That's a holy item.

I think Altirias already responded to this, but just to reiterate and expand... You are talking about going out of mana from two holy lights (enough to almost certainly bring you to full life with sheath), then 8-12 seconds later having enough mana to do so again. That, I believe, would be overpowered. I think if the paladin uses that much mana on heals, it should take closer to a minute to regenerate back up to full again unless he uses SoW to regen a bit faster. I believe that giving a paladin that much mana return would make healing a bit too important in a Ret's playstyle.

We both agree on Ret needing to be able to dps consistently on cooldown without running out of mana, but doing anything extra should slowly (cleanse) or quickly (holy light) diminish our mana supply and we would have to make certain changes or sacrifices to get our mana up higher; such as periodically using SoW, stopping to drink, or casting Divine Plea.

This was the particular part of your post I was responding to. I don't think sustainable dps requires a tradeoff at all, in pve or pvp. We are melee dps, and if we are the only melee dps that cannot sustain ourselves, we will be sub-par. I didn't mean to imply that's what you thought we should be at all, I'm saying that we should not be so scared of becoming powerful that we're willing to trade things away in order to get what we should have anyway. That would be like warriors being willing to lose mortal strike and hamstring in order to be able to actually do damage in pvp. IT just doesn't make sense to gimp ourselves in one area simply so that we can do what we need to be able to do in the first place. Sorry if I was unclear or sounded like I was attacking you; I've done a decent amount of arena and it can grow frustrating as a ret paladin at times.

Yes, but if we are the only melee dps class that can sustain his dps AND heal himself without hard limitations to it then we're not sub par, we're not balanced, we're overpowered.

And don't tell me about push backs and exposure to spell locks and such. I've played holy in Arenas and I know how to cast-cancel to avoid a kick. Push back will be much less of an issue with the new mechanic.

It is not about gimping ourselves and fearing to be powerful. It is keeping in mind that balance is important, and being overpowered is not fun to play in pvp (for the others and for yourself).

juking kicks is far less viable when you have no pushback resistance and your spells are 25% longer. I really cannot imagine an arena situation in which a ret paladin will be both in danger of being killed, and able to heal himself through that danger. It just makes no sense trying to picture a scenario when you can cast a 3.5s heal(with pushback) and heal yourself through the incoming damage which is putting your life in danger. I really think ret paladin heals will not be the juggernaut people imagine them to be at level 80, in arenas, in arena gear. It will be the odd offheal, similar to what we could do with shield/weapon switch macros but a bit more powerful. It's not sustainable, it won't save our lives, at best it might buy our partners another 2 seconds of life. I feel like people have sheath of light embedded in their minds as a holy paladin healing power talent, which it just is not.

I have to disagree. So long as we are missing so many of the other tools the other melee classes have and are still subject to all the problems any other caster class has then we are far from over powered.

Sure this is level 70 PvP gear, but let's look at it.

I have ~1700 AP unbuffed in my PvP gear with ~32% crit and I naturally use my Cat's. With Wrath talents that would mean my JoC (after applying the percentage modifiers of Sanctified Retribution and Vengeance x2) hits for 1182 non-crit. With a 57% crit chance (Fanaticism + Base) we're looking at an average damage of (assuming you don't take RV because it's a crappy talent in a PVP build) 1856 damage. Even at 60% returns that's all of 1114 mana, just lower than the amount for one Holy Light.

Yes, let's say you went wild and blew stun for JoC returns. Your non-crit damage goes up to 2364, crits do 4728. The average damage there is 3711, 2227 mana returned. Great, by blowing cooldowns and winning at RNG you now have enough mana for 2 Holy Lights! How overpowered!

But guess what? Warriors have this right now! When my Warrior runs up and does a White + Windfury + Sword Spec (it does happen) she pretty much instantly gets a full rage bar. That is balanced. When a DK blows all his cooldowns the Runic Power flows like the Ganges. That is balanced.

Again, why is ret special? Enhancement Shamans can heal. Restokin Druids are the strongest healers in Arena. These are DPS/healing hybrids who are perfectly balanced with heavy extra mana bars and still are able to push some awesome DPS. Why is ret special? Why are we continually "balanced" around being OOM when other classes that can heal as well if not better for longer with bigger mana pools balanced?

I'm sorry, but your argument is flawed.

Only? Melee Shaman appear to fit this bill, or do I have a gross misunderstanding of their mechanics? There appears to be some kind of Ret Paladin psychological barrier going around.

