So Much Blue!

Finally, there are good Blue beta posts on ret paladins. Let's take a gander.

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On a related subject, Pursuit of Justice is pretty under budget and Eye for an Eye is pretty risky to take, considering it could perhaps break CC on the target.

Eye for an Eye will only reflect direct damage spells, not dots. 

Oh good, another reason not to take Eye for an Eye. Next.

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It is something that really needs work on because at the moment as long as you have a single Holy Power and an open GCD you will TV instead of only wanting to TV at 3 which just seems odd to me.

This would be a pretty big dps loss under most circumstances. A 3 charge Templar's Verdict hits so much stronger than a 1 charge, that it's not worth it using Templar's Verdict to fill holes. 

They're trying to move away from the FCFS rotation system, from what I've been told, so the poster's sentiment of "Oh no, I have no more buttons to push, I'm just going to TV!" is misinformed. Wait for the 3 stack, young padawan, then facesmash TV.

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This has pretty much been my complaint from the start. Our rotation is one part Rogue, one part feral, one part empty space, and one part mashing buttons.

It doesnt feel cohesive, it doesnt feel fluid, it has no rhythm

This specific feedback is a tricky thing to handle because a lot of Ret paladins are used to mashing buttons every GCD, and any time they aren't in that state they are going to feel a lack of "rhythm" (as you put it). Yet if you look at rogues and Feral druids, they can't hit a button every GCD because they don't always have the energy to do so. 

We don't want classes / specs to use every GCD. We don't think that's good for the game, as I've mentioned before. (Casters do their waiting while casting rather than in between abilities.) The trick is to fill "enough" holes with something. For some players, especially some Ret players, that "enough" is going to feel weird for them unless it means every single hole. That's not what we're going for though. Wasting every other GCD is too extreme and isn't what we're going for either. 

Again, no more FCFS. At least not the "fill the hole with any old spell that's not on cooldown" FCFS we're used to. Since I'm not on the beta, and since I've been lagging behind with my beta research, I can't say for certain, but it seems like it's going to be a FCFS with a HoPo (*shudders*) dump (*giggles*) woven somewhere in there. Yes, it's going to be weird. But at least they're trying to require a little skill for the ret rotation.

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Yeah just to clarify though, I think most Rets understand that they are a hybrid and like GC said like an arms warrior but with no MS and better healing. However, the majority of complaints are coming from the "defensive dps" model and not necessarily just being defensive. We don't want and don't need to be offhealers or defensive utility providers, that is what we were and that is what GC has said multiple times was NOT effective.

I usually regret getting into the "what is my role supposed to be?" discussions because players then feel like they're supposed to use that as a constitution to interpret whether their class is performing correctly or not. Let us worry about that. If Word of Glory is so weak that you'd never consider using it, then that's good feedback. If it needs to heal for 50K before you'd ever consider using it, then that's good feedback too (because it either means we're barking up the wrong tree, or you personally aren't the correct audience for that talent). The fact that you have talents that affect a heal should be ample evidence that we want you to situationally cast it. The fact that you have only a couple of talents (and one really aimed at Holy sub-speccing) should suggest that we want to keep it situational. 

Blizzard needs to understand that as ret paladins, defenders of the Light and all that RP stuff, we have MASSIVE egos. As such, we're going to get every damage-increasing talent within our grasp, only coming back to utility and "situational" things as our remaining talent points afford us to.

Healing has no immediate, noticeable increase in ego-size. No one stops what they're doing and goes "Hey, ret paladin, thanks for healing me!" Hell, I do it a lot now-a-days with my Art of War procs and not one peep from anybody. Well, Ana gives me the occasional confused, "Did you really just use that proc for a Flash of Light? On... someone else?"

But our Hand spells? Freedom-ing a tank on Sindy, Salv-ing an overzealous certain cat-wielding frost DK, Sac-ing our LK tank when the Lich King enrages when someone just utterly fails in the Frostmourne room, Protect-ing a Marked healer or caster on Saurfang when we're sub 30%; all of these things distinguish the good paladins from the apathetic, lazy ones.

