[Ret Ideas] Reworking Retribution

[Revvo]

No, they adjust like Censure.

No they don't. This is why locks/spriests/fire mages/ferals reapply dots with trinkets and CDs up. You get a full rack of buffed dots.

Also, there is no possible way they will EVER make our mastery strength. Strength is already a main stat. Mastery would then add ADDITIONAL strength on all pieces with mastery. Not to mention the doubt budgeting that secondary gems have. People would end up stacking mastery, and having ludicrous amounts of attack power.

[Neldarie]

No they don't. This is why locks/spriests/fire mages/ferals reapply dots with trinkets and CDs up. You get a full rack of buffed dots.

Also, there is no possible way they will EVER make our mastery strength. Strength is already a main stat. Mastery would then add ADDITIONAL strength on all pieces with mastery. Not to mention the doubt budgeting that secondary gems have. People would end up stacking mastery, and having ludicrous amounts of attack power.

Ok, you got me I've said it wrong. Was ment to be treated like passive autoapplied dots such as >censure<, deep wounds BB etc.
Has nothing to do with the idea tho: of having cooldowns more interesting to play out and balance the gap abit vs other top performing specs.

Why ES, you may ask (yes it is already "op"). Answer is pretty simple: Buff PvE w-o screwing over PvP.

[Revvo]

Ok, you got me I've said it wrong. Was ment to be treated like passive autoapplied dots such as >censure<, deep wounds BB etc.
Has nothing to do with the idea tho: of having cooldowns more interesting to play out and balance the gap abit vs other top performing specs.

I feel like having an ES caster during trinket procs would be better than live scaling. Personally I actually track trinket ICDs and use ES with the buffs, but that's me. Live scaling would probably result in less damage. As for haste scaling, ES has a set amount of damage, so I don't see the point.

[Neldarie]

Well yes and no because if you actually track ICDs on such things like trinkets you could pop it before them comming off cooldown to save the GCDs during real burn (wings etc) and let ES tick out for its useless dmg ticks prior.

Or well just remove it from GCD and keep it as it is now + hammer tick durations.

[Revvo]

Well yes and no because if you actually track ICDs on such things like trinkets you could pop it before them comming off cooldown to save the GCDs during real burn (wings etc) and let ES tick out for its useless dmg ticks prior.

Or well just remove ICD and keep it as it is now + hammer tick durations.

Yeah I suppose, but now what happens if your trinket proc falls off before your ES hits good damage ticks? Or dancing steel? I feel like that leaves us more opportunities to get shafted on damage. As for removing it from the GCD, I don't see a problem with that. I'd like that to happen with seals as well.

[silverhatred]

So to reiterate on my last post, there are several goals I have for retribution.

I originally wanted to split them up between pve and pvp but you just can't do that due to blizzard not doing it either.

These are in no particular order of importance.

I) First of all, I want to bring consecration back. Its too much of a class iconic ability and fills a niche that just isn't filled by ret aoe. I liked it then and after playing ret for a long time still do not agree that it needed to be taken out. This goes for all aspects of pvp and pve.

1. This could be implemented the same as it is for prot. But it also could be implemented differently for ret specifically/or the whole class.

2. An aura of damage the range of consecration. Pretty self-explanatory. This ability could have a cooldown greater than its duration, reduced by haste.

3. Placed on the ground at your hammer of the righteous for 3-5 pulses.

II) Change Hammer of the Righteous to something better than it is right now. This ability was one of the reasons I went from prot/ret in wotlk to holy/ret in cata. I just never really like how much of a pain it was when I wasn't facing the right direction or had it on a target where it didn't hit everything as I was pulling. The range is also really short not allowing you to do any kind of aoe outside of melee range or even on the fringes of melee range. This is a serious limitation for a class without a reliable aoe stun or any kind of aoe buildup while not dpsing.

1. Increase range of use by 5-10 yards, keep facing.

2. Increase radius by 5 yards and make it on paladin like divine storm no target or facing required.

3. See III about judgment.

III). Seals to matter and be a core part of the class and not just 1. Lose damage for more self-healing/group-healing 2. Do damage 3. Not use seal of righteousness ever 4. Not do any of these things to bring the worst melee slow in the game.

