A matter of opinion, really. I want people to stick with one spec because I believe it's essential to the nature of a character-driven genre. Talents are your character's experience, training, and natural aptitudes. It doesn't make any more sense for them to be changeable than it does for your character's race to be changeable. To me, the game would in fact be more fun if people had to deal with the weaknesses of their specs just as they enjoy the strengths of their specs.

Basically all this is, is an debate about the kind of game we want WoW to be.

As your anecdote shows, "lolret" is an earned stigma. It's not much different from "huntard" or whatever label you want to come up with to describe players under-utilizing their class. I've seen poor rogues, poor mages, poor tanks, poor healers... Their existence is irrelevant to the question of whether buffs are necessary.

(let's give paladins the buffs you propose - will "lolretnubs" still exist? Yes. So what does it matter?)


As for Ret paladins "never" being able "to gear up", that's a clear exaggeration. DPS gear is not in short supply right now, whether from PvP, 5-mans, heroics, or badge gear. Perhaps WotLK will yield such a problem - but that'd be wild speculation.

Time spent in theorycrafting and practice, gearing, tweaking and general devotion towards one spec are still the common theme in PvE at least, and that flourished in TBC where the 'easy respecs' started. There wasn't even such a thing as a raiding prot paladin, or a raiding survival hunter before TBC. Cheaper respecs facilitates deeper, more intricate specializations and allows more challenging gameplay without the need to over-recruit for every gimmick.

Oddly enough Blizzard did exactly what you scoff at; temporarily overpower feral tanks to the point that the WoW forums whining reached an incredible amount, then handed down a skyscraper-sized nerf bat (although admittedly some of those nerfs were reversed or eased up upon).

Completely disagree. As prices go up, auctions sell for more too. When you have many things remaining fixed cost (respecs, repairs, mounts, reagents, etc), but can gain more gold per hour spent farming (due to AH price rises), inflation becomes a net gain.

I find when starting on a new server I tend to be an AH seller, only becoming a buyer once I've got an established base on funds, so inflation is something I'd want more of as a new player.

Wrong way of looking at things. Instead of nerfing Paladins, the direction seems to be towards bringing everyone else to their level - Thunder Clap getting an AP coefficient, Shockwave for more AOE threat, DKs getting Frost AOE, etc. etc.

Realize that the "consecrate and go" model is a GOOD way to tackle instances:

1. It gives all DPS specs a fair shot at getting into 5 mans, because CC is (relatively) unnecessary
2. It rapidly speeds up dungeon runs, particularly into the "1 hour or less" model that Blizzard seems to be aiming for
3. It allows the tank to deal decent amounts of damage by himself, again a direction Blizzard has expressed intent in exploring.

It was already mentioned that they want to design dungeons with an eye towards mixes of creatures. Instead of 100% humanoid Shattered Halls runs, we might see Dragonkin, Undead, Beasts, Elementals and Humanoids all within the same Nexus 5-man. That kind of variety will further de-emphasize the role of CC as a necessary 5-man mechanic, and further elevate the kind of "tank it all" mentality Paladins are already practicing.

The only thing inflation/deflation changes are how much set prices (repairs, etc) "cost." If you sell a primal for 100g, whatever its used to craft is more expensive but that money is easier to get. The 50g repair is much easier to pay than if you sold the primal for 25g, though. The opposite is true as well.


Increasing respec costs would really piss me off. I really cant pvp in my pve spec (unless i have a strange urge to drop 200+ rating all at once), or raid as pvp spec. So when i want to pvp, im stuck spending an hour+ doing dailys as resto to go pvp spec, then respec to raid later. If i didnt decide to not pvp when i actually want to, i'd either go broke in a week or spend half my time doing daily quests. Its a time sink, like everything else. Free respecs would make a lot of people i know who only raid or only pvp experience the other side of the game, and i think blizzard wants that to happen.

