Infraction for Wrl: General Idiocy

• Aldriana · 09/02/08, 8:21 PM

Post: [Paladin] Retribution DPS Theorycraft
User: Wrl
Infraction: General Idiocy
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Elitist Jerks - Announcements in Forum : Public Discussion, #5 (quote splitting).

Original Post:

Originally Posted by Alleyra

Warriors and Rogues also suffer consequences for Energy and Rage burning. If they start going crazy with abilities, their Rage/Energy bars tap out. They don't have the freedom to burn every cool down/ability as it's available. There is still a throttling mechanic in place -- without one they'd have runaway leads on damage.

Obviously rogues/warriors are throttled by their energy/rage generation. Paladins are not quite that simple and are almost entirely throttled by their DPS cooldowns. This is why I am saying that PvE mana regen should be balanced to be just barely enough to do the 3 main cooldowns, Judgement/CS/DS. From that point we can start wasting mana on Consecration/Exorcism/etc. But in a 30m fight, we can at the very least not lose mana doing Judge/CS/DS.

I have to completely disagree here. This is likening bringing along a Shadow Priest in order to fill a healing role. Sure, they have the spell damage to heal for a short while, but they lack both the talents, abilities, and longevity to be effective healers. Sheath of Light is a welcome addition to our talent set; but at 33% of our AP, healing will still be dwarfed significantly by a dedicated healer. Not to mention our mana pool would dry up very quickly without any/very little intellect on Ret's gear. If anything, giving us a large mana pool exacerbates the problem of potential Retribution healers -- as there would be far less impact on the Paladin casting those expensive healing spells. Again, I think it'd be foolish to balance solely through the prism of Arenas/BGs.

One of the reasons shadow priests have been a popular 2s/3s choice in the past has been their very potent healing abilities. Every good shadow priest knows when to pop out of shadow form and start churning out heals before switching back in to shadow to start dpsing again. This is also comparable to a Moonkin or Elemental shaman. Healing is generally a very important aspect of their playstyle, and Sheath of Light creates a similar balancing issue and represents a possibly significant shift in playstyle for a Retadin.

As Selenia pointed out, Enhancement Shaman are very synonymous with our class; however they have the distinct ability to passively and actively regenerate their mana without really impacting their damage output. There's no reason that we cannot be afforded the same ability or functionality. Especially with the standardization of DPS classes, we must be competitive with other melee classes in order to ensure viability. If we cannot provide comparable melee DPS, raids will simply take Hunters and Shadow Priests along as their mana batteries.

I believe that yes, their mana regen in PvE is balanced very well and it works. In PvP, though, mana regen for an Enhance can become very troublesome very quickly such as being CC'd during a Shamanistic Rage. If Enhancement shamans had infinite mana in PvP their options would be a lot more open. I think retadins could be balanced similarly, but the hard part is trying to make it work in PvE without breaking it in PvP an vice versa.

At the end of the day, 1% regeneration is 1%. It matters not if the mana pool is 5000 or 10,000. With abilities costing 12%, 20%, etc. we're still faced with an inevitability: we will exhaust that mana supply at some point, without some sort of ability similar to the older JotW. A larger mana pool just buys a little more bit more time -- a fix for a symptom, not the real problem.

You aren't paying attention to the math. Abilities are not costing % of our TOTAL mana, its our BASE mana. So lets say we have (with the current system) 6000mana at 80 with no INT at all, and no +mana talent. An ability that costs 20% of our base mana will cost 1200 mana. If we get a talent that increases our TOTAL mana to 12,000 the ability will still cost 1,200 but we will be regening at a higher rate. There is a point at which we have enough mana to regen indefintely, although it is currently practically unreachable.

To sum it up:

a. Yes we need to have an amount of mana return that will allow us to do our core DPS abilities on cooldown without ever running out in a PvE situation (such as every other dpser is capable).
b. Our mana return can not be so exorbitant that it allows us to perform more than just our DPS abilities in a PvP environment indefinitely. If we have enough mana return to dps, cleanse, stop and heal, then go back to dpsing without every worrying about mana, it is an issue.

I believe that Blizzard probably saw JotW to be too much mana return for a paladin and allowed him to not ever have to worry about running out, which is silly because if we don't have to worry about it, why do we even have it?