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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Light and How to Swing It: The Retribution solution
by Zach Yonzon 
May 21st 2009 at 4:00PM
Despite the statement that there'll be fewer changes to classes in the foreseeable future, Ghostcrawler did say "there will be some (changes)" in addition to "tweak(ing) numbers up and down as needed". So don't despair, Fury Warriors, you'll be swinging those two-handers once again in glory one of these days. I'm also dead certain that Paladin tweaks aren't quite done. For one thing, we know that Crusader Strike is in line for some coolification. Another is that Exorcism was quickly hotfixed not to work on player targets as precursor to what Ghostcrawler calls "a little more tweaking" to the class. So while I asked the community to share their thoughts on how to improve Retribution, it's taken me much, much longer to ruminate. Humor me for today as I go share my own thoughts on the matter.
First of all, I don't think the spec needs major changes. It has improved vastly since 3.0 and was fine tuned in 3.1. It plays nicely -- if a bit too simply -- and can dish out competitive damage in raids and in PvP. Its shortcomings, if any, as far as DPS output is concerned can easily be "tweaked" through numbers, and that's not what I'm interested in. Through my first weeks in Ulduar, I haven't put out enough consistent numbers for anything conclusive -- sometimes I'm right on top, and sometimes I drop down as far as 10th in a 25-man raid. More thoughts on Retribution in Ulduar in another column, but for now we'll take a look at what I think are the most glaring deficiencies of the spec.
Seal of Command
The Problem
Since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, Seal of Command has been something of a lame duck talent. Subject to repeated nerfs, the Seal was neutered to the point of being inferior to Seal of Blood in every respect including PvP. This isn't just a matter of numbers anymore but a question of mechanic. Seal of Blood provides the most consistent source of damage and crits for a considerable amount. Despite the potential for huge burst, Seal of Casino reintroduces the concept of RNG into PvP. Blizzard has methodically been weeding out RNG stuns from the game, and RNG burst damage isn't too different.
The bottom line is that Seal of Command is a talent that has outlived its usefulness. Aside from the numbers being significantly lower compared to Seal of Blood, its PPM-based proc is actually bad for the game. As much as PvP is about burst damage, it's about controlled burst and the bonus of an automatic crit on stunned targets isn't quite enough when everything else about the Seal is RNG. Right now, it's a waste of a talent point and not even PvP players -- whom the talent seems to be designed for -- pick it up. In fact, the only time it makes sense to pick up Seal of Command is while you're leveling as Ret... then you respec at Level 80 to put that talent point somewhere else.
The Crazy Idea
Seal of Blood/Seal of the Martyr is pretty much the only Seal a Retribution Paladin needs, so do the proper thing: remove Seal of Command from the game and make Seal of Blood trainable at Level 20. Making it trainable should solve the problem of Retribution leveling. It also teaches players to use the proper Seal considering Seal of Command isn't optimal for dungeons and raids, anyway. It makes absolutely no sense for players to level using one Seal and then adapt to the use of another Seal for the endgame.
Of course, this leaves us with a vacuum at the fabled 11-point spot.
Vindictive Command
Requires 10 points in Retribution
Instant, 2 minute cooldown
Seal of Blood has an additional 20% chance to critically strike against stunned or incapacitated targets. Unleashing Seal of Blood's energy will judge an opponent, and has a 100% chance to critically strike against stunned or incapacitated targets. Lasts 10 seconds.
This eliminates the complexity of having two different Seals for PvP and PvE. It provides a window of controlled burst for PvP while being a relative DPS boost in PvE. Stuns and incapacitate effects don't work on bosses, so it's still more of a PvP-oriented talent (as Seal of Command was) while providing raiders with an additional activated ability to make things interesting -- it actually encourages the use of Hammer of Justice or Repentance in PvE. The Seal bonus crit numbers may need some more fine tuning, but you get the idea. Let's take a look at a few more perceived holes next.
