A Very Controversial 4-Set - Retribution Paladin Class Changes and Tier Set Review
Class Changes for Retribution Paladin in 12.1
Retribution has received quite a few changes on the 12.1 PTR:
Blizzard — View Original
Retribution
Developers' notes: In addition to addressing the throughput spikes during cooldown windows, with Curse of Ula'tek we are aiming to smooth out the rotation by reducing the pressure on consuming Art of War/Righteous Cause effects. Alongside these changes, we are also removing some interactions with the Skyfury buff that deeply impacts the rotation and Holy Power economy. We believe this is a healthier direction for Retribution Paladin that will allow for more choice and player agency.
- Apex Talent: Light Within (Rank 1) now has an additional effect – Art of War and Righteous Cause can now each accumulate an additional time.
- Art of War has been updated – Now increases Blade of Justice damage by 80% (was 150%).
- Blade of Justice damage increased by 40%.
- Final Verdict damage increased by 15%.
- Divine Storm damage increased by 15%.
- Avenging Wrath now increases damage done and critical strike chance by 15% (was 20%).
- Templar Strike damage increased by 50%.
- Templar Slash damage increased by 50%.
- Judgment damage increased by 50%.
- Hammer of Wrath damage increased by 50%.
- Divine Toll's Judgment now deals 50% increased damage (was 100%).
- Apex Talent: Light Within (Rank 3) damage reduced by 25%.
- Flash of Light healing increased by 25%.
- Word of Glory healing increased by 25%.
- Eternal Flame healing increased by 25%.
- Art of War no longer activates from additional Skyfury attacks.
- Additional Skyfury attacks no longer generate Holy Power when talented into Crusading Strikes.
- Crusading Strikes now increases auto-attack speed by 15% (was decreasing by 20%).
- Execution Sentence area of effect radius increased to 10 yards and now includes the bounding radius of the target (was 8 yards).
Hero Talents
Templar
- Hammer of Light damage reduced by 30%. Does not affect PvP combat.
- Hammer of Light now costs 3 Holy Power (was 5).
These changes have a pretty big impact on Holy Power generation cadence. In 12.0, Crusading Strikes could proc off Skyfury, which led to extremely spiky Holy Power generation, but also meant that Retribution was far more reliant on a Shaman being in their group than most specs would be. With these changes, Holy Power becomes much more predictable, but the rate of generation has also been massively increased; the change to Crusading Strikes's speed from -20% to +15% is a roughly 20% increase in average number of hits after taking the Skyfury change into account, which is a huge increase in Holy Power generation and Art of War procs, while also smoothing the rate of generation.
These changes in Holy Power generation mean that Retribution is even more flooded with Holy Power, especially during cooldowns, where it can be a struggle to find a moment to cast all your cooldowns that all generate absurd amounts of Holy Power. You're always either in a state where you can constantly press buttons and cooldowns are irrelevant, or you hit a small bad luck streak with procs, have nothing to press, and nothing you could have done differently could have mitigated it. In my opinion, Retribution is at its most interesting when you need to consider generator cooldowns and Holy Power management in order to maximize spender casts, but these changes are another step in the direction of simply spending Holy Power as soon as possible and having very little agency over generation. That said, I do think that having more smooth, consistent generation is a more enjoyable playstyle than how spiky it was in 12.0, since you'll have fewer periods without anything to press.
My personal favourite change this patch is allowing Art of War to stack twice, so that you don't need to instantly spend procs to minimize the chance of accidentally losing a proc to your next autoattack. This improves the feel of playing a huge amount and removes awkward Holy Power loss by just trying to put it on cooldown as fast as possible. However, it does make Improved Blade of Justice a much worse talent, since its main use case was to be able to bank charges in case of procs.
Other changes are mostly smoothing damage output, moving some of the power from Avenging Wrath and Light Within into regular abilities, and buffing healing a small amount. Losing burst damage is unfortunate, but 12.1 is bringing cooldown nerfs for most specs, so it's understandable that Avenging Wrath would get a nerf too, but it seems like a pretty severe nerf considering that Ret didn't have especially strong Avenging Wrath burst windows to begin with compared to the strongest burst classes.
Curse of Ula'tek Tier Set
The tier set this time around for Retribution focuses on Divine Purpose procs:
Blizzard — View Original
Retribution
- 2-Set Bonus: Divine Purpose has an additional 10% chance to activate, and consuming it grants Divine Power, increasing Holy damage done by 10% for 12 seconds.
- 4-Set Bonus: Consuming Divine Purpose with Divine Storm causes your next 2 Final Verdicts to unleash Divine Arbiter at its target, dealing Holy damage and Holy damage to enemies within 8 yards, if it is not already empowered.
The wording is a little confusing, but essentially the way the 4-Set works is that consuming a Divine Purpose proc with Divine Storm will give you 2 stacks of the Divine Arbiter buff, which causes your next Final Verdict to do additional AoE damage. However, if you already have any stacks of Divine Arbiter still active, then using a Divine Purpose proc on Divine Storm won't refresh them or grant any new ones, which means you'd need to spend Divine Purpose procs on Final Verdict if you already have any Divine Arbiter stacks instead.
The 2-Set is a pretty solid and inoffensive bonus, but the 4-Set has definitely been one of the most controversial set bonuses in the Retribution community in recent memory. The general sentiment seems to be that people really do not want to have to use AoE abilities in single target and vice versa, with the forum post asking for feedback on "Likely degenerate or unintended impacts on rotations, including: Using single target abilities in AOE or vice versa" being heavily quoted. There are definitely some players that do like the playstyle of weaving spender casts, like the WoD version of Final Verdict, but in general players aren't happy about being forced to constantly use the "wrong" spender for the target count.
From a design perspective, I think the set misses the mark based on how punishing it is on mistakes. Since Dragonflight, Retribution has become the poster child for an easy to learn (but usually not too hard to master) spec that's a good choice for newer players. This set completely bucks that trend by introducing a mechanic that is incredibly easy to accidentally mess up by spending a proc on the wrong spender at the wrong time, but also very punishing if you do make a mistake. It's also not the kind of set that an incredibly skilled player can take advantage of over a moderately skilled player, since it's simply just pressing the correct spender at the correct time based on very discrete buff stacks; there's no careful resource management or timing that would change the situations you would press each spender. For Retribution, the ideal set would allow newer or less skilled players the ability to gain damage without punishing mistakes too heavily, while allowing for more skilled players to optimize their rotation around it to take advantage of it more. This set does the opposite, being both unintuitive and punishing for players playing suboptimally, while also having a very low skill ceiling when you do play around it correctly.
Final Thoughts
Aside from recent changes, there are a couple of sore spots Retribution has had that haven't been fully addressed. One is Hero Talents, where Retribution has almost exclusively used Templar for the last couple of expansions, although balance has improved significantly recently, and the new tier set is a lot stronger for Herald of the Sun. One of the biggest issues Retribution currently has standing in the way of balanced Hero Talents currently is bugs with Instrument of Retribution.
All 12.1 Class Changes and Tier Set Reviews
Some of these articles were released earlier than others, and may be out of date now.
