Blizzcon has officially ended and my left index finger can now take a much needed hiatus from the frantic refreshing of MMO-Champion. During Blizzcon’s entirety I multi-tasked between actually playing the game in its current state and learning about the seemingly brand new game to be coming with the expansion. As more and more information regarding the expansion was exposed to the public, I began asking more and more questions among my guildmates with the intent of gauging a reaction. The reviews were mixed - perhaps an iota towards the positive.
Although this site is intended specifically for the Retribution way of the Paladin class, a class and spec that was more or less absent from the entire event aside from one ridiculous question proposed by what seems as a FotM Retadin (see the footnote at the base of this post), it seems prudent to provide at least an overview of one very important change we can expect from the game when the expansion officially arises.
Enter the Mastery system. Generally, it involves the following:
- 1) Making talents more fun and useful
2) Move all passive bonuses to your character’s Mastery tree(s)
So what does this mean for Retribution? Well, to answer this requires an understanding of what Blizzard means by a “passive bonus”. My guess would be that all of the following talents, either partially or in entirety will moved removed from the talent tree and simulated with Mastery:
- - Deflection
- Benediction
- Conviction
- Sanctity of Battle
- Crusade
- Two-Hand Weapon Specialization
- Swift Retribution
- Improved Blessing of Might
There is one issue of note here, however. Blizzard has confirmed not only that we will still have our 71 talent points of today to spend on talents but there will be no new talents and we will still receive 5 additional talent points to spend for level 81 - 85. But how will this work if the majority of “passive” talents such as those in the list I mentioned above are removed from the trees? Giving this some thought over the weekend, I have arrived at two possible scenarios one of which I believe Blizzard to be heading:
- 1) Replace most if not all “passive” talents with more interactive but similar talents. For example, the tier 1 Retribution talent “Deflection” might become something like “Gives you a 20% chance after dealing a critical strike to increase your parry chance by x% for 10 seconds”.
2) Condense the talent trees down to only 41 points again (i.e. Divine Storm would be a 41 points talent) with the removal of “passive” talents and adjust the talents within trees to prevent exploitation and generally being “overpowered”.
The first scenario, to me, seems most likely given Blizzard’s track record. It is the most straightforward and allows them the most flexibility for balancing. The second scenario, however, seems like it has the potential to finally balance classes among their respective archetypes. Allow me to explain.
Currently, a standard PvP Retribution build is some variation of either 5/15/51 or 0/20/51 (+/- a talent point or two here or there) depending on personal palette. What if the trees were condensed to only 41 points? Imagine a 35/0/41 and the healing potential therein. Consider a 0/35/41 build where sword and board as Retribution may very well be viable. Certainly this may be proverbial “pie in the sky” thinking but personally I believe this would be quite an extraordinary opportunity for Blizzard to return classes to their intended archetypes. Rogues, for example, are damage dealers and that is all. Regardless of which talent tree they spend the majority of their points in, they are confined by an archetype of “damage dealer”. They can never be a healer nor a tank (aside from a Rogue in my guild pre-WotLK gearing for and successfullly evasion tanking most of Mt Hyjal!). Warriors, by contrast have the potential for dual-purpose. They can be a tank (one archetype) or a damage-dealer (another archetype). Then there are your true hybrid classes in the Druid and Paladin. Among all the classes, we two classes are afforded the unique opportunity of being truly hybrid - we can perform all archetypal roles available to the game almost as well as the “pure” classes for those archetypes. This brings me full circle back to my point: if you condense the talent trees following the removal of all passive talents, then you can afford all classes the opportunity to truly explore hybrid possibilities. Certainly tuning would be necessary as is always the case in an ever-changing MMO such as WoW but the possibilities seem endless! In my humble opinion, this seems the proper way to go but I do strongly believe their plan revolves around the alternative. Either way, I’m genuinely excited for the expansion and am already in “preparation mode” for all it brings to the table.
