How do you feel about mid-expansion reworks like what Ret Paladins are getting in 10.0.7?

The complete rework of the talent system in the leadup to Dragonflight had a major impact on many playstyles in World of Warcraft, as the former limited set of options was replaced by extensive trees that not only hearkened back to the Classic style but also expanded them considerably. While cookie cutter builds will always exist — the ability to import selections even makes it more likely — there’s still enough built-in flexibility that a player who doesn’t min/max would still be able to tailor their experience as desired. As should be expected, there has been a lot of fine-tuning of the classes since the new talent trees were first implemented for testing during the beta, but the forthcoming patch 10.0.7 came with a surprise announcement: Retribution Paladins were getting a significant rework.

What makes this development interesting is that, in general, the WoW team limits major class adjustments to expansion pre-patches, as that’s when they’ll have the least impact on active players (not only due to the usual pre-expansion lull, but also because most progression has been over for months). The roadmap for 2023 doesn’t even mention class changes, and while introducing major class changes in 10.0.7 isn’t any less notable than if it had been done in 10.0.5, it’s still not typical behavior for the developers to essentially say, “This isn’t working and we’re not waiting for a major patch to fix”.

Now, I’ll be honest and point out that a cynical part of me could argue that they simply didn’t have time to finish Paladins before the release of Dragonflight so they delayed it until it wouldn’t be a huge issue to implement. That said, it doesn’t feel like that to me: The responses from the development team are measured and address current specific issues with their abilities and talent trees. The players are responding as well — if you log into the PTR you’ll see a lot of pink names discussing the changes and impact as they test them. While ideally a class is settled enough that major reworks aren’t a regular occurrence, doing so at this juncture instead of waiting is a welcome (if potentially frustrating) development.

What do you think? Are you glad to see Paladins getting attention? Do the changes make you more likely to play a Ret Paladin going forward? And do you think this is one-off, or do you expect to see mid-expansion reworks of other classes in the future?