Is the state of Retribution Paladin really that bad?

[Nymrohd]

I guess it could simply move an active consecration instead of spawning another one then.

Yeah I suggested adding that to Steed, let it drag any active consecrations with it.

We are not getting more mobility any time soon, current design team is really focused on giving us this weakness because of class fantasy (does every spec have a weakness as important I wonder . . .)
But I do think we may end up getting some strong defensives. Issue is, I predict us getting them in our already bloated spec tree.

[Wrecktangle]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31#

Looks pretty solid to me. It ranks lower in heroic and normal for some reason, but it is still well within an acceptable range.

Yep, Retribution Aura. I can go from 1st to 5th on the meters entirely depending on what level of progression we're on in the fight because it practically doubles my uptime on Wings. In normal and heroic people die less often.

Too many active abilities, hence a lot of "ramp up" time to get going (5 HP for Dawn > Crusade > Seraphim > Build to 10 stacks > Trinket > Build to 3-5 HP > Final Reckoning > Start dps-ing. Zzzzzzzzzzz

Agreed. Even +20 keys adds are either dying, or near dead at this point and I still have 20 seconds of wings left, we lose a few seconds moving to the next area, but I can't just drop Wake here or i'll rip aggro and die, I have to wait another 3-4 seconds to make sure everything is grouped and secured and my damage tanks. Other DPS classes have instant press 1 button, short CDs do stuff, or they have even bigger cds, but require no ramp.

Too many talents tied to Consecration. If standing in it gave us a boost of some kind or inspired allies around us, the current focus on it might be understandable.

Agreed.

Too many "dead" talents, or talents you'd rather skip but are forced to spend points on to progress down the tree. I'd take a tree full of boring passives that I don't mind taking over actives that I hate to have to drill down to.

Which are you referring to? For me the only point that I wish I could skip is hand of hindrance. Other than that there's plenty of dead talents for sure.

I'd like to see our big utility be inspiring allies within melee/close range. Our abilities grant different "inspirations" to allies, whether it's DPS boost, stat boost, speed boost, something that gives us a unique and interesting utility instead of the "mid DPS and few desirable abilities" that we currently are.

I love the paladin archetype, I just don't find Ret fun right now. It's not horrible, but just kind of like eating dry toast, there are tastier things to eat.

Same here on the archetype. I've literally played Paladin, specifically Ret since Vanilla. I've been through the ups and downs, (a lot more downs). I've seen mechanics come and go, etc.

While I always liked the idea of being a inspirer/commander type, honestly I think we just need to pivot and look mechanically at what Ret is missing to be competitive and what other specs have that makes them valuable.

We've already established they want mobility to be our weak point. I'm fine with that, but let's analyze it. We have steed (costing 4 talent points to make optimal) and consecration. These 2 mechanics I think sufficiently make mobility our weakness. I think they could easily add a small mobility buff and we'd still have that weakness. Give us Long arm of Justice back. Tune it to a reasonable value.

Compared to our peers, Wars, DK, DH, Rogue, Monk etc. we're slower than all (possibly tied with DK). Even with LotL we're still not highly mobile, ESPECIALLY compared to our peers.

Let's move on to our defensives. I'm not sure it's ever talked about, but I've been seeing it a lot as my group and I push keys, but Ret only having a single weapon slot just means on average significantly less stats, specifically stamina. I generally have 15% less HP than my peers despite similar ilvl at all times. MANY times in these +20 keys, I die to something that they don't just because they baseline have 30k more HP than I do. How would you feel about Ret having a shield off hand and wielding a 2h? Kind of like how Fury gets to dual wield 2her's maybe we can wield them with a shield. This also gives an avenue to create new abilities tied to using it and additional stats.

Shield of Vengeance is great thematically and I do enjoy it at the 1m CD right now, but it's not enough, especially for the "tanky DPS" spec. I don't think the answer though is just giving us Divine Protection baseline as I really don't need to worry about my keybinds and button bloat.

Our healing is garbage, especially compared to peers. I can spec multiple points into healing and still do less than other specs who not only sacrifice no talent points, but also don't sacrifice any damage to do it. That's an issue. Sure you could argue we can use our healing on others and that CERTAINLY has value, but that shouldn't be an impossible fix to balance. I think JV should be a baseline feature of TV/FV, or hell if you need it as a talent do it, but obviously reduce the efficacy.

