6.0 Paladin Discussion and Speculation (All Specs)

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

People don't like maintaining Inquisition that lasts 1minute, how do you think ppl will react to maintaining 2 buffs on a 20sec duration...?

[PosPosPos]

People don't like maintaining Inquisition that lasts 1minute, how do you think ppl will react to maintaining 2 buffs on a 20sec duration...?

Exactly my point.

[Lovestar]

What Ret and Prot are missing is a no-CD filler. Having this alone would declunk the rotation significantly at low Haste points. (And trust me, Prot is equally if not more frustrating than Ret with low Haste)

Even Enhancement, of all specs, can just fire off a Lightning Bolt if all else fails, and it has so many whackamole buttons that it rarely, if ever, is starved for something to hit.

Ret/Prot are one of, if not the, only specs which can literally slam into a wall of nothing to do — not because of resources, but because literally every button on the bar will bleep "Not ready yet". It feels awful, although it does have the perverse effect of making high Haste feel abnormally fun because of the contrast.

I'd be interested in Blizz experimenting with Crusader Strike/HotR having no CD and repurposing Judgement as a heavy-hitter without HP gen, with Glyph or baseline option that Judge generates 1 HP if used from X yards away (so retaining its running-back-to-melee consolation prize). Leave SoB intact (reduces GCD for CrS).

[Deleted]

Prot get from The Light Within may end up being a refreshing addition to our gameplay choices.

Prots are not going to be using TLW. It's garbage and takes up too much micro-management and GCDs for very little return. I'll use it on magic fights (assuming the third yet-to-be-revealed talent does nothing against magic).

@Lovestar, I too would like to see a low-damage no-CD filler introduced. It's one of those things that almost every melee/tank seems to have except for us. Make it so it's not a big amount of damage, but can proc Grand Crusader. Just something to do during dry periods.

Regarding Inquisition, what if they redesigned it to be similar to the Soulburn mechanic for Warlocks? It could gain a charge (up to 2) every 45 seconds that when consumed empowers a number of skills. They can just bake the 30% Holy and crit increases to another passive to make sure scaling stays good.

Your Divine Storm leaves a DoT component on all targets hit.
Your Templar's Verdict will consume up to 5 Holy Power for increased damage.
Your Judgement will shield you for the amount of damage dealt.
Your Exorcism will generate 2 Holy Power and cause the target to cower in fear.

Just some ideas. A good mix of utility, damaging and defensive add-ons would help give it some flavour and versatility. Not able to melee the boss but about to take damage? Inquisition -Judgement. Need to CC something on the move from afar? Inquisition - Exorcism. Know that a big pile of tanky adds are about to come in? Save Inquisition for Divine Storm, etc.

[Lovestar]

That's actually a cool idea for Inq. Maybe if every 3 HP spent granted a stack of Inq (fitting the theme, even) and at X stacks you can consume it for a special effect on your next skill. That almost sounds fun. :p

Agreed that the current effect should just be baked in as Passive in that case since there's fewer headaches that way than trying to redesign the system to accomodate the loss of Inq's bonus.

And yeah. Ret/Prot feel awful until they get their Haste to the point they're filling every or nearly every GCD with something productive (not, you know, ST Consecration because WHY NOT). Bear is technically in the same position except not, because its army of 3s CDs and Mangle resetting every time you sneeze means it's usually GCD-locked.

Ret/Prot are genuinely fun once they get their Haste up, though, so it's not that huge sweeping changes are needed.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

That "release" of Inq would have to be so big that it makes up for other damage lost, take that to pvp and it's gonna be murdered within a week.

[Deleted]

That "release" of Inq would have to be so big that it makes up for other damage lost, take that to pvp and it's gonna be murdered within a week.

What other damage lost? If they bake in the passives and make Inq's activate into something new you're not losing damage (unless you don't use the new ability properly - as it should be, whatever they did with it).

Why are you under the impression that if Inq was changed, Blizzard are going to leave us without any of the current effects...? They have baked other things in before, baking in some holy damage bonus and a crit bonus to keep scaling in order is not a hard task.

