Ret has a few major issues at the moment, primarily centered on raid utility and movement. The loss of Devotion Aura hurts, but Blizzard seems to be moving toward pruning those abilities rather than adding more (fox/amp). Other issues would be extremely weak to non-existant cleave, and inconsistent AoE capability, as well as a heavy dose of RNG based damage. I would like to find ways to address these problems with the overall goals of not running counter to current design and not increasing single target DPS.
Blizzard has shown with WoD that they are more willing to have spec specific talents, and I think we can utilize this to overcome Retribution's deficiencies without giving them too much kit.
The ideal place to start is in the movement tier.
Pursuit of Justice is a thoroughly boring and effective talent, that may not provide enough when you really need to move and sees it benefit wasted when mostly stationary.
Long Arm of the Law is unique but requires a target to be in range of a short range rotational ability to make use of, and due to this nature can be inconsistent or too weak.
Speed of light is not strong enough.
So, I want to start by making PoJ a baseline ability for Ret, capped at 15% and also provides a 10% movement speed buff for all party and raid members. Some mild utility and mild mobility for the spec.
New talents to replace the movement tier talents:
Devotion:
50% of your healing done to others is reflected to yourself as well. This ability can multistrike. Your damage dealing abilities are immune to silence and interrupt effects.
This will go a long way toward helping survivability and providing utility as the vast majority of ret use selfless healer, it can now be used to heal an ally for 160% and simultaneously self heal for 80%, meaning there would be almost no reason to ever use selfless healer procs on yourself, while leaving a window where that situation could arise.
Long Arm of the Law:
8-40 yard range. leap to your target, Your next 2 abilities used within 6 Seconds will have no GCD. 45 second cooldown.
An actual gap closer with a mild burst buff intended to allow you to recover the damage that would have been lost due to range issues. In keeping with other paladin talents, you may jump to friend or foe. This combined with passive speed boost should give paladins sufficient mobility to handle mechanics that have traditionally been difficult for Ret to handle cleanly. While maintaining the target requirement of LAotL and a sufficiently long CD to prevent abuse.
Righteous Vengeance:
Increases the damage of your Hammer of the Righteous by 100% to your target, and 150% to additional targets. Hammer of the Righteous is now capped at a maximum of 3 targets.
HoTR missed the boat when the 20% buffs came in at the end of MoP, presently it takes something like 4 or 5 targets to be a DPS gain over CS, therefore I feel it makes an excellent candidate for massive buffs that restrict the number of targets. For cleave heavy fights, this would greatly increase damage, as HoTR would essentially do 2x CS damage on 3 targets, compared to 80% CS damage on a single target. So, roughly a 5% gain on 3 target cleave and a loss on mass AoE (6+), while remaining relatively equal on 4-5 targets.
Keep in mind choosing between these talents is a choice between mobility, raid support, and cleave damage, so we have solutions to various issues that hurt the spec, and players are free to choose the talents that help the areas they find to be weakest.
Next we want to talk about the base rotation and the RNG factor. I think the simplest solution here, is to modify the final verdict talent and the EDS perk.
Final verdict has the issue of throwing a massive buff onto an ability that already has a perk that buffs it. it puts the devs in a tight spot of needing to keep those double buffed DS procs in check. The other issue is, if FV doesn't provide some time of AoE boost, its essentially a dead talent on anything other than pure ST fights.
I think the best solution, is to drop the FV DS buff, and instead make Empowered Divine Storm a part of the FV talent. By doing this, we can safely boost divine Storm up to ~110% weapon damage baseline. Then players who choose to play with seraphim will have a consistent and predictable rotation that is not hindered by extreme proc dependence, while players who like the proc heavy playstyle can choose FV and have essentilly the same playstyle as now, minus the counter-intuitive weaving of st attacks into aoe rotation.
With DS at 110% weapon damage, it should be roughly equal in terms of damage output to TV at 2 targets, and clearly ahead at 3. Thus providing us with much more consistent and reliable cleave and AoE damage, as we no longer hope for EDS procs to be effective.
The sum of these changes would be a much better available toolkit, more predictable and reliable damage output in AoE situations, less reliance on procs, and an overall better class. These changes would not have much effect on ST encounters, but our ST damage is not completely off the mark as is, the ability to bring stronger cleave or more utility could put us on the mark to be a highly valued DPS, but also leaves room for future tweaks if needed by not fundamentally changing those aspects in any way.