Paladin ret talent overhaul

[Geojak]

I found the proposed paladin changes bring many good ideas, but they won't help ret paladisn enoguh.

Here are some suggestion I would like to see based on top of the current 1.12.1 talent tress with holy strike we currently play with.

I thought of these for a long time after reading many discord discussion. This is my approach on the topic, maybe it can inspire some ideas for the fut8ure.

1. Make seal of crusader usefull
New baseline additional effect. Seal of crusader hits one addition target for 25% weapon dmasge as holy damage,similiar to sweeping strike. Can proc stuff on the secondaey target, but can't crit. This is like SoR.

Improved crusader talent new additional effect
Increase the holy dmasge on the second target by additonal 10/20/30%.

It will deal 55% holy dmasge with 3/3 in that rarely used talent.

2. Make sanc holy damage aura generally usefull instead of situational.
New effect: increases all dmasge by all party members by 5% and holy damage by an additional 5% (total 10% more dmasge on holy damage stays same)

3. Make the last ret talent usefull and exocism a part of ret rotation not just in naxx.
Additional to granting access to repetnace the talent gives the following effect:
Reduce cooldwon, manacost and damage of exocism by 50%. Allows the spell to be used against all targets. The damage against undead and demons stays unchanged.

Its a shame that many rets skip their 31 talent completely at the moment.

4. Make ret scale with paladin gear with more focus on spellpower and int and not second grade warriors

Vindication new additional passive effect. 33/66/100% of your spell power gives you additional attackpower

5. Replace 2h specc with the following talent
Receive an additional 33/66/100% of your spell critical chance from your intelligence as bonus meele ciritcsl chance

6. Make pursuit of justice not obsolete with riding gear and boots speed enchantment

New additions affect: refibd 30/60% of spell and abilities mana cost back on miss and resists.

Note that warriors and druids have a Similiar mechanic already for rage

7. Rework SoC to give ret the mana sustain he needs
Additional new effect.
Receive on procc, 3/6/9/12/15% of holy damage dealt as mana
And judgement of command: all party members in a 20 range receive 3/6/9/12/15% of the damage caused as mana.
Rank 1 is 3%, rank 5 is 15%. This is to stop paladins using rank one Soc all the time since the proc dmasge is always fixed at 70%

[Redmagejoe]

I'd argue the only thing ret ever really needed in vanilla to make its 31 point talent worthwhile is to make it only last 1-2 seconds, but have a 10 second cooldown, that it could be used to effectively give that niche benefit from Judgement of Command a core part of the ret playstyle.

Frankly if you could guarantee a stun-incapacitate every time Judgement is off cooldown, but that lasts almost no time, it could actually be pretty meaningful. Or if the CC aspect of it is somehow appealing and people don't want it changed, leave Repentance as it is but add some sort of low cooldown "mark" that gives the same bonus damage effect to Judgement of Command. That way you could utilize it every time Judgement is off cooldown and noticeably increase the damage output of Ret Paladins.

[Radtradcat]

It's such a shame to see that after trying to buff the classes that were meme spec's and had unfinished designs that Ret somehow missed out on enough love!

The demand for this spec is so huge and the players that would flock to this server if only Ret was sufficiently buffed are numerous.

Turtle wow I appeal to you to make Ret's great! Really great, you know, 'arbiter's of truth and justice, of holy wrath and sweet sweet vengeance' great!

It's what first drew me to this project, the thought that you might have finally fixed Ret and I could have what classic Wow didn't quite give me. But alas I read in other posts about needing to be 'educated' about what a support class should be.... People who roll Ret want to kick ass not be re-programmed to want to suck!

I really don't know what the problem is, just buff it and tinker with it until it's competitive with other desirable DPS spec's. Am I missing something?

[Phoenixphire]

I think people always go about buffing ret wrong and I personally believe they did a decent job with the class changes but I would like to see more done.

What is wrong with ret:

Poor scaling
Mana hungry
Poor dmg
Not really that rewarding to play in a group setting

What most vanilla ret players DON'T want when buffing ret (IMO):

Warrior-lite
Just making it TBC ret for the most part

I posted my thoughts in a reply to the general class changes post a while ago but I will sum them up here because I think a lot of ret players need to hear this. Making ret viable is not an easy fix, it is not one or two easy changes away from being perfect. We are not warriors. We will never be top dps and honestly shouldn't in vanilla. If we want to be a more viable class and not break the original design paladins seemed to have had we have two paths.

