Blizzard has announced changes to Retribution coming today, with some nerfs to the damage side of the spec and their defenses as well. We’ve been seeing the spec perform very well in raids, reaching the top of the DPS charts this week, and while it’s not that prominent in Mythic’, it has been improving there as well.
Retribution Tuning (Source)
With a hotfix that will be deployed to Live environments shortly, we are making the following adjustments to Retribution Paladins:
Damage
Retribution Paladins have been overperforming in terms of their damage output, so we’re making some adjustments here to bring them more in line with our intentions.
All damage reduced by 3%.
Instrument of Retribution duration reduced to 9 seconds (was 12 seconds).
In addition to this we have a hotfix coming at a later date related to Execution Sentence and its unintended interactions with various damage boosts.
Defenses
One of our major goals with the rework of Retribution Paladin was to give them a significant boost to their survivability, as this was an area where they were previously underperforming. We overshot the mark here and Retribution Paladins are proving to be more durable than we intended. As such, we are making some defensive reductions to bring them more in line with our intentions.
Fading Light – Blessing of Dusk causes your Holy Power generating abilities to also grant an absorb shield for 3% of damage or healing dealt (was 10%).
Aegis of Protection increases the value of Shield of Vengeance by 10% (was 20%).
Shield of Vengeance duration reduced to 10 seconds (was 15 seconds).
Lightforged Blessing now heals you and your party for 2% of maximum health (was 3%).
