Wrecktangles idea for Ret gameplay (lots of homage to old talents/abilities etc.).

[Wrecktangle]

I once made a pretty elaborate post about a wishlist idea for a Ret design, but I'll try to keep this one shorter. This'll be a fairly radical redesign that uses a lot of the same elements and abilities, but alters their usage so I suspect some may not like it. I also wanted to find ways to bring back old talents, abilities, and playstyles into the spec. Please only rely on the %WD values as a measure of relative damage. I.e. how much stronger one is compared to another. There are likely to be errors here as I didn't invest a ton of time into the mathematics. My main goal was to incorporate old and new abilities together in harmony to stoke the flames of nostalgia while remaining engaging and not being too much of a mechanics vomit.

Core Changes

New Resource: Wrath - Replaces Mana & Holy Power. Is a white "mana" bar that starts at 0 and is gained & spent by using abilities. Maximum of 100.

New Mastery: Divine Retribution - Increases damage dealt during Avenging Wrath in addition to increasing Wrath generation. Low end gear would be like 20% Mastery. High end with prioritization could be as high as 50%.

Avenging Wrath - "A Paladin harnesses their connection to the Light unleashing their wrath." This can only be activated at maximum (100) Wrath. Assume high end gear with mastery prioritization around 50%.

• 20s Duration
• 10s Cooldown
• Costs 100 Wrath
• Off the GCD
• Increases all damage/healing by 10%(+.2x% based on Mastery) & enhances all normal abilities with additional effects. While under the effect of Avenging Wrath, all damage dealt is Holy.

Developers Notes: So the idea here is going to a singular resource, tying our mastery to the core of the job and making it feel rewarding to invest into. Like most of you I've been through the ups and downs for over a decade with Ret and I feel like our wings have always felt central to our gameplay and I wanted to build on that concept. I also wanted to make sure Ret scales so I ensured there were a decent amount of crit interactions and mastery now directly bolsters generation and damage. Haste will still be nice to have because it gets you into wings faster and keeps you in wings longer.

The rough idea is still a High/Low phase (i.e. in wings, out of wings) that we currently have, but instead drawing some inspiration from Seraphim and Inquisition (I know I know!). The idea that we go in and out of wings more frequently should be fun. Right now, building up Holy Power doesn't feel fun, and spending it is almost as bland as gameplay can actually be IMO. With this build you'd be building towards something really meaningful. Ideally an average player would see like 50% uptime on wings. A good player would see like 60%, and a top player would see like 65%.

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Retribution Basic Abilities:

Crusader Strike - "A bold strike that renews fervor"

• Melee Range
• Single Target
• 4.5s Cooldown (2 charges)
• Generates 3 (+.10x% based on Mastery) Wrath
• Deals 100% WD
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Zeal

Zeal - "A powerful strike that rends all nearby foes with blades of light."

• Melee Range with 5yd Splash
• AOE
• 4.5s Cooldown (2 charges)
• Deals 100% WD
• Successful cast reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Wrath by 1.5s.

Developers Notes: This is pretty straightforward. It's our generic generator. 2 charges, and when in wings transforms into zeal. The ability gets a new animation, similar strike, but with bursts of light that cleave (much like a slightly larger live Zeal would). While under wings, using this filler ability helps reduce the cooldown of Hammer of Wrath to invoke that old Sanctified Wrath talent feel that some players liked.

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Blade of Virtue - "Conjures a sword of brilliant light to abolish evil."

• 10yd Range
• Single Target
• 10.5s Cooldown
• Generates 1 (+.20x% based on Mastery) Wrath
• Deals 180% WD
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Blade of Wrath

Blade of Wrath - "Conjures a sword of violent light to annihilate evil."

• 10yd Range
• Single Target
• 10.5s Cooldown
• Deals 210% WD
• Resets its own cooldown on critical strike dealing 3x normal value.

Developers Notes: - Again, this is very basic. The idea is a harder hitting generator on a longer CD. Under wings, it does additional damage, and crits for 3x, instead of 2x. The animation would likely have a slightly different color, and be a little bit more robust to fit the idea of surging with the Light boosting our power.

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Exorcism - "Blasts the target with divine force."

• 10yd Range
• Single Target
• 9s Cooldown
• Generates 1 (+.30x% based on Mastery) Wrath
• Deals 140% WD
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Holy Wrath

Holy Wrath - "A Paladin channels their weapon unleashing bolts of hallowed light that obliterate foes."

• 10yds
• Conal AOE
• 9s Cooldown
• Deals 40% WD over 1.5s (40% per bolt T= 0, .3, .6, .9, 1.2, 1.5)
• While channeling the Player is able to move about freely, but does not auto-attack. Each bolt deals 100% increased damage against the same target. Total 300% WD.

