What's would your ideal ret design look like?

[Eurytos]

If you were making ret, and you had the entire history of ret to pull from, how would you design the spec? What spells and abilities, what passives, what play style would you want? I think with the history of ret, there is a sweet spot. There is a combination of past and present that could make ret, at least its basic function, stable. Not having a complete overhaul every other year. I tried this on the official forums, but it went down a road I didnt think was constructive, so here we are on MMO-C, lets see what ya'll have to say.

TL;DR This is my thoughts on ret design. Tell me your combination of old and new that you would like to see.

I'm of the mind that pvp and pve in WoW are almost entirely incompatible, so all my suggestions are in the vein of pve only. Here is what I think would be best for ret:

1) I think the best change to ret, that really worked out well, is Holy Power. I would keep Holy Power at 5, and our most powerful abilities would consume 3-5 HP. Final/Templar's Verdict fits here as baseline. Justicar's Vengeance is something that I think fits good as a talent choice. There is room for it. Word of Glory also fits as a talent. It should be a strong heal.

2) I think Divine Purpose is a baseline ability. It has synergy with all the different HP consumers we have. Its integral to having HP as a resource. It is the main proc we have.

3) I think Seals are a part of paladin. I think there is value in having an AOE seal and a ST seal. Seal of Vengeance with a Censure dot for ST, and Righteousness for AOE. I think some form of seal swapping can separate average rets from good rets. Not the seal swapping talent of WoD, but there should be a payoff for good seal swapping. Censure would stack with auto attacks, CS, and Judgement. This also allows for good rets to separate themselves from average rets. Being able to run multiple stacks of Censure thru good Judgment use, obviously Judgment doesn't have a facing requirement. This allows for the decision making with what seal to use. Do I have time to make use of multiple dots, or is a quick AOE cleave in order?

4) I think having a talent choice for a Judgement is also good. A debuff that buffs melee dmg, or one that buffs caster dmg, or one that heals attackers, or something more creative like a Judgment of Sacrifice that redirects some aoe dmg off the raid onto the pally. IDK, get creative here. I think there is an interesting choice to be made their that fits your raid best. Obviously the tuning needs to be good on this, but I think its mainly a choice on who's in your raid. I think soemthing like this, soemthing that doesn't necessarily directly benefit the paladin, but helps the raid overall, fits with being a paladin.

5) Blessings or Hand spells are good paladin tools too. Sacrifice, Freedom, Protection, Might, Wisdom, Kings,...and some old ones too, like Sanctuary, and (in my ideal world threat is a bit more of an issue than it is today), Salvation could be useful. In fact, I think they should be situational. You don't buff and forget. But that all of these would have the function of Hand spells. Cast them when needed, not just as a passive. Call them what you want. I think there is room for creativity here in regards to turning the old school blessings into Hand-like spells. Maybe they never get used by most people. Maybe they don't have the biggest impact, but again, I think based on the fight, based on your raid comp, there are interesting choices to be made using Hand Spells...but they have to exist first in order to use them. I want to be able to help out my raid in a way more than just dmg. The fights are so different these days, often having times of no dps whatsoever, allow us to pitch in during these times. We are hybrid for a reason. We can't carry anything, but we can help out...and I think these spells allow for that.

6) Avenging Wrath is our defining trait. As ret, I think our niche is burst dmg. Sure, maybe we suffer on a fight or two where we can't make optimal use of our CDs. But on average, it will work itself out to be a solid dps spec. This is where Hammer of Wrath makes its comeback. When wings are up, HoW is useable and generates HP. I think having HoW as an execute is fine too, put it at 20%, 15% whatever you have to for tuning purposes. 2 minute AW means for most fights we get 3, some fights more. I think AW is another good spot for talent choices. I think this could be based on stats. Buffs you dmg and a secondary for the duration. Maybe youre a crit monster, maybe mastery is best, maybe its like Crusade and haste is best. I can foresee that maybe the choice for this row might not be incredibly interesting once we find our best secondary...but what I think it does is give room for change. Maybe from raid tier to raid tier, and from gear choice to gear choice, a different secondary will be better than the previous tier. It also allows for tuning. Easier to change one row of talents that are similar than to have to blow up the whole spec.

