What's would your ideal ret design look like?

[Reith]

Any old iterations of blessings, seals, auras or spells like exorcism and hammer of wrath should never return. I know everyone is nostalgic about them, but if they for example focus on making judgement or execution sentence visually and mechanically impactful, a return of hammer of wrath would be redundant. I don't think we should encourage redundancy or "filling" our spell bars.

Seals worked really well in MoP, actually. I even thought they did back then. You had to have a ton of skill to fully optimize DPS on a council fight, but you didn't HAVE to go that far if you didn't want to. Blade of Wrath should have Exorcism's range.

[Angeredsoul]

Legion ret sucks the big one. Colossus smash mechanic needs to go. Judgement needs to be our hardest hitter. Seal of command needs to return. Exorcism and art of war was also a feast for the eyes.

[Celebhil]

@ Reith art of war baseline and a range boost to blade of wrath seem like good places to start in respect to "quality of life" changes; so long as players cant effectively snipe targets at range continuously and blade of wrath doesnt get nerfed to compensate (pvp concern i know, but i think a limit to that kind of power is in order).

the binary switching of seals and the half-assed seal of truth glyph wasn't that fun, ergo effective. As you say it was optimal dps but players ignored it sometimes and that seems to be a bigger problem than whether or not it "works"

one thing i noticed considerably while leveling in legion was dps on anything outside the judgement window was horrendous. Judgement needs a revamp > having it be a key part of the rotation is fine but mimic of colossal smash isnt it.

[Wrecktangle]

I am returning to this post to disagree with this. I would far rather have the element that differentiates my AoE from my ST rotation be a base class element like a Seal than to have 2-3 talent tiers devoted to that entirely binary choice.

That's completely fine and I actually agree with that stipulation 100%, but it doesn't change the fact that Seals still were not fun in that iteration, even if they were effective, which was the core point of my post.

Tell me how you would make seals both FUN and effective.

My idea I once posited was that Seals were off GCD medium cooldown presses that immediately did an effect based on a condition, and offered a passive bonus.

For instance, in my Ret Legion build (way back in Legion beta) I had a mechanic that had Ret's Mastery place a stacking DoT that when activating Seals 'popped' the stacks dealing damage and offered an effect (i.e.resource restoration, reduced CD on AW, etc.). Thematically the idea was that you were rending your enemies bodies with Light, and you would reclaim it when you needed it (by using a Seal) and pulling that Light out of your enemies dealt damage and boosted your power since you were "whole" again i.e. one with the Light again.

[Zephire]

I just want my damn hybridiness back! I want offensive, defensive and utility abilitys which consume holy power. you've to choose on what to spend your resources; a powerful instant heal, a massive strike or maybe a movement speed boost? If you spend HP on heals you'll be a great off-healer, if you instead spend it on damage you'll then be a great damage dealer. You can't do both at the same time though! I want to throw heals, buff people, slay foes and tank. Sure, every "pure" tank or healer would out do ret but damage wise it would be on pair with "pure" dps. Point is, when you heal, you won't do damage and consume your stored HP.

This could mean a broader rework, ofcourse, like a new resource system where damage stores healing power which the first HP consuming heal, well, consumes for increase healing meaning you can still heal if you've no "healingbuff-resource" but it would be for much less. OR something along those lines...

I miss my instant, no cooldown Word of Glory

[rubenmsalles]

i really like 2 designs: WOTLK and WOD.
in wod we have the option to run with ranged templars veredict or seal dancing that only need an improve to be amazing and completely class identity.

[Wrecktangle]

I did, in page two, since the thread talked about how people would design ret and not how they would just complain. Reposting it I guess, but it's massive:

Seal of Truth
Instant, 1m recharge
2 Charges
Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing single-target attacks to Censure the target, which deals additional Holy damage over 15 sec. Censure can stack up to 5 times. Once stacked to 5 times, each of the Paladin's attacks also deals 0% weapon damage as additional Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 10sec.
Unleashing this Seal's energy ends the Seal’s duration and deals Holy damage to an enemy, increased by 10% for each application of Censure on the target.
Shares charges with other Seals

Seal of Command
Instant, 1m recharge
2 Charges
Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing single-target attacks to have a chance to deal additional Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 10s.
Unleashing this Seal's energy ends the Seal’s duration and deals Holy damage to the target and all other nearby enemies.
Shares charges with other Seals

So I read this and I see 2 seals (I'm ok with the quantity, I don't buy into needing a half dozen versatile seals, too powerful).

Something about Seal of Truth annoys me (more than the nightmares of the ramp up/target switching shit we had back in WotLK). You are rewarded for 5 stacks, but you're encouraged to dump them for the bonus Judgment damage. That to me "feels" awkward in my head. If you removed the % WD proc on 5 stacks, you'd fix that, but then the payoff seems lackluster. You could put a %WD proc off unleashing it, but even still then it's still just passive damage and not terribly interesting.