Developers Notes: - Exorcism is back baby! Just a generic generator here. Back in beta we had an implementation of Holy Wrath that not a lot of people liked, but I did. I firmly like the idea of a Ret being half magic half melee and my build supports this. Activating this abiltity allows you to channel bolts of light that hit nearby enemies. It's very potent in AOE to make up for the loss of AA damage.

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Judgment - "Calls down righteous fire from the heavens."

• 20yd Range
• Single Target
• 12s Cooldown
• Generates 5 (+.10x% based on Mastery) Wrath
• Deals 200% WD
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Hammer of Wrath

Hammer of Wrath - "Hurls a conjured hammer of pure wrath that detonates on impact."

• 20yd Range
• Single Target
• 12s Cooldown
• Deals 300% WD
• Extends duration of Avenging Wrath by 3s on cast.

Developers Notes: - It's HoW what can I say? The idea here would be the super hard hitting ability that we want to cast as much as we can because it extends your wings duration. The idea would be using Zeal to reduce its CD when needed while rotating in other abilities as filler under wings to maximize duration/uptime.

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Templar's Verdict - "A true and just strike that invigorates the most hopeless of crusades."

• Melee Range
• Single Target
• 12s Cooldown
• Generates 5 (+.10x% based on Mastery) Wrath
• Deals 210% WD
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Final Verdict

Final Verdict - "Conjures a weapon of pure Light that smites an enemy."

• 10yd Range
• Single Target
• 12s Cooldown
• Deals 240% WD
• Grants Holy Empowerment - a buff that lasts 6s & boosts the damage of the next ability used by 50%.

Developers Notes: - I doubt you'll find many people say that they didn't like the old EmpDS and FV WoD Ret playstyle. The idea here was to implement that functionality baseline. I always loved the animation and utility it offered in its additional range. Using it to boost your next attack is a fun iteration that lends weight to both ST and AOE.

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Divine Hammers - "A shining storm surrounds you smiting those who tread too close."

• 10yd Range
• AOE
• 6s Cooldown (hits at T=0, 3, & 6)
• Generates 1 (+.05x% based on Mastery) per hit Wrath
• Deals 40% WD a hit, 120% WD total
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Divine Storm

Divine Storm - "Unleashes a whirlwind of holy energy rending all foes in its path."

• 20yd Range, travels forward 10yds
• AOE
• 6s Cooldown
• Deals 160% WD
• Has a 50% chance to reset the cooldown of Final Verdict

Developers Notes: - I quite liked the tornado functionality we got in legion. I also like casting Divine Storm in general. It kind of acts in reverse of WoD where DS can reset FV's CD and let you boost the next attack.

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Wake of Ashes - "Lash out a torrent of radiant fire that purifies foes."

• Melee Range
• Conal AOE
• 30s Cooldown
• Generates 10 (+.1x% based on Mastery) per hit Wrath
• Deals 200% WD + 120% as DoT, 320% Total
• Under Avenging Wrath: Becomes Consecration

Consecration - "The ground beneath the Paladin pulses with holy light."

• 10yd Range
• AOE
• 30s Cooldown, 10s Duration
• Deals 300% WD over time

Developers Notes: I quite like Wake of Ashes. I kept it as the big generator and used it to bring in consecration while under wings. Nothing too fancy or special here.

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So that's the rough idea behind the core abilities and rotation. I've even done a bit of modeling and with 30% Mastery we see an uptime of roughly 55%. With 50% Mastery we see roughly 64% uptime and lastly 20% is roughly 50%.

It takes on the high end of like 25 seconds to get into AW, and on the short end about 18 based on how much mastery/haste you have. You can stay in wings roughly 30s regardless of mastery. Both rotations have no dead spaces, but do use DH/DS as fillers.

Thoughts? Feedback? Likes/Dislikes?

[RohanV]

Seems similar to shadow priest Voidform and demon hunter Metamorphosis. Not necessarily bad, but you may want to see what those specs dislike about the mechanic.

[Jester Joe]

I mean, the idea of "Wrath" build up does make more sense, but I feel like it makes Ret too much of a half ranged/half melee spec, and that just starts to feel awkward considering large/small hitboxes of bosses and what not.

[Katchii]

Thoughts? Feedback? Likes/Dislikes?

I really like the idea of a really active rotation on any melee class, down time and waiting for things to come off cooldown or for resources to generate doesn't feel great.
I also really like the idea of a melee class that adds in magic based attacks as well. Blue Mage from FFXI type game play is my ideal.

The only negative I see here is that this is almost identical to Shadow Priest game play with Void Form. Not a bad thing per se, just commenting that it's not a unique game play mechanic. That said, Enhancement Shamans, Warriors and Protection Druids, Shadow Priests and Death Knights all have similar mechanics and they all feel pretty different thanks to execution and aesthetic.

