---
title: '12.1 Ret Paladin: This Is SO GOOD!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=sgSZRrJ9hSI'
video_id: 'sgSZRrJ9hSI'
date: 2026-08-03
duration_sec: 939
---

# 12.1 Ret Paladin: This Is SO GOOD!

> Source: [12.1 Ret Paladin: This Is SO GOOD!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sgSZRrJ9hSI)

## Summary

This video provides a detailed analysis of the Retribution Paladin changes in World of Warcraft patch 12.1, focusing on talent reworks, tier set mechanics, and overall gameplay feel. The creator expresses cautious optimism, highlighting both the improvements and potential pitfalls of the new design.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Ret Paladin Changes** [00:05] — The video discusses the 12.1 Ret Paladin changes, noting that while the spec feels good, there are underlying issues that might make it 'bad for you' if overindulged.
- **Rank One Apex Talent Buff** [00:30] — The rank one apex talent now allows Art of War or Righteous Cause resets to stack an additional time, enabling more efficient proc juggling and filling downtime in the rotation.
- **Execution Sentence Radius Buff** [01:56] — Execution Sentence's radius has been increased, providing quality-of-life improvements and occasional DPS gains in large AoE situations.
- **Art of War Nerf with Skyfury** [02:23] — Art of War no longer activates from additional Skyfury attacks, and Crusading Strikes no longer generates Holy Power from Skyfury hits, removing a fun synergy with shamans.
- **Crusading Strikes Attack Speed Change** [03:36] — Crusading Strikes now increases auto attack speed by 15% instead of decreasing it by 20%, which the creator believes will still be better than Templar Strikes despite the buff.
- **Blade of Justice Damage Changes** [04:28] — Art of War and Righteous Cause now make Blade of Justice deal 80% more damage (down from 150%), but baseline Blade of Justice damage is increased by 40%, potentially compensating if more raw casts occur.
- **Final Verdict and Divine Storm Buffs** [05:08] — Final Verdict and Divine Storm receive a 15% damage boost, likely compensating for Avenging Wrath's reduced damage and crit chance increase (from 20% to 15%).
- **Templar Strike and Slash Buffs** [05:23] — Templar Strike and Slash receive a 50% damage boost, which combined with Crusading Strikes' attack speed increase, translates into more damage and Holy Power generation.
- **Judgment and Hammer of Wrath Buffs** [05:36] — Judgment and Hammer of Wrath damage increased by 50%, but the creator notes this might be pointless for intuitive gameplay in season 2.
- **Divine Toll Judgment Nerf** [06:07] — Divine Toll's Judgment now deals 50% more damage (down from 100%), but with baseline Judgment buffs, the overall damage might still be higher than before.
- **Apex Talent Nerf** [06:47] — The last rank of the Apex talents has been nerfed by 25%, indicating a shift away from Art of War damage output, with base ability buffs compensating for reduced burst.
- **Health Pool and Enemy Damage Increase** [07:14] — In 12.1, RHP pools will be increased by 25% and enemy damage by 25%, related to nerfing healers' burst healing capabilities.
- **Self-Sustain Buffs** [07:29] — Eternal Flame healing increased by 25%, helping Ret Paladins survive in solo content.
- **Gameplay Impressions** [07:50] — The spec plays smoothly and is better than before, but the creator feels it might not last due to the tier set's power.
- **Tier Set Two-Piece Bonus** [08:17] — The two-set increases Divine Purpose proc chance by 10% and grants a 10% Holy Power damage boost for 12 seconds when consumed, likely having 100% uptime.
- **Tier Set Four-Piece Bonus (Original)** [08:30] — Consuming Divine Purpose with Divine Storm makes your next Final Verdict free and unleashes Divine Arbiter, dealing holy damage to the target and nearby enemies.
- **Concerns with Tier Set** [08:45] — The creator worries about the complexity of tracking Divine Purpose and managing procs, which might be stressful and lead to mistakes.
- **Single Target Proc Management** [09:13] — In single target, you must avoid accidentally consuming Divine Purpose with Final Verdict, and in AoE, you should use Divine Storm to consume it to get the buff for Final Verdict.
- **Proc Overload** [09:52] — The rotation has many procs (Art of War, Divine Purpose, free Hammer of Light), and it's not obvious which is better, leading to resource overcap.
- **Creator's Experience with Proc Management** [10:46] — The creator admits to overcapping resources at least one in ten procs, despite trying to prioritize Holy Power, and expects the community to find optimal rotations.
- **Brain Required for Damage** [11:15] — Unlike past Ret tiers, the new gameplay requires more thought to maintain damage, which the creator sees as a positive change.
- **Prediction of Tier Set Change** [11:43] — The creator predicts the tier set will be changed due to the intellectual work required, and if it stays, he will apologize to Ret players.
- **Four-Piece Set Change Announcement** [12:11] — The four-piece set has been changed: consuming Divine Purpose with Divine Storm makes your next two Templar's Verdict or Final Verdicts shoot the Divine Arbiter effect, but they are no longer free.
- **Still Requires Tracking** [13:57] — The creator notes that even with the change, you still need to track Divine Purpose and respond properly, so the cognitive work remains.
- **Final Thoughts** [14:34] — The creator appreciates the depth of the new Ret Paladin but notes talent tree variety issues remain, and he may still have to apologize if the tier set stays.

