Kigale

I really like Avitus' post on the last page. I'm going to repeat his sentiment because it seems many people missed it or didn't think much about it.

With a small mana bar the number of possible heals is very low (about 3 HLs) so healing will be far from infinite. Our melee abilities are limited by CDs. We gain no advantage from having infinite regen. We can still only dps at the limit established by CDs, and we can only heal very few times as limited by the very small mana pool.

Ret mana bars have been referred to as blue rage bars. I'd rather see them behave like blue energy bars. Even drop the bar to 2k mana allowing only 1 heal, but provide infinite regen through combat.

 

Alleyra

I would argue that we should only have to start seriously concerning ourselves about mana when we begin doing things outside of the norm for our spec. (i.e. healing, Cleansing, Taunting, etc.)

As countless others have posted, especially recent posts from Enhancement Shaman, they very eloquently illustrate that mana is not an issue for their class when they're performing within the scope of their spec. The same is surely going to apply to any other class with the capability to heal. Additionally, there's been some fantastic posts by Avitus, Toastr, and others who have illustrated through actual beta participation or napkin math which purely demonstrate why the older JotW mechanic was an ideal talent for us.

And while I understand and disagree with your sentiments about mana concerns/PvP, you're only citing half of the statement made by Blizzard:

One cannot just ignore the latter half of that comment, as it directly applies to Retribution.

 

Altirias

I'll read again the shaman testimonies in the Wotlk Pal thread, but I thought I read that if they were totally self sufficient for DPSing in PVE solo play (as long as they don't do too fancy things like healing, totem twisting and such) and raids (as long as they have JoW) it was not the same in PVP. They seemed to be lacking mana when they started to go crazy on utility stuff (throwing heals, reapply totems a lot, spamming purge, etc..)

So basically they can dps all they want without coming short of mana, but if they start to do the grand show then it's an all other story. This mechanic seems totally natural for me and I haven't saying more than that. This what the mana regen mechanic we need should work. The blue rage bar is nothing more to me than a wild and unjustified dream because even though it provides dps sustainability, it also provides unlimited ressources for everything else we have at our disposal.

And I totally agree on that. That is why I think the right solution is neither older JotW or actual JotW, but something in between that would grant us sustainability for "doing things inside of the norm of our spec", and "penalize" us mana-wise when we do other stuff.

What I, and others have also demonstrated with figures and napkins maths is that old JotW CAN do much more than what you claim we need (sustain dps but not the rest, and so forth...). And it's not that situationnal.

 

• Avitus

Altirias, correct me if I'm wrong, but according to what you posted a few pages back:

"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." (emphasis mine)

This leads me to believe that you're addressing something that's outside of the scope of this discussion. You're talking about changing every melee class in the game due to a mechanic you personally don't like, rather than moving ret in line with everyone else.


Fact is: With the exception of ret, every single melee class (that's Rogue, Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druid and now Death Knight) can DPS to their hearts content and keep up a full rotation in ANY area of the game (10/25 man raiding, 5 man parties, solo and PVP). There are no limitations or constraints outside ability cooldowns. For abilities without cooldowns, rage/energy works somewhat as a global "shared" cooldown, but still an infinite resource.

All anyone is asking here is to have the same treatment. The only concern anyone here seems to have is that this would somehow make us supreme healers, despite the radically small mana pool and this is really a non issue in my eyes.

Maybe you're just not seeing it.



Let me illustrate what I think this would be balanced:

-We're assuming that "total mana" = "base mana" (100%)

-An 8 second rotation would cost us (8/10)*20% Divine Storm, (8/6)*8% Crusader Strike, 5% Judgement, that's a total of: ~32% mana every 8 seconds.

-If you throw in a Consecration it will cost us an additional 22% mana every 8 seconds. Remember: You can't downrank for cost reduction in WotLK

-This leads to a grand total of 54% mana used every 8 seconds, that's over half our mana bar, every cycle.


Now lets add JotW:

(-For the time, lets ignore other personal sources of regen, such as replenishment)

-If the average JotW would regen about ~60% mana (every 8 seconds), it would mean we can keep this rotation going while not losing and barely gaining any mana.

-Again, before acting shocked at the 60% number, compare that to using 54% mana every 8 seconds for a full rotation.

-If you throw out your mana bars worth of Holy Lights (which each cost 29%) you can throw 3 heals and end up at 10% mana.