Footnote: I have removed the original text of this footnote pertaining to the seeming idiocy of a FotM Retadin due to the fact it has turned out to be false idiocy! It was generally assumed and reported that the Retribution Paladin in question here asked for “when Retribution Paladins will be getting Mortal Strike”. This is false. In fact, he simply asked “when will you be giving everyone a Mortal Strike because that’s what you’re doing now.” This comment is obviously in reference to both Frost Mages and Shadow Priests receiving such a debuff thus adding them to the list of class that now can obtain this overused debuff. My apologies for misrepresentation! For those interested, I was going off of this WoW.com live blog regarding the Retadin’s comment. Even though the line at which his comment is reported states “not an exact quote” I was at least expecting the sentiments of the comment to be somewhat accurately captured - which was not the case.
August 24th, 2009 - 7:04 am
I am in favor of the direction that ‘I think’ they are going, especially with item stats.
Oh and you guys are lucky isn’t wasn’t me asking the devs a question or I would have been like “Doods, when are Ret Paladins going to get to roll Worgen?”
August 24th, 2009 - 7:09 am
His actual question was pertaining to when EVERYONE was going to have an MS like ability. Everyone got blinded by the fact he said he was a ret paladin - even the developers, for a moment. I don’t believe he was asking for an MS specifically for retribution.
The only thing that shows is how the community has gone from “LOLRet” to “I hate you, and your entire class.” Paladains have become an joke and like most… I don’t know if we’re hated or loved by the developers.
Anyway, back to the point. Mastery is going to be AWESOME.
August 24th, 2009 - 8:44 am
@ Article Writer
QUOTE
” During the Class discussion panel, the floor was given the opportunity to directly participate in the discussion by asking questions of the development team. Ghostcrawler was on the stage and from the audience spoke an individual with the following sentiment: “Hi Ghostcrawler. I’m a Retribution Paladin. I was wondering when we will be getting an MS.” Even before he mentioned the “MS” part, the crowd was already booing him. Please - if you’re given the opportunity to ask the development team directly any question at all pertaining to the Retribution class and spec, don’t make it a question about an overused, watered-down ability that almost every class has now and that we don’t even need. There are far more pressing issues with Retribution PvP that need to be addressed and receipt of a healing debuff falls nowhere on the list. ”
/QUOTE
That was NOT the question that was put forth by the Ret Paladin.
I was hoping that this site wasn’t gonna fall into this misinformation, but the “mob mentality” prevailed.
http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2009/08/ms-kid.html
Please, please do some more research before posting.
(Or at least try to pay more attention since it appears you were actually there when it happened)
August 24th, 2009 - 8:56 am
I’m looking forward to the itemization changes as well as the mastery system - IF they pull it off right. It’s an amazing concept but the execution is always where blizzard and I have had our differences in the way we feel things should be done.
I have to personally disagree with you in that I don’t want to be able to do the whole 35/0/41 thing. I have dual specs and that’s fine. I don’t need to be able to heal while I dps, because frankly, I don’t want to listen to the pures QQ about it or have some guy in a run going “omg why aren’t you topping damage and healing?!” not like the GCD exists or anything. In short - I don’t want to deal with the amount of stupid that would flood the warcraft community, nor the QQ from it, that would result in such an event. It’s not worth it. They cry enough about hybrids as it is, I don’t particularly feel like feeding fuel to the flame.
I have to say I was really disappointed with Blizzard and all the cheap shots they took at Ret Paladins, from the opening ceremony to to the powerpoint saying no ret paladin questions. Rather intended as a joke or not, it does nothing but bring further negative view upon an already laughed at, walked on and just generally harassed class, and specifically the ret spec. While it may have all seemed to be fun and games, when you’re the laughing stock of a 11mil+ community, for years running, it gets rather disheartening to even log into the game.
