I with agree with a lot of people here: the ability to use Art of War for exorcism is very interesting. It would give us a damage boost, but also make us choose utility vs damage whenever AoW procs.

The CS proc'ing Seal of Vengeance is also a neat idea. I personally think it would work easiest if CS added its own stacking DoT debuff (could be built like SoV damage-wise) that wasn't the same debuff as Vengeance's. If we wanted to get really neat, we could have an attack (like say exorcism) consume the stack of debuffs for bonus damage!

When the level of real discourse drops here, threads like this give me some hope. Thanks to the original poster for an intelligent and well-written post that actually might work well. It'd address just about everything anyone unhappy with Ret Paladins would like.

The Art of War-Exo idea is the only one I really liked out of your suggestions. Not to say yours are bad, I just hope and believe we have a more ... entertaining change coming.

And hello fellow Korialstrasz Ret Paladin. :P

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Q u o t e:

How does this really change anything though? As long as you CS a GCD before you DS, the upfront burst damage would be the same. You would have to make the DS damage so low that it essentially becomes a rogue-like finishing move. Do 3-5 CS and then finish with a DS. But that basically means you can CS and then autoattack for awhile until the next CS. Is that fun?

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It's a blast! I think....

No.

EDIT: I think everyone should just wait patiently for the new combat system.

Alright, chips on the table, GC is reading this: Are we in fact getting a new combat system, yes or no!! I ask questions with exclamation marks because I'm extreme like that! Meety mow!

Idk, mlg stream is chewin up my social skills apparently :o

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Q u o t e:
No.

EDIT: I think everyone should just wait patiently for the new combat system.

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Of course, you are a paladin.

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Q u o t e:


Of course, you are a paladin.

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There's nothing else most posters (save GC and friends can do)

Last I heard, that was planned for 3.2.

I wonder if it's still on track?

I think I have a great idea on how to give ret some more options. The art of war/Exo was a great idea I think. The option that i came up with is letting Rightous Vengeance stack to 5 debuffs, and give us an ability similar to envenom that will remove the stack, and do a quick burst damage or a high tick DoT debuff is applyed instead. The burst one, to avoid pvp complications, could maybe only be used when the target has less of a % of health then you. This would make ret more challenging because Ret would have to moniter the debuff stack and would have to try to keep the DoT up (on boss fights) while sneaking in a quick burst when possible.

Thoughts?

Edit for spelling

Remove seal of blood imo. Adding 900-1000 damage non crit to every attack a ret paladin does is a little ridiculous.
Retool seal of command perhaps. Maybe the entire seal system in general. It used to be intuitive and really shined in the hands of a skilled paladin.
Now its a 30 minute buff that adds damage or mana.

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Q u o t e:


Of course, you are a paladin.

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Well naturally a paladin doesn't want to get turned into a watered down rogue with predictable burst and easily pealable. That and it would turn pve from somewhat interesting to mindnumbingly boring.

Or return it to the old seal system with points deep in prot and holy so that they dont have to keep refreshing, and so that ret has to work reapplying seals into rotation.

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Q u o t e:

How does this really change anything though? As long as you CS a GCD before you DS, the upfront burst damage would be the same. You would have to make the DS damage so low that it essentially becomes a rogue-like finishing move. Do 3-5 CS and then finish with a DS. But that basically means you can CS and then autoattack for awhile until the next CS. Is that fun?

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Hint: People who don't play Ret don't want Ret to be fun.

Having good snap aoe damage through divine storm is a nice, useful feature of the class, which I'd like to keep.

However, it isn't reasonable combined with the rest of our instant burst. What about shifting seal damage to a layered debuff release that requires more than one complete rotation to unleash, using a new strike? The total damage should be slightly higher than our total dps is now once unleashed, to push us slightly up from the bottom of the barrel in pve and give us slightly better healer pressure in PvP. Conversely, we would need to stay on target for a fair bit in pvp, and couldn't just HoJ out people.

It might be interesting if the strike were ranged (20 yards or less), but that's optional.

As a general direction, GC, the spec needs rebalancing for people playing it and against it, not nerfing per se. Burst is a gimmick and people playing ret are not really better served by it than the people they faceroll. It would be great if Ret received the tools and balance to reward experienced players over fresh 80s.

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Q u o t e:
Or return it to the old seal system with points deep in prot and holy so that they dont have to keep refreshing, and so that ret has to work reapplying seals into rotation.

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You mean where judgement was off the GCD? That's an awesome idea, make it so ret can squeeze even more damage into two globals. And it's not like ret has a shortage of open GCDs in pve or anything.

Thing is, Retribution paladins have no closer, no interrupt and no slow.
They have things to slightly make up for this yes, but realistically they don't have them.

To make up for this they do incredible amounts of damage.
Which is enough alone to pressure a healer or perhaps force someone into being defensive. But without things like interrupts and a way to slow players, ret paladins can be peeled and outhealed.

But now you throw a warrior, dk or rogue into the mix with the ret paladin.
Now the ret has the mortal strike, interrupt and slow. It doesn't even matter what the other player does.
If one heal gets interrupted your dead, if an ms is up on the ret paladins target, that player is GOING to die, once a slow is on someone the amount of damage they're taking will be unbearable.

In all honesty I think its time to give ret paladins slows, interrupts and a mortal strike. If that would mean lowering their damage to an acceptable level and removing the ludicrous burst synergy they have with other dps classes.

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Q u o t e:


You mean where judgement was off the GCD? That's an awesome idea, make it so ret can squeeze even more damage into two globals. And it's not like ret has a shortage of open GCDs in pve or anything.

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But seals were on the GCD, when i was playing judgement was on the GCD

Rets should go the way of the Shadow Priest imo.

They lose all of their defensive capabilites if they want to DPS.