Durlindana

Whats everyone thoughts on a deep ret talent that says something along the lines of,

"The effect of Judgement of Wisdom for you is amplified 20/40/60%"

I'm not the greatest obviously at writing skill descriptions but the way i see it, they can nerf it for those who it needs to be nerfed for (IE BM hunters) and still make it useful for us.

Thoughts anyone?

 

Rustik

I actually like the free for all. It just seemed you were comparing the two buffs together.

As for The SoW thing, I got curious.

I just did some very basic number crunching. Let's assume that they have other two handed weapons similar to the level 70 polearms, with a 2.2 second swing time. Am I correct that Jow is 2%, and SoW is now 4% of maximum mana?

Replenish = .5%/second
JoW = .45%/second
SoW = 1.82%/second

Total = 2.77% per second - .63%/second (for judgements to continue replenishing) = 2.14%/second

47 seconds to refresh the mana pool. That's with a really really fast weapon. I suppose regen mode could be done with a one hander to achieve the neccessary swing speed, perhaps a one handed caster weapon with a shield and intellect enchants, but that's a cheesy way of doing things. :P

EDIT: To Durlinda, that brings up an interesting point. "All mana gains from outside sources (Or even all mana gains, period) are increased by X" Could combine it with an existing talent, such as our 45 point talent.

 

DarKNecross

I had a similar idea, Durlindana, except added into Crusader Strike to give the playstyle more synergy.
CS on a target with JoW would return [0.09 * SPH + 0.09 * AP] mana, JoL would return [0.18 * SPH + 0.18 * AP] health, and JoJ would further limit movement speed.

http://crimson-guild.com

 

flyingtoastr

Given how Blizzard's percentage buff system works a 60% increase in JoW would actually only buff it from returning 2% of total mana to 3.2% of total mana. To get something appreciable you're looking at something like "increases the effect of your Seal of Wisdom by 166/332/500%", which would increase the mana return from JoW to 10% of total.

Even so, that really doesn't help with our regen. It basically locks ret pallys into using JoW at all times or running OOM faster than humanly possible, meaning in PvP you can't Justice if you plan on the fight lasting longer than 20 seconds. Incidentally it also doesn't help with the crippling problems in PvP ret of mana burns, which without a strong regen system make ret the worst melee class.

The main problem is that JotW was a nearly perfect talent. It helped greatly in PvP, small group, raid and solo content by giving paladins the one thing they really need to be competitive in all three; self sufficiency. As it is now even with some "amped up SoW/JoW" you're still looking at dependancy on Mana Spring, Blessing of Wisdom, etc. to make up the gap. Why are ret pallys the only physical DPS class that has that handicap?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Rustik

Come to think of it... Aspect of the viper scales to damage. Why not just do something similar for JoW and SoW. You're right, JoW was nerfed because of very very fast attackers. Why not make it DPS based instead, where JoW returns 10% of the damage done to the attacker. THen a hunter doing 3000 DPS and a mage doing 3000 DPS would still get the same mana, even if the mage only hits every 3 seconds, compared the the hunter averaging almost three times that.


EDIT: Ok, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced. SoW should be supercharged (contrary to what I stated earlier). And it has to scale with damage.

A ret pally throwing up SoW loses a pretty big chunk of damage. In return SoW SHOULD give him a mighty mana return. 20% damage done in mana return, and judement is 10%. (Maybe 10/5, maybe 15/7.5, I'm sure there's a good place.)

This would work out great for ret pallies, and in a situation where a prot pally overgears the hell out of his area, even consecrate would act as a mana return if he pulled enough mobs. (And he needs the mana in such a situation).

It also would solve the problem of being too overpowered for a holy paladin. Holy paladins already don't really benefit much from their seals, so they're not losing nearly as much utility/DPS/threat for putting up SoW. In fact, they're GAINING mana regen, which is all part of the healing kit.

With it damage based, then the holy pally, who is only judging occasionally and maybe holy shocking, and adding in a few weak melee swings, would not gain an overpowering benefit from it, but it would be effective enough when added on top of all their other regen. (The regen their gear has, which ours does not.)

 

burghy

Or you could add the current SoW effect on JotW . (33/66/100% chance that your melee attacks return 1% mana, or w/e it is now) And you also get the rage bar effect.