-At this point, you have choices:

A. Keep going with the full rotation, you will stay at ~10% mana indefinitely, gaining only ~6% mana ever 8 seconds

B. Stop using Consecration gaining 28% mana per rotation, allowing you to spot heal once after every rotation but staying oom.


So, unless mana burned/drained, you'd be able to throw 1 heal every ~40 seconds while going all out, or 1 heal every 8 sec rotation if you don't use consecration (which would be pretty much an impossible play style as you'd do crap all damage) in the face of mortal strike/healing reduction effects, 1 sec pushbacks and interrupts.



Tweaking:

Keep in mind I ignored all other personal regen sources (replenishment). If you add that to the mix, you can reduce how much jotw gives.

The exact numbers aren't the issue here they are just rough examples (so lets please avoid 30 replies with +/- 5%), the "idea" is. Mana gain should be exactly as much as mana spent plus a little extra, numbers can be added later.

Additionally if Consecration could become cheaper (possibly through talent as it was long ago), JotW could be taken down further, meaning fewer possibilities to throw a heal. Whether Consecration should be part of the rotation or only an occasional ability might be up for debate, however that aside, the premise of what I'm saying remains the same.

 

Wrl

Another more minor point is that mana consumption through the old JotW focuses too much on gear to provide mana returns and could very easily have levelling up retadins returning very poor mana while highly raid geared retadins returning ungodly amounts.

Mana returns shouldn't scale exceptionally quickly because Ret mana consumption doesn't increase very much (if at all) with gear.

Gori | Aja | Secured | Sao | Wrl | Lloem

 

• Avitus

Wrl, as long as paladins in leveling gear get enough mana to sustain minimum rotation (CS, DS, Judge) and once you hit epic gear, you can start fitting in Consecration too, it shouldn't be a problem.

Alternatively, if it's balanced high enough (as illustrated above), I'd actually be fine with a fixed base mana percent return, seeing as how our abilities don't cost more as we gear up.

 

Altirias

Avitus, you'd be kind to carefuly read my posts before ruling me out.

I said that we should have unlimited dps capabilities BUT NO MORE. The old JotW was provindig more than that. It would also sustain our capability to heal and support, which in the case of Enhancement shamans and feral druids (since warriors and rogues can't really heal their friends do they ? I agree they can do other things but that's off topic) is not permitted for their natural mana regeneration that is only built for sustained dps abilities.

I really don't see why I'm beeing thrown stones at since I basically ask the same thing as you, but keeping in mind that it could raise balance issues in PVP, and therefore trying to find a balanced mana regen mechanics that serves its purpose without allowing situations where it would go beyond.

 

flyingtoastr

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Look at it though. Enhancement Shamans, Ret Paladins and Feral Druids can all heal while Rogues and Warriors can not. However Warriors and Rogues can reduce healing going onto their targets while Enhancement Shamans, Ret Paladins and Feral Druids can not.

So perhaps this could be the balance? Warriors/Rogues work to prevent their target from receiving heals, effectively going with the offensive "burn them down" play style. The hybrids on the other hand can keep themselves going, running with the defensive "outlast them" play style.

Actually, I kinda like that!

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

tarja

The more I think about it, this may be necessary in order to balance our mana regen for both PVE and PVP. Our judgements will do much more damage in PVE gear with full raidbuffs than in PVP gear (although the extra JoC damage on stunned targets mitigates this somewhat). Then we'll also get more mana regen from Mana Spring, BoW, JoW and JotW in PVE since they are guaranteed to always be up (whereas in PVP they'll often be dispelled and/or not available). And then of course we have to deal with manaburns in PVP but not in PVE.

So it seems like when they try to tune the "X% of damage returned as mana", if they balance things just right for PVE then we'll be manastarved in PVP (and manaburn will completely destroy us), but if they balance things just right for PVP then we'll have far more mana than we could ever use in PVE. But I'm not really sure, it may be possible to tune things so that our PVE DPS rotation is supposed to include consecrate and situationally include exorcism/HoW to use up the extra mana.

Hopefully they'll find some way to balance us around mana regen dependent on our damage done, since that's a much more fun and interesting mechanic than basing everything off %base mana.

 

Noctivagant

The JoTW replacement needs big numbers to function at all. It's going to piss outsiders off, but they are going to have to live with it, or adjust the costs of the abilities.

