After playing around extensively on the PTR I have found a build that feels really smooth to play. It’s a little weak in ST, but it’s extremely fun and strong in AoE.
The reason I don’t pick art of war/righteous cause is because I want to press Templar Strikes as much as possible. The only reason I’m pressing BoJ is to extend my DoT, same reason why I’m taking Fading light over Seal of Order, Fading Light provides insane sustain and makes it so you don’t have to constantly juggle your builders.
The reason I’m not going for the holystrike talents is because they turn Templar Strikes into holystrike damage which has negative synergy with Searing Light.
I picked Highlords’ Judgment because again, it means I don’t have to press judgment as often and leaves more room for Templar Strikes.
Picking sanctify is not ideal, but I need it to get to Blade of Vengeance. I’m still kinda iffy about whether I should pick Empyrean Power, but I think with the new tier set going for the judgment talents will be stronger and Empyrean Power doesn’t feel great with the Templar Strikes playstyle.
I’m sustaining about 200k dps on the 5 target dummies with my 413 paladin and it’s a really fun playstyle with 0 downtime
Single target with this build isn’t great, I’m sustaining about 55k on the single target dummy which honestly isn’t that bad. But I do about 65k with a pure single target build.
Templar’s Strike is benefiting from both Holy Strike and Radiant talents. But it does lose the ability to proc Searing Light if you pick up Blades of Light. Not sure if that’s intended or not.
Templar’s Strike spam is going to get indirectly stronger when we lose season 1 tier gear. Which buff the damage of all abilities except for CS/TS.
It feels really strange that CS (TS) might become the forefront to Ret again.
Also, why did you spec into Light of Justice over Swift Justice for a TS spam build?
Yeah I noticed that, I did notice a decrease in searing light procs with the holystrike talents talents included.
I really like it though, it feels much better than Crusading Strikes. CSaa just leaves you with occasional downtime.
Expurgation only lasts for 6 seconds and Light of Justice puts BoJ at a 7.5 second cd. Judgment cd reduction has negative synergy with Highlords’ judgment, kinda. You also run into problems with Divine Resonance and judgment overlapping eachother.
Id dont know how you sustain 55k on ST. Ive tried your build but it averages out at about 45-50k for me on ST (and my gear seems to be a tad better also). Note that im avoiding Divine toll since that tends to cleave like mad on the training dummies around me in Valdrakken whicjh imo muddies the results otherwise.
I did use divine toll on single target, but I’m positioned in such a way that I only hit one extra target, it does mean I generate a little more holy power with it, but it’s very little (about 1% of my dmg is to one of the cleave dummies which comes down to about 600 dps)
I do use elemental potions and all personal buffs and consumables, that might be the difference. I’ve also practiced this build quite a bit. You could spec into the holystrike side for a little more single target damage as well, so you’d take the 3 holystrike talents instead of Highlord’s Judgment, Divine Wrath and Executioner’s Will. The playstyle is a bit more annoying because judgment becomes higher prio, but damage wise it’s slightly lower in AoE and slightly higher in ST. Replacing Sanctify with Vanguards Momentum is probably worth it as well.
Well, theres a whole lot of TS spamming… Not rly sure whats the proper priority anymore though. When i can use a finisher do i prioritise that over finishing a TS combo? Do i use Judgement on cd or wait till ive used two spenders and THEN push it again? Questions, questions.
Im no theorycrafter by any means so i hope people with a knack for this will be able to sort all this out so we can optimise our play again.
Spamming TS doesn’t sound fun at all in my opinion and would feel worst than what we got right now. The reason rets wanted a rework is to improve gameplay not numbers. I know you have good intentions but numbers in my opinion are meaningless when it comes to the rework because they can just tune our numbers right now and we’d be fine. The rework started out great but now isn’t looking too good. Personally, I’d rather they postpone or cancel the rework if they aren’t looking to do a good job with it to begin with.
TS is a high priority spell that you WANT to press as much as possible in between spenders. There are still other spells that take priority in certain situations such as:
Blade of justice to refresh the expurgation DoT
Judgment to buff your spenders (not on cd when using highlord’s judgment or when divine resonance is active)
Divine toll to buff your spenders (paired with one minute wings and final reckoning)
Hammer of Wrath during ST situations (this is especially powerful when taking Vanguard’s Momentum)
The rotation becomes more of a ‘‘dance’’ where we use TS alot when wings is on CD and we use HoW alot when using wings. (You obviously don’t use HoW in AoE). I think calling it TS spam is not super accurate.
Fairly sure TS will get a hefty nerf sooner or later as its second strike currently does more dmg then a normal hit with FV + judgment debuff.
Edit: With the low dmg judgment currently does it does not feel good to press at all. Is it even worth the GCD when FV does lower dmg then the second TS on non crits?
With blizz’s usual track record it will probably go live as is for a day or two… (maybe a week?) and then nerfed into the ground and become a dead talent for 3+ expansions.
Either way still find it funny they dropped any form of communication just as they realised they wont be adding any mobility. 0 work/communication done during alpha/beta and trying to shoehorn our rework in a .7 update, ran out of time (who could have guessed) and here we are, the afterthought class.
Yeah don’t think this build is viable anymore, CSaa feels like the more powerful option again and they nerfed Blade of Vengeance to such an extend that I don’t even know if it’s worth taking anymore.