Cromfel

I wanted to post this here as EJ boards seems to contain people who have good vision of game mechanics and view on how certain skills/talents effect game mechanics for separate classes and so on. I have been thinking of way to increase Paladin support system to make 1 Retribution Paladin being desired addition to small partys and even arenas/battlegrounds.

Judgements becoming irrelevant

Current judgement system is close to state of irrelevant when it comes to majority of content and gameplay. Many of them dont really bring anything remarkable, or even noticeable difference in the combat. Best example of this would be 5man groups and solo playing. Its pretty obvious that the low support what they offer need some changes. For Soloing its just plain stupid to judge any of the seals instead of damaging ones due monsters dying in relatively short time (Judgement cooldown wasted and mana waste).

Only real place for judgements to start shine is 25 man raids, and even there the benefit is not obvious for majority of the playerbase to understand and see Retribution as good raidmember, unlike Shadowpriest misery/weaving bonus and mana/heal regen to group.

Defining Retribution spec

We are now making Retribution to have main role as Support DPS, and their responsability is to offer some form of support while meleeing. Something small to have reasonable support utilitys when comparing to other hybrids who can offer good raw dps and good support. Retribution Paladins should have unique support role what is very obvious and why the low damage they offer should be considered as sufficient because they bring the good support tools.

Currently theres nothing what defines Retri, non-Paladins only see Retribution bringing low damage and same utilitys as holy/prot can bring, and they are absolutely right. Blessings are same, Judgements are same, and this creates similiar situation where Shadowpriests were when community hated them for their selfish spec. Now shadowpriests are having fun for their money, they arent "selfish" anymore as they offer great manaregen additions and great offhealing while doing dps. This is something that we want to reproduce for retribution.

Changes

First of all, we are introducing new talent for Retribution. It will be called Lightbringer. This talent will be in very deep Retribution, to make this system provide some clear role and purpose for the Retribution tree to separate it from Prot/Holy. Taking this talent will allow Paladin to have 2 seals up and judgeable at any given time, only exception is that they can have 1 Avenger seal and 1 Guardian seal up at same time.

Lightbringer New Retribution Talent (Pre talent for Crusader Strike)
Paladin can now have 1 Guardian and 1 Avenger seal up at any give time and can judge either of them by using Guardian Judgement or Avenger Judgement. In addition to the normal effect, your Guardian judgements have party beneficial components available for Retribution Paladins party only.

Guardian Seals
- Seal of the Crusader
- Seal of Light
- Seal of Wisdom
- Seal of Justice

Avenger Seals
- Seal of Command
- Seal of Vengeance
- Seal of Blood
- Seal of Righteousness

Guardian Judgement Changes.
These changes are introduced to promote support nature of Paladin dps. These changes are only here to give small obvious group components to judgements so it would be seen as beneficial addition to any party to take Retribution Paladin in their group. We all know how playerbase think about Retribution Paladins, and they have right to do so. But we also know what happened to hate against shadowpriests.

*** Judgement of the Crusader ***
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, increasing spell damage taken by up to 100.
In addition judging Paladin party can get 5% haste rating buff when Paladin attacks target (33% proc rate, 5sec duration).

*** Judgement of Light ***
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting all attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker for 100.
In addition judging Paladin party will be healed for 20% of Paladins critical strike damage.

*** Judgement of Wisdom ***
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting attacks and spells used against the judged enemy a chance to restore 100 mana, 1 rage and 1energy to the attacker. (Rage and Energy proc rate is 33%, mana proc rate is 50%).
In addition judging Paladin party can get 25mana/5sec buff when Paladin attacks the target (50% proc rate, duration 10sec).

*** Judgement of Justice ***
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, preventing them from fleeing and limiting their movement speed.
In addition judging Paladin party attacks have change of dazing the target for 4 sec. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration.

Why?

Judgements offers mediocore support in raiding environment. But its impractical to force other Paladins from healing job to come aply new judgements when from time to time they will drop off. This would not create any imbalanced issues as the Judgement scaling in small scale gameplay is extremely thin, and in pvp combat duration is very short to even consider judging many 8 sec cooldowns to aply multiple seals. One could always claim that this would make Retribution overpowered, but lets face the facts. These changes would hardly make huge difference in pvp, only improvement would be that people actually see them gaining something from having Retribution Paladin. WOOT? Retri being useful? Sign me in! Judgement of light seems to be powerful, but think twice, its only fraction of the heal regeneration what Shadowpriests offer. Again, only producing small beneficial addition gained trough retribution spec.