For one thing, we keep neglecting re-sealing, which is a very front loaded cost, and a shock to the mana bar at 14% in addition to everything else. (That's every two minutes without ANY twisting of any sort. Who is going to drop 14% into SoL/W then 14% back knowing the cost?)

It is my assertion and assumptions in my posts that we should not be using BoW in a ret role, and should not have to settle for permanently eschewing damage seals for regen seals.

Even at 2 minutes, very often as you move to the next mob, or loot, or scoot around, or talk to a friend, or whatever, you are going to have to start a pull by sealing yourself.

(The below assumes that people are going to want to get HoJ in as soon as possible for the SoC bonus (whatever it ends up) and the CS glyph (not to mention the sooner you use it the more likely you have it for mitigation again))

That leads us with this sequence from full mana

SoC 14% aggro HoJ 3% gcd CS 8% gcd Judgment 5% gcd DS 20% = 50%

From there you have pretty much every cool down used and are auto attacking. I wouldn't consider this situation to be altogether very exotic at all.

Now, you have laid out exactly half of your mana at this point, and have only used 4 abilities, 3 for damage, 1 for control.

- This is not even with consecration or anything else
- This is only 4 things to do, none of them real choices
- If you don't DS at this point, that's only 3 things to do

I just don't think you can say that DS should be excluded, there is already so few things to do, and I don't think with the current costs the JoTW replacement can be mamby pamby.

 

• Avitus

Then again, you also very clearly stated that every class should have limitations on using their abilities on cool down (all melee classes except ret). I'm still hoping you'll comment on this. I'm not trying to rule you out, but there's just too many things that make no sense.

Again, you refer to warriors and rogues with "they can do other things but that's off topic". No it's not, that's what everyone here is arguing against. Why is throwing an occasional heal any different than the truckload of utility they have and we lack? Even worse, aren't we by nature limited in utility due to the fact that we can and should be able to throw heals?

I really fail to understand this obsession with heals as some god mode move. Anyone who's ever gone above 2k rating in a decent battlegroup knows how it all comes down to CC and control in the end. I'm having a hard time imagining a ret paladin "sustaining heals" (with a 4k mana bar no less) while under fire and while keeping in mind that mana regen is only possible while in melee combat.

And finally, again it's the argument of wotlk retadin vs tbc enh shaman/feral druid. Look up Hex and Infected Wounds and then tell me having the resources (but not the guarantee) to throw a heal every now and then would make us overpowered.


Sorry it's not that I want to shoot down what you're saying as much as it makes no sense to me if you look at the bigger picture.

 

Thorin

Guys,

I'm sure most of you already know, but there is a Ret post in the official Beta forums, where devs are asking for our feedback on the Ret. tree.

-LINK-

If you have an a Beta account, please post your thoughts, as the discussions in this EJ thread and the other EJ threads are by far superior to those found on the forums.

Avitus, I'd like to quote your post in the official Ret. feedback thread

 

• Avitus

Thorin (and toaster previously), feel free to, I'll probably add something on the EU ones, though they're even less likely to be considered.

 

Rasputin

I just gave a rundown of every Ret Talent. If someone without access wants to write up a summary I'd be happy to post a synopsis of EJ input.

 

Khørik

I think, it´s a very good idea to summarize the "EU-EJ-Ret Opinions" and post them in one Thread, if i am sober again tomorrow, i will post my Ideas here.


no one knows me, because i only read, but Wodka lets people act strange!

 

Wrl

Here is my take:

T1:
Improved Blessing of Might: Not bad per se, but it is the sort of talent that would be better suited as a 2 or 3 point talent.
Benediction: Too insignificant, especially given the lower mana consumption these two abilities will be using overall. I'd like to see it changed to a 2 or 3 point talent as well.

T2:
Improved Judgements: Versatile across specs and well-placed. A solid talent.
Heart of the Crusader: Perfect. While some Rets would complain that it is too accessible to other specs, I think it is nice to not have our value be placed solely on this one ability.
Deflection: A Little oddly placed. A Ret has basically no reason to get this talent at all, and Prots are forced to spend a few weaker points to get this.