1. There are several ways you could do this, and most of them will solve point IV as well. The simplest way to do this is to make seal of righteousness a clear aoe winner over seal of truth tab-targeting. It used to proc off of everything we did and be a massive source of damage (thinking of yor'sajh).

2. Another way of doing this is to make seals part of the rotation. This would require a rework of Censure and the way Seal of Righteousness works with our abilities. I will not just demand a rework, however, I will try and propose one.
First of all most of the changes would put seals off the gcd.

a) Seals morph your abilities.
>>Seal of Insight - In addition to current effects - Make battle healer prot only.
-Inquisition Boosts your healing done instead of holy damage and reduces damage taken by 10%
-Templar's Verdict, crusader strike, and hammer of wrath's mastery also heals you while doing damage to the target
-Consecration heals instead of dealing damage (doesn't matter which iteration)
-Your judgment places a debuff that makes melee attacks heal the target.
<<Note that Seal of Insight may or may not need a cooldown depending on how powerful these effects are, numbers can always be tweaked, this is about making something exclusive to ret that makes it function better, as well as be more dynamic and fun.

>>Seal of Truth
-See IV for a Censure rework, otherwise more or less the same.
<<<

>>Seal of Righteousness - Possible effects non-exclusive
-Hammer of the Righteous applies consecration (could apply it anyways)
-Actual weapon-based abilities proc it (make it scale better with more targets than it does right now)
-Make it proc an aoe blast everytime any offensive ability is used (damage can be balanced but would make it great for flag-guarding)
<<

>>Seal of Justice
-Aoe Slow, its already pretty crappy but HotR not proccing it anymore basically made it useless. I don't even use it on flag carriers anymore.
-Should probably be a seal on a cd that lasts for a limited time that an ability procs it. For example I press Seal of Justice and my Judgement lights up for 70% reduction, my Hotr Lights up for 50% reduction and my CS lights up for 100% a snare where it would decay over the next 6 seconds on a 10-20 second cooldown.
-Could probably be worked into Seal of Righteousness so that Retribution doesn't suffer from so many seals that the most used niche they find themselves in is basically their auto-seal
<<

b) Seal Change Judgment/Remove seals and add different judgment's put back in auras for previous passive bonuses.

1. You would have Judgment of Truth which scales very well with censure.

2. Judgment of Righteousness would consume Truth stacks for an aoe blast with high base damage based on str and an additional portion that scales with the truth stacks currently on it.

3. Judgement of Justice would provide slows based on censure with a glyph of reduced slow for not consuming censure. Inferior damage to Judgement of Truth.

4. Judgement of Wisdom creates a mini-cata sacred shield/healing boost/self heal/etc. You could really go any way you wanted with this but it would be your utility/survivability seal/judgement. You could have an entire talent tier based on this ability alone and people would still see more stuff you could do with it.

IV) More complex and interesting rotation as far as 2 finishers and 3(+1 optional) builders on a fcfs basis while working in last tier talents which are not smoothly integrated into our rotation in the least.

First of all many of you might not agree with what I have to say about this. This really isn't on the priority list near as much as some of the other stuff but I do believe it is a problem and I do want it addressed at one point or another.

One of the main issues I have with our last tier is that it really breaks the whole holy power meta that blizzard is trying to implement. It is clear that all of the abilities ret has in the last tier aren't the greatest as far as flow. Lights hammer can easily be made useless in a variety of situations where the boss or trash has to be move or is just moved without warning. It also seems to not scale with your buffs and cooldowns and stats in the way it should so its pretty much just "throw down on adds when you can" I would say the same about holy prism except its even worse as far as aoe damage and rotational flow goes. Execution sentence is one of those things thats seemingly barely a dps increase. I am more excited about using my hammer of wrath during cooldowns than my execution sentence.

a) I think the Execution Sentence issue is purely a numbers issue and by increasing the duration and damage by 50% I think this would make it balanced in pvp and pve. (same damage per second, higher damage per cast time)

b) Holy Prism is just one of those things that I don't think will ever be used in pve. It is good for prot and has niche uses in holy but this ability is just up too often to be fit into the ret rotation be it aoe or single target and the heal more than often goes to waste.

