Khaelarys

Hardly a need to be insulting.

X = DPS Cycle mana cost.
Y = Mana regen from a DPS Cycle
Z = Healing Cost.

If you're saying you're down with Y > X, and Y ~= 1/2 a Heal, then fine. I'm saying that only addresses a portion of the issue. Evident with the quoted portion above.

I really don't care how much Y - X is, as much as I care that Y - X > 0, and X is much lower than Z. I need to be able to function at more than 30% capacity for 30 seconds after being burned into the ground, and a DPS cycle that requires 900 mana returned to support it is going to hinder that.

Judgement costing no mana would handle this functionality perfectly. But that's not likely to happen, so I need it cheap enough that my worthless natural regen will give me enough mana that I can actively regenerate my mana.

 

Kigale

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest all the physical abilities should cost 0 mana and be limited only by the CD. Mana is still useful for utility spells but our dps wouldn't be as crippled with 0 mana.

I'm going to get even crazier (this idea will never happen but it could make for some fun gameplay): Deep Ret talent that gives an insane amount of Spirit. This would force a paladin to choose between casting a spell and getting oo5sr regen. I think it could be an interesting mechanic, use mana now or gain some for later.

 

Thorin

Avitus, your post basically summarized what we've all been wanting/suggesting for a Retribution paladin.

I was very excited when the new Ret changes came out, and how the old JotW was working, but after this patch, all that excitement has gone down the drain.

From the looks of it, I believe Blizz will be reviewing 1 or 2 classes per week as the Beta advances, and the things you pointed out in your post are what developers @ Blizz should be doing.

I would love to quote your post (with your permission) in the Beta forums, and pray they actually read it, as they claim they do.


Best,
-Christoff

 

Rustik

Kigale: That seems to be changing our mechanic unnecessarily. I'm with Avitus and Toast. As long as the mana regen from your standard DPS cycle is reasonable in some way, It will still force you to space out any heals you do. Thus, in both PVE and PVP, your healing would really only be of the "oh shit" variety. If yuo're being burned, you can still DPS to an extent, but yuo won't be doing any healing, and your DPS may be minimalist, losing DS first.

Having said that, it's entirely possible Divine Storm was not mean to be part of our main rotation. They may have intended for it to be a large mana drain to limit the amount of Armor ignoring holy kick-assery you could dish out. Sustaining a CS/Judgement rotation with a surplus would be fairly easy, regardless of what buffs they give our regen, making DS the skill to use when you are either at 100%, or when there are multiple mobs handy.

If that really is their intent, then DS could use a buff vs. a single target, as currently it's about 200-250 DPS in a 1850 DPS cycle, but that's a different argument, methinks.

The biggest peeve I have is that replenishment doesn't even regenerate the judgement, much less any of our other skills. Even if we take benediction, our mana battery skill causes us to lose mana. I haven't checked Shadow Priest or Hunter skill costs, but their mana pool is probably big enough to at least get the spell back, on top of their own regeneration mechanics.

Part of our ability is SUPPOSED to be a mana battery! Tell me why easy mana regen is overpowered for a mana battery?

Like I said earlier, the surplus can be SLOW, but there has to be one, for whatever DPS rotation the devs intend us to use.

 

Noctivagant

I like this line of thinking (embracing the mana battery) as it fits the feel of the onward driving, encouraging, charismatic Paladin awash with fervor and energy.

This is really the heart and soul of it; all the issues come down to defining the expectations and elements of X, Y and Z above. I would split Z into Z1 = healing AND cleansing , Z2 = various DPS like exorcism, concecrate,etc and Z3 as utility odds and ends, reapplying seals, buffs coming due to refresh, etc.

As far as X, given how few things we have to do, I think its fair to say that HoJ, CS, DS and JoX should be able to be popped as they come up. Personally, the strongest argument is that we only have 3 damaging things to do! A single target, an AOE and a DD are the entire choices, so we should be able to at least do them.

This cost of X is going to be very easy to set and due to base costs is going to be the same for everyone, this should be the golden, defined number we have to measure against.

The hard part to sell is where is the sacrifice, how do we start to have to make choices, and I think thats all about Z, not just healing, but healing, and cleansing and doing frilly extra DPS moves.

As the "fighter who can heal/utility", the decision needs to be, "how much heal/utility can we do when we choose to sacrifice fighting", not that we permanent sacrifice fighting just from the potential ability to heal/utility.

 

Fiola

Are you sure you're using the right numbers?

