So, can we call Legion a bust for anyone who played Ret, and what's in it for 8.0?

[Zabatakis]

I get where you're coming from, but this is really nonsensical. Gameplay devs are not the same devs that create mount models/animations.

Oh I understand that. Didn't mean specifically gameplay devs going up to the head guy, more like the overall director of wow being told to move resources away from class development and into something with more immediate return of capital.

[Draeth]

I've been playing Ret since Vanilla and this is the least fun version of the spec ever, IMHO. I wouldn't complain about a complete gutting and revision or a return to MoP Ret at this point.

[CaptainV]

My proposal for Ret in 8.0:

The Holy Chainsaw:

Crusader Strike becomes a 3 strike base rotation, judgement is removed, but CS is now ranged, it is renamed Crusaders Smite, and has a 15 yard range from the target. Each stack of CS applies "Crusaders Judgement" a passive debuff that increases the damage of your next holy power spender by 15-30-45%

Blade of Justice remains mostly the same but again, is now a 20 yard ranged ability.

All Holy Power abilities now can be spent at just 1 Holy Power, and basically work like Rogue Combo Points.

Templars Verdict is known as Templars Judgement, this consumes your crusader judgement charges and deals flat damge aswell as applying Templars Justice, this now gives every holy power builder an additional charge, so CS now gets 2 charges for 5 seconds.

This is designed as a cycler rotation that also offers additional options: Justicars Vengance becomes Justicars Judgement, this is a holy power spender that has a 20-100% chance of being free cost and reuseable depending on your Holy power, it also does extra damage vs stunned targets.

Execution Sentance returns but now acts as a base AOE, it strikes multiple targets from the central one outwards applying Executioners Decree, this now applies any damage done to the central target to any targets within a 20 yard AOE, this ability has a 2.5 min CD.

A new ability, Heavens Wrath, brings a holy blade from the sky that smashes down in an AOE, any targets affected by any judgement will recieve 300% of the damage, this is a 3 min CD ability.

Finally, Divine Steed is replaced by Wrathful Stallion, this gives you Divine Steed for 30 seconds and in addition deals damage to a target (cannot proc more than every 5 seconds) of trampling where they are trampled for X damage. This has a 5 minuate CD and causes forberance, replacing crusade.

Blessings are now a universal thing and *Auras* return to paladins, with each one getting 3 options, 2 universal and one unique per spec.

Universal:
Devotion Aura: Reduces all damage taken by 10% within 40 yards of the paladin.
Radiant Aura: Increases damage dealt by 10% within 40 yards yadayada.

Holy:
Aura of Sanctuary: Healing recieved increased by 5%, passivly regain x small hp over 10 seconds per tick.

Prot:
Valiant Aura: The Prot Paladin takes 25% of all damage dealt to allies as a DoT over 20 seconds within 40 yards.

Ret:
Vindictive Aura: Haste increased by 5%, all Judgements heal allies for 5% of the damage dealt.


Utility:

Blessing Of Protection and Freedom merged into "Blessing Of Sanctification" which reduces all damage the target takes by 25% and makes them immune to CC for 8 seconds.

Lay on Hands is now a Ret only ability, it now operates as follows: Holy power 1-5, the Retribution Paladin unleashes their holy light through themselves to their allies, within 40 yards for 5-25% of their total health, (1 minuate CD).

Flash of Light, similar effect but now tied to damage renamed: Holy Inspiration: Inspire allies with your divine presence, damaging an enemy and healing allies near that enemy within 40 yards for 1-5% of their HP, (10 sec CD).

Finally:

Righteous Vengance (Replaces Blessing Of Sac): Damage dealt to the ally is transfered to the Retribution Paladin (Cannot exceed more than 30% of the players HP), that damage is then turned into flat damage dealt back to the target as 1/2 of its origional value (reduced to 15% of its damage value in pvp).

Divine Shield now replaced with Vindicators Aegis: All damage dealt to the paladin is reduced by 99%, all damage dealt is returned to the target (ignored if the damage exceeeds the paladins max HP) after 6 seconds. (this ability has a 10 minuate CD).

