Hand of Light is gone. And back in. The new mastery effect for Retribution Paladins is being redesigned to give a passive damage increase to Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage. Hand of Light will move to replace Divine Purpose in the Retribution Talent Tree, and Divine Purpose goes away. This really switches things up, stabilizing our rotations to a more solid state.
The new Mastery change will be interesting as it scales upward, especially with Inquisition integrated. Stay tuned as we find out more from Blizzard on what to expect with this Mastery re-design! Thumbs WAY UP so far!
Here is the post from Blizzard: [Source]
Retribution Mastery Changes
Mastery is a new stat for us, and there are a few specs that don’t value it enough. In some cases (e.g. Combat rogues), the design for mastery is fine and we just need to buff the effects to make it more desirable. In others, we don’t think it’s possible to buff mastery enough in its current form. For example, the Retribution mastery, Hand of Light, is fun, but it doesn’t contribute enough damage. To make it contribute enough damage, the proc would need a very high chance, which then can cause paladins to devalue other sources of Holy Power. Instead, we are redesigning Retribution mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage (which also plays better with Inquisition). Because Hand of Light is fun, however, we are going to change Divine Purpose as a chance to proc Hand of Light instead of a chance for extra Holy Power (which will also remove a little of the randomness from the rotation). Unholy DKs are another spec for whom mastery just isn’t working out. Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery).
i hear the incoming crying over holy damage from non-pallies already. Seriously though, I love that they were at least listening to the ret community enough to fix this.
I am glad they did something. I have been so thoroughly disgusted how bad my dps was i started playing my warlock. Don’t kill me. LOL
Plus offensive dispels nerfed for mages and shamies. Thanks god. Finally someone is listening…
Good news at last
finally we can actually dps
The current system is not broken. A ret that understands what they are doing can pull competitive dps in both heroics and raids. Now, everything is back up in the air again.
Son I Am Disappoint.
@ Captoats
Yes they can. but remember that to do so we gotta stick our rotation 100% perfect to get good dps. im not saying that thats bad, just that rets have had to work a hell of alot harder to get decent dps then any other class.
I think that this change is great. This might make me go ret again so i dont have to be a healbot ^^
Ret is doing decent dps if the fight doesn’t require lots of target switching or killing adds. RNG is still a huge problem, since i can be doing 12k dps or 16k dps, depending only on RNG, and that’s not cool.
The big problem on raids as i see it right now is that other classes are doing better with less effort, therefore taking raidspots that before used to belong to rets.
New mastery need to increase TV damage ALOT to compensate for fewer TVs in this new rotation. If the buff to TV is not big enough, we will end up doing even less DPS. Sure, it will be alot less RNG dependant but also much weaker. They really should give us another method of generating HP, not only CS.
It will certainly put things back into the realms of DPS for rets again. At the moment im doing just above average DPS but my role is a more intricate one. Helping with healing, CC and even doubling as a secondary tank in some cases for brief rest bites.
Either way im pleased.
Also……. what are they exactly saying here? That We wont get the proc show up on the screen and we basically will see extra damage come off the Mob when it procs?
What if it procs when your fighting a particularly nasty nasty and you wanted that Holy power for health?
I think I must be missing the point….
Well, this will be the third time that I will need to relearn the class; it’s getting tiresome and I bet that won’t be the last time on the next 3 months. So far I think that Ret DPS is in a good place among other classes and I have been able to explore some of the utility that the can offer so far.
What I like is that some randomness is being removed for good.
PS: I won’t ever comply if my class is OP or any DPS increase.
Agreed! That is tiresome for being playing around by blizz on Ret pally. Not having any real fun for that complicated rotation. Actually, I stop my ret at 80 and left it there. At least, she still have full epic T10 wearing – looking good. (It may be my personal problem thinking like this)
I’m Loving the changes, Inquisition is actually going to be worth while, won’t have to keep my eyes pinned on the HP bar for random procs meaning rets will no longer have to suffer from migraines
good call blizz, and about time!! if you want to heal, go holy. if you want to tank, go prot! leave ret as a pure dps spec and not a hybrid one! thanks!
