For some one who has thoroughly played every expansion, the list of reasons not to play Shadowlands is sadly greater than the reasons to play. Getting rid of so many things at once on top of the massive-much needed level squish, is unmotivating.
TLDR;If you want to play competitive, don't play paladin. If you want to roleplay, play paladin.
I will go out there and say I like consecration, and am glad its back baseline. However GBoK and GBoW being removed are huge blows. The absorb on Kings was small, but it refreshed frequently, and the loss in survivability is noticeable. The loss of Wisdom is more egregious in that it was a popular buff amongst healers, and one of the few unique bits of utility ret brought to the table. Furthermore there are STILL pvp talents that require greater blessings to function. Add in the loss of the aoe component to WoG, and ret has been utterly pruned of everything that made it stand out from Prot and Holy. Why bring a ret when a more desirable role can be filled?The level 45 row is DOA as Selfless Healer is just superior in every way. JV remains a trap talent. Healing Hands is too niche, and dead in rated PvP as LoH can't be used their. Eye for an Eye needs to be moved into the pvp talents. Repentance SHOULD be baseline with a talented version to make it instant cast with an increased cd, otherwise Fist of Justice will dominate the level 30 row.
There's still no word on Inquisition + Seraphim yet. Can't %^&*ing wait to spend half of my HP on upkeep buffs eventually.
Are auras on the GCD? Like, can we use the old /macro for crusader+mount for crusader+divine steed? Or do we have to use the GCD to pre-cast the aura before steeding? Also, why did we not get exorcism back? I thought that was for sure a class fantasy ability for unpruning. If it was the spammable version from wotlk then cool. If it's a CD version from classic, not as cool but still cool. But I thought for sure it would be the cataclysm ret HP generator cd we had. It was replaced by blade, but it could at least have been a talent. Like even if it was just a replacement for blade of wrath that functioned exactly the same but just had that old picture of the skull melting in holy energy, yknow?
Thank you for a very good in-depth analysis. I have been waiting for something like this. I'm kind of disappointed in the direction the spec is headed. I really like it as it is with the azerite powers on top. Word of Glory nerf is really really bad for mythic plus, and the auras feel outdated. Overall i dislike the unpruning, what we got are bare-boned versions.
As someone who mains paladin, I've looked for every piece of SL info about their changes. I got to say, it feels to me paladins are one of the classes they had no ideas what to do with. Their anima powers were one of the last to come out and unlike the mage, for example, there aren't really many interesting or fun choices. Almost all of them are again basic dmg increase or dmg reduction. The only creative ability that paladins got, in my opinion, is the Blessing of Seasons. No love for the paladins in Shadowlands :/
Sounds like ret is the least favourite paladin spec then.
Personally I disagree with your feedback to the initial posting.When talents are close to never used in pve environment it might be a good idea to either make those baseline or bring them back as pvp talent only.Currently, 1 talent is never used, one is used for pve only and the other one is used for pvp only.As the result, there is no choice at all. By reworking this talent row we hopefully get to a result that offers more meaningful choice.The current state of the talent row is not satisfying for both audience's (pve or pvp).
Not playing this spec again come shadowlands. It was okay throughout BFA, bit in legion and I can barely remember it MoP/WoD. Going to play caster because of these changes to AoE cap, and Blizzard’s rigidity at keeping movement worse than a DK.
After really enjoying it in the PTR, I'm surprised at how negative the community feedback isI guess I never really took into account the numbers, but... I just find it... fun
Ret Paladin either will be really strong or complete dog*!@# in Arena/PvP. We shall see.
I know that Bliz has lowered the %s from most buffs. So I can see that they were looking to tone down buffs and therefore cut kings and wis. My only issue with this is that these feel like core abilities that we have had since classic. I know they weren't much but it felt like a core mechanic.The only other primary issue I have with ret is Retribution Aura. It totally boggles my mind that a paladin should hope for an ally to die so their dps will go up. As a dps spec a ret paladin should be trying to do as much damage as possible, so should we bop another dps near the end of a fight to save them or let them die so we do more dps. It just feels wrong. I'd like to see them rework this aura. Maybe something like when the paladin takes damage it boosts the dps of an ally (possibly the paladin or another group or raid member) by some % for x seconds. Because the way its setup now, the choice will be between Devotion and Concentration auras during fights. About the only use I see for it in its current form is if there is a fight where you know a group or raid member needs to be sacrificed, thinking the early strats for Mythic Lady Ashvane.
Still don't see Emancipate and Long Arm of the Law.
Ah, I see that Retribution Paladins are still paying their Ashbringer artifact debt by being tuned down even more. Anyone enlighten me why I would ever bring a ret paladin to raids/m+ in Shadowlands? With these changes I don't think I'd even want a ret paladin in my group when doing any kind of content as they bring nothing to the table in terms of utility and dps.