They look so powerful! I think we can be strong dps viable for raids with these abilities! Love it!
General
There are some places that are a bit bloated with points though!
Raiding
I’m a bit worried the lack of a unique raid ability (we got blessing of spellwarding! AMAZING!) - we don’t have strong options here!
Mythic+ - lack of survival that isn’t on a long cooldown
Im a bit worried about not being able to choose a 20% defensive, making us weak in mythic+! These are superusefull doing higher keys! We cant outheal the quick-burst
Can’t we cant a talent that reduces our aggro? please?
Still no raid wide CD for ret, which is bad since ret is meant to be a support class.
Shield of vengeance not being replaced by an actual defensive CD is also bad.
Exorcism should generate a holy power alongside consecration.
Why the hell on earth is justicar’s vengeance still a thing ?!
Other than that, It looks pretty good, we’re getting access to a lof of talent combinations we currently can’t do at the moment, which could lead to some interresting results.
As weird as it sounds, i am actually really excited about the Consecration build. Probably going to suck, but it does seem fun to put down multiple giant Consecrations that both heal and deal damage.
My only complaint with the new talent trees for Ret is that there are 2 seperate talents that give a flat 2% haste. Seal of Alacrity and Swift Crusader. And that Liadrin’s Fury seems really poor for a capstone talent. But is probably OP with the Avenging Wrath build. But more importantly, it is boring.
Considering how much of a pain AMZ has been this expansion, that’s probably for the best. If Ret did get some kind of raid wide CD it would have to be really weak.
Fun fact. Shield of Vengance is replacing an actual defensive CD. That being Divine Protection. All Paladins get DP by leveling (in Shadowlands) but it is replaced with SoV at level 26.
But to be fair. Shield of Vengance isn’t that bad. Mathematically it is technically better than DP unless you take more than 150% of your entire health under it’s duration. That is assuming the cooldown of the 2 spells are the same. Which they obviously aren’t. Meaning no matter how you see it, SoV it worse at reducing damage than DP.
What if SoV was a talent that modified DP rather than replacing it? Causing DP to reflect damage taken up to a certain percentage of your health? That would keep the flavor of SoV with the efficiency of DP.
Exorcism for sure. I would almost bet it is going to get HP generation during the alpha/beta period. Consecration i am not so sure about. Could cause some issues with the talent that proc Consecration with BoJ.
Id assume DP is baseline. The talent Unbreakable Spirit in the basic tree lowers the CD of DP. Crusader stike isent mentioned in the talnt tree, but theres an Improved Crusader strike talent for Ret.
How does this talent work? Havent seen clips yet of someone using it. “Has its own Consecration limit 1” Does this work outside the baseline CD or triggers it?
About Incandescence in the baseline tree… its so weirdly worded. Does it procc it aswell or do something with an already laid consecration?
At the same time, why would you bring a ret in a M+ group or a raid comp? There are no reason whatsoever to do so. At least, DK has AMZ and grips so that’s something but I see no reason to bring in a ret. Heck, the ret In my roster has been sitting on the bench for most of bosses during this progress…
Well, I’ve learnt something today!
Not only sov is bad at reducing damages, it’s actually an offensive CD, in a way. And that’s the thing I dislike the most about this spell, is that there are incentives to cast that as an offensive CD, which is not the aim of a defensive CD.
As regarding reducing damages, za’qul was consuming sov and I would still barely survive at 10% whereas my guild mates were able to get out with more health. The fact that sov is not good at withstanding high damages is quite old now…
You know… the Unbreakable Spirit talent does suggest Divine Protection is baseline for the whole class. The Shield of Vengeance talant also doesn’t say it replaces DP. But i can’t seem to find any confirmation on the matter.
From what i’ve seen, it puts down a Consecration under the taget of BoJ. Not 100% sure though. Since in the video i saw it the paladin wasn’t the PoV.
Incandecescence causes enemies standing in your Consecration take extra damage.
DK’s aren’t a spec. All of them have AMZ and grip. But Aura Mastery is the strongest raid CD of them all and is the reason why Holy has been tuned so low almost all expansion. If ret got AM, it would have to be a nerfed version of it or Ret would have to be really bad DPS to prevent raids full of them.
But i do agree Ret needs something.
Here is a couple of ideas.
In WotLK Ret had significant passive healing. Maybe too strong, but they could bring some of that back. Like a AoE heal based on the damage done by Divine Storm and TV/FV.
A damage boost buff. I’d hesitate to say Blessing of Might since people hated it and campaigned for it to be removed. But maybe a proc? Say Art of War gives your party (or a few random people) an extra 3% crit for a few seconds. Or alternatively, Wings give your party (or a few random people) an X% mastery buff for Y seconds.
Maybe an inverse Restless Crew? I.E. Holy Power spenders reduces the cooldown of party members Defensive Cooldowns. Or maybe even their movement abilties. But i suppose Evokers already has that.
Seal of the Crusader might be raid wide (extra 5% holy damage) which is pretty decent for Disc Priests.
Depending on how Dragonflight shapes up to be, Blessing of Spellwarding might be all that is needed for Ret’s to get a spot. But i wouldn’t count on it.