 

Durlindana

I thought of this as i was reading over this again, and the only problem with this I see is the fact that for instance take a survival hunter on live now, he takes a huge personal dps loss contrary to the BM hunter. Does that mean he uses less mana? No infact usually he uses more (I believe). So the idea of having it be DPS based is flawed from that stand point.

This statement is correct in my mind. However I think we came to this conclusion from different means. The way that I see it is this: As the raids gear gets better, the instances SHOULD get harder. Now when we apply that theorem to JoW what happens?

Currently, The amount of mana returned is constant from a low level 5 man, to Naxx2 and Arthas, its always the same. However the raid ends up using their mana faster (through haste gained in gear, more healing/dps needed etc) yet our return stays the same. This is flawed. The fact that JoW should scale with AP and SD is a critical point for a raid because it allows the DPS to DPS harder, using haste potions instead of Mana Pots, DPS flasks instead of Mana Regen allowing for overall raid dps to increase dynamically based solely on the gear of the Ret Paladin.

In theory the fact that the Ret Paladin being the center of the raids increase in mana regen is alittle self centered yes, but needed so that instances can actually get HARDER and not just a different change in scenery.

Now for toast.

I had not thought of the numbers to make this change effective but if your numbers are correct, the mana deficit that we currently hold on beta is astounding. 500% to JoW mana return would be an astronomical increase and for balancing sake would have to be far enough down the ret tree that prot nor holy can get it.

Also to shy away from the switching to SoW, i would suggest the talent effects personal Judgment of Wisdom. This way we dont have to for all intensive purposes, stop dps in order to regain mana. Shamans do not, so I do not see why we should be any different.

 

Alleyra

I'm not sure how valid the theory is, but the rumor circling about is that JotW was nerfed due to the possibility of a Holy Paladin acquiring this talent and the potential for "limitless" mana. If the positioning of the talent is such a major issue, why not take an ability that seems lackluster (i.e. Art of War) and swap it's position with JotW? Or perhaps another deep-tree Retribution talent that couldn't possibly be included in a hybridized build? If the idea was to limit the amount of mana output to the rest of the raid/party then the changes are understandable: but we come back to the point that we still need to have the personal mana returns that the older JotW gave us.

 

flyingtoastr

JotW was "nerfed" so that it restored the exact same mana as Spriests and Hunters so that there wasn't a good reason to bring one over the others. As a side effect it crippled ret in general.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Fqubed

Well 43/28 Build seems to be the "problem" if that was the case, a deeper version of sheathbot. As I have thought on the issue art of war kept poping up as a possibility to "fix" retpally mana. Perhaps link it again to CS and have it regen 10-20-30% of the damage done as mana on CS hits/crits. The numbers are random but giving ret something to use to regen mana, and not dump damage. Also if they tweak the numbers perhaps give wings a hit -> restore mana so that you could pop wings after 180 seconds giving a ret pally 5 minutes of fight without mana issues.

 

Nhul

Thats my biggest issue.

Given full raid support we can be 'fine' just like on live. Great. I still take my gear out and farm with BoW, R1 SoC, and nothing but CS spam on mobs that hopefully have a mana pool so I can use Mana Tap and Torrent.

Meanwhile, I have given Deathknights a real honest look.

As blood, I do not stop ever. I can kill forever, chain pulling (Deathgrip rules) mobs a level or 2 higher then my current level and the self healing if you talent it correctly is simply embarrassing if you are used to being stuck in nearly top of the game gear and having to full on gimp yourself to maintain your 'dps' in solo and pvp play. I think back to the rogue I was leveling as combat, the warrior I have leveled as fury and its essentially much of the same story, less so with the warrior but the point remains.

Melee classes (specs) should not be limited by their power source to the point of being useless after a brief time doing what they have been built to do.

I am built to melee, but once I do I get weaker and weaker, no other melee class functions so poorly in melee range, and has for so long.

 

• Avitus

Since it seems the purpose of beta at the moment is to see what's "fun" and "what works", rather than balance numbers, I can report that leveling as ret right now feels very painful. I've pretty much resorted to using SoW/JoW all the time, with BoW up and judgement as priority attack to keep replenish ticking and still I have to take breaks every now and then, despite operating at such low damage levels. I also didn't bother touching Consecration since this patch. I can sum it up: This is not fun.

