Night Fae
- Class Ability: 四季祝福
- Signature Ability: 灵魂变形
- Covenant Potency Conduit: 漫漫长夏
四季祝福 is an ability that buffs a friendly target, rotating through the four seasons as you use it:
仲夏祝福,
暮秋祝福,
凛冬祝福, and
阳春祝福. In addition to providing a decent damage buff from
仲夏祝福, it's an ability with decent utility as it can also be strong to help out a healer if necessary with
阳春祝福.
仲夏祝福 doesn't quite end up lining up with Ret's cooldowns very well since it ends up being a 3 minute period between any specific season before you're able to cast it again - since you need to wait through four 45 second cooldowns for each season - and Ret's biggest damage cooldown,
复仇之怒, is a 2 minute cooldown. (Even if this period is reduced by
暮秋祝福,
复仇之怒's cooldown is reduced at the same rate so there ends up being the same gap between the cooldowns either way.) However, you are able to use it to buff another player's damage instead if they have cooldowns available at the time, which mitigates the awkward cooldown timing a little bit. It's also important to note that while
仲夏祝福 does Holy damage it doesn't actually get buffed by Ret's
精通:圣光之手, so there's no downside to using it on whoever will do the most damage during its duration anyway. The potency conduit for Night Fae,
漫漫长夏, increases the duration of
仲夏祝福.
灵魂变形 teleports you forward a small distance and increases your movement speed for 12 seconds, but using most abilities will cancel the
灵魂变形 form. This is still a powerful option to have for Retribution, since our only baseline mobility option is Divine Steed, and there have been significant mobility issues for the spec since the dedicated mobility talent row disappeared at the beginning of Legion.
Venthyr
- Class Ability: 红烬圣土
- Signature Ability: 暗影之门
- Covenant Potency Conduit: 圣灰洞察
红烬圣土 is a targeted ground effect that does ticking damage to enemies inside over 30 seconds, allows
愤怒之锤 to be cast while standing in it regardless of the target's health, and buffs
愤怒之锤's damage. With
红烬圣土 having a long duration for an unmovable ground effect there can be situations where enemies are moved out of (or die) before the full duration is up, and its 4 minute cooldown can make it very costly if it's used in a situation where you can't get full damage out of it. However, the ability is still numerically very strong and it scales reasonably well with extra targets, although its ticking damage is reduced past 5 targets. Venthyr's potency conduit,
圣灰洞察, increases its ticking damage on the lowest health target.
暗影之门 is a 1.5 second cast that teleports you up to 35 yards at a targeted location. Similarly to
灵魂变形, any ability that offers additional mobility to Retribution is likely to be a strong choice for any PvE content due to the lack of options for the spec otherwise. Although its cast time is a drawback, in most situations you'll need to use it you will be able to adequately prepare and start casting it early if you know you'll need to use it for a specific mechanic.
Kyrian
- Class Ability: 圣洁鸣钟
- Signature Ability: 召唤执事者
- Covenant Potency Conduit: 明澈之音
圣洁鸣钟 is a 1 minute cooldown that casts
审判 on up to 5 targets within range. The
审判s cast do double their normal damage, the
审判 debuff is applied to any enemies hit, and you gain 1 Holy Power for each
审判 cast as normal. The baseline single target damage for this ability is pretty weak relative to the other covenants, but it improves significantly with the Kyrian potency conduit,
明澈之音, which provides a chance for it to cast its empowered
审判 four times on your primary target instead of once. For AoE situations, the strength of
圣洁鸣钟 scales well with additional targets up to 5 since you not only gain more damage from each additional
审判, but also gain more Holy Power.
召唤执事者 summons an NPC who gives you a
静谧之瓶, which can be used to heal you and removes most diseases, poisons, curses, and bleed effects. Although there may be situations where being able to remove curses is valuable, Retribution can already remove any diseases and poisons with
清毒术 and bleed effects with
保护祝福. There's also many tools Ret can use for self-healing, including talents like
无私治愈, which makes the healing portion of the ability less impactful as well. Overall it's better than nothing, but Ret stands to gain very little from
静谧之瓶 when most of the utility it provides already exists as options for the spec.
Necrolord
- Class Ability: 征服者之锤
- Signature Ability: 血肉铸造
- Covenant Potency Conduit: 正义之力
征服者之锤 is a single target damage ability that empowers your next
圣殿骑士的裁决 to also cast a free
神圣风暴. It has a 30 second cooldown and as of a recent change no longer costs any Holy Power. The damage the ability provides isn't particularly good on full AoE when compared to other covenant options, but it's worth noting that it does still perform alright in situations where a primary target needs to be focused down but incidental cleave on other enemies is still valuable.
正义之力 increases the initial damage dealt and also heals you for the damage done.
血肉铸造 is a channeled ability that creates an absorb shield for up to 20% of your health depending on the duration channeled, or up to 50% if there's a corpse nearby. Due to the fact that Retribution already has a 20% absorb as part of its defensive toolkit in
复仇之盾, that doesn't also require a 4 second channel to use, this ability is unlikely to be very impactful for most content although there could be niche situations it has an impact. In most circumstances though, it doesn't compare very favorably to the other covenant's signature abilities.