Enhance Shaman, Retadins (oddly enough), power-shifting Ferals (I think anyway, believe Wis still regains mana in shifted form) all benefit from all four blessings. I concede the drop off after three is pretty steep though, I'd probably never voluntarily bring more then three Paladins to a raid.

Well yeah, what I mean is just have one of your healer spots allocated to someone with Imp Sanc (which you can get with 38/0/23, still a good healing spec). Getting CS is definately not worth it, though Sanc Crusader might be. Its 3% raid crit versus a slightly better healer....dunno. Really would depend on the fight.

In either case, the Ret tree is broken if you don't need to be meleeing to provide the benefits, and the benefits need to be improved such that they are *worth* losing a paladin to melee.

Apart from what Grital replied, when you have both a resto druid and a cat, druids will want both BoW and BoM.

An up to 10% increase in overall raid healing seems like a great blessing to me.

Granted, Blessing of Sanctuary is often not that great but it's something and you don't have to give up that much to get it. And that's beside the classes that already have use for five blessings aside from Blessing of Sanctuary.

how is this an overall 10% increase in healing, it only applies to the paladins. In my experience, BoL on anyone but a tank makes it Blessing of Overhealing

You can single buff the smaller part of the group. It's a little bit inconvineant, but it works. I often rebuff regular blessings during the fight since greaters are pretty heavy on mana.

The benefits from going from 3 to 4 paladins are imho much, much smaller than going from 2 to 3.

Wisdom doesn't work while in cat or bear forms. Normal mp5 works but wisdom and mana spring do not.

Maybe since paladins are the only true defensive hybrid they aren't meant to dps? Ever thought to what they'd take away for more buffs? Playing a paladin since release, I know nothing comes free (unless your a druid, lol jk ). 25 mans just require good class balance, unless you're rolling over farmed content.

Welcome to ALL of vanilla WoW for Shamans. Only their healing tree is way worse than yours.

Except they mostly fixed that for you in BC. Didn't, as much, for us.

And now your trees have been fixed, as we're asking for ours to be. Your point?

Being a melee class does not mean you are a DPS class. People really need to stop leaping to that conclusion. The Ret tree could be a melee support tree - marginal DPS, but high buffing potential *dervied from melee ability*. The buffs could even be defensive in nature if you want to fit it with the theme of the class.

When ret was first brought in with Crusader Strike there was much rejoicing. When CS/veng got changed a slight bit, there was anger, but still much rejoicing at a Strike finally brought back. Now it's changed so paladins want what they don't have... again. CS was a great toy, no one complained at all before tbc.

How many guilds brought a serious ret dps paladin in Naxx/BWL/AQ40? Probably not many, the amount now which ret paladins are taken. Having seen the paladin forums for years, there will ALWAYS be outcries for what they don't have, unless of course you have a broken sotc But isn't that the real nature of WoW's class balancing act? Fixing one, forced to balance another, and so on.

This thread is not about "we want a shiny new toy". The thread is about "We want this spec to be raid viable." (Which incidentally is something we also want for Protection, but one tree per thread.) Given the great strides to which Blizzard has gone in BC to give some raid utility to each spec for every class -- admittedly with more success in some cases than others -- I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to ask for.

If all you're getting from this thread is "We want another new toy" then I respectfully suggest you're not paying enough attention to be able to participate constructively.

I also think Igniter missed that the Crusader strike people were happy with is NOT the crusader strike we have today.

Actually, I've been keeping tabs on paladins closely, as I played one since release, which is besides the point. I don't think it's feasible for every spec to be viable pve 25 mans, there are many other class trees to the contrary. You just said yourself paladins are wanting all three trees to be viable for pve raiding, which few classes have, one of them being mine It's not just a "shiny new toy", it's the mindset of the paladin forums I was describing.

I'll just leave this thread alone then, as I've stated my concepts of feasible talent trees for a defensive hybrid to the extent I can, without seeming an jackass :p

As a former Paladin (played it up through Loatheb), don't expect them to make all 3 trees raid viable, I can't think of any class that is viable spec'ed into any of their trees, there is normally 1 that is ideal, 1 that is ok, and 1 that is unacceptable.

For example no raid that is at all concerned with progress will bring a Subtlety spec'ed rogue. However, if the rogue knows what he is doing they might bring a Mutilate spec'ed rogue, and would always prefer a combat spec'ed rogue. Asking for a second tree to be somewhat viable is reasonable, however the soloing tree is very rarely ideal for raiding with any class.