Judgement costs 5% of base mana. Replenishment returns 4% total mana over 8 seconds. (5% over 10 seconds, but I'm going to assume 8 seconds as a worst case scenario)


L80 BElf base stats:
5624 Health
5644 Mana
147 Strength
92 Agility
140 Stamina
102 Intellect
104 Spirit
WoW Forums -> L80 Base Stats + Full 80 PvP Ret Stats

Naked mana is 5644, so Replenishment will regenerate 4% * 5644 = 225 mana
Base mana (mana pool with 0 int) is 4114 mana, so judgement costs 5% * 4114 = 206 mana

(Benediction would save another 30 mana / 8 sec on top of that, at a greater talent point cost)

 

Redcape

The ideas thrown about to lower our costs simply aren't going to be effective. You can't just make all ret abilities stupendously cheap or it will massively impact both holy and prot and become very out of whack with potion amounts, Mana spring returns, etc. To keep all the other parts of the game balanced reasonably ret pally abilities need to cost a reasonable amount of mana (somewhat like they do now) and our regeneration needs to go up dramatically.

I actually favour a substantial manapool boost from dps stats. It seems like too many conversions, but a tiny pool is a problem in pvp. Massive regen, tiny pool is fine in pve but I suspect that 2x manaburn = oom is going to be a serious problem for rets pvping. You don't want the situation that a ret paladin gets manaburned twice and suddenly can't cast any spells until his pathetic spirit value gets him back the cost of a judgement.

The other possibility is a substantial mana return from judgement (or some other ability, though judgement makes a ton of sense) and a powerful manaburn resistance talent tacked on in the ret tree. If we had 50% resistance to manaburns stacked onto a ability we already take, that would certainly mitigate the need for a bigger mana pool. In addition, if it was placed where holy could get at it we might see some increased viability for holy pallies.

 

Noctivagant

Here's a thought to streamline things as a sort of Perpetual Motion machine.

1) The 3 things we want to keep doing over and over are CS, DS and Judgment. In 120 seconds (the LCD on cooldowns) there are 20 CS, 12 DS and 15 Judgments. Basically there are 1.333 CS's and .8 DS's per Judgment.

2) If we go with the key concept of JotW and fit it to that cycle, we could say that Judgment "pays" for the other two.

3) Based on #1, the cost per Judgment is

1.33 CS Cost = 8% x 1.333 = 10.7%
.8 DS Cost = 20% x .8 = 16%
1 JoX Cost = 5%

So, each Judgement needs to return 31.7% base mana to drive the machine of those 3 forever.

Throw in Replenishment for HoW, HoJ, Avenging Wrath, and that out to do it.

We round that up to 33% and we get a very clean number. 33% base mana back on Judgments and you can drive the Paladin machine.

Now, we could drop that to better accommodate replenishment, or to have a slight shortfall, so we do slowly slide down, but its a starting point.

 

Ghraabthar

The whole issue with mana regen is pretty complicated. With the increased amounts of damage that ret paladins are doing having regen based off of damage opens up some obvious imbalances (for the objective player). In previous builds where it was commonplace to judge in the 6 to 10k range, you would essentially regenerate your entire mana pool about every 8 seconds. With that, you basically have no resource management at all to consider, the only constraints you have for dps are your GCD and cooldowns. However, add to the fact that we can also cast a heal with that same resource pool (which is beefed up significantly with the spell power changes not to mention that spell crit and melee crit are linked) you have something which is almost too powerful.

With the replenishment buff, the main problem is that with the simplification of dps plate itemization our mana pools are not large enough to gain enough of a benefit from the buff. Ironically, a buff that is great for every other mana user is not all that great for us. One simple solution would be to be able to gain intellect or mana points passively in some sort of AP to int conversion. Once the pool is larger the regeneration gain would increase. In addition, it would be something that scaled well, and in addition to hitting harder once you have more AP you would also gain more longevity.

One other suggestion would be to have a ret version of illumination, where you get a % of the mana cost returned for critical hits on Divine Storm, Judgements, or Crusader Strike. Say 60% returned of the cost of the spell or something to that effect.

A more radical idea, would be if you want to address the mana longevity issue, but want to balance the potential imbalance of having a resource that can also heal (i.e. Rogues/Warriors/DKs can't use energy/rage/RP to cast a heal) you could introduce a "Crusader Form" a la Shadowform and Moonkin where you have greatly increased mana regen or reduced mana costs, but you give up casting holy spells or heals. Make it where you have Tyrael style wings while in the form.