This is entirely true, but the fact remains that Ret has no utility outside of raid groups (a problem shared with many "offspec" DPS classes) and has (for lack of a better term) piss poor regen and DPS without numerous raid-only buffs. The prevailing attitude of "lolret" still is a problem when trying to find an out-of-guild group, even when I flash my Sunwell crap to people.

One thing that really would help the spec out is updating tooltips based on talent information. When you have a feral Druid in your party you see a nice buff that says "hey, you have 5% more crit now, enjoy!". With a ret pally you don't see that, all you see is this weird buff called Sanctity Aura that increases your Holy Damage by 10%. "Well lol, I don't do holy damage, that's useless!" a lot of people might say, because they are ignorant of the fact that it is giving them an additional 2% damage. It would help immensely if all these "improved" abilities actually improved the tooltip as well so that Mr. Rogue sees "well gosh, this ret pally is giving me 2% more damage and 3% more crit, I would like him in groups more often!". I can't think of anything that would suffer as a result of showing spec changes in tooltips.

Really, with a few tweaks ret would be quite PvE viable (simply adding one form of heavy activated regen to the paladin class would actually go a long way to making every spec viable). The problem is still convincing the general populace that it is viable. Let's face it, EJ is the minority. Most everyone here is the cream of the crop and the more intelligent players who understand raid synergies. Us sitting around talking about how ret rules in raids isn't helping. The key to true viability is getting into 5-mans, only then will the general population accept the spec. It worked for Feral Druids and Prot Pallys, now it needs to work for the other "offspecs" like Boomkin and Ret Pallys.

To be completely fair, the true value of Ret pallies coming out of vanilla was supposed to be leveraging the Judgements of your Holy paladins, who were your mainstay healers. Any personal DPS they could muster was just a bonus. Or so went the theory. In reality, what happened was that people discovered the god-like Chain Heal and Circle of Healing (after many buffs), Illumination got destroyed, Spirit-based classes got successive major buffs, and raids stopped taking so many paladins.

The current state of the class is nebulous at best. While everyone wants blessings, none of the other specs is really all that solid of a performer, which makes it difficult to justify stacking up more paladins. Instead, raids are increasingly turning to gimmicks like having extra paladins buff the raid and stand in group 8 outside the instance in an attempt to have their cake and eat it too.

Holy is seriously outclassed as a healer, limited mainly to spam-healing a single target, and utterly useless when forced to move often. Other healers bring chain or AoE healing, as well as reactive heals and HoTs, which can be cast on the run. This fundamental weakness is also ruthlessly exploited by opponents in arenas, which makes the class distinctly weaker than a Discipline priest or druid.

Protection is a viable add and trash tank, and in fact excels for gimmick encounters like Mt. Hyjal, ZA (Eagle and Lynx), and Heroic SH. However, Paladins are the squishiest of the tanking classes because of class skills and unique stat requirements, and are therefore usually relegated to crappy off-healing during true progression fights while a warrior or bear handles the "hard stuff."

Retribution, meanwhile is plagued by faction imbalances. Seal of Blood produces good, consistent damage scaled on attack power, while simultaneously regenerating mana through synergy with chain or AoE healing and Spiritual Attunement. Seal of Command, meanwhile, produces potentially dangerous spikey and sub-par damage due to its split coefficient. It also lacks the mana efficiency of Blood, and has a near-useless Judgement to boot, good only for keeping Vengeance stacked up. Crusader Strike, despite several round of buffs, still has problems. Without two other paladins to keep Judgements up, it is reduced to a generally crappy version of Mortal Strike. Without a healing debuff or a spell interrupt, a Retribution paladin cannot be relied upon to control healer adds the way a warrior or rogue can, reducing their desirablity. These same problems also carry over into arena play, limiting paladin viablity at a high level of play where total caster lockdown is absolutely required.

