Honestly i don't like spells placement for protection, you are forced to pick some borderline useless spells that should be optional to reach actually usefull talents, also placement of these spells makes no sense like for example Hand of the Protector to reach talents improving play around avg shield. You literally cant reproduce SL build in this tree, seems imo ridiculous.
Alright, first off, great to finally see what has been in the works with paladin. I'm going to be focused on the ret side of the trees, since it's what i have played for 16 years at this point. i'd like to preface that most of what i wrote down is just comming out on the top of my head and i know there are issues in the tree that can be flushed out more.Class tree for Ret:First and formost, it looks like blizzards design on the paladin tree is very centered on judgement, consecration and wings when it comes to ret. From what i can tell, the entire playstyle revolves around getting out as many judgements out during wings as you can to extend it.It's great to see that you have put in some utility that used to be spec specific into the general tree, so a specs have a chance to bring it (spellwarding for ret / holy and rebuke for holy especially). But there are some things i have concerns and things i think are really cool.just to get it out of the way, make switching aura's off gcd, it doesn't feel good to switch between them and it makes seal of the templar useable.I like the fact that the class tree seems to not be too punishing going down either side of the tree to do some hybrid spec, since there is somewhat good node connections. As a ret, you could go down the left side to become almost a pseudo healer, if a raid fight seems too healing intensive. here you would be able to make a consecration healing spec with judgement of light on top to do a bunch of passive healing to your team. but if you are building a consecration healing build, it would only make sense for AoE fights (doing stuff like divine toll + judgement of light on top). if you are doing a ST fight, depending on the damage from consecration, you would probably not do damage on par with other dps specs that also have util, but doesn't have to go into an AoE playstyle. For the pvp aspect, you dont need to go down the right side really and you can go into more tank / healer oriented talents further down the tree.If maximizing for damage however, both in ST and AoE, i can't see a world currently where you wouldn't go grab 2/3 capstones in the class tree for ret for most situations. It has the highest upside damage wise. and a lot of talents going towards them are damage oriented. you would always want The Mad Paragon with everything around it (taking hallowed ground for AoE and not taking 3 points in Seal of might (depending on tuning)) and you get avenging wrath with seal of might. This almost entirely negates the cool thing about paladins, which is their vast ST utility arsenal.Also, if you choose to go for the healing hybrid, this causes you as a ret to lose out on mobility, which we dont have a whole lot of already, if you still want as much damage as possible. It takes 4 talent points to get somewhat close to what we have now in terms of the divine steed only. Here i do like we have the option of getting a nerfed version of long arm of the law in the spec tree. this makes up for the lack of mobility a bit. would like to see that talent give a bit more speed, since 20% isn't a whole lot. maybe 30% would feel a bit better.Spec tree for Ret:like the idea of you being able to make very different specs with different goals in terms of what they are doing. You can make an all in 1 min burst spec with ES, FR, since it's an intense, yet punishing / rewarding playstyle depending on tuning. if not tuned correctly. You can make a ST spec that has more general throughput both for ST and AoE. Getting consecration revived is a big plus. and having a talent auto cast is and having a chance to generate HP from it are really good changes. also having ES not blocking anything else is good, since it's very fight specific you would want this talent in general. Still confused why JV is still in the game, since that node is only being picked for Eye. Personal victory is you can finally get crusade without it feeling sad. One major concern i have for ret is the same thing that has bothered me for a while now: Where is the unique raid util for ret? since we dont have the old buff blessings, ret paladins don't bring anything unique to the table when it comes to raiding, that a holy / prot don't bring. There is nothing in the spec tree that screams: "this is a useful spell / ability, let's bring a ret." Anything going on in the class tree, the other specs pick up, that would benefit the raid and not lose a major part of what their role does. In the spec tree, nothing is there to help your team, only very selfish talents. The consecration slow is also available for prot and many other classes in general. They also get even lower CDs with Uther's Guard. Something like an improved retribution aura that actually buffs the team a bit or something along those lines would help get rets at least 1 spot in raids without it feeling like a worse... well, close to any melee really at this point.There is probably more things, but these points are what stood out to me at a first runthrough. Who knows, i might be wrong on this completely. Excited to see what blizz comes up with :)
This is the first talent tree I look at since I main paladin, and I don't really understand it. Why are there so many what you'd think would be baseline spells, in the talent trees? I thought talent trees would primarily be for passive bonuses and a few interesting spells, but I'm seeing a lot of baseline stuff in there. The tree is also oddly connected at the moment, forcing me to pick certain spells just to get access to other powerful ones.Maybe I just don't understand it properly, and maybe it'll work well in-game. But I'm a bit worried. I hope they keep iterating on it.
Ret Tree along with base tree is INCREDIBLE. Well done on this one blizz seriously. The only thing I would change would be to make the base tree have 30 points and the ret tree have 31, because as it stands, you're already giving us 2 talents from the base tree without us asking, like those talents are baseline. It felt like I just had extra points to spare in the base tree, so changing that would give more flexibility in the ret tree but, thats all I would change.