c) Light's hammer is probably something that should be passive and should replace consecration for more damage and healing but honestly I think it is in the wrong tier entirely. Prot won't use it outside of fights like wind lord. Holy uses it on almost every fight due to stacked healing advantages and the situational use fits holy perfectly.

d) I would honestly give light's hammer to holy, prism to prot, ES to ret, and redo the entire last tier. Its impossible to balance, punishes the player for picking one or another in a certain part of the fight (do I use lights hammer for more add damage or do I use ES to do more damage during recklessness? You feel punished instead of rewarded because no other class is forced with this retarded mutually exclusive choice before the pull even starts. This final-tier redo would give something that is usefull for ret to bring to a rbg or raid, an ability that would change per spec.

e) Any ideas on last tier abilities?

f) Censure Rework still in progress. Not really a high priority because alongside many of these proposed changes just won't be needed.

V) Aoe rotation more interesting/complex

I went over this in the seal section because I feel like it is the way to go about this. I am putting this here because this is something I feel strongly about. Aoe'ing as a warlock is so much more fun and rewarding and complex its not even funny. If we could get to about half of that I would be happy.

VI) One additional raid utility/cooldown other than Devo Aura.

Also mentioning random utility improvements. Not really requesting all of them but any of these as a standalone or duo improvement would be welcome.

a) Many players have mentioned conviction aura, increased mastery/damage done to the raid. I think this is a pretty neat idea but I wouldn't want it to put Devo on cd.

b) This could be in the final talent tier as mentioned in IV.

c) Seal of insight being a long cooldown for ret as mentioned in III and bringing a healing cooldown to the table.

d) Some sort of aoe dispel or even single target dispel.

e) Absorption/Mitigation negation cooldown This would seem extremely overpowered initially, but it would require good timing as far as who to use it on and when to use it. Very niche in pve but in pvp it could be the edge ret needs in rbg and arena. This would be an ability that would reduce the effectiveness of damage reduction or immunities/absorbs by 1/2 (or more) for a certain duration. This would be a hefty cd, 3 minutes at least, or you could make it a much shorter cooldown but have a channeled effect which is easily interuptable making it part of a team effort to use it correctly.

f) Position swap. Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like, whether it can be used on enemies or friendlies is another matter entirely, but it hasn't been done yet and the uses would be awesome and fun as hell but not overpowered. Same restrictions as life-grip.

g) Ret bubble allows threat but only with taunt which you can spam during bubble only crits pierce bubble and most likely kill the paladin.

h) Blinding light dispels all allies/enemies

i) Hand of Sacrifice is damage reduction, not shared damage.

j) Change to hand of sacrifice, works like guardian spirit (mitigation instead of healing boost still) but kills the paladin instead of the target.

k) Hand of Salvation can be glyphed to give target a 100% threat boost. Same ability to troll with as before for those of you who are afraid of that, just turns the tables on how exactly you would use it.

l) Crusader Aura, same as druid speed boost.

m) Suppression. Disarms and Silences the next 3 attackers for a short duration. 3 charges, can be dispelled. Cannot proc on the same person more than once every 30 seconds.

n) Eye for an Eye, I really disliked the passive effect. Its either too weak to matter or too op to be in the game. It also scales with your survivability and current levels of burst and is different for arena than it is for rbgs. All in all I like the idea of suppression better. But if people like this ability might as well add it. Maybe a glyphed suppression hehe.

To Close

That's all for now if you have any questions/comments/criticisms on what I am saying or how I am saying it please tell me. Also any additions to what I have here are welcome. As soon as I fine tune this post I will be heading to the official wow forums.

Before replying, however, I really want you to understand that any and all of these changes could be a standalone change. They are all trying to address the different goals I lined out which I want all to be reached. But the different ways of going about it often overlap and I don't want to get into an argument where the combination of 3 or even 2 different things would BE WAY TOO OP YOU ARE DUMB HUEHUEHUE.

Thank you.

[Ulmita]

No they don't. This is why locks/spriests/fire mages/ferals reapply dots with trinkets and CDs up. You get a full rack of buffed dots.