7) Big 5minute CD. This is another talent choice. It could be Guardian of Ancient Kings, or Seraphim, and something else. This is part of our burst niche. Again, its important for these to be competitive. GoAK gives a strength buff for a time, Seraphim gives a butt load of secondaries, maybe the third choice is a buff given to raid members. It could be cool that the paladin and a random dps get a cool buff at once. Something powerful, but its a long CD. 5min CD means most fights you get it once, the occasional fight you'll get it twice.

8) Standard rotation would make use of these standard spells: Judgement, Crusader Strike(generates 1 HP), Blade of Wrath (generates 2 HP, can proc resetting its cd through an Art of War passive) HoW(execute or thru AW, generates 1 HP), a ranged spell something like Holy Wrath or Exorcism (doesn't generate HP), and Consecration. Finishers are F/TV, JV, or DS...depending on the situation. This is a 5-7 button rotation. Not incredibly complex, but has some variation with procs and such.

9) Medium CDs. I think Execution Sentence, Holy Prism, or Hammer of Light is a good talent row to keep. Somewhere between 20-60 seconds on these. Use them based on fight/situation, adds a little something extra to the rotation but doesn't clog it up too much.

10) Movement. Pursuit of Justice baseline. Talents are things like like Divine Steed, or maybe a passive that can proc speed from Judgement, or one of those other ranged spells. A Long Arm of the Law type talent that would proc if you are out of melee or something. From an aesthetic perspective, maybe they change Divine Steed to a Falling Sword type spell, or a Tyrael's Sword spell...that could be really cool. Its the difference between a targeted spell or not. Pick three for the row!

This is not a comprehensive list. Plenty of things I left out. Like Mastery. What's our mastery do? Hand of Light seems too passive, tho I like the idea of doing extra Holy dmg to things. Our current mastery is obviously garbage and wouldnt fit in this world either. Plenty of discussion about passives and defensive cds can be had. Divine Protection, Shield of Vengeance, incentive to hurt ourselves to gain something? Other passives.

I'll stop here. Thanks for reading this far if you did.

[Kuriyama]

Just give me back WoD Paladin and I'll be happy. Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism with Art of War, Final Verdict spell, Execution Sentence how it used to be, Speed of Light and Long Arm of the Law. Get rid of Crusade and make Divine Purpose viable again. Seals would be nice. I liked Seal of Vengeance. Oh and get rid of that horrible Shield of Vengeance and bring back Divine Protection for Ret! Either that or Guardian. SoV is the most stupid CD I've ever seen.

I'm fine with how Blessings are right now, especially since Might is gone. That was a nightmare...

[Sigxy]

Can't say I agree with everything here, sadly. I am not very fond of Holy Power - at all. Even Avenging Wrath is something I'm not in huge favour of since I would honestly take sustained damage overall, over burst damage.

Otherwise, a few things I would like, even if some of them are more about "paladins overall" rather than just ret. Starting off with bringing back some of the older stuff, even if with a twist, and then bring in some new stuff! And note that I'm calling it "Judgement", that typo had a strange charm to it.


Bringing stuff back.

Bring back auras.
Instead of making them talents, make them baseline. Make them scale with you. Devotion aura? Make it scale with the paladin's armour. Retribution aura? Make it scale with attack power. Maybe make a new one to fit in for Holy Paladins: Aura of Light, making those around you heal for a little bit, scaling with spell power.

Part of me would love to make it so auras only effects the party, not the entire Raid, to help balance it, but then you'd want to make every 5th person you invite a paladin for them, so just to make sure they don't become too powerful. Which I'm fine with. It's great 'class fantasy'. >_>

And bring back Crusader Aura!