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Classes, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Improvidence May 22nd 2009 2:35AM
As I've raided at 80 with both feral cat and ret, I feel well suited to respond to this. There really is no comparison between the two. Ret is incredibly simple. When the buttons light up, press them. Sometimes more than one button will light up at the same time, but one of them is usually a better choice than the other, so press that. Sure, there are a lot of other abilities they can use. I love hand of freedom, hand of sacrifice, and hand of salvation for their raid utility, and do plenty of cleansing and passing out instant flashes of light. But you can still be a top tier DPSer and only just push the buttons as they light up.
Feral is all about keeping up a set of buffs and debuffs while managing combo points and energy. All of these buffs and debuffs should be up as close to 100% of the time as possible or you are suffering a massive loss to DPS. Savage roar fell off? Well, that's a 30% damage boost, so you'd better build up your CPs and get another one up. And keep the mangle debuff up, because that adds 20% damage to shred, rip, and rake. Oh, rip and rake need to stay up. Rake only has a nine second duration, so you'll be using that a lot, but don't waste a clearcast on rake because it's a waste. Clearcasts are only for shred. And rip is confusing, with its duration based on how many shreds you can get in before it runs out. Remember to throw in Tiger's Fury every 30 seconds and only to use berserk when you have close to full energy (unless you -really- need to break a fear). And there's no way to make a set rotation out of this, because with roughly a 50% crit rate when raid buffed, any attack is a tossup between one or two combo points, so you could have a surplus that you waste on ferocious bite or have a drought that makes one of your crucial buffs wear out. Complicated doesn't begin to describe it.
As my druid PvPs as resto, I should also mention that ret paladins are very bad against healers. I can sit there and cast heal after heal and there's nothing really they can do about it. I'm hoping they get some kind of change to the complexity of their rotation and that they have a better way to deal with spellcasters.
Korgull May 21st 2009 5:24PM
The article mentions Crusader Aura. It seems that everyone is a paladin expert nowadays - they see a Crusader Aura on and yell... "Turn off crusader aura you noob"... Many of them doesn't even know what the aura is for. They just know that is should not be on.
They usually yell it at preparation on BGs, specially Alterac Valley. That's annoying.
Jeff May 21st 2009 5:25PM
Some of your ideas are awesome. The cool-down that basically allows us to use Seal of Command's burst once every 2 minutes would solve our problem with controlled burst. Perhaps they could give us this at the expense of costing us a little bit more RNG so that people don't whine. And SoC should disappear as soon as possible.
I definitely agree that Aura's should be off the GCD. This has the added benefit of allowing us to make a macro that uses crusader aura when mounting. =)
Your idea for exorcism, if you want it to be usable for pvp, would be a bit OP in BG where people are too dumb to dispel, can't dispel, and don't have someone doing it for them. Right now ret isn't great in arenas, but since we are very good against undergeared people (e.g: BG players) who dont know how to play, lots of people whine about ret-- and it seems like Blizzard is increasingly listening to stupid QQ.
My idea for ret:
Basically, I don't want it to be too complicated, or to be proc-based, but I want there to be some situations where we mix up FCFS, which becomes a bit mind numbing.
My idea is that critical Judgments (or perhaps crusader strikes) have a chance to reset the CD on exorcism, which would then buff our next Divine Storm's damage by a significant amount so that we choose to prioritize it over crusader strike rather than just following our normal rotation.
This would give good paladins who pay attention a boost over facerollers, which is what they seem to be going for. We wouldn't be able to just follow the same rotation the entire fight-- without losing some DPS. Bad players would be penalized a bit.
Also, If exorcism misses, we wouldn't benefit from using DS over CS, so paladins who just got in the habit of using DS after exo would lose out on DPS too, thanks to exorcisms high miss rate. Skilled players would, once again, benefit from some DPS.
Its not too complicated, and mistakes made in terms of either not following the rotation adjustment, or in following it even when exo missed, would not be huge. It would just reward good players and punish facerollers.
Perhaps the buff granted by exo could only last, say, 4 seconds, when DS's CD is 10 seconds. This would require players to time exo useage when they will have DS coming off CD shortly (but also when it is best to use based on CDs).