### Conclusion

The 12.1 Ret Paladin changes offer a more engaging and proc-heavy gameplay style, but the complexity and potential for resource overcap may be a concern. The tier set has already been adjusted to reduce stress, but the spec still requires more cognitive effort than before.

## Transcript

Oh, yeah. We are talking about Ret Paladin today. Specifically, the 12.1 Ret Paladin baby, because well, as I said, I'm kind of loving it. But, just like for the fast food joint that carried the slogan, something is weird
in the meat, and it feels like too much of it will be bad for you. Let's explore of it will be bad for you. Let's explore that.
>> Not too many of them, mind you, and rework is a big word that people tend to rework is a big word that people tend to have a problem with. However, if they work differently, then how should that be referred to?
With a save-my-ass disclaimer out of the way, the rank one apex talent now has an additional effect where the reset mechanic Art of War or Righteous Cause, whichever one you end up choosing, will stack an additional time. And the reason
for this is, I believe, the new tier set. We'll get to that in a moment. The basic appeal of this effect is that it lets you juggle your procs more efficiently, where you can always sit on one charge of the Art of War reset to
fill in dead air or downtime in your rotation. As always with Ret, you have a lot of procs and resource influx, where managing it is either one of two things. You either rotate procs as smartly and mathematically correct as possible for
maximum DPS gain, which sometimes still leads you to overcap resources, or you simply ignore your resources and cash your procs in order of importance, which may lead you to cast Blade of Justice with full Holy Power just to consume Art
of War. Now, this is a sim question on whether or not the proc is more damage than the Holy Power value lost, but the fact that it's not obvious could be a problem to anyone trying to do better on Ret without diving into online guides
and videos. Execution sentence has received a buff in its radius. Normally, we would treat this as a tuning note, but the functionality of it is mostly a quality of life that translates into occasional
DPS gains. The radius is obviously a plus when we are talking about large OE pools or raid ads being just far enough away from each other where you just cannot hit them all with one big blast of execution sentence. Now to the likely
bigger impact changes. First, we have art of war no longer activating from additional skyfury attacks. We have seen the red paladin resto shaman combo, but other [music] shaman specs are welcome to where the mastery of windfury giving
extra melee swings was giving it great value. Well, not just for red, but red is on the menu today. This might actually be a bigger nerf for shamans rather than reds, but the fact that red also no longer generates holy power when
talented into crusading strikes from the hits provided by skyfury again is incredibly counterintuitive. This is one of those hidden changes you have to they have already figured out the synergy and think that's really cool,
it just doesn't exist. This is the kind of change players need to go outside of least make them go but it should work. I'm reading the I understand this is done for the purpose of balance, but this is a
textbook example of the fun police removing cool synergies for the goal of making it fair for everyone else. The destroy the kids sandcastle on the playground because yours couldn't build it also. Not a fan of this.
To counteract it or maybe just as a buff to the class, crusading strikes now increases auto attack speed by 15% instead of decreasing it by 20. I have a feeling that despite Templar strikes being buffed, this will still be way
being buffed, this will still be way better in the end. them since there's quite a few now. Do keep in mind two big things. One, this
is fairly early on the PTR cycle before the actual ending content was even introduced to be properly tested. At least, we didn't have any mythic plus or raids when we made this video. Two, a lot of the changes are there to
facilitate the new tuning philosophy of removing burst damage from a lot of removing burst damage from a lot of players and moving it outside cooldowns, giving them more power when their big buttons are not available.
With that being said, Art of War and by the looks of it Righteous Cause will now make the Blade of Justice deal 80% more damage instead of 150%. This is a clear nerf, at least from a baseline perspective. However, Blade of
Justice damage is increased by 40%, which in the grand scheme of things could compensate it if you end up casting more natty raw Blade of Justice rather than the proc ones. With the Crusading Strike buffs and the
might proc Art of War way more often enough where the damage even know anymore. Final Verdict and Divine Storm get 15% damage boost to compensate likely for Avenging Wrath now increasing damage and