Bring back the old Blessings.
Kings for stats, Might for attack power, wisdom for mana. If we need to change them, I'd say: make Might work as pure damage increase, and wisdom for resource generation for any spec which excludes 'combo points'. So, rage, energy, mana, those things would regenrate - but not combo points, soul shards, etc.

Bring back the seals and their Judgement effects.
Yes, back in the days, when you cast Judgement with Crusader on, you dealt extra holy damage on them. You could compare it to today's mastery, but back then, you at least could keep it up at all time. And we all know it's just clunky with the new version we have now.

Now, hear me out, before you call me a heretic: I do think that the Judgment of Crusade effect was fine when it didn't help our dps TOO much. Why? So that we can have a reason to toss up other judgement effects and not feel like we're too crippled, but still lose some of our dps to help others out. Light for health, wisdom for either mana - or as said before, to generate your primary resources.

And of course, with something like Seal of Command: the judgmenet is pure damage and won't replace the current seal.

Bring back Pursuit of Justice.
Don't think I have to mention much here. We had it since vanilla as a talent. Divine steed just doesn't cut it.

Bring back instant Repentance.
I'm fine if they might increase the cooldown a little bit, but they really should remove the casting time. The worst part about being Retribution: if you get holy locked, either by being interupted by trying to heal (which should be interuptable), or by said Repentance, you just crippled yourself beyond help and can't attack with most stuff anymore. Even Divine Intervention won't work!


The new stuff. (and possibly mess up being creative, but worth a shot!)

New Mastery
Mastery: Adds in some extra damage to each of your abilities as Holy Damage - half of it is direct damage, half of it is done overtime over a short amount of time. The duration is refreshed each time. Whenever you cast Judgment: All the Holy Damage over time is consumed and is dealt straight away.

This way, you can turn Judgement into being a pretty nice damage ability, rather than just a 'debuff' thing. And this way, since we're obviously not allowed to catch up to people: let's add to the 'fantasy' that running away from the Light's vengeance isn't going to happen, and it adds a bit of that burst damage in case they try to heal at a safe distance - kinda making you want to be careful with using Judgement in PvP and try to just use it otherwise for the Seal effects.

New resource
As I said above, I dislike Holy Power. A lot. But people would find it boring if Paladins only used mana, so - let's make something that's a mix of rage and energy.

Here's the deal:
Like energy, the resource is pretty much maxed out by default. However, unlike energy: it does NOT regenerate on it's own while in combat.
Like rage, you gain the resource by doing attacks, and some abilities consumes it. Unlike rage though, it doesn't deplenish overtime while not in combat.

Though I will admit, I'm unsure how much each ability would cost to use, especially for the healing abilities.

Wake of Ashes (or whatever it'll be named in the future without Ashbringer) as baseline.
Definitely the most fun ability we got in Legion. It'll work the same way, just that instead of granting holy power, it grants the new resource. It's 'Damage over time' effect, however, is scaled with mastery.


Stuff to remove. (And people getting very angry with me. Very fast.)

Avenging Wrath
As I've said before: I'll gladly trade this thing off for some sustained damage. I want to be able to do damage I can rely on, not just at short moments and, if timed badly, can go to waste (Being CCd all the time, or some boss that forces you to run away. Wasted ability by poor timing.) If I want to have some sort of burst damage, I've already mentioned the Judgement stuff above.

Shield of Vengeance
In theory it's nice to have a shield that, once broken, you deal damage to those around you. However, in PvE it'd motivate you to really stand in bad stuff most of the time if you really wanted that extra damage. Sure, they could make it so you deal damage depending on how much the shield endured once the effect is over, but it's hardly satisfying, is it?

Any kind of current Holy Wrath.
Nuff said.


I could go on for hooouuuurs to write down stuff for Retribution (and paladins overall since I really, really enjoy them - and not just in WoW either. I would dedicate a whole website to how I would design them if I could but I obviously won't...!) but I think this would give at least some idea what -I- would like. Trying to be a class designer is quite a lot of fun, too.

