watersrog

So you just assumed that all of us here (and there were quite a few dozens around here) who said that the burst is significantly lower at 80 didn't play beta? Were beta keys so hard to come by that you actually believe that?

Besides that, I doubt that you bothered to read the argumentation of any of the posts here regarding level 80 burst. It's quite simple really: +~80% more HP for most players at level 80 in level 80 gear, +~20-25% more damage for Paladins at level 80. From that, it should be quite obvious for anyone who grasps some simple math that the necessary time for a Paladin to kill someone will increase.

And usually arguments based just on "me tanking on my Resto Druid against Ret Paladins" hardly convinces anyone here, are just embarrassing.

 

Xavias

Actually no. Ret Pallys hit much harder than any other level 80 class. Their damage was highly disproportionate to every other DPS class.

Just because everyone's HP pools will scale more than the damage increase of Ret, does not mean the fact that Ret is still doing disproportionate amounts of damage, and level 70->80 does not lower that.

So my point is, yes they will kill people slower due to more HP than extra damage, but they are pushing damage much the same as they are now at 70 compared to how much damage other classes are doing. Therefore the argument that level 70-> 80 will even out Ret's damage in line with other classes, is false.

Hope that made sense.

 

osmigos

I rarely post here, but this demanded a response.

You're making a fool of yourself Xayias. You're coming into a thread absolutely full of math and numbers, and arguing against everyone here based on anecdotes from a couple of PvP encounters in beta. You aren't offering any numbers from those encounters, just saying 'it felt really high'. If you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously either go back to beta, record combat logs, and come here with real numbers to support your stories, or go post this crap on the blizzard forums.

I guess GC has really let go on their standards since I was on Korgath.

 

Merovengian

Sorry if i skimmed over it, but did the braintrust ever come to a conclusion about what the Hit Rating goal at 80 would be?

Ive heard all kinds of crap on the WoW forums, including something about a seperate melee and spell hitcap? I thought that sounded more like a confusion with warrior special skills.

You know, something short and sweet like...
(XXX Hit Rating) if the ghost hit stays (YYY Hit Rating) if it doesnt.






Much Obliged
~Mer

 

Prinsesa

Don't sign your posts.

Untalented miss rate for single-wielding melee is 9%. That requires 296 hit rating to cap at level 80. This covers our auto-attacks, Seal procs, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm.

The miss rate for ranged attacks is 9% as well and requires the same amount of hit. This covers Judgements and Hammer of Wrath.

Untalented miss rate for spells is 17%. That requires 446 hit rating to cap at level 80. This covers Exorcism, Consecration, Holy Wrath and generally the rest of our spells, although the consensus is that you do not need to cap spells.

Capping melee/ranged hit would leave your spells with a roughly 8% miss rate.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

littlejim

In level 70 and 80 raids, ret paladins are coming near the top of the damage meters, but aren't doing anything to indicate that their damage is disproportionate to other classes. And in pvp a ret paladin does not gain any secret new damaging abilities, in fact he/she drops consecration and his/her targets have more damage mitigation (resilience, numerous defensive abilities that raid bosses do not have).

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you conveyed your thoughts badly, and that your real goal is a simple nerf to retribution paladins' burst damage in pvp. Playing devil's advocate, damage taken in pvp is highly reliant on the player skill and gear of the attacking and attacked party, so you can't justify the nerf without numbers and specificcally described scenarios. Still, most will agree to nerf retribution's burst damage potential, assuming burst damage isn't all we're left with after pending mana restraints remove our ability to heal and use hand spells.

That said, all I really can conclude from your post is that you aren't interested in highlighting the real balance issues with this game and instead simply want to contribute (like many others in the past) to the pve and pvp castration of the paladin class.

Insert random player's name has died. "wtf lol nerf pala. too much deeps"

 

Xavias

I didn't mean PvE damage, I'm strictly on a PvP standpoint (which I clearly expressed). Also, I am referring to Ret's Burst in PvP.

One of the major things you will notice with Ret, is that their burst is highly unpredictable and can be invoked at any time during a PvP encounter, multiple times. This is unlike other classes, who rely on 2+ minute cooldowns, trinkets and other on-use effects. In other words, a Ret Pally can turn to you and burst you down with some heavy damage, at any point during an Arena match, and if enough abilities crit, they easily match the burst of other DPS classes whom can only achieve this with CD's popped. A Mage/Rogue/Warrior pop all their CD's, and then burst you, whereas a Ret Pally has a chance to crit you with their 3 signature abilities, and if some of them crit / SoC procs, it will match the burst potential of a fully CD popped DPS class. This is a bad thing, because when the conditions are right (particularly in a double DPS scenario), the target has an extremely low chance of survival. Wings simply make this quite unfair, if the RNG works out on your crits while its popped.

I'm sorry you feel that I am attacking your "class". I actually have a Ret Pally too. Its always a sensitive subject when an outsider comes in and suggests the opposite of what a lot of people are feeling.