And just so we're clear, Blizzard; we don't need mana and cooldown reductions on our utility spells. Unless you make them cost like 50% of our mana. Then maybe we can talk business.

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GC do you have any planed changes for AoW? what do you think of the suggestion to make it effect hammer of wrath instead? i thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Hammer of Wrath hits too hard to be a rotational ability. We'd have to make the proc really rare or nerf the Hammer of Wrath damage. You might notice we dropped Execute from the Arms warrior rotation for the same reason -- it actually neutered Execute rather than making it a fun ability. 

Why does this need to be changed? If they made AoW affect (notice: affect, not effect) Hammer of Wrath, that would essentially eliminate Exorcism from our rotation. Less spells and an Execute spam, or sophistication and an Execute that works as intended? Hmm, toughy.

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Could you please address any of the many greater concerns outlined in the OP instead of a tertiary flavour talent please?

I address what I want to address. The reason is because players will never agree on what the right thing is for us to address, nor do we want to turn it into a shouting match. You're better off giving us feedback and letting us answer when we think it's appropriate rather than demanding answers for specific issues.

And Ghostcrawler becomes Eric Cartman. Seriously though, WoW players are like a bunch of spoiled brats when it comes to class changes; Mommy Blizzard can't appease all of us all the time. It's called tough love, get used to it.

Talents like Eye for an Eye, Selfless Healer and Acts of Sacrifice are designed to be choices. No half-decent paladin is going to skip over a major talent like Sanctified Wrath. But we are trying to design the trees so not every talent is Sanctified Wrath. If part of what attracted you to the paladin class was being able to occasionally throw out a heal to save your friends in a 5-player dungeon, then Selfless Healer might be attractive. If you like having lots of utility in PvP, then Acts of Sacrifice might be a better choice. 

It's okay -- intended even -- that some of you would skip over these talents. It's only a problem if everyone does so. We imagine a cookie cutter Ret build would tell you to absolutely take Sanctified Wrath and Zealotry, but to spend a few points where you want.

Well said.

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Acts of Sacrifice just seems lackluster in a tree that isn't suppose to worry about mana.

That's not entirely the case. Ret is designed to be able to hit basic abilities with enough mana. You don't have infinite mana. You'll find that casting heals other than WoG will be really difficult and Consecrate is probably not going to happen unless you situationally find yourself with a lot of mana. In that environment, being able to do something other than dps might be attractive. I think it gets way overplayed on the forums, but it's often nice to offer something other than "I bring damage!" to a group, because everyone brings damage. 

Thank God, now maybe this "finite mana" sentiment will be heard by everyone else and I won't get asked to heal a dungeon when our healer drops group. Wishful thinking, to be sure.

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With regards to Seals, I agree with the general sentiment that it really isn't much of a choice between Seal of Truth and any other Seal right now; even in PvP, you lose such a huge amount of damage by using Seal of Justice that it's just not even a choice. Either Seal of Justice needs to be more effective at slowing targets, or Seal of Truth needs to be less powerful so the choice is more reasonable.

We're going to add a little bit of damage to Justice just because there are several talents that improve Seals in the trees and we don't want those to be completely unattractive to a PvP Retribution paladin. I think it's far too early however to be able to place judgement [sic] calls on whether damage or the movement limitation of Justice is the obvious choice. You can't do much damage if you can't get to melee and typically autoattack-based damage isn't nearly as valuable in PvP. 

I foresee a return of seal-switching in PvP. Seal of Justice until you can get into melee, Seal of Truth when you do? Although we've held the "kitee" crown for quite a while now, maybe Seal of Justice + Long Arm of the Law will topple that throne.

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I'm sorry...but acts of sacrifice are probably my favorite situational talents, as they are helpful in heroics to alleviate tank damage with sac, and hof 5 seconds less is too good NOT to take. Reducing mana cost is just icing on cake. It will probably be in my pve and pvp builds, but if WoG doesn't heal for a decent amount, I doubt many will take selfless healer at all.

That's good. Now if we can just get to the point where some (not all) paladins say that they like the hybridy feel of Selfless Healer, then we're all set. 

That's all well and good, but the current iteration doesn't do a damn thing to Sac. It does seem odd that it only affects two of our Hand spells, though.