anyone else feel like ashen hallow is lackluster?

[orlfman]

i'm a ret, and i picked venthyr. i've been really trying to use ashen hallow and get into it but i'm just having a hard time figuring out any meaningful use for it. the cooldown is so long. while leveling i used it like once because things went by so fast i wanted to save it for something useful. i pretty much only used it on the 5 man rare quests. in dungeons placement has been challenging and even though there's more opportunities for it, with a long cooldown, i find myself just using it after the boss has been pulled. in pvp which has been battlegrounds, its been a joke for the most part. the only time i used it was on a flag in arathi. but again, 4 minute cooldown doesn't make it used frequently.

door of shadows has been somewhat more useful. 1.5 second cast is annoying in pvp as its easily interrupted. but using it with divine shield, followed by divine steed after, makes a quick get away. but i feel like night fae's soul shape is superior with its instant cast teleport + 50% speed for 12s. can follow it by divine steed as well. but you get it without the casting time.

right now i'm thinking about trying kyrian as divine toll i feel like would get more use. or night fae because i actually did enjoy blessing of the seasons. i'm just not a fan of night fae's rewards as a paladin. necrolords vanquishers hammer is a bit cumbersome. as it doesn't give you a free templars verdict to use right after you cast it. still have to build up for templars verdict.

but yeah anyone else just not like ashen hallow?

[Dravec]

It's a shitty clunky spell but its damage is retarded.

I was running a dungeon with another Ret who was Venthyr and I was Kyrian, and Ashen Hallow did like 15% of his damage on every boss. He was slightly more geared than me but he did about 1k more dps than me, solely due to that shit.

I really, really hope it's not the best covenant for Ret, I can't stomach the idea of playing such a fucking mongoloid clone of Consecration. Hope it gets nerfed.

[Pawpurr]

I find it to be quite strong at 60, but yes, long CD, giant AOE, target circle spell is just not ideal. The leveling version kinda sucked. The conduits for it help a lot, and because of the hammer of wrath interaction, it really shines in torghast when you have stacked up a bunch of HoW powers.

Mechanics aside, Venthyr has just been the area/quests I've enjoyed the most, so I might have gone that way anyway.

[ExiHext]

I really, really hope it's not the best covenant for Ret, I can't stomach the idea of playing such a fucking mongoloid clone of Consecration. Hope it gets nerfed.

Bad news for you...it's at least best for raiding and as far as I understand one of it's soulbinds is very strong either. This paired with Door of Shadows seems to make Venthyr BiS for ret. Not that I'm interested in BiS. I go for style so it's Kyrian all the way. Also I don't like edgelord vampires.

[Deneios]

All paladin Covenant abilities are boring. Kyrian is just a extra aoe button, maldraxxus is just another judgement that buffs the next verdict, ardenweald is a maintenance buff every 30sec, and venthyr is just a big consecration that hits harder and heals but with 4min cd.
Someone might say that the Covenant abilities were rushed compared to other classes

[ExiHext]

All paladin Covenant abilities are boring. Kyrian is just a extra aoe button, maldraxxus is just another judgement that buffs the next verdict, ardenweald is a maintenance buff every 30sec, and venthyr is just a big consecration that hits harder and heals but with 4min cd.
Someone might say that the Covenant abilities were rushed compared to other classes

It's more like former expansions, where it always felt like (and sometimes even was confirmed by devs) that paladins were the first class to get the new borrowed powers and therefore they often felt not well developed...like prototypes. The problem is the devs tend to not revisit paladin abilities after a while...they just keep what they introduced first. A bit lazy.

[Gasparde]

It's a shitty clunky spell but its damage is retarded.

I was running a dungeon with another Ret who was Venthyr and I was Kyrian, and Ashen Hallow did like 15% of his damage on every boss. He was slightly more geared than me but he did about 1k more dps than me, solely due to that shit.

I really, really hope it's not the best covenant for Ret, I can't stomach the idea of playing such a fucking mongoloid clone of Consecration. Hope it gets nerfed.

So he beat you by 1k on each boss... great. Therefor you should've beat him by 1k on every trash pull due to Divine Toll doing fuckloads of dmg and basically giving you 2 free Divine Storms.

Ashen Hollow is only 'retardedly strong' in ST situations that barely last a minute. It then only becomes strong again if that situation lasts exactly like 4.30 minutes or if there's 4 minutes of downtime between 2 ST situations.

Of course his fucking 4 minute CD does more dmg than your fucking 1 minute CD on a fight that probably doesn't even allow you to cast your spell twice. Jesus Christ.

[xxcloud417xx]

So he beat you by 1k on each boss... great. Therefor you should've beat him by 1k on every trash pull due to Divine Toll doing fuckloads of dmg and basically giving you 2 free Divine Storms.

Ashen Hollow is only 'retardedly strong' in ST situations that barely last a minute. It then only becomes strong again if that situation lasts exactly like 4.30 minutes or if there's 4 minutes of downtime between 2 ST situations.

Of course his fucking 4 minute CD does more dmg than your fucking 1 minute CD on a fight that probably doesn't even allow you to cast your spell twice. Jesus Christ.