Anyway, regarding all the self mana ability suggestions, while some are nice, I can't see anything wrong with just re-implementing a self-only version of JotW at ~20-40% of judgement damage. A new mechanic or multiplier is not really needed.

 

Rustik

So I was thinking about it, and got curious. HOw much dps DO we lose when we drop a DPS seal for another? I was bored, and couldn't sleep, so I ran the numbers.

4200 AP = +300.0 DPS
25.00% crit chance
200.0 DPS Weapon, 3.600 speed
Average weapon damage = 720.0

White Damage = 500.0 DPS, or 1800 per White Swing.

With armor (assumed at 25.00%, an underestimate), crit, and glancing blows(25.00% chance, 35.00% reduction(???)):

Assume 100 swings:

.75((25 * 2 * 1800) + (25 * .65 * 1800) + (50 * 1800)) = .75(90,000 + 29,250 + 90,000) = 156,937.5 Damage done

Average white swing = 1,569
Average white DPS = 435.8

For our SPecials, I am using the 43.00 second rotation I posted some pages earlier.

Crusader strike = 6.143 seconds
Judgement = 8.600 Seconds
Divine Storm = 10.75 Seconds

Crusader Strike Damage = .75(110%(720 + 300 * 3.3)) = .75(1881) = 1410.75

--With Crit: 1.2500 * 1410.75 = 1763 average damage every 6.143 seconds = 287.0 DPS

Judgement Damage = .45(720) + (.534 * 4200) = 324 + 2243 = 2567

--With Crit: 1.6250 * 2567 = 4171 average damage every 8.6 seconds = 485.0 DPS

Divine Storm Damage = 720 + 300 * 3.3 = 1710

--With Crit: 1.3125 * 1710 = 2244 average damage every 10.75 seconds = 208.7 DPS.

Finally, Seal of Blood damage:

We can assume the base auto-swing seal will simply be 35% of the unmodified white damage.

500 * .35 = 175 DPS

--With Crit: 1.25 * 175 = 218.8 DPS

Additionally, Crusader Strike and Divine storm will proc an additional 11 Seals over the course of 43 seconds.

(11 * (1800 * .35))/43 = 161.2 DPS

--With Crit: 1.25 * 161.2 = 201.5 DPS

Total DPS:
White Swing: 435.8
Crusader Strike: 287.0
Judgement: 485.0
Divine Storm: 208.7
Seal of Blood: 420.3

Total: 1837 DPS

Seal is ~23% of our damage.

Unfortunately... I think I did something wrong, because that DPS number seems really really low. Avitus reported he manages ~2200-2300 on brut, and I know he doesn't have a 200 DPS weapon. I may have under-estimated the AP. Might also be explained by the lack of haste, and no bloodlust, and a low crit percentage. I did a few of the calculations in a roundabout way because I couldn't figure out how else to do it. Someone please check the math.

 

Worldie

Is it possible he was Seal twisting and you didn't include that? Seal twisting gives a decent boost on DPS on live at the moment.

 

Rustik

Avitus is a human paladin, and therefor does not seal twist. In fact, he'd have been using Seal of COmmand, which should do less than SoB. I think it's because I don't have any haste in there. Additionally, on a brut kill, I presume he would be buffed to the gills with drums, bloodlusts, Windfury, and LotP, which would jimmy the numbers even more.

 

• Avitus

It was probably the added haste yea, also 25% crit seems awfully low, I have something close to 38% crit unbuffed in my raiding gear.
Note: The gear on my armory is not what I always raid with. I wear the T6 boots when our drenai warrior is in the party (giving 1% melee hit) and the crafted leatherworking gloves which have a lot higher crit and provide higher DPS (mainly I wear the plate ones for small instances/farming/looks).

For reference:

Kill: http://wowwebstats.com/jpm3ueonikfrg?s=257216-281936
Try 6 (we canceled at 1% due to trying to set the new DPS record and someone dying): Wow Web Stats

warrior, enh, rogue, rogue, 3/4 drum rotation, 1 heroism, 2x haste pots, 2x dark runes

 

burghy

It's a breeze for me atm (73 - running with sow, jow, bom) and your gear should be quite a lot better than my s3. I have 0 downtime and mobs drop in less than 8s usually. What levels did you start having problems?

