1 neat trick to fix Ret!

[mrn10ct]

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.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

we won't see any buffs to TV/FV or DS as long as we got DP, EmpDS or the current 2/4 set tier bonuses to fuck around with. Send your thanks to certain people on MMO-Champion ret forums that suggested these changes during WoD beta.

[Morally Grey Storm]

we are balance, we dont need no buffes!
what we need is to do not forget that Retribution is a support class which means you must not be some pathetic pure dps, you must actually use your abilities to its fullest and maxest!
Cleansing, giving Hands, healing A LOT - thats what a true Retribution Paladin does if he;s any good.

[Haaz]

Gotta say I have been toying in my mind with the idea of a charge/leap ability aswell... I mean we allready have wings Could make a pretty decent animation for that allso..

[iktankniet]

Yeah, a leap + glyphed wings so we all can fly through the sky like shiny golden eagles

[Omaski]

we are balance, we dont need no buffes!
what we need is to do not forget that Retribution is a support class which means you must not be some pathetic pure dps, you must actually use your abilities to its fullest and maxest!
Cleansing, giving Hands, healing A LOT - thats what a true Retribution Paladin does if he;s any good.

A "support" niche class isnt a thing anymore if it ever has been. ppl bring ret for their dps just like every other dps class. no raid lead posts in chat, "LF more utility...need a ?/? N ?/?H geared ret pally.

[Soob]

One REAL trick to fix Ret
Put a picture above your screen of this guy:

[Mandrace]

One REAL trick to fix Ret
Put a picture above your screen of this guy:

That's awesome! ^^

[DrMcNinja]

we won't see any buffs to TV/FV or DS as long as we got DP, EmpDS or the current 2/4 set tier bonuses to fuck around with. Send your thanks to certain people on MMO-Champion ret forums that suggested these changes during WoD beta.

Looking forward to your Finalboss Interview. I hope you bring plenty of salt

[Vinictus]

1 neat trick to fix Ret: Secrets that has Blizzard developers up in arms by using this weird old trick

[Reghame]

we won't see any buffs to TV/FV or DS as long as we got DP, EmpDS or the current 2/4 set tier bonuses to fuck around with. Send your thanks to certain people on MMO-Champion ret forums that suggested these changes during WoD beta.

dont forget zealotry. Spells force our finishers to be noodles or blizzard will fear us killing people in 2-3 seconds with powerful TV/FV/DS consistently during coolies.

the spell also fucked over prot paladins dps this expansion too when the combo of seraphim + that + pot could make them do god like burst because of super strong AP scaling they had on their finishers.

never liked the spell. Wings is enough of a problem making an execute be castable in the way it is which makes THAT hit like a noodle sometimes.

we have so many abilities that do similar damage and then a bunch of little hitting shit as well. but then we have all these burst cooldowns and its like.... wait whats going on here? what type of damage is this? i cant even tell anymore.

Spec feels more confused than a 100 year old man who walked into PAX prime. everything just does not make sense anymore.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Agreed Reghame

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Our Ret does very solid damage.
Could go back to being brought solely for Nightfall and Wisdom.
Is that 1 neat trick?

[Korie]

1 neat trick to fix Ret: Secrets that has Blizzard developers up in arms by using this weird old trick

He found the way to fix ret & Blizzard hates him for it :^)

[MarshallX]

Our Ret does very solid damage.
Could go back to being brought solely for Nightfall and Wisdom.
Is that 1 neat trick?

If your ret is doing solid damage vs the rest of your raid it's because your mages/hunters/mages/dk's/mages/feral druids are afk and/or are shitlords. Did I mention mages?

[Soob]

If your ret is doing solid damage vs the rest of your raid it's because your mages/hunters/mages/dk's/mages/feral druids are afk and/or are shitlords. Did I mention mages?

Either this or he sacrificed his firstborn child to get massive amounts of proccs

[Omaski]

Either this or he sacrificed his firstborn child to get massive amounts of proccs

PREACH!!!! ^^^

rets too much RNG to be truly considered top tier...middle of the pack at best.

[Deleted]

Let's take Gruul for example, which is a pretty simple fight in terms of mechanics and movement for us retri palas. Dodge them great balls of fire, don't walk through the overhead smash, etc. Pretty much all the time in range of the boss with little worries of hitting him in the face and not spanking him properly.

I was parsing my logs a week ago for a Gruul Mythic kill and comparing my 39k DPS with the best retri on warcraftlogs.com who did 52k. We have similar gear, his mythic trinket from maidens is not going to make up for the 13k DPS difference compared to my heroic maidens trinket

Instead what did make the huge difference, though we had the same talents, was his divine purpose which proc'd 36 times in a ~4:30 min encounter while my divine purpose only proc'd 16 times in a ~5:00 min encounter. Combining that with his 2set bonus activating 25 times while mine activated just 12 times, which is quite obvious due to the first RNG difference. Well, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, sometimes I don't execute everything absolutely perfect with zero avoidable dmg etc, but for doing a pretty simple fight correctly and being right at the bottom with the tanks doesn't feel fine to me.

Because that is a simple fight. Sh..tuff doesn't get messy like progress on Blast Furnace. Now I'm in the second mythic guild this tier who progressed at least to BF and I'm getting benched. Again. I do decent damage on operators and firecallers, but when I pop my wings on the primalist I really get freaking religious asking all gods for help. And they don't answer. Compared to a rogue for example who also keeps his cds my dmg is overall dogshite.

All in all I have no more high hopes for the retri spec in terms of being a valid candidate for a DPS spot in a mythic progress guild. My HoPs and HoSs are just not enough to compensate for the atrocious RNG in damage. If the SW will be viable again I might consider to fight on, but I may very well be prepared to leave aside all the future "Cutting Edge"s if I'm still going to be stubborn enough and not reroll a more reliable melee dps class.

[Bad-apple]

One REAL trick to fix Ret
Put a picture above your screen of this guy:

Oh my gosh.

I'm putting this in a frame above my desk.

[Alanar]

Yeah, a leap + glyphed wings so we all can fly through the sky like shiny golden eagles

It's mora priest thing.. Ashran spell for priest ARE golden wings and leap= leap of faith..