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Retribution Paladin: A Critical Review of the Dragonflight Talent Tree
Dragonflight
Geposted
18.10.2022 um 03:00
von
Bolas
With the
design phase over and the tuning phase underway for Dragonflight Talent Trees
, our Retribution Paladin writer Bolas critically reviews the current state of the Retribution Talent Tree as we near Pre-Patch. Join us as we discuss all the Talent changes for Retribution in Dragonflight!
To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Holy, Protection, and Retribution Paladin class guides:
Holy Paladin Talent BuildsProtection Paladin Talent BuildsRetribution Paladin Talent Builds
To put it bluntly, Retribution's talent trees are not in a good spot - we've had mostly the same issues for essentially the entirety of Alpha/Beta, there's been few changes made, and even less communication about them. With the "design" phase over and the "tuning" phase underway, it's unfortunately extremely unlikely that many of these glaring issues are addressed before prepatch or launch, so this may serve more as a post about what should be changed in 10.1 rather than before launch.
Before I get into the details about the tree, I want to take a moment to talk about what this article
isn't
about. Firstly, it's not about whether or not Ret will be a good spec in Dragonflight. A poorly designed spec can still be tuned to be strong, and a well designed spec can be undertuned and never brought. It could well be that Ret is stuck with an incredibly boring singular talent build for the whole first tier and still do enough damage to be decent, but this doesn't mean that it justifies the poor talent design. Secondly, I've seen a lot of comments on the feedback forums and elsewhere insulting the developers for the talents. This should go without saying, but those kinds of comments are not acceptable anywhere and all criticism in this article is directed towards the systems themselves.
Paladin Class Tree Issues
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
The Paladin tree is essentially defined by its throughput talents. Here's an abridged breakdown:
Top Section
After spending 5 points on mandatory throughput nodes or other nodes to access future throughput nodes, there's a few of points left over to allocate how you want before the first gate. Enjoy them, as this is the most you'll get in this tree. Although you do have a choice, there aren't really many options - most of the time you'll take
Handauflegung
,
Erfahrenes Kriegsross
, and probably just a throwaway point in
Segen der Freiheit
, but if you want
Buße
or
Blendendes Licht
or
Toxine läutern
you can take those instead. You basically have a default, general purpose path, and can move points out of mobility if necessary, but the degree to which you can customize it is very small. There's only 10 nodes to pick from in this section - compared to 19 for DK, 16 for Warrior, or 20 for Shaman, this is a pretty poor number of options. You also need to take
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
in order to get a basic function of
Richturteil
,
Großes Richturteil
, even though
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
is completely useless in the majority of Raid encounters.
Middle Section
First off, you spend another 10 points on throughput nodes or pathing for them, leaving you with 2 points before you can access the bottom of the tree. Previously, these two points were effectively locked into
Segen des Schutzes
and
Segen des Zauberschutzes
, but since
Segen des Zauberschutzes
is now removed from the class tree, you'll just put them somewhere else useful.
Richturteil des Lichts
and either
Nachbild
or
Goldener Pfad
are probably the most useful options, but you can also take
Segen des Schutzes
if it's going to be useful. Again, although you end up with a couple of points left to spend, it's a very small number compared to other class trees, and your options for spending them are extremely limited - you can choose to either take
Segen des Schutzes
or not, and otherwise just pick a couple of generic healing nodes. Even if you wanted to pick something else than healing, the option to just doesn't exist in the tree. You're also again forced to pick an often useless utility node in raids, either
Zurechtweisung
or
Böses vertreiben
, in order to take a large throughput increase.
Bottom Section
Every single point you spend here is dedicated to throughput. You essentially only have two choices in this entire section:
Pick 3 out of 4 of
Göttliche Bestimmung
,
Siegel der Ordnung
,
Paragon der Zeloten
, and
Geweihter Zorn
.
If you picked
Göttliche Bestimmung
, pick between
Siegel der Macht
and
Siegel des Eifers
.
The capstone abilities here are cool and powerful, but when it comes down to choice, there still isn't any - every capstone is a strong DPS trait but you can take all of them anyway. The choice nodes are also not even close to a choice:
Heiliger Rächer
has not ever been close to competitive with
Göttliche Bestimmung
, and hardcasting
seems pointless when you get very high uptime from
Aura der Vergeltung
and
Asche zu Asche
already.