Also, there is no possible way they will EVER make our mastery strength. Strength is already a main stat. Mastery would then add ADDITIONAL strength on all pieces with mastery. Not to mention the doubt budgeting that secondary gems have. People would end up stacking mastery, and having ludicrous amounts of attack power.

That's not necessary true. That's why i left the amounts & percentages blank, cause it needs calculation. Blizzard when releases gear they know exactly how much of it will end up for each spec under all possible scenarios. They can easily adjust our mastery to provide lets say a 10% str from mastery and not any more. And that 10% its just an example, they will balance numbers.

Let me give you an example to see how easy it is: Atm rets in full bis gear stacking and reforging - geming haste they are around 11k haste (around 24-25%). Lets assume that was the case for mastery.

Then: Your mastery provides a 3% increase in strength and each additional 1% of mastery will further increase the strength by 0.3%
Napkin calcs:
0.3x25 = 7.5% from total reforges + gear + gems
+ 3% passive
=10.5% extra strength.

Again these numbers are trivial just to demonstrate how easily a change in mastery really solve the majority of our problems.

The only problem i see with the above is that every couple of tiers the multiplies will need to be deflated.

[Talen]

The people who enjoy inquisition or don't mind or care aren't going to crusade around the forums to explain this. I think it is a much needed skill-check for a rather skill-less class.

I don't think it's a skill check at all. I think it fails in fulfilling that role and that is simply one more reason why it needs to go. The class needs complexity, but that complexity can and should come from elsewhere.

EJL

[Guyviroth]

I think now I know how Ghostcrawler feels when answering tweets...

I think most people here have valid points and equally valid ideas. It's nice to see people throwing back and forth ideas.

[Sivick]

our seals got reworked so we wouldn't constantly be re-applying a 30 second buff... and all these years later we have permanent seals, and yet another 30 second buff that has to be constantly re-applied. the circle of life.

[Revvo]

That's not necessary true. That's why i left the amounts & percentages blank, cause it needs calculation. Blizzard when releases gear they know exactly how much of it will end up for each spec under all possible scenarios. They can easily adjust our mastery to provide lets say a 10% str from mastery and not any more. And that 10% its just an example, they will balance numbers.

Let me give you an example to see how easy it is: Atm rets in full bis gear stacking and reforging - geming haste they are around 11k haste (around 24-25%). Lets assume that was the case for mastery.

Then: Your mastery provides a 3% increase in strength and each additional 1% of mastery will further increase the strength by 0.3%
Napkin calcs:
0.3x25 = 7.5% from total reforges + gear + gems
+ 3% passive
=10.5% extra strength.

Again these numbers are trivial just to demonstrate how easily a change in mastery really solve the majority of our problems.

The only problem i see with the above is that every couple of tiers the multiplies will need to be deflated.

Strength already exists as a stat. Making mastery into a strength boots no longer makes it a unique stat.

[silverhatred]

Strength already exists as a stat. Making mastery into a strength boots no longer makes it a unique stat.

Yea I'm with him. Mastery meaning a balanced amount of strength is pretty much the most boring stat I can think of.

[Tauren]

seal of command your crits cause you to do an additional 130% weapon damage as holy damage but judgement consumes. if u dont like it then u can use seal of truth lol. not sure if this would be op or not because i have not played mop and not sure if things like 130% is weak or not now. because i know in wrath that would be a lot but now im seeing things like 300% weapon damage

who with me

and 2 handed weapon plus a shield for the paladin talent in new expansion. also with this comes the holy shield buff. its like the way resto shamans use that healing buff thing. pretty much you cast it on any shield user (including yourself) and it reduces damage by 10% and increases your chance to block by 30%

new move for holy. you place a ward on your target and the next crit actually heals you for half instead of damaging you

also i just thought of a really cool ability that would replace repentance if you chose it. you cast a spell on your enemy and a holy god like hand comes from the sky and grabs your opponent and becomes 100% invunrable to all damage but the paladin who casted it. and you do all holy damage to him. the animation would also make the enemy look like he is steaming. like imagine if u threw holy water onto a demon. his face would be on fire kinda thing