In short:
Remove the wings so we can keep sustained damage, make us more dangerous overall, but not too much. I don't want Retribution to be at the top meters, honestly, I just want them to be on par with most dps, with some of the damage made up for the fact that we have some utility to help out the group. It's just to make sure we get some utility that Holy and Protection can't provide already.

[Super Kami Dende]

Wrath Ret with TV as a 12sec CD move and baseline Divine Purpose as a chance for CS to reset TV CD. entire removal of Holy Power. Or at least make Holy power a bar that fills as you do damage, that when you hit 100% you can Cast Wings or Something.

[Deleted]

Well I prefer leaving the design to people that are professionals in the field and reflect afterwards as a player.
That being said I am totally disappointed at reading so many nice ideas in fan sites and forums and blizzard coming down with attrocities. From the ideas thrown here I miss one that utilizes one iconic paladin resource: Mana.
Find a way to utilize mana (mobility - wog talent not consuming damage resources or w/e locked behind mana and some boring things become more interesting).

[Deleted]

I don't deal in absolutes, but the following things but some of our talents need to be seriously looked at; and by that i mean those noone ever chooses.
Row 1 - i had no reason to even look at it this expansion
Last row - DS and Crusade are somewhat ok, but the 3rd talent really needs to be replaced (i don't think a rework would help it at the moment)

[Dismembered]

What's would your ideal ret design look like?

[Tehterokkar]

Wrath Ret was the pinnacle of Ret for me. Not necessarily in the amount of random spells you had, but the rotation feel and Seal of Command.

[Eurytos]

Can't say I agree with everything here, sadly. I am not very fond of Holy Power - at all. Even Avenging Wrath is something I'm not in huge favour of since I would honestly take sustained damage overall, over burst damage.

This is interesting to me, and I'm genuinely curious about this thought process. Considering that burst is kinda the basis for all my positions. Balance around ret being a class that excels at burst, but isnt a complete drag when not bursting. What is it about being bursty that you don't like? Is there no place for a bursty dps spec? Or that you just prefer ret not to be that spec?

I think it could be done though, with more thought than I'm putting in right now, to create a ret talent tree where the choices would be between leaning heavy on wings and other cds, or choosing to gain some increased dmg on seals and dot dmg, at the expense of wings or other cds. I could see this. And it could be customized for the fight.

To me, sustained dmg feels like a spec where most dmg is done passively, whereas burst is more dynamic. Maybe Im just not thinking broadly enough about how it could be done.

Let me know what you think.

PS I appreciate the responses yall. This is much better than the responses I received on the official forums. I've not seen a single response where I was just like, NO! I get that some don't like HP. I remember Wrath ret, it was amazing. I just also like HP. Keep the ideas coming.

[Varx]

Here's my take on what the ideal toolkit for ret could be.

Dive Purpose: Is now baseline

Divine Shield: Reduces damage caused by 90%. Reason behind this is that being completely immune while still dealing regular damage is just silly balance wise and is probably one of the reasons why blizzard is hesitant to buff us. The spell is meant to be defensive and can be easily canceled to regain our damage.

Hand of Hindrance: Reworked, now it costs 1-3 Holy Power, spending the most it can given the chance. 1 holy power reduces enemy movement speed by 70%, 2 holy power Roots in place for 3 seconds in addition to the snare, 3 holy power increases the paladin's movement speed by 50% in addition to previous effects. 30 sec cool down

Repentance: castable version is now baseline.

Execution Sentence Rework and Baseline. Places a debuff on the target for 15 seconds after which detonates and deals massive damage to the target. 30 second cooldown. Execution Sentence also applies the judgment effect.

Falling Hammer: Teleports above the target and slams down. immediately consuming the effect of Execution Sentence. 30 yard range.

Divine steed: Now also removes all roots and slows.

Consecration: Is now baseline. Standing in consecration turns blade of justice into divine hammer.

