[7.0] New Paladin Abilities and Talents

[ruiizu]

this helps with our negative mobility how



BTW interesting how you act like it matters or like L&O is a good talent.
All it takes to completely negate said talent is to be further than 12 yards from Ret.
Which is not terribly difficult to accomplish.


@ruiizu, thank you for mentioning dodged generator issues and overkill/absorbed JVs on Battle.Net BEta forum.
Slightly annoyed that noone responded.
It's slightly serious issue.

I played for years as a Fury Warrior, where missed attacks on dual wield generated no rage (and you had over 10% chance to miss), and you also generated no rage from absorbed hits (meaning for a while you basically couldn't kill priests unless you already had rage). This problem is basically no different. Also in general avoidance is already good enough, it doesn't need this edge against us even more.

[Teleros]

Ya, but then we'd have a WHOLE EXTRA ability on our bars, and heaven forbid we should actually be able to fill up all our bar slots. Its very intimidating to new players.

Ret already has plenty of characters for a MOBA game.

:P

[Snegovik]

I played for years as a Fury Warrior, where missed attacks on dual wield generated no rage (and you had over 10% chance to miss), and you also generated no rage from absorbed hits (meaning for a while you basically couldn't kill priests unless you already had rage). This problem is basically no different. Also in general avoidance is already good enough, it doesn't need this edge against us even more.

Oh i know 100% what do you mean, until this day one of my favorite pvp memories was when i was lvling my shadow priest in BC @lvl 67, 3 wars lvl 70 jumped me from above flying on their fancy mounts, i 1v3 them as easy as taking a candy from a child, Bubbles > wars, so lets hope priests wont be a good healer in legion, since not only it will be the only class able to dispel our bubble but their abs bubbles wont give us healing from JVs =(

[Morally Grey Storm]

I played for years as a Fury Warrior, where missed attacks on dual wield generated no rage (and you had over 10% chance to miss), and you also generated no rage from absorbed hits (meaning for a while you basically couldn't kill priests unless you already had rage). This problem is basically no different. Also in general avoidance is already good enough, it doesn't need this edge against us even more.

oh I do fondly remember Cata PvP, when as Ret, you had to hardcap Expertise.
Expertise.
Hardcap.
For PvP.

What I also recall from the Cata days is that at first, CS would generate HoPo even if missed/dodged/used on immune targets, which was fixed very very quickly, and left at that since then.
Nevertheless, thank you for rising the topic .

- - - Updated - - -

Don't want to start that "grass-is-always-greener-..."-discussion again, but the frost mage rework from the last build (poor frost mages felt uncomfy with frozen orb) shows, that blizz can still make some significant changes (e.g. adding new abilities). What about paladins feeling uncomfortable? Our burden?

NO RET IS GRAET STACK 95% HASTES AND IT SMOOTHES OUT

[Teleros]

What about paladins feeling uncomfortable? Our burden?

Ret has plate, bubble, and heals, it's OP enough :P .

[Silvus]

Change Retributions mastery to: Haste now also increases movement speed by x% when hit by a critical strike ^^

[Helsinki]

Is it just me or.. I try to follow this thread, but there is so much to read..
Every retpal seem disappointed with the upcoming changes, since almost the beginning of the beta
And I've never seen a Feedback blue post about retpals..

It's like blizzard is convinced to do a great job with ret while everyone is saying they don't.
Maybe I've missed some posts of rets that are happy with those changes.

I don't have the chance to get into the beta, but I've tried a bit on the PTR and I didn't manage to avoid having timeouts in my rotation D:
I'm surely doing it wrong and I'm waiting for the patch being live to focus on that, but I worry a lot..

[Teleros]

Is it just me or.. I try to follow this thread, but there is so much to read..
Every retpal seem disappointed with the upcoming changes, since almost the beginning of the beta

Perhaps 8/10 to 9/10 are, judged by comments here.

And I've never seen a Feedback blue post about retpals..

There have been some, but mostly early on about how awesome Equality (now Holy Wrath) is as a talent.

We've had some theorycrafting feedback too though.

I don't have the chance to get into the beta, but I've tried a bit on the PTR and I didn't manage to avoid having timeouts in my rotation D:

There will be some anyway I think, I think Blizz have tried to slow down the rotation for Rets a bit.

Pretty sure we've got @Hekili etc working on rotation addons, and @Solsacra doing SimCraft stuff etc too. By the time the pre-patch goes live I think we should be able to adjust to the new system without too much trouble.

[Helsinki]

Thank you Teleros for the quick summary. SeemsGood

[Deleted]

@Nemmar, with the 8 second judge window, if your having close to max HP when that window depletes AND boJ cd is coming off CD, that means you messed up, not that the CDs are messed up.