As naive as it sounds, I remain optimistic about the changes to ret. The addition of replenishment gave us our utility ticket for pve, and it seems that the devs haven't really looked at ret specifically since the initial beta builds had been released. I'm hopeful they'll find something creative and intuitive to address our issues with mana and dps longevity.

 

Prinsesa

I have a question: How long does the Replenishment buff last, and does it affect our ability rotations?

I ask this because if the buff lasts something like 8-10 seconds, then we'd have to adjust to make sure it has a 100% uptime.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

DarKNecross

Replenishment lasts 15 seconds.

I can almost understand why they implemented Replenishment scaling with Mana instead of the battery.
On one side, as far as DPS is concerned, mana based DPS classes don't see an increase in the cost of their spells (with exception to Haste). So a fresh L80 Mage spends the same amount of mana on Fireball as an Arthas farming Mage.
In PvE, if Mana Consumption doesn't scale with gear, why should Mana Returns?

Of course, this falls apart when you look at healers. More intensive encounters require more intensive healing, and when you couple the downranking change with the potion change, healers seem to dragging behind. Right now, a 1400DPS Shadowpriest returns 70mp1(350mp5) to his group. A healer in WotLK with 18,000MP would get 90mp1(450mp5) from Replenishment - assuming the buff has a 100% uptime. The extra mp5 returns 1200 mana per minute, or enough for an extra Chain Heal/Greater Heal/Holy Light.

Ultimately, I think the ability is balanced around affecting too many people, so the effectiveness per person is suffering from being spread too thinly.

http://crimson-guild.com

 

Altirias

Well actually, in PVE, since all our damaging abilities are on cooldown, having infinite ressources doesn't increase dps, as it has been said by Avitus earlier.

So the issue really is to find the breakpoint between being able to sustain our dps in a pvp context where you can't rely on mana tide and JoW, and not being always full, or at least having the ability to regain half of our mana in one shot.

Toastr's example is actually an average case, and not a situational one (simply a JoC crit). Imagine a JoC crit on a stunned target with wings, vengence stacks and all, and then it's more likely to be 75 - 80% of your mana bar that you can retrieve in one shot.

I understand that warriors now have a 30% hp non dispellable hot on a 3 mn CD, and they might get full rage with one white hit proccing both windfury and sword spec, this is not something you can reliably do every 2 minutes.

So again, I'm not saying we don't need a way to regen our mana, I strongly think we do. But I also thing that we should still have to worry about our mana - and that is what the developper's quote is all about => we should still worry about or mana or there's no point in having a mana bar and mana costs to spells - which means having a balanced regen and not a mechanic that can get you almost full mana with a combined used of 3 abilities.

Replenishement and using JoW are not satisfying, I agree. I think the old JotW should be a good regen mechanic for rets if JoC double damage on stuns is removed and / or mana gains from JotW are capped to let's say 35-40% base mana (which is roughly what are judgement / CS / DS dps cycle costs us every eight seconds).

So we got regen, it can be quite strong, but you still keep an opportunity cost when using healing / cleanse and other techniques. The fact that you still sometimes need to drink or plea to recover mana is not that big a deal, and it feels natural for us to need to do so to some extend. But not every 30 seconds for sure.

Actually, having a ret talent rendering our major dps abilities mana-free is interesting, because it would serve the purpose of "you can dps all you want given you're not on cooldown, but for the rest, it should cost you". So then I guess, replenishement, JoW, and divine plea should be enought regen mechanics, since our mana would only be used for healing and other utilies.

The debate seems to be centered about the question : useless regen vs rage-like mana bar. I think there's a balance point in between and that's all I'm trying to say since my very first post on this debate.

 

Borna

Reasonable or not, balanced or not, this is the only ret related idea that's made my ol' ticker beat faster since the Crusader Strike introduction...

 

Rustik

It was speculated originally that our 51 point talent would be "Avatar." OH well, maybe the 61 pointer?

Fiola: I had forgotten to include base intellect. I was using base mana for both numbers. Additionally, if replenish lasts 15 seconds, then using 5% every 8 was also a mistake for judgment cost. But that's an even bigger DPS nerf, cutting your judgment damage almost in half just to gain a trickle of mana.

Noctivagant: The LCD is 40 seconds, but you can't actually fit that many, because their GCDs will get in the way. Best I've managed personally is 43 seconds, I don't know how others have fared.

I'm still not sure DS is even intended to be part of our main rotation; perhaps it's supposed to play the role consecrate does on live. Used when you have extra mana, or in AOE situations. If we were meant to spam it, it wouldn't cost 20% base mana.