Did my Mythic 0 world tour as Kyrian with a Venthyr Ret in the group too. He was only able to use Hallow on 2 of the 4 bosses (cuz that CD is ridiculous) and he beat me on those 2 bosses by 800 to 1,000 dps. Overall dungeon damage though? Dude did over 1k less DPS throughout the entire thing by the end. Pretty sure this is working as intended too.

[Gasparde]

Did my Mythic 0 world tour as Kyrian with a Venthyr Ret in the group too. He was only able to use Hallow on 2 of the 4 bosses (cuz that CD is ridiculous) and he beat me on those 2 bosses by 800 to 1,000 dps. Overall dungeon damage though? Dude did over 1k less DPS throughout the entire thing by the end. Pretty sure this is working as intended too.

That fucking spell is overrated as fuck, and I'm pretty sure it won't even be bis for raiding like ALL THE FUCKING SIMS are claiming right now.

I'd be amazed if AH performed better than the other options on fights that don't EXACTLY last either 4.5 or 8.5 minutes. And it'll probably perform even worse when there's fights with constant add spawns. Spoiler: Most mythic fights (even on your first kill) will take like 6-8 minutes and the (probably' hardest fights in Nathria (other than maybe Sludgefist) all have constant add spawns.

The first time I've fought against a Ret with AH I was shocked by the dps difference. 2 seconds later I used my brain and realized that this spell would be garbage for most m+ settings and probably for a lot of raid encounters as well.

[Snowfunk]

Cast time is awful and cooldown is TERRIBLE.

But functionally, it is AWESOME.

I'm main Ret, Prot for dungeons and it's a powerhouse of an ability. Can't say how it compares in numbers to Divine Toll, which undeniably is a lot smoother to play with.

[Essem]

I got a question.

Tooltip says "reduced if there are more than 5 targets (Ashen Hallow). Does allies and enemies count toward that same 5 target? In raids since the AoE is so big its gonna hit the melee camp and tanks aswell, will the damage portion be reduced by having 6-7 allies inside it or just the healing?

[h8ryan]

BONG style Big Ben Paladin seems so much more smooth, the conduit with the 40%+ chance to triple judge your target does stupid damage and there's no cast time and a minute cooldown

[GreenJesus]

Kyrean ability for holy paladin glimmer build feels amazing though. For ret it's an AoE combo point builder. Nuff said.

[vitor210]

i'm a ret, and i picked venthyr. i've been really trying to use ashen hallow and get into it but i'm just having a hard time figuring out any meaningful use for it. the cooldown is so long. while leveling i used it like once because things went by so fast i wanted to save it for something useful. i pretty much only used it on the 5 man rare quests. in dungeons placement has been challenging and even though there's more opportunities for it, with a long cooldown, i find myself just using it after the boss has been pulled. in pvp which has been battlegrounds, its been a joke for the most part. the only time i used it was on a flag in arathi. but again, 4 minute cooldown doesn't make it used frequently.

door of shadows has been somewhat more useful. 1.5 second cast is annoying in pvp as its easily interrupted. but using it with divine shield, followed by divine steed after, makes a quick get away. but i feel like night fae's soul shape is superior with its instant cast teleport + 50% speed for 12s. can follow it by divine steed as well. but you get it without the casting time.

right now i'm thinking about trying kyrian as divine toll i feel like would get more use. or night fae because i actually did enjoy blessing of the seasons. i'm just not a fan of night fae's rewards as a paladin. necrolords vanquishers hammer is a bit cumbersome. as it doesn't give you a free templars verdict to use right after you cast it. still have to build up for templars verdict.

but yeah anyone else just not like ashen hallow?

As a paladin that is in venthyr too, I use Ashen Hallow when I'm either fighting a pack of mobs or the same situation but in a dungeon. I don't even care about the actual numbers for the damage, the main selling point is the use of Hammer of Wrath on any target regardless of HP left, and AoE healing has saved my group a couple of times. It's a cool ability, I like it

[slime]

Yea, I hate topping the meters on bosses as prot pally because of ashen hallow.

But seriously it'll become something you just muscle memory on M+ runs mostly and just drop at the highest possible dps moment on raid bosses.

The only thing I questions about it so far is whether or not to pop Divine Verdict during it because of the wasted overlapping ability to use Hammer of Wrath during either one.

P.S. Sorry - in re-thinking about this, ashen hallow must be a nightmare to manage when you are not the tank. Maybe create a macro that says something like "About to drop ashen hallow" - in areas that you expect to pull the most trash mobs possible or on bosses, so the tank and other dps know to get in the circle and pull packs into the circle. I took for granted that I can pull as many as I want into the ashen hallow.

[roboscorcher]

I have a Venthir Belf ret and a Kyrian Human ret. My guild went horde so I'm stuck with the Vampire guy for a while.

Ashen Hollow is really good for solo or all-dps content, like Torghast. It gives you group heals, bonus damage, AND it boosts Hammer of Wrath by 100%. If you can get the 4x HoW and the HoW-Spender-Boost anima powers, bosses are easymode. The Mad Paragon will also boost HoW by another 30% and these modifiers apparently stack.

So yeah, the benefits outweigh the long CD IMO. We have plenty of other short CD's to choose from right now.

EDIT: for ease of use, make a self-cast macro for the ability. Same goes for Final Verdict. How many times do u need to cast it away from yourself? Very rarely.