Retribution Downtimes and Talents

#1 - June 7, 2018, 12:36 p.m.

Since Arms Warrior will get a Rage-talent „rework“ in a upcoming build, and Ret has a very similar issue with Holy Power generation, and how much it changes dependend on talent choices, i want to lobby for a change once again:

Issue:

Retribution downtimes currently on BfA are very dependend on talent choices, they range from ~4% up to 17% which is a massive difference to start with.
The main reason why this occurs is because +HoPo talents are too scattered. Basically T30 is ur main +HoPo generation Tier, but T60 also has 2 talent which provide HoPo and finally in T100 there is Divine Purpose which has a chance to make Spender free, effectively giving +3HoPo.
So in T60 Divine Judgment, which has zero rotational impact, competes with two +HoPo talents. While in T100, DP has a chance to give +3 HoPo for free, but Crusade and Inquisition provide Haste, and therefore dont lower ur rotational Downtimes.
This massive difference in downtimes is both noticeable ingame but also shows in early Sims:
https://i.imgur.com/85e7jTn.png

Suggestion for Solutions:

a.
The obviously easy solution would be to exchange DP and DJ, while slightly increasing baseline HoPo generation. But thematically both dont really fit into either tier. So this would just be an easy bandaid fix.

b.
- Change DJ to also have an impact on HP generation e.g.:
Each enemy hit by an ability that consumes Holy Power increases the damage of your next Judgment by ~10%, and reduces its CD by ~0,5sec stacking up to ~10 times.

- make DP baseline, or move DP to T30 and make BoW or HoW baseline, adjust numbers ofc.

- add a new 100 talent which could be Seraphim, or something which resembles old Seals, since there are quite some requests to do so, e.g:
Crusaders Strike or Auto Attacks apply a stacking DoT with X%dmg over ~Xsec max 3 stacks per target. For each stack u gain 2% Haste up to a maximum of 3 stacks.

This however would require new talents to be implemented which im not sure is possible since we are allready really late into Beta.

Conclusion

In my oppinion some downtime for Retribution is fine. But right now the difference in certain talent combinations is way too big. Especially if setups like BoW / DJ / Crus end up as ur best DPS combo, Min-Max player will sit at 17% downtime, which i personally think is unbearable.
So even if Solution a. would be a bandaid fix, i'd still prefer it over having talent setups with more then 10% downtimes.

So long

#23 - June 9, 2018, 12:47 a.m.

Hey all,

Since the first round of changes to Retribution early on in alpha, we've been letting the spec settle into a steady-state, but have been very much keeping it in mind. Like many have suggested, the spec is almost all the way there, but is missing a little bit baseline.

Blade of Wrath
Blade of Wrath's mechanic is becoming baseline, named Art of War: Your auto attacks have a chance to reset the cooldown of Blade of Justice. Any many correctly pointed out, this is a sort of unpredictability that the spec needed in its baseline rotation.

Blade of Wrath, the talent, will now increase the frequency of Art of War resets and cause its proc to also increase the damage of the next Blade of Justice by 25%. Numbers are pending tuning, but the gameplay is there.

Divine Purpose
Divine Purpose's proc chance has been reduced to 15% (down from 20%), but it now also increases the damage and healing of that free Holy Power spender by 20%.

The entire value of this talent was in the free Holy Power proc, which is a huge swing on button presses and pacing, but which neither of its talent match-ups provide. This change reduces that difference slightly and gives Divine Purpose a little more nuance to its gameplay – now you may consider saving or waiting for that proc to use on a different Holy Power spender from usual.

Thanks for the patience and continued feedback.