Jibbly May 21st 2009 5:27PM
I think these are some amazingly insightful ideas for how to change Retribution. It is ridiculously easy to level as Ret, and with Exorcism now useable on any target, most non-elite enemies just go down quick. There's no challenge, no skill needed to play Ret. It's just no fun, at least to level. I think the biggest problem is Exorcism right now, if this ability could only be changed it could be the central attack of Paladins, Ret or otherwise, along with Judgement and Crusader Strike. I think if Blizzard put this list of changes to Ret today, I would be a very happy Blood Elf.
Just one change, though, which I don't think anyone would really notice, is I think the proposed Exorcism would work well, but it would be a Ret only ability, yet everyone could use it. What if you changed it to simply do all the damage on a target with a Judgement on them, and if that target happens to have the "Contrition" affect, it would consume that, and do that later affect of healing, mana regeneration or stun based on the Judgement on the target. So, this way, Exorcism would be a key ability to all Paladins, but Ret's ability gives it huge life. More over, I think to knock down the damage of Exorcism is a must, especially it being a ranged ability.
To address PVPer complaints, I think a lot of this "OP" talk is a little over exaggerating, but still a valid claim. I think what makes Ret Paladins particularly high amounts of damage, but I think it is balanced because Ret Paladins are fairly squishy. Yes, they wear plate, but Druids, Priests, Mages, Warlocks, Shaman, other Paladins, and Death Knights have a high amount of magic damage, which as we all know goes right through armor. Rogues can cripple you and get ride of your weapons, and Warriors have just as much armor as Paladins do. Retadins (If you pardon the crude vernacular) may have instant Flashes of Light, but even with high crit it doesn't heal that much without the Holy talent, which few Retadins don't seem to take because they prefer to go into Protection, and to try and cast a Holy Light in the middle of an Arena match with someone on you would never go off in time, if at all. Even more so, the Divine Shield second life isn't as bad as one would think. Often times, when a Retadin heals himself in the bubble, they use up most of their mana, and so don't have much left for anything.
The truth is that Retadins are a high bursting class in PVP, that if you can simply avoid or withstand that first onslaught, they can be easily killed. In my humble opinion, it's simply a matter of skill, no offense to those who say "Ret is OP!"
Blackhawk May 22nd 2009 7:44AM
I've mainly played a warrior in PvP and I am now leveling a paladin and have pvped with her as well. I've found that there is one other factor that tends to lend the illusion of 'OP' to the ret paladin's PvP play style. This factor is the direction of the paladin's attacks.
As a warrior, all of my attacks must be performed facing directly at the target (other than the occasional bladestorm or a fury warrior's whirlwind of course). A ret paladin has some advantage in the fact that abilities like divine storm, judgements, and consecration don't require you to be directly facing the target. A ret pally can step through their opponent and press divine storm, getting a free hit off on someone who doesn't have a multi-directional attack and must realign themselves.
That being said, this can be compensated for with some practice. A proper spin can reposition you to hit the paladin back, or a well applied stun. I think that newer players who are experiencing PvP for the first time though may do better with a ret paladin because they don't need as much experience lining up all of their attacks. Yes SOME of the attacks require proper alignment, but it's much easier to hurt your opponent because you can do damage as you turn to face them.
As a warrior, I am still able to defeat ret paladins due to the ability of shattering throw to remove the paladin's bubble. As some of the other posters have said, PvP is designed to be around group play, and i often help others who are trying to kill a paladin by popping their bubble at the right moment, even if i have no intention of running over to kill the enemy myself.
Ret paladins just require a different train of thought both to play and to fight against in PvP. You simply have to know what to expect and know what abilities your own class has to deal with them. I would never fight a deathknight for instance without immediately disarming them as my first step. The damage i would suffer from taking their hits puts me at a major disadvantage, while disarming them gives me an edge in my damage right off the bat!
tq May 21st 2009 5:37PM
Why give pallies more burst? They're already dominant in 2500+ arena. And rape when paired with DK/War + Druid. No sense in giving them more buffs to make them more "faceroll" then they already are.
Schadow May 23rd 2009 7:40PM
"Whenever your Retribution Aura deals damage, there is a 5/10% chance to reset the cooldown of your Crusader Strike."
