[7.0] New Paladin Abilities and Talents

[Ulthane]

@Zartorus agreed very much so. Which one could argue that maybe Wog should not cost Holy power with a cd like that to truly aid in off healing if that's a thing? The old concept of Blaze of Light was interesting. Would be interesting to see it come back as a replacement that is a heavy instant heal on a cd that replaces fol. Think Selfless healer at 3 stacks but no stacks instant but a cd.

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A proper support row would look like this.
-Blaze of Light: instant, cd, big heal like selfless.
-Wog: big, instant, cd no Holy power
-Divine Intervention: perhaps tune it to act like a purgatory for other players? What if it lowered cd of Divine Shield by 50% and of you or an ally took fatal damage it would trigger it on them?

Fills support fantasy and none cost you dps.

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Selfless is 150% more healing at 3 stacks so I'd say that Blaze would be 150% stronger and instant and 10 sec cd.

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Or instead of DI keep that personal and in the row with Eye for an Eye and then have Hand of Light as a talent

[Deleted]

@Ulthane .

Well WoG is quite sufficient on it's own if it actually heals for much and at least about half the raid and not just meeles.
Or and also it should have either No HP Cost or no Cooldown. No HP Cost would be prefered but also with a internal 20sec CD that this can't be really spammed.

BoL Wouldn't be that big of a deal for exept maybe PvP because , well why? Why would someone take that thing if we can have both LoH and WoG ?
Saving a singe guy will happen only every once and a while and should , and in good raiding guilds , will only somewhat rarely happen. And saving a single guy won't really safe the entire raid while WoG certanly could.
Simply put with WoG BoL would be redundand.

Divine Intervention would be far to strong since things like that are the domains of healers and tanks now. It should remain just as it is in order for it to be at least be the chance that it can be used for Suicide tactic fights like Xhul.
Or just for bad players overall.


But again , even if it would be there this would change only little. The same question remains what would ret have to offer exept for very suituational heals?
And again this are the same two answers. Either massiv dps , most than most other speccs should be capable off since we are limited in more ways than one , or additional non-healing support and high-mid-tier dps.
Simple healing will never just cut it exept if it is raidwide and strong like Spriests vampiric embrace can be. Anything besides this is little more than a nice to have but not really necessary thing - or else we would see far more Ret pallys in high end Guilds , wouldn't we.

[Ulthane]

@Zartorus then we are on the same page. Because the big issue is when you have to trade dps for a heal it screws you hard. That being said the tweaks could be seen then.

-Blaze of Light could maybe not have a cd then but high mana cost?
-Word of Glory no HP cost and 20 seconds cd
-Hand of Light triggering for all players but on a 1 minute cd?

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Good spot heals that act like burst
But focuses on heavy st damage
Has fluid aoe
Has blessing to mitigate or buff.

That would be the general idea but at the moment what we see is far from the mark.

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Or if they shafted the support may as well do both heavy aoe and st

[Deleted]

Again , BoL has no real use , wether with or without CD. It is single target heal and will never in a PvE enviroment compete with AE Heal , well in the overwhelming majority of cases.
I didn't really meant that WoG shouldn't have neither a cost and CD , but if the CD remains it should have a about 20 second internal CD , otherwise this will be quite hard for both PvE and PvP as CD.
HoL , well there is WoG , so essentially you would have two Talents that are filling the same role within the same row.
There wouldn't even have to be new talents tbh , WoG as it is itself would be sufficient enough if
- We deal big dick dps , than it can keep it's Hp cost and heal for as much , but more people and in a wider radius.
- We deal moderate/good dps than it shouldn't have a HP cost - but also there would have to be other Raid CD - non healing once - for us in store.

Since at this point most likely nothing that much will change , i believe , that only the first option would be acceptable. Since also everything we have seen so far is telling us that we are designed around being very very good DPS.

Srsly , if we aren't , if we are about the point were we have been historicly , namely in the middle of pack.
This whole damn system doesn't makes even a bit of sense.
Why would we have so damn weak mobility? Or No real support options , or the limited gameplay in terms of fast target switches , a mastery that is more or less designed for ST dps with only a limited AE option to it , or why Retribution is there in the first place , or why the Blessing of might stuff exists etc etc.
Litteraly nothing else would make sense and with that Ret would be virtually useless.
Why take Ret into the raid if he has no usefull support?
Or is slow to walk out of Void zones , or will be quite handicapt in most movement fights.
Or that Ret has only limited options for constant AE , with a somewhat good Burst but thats just about it. And the burst AE isn't something like Bladestorm even.
Hell even their offhealing costs dps so that even if they would use it , the raid will still loose something.
BoP maybe? Nope HP pally is far to valuable and with that we have that covered. Maybe there is also a Prot Pally in the raid too.