If you wrote up a two paragraph description of Melee Shaman in their live state, and substitued the words proposed Retribution Paladin, and posted it on the official forums, it would cause an uproar.

Sure feel free. I usually don't post there since things never really get anywhere, but maybe I will.





Altirias, wrl, try to remember that we're comparing "wotlk" retadin to the "wotlk" version of other classes, not the "tbc" version of other classes.

As someone linked, warriors are getting a fairly efficient self heal and pretty much all classes are getting big chunks of utility or functionality to make them a lot more effective than they are now (too many to list really, various slowing/mortal strike abilities, hex, you name it). Did anyone ever imagine something as destructive as a fury warrior would get a "passive" mortal strike ability? I also wonder how you can shrug off ferals so easily, even in TBC hide behind the corner, throw a few hots, frenzied regen and come back at full HP, innervate if necessary.

In contrast, ret is getting pretty much nothing new for arena, excluding the semi useless passive talents (art of war anyone?). Besides DPS boosts (which all classes are getting), we're pretty much same old as we are in TBC right now.

In that light, would it really be so overpowered to be able to throw 2-3 heals every now and then? Heals that are very easily interrupt-able at ~2.5 sec cast time and will suffer under Mortal Strike effects? I really don't see how getting a slight edge with something like this will make us overpowered against all other melee classes which are getting a box full of new arena utility. As arena perks go, a heal every now and then is nothing more than an added MS effect or an added slow or polymorph/hex.


At the risk of opening up old wounds: It's the same reason we waited for years for a "strike" and before that for anything more than Seal up and stand auto-attacking. The same reason paladins in general had to wait for years for a "taunt" which was always considered to be extremely overpowered. Or a small instant heal before they made holy shock also heal.

It's the same outdated ideals being rehashed without looking at all the facts. The game is evolving, so are all classes around us, why should ret/paladins be any different.

Avitus, I hear what you say, and even though I admit I have a hard time keeping up to date with all the changes to all the classes going around (well, I also happen to have work to do event though I'm spending too much time hear :/), I try to throw a critical look at what is suggested. Not considering tbc balance, I know all the classes have received boosts, and that they're providing everybody with damage, burst, utility and survival... I play ret in pvp, and it is really frustrating to run oom so quick, to be so weakened by manaburn... I agree we need a way to sustain our dps capacities in WotLK. But the fact that specs similar to ours are getting dps, utility, healing power and everything else lead me to think that they should be nerfed more than we should get an upgrade. It feels like we're all turning to the same classes, with the same techniques, the sames capacities...


I also hear what the developers said, and I strongly agree : what's the point of having mana if you can regen half of it with a bit of luck (50% chance is not that bad), 2 small CD and 3 GCDs ? this is more than sustainability, this is unlimited ressources. I know rogues, warriors and DK may not be concerned by power regeneration but we're not either of those, and we have capacities they don't. I agree that it's true the other way around too, but it doesn't soud good enough for me to justify the claim for unlimited ressources. And if shamans and ferals get a divine shield, a lay on hand or whatsoever, then they get too much. I'm not against the idea of change and progress, I just think that we should all meet some limitations to keep our specificity.

So yes, I think we need some sort of limitation in our mana regeneration. Returning almost half of our mana bar with a clever use of a couple or our abilities seems to strong to me, even though appealing at first sight.

Again, I'm thinking that the double damage on stuns from JoC should be removed (and then a 100% crit should be fine I guess), or (and maybe ?) mana returns from Jotw should be capped to what hitting seal, judgement, CS and DS on cooldown costs mana-wise, but no more.

I don't think it's fun if we can go all out using every ability on every cooldown without any form of limitation. And if other classes or spec can, well they should have limitation as well. If the winner is the one who smashes his buttons faster, or the one who as less latency, it is not interesting. If the winner is the who makes a clever use of what's in his arsenal, under certain limitations (cooldown, power regeneration and such), that's more pleasant to play.

But anyway that is my perception of the game, and since I see that I'm quite alone speaking this voice, I will say no more on this and wait for the next changes to be announced

To be honest, it's about time for the stun-JoC mechanic to be retired. It's a relic from patch 1.9 when Ret had no active burst other than judgements that by and large hit for piddly amounts, and just prayed for timely SoC procs.