... So, Casino Strike?
Naix May 21st 2009 5:46PM
"If you are constantly getting pwned by a Paladin, trust me, it's you and not the spec."
I have a Dk, Warlock, and Priest. All those classes get beat down by Paladin's in PVE dps/healing and PVP. I am not wearing greens either I am wearing 25 man gear, speced out, glyphed out, and hit rotation macros made.
As a warlock
- My dots do nothing, can be removed, and take waaay no long o do any damage
- I am wearing cloth
- Sure I can fear but soon as I cast you pop out of it
As a DK
- Spell lock down
- Heal through damage
- Armor+Shield = win
As a Priest
- Removed dots
- Lock me down with stuns
- Fear is a joke
Scott May 21st 2009 11:36PM
"As a warlock
- My dots do nothing, can be removed, and take waaay no long o do any damage
- I am wearing cloth
- Sure I can fear but soon as I cast you pop out of it"
You also have a pet which causes pain (although we can Turn Evil on that, for a small amount of time), we can't instantly shrug off your dots and we can only pop out of your fear once for at least 2 mins (if we're human). Cloth is part of the class, you can't blame it for being killed by something that hits hard with melee.
"As a DK
- Spell lock down
- Heal through damage
- Armor+Shield = win"
Spell lock down? Pallies can't chain-silence you, we can heal through damage but we actually have to deal damage to you to win the fight and armor +shield doesn't mean autowin. It means mitigation and only a 1h'er to do white dmg with, and also it means the pally is prot, not ret, which is the focus of this whole debate (no ret pally would be without a 2h'er). You should be absolutely mauling paladins with a DK, especially with a zombie up.
"As a Priest
- Removed dots
- Lock me down with stuns
- Fear is a joke"
Stun locks? Are you sure you haven't confused this with a rogue article? We only have two stuns, one with a minute CD and the other can go as fast as 20s CD but that means he's heavily into prot, not ret. Again, 'fear is a joke' is a joke. Hand of Freedom does not break us out of fears, if that's waht you're thinking. Humans have their racial, everyone has a trinket, and they share a CD.
Go practice some duels against a friendly paladin who'll explain what his class does. I'm an average ret paladin in PVP (I do okay) and I get mangled by DK's and challenged by locks and priests all the time. If you're struggling against them, it's you, not your class.
Fugmug May 21st 2009 5:52PM
"It's come a long way since the launch of the game and 'lolret' is arguably a term now only used in spite and no longer with genuine ridicule. Ridicule and some fear and loathing, maybe, but no longer just ridicule."
Yeah Zach, there is a REASON for this. The only people playing this stupid spec are the ones who need the equivalent of three health bars in order to win a fight.
(Initial health bar, bubble+Heal, and LoH)
In addition to all your other suggestions, shall we send over Cartman's mom so you don't have to get up to take a dump anymore as well?
jbodar May 21st 2009 10:11PM
Soooo, Ret pallies only win 1 fight every 20 min? Every 4 min. if they don't have to LoH? You've clearly thought this through to its conclusion. Not to mention that these spells are all baseline Paladin...
Fugmug May 22nd 2009 9:24AM
Oh I'm sorry, I actually have to type out the differences between Holy, prot, and ret. My bad, I assumed that you guys KNEW the difference. Clearly an erroneous assumption on my part.
Okay, ret is the only spec that ALREADY generates a disgusting amount of burst damage during those fights, which is why no one has a problem with prot or holy doing it.
Glad we can clear that up.
GnomesScareMe May 21st 2009 7:08PM
Because having an actual rotation and making a maco where you hit 1 over and over takes so much more skill than FCFS ret abilities.
themightysven May 21st 2009 7:21PM
there totally need to be more utility judgements.
Fear,
Cleanse Piñata, (hit the vic to get a cleanse)
what about a shove? no body has a shove.
as for exorcism, what if it just has a different effect for Humanoids? stun the target and make it the center of a psychic scream type effect?
Popes May 21st 2009 11:38PM
Dear PvPers,
Some of us Ret Pallies don't BG, because we would rather, oh, I don't know. Raid.