What if instead of the active activation of the wings, you automatically gained them after reaching a certain Wrath level and then a few attacks then became empowered if you used them in this form while spending Wrath in the process, with some attacks still retaining their base damage but continuing to fill the Wrath gauge so the game play would be balanced around using the right empowered attacks at the right time while weaving in the appropriate builders to stay in that sweet spot. This would give you different sustained DPS or Burst DPS game play. Where balancing builders/ spenders would be more sustained whereas in Burst you would build, build, build and then blow through it all on empowered attacks.

One of the cooldowns would be to instantly grant a full 100 Wrath gauge and reduce the cost of spenders, or maybe simply make it empower all attacks for ~10 seconds regardless of your current wrath level.

Admittedly this concept is a slightly modified version of the FFXIV Red Mage.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Interesting.
Issues that spring out to me are:
-wasted resources necessitated by capping to activate AW
-wasted resources at high mastery when wrath caps but AW is still on CD
-feeling weak outside of AW
-World content becomes frustrating when you only spend half your time doing decent damage, and most of it building up to that
-early gear being quite unpleasant, when you're tuned around being in AW half the time, and your mastery is low so even then you don't do much damage.
-minor issue, but there's no need to rename the resource imo. Holy Power isn't used by other specs, so there's no harm in keeping the name, particularly if your focus is returning iconic parts of the spec. For many, Holy Power will be part of that.
-I like the idea of making consecrate the hard-hitting AoE spell, but there's an obvious issue there of mechanics moving you out of a major damaging ability, which has the potential to really suck.

Despite these criticisms, I don't hate the ideas. You've done well with this, I'm very impressed. I'd be interested to see how something like this played out.

[Angeredsoul]

So long as Paladins have Avenging Wrath, you will never be balanced properly. You'll either be incredibly bursty then limp for 2mins, or they'll nerf it so its next to useless. I'd rather see Seraphim mechanic take its place, but still get the wings for the cool looks.

Apart from that, I think I would enjoy your suggested changes. I'm definitely not a fan of ret in Legion especially coming from WoD.

[Shinrael]

Avenging Wrath with 20 sec duration and 10 sec cooldown AND costing one cap (100/100) of our main combat resource? What is this, an even more painful to use version of MoP's Inquisition? Man I hated Inquisition. So basically you just have to reapply Avenging Wrath every 20 sec. Tirion would jump out of his grave to bring the ash out of you mate.

[Deleted]

So you are asking for what we had with "Inquisition"...

I wasn't exactly a fan of that.

The ramp up would be horrendous also; especially looking at fights like KJ.

[Wrecktangle]

Seems similar to shadow priest Voidform and demon hunter Metamorphosis. Not necessarily bad, but you may want to see what those specs dislike about the mechanic.

Voidform was what replaced the STM stuff right? I'm not familiar with either of those classes mechanics, but a cursory glance shows Voidform at a 10k foot level is closer to the Breath of Sindragosa rather than my idea, but I could be mistaken as I'm not taking artifact/talents into consideration. It looks like you activate it at max insanity, then your goal is to keep it up as long as possible. Does it actually modify your gameplay in any other fashion short of just boosting damage and granting haste?

Metamorphosis is a really long cooldown, so I think having AW be a more frequent application separates it enough. I do see that it amplifies the abilities though so there is a minor amount of overlap, something I'd have liked to have avoided.

I mean, the idea of "Wrath" build up does make more sense, but I feel like it makes Ret too much of a half ranged/half melee spec, and that just starts to feel awkward considering large/small hitboxes of bosses and what not.

I'm actually ok with this and it was intended. I've always though that what separated Ret from Warrior was the Light and that meant conjuring weapons of light, blasting enemies with holy energy etc. all of which are ranged/magic attacks.

The only negative I see here is that this is almost identical to Shadow Priest game play with Void Form. Not a bad thing per se, just commenting that it's not a unique game play mechanic. That said, Enhancement Shamans, Warriors and Protection Druids, Shadow Priests and Death Knights all have similar mechanics and they all feel pretty different thanks to execution and aesthetic.

I'm not super knowledgeable about other classes in WoW (especially casters), but as I stated above to Rohan, a cursory glance of Voidform looks slightly different, enough that I'm ok with the differentiation, especially as an alternative to the play-style via ranged/melee).

What if instead of the active activation of the wings, you automatically gained them after reaching a certain Wrath level and then a few attacks then became empowered if you used them in this form while spending Wrath in the process, with some attacks still retaining their base damage but continuing to fill the Wrath gauge so the game play would be balanced around using the right empowered attacks at the right time while weaving in the appropriate builders to stay in that sweet spot. This would give you different sustained DPS or Burst DPS game play. Where balancing builders/ spenders would be more sustained whereas in Burst you would build, build, build and then blow through it all on empowered attacks.

The downside to this approach is that you have less control. I wanted to avoid that idea. I'm not opposed to the idea of it being more build/spend inside AW, but your idea is a fair alternative.

One of the cooldowns would be to instantly grant a full 100 Wrath gauge and reduce the cost of spenders, or maybe simply make it empower all attacks for ~10 seconds regardless of your current wrath level.