Word of Glory: Is now baseline once again


Expansion of Greater Blessings:

Greater Blessings include:

Greater blessing of Light: Increase all heals received by x%

Greater blessing of Justice: Increases movement speed by 15%

Greater Blessing of Wisdom: no change

Greater Blessing of Kings: Reworked. Now places a shield equal to x% of your total HP when dropping below 30% Hp.

Greater Blessing of Faith: Loss of control effects are reduced by x%.

Only one Blessing can be active on one person at a time. In addition the same Greater Blessing can only be used on one person at a time.


Talents

Tier 1

Final Verdict: Old WoD FV. Increases TV's damage by x%. TV now empowers your next Dive Storm to deal x% additional damage and increased radius

Respect the Hammer: Judgement is now off the GCD and increases the duration of Execution Sentence by 3 seconds each time it's cast up to 30 seconds and increases it's damage by x% per cast. In addition Judgment spreads when enemies are damaged (assuming we don't carry our artifacts with us in the future)

Promised Land: Standing in consecration increase your versatility by x%. Enemies inside consecration are slowed by 50%. Divine Hammer is now its own spell that shares a CD with BoJ.

Tier 2 Remains the same

Tier 3

Fist of Justice: No change

Improved Repentance: Repentance can now be cast while moving and is uninterruptible.

Blinding Light: 45 sec CD, replaces Repentance.

Tier 4:

Justicar's Vengeance: Remains the same

Eye for an Eye: Now Reduces all damage by x% and reflects all kinds of damage back at x%.

Shield of Light: Absorbs anhuge amount of damage, when shield expires it heals the paladin for x% of the damage absorbed. Replaces Shield of Vengeance.

Tier 5:

Cavalier: No change.

Hand of Law: Hand of Hindrance now costs no Holy Power and acts as if 3 Holy Power were spent.

Pursuite of Justice: Increases movement speed by 15% (does not stack with Greater Blessing of Justice). In addition each Holy Power saved up increase speed by an additional 5%.

Tier 6:

Crusade: No Change.

Unyielding Faith: Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm now cost 2 holy power.

Holy Wrath: Old HW from legion beta but with higher numbers and lower CD.

PvP Talents

So far the only PvP talent I came up with is Having consecration create a zone in which players cannot escape out of for 3 seconds

[Deleted]

Wrath ret with holypower and t17 baseline

[Dalamian]

Getting rid of Avenging Wrath!? Blasphemy!

Wings has become such an iconic Paladin ability its hard to imagine a world without wings, then again I said the same thing about seals and auras and, well, look where we are now.

I do kind of miss the old interactions between the different seals and judgement, it was very tedious to keep reapplying wisdom, or light every 30s, but it was at least great utility. You even had seal of the crusader that increased holy damage done to the target.

So here we go,

Judgement of the Crusader (retribution baseline)- Judge the target for their wicked acts, increasing damage from all sources done to the target by X% for Y seconds, cooldown equal to or less than the amount of time the debuff is up

you could then change this for each spec, prot get's something to make their judgement unique and so does holy.

They did something similar to this in wrath when we had 3 separate judgement spells, one applied wisdom, one applied light, and I think one was justice and it applied a snare.

[Colmadero]

Getting rid of Avenging Wrath!? Blasphemy!

Wings has become such an iconic Paladin ability its hard to imagine a world without wings, then again I said the same thing about seals and auras and, well, look where we are now.

I do kind of miss the old interactions between the different seals and judgement, it was very tedious to keep reapplying wisdom, or light every 30s, but it was at least great utility. You even had seal of the crusader that increased holy damage done to the target.

So here we go,

Judgement of the Crusader (retribution baseline)- Judge the target for their wicked acts, increasing damage from all sources done to the target by X% for Y seconds, cooldown equal to or less than the amount of time the debuff is up

you could then change this for each spec, prot get's something to make their judgement unique and so does holy.