Path 1: (Spell damage melee fighter) In this path first thing needed is to fix Ret's scaling, If you aren't gonna make them a pure support class they need to deal more dmg, period. Kinda like what you have said in your post, more of a focus on holy dmg and spell dmg. Make paladins less reliant on physical dmg and more reliant on holy and spell dmg. Maybe a new holy dmg ability to go along with our new stacking holy dmg increases. No matter what path paladins go down we need better mana sustain. Balance druids got a flat 20% mana cost decrease to their abilities in form to fix this issue, we need something similar.

Path 2: (Support melee fighter) This is my personal preferred solution, but either I think work. They moved slightly towards this path by giving us kings and sanctified command which I think are awesome changes, I am very happy with them. But to make it a truly viable and more rewarding class to play they need more support abilities. Some examples could be.... A new melee attack that gives a benefit to your party based on your current seal, targeted short duration (10-30s) buffs the ret can use during combat making them a true support fighter, or possibly even new unique auras that will provide a more noticeable buff to a larger range of different classes. Again insert rant about our mana issues here, no changes will truly buff ret without addressing our mana issues, the more buttons you add, the worse they will get.


I really appreciate your post as I love people giving ideas on how to bring one of my favorite specs up to speed. I like a lot of your ideas and I would love to hear more. I believe Turtle Wow is and will be the top place for vanilla to stay alive and thrive. And a large part of keeping vanilla alive will be making sure the classes and specs feel viable and rewarding to play while still staying within the design frame of vanilla wow. I hope we get an awesome discussion going about the spec in this thread and would love to hear other's ideas on the topic as well. Once again, all of this is just my opinion, I am but one player of the spec and class.

Much love to the Turtle Wow team and all the effort they put in.

[Geojak]

I appreciate your input, but what I would like more than general discussion is explicit suggestion to what exactly (tslent/spell) shoild be changed.

Like you propose make paladins spell meele. Then how? Usable exocism?

You say increase scaling? What talent wording you have in mind.

Personally I don't want to discuss if rets need a buff,instesd let's discuss how exactly

[Radtradcat]

That's a well thought out post and I appreciate your response.

As you have laid it out I think that Path 1 will be the clear crowd pleaser and my personal choice.

I remember following Drakova and other Paladin's as they tried to make Spelladin viable/decent

Unfortunately it never quite made it in PvE but it came close.

Perhaps it could give the Dev's some inspiration as it the idea just needs a little help to be really strong.

Basically you stack spell power use a really fast one hander and try to proc things with a flat proc rate.

It went a little something like this:

[Xiongbros]

Easiest solutions to Ret's issues are the follow:

For Talents

• Crusader Strike should be a talent in Row 5: doing 50-75% weapon dmg and buff the pally stacking 5 times (increase Crit by 1%,2%,3%,4%,5%) and using Holy Strike while the buff is active will restore mana base on the number of buff stacks (2%,4%,6%,8%,10% base mana within 10 secs)

This will make it so Seal of the Crusader and Crusader strike doesn't do the same thing.

• Add an additional effect to 2h Specialization: when equipping 2h weapon, the spell power is increased by 5%/10%/15%

• Benediction: also reduce the mana cost of Crusader Strike

• Heart of the Crusader also increases Crusader's Strike's damage.

Move repentance elsewhere and give ret a stance ability.

• Avenging Crusader: Increase all dmg by 5% and reduce all healing done by 50%. Judgment imminently granting 20% base mana

Ability Change

• Judgment of the Crusader: Instead of a debuff, should just buff the paladin increasing holy dmg done for 10 sec.

[Kwayver]

There are many rebuttals to almost all suggestions I and others have made to improve the state of ret paladins on twow. Some of them are unfair however others do make good points.

Changes and suggestions all need to consider the following:

- ret burst in PvP is already quite good with seal of command in its current form. Any changes or additions to rotations and buffs have to consider the fact that if ret acquired any more burst than they presently have PvP will become unfair in their favour, and the devs will never go for it.

- twow devs have a philosophy in place for ret paladins which most of the community agree with: they are a support melee class which does damage. Any debate or idea around trading some or all support for damage doesn't fit the philosophy and moves them closer to warrior-lite.