It hasn't been an issue in TBC due to the non-scaling nature of judgements, but now in WotLK, judgements scale nicely and are hitting hard enough anyway, along with having Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, that the stun-JoC is standing out like a sore thumb. It's no longer necessary, and the main thing it seems to be doing at the moment is giving people a good reason to whine about Ret when they get one-rounded in a HoJ thanks to a lucky crit-streak.

Just a minor point of contention with your post. Ret paladin/rogue is the counter-comp to druid/warrior and druid/warlock, and does well against druid/rogue and rogue/lock.

On the finer point I fall on the "not overpowered" side when it comes to emulating a "blue rage bar". It's no different than on live today. You know going in that you want to rage starve a warrior, and only attack him when you're ready to take him down. Groups are built and executed on this strategy.

Paladins have BoF, warriors have charge and intercept and hamstring. The meta-game isn't even that different. Ret pallys can heal, warriors can reduce incoming heals by 50%.

There should be nothing inherently better about rolling a warrior for pvp than rolling a paladin for pvp. They should be equal. A warrior is the lynchpin of any team composition at 5s, most at 3's and many at 2's. A properly balanced game would afford the same opportunity to a ret paladin.

This is exactly what most of us are arguing against: We should be the same. The "capacities" we have are in no way greater than the ones they have and we lack.



What you're saying here is that not only shouldn't we be able to have a semi-infinite resource while DPSing, but all other classes who do (pretty much all melee specs except ret) should be nerfed down to our level? Hmm, you and I seem to have very different views of what's fun.

As a side note, keep in mind mana burn or having to throw a heal will put a periodic dent, but it should never be any longer than a few moments/seconds.

I'm not even going to comment on bringing Divine Shield and Lay on Hands into this discussion :P

There's a very large difference between the teams at the top of the bracket, and teams floating at the 14-1500 bracket. All of the teams you just listed will eat any ret/rogue group alive if all players are of equal skill and gear. Sure you may get some lucky RNG every now and again, but you're going to lose almost every time. Really, if what you are saying were true, you would see ret/rogue pushing its way toward the top very quickly, because you're going to be facing those comps nearly every match once you get above 1800 or so.

When and where did the developers make this post/claim?

The only recent post I've seen from Blizzard was the one pertaining to the the newest mana regeneration mechanics. I haven't seen anything about "out of control mana regeneration."

Source.

I do recall a few posts made in response to the massive crits Retribution was pulling off. There was also mention made of pulling our DPS in line with other classes: but I can't find anything that shows the developers supporting your claim.

If you could find this information, it'd be much appreciated -- I'd like to have a read.

rldolph: Ret/Rogue actually has a fair amount of teams above the 2000 marker and still can compare vs those combinations. The counter-groups for ret/rogue is mostly shamana and holy paladin teams which are far less common past the 1900 marker.

I think what blizzard is afraid of, is making Ret TOO versatile. Ultimately I think Blizzard intends for each class to be equally represented in arenas across the board. I think we are lucky that Blizzard intends to create a niche for Retadins (whereas other classes are stuck with basically one single viable pvp spec).

That niche for Retadins, however, can not be as big as the niche for Warriors unless Holy/Prot are both totally Arena-useless.

I'm going to try to think like Blizzard using what I can only believe is their ideal model.

Lets just use 5s as an example.

Overall, with 10 classes, every single class (not spec) should have a 50% viability in 5s.

Lets pretend that Holy Paladins have a 35% viability, showing up on 35% of all 5s teams.

That means, to be fair to all of the other classes, Retadins can only have a 15% viablity VS. a Warrior's 50%.

Basically this means that Retadins have to have a powerful use, enough to make them valuable on a specific type of team, but that use can not be as broadly powerful as a Warrior's.

Now these numbers are totally arbitrary, but it illustrates my point of why you can't compare a class's viability spec to class or even spec to spec.

The way I look at it, we offer very little regular PvP melee utility. What I mean by that is, we bring 0 snares/healing debuffs/minimal CC on (relatively) long cooldowns/no interrupts, etc. Healing, added to our caster like support abilities (mainly cleanse, Hand spell buffs) offsets this lack of regular melee support. Where a warrior might hamstring/stun/fear off a rogue ravaging his healer, we can HoP, HoF, HoS or bubble and heal. Factoring the amount and size of our heals in the face of the incoming DPS, both options seem balanced to me.

As mentioned above, this is possible now as an non-dispelable HoT.