So what does raid have? Virtually nothing.
But us being some of the best DPS and having at least some , if not limited , form of support would be still good because DPS is usefull in every fight without exeption.

[Ulthane]

And that is where the frustration comes in. Because mechanically you see we are boxed into a corner. A mastery involving our single target needs to make our st amazing damage. So I'd imagine a melee version of Arcane with an arms twIst. Sure. Aoe is there but it's not Bladestorm or other such, sure. We have st, that's what matters.

In this regard we have support, does the support match up to what we are doing. No? It conflicts. So then how do you make the support not conflict with our damage dealing. This is why I mentioned what I did.

-Bol could bring you or another back from the brink at the cost of your mana and a couple GCD's. Not bad considering
-WoG would be a capped target aoe heal that is bursty.
-Hand if Light wide gives a non capped non burst aoe heal that would work.

Now am I saying this is the best option? No. Am I disagreeing with you. No.

All I'm saying is if they give us support tools it should not conflict with damage dealing other than a gcd.

[Teleros]

Because so far ret has virtually speaking no suppport what so ever , and that which we have comes always at the cost of dps , Blessing and WoG for that instance.

For what it's worth I'm fine with healing costing us DPS by spending our resources etc, but not other kinds of utility. Well, I'm also fine with utility costing us GCDs, because losing a GCD here and there occasionally really is no big deal, but you get what I mean. I wouldn't want to spend HP to cast Hand of Protection on someone (!).

- But most of these speccs do have something else of value to offer that can and will be quite strong indeed. Like shamans for instance , they have a totem that increases the movement speed for everyone , or Druids who have Roar for the same thing , Balance has a rather heavily powerfull Healer CD. So what does ret have? SO far only really healing.

Indeed. I think Ret utility is quite nice in PvP, but in PvP there are far more uses for Hand of Freedom etc and off-healing than in PvE.

And as a sidenote to the guy saying why Ret should maybe have a raid wide Dps CD.
Well simple , while it would be cool and usefull , it would make completly mandatory and always without exeption part of the tactic. This would mean that we quite litteraly would be designed around this thing and most likely , like so many other things in this category like Fox , will be removed once the second content hits.

Yeah, it depends really on how it's designed. If we could go back in time to TBC I'd say that actually Ret would be a good spec to give Heroism to (but not Bloodlust), given the idea of inspiring your allies and the like, which IMHO is not something shamans are really known for. Be that as it may however, if we're talking about giving Ret a raid-wide DPS cooldown in Legion, then I'd want something noticeably weaker than Heroism. Rets were all of a sudden desired in Sunwell Plateau when they could bring the +3% crit debuff on Brutallus for example, but as I recall it wasn't so powerful that top guilds were keeping their Rets around for all the SWP bosses.

A defensiv CD is far simples to handle and has just as offensiv CD a high value for a raid. And defensiv doesn't necessarily mean that it is a dmg reduction but can also be something different like movement speed increase or a smokebomb with Line of sight.

Exactly. Even given what I just wrote above, defensive CDs do offer a lot more flexibility and are a lot less likely to be felt as "mandatory" for fights. There's lots of different ways you can create a meaningful defensive CD too: damage reduction, AE healing, line of sight, mobility, cooldown recovery rates, resource generation rates, free bonus healing, damage redirection, immunity effects (CC and damage), etc. These in turn will have greater or lesser use on different fights. On Gorefiend, a mobility CD won't be as big a deal as, say, a healing aura or Power Word: Barrier clone would be. You might prefer the mobility CD on other fights though: there's swings and roundabouts to any one design chosen.

On the other hand, if (for sake of argument) the Ret offensive CD is +10% crit damage for 10secs, then that's very easy to assign a DPS value to, which in turn makes it very easy to decide whether it's mandatory or not. On the other hand, there are so many other defensive CDs out there that if you don't have a Ret paladin there's almost certainly someone who can do the job (probably an actual healer spec), so bringing a Ret isn't mandatory, which is a good thing for the game (if not Ret paladins :P ).

