UPDATED: 5/7/10 @ 9:13PM EST
Hello my fellow Retadins
It seems that MMO-Champion has given us quite a bit to chew on with the release of the Cataclysm Alpha phase. With this post, I intend to provide everything known to date with regard to Retribution in Cataclysm.
Talent Trees
Note that as of this update, there have not been many changes to the talent trees. As more are implemented, I’ll be sure to capture them here for you.
Link: Paladin Talent Trees
Key Changes:
- Retribution Tree
- - Crusader Strike talent changed to increase damage done by Crusader Strike by 10% (1pt)
- - Vindication talent changed to reduce physical damage done by target by 5/10% (2pts)
- - Repentance slightly changed to now remove Righteous Vengeance when it lands (1pt)
- - Swift Retribution talent changed to increase melee and ranged haste by 7/14/20% (3pts)
- - Divine Storm talent changed to only do 55% weapon damage but now hits unlimited targets (1pt)
- Protection Tree
- - None at this time
- Holy Tree
- - Beacon of Light changed to only work with Holy Light instead of all heals (1pt)
Now I realize that changes above are underwhelming and even in some cases flat out nerfs to abilities but I’d like to reiterate that the trees are FAR from done (you can expect most of the 1% per point talents to go away completely and be replaced by more interesting things). Take for example that Holy Shock is part of the Holy tree still. This was announced as a baseline ability for all Paladins. This should give you some indication of just how young these trees are yet.
May 7th, 2010 - 6:43 pm
Crusader Strike talent changed to increase damage done by Crusader Strike by 10% (1pt)
Talents like this are dumb.
I thought they wanted to get rid of point talents….so we get 1 point back from not having to go crusader strike, but are forced to get 10% more for it by spending it on crusader strike…. sigh
May 7th, 2010 - 8:38 pm
Crusader Strike talent changed to increase damage done by Crusader Strike by 10% (1pt)
Stupid, Why? because this would have been a great chance in adding a secondary effect for Ret, maybe like “reduces targets movement speed by 10%” Since are ability to close the gap has been nerfed even more. So far ret is going to be kited to death. Mage will roll stomp us and hunter probably will to, hell anything with range will just about. Yes i know things are not set in stone but still not looking good.
Repentance slightly changed to now remove Righteous Vengeance when it lands (1pt)
So it’s ok for a warlock to dot me up while i’m running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. But if i try to repentance and my dot gets removed? i understand that it can break rep but why not make it not break? Or hell make it break it for more room to make mistakes? I’m sorry but i can’t get over the cleans nerf still, that’s going to hurt.
Divine Storm talent changed to only do 55% weapon damage but now hits unlimited targets (1pt)
Don’t get me started here, single target damage is going to be bad. But that also depends on how much are damage scales. This one I guess I’m undecided till beta starts up.
Vindication talent changed to reduce physical damage done by target by 5/10% (2pts)
Now this one is nice. Finally worth some talent points in pvp.
Swift Retribution talent changed to increase melee and ranged haste by 7/14/20% (3pts)
Movement nerf, but a PvE buff. Maybe a PvP buff in damage but I don’t see it, cause haste sucks in PvP. Time will only tell.
Well that’s my 2 cents.
May 8th, 2010 - 3:48 am
“Vindication talent changed to reduce physical damage done by target by 5/10%”
If you think they will let that work in pvp….. well we will see. LOL
In a raid situation “Swift Retribution talent changed to increase melee and ranged haste by 7/14/20% (3pts)” Where you already had this buff, its a nerf removing the 3% we would have had. Its a buffed to ranged haste users tho.
“Repentance slightly changed to now remove Righteous Vengeance when it lands ”
Removing my dots is dumb, just make them not break it. I agree with Jolee, it doesn’t remove everyone elses dots, what good is that just to have it break anyhow and i lost my dmg if i used it as a split second catch up/interrupt.
No cleanse is going to be horrrrrrrible. This tree has added nothing of real use to “US” and we need something. Glad its only alpha still.
May 8th, 2010 - 4:45 am
I agree with both of you but do bear in mind that these trees are still extremely early on with their changes. There is a substantial amount still yet to come and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the trees.
At this point, my biggest concern is Divine Storm. A 51 point talent that does absolutely atrocious single-target damage doesn’t at all seem appealing to me.
