Like everyone else, i am super hyped for the upcoming class changes in Shadowlands. I would like to share some of my suggestions about my favorite class and spec i played for years. And i would like to hear about your opinions too. First of all, i really think that the retribution paladins have rather non-fluid rotation compared to the other classes. As a retribution paladin, there are quite a lot of moments where you have no abilities to press and just wait for the cooldowns. I think this can be fixed rather easily with the removal of the Crusader Strikeâs cooldown. This might result in much more fluid and fun experience while playing a ret paladin instead of having to wait for a cooldown (or a proc like Art of War, Divine Purpose, Empyrean Power, etc.) to get ready every so often. Developers also announced that the paladin auras will be reintroduced in Shadowlands which i am happy about but the truth is that the addition of the auras will not change the overall playing of the spec. Auras are like passive buffs that can be switched every so often without any major effect of your class gameplay. If we are going to reintroduce one thing it has to be paladin seals in my opinion. Which might change the gameplay rather interestingly if implemented correctly. If the seals would be reintroduced as an Inquisition style ability I think it would be excellent. I think if we bring back old âmelee attack enhancingâ type of seals it wonât affect the gameplay much and also it wonât fit into the modern design of the spec. Here are some of my suggestions about how we can reimplement the seals;
1- Seal of Righteousness: Increases the damage done of your damaging holy power spenders by X% (letâs say %18 for this instance) for the 15 seconds duration each holy power spent. (45 seconds duration if 3 holy power spent using this ability) If you use your Judgment ability while this ability is active, it will increase the damage caused by your next holy power spender to the target by X%. (the current baseline judgment effect.) Only one seal can be activated at a time.
2- Seal of Light: For the duration of this ability your damaging holy power spenders will restore 4% of your maximum health. Duration is 15 seconds each holy power spent. If you use your Judgement ability while this ability is active the target will get âJudgment of the Lightâ effect for X seconds.
Judgement of the Light: The paladin will have a chance to heal for X amount of every time he uses a damaging ability on this target. Only one seal can be activated at a time.
3- Seal of Justice: For the duration of this ability your damaging holy power spenders will root the damaged enemies in place for 3 seconds. This seal will last 15 seconds for each holy power spent. When you use judgment on your target the enemy will be slowed by X% for X seconds. Only one seal can be activated at a time. This ability can be a PvP talent and maybe could replace the Hand of Hindrance ability.
These situational seals may add some variety to play. Some more seals could be added via talents. Maybe a seal which is good while doing AoE damage, or maybe a seal which can apply a DoT effect to the target, etc. In addition to these, i would like to see Hammer of Wrath as a baseline ability. It was such a core ability since classic and i think it shouldnât be a talent. I also would like to see the Holy Power to be like the Shadow Priestsâ Insanity where you can accumulate it to some degree instead of having to spend it as fast as possible to prevent a five-point cap like rogue combo points. (Where its currently pretty much alike.) I also think the paladins should have a group-wide buff like the priestsâ Power Word: Fortitude or warriorsâ Battle Shout. This can further increase the class fantasy and overall usefulness of a paladin in a group. One target limit of the paladinsâ blessing buffs feels very wrong and inorganic.
I would like to know what do you think about these suggestions and how retribution paladins can be further improvised. Feel free to share your thoughts.
This is caused by a poor rotation (or poor stat balance, but itâs mostly rotation). I can find a mistake in your rotation in 5 seconds. This is not the case with ret paladins at the moment.
Regarding to your suggestion about the seals: Sure. They can literally bring seals back. Having seals will only bring the class fantasy closer to what it suppose to be.
Hereâs how Iâd make it work: Iâd redesign the first talent row with judgment talents that will enhance the Judgment ability.
Judgment of Light: You guys know this one, itâs the talent that no one ever picked. But compared to nowadays Zeal, it will be a competitor if we put it in the first row of talents, 'cause Zeal doesnât do much damage, but the heal will help the raid team a lot. Judgment of Light used to be a talent for Judgment, it put a debuff on the target that healed the players that attacked the judged target.
Zeal: This can honestly stay the way it is. A passive, small buff to your damage, very minor, maybe even more minor than it is right now, cause if we wanna have both Zeal and Judgment of Light in the game, one shouldnât deal too much damage to not make the other one worthless, and the other should heal enough to make it worth using in a raid environment.
Judgment of Justice: You can call this whatever tbh, doesnât matter, a buff to your judgment that will either slow the enemy or boost the speed of the caster, or dispel the caster, a type of judgment that will help the paladin with the mobility, either by slowing the enemy or speeding up the caster. We already had something similar. We had a judgment that slowed the opponent, we had a judgment that locked the target at 100% speed max, and we had a judgment that gave us speed. Any of the 3 works, paladins need this.
Why the hell people are trying to make seals a thing again? No one liked seal system from day1 till it was removed. It was horrible. If you nostalgia so hard go play on nostalgia servers.
I think what people that play paladin donât quite understand is that you canât be a straight up dps class like a warrior, rogue, dh and yet still have all the utility and tools that a paladin has, otherwise it would be way too much and theyâd have to rebalance the class over it.
As a ret paladin sure, you can do damage but thatâs not really your sole role as a class, itâs not about tunnel vision on a single target. Adding all these abilities to itâs rotation would just make it another dps class. Plus, you can spec for other abilities and you also have your essence, itâs not terribly dry but it isnât flashy either.
This is especially true though in pvp, you need to be assisting other players and you have some utility to do that.
In pve though Iâve been playing lots of other classes and theyâre not all terribly complex and filled with a crazy and excited rotation, they have just about the same downtime with all that being said.
Shadowlands is going to unprune a lot of things that happened in BFA, which just took the excitement and variety out of a lot of speccs and classes, it affected everyone but some made it out better and more exciting than others but not completely.
I think itâs a little late to start giving advice because thereâs already a new alpha coming out soon and weâll have to see what changes have already been done.
But even then, I never expect Ret to be and play like a DK for example and then be able to provide all this utility on top of it that a DK canât. The rotation has always been a bit bland and maybe itâll it improve but I wouldnât expect a miracle
Well, it was trueâŠUp to tlk. Iâm playing ret paladin to be that holy punisher. It feels bad to hit less than a warrior who has a ton of utilities at the moment. And by that, I mean USEFULL utilities, such as a raid cooldown, compared to a BoP (which is selfdom usefull).
So I disagree, in a way. I could trade DPS for utilities, only if they were to remove DH, warrior, mages and rogues supportive tools. Obviously, they are not going to remove spells from pure DPS classes #pruning.
Also, if ret paladin becomes a support again, then weâre useless, because holy pal is better at providing said supportive tools, in a way better way than ret does. If I canât play my spec if my guilds wants me to play holy then Iâd rather not play paladin.
I totally agree with this comment. Many of the other specs with excellent damage does have great utility. Not only the utility but heals too! A Ret paladin currently (who supposed to be a hybrid class) does heal a lot less than most classes which doesnât even have a healing spec. Fury warriors, for example, does have a ton of self-healing abilities, and not only that he can just keep healing himself without changing his rotation in the slightest. This is most apparent in pvp situations. Death Knight, for example, can put more healing than a retribution paladin with his Death Strike ability rather easily while doing damage. Another example is the Demon Hunter class. They do have insane self-healing capability while bursting without even changing his normal rotation. A Ret paladin on the other hand not only heals a lot less, but he also has to STOP damaging entirely in order to heal. And those classes I did mention also has some great utility and mobility abilities.(aside from DKâs) I could also trade dps for utilities, if they were to be removed from the classes which currently have great utility, mobility, self heal and amazing dps alike.