[Deleted]

@Ulthane ,
Yup , pretty much this. But i've been saying this all along that we are and should , with the current design , be the new ArcaneSubAffli. But we have to have AE options aswell because all of the other classes like Mage and Rogues do have their designated AE/Cleave speccs into which they can go. We on the other hand don't so we have to have both options within one specc alone. And that is why , at least i believe that to be the case , why we have so god damn many AE speccs in virtually every row that has something to do with dps. To allow us at least the chance to be somewhat more versatile.
IF this is going to be balanced properly , well i won't be happy with the playstyle so much is for sure , but it can be ok if the numbers are correct. But this is just the problem , ret and numbers have been mortal enemies for a eternity and that is what i fear will happen. That we will be handicapt , or just outright retarded , in every way possible and that we are going to have only average DPS , no real support , no mobility and bad target switching and AE capabilites.

BoL, remains the problem. In PvE it is virtually useless cause LoH. In PvP on the other hand , well let's just say it would be quite op if it heals too much.Likewise , what does much mana really mean? At this point a FoL consumes about what? 20% of our mana? What should BoL consume then? 30-40% ? And what Talents should it replace at this point? E4E ? DI ?
WoG in comparisson to HoL would be to limited in it's action and far to situational. While HoL can be used in most fights.
But again , which talents should be replaced? Well technicly you could have HoL as baseline and talent into WoG. But this goes somewhat against the point of thought , wouldn't it?
Maybe , but if we are to be the new ArcaneSubAffli , then this would make sense why our support cost us DPS in a active manner. Because otherwise this would be too much , more or less. At this point we would technily be among the "pure" DPS classes and if we would have , even only small amounts of free support , would be too much compared to the others. The some goes also the other way around - but i am running circles around my self here. YOu get the point.


@ Teleros , Ret utility for PvP is fine as far as i am aware off. But PvE is another thing is you correctly mentioned.
But in the end , the actuall question isn't if Ret has to have a Raid CD. But if it becomes necessary for us to have one in the first place. And this , and ALL of this , will be decided in the next coming months in the real number tuning phase. If our DPS is low-ish , to what it is supposed to be , than yes , we need CD to gain value in the raid. But if we have the DPS and a thing like WoG for dire moments than the thing is fine by itself since we provide enough value for the raid with our DPS alone.
In the same regard a arcane mage doesn't really need a support , cause well they are arcane mages and OP as fuck.
But on the other hand a Warlock has his gates for very situational fights and moments.

Also , Brutallus was a DPS fight that requiered a bit of movement. So every additional gain of DPS counted. And since that fucker was a demon ret had Ok-ish dps and did gave the Raid additional value.
The difference in this and WoG is simple. You can plan having a 3% Crit additonaly for the boss fight, just as you can plan the fight in having Roar or the Wind totem , but you can't plan the fight around where Ret has to use his WoG. WoG is a small gain that gives additional value to what there is in the first place , and not a thing that will make Ret usefull to beginn with.
And there was also 3% additonal DPS for the raid from the +Holy damage aura , sanctity aura i believe it was.

[Wrecktangle]

It's incredibly disheartening how Ret is literally just a walking contradiction of gameplay mechanics.

Greater Blessings are literally MORE passive than seals were, wait weren't seals removed for not adding gameplay value and being too passive? Oh wait, it's a Ret build its fine, whew if this was a mage or death knight we'd have to rework the entire spec.

Greater Blessings are unfun, clunky, and incredibly bland from a gameplay perspective. How exactly is it "fun" to fire and forget a buff on 3 other players? If they die, you're punished. If they're bad players, you're punished. If you're bad and die, your DPS goes down a little more slowly than anyone else, but it doesn't matter because everyone knows you died... It doesn't matter if 3 people can still help my DPS totals after my death because it still won't make up for me actually being alive and DPSing, and most importantly of all it just simply isn't fun.

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Here's an idea for Ret based Utility. At least from a mechanic perspective.

Domain

"A Retribution Paladin's presence inspires even the most weakened of warriors."

Upon gaining 5 Holy Power the ground beneath you becomes consecrated for 4s. During this time any ally within 8yds is granted Sacred Shield. The effect can only happen once every 6s.