Warriors: Protection - Ideal, Fury - Useful, Arm - Limited Value
Shaman: Resto - Ideal, Enhancement - Useful, Elemental - Somewhat Useful
Hunter: Marksman - Ideal, Beast/Survival - Limited Value
Priest: Shadow - Ideal (lol), Holy/Disc - Ok, but not what it used to be
Druid: Resto - Ideal, Feral - Useful, Balance - Limited Value
Warlock: Not entirely sure but I think Affliction > Destruction > Demonology
Mage: Probably the closest the 3 viable specs.. but not sure

Right now Holy is very viable for Paladins, Protection is some itemization and a couple tweaks away from being viable, Ret is a fun leveling spec that is the equivalent of the Subtlety tree for rogues... it has some fun toys but don't ever expect to raid with in.

But subtlety is good for something, its a good pvp spec, ret right now is not really good for anything, if I bg I would rather do it as holy, if I level I would rather do it as prot, if I raid I would rather do it as holy, if I do 5 mans I would rather do it as prot or holy. There is no place for the ret paladin. Its not that we want every tree to be useful in raids, I take your point that most dont. But ret is not better for anything, not leveling, not small groups not big groups.

Arms warriors shine in arenas due to MS.
Beast hunters are great at leveling.
Subtley rogues are good at PvP.

Ret paladins are good at being the butt of jokes?

I would just like the tree to be good at something, and I dont think thats too much to ask, I would like oomkin and whatever other laughable specs to have their place in the sun. I dont think thats too much to ask.

I dont want new toys, I dont even need new talents, if its just a numbers tweak great, but give ret a place.

Thats what I want.

I agree, ret does need changes.. in regards to pvp. A MS style debuff would be perfect along with persuit of justice giving a movement impairing resist chance, and maybe move the low level fear holy talent to early level prot (lol devo aura). Pre tbc ret was awsome, bordering overpowered. Now the stam and resilence has gone up to the point where some chain crits from a paladin are easily healed through (more of a reason for a paladin ms debuff)

If you want to be a MS warrior... why not make one?

I think that part of the problem with the retribution tree stems from the fact that it has a line of talents that cost 3-5 points each and add damage (either holy or physical), but do not add utility. If ret damage is not going to be competitive, then it does not make sense for the "core" line of the tree to focus so much on damage. Between Conviction, Crusade, Two-Handed Specialization, Vengeance, and Fanaticism, a paladin can sink 21 points into raw damage without gaining any utility.

Because paladins are simply not damage-competitive (which is a viable design given their inherant survivability), then it would make morse sense for some of those talents to incorporate an additional utility. For example, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization could be changed to the following:

Imbued Attacks
Melee weapon attacks gain 2/4/6% physical damage and decrease the target's parry chance by 3/4/5% for 8 seconds.

This talent would 1) add more encouragement for the paladin to swing periodically and 2) slightly reduce spike damage on the tank and slightly improve a tank's threat generation curve.

Crusader Strike also warrants a slight change:

Crusader Strike
220 mana, 8 second CD
An instant strike that deals 75% of weapon damage and an additional 40% of spell damage and refreshes all judgements on the target.

The change roughly preserves its DPS and DPM, while making it more effective at refreshing judgements.

One other possible change would be to remake Fanaticism to a two point talent as follows and to move Santified Judgement down to the same tier:

The paladin's Judgement casts have a 10%/20% chance to fill nearby players with Fanaticism, increasing their spell and melee haste rating by 40 and reduces the damage of area of effect attacks against them by 15% for 15 seconds. Fanaticism has a 15 yard radius.

This last suggestion would again trade damage for utility, but it would continue the trends of encouraging the paladin to stay in melee range and increasing the effectiveness of other players.

Actually, it's not a hideously bad idea if, say, it were tied to Vindication with a selfstacking mortal-wounds style debuff, stacking up to 5 times? It stops paladin burst oneshoting you out of the gate but if you let them get in range of you for long you could be in a -lot- of trouble....

And it gives some justification to having a paladin in melee in the first place in raids (well, it would if more raid bosses healed).

Of course, it's not exactly like paladins need yet another proc-based system, so maybe it's a horrible concept, but an 'improved vindication' deep ret could be..interesting.

If anything, the strength and near necessity of the MS debuff in 5man Arenas says that it may be worth re-evaluating antiheal, not that it needs to be given to Paladins.

A lot of people propose silly toys because we all know that the way ret falls out now, it doesn't really work, and in the past Blizzard has shown itself to really enjoy fixing problems by providing new toys rather than providing minor number adjustments.

It's not THAT far off from being effective. It wouldn't take much of a tweak to fix it; -15% threat, a CS that can perform it's utility role (either with an 8sec cooldown or simply allowing the judgement refresh effect to work independently of dodge/miss/parry) and some sort of short term buff or debuff effect that encourages the Paladin to actually be in melee.

In thinking some more about my previous ideas, I had a better suggestion for Fanaticism:

Fanaticism
Gives the paladin's judgements a 5/10/15/20/25% chance of granting the paladin 20% melee and spell haste and granting party members 5% melee and spell haste for 8 seconds.

This would retain its value to the paladin in soloing at about 1% DPS or healing per point, but it would also give it some group utility.