With a hotfix that will be deployed to Live environments shortly, we are making the following adjustments to Retribution Paladins:
Damage
Retribution Paladins have been overperforming in terms of their damage output, so we’re making some adjustments here to bring them more in line with our intentions.
All damage reduced by 3%.
Instrument of Retribution duration reduced to 9 seconds (was 12 seconds).
In addition to this we have a hotfix coming at a later date related to Execution Sentence and its unintended interactions with various damage boosts.
Defenses
One of our major goals with the rework of Retribution Paladin was to give them a significant boost to their survivability, as this was an area where they were previously underperforming. We overshot the mark here and Retribution Paladins are proving to be more durable than we intended. As such, we are making some defensive reductions to bring them more in line with our intentions.
Fading Light - Blessing of Dusk causes your Holy Power generating abilities to also grant an absorb shield for 3% of damage or healing dealt (was 10%).
Aegis of Protection increases the value of Shield of Vengeance by 10% (was 20%).
Shield of Vengeance duration reduced to 10 seconds (was 15 seconds).
Lightforged Blessing now heals you and your party for 2% of maximum health (was 3%).
I can’t wait to see r/worldofpvp turn this into memes and rage threads.
Jokes aside, my biggest concern isn’t Retribution.
The biggest issue I have right now is this datamined PvP talent for rogues: Cloak of Shadows now also removes harmful physical effects and increases dodge chance by 100%
Do you sincerely think that the most overperforming PvP class since Vanilla really needs this?
Who writes this way? It reeks of arrogance. “more in line with peer classes” would be a better way to say it. But, “in line with your intentions”? You mean you have no idea what will happen? You just “intent”? And then hope for the best?
Welp ret got to be viable for 2 weeks and it already feels barely viable going against demo locks, bm hunters, arms war and frost mage. Lock and arms already do more self-healing so I don’t know where this supposed tankiness comes from when flash heal heals 10% hp. Back to prot then.
Paladins are protectors of the light. Their main function is to aid team members by defensive means (like dispels, offheals, protections from status effects, etc.) and, in the case of Retribution, deal melee damage.
Their role is not doing massive AoE CC, going speedy gonzales on a steed extremely frequently, attacking from 20 yard range, and so on.
The problem with Retribution Paladins is that they’ve gone outside their lane. They’re doing a lot of things that Retribution Paladins should not be doing. If you stop them doing that you can have a fun and unique spec that doesn’t displace everybody else.
What you quoted would not do that, unless you only think of the rework as “an unreasonably massive buff”. The main outcome of the rework is higher baseline damage and more frequent cooldown uptimes.
I don’t agree with what you quoted though. I think there’s a better way.
I didn’t say without steed. I just think 1 charge does it.
But I think you could - and if nothing else you could certainly enable a warrior or death knight or some other class to have an easy time getting at us. You have 18 seconds of total immunity to all magic, a ranged stun, I think you should have a slow or at least a movement speed cap, freedoms, and I think having some dispels for yourself is a good idea as well.
It’s all about the means and the methods for me, not whether you can touch Frost Mages.
I’m just looking at Paladin historically and asking:
What is this class?
Why was it included?
What was it designed to be good at?
What was it designed to be bad at?
That’s it. And you’re out of your line - you’re doing all sorts of things that other classes were designed to do and you’re displacing them and making the game no fun because they have nothing of value to bring. “Just bring another ret”.
Will have to see how this looks but i have massive questions about this.
Not surprised about this at all over buffing and then massive nerfs to the ground on ret is the common way of swings to go.
Fading light at 3% on Holy power GENERATORS means it is not going to be worth taking for the dps loss it is to take, a reduction in the Max shield it could bring would have been better in my opinion.
SoV lasting less time whatever it is gone inside of 5 if used for damage reduction for big hits anyway.
Lightforged Blessing at 2% at a 10yard range ok but why are you NOT nerfing the Natures vigils of the world that has been OP off healing for a LONG time now?
Will have to see how this actually effect the class but not surprised a knee jerk motion is happening as always with ret paladin Having Ret in the Meta is just not something that is ever going to happen it seems like.
Nobody minds having rets in the meta. They just can’t be the meta entirely. There’s rets in every single lobby I play in Solo Shuffle, and I’m not even that high, and as you climb it gets worse and worse. I’ve seen streamers fight ret paladins in almost every game for hours on end - and everything rets counter or displace just leaves the game.
Retribution paladins are so strong they even changed the healer class balance as well to favour classes that are good with ret paladins and warriors (which are their side kicks and also need a thorough looking at)
Yes it’s really stupid how they keep gutting talents making them unviable and forcing us to switch to something else like they’ve done to almost all our pvp talents. They may as well just prune the talents from the game and replace it with something worth using.
You sure? because people Whine like babies every time they potentially could maybe be there.
Ah i am talking PVE not pvp ret has not been in the PVE meta for expansions and NEVER in M+
It seems it is impossible to make ret decent in Pve and decent in PVP without making them OP in PVP.
They did that for the last decade in WoW, it never felt so much fun as it is now.
Just as a reminder.
Idk, I think that is exactly what a Paladin should do compared to “I yeet into enemies”-Warrior with Beyblade skill and group fear shouts or “I strangle enemies, summon entire minion armies, reverse a lot of damage” Death Knight, etc.
Sounds fair to me that we can finally use the Light more offensively unlike so passively before. Before the rework, Paladins felt gameplay-wise too close to the original Warcraft 1 lore, where they are just Knight Priests with very little usage of the Light in the books…