All this is not to say that paladins are completely dead, however. Everyone still wants blessings, and even a Ret paladin can (and should) throw Cleanses, bubbles, and Freedom around, all of which are powerful tools. The problem is that the class lacks distinctive focus even in the highly-specialized nature of its talent trees. A DPS warrior or rogue is built to deal damage and make it stick (through spell interrupts and wounding effects); a Ret pally can only do half of that. A Holy priest, Resto druid, or Resto shaman is built to be a total healer, keeping an entire party rolling through damage; a Holy pally can only keep one or two people up at a time before falling apart. This, more than any disparity in personal DPS, is what's keeping the "lolret" (and, I fear, soon to add "lolholy") stigma alive.

Personally, I don't see how 5-man viability will help the lolret syndrome at all. As mentioned before, the Huntard stereotype is still alive and strong and has been for the last three years. Generally speaking, we perform well in 5-mans, 10-mans, and raids, yet we're still the punchline for forumgoers.

The major difference between us and Ferals and Prots is both those specs received pretty hefty retooling. This combined with them excelling past the traditional prot warrior led to their acceptance. I would think this means Ret would have to dominate in their field of expertise to gain acceptance. However, that would most certainly lead to them pushing out pure DPS classes for their 5-man spots. That's also not mentioning the impact such a buffing would have in raiding setting.

But even with the huntard rep you can still get groups. The "lolret" syndrome is what is mainly holding the spec back because it is nearly impossible on alliance side to PuG a ret pally. It all goes back to the fact that ret was, for most of WoW, a very very weak spec. A lot of alliance players are so ingrained with the idea that ret is bad ("lolret") they aren't willing to give it a chance. If ret becomes viable in 5-mans and defeats the "stfu and heal" crap like prot pallys did it would help the spec out immensely in overall representation.

There is the difference between being a joke and still being allowed in and not being allowed because you are a joke.

4. Makes it bearable for a tank to do 5 mans with "pug" dps.

The difference with feral druids and prot paladins becoming accepted as tanks is that people wanted to accept more tanks. There weren't enough tanks to start with, so it was more a case of "what the heck, we can take this class or sit around looking for a warrior for another 2 hours". There's far less need to try out new DPS classes, generally you can find the tried and tested CC class for that spot without much trouble.

I really can't see ret becoming accepted any time soon. It'd have to be very overpowered for the average player to sit up and take notice.

This factional DPS difference is unfair and unjustifiable, this has been discussed ad nauseum in ret paladins threads but I don't think it's very reasonable to argue that a 5-10% increase in DPS is changing a barely acceptable spec in a borderline overpowered one. The truth has to be somewhere in the middle.

The general opinion seems to be that Ret is more or less fine in 25 raids but suffers more and more as group size decrease due to a lack of mana regeneration mechanisms in these contexts.

The issue goes beyond simple mana efficiency (although that plays into it as well), it's a matter of utility gained per mana spent. I know that sounds just like a simple restatement, but bear with me here.

In the context of DPS, this means that without access to reliable spell interrupts or wounding effects, you can't whittle down an opponent in a mana-efficient manner; you have to go balls-to-the-wall, maximum burst, and damn the mana cost and cooldowns. If it works, you usually end up heavily damaged, with relatively little mana and cooldowns left, because you did it to yourself to beat the incoming HPS. Playing any other way results in being kited around by whatever means while the enemy heals himself or gets healed through a more measured (and efficient) DPS cycle.

On the healing side of the house, encounter design has shifted towards frequent and heavy raid damage and frequent massive spikes on the tank. Absent one of those qualifiers (frequency or quantity), you could easily avoid going OOM by relying on Flash of Light, which is still one of the most mana-efficient heals in the game. But as it is, you're forced to spam mana-inefficient Holy Lights the entire fight to keep up with incoming damage, because you lack tools like Chain Heal or Circle of Healing to manage multiple targets in a timely manner. Again, you cause your own mana problems by choosing time-efficiency over mana-efficiency.

Now obviously, I'm not telling you to stop playing the way you're forced to play; that would be stupid. My point is that paladin skills don't necessarily need a mana cost reduction to fix all of the problems, they do need a sizable boost in effect and utility to bring them in line with all the other classes to make them worth the mana cost to cast them.