You have to be more precise over what exactly i messed up on. It's unclear wether you are saying i should not pool max HP for the judgement window or what? During judgement window i alternate a finisher with a generator. It varies depending on where the rotation is. At the end of the window i usually have between one and 3 HP. So, again... i need you to be more precise on what this mess up is. I would like to know.

- - - Updated - - -

Now i want to preface this with that this is just my views on things and a recounting my experience with ret's rotation from the PTR so obviously it's not wholly accurate for 110. With that out of the way i'm going to try and address some things you've said.

1.) While i have ran into the 4 HP dilemma a number of times (it's pretty much unavoidable at times) it's rarely an issue as with my character ( copy from live, so-so gear 14% haste 27% crit 36% mastery) I usually take that as a opportunity to start up a ES into judge cycle (i'm actually very fond of ES and have no issues working it into our rotation). So it usually looks like: 4HP BoJ off CD, 1 Charge Zeal/CS so it proceeds into ES > BoJ > CS/Zeal > CS/Zeal > Judge > TV > CS/Zeal > TV > Cs/Zeal > BoJ > TV. Zeal obviously throws it off a bit by just being slower HP generation in general, but it's still entirely possible.

2.) I've honestly never sat on 2 charges of CS for very long, if at all unless i got a chain of DP procs which then shit happens, it's a gain to get those procs than to be returned to standard rotation for generation.

3.) Again it does happen yes, but theres a reason you used Judgment in the first place. That you were ready to begin a burn cycle and having all your generators at the ready is a good thing when heading into a burn cycle to ensure you get the most out of it.

4.) Rather cast a TV or JV for free then continue the generation path.

5.) Wrath is far less appealing (IMO) than it was before due to the hefty nerf to damage it took and puts Virtues above it, but it still has it's use at lower levels of haste.

6.) See i don't really get where this one is coming from, i have ES ready for each judgment cycle, so unless you are using ES and then IMMEDIATELY judging (which you should not be doing) then this is not really a issue and in fact serves to even alleviate the 4 HP dilemma (as i outlined earlier) as it gives you something to use as a spender without having to start a judge cycle that moment that also does not get reduced in damage due to it being cast outside of the judgment window.

Though i'll agree the two systems do bash heads in a sense between the HP generation and the Judge window, but from my experience thus far it does work together oddly enough. One things for certain though, we need that 2HP generation on blades for the rest of the system to work without it, we'd need a faster CD on it or for damage to be shifted from the spender spectrum it currently is to be more balanced something along the lines of the mastery we had initially for Legion.

So, about the ES thing. I don't see how that can be working for you. Even if you use it earlier, there will come a cycle where you either won't use it or sit on your judgement waiting for it to be useable again. Where you use it does not have a huge relevance because the CD does not synch with judgement's. Unless its one of those haste fixes it cases. I have increased my haste on the ptr to 13% and i honestly have seen no difference. I am even getting unconvinced that haste will yeild much value if we can't maximise the cooldown usage.

edit: Nvm... i understand now how you are doing this. You are basically delaying the judgement window everytime to fit it.

This is exactly what i am saying. Everything goes on downtime all the time. That is why some people don't mind Zeal. I get it now... you are waiting anyways. This is really messed up. You guys aren't giving good feedback at all.
What is the point of the CD's? Its what i have been saying. The HP dictates the CD's most of the time, not the number they have on the tooltip.
This spec is completely broken and you guys are trying to leg it... as is blizzard tbh.

[Clash the DK]

@Nemmar

You don't delay Judgment. It doesn't matter how much Holy Power you have at the time. Judgment is now the first priority. Everything else just falls into place.

[Wrecktangle]

I was talking about the suggestion, not the concept =P

Not sure I follow lol on the suggestion piece.

I don't disagree that a powerful damage-window does adequately represent our spec; however, I do disagree that a system where one builds HP until max, then is forced into using one or two abilities for 10 seconds (depending on situation) represents Retribution effectively.

I wanted to clarify this because I think you're missing something. I never said or implied you'd be forced into spamming one or two abilities repeatedly during a Zealotry window. Zealotry merely augments your skills to have additional and more powerful effects. They still have cooldowns. The only piece that changed is during the window you no longer gain or spend Holy Power. Obviously in the current build of the game you'd just spam TV since it's "free", but I did state that a full retooling of general abilities would need to be changed to accommodate the new mastery/mechanic. I also stated that abilities would be much more balanced in damage (i.e. TV doesn't do 6x (made up number) CS damage now, they'd be much closer in damage as I didn't want to tie our damage into all finishers, but rather spread it out over our abilities.

