Retribution Paladin GuideMidnight Overview
With the Midnight Alpha launch we've seen significant changes to Retribution Paladin, changing how it will play in all types of content. Today we'll look at the biggest impacts of these changes and the introduction of new systems like Apex Talents as well.
Midnight Changes for Retribution Paladin
Retribution received a large number of changes in the Midnight Alpha. Although the most impactful gameplay changes are discussed here, there are many more minor changes; for a full list, see the Midnight development notes.
Crusading Strikes has been removed, and Divine Resonance has been redesigned to no longer automatically cast Judgments.
With the reintroduction of Templar Strikes as an active ability, Hammer of Wrath has been removed as a separate ability. Judgment now turns into Hammer of Wrath during Avenging Wrath.
The effects of Final Reckoning have been added to Execution Sentence as a single ability with a 1 minute cooldown. Radiant Glory has been nerfed to no longer proc extra Avenging Wrath buffs when spenders are cast. Divine Hammer has been redesigned and is no longer an active ability.
These changes effectively remove all automatic Holy Power generation and shift everything to active ability use. Given how necessary an auto-attack swing timer was to track Crusading Strikes, as well as similar buff trackers for Divine Resonance, removing them as talents is really the only way that Ret could work with the changes to addons coming in Midnight. It's unfortunate since many players did enjoy this style of gameplay a lot, especially since it's been the dominant style in almost every tier since its addition in early Dragonflight, but there was really no way for this playstyle to exist without a way to track auto-attacks. That said, a lot of players also prefer to have more control over how they generate Holy Power, and I expect the return to a more "traditional" playstyle will still be an enjoyable gameplay experience.
A major issue that Retribution has had in The War Within is damage distribution. Ret had very short cooldown lengths, only 30s for its most important abilities, which is great when you want to be able to have burst for every new pack in a Mythic+ dungeon but not so great when you're trying to optimize damage for a 30s amp window on Nexus-King Salhadaar. The damage you do during these burst windows is also extremely concentrated in the first 4-5 globals, which means that for any important burst window, you can do reasonable damage for a few seconds, but will then fall off hard for the next 30s. Over a long fight like Fractillus this doesn't matter, but when you have long and infrequent amp windows on every important boss like in Manaforge Omega it made Ret a much less useful spec than other options. The changes to cooldowns in Midnight should theoretically help alleviate this issue a little. Uptime on Avenging Wrath with Radiant Glory procs was extremely high, over 50%-60%, which will now be much lower at a maximum of 40%, and should allow for damage during cooldowns to be higher.
Complexity
Although many specs have lost a significant amount of complexity with the changes coming in Midnight, this arguably has not really happened for Retribution. It's certainly had a reputation recently as being an easy or straightforward spec to play, which is probably deserved - a lot of the poor rotational play that used to severely reduce your damage, like overcapping Holy Power or prioritizing generators incorrectly, has a much smaller impact on damage with current design, since so much of your Holy Power generation is passive anyway. Similarly, with Templar a huge portion of your damage was just pressing Hammer of Light whenever it was castable and gaining the passive damage from Empyrean Hammer, which is very difficult to make mistakes using.
With the removal of all passive Holy Power generation and the reduction in power of the Hero Talent effects, the spec has arguably gained a small amount of complexity where proper generator prioritization and Holy Power management might be more important. Holy Power spenders have also been buffed significantly, since their power relative to generators was definitely far too low during The War Within, which should put more emphasis on good Holy Power generation as well. Despite losing Hammer of Wrath as a separate ability, the number of generators available has also stayed constant with Templar Strikes becoming the only option again. It's unlikely that these changes will make Ret a significantly more complex spec, but it might widen the gap a little between players who put effort in to improve their play and those that don't.
The one area where Retribution definitely has lost significant complexity is in talent choices. The Retribution tree has had 14 talents removed and no new ones added. To be fair, none of the removed talents are really effects that anyone will really miss much - the vast majority were either never taken or passive effects, but the sheer number removed limits your choices when creating builds significantly. For example, here is what a single target build in Midnight could potentially look like:
In the top 2 sections, you essentially just take every single talent that could possibly have a use on single target - the only talents not selected here are Tempest of the Lightbringer, Sanctify, Blade of Vengeance, Blessed Champion, and Empyrean Power, that all have little to no value without additional targets. The only choices you can make are choice nodes for the number of charges on each generator and their cooldowns, there are no choices you can make that can create alternative "builds" beyond that. If the intention is just to create a single version of Ret that is only slightly modified by talent choices then this makes sense, but I think being able to adjust builds based on the situation and have alternative playstyles is an interesting aspect of the game and it would be a shame to lose it completely.
