[7.0 Retribution Paladin] Guide and Discussion

[Morally Grey Storm]

Reposting from battle net forums, fir greater justice

Just got off the PTR.

- Judge Unworthy does NOT spread Lawbringer
- Lawbringer does NOT increase the duration of Judgment

It's a nerf.

All credit goes to Jovey.

[Deleted]

Because executes are for warriors, duh!

Now here, take colossus sma- I mean uh, NEW AND IMPROVED JUDGMENT!

And priests!

[Ryuji]

Talents

Divine Hammer Divine Hammers spin around you, damaging enemies within 8 yds for (90% 68% of weapon damage) Holy damage instantly and every 2 sec for 12 sec. Generates 2 Holy Power. Retribution Paladin - Level 60 Talent. Instant. 12 sec cooldown.

RIP DH on 2-target fights probably. Our tuning knob's going from 12% to 16% though so...hmm. It's including BoJ/DH so am not sure what the actual change is going to be in the final release of 7.2.5.

[Morally Grey Storm]

RIP DH on 2-target fights probably. Our tuning knob's going from 12% to 16% though so...hmm. It's including BoJ/DH so am not sure what the actual change is going to be in the final release of 7.2.5.

It was only logical and expected after Lawbringer finely tuned balancing.
Once more we are witnessing the Wisdom of the Infallible Developers of Bzzd.

[Ryuji]

It was only logical and expected after Lawbringer finely tuned balancing.
Once more we are witnessing the Wisdom of the Infallible Developers of Bzzd.

Seen the WW monk changes? It's...interesting lol. Nerf Fists of Fury, the highest damaging skill, buff the rest of the abilities by 5%. Seems good? Actually is both a ST and an AoE DPS loss, when WW Monks are supposed to be AoE kings/queens.

Blizzard pls.

I do know this, if they intend on people using Execution Sentence, I'm still not gonna use it. Still as clunky as the day it was revamped.

[Deleted]

I compared live with PTR.

With blessing of the ashbringer on both.

BoW hit for +4k.
TV hit for -11k.
DH hit for -22k per tick.

Nerfs ahoy! Cause we were obviously OP.

edit: Oh... they nerfed tier 19 x2 by 3%.

Like what is the point of letting us equip 3 tier bonuses if you are just gonna nerf them till they aren't worth it. Someone please fire these designers. Sigh...

[Lumineus]

We're going to use Blade of Wrath for almost everything in Tomb anyway. All these AoE nerfs (not just ours) are going to suck ass trying to push back to M+ 15 though.

[Kuriyama]

I guess Blizzard didn't like the idea of us planning to use 2P T19 and 4P T20...I haven't looked at numbers but I'm assuming with the 3% nerf you'd be better off getting some ToS gear with a higher level, rather than still using like 895 T19 pieces.

As for Divine Hammer, that is such a stupidly huge nerf. They've obviously done it because they want us to stop using it on single target fights. So this is annoying as I'll have to start bringing tomes to raids again. Sigh.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Seen the WW monk changes? It's...interesting lol. Nerf Fists of Fury, the highest damaging skill, buff the rest of the abilities by 5%. Seems good? Actually is both a ST and an AoE DPS loss, when WW Monks are supposed to be AoE kings/queens.

Well considering they are buffing Seed of Corruption for warlocks, I'm not too inclined to believe Monks are supposed to be said kings.

I do know this, if they intend on people using Execution Sentence, I'm still not gonna use it. Still as clunky as the day it was revamped.

Well isn't it the best time to push the envelope with the most balancestest spec?

Nerf all the pros, force all the cons, enjoy the show.

[Nition]

Ugh this is upsetting...

[Reith]

WTF Blizzard? Why are they so intent on not adjusting retribution talents that they go at it in such a roundabout way that nerfs the only thing we were good at (and not the best at)? Seriously? There's NINE talents that never see use in raids by probably 99% of ret players. I'm actually considering not resubbing tbh. My sub runs out in like 12 days so we'll see.

