Be advised, this post contains quite a bit of salt and sarcasm. If you are a Blizzard developer reading this, please take my frustration with a grain of salt. But these thoughts need to be stated. So grab that hot cup o’ joe and sit down, cause this will be a long read.
Lets begin:
At this point, I’m starting to feel that someone in the Blizzard development team holds a grudge against paladins overall. And if that is not the case, then this can only be summed up as pure incompetence or sheer laziness.
Paladins have long waited for a firm place in modern content, especially Retribution paladins. Back in the day, at least we brought Blessing of Might, Kings and Wisdom to the party. There was also a brief but weird moment where our Retribution Aura actually was useful, boosting the entire groups damage when someone was hit hard. Pretty niche, but workable.
Now, we literally bring nothing of true value. Might, Kings, Wisdom, and Ret Aura are all gone. Our blessings are now very niche, as you never have to put Blessing of Protection on someone in a raid. And yet it still has a 5min cooldown. Blessing of Sacrifice has its place, but it can be a serious gamble to use it. So we are left with Blessing of Freedom, which is our only true utility spell that can affect others. No, I’m not gonna count a 10min cd Lay on Hands as “utility”. It’s a legacy gimmick spell and nothing more.
Come on, Blizzard. Even with the coming changes, nothing actually changes.
Lets run through the proposed new talents in the class tree and rate their value to us as paladins, and Retribution, more specifically:
Tier 1:
Lay on Hands - Still your good ol’ healing nuke gimmick spell. I feel the need to use it maybe once blue moon. If I have to use it, someone(possibly me) F’d up.
Auras of the Resolute - It’s auras. Yay. And only one of them will ever be used. And it obviously doesn’t stack. Where is Retribution Aura? Give us something that buffs the raids damage.
Hammer of Wrath - Ah, yes. The infamous swirly hammer of doom. Which nowadays hits like a wet noodle unless you run Blessing of An’she. Why is this not baseline?
Tier 2:
Cleanse Toxins - Why the heck is this still not an included spell? I see no valid reason for it being a talent you must pick.
Empyreal Ward - Maaaybe useful in PvP…? I see no reason to pick this is in any other situation.
Fist of Justice - Really Blizzard? It was one of the few good things paladins brought to Mythic+ and PvP. Give us the old version back, and make it a 1 point talent.
Repentance/Blinding Light - Neither of these are especially good in any content. Repentance has a cast time, need I say more? Make it instant. Blinding Light might as well be turned into an AoE interrupt at this point, as that is all its used for. Especially since Sun’s Avatar breaks it from 20 yards away.
Turn Evil - Was great. Back in WotLK… 14 years ago… Only used in PvP against Death Knights. Make it included in our baseline kit.
Tier 3:
A Just Reward - More or less useless due to the low scaling, even for Holy.
Afterimage/Healing Hands - I have never seen anyone play with Afterimage. Ever. Its just not a good talent. Could easily be built into baseline Word of Glory. Healing Hands is decent and now in a better place in the tree.
Divine Steed - Oh boy, the biggest offender in the book. Where to begin… This spell SHOULD NOT BE A TALENT, it should be baseline for all Paladins. Its our only mobility spell outside of a talented Blessing of Freedom(which you decided to make into a magic effect that people can dispel), its just not ok Blizzard. You then use it as an excuse to fill in the rest of our tree with a bunch of talents to improve it. There are 4 (5 if you count the Templar’s Unrelenting Charger!) talents in our tree to improve it. Yet even at its max potential, its still much worse than Death Knight’s Death Charge. And they also have Death Grip and Wraith Walk. Get your sh*t together, Blizzard. Stop inventing ways to punish people for playing a Paladin. Remove this and all of its supporting talents and put it in our spell book with all combined effects built in. Getting real sick of this. While you’re at it, give us back Speed of Light.
Light’s Countenance - Pretty pointless for anything but PvP and some niche M+ situations. The cooldown of Blinding Light is already too long for those 15sec to have any major impact on gameplay.
Greater Judgement - Why is this even here? Just make it baseline for all specs and remove it from the tree.
Wrench Evil/Stand Against Evil - Rework Turn Evil to alway be instant, and then make these two choice nodes do the following: Wrench Evil now hits 5 targets in a 30-yard cone in front of you/Stand Against Evil is now and AoE and hits all valid targets around you within 8 yards. Its not great, but still better than what you came up with.
Tier 4:
Holy Reprieve - Just remove Forbearance altogether from the game already. It has no place in modern WoW. Stop handicapping us.
Cavalier - Should be built-in into Divine Steed. Remove.