What Needs to Change?
The Paladin tree basically just needs a complete rework at this point. I can't see a way for this tree to be salvaged other than removing about half the talents and adding twice as many back in, which is absolutely unrealistic at this stage of development. Initially, it seemed like it might just be a problem with connecting nodes not allowing you to move laterally through the tree, but after the one pathing iteration it's become clear that there just aren't enough nodes in the tree to begin with to even give you choices. There's just so many really bad nodes, like
Heilige Aegis
or
Siegel des Eifers
, or even the random damage procs like
Gleißendes Strahlen
or
Siegel des Kreuzfahrers
, that are just complete filler that you end up required to put your points into to maximize your damage, and when the total number of nodes in the tree is already low you don't end up with any real choices to make. You also have to put points into almost all of your basic abilities like
Göttliches Ross
or
Zornige Vergeltung
instead of getting them baseline like many other class trees.
The only pieces of feedback I can think of that would improve the Paladin tree that isn't adding completely new talents is to buff
Erfahrenes Kriegsross
and remove the
proc from
Aura der Vergeltung
. It really sucks to have your mobility get significantly worse from one expansion to the next, especially as one of the classes with the most limited mobility in the game to begin with. With
Aura der Vergeltung
providing a consistent damage increase now, assuming that Ret is tuned around having this bonus, you're never going to have a Ret in the raid for
Aura der Hingabe
.
Retribution Tree Issues
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
Compared to the Paladin tree, the Retribution tree has far fewer issues. You're likely to have interesting decisions in almost every part of the tree, bar the top section where your first 8 points are basically locked in no matter what. Once you start filling out the tree you end up with a lot of close choices that you could change depending on the situation, which is exactly the type of tree you want to see in Dragonflight. That said, there are still some issues which I want to highlight.
Utility Nodes
Ideally, utility nodes should just exist in the class tree and not the spec ones. I think a version of
Heilende Hände
could exist that works differently enough for Holy and Ret/Prot that it's balanced, and I don't think there would be any problem giving the other specs access to
Weihe
size buffing talents or
Hand der Hinderung
. As it stands, the utility talents in the Ret tree block your entire access to the bottom section, requiring you to put at least one point into them to progress. The problems that arise are twofold: firstly, you don't end up actually choosing utility based on the situation, you just pick whichever node gives you the best choice for the paths that are locked behind it, regardless of how useful the utility ability is itself. In every case this is either
Hand der Hinderung
or
Heilende Hände
, since they both let you take
Asche zu Asche
as well as the other talent on their side. Secondly, the structure of the tree means that if you want to pick both
Todesurteil
and
Letztes Urteil
, you need to waste an extra talent point on a non-throughput ability to get access to both "sides" of the bottom section. These restrictions all suck, but seem unlikely to get changed at this point.
Pathing Non Sequiturs
This has mostly arisen due to a few last minute swaps of ability locations, but there's quite a few sections where the way the talent choices flow really don't seem to make sense at all. Here's a few examples:
Himmlische Macht
, an ability primarily useful on cleave/AoE, is required to take
Rechtschaffenes Urteil
, an ability that only works on single target.
Siegel des Zorns
, an ability that procs off
Richturteil
casts, is nestled among abilities that all buff
Klinge der Gerechtigkeit
, and nowhere near any of the other abilities that work with
Richturteil
like
Urteil des Hochlords
.
Sturm des Lichtbringers
, one of your best talents for AoE, is on the opposite side of the tree to all your other AoE oriented talents like
Himmlische Macht
and
Heiligen
.
Fortunately it's fairly easy to get access to pretty much any part of the tree due to the excellent pathing structure, so this doesn't really have a negative impact on whether you can actually take the abilities, but it's certainly going to be confusing for many players and goes against the design of pretty much every other spec tree in the game.
Boring Nodes
There's some really fantastic new talents in the tree like
Geweihte Klinge
and
Allumfassendes Urteil
, and then there's all of the boring flat % damage increases.