With Divine Purpose going away, that means we have no way to generate HP in AoE situations. Is this an opening that we can petition for HotR treatment for DS? With DS and CS on the same timer, this just eliminated my ever using DS even in AoE situations, since it won’t generate HP.
Also, difens, there won’t necessarily be less TVs now. Hand of Light is staying in. It’s DP that is going away. The real questions are going to be, what percentage chance will Hand of Light have to proc, and what can we do to generate HP in AoE situations?
So it sounds to me like mastery was a half baked idea that they really didnt know what to do with, but it sounded cool at the time. Mastery should have been passive from from day one if they were going to have us use it. I just hope its not another stat we have to stack or cap…we have enuff of those as it is atm.
I’m happy that there is a upcoming change and that it might work out, but i’m not holding my breath for its results. I’ve pretty much lost faith in what there doing to rets anymore. I still play mine all the time, its ok, but its just not right. To many changes & to much bs.
A simple change like dropping our CS cd down to a 2 sec cd would be something more solid and reliable than the random whack a proc and waiting for cds like we have now. In some situations we cant just hit whatever is available at the time. Since CS is our primary HP building block, the only one we can really rely on for HP, wouldnt we get better dps overall just from this?
I am sincerely glad that blizzard has acknowledged that ret paladins need a bit of tweaking. This will make mastery almost more important than crit in the upcoming fix in my opinion. I have already begun to shy away from pure strength in favor of reforging excess hit and expertise into mastery as well as using hybrid gems like the Skillful Ember Topaz. While maintaining my current level of dps, I am also already ready for when the mastery conversion goes live.
I will be curious to see just how much my dps goes up with this new change in place. I can already peek out at 11k with a good rotation and full cooldowns so it can only get better from there
I’m sorry, but if you can’t play the new system well then stop complaining and spend time on a training dummy figuring it out or go reroll. The spec is perfectly fine, I can match fury warriors and UH DKs (both of which are ‘op’ at the current time) even when I miss a beat. The new system requires you to be competent, you can’t mindlessly mash buttons, you have to understand what you are doing and what you ultimately want to do. You think it’s hard to keep inquisition up while you watch your holy power? Do locks complain about having to keep up ALL of their dots and ALL of their buffs? Do rogues or kitties complain about having to watch their combo points? The only thing bad about rets is that people are TRYING to make mastery good because they simply want it to be good. ArP was not a good stat for us in WoTLK but it WAS a good stat for others. Mastery is in the exact same situation. Items with Crit and haste aren’t hard to come by, and they are stats we want. As far as I can tell, we don’t need to get a buff in this area.
On a side note, losing DP is an utterly horrid thing. Our HP supply is limited to CS and a HoL proc. If we get disarmed, our HP resource is cut in half. We lose versatility just to gain a harder hitting TV. The bottom line is any knowledgeable ret pally would rather have better HP generation than a harder hitting attack. Less HP means less heals, tvs and inqs. This is a huge pvp nerf, and imo will also be a pve nerf. Blizzard needs to leave this alone and let the players not get what they want.
@ Captoats
I dont think its a problem of most ppl not being able to use this system , I dont have a problem with it at all & im sure othe ppl dont, i think its most ppl are tired of the constant changes. Your all the same, just because ppl disagree with what you or blizz think, you tell them to quit or reroll, your even complaining yourself..so where does that put you?… And it sounds like blizz made up there mind already.
The fix is amazing. Simple as that. DP will in essence proc 3 HP now instead of 1. There’s no change to RNG (apparently), so consistency in spells/attacks proccing DP will be exactly the same. The reason why crit and haste are THE secondary stats to have is because of the state HoL is in at the moment. Considering the way Blizz are intending HoL to function in the future, I wouldn’t be surprised if mastery eventually sat evenly alongside Crit and Haste.