We need more utility, not just Bres. Frankly we should have had that expansions ago. Maybe make Hand of Hindrance slow spell casting speed by a significant margin. That allows interrupts to be easier/timed better in these high keys. Maybe make Blinding Light actually silence, or be a short duration PBAOE buff that silences all nearby enemies while it's active (like a mobile solar beam?). Give Ret a magic dispel? That'd be some great utility. Priests get it, why can't another DPS?

I could literally go on with ideas for days. I don't know if they're good, but they're a start.

Yeah I suggested adding that to Steed, let it drag any active consecrations with it.

We are not getting more mobility any time soon, current design team is really focused on giving us this weakness because of class fantasy (does every spec have a weakness as important I wonder . . .)
But I do think we may end up getting some strong defensives. Issue is, I predict us getting them in our already bloated spec tree.

I really don't want to tie Consecration to mobility, but maybe rather allow us more ways to put it down more easily, making the pain of it less punishing?

[Nymrohd]

I really don't want to tie Consecration to mobility, but maybe rather allow us more ways to put it down more easily, making the pain of it less punishing?

The thing is a big part of Consecration's power is that you have more than one up a lot of the time so you do need to move the existing ones somehow.

[Swnem]

This seems like a really great option. Now i saw that there was a talent that could sometimes cast concececration by doing another skill. Is this talent enough of are retri pala's really hardcasting consecration everytime?

That talent makes you have a chance to drop an extra consecration on the target when you use blade of wrath. It's pretty cool to have 2 consecrations ticking at the same time. It's a good one.

[Durkstar]

Oke then i just might need to get used to use consecration

[Alanar]

Damage is alright. Defensives are terrible. Mobility is lacking.

Main problem are the defensives. When you see monks with 4 defensives and rogue with lol feint, it's depressing. In high keys you need defensives or you go splat and Paladins have low max hp.
In short... we gonna go splat. I would very much like to get one more defensive or at least be able to take both SoV and divine protection with 1m CD.

Yea its pretty much this.

The long standing problem of shield of paper, you will always end up using bubble straight after. A lot of people assume ret has good devensives, but honestly its bypassed very quickly.

The only good thing they shine in is burst damage, but as others have said the yawning build up takes way to long.
Reduce or remove the cost of sereph would be one way to go.. building up holy power after you cast it sereph feels realy bad. Not a big fan of this abillity in its current form. The talent is there sadly.

I would like to see some focus on their devensives mainly, dead talents and not so much focus on concentration, its just shit. So much talents that either do couple of 100 healing or a very small damage increase, i would rather see talents return such as sacred shield or speed of light back. Also.. maybe look at certain abillities to take them off the gcd. I feel like the spec should feel less resttictive in a sense and let us use stuff faster.

Pvp healing tuning needs to be looked at as a whole, tuning feels very off. Flash heal is not even worth casting.

[Eon Drache]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31#

Looks pretty solid to me. It ranks lower in heroic and normal for some reason, but it is still well within an acceptable range.

As for your other choices, DK is a great class and Unholy can be fun in both AoE and ST with different builds. Frost has two totally unique play styles with both breath and obliteration builds. Breath is the type of build that makes you feel great when you get lucky and play it well, but makes you want to throw your keyboard when you have to drop your breath because of mechanics. Demon Hunter is boring IMO, I've tried to main swap to it about 3 times at this point and within 2-3 weeks I just don't want to play anymore.

Ret ranks lower in easier content because of Retribution Aura. We get Wings and most rets are taking Grieftorch so people dying is HUGE for ret. Which is going to happen more on progression. Once these guilds have it down where you're not seeing deaths Ret will fall to about where it is in heroic.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly feel what we need is for the class tree to change. Instead of all three paths ending in throughput, keep one throughput and turn the other two into a strong defensive and a strong utility. We are paladins, together with shaman we are the original support classes of WoW yet Ret can barely offer any.

I don't think there is a solution for Consecration. It's not just the tank hating you; sometimes the tank just needs to kite and that's that. Imo it would have to be MUCH larger. One idea I had would be a talent that let your Steed drag any active consecrations along so that we can at least relocate better (and so that Prot did not have to lose so much defense when it is on the move).

I think Consecration should more so be something like "Consecrate the ground you walk up" so as you move it moves with you. Can make it smaller than it is when untalented to make up for it but keep it like 8 yards around the paladin.

[Tangra58]

We're a very sloppy support spec for 3s, in PvP. Mobility makes some fights awful in PvE. The coming rework seems to be trying to revert us the previous xpacks, since the redesign for DF is a failure. Button bloat in serious PvP is awful because of macros. The spec needs serious buttonbloat reduction, streamlinging, and a very serious quality of life overhaul.

