Patch 11.0.5 has brought a number of changes to the Paladin Class Tree, although the Retribution Tree and its Hero Talents have emerged relatively unscathed. These changes won't have a huge impact on Ret's rotational playstyle, but they do have some important implications that are worth exploring before they go live.
Removed Talents
The previous Paladin Tree was bloated with a ton of miniscule DPS increases that basically only existed to eat up talent points and space in the tree, like
or
. Most of these have now been either removed or condensed into single nodes, like
. However, some of the removed talents have a much more significant impact, like
, which is a loss of 10% increased cooldown reduction on all of Ret's generators - this is clearly going to be a substantial DPS loss, but in terms of gameplay I think that increasing generator cooldowns is probably a positive change, since I think that managing generator cooldowns should be the core of Ret gameplay and it's really become a second priority recently. Some talents have also had the opposite treatment -
, which is a very watered down version of the older talent that gave
a 100% crit chance, is now becoming a 2-point node despite being fairly underpowered, especially for Templar.
Overall I think the reduction of these talents is a good thing, as their sole purpose is to effectively only tax the talents you can spend on utility, but the way it's done here is going to result in a small nerf to Ret's damage due to effects like
and
not being completely compensated for by buffs so far, and I'd like to see more meaningful damage increases from talent points spent if the number of points required to take an effect as mediocre as
are going to be doubled.
New Talents
For throughput, there's only really one notable talent -
, which is a choice node with
. Not all talent builds for Ret value
that high, since Holy Power spenders are at a particularly low point in terms of their contribution to overall damage and GCDs are often at a premium, especially inside cooldowns, so it's nice to have an alternative option that provides some extra power, although a 2% increase to their damage is still going to only be about a 0.5% overall damage increase.
All other new talents (and there are a LOT of them, too many to list here) are new utility options. Some of them that stood out in particular to me are:
- - This seems like a cool option for Ret, since almost all your healing taken is from external sources. It always feels weird to see Ret so low on healing meters recently, since historically Paladin tends to have some decent external healing options across all specs, but the passive talents that did this have gradually been removed or nerfed. There's a bunch more new options that might also be useful passive healing bonuses, as long as they're tuned appropriately for it.
- - This isn't especially useful when using it on yourself, but making a relevant external cooldown for tanks (in addition to ) is a cool effect to add.
- - A 3% movement speed increase is an ok option, but a 3s cooldown reduction that has limited targets seems laughably irrelevant, especially compared to the "real" version of this effect, . If this is just supposed to be a flavor bonus rather than a real effect then fair enough, but I can't imagine this effect ever being actually relevant.
- & - I really dislike existing. It's miserable whenever you die being unable to use because someone used on you to try to help, or you can't use to remove . Being able to now use regardless is definitely less bad, but feels like a Vanilla mechanic that should have been removed when we stopped needing reagents for Greater Blessings.
Many of the other talents added are tiny bonuses to marginally improve some specific aspect of a utility ability that might only rarely be relevant, like
or
or
. I absolutely love these - you don't need all the talents in the Class Tree to be useful every season, but if there's a random situation one time where you really need to stun 5 Aberrations at once or give someone an immunity to Diseases then it's really cool to be able to pull out a talent that can solve it. These are the types of talents that I love seeing in the Class Tree, and I'm really happy to see all of the boring 0.1% throughput increases replaced by them.
The talents that I'm less enthusiastic about are ones that seem very specific to Holy or Prot, where there really isn't any situation, even extremely niche, that I could envision them being useful for Ret, like
or
. I think these types of talents that are tiny throughput for healing effects or defensive bonuses that are exclusive to tanks shouldn't exist in the Class Tree in the same way that effects like
shouldn't exist for damage, but it's worse when they're only bonuses that one or two out of three specs can actually even make use of and we effectively end up with a smaller tree instead - the tree should be comprised of talents that can be useful for all specs of a class, not only one or two.
Hero Talent Tuning
Before going into how I think Ret will end up after these changes, I wanted to first talk about the changes that are already being made to live servers, in particular, the Hero Talent buffs and nerfs we've been seeing since launch. For a quick recap, at the beginning of the expansion Templar was the strongest overall by a large margin, until Herald of the Sun had some bugs fixed that dramatically improved its performance and pushed it solidly ahead. A few weeks after that, Templar received its most recent round of buffs that again made it a much stronger option than Herald. Fixing bugs and buffing underused trees is a good thing generally, but the way it was done here has been difficult for a lot of players, where instead of them being buffed to be equivalent they're just swapping places as the clearly best choice in all content. It's especially rough for inexperienced or more casual players who sometimes struggle with adapting to new playstyles but still feel forced to play the "best" option.
The most recent Templar buffs might have slightly overshot the mark, but I think reactively nerfing it before the 11.0.5 changes go live would be a mistake - Ret is not overperforming relative to the best specs in any content, and the changes coming in 11.0.5 are a net nerf anyway. I would like to see the remaining bugs and issues with Hero Talents addressed however, as they do have a noticeably detrimental effect on the feel or power of the spec:
- has a static 1.5s GCD that isn't reduced by Haste, which causes players to feel as if they're lagging when they press it, especially with high levels of Haste from . It also resets your auto-attack swing timer, which is especially noticeable when you're relying on them for Holy Power generation due to . ( also has this problem with resetting auto-attacks.) Yet another issue is its damage range - on bosses like Rash'anan or Ovi'nax, using on the boss while adds are active next to it won't actually hit them due to the tiny radius it has.
- has a 1s ICD on proccing s, which can very easily prevent it from proccing properly with normal levels of Haste with and back to back spenders allowed by or automatic Holy Power generation between spender casts.
- only lasts a maximum of 30s when is kept constantly active on a target. For single target encounters like Sikran or Ky'veza, this means that it will always be removed after 30s and never be reapplied even though is still constantly active.
- 's bonus to is overwritten whenever is reapplied, which happens instantly in most situations as you're almost always immediately using a spender after activating .
Going Forward
Overall, I think the changes to the Class Tree will be positive for gameplay and utility choice, and be a small nerf to our damage. One thing that the rework pretty notably does not address is the utility gap that still exists between Paladin specs - Prot and Holy both have some very specific utility abilities like
that Ret does not have access to, and Ret has no special utility abilities that cannot also be brought by either of them. For early Nerub'ar Palace progression it has been fortunate that Ret has happened to be a pretty useful spec, since multiple
s are useful on Queen An'surek and guilds dropping healers to kill Ovi'nax or Ky'veza early on preferred to drop Holy Paladins due to how overpowered Preservation was as a healer. This is a pretty unique situation however, and I wouldn't expect to see Ret being the relatively least bad option for
or multiple
s or
s required that often. For proper parity to exist here, either Paladin utility needs to fully become classwide instead of Ret being left out, or Ret needs to have access to something uniquely useful that's on par with what Prot and Holy have available.
After the rework in early Dragonflight, Ret had its defensive capabilities massively buffed and was by far one of the strongest DPS specs in that area. These have slowly been nerfed or removed to the point where Ret is now below average defensively -
and
have been effectively nerfed by 33% and 25% due to the movement of
in the talent tree,
has had its DR nerfed by 40%, and Ret is no longer a spec that values Versatility which previously helped reduce our damage taken significantly. For example, there's been many situations during progression in The War Within where I have been unable to use
to help someone else live as I would simply be dead myself through a defensive like
if I was taking 30% extra damage trying to save someone else. I don't think the previous state where Ret was borderline unkillable relative to other DPS was healthy, but if the design intention is for Ret to have limited mobility but strong defensive options then I think the specific numbers should really be looked at again.