I toyed around with some ideas for cooldowns/talents, but refrained from adding them. One of which was a long cooldown that did basically this effect. Granted 100 Wrath instantly. While I do like your idea of "granting AW regardless of Wrath for x seconds, I think it could get kind of confusing to a player who is using enhanced abilities, watching a buff timer, resource window, etc. I wanted to keep the gameplay deep, but accessible and I think the first iteration accomplishes this best, even if it's moderately boring.

Admittedly this concept is a slightly modified version of the FFXIV Red Mage.

Nothing wrong with that lol.

Interesting.
Issues that spring out to me are:
-wasted resources necessitated by capping to activate AW
-wasted resources at high mastery when wrath caps but AW is still on CD
-feeling weak outside of AW

1) Fair point. I wasn't sure of an idea way to approach this. It isn't covered here, but I had an idea for a talent that was basically "Boundless Wrath" that allowed you to accumulate 120 Wrath. Upon activating AW it would instantly convert any excess wrath into immediate damage, thus giving a buffer. However, since @Rohan pointed out this talent while neat, adds another element that exists in Metamorphosis, an ability I'd like to distance my concept further from. I'm open to any ideas to mitigate this issue.

2) Shouldn't really happen as far as my model can tell. Even still, it's simple enough to remove the actual cooldown and simply keep the resource cost which would alleviate problems. I left the cooldown there in case I decided to flesh out the talents section.

3) I think that's ok. It's basically how we've felt since forever. I think a lot of people are accustomed to that playstyle and it's ok.

-World content becomes frustrating when you only spend half your time doing decent damage, and most of it building up to that
-early gear being quite unpleasant, when you're tuned around being in AW half the time, and your mastery is low so even then you don't do much damage.
-minor issue, but there's no need to rename the resource imo. Holy Power isn't used by other specs, so there's no harm in keeping the name, particularly if your focus is returning iconic parts of the spec. For many, Holy Power will be part of that.
-I like the idea of making consecrate the hard-hitting AoE spell, but there's an obvious issue there of mechanics moving you out of a major damaging ability, which has the potential to really suck.

Despite these criticisms, I don't hate the ideas. You've done well with this, I'm very impressed. I'd be interested to see how something like this played out.

1) Agreed. I would need to find a solution for this. Maybe a trait or talent that allows passive Wrath build outside of combat or on enemy kill that would speed up the gain considerably outworld, in addition would help ensure the pull of a boss starts with it up (mitigating Inquisition concerns of ramp up).

2) Fair point here. Then again, I don't think we've ever struggled to find mastery gear

3) True, I just hate the name Holy Power. I don't mind the concept, just the name. FWIW I don't particularly care for Wrath either.

I greatly appreciate the kind words.

So long as Paladins have Avenging Wrath, you will never be balanced properly. You'll either be incredibly bursty then limp for 2mins, or they'll nerf it so its next to useless. I'd rather see Seraphim mechanic take its place, but still get the wings for the cool looks.

Apart from that, I think I would enjoy your suggested changes. I'm definitely not a fan of ret in Legion especially coming from WoD.

Well, my iteration of AW would hopefully mitigate that due to it being weaker than live, but more frequent. I think my iteration comes extremely close to Seraphim's and that was my goal to bring in old talents/abilities that people likes into a complete redesign. Were there any aspects of Ret that you liked and are absent from this build?

Avenging Wrath with 20 sec duration and 10 sec cooldown AND costing one cap (100/100) of our main combat resource? What is this, an even more painful to use version of MoP's Inquisition? Man I hated Inquisition. So basically you just have to reapply Avenging Wrath every 20 sec. Tirion would jump out of his grave to bring the ash out of you mate.

What about the build did you not like? What's painful about it? Were there any bits that you did like?

So you are asking for what we had with "Inquisition"...

I wasn't exactly a fan of that.

The ramp up would be horrendous also; especially looking at fights like KJ.

Agreed that ramp up would be an issue. I didn't do a full build because I didn't want to write a book, but there would be talents/traits that improved this. One such example above was sitting outside combat would give passive Wrath generation (guaranteeing AW on pull, making open world more tolerable), or alternatively a long CD that instantly provides 100 Wrath (or both). Something that could be used on pull, or could be used to get back to back AW during critical phase/add'l dmg phase, etc.

Inquisition was merely a dump that gave a flat dmg buff. It did not enhance any abilities. I think that aspect alone is enough to differentiate them.

Suspending belief that I could mitigate the ramp up via talents/traits, what specifically about the design do you not like? Are there any pieces that you do like?

[Katchii]

I'm not super knowledgeable about other classes in WoW (especially casters), but as I stated above to Rohan, a cursory glance of Voidform looks slightly different, enough that I'm ok with the differentiation, especially as an alternative to the play-style via ranged/melee).



The downside to this approach is that you have less control. I wanted to avoid that idea. I'm not opposed to the idea of it being more build/spend inside AW, but your idea is a fair alternative.



