[2023] Feedback: Paladins in 10.0.7

Hello Paladins.

We’re hard at work on updates to the Retribution tree, and we’ll soon share a set of in-depth development notes to give an overview of what’s changed there.

We’re also making some changes to the Paladin class tree, some of which you’ll see in today’s PTR update.

In Dragonflight, Retribution Aura has functioned only as a personal throughput benefit to Paladins, locking them out of using other Auras during gameplay. We’re looking to change that, so Retribution Aura now grants 5% increased damage and healing for 10 seconds to all party or raid members whenever a party or raid member within 40 yards takes more than 50% of their health in damage. This can only occur once every 30 seconds.

In addition to the changes to Retribution Aura, Retribution Paladins will receive a baseline passive: Instrument of Retribution – When any party or raid member within 40 yards dies, you gain Avenging wrath for 12 seconds.

Seraphim has been removed from the Paladin talent tree. In our previous notes, we mentioned stacking auras and having an excessive amount of buttons to press. Seraphim is a fairly large factor in both, and we feel it is better to take the throughput provided by this cooldown and build it into your core abilities.

As a result of the above, we’ve decided to move Divine Toll to the Paladin class tree to ensure there’s still a powerful and exciting node at the end point of the class tree as a goal.

We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks and hearing to your feedback!

With today’s PTR update, we’re moving toward providing Retribution Paladins with options to invest in certain abilities, damage profile and damage types, while also increasing their survivability and trying to put them on a fairer playing field regarding movement.

Buttons
We’ve reduced the number of total buttons that you’ll be able to acquire as a specialization at one time. We’ve accomplished this through a variety of means: some abilities have been removed, some that felt redundant are choice nodes opposite one another, a number of abilities can now be talented to override existing abilities, and in a few cases we replaced abilities are granted for free as a secondary function of another.

Stacking Modifiers
We’ve made significant changes to reduce the amount of stacking modifiers available. To accomplish this, we’ve removed abilities that felt like they were doubling up in purpose, such as Seraphim and have also removed several small maintenance buffs and debuffs that we feel were not providing rewarding gameplay. The lost damage from this will be rerouted to core abilities, cooldowns and new talents as part of our future tuning.

Survivability
The Paladin class tree has seen a substantial update alongside our Retribution rework, through this and updates to the Retribution tree itself there should now be a number of options to help Paladins survive more while participating in various types of content.

Maneuverability
We aren’t done with maneuverability yet; we have a few ideas we’re currently exploring internally and will have more to share here in the future. Additionally, we’ve removed Divine Steed from the GCD, since Retribution Paladins rely on this as their major movement ability. Retribution Paladins now receive Blessing of Freedom for free as a part of their Specialization and can talent into a new talent “Unbound Freedom” which provides increased movement speed.

Utility
As previously detailed, Retribution Aura has been redesigned to benefit your group or raid. In addition to this and as a result of the updates to the Paladin class tree, it should now be easier to acquire talents that will provide a benefit to your group or raid.

In the 10.0.7 PTR, we currently have some

Known Issues

• Tuning is in progress and several talents / abilities are likely undertuned and overtuned.
• Divine Hammer does not benefit from some Consecration talents.
• Improved Crusader Strike is not granting an extra charge to Blessed Hammer.
• Blessed Champion and Commanding Judgement do not receive the correct damage reductions.
• Executioner’s Will is not correctly functioning with Final Reckoning
• Physical Presence and Searing Light will have more functionality / purpose.
• Penitence and spells that benefit from it are not currently functioning.
• Punishment is not correctly functioning.
• Lightforged Blessing is not currently affecting allies.
• Consecrated Blade and Divine Hammer are not correctly replacing consecration.
• Jurisdiction and Unbound Freedom PVP talents will be removed as their effects are now built into the talent tree.
• Consecrated Blade and Divine Hammers incorrectly require 20 talent points to be spent.

We look forward to hearing your feedback on the individual talents, layout, pathing and how fun you feel the builds you can create are.

The current in-game tree is incorrect, we’re working on updating the tree itself in the 10.0.7 PTR. We expect to do that via hotfixes at a later time.

The talent tree has been hotfixed and is appearing in the 10.0.7 PTR as intended.

Hello again, Paladins!

Working from feedback we’ve received, the new 10.0.7 build includes changes to talent positions, Holy Power generation, general build synergy, and many bug fixes.