thhis is fucking sick

also the 4th spec. corrupted paladin or something. pretty much your a paladin but your an abuser paladin. you use ur powers the way other paladins look down upon because its just not right. one of the main things would be using spells to corrupt your target and then you have holy moves that actually deal more holy damage depending on how corrupt they are. it could be worked so it could have a cool non static rotation without having to have tons of procs

to sum it all up the paladin was very lame in cata and im guessing mop too. the reason why is now the paladin does not feel unique. maybe u dont like the old seal system but it was unique. same with divine storm from wrath. but now they got templars verdict? ooo cool sack of shit ability if u ask me

have a 30 second cool down that brings in like 10 non targetable holy warriors that attack your target. only lasts 5 seconds

have a move that makes your auto attack speed increased by 300% for a bit (zeal from d2)

make judgements do something cool

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

Like most people. What I'd like to see is the removal of GoAK and Inquisition.

My ideas:
Make Execution Sentence baseline for all Rets as a replacement for Inquisition.
-1HP/2HP/3HP: 20sec/40sec/60sec duration.
-Make it do AoE damage during the first 10 or so seconds of its duration.
-Keep its 1 minute cooldown and ramping damage.

This way, we don't only gain some quick AoE dps, but a nice sustained dot.

Replace Execution Sentence with GoAK:
-Remove strength buff
-Shorten cooldown to 1 minute.

or

Ignore everything I just said and replace Inquisition with a version of GoAK that functions similarly to the version of Execution Sentence I just mentioned.
-It could radiate a Holy Wrath-like spell that applies SoT or triggers SoR/SoI every tick in place of Execution Sentence's dot.
-And instead of a pet, we gain the GoAK's wings for the duration.

and

To replace the void left by GoAK, we could gain a cooldown that makes all our abilities pure holy damage and that gives them a 30 yard range. Kind of like this:



But, I'm no game designer, what do I know...

[Vintersol]

A small change i would like to see:

Regenerate holypower to its maximum if you are not infight. So you can start the fight with full Holy Power, while fighting, the regeneration is disabled.

[silverhatred]

I don't think it's a skill check at all. I think it fails in fulfilling that role and that is simply one more reason why it needs to go. The class needs complexity, but that complexity can and should come from elsewhere.

EJL

But why do you think it fails in fulfilling that role? What is so bad about spending holy power offensively on something other than templar's verdict?

[Talen]

But why do you think it fails in fulfilling that role? What is so bad about spending holy power offensively on something other than templar's verdict?

There not much real choice, there is little or no decision making, it feels bad, and its fairly boring.

And...worst case scenario...complexity is removed in its entirety by fitting an add on. Inq, IMO, fails to add anything except check a box for "Non offensive use of HP".

EJL

[Valedus]

There not much real choice, there is little or no decision making, it feels bad, and its fairly boring.

And...worst case scenario...complexity is removed in its entirety by fitting an add on. Inq, IMO, fails to add anything except check a box for "Non offensive use of HP".

EJL

I do agree with this. I think Inquisition needs to be replaced with a Holy DoT or something. In PvE, still something you must watch and keep up, but in PvP it allows for a choice, or perhaps a ranged spell if we cannot get into melee to continue pressure. Just a brainstorm.

[Neldarie]

Remove the target requirement (tAoE) for HotR and increase its radius to that of Divine Storm thus making it have the same PBAE mechanic.
Remove Divine Purpose and replace it with "on-demand" burst AoE CD. Say 1min cooldown lasts 12secs Divine Storm hits for 70% of its normal dmg but costs 0 holy power and applies Censure to targets it hits.

[akon]

Totally agree on that one. Inquisition is part of our rotation and holy power generation is way smoother than it was in cata. Inquisition is fine imho. Without divine purpose i find myself having some gaps sometimes in my rotation that bugs me. I think haste will make that a lot smoother in the final tier of content.

It was terrible back in Cata that i think that we fear any changes with inqui atm OR we were used to tough situations back then that it seems so smooth now, well imo it doesnt, its a crap buff if u consider the effort it requires to build, one way to improve it is just not to consume hp but only usable with 3hp