There are some cases in this system that would need tuning, for example Seal of Crusader + SoC combination could become insanely powerful, but due SoCr mechanic that aplies damage reducing component, the imbalanced state could be easily prevented. Same goes for JoWisdom + Seal of Wisdom combination with for example Seal of Righteousnes. With small math on the issue, you have 3.8weapon, and have SoR proc every attack giving you 1 JoW proc every attack. Thats 26.3 mana per sec. Now we have also Seal of Wisdom up, granting us 31.6 mana per sec. Total 57.9 mana per sec.

Compared to 900 dps shadowpriests 45mana per sec to whole team. So even with this kind of setup we would be at similiar rate on personal grinding manaregen efficiency, not to mention that Shadowpriests would still be superrior group manaregen battery. But the effect would be great enough to help Retribution Paladins to fulfil the support DPS nature.

Im open for all feedback. What loopholes there is in this kind of system, and how (theoretically) broken would this kind of system be? Yes, this would greatly improve Retribution, but from my experience it would only bring the spec to equal state with other hybrids in grinding and group support. Specially in small scale gameplay. Would you as raidleader see these being reasonable additions to bring 1 Retribution Paladin into raid instead of current flavor of brining multiple Shadowpriests (Yes we all love Shadowpriests I know, but for "hybrid balance" sake there could be room for 1 Retribution Paladin along all those Shadowpriests)

Thanks for reading.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

◊ Anias

If your goal is to get a paladin into close support as a mellee dps class, they first have to deal comparable mellee damage to other mellee combatants. Then they have to offer compelling utility.

Until then, it's simply pointless to _waste_ a raid slot on a class that cannot fulfill a primary roll at the same time they offer reasonable utility.

Giving retribution paladins arms/fury warrior damage output has some real problems in pvp due to the base skill set of the paladin, and due to how _bursty_ the paladin damage implementation is. Thus to increase retribution output, the base class would have to be adjusted and some of the burst would have to be examined. There's other stuff, but that's two very large items that the playerbase wouldn't react well to in my opinion. Given the general maturity level of the avg paladin I think the viciously stupid whining that would result is enough that blizzard is extremely loathe to make changes to the base class, thus dooming the ret spec.

I'd be a very very happy raid leader if paladins made sense as prot and ret spec, simply because building groups would be easier if different paladins wanted different things, however as things stand right now, that's not the case, and there are serious impediments to changing it.


The real problem with retribution paladins is that no matter how much utility they offer they are adding a mellee dps slot to your raid with sub par damage, at a direct cost in healing required to sustain the additional mellee combatant, lost damage from the slot compared to other dps options, and difficult gearing issues. Until the base damage for a mellee combatant is higher output than the ranged alternative, there is zero reason to bring the mellee class - because ranged combatants in wow simply allow you much more flexibility in strategy (you can always tell them to stand on the mob's tail if you have to. A rogue at range is pretty depressing. There's very very few fights where having a ranged class forces the raid to deal with more healing) So it's pointless to talk about "fixing their utility" until you fix their damage, and as I said above - there's other factors that prevent blizzard from adding real damage to retribution paladins.

Personally? I think _plate_ armor should be a deep 31 or more point talent in prot, 2h weapons should be the 11 or 21 pt talent in ret, and some meaningful heal should be a talent in holy. If the goal is to allow a paladin to perform as a dps class, then you need to nerf the base class some so that meaningful choices are being made in the talents to pick a strong focus. This in turn allows the paladin to be much more competitive with the "pure" classes for any role they choose, which in turn will make the prospect of "additional utility to offest the 5% loss in damage" more feasible.

Right now a ret pally working their ass off isn't competitive with a fury warrior/enh shaman/cat druid, and a big part of that is because blizzard has to worry about the classes's Freebies, and about the burst issues in pvp.

If you seriously want positive changes in the PvE side of the paladin related to ret and prot, you need to come up with a tenable plan to get them similiar sustained damage and survivability respectively, which means moving some of that out of the core class so that the talent trees can provide meaningful growth without creating superman.

 

Cromfel

Thanks for great input Anias. Your argument of sufficient DPS was exactly the reason why I wanted to present increased support. Relatively low damage that Retribution offers, with great support tools would exceed the offset and bring their viability in stage where the low damage is acceptable because raid gains the support they offer.

Im really confused that you completely trash the idea of this Low Damage + Good Support. And that support would become obsolete when raids would only need raw DPS and nothing else. I wouldnt personally like to see any hybrid perform as good dps as core classes, but like Shadowpriest their dps + mana/heal regen is so big that its good to have few of them along.

Interesting point of view Anias, very interesting.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

◊ Anias

I'm a raid leader, and the first two things raid leaders (at least every one I've ever sat down with) solve for are:

1 - Tank/Add control. Is the tank living, does the encounter feel under player control. Are we dealing with adds, bosses, extraneous factors such as aoes or positioning concerns.

2 - Are we killing the objective.


