Retribution PvP-Issues... an attempt in solving them

[Bleda100]

Hello fellow paladins,

I'am a long-time reader and now first-time poster. The discussion going on in some topics here at mmo-champion.com-forums and on the official board has made me think about a possible solution to solve our main pvp problem (not being able to put any kind of real pressure on a healer) without making us overpowered again and without making it too easy. The goal has to be: Easy to learn, hard(er) to master.

First of, i'm a retribution-paladin since beta of wow. I have experienced all the changes this class / specc has gone through. Hell, i do even remember, when there was the seal of the crusader for improved attack speed at cost of attackpower and incresed holy dmg , when judged...

You can armory me here, if you like: http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...krock&n=Kiaria

And please, don't make any comments on my arena ratings - we are still evaluating...

So,if possible, this post shall start a brainstroming about how to solve the main problems retribution-paladins suffer. There is a reason, why more and more palas are going prot to do dps in arena.

Its the simple lack of offensive utility which leads to being absolutely no real threat to a healer or a healed target, because our damage got nerfed a lot in recent times and resiliance / stamina went up. Face it:

Before, Retribution paladins had (if lucky) enough burst to kill a healer , who was offguard or cc-ed by some other person within a very limited time frame of less than, say, 6 seconds. This had to go, i fully agree on that point. But we never received any compensation for these nerfs. So in today's time, retribution dmg is a.) less bursty (good) , b.) completly predictable (not so good) and c.) sometimes a joke and healer-tankable (not good at all).

So, before i get carried too far away, i will explain to you my suggestions for the retribution tree. Keep in mind, that all numbers are just for illustration purposes.

I.) Repentance made baseline, duration and cooldown cut in half. Also make it work on Elementals. Not breaking on damage from dots applied from the paladin.
Explanation: By doing so, every paladin specc gets a viable CC for PvE and an interrupt on a cd less than a minute. Shouldnt be op at all.

II.) Crusader Strike moved from 41-point talent to 31 point talent. Add another glyph which adds a secondary effect: Each time, CS hits the target, targets movement speed will be reduced by 2 % for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Explanation: By doing so, the REALLY boring process of leveling a paladin ends sooner (lvl 40) and gets in line with our former horde counterpart, enhancement-shammy. Glyph addresses kiting problems.

III.) Divine Storm moved from 51 point talent to 41 point talent.
Explanation:Moved to make room for new 51 point talent.

IV.) New 51point-talent! Unstoppable Faith, costs X % base mana, xx second cooldown (reduced by glyph)

The paladin's faith is so strong and pure, that the light itself will assist him in the battle against his foes. Based on the current judgement on the target, the following effect will occur.

Judgement of Light: The grace of light radiates at its target and will absorb 25 % of all incoming healing effects up to a maximum of xxx healing absorbed. Cannot be dispelled.

Judgement of Wisdom: The heavenly wisdom itself will be looking at the target, increasing the cost of all spells done by the target by 20 % , until xxxx Mana has been absorbed or until y casts have been made. Also increases casting time of ALL spells by 0.x seconds. This also applies to instant cast spells. Cannot be dispelled.

Judgement of Justice: Inspired by the holy hymns of the heavens, the paladin will become furious to bring justice to his target. Instantly increses movement speed of the Paladin by 60 % and removes all movement impairing effects. Effect ends, when the paladin does the first hit at any target or casts a spell or after 10 seconds. Cannot be dispelled.

If no Judgement is active on the current target, the effect of Judgement of Justice will apply.

Explanation: First of, all numbers are purely for illustration purposes. The reason is to make the paladin think into the immidiate future. „What judgement do i need to put up to get what effect? What effect may i need in the next seconds?“ This increases skill cap. It takes the paladin hopefully a little bit away from faceroll. Also, by introducing a limitation in form of an absolute number, it isnt quite as powerfull as for instance Mortal Strike. Its a completly new mechanic – which shouldnt be hard to incorporate into the game, given the fact that these kind of spells already exists ( Lord Jaraxxus Burning Flesh for example)

This shall also adress all the weaknesses paladins have in current PvP Situations : It can apply pressure on a healer ( via 2 ways – less healing done to target or mana cost increased, but not both), so no one can afford it to completly ignore the guy with the club next to him. It also adresses the problem of a non-existent gap closer ( come on: 15 % faster than someone with JoJ iup – that means we close a distance of 10 yards between us and a fleeing target in a whooping 22,2 seconds* – you can't be serious...)

* assuming a runspeed of 3 yards / second

All in all, the proposed changes shall lower the boredom of leveling a retribution paladin while adressing the core problems of PvP without the cost of PvE damage-loss and with incresing the skill cap.