The guy who said that at Blizzcon - congratulations, you just gave everyone more reason to /spit at us. While I watched the clip and heard specifically what you said, what almost anyone heard was “paladin + ms”. Think before you open your cockholster.
August 24th, 2009 - 9:10 am
@ Duali
“The guy who said that at Blizzcon - congratulations, you just gave everyone more reason to /spit at us. While I watched the clip and heard specifically what you said, what almost anyone heard was “paladin + ms”. Think before you open your cockholster.”
So…
The problem was not “what he actually said” but rather what “every moron and their mother understood”, right?
The question was sarcasm and its objective was to criticize the continuous homogenization of abilities among different classes.
(Atm 4 classes have MS)
August 24th, 2009 - 9:19 am
Who the hell do we think we are to tell someone what to say or not say? Ask them why gnomes can’t be Paladins for all I care.
August 24th, 2009 - 9:43 am
Tordek
Thanks for pointing that out. I have updated the article to remove the negative sentiment towards this Retadin as your video clearly demonstrates that is not at all what he was asking. I was NOT present at Blizzcon and was using live blogs and the like for my updates. I have linked the particular live blog which provided my reference to the Retadin’s comment so I hope you can see my point of confusion there!
Just as a side note i would clarify that actually five classes have MS now:
Priest, Mage, Hunter, Rogue and Warrior
Although it should be noted that Priests and Mages only get 20% whereas the other three receive 50%. Even still, this fact only makes the Retadin’s comment more valid as now over half of the game’s classes have heal reduction ability.
August 24th, 2009 - 9:47 am
@ Tharvolde
And I’m quite sorry about being so “over the top” on my comments of this issue.
Blame my mood on the whole negative sentiment that was officially put forth from Blizzard towards Ret Paladins in this convention.
August 24th, 2009 - 10:54 am
@ Tordek
It’s no problem at all! I appreciate you bringing it to my attention. I would much rather be corrected when wrong than allowed to continue with false information.
August 24th, 2009 - 11:44 am
*sigh*
August 24th, 2009 - 12:57 pm
So the only thing I took away from blizzcon that was actually retadin specific was the “still in development” Mastery skill of Reduces the time of your cooldowns.
Did I miss anything?
And how ‘masterful’ is that really when all of our current damage is output using instant spells?
August 24th, 2009 - 1:11 pm
F no! I would still like to crucify the kid about the MS question…
Yes the question may have been out of sarcasm! and I liked that idea…BUT! he didn’t do it right. If he was gonna try to be a sarcastic smartmouth, could’ve he at least said something that would hit devs were it counts? The Mob mentality will prevail in the situation in which the vast majority of others who dont play paladins will continue to support the nerfs that may or may not come our way. And even if information on how it REALLY HAPPENED was strongly supported across the forums by those who know better, the vast majority will act like the Fox Network and turn a blind eye and keep yet another reason to hate Ret Pallies.
August 24th, 2009 - 3:52 pm
My guess is they are gutting tree’s so much that we can go half and half into 2 tree’s.
August 24th, 2009 - 4:57 pm
Going back to the “meat” of your Post Tharvolde, here are my thoughts:
- The ret tree has so much “passiveness” that I fear not much will be left once they put in the MASTERY SYSTEM.
- This means that they would have to make a new talents as Thar describes which, given their experience in balancing Retribution, will basically warrant metric tons of nerfs/buffs to make them “work as intended”.
This basically makes me fear for our future.
August 24th, 2009 - 5:09 pm
I think they’ll only be getting rid of the global passives. Abilities that gives a much larger passive increase to select abilities may stay because they add flavor to the class.
And since most classes have passive talents, my guess is that the number of talent points will be reduced to coincide with less options. For example, you may only have 30 talent points, but each tier only has 1 or 2 points.
August 24th, 2009 - 8:45 pm
Well we know specifically that the following types of talents will certainly be removed:
+ Hit, crit, armor penetration or similar statistics as these are all being moved to the Mastery tree
Any buffs to buffs - GC specifically mentioned improving blessings and improving mark of the wild as going away
August 25th, 2009 - 1:33 am
at least that kid got the question off, more than you can say for like 4-5 other people…..
