Phayne2355

But not every ability they have is on a cooldown.

 

Arthaal

Nitpicking: the regen % is based on total mana, while the expenditure is calculated on base mana, so as mana pools grow larger, the relative cost of these abilities do in fact decrease and the regenerative power of Replenishment/SoW/JoW are increased as well.

I agree with you that a larger mana pool is not the answer however, since increasing our mana pool through talents would imply us having to rely on the existing regen mechanics (Replenishment/SoW/JoW) to "recharge our batteries" and with percentages remaining as they are (which they must at least in the case of JoW and Replenishment for balancing), this would still take us over 1 minute of 75% DPS to be back to full (going off half remembered numbers from earlier in this thread). Compare this to a hunter's 6 seconds at 50% and an enhancement shamans 0 seconds.

Not to mention the cost (both those classes have free regen mechanics), 14% base mana + 5% base just to switch to "regen mode". Any cost at all makes it difficult or impossible to use in arenas with an attentive mana burner.

And once again, that's ignoring chance for the JoW debuff being dispelled, you being kited because you're no longer keeping JoJ on your target and generally not being able to find anything to reliably hit... thus negating your regen efforts altogether.

 

Alleyra

I stand corrected on the total mana versus base mana -- I was comparing base mana to base mana.

I think my point remains re: increased mana pools. It's a band-aid fix for a symptom rather than the root cause.

 

• Avitus

I'm amazed by some people imagining a quickly recharging (comparable to rage/energy/runic power) mana bar would somehow make us gods of PVP. Read my lips: It would change absolutely nothing at all and here's why:

All our DPS abilities have cooldowns, infinite regeneration (so we stay positive all the time like all other melee classes out there) would not increase our DPS in any way, it would just guarantee that we can keep DPSing at full blast. Ability cooldowns regulate what exactly this "full blast" is, there is no need for dual regulation (cooldowns + mana).

"But, ret will be able to heal forever!!"... No we won't. Look at the facts. Int is being taken away from DPS plate. I'm not at a computer where I can log on beta to check for exact numbers, but as a level 76 paladin in pretty much full int-less DPS plate I'd have something around 4k mana unbuffed. Holy Light currently costs a bit over 1k mana and downranking has been pretty much eliminated, which means even with a completely full mana bar of a whopping 4k mana I'd be able to throw 3 heals and then be as useless as a brick until I get back in combat to gain more mana.

Actually more accurate numbers from wowhead: Holy Light will cost 29% base mana. A ret paladin will not have any int on their DPS plate (meaning his/her unbuffed mana pool will be exactly that 100% base mana), will be able to heal for exactly 3 Holy Lights before going oom.

Also remember, as soon as a ret paladin starts healing, there ends the regen (as well as the damage obviously). They have to be in combat to keep their mana pools up.

Now please tell me. Is this overpowered or game breaking in any way?



And here's what it all boils down to (why I think this works):

The whole trick revolves around keeping our mana pools so incredibly small while keeping our regen very high (rage/energy/runic power regen like). This means that we can always keep blasting (same as all other melee classes), but cannot abuse this regen for anything else since at any point we stop the DPS/regen (to heal) we only have a very small mana pool to use. I would probably be even ok if they made us have 2k or 3k mana pools but truly infinite regen. The old JotW fit this perfectly.

So what was established in this post?

-Infinite regen would not increase our DPS
-Infinite regen would not make us gods of healing with such wimpy mana pools
-Mana burn would still make a dent in our cycles. A "dent", which is what it should be, not a "death sentence".

This is the way to balance it.

Please people get your heads out of the box and try looking at the facts rather than just rehashing outdated ideas without really thinking about them ("hey infinite mana, that sounds overpowered somehow, lets complain!").

 

Ragnor

100% agreed with Avitus.

Remember with down ranking dead, you can't use R1 consecration or R1 SoC as you do today when low mana in pvp and pve it's going to hurt even more than you think.

Any alliance ret paladin doing competitive dps on Brutallus right now knows how retarded it is to have to use Demonic Rune x3 and Fel Mana Potion x1 for a 3-5min fight. Nevermind what happens if your enh shaman forgets to drop mana spring or JoW gets pushed off (due to the debuff limit) or he plain forgets to judge on the pull.

It's painful and it's not fun.