Divine Spurs - Remove the 40% duration reduction. STOP. INVENTING. HANDICAPS.
Steed of Liberty/Blessing of Freedom - First choice can remain as a talent, that’s fine. But for the love of all that is Holy, make Blessing of Freedom a baseline spell! Enough is enough.
Rebuke - While I hate that you keep forcing important spells into the talent tree, Rebuke has no real use in raids for the most part. Yet it is used in nearly all specs currently, because you never know when you might need it. Make it baseline, or put it where Hammer of Wrath is today and put Hammer as a baseline spell instead.
Tier 5:
Obduracy - Feels very bland and does not really have any major effect. Maybe change it into a choice for 2% damage/versatility? I see lots of classes that get this.
Divine Toll - I still argue that this is the single most boring spell that was brought over from Shadowlands. Good, but boring. Whatever happened to Ashen Hallow and Vanquisher’s Hammer? Their effects felt far more interesting and even had better visuals. While the secondary Vanquisher effect got implemented into our retri tree, we are still missing the upgraded, secondary effects of these ones.
Unbound Freedom - I don’t mind this as a talent. But if you insist on having BoF being a magic effect, this talent should also prevent dispels.
Sanctified Plates - Should not be a talent, it should be baseline passive. But if it must be, then it should be a 1 point talent high in the tree and close to the middle. Currently we are forced to take this for survival. Fix.
Punishment - Scrap this and give us back our increased auto attack/Crusader Strike/Rebuke range increase. Why did you remove that in the first place, and who the heck designed this trash?
Tier 6:
Divine Reach - Next to useless with our current auras. Maybe Holy can get some use out of it, I dunno. Design something better or replace it.
Blessing of Sacrifice - Still don’t like that this is not baseline, but whatever.
Divine Resonance/Quickened Invocation - Should not be a choice node due to how poorly these measure up to each other. Nor should it really be a talent as without Divine Resonance, Divine Toll has no meaning or impact. Redesign these choices and implement Divine Resonance into Divine Toll as baseline.
Blessing of Protection - Same as with Sacrifice.
Consecrated Ground - Finally moved away from the Retri tree, yet still useless in all but PvP. Consecration is our least impactful spell, even in AoE situations. You seriously need to buff it by 50-100% or more for this talent to be even remotely useful.
Tier 7:
Holy Aegis - Lets be honest, no one takes this for the armor. Not even Prot. 4% crit is always welcome. Redesign idea: Since you removed so much damage talents, make this talent provide 4% crit and 4% haste. You seriously hamstrung our dps in all situations when you decided to remove Seal of Alacrity. Fix it.
Sacrifice of the Just/Recompense - First one I can understand. Cooldown is cooldown. Second one has always baffled me, as I rarely see any impact from using it in raids or m+. It just doesn’t feel good to use it.
Sacred Strength/Divine Purpose - Oh god, this. This shouldn’t even be a thing. Sacred Strength’s damage buff to our finishers should be baseline and it should be at least 10%, because our Templar’s Verdict and Divine Storm are already extremely anemic due to you nerfing them right out of the gate when we went into War Within. Only reason they come out on top of our dps lists is because we are forced into a sweatlord key-spamming gameplay every time we use any cooldown. We went from being hard hitting lightbringers in plate to a combination of combat rogues/enhancement shamans, basically. Get your act together and give us back that “oh sh*t”-factor when we decide to burst. Divine Purpose is nice, but it should not be on a choice node with this trash, and it should be bumped up to 15%/15%.
Improved Blessing of Protection - Cooldown is cooldown, but BoP is not strong enough to warrant a 5 minute(!) base cooldown. Bring it down to 3 minutes baseline.
Unbreakable Spirit - Bump this up to 40%, because currently our survival completely sucks. You have even admitted as much yourselves.
Tier 8:
Lightforged Blessing - Still not strong enough to have any real impact in M+. Bring it up to 5%, then we can talk.
Lead the Charge - The only Divine Steed talent worthy of being an actual talent. The rest should be baseline and built into Steed. Again, fix this Blizz.
Worthy Sacrifice/Righteous Protection - I honestly have no real opinion on these, other than WS probably promoting bad gameplay and making mistakes.
Holy ritual - Not impactful or useful. Remove or redesign.
Blessed Calling - As long as it affects myself as well, then its an ok talent. Outside of that, trash. Missing connection to the talents below it. Fix this before patch.
Inspired Guard - Finally, an actual talent that promotes survival and good planning. More of this, Blizz.
