Ret: Primary Problems with Build 12803

#0 - Aug. 23, 2010, 6:17 a.m.

Just trying to put together a general outline of the biggest problems currently plaguing build 12803 for Retribution. If I miss anything please bring it up so that it can be focused upon with greater detail.

1. Word of Glory- With the loss of Sacred Shield to Ret as well as instant heal procs from AoW, the spec's healing potential in combat is almost non-existant, and WoG is not a viable solution to this problem.

As a instant heal, WoG heals for a very minute amount relative to the health pools we will have in Cata while essentially destroying DPS potential to use. GC mentioned that we should function like Arms Warriors but with less mobility and greater healing, but Ret healing potential is currently so bad even Arms Warriors have better combat healing.

The problem is WoG heals for far too little for too great a cost, hence why Ret Paladins will amost never use it. Making a sacrifice to heal in combat is acceptable, but the sacrifice should be worth the cost, and currently it is not worth it. If we are supposed to have better healing than Arms Warriors, then WoG needs to either be worked to function properly with Retribution at a balanced cost cost to make it worthwhile, or else implement some form of combat healing that is built to work with the mechanics of the spec in mind.

2. Group Healing Emphasis: It seems that we are still being worked around healing others in group settings as a DPS, which makes no sense since it ties directly into the defensive support concept that was abandoned for a reason: it didn't work.

Now obviously, there is nothing wrong with tossing a heal to help save a teammate every now and again, but this role should not be emphasized via talents for a DPS spec. Talents like Selfless Healer and Eternal Glory do not belong in Retribution for the simple fact that healing specs will take care of dedicated healing, and our tree should be focused on how we can support our team offensively rather than defensively.

3. Lack of Hard Choices in PvP Talents: As Hofflerand pointed out, there seem to be too few hard PvP choices for us since so many focus on Seal damage even though it is has been heavily reduced and so far does not affect SoJ which deals no extra damage, so many can be bypassed.

These are the some of the major problems so far. Let me know if I missed any!

Moving on to the quality of life and efficiency problems:

-Art of War: This talent feels very clunky and wasteful right now, with the proc being useless as long as Exorcism is on CD. I feel that Exorcism is not so overpowering with the massive health pool increases in Cata that it cannot simply be made instant cast and the ability reworked to make one or more of our abilities more effiicient in other areas. There is no skill involved with waiting for something to come off CD when the proc will always be up.

-Seal of Justice: The effect of this ability is extremely lackluster, and would only be moderately effective against certain classes in very specific situations. With it dealing no extra damage, Seal talents will not effect it either.

Considering that staying in melee range is still a noticeable problem for Retribution, we feel the effect from SoJ should be more powerful in terms of utility, whether by actually snaring our opponents to a much slower movement speed , dazing them, or something with greater utility that will make it worthwhile to use over a damage Seal. Requiring melee range and weaker damage/Judgements to simply slow someone to 100% movement for a few scant seconds is extremely weak.

-Pursuit of Justice: Investing 2 points simply to run 15% faster seems like too little, and we feel like the talent could be added onto so that it is more worth the expenditure in terms of utility.

-Repentance: With CC taking a greater role in both PvP and PvE, we feel that Repentance is long overdue for a buff. With only a 6 sec PvP duration that is broken upon any damage with a long 1 min CD, it is rather weak when compared to equivalent CC abilities of other classes. Perhaps lowering the CD to a more manageable degree and/or increasing the PvP duration?

Overall, the Ret tree is looking a bit better, but certain aspects need to be corrected before they become bigger problems. Some work on them plus a few tweaks for quality of life and efficiency and we will just about be set.

Ghostcrawler

#54 - Aug. 24, 2010, 3:12 a.m.

Q u o t e:
On a related subject, Pursuit of Justice is pretty under budget and Eye for an Eye is pretty risky to take, considering it could perhaps break CC on the target.

Eye for an Eye will only reflect direct damage spells, not dots.

Ghostcrawler

#62 - Aug. 24, 2010, 3:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:
It is something that really needs work on because at the moment as long as you have a single Holy Power and an open GCD you will TV instead of only wanting to TV at 3 which just seems odd to me.