I toyed around with some ideas for cooldowns/talents, but refrained from adding them. One of which was a long cooldown that did basically this effect. Granted 100 Wrath instantly. While I do like your idea of "granting AW regardless of Wrath for x seconds, I think it could get kind of confusing to a player who is using enhanced abilities, watching a buff timer, resource window, etc. I wanted to keep the gameplay deep, but accessible and I think the first iteration accomplishes this best, even if it's moderately boring.



Nothing wrong with that lol.

As others have stated too, ramp up would be a thing so outdoor content would feel terrible IMO knowing you were never really ever able to bring your full force to bare except on rares. Couple ideas are a base setting of 50+ Wrath so you don't have to build the whole bar every time similar to what Blizz did for Warlocks and gave them 3 of their soul shards as a baseline so they could begin combat feeling powerful instead of having a 2+ minute build up. There could be an ability that becomes available after an enemy kill that when used increases your Wrath by 20 or something...anything that drastically increases your Wrath generation or availability in outdoor content because having to build from zero would make me not ever play the spec honestly, I'd just go Prot in outdoor content.

While a cooldown or active ability gives you more choice of when to activate it, I don't feel like it gives you much more control, and the choice itself is kind of false since you either use it or your fail at DPS, so it's not much of a choice at all. It just turns into a part of your de facto rotation and your game play doesn't really change at all. You hit the same buttons whether your in AW or not, you just build up to 100, hit AW and then move on with your rotation as normal and repeat the process. Using a passive ability that requires balancing puts you in direct control 100% of the time and requires far more skill than hitting a button whenever you cap your resource.

I have another idea to write about but have a meeting and my work PC needs to update so I'll come back later.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

As others have stated too, ramp up would be a thing so outdoor content would feel terrible IMO knowing you were never really ever able to bring your full force to bare except on rares. Couple ideas are a base setting of 50+ Wrath so you don't have to build the whole bar every time similar to what Blizz did for Warlocks and gave them 3 of their soul shards as a baseline so they could begin combat feeling powerful instead of having a 2+ minute build up. There could be an ability that becomes available after an enemy kill that when used increases your Wrath by 20 or something...anything that drastically increases your Wrath generation or availability in outdoor content because having to build from zero would make me not ever play the spec honestly, I'd just go Prot in outdoor content.

While a cooldown or active ability gives you more choice of when to activate it, I don't feel like it gives you much more control, and the choice itself is kind of false since you either use it or your fail at DPS, so it's not much of a choice at all. It just turns into a part of your de facto rotation and your game play doesn't really change at all. You hit the same buttons whether your in AW or not, you just build up to 100, hit AW and then move on with your rotation as normal and repeat the process. Using a passive ability that requires balancing puts you in direct control 100% of the time and requires far more skill than hitting a button whenever you cap your resource.

I have another idea to write about but have a meeting and my work PC needs to update so I'll come back later.

Not necessarily. If it's tuned around a 65% uptime as OP states, then you have some flexibility, there's optimisation to be done with damage buff overlap, add phases and the like. Forcing you into AW when you don't want it would be really frustrating if it means you don't have consecrate available when you want it.

RE the outdoor problem, perhaps a talent could be implemented that increases HP gen so it's more like 20 per hit (ie similar to current gameplay), but reducing damage of spells accordingly, or shortens the AW window. Alternative gameplay option for those who prefer it, can be tuned to do less damage than the intended playstyle detailed in the OP, but plays faster, making it better suited to world content.

[Shinrael]

What about the build did you not like? What's painful about it? Were there any bits that you did like?

I was pretty clear... but okay. Have you ever played MoP Retribution? Basically, you have this [Inquisition] spell. It has no cooldown, it costs 1-3 holy power to activate and the duration is holy power spent x20 seconds. And the effect is: Increases damage you deal by 30%. So what does this mean. Since it increases damage by such a huge amount and has no CD you have to keep it active ALL THE TIME. You spend 3 holy power to reactivate it every 60 seconds. Why is this not okay for me? Because every 60 seconds, instead of pressing that awesome Templar's Verdict button to deal massive damage I press a self-buff which deals no direct damage and not only is my 3 holy power "wasted" (ofcourse, it proves to be a much bigger damage increase in the long run, but it simply doesn't feel rewarding) but also it takes up a GCD (your version of it has no GCD, but has to be reactivated 3 times more often so it's still worse imo). It just generally feels unpleasant. Instead of building up holy power to smack things, you build up resources to be merely... efficient. You build up resources to activate a self-buff without which you suck. There is no feeling of awesomeness when you press that hard TV or Avenging Wrath. It's not fun imo. And the most important thing for gameplay is to be fun. You have to feel powerful. Not miserable.