So Seal of Command is only based of ST attacks and does AOE based on strictly judging? That's not terrible, but does sound kind of awkward. Shouldn't it just cleave baseline if the goal is an AOE themed baseline Seal? It's also kind of boring. It's a tough thing to balance "excitement/engagement" without overloading a kit, but I can't help but feel it's missing something.

Maybe if when unleashed if the target is affected by Consecration it boosts Consecrations damage/range/duration? This way you REALLY hone in the AOE aspect of it?

[Anardel]

I think current iteration can work well with some adjustements and applying common sense. For example:

-The Fires of Justice: Crusader Strike now deals Fire damage. Also when it crits, it applies a DoT doing 30% of the initial damage during 10 secs, improved by the Judgmenet debuff and with option to crit.

-Greater Judgement: Your crits on enemies with Judgement debuff can extend the debuff duration one second, or give you one HoPo.

-Virtue's Blade: In addition to current effect, BoJ now deals Holy damage for example.

-Justicar's Vengeance: Your Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm heals you 30% dmg you have done with them.

-Holy Wrath eliminated. In its place, Hammer of Wrath: Judgement's cooldown is reduced, and its damage is improved 50/60% when the enemy is below 30% health and during Avenging Wrath.

The first three ideas skyrocket the value of crit but they're just hypothetical.
They're a few ideas I thought in 5 minutes. Pretty sure Blizzard, with months of planning and a lot of heads thinking, can do things better.

[dopefishz]

step 1) remove holy combo points,
step 2) go back to a LK model
step 3) have fun

I would instantly reroll if they brought back ICC Ret !

[tuesday the paladin]

-Holy Wrath eliminated. In its place, Hammer of Wrath: Judgement's cooldown is reduced, and its damage is improved 50/60% when the enemy is below 30% health and during Avenging Wrath.

Something along the lines of reduces the cooldown of judgment by 4 seconds and for every 1.5% health your target has lost, your judgement gains 1% increased damage. While wings is active your judgement deals damage as if they have 10% health unless the target has less than 10% health. Judgement would become stronger and stronger as the fight progresses, and if the damage was comparable to crusade I'd totally take it. Sustained DPS outside of wings, and baseline judgement debuff=judgment CD at 0% haste would make mastery and timing judgement a lot less frustrating.

[Improtaight]

i would love to get my hammer back, and art of war with exc, some ranged stuff.
i also loved the animation of the holy power finished in WOD, the one from talents i think, it was so amazing

[Deleted]

Just reminding people, the WoD iteration of ret is the one without the HFC tier bonus or the HFC trinkets.

- - - Updated - - -




I am returning to this post to disagree with this. I would far rather have the element that differentiates my AoE from my ST rotation be a base class element like a Seal than to have 2-3 talent tiers devoted to that entirely binary choice.

+++++
People need to recall how retribution shined in hfc largely due to the allignment of stars that came from hfc tier, class trinket and dps ring and the synergy/timing that allowed for a sick ES explosion every now and then... (i mean come on had to study the encounter to watch the timing, when to stop casting --- around 6 secs before sera been ready so every generator was of cd --- and then try to squize everything during seraphim) Only really good thing i have to recall from that expansion pve wise was a neat mobility and a strong damage reduction cd for the raidteam that could be enhanced by a talent. Other than that ret would be top average and usually not favorable for timed instances and progression

Having said that one can only reflect at how bad the situation is now since people recall wod times as good times.

[RussW210]

Every class in wow has an almost instant gap closer:

Warrior (charge/leap)
Rogue (shadowstep)
DK (grip)
DH (2 charges)
Monk (roll, teleport)
Druid (displacer or whatever)

And paladin has to waste 2 globals on steed + freedom. They should make steed have a built-in freedom because it's garbage in PVP. It would also greatly improve the feel of the class because paladin is currently so GCD-locked.

[Sigxy]

Every class in wow has an almost instant gap closer:

Warrior (charge/leap)
Rogue (shadowstep)
DK (grip)
DH (2 charges)
Monk (roll, teleport)
Druid (displacer or whatever)

And paladin has to waste 2 globals on steed + freedom. They should make steed have a built-in freedom because it's garbage in PVP. It would also greatly improve the feel of the class because paladin is currently so GCD-locked.

I felt pretty sad that my level 31 warrior tank got 2 charges and 1 leap ability - and my 110 Paladin got one horse 'sprint' ability. ;_:

If they insist that paladins shouldn't have a gap closer, they seriously should give them a baseline Pursuit of justice for increased movement.

[JaoStar]

I think they did take too much off the top with Ret. the spec really doesn't shine until you get your three artifact traits. Definitely needs more light spells, not so much that you feel disconnected from the target but maybe ones that work in conjunction with weapon strikes. Retribution paladins have two bland weapon strikes, one that does dmg and another that does more dmg.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

I never really played my Ret Paladin in WotLK but I enjoyed the whack-a-mole design from Warlords. Kept me entertained and involved with my priority/rotation while not feeling like my boots are covered in tar.