crit chance by 15% down from the previous 20. It's the more damage you about. Templar Strike and Slash receive the 50% damage boost as well. This has to be put into perspective with Crusading Strikes
giving you a 35% more attack speed from the live servers version, which also translates into more damage directly, but indirectly through the increase in but indirectly through the increase in Holy Power generation. Again, this needs
to be simmed. Judgment and Hammer of Wrath now have their damage increased by 50%. This is particularly interesting and probably pointless when we talk about the intuitive gameplay in season 2. More on
that in a second. You can speed that second up with a like and a subscribe. >> Why you lying? >> No, I know we're lying to them. >> Dude, do you want our channel to be bigger than Asmongold's or what?
>> Asmongold? How about Mr. Beast? >> This guy. Divine Tolls Judgment will now deal 50% more damage down from the previous 100%. Judgment baseline being buffed means that the 50% increases from the new version of Judgment and not the
old one, clearly. Which, if my napkin math is correct, it might end up with math is correct, it might end up with even more Divine Tolls Judgment damage. If with the original Judgment tuning it did 200% damage in the new one, which
would be 150% baseline Judgment damage compared to the live version, also increased by 50%, meaning 75% baseline Judgment damage added on top, you have Judgment damage added on top, you have 225% rather than 200%. But again, I make
video game videos because my math hasn't carried me into the SpaceX program. The last rank of the Apex talents has been nerfed by 25%. It really seems like they want to move away from a lot of Art of War damage
output, and it's likely that all of the buffs we have seen to the base abilities are to compensate for the lack of burst that we will have with cooldowns and procs, or not have anymore, rather. Additionally, in 12.1 RHP pools will be
flat-out increased by 25% while the damage enemies do will also be increased by 25%. This is in relation to the healers' burst healing capabilities and the need to have those nerfed. So, everything is bigger except the heals.
Since we are still a hybrid class that needs to survive on our own outside group content, we received a bunch of buffs to our own little self-sustain. Eternal Flame healing has been increased by 25%.
practice? And by practice, I mean a special edition of the dummy dome, where we hit things that cannot hit back, kind of like social media. The spec actually plays really, really smoothly. Listen, I'm not normally a fan of red paladin,
and the changes to its play styles haven't converted me yet, but it is better. Actually, it's so much better that I have a feeling it's not going to last, and the tier set has a lot to do with it. The two set makes
divine purpose have an increased 10% chance to proc, and when you consume it, chance to proc, and when you consume it, you gain 10% holy power damage boost for 12 seconds. So far, you likely have 100% up time on this one, so min-maxing it is
definitely not something to worry about. The fun starts with a four set. Consuming divine purpose with divine storm will make your next final verdict free, and unleash divine arbiter at your target, dealing holy damage to it and in
will likely change by the time the season launches. If not, I might seriously consider maining red paladin. First of all, you actually need to track divine purpose in single target and AoE,
or you might accidentally munch the effect. In single target, you need to not accidentally consume it with final verdict, which can happen if you get back-to-back [music] holy power procs, and you just spell queue final verdict
after final verdict. Not being fast enough to react to divine purpose and use divine storm instead will lose you damage. Similarly, in AoE, if you just cast divine storm after divine storm, you
will consume divine purpose with divine storm, but you might miss out on using the buff to final verdict and add the divine arbiter to the damage pool. This wouldn't be the first time divine Storm is used consistently in single target
though. So, the general feeling might not be that alien. Second of all, you have a lot of procs. Now, without thinking too hard about it, and let's be honest, Ret paladins, that's not a new feeling either. The
rotation and gameplay is dopamine inducing. I actually tend to be very critical of proc heavy play styles, especially when it is not clear which proc is better. And I'm talking about Art of War versus Divine Purpose versus
the free Hammer of Light Templar Hammer thing ability, which, yes, will all happen all at once at least once during the fight. It's actually not obvious at all, and the worst part is that they all happen when you are at full Holy Power