Judgement of Light - 5x heals for 17.5% of spell power? Are you drunk, maybe high? A standard dps doing HC content has 5-5,5 MILLION hp. 17,5% of a Retri’s spell power is like 5-10k. Redesign this to debuff the target with a 2-3% max hp heal on hit, then put a 2 sec internal cooldown on the proc and make it last for 10 seconds. This talent just shows me the devs utter disrespect for our class.
Tier 9:
Faith’s Armor - Who even uses this and why is it so deep into the tree?
Stoicism - Move to PvP talents or place much higher up in the tree. Does not belong here.
Seal of Might - Oh wow, an actual dps talent? Wait, we already had this one. Oh well. Nice to see it stay.
Seal of the Crusader - Oh boy, this one. You really missed the mark here. You removed roughly 3-5% of our total damage when you turned this into healing. And the healing is not even very good. Here’s how you can redesign it to make it more fun and useful:
“Your zealous attacks now burn your foes, causing your auto attacks to deal an additional [(30% of attack power(Prot/Retri)/spell power(Holy))] damage as Holy. This display of righteous fervor inspires nearby allies(you + 2-3 targets), causing them to be healed for 50%(priority on low health targets) of the combined/total damage dealt.”
See? It’s not that hard to design good talents that are still balanced and, most importantly, fun. This will then scale properly as people do more damage but also have more health. Start using % more effectively, lads and lasses.
Vengeful Wrath - Guys, come on. There are several issues with this talent: It should not be a 2 point talent, it should not increase execute window damage, and its in the wrong place in the tree. It feels like an afterthought. Redesign this to make it deal 25% increased damage at all times, or give it some other fun effect. Like I said before, it hits like a wet noodle outside of Blessing of An’she. We are not an execute class and have not been since Cataclysm.
Eye for an Eye - This is and have always been a PvP talent. Move it to the PvP talents or give it to Protection. Holy/Retri have 0 use for this in PvE.
Golden Path/Selfless Healer - Golden Path needs a serious buff to be useful. 5% of attack power is nothing, not a blip on our allies’ health. Make it 10-15% and it might see some real use. As for Selfless Healer, it does seem pretty useful. But not as Retri and not in PvE, due to us more or less being forced into the choice of Word of Glory heals with Light’s Celerity/Guided Prayer in the Retri tree. We have too poor survival to pick LC, and as such cannot really benefit from SH. Good idea, bad execution.
Tier 10:
Ok, so just a note before we start on the T10 talents. I can see potential here, but right now, these max level talents are some of the worst in the game. While I welcome the buff to Of Dusk and Dawn, its still a rather boring, uninspired talent. Some have interesting ideas behind them, but are just terrible in their current state.
Of Dusk and Dawn - Been with us for a while now. Saw some changes here and there but ultimately, even with the new 10% buff to the damage and healing of this talent, its not a very good design. Reason being that you (dev team) have turned paladins into a spam class. We do not have time to think about lining up a proc like this to deliver a big heal or finisher. While I understand the design behind it, it really doesn’t suit the class very well. Especially for Retribution. I cannot speak for Holy and Prot, as they have different play styles. But please go back and have a look at this.
NOTE: Please keep in mind though that if you redesign it, make it into something that will give Retribution the same damage boost overall. We cannot afford to lose more damage, which you seem to constantly forget.
Lightbearer - This is a neat concept that I have always liked, but I fear that in its current state, this will not play out the way you think it will. The extra healing will mostly be wasted unless turned into a shield. However, like with Seal of the Crusader, you could do something interesting here. Allow me to redesign it:
“10% of all healing done to you(including self heals) is spread to 4 nearby targets(15 yards), divided evenly among them. Any overhealing done to any target affected is instead turned into a reflective burning light, damaging nearby targets for 10% of the value healed.”
See? Best of both worlds. It helps the group and it helps our dps slightly. This way it feels far more impactful and fun, making it more fitting for a max level talent. As a nice bonus, it fits the paladin lore.
Light’s Revocation - I never liked this talent, ever since it was introduced -and then later removed- in an earlier expansion. Like I stated earlier, Forbearance should not be a thing in modern WoW. The game is far too fast paced for this, in all modes of content. I can see where your idea comes from, but this is really just a very weak PvP talent. You need to remove and/or redesign this completely. It should not be a max level talent.
Aaaaand we are finally done with the class tree. Please do comment with your own ideas about should be done to specific talents or just to the class overall. The more, the merrier!
Stay tuned, as I intend to go through the entire Retribution + Hero talents next. Just might need a little break. My fingers kinda hurt after this little endeavour.
Cheers!