I never, ever, think "We need some utility in here, stat."
I often think "We need more mitigation on the tank or more healing or more tanks to control adds"
I often think "We need to kill this faster."

The way the current game is designed (and it's pretty consistent so unlikely to change without a major expansion revamp) you simply don't care about utility as a primary concern - you get it incidentally along with the people you bring along to accomplish the tanking/healing/damage. Even warriors and priests provide impressive "In the raid" utility. It's by no means in short supply. So any class that provides "high utility" at a _cost_ of other abilities isn't really providing "high utility" they're providing a relatively minor upgrade in utility from the baseline, at a cost of a relatively high amount of other abilities that are generally more important.

Thus my statement that if the class _requires_ mellee combat (as you seem to envision the ret pally) then the barriers to entry are: High damage intake from having less places to stand to avoid damage, Competing for a harder group to fit into (the number of mellee buffs is relatively high compared to ranged buffs), and lastly the fact that on some fights you simply won't be able to actively engage the mob in a meaningful way as you introduce a substantial MAGIC component to your mellee damage - the largest example being the emps in aq40.

So you are going to have to compensate for those downsides, and it's hard to do that in a reasonable fashion without accidentally creating superman. You can remove the parts of the class that make a ret pally with fury warrior damage into superman, but that leaves the base class looking weaker and pisses off a lot of 4 year olds that really think they should be clark kent.

This is not the game for a low damage high utility dps class. Utility simply isn't that rare in wow, so having "I have great utility" be all you can say about a spec when compared to "I'm an amazing healer" won't get you anywhere.

Incidentally, this is the same problem that moonkin have, and that the various rogue trees have. Sometimes blizzard is hamstrung by the core class doing something too well (moonkin heal too well, so they have serious mana issues with their dps so that you don't have one in dps gear healing the MT for 4 minutes toward the end of a fight)
(rogues do too much damage coming out of stealth in pvp to give them severe utility/survival - poly on a rogue for instance)


The ret paladin has too much survival/healing ability base - combined with blessing of freedom and high burst in pvp - to be allowed to have the same level of sustained fury warrior dps, much less rogue dps, but without at least fury/cat dps you aren't going to make sense for the raid to support in a mellee dps role. There's a number of things you can do to lessen the cost of a pally dpsing in terms of healing required, but the biggest part of the cost is the loss in overall raid dps, and it's surprisingly hard (without directly increasing that pally's personal dps) to offset that without running into the bard problem from eq (which blizz has stated they don't want to run into).

As I said before, I think the best way to fix the current issue is to look at what can be shaved from the core class to make room for the ret tree to do meaningful mellee dps (which is incidentally probably more than mage dps to put it in perspective as the ret tree doesn't offer "tanking" like the fury/cat options do). See why blizzard is hesitant to touch it?

Leaving the want-to-ret-raiders unhappy is much less of a PR nightmare than making ret feasible/desirable for raid groups.

 

Zzbzq

Slightly OT: Remaking blessing [instead of seals] system is a lot more appealing to me. Blessings are just repulsively annoying.

Combine blessings and auras into bard-lite imo. k

I think you totally had the right ideas such as making crits heal the group. The non-CC dps classes basically need the free group healing and/or mana regen to replace the CC. It's why shadowpriests are good unlike any other "offspec". However I reject your choice to list specific abilities. It's better to just say what ability it is and give a reason why, instead of writing the tooltip for the spell. The former gives us the theoretical essentials, the latter gives us form... formality.

 

Floria

The problem right now is that players like Anias take "Paladin = Low DPS" as an axiom, and it's just not true. A paladin is gear-dependant, and the presence of Windfury totem can make or break Paladin DPS. Wow, just like warriors!

Not just gear-dependant, but it's also easy to make mistakes. For Raid DPS, a paladin needs to stack Strength and crit, and ignore spell-damage, which means avoiding those "Paladin" items that come with str/stam/int/spell/mp5 and no crit. No crit means no Vengeance, which means 15% less damage. A good Retribution can keep pace with other DPS classes until the point where they get threat-capped due to a lack of threat-modifier.

People used to poo-poo Shadow Priests, Feral Druids, and Elemental Shamans, and they're now everyone's favorite. Check the Retribution Paladin Raid thread in this forum, and see if maybe you're judging pre-maturely.

 

Symbul

Honestly though, have you seen what Paladin healing is like in Warrior (or if alliance, "Ret") gear? Sure we can put on +heal/+mp5 gear and spam FoL (HL not so much) like champs even without Illumination but it's not as if we're better at healing in dps gear than the other hybrids. The days of AQ geared Paladins (they could actually do some pretty impressive things) being pvp-damage/healing powerhouses are over.

