Paladin Runes Phase 3 - Retribution

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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I hate Doom Posting but Retribution is looking incredibly bad on the sims next phase already and Ret is gonna be shafted with our Runes again…

Wrath / Fanaticism - Both are decents and Wrath will be better if it adds Spell Crit + Melee Crit. I personally thought this Rune looked strong until I saw what every other class got in their Runes this phase. Warriors, Rogues have a flat 20% increased damage Rune, Shamans got Sheath of Light on steroids that gives a flat 100 attack power extra at 50 because intelect scaling on it too. Also Conc getting Crit is decent on AoE pulls but single target its still too weak for the mana it costs - it costs nearly 500 mana at 50 thats at least 1/4 of your mana pool.

These are the Runes Wrath is competing with and its extremely lack luster. You’ll Crit 20% extra will spells. It sounds good but when you compare that to a flat 20% damage increase Runes or Stuff like Metal Dexterity on Shamans, this Runes is 100s of DPS behind the other Runes.

Our Wrist Slot must be the most troll slot in the game. Nothing here synergises with what Ret Paladins want to do. You want a fast weapon to attack and Proc Art of War as much as possible. Improved HoW Rune makes it reset its cast time when below 10% (datamined increased to 20%) which is okay but it still has a cast time and costs 1/3 of your mana - which puts this in F tier. Holy Wrath is niche as its only good on AoE because it has a cast time still. Exorcism going to a 7-8s CD is also troll because I have to have the worst RNG to not land a crit every 3 hits with SoM. Like nothing on Wrists works with what Ret does, we reset the CD on Exorcism and spam it, we don’t need a another rune lowering the cooldown when it resets all the time.

Does anyone here see my point? We are simming already so low because nothing synergises with our class. Its just passives that don’t work or slightly more crits that will at max boost our dps by 100 ish. Our new abilities either have cast times so are unusable, cost too much mana or have both these issues. Using these Runes is an actual DPS loss. In what world should taking a Rune make you do negative Damage? (I know Arms has this issue too with Rend and Overpower right now - sims as dps loss like us…).

Also the new raid loot is looking terrible for Ret as there is no fast Weapons. Everything is slow and hits hard and you don’t want that for SoM and Art of War Procs. Its very possible we will be using Crown Pummeler in ST and it might do more DPS than any other weapon in the raid for us. Thats how important a fast weapon is for Ret.

We honestly got memed on. This will be Phase 2 all over again where they have to emergeancy hotfix buff us over 4-5 weeks. These Runes are disgustingly bad and do nothing for Ret.

Also, Alliance are miles behind Horde because we don’t get Str and Agi totem. Paladins have that Rune but it competes with SoM and Divine Storm so nobody can take it other than the Holy but guess what? Its group specific so they are never with Melee as melee is in windfury group so nobody gets it, YAY! Make this a book like you did with all the other class buffs or combine Exorcism Rune into Art of War and swap Divine Sacrifice Slot with Horn of Lorderon, so Holy Paladins get the strong raid Cooldown on chest to buff them and we get Horn on legs so we can buff the melee group. This last change isn’t about boosting Paladin, it’s about keep Alliance semi competitive with Horde so we don’t lose all of our players.

Like honestly who is designing Paladins. Every phase we got memed with Rune Placements and Phase 3 we are memed even harder. I’m willing the gamble emergeancy hotfix buffs for Ret for the start of Phase again…

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Dont worry next we will get the wheelchair enchant datamined that you can put on pants and libram of copium that will solve ALL the problems just like for feral :+1:

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Its extremely bad because feral and ret are siming extremely badly and Alliance being a viable faction is dependent on those 2 specs not sucking. Feral and Ret will need hotfix buffed i’d gamble 10000 quid on it both specs get x20 buffs this phase. If not Alliance is actually doomed.

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Cant wait for it. Lets goooo :woman_in_manual_wheelchair::woman_in_manual_wheelchair::woman_in_manual_wheelchair::woman_in_manual_wheelchair::woman_in_manual_wheelchair::woman_in_manual_wheelchair:

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we also lack a CD to actively use for DPS boost and mobility, we got none of the two.

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I think we just need exorcist to be usable on any targets without rune or baked to other runes to free the leg slot. we dont get mobility, but we should be use avenger shield with exorcist which is like 20-30% of our single target dmg.

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it should be less RNG dependent, shamans get a 20% WF+AP with literally any weapon, pallies get 30% and no additional weapon+AP, flat 70% as holy damage which honestly sucks on their MAIN seal in PvP and cleave fights.
Instead of just 70% it should be “100% weapon damage + whatever WF gives in terms of AP” + higher chance, when shamans literally get 2 free weapon swings from Stormstrike this isn’t even remotely fair.

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We have other stuff and should not compare seals to wf to be honest. I think that WF and stormstrike is perfectly fine as well as martyrdom and judgement.
issue with paladin is leg slot(exorcist+tremor+avenger shield slow-kick all on same slot is just bad), new wrist slot and head slot useless without exorcist.

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I just terrified that ACP is siming better than every weapon other than the Epic weapon from the last boss.

This pretty much means the DPS increase will be around a 100 dps with Runes and probably another 100 from talents + ability rank increases at tops. We will be doing like 800 dps in ST with ACP and other classes like Shaman and Warriors are siming around 1.5-2k.

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Thank you for the insightful write up. It seems paladin will be in a very bad spot again P3. Uninspired inconsistent runes, our only viable play style being built on a literal bug, SoM triggering aow proc. Frankly the most baffling part about it how shamans get everything we get but better.

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Purifying Power rune is a complete joke tbh, it synergizes with nothing and actually kind of negates some of the benefits from AoW.