May 8th, 2010 - 5:56 am
Yeah, I was hoping for something more where Crusader Strike used to be. The changes to Divine Storm are also kind of mahbleh. I think it’s too much to hope for additional melee attacks. Overall, it’s an okay preview of the talent tree.
May 8th, 2010 - 7:46 am
really, it seems like they just shoehorned in the changes that were being done for other classes, but not actually picking apart the paladin trees yet.
Vindi- announced that it would be changed with demo shout to be “more clear”.
CS- well, i guess they have lv 1 figured out, hopefully its just a placeholder.
Repent- isn’t that supposed to be coming in like, the next minor patch? maybe i read it wrong when it was announced.
Swift Ret- i bet they want to make this and windfury and icy talons interchangable.
DS nerf- whirlwind treatment, still, think of the healing when you are aoe’ing in packs of 10-20 mobs. going to make us even stronger soloing i think, assuming we still have the damage we do now to 2-3 global mobs.
as far as the bacon change, sucks, but again, they can’t be done with the trees considering holy shock is still in there.
May 8th, 2010 - 10:41 am
Repentance already works like that on live and has since the last patch. It’s just not spelled out in the tool tip.
May 8th, 2010 - 1:01 pm
If anybody thinks the current Crusader Strike talent is anything other than a placeholder they need to punch themselves.
May 8th, 2010 - 1:03 pm
Somebody in the DDF mentioned this regarding Divine Storm possibly being “moved” from its 51-point spot.
“Your 51 point talent will be Forbearance.
Sssh, it’s a surprise. ”
Totally appropriate.
May 8th, 2010 - 2:46 pm
100% agree Meracalis. Technically, we shouldn’t even be seeing these trees yet, that’s how underdeveloped they are.
May 8th, 2010 - 3:02 pm
Exedore – I thought the way it works on live is to keep Righteous Vengeance up but that it doesn’t break Repentance. The change in this tree is that Repentance now REMOVED Righteous Vengeance.
Meracalis – Exactly. I’m in agreement here. The trees are all we have to go on thus far and they are clearly extremely underdeveloped. Expect substantial changes around the start of the summer.
May 8th, 2010 - 3:29 pm
@Tharvolde
They changed that recently. Repentance removes Righteous Vengeance now on live. The change is simply a visual fix of the tooltip on Repentance in the Cataclysm Alpha builds.
May 8th, 2010 - 7:14 pm
The Cata Beta thread in the General Forum has more changes BTW, for those interested in more info.
May 9th, 2010 - 1:36 am
I punched myself.
May 10th, 2010 - 3:26 pm
I’ve seemed to notice that the ret paladin community(myself included) as become very bitter here at the end of wrath. Being horribly designed around burst, then having that nerfed with no compensation seemed to leave a bad taste is peoples’ mouth. It’s easy to see why when we see any change the majority tend to see it as negative, because given Wrath’s history blizzard hasn’t the slightest clue as to what to do.
That said, if this 41-pointer goes live I’m going to let out a guffaw.
May 11th, 2010 - 1:11 am
Really bad? I don’t think it would really warrant a guffaw, maybe a one-and-a-half look MAYBE. At this point I think 10% on CS that is getting its damage raised might be better then some queer shit like “Your successful CS reduce the CD on Holy Garg by x seconds”. Quote me on that bitch when that is our 41 point talent.
May 11th, 2010 - 1:45 am
The Ret Paladin community has been bitter from day 1
May 11th, 2010 - 2:53 am
@ Baconizzle
I suppose guffaw is too big a word. Maybe sarcastic chuckle? But yeah, if they manage to fuck up pvp again along with this ridiculous raid changes I’m definitely gonna go from weekend hiker to 7-day a week hiker. If it weren’t for Heroic LK progression I’d have been gone a while ago.
May 11th, 2010 - 3:21 am
I like the change to swift retribution. It makes SoC very interesting.
May 11th, 2010 - 11:23 pm
“You summon the Archangel Tyrael, who unleashes the 5-year accumulation of disgruntledness from the Retribution Paladin Community upon all nearby targets, immediately disconnecting them from the Internet and consuming all bacon within a 50,000 yard range. For each strip of bacon consumed it will instantly heal the caster for 10% of their total health. Instant cast.
Causes Forbearance.”
May 12th, 2010 - 11:00 am
Anyone with a brain knows that Paladins (all 3 specs) are in dire need of yet another overhaul.
Paying attention to any info from the Alpha is really just a waste of time.