So called "Infinite Regen" would probably increase our dps but it wouldn't increase it beyond what our restrictive cool downs permit (exactly like enh shaman).

The original self only Judgement of the Wise at maybe 30-40% or if blizzard prefers non scaling an appropriate fixed value say 800 mana (800 mana per 8sec = 100 m/sec = 500 mana/5) instead of 60% would have been perfect.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Khaelarys

Just to be clear, Avitus - you're suggesting that the mana regen be slightly higher than the mana cost for a complete cycle - so after a heal, we COULD regenerate back up to full while dps'ing, but it would take some period of time?

 

• Avitus

Yea that's pretty much it. Exactly as it was on beta at the start: While grinding you'd throw 2 heals and go oom, but no problem, you'd get back in combat and judge two times (over a period of ~8 seconds) and be back at about full mana again while having maintained full DPS cycle (used all attacks after the first judge).


The premise of this is simple: As long as we're DPSing we should always be positive, or even gaining mana, having a close to full mana bar = Same as all the other melee classes who can DPS non stop, only restricted by ability cooldowns.

As soon as we do anything besides DPS (like throw 2-3 holy lights), our puny mana bars will empty, voiding any "excuses" of being overpowered.

By careful planning or possibly through sheer luck it seems the blizzard devs have stumbled on the solution to all our balance issues when they removed int from our itemization. Rage like mana regen is now possible for DPS without having to worry about the consequences of abusing it in heals.

 

Selenia

Didn't see this posted anywhere else, so..

Mutilate rogues share that bit of raid utility with us now.

 

flyingtoastr

Avitus, you need to copy that post onto the beta forums. It is spectacular. With you permission I'd love to get it over onto the US forums too.

Eh, given that Mutilate Rogues have a good reason to use Envenom in Wrath (reset the timer on S&D nom nom nom) I would rank that a bit below below HotC. Since Envenom eats your poisons it would be counteractive to the talent to have a second or two of downtime after your finishing moves.

That does put 3 things into the "increase all crit" category; Mutilate Rogues (Master Poisoner), Ret Paladins (Heart of the Crusader), and Elemental Shamans (Totem of Wrath). Heart of the Crusader will most assuredly be the best for single Target DPS; it applies to all attackers regardless of distance and is applied and refreshed continually through normal DPS rotations. Totem of Wrath does have the AoE situations nailed though; it specifically says that the crit chance is increased against all enemies, making it wonderful for overcoming the AoE damage caps. Master Poisoner has the dubious position of being the least effective of the three due to downtime, but it is still nice extra utility for a class that is severely lacking at the moment.

Something else worth mentioning on the utility front, anyone else miffed about sharing our percent damage increase with BM Hunters? Ferocious Inspiration is flat out better than Sanctified Retribution (3% versus 2%) and the argument that "it might go down sometimes because it's dependent on crits" (looking at some of the new BM talents I highly doubt that would be the case, but meh) doesn't seem like enough of a balance.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Selenia

I might be wrong on this, but isn't Ferocious Inspiration still party and not raidwide?

 

Prinsesa

Currently, yes, but it's a reasonable expectation to have it changed to raidwide in light of their announced plans.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Altirias

Avitus, your post is really interesting, but I'm afraid it's not that simple.

On the one hand, I totally agree with you about how frustrating it is to be rendered useless by a quick mana burn or just using a couple of our abilities. Full life but oom, not even able to pop rank 1 SoC and try to help our allies nearby or simply be forced to be owned by a healer that has not even been harmed by our attacks. We need more sustainability in our dps, that's certain.

On the other hand, I still see a possible balance issue in the older JotW. As you demonstrated it, due to all our abilities other than procs on melee attacks are on cooldown, then having infinite sustainability would not increase dps, as it is the case for casters (mainly arcane mage). But there would still be a balance issue in PVP due to our healing capabilites. Infinite mana not providing more dps, I agree. Not making us gods of pvp ? well actually I think it would.

Even though you may almost empty your mana bar by throwning yourself 3 holy lights, don't forget that they'll be more powerfull thanks to sheath, one of those heals will certainly crit due to the merging of melee and spell ratings, and that crit will reward you 60% effective heal as a 15 sec HoT (that may be dispelled I admit, but it's still there at first). So you'll basically be able to put yourself full life that way. Empty mana bar ? No problem, stun + JoC and here you go, full mana again to burst out and possibly start over again : 3 heals, then judge to regen significantly and so on. 1 GCD to heal yourself to full and regen all your mana every eight second seems overpowered in pvp. Imagine a warrior beeing able to heal himself for 4-5k every once in a while for 30 rage ? Yes, it would be overpowered.