A Soulburn mechanic doesn't have to be bursty either. Those were just some ideas off the top of my head for going down that route - turning it into a multi-functional ability empowerment. You could just as easily flip the DS and TV ideas around; TV now leaves a debuff, DS gets double damage. Bam - nobody's getting 1-shot by a 5HoPo TV in PvP (not that we're anywhere near gods of burst in arenas anyway).

Going that route, you'd need some damage empowerment to make sure it's used in PvE "rotationally", but equally by giving other spells some strong utility buffs via Inquisition-burning you can give people some interesting options for all aspects of the game. Actually turn Inquisition into something people think about using effectively, and give it the possibility of being "wasted" by burning a charge at the wrong time, or on the wrong spell.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

So you'd turn Inq into a passive, always 30% holy damage and 10% crit.
Replace it with a stacking buff that you release when it reach X stacks, so exactly what enh shamans have?
Not saying that wouldn't work but why take it at the cost of Inq being set to passive? Why can't Inq stay as it is and we get a type of mechanic as you suggested?
Again, it's the hate towards Inq (maintenance buffs/debuffs) that I don't understand. They're not there to be the allmighty fun and glory, they're there to keep you occupied/ giving you something to do. It's not hard, it's not trying to be hard. It simply exsist to keep you thinking ahead. "Oh shit a wave of adds are spawning in 5sec, might as well refresh my dots/buffs now so I don't lose uptime.

[Deleted]

I didn't say anything about a stacking buff (that was someone else). Go back and read it; it's a charge system that empowers a bunch of different spells.

Here's the difference between something like that, and current Inq.

Inquisition offers no choices. You either press it and do normal damage, or you don't (which is not an option). It doesn't have any gameplay attached to it; it's just busy work for the sake of keeping people busy. Nobody has ever thought "if I press Inq now, I can't do X later, but I really do need this Inq right now".

Even Enhancement Shamans have an option with Maelstrom. It can be used to AoE, ST, heal or raid heal. It isn't "just" a damage increase the way Inquisition is.

If Inquisition was turned into something like my suggestion then you get the gameplay, the choices, the variety. It gets you thinking and engaged, especially if the limitations are tight (like limited uses and a mid-length CD) where bad usage can result in wasting it.

If something isn't fun to use and doesn't make you feel good about using it well then what the hell is the point of it? That's current Inq. Back when I was Ret I never finished a fight and thought about how well I'd used Inquisition, it was simply a thing I did automatically.

Maintenance buffs are just fluff. The devs put them in because they can't think of other ways to create synergy between skills. It's like the filler episode in a TV show; it's there to fill dead space while they think of something new to write, nothing more.

[Deleted]

After all those changes that we got since Inquisitions first incarnation I do not see why somebody still bitches about it! From only one holy power generating ability we got to two with the set bonus in Dragon Soul and in MoP now every filler spell gives us Holy Power and in 5.4 they even doubled the duration so that we do not even have to refresh it while our DPS CDs are up. I think Inquisition finally reached a sweet spot where it is not anymore a pain in the ass but still something you have to track and care about and in some cases also have to think ahead when you maybe have still several sceonds left till you have to refresh it but it falls together with a moment where you really need to dish out Damage Bursts - Garrosh Heroic fight is one of the grand examples where this is permanently happening. You want to refresh Inquisition or at least pool Holy Power before you go up to burn those adds in Transition as fast as possible and you want to not refresh your Inq-Buff when the Mind Control is going to go out. Saying Inquisition is totally and absolutely the worst spell ever implemented is far from true. After all it is still something that adds to our gameplay.

[Lovestar]

A stacking buff built by spending HP, that you consume with a specific ability to buff other abilities is approximately absolutely nothing like Maelstrom Weapon.

It's more like the lovechild of Soulburn and Tigereye Brew.