This is more my fault than yours for putting an idea out there without fleshing the full build out . I understand where your confusion came from.

not static like your suggestion - which is not without merit, obviously, but a static window like that feels like it would be uninteresting, especially considering we'd need to rethink how quickly we can max out our resource again to enter into the window). Even Shadow Priests have a variable duration window for their Insanity, based on their skill-use and optimization therein. I just think the static window approach wouldn't work, especially since our options of skill use during that window is limited.

This is a good point. I personally disagree that it being static makes it uninteresting, however that doesn't mean that it being static is optimal either.

Some abilities could definitely extend or "spend" the Zealotry buff while in the effect. That is actually a very strong suggestion!

I imagine the push-to-5 mechanic would interfere with how the class feels with respect to encounter mechanics; if we're removed from combat due to mechanics any time during our big-dick DPS phase of the static 10 sec, it would feel terrible ("aw man, if only I could have used my entire damage window!"). Ideally, we'd need to spend x time building to 5, then 10 seconds in the window, mashing our TV for single-target or DS for AoE. That means our rotational cycle winds up being 10+x sec. Other classes have a variable rotational cycle in their DPS, Havoc - for instance - only requires 4 or 5 GCDs before they're resource capped, then use up x sec of GCDs on their spenders, increasing with crit chance. Essentially, they have a more fluid rotational cycle of 4.5+x, as opposed to Zealotry's 10+x. The majority of their variability also lies in their consumption phase of DPS, rather than their build-phase of DPS, accounting for the variability of their resource generation (20-30 Fury built per GCD).

We covered the other piece about spamming TV/DS so I won't go into that again, but I agree that balancing it around mechanics is the challenge. It's not hard to build to 5. What would be more challenging would be maximizing its uptime value MEANINGFULLY. I.e One ret has 47% uptime, pretty good, with only say 40 GCDs used during Zealotry. Another Ret might have only had 42% uptime on the same fight, but managed to accrue 46 GCDs during Zealotry, thus probably having reasonably higher DPS.

I'll have to take a look at this another time. From what I've read so far, there are a few reservations I'd have about a set-up like this, but I'll explain in that thread, instead.

Sounds good.

[Deleted]

and greater judge is now incredibly strong since the damage does not go down per bounce at all. hitting 4 targets of which you are more likely to be hitting them with it at max HP is a great boost to our damage. more so over since you can most likely double DS all 4 targets for a nice boost as well. thats a big changer in terms of talent choice.

Double DS? You don't mean via Divine Tempest, do you? They said it won't cause DS to hit the same target twice.

[rubenmsalles]

War cryes about charge and heroic leap need more charges, wars have it
mages cryes about frozen orb doesn't fit their playstyle, even when blizz says that there are not more mechanic changes now, they have it asap
ret cryes about their unwanted changed, blizz nerf vengance aura and keeping nerfing paladins every build
good job

[Teleros]

Double DS? You don't mean via Divine Tempest, do you? They said it won't cause DS to hit the same target twice.

I think he means you can do something like DS > CS > DS, benefiting from mastery and such.

[Deleted]

I think he means you can do something like DS > CS > DS, benefiting from mastery and such.

Well you'd expect to get at least three off in a window now, so I'm not so sure.

[ruiizu]

Well you'd expect to get at least three off in a window now, so I'm not so sure.

That's definitely not a guarantee for every window if you're running Greater Judgment. Getting off 3 basically depends on whether you've got any procs or high enough haste if you're not running Fires of Justice (because you won't always get 5 Holy Power before Judgment comes off CD if you just spent 3 at the 7.5 second mark of Judgment debuff or so).

Of course that's where Wake of Ashes comes in.

[cletis1234]

So I just tried out Ret for the first time on the PTR. These are my thoughts:

1. It's horribly awkward and clunky. The new Judgment mechanic is the worst thing to ever happen to the class. I'll gladly take Inquisition over this crap. And I honestly thought nothing was worse than Inquisition.

2. I don't feel like a Paladin anymore. I've been playing since WOTLK, and I thought WoD Ret was so close to being perfect. It was the culmination of several expansions' worth of iterations, all of them improving on Ret. Legion has just taken all of that and thrown it out the window.

3. Ret has no identity. We have combo points like Rogue, but we don't have the Control or the tactics that comes with playing a rogue. We are also much more like a Warrior, restricted to dealing our damage up-front, but we don't have the mobility nor the DPS of a Warrior. We are even less of a Priest, or anything that resembles a "Warrior of Light", now that we've lost Exorcism, Selfless Healer, Sacred Shield, Sac, etc.