[Makabreska]

My mythic raid group ret keeps being in 1-3 top DPS every time (mostly no. 1, no PI). Can't really speak about how well gameplay feels.

It is actually scary how hard he pumps...

[Gracin]

My mythic raid group ret keeps being in 1-3 top DPS every time (mostly no. 1, no PI). Can't really speak about how well gameplay feels.

It is actually scary how hard he pumps...

Yes, but how many players are dying during the fight?

[Palapop]

My mythic raid group ret keeps being in 1-3 top DPS every time (mostly no. 1, no PI). Can't really speak about how well gameplay feels.

It is actually scary how hard he pumps...

pls link to logs

you guys play with 1 ret and 13 FDKs?

[Gloriandus]

The issue isn't "Ret can do great damage!"; it's that the rest of the toolkit (and, at least for me, the fun) is falling behind the majority of classes/specs.

As mentioned, there are always great players who can "pump" (as much as I despise that word) even when playing specs considered "subpar" by the meta; if DPS logs are all that we go by, however, then one can always pluck out said players as examples of things being "fine".

[Loveliest]

It's fine, for the type if content you do. Our retri paladin is in top 3 dpses in hc raid. It won't ensure you being taken in M+ though. But if I had to choose who take between a retri pala and a warr, I would take the pala.

[Donkeywing]

Ret is by far one of the hardest dps specs to play because the cd management and rotation/abilities can be very complicated, especially compared to other specs. Besides that you take 10% more dmg or have 10-20% less health than your direct competition so almost all mechanics are more deadly to you with no good mobility to get out and our personals having gcd; you're basically playing the game on hardmode. Utility is highly situational and requires high skill to execute effectively (recognizing the value and capitalizing on it instantly). It's certainly not a recommended spec unless you know what you're getting into.

[Nymrohd]

pls link to logs

you guys play with 1 ret and 13 FDKs?

They are in progress and so ret aura procs have a high uptime.

[Eon Drache]

The issue isn't "Ret can do great damage!"; it's that the rest of the toolkit (and, at least for me, the fun) is falling behind the majority of classes/specs.

As mentioned, there are always great players who can "pump" (as much as I despise that word) even when playing specs considered "subpar" by the meta; if DPS logs are all that we go by, however, then one can always pluck out said players as examples of things being "fine".

I think something that amplifies how bad rets toolkit is is Mythic Raz. Ret is doing great damage in Mythic atm. However, despite that Ret is the only class without stats on Mythic Raz kills. There is one ret that has killed it and if you look he had to have support. Ret cannot survive the mobility or the damage going out on the fight even at the high ilevel. Ret falls behind on both.

Also getting time to build to 5 Hopo > Crusade > Build to 5 Hopo > Seraphim > Build to 5 hopo > Final Reckoning > NOW you start to do damage really sucks. We spend the first 10 seconds of our major CD just using other CDs before we start to deal damage. And its not fun, exciting or meaningful gameplay.

[Donkeywing]

we're slower than all (possibly tied with DK)

Just to touch on this briefly, this is incorrect. Deaths advance is way stronger than divine steed in most cases. The main reason for that is because death advance is actually OFF gcd, which means they don't lose the global and more crucially, they can activate it faster than divine steed, which matters. Furthermore it lasts 10sec instead of 3, so it's more than a short burst of movement speed, and they can actually easily modify deaths advance to give a great burst of speed instantly if they want, which is a better modifyer to their mobility than what ret got. There is actually an argument to be made that deaths advance is a more powerfull mobility tool than divine steed, mostly cuz its off-gcd. And that's before we get to the good part, which is that this ability makes you ignore a FUCKLOAD of movement mechanics in raids/dungs (slows, knockbacks, roots you name it). I've had the pleasure of playing a dk for a year so I know all about it. You are flatout immune to specific dangerous mechanics with this ability, surprisingly frequently (way more often than freedom), on some of the hardest bosses ever released. They also gave them an easy option of having 2 charges on it this expansion, which is a major mobility buff btw, in a 1pointer talent node which in addition to giving 2 charges to death's advance, also buffs other abilities, fucking hilarious shit compared to the ret equivalent. Divine steed doesn't even come close to the potential of death's advance.

