Blizzard has the arduous task of balancing 38 specializations across 13 different classes in modern World of Warcraft. Major reworks have occurred for many of these specs over the years, and with the launch of the Dragonflight expansion, the developers overhauled the talents of every class and specialization to the point that almost every single one of them plays differently than in the past. With such a huge undertaking, it was not a surprise to see that some specs needed more time in the oven than others. While substantial job reworks usually only happen at the launch of an expansion, Blizzard is now extending this to the next patch by giving Retribution Paladins a much needed makeover.
Current Dragonflight content analysis shows that Retribution Paladins are not as popular as some of the other specializations in the game. Blizzard attributes this to many factors, and are redoing their talent tree from the ground up in Patch 10.0.7 to address these pain points.
For starters, Retribution Paladins are on the extreme end of button bloat. Players don’t mind having a list of spells to utilize, but when that list becomes a book it can often turn into a daunting task finding keybinds for each spell and learning the rotation. Blizzard is aiming to make the main rotation for Retribution Paladins more focused with less bloat. They also want to round out the interactions of talents in the tree to give more power to the rotation and less focus on extreme burst damage followed by unsatisfying downtime.
Retribution Paladins also have the highest death rates across all forms of content. To bring them in line with other melee classes, the developers want to add more interactive ways to give Retribution Paladins access to passive defensives through abilities and cooldowns, as well as boosting the spec’s mobility slightly. Lastly, there will be substantial reworks to the core theme of the specialization, which is to utilize the light to buff damage for yourself and your teammates.
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There are several other classes that players would love to see reworked in future patches, but the Dragonflight talent tree system has mostly been well-received so far. Blizzard seems to be moving away from outdated practices, and it is nice to seem them address class pain points by reworking broken specializations mid-expansion.