Class

• Unbound Freedom is now located on the class tree for the Retribution specialization only.
• Healing Hands is now located on the class tree for the Retribution specialization only.
• Zealot’s Paragon has been removed from the talent tree for the Retribution specialization only.
• New talent - Vengeful Wrath: Hammer of Wrath always critically strikes. This talent is located on the Class tree for the Retribution specialization only.

Retribution

• New talent - Vanguard of Justice: Your single-target Holy Power abilities cost 1 additional Holy Power and deal 20% increased damage. 2 Ranks.
• New talent - Divine Wrath: Avenging Wrath / Crusade duration increased by 3 seconds.
• Executioner’s Will has been redesigned - Now increases the duration of Execution Sentence and Final Reckoning by 3 seconds.
• Adjudication has been redesigned - Now increases critical strike by 2% and Hammer of Wrath critical strikes cause a Blessed Hammer to spiral around you dealing Holystrike damage to enemies.
• Justicar’s Vengeance now has a default range of 8 yards.
• Crusader’s Reprieve now also affects the range of Rebuke.
• Final Reckoning now lasts 10 seconds (was 9 seconds) and you deal 40% increased damage (was 50%).
• Empryean Legacy lockout period now 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Inquisitor’s Ire now gains a stack every 2 seconds (was 3 seconds).
• Art of War now only triggers once per Crusader strike cast, whether it be from manual casting or auto-attacks.
• Art of War’s chance to proc increased to 20% (was 15%).
• Penitence is now 1 rank.
• Divine Hammer now deals damage every 2 seconds (was 1.5 seconds) and total duration has been increased to 12 seconds (was 9 seconds).
• Vanguard’s Momentum is now 1 rank.
• Hammer of Wrath damage increased by 16%.
• Execution Sentence now causes 25% of the damage you deal to be added to Execution Sentence (was 10%).
• Blessed Champion now correctly states that additional Crusader Strike targets are hit for 50% damage.
• Commanding Judgment now causes additional Judgments to deal 50% reduced damage to targets (was 85%).
• Highlord’s Judgment now additionally increases the duration of Judgment by 2 seconds per rank.
• Tempest of the Lightbringer no longer consumes a stack of Judgment.
• Crusader Strikes now generates 1 holy power every 2 attacks (was every (1) attack).
• Righteous Cause chance to trigger reduced to 20% (was 25%).
• Vanguard’s Momentum no longer grants additional damage to Hammer of Wrath (as its base value was significantly increased).
• Fixed an issue that prevented Divine Hammer from benefiting from Sanctify.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Consecrated Ground from working correctly with Divine Hammer.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Empryean Power from triggered from Crusader Strike auto-attacks.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Blessing of Dawn from working correctly with Justicar’s Vengeance.
• Fixed an issue that was causing Penitence to not work correctly with Wake of Ashes, Expurgation, Consecrate, Consecrated Blade, Divine Hammer, and Execution Sentence.
• Fixed an issue that caused Sanctified Plates to not correctly increase your stamina.
• Fixed an issue that caused Justicar’s Vengeance to not consume stacks of Blessing of Dawn.

As you can see, we have not yet focused on tuning. We’re still working on the amount of single target talent choices, Holystrike / Radiant builds, and Retribution’s overall mobility package. But we intend to move into tuning in the near future.

Thank you very much for your testing and feedback!

Hello Paladins!

The Retribution Paladin talent tree is now mostly complete. There are a few talents we’re still iterating on to get the functionality and feeling right, such as Templar Strikes and Searing light.

But we’re now moving our main focus to bug fixing and tuning in the coming weeks. Due to the scope of this rework, we still have a lot of iteration and testing to do here, but we’re nevertheless approaching our goal of streamlining the spec while improving throughput, mobility, survivability, and utility:

• Retribution Aura has been redesigned – When any party or raid member within 40 yards takes more than 30% of their health in damage in a single hit, each member gains 5% increased damage and healing, decaying over 30 seconds. This cannot occur within 30 seconds of the aura being applied.
  • Developers’ note: Implementation of these new effects will be added in a future PTR build, functionality for this week’s PTR might be a little buggy while we work on these new effects.
• Wake of Ashes, Execution Sentence and Final Reckoning now contribute to Blessing of Dawn if they are providing Holy Power.
• Various abilities are no longer providing extra triggers for Blessing of Dawn.
• Various abilities no longer incorrectly benefit from the damage bonus provided by Blessing of Dawn.
• Unbreakable Spirit’s tooltip now correctly calls out both Divine Protection and Shield of Vengeance.
• Fixed an issue causing Sanctified Plates to grant zero extra health.
• Punishment now triggers Crusader Strike correctly.
• Lightforged Blessing’s healing effect now appears in the combat log as Lightforged Blessing rather than Healing Burst.
• Lightforged Blessing now heals for 3% of maximum health (was 5%).
• Divine Purpose no longer interacts with Execution Sentence.
• Crusader Aura no longer grants extended ranges.
• Protection
  • Fixed an issue with Final Stand causing a delay between Divine Shield activating and the taunt effect being applied.
  • Fixed an issue with Incandescence causing it to incorrectly damage Explosive orbs.
• Retribution
  • Fixed an issue causing Virtuous Silver Cataphract’s 4-set bonus to grant Templar’s Verdict/Final Verdict 20% increased damage rather than 10%.
  • Virtuous Silver Cataphract (Set Bonus) now works with Justicar’s Vengeance.
  • Mastery: Hand of Light now provides less Holy damage bonus per point in Mastery.
    • Developers’ note: We’re currently experimenting with this as Retribution Paladin’s damage is made up of both Physical and Holy damage, this leaves their Physical damage in a fairly bad place which we’d like to amend.
  • New Talent: Rush of Light – The critical strikes of your damaging single target Holy Power abilities grant 5% Haste for 10 seconds.
  • New Talent: Divine Wrath – Avenging Wrath / Crusade duration increased by 3 seconds.
  • New Talent: Judge, Jury and Executioner – Increases the critical strike chance of Judgment by 10%.
  • Final Reckoning damage reduced by 13%.
  • Wake of Ashes damage reduced by 16%.
  • Execution Sentence now deals 25% of the damage dealt during Execution Sentence (was 20%).
  • Aegis of Protection’s Shield of Vengeance absorb is now increased by 20% (was 30%).
  • The old functionality of Executioner’s Will has been removed and now simply increases the duration of Execution Sentence and Final Reckoning by 4 seconds.
  • Adjudication now increases Critical Strike damage by 5% instead of increasing Critical Strike chance and Hammer of Wrath critical strikes cause a blessed Hammer to spiral around you dealing Holystrike damage to enemies.
  • Commanding Judgment now deals normal damage to the primary target.
  • Of Dusk and Dawn’s Wake of Ashes now correctly contributes to Blessing of Dawn.
  • Highlord’s Judgment extends the duration of Judgment by 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).
  • Physical Presence renamed to Divine Arbiter.
  • Divine Arbiter increases the damage of Holystrike abilities by 10% (was 20%) and your abilities that deal Holystrike damage grant you a stack of Divine Arbiter. At 50 stacks you lash out dealing Holystrike damage to your primary target and reduced Holystrike damage to enemies within 8 yards.
  • Vanguard of Justice bonus damage per rank increased to 33% (was 20%).
  • Vanguard of Justice now also applies to Divine Storm.
  • Blades of Light now also causes Templar’s Verdict, Final Verdict, and Justicar’s Vengeance to deal Holystrike damage.
  • Crusader Strike, Judgment, Hammer of Wrath, Templar’s Verdict, Final Verdict, and Justicar’s Vengeance’s tooltips are correctly modified by Blades of Light to detail they deal Holystrike damage.
  • Blessed Hammer removed from the talent tree.
    • Developers’ note: We feel there’s something cool about the spinning hammer fantasy, but we’re happy with other ways of providing this rather than directly replacing Crusader Strike.
  • Divine Storm, Divine Hammer, and Consecration’s tooltips are correctly modified by Burning Crusade to detail that they deal Radiant damage.
  • Burning Crusade now also increases the damage of Divine Storm, Consecration, and Divine Hammer by 10%
  • Fixed some functionality with Avenging Wrath: Might. The tooltip stats it increases your critical chance, but it was only increasing the critical chance of certain abilities. It should now be working correctly.
  • Empyrean Legacy now works correctly with Justicar’s Vengeance.
  • Consecrated Ground now has custom values for Consecration and Divine Hammer, and Divine Hammer now slows correctly.
  • Divine Hammer radius reduced to 6 yards (was 8 yards).
  • Divine Hammer now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • Swift Retribution renamed to Divine Retribution.
  • Divine Retribution Haste increased by 2% and Divine Storm and Blade of Justice deal 5% increased critical strike damage.
  • Consecrated Blade now casts Consecration 100% of the time but can only occur once every 10 seconds.
  • Art of War chance to trigger reduced to 15% (was 20%).
  • Searing Light is still a work in progress, but the idea is that under certain conditions you can create a large explosion of Radiant damage.

We really appreciate all the feedback we’re seeing across many different sources! It really helps us shape our work, thank you!