Seeking Divination in Retribution Changes

So far, Blizzard has announced the following changes for the paladin class:

• Mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath lowered
• Vengeance duration increased to 30 seconds
• Improved Seal of Crusader benefits put into base spell, talent benefits replaced with those of Sancitified Crusader
• Sanctified Crusader renamed to Sanctified Seals, which increases chance to critically hit with all spells and melee attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33/66/100%
• Crusader Strike cooldown reduced to 6 seconds
• Vindication frequency and duration increased and reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%
• Pursuit of Justice is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.

These changes are interesting. First, the change to Vengeance means that a lower crit percentage will be required to maintain perma-Vengeance, and that Vengeance can be maintained even on fights which require a little running.

The Vindication, Crusader Strike, Pursuit of Justice, and Sanctified Seals changes are significant buffs to PvP Retribution paladins.

The change to Improved Seal of the Crusader is interesting. It takes the one major raid buff that Ret paladins have and puts it in reach for Holy or Prot paladins to pick up.

However, the glaring omission is threat reduction. Right now, PvE Retribution paladin DPS is limited more by threat than anything else. Without a threat reduction mechanic of some sort, these changes will not increase Ret paladin DPS.

However, these changes do open the door to a potentially more interesting possibility.

Disclaimer: This is complete speculation, and probably isn't correct.

Lets look at the breakdown of Retribution DPS. Assume that the paladin does 100 points of damage and is at the threat limit. From my experiences, the damage breaks down as follows:

- 55 points from Auto-attack
- 18 points from Crusader Strike
- 18 points from Seal of Command
- 9 points from Judgement of Command

Now, the change to Crusader Strike means that Crusader Strike damage will jump from 18 points to 30 points. But the paladin is still threat-capped at 100 points. So the new breakdown will look like:

- 55 points from Auto-attack
- 27 points from Crusader Strike
- 18 points from Seal of Command

What does this mean? It meanst that the paladin no longer needs to Judge Command.

This has two important ramifications:

1. You can use Seal of Command (Rank 1). Combined with no judging, This means Retribution DPS becomes very mana-efficient when threat-capped.

2. 100% of your damage scales with Attack Power. Retribution does not need Spell Damage anymore.

So what should Blizzard do with all that spell damage on Retribution? You could add extra Strength, but you're already threat-capped. Instead, you could replace it with straight +healing. Retribution gear would feature Str, Sta, Int, and +healing.(The fact that +healing now gives a little boost in spell damage only makes this option better.)

So now we have a mana-efficient melee character, with a decent amount of +healing, and who is expected to have to hold back DPS because of threat issues. Add to that the fact that Vengeance now lasts twice as long. This allows the paladin to break off DPS and toss a heal without Vengeance falling off, while staying near the threat cap.

Perhaps this is Blizzard's latest attempt at creating a paladin who melees and heals.

Crazy? Maybe. Reality? Probably not. Madness? Sparta. Worth trying? Definitely.