And I don't care whether Inq mutates or stays or goes (I personally like it fine), but I was saying if we convert it to some other form, then it would be simpler to just make the old effect passive than re-write Ret's entire stat system all over again.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

All fine suggestions but why do we have to sacrifice Inquisition? As it stands we hit Inq button every 50-58 seconds (situations where you want to clip it can happen just as there's situations where you can delay applying it) and while some find it boring or not interesting it is SOMETHING that we need to watch and therefor gameplay, we've pointed out over the couple threads and tens of pages that there's good gameplay and bad gameplay however their all have a purpose that goes deeper than the "enjoyment" of those individual things. (dailies, maintenance buffs, farming gold for raid consumables, rep grinds and such)

Question: Do you find Ret boring or missing anything today?
me: Yes, we need something that isn't bound by the rotation of Holy Power that we can chose when to use and how to use. Something that requires thinking on the fly as well as planning ahead.
Question: Do you think Inquisition should be removed at the cost of such ability or just removed in general?
me: Hell no, Inquisition is perfectly fine as it stands now (I think it was fine back before the duration buff). Is it annoying at times? Yes, frustrating. Does that make it bad? NO, FUCK NO!
Please ask yourselves that question, I personally think the problem is that there's not "enough" to do as ret. We have 3 buttons + 1 finisher (replace CS + TV for HotR + DS for aoe, still 4 buttons) that we hit often enough to be considered a "rotation". Apart from that we have Execution Sentence that we hit and forget every minute (or we will when snapshotting disappears) and of course a wide variety of survival and utility tools. But where's the middle ground? If Holy Prism (20sec CD) was any decent that would be a good "filler" in our arsenal but it's not very interesting, lots of people have made lots of good suggestion the last couple days that all could be developed into different ideas that I could see work in game. I think a good place to look is our Execution Sentence, Holy Prism and Light's Hammer tier of talents. Those are all abilities that could be changed or removed with other abilities that could have some deeper gameplay value than just "hit every 1min", first of all I think there should be at least one option in that tier that has a 10-20sec cd that we use often enough to make it a thinking matter and not something that comes up so rarely that we just ignore it.
Like you suggested, some stacking buff that we get from using holy power that we can dispense to buff our single target, aoe or maybe even healing? That could be really good gameplay value.
I keep jumping back to this but why does Inq have to go from being active and something we watch to something passive or even worse, being removed all together?
There's enough room (like I pointed out) in ret for us to manage and mismanage (if you want to call it that) another spell without touching Inquisition.

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if we convert it to some other form, then it would be simpler to just make the old effect passive than re-write Ret's entire stat system all over again.

People don't like Inq because it's not meaningful, which is the same as saying ret isn't entertaining enough. So removing an active ability only to make it a passive is going to change what? It's gonna remove something for you to do, that means less gameplay. In my eyes the less I have to do and/or manage means there's less of a challenge to playing properly which in return makes the feeling of accomplishing it less sensational or in other terms less "fun".
If you've played FPS games for 10 years and you're good at it you don't set story mode on CoD or Battlefield to easy or beginner do you? You don't feel as challenged if you do and for some (the majority I hope) being challenged is fun. Now that doesn't mean that Inq is hard and that it's fun, it simply means that Inq is there to "distract" you.

[Lovestar]

@Huntingbear, yeah I get how you feel about Inq and I've made clear my own position that I have no issues with its current design.

All I'm saying is that if it gets cut as a rotation button, I'd rather see it become a passive than for the effects to be deleted completely and then have Ret re-balanced around different bonuses. @anaxie, @etsumii92, and others have explained better than I can why this is a more favored solution to outright deletion.

If we're speculating about ways to replace Inq, I favor something simple & fun that adds to the rotation rather than something convoluted or awkward. A lot of the "new Inq" ideas sound 'neat' on paper, but will become clunky headaches in practice and make you long for the days of your 45s / 60s maintenance buff.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I'm not talking about adding those ideas to inq, I'm talking about leaving inq alone because it's perfectly fine. Add a completely new spell/ability that adds "fun" gameplay or gameplay with meaning.

[Zabannith]

Like I said over in Anaxies thread last night I would still love to see some interaction between inq and art of war , as it is art of war is "just as boring" and inquisition...why don't we get rid of that as well?
I'd love to see something like when your inq is applied and art of war procs you generate 2 hp for every generator instead of 1hp
or have it add time to inquisition since people have a problem using it 1 every min

oh wait how about art of war procs while you have inq up you gain a buff that does 2 things and you have the choice of what you want it to do . cast exo and it will apply a dot to the target and consume the buff ,if you hit inq it will consume the buff and make inq scale to 40% holy dmg

there I've fixed peoples "complexity" problem , you now have a choice of what to do with inq, dot on the target or increased holy dmg , can you maintain both buffs at the same time?