T3:
Vindication: While a PvP staple, its been reasonably underwhelming and the actual PvP impact it has is questionable. Would like to see some PvE value added. I'd be interested to see it take the form of either a -ap/-sp debuff or a -attack speed/-cast speed debuff instead.
Vengeance: Yada yada... the fact that it increases spell crit now is nice.
Seal of Command: I feel like the limitations of the other seals is what makes this seal good for PvP. However it hasn't been fun since day 1, simply because waiting for procs can be so frustrating. Does it need reworking? Not really. Could it be more fun? Yes.
Pursuit of Justice: Like what you've done here.

T4:
Eye for an Eye: A great change. However, it makes sense for crits to proc something DEFENSIVE, but a little counter-intuitive proccing something offensive given that we are trying not to be crit.
Improved Retribution Aura: Hey as long as it is scaling properly and not just effecting base damage.
Crusade: Given that it only effects certain types, it could stand being buffed a tad such as adding 1% crit damage as well.

T5:
Two-Handed Weapon Spec: One of those 100% required ret dps talents. Let it lie.
Sanctified Retribution: Good, however its non-stacking with FI is questionable given that FI is 1% more.
Sheath of Light: Finally.

T6:
Vengeance: An awfully difficult to balance ability. While it is great to have, I've never liked having such a large portion of our potential dps reliant on this.
Judgements of the Wise: The change was understandable from a raid perspective, however it left retadins practically manaless. Especially silly given that it scales off of max mana and max mana for a retadin is so low.

T7:
Sanctified Crusader: Fine as long as you recognize that the 96% dispel resist via 2/3 Sanctified Crusader and 3/3 Stoicism cheese is intended.
Repentance: This could stand having 5 more yards of range and maybe 10 less seconds of cooldown. As a CC-in-pve ability, the resist chance would be an awfully big pain; similar to the old chance for improved sap not to work.
Divine Purpose: I've never had a point in this talent. It has always seemed sloppy and given that most snares are being removed by HoF, this talent just seems a little redundant and awkward. As a ret I'm generally more concerned about stuns, fears, saps, blinds, poly, hex, especially given the changes to Blessing of Sacrifice.

T8:
Fanaticism: Sure, good.
Sanctified Wrath: The odd selection of mechanics on this talent make me like it a lot. Simultaneously a nice PvP and PvE boost in different ways.

T9:
Swift Retribution: A bit underwhelming for one of our spec-specific utilities, but welcome as a pve filler.
Crusader Strike: Okay it does damage, anything else? This needs some sort of secondary effect again.
Art of War: Not too enthused about it. I think the fact that it can be used for 2 separate things is a little clunky and a paladin will probably often find himself using it to break a stun only regretting it later when he can't remove a snare. Not to say it isn't good though, definitely a must-have for PvP.

T10:
Righteous Vengeance: Horrifically underwhelming. Was more interesting when Judgement damage was so important for mana return, but as it lies it is 'just another damage talent' and a pretty poor one at that netting less than 1% overall damage per point. Given the newly created huge mana issues for Ret, this would be the ideal place to include some form of mana return.

T11:
Divine Storm: Giving paladins this ability you have to expect them to use it on cooldown every time, its insane mana cost coupled with Retribution's horrifically bad mana problems are quite frustrating. Mechanically, though, a great ability and fun to be able to heal without having to stop cutting things up. Mechanically fun as long as we aren't breaking sheeps on Twins Emps.

Overall Concerns:
1. Mana longevity. We need some better form of personal mana return.
2. Arena Niche. Are you confident there is a niche for ret paladins to play competitively in various arenas? I'm not so sure.

Gori | Aja | Secured | Sao | Wrl | Lloem

 

JettJaguar

I think we actually need quite a bit more than "as much as spent plus a little extra." After all, we need to be able to deal with HoW spam or at least use from 35% -0% and I haven't seen anyone talk about HoW usage in our rotations and our dirth of mana.

 

Rasputin

We also need mana as necessary to cleanse and use Hand spells at the least. It works out to a significant chunk, and will most likely end up being enough to toss a heal or two if necessary. I'm still unsure why healing is the only utility which must be punished through being weaker in other areas of the game. We have to be able to use our utility in the same way rogues need to be able to blind and vanish and warriors need to be able to hamstring and intervene and shaman need to be able to purge and shock, etc. The ability to heal can't be considered enough to balanced solely around. If we are to be restrained completely from healing, then we're also restrained from everything else we can do besides attack, and that makes for entirely uninteresting play.

 

• Avitus

Just a comment, while we generally agree, additionally I don't see "too much mana" in PvE as a problem. There is no way to abuse this excessive mana to cause an imbalance, so why should it be a problem?