Ok so class tree, for all spec, incuding holy, you always take Mad Paragon. The class tree has very little choices. You don't have many points to spare and even if we had, there isnt really much to spend on. Better steed, better sac and thats about it for stuff thats not insanly niche. One note is the Holy Avenger/Divine Purpose node. Holy Avenger is functionaly only Holy Paly talent. it needs to line up with Wings for it to be good for Ret and Prot.On the Divine Toll, with out the conduit its not worth to take on single target, even with resonance. The effect is not worth 2 points on ST. Its pure AoE. Keep that in mindRet tree. Is really weird. There are some interesting talents there but the whole tree is so confusing. You have pure ST talents requiered for AoE talents, and vice versa. Path of Ruin is worse then Divine Storm unless you get the stun, and then its OP! 15 cd 5sec AoE stun? What? I hate Ashes to Dust on ST. I want one minute build for ST it was awesome, but i wonder if loosing the Divine toll on ST is gonna make it not good anymore. Having to take HoH or/and Healing Hands to get to Capstones is bad. You take the talents that we can flex for different utility in might and make them mandatory. The point of utility nodes is to be able to flex them, thats the fun of these tree! Don't make them mandatory. The Eye for an Eye/Justicar Vengence node needs to get deleted. Both of these suck. Overall, The builds end up being ok but Rets dont have any flex utility. Which is the one thing that can makes ret viable over other dps classes.Prot. I dont like this tree. The Capstones are Rightous Fury(an Aoe oriented talent), Eye of Tyr(Aoe DR), DT(an Aoe talent). All Caps are very AoE focused. Same goes for a lot of talents. There are only few ST talents and they are not very powerful. I would have like Prot Paly to get some abilities that, well... Protect. Some Group defensive utility. Overall Prots dont get much new stuff. You can have more old stuff at once but not much new and most of new is just makeing all stuff last longer and be stronger. I don't think Prots gonna change at all with these, its just gonna be stronger. And I think that's OKIn summary. The build you end up having are powerfull, you can have strong talents combos. But the paths through nodes are weird and awkward and you dont have many points to spend on utility AND even if we had, there is not much utility to even pick up. So compared to some other better trees it feels lacking but I dont think we have many agreedius node paths compared to some other worst trees. We have some nodes we'll never pick. So it needs some works but I'm hopeful some iteration will make it a great tree
Jesus fecking christ. The RET tree is stacked...So much goodies, now just how much of it can I stack?
Ok.. very disappointed to be seeing the same mobility issues xpac after xpac. Divine Steed feels bad to use and sucks to be 3 secs baseline with a 1 min CD. Having to spend points to make this spell not feel like booty is not fun design. The two charges spending point is ok, but using a point to make it last 1 second longer? Gee thanks.... Turn Evil is still niche and almost useless without the conduit power that makes it seemingly instant cast. I have issues with there being Cleanse Toxins as a major point node that you have to choose to get to very useful items for holy spec. So what... we have to spend 1 point to get the useless Cleanse Toxins and then I'm guessing waste another point in the Holy specific tree to upgrade it to Cleanse that includes magic effects? These should be baseline... Why are we being forced to waste multiple points that should be meaningful on an ability twice. I would argue that having both Blessing of Sacrifice and Blessing of Freedom in the general tree is pretty lame too since these are abilities paladins are known for.I am super bummed that Exorcism is ret only... I have wanted this ability to make a comeback for paladin and its now spec specific. Idk maybe it would be in the holy tree but I doubt it. I would really like for that ability to be in the general tree instead of Seal of Mercy to add some spice to consecration instead of a lame passive "seal".
There is a reason i left paladin to play warlock and that is the fact Retribution paladin bring nothing to a raid. Paladins need a raid buff, and to be more specific. Ret paladin needs to bring a raid buff!Warriros has always brought raid buffs and raid cooldowns while paladin has only brought single target utility when they removed blessings.In my opinion they could make so Retribution gives perhaps a flat 3% haste buff to everyone in a raid, i wanna see a reason to bring a RET paladin not just a paladin.You have always brought a holy for the paladins utility and a prot paladin for the extra dps/immunities but never brought a ret paladin for anything for years now
So... retribution and crusader are still auras huh.Worst change to paladins ever IMO.INB4 we have awesome damage until launch, when we are gutted and nerfed to the ground, like every expansion so far.
Cannot go for a ST build without having to take Divine Storm ? weird
Is it just me or are these these "talent trees" just reskinned versions of the current talent system with extra steps?
at least give Vanquiser's Hammer for Prot if Avengers Shield is no longer generate Holy Power pls
I think Holy would be cool to play if Avenging Crusader was passive or cost holy power and maybe add in holy shock after balancing
I thought the point of the class tree was that there wouldn't be any throughput talents on there since you'll always take them over utility...
Ret PaladinI really love how they finally added some interesting synergy with Consecration. Hammer of Wrath however, is in a sorry state.For an execute ability, it deals pitiful damage and only grants 1 Holy Power. It's pretty much just worse than Blade of Justice, and with frequent Art of War procs, Hammer can feel like a glorified Crusader Strike. Currently in shadowlands, it feels really bad to use unless you are Venthyr and/or have The Mad Paragon legendary. With Dragonflight, it looks even worse, because The Mad Paragon now only buffs Hammer by 10% and also affects Judgement now. I really hope they buff Hammer of Wrath in some way. Give it some execute sniping benefit like Shadow Priest and Fire Mage have. Or maybe just increase the damage it deals, make it grant 2 Holy Power, something to make it feel good.
Ok, umm, why is divine toll last roll talent on all 3 specs? Why not just move it to the class tree if all specs have it anyway... And why is it the only covenant ability available for prot and ret? Maybe consider giving blessing of seasons to prot as well. I miss giving buffs.