 

Rasputin

If DS isn't supposed to be part of our main rotation, our dps will not increase at all and it would turn from being one of the best 51 point talents to one of the worst. I have to imagine it's supposed to be a whirlwind clone since, well, it's a whirlwind clone. Warriors spam WW just about on CD(not quite, but we're not discussing warrior cycles) as Arms or Fury, despite the fact that it hits multiple targets. Sure we get a piddly heal out of it, but I don't think that's enough to relegate the ability to situational usage. If this is the intention I can only imagine a community uprising demanding a redesign, considering the uproar over JotW.

 

Rustik

I had not intended to imply that DS was useless or to be neglected entirely.

Our damage has still increased, due to better judgement scaling, and the additional talents.

I was simply pointing out that it's possible DS is reserved for bursts of damage, unloading it, letting your mana regnerate, then unloading it again.

Yes, Warriors use WW regularly, but they're still limited by rage, and they don't have "judgement", nor can they heal, and it does not ignore armor entirely.

Perhaps our regen should allow for DS spam, but I think then it would be JUST BARELY, preventing us from throwing any heals. I realize that against one target it is not that powerful, but the ability to spam it repeatedly on top of consecrate could potentially make it very powerful, and there would have to be some limiting factor to it. The current limitation seems to be mana, and I'm ok with that. It's either increase our dps by 20%, or throw heals. I don't mind making that type of choice. In a PVE situation, I likely don't need to throw heals anyway, so it's hardly a massive sacrifice. If I DO need to throw heals in an emergency, it's going to prevent me from using DS for a short time while my CS/Judge rotation brings my mana back up from abysmal levels.

 

fds

just few ideas..
Retribution paladins should have unlimited mana pool, similar to warriors and rogues (they shouldn’t worry about mana). And their abilities should be balanced around that.
Retri specc heals too much? lower hps
Too much damage? lower dps
There is nothing worse than playing a class where all you can do is auto attack. Imo jotw should be % base mana return.

 

Rustik

I disagree. You're talking about making the class ez-mode. Vanilla wow hunters were like that. All you did was point and shoot. My BM hunter now is like that. He effectively has infinite resources with viper up, and can manage it with Hawk up when he has JoW available.

That's BORING!! What you;re saying is basically:

Ret pallies should just spam their rotation indefinitely... and if they have to heal, they should be able to heal indefinitely, and cleanse indefinitely.

There's no decision making in that process. It's no fun. I stopped playing my hunter because pressing steady shot for 10 minutes is boring. I'm all for some kind of way to make us have to actually concentrate on our mana. Otherwise I might as well go back to the hunter.

 

Altirias

how can you make that claim ? it is in strict contradiction to what developpers said : mana user should somehow worry about their mana.

And you can't say it is suppose to concern every mana users but Ret, because it is an answer from Ghostcrawler to a whine about Ret's terrible situation on the beta right now

 

Hylo

If paladins didn't have healing spells there indeed wouldn't be ANY reason to have mana at all. Same goes for shamans (if you exclude elemental too). Isn't it curious that only melee specs in the game with mana is those classes that have healing tree (paladin and shaman).

 

Valerys

I would rather spam DS than Consecration, it just feels more retribution-like. So we should have enough regen to support Judgement/CS/DS indefinitely, with Consecration/HoW/heals causing mana to go down.

 

Noctivagant

On the "LCD":

I was trying to find the proper ratios between the cooldowns, and 40 is not cleanly divisible by 6, I guess we are using the term differently. I was just trying to find the ratio of the 3 abilities to each other in a vacuum. In reality there are many things to screw up the perfect firing of everything, you being CC'd, out of position, whatever, timer collisions.

On DS and this whole business in general:

I think it would be extremely valuable for someone with Enhancement Shaman play experience and/or maths to speak to:

-DPS Rotation: How many things can you do in your cycle? Are there decisions to make? Is it fun? How does it relate to the proposed CS/DS/Jox sequence?
-Solo Downtime: What kind of uptime do the above costs, mitigated with the Mana Globe thing and SR result in?
-Raid Sustainability: How long (and hard) can you go to town?
-PVP: Susceptibility to draining, and dealing with OOM scenarios

If they are already (and in WotLK) closer to our goal targets for uptime, then there is NO argument against at least parity in these areas, as the healing/buffing argument is completely voided by their similar access to healing.

 

Puretide

Just for clarification: My shaman is elemental specced right now just to give it a try, but until recently I was Enhance in a 3/6 SWP guild and hit ~2050 in S3. I also cannot really comment on the implications of any wrath talents as I am not a part of the beta.