[Kanael]

http://www.strawpoll.me/12934224/r

Place your bets

[Deleted]

Honestly, that doesn't seem too bad. DH was overtuned anyway, keep in mind that ironically despite buffing BoJ by 20% (hotfix with Crusade nerf) to prevent us from using DH on ST, buffed DH was still competitive with BoW on ST.
And as much as I disliked that our mastery was useless on AoE, JU (and further DH buffs) with the 7.2 traits buffed our AoE even further, and I doubt DS was tuned around having mastery up on more than two targets. While I still want to see some ST buffs, at least this nerf turns us towards the rigth direction (unless Blizz pulls some stupid shit like buffing ES so it's viable, and immediately hotfixing it back to unusable state. Even if you dislike the talent, that nerf was random as fuck).

And the change itself shouldn't hit too hard, excluding the BotA nerf, we would lose ~6-7% of our DH damage during an entire m+ run, with the modifeid aura it's more like ~3% nerf overall, not that terrible. On ST encounters we're buffed (BoW was roughly equal to DH, now everything but DH got buffed, it's at least something).

Like what is the point of letting us equip 3 tier bonuses if you are just gonna nerf them till they aren't worth it. Someone please fire these designers. Sigh...

That was never intended. And actually T19 will be nerfed for the same reason why we have six set items in the first place: in order to not fuck us for using legendaries in Tier slots. Also a lot of T19 boni got nerfed, some harder than ours (look at BM, T19 2p was nerfed by 50%).

Edit: I too believe it's gonna be tFoJ, but honestly: it would be really lame, neither Zeal nor Gr. Judge are really interesting. Tbf our talent tree is the worst of all specs in legion. Sure others are not balanced either and some are similar to Ret with mixing ST/AoE talents. But we have this shit all over the place, in addition to most talents being boring as fuck and the existence of HW...
Speaking of which... maybe the ring will give us HW? so that we can finally use our most beloved talent without gimping our damage... that would be the first legendary I wouldn't use despite it potentially being in line with our top legendaries.

[Nition]

That was never intended. And actually T19 will be nerfed for the same reason why we have six set items in the first place: in order to not fuck us for using legendaries in Tier slots. Also a lot of T19 boni got nerfed, some harder than ours (look at BM, T19 2p was nerfed by 50%).

Actually they said in an interview they considered that an option and wanted us to consider whether the 2set was still worth taking over higher iLvl ToS gear.

[Deleted]

To my understanding when buffing BoJ everything connected to it or replacing it got buffed. So did DH.
Its only about a perspective. Instead of buffing BoJ ST (with more BoW proccs or VB increased damage or it doing holy damage or w/e) they preferred to nerf DH.
We have reached to the point where the thought behind it is : DH overperforming rest talents in ST situations which was not intented. We are happy with ST output of ret paladin. We believe that ret aoe could survive a nerf. So bring dh damage down and retribution will get more talent choices."

I stand in awe, eyes wide open witnessing the ingenious developer team and clap blizzard for the arse it is serving us again. thanks a lot.

[Morally Grey Storm]

That was never intended.

So what?
Let us then merrily nerf and cut to pieces and ban all the tricks, all the expoilts, basically all that makes playing and tinkering with your character fun!
Right? Right?

Who needs reforging? We don't want people to tinker with the way they stack stats.
Who needs gems, chants?

Who needs diversity in arenas? Lets cut off all the Dragonslaying items in PvP for such a feeble reason like "it's too hard to balance". Sure, it's hard to balance, but did you see any improvement since said cutting off took place?
Who needs to actually be in control of how do you gear , chant and gem you character for PvP?
Who needs to have a choice?

Your choice is not yours, and if you choose poorly(i.e. not what was intended or expected) , you will get your preferred talent/perk/gearpiece nerfed: See Crusade nerf, Equalolity nerf when it was finally barely almost usable albeit in PvP only(not to mention forcing this on us beforehand), ExeSent nerf next day after NH was released, CoF nerf Ret-specifically, and so on and so forth.

[Deleted]

To my understanding when buffing BoJ everything connected to it or replacing it got buffed. So did DH.

Blade of Justice damage increased by 20%, unchanged in PvP.