This would be a pretty big dps loss under most circumstances. A 3 charge Templar's Verdict hits so much stronger than a 1 charge, that it's not worth it using Templar's Verdict to fill holes.

Q u o t e:
This has pretty much been my complaint from the start. Our rotation is one part Rogue, one part feral, one part empty space, and one part mashing buttons.

It doesnt feel cohesive, it doesnt feel fluid, it has no rhythm

This specific feedback is a tricky thing to handle because a lot of Ret paladins are used to mashing buttons every GCD, and any time they aren't in that state they are going to feel a lack of "rhythm" (as you put it). Yet if you look at rogues and Feral druids, they can't hit a button every GCD because they don't always have the energy to do so.

We don't want classes / specs to use every GCD. We don't think that's good for the game, as I've mentioned before. (Casters do their waiting while casting rather than in between abilities.) The trick is to fill "enough" holes with something. For some players, especially some Ret players, that "enough" is going to feel weird for them unless it means every single hole. That's not what we're going for though. Wasting every other GCD is too extreme and isn't what we're going for either.

Q u o t e:
Yeah just to clarify though, I think most Rets understand that they are a hybrid and like GC said like an arms warrior but with no MS and better healing. However, the majority of complaints are coming from the "defensive dps" model and not necessarily just being defensive. We don't want and don't need to be offhealers or defensive utility providers, that is what we were and that is what GC has said multiple times was NOT effective.

I usually reget getting into the "what is my role supposed to be?" discussions because players then feel like they're supposed to use that as a constitution to interpret whether their class is performing correctly or not. Let us worry about that. If Word of Glory is so weak that you'd never consider using it, then that's good feedback. If it needs to heal for 50K before you'd ever consider using it, then that's good feedback too (because it either means we're barking up the wrong tree, or you personally aren't the correct audience for that talent). The fact that you have talents that affect a heal should be ample evidence that we want you to situationally cast it. The fact that you have only a couple of talents (and one really aimed at Holy sub-speccing) should suggest that we want to keep it situational.

Q u o t e:
GC do you have any planed changes for AoW? what do you think of the suggestion to make it effect hammer of wrath instead? i thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Hammer of Wrath hits too hard to be a rotational ability. We'd have to make the proc really rare or nerf the Hammer of Wrath damage. You might notice we dropped Execute from the Arms warrior rotation for the same reason -- it actually neutered Execute rather than making it a fun ability.

Q u o t e:
Could you please address any of the many greater concerns outlined in the OP instead of a tertiary flavour talent please?

I address what I want to address. The reason is because players will never agree on what the right thing is for us to address, nor do we want to turn it into a shouting match. You're better off giving us feedback and letting us answer when we think it's appropriate rather than demanding answers for specific issues.

Q u o t e:
Still wish it would get the thorn treatment, sure it would be a little homogenization but I don't think thorns returns damage equal to a percent of the damage done.

We want the talent (Eye for an Eye) to be situational or at least subjective and not a no-brainer. As an active ability, every paladin would feel compelled to take it, which then gives you fewer points to spend elsewhere.

Ghostcrawler

#65 - Aug. 24, 2010, 4:05 a.m.

Talents like Eye for an Eye, Selfless Healer and Acts of Sacrifice are designed to be choices. No half-decent paladin is going to skip over a major talent like Sanctified Wrath. But we are trying to design the trees so not every talent is Sanctified Wrath. If part of what attracted you to the paladin class was being able to occasionally throw out a heal to save your friends in a 5-player dungeon, then Selfless Healer might be attractive. If you like having lots of utility in PvP, then Acts of Sacrifice might be a better choice.

It's okay -- intended even -- that some of you would skip over these talents. It's only a problem if everyone does so. We imagine a cookie cutter Ret build would tell you to absolutely take Sanctified Wrath and Zealotry, but to spend a few points where you want.

Ghostcrawler

#87 - Aug. 24, 2010, 5:24 a.m.

Q u o t e:
this is how i feel. Its not that the talents can not be useful, they just pale in comparison to the fun talents of other trees and classes. When i look at a tree like holy priest or any of the mage trees im like holy crap i hope ret gets some more depth like that. i just dont think ret is there yet.