As Bodhi mentioned, there is a chance Ret gets both Divine Protection and Shield of Vengance in DF. Because there is a talent in the class tree that reduces the CD of DP and SoV doesn’t mention that it replaces DP.
That’s likely because of how spikey SoV is. You take no damage until you suddenly take all the damage. You can go from being at full health to suddenly dead at a moments notice. While DP makes your damage intake smoother and much easier to heal.
Bit bothersome that this is what we all think when getting utility, for Paladins something has to be nerfed to actually get something… every time.
Anyway on the utility front…
The passive healing from Divine storm and judgment of light, was it that strong? Anyway if one were to specc all 10 points into the consecration talents would that be good passive healing… oh and judgment of light? Fairly sure it atleast wouldnt be totaly wasted points for dmg.
I’m talking from the perspective of a dps and tank specs player, so everything I’ve said is also some kind of comparing bdk with prot pally.
I don’t like this reasoning, because some classes get to bring both relevant utility and good damages. For instance, both mages and lock are always op while also bringing mandatory raid waid utility spells. It’s really unfair towards ret and other bad specs to get such treatment and views. Why can’t ret have nice things for once?!
If the raid does not need to be topped then it’s just extra overhead, which is useless.
I think that should be brought back. I don’t understand why one would want that spell being removed more especially if those were ret mains. We even Lost blessing of wisdom in the end…
That sounds too nice but… People would qq about more externals…
Outlaw rogue already has such talent, so there is no chance for another spec to bring that.
That’s why I don’t count bop or spell warding as a relevant utility spell, because it’s not often that useful. I’d say something like 2 bosses per tier but the issue is that holy also brings that, so might as well bring another holy pal instead.
That would be so great! But I wouldn’t count on that…
I playing a mage every now and then, i hate the int buff mainly because it doesn feel like a buff. Im balanced around always having it on, meaning without it im weaker. It doesnt"buff" me, it makes me normal.
In raids it does the same for everyone there, buffs all to their “balanced” lvls as everyone is balanced around having those buffs up.
Now this i just find hillarious that rogues are the class to bring such a buff… a buff that actually changes gameplay. “oh i can use my fun CDs more often if i bring a rogue”…The hell is this???
Its a freaking aura like buff and PALADINS dont get it??
Edit: Could have sworn ive seen it but cant find that talent atm. What was it called?
Edit 2: Ah found it… its a combination of talents with restless Crew. Lowering CDs of everyones offencive CD of 0.2 sec for every combo point spent.
The thing is which version are we talking about? If it’s the raid wide version then I liked cata to Wod buffs since many classes shared those anyways, so it was “fair”.
However, the legion version was only single target unlike any other buff so I don’t get why it would be that problematic.
Classes aren’t being balanced around buffs like pi or stacking a heck tons of externals. If Blizzard can’t balance classes around buffs then they should chuck them out.
That’s only a group wide buff and is called restless crew, right In the middle.
See my point? Ret not only does less damages than rogue, it also brings less relevant utility…
Yea just saw… still missed it was a group only buff =/
Yet something that would have worked brilliant for a Ret yet never implemented. Because for some reason we are stuck with the named fantasy of Retribution and curret ret aura fits perfectly with that name, just something we never wanted.
Because they are still in the fire and forget categoy and are as noticable as current dev aura.
But you feel a destinc difference when those buffs are used. Theres an impact when they are used in gameplay.
Edit: Lets put it this way, overall Dev aura in a raid might have mitigated more dmg total overall then all the DKs AMS’s combined have used (do note im not even sure thats the case for 1 DK) But that dmg mitigation is so spread out and non noticable while AMS use is clearly seen by animation alone and ppl know what it does.
This is the main problem with fire and forget buffs, if you dont even notice they are there, are they really that helpfull?
Spellwarding is huge actualy, people used to cheese mechanics by having prot pala, now you only need ret. And lets be honest 80%+ boss special abbilities are magic dmg anyways so BOP is pretty much useless.
Do not know how you can get excited about the new talent trees, most of the stuff you have now baseline you need to spec for and you can’t reach what you have rigth now(aka 3 of the 4 final talents). Of course I will wait till the release and after some real feedback, but so far I see it even worse than past expansion, and have to say, I do not really enjoy my ret since wotlk. The holy power system was a total disgrace making us rogues with holy combo points.
From what I’ve heard, many “baseline” abilities on SL are going for talents. However, not only are these very easy to pick up, people are getting excited about their upgrades! The Concecration gameplay for PVE; Exorcism back; Long Arm of the Law, etc. etc.
Personally, having played almost all expansions with a Ret Pally, I am really enjoying this new talent tree, and am seriously hopeful towards the future!
I really wonder what the dmg tuning will end up with for Consecration as they really go heavy into that one spell, remember exorcism is part of the Consecration build, but doesnt give holy power… Cons does.
It better be really good, otherwise its just 10 dead talents.
And for the ppl complaining about baseline talents being points needed to be used, yhea this was always gonna be the case, its the case on retail even now when lvling, its exactly the same!
But ppl seem to forget we are being able to get what… 3 legendary effects and 2 set bonuses at the same time now as a standard.
The main thing i want changes to is the 4 points into steed to get a lesser version of what we have now, thats far to many points for far to little!