I'm looking forward into a constructive discussion without too many flames or trolls. Maybe somebody is nice enough to post this in the US Damage-Dealing-Forums and/or Paladin-forums because I'am a european (german) customer with read-only access to american boards.

Best regards,
Bleda100

PS: If someone finds spelling errors or so , i'm sorry. English is not my mother-tongue.

[imgladidonthavedowns]

i lold

[Iliar]

i lold

GTFO if you have nothing productive to contribute.

On topic... I think that these changes are very interesting. I played ret for a long time, not as long as OP, but since about mid-BC. Anyway, Paladins are at a very weak point in PvP right now. Whenever I would come up against a healer, it would be near impossible to kill them. Adding the judgment effects would actually make it possible to kill weaker healers.

The crusader strike change with the slowing effect is a good idea, but i think stacking to 5 would take too long. Maybe a 3 stack would be more appropriate.

I do disagree with repent not breaking though. Breaking on damage is fine, most people I talk to only use it as an interrupt anyway.

The judgment of justice speed buff should not be 60%. 30-40% may be better.

But this is from a retired ret pally that rarely pvp'ed anyway, so what do I know. Just wanted to chip in, and say that I like it.

[TeenyTonto]

I personally like these ideas they would be quite useful in making ret pallies more viable in arena..I'm not horrible in arena as ret but I still get kited like crazy due to the fact that I catch up and get my stuns on but resilience makes it seem like I do nothing plus their healer.

Then they just get away so I see where your coming from but the only downside is due to the fact that ret pallies got to shine for more then a day people will find any reason to QQ about us actually succeeding in anything other then healing and tanking. But I like the ideas definitely they have thought put into them.

Getting a new move would be quite nice also since people always complain about how our rotation like you said is facerollable. Plus the move sounds pretty neat.

[Strykewrath]

These are some nice, constructive and valid ideas. Most of what I would say has basically already been said by Iliar. I personally think the Crusader Strike slowing effect would take too long, and the idea of Repentance not breaking on damage would cause a lot of complaint from other classes, probably followed by a prompt nerf. Unstoppable Faith would have to have a reletively long CD or short duration, otherwise it could potentially, especially concerning Judgement of Justice, become overpowered. Generally, the problem that Ret Paladins suffer is lack of keeping pressure on healers, but I think your ideas mainly cover that, with a little bit of tweaking perhaps. This is all from a PvP perspective, of course.

But overall, seems like some good ideas that you've put a lot of thought into!

[x]

ret is fine. one or two talents could be tweeked slightly but other than that, these ideas would be so OP.

[coen]

i lold

not only u

[zcks]

I like some of the Op's ideas & the fact it is very moderate changes.

Personally I wouldn't mind having a small stacking debuff that reduces healing taken similar to what frost mages have. Say your crusader strike now reduces the healing done to the target by 5% stacking 5 times, at the rate we can apply crusader strike it would take it would take 20 seconds to get 5 stacks. At this point crusader strike could definitely use a buff, I mean come on it does less damage then a normal hit.

As for giving us some type of ranged snare maybe if they were to reduce the cool down of repentance to 30 seconds then have it apply a 25% snare (perhaps be dispellable) that lasts 10 seconds if it breaks early.

For an interrupt,why not let exorcism interrupt casting for 2 seconds if it hits a casting target, the 15 second cool down is just as long as wind sheer & it needs an art of war proc to be instant.

Now allot of people say ret can heal far to well to be allowed to have things like MS (even a week one) snares & interrupts. Ok many of us would gladly admit that for a dps spec we can heal very well (In fact a ret paladin in holy gear can heal pretty much as good as a holy paladin). Maybe at the same time they could reduce the base amount healed by flash of light & holy light by say somewhere between 10-20% then increase the amount they heal with a talent deep in the holy tree. This would allow us to have these abilities & prevent stupid gimmick specs like prot/holy from popping up again.

[Palatinus]

I like the sound of the changes. But i have two problems with it:

1. The type of changes you have suggested blizzard will never make outside of a new expansion. Frankly, 1 year away is too long for me to wait for theses changes.

2. The 51 point talent sounds a bit OP. Right sort of idea, but the whole "freedom on use"? or making an instant cast spell not an instant cast sounds far to OP. Even if it was a 5 minute CD, which it probably would have to be.

Blizzard just needs to stop faffing and either give us a 20% healing debuff (like shadow priests AND errr MAGES? got), or a god damn viable interrupt that doesn't have a 1 minute cooldown (or 2 for arcane torrent)....I don't get how dks can have 10 second interrupt but paladins can't get one lower than 40 seconds talented? Even feral druids already have the repentance change you suggested on a 10 second cooldown? Sure it requires combo points...cough secondary crusader strike effect cough.