[Merie]

It's like we're still middle of the pack like in Warlords, but now we're slower than hell and have god awful range too. I had 156% movement speed last expack. Lowering that down to 100% in Legion felt extremely jarring when doing pretty much anything.

[Jester Joe]

Ok, to be a bit constructive here are some things i'd like to see.

First talent row revamped: FV (WoD iteration), ES (WoD iteration), Uther's Greater Divine storm (see HOTS, 30 sec or 1m CD AoE stun+damage)
Second row: soft HP generation increasing row: Fires of Justice, 3HP BoJ, Judgment reduces the next spender by X or by 1 Y times.
third row: can stay the same
forth row: Can stay the same but Blade of virtue replaced by some other interaction
firth row: Redesigned. JV goes baseline. Could replace with leggy effects here. Cape legendary effect, legendary ring effect, legendary shoulders effect
sixth row: Purge this s**t aswell. Cavalier baseline. We can leave this one for new experiments.
seventh row: Crusade baseline or removed and let's go with a tentative: DP, Sanctified wrath, Hammer of wrath(?)

Anyways that is just with a quick think. There is no deep thought going through this, but this would already be alot better.

If they want to keep going with this "Unique spec abilities" thing, Crusade should be baseline. Technically, there's nothing wrong with Crusade itself, it's the traits and the fact that we can't pick anything else for a level 100 talent.

[Kobor]

It's like we're still middle of the pack like in Warlords, but now we're slower than hell and have god awful range too. I had 156% movement speed last expack. Lowering that down to 100% in Legion felt extremely jarring when doing pretty much anything.

I like more my DH 'alt', who is actually a bit better geared by now and she is like flying related my paladin, who is dragging a pair of huge stone block on chains.

[Deleted]

If they want to keep going with this "Unique spec abilities" thing, Crusade should be baseline. Technically, there's nothing wrong with Crusade itself, it's the traits and the fact that we can't pick anything else for a level 100 talent.

I would pick simple wings than crusade baseline every day: loosing hero and prepot to ramp up , prayin that the RL will not come down with mechanics i will have to deal through my crusades specially when everything on the toon -relics,leggos- are attuned for tunnel during crusaðe playstyle.... I dont like that thing i would go with dp or some execute talent with HoW integrated every day if they were competitive.

[Meiffert]

How can you say that? We are dependant on haste for it to not have dead times. It's certainly clunkier. Though atm with t20 4x and some decent haste it flows much better.

Haste has no effect on downtime (unless above 100 %).
If you spend 15 % of time waiting because everything is on cooldown at 0 haste, you will also wait 15 % of the time at 30 % haste or 70 % haste.

I also don't understand why they couldn't balance Crusade with the excuse that the spec is too dependent on it. Makes no sense.
It is maybe 8 % ahead of DP currently. So just nerf it so that it does the same (maybe 2 % per stack) and buff all damage by 8 %.

[Deleted]

Haste has no effect on downtime (unless above 100 %).
If you spend 15 % of time waiting because everything is on cooldown at 0 haste, you will also wait 15 % of the time at 30 % haste or 70 % haste.

I also don't understand why they couldn't balance Crusade with the excuse that the spec is too dependent on it. Makes no sense.
It is maybe 8 % ahead of DP currently. So just nerf it so that it does the same (maybe 2 % per stack) and buff all damage by 8 %.

Why are you talking about time %s? 15% with low haste can be one second or 0.1 of a second with high haste. Percent doesn't matter. It's a very different downtime feel.

[Meiffert]

Why are you talking about time %s? 15% with low haste can be one second or 0.1 of a second with high haste. Percent doesn't matter. It's a very different downtime feel.

How else do you measure it?
If a fight is 5 minutes long, you spend 45 second waiting either way.

I guess that waiting 36 times for 1.25 seconds (20 % haste) may "feel" worse than waiting 40 times for 1.125 seconds (33.3 % haste) to some people, but I don't think that's really relevant to the underlying issue.

(Whether having some downtime in rotation is necessarily bad is a tough question, there are some classes with it and some that are GCD capped after all. But it's caused by cooldowns on you abilities, CD reset procs etc., not by haste. At least classes with GCD affected by haste - like a paladin - don't become GCD capped through haste.)