Your whining and QQing about us being OP has caused me to tank on the DPS meters, only to rise again. You call us broken? Go look at a Death Knight for a while.
TonyMcS May 22nd 2009 1:27AM
Not a bad try Zach. Still won't make me give up prot though ;-)
I hate the new low contrast comments with the spidery font. I presume you get voted down to totally unreadable rather than just read with difficulty.
The new format also seems to lack the Wowhead code for pop-ups.
Seriously, go and fire your graphic designers and try and hire someone who understands that low contrast text (black on dark grey for god's sake) makes things HARDER to read, no matter how kewl it might look to them.
Rainhio May 22nd 2009 4:04AM
So they figured out how to make DPS fun. They made tanking fun. And now U say that there is no more changes? What about the healers? Nothing! LIES LIES! ALL LIES! Blizz lied and is happy about it. They did't make healing any more fun. :(
No more changes :(
All wating.
All the hoping :(
pakkman781 May 22nd 2009 3:47AM
I'm still waiting for them to figure out a way to get the keyboard marks off of my face!
Sorry pallies, couldn't resist :D
Extremitus May 22nd 2009 9:03AM
Can't Ret just be Ret? I'm getting so tired of this "everyone must be equal" attitude that is seriously hampering my enjoyment of the game. At the moment it is a bursty, simple physical DPS class, what's wrong with that? If you want to play a melee class with a more complex rotation, then go Mutilate Rogue or Feral Cat. Fancy a middle ground? Enh Shaman or Fury Warrior. Want something that's light on button mashing, but that (if you are willing to put in the effort) has outstanding utility? Welcome to being a Ret Pala.
Feral Cats and Muti Rogues do DPS. Almost exclusively in fact. They have to spend all of their mental and physical resources to do the best DPS they possibly can. Ret Palas are not similarly afflicted with this issue - their DPS is very easily managed and leaves them with free GCDs to give some of the following advantages to the raid:
- AoW instant FoL heals
- Sacred Shield
- Hand spells (Prot, Sac, Salv, Free)
- Divine Sac/Aura Mastery
- Instant 100% heal + mana
- Cleanse
The way I've always seen Ret Palas is as a support class. They can solo well, and I like that, but they excel when among the largest groups of players so their percentile buffs (of which I feel they have the most of any class, besides perhaps shaman?) become exponentially better. Remember the Sunwell? Ret Palas do, they finally started getting some spots!
I agree with the damage buff they received because it allowed them to compete for spots in 5 and 10 man content. I was devastated when once again PvP balance messed around with what I felt was an alt I was really enjoying, but the devs in their infinite mercy didn't overreact, made a difficult call and while Exorcism having separate PVE and PVP functionality isn't ideal, for me it's far more preferable than taking a damage hit so people can have PVP matches that last longer.
Side Pala Chat:
I don't raid on my ret pala yet, so as far as the SoC/SoB debate goes, I'm a SoC man. Sure I'll use Blood if I go to a raid, and in a 5 man I would tend towards asking the group if they would mind if I just stuck with SoC, as it's easier and arguably better on stunnable trash, especially if a rogue is in your group. I'd also prefer them to "fix" SoC than to remove it, as it's clearly the grinder's choice of seals. I wanted to make my pala as bursty as possible since I'm an engineer and therefore have off-GCD rockets on my gloves, so I picked up Darkmoon Card: Death. It's not uncommon for me to let loose 12k+ in the first swing of Judge-Rocket-Autoattack-Deathproc (even nicer if they're stunned). I'm not even well geared (Hoolahoop on EU armory, Tarren Mill server, if you want to see) but I feel really nicely powerful, without being ridiculous (takes the pala 4 spells to do the damage my Ele Shaman could do in 2-3)
Fugmug May 22nd 2009 9:28AM
See, if this were about everyone being "identical" (your term 'equal' kinda sucks) it wouldn't be so bad.
Picture a deathmatch in TF2 with melee weapons, and the soldier gets to keep his rocket launcher, and the Heavy gets to keep Sasha.
That is EXACTLY what is going on in PVP right now, between DKs and Ret Palys.