It gets even worse when mob has very little hp left and you have to choose one final ability to use before it dies: Templar's Verdict with -30% damage debuff or reapply Inquisition and watch the mob get killed by other players... Either way 5 seconds later you get kicked from raid for being a useless DPS. Ofcourse this is super exaggerated, but as a Ret main throughout MoP... it was tough shit mate. Never wanted in CM Dungeons or raids. Always being at the bottom of DPS charts. And then 6.0 and finally getting Galakras trinket happened and I was top DPS in my guild, doing Mythic SoO.

[Kelborne]

2 main problems here. One as mentioned before is its two similar to shadow priest and demon hunters. The idea of basing us around Avenging wrath does sound really neat, but not in this form. It would be taking away everything that is unique about ret and giving us watered down versions of what other classes have. Secondly is the ability bloat. More specifically the bloat of builder abilities. The problem with builder spender specs like this is you need to limit the building to just a few abilities or us the rotation becomes mundane and boring. You'll start to see people macroing a bunch of abilities into one button and just hitting things as they come off CD. This isn't fun or engaging in the least. Say what you want about current ret. but putting the holy power building into just two abilities and giving one of them a charge was a good thing. When you have two many abilties that do the exact same thing with just a different animation each button press really feels boring and mudane.

[Wrecktangle]

As others have stated too, ramp up would be a thing so outdoor content would feel terrible IMO knowing you were never really ever able to bring your full force to bare except on rares. Couple ideas are a base setting of 50+ Wrath so you don't have to build the whole bar every time similar to what Blizz did for Warlocks and gave them 3 of their soul shards as a baseline so they could begin combat feeling powerful instead of having a 2+ minute build up. There could be an ability that becomes available after an enemy kill that when used increases your Wrath by 20 or something...anything that drastically increases your Wrath generation or availability in outdoor content because having to build from zero would make me not ever play the spec honestly, I'd just go Prot in outdoor content.

I responded to someone else about it. The idea would be either a talent or baseline trait that basically made it so you either accrued Wrath outside of combat passively (i.e. guaranteeing AW on pull for bosses), or killing enemies passive gave x amount of Wrath significantly speeding up the time in AW while out in the world. Hell could combine both honestly.

I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to have to come up with a full talent tree setup now LOL. I already had some of the ideas in my head.

While a cooldown or active ability gives you more choice of when to activate it, I don't feel like it gives you much more control, and the choice itself is kind of false since you either use it or your fail at DPS, so it's not much of a choice at all. It just turns into a part of your de facto rotation and your game play doesn't really change at all. You hit the same buttons whether your in AW or not, you just build up to 100, hit AW and then move on with your rotation as normal and repeat the process. Using a passive ability that requires balancing puts you in direct control 100% of the time and requires far more skill than hitting a button whenever you cap your resource.

Common misconception. Having the choice is a good thing, because you may not want to activate it at x time for any number of reasons. Some examples from NH would be:

1) Skorpyron - boss has a damage up phase that lasts roughly 15-20s. If my AW came up 20s before that phase popped up, it could be beneficial to hold it rather than try to regen it during the damage up phase. Fight duration/experience would dictate best option.

2) Spellblade - could save for add phases, overlap with raid buffs, etc.

3) Krosus - hold for 1-3 GCDs until after bridge smashes or adds are dead to maximize uptime on boss, etc.

4) Elisande - if boss is 3% from triggering next phase, worth it to hold off for next phase rather than have it tick down during downtime, etc.

You get the idea though. adds, damage up phases, downtime, mechanics, etc. all are reasons you'd want to sit on it and still have the ability to contribute DPS, even if it's less than you would have you popped it immediately as long as the overarching effect makes up for it (and it does).

While it's true that the abilities don't 'change' per se, they do have additional effects that make the priority different so while a specific priority works best for Wrath Generation, it is not the same priority that does the most damage while under AW. I think that's actually good design. NOW - an alternative could be something like adding or repurposing a generator into a spender outside of Wings. This would make it so that you could prevent yourself from capping by dumping on an ability and then cap when you wanted too automatically triggering AW. It's a very fair idea.

I was pretty clear... but okay. Have you ever played MoP Retribution?

Yes you were clear, but your post offered very little insight into why you said it. That's all. I have played MoP (& raided heroic in Cata as a Ret with 30s Inq). I have mained Ret since Vanilla including top 20 US raiding at points across a 10+ year tenure.

[snip]

I am familiar with Inquisition and how it works. While my iteration has some bits of it, I think it mirrors Seraphim MUCH more closely than Inquisition wouldn't you agree? The difference between Inq and my AW is that you WANT to spend the Wrath on it because then you get your wings, your damage, your new abilities and more powerful effects. You want to spend as much time in AW as you can, and once you're forced out of it, you want to minimize the time spent getting back in.

Just out of curiosity did you happen to notice that while under AW your basic abilities are empowered with completely new effects, names, and characteristics? Did you not like any of their implementations? Did you not feel that their effects were fun or varied? I understand the concept that a high-low phase MAY not be for everyone, but it's been that way for a long time so I hesitated to change it.