As a side note: going from 1s downtime GCDs to 0.1s downtime would require going from 50 % to 1400 % haste, which isn't a very realistic scenario.

[Deleted]

How else do you measure it?
If a fight is 5 minutes long, you spend 45 second waiting either way.

I guess that waiting 36 times for 1.25 seconds (20 % haste) may "feel" worse than waiting 40 times for 1.125 seconds (33.3 % haste) to some people, but I don't think that's really relevant to the underlying issue.

(Whether having some downtime in rotation is necessarily bad is a tough question, there are some classes with it and some that are GCD capped after all. But it's caused by cooldowns on you abilities, CD reset procs etc., not by haste. At least classes with GCD affected by haste - like a paladin - don't become GCD capped through haste.)


As a side note: going from 1s downtime GCDs to 0.1s downtime would require going from 50 % to 1400 % haste, which isn't a very realistic scenario.

I was illustrating the mathematic problem with using % to describe the feel of a rotation.

In essence we agree that it isn't an ideal one. But you are talking about GCD, not abilities here. Compared to the GCD it's the same % of downtime. But in reality the downtime is less because everything goes by faster and therefore feels smoother.

Either way, the base Ret rotation (without artifact, current set bonuses, haste and legendaries) is quite clunky. It requires these extra functionalities to flow in an acceptable way. It is obvious they need to go back to the drawing board with it. It shouldn't have to require all these factors to drawn some enjoyment out of it.

[Morally Grey Storm]

to be frank, Arms rotation sucks manhood w/o Ayala's Stone Heart and either FR or Rend and no Tactician procs.
Basic DH rotation is arguably worse than Ret rotation.
I'm sure there are other examples.

[Nerovar]

Didn't like Ret since they've introduced holy power. But these days every DD spec seems to need a simple builder/spender mechanic. I just don't understand how Blizzard can talk about "muh class fantasy" when they're constantly making all the specs more alike when it comes to the actual core mechanics.
It's really bad.

[Krothare]

to be frank, Arms rotation sucks manhood w/o Ayala's Stone Heart and either FR or Rend and no Tactician procs.
Basic DH rotation is arguably worse than Ret rotation.
I'm sure there are other examples.

Fury is sorta fun, but ultimately you are just waiting to mash go on Rampage. Frost is kinda crap, WW is a mess, Outlaw is.... Outlaw.

Melee in general has been pretty unattractive in Legion, it's odd but the skill trim seemed to affect melee harder then ranged as far as fun rotations go.

[Deleted]

to be frank, Arms rotation sucks manhood w/o Ayala's Stone Heart and either FR or Rend and no Tactician procs.
Basic DH rotation is arguably worse than Ret rotation.
I'm sure there are other examples.

Yes, the Legion redesigns were complete crap. I didn't claim Ret was the only deficient spec.

[Ulthane]

Im honestly hoping at the Blizzcon Q/A that the rets grill them during that X'D ill for sure be in that line.

[Deleted]

As much as i like current t20 set : taking a look at the logs u can easily find out wasted cds (aka builders stayin on cd not cast cause either overcap or outside judge buff window) , hopo overcap to avoid the first, weird leggo interactions sometimes not even making sense... and this from the same peopz that were executing the rotation like the deep blue a couple of patches before. Current ret rotation is a clusterfest. With current mobility and damage pattern there is little way to execute a fight and achieve acceptable numbers making good use of class mechanics and cds .

[jontunnel130]

It's like we're still middle of the pack like in Warlords, but now we're slower than hell and have god awful range too. I had 156% movement speed last expack. Lowering that down to 100% in Legion felt extremely jarring when doing pretty much anything.

^this a thousand times over. I love that we lost so many talents to the class skill chainsaw. Auras and run speed being my top 2 ground gears.

[Morally Grey Storm]

You must keep in mind that ability gutting was impeccably performed for the sole balanced reason of balance.
Therefore, balance was achieved. If retribution had kept all its tools, there would be no balance. And now we have balance.
Noonkins wish they were as balance as retribution is.

[Reith]

They could do so many things, and they don't want to because they're stubborn.