Hunters can't heal themselves, so their regen capabilities don't allow them to get full life at the same time it gives them back all their mana. Enhanced Shaman have efficient regen, but no "burst regen" except a 3mn CD that may be used for nothing if cc'ed while the buff is active (much like our Divine plea actually : gives quite a lot of mana in a shot, but can be wasted). They can't get full mana on the shot after emptying their mana bar to heal themselves, what old JotW sort of provided. And ferals, at last, they have to give up all their serious dps abilities and their survivability in order to pop out a laughable heal.
No melee or physical dps class has increased healing potential AND strong and fast mana regen. There's no reason we should have both. The point of having a very small manapool does nothing as long as you can regen it to full or near with just one GCD.


I'm not saying that what's on the beta server is satisfying, because it is very far from being so. We lost one of our best regen mechanic (80% of seal cost refunded on judgement) as well as the little usefull tricks like downranking SoC and consecration that could somehow postpone our inevitable uselessness when oom. Combining huge regen and significant healing capabilities is too much, at least in PVP. But if I have to choose between the two, as a ret, I'd rather be penalised when healing than being penalised constantly in my dps capacities due to insufficiant mana regeneration that would allow for too much healing utility.

My point is : we need dps sustainability, but we should pay a steep price for getting it. What would be acceptable both pve and pvp-wise would be a strong regen talent like JotW v1 was, but one that would also dramatically increase healing spells cost. So that we are not the class combining infinite mana provinding both high sustainable dps and greatly improved healing capabilities.

EDIT : typos & misc

 

Selenia

Won't an enhancement shaman's healing spells be equally boosted by Mental Quickness and the same crit rating merge? Granted that he doesn't have the HoT, but he can also heal in combat.

I also didn't see Avitus suggest that you should get a full mana bar out of a judgement. I believe he said you should get enough to sustain your basic combat skills plus a little bit more. In that way, you will go negative if you heal, but you can regen the loss slowly. If you throw three heals, then judge to regen you wouldn't get enough to heal again and would barely be able to sustain your basic abilities in other words.

They can every third minute for 15 rage.

 

Rasputin

Funny you should mention this, in light of the recent post by Gamnin in the warrior beta boards:

Source

Edit: for clarification, a warrior in starter PvP blues/honor epics in WotLK currently has approximately 20k HP, making this a 6.7k hp heal.

 

Altirias

Well yes, but they can't get the "burst regen" after healing themselves back to full.
see below

A popular idea was a self-only JotW with a 30-45% damage returned as Mana. That can actually return whole your mana if you combien all the multipliers (JoC crit on a stunned target with vengence * 2 + wings + righteous vengence + other trinkets or random procs...)
But I agree that the issue is then about finding the exact numer, but the limit between useless and overpowered is very thin considering the range of our burst.
From the figures I'have gathered, a standard JoC proc would hit for roughly 1K, whereas if you meet all the conditions quoted above you can multiplly that figure by a rather big number, which would make old JotW maybe to powerfull under certain conditions. Those conditions are not that situationnal, because popping wings and stunning before judging and get a crit wouldn't be that unusual given the high crit rates we have on judgements through fanaticsm namely.

Yes, I just saw that after I posted, on MMOC. I guess we will have to wait for a dedicated post regarding or class to know more about what we can expect.

Yet, this is a 3mn CD, whereas throwing ourselves 3 holy lights, get empty mana and then full back again with JotW is far for having the same cooldown

 

Rasputin

3 HLs also takes 7.5s(modified by haste, of which we will have unknown quantities in PvP) of channeling leaving you open to lockdown or interruption to cast, while the warrior ability is an instant cast HoT which most likely cannot be dispelled, as I would imagine it to be in the physical school. The abilities are different in the specifics to be sure, but similar in the end result: self healed at the cost of dps. I might argue that we'd lose more dps by emptying our mana pool and standing still for 7 seconds than a warrior would by losing enrage for 10s and 15 rage, but that's not the focus here. Avitus' post is entirely on the money. If we can heal ourselves at the cost of all significant dps for some 8-16 seconds, is that really such a terrible thing? Will it really make us PvP Gods? It's certainly not something you can do under pressure, and the cost seems commensurate with the gain in a PvP situation.