Basically, until the Hotfixes are implemented (3rd or 4th week after Cata Launch) , you will never have a complete idea of what Paladins will look like.
May 12th, 2010 - 6:07 pm
I went ret right before the release of 2.4 and all ive known is the ret community to be pretty bitter and somewhat have the right to. I know these changes are not fully set in stone but it shows a direction that they might go with.
I know that ill always adapt and learn and be the best i can be but having to work harder then every other class just to be good sometimes gets kinda nerv racking.
May 13th, 2010 - 3:46 am
So far I see our rotation as such: Judgement, Holy Shock, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm. If you are running SoC as, it currently works, thats 3 aoe attacks 4 if you use concecration. Combine the new swift retribution with this rotation and that is a lot of cleave damage.
May 13th, 2010 - 1:54 pm
Ernhart Swift Retribution is nothing new, 99% positive it will be the same buff as windfury and icy talons. You should already have one of those in a 25 man raid so you aren’t gaining anything special except for 10 mans possibly.
May 13th, 2010 - 8:45 pm
Turkey, I wouldn’t say they need an overhaul. And it’s EXTREMELY unlikely either Retribution or Protection will see anything to that extent, as they kinda just received an overhaul at the beginning of WotLK. From the look of things, Holy is being changed pretty drastically, but I still wouldn’t call it an overhaul.
@Treis
The community does have the right to, but being eternally bitter doesn’t help fix things (Thanks to ‘Bushock’, shaman forums were disregarded completely by blues for a big chunk of time, just because people can’t settle down).
I also wouldn’t say we work harder than other classes to be good. I’m not sure why you believe this, but we aren’t feral druids (or even close for that matter). We definitely work harder than other classes to be perfect, but not good.
May 13th, 2010 - 9:55 pm
” Beacon of Light changed to only work with Holy Light instead of all heals ”
Well that is the END of FoL Healadins. Back to “inside the box” thinking. Bliz obviously wants all pallies to spec one way and this is certainly a move toward that. FoL pallies can official retire right next to the vanilla shockadins.
May 13th, 2010 - 11:21 pm
@NovaBlazer
Flash of Light is being changed in Cataclysm to be a standard fast heal that has high cost and moderate throughput like Flash Heal or Lesser Healing Wave. It will no longer be low cost, low throughput and outright terrible. It’s years overdue.
Beacon of Light is also changing so that the additional heal is no longer free. Blizzard felt it was good in its current form and was a balance issue for 10man especially.
@Vindictus
Paladins will always feel terrible until Blizzard realizes they need to fix the core of the class and stop adding bells and whistles. The seal/judgement system has been lackluster since the start of WotLK and that’s where a lot of the problems for Ret come from. Then there’s the fact that paladins are a mana-based class with infinite mana. There’s no resource limitation and there needs to be. In addition, ret doesn’t work well with a small mana pool and high regen.
May 14th, 2010 - 2:07 pm
@Exedore
Will you please make a war-tools talent tree and link it? I would be really interested in the ideas you would come up with for Ret. I normally always agree with your posts and want to see a good Ret paladin tree made.
May 15th, 2010 - 4:32 pm
lol what? youve never ran out of mana?
May 15th, 2010 - 5:08 pm
About the only way for a Ret to go OoM is for them to constantly judge shields, get CC’ed at the same time as they judge, or heal/cleanse and not judge at all.
May 20th, 2010 - 8:55 am
In PvE I’d agree that it’s very hard for a Ret to go OOM, especially if it’s full buffed. However, it’s a completely different story in PvP. If you run into the frost/disc comp, you can kiss your mana goodbye. I run ret/rogue (as the rogue, but I have a Ret pally, so I know what I’m talking about) and every time we encounter a comp like that our pally switches to Seal of Wisdom for the extra mana and still goes OOM.
IMO what Blizz needs to do is allow partial mana return from judging bubbles, maybe not full, because that’d be too OP, but at least 1/3 or something…. Warriors still get rage from beating of a bubble, so why shouldn’t we get mana?
May 21st, 2010 - 10:28 am
Check the General Forum thread on Cata changes for the Masteries BTW.
May 23rd, 2010 - 12:55 pm
Repentance change should act like a glyphed sheep for mages so that ALL DOTs from the target are removed.
Especially since the game will be balanced around rated BGs… how many times are you going to repent a target w/ DOTs on them?
Repentace – Also removes all DOT effects from the target.
fixed
all other changes still suck complete balls btw. paladin guardian? epic FAIL