They did something similar to this in wrath when we had 3 separate judgement spells, one applied wisdom, one applied light, and I think one was justice and it applied a snare.

I mean, for what it's worth, Hammer of Wrath used to be a staple and iconic ability and look what happened...

[Sett]

PoJ back and baseline for ret. I'd like holy power gone too but I'm ??? on how to fix that mess. Things have gotten way to complex to go back to WotLK era of ret.

[Dalamian]

I mean, for what it's worth, Hammer of Wrath used to be a staple and iconic ability and look what happened...

It certainly was, man I remember when they introduced, I forget which patch it was but I remember running around Arathi Basin and getting so many killing blows with it when people were trying to run away from me!

[fosheeze]

Or at least make Holy power a bar that fills as you do damage, that when you hit 100% you can Cast Wings or Something.

This is actually an interesting idea to me that kinda fulfills the class fantasy. You build up some resource, maybe "vengeance" or something and then unleash it as holy wrath (but not that holy wrath).

[brandox]

Wow, had just finished typing this up and read the above comments.

New Resource: Righteousness
Similar to a Shadow Priest's Insanity - The Paladin's abilities generate Righteousness, increasing Holy damage done by .25% per stack. At 100 Righteousness, the paladin ability - Righteous Fury - becomes available, increasing the Paladin's damage and haste by 30% until cancelled. Righteous Fury drains the paladin's Righteousness by 5 every second.

BoW generates 10 Righteousness and Crusader Strike 5.
Judgement remains the same - increasing damage taken from Holy Power spenders by x%.
Templar's Verdict/Divine Storm remain the same but on a 6 second cooldown.
Righteous Fury enables the use of Light's Vengeance - a meteor ability that deals large damage to a single target or moderate damage to multiple enemies.

Avenging Wrath increases all damage done by 20% with a 3 minute cooldown.

Shield of Vengeance removed.

Divine Protection returns - decreases magic damage taken by 20% on a 1 minute cooldown.

[Dalamian]

Wow, had just finished typing this up and read the above comments.

New Resource: Righteousness
Similar to a Shadow Priest's Insanity - The Paladin's abilities generate Righteousness, increasing Holy damage done by .25% per stack. At 100 Righteousness, the paladin ability - Righteous Fury - becomes available, increasing the Paladin's damage and haste by 30% until cancelled. Righteous Fury drains the paladin's Righteousness by 5 every second.

BoW generates 10 Righteousness and Crusader Strike 5.
Judgement remains the same - increasing damage taken from Holy Power spenders by x%.
Templar's Verdict/Divine Storm remain the same but on a 6 second cooldown.
Righteous Fury enables the use of Light's Vengeance - a meteor ability that deals large damage to a single target or moderate damage to multiple enemies.

Avenging Wrath increases all damage done by 20% with a 3 minute cooldown.

Shield of Vengeance removed.

Divine Protection returns - decreases magic damage taken by 20% on a 1 minute cooldown.

Its Breath of Sindragosa basically, with a Paladin theme. You would probably want to make it just like insanity though. where eventually it becomes unsustainable no matter what you do. Otherwise you end up in a situation like Frost DKs have right now.

I still would like to see type of "Falling Sword" type ability from the Crusader in Diablo 3, a holy heroic leap if you will. Avenging Wrath wings pop up on your back, lift you into the air and you land at the targeted point and maybe lay down a shortened version of consecrate when you land or something.

[Swalload]

Good old vanilla ret.

INEXISTANT.

[Eurytos]

I'm really coming around on these ideas about a resource that isn't HP or mana.

Some very cool ideas. Building up that resource to explode for some big damage for a duration. Could be sweet.

Also, and this is sorta what spawned this whole idea in my head, is the discussion about old Seals and Judgment. My friend said she really enjoyed the cast a seal, judge the seal play style. I remember it being really tedious. And was happy when the seals were long duration and judgement didnt consume the seal. I'm not sure I'd be on board with bring this back in its entirety, but, making seals and judgment more connected is something that makes sense.