 

Rustik

I'd picked 25% for simplicity without really considering how much of a difference it would have made. Guess that's what I get. Not sure what level of gear at 80 would get you 4200 AP, or whether it would coincide with a Naxx-25 2h, or even 25% crit chance.

Either way, the 23% would remain the same as crit increases, since it scales across the board. Haste would make the percentage go up a bit, AP go down. I doubt we'll be going much for AP though, since we do so much holy damage now.

I'm not sure how str would affect it, as Str scales differently to the different attacks.

I also didn't factor in the fact that your Judgement will do less damage if you have JoW up.

Judgement will actually average 526 less damage over time. That's 61.1 DPS coming from our seal.

Added to the seal damage, you get 26.21% of our total damage. Our seal really is more than a quarter of our DPS. Losing it for any significant length of time is devastating.

 

• Avitus

burghy I'm currently at level 76, the first 5 levels I did 2 patches ago (before they broke judgements, then I couldn't be bothered for a while). Obviously the higher you get the less crit (and other ratings) you have.

Anyway, it's not so much "problems" as much as it's plain not fun to have to play this way. The first 5 levels I could basically use any ability and go back up from empty mana if needed, it felt very much like leveling my warrior and rogue, as a melee class should feel. This last level it again felt like it is on live, where you're operating on a bare minimum, spacing out your attacks (maybe I don't need to use CS to kill it at 5% and just wait for the next auto attack to finish it off?), no use of consecration and having to divine plea/drink every bunch of mobs.

Gear makes no difference here, maybe I kill mobs faster, but we expend mana at the same rate, which is exactly my point: Gear should make your character last longer.
Come to think of it, you probably have a lot more mana than I do, at level 70 I have 4.6k mana in my pve gear (soon to be only 4k as soon as I replace my chest which is the last piece I have with int) and 7.4k in my S4 which still gives int on every piece (which should not be the case anymore with wotlk arena items due to making only 1 plate dps set).

In S4 I'd get ~160% more mana from the replenishment effect/divine plea due to the mana pool. "So gear for int?", well, maybe it's going to be a choice while leveling, however ultimately DPS plate with int will not exist in wotlk so it's a moot argument.

 

Fqubed

Art of war 3.0 Renamed to Strength of the Pious, each point of strength grants the paladin 2/4/6 points of mana.

Thus at Avituus's gear level you gain an extra 4.5k mana and double the effect of replenishment. Its deep enough so no other spec can grab it, the only issue might be that it makes Strength too good for ret, but follows well with the class and actually can fit in with "class lore"

 

Alleyra

I don't really think it's so much of a mana pool issue, as it is a mana regeneration issue. 1% per second still comes nowhere close to the sort of Energy or Rage generation other classes have, nor would it allow us to be competitive. The old JotW was (and still is) pretty much the perfect talent for us to be viable in future content. Now whether they elect to tie this ability in with Judgements or Crusader Strike, I'm not too particular on: as long as we have a system that works and allows us the longevity and the ability to be competitive with other DPS classes.

 

Arthaal

Added for clarity... my main concern is keeping up with rogues/warriors/DKs that basically: a) constantly regenerate their blue bar or b) get the better the more you hit on them.

 

Vitae

My pet proposal, along the supercharging SoW lines.

Seal of Wisdom also restores 1 mana for every white damage you do. Near useless for holy paladins, usable for prot with the new focus on AP (though BoSanc means they have zero mana issues), solid chunk for ret.

 

CaptBooyah

Just having JotWise do something a little extra for the retadin would be one way of fixing it, maybe have it return an extra n-percent of mana per swing for the next 3-4 secs... or make next crusader/ds return mana equal to a percentage of dmg.

 

Ghilgam

Wouldn't just giving ret more intellect solve this more elegantly than one of the many proposed solutions? I was thinking about something along the lines of a "You gain intellect equal to 30% of your strength" talent.

It would give us a larger starting pool, more return on percentage-based regen mechanics and both would scale (albeit slightly) with better gear.