Perfect example: Enhancement Shamen on live with JoW can practically never run out of mana.

 

bellator

The one extremely picky issue i see with too much mana is exorcism/holywrath. Whilst these may only account for around 250dps total, if we had an infinite mana source, it would bring up the question of whether ret palas dps should be balanced around undead or non undead bosses.

 

• Avitus

Well, I'm assuming being mana positive while soloing, raid buffs (BoW/jow/shadowpriest/survival hunter/mana spring) should take care of any extras in raid situations.

The general premise for PvE is: Mana regen doesn't need to be balanced since we don't really have a way of abusing it.

The only "developer-like" reply I can think of is that they want mana management to be part of the class and this is where I think pretty much all the community sees it differently: Mana management as a melee class is NOT fun. Especially if you can't gear for it. I'd much rather we can become highly optimized like all other melee classes and have our focus on DPS cycles/cooldowns and threat.

 

Noctivagant

The problem with the mana managment approach is that they forgot to give us things to manage.

Mana management makes more sense when you have:

-many things to choose from
-things on no cooldown (the mana balances the lack of cooldown)
-choices that interact or make a different approach or flavor

by contrast we have

-few things to choose from (Seal, CS, DS, Judgment)
-everything on cooldown, EVERYTHING
-one choice that interacts: stunning, which anyone of any class is stunning as often as possible for mitigation

The "problem" is that we can heal. Somehow for Melee Shaman this doesn't keep them from the ability variety and mana happyland, but for us it does.

Most classes end up just doing their most effective things, so I don't *mind* just having CS, DS and Judgment in a cycle, but if you are going to give me 3 attacks, and try to say that I cant even cast my THREE attacks all the time (one of which only comes up once every 10 seconds!) then the class is negatively comparable to any other melee class n WoW.

 

Saltycracker

I haven't looked in great detail at the Paladin glyphs, but one possible option for mana regen at zero mana (at least for PVE) is using the Lay on Hands glyph (Use: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.)

Might be good for mana burning bosses like Kaz'rogal or Thaddius in the new Naxx.

Its also a once a fight boost of 2k mana which is helpful if you know you are going to be eating it like candy for Holy Wrath, Conc, Exor, etc. While giving another person a heal and some mana.

I know this doesnt solve the overall issue, but it's an option if we get bent over by bliz.

 

Thorin

Agreed,

Devs seem to think that since we can heal, we cannot be strong DPSers, yeah right 3 miserable heals and we're OOM, if you call that healing...

• this way of thinking comes from Vanilla WoW, when all Paladins would do was heal [In Cloth!]
• with TBC they made Paladins viable Tanks, and gave them a niche as the ultimate AoE tanks,
• they improved Ret a bit, but not enough, at all, and
• Paladins now had good healing plate

Now the WOTLK, seems they want to make the final tree, Retribution a viable one.

like us, Prot Paladins have shallow mana pools,

BUT, Tanks get their mana back from what they are supposed to be doing [taking damage] getting their mana back from such heals... [hence, infinite regen when tanking - what they are MEANT to do] , limited only by cooldowns, like every other melee class

• Ret on the other hand, does not get Mana back from doing damage (yes JoW is there but its hardly any regen at all)
• we DO NOT have a talent that gives us Enough mana back from DPSing, the old jotW used to do it... and it gave us exactly what we needed, a talent that would Regenerate our mana when we are DPSing - what we are MEANT to do

If they took it 'cause we were an overcharged mana-battery, hell just make JotW affect only the paladin, simple!
and integrate that new raid-wide JotW into it. withotu taking our self-mana-regen

 

Fiola

Beta JoW is a 100% proc chance on a 4 second CD, so slow weapons and lack of reckoning have nothing to do with it. JoW is lacking because it scales off of our total mana pool, even though Ret paladins no longer get Int on gear.

As for not getting mana back from DPSing - that's completely wrong. We don't lack for mana regen mechanics - JoW and JotW are perfectly fine as *mechanics*. What we need are better coefficients on those mechanics. If JotW gave 100% mana over 10 seconds, for example, there would be no discussion about "inadequate Ret mana regen".


What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't argue "we have no mana regen" when the true problem is "we don't have enough mana regen". The first statement is false for all versions of the Blizzard paladin and can be dismissed without a second thought. The second one accurately describes the problem and should be addressed.