DPS Rotation: Pre-Wrath, Rotation was Stormstrike-> Flame/Earth Shock -> Totem Twisting. Then on top of that maintaining the other totems (Eg: Searing, SoE, Mana Spring), making water shield was up (General wasn't an issue, but sometime's bosses can knock it off). It comes down to: nearly every global cooldown you're using a different ability. There are plenty of "decisions" ie I can refresh WF totem early so it doesn't conflict with SS/shock cooldowns. I have to maintain which shock is next (It goes Flame shock -> Earth Shock, but you also have to keep an eye out for resists with flame shock and reapply as necessary). I personally find enhance DPS in raids to be very fun. I'm not really sure how it can compare to the new ret rotation (as I do have a ret paladin now, but he's in the low 60s now), but I think it could be similar, although somewhat less "thinking" involved (not sure if thats a good word, drawing a blank). Ie you're just going to be waiting for a CD to come up and just hit the abilities in the priority order, rather than try and value the costs and benefits of hitting something "early"

Solo Downtime: If this is any indication, if I'm soloing in my raid gear (and I am not ganked), I can do an entire circut of IQD dailies (wretched ones -> BE ones -> Daemon ones -> Naga ones) without even looking at my mana or blowing SR. Water shield is pretty intense when it comes to solo regen. If it does matter I do tend to bandage/GotN combo rather than just HW myself if I'm low on health.

Raid Sustainability: Without JoW: If SR regens all of my mana (sometimes I just get unlucky with procs with the new 15s Duration and its annoying - but its pretty rare occurrence) I can last until it comes up again. If I have JoW: I pretty much can save SR for the DR component (like the last 15 seconds of a Burn or something similar - it isn't necessary but I just don't go out of mana otherwise)

PvP: I got 2050 on my shaman on a Priest/War/Enhance team, just for clarification. PvPing as enhance can be painful. I mean there are tricks (rank 1 ES, rank 1 WF totem), but once you hit later teams, totems are going to die very quickly. I rarely was mana burned, but I did run OOM pretty quickly in a lot of matches. This was a combination of having a lower mana pool in my pvp gear, having less AP (and thus less SR procs), getting water shield removed via dispell stuff, and having to save SR for being focused fire, meaning I had the shield out during its duration, plus getting stunned a lot, so not a lot of openings for procs. The main advantage I had was I did not need a lot of mana for rank 1 ES and rank 1 WF totem. My DPS was lowered a lot, but I was able to keep my utility going to help out the warrior. But in the long run, going OOM was a constant problem for me.

I hope this helps

 

Sorry

edit: I'm slow, Puretide beat me to it with a much nicer post

I'm raiding currently as enhancement shaman working on Felmyst.
Can't comment on the beta or the new enh shaman playstyle with maelstrom weapon/static shock and how it would affect mana usage. I don't pvp either.

Basically I never run out of mana.
Solo you'll have a hard time to spend mana at all beyond stormstriking with Windfury eating everything alive, but of course that has to do with the gear. Even at lesser gearlevels manashield alone due to its nature of static mp5 + chance to return mana on being hit makes it really hard to run oom.
In raids, even without JoW, I have no problem keeping up a quite mana intensive Stormstrike>totem twist>shock rotation while keeping all totems active. Manashield+Manaspring Totem but most of all Shamanistic Rage let me never run out of mana. Judgement of wisdom just trivialises this even more making SR more of an "Oh Shit" button just for the -30%dmg taken.

Having about 70% (for soloplay even higher %) of your dps, autoattack + windfury, costing no mana at all shows.

 

Crossbones

It's entirely possible that I am seeing this too much from the lens of current WoW since I haven't had a chance to toy with the new beta abilities/changes, but you could give ret paladins infinite mana and sheath tomorrow and they still wouldn't come anywhere near approaching the top classes in arena representation.

It looks like ret is going to maintain its role as support DPS in PvP. In other words: You probably have to group with a rogue or warrior in any bracket, cannot play with a healer in 2v2 or double healer in 3v3 and cannot be the "main" dps in a 3v3 with a more cc oriented dps class as the second DPS. If this is the case, it's perfectly reasonable for ret to be throwing out big heals without totally gutting their DPS sustainability. It will not work when the paladin is being attacked (which is often now and probably will continue to be so) and will be easy to interrupt should the other team expect it. Now if they start throwing in snares, healing debuffs, whatever, then you have to evaluate how good paladin support should be. With the current look/role of the tree, a few big slow heals before you run low on mana and have to DPS again seems reasonable.