and constantly generating more with Crusader Strikes because you just attack so much faster now. To actually optimize this, at least intuitively by being a regular gamer reading tooltips, you will want to play your rotation optimally and
consume procs with a specific priority in mind to not overcap on resources. I have been playing WoW for a while at different levels of difficulty, and I'm disclaiming this because I'm about to tell you how I am.
actually have no idea which proc is better than the other. I tried to use Holy Power as the most important resource and not the actual procs, and even with that I overcap resources at least one in 10 procs. I'm sure the big
red brains will use math, coding, and numbers to tell us the best way to press our buttons, but the fact that I cannot tell by myself is slightly worrisome. The saving grace of all of this is that I need to use brain to maintain good
damage as opposed to past Ret tiers as where just pressing shiny buttons in the order that they appeared in was mostly correct. have very large parts of your gameplay where you'll press almost no judgements,
and those parts get significantly more frequent during wings and general cooldown usage considering both Wake of Ashes and Divine Toll give you so much Holy Power.
Not sure how this will be addressed, but because it seems players will need to do some serious intellectual work, well, serious for red players, I doubt the tier set will remain this way. And if you think I took my red paladin players
insults too far and I'm just a salty boomer, bookmark this video. And if the tier set stays this way when season 2 releases, I will formally write a public apology to all of the red players. If not, then you know where to find me
not, then you know where to find me gloat. here coming at you after a recent announcement that the four set of red
announcement that the four set of red paladin is going to be changed. Now, I don't want to say that it happened before we actually were able to upload before we actually were able to upload the video so fast that I called it. I
did want to keep uh the previous iteration of the four set into the video so that I can gloat a little bit, but also to point out how PTR can actually drastically change things from what the people's opinion can form because
usually the way that the PTR design goes and the beta the tuning and testing and happening before a patch that you guys keep in touch with, iteration of the PTR announcements and
when that's actually the worst thing that you could do. You should probably wait until the end [music] of the PTR cycle and then make a decision of maybe won't play red paladin or maybe you won't play the patch or play the patch.
It doesn't really matter, but what is the actual four set without, you is actually almost the same. The difference is that now once you consume the divine purpose with divine storm,
your next two Templar's Verdict or Final Verdicts will be uh shooting that orbiter divine orbiter effect and deal damage to everything all around, but they will no longer be free because this is strictly addressing the biggest
problem that I personally had with the tier set and that is the influx of holy power and juggling that was going to be very stressful and very annoying unless together. Which I was hoping that it would not turn into the to the case.
However, let's just say then let's be fair that I didn't really call it call it, right? I I'm I haven't actually been debunked yet because you still have to track divine purpose. You still have to respond properly and not with your usual
rotation cadence. So, you still have to kind of like think a little bit. So, although I made fun of red players, you still have to actually do a little bit of intellectual or cognitive work to be able to play your forced set properly,
lot of the other tier sets going on this season. So much so that even Marcelian is actually turning his high back on red paladin and potentially thinking of meaning it next season. But, we'll see how things evolve. So far, let's just
say I'm not out of the woods just yet. I might still have to do that public apology, but for now, I'll let the video resume. You enjoy. resume. You enjoy. >> [music]
version of red paladin I have played in the modern version of red paladins. The depth to respect is something that I welcome it wholeheartedly and I kind of was hoping that this would be something big baseline. Red still has a problem
with its talent design where you're just taking 90% of the same talents no matter what because you just don't have enough nodes on top of the talent trees or branches rather of the tree are not different enough to add some variety in
gameplay. That remains to be seen if it will ever be addressed, but definitely likely not for 12.1. And if it does, don't worry, your boys will update you other changes, and we made a video about it right here. On top of the class
tuning we discussed, there's the healer issue and burst DPS issues, talked about it in the video as well, together with everything else coming in 12.1.