I do gotta say though I like the idea somebody said about a stacking consumable buff based on how much hp you spend that empowers your abilities ,at least it would give ret something else to watch and maintain ,but I guess since its a stacking buff that you would consume ~ once every min , it would be in the same ballpark as inq now "uggg I have to hit a button every min or loose dps"

[Deleted]

I really like the idea to use our Tier 75 to implement spells that really add to our rotation than just fire and forget spells especially when dotsnapshotting is really gone and there is absolutely no thought process left whether to use ES immediately off cooldown are wait those extra seconds. We really need something more and not less to spice our rotation up. In the rare occasions when cleavefesting the procs from our 4 peace or Divine Purpose (only few fights where this is a good choice) really are a welcome change where you have to react to. I hope that our set bonus is an indication that they like the idea to change our rotations and priorities like the Dragon Soul set bonus for Judgment granting Holy Power was an indication to add more Holy Power generators.

Zabannith's example for different Art of War usages is something we already had in the past. Remember those Wrath days? It used to make our Exorcism cast time spell instant or our flash of light instant cast - something that was afterwards taken away. In PVP this was a nice tradeoff - do you want to use the proc to heal yourself or somebody else or to do additional damge? I really dislike how Blizzard continuously takes away interesting gameplay choices we already had.

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And before someone starts again to talk about stupid mechanics to debuff our targets - NO, JUST NO. That is even far worse than maintaining a one minute buff. I played Enhancement enough to know how such mechanics are and what a pain in the ass that is. You are always losing out on so much damage when you have to target switch and always hate when you still have to do that. To my mind Retribution lives from a fast paced, fluid gameplay which should offer a standard rotation with predictable outcome and some variation like rotation changer (AW, maybe we get a second smaller and more regular one - that could be Art of War, only where you, you know, really always want to press it...) or additional procs to use other spells like our current 4 PC but maybe instead of DS we can use Hammer of Wrath outside 20%/AW - how would that be?

[Zabannith]

additional procs to use other spells like our current 4 PC but maybe instead of DS we can use Hammer of Wrath outside 20%/AW - how would that be?

In my experience in playing my assassination rogue alt, blindside is an amazing mechanic , i'd love to see it applied to hammer of wrath , even if it was removed from being available to use during AW, if we were to make a direct copy it would be
Performing a successful crusader strike has a 30% chance to enable a single use of Hammer of Wrath ,Regardless of the enemy targets health

this would actually make haste even more valuable because you'd want to get the CS cooldown as low as possible, or they could say successful CS crits will enable a single use of HoW regardless of target health , if they wanted us to gear towards crit instead of haste , id actually like this a lot i think.
It would give us another proc to watch for that we'd want to use before our next CS or risk loosing another proc , lets face it art of war isn't exciting .. or rewarding really

[Rogal Dorn]

or additional procs to use other spells like our current 4 PC but maybe instead of DS we can use Hammer of Wrath outside 20%/AW - how would that be?

Art of war should proc HoW, or a big buff to exo.

[Nurvus]

You can be sure lots of rets will complain about having to seal twist to maintain what is shaping up to the mandatory buff.

Why make an assessment on the assumption that the talents will launch unbalanced?
Even if they don't end perfectly balanced, the goal is getting them to be balanced.
Remember it'll be 2 GCD wasted every 20 seconds plus whatever damage loss from not using the best Seal all the time vs the benefit of the buffs.

[Deleted]

I'm not talking about adding those ideas to inq, I'm talking about leaving inq alone because it's perfectly fine. Add a completely new spell/ability that adds "fun" gameplay or gameplay with meaning.

The thing is, Inq _DOESN'T_ provide any unique gameplay. It takes up the same resource and GCD cost as Templar's. If Inq was removed, you just press an extra TV a minute instead.