World of Warcraft: Midnight Season 2 is beginning today in North America.
Most players would therefore be forgiven for assuming that the class tuning was finished.
Retribution Paladins have just received evidence to the contrary.
Only hours before Season 2 goes live, Blizzard added another change to its August 18 class tuning notes: all Retribution Paladin ability damage is being increased by 6 percent.
No elaborate redesign.
No six-paragraph developer explanation.
Just six percent more damage.
Sometimes the most exciting patch note is also the easiest one to put into a calculator.
Retribution Gets 6% More Ability Damage
Blizzard added the Retribution change to its Season 2 tuning thread at approximately 12:30 AM on August 18.
The entire PvE note reads:
All ability damage increased by 6%.
That broad wording is important.
This is not a buff to one underperforming talent or a niche Hero Talent setup. It increases the damage of Retribution's abilities across the board, making it the sort of tuning change that should be felt regardless of the exact build players take into the opening week.
It also arrives after Blizzard had already published a sizeable Season 2 tuning package covering Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Druids, Hunters, Mages, Monks, Priests, Rogues, Shamans, Warlocks and Warriors. Retribution was added afterward.
Apparently somebody looked at the final spreadsheet one last time.
Then looked at Ret.
Then found the percentage button.
This Comes After Blizzard Already Started Rebalancing Season 2
The surprise buff fits the larger pattern we have been watching throughout the last week.
Blizzard has been unusually aggressive about changing Season 2 balance before players have even had access to the full Season 2 environment.
We already covered the major Season 2 tier-set nerfs Blizzard announced before The Venomous Abyss opens. Arcane Mage, Frost Death Knight and Devourer Demon Hunter were among the specs receiving significant redistribution between baseline abilities and their new raid-set bonuses.
The philosophy behind several of those changes was clear.
Blizzard did not necessarily want to make the entire specialization weaker.
It wanted less of that specialization's power concentrated inside one seasonal set bonus.
Retribution's new 6% increase is simpler.
More damage.
Everywhere.
Discipline Priest Gets Another Nerf at the Same Time
Retribution Paladin is not the only specialization receiving a late addition.
Blizzard has also further adjusted Discipline Priest's Void Shield.
Void Shield now reflects 10 percent of damage instead of 15 percent.
That comes on top of the much larger Discipline changes already included in the August 18 tuning package.
Discipline's overall damage is being reduced by 30 percent, while Atonement's damage-to-healing conversion increases from 32% to 46%. Entropic Rift receives a 20% damage buff to help preserve Voidweaver's dungeon damage profile.
Blizzard's stated goal is to bring Discipline's unusually high healer damage down without reducing its overall healing output.
That makes the additional Void Shield reduction especially noticeable.
Disc was already getting the message.
Blizzard apparently wanted to make sure it had been delivered.
Ret Also Gets Separate PvP Buffs
The 6% PvE increase should not be confused with Retribution's separate PvP tuning.
In PvP combat, Blizzard is increasing Retribution's overall damage by 8 percent, Final Verdict by 15%, and Hammer of Light by 25%. At the same time, some of Ret's team utility is being reduced through changes to Sacrifice of the Just and Unbreakable Spirit.
Blizzard says Retribution contributed to longer PvP matches during Season 1 because of its frequent access to team utility, so some of that strength is being moved toward more consistent offensive pressure instead.
The PvE change is considerably less complicated.
Hit monster.
Monster takes six percent more ability damage than Blizzard had planned yesterday.
Season 2 Is Launching Into a Moving Meta
If there is one consistent theme heading into Season 2, it is that nobody should become too emotionally attached to a pre-launch ranking.
Today alone, Blizzard has also reworked all eight Season 2 Mythic+ dungeons only hours before launch.
Murder Row needs fewer enemy forces.
Ruby Life Pools has another round of mechanical cleanup.
Temple of Sethraliss has been adjusted again.
Mythic 0 has moved to daily lockouts.
Now Retribution gets another six percent.
This is occurring on top of the 4% health increase already applied across the Season 2 Mythic+ dungeon pool.
So even before the first meaningful Week 1 logs exist, both sides of the equation are moving.
Player damage changes.
Enemy health changes.
Dungeon mechanics change.
Then somebody updates the tier list and pretends this was always the plan.
The Timing Makes the Buff More Interesting Than the Number
A flat 6% increase is substantial, but it is not an emergency redesign.
What makes it particularly interesting is when Blizzard chose to add it.
The original August 18 tuning post had been public for several days. Blizzard then returned shortly before the Season 2 reset and inserted Retribution into the list.
That suggests the developers were still evaluating expected opening-week performance extremely late in the process.
And that is probably healthy.
If internal data says a spec is likely to arrive noticeably below target, fixing it before raid and Mythic+ progression begins is generally preferable to waiting a week simply because the original notes have already been published.
Less ceremonious.
More useful.
Ret Players Should Recheck Their Season 2 Expectations
The buff does not automatically mean Retribution will suddenly become the dominant melee specialization of Season 2.
Dungeon composition depends on far more than raw damage.
Utility matters.
Damage profile matters.
Tier-set strength matters.
Encounter design matters.
And Blizzard has already demonstrated that additional tuning can arrive quickly.
But anybody who evaluated Ret based on yesterday's numbers now has outdated information.
That is particularly relevant for players choosing a main for the opening weeks or evaluating which characters deserve early crafted gear and upgrade currency.
We have already covered several ways to prepare characters efficiently, including four easy Season 2 upgrades from refreshed Renown quests and the guaranteed Champion item available from Venom-Cursed Fragments.
If your chosen character is a Retribution Paladin, those upgrades just became slightly more attractive.
Discipline Players Have the Opposite Problem
Discipline Priest enters the reset from the other direction.
Rather than receiving a surprise broad buff, the spec has accumulated another reduction on top of an already significant damage redistribution.
That does not necessarily mean Discipline healing will collapse. Blizzard is explicitly increasing Atonement conversion to compensate for the 30% overall damage reduction.
But it does mean players interested in healer damage, particularly in Mythic+, should expect a noticeably different Season 2 profile.
This is another reminder of the wider defensive and healer tuning happening in Patch 12.1. We recently saw the opposite sort of tradeoff in our look at Frost Mage losing Ice Barrier strength while gaining additional defensive tools.
Blizzard increasingly seems comfortable moving power between different parts of a spec rather than simply applying one overall percentage.
Except Ret.
Ret gets six percent.
Do Not Print the Week 1 Tier List Yet
Midnight Season 2 begins today in North America, with the European reset following on August 19.
And Blizzard is still editing the numbers at the starting line.
Retribution Paladin gets 6% more ability damage.
Discipline Priest's Void Shield reflects 10% instead of 15%.
The Mythic+ dungeons have been retuned.
The tier sets have already been adjusted.
The opening meta is moving before it technically exists.
Anyone confidently declaring the final winners and losers of Season 2 this morning should probably keep the document editable.
Blizzard certainly is.
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