Stated goal at WWI was that each piece of equipment should be useable by "about 3 classes".
Hunters already have a major change in the pipeline, in the form of pet talent trees; I imagine both areas feed off each other, and we won't see one until the other is ready for a minimum testing.

That's quite shortsighted.

Why would a tank be useless for PvP ? You only need to give him the tools to actually play his role as a TANK.
Make taunts useful (if only through switching target and preventing them to be changed for one or two seconds), give the tank a talent to take a part of the damage of someone, to give someone a part of his own defense, etc.

Tanking could be perfectly viable, and even very powerful, in PvP. It just require to have talents/abilities allowing that. So yes, it's ENTIRELY a lack of creativity.

Age of Conan has a fairly decent solution for this problem, the tank class (Guardian) has an ability called Vengeance that gives them a buff whenever someone else in their group gets hit, this buff increases their damage/runspeed(don't remember the exact stats) and stacks up to 10 times.

They also have an attack called Bloody Vengeance, that becomes much stronger and recharges faster depending on how many stacks of Vengeance they have at the moment.

This gives players an interesting problem in pvp, if you ignore the Guardian and go for his squishier team mates you're taking a risk because he can retaliate and punish you for it, but if you do go for the Guardian you're going to waste a lot of time because he's so hard to kill (he has more than twice the hp of a healer, and better health regen/resists).

Dark Age of Camelot also had a decent solution, the shield spec classes could select a party member and use the Guard ability to block most physical attacks going their way as long as they were standing next to them. Warhammer Online has some similar stuff as well I think.

I'm not saying WoW should be copying all of this though, I'm just trying to show that there are ways to give tanks a role in pvp that don't rely on them being able to "taunt" like in pve. Tanks need more interesting/useful abilities like Intervene.

I'm really confused how people can seriously have problems about "specs" somehow defnining your character. Are we even playing the same game? On a given Sunwell night, we have a paladin spec holy, then prot. We have one shaman go enhance for all fights but one, and another go enhance for M'uru, then back to resto. Our priests respec frequently between shadow and holy. I doubt this is atypical of any Sunwell guild.

There is no such thing as "I am a [spec] [class]" anymore. You can call yourself a frost mage all you want, but you'll be terrible DPS. You can bind yourself to the Beast Mastery tree and be largely ineffective in PvP. Good players pick the best spec at the current time that maximizes their role regardless of what it is.

A bad player? Maybe not. But would you rather have a paladin in your guild who is comfortable role-swapping on the fly (and who gathers multiple gear sets) or one who is bound to one spec and will never change? I personally think paladin mechanics are generally terrible and don't really enjoy tanking or PvE Dps, but I have gear sets for both in case we need it. I tanked KJ adds when our prot tank was unable to play. If none of us had bothered to build a second gear set or learn how the basic abilities work, we wouldn't have raided that day.

Anyway, I just generally don't understand how people can be in this imaginary bubble where you are somehow defined by your spec as a player and character. That hasn't been the case for a long time.

The main problem for ret at the moment is transparency. People like seeing numbers, tooltips and things that scream 'hey this is how I benefit YOU' in a blatently obvious way.

Ret paladins simply dont offer the same transparent benefits other hybrids do - this needs to be fixed ASAP.

Shaman in group? Cool WF animation, procs fill screen. Shadow priest in group? Misery, weaving on boss and screen filled with mana regen. Feral druid in group? Tooltip and heals show up on SCT. Ret pally in group? Nothing, to indicate it, not even the tooltips. Yes - most of us know what the benefits are on this forum, but that doesnt change the fact this issue really needs to be addressed and changed ASAP.

This really isn't a problem with the game, as much as it is a problem with the players. It's really not Blizzard's fault that the average player is pretty ignorant when it comes to game mechanics.

Ret paladins, MS warriors, and shadowpriests all put out significantly less dps than "pure dpsers" but only idiots would question their usefulness in a raid on fights like Brutallus.

"role-playing game"
Am I blind or is it what the game is supposed to be ?