The Queue: Reach for the Sky

Dear Blizzard,

Why not add Skyreach as a choice on the same node as Rushing Reflexes at the bottom of the Monk talent tree?

I don’t mean the critical strike component, by the way — remove that. Make Skyreach an ability that’s all about dashing players to their next target, and nothing else. Rushing Reflexes, which is being added to the game, seems to serve the exact same purpose anyway — but based on the testing we’ve done so far, it gives you nowhere near the same sense of control about picking and approaching your intended target.

Sincerely,

a Monk player who finds Skyreach an extremely fun and useful ability, and sees no reason why it can’t be optional for those who enjoy it — rather than outright removed. (Trying to put the cat back in the bag feels awful for everyone involved: you, the cat, the person who’ll have to treat your infected scratches later, everyone.)

Happy Birthday!

As for changes: yes, indeed! I won’t list every single one (cause there are a lot of them), just the more important ones. First, a negative change on the Paladin tree:

• Crusader’s Reprieve (the ability that increased the range of a lot of your abilities and auto-attacks by 3 yards) is gone, sadly.

But every other big change in the Retribution tree (I know that’s the one you care about) is either a straight positive or a rework:

• Templar Strikes no longer makes the second hit of your combo (Templar Slash) always crit — instead it adds a dot that deals Holystrike damage. This allows the ability to now scale with crit, as well as haste (which it didn’t before due to some internal GCD shenanigans — the new dot, on the other hand, does benefit from crit and haste).
• Wake of Ashes has been moved right to the center of the tree so that everyone takes it. A lot of the new Hero Talents require it to work, so it’s now an absolute core skill that will be taken by every single Ret Pally. In addition, Seething Flames has moved positions in the tree so that players will no longer have to choose between AOE or single target versions of Wake.
• Shield of Vengeance and Aegis of Protection now share a node, so you’ll take one or the other — but they’ve also been improved, so your choice is between one big defensive or two smaller defensives.
• Divine Hammer is no longer a 20-sec CD rotational ability. Instead, it has a 2 minute CD and replaces Consecration. Once you activate it, the spinning hammers will strike your enemies automatically every few seconds. It’ll also reduce the CDs of some of your rotational abilities, and using those abilities will make your hammers spin faster. It looks really cool.
• The fun interactions between your Final Verdict and Divine Storm from WoD-era Ret (one of the best eras of the spec) are back, due to two changes:
  • Judge, Jury and Executioner now reads “Divine Storm has a 40% chance to cause your next Final Verdict to hit an additional 3 targets.”
  • Vanguard of Justice now says “Enemies hit by Final Verdict take 30% increased damage from your next Divine Storm.” Combined, these changes make the two abilities feed off each other.
• Speaking of Vanguard of Justice, with its rework, it no longer makes your finishers cost four Holy Power to deal increased damage. This might be considered a negative change if you enjoyed those 4-point finishers, I guess.
• You have a new Mastery, Highlord’s Judgment, which increases all your Holy damage and gives Judgment a chance to deal extra Holy damage. Some talents improve that even further, by also allowing Hammer of Wrath to trigger it.
• Burn to Ash is a new capstone talent that further improves the dot that the Truth’s Wake talent adds to Wake of Ashes.
• Radiant Glory is, well, a pretty glorious talent. It turns your Avenging Wrath (or Crusade) into a passive ability! Your Wake of Ashes will give you your wings for a few seconds every time you use it, and your other holy power spenders will also have a chance to activate them. This will completely change how you think about your rotation and cooldowns.

Thanks for coming to my RET Talk.

I 100% hope and 60% expect to see a remake announcement for Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War.

I 90% hope and 45% expect to see an official announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2 — which I hope will be called the Super Nintendo Switch.

I 75% hope and 20% expect to see the surprise announcement of a new 2D Metroid game.

Well, the one that best fits that description is easily Civilization 7. I could see it taking over my entire life like Civ 5 did a few years ago.

But I’ll likely do it anyway!

I’m hungry.

This has been The Queue. Have you hugged your favorite ability today? You should, because it might be gone tomorrow. :(

(But hey, at least you can try to provide reasonable feedback on why it shouldn’t be removed. Come on, Mr. Blizzard!)

Take care, friends, and leave lots of questions!