As if that wasn't enough, Dks also get the option of wraith walk if they so choose. A secondary movement ability. DK mobility is superior to ret mobility in almost every way you can think of. Only advantage would be a greater burst of speed on pony (40% more for 3/4s), but a lot of that is negated by the fact deaths advance is off gcd.

Only reason I touch on it is because I too once believed dk mobility to be as bad, because whiny dk bitches convinced me when they placed themselves in ret category of terrible mobility, which is pissing me off tbh. It's insanely dishonest.

[Wrecktangle]

Just to touch on this briefly, this is incorrect. Deaths advance is way stronger than divine steed in most cases. The main reason for that is because death advance is actually OFF gcd, which means they don't lose the global and more crucially, they can activate it faster than divine steed, which matters. Furthermore it lasts 10sec instead of 3, so it's more than a short burst of movement speed, and they can actually easily modify deaths advance to give a great burst of speed instantly if they want, which is a better modifyer to their mobility than what ret got. There is actually an argument to be made that deaths advance is a more powerfull mobility tool than divine steed, mostly cuz its off-gcd. And that's before we get to the good part, which is that this ability makes you ignore a FUCKLOAD of movement mechanics in raids/dungs (slows, knockbacks, roots you name it). I've had the pleasure of playing a dk for a year so I know all about it. You are flatout immune to specific dangerous mechanics with this ability, surprisingly frequently (way more often than freedom), on some of the hardest bosses ever released. They also gave them an easy option of having 2 charges on it this expansion, which is a major mobility buff btw, in a 1pointer talent node which in addition to giving 2 charges to death's advance, also buffs other abilities, fucking hilarious shit compared to the ret equivalent. Divine steed doesn't even come close to the potential of death's advance.

As if that wasn't enough, Dks also get the option of wraith walk if they so choose. A secondary movement ability. DK mobility is superior to ret mobility in almost every way you can think of. Only advantage would be a greater burst of speed on pony (40% more for 3/4s), but a lot of that is negated by the fact deaths advance is off gcd.

Only reason I touch on it is because I too once believed dk mobility to be as bad, because whiny dk bitches convinced me when they placed themselves in ret category of terrible mobility, which is pissing me off tbh. It's insanely dishonest.

I stand completely and utterly corrected. Appreciate the insight.

[heltvild]

https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...in-1007/426652

Well met!

We’re doing a substantial rework to the Retribution talent tree in patch 10.0.7. Rebuilding the Retribution talent tree from the ground up means significant changes ahead. However, the talent tree itself will not be available in our first PTR build(s), so initial testing on the PTR will be missing important context.

Nonetheless, we’d like to share our major goals for Retribution with you.

Button bloat: Retribution Paladins currently have a fairly large number of abilities, and some of these feel unnecessary and inefficient. We’re working to tone this down and have a more focused set of abilities and cooldowns.

Stacking modifiers: There are currently several talents and abilities that provide stacking bonuses, which can make for a confusing and messy playstyle that deals extreme burst damage, but in return leaves your core abilities feeling unsatisfying and under-tuned. We intend to significantly change this. We want your core abilities to feel good and powerful when used in all situations. This doesn’t mean we’re reducing all elements of burst damage, but we do want to make burst more purposeful and deliberate, while also allowing options that provide sustained damage.

Survivability: Retribution Paladins currently have one of the highest death rates across all forms of content. For a plate wearing class with hybrid healing, this doesn’t feel right. We’re looking to strengthen them through a mixture of passive bonus and improvements to active abilities and cooldowns, while keeping the degree of challenge that results from being a melee-based spec.

Maneuverability: We recognize that there’s an issue here and we hope to make some improvements. However, we want to set clear expectations. Retribution Paladins should not expect to gain the mobility of Rogues.

Utility: The changes that Dragonflight brought to Retribution have caused some conflict for players, forcing the Ret Paladin to choose between providing benefits to their groups or benefiting themselves. This choice can be interesting, but due to the way this has historically worked for Paladins, it hasn’t felt right in Dragonflight. So, we’re looking to make changes here that allow you to feel good and improve your own damage while also providing the group benefits that you’re used to. We’re also looking into additional utility improvements for Paladins during the 10.0.7 test cycle.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on the points above, as well as anything else about Retribution that you’d like to share. Thank you!

Big changes on the way for retri

[Alanar]

My mythic raid group ret keeps being in 1-3 top DPS every time (mostly no. 1, no PI). Can't really speak about how well gameplay feels.

It is actually scary how hard he pumps...

The dps was never the issue realy and I am glad we got a response confirming the issues of survivability which was my issue with the spec personally.