Also, Ret doing terrible dps is not some empirical fact, though your thread would leave us thinking otherwise. We're at the mercy of group setups to do competitive damage (not Shadow Priests though) but it's not like Paladins are the only class to do so. Ever try not giving one Rogue BS and WF on Patchwerk and see how he did compared to the others? I played a Rogue in WoW 1.x and it wasn't pretty. Paladins do not do Fury dps on their own, ofc they don't, and threat is a real issue, but I honestly think that with a slight buff to dps and maybe some to utility Ret will be raid viable. Only ever to a max of 1/raid only, taking any more is a very long shot.

As for Seals I'd like to see the seals unflagged as magic. I've always thought it was retarded that almost our entire combat system can just be purged off. I'd also like to see the dps seals lasting longer and not fading on judgement. The Judge/Reseal mechanic on dps seals is just awkward and always has been. No other class has to do something that silly for their damage cycles. Our dmg/mana ratio is also completely horrendous. It just feels wrong that such a big part of our active combat system is something that we scale away from.

Also, I would like to see Sanctity Aura get a makeover. The +10% holy damage isn't impressive at all except in very specific circumstances (read: grouped with another Paladin aoe tanking). I would like to see this changed to ~3-5% increased damage overall (for the whole party). Hell, they can even make it Crit or Hit or whatever - even physical only - just make the base aura have a tangible benefit and that should go a long way to making Retribution an accepted "melee group" spec alongside Enhancement.

 

Cromfel

This is so true. Retribution have lost the ability to actually be hybrid. The possible healing capacity just have vanished due greater health pool and relatively high damage that many class have. The time for Stun/Repe throw 1 heal to be 100% are over. 860mana for 1 big heal out of 6500 manapool just isnt working. Not to mention that current retri gear has 0 mp5 leading inevitable oom in no time. And when u are oom, you stay there,

Things were well balanced for Retribution Paladins at lvl 60, but now things just have gotten out of bounds. 1 of the reasons this topic was made to give Retribution back some of the true paladin nature.

I agree on this. It seems to be singleplayer aura, without improvement. It should have some universal modifier like 10% holy damage and 10% haste rating. Just so people dont go nuts in partys when you use it and dont see anything but +10% holy dmg gained

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

Schneeb

I think the current judgement system is good and powerful, making it better would make them overpowered in my mind.
Sure 'ret' need a better way of keeping them all up but thats the only change thats needed imo.

A buff like this would really piss off shamans who have been complaining about totems for alot longer

 

Cromfel

Currently to my amaze only place where Retribution is genuinely viable in TBC seems to be raids, and we know that its theoretically viable there. Not even remotely desired by raid leaders. Where just a while back it was supposed to be just leveling/pvp spec.

My major consern is the "casual" Paladins who are having extremely hard time on proving that they could even join 5man party. Major issue in this is the predjudice, 2 years of Retirbution jokes and mockery. But we all know what happened to Shadowpriests, all they got was 1 obvious visible support mechanism... And now everyone love them.

Love with capital L due the fact that many guilds even use 2-4 shadowpriests per raid. Where even 1 Retribution Paladin is having extremely hard time on proving hes viability. Improving Seal system would be very good route in creating situation where Retribution can be seen as alternative to Shadowpriest. And the seal/judgement system has built in mechanism to prevent stacking multiple Retribution Paladins to abuse their (if fixed) good support. Unlike the current situation with raids stacking shadowpriests.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

Deth

I enjoyed reading this, because utility classes are the best at solving these issues. Bring a Paladin to control adds a bit when needed and heal in other situations. Bring a shaman for heroism or other DPS enhancing effects. It kind of makes me sad to think that you are a raid leader and yet you don't see "utility" as something that can solve your problems. Anyone in a raid can easily see the benefit of a single paladin over none. The added incremental benefit of more Paladins diminishes with each addition yet it is tangible. Any group with salve, kings, might/wisdom will greatly outperform the same group with only salvation. And if you are genuinely set on min/maxing, you absolutely can not ignore the effect of the candidate's "utility." For example, take a 25 man raid that is completely fleshed out save one dps slot. Your choice is a pure dps class or a retribution paladin. The Paladin's personal contribution to raid dps is only 60% of the pure dps candidate. Yet improved judgement of the crusader boosts the dps output of the entire raid. Back when 2.0 info first came out, the effect of this bonus was calculated to be similar to adding another dps class to the raid. So would you rather take the pure dps class, and work at 100% effectiveness or take the paladin, and work at something greater than 100%?

The choice seems fairly easy to me. I can't argue with anything you said about healing cost associated with the choice, but that boils down to range vs melee dps selection, and really has nothing to do with ret paladins specifically. My point is that spot selection does not have to first look at a candidate's individual contribution, but should look at the combination of the contribution and "utility."

"Death is only the Ultimate Excuse"