2 main problems here. One as mentioned before is its two similar to shadow priest and demon hunters.

I'm ok with the Spriest connotation. The DH one is concerning to me, and based on very cursory review, unfortunately looks more akin to my idea than I'd like. I still think it's different enough that it works, but I do see the correlation for sure.

The idea of basing us around Avenging wrath does sound really neat, but not in this form. It would be taking away everything that is unique about ret and giving us watered down versions of what other classes have.

What uniqueness about Ret are we losing here? I am very interested in this point, because even though I quite like the way Ret plays in Legion (minus AOE/ST talent forces) the gameplay is good. I find that we already feel like a walking watered down version of a amalgamation of specs, I also believe that this is a fairly general consensus on the forums as well, we get every specs broken toys as it were.

Secondly is the ability bloat. More specifically the bloat of builder abilities. The problem with builder spender specs like this is you need to limit the building to just a few abilities or us the rotation becomes mundane and boring. You'll start to see people macroing a bunch of abilities into one button and just hitting things as they come off CD. This isn't fun or engaging in the least. Say what you want about current ret. but putting the holy power building into just two abilities and giving one of them a charge was a good thing. When you have two many abilties that do the exact same thing with just a different animation each button press really feels boring and mudane.

This is good feedback and something I had not considered. @Katchii had good feedback that I think could help tie into your bit here. Transitioning one builder to a spender (outside of AW) that allowed you to translate excess Wrath to damage without using AW. The original idea I had was that each builder had a different mastery scaling and base value making some more important than others based on your personal stats (I quite liked that iteration). The problem was that with that concept my model was giving absurd AW uptimes and building max Wrath almost 50% faster. If I pull one generator out, it gives some room to shift the values around.

I don't agree with the macro bit. I've modeled like 6 different rotations and there is a huge difference between them in both potency (%WD) and Wrath generation.

[Shinrael]

The Avenging Wrath change was huge enough turn off so I did not pay much attention to the rest. Not saying it is either bad or good, just that the Wrath idea isn't to my liking. Perhaps if it did a huge explosion with some AoE damage when popped, it would be more to my liking. I just dislike spending 100% of my combat resource on a non-damaging ability.


Okay, wait. I just checked to make sure, but now I notice none of the abilities have costs. So basically, the only purpose of Wrath is to use Avenging Wrath and using Avenging Wrath doesn't come at the cost of any damaging abilities (as they are free and it is off the GCD). Okay. This sounds better. I will read it thorougly again tomorrow evening and reply again. But tbh, even if it is good, I am not sure if I would trade current Ret rotation/gameplay for it as I like the current state of Ret A LOT!

Anyway, apologies and ttyl xD

[Katchii]

I responded to someone else about it. The idea would be either a talent or baseline trait that basically made it so you either accrued Wrath outside of combat passively (i.e. guaranteeing AW on pull for bosses), or killing enemies passive gave x amount of Wrath significantly speeding up the time in AW while out in the world. Hell could combine both honestly.

I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to have to come up with a full talent tree setup now LOL. I already had some of the ideas in my head.



Common misconception. Having the choice is a good thing, because you may not want to activate it at x time for any number of reasons. Some examples from NH would be:

1) Skorpyron - boss has a damage up phase that lasts roughly 15-20s. If my AW came up 20s before that phase popped up, it could be beneficial to hold it rather than try to regen it during the damage up phase. Fight duration/experience would dictate best option.

2) Spellblade - could save for add phases, overlap with raid buffs, etc.

3) Krosus - hold for 1-3 GCDs until after bridge smashes or adds are dead to maximize uptime on boss, etc.

4) Elisande - if boss is 3% from triggering next phase, worth it to hold off for next phase rather than have it tick down during downtime, etc.

You get the idea though. adds, damage up phases, downtime, mechanics, etc. all are reasons you'd want to sit on it and still have the ability to contribute DPS, even if it's less than you would have you popped it immediately as long as the overarching effect makes up for it (and it does).

While it's true that the abilities don't 'change' per se, they do have additional effects that make the priority different so while a specific priority works best for Wrath Generation, it is not the same priority that does the most damage while under AW. I think that's actually good design. NOW - an alternative could be something like adding or repurposing a generator into a spender outside of Wings. This would make it so that you could prevent yourself from capping by dumping on an ability and then cap when you wanted too automatically triggering AW. It's a very fair idea.



Yes you were clear, but your post offered very little insight into why you said it. That's all. I have played MoP (& raided heroic in Cata as a Ret with 30s Inq). I have mained Ret since Vanilla including top 20 US raiding at points across a 10+ year tenure.



I am familiar with Inquisition and how it works. While my iteration has some bits of it, I think it mirrors Seraphim MUCH more closely than Inquisition wouldn't you agree? The difference between Inq and my AW is that you WANT to spend the Wrath on it because then you get your wings, your damage, your new abilities and more powerful effects. You want to spend as much time in AW as you can, and once you're forced out of it, you want to minimize the time spent getting back in.