We will have to eventually wait for our next major class revision to make any more definite statements. I'm pretty sure the developers are aware of our mana issues under the new system, but they can't just hotfix us a solution. Classes are being revisited in turn, and we'll come up, at which point discussions like this can take place with a little more accuracy.

 

Selenia

That largely amplified judgement through the use of hammer, trinkets, wings, full vengeance and random procs isn't exactly something that'll occur every 8 seconds either though.

If the standard JoC is roughly 1k, it'd return 600 mana with old JotW. This is actually a fair bit below what we need to keep our full complement of standard combat abilities up, iirc.

I still hold a button on the JoC-on-stunned doubling being removed before live. It's the whole reason why our burst is sickeningly good currently and the main reason why old JotW was OP.

 

Altirias

I'm saying I don't agree with Avitus when he claims we need a relyable and efficient mean to get dps sustainability, I'm just saying that the old JotW with the possible burst with Joc doubbled damage on stunned target would be very hard to balance in a pvp environment.

Of course the other class's change show us that we may be expecting exciting new things when they turn their eyes towards us, so I guess we'll have to wait.

But for starters, I'll definitely trade the JoC burst on stunned target against what we need the most : some way to make us last longer than 30seconds when we're left alone, and at most 6 seconds when we're being mana burned. Because I think we cannot get that without giving something else or everybody will whine against ret pals in pvp (and arena) and you all know how that turns out in the end => PVE nerfs for the sake of pvp

 

Rasputin

This honestly sounds like exactly the pre-concession that Avitus spoke against earlier. Why should we have to duck our heads and tip our caps and hope that we get some minor buffs while never rising to equality or even prominence? No other class or even spec has this problem. Why should we be the one spec that must always be softly asking for just a little bit more, if it doesn't inconvenience the other specs too much, please? What exactly is the problem with a strong ret spec which can compete in arenas instead of being a sub-par complement to a warrior or rogue? Why should I spend every moment in arena knowing that if my team grabbed a rogue or warrior(or int he future, DK, enh shaman, feral), they'd be a stronger team? We SHOULD be able to sustain our DPS indefinitely in PvE and in PvP. We SHOULD be able to toss an occasional heal if the situation merits it. Nobody is concerned that Ret Paladins will be main arena healers who can still smash a face or two; we are and will be melee dps characters who as compensation for our lack of distinct melee utility have strong defensive utility, up to and including the ability to offheal effectively, if for a short time.

I do not concede that we must be constantly playing second fiddle to some botched 3 year old conception of a pure melee class, or that we must never get strong enough to draw negative attention, lest we be smacked down. That is a self-defeating attitude and I have no desire to take part in it.

Altirias, please don't think I'm lashing out against you. Your post was merely a jumping-off point.

 

Altirias

Rasp,

You're saying things I didn't.
I didn't say we should be worse than the other classes, that would be stupid. I'm saying that JotW v1 might make us overpowered in pvp. But since the sustainability is needed, we are to find a trade off, so that balance remains IF the talent is proven to be indeed overpowered.

The fact that you are feeling less useful than another dps class is not helping in the analysis of our new combat mechanics and is no justification to claim for a talent that might prove himself too powerfull.

anyway... wait & see

 

Steldemian

What???????? Look at that!!!!!

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...icnexus_08.jpg

and that

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...icnexus_19.jpg

Thought that Blizzard said that we are gonna use warriors gear.... Want to see a Warrior roll over that item!!!!

So the problem solved.
We are gonna have Intellect in our gear so bigger mana pool so more mana from Replenishment

 

Valerys

Um, that's Holy spec gear.

 

Altirias

that is holy (healing) plate gear

there's no strength, no hit, no haste on that belt. Maybe we could wear a couple of thoses pieces but then we're back to a weird itemization were we have both healing plates pieces and physical dps pieces (plate or whatever)

I don't think that's any close to a solution for rets

 

Steldemian

Yeap, you are right.....

I just saw saying critical rating and not spell critical rating and got confused....

Sorry about that....

 

levk

Erm... what are you talking about? That's holy gear.