4. Our talents are Lol-worthy. There are no interesting choices to be made at all. IF you want ST damage, you spec into the left side, if you want Aoe, you go right side. What happened to talents being meaningful choices that change how you play, but didn't require a re-spec after every encounter? So much fail.

5. Nothing has been done to alleviate the pains of having to constantly watch a debuff on your target. I never know how much time is left on the judgment window unless I look at the tiny, hard to see icon above my target's nameplate. Doing this distracts from gameplay, and makes it awkward than it has to.

6. And NAMEPLATES OMG. What happened to the nameplates. I went into a BG, and I turned on nameplates, and I couldn't target anything, it was just a sea of people that I couldn't tell apart from one another.

I'm not coming back to Legion if this is how Ret stays. I was fairly optimistic about Legion, but now i'm just shocked. The Devs literally threw everything that was good about Ret right out the window. And it seems they've ignored all the feedback since Alpha. We have triple the amount of pages of feedback in the forums, and not a single response, while I consistently see other classes getting addressed from the Devs. So not cool. Ret is dead, and as far as im concerned, WoW is now dead for me too.

[ruiizu]

So I just tried out Ret for the first time on the PTR. These are my thoughts:

1. It's horribly awkward and clunky. The new Judgment mechanic is the worst thing to ever happen to the class. I'll gladly take Inquisition over this crap. And I honestly thought nothing was worse than Inquisition.

2. I don't feel like a Paladin anymore. I've been playing since WOTLK, and I thought WoD Ret was so close to being perfect. It was the culmination of several expansions' worth of iterations, all of them improving on Ret. Legion has just taken all of that and thrown it out the window.

3. Ret has no identity. We have combo points like Rogue, but we don't have the Control or the tactics that comes with playing a rogue. We are also much more like a Warrior, restricted to dealing our damage up-front, but we don't have the mobility nor the DPS of a Warrior. We are even less of a Priest, or anything that resembles a "Warrior of Light", now that we've lost Exorcism, Selfless Healer, Sacred Shield, Sac, etc.

4. Our talents are Lol-worthy. There are no interesting choices to be made at all. IF you want ST damage, you spec into the left side, if you want Aoe, you go right side. What happened to talents being meaningful choices that change how you play, but didn't require a re-spec after every encounter? So much fail.

5. Nothing has been done to alleviate the pains of having to constantly watch a debuff on your target. I never know how much time is left on the judgment window unless I look at the tiny, hard to see icon above my target's nameplate. Doing this distracts from gameplay, and makes it awkward than it has to.

6. And NAMEPLATES OMG. What happened to the nameplates. I went into a BG, and I turned on nameplates, and I couldn't target anything, it was just a sea of people that I couldn't tell apart from one another.

I'm not coming back to Legion if this is how Ret stays. I was fairly optimistic about Legion, but now i'm just shocked. The Devs literally threw everything that was good about Ret right out the window. And it seems they've ignored all the feedback since Alpha. We have triple the amount of pages of feedback in the forums, and not a single response, while I consistently see other classes getting addressed from the Devs. So not cool. Ret is dead, and as far as im concerned, WoW is now dead for me too.

The interface definitely took a hit. I don't like where they went with it (trying to make things tiny and trim, what a great idea for a bunch of people that stare at screens all day and 50% or more of which have glasses). But you're not right about the choice of talents.

With the exception of Execution Sentence, the other talents just change "how" you deal your single/AE. Fires of Justice builds faster finishers for both single and multi-target; Zeal cleaves and so does Greater Judgment (builder vs. spender model again). In the Blade tier, Blade of Justice is slightly more in favor of single target, but builds Holy Power faster than Divine Hammer so you get more frequent Divine Storms with the former and also Blade of Wrath. Wrath shifts damage from generators more towards finishers with slightly more Holy Power gain.

Honestly Judgment tracking is going to end up being an addon thing. The default UI has actually gotten worse than it used to be because everything is so goddamn small.

The only talent tier that is pretty much crap is 100. Divine Purpose has been the clear winner since Crusade got changed in such a horrible way. And yes, the talents at 100 are very "boring" for being the last tier.

[Reghame]

@Nemmar

You don't delay Judgment. It doesn't matter how much Holy Power you have at the time. Judgment is now the first priority. Everything else just falls into place.

if people would follow this rule to the letter then they would quickly find out that the spec is not broken. a lot of people keep waiting for no god damn reason because they dont understand how it plays, have to wait because they fucked up, then say the spec is broken after 5 minutes go gameplay at level 100 at prepatch.