Besiegeltes Urteil
,
Urteil des Hochlords
,
Klinge der Verurteilung
,
Nachstrom der Wahrheit
, even old abilities like
Unnachgiebiger Inquisitor
,
Rechtfertigung des Templers
, and
Tugendhafter Befehl
that players might remember fondly, but are honestly pretty boring as talents. I'm not sure if Ret is the only spec with a flat stat increase node in its spec tree, or just one of an endangered species, but I do know that
Heiliger Kreuzfahrer
is not a fun or interesting talent in the slightest. I don't expect every talent you pick to massively alter your rotation, but I think there's some more room for middleground than just "talents that you could build your whole character around" and "talents that you wouldn't even notice not existing".
What Needs to Change?
To start with, here's some fairly straightforward tuning changes I'd like to see:
Buff
Göttlicher Schutz
.
Buff
Ausmerzung
and related
Klinge der Gerechtigkeit
talents (
Klinge der Verurteilung
,
Besiegeltes Urteil
) to be competitive talents.
Give
Zornige Vergeltung: Macht
some axis or situation where it's competitive with or better than
Kreuzzug
.
Rebuff
Asche zu Staub
's proc rate. It's a really unfun talent to play with when it never procs.
Nerf
Exorzismus
so that it isn't permanently taken on single target (unless that's the intention for this talent?).
Nerf
Rache des Rechtsprechers
so that it doesn't do more damage than
Urteil des Templers
baseline.
A bug fix rather than a tuning change, but currently
Kreuzzug
doesn't work with
Geweihter Zorn
.
Past that, I think the tree is structurally quite good, but could use some small positioning adjustments to make more sense with how talents path to each other. If it gets another look later on in the expansion, I'd like to see some of the many "boring" stat or damage % nodes removed for some with more interesting interactions and the utility nodes moved to the class tree.
From Shadowlands to Dragonflight
In my last article, I said that I thought Ret would be in a marginally better state in Dragonflight than Shadowlands due to
Segen des Zauberschutzes
. Unfortunately since then it's been removed, along with my remaining optimism. Ret is at best on par, and by most metrics worse in raids than it was in Shadowlands. Here's some examples:
Mobility
In Shadowlands, you have 2 charges of
Göttliches Ross
and up to 6.3s duration. You also have
Widerhallende Segen
, which gives
Segen der Freiheit
up to an 11% speed increase.
In Dragonflight, you have 2 charges of
Göttliches Ross
and up to 4s duration.
Defensives
In Shadowlands, you have
Gottesschild
and
Schild der Vergeltung
, and
were one of the melee most likely to die in every raid
.
In Dragonflight, you have
Gottesschild
and either
Schild der Vergeltung
, or you can choose a version of
Göttlicher Schutz
with a 2 minute cooldown, that will require you to lose damage to use and will likely be a worse defensive than
Schild der Vergeltung
in the vast majority of situations.
Raid Utility
In Shadowlands, you brought
Segen der Aufopferung
,
Segen des Schutzes
, and
Segen der Freiheit
, technically
Aura der Hingabe
if you somehow didn't have a Holy Paladin, and competed for a raid spot against Warrior with
Schlachtruf
and a fantastic raid CD in
Anspornender Schrei
, Monk with
Mystische Berührung
, Demon Hunter with
Chaosbrandmal
and a decent raid CD in
Dunkelheit
, DK with
Todesgriff
and
Antimagisches Feld
, Enhancement with
Totem des Windzorns
, and the other melee that were in a similar boat as you - Rogue, Survival, and Feral.
In Dragonflight, all of that is still true, except now Druid and Rogue also have mandatory raid buffs, and you lose a significant amount of damage by using
Aura der Hingabe
as you lose the damage procs from
Aura der Vergeltung
.
I don't think any of these issues are big enough to make Ret an actively bad spec to play for most guilds, but I can't imagine why a competitively minded guild would ever want to bring a Ret to a fight as it is unless their damage is insanely overtuned, and the choices made at the top end always trickle down throughout the rest of the playerbase.
From a Mythic+ point of view, the situation is a lot less dire. Paladin utility like
Segen des Schutzes
,
Segen der Freiheit
, and now
Fürbitte
is generally a lot more useful and you don't already automatically have another Paladin in your group, and although I expect Ret to be worse in Raids than it is now, I think it's probably slightly better in Mythic+ than it was in Shadowlands. That said, surviving is still a problem in keys, so unless Ret happens to do a ton of AoE damage I doubt it'll be much more popular than it is now.
Interested in playing Retribution Paladin now? Check our out live guide for this spec!
Retribution Paladin Guide
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