I read a ton of forum posts and I'm pretty confident in saying *every* class says this. :)

Ghostcrawler

#90 - Aug. 24, 2010, 5:33 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Acts of Sacrifice just seems lackluster in a tree that isn't suppose to worry about mana.

That's not entirely the case. Ret is designed to be able to hit basic abilities with enough mana. You don't have infinite mana. You'll find that casting heals other than WoG will be really difficult and Consecrate is probably not going to happen unless you situationally find yourself with a lot of mana. In that environment, being able to do something other than dps might be attractive. I think it gets way overplayed on the forums, but it's often nice to offer something other than "I bring damage!" to a group, because everyone brings damage.

Q u o t e:
With regards to Seals, I agree with the general sentiment that it really isn't much of a choice between Seal of Truth and any other Seal right now; even in PvP, you lose such a huge amount of damage by using Seal of Justice that it's just not even a choice. Either Seal of Justice needs to be more effective at slowing targets, or Seal of Truth needs to be less powerful so the choice is more reasonable.

We're going to add a little bit of damage to Justice just because there are several talents that improve Seals in the trees and we don't want those to be completely unattractive to a PvP Retribution paladin. I think it's far too early however to be able to place judgement [sic] calls on whether damage or the movement limitation of Justice is the obvious choice. You can't do much damage if you can't get to melee and typically autoattack-based damage isn't nearly as valuable in PvP.

Q u o t e:
I'm sorry...but acts of sacrifice are probably my favorite situational talents, as they are helpful in heroics to alleviate tank damage with sac, and hof 5 seconds less is too good NOT to take. Reducing mana cost is just icing on cake. It will probably be in my pve and pvp builds, but if WoG doesn't heal for a decent amount, I doubt many will take selfless healer at all.

That's good. Now if we can just get to the point where some (not all) paladins say that they like the hybridy feel of Selfless Healer, then we're all set.

Ghostcrawler

#249 - Aug. 25, 2010, 6:07 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Regarding WoG, you said it is intended to be situational among other things. If so, do the developers still think the almost non-existant state of Ret combat healing is currently acceptable?

Yes. Many of the problems we've had with Ret are of the "one man army" category, where a paladin can do a lot of damage, then go defensive and heal themselves up. We love the kit of the paladin who can heal as well as do damage, but it needs to be tightly controlled. Word of Glory gives us that control. We have the room to make the spell really powerful because we know its on a tight cooldown and you sacrifice dps to use it. We can't do that today with say Flash of Light, because once you can cast one strong FoL, you can cast a bunch of them until you go OOM (at which point you Judge or Divine Plea, and you're going again). Similarly, we can make Selfless Healer nearly overpowered because you can't use it on yourself and because even with it you're not going to out compete a Holy paladin in healing. If you can occasionally contribute to group healing in tight spots, then that's great. That's some utility you can provide. (Note: Don't oversell this as "I'll get brought to raids because of my healing.")

Q u o t e:
Less grating, but probably more important, Divine Purpose's rng on Holy Power generation could seriously mess with sustaining a rotation. A protracted dry spell will leave you out of usable spells for significant periods. I'm sure this will all balance out over the course of a standing fight but it will still be annoying and inconvenient.

That's the wrong view to take though. The equivalent would be "I'm balanced around getting a crit every swing, so when that doesn't happen, RNG screws me." You get a Templar's Verdict every 3 Crusader Strikes. Sometimes you get lucky and need fewer. You of course need to pay attention for when that happens and be able to react to it and alter your immediate plans. That right there is the element we think is most missing from today's Ret paladin.

Q u o t e:
I don't have anything really useful to add, but I'm glad that someone at Blizzard understands that the word "judgment" is spelled incorrectly in-game.

I've been tempted to change it soooo many times. :)

Q u o t e:
The amount it heals is most definitely balanced around how good it will be for Holy.

Those numbers don't have to be the same though. The new talent tree design affords us a lot more flexibility in that regard. Part of the reason Word of Glory is so useful to Holy is because it costs no mana. Ret doesn't really care about mana, because it comes and goes easily, but a Ret generally won't be able to sit there and queue up several Holy Lights in a row. They will be able to sometimes use a Word of Glory though.