This I fully disagree with. For one thing, an enhancement shaman popping Shamanistic Rage gets 30% of his AP returned as mana on EACH successful melee attack. Looking at an enhancement shammy in my guild with 1800 AP unbuffed that would be 600 mana back on each hit. Have you recently been on the receiving end of an enhancement shaman's attacks? They hit fast. Very fast. JotW with your own numbers returns an identical amount every 8 seconds.

CC'ed while under the effects of shamanistic rage? Well one could argue that the old JotW suffers from much the same drawbacks. If we aren't hitting, it's not proccing. Of course ours is always active, while theirs is on a 3 min cooldown, BUT, they still have the free-to-cast water shield for an extra 50mp5 and 200 mana on hit.

In addition to all of this, friends who've played enhancement basically laugh at my mana regeneration concerns. Since the recent changes, enhancement shamans mostly don't have to worry about it.

I'm curious about the implications of this argument - more correctly, I'm not sure if I'm really understanding the argument. I keep asking because I'm concerned that we're arguing completely different things.

Argument 1 (Toast, Avitus) - DPS cycles should be such that it nets a small amount of mana. They're not actually saying free, they're just saying that we need to net some small amount of mana in our dps cycle. Our damage will be moderated by global and ability cooldowns almost exclusively. This is similar to a rogue, and slightly better than a warrior who's rage is additionally effected by his enemies.

Argument 2 (WL) Retribution paladins need to be only good enough to fill in the % gap left by holy paladins based on the "represented" number that Blizzard uses. So, we need to factor in class weaknesses that make ret paladins only X% as effective as other classes that fill the same role. This is in direct conflict to a growing trend on this forum that basically "why the hell shouldn't expect the same effectiveness".

Note, this only sideways addresses the argument in one (1). He's not saying it will or won't work, or that it is or is not a fun mechanic, or a good solution - he's really only saying a solution that is as effective as the solution in one(1) is going to upset the balance in his original argument.

Argument 3(Altirias) Altirias is putting real numbers to the solution in 1 and he feels it's completely unbalanced. It looks like he thinks the solution in 1 will trivialize mana completely - to the point that cooldowns alone are really the only thing that effect the ret paladins ability to function. Unlimited resources, basically.

I think maybe (I've been wrong so much, who knows) that the problem here is the math just doesn't work for him. Which, I agree to some extent. If our judgement alone can regenerate 50% of our mana, it's not really a fuel or a throttle mechanic, either one.

With a few very simple changes, I'm actually down.

Lower Seals to 5% mana.
Lower Judgement to 2%.
Lower Crusader strike to 3%.
Lower Divine Strike to 4%.

Now, we're at a place where JotW (Replinshed) and JoW may, in fact, approach enough mana to actually support us. We can do this nearly indefinitely, as long as we don't do anything else. But, that said, the mana regen that we're getting is a small portion of our utility - that is, Healing. For us to throw a couple of heals, it would take a significant amount of time to actually generate enough mana to throw another - but we can actually function while we do so. Additionally, we can still be burned, and JoW can be dispelled - so we're not immune to being weakened. (Could really use a mana burn protection talent in deep ret though).

Anyway, I agree that we need to be looking at a way to throttle utility, not completely burn out. I don't have a good solution to this. I'm not a developer. But being, literally, the only spec of any class that completely burns out indefinitely (10, 20, 30 minutes of combat and no drinks means, literally, no recovery) is 0 fun. It's even less fun when it's so easy to help that to happen.

I hope, at the very least, we can all agree on that. I've been in scraps in BG's, in Arenas, and in World PVP as ret where I'm completely out of mana with no recourse but to, literally, do nothing. Hope the viper sting falls, hope the priest forgets to mana burn me, hope my mana ticks enough to be able to throw a rank 1 command up.

I challenge anyone to come up with a scenario similar to a ret paladin being OOM in a scrum with any other spec in the game. It's broken. It's wrong. It's not fun. It needs to be addressed.

Uhh, what?

I put some "real numbers" in right here. That wasn't even accounting for the cost of Judgement. When you take the cost of Judgement in you're actually only gaining an average of 908 mana from a non-stunned JoC in PvP gear. Holy Light costs 1194 mana. You are still having to do 2 Judgement (sixteen seconds) cycles to get the mana back from casting one Holy Light. If you're using CS and DS you're still far in the hole. Our mana pool can only support a maximum of three holy Lights to begin with, it would then take four Judgement cycles (at least 32 seconds) doing absolutely nothing else to recoup the mana loss.