Just out of curiosity did you happen to notice that while under AW your basic abilities are empowered with completely new effects, names, and characteristics? Did you not like any of their implementations? Did you not feel that their effects were fun or varied? I understand the concept that a high-low phase MAY not be for everyone, but it's been that way for a long time so I hesitated to change it.



I'm ok with the Spriest connotation. The DH one is concerning to me, and based on very cursory review, unfortunately looks more akin to my idea than I'd like. I still think it's different enough that it works, but I do see the correlation for sure.



What uniqueness about Ret are we losing here? I am very interested in this point, because even though I quite like the way Ret plays in Legion (minus AOE/ST talent forces) the gameplay is good. I find that we already feel like a walking watered down version of a amalgamation of specs, I also believe that this is a fairly general consensus on the forums as well, we get every specs broken toys as it were.



This is good feedback and something I had not considered. @Katchii had good feedback that I think could help tie into your bit here. Transitioning one builder to a spender (outside of AW) that allowed you to translate excess Wrath to damage without using AW. The original idea I had was that each builder had a different mastery scaling and base value making some more important than others based on your personal stats (I quite liked that iteration). The problem was that with that concept my model was giving absurd AW uptimes and building max Wrath almost 50% faster. If I pull one generator out, it gives some room to shift the values around.

I don't agree with the macro bit. I've modeled like 6 different rotations and there is a huge difference between them in both potency (%WD) and Wrath generation.

One way to mitigate some of the all in AW phase activation thing would be to make it a toggle similar to old Warlock Metamorphosis where you could activate so long as you had enough chaos built up, but could turn it off or on whenever you wanted so you still get the choice to activate it when you want it but still means have more options for when and how to activate it about . Maybe instead of a toggle ability (like Cleric's stance) you have active abilities that either activate or deactivate upon use as a secondary effect, like...activating Divine Storm or Templar's Verdict automatically activates AW and using another ability turns it off so it's an active choice and decision rather than a simple toggle.

The idea I was referring to earlier would be keeping Holy Power as a thing and have that be what builds your Wrath bar rather than the abilities themselves. The same abilities that currently build Holy Power and the same ones that currently spend it are the same. Each Holy Power spent would increase Wrath by 5 (unsure of number just throwing it out there). Upon reaching 80+ Wrath you can activate Avenging Wrath, at which point your abilities become empowered and don't require Holy Power to use and instead use Wrath and activate as if you had the Holy Power to use them, with each ability using Wrath proportionate to whether it's an AoE or ST and relative ability power. The abilities however still build Holy Power and if used when you have the appropriate Holy Power would still build Wrath. This would allow you to organically lengthen the duration of AW by optimizing your rotation for that. You could also, dump everything into hard hitting abilities for burst. An alternative would be to have an ability that's only available in AW and required 5 Holy Power to increase the duration of AW. In either case, the intent is that with proper gameplay, 100% uptime would be possible once AW is initially activated (encounter allowing).

This is similar to current FFXIV Dragoon game play with Blood of the Dragon or Black Mage with Enochian, where the goal is to perform your rotation/ priorities in a way that keeps the buff up, with a possible 100% uptime if executed appropriately. If you don't want it up 100% then scale the Wrath cost up and/or the duration of the buff down so it would be impossible to build faster than you're spending.

This gives you the choice to save and activate for burst phases if you want and also gives you the flexibility to optimize the rotation for sustained DPS when that's what you're aiming for, all while keeping the game play deep and requiring skill to execute well and feels good in short encounters too like in open world content since you're not just building to blow it all. It's an ebb and flow type of game play rather than a charge and discharge (all or nothing).

Regardless, I like the base idea of making Avenging Wrath and being a Light infused weapon of justice being the core element of what makes Retribution tic. I'm just throwing out some ideas on how to keep Avenging Wrath from feeling like a cool down, and more of an integrated organic part of the game play and class fantasy.

[Deleted]

I like the Final Verdict Divine storm combo return. But for FV, Holy empowerment would be wasted on some filler if it's not specifically a buff to DS or Blade. Much like the old Frost DK with should I use Obliterate now or not to anything for 2 seconds to use Frost Strike.

As said before Consecration is weaker than it's supposed weaker version of Ashes. Ashes is instant with a DoT for 320 guaranteed damage. Cons is 300% assuming the mob stands on the same spot for 10 seconds. It could move with you like in MoP, but it's still weaker than Ashes. I'd rather just stick with that even in Wings. Not everything needs another version. Or buff it a little.

As for Wrath, we could stick with Holy Power. Maybe up to 10. With everything generating 1, except for TV, Divine Hammers with 2 and Ashes with 4. Wings requires 10 Holy Power, you can play around with the default duration to make it balanced. And Hammer of Wrath can still extend it.