I don’t understand how it can be on the same slot than HoR which is so much more powerful, this is terribly wrong.

Oh and DS is still totally lackluster to compete with SoM.

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To be fair ret pal isn’t in a bad spot. We’re reliant on a fast weapon but our damage is more than good enough to clear the content.
Sure we won’t be top dps (even though I’ve been regularly in the top 2 or 3 DD in quite a few gnomer runs) but we don’t need to.
The main issue I feel is that every phase priorise either caster or melee. P1 was melee fav and P2 is caster fav. Even the WB gnomer is outragingly favoring casters compared to melee. It would be nice to balance it a bit so every spec can at least get into a raid without having to spam lfg for 3 hours. Of course having a guild is the best way to raid imho but not everyone can/want to.

SoD provides a far better balance spec/class than classic did, it should also be adressed that it is us players who make it so much harder when asking for perfect raid comp, 90+ parse, 500+gs and more. I’ve cleared Gnomer with 6 melee, being the only DD over 200 dps, and it was smooth.

I think going to 20 man raid should help with it as even not opti class/spec will be able to enter for the sake of diversity.

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Well as for the weapon I don’t think the answer is in the raid but I think it would be in the zf dungeon, have you heard of sul’thraze ? It as the same dps as the weapons in the raid (except the big sword) and is fast too (2.60 if I remember) and it could be possible to see a rework of it so maybe a buff who knows

I think it could become our bis for this phase and we could use it like we did before the nerf of the proc effect in p2 with the nightblade or like some people are using it by swapping mcp and the jackhammer (use mcp cd → wait for the end of the effect → swap for the better weapon and wait for the cd to be up again)

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The fast weapon req alone is an issue.

It’s the opposite of what ret should be : 2 handed, therefore slow but big hits. You can find the same philosophy for arms warriors.

Moreover regarding the gameplay, waiting for auto attack to proc AoW centers again the gameplay on auto attack which is something paladins were already complaining about back in the classic days.

It is a terrible design that needs to go.

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It’s not because you don’t like the gameplay that it has to go.

Personally I had a breath of fresh air when it has started and I found it way more fun than the original one cause let’s be honest the original one is just autoattack slowly praying for a SoC proc and wait for the cooldown to be up then be oom 2 rotation after the start of the fight…

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I don’t see why it’s an issue. Every spec has optimal gear, ours is to have a fast weapon. We still do damage with a slow weapon, but it’s not optimal.

As to the gameplay centered on auto-attack, I’m sorry but it’s classic man. Every melee is centered around auto-attacks, what do you expect ?
Ret pals were complaining about the fact that you only had to use 2 buttons every 10 sec. As of now, I cant press exo procs fast enough because crowd pumeller’s buff make me hit faster than the gcd and with a feral in my grp it’s just madness when crits are piling up. Ret has a very dynamic pve rotation - I enjoy it way more than my mage for exemple.

I really don’t agree with you, ret pal in pve is super fun and if that’s the price to pay to be competitive in pve without being busted in PvP, I’m fine with that.

Let’s not forget that shockadin spec is something that SoD devs want to push. The new 1h weapon from STV will be really fast (1.5 sec) so paladin dps spec might be deep holy instead of ret…

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We are not in a bad spot damage wise, we are A tier in PVP. But there are huge class design problems with ret (scaling, synergies), which will kill or pigeon hole ret into a gimmick.

  1. We got strictly AP scaling, slow weapon scaling abilities which did not scale with the classic ret core. JoC, sanctity, etc.
  2. We got the exo, aow package in p2. Which scales with SP and fast weapons. Me and Holydk had a discussion about this at the beginning of the phase, it might be worth a read.
  3. Ret was extremely weak in p2 start because we had to distinct packages that could not be utilitiesed in the same time.
  4. P1 package was/is extremely weak (you don’t take exorcist you are the worst DPS spec)
  5. The devs saw how weak ret is and buffed SoM. Which is kind of silly because som only good because of an admitted bug, aka triggering aow proc.

So instead of class design we have hotfixes, our P1 core abilities are really bad, cs criting for 500 while lava lash 1400. We are locked into one set of runes, this is even true for prot.

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I’m not sure I agree with those two points. We have sheath of light rune, which allow us to scale sp with strength, allowing us to entirely gear agi/str and sit at 200+ sp, boosting both are physical and holy damage. It’s great !
Maybe later in phases we will mix it up, or go full sp to give infusion of light rune a go as shockadin, meaning a second dps spec and more sets of runes.

I haven’t played much during P1 so I won’t comment too much on that but I don’t know if it’s too relevant today ?

Hmm… I understand you may feel wronged by that, but as long as it works I don’t really care if they stumbled upon it by making mistakes. That’s often how great ideas are discovered.

Lastly, comparing CS and lavalash doesn’t really makes sense either. You have to compare the whole toolkit. Cs was never meant to be lava lash’s counterpart.

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What are you talking about ?

Original gameplay was waiting for a SoC proc and ret had no options to spend mana for damage.

Current gameplay is not much different, instead that we are not waiting for a proc but for a crit, which follows more or less the same mechanic.

Auto attack gameplay needs to go.

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That’s literal what I’ve said lol…

And remember consecration in classic vanilla ? Judgment ? Exorcism for ud mobs ? HoW ? Divine wrath ? Yeah there was some spells to use to be oom rapidly don’t worry

And actually if you’re not using the SoM/ art of war gameplay you’re literally oom after 3-4 rotations because of all the mana we spend during the fight while we’ll be full mana with the art of war gameplay and doing way more damage

Again it’s not because YOU don’t find a gameplay fun that it’s not the case for others, don’t worry you’ll have a big sword to swing next phase but as of now with the data we have it will not be the optimal move to play with it (outside of pvp I guess)