And that is assuming the old 60% version of JotW!

The reason you guys are seeing this as "unbalanced in PvP" is because you're using PvE stats for your calculations. It is incredibly rare to see a PvP ret pally with more than 1800 AP unbuffed, and thanks to how common purge mechanics are you won't consistently see more than that.

Think people.

I would have to agree with Avitus and Toast. Rogues are limited on specials by their regeneration rate of Energy, DK with RP. Warriors have a large pool of abilities at hand and have to choose what to do with their rage, so they are limited by CD's and rage but their DPS capability is infinite (albeit scaled by how much rage they are receiving). Enhance has lots of regen options that don't hurt their DPs cycle or abilities. If they OOM, they can switch to water shield, pop Sham Rage, and switch to mana spring totem if it isn't already down. All these ideas to increase our mana pool or reduce mana cost of our abilities will not help us when we finally run oom, whether by mana burn or eventually by being in combat for an extended period of time. We need to be able to be at basically 0 mana and be able to regenerate it at a rate that is, as Avitus says, a dent in our cycle and not our current "get out of combat to drink or be completely useless and wait forever to attempt to return to a dps rotation". Ret is currently, since we start with a full bar, limited by CD. There's no reason we should be CD limited in our DPS ability until we hit a pt. (0 mana) and then we do even less DPS. We should definitely be able to sustain a rotation like every other melee. It isn't asking for too much, and the healing argument is a weak one. Our heals won't be poor (low low low SP, although it will crit now) along with having increased cast time. Our HPS will be poor, and will be situational at best.

Currently Blizz has druids and warriors insanely over represented. Druid can arguably be placed as the OP class of BC after they received their changes. I don't see any druid whining about it being too easy and not fun, and everyone else has just accepted that 90% of teams they face will have a druid and/or a warrior. I don't see why ret can't be like that. Everyone is still viewing us as a class, not a spec. A ret paladin is NOT a holy paladin. Currently Holy is more or less the only viable PVP spec. It is wrong to think that because one spec of a class is strong in pvp, the others should be weak. Shamans have proven that all 3 specs can be not just viable, but very strong.

I don't see how this one is bad. People are taking the ability to heal as an OP ability for a melee class. Shamans can do it, but no one whines about enhancement being so strong. With our FLash Heal being so weak, our healing abilities are actually worse than an Enhance Shamans. Healing completely removes us from our role as a DPS. We have to stop doing dmg, stand still, cast 2.5 sec heals, and hope our expensive and weak heals aren't CC'd in some way, rendering our entire attempt to be an "off-healer" useless. On top of all that, everyone believes we should then be gimped in our DPS after healing, and our mana bar should suffer after healing. I still fail to see why everyone thinks viability is too strong of a thing to ask for a ret paladin.

I don't buy these (and subsequent) arguments at all, and I really hope Blizzard doesn't see things this way, or else we'll continue to be really screwed in arenas in WotLK. Even if we could toss out a few decently sized holy lights every now and then (ignoring how easily interruptable they will be at 2.5-3.5 second cast time), we still have no Mortal Strike debuff, no spell interrupt, no snare to reduce below 100% speed, no intercept to close the gap, and no spammable CC. Every other melee class has at least THREE of these powerful PVP tools, while Ret Paladins have zero.

Unless Blizzard is planning on giving us at least a couple of those tools so that we can be a viable melee DPS class without requiring a Warrior or Rogue alongside us, it would really not be overpowered in any way for us to have the best offhealing abilities of any melee class. In fact, if they absolutely must refuse to give us an MS, interrupt, snare or intercept for fear of making too many classes similar, one possible route to make us decent in arenas while still standing out from other melee classes would be to give us fairly powerful offhealing capabilities.

This was a change that I was considering might actually work. While I don't think those number specifically are tuned right, something along the lines of Ret melee abilities being considerably cheaper and easy to self sustain would be fine. This means that casting frequent heals and spamming cleanse will run you out of mana fairly quickly, but you will still be able to dps endlessly with just the ticking of JotW. Ideally the regen would still be a bit higher than where it lies on live/beta at the moment to allow a decent amount of cleanses/hands/stuns/repents without having to stop and drink after a minute or two, that would mean a bigger mana pool as well.

So:
1. Far cheaper mana costs on DPS abilities to allow infinite sustainability when merely dpsing.
2. Larger mana pool to provide more regen and a longer period of Utility casting before having to stop and drink/plea.