As such, we're going to tone down Crusade, and compensate with a buff to Blade of Justice. For those that had maximized Crusade to an extreme degree, this may result in a small overall nerf – this is intended. This change also helps prevent Divine Hammer from being too dominant in single-target situations

It was a change to BoJ only (DH got buffed to 90% in 7.1.5 and was still at 90% after the hotfix).

After all the DH nerf was needed, VB is dead anyway and would need significant buffs to compete with BoW on ST alone, while still being useless on cleave etc. Even a buffed BoW would porpably still be significantly weaker than DH prenerf DH on two targets, DH just eliminates any choices in this row (it's a flaw of putting ST and AoE talents in the same row).
And since everything got buffed by 4%, it's like a 3-4% damage buff to our ST damage as compared to now. Imho not enough but at least better than nerfs only

Edit: @Storm: Hey, it's just what I remembered (and Nition corrected me) and I don't disaggree with you, I'm just saying it makes sense in regard what blizzard said, and it applies to all classes, not Ret only. Do I aggree with Blizzard? No. But at least it's a somewhat understandable change.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Edit: @Storm: Hey, it's just what I remembered (and Nition corrected me) and I don't disaggree with you, I'm just saying it makes sense in regard what blizzard said, and it applies to all classes, not Ret only. Do I aggree with Blizzard? No. But at least it's a somewhat understandable change.

hey there.
I'm not attacking you personally and am not apologising for somewhat agressive tone.
Just slightly dissapointed with bzzd.

Ofcourse it does make sense to THEM, but it does not improve OUR gameplay. Which, as far as I am aware, should be their top concern as far as game development goes. Right? Right? Logic at least tells it's right. But logic is such a liar.

Understandable changes and bzzd...
prot T11(was it t11, which prolonged GoAK?) nerf, fething ridiculous Ret-specific Gurthalak nerf during Cata come to mind at first.

DH just eliminates any choices in this row (it's a flaw of putting ST and AoE talents in the same row).

Of course it's a flaw.
Take a look at tier 15 f.e. Concecration is useless, virtually.
Take a look at tier 30. Not so Greater Colossus Judgement of Lothar of Smahs of the Whale was almost dead talent and now it is even more deader due to Judge Unmanly. And noone bats an eye.

But hey, Rets are doing somewhat good Aoe in PvP and while Dragonslaying! Better to nerf them there and then!

I don't even sometimes. Literally.

[Deleted]

Ret talents have been shitty like that ever since beta. As I said we got the worst talent tree.
No interesting choices (half of our talents feel like copy-pasted vanilla talents), AoE/ST talents share rows (was there in the past, but not as extreme as now). Holy Wrath. Seriously, the old HW (channeled finisher on 2min cd) was still a better talent than whatever abomination equality is.

Ironically, prot to some extent and holy certainly have decent talent trees in PVE (holy imho is actually very balanced and interesting) while the same class got VB, Gr. Judge and Equality.
I can't help but imagine Paladin talent design process like that:
"Okay we put a lot of effort into Prot and Holy talantes, to have decent design specs after we replaced holy power, what to we do with Ret?" - "Fuck that shit, put some of the discarded ideas in there and let us get home"

In a way, the DH nerf at least allows some choice in that tier (from pve perspective, assuming DH stays ahead at two targets, the difference could be small enough to pick talent based on preference). this row went from terrible designed to bad designed. Progress.

[Morally Grey Storm]

In a way, the DH nerf at least allows some choice in that tier (from pve perspective, assuming DH stays ahead at two targets, the difference could be small enough to pick talent based on preference). this row went from terrible designed to bad designed. Progress.

Sure, it is a progress.
Sure, it allows some choice.

But here is this little thing: our PvP AoE pressure gets gutted once more with no recompensation, and knowing full well it's bzzd and Retribution we're talking about, no impending, or any, recompensation at all.
And then there's this little thing: new raid tier has what, 2 or 3 out of 9 bosses with any kind of adds?
So what is the choice? Do you see people often swap out of DH currently in NH?
I'm not so inclined to think people will swap out of BoW, just as much.