August 25th, 2009 - 4:41 am
While I thought the devs and audience’s reaction to that kids question was harsh and un-called for, since all they heard was “Ret Paladin,” it just goes to show how the devs and customers take the class as a whole and how broken the class is/has been.
I was surprised no one asked about the whole class in general. We are having an identity crisis of epic proportion. We are now what druids where right around 2.0. Confused what tree to use for what. You got Holy paladins specing Prot, with Holy being so broken and the heals craptastic. You have Ret, confused again what position we play in a raid or what Seal do we use now, what glyphs. Prot being one of the better tanks now because of an extra passive talent, but changing threat because it seemed too much. (Just because some new paladins cannot control their OT threat.) The whole class in general is just mixed up now.
While I would love to see the class balanced, I still do not think that will happen.
The biggest thing I got from that panel and the devs was about the change to spell levels. Does that mean all our Seals are going to level better as we level up? Will we be getting SoV at an earlier level? Will all seals be base line by level 20 and will we be getting more attacks/spells as base line as well so we aren’t just hitting more then one button for 20+ levels? Will CS/DS/HotR etc have levels to it? Become base line etc? Will we be getting a combat system that plays pretty equal among all three trees/specs? Those are the questions I want to know with this exp right now.
August 25th, 2009 - 10:04 am
@Mekaya
“F no! I would still like to crucify the kid about the MS question…”
Oh c’mon…
The guy’s ONE mistake seemed to be mentioning the fact that he was a ret pally, thats it. Now because he said that virtually no one in the audience or on that shambolic “dev” team listened to what he said. They basically seemed to hear, “ret pally” “when” “ms” thats it.
Reality is he asked when was everyone gettin MS because of the way its being handed out like candy instead of blizzard gettin off their bums and looking at pvp healing, you know the actual problem. I feel sorry for the poor fella tbh, asked a legitimate question about MS and then got boo’ed down by a 15,000 strong bunch ignorant moron’s and became the butt end of a “dev” joke.
I agree with ferarro 110% in the fact that as far as paladin “reputation” goes, the “dev’s” are dealing far more damage to it than any player could ever hope to achieve.
August 25th, 2009 - 1:26 pm
No I don’t think so…this moron was trying to a smart ass.
“Uhhh…When are you gonna give mortal strike debuffs to everyone? -*CAUSE YOU’RE DOING THAT RIGHT NOW*-.”
He was trying to be a smartass prick. I actually feel that everyone had a legitimate reason to boo him. That grin after his statement really didn’t help his message out with the body language.
August 25th, 2009 - 7:00 pm
Having random n00bs and bads /spit on you because they fail and don’t know how hard Ret was to play (TBC) or that nobody wants to be OP Superman (WoTLK) is one thing…
Having Blizzard Devs & Management /spit on you for being Ret is quite something else.
I’m very glad I quit 2 months ago. This game is just getting shittier after each Blue Post.
August 27th, 2009 - 1:53 am
WTB sunder armor on crusader strike.
August 29th, 2009 - 2:59 pm
-Stat increase (ArP, Hit, expertise ect) will probably get removed.
-Static damage increases (ex. conviction) will get removed.
-Condition static damage increase (exs. two handed weapon spec and crusade) may be removed or left in as flavor.
-Ability modifiers (ex. improve judgments) may be removed or left as flavor
-Misc, (ex. Pursuit of Justice) will likely be left in as flavor, but may get axed.
So what passive talents end up being considered boring is an important question for Blizzard to answer because there are lots of passive talents.
I see option B creating balance issues. Blizzard has stated the design goal is to have hybrid dps being slightly behind pure dps (let’s not argue over how well they are doing on this goal right now). The idea of having each tree be 41 points would then give hybrids the opportunity to also be slightly behind on survival or healing when compared to tanks and healers, while also being slightly behind pure dp.