“…mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage …”. Additional Holy dps through Ret’s heaviest attacks is, in theory, a very substantial plus. Exactly what we needed, although I’m not sure if it will help our appalling AoE :>
Captoates you said “The bottom line is any knowledgeable ret pally would rather have better HP generation than a harder hitting attack. Less HP means less heals, tvs and inqs”. The fix will do just that, 3 HP for the price of 1. You now have 7 abilities to produce 3 HP at a 20% proc rate; that’s pretty damn good imo. Combined with the T11 bonuses (especially 2PC) and of course the TV glyph, the benefit will be HUGE. The downside: we’ll have to start thinking at least 1 rotation in advance now, as to which ability to use HoL on (TV, WoG or Inq).
Note: Keep the timings tight!
I always played Prot and decided to give Ret a try…
I was immediately struck at how chaotic the rotation was — I couldn’t look away from my action bar for more than a half-second. It was also apparent that my DPS was entirely based on a set of procs.
I decided to check online about my crappy DPS and completely un-enjoyable experience as Ret. I found this article — I’m glad to see the problem wasn’t just me being a Ret beginner.
Thanks for the article — and thanks to Blizz for making things right.
I welcome these changes. I’ve played a ret as my main since I started playing the game 2 years ago and have always loved it, but since HP and these other changes were introduced, it’s been boring as hell, at least for combat while questing. Maybe it’s better when fighting a big boss in a dungeon, but I haven’t gotten to try that out yet. I just feel completely at the mercy of the RNG — If I get plenty of HoL and AoW procs, combat moves quickly; if I get none/few, it takes forever as I go CS>CS>CS>TV>repeat. So I can kill one mob in a few seconds thanks to multiple procs, and then the next, *identical* mob take 5 times as long because I get no procs. Inquisition and Zealotry feel very useless for combat while questing, due the distance between mobs, i.e. I pop them while fighting one mob, then they wear off by the time I get to the next mob and Zealotry’s CD prevents me from popping it again; again, these are probably awesome in a dungeon/raid situation, but mostly useless for quest combat. CS and DS being on the same timer is annoying as well. I used to be able to somewhat alternate them, but now it’s one or the other and 99% of the time there’s simply no reason to use DS.
Right now I’m at the point where I’m enjoying playing my #2 (fire mage) and #3 (arms warrior) toons a lot more than my #1 toon. I feel like my paladin is spending more time of Fishing and Archaeology than on adventuring.
…time to dust off that ret set that i’ve been collecting from tanking heroics…at least as an offset when my guild doesnt need a tankadin for a pull.
ya ur right about not beign able to look away from the action bars
using all cooldowns i can do 15k dps. when it wears off i can only keep it up to like 11-12k. but still i hope they increase ret. i get aggro from trying to increase my dps, despite being in 3rd place on the dps meter.
Hey, I’m excited to see what this change brings about, it looks like it will be a dps increase overall and I sure hope it is. But really, our dps is not that bad for those of us who know what to do. My guild just did argaloth last night in baradin hold and I was on top of the charts at 15k dps for the whole fight, i peeked at 20k during the high point of the fight, so it is possible for us to perform great dps.
Someone else mentioned the aggro issues that ret seems to have. It does seem unbalanced. I’ve seen this both as ret and when on my DK tank, ret seems way overboard on their aggro tables. Sometimes I barely do anything at all and I’ll pull mobs without even trying. I saw a ret pally who was doing 2k dps and dead last on the charts still pulling aggro from the tank, who was working aggressively and had no problem holding in other situations and against far higher dps. Not sure what is going on with that, and I’ve only seen it briefly mentioned here and there.
how are you guys gettin that sort of dps im lucky if i get 7k wtf am i doin wrong lol when are these changes due to be realesed?