Blizzard has announced that WoW Dragonflight patch 10.0.7 will include a Ret Paladin rework aimed at altering the way auras operate. Some of the changes will be implemented in the latest WoW Dragonflight PTR patch.
Randy'Kaivax' Jordan, a Blizzard community manager, discusses the planned World of Warcraft update on the Blizzard forums, stating that the team is "working on improvements to the Retribution tree." They explain, "In Dragonflight, Retribution Aura has functioned only as a personal throughput benefit to Paladins, locking them out of using other Auras during gameplay."
Retribution Aura will now provide 5% increased damage and healing to all party or raid members for ten seconds whenever a member within 40 yards takes more than 50% of their health in damage. This has a 30 second cooldown, but it should provide a decent benefit to your entire group during intense burst damage.
The previous Seraphim proc, which would occur when a party member suffered damage, has been removed from the Paladin talent tree, according to Kaivax. It's a large factor in Paladins "having an excessive amount of buttons to press."
The team has decided to take the energy provided by this cooldown and incorporate it into your cool abilities. Kaivax also notes that the Divine Toll ability will be moved to the Paladin class tree "to ensure there's still a powerful and exciting node at the end of the class tree as a goal."
Avenging Wrath, the other component of Retribution Aura, is now being dubbed a new Ret Pally baseline passive, which is 'Instrument of Retribution.' Now, when any party member within 40 yards dies, you'll get Avenging Wrath for 12 seconds, a fairly nice improvement over the previous eight seconds.
Retribution Aura's new look should be welcomed, but it may be a source of controversy — those looking to hit those high DPS parses are now actively encouraged to have someone on the team intentionally do damage, which is a fun risk/reward mechanism, but it can be frustrating to play "suboptimally."
The time will tell how these changes turn out – with some of the changes going into testing on the current WoW Dragonflight 10.0.7 PTR, it's likely we'll start to hear feedback on how they feel pretty sharpish. Kaivax concludes: "We look forward to sharing more with you [about the upcoming Ret Paladin changes] in the coming weeks and hearing your thoughts!"
For the latest class tuning changes, check out the WoW Dragonflight patch notes for February 7 and make sure you're getting the best WoW addons for Dragonflight in 2023.