So new talents actually make sense and it would explain why the trees aren’t being extended to a degree, I see other reasons for not extending them. Given how sparse the ret tree is, we’ll likely see replacement talents for whatever gets axed. I’m not sure about prot, Blizzard may opt to not replace all the talents they remove from that tree given that it does seem a little bloated.
September 1st, 2009 - 4:28 pm
@frog
No sir, i will one up you on that. I want CS to go back to having it’s original functionality where it will refresh all judgements active on the target. Namely, where my CS will keep up the 5stack of Socorr, so that i can twist my way back to SoR. Granted, i would lose the strength buff from the new libram (so hot). But i think it would work out rather well with the SoR glyph, and the fact that i would have 5stacks causing the 33% damage buff with the already nasty damage that SoR does.
Pipedream, i know. But i can dream.
September 2nd, 2009 - 7:36 pm
-Comment to Retpaladin.com-
This site feels very dead now, ever since the main guy left.
Put some articles, you guys are writers, go write something. Or at least let me do it
September 5th, 2009 - 2:51 pm
To Cnicus
Even if CS had its original functionality, you would be refreshing judgment of light/wisdom/justice and not the Seal of Vengeance/corruption stack you put on a mob since the stacks are not a judgment
September 6th, 2009 - 6:54 pm
WTB Update!
September 8th, 2009 - 3:35 am
= /, Hopefully they’re just making some major updates the website. It’ll be fine.
September 22nd, 2009 - 1:41 pm
Hybrid! You do know that shamans where described as hybrids on the blizzard homepage when wow came out.
To me a hybrid is a class that can do more then one thing. That leaves 4 classes. Rogues, mages, warlocks and hunters. Rest of the classes are hybrids.
I like that blizzard made it possible for all classes to compete in the dps meters. I was a rogue in vanilla wow. In a top guild in Europe. Shamans, druids, priests, paladins where all forced to be healers. Because their dps was alot lower then the “pure” classes.
I never liked that bit at all.
If I spec DPS as a paladin or a shaman or any other “hybrid” and i got the gear and skill I should be able to compete for the top dps spot.
October 14th, 2009 - 11:58 am
Crusader strike in my opinion should have always been baseline. Now it seems it’s been tagged onto the ret paladin tree as a result of an oversight. No tree should have a 41 pnt talent as a 75% white dmg autoattack. Seriously, blizz itself admitted the cycle we have was how shall I say it ‘Too give us more button’s to push’?.
The problem lays deeper then that. It’s the system. A system who refuses to see that you can’t balance pvp and pve with the same unmodified spells. As long as a mob hits for 15000k, we’ll have healers abilities that can heal this. That’s why they gave all dmg classes MS. Why Ret Paladins didn’t get it, well….
Fine. Give us another ability to shut down healing (interrupt, mana drain, I don’t care).
February 8th, 2010 - 10:39 pm
we rets are basically wow’s red-headed step children. they beat us more than they help us up off the floor after slapping the shit out of us. how it has always been kinda makes me wanna class change some times but fuck that i love my retadin >:)
June 4th, 2010 - 7:53 am
You forgot:
- Heart of the Crusader (+3% crit)
- Fanatacism (+18% crit to Judgements)
In addition to
- Deflection
- Benediction
- Conviction
- Sanctity of Battle
- Crusade
- Two-Hand Weapon Specialization
- Swift Retribution
- Improved Blessing of Might
Making that a grand total of 10 talents in the Ret tree that require changes to make them more interactive, intuitive, and “fun” as Blizzard has planned
I’m hoping for a total Ret overhaul in Cataclysm and I won’t be surprised if many of these talents will be changed to increase complexity in our rotations.
Oh, and don’t forget Crusader Strike and maybe Divine Storm, making that 12 talents that would require changes to prevent blandness.