- any shift towards melee/physical focused damage risks paladins competing for gear with warriors. Even though I personally have no problem with such competition the majority of the community will not go for it.

- each ability and even choice of gear should have purpose. What I mean is "ret paladins wear SP plate and hold a big slow 2h weapon and fish for procs"... But why? The best SP gear is usually cloth, and fishing for weapon procs would be better served by a fast 1h weapon. The main reason rets fish for procs is because seal of righteousness gives them 2 chances per swing to proc on-hit effects. This whole philosophy appears to be responsible for the current design of crusader strike. Is this the preferred play style for rets? Does this set them apart from other classes?

- ret is dependant on windfury totem to be viable in raid. Others may find this acceptable, personally I find being dependent on a single ability from another class which makes all other temporary weapon enchants obsolete stupid and unbalanced class design.

-----

Considering the above I believe the following suggestions will make ret playstyle more fun for the player, make ret more valuable to a raid, and won't risk an imbalance from the class or impact other classes unfairly:

Seal of Command is very iconic but needs a change. It currently under performs by comparison to seal of righteousness in raid settings, but could be useful in other settings. Rather than redesigning it to take the place of SoR it should be situational much like the rest of rets tool kit.
[Seal of Command] - your weapon swings hit your current target for 30% weapon damage (+23% SP scaling) and all targets within 10 yards of your target for half this damage as holy damage. Unleashing this seal gives the Paladin +20% melee haste for the next 2 weapon swings
(By lowering the overall single target damage of SoC we open up the class to other design changes without breaking PvP, and keep SoR as the preferred single target/raid seal. Sanctified command could remain as it is. Ranks should increase the attack speed award by something like 10/12/14/16/18/20% intervals)

Ret paladins need a reason to wield a 2h weapon and some value from AP, and they also have severe mana problems. They need a reliable solution, but not in such a way that allows holy paladins to abuse the mana regen or encourage ret to chase pure strength gear. This change would create a meaningful decision around how much AP your ret would actually need to sustain themselves.
[Two-hand weapon specialisation] - (in addition to its current effects) while using a 2 handed weapon the Paladin generates 2/4/6% of physical damage as mana.

The only situation I believe a ret Paladin should be competitive on dps meters is in Naxx, because this fits the philosophy and 'ashbringer' vibe most rets fantasize about. Exorcism (and somewhat holy wrath) are the gateway to this, although I also appreciate some would like to see it become part of the rotation, and I respect the concern others have about it providing too much burst. It's a tricky problem to solve, however I think the best approach to this isn't a permanent investment in the talent tree or the spell book, but rather a choice renamed by a different book: the Libram.
[Libram of the Dusk] - your exorcism can now be used on all targets, but damages the Paladin for 50% of damage caused.
[Libram of the Dawn] - reduces the cooldown of exorcism by 50% and reduces your healing by 50%
(Pick your Libram based on your situation)

The ret tree final row ability is certainly lackluster for raid scenarios. Repentance has many uses but personally i find myself using it as a gap closer most of the time in PvP. Perhaps it would be better suited elsewhere in the talent tree or made baseline, however if I were to suggest a more appealing final row talent to replace it entirely and see usefulness in both PvE and PvP I would suggest the following:
[Sanctified Ground] your consecration provides friendly units within its area +10% movement speed and +5% spell damage
(Main purpose here being to boost damage from other hybrids and rogue poisons, prevent causing warriors to become even more powerful than they already are, and providing a gap closer/escape for the Paladin in PvP)

Finally, I would like to address windfury. It wouldn't be fair to change a shamen ability just to fix a ret problem, so we should have alternatives to consider rather than defaulting to "plz put me in the melee grp with shammy plz"
[Sanctity Aura] increases group holy damage by 5% and sanctifies their melee weapons, giving attacks a chance to strike for additional holy damage. This attack can proc seals and on-hit effects
(By tieing this effect into an aura it provides versatile choice. Paladin wants WF instead of sanctified wep? Change aura. Other group members in raid want WF instead? Put the Paladin in another group. Reason for the damage nerf is to balance it with previously mentioned consecration talent idea. Essentially replaces WF with a seal-twist-of-command)

-----

If any of the numeric values seem overpowered or underpowered they can be tweaked to balance.

[Thormenius2004]

Remove Wbuffs and give " Memespecs " powerfull group wied auras to replace them , also enforce the hybridtax on warriors problem fixed