Sacred Shield lasts 6s and absorbs x% (+x% of Mastery) of damage.

That's some solid Ret utility right there. It requires 5 HoPo so it has good uptime, but not all the time. It would add up over the fight to a reasonable amount of reduction.

If we wanted offensive utility simply change the effect, but the mechanic itself works (we need some melee love IMO).

[Ulthane]

@Wrecktangle I love that concept a ton Holy hell

[ruiizu]

It's incredibly disheartening how Ret is literally just a walking contradiction of gameplay mechanics.

Greater Blessings are literally MORE passive than seals were, wait weren't seals removed for not adding gameplay value and being too passive? Oh wait, it's a Ret build its fine, whew if this was a mage or death knight we'd have to rework the entire spec.

Greater Blessings are unfun, clunky, and incredibly bland from a gameplay perspective. How exactly is it "fun" to fire and forget a buff on 3 other players? If they die, you're punished. If they're bad players, you're punished. If you're bad and die, your DPS goes down a little more slowly than anyone else, but it doesn't matter because everyone knows you died... It doesn't matter if 3 people can still help my DPS totals after my death because it still won't make up for me actually being alive and DPSing, and most importantly of all it just simply isn't fun.

---

Here's an idea for Ret based Utility. At least from a mechanic perspective.

Domain

"A Retribution Paladin's presence inspires even the most weakened of warriors."

Upon gaining 5 Holy Power the ground beneath you becomes consecrated for 4s. During this time any ally within 8yds is granted Sacred Shield. The effect can only happen once every 6s.

Sacred Shield lasts 6s and absorbs x% (+x% of Mastery) of damage.

That's some solid Ret utility right there. It requires 5 HoPo so it has good uptime, but not all the time. It would add up over the fight to a reasonable amount of reduction.

If we wanted offensive utility simply change the effect, but the mechanic itself works (we need some melee love IMO).

It's a pretty cool idea. The sense that reaching maximum power literally causes you to radiate power is a neat one.

Also, been a little while, but I have to say to everyone else: I rolled Paladin because in basically every game, it's a Warrior with some Priest abilities (more specifically heals and undead killing skills). If you seriously reject healing as part of Retribution (or any Paladin variant), you've got a very different idea than I do. I like to play melee that have heals. Paladin not having heals means no thanks.

[Deleted]

These greater blessing things are so dumb.

Really Blizz... how difficult is it? Its in the name. Its a greater blessing. A greater blessing should be greater, not individual. This is so easy to fix. Make the blessings 1m cooldowns and have it be mini legendary rings.
This would give us utility and would make for a very fun mechanic that doesnt need to be contrained to these "he dies or i die = some damage gone or some damage gained".
There is no need for this!

Scrap what we got and make it:

All values subject to balancing but just giving the example.

GBoM: Increases the raids damage by 5% for 5 seconds (1m CD).
GBoW: Increases the raids healing (mana regen?) for 5% for 5 seconds (1m CD).
GBoK: Reduced the damage taken by the raid by 5% for 5 seconds (1m CD).

They all share the cooldown.

If too OP, just put a range limit on it or increase the CD. If the damage one is so predictable, make it a shiled based on 5% of the damage. I think the optimum solution is to have it not coincide with the heroism cooldown (aside from the start), otherwise it will be stacked in all cases.

This is so easy to work out. Just reuse the code from the legendary ring. Doesnt even need to have explosions/shields.

Isn't this much better than to be having the damage be affected by he dies or i die and all this? Just keep it simple. Don't complicate things that don't need to be complicated and don't bring any interactive and interesting gameplay in.

[AlmightyGaudrik]

@Nemmar that sounds amazing but im pretty sure the dmg one would be used most of the time by progression guilds and will be nerfed qq

[Yardu]

I actually like the concept of blessings. I just wish they would implement it better. Who knows though. There's a new build today, maybe there will be some tuning. It's not something I'd abandon ship over though.

[Lunavale]

On the healing topic, I agree that healing is intrinsic to Paladins and I think it makes for an alright utility assuming it's tuned decently (though it shouldn't be our only utility). That being said, I don't think the heals we have now work as a utility. Ret should NOT be standing around hard casting heals, that's just silly (at least, not in combat). We also shouldn't be spending a large dps cost to heal (ie. WoG).