[Crucis]

I really your idea of a stacking increase to baseline cast time, the healing absorb is also a good idea, not so much @ the justice one though.

Maybe .2 base cast increase stacks 3 times, I don't think it should be undispelable though. (if applied on judgement)

Or maybe instead of on judgement, the effect is applied when you Crusader Strike when they have said Judgement effect ex. while they have the Judgement of Wisdom debuff on them, your Crusader Strike increases the base cast time of all spells by .1 per application for 10 seconds (stacks 5 times).
I could agree to this being undispelable since you had your chance to dispel the judgement effect itself.

Same basic concept to judgement of light, with it's healing debuff absorbing x% of what your CS hit for (kind of like a reverse divine aegis), this is debatable whether it should be dispelable or not.

Maybe they could make it the new CS glyph :P while afflicted with your judgement, crusader strike causes an additional effect depending on the judgement to the target.

It'd be a nice resto druid counter, especially the cast increase.

[Dalam]

I really like these ideas, i do think that you will need to add in a PvE effect into the new talent. What immediatly comes to my mind would be an effect similiar to hemo that increases the dmg the target takes for X charges. I am not sure how you could incorporate that without it becoming OP in pvp though... Maybye you can only apply that effect if you have 5 stacks of vengence on the target??

[riflemancho]

One word :> OP !

[zcks]

One word :> OP !

One quote

GTFO if you have nothing useful to contribute.

[Ronark]

The 51 point does nothing for the PvE Paladin.

[iktankniet]

The 51 point does nothing for the PvE Paladin.

well, the absorbance of healing might work on fights like vezax a little bit, but overall it aint good for pve. i agree on that.
i presume the new talent you made up has a duration. else you wont need a cooldown. so whats the duration of the talent?

on JoJ 60% is alot of speed. some1 said before that 30% would be better and i agree. it already is like a 2nd HoF, but with a speed increase.

your idea made me come up with a new glyph for pvp paladins:
Glyph of Hand of Freedom. increases runspeed 20% for 7 seconds when Hand of Freedom is used.

[Jester1257]

The 51 point does nothing for the PvE Paladin.

^^^^
Basically what he said -_-

And personally I think Crusader Strike should go baseline. Having CS as a baseline skill would make Pally leveling less of a back breaker. Now I don't know if its any easier with WotLK but you try leveling a Paladin back in BC or even Vanilla. Do you really think auto attacking was fun...? Also, make DS a 41 or keep it 51 and either give a new 41 or 51 pointer. I don't want to think of any specifics but that's just my 2 cents.

[Wrinkle]

Why do you think you should be able to bring pressure to a healer? There are plenty of DPS specs for other classes that hardly touch a healer, and they don't even have the burst a ret pala has.

Repentance and crusader strike as base? A big solid no. Imagine a Prot/Holy paladin with a HoJ on 20 seconds and repentance as well. Crusader Strike serves to show that the ret tree is the offensive melee tree. A paladin in World of Warcraft has been a more group buffing defensive hybrid and crusader strike as base wouldn't fit that.

[DaGhostDS]

too much work was put into this.. an interrupt is the only thing we need
lfm pve 51 points

^^^^
Basically what he said -_-

And personally I think Crusader Strike should go baseline. Having CS as a baseline skill would make Pally leveling less of a back breaker. Now I don't know if its any easier with WotLK but you try leveling a Paladin back in BC or even Vanilla. Do you really think auto attacking was fun...? Also, make DS a 41 or keep it 51 and either give a new 41 or 51 pointer. I don't want to think of any specifics but that's just my 2 cents.

yes it wasnt great but not that bad either, now they have hand of reck to start combat, then cast exo and SoC + glyph for mana
Drinking on every 2-3 mob is something i dont miss tho

[Koronis]

You're doing it wrong

[Kibou]

The Judgement of Justice Judge on the 51 point talent is OP. You have other abilities to to get of snares. We don't need more "lol I can't snare you while I kill your partner" talents. They should also be all dispellable. Ret Pallies already have dispel fodder as it is.

I thought when blizzard was going to make ret pally's rotations more complex and not I spam certain abilities off cool down. However, that didn't change at all. I would be much more willing to give pallies an interrupt or an a partial MS if their damage method changed. Death Knight's have to diseases up to inflict maximum damage. Rogues cannot easily switch targets without losing combo points. Casters can be interrupted or have their abilities to enhance damage dispelled. Warrior can be rooted constantly. Ret pallies have none of these drawbacks. Arcane Mages watch their arcane blast and missile barrage buffs. Fire Mages watch for a buff too and they generally have to apply scorch. The only change blizzard made was to allow pallies to use their abilities more often to smooth out damage. This needs to be changed in order to increase the skill cap, and allow other people to have better ways to fight ret pallies.