New Systems
Apex Talents
The new Apex Talents for Ret focus around Art of War / Righteous Cause, increasing the damage of Blade of Justice casts after it procs with Light Within and Light Within, and adding some extra damage to Holy Power spenders too with . These effects are certainly strong with current tuning and will probably incentivize much faster reactions to Art of War / Righteous Cause procs. It remains to be seen whether Art of War and Righteous Cause will both be balanced to be usable options though, since currently Art of War is significantly stronger.
Tier Set Bonus
Retribution has also had an early tier set bonus for Midnight Season 1 datamined:
Paladin Retribution 12.0 Class Set 2pc - Expurgation deals 20% increased damage.
Paladin Retribution 12.0 Class Set 4pc - Final Verdict applies Expurgation at 50% effectiveness, and Divine Storm applies Expurgation at 25% effectiveness.
To quickly explain how Expurgation works, whenever any new debuff of Expurgation as applied, it automatically adds any leftover damage from existing Expurgation debuffs, which means that these 50%/25% strength Expurgations from the 4pc bonus won't overwrite pre-existing full power Expurgations. Season 1 bonuses tend to be passive and on the weaker side most expansions, and this definitely is the case here - this bonus will have no impact on gameplay at all and is also likely to be an incredibly small damage increase, since Expurgation is currently also a very small percent of your overall damage on the Alpha.
Hero Talents
Although most specs have played both Hero Talents in The War Within in at least some situations, this hasn't really been the case for Retribution in any PvE content, where Templar has been by far the dominant choice since the first few weeks of Season 1. Despite having two Hero Talents that people love the visuals and theme of, only ever being able to use one has arguably left this system as a failure for Ret so far.
For Herald of the Sun, the biggest issue is its design - it seems almost like a tree that was designed for Holy Paladin and then adapted to be usable by Ret as an afterthought. Dawnlights make sense when you're applying them to multiple allies as healing effects, but are a much worse play experience for Ret. On single target you end up with permanent uptime on Dawnlight, and with multiple targets you have little to no control over how they get applied, meaning you can end up with multiple being applied/extended on one target when you would prefer they were spread out, or applied to extra mobs you don't need to do damage to when you would prefer they were applied to one target. The changes to Hammer of Wrath also aren't reflected in most of the talents, where many still exclusively buff Hammer of Wrath and not Judgment. Although it is clearly an issue to have one Hero Talent be consistently tuned below the other, I think it is still preferable for Ret to be exclusively playing Templar until the current design of Herald of the Sun is updated for Ret.
The only major thing that I would like to see changed for Templar is the cost of Hammer of Light, which is 5 Holy Power for Ret but only 3 for Protection. It made some sense to have it cost more when generation was much higher in The War Within and the damage difference between Hammer of Light and other spenders was much higher, but with the other changes I think it would be less confusing for players changing specs/talents and would be a more fluid cooldown sequence at 3 Holy Power.
Other Issues
Raid viability has been a big problem for Ret ever since the removal of Retribution Aura. Protection and Holy Paladin have been dominant for providing Devotion Aura, especially when Protection still has exclusive access to Blessing of Spellwarding, which has caused a large drop in the popularity of Ret for higher end content. We have a similar problem to Death Knights, where everything else being equal the Tank spec (or Healer spec for us) is just a far better default choice for the class's utility or buff unless the DPS spec does high damage, and Ret is never a spec that ends up doing high damage early on in a raid tier. I've repeated this feedback every season, and it continues to be true every season as the population of Ret players in high end content drops consistently.
For defensives, Ret has had its two previous buttons combined into one with the changes to Shield of Vengeance. Although Ret was very strong defensively in Dragonflight, this hasn't really been true to the same extent in The War Within, since we went from using Versatility as our most important stat to our least important and had many other nerfs to defensive abilities. As it stands, Ret is probably defensively average currently, and might be slightly below average with the further changes coming in Midnight. For a class like Paladin, the design should theoretically be a spec that has low mobility (success on this part) but is otherwise hard to kill. One option to improve this slightly could be to add a charge to Divine Protection like how Demon Hunters have had a charge added to Blur, as they have had a similar combining of defensive abilities as us.
Instrument of Retribution is an effect that is loved by some, hated by many, and still exists in Midnight. I think it's nice to have an effect that can help you get a close kill during progression, and it's not really an effect that is currently abused a lot to get good logs. The big issue historically with it is that it's often been included as part of Ret's tuning when it really shouldn't be, for example during the first week of a season when players are dying to new mechanics much more often, and this can artificially inflate Ret damage leading to it being left undertuned early on. As long as this is properly accounted for, I think it's nice to keep a cool thematic bonus like this.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I'm very positive about the changes that we've seen so far and am looking forward to a return to a more traditional playstyle for Midnight. A lot of the bigger issues with damage distribution and playstyle that existed in The War Within have already addressed, which is a good sign for more future positive changes as Midnight development continues. There definitely still are some improvements that can be made from here, but the changes so far have definitely been the biggest improvements we've seen since the most recent rework in early Dragonflight.