Ideally healing utility for Ret would be:
-Instant cast
-No cost, potentially to the point of being off the gcd
-On a moderate CD, we shouldn't be running around spamming heals
-Strong enough to make a difference (duh)

If it's AoE it should probably have limited range but not targets, so that there's some thought put into when you use it. Kinda like when Ret had Holy Radiance (except that was weak as shit).

[Ulthane]

@Nemmar that sounds amazing but im pretty sure the dmg one would be used most of the time by progression guilds and will be nerfed qq

I'd say let them all be usable.

[Reghame]

On the healing topic, I agree that healing is intrinsic to Paladins and I think it makes for an alright utility assuming it's tuned decently (though it shouldn't be our only utility). That being said, I don't think the heals we have now work as a utility. Ret should NOT be standing around hard casting heals, that's just silly (at least, not in combat). We also shouldn't be spending a large dps cost to heal (ie. WoG).

Ideally healing utility for Ret would be:
-Instant cast
-No cost, potentially to the point of being off the gcd
-On a moderate CD, we shouldn't be running around spamming heals
-Strong enough to make a difference (duh)

If it's AoE it should probably have limited range but not targets, so that there's some thought put into when you use it. Kinda like when Ret had Holy Radiance (except that was weak as shit).

Does flash of light work as utility? no it does not, not at the moment i agree.
Does a talented WoG count as possible utility? yes it does.

The problem i have with this entire argument is people asking that "i dont want to heal others" sort of thing.
No one is forcing you to heal them, but you asking for their flat removal shows how stupid the argument is and why blizzard does not want to listen to you.

i said this in the past and ill repeat it once more.
Retribution is not a fucking class, its a sub spec.
YOU ARE PALADINS FIRST AND FOREMOST. AND THEIR ROLE IS TO SUPPORT OTHERS IF YOU DONT LIKE THAT LEAVE.

does this mean ret will do less damage because of utility? no. this is possibly people's train of thought that "oh well im going to have to use flash every time i have mana for it" thats stupid thinking. you use it when you feel it is necessary. same with WoG freedoms bops w/e.

im so sick and tired of people demanding for things when they have no idea of what it takes to make a class and even a spec.

Sure go ahead and remove our heals. Remove freedom and bop and bubble. make us pure DPS with new CDs. you can give us something new and exciting like mass spell reflect or vigilance. Hell just give us defensive stance too we need it! also give us bloodthirst because we need some self healing.
then lets label the class retribution because its all so new and unique.......

This is why the game has become shit. ever since blizz started the clippping and homogenized everyone theres no identity to the classes and specs and people like this community seem to enjoy being copy pastes of everyone else. Blizzard has finally realised how stupid that was and is taking it back to when the game was ACTUALLY fun instead of speccing into dps and tunneling the boss for 5 minutes like everyone else.

If you want to be like everyone else go play a game like chess or something. theres no variance there and have at it. you might enjoy it. but stop asking to completely change the fundamentals of a class to satisfy your need to play a sub spec within the class but at the same time pretending that its some other class.

again your a fucking paladin. not a warrior, not a DK, not a rogue, a paladin.
Would it be fine if feral druids started to ask if they could just be in cat form all the time and never have access to their other tools because "they are a feral druid, i dont want to be defined by my heals."? no its stupid, just like this topic is.

good day sirs
/endrant

[ujx]

Tier 100 talent change - Greater Blessings swapped for Divine Purpose.


Hooray!

[Taeldorian]

Ooo a build that actually seems to help us a bit. Niiiiiiice

[Deleted]

Yes! Sweet loveable Divine purpose how i missed you!

Don't you DARE remove this blizzard! Love it!

Gonna read the other changes... just wanted to say that first. ^^

I like the greater judgement change aswell. I am guessing it will remove all downtime from the rotation. The only danger i see is that the other talents don't have any legs to walk unless they hit much harder.
It will be weird to see how fires works with divine purpose. I guess it either won't use the fires proc or gives us one HP somehow?

Anyways, i really like these changes. I really really hope they stay. Don't care about the other talents aslong as i can have this exciting and faster paced gameplay.

[Super Kami Dende]

THANK FUCK, THEY'VE GIVEN US DIVINE PURPOSE BACK!

Now with Divine Purpose, it will give us the chance to get more TV's off during the Judg Window.