I did read a lot in this thread. I read the calculations. I'm reporting on what I experienced in Beta, and I clearly felt that Ret's burst was on a totally different level to other classes. I have a video of my level 80 Premade PvP Druid being killed in 5 seconds flat by a Ret Pally with Wings popped. Obviously a huge part of that was RNG, and I wouldn't base my feelings on that event alone. Ret damage in general, for PvP, feels way too bursty for me at level 80.

I'm not biased against your class or spec. I have no reason to be. I've achieved Gladiator on a magnitude of classes, not just healers. I see the PvP metagame on the perspective of multiple classes, and I don't discriminate.

It is my opinion, from what I have experienced in Beta, that Level 80 Retribution Paladins did too much burst damage. But its just my opinion, and you can totally disagree with it, but don't suggest that I am biased or have ulterior motives in having this stance. This is obviously shared by Blizzard testers, as well as a heap of reliable feedback from good players, who have made this same claim (a few top ranking Paladins amongst them).

I'd recommend you do more research on who I am, and what I've achieved in WoW before making knee jerk insults.

Brutal Gladiator

 

Argavaine

I am ok with that if you say that a ret paladin killed you a little bit to fast but in this case you have to argue against the class mechanic and not the paladin damage because if he would not be able to kill you that fast he also would not be able to kill you anyway. He is not a warrior or rogue ....you die fast or you never die, thats it.

 

Xavias

There is no DPS class in the game currently that can kill a good Druid on their own before the Druid goes oom.

I'm looking at proportionate damage. PvP balance is insanely subjective and situational. The variables are just too insane to accurately predict whats fair game and whats broken. Blizzard know this, and that is why they take a backseat in Arena balance and just "put out the fires" and slowly work on balance. Ret became a wild fire.

Ret in its early state was enough to upset the delicate balance of PvP in both live and Beta. This is why it is getting nerfed.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories on why Blizzard nerfed Ret. In my opinion it was needed on a PvP perspective. You might disagree but this is the conclusion that Blizzard have made.

We'll just have to wait and see.

Brutal Gladiator

 

littlejim

To be fair, you are posting in a Retribution DPS Theorycraft thread, quite obviously focused on PvE. Nevertheless, it seems inevitable that PvP balance will be the inevitable source of PvE nerfs for retribution, so maybe you are posting in the right place.

Pretty clearly you didn't read most of my post. To shorten it and make it nice and easy to understand, I basically agreed with you that retribution paladin's burst damage in pvp is too high, but requested that you help us out with combat logs or specific examples. If retribution paladins say "Hey GC, x-geared retribution paladin did y amount of damage to z-geared player, in s amount of time and the combat log shows that clearly ability t and v are responsible for this. maybe if you altered the abilities to do q the burst damage would go down without being a nerf to raiding paladins", we maybe can be constructive about balancing things before it's too late. But telling us "Hey, i was playing some WoW last night and ret palas' damage sure feels bursty" is about as useless to getting our class balanced as is the time I've spent on these two replies to your posts.

 

osmigos

Yea I'll concede that that insult was probably uncalled for. However, in all the posts you've made here so far, you've provided almost nothing to support your claims, and this thread is all about numbers. I don't care who you are or how many nobel prizes in PvP you've won, if you post blanket statements with nothing to support them, you still look like a fool.
If anything, someone who knows their stuff and has accomplished a great deal should have a much easier time providing such support.

 

burghy

Did you get killed on your druid or on a premade one?
I've tried priest/shaman/druid (and paladin ofc) premades on beta and on neither I was even close to being killed by a ret paladin before going oom 1v1. Yeah ret + X kills you in a stun, ret alone, hardly.
And if you don't get killed in a stun you're back to full and the ret can't do anything.

Anyway the biggest problem with the changes is that they take away again the fun in pvp. Back to "zerg something fast or lose" tactic in arena and requirement to be teamed with a high utility class (rogue/lock/mage).

 

Prinsesa

Pardon me if I misinterpreted what this sentence means, but unless I miss my guess: No DPS class in the game can kill a Druid before the Druid goes OOM, except a Ret Paladin did, which is proof of their higher-than-proportional damage.

Again, pardon me if I took that the wrong way, but if that is in fact what you're implying, why is this the Ret Paladin's fault? Couldn't this mean that other classes don't have enough burst, or Druids have too much survivability, or both?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Xavias

For clarification Ret Pallys are included in the list of classes who can't kill a Druid before OOM. I had one Ret pally get the right RNG to be able to kill me insanely quickly, but that was very rare, for further clarification.

I apologize if this is a PvE-only discussion, but the subject of PvP did crop up. Hell, the nerfs are a result of PvP.

I played probably 200+ Arena games during Beta on my Resto Druid (premade 80 for resil gear). I am basing all the stuff I wrote on that experience. As a Resto Druid, I'm always the priority target so I get an excellent feel for how DPS classes compare. Unholy Death Knights are absolutely insane, but that is being addressed. But to stay on topic, a Ret Pally on me is the most devastating of the DPS classes (apart from DK), but one thing to note is that it is easier to avoid their damage, or have your DPSer peel them off. However, this is a bad way of balancing or even justifying the burst potential Ret could dish out. You simply can't balance a class that way. If a class does too much burst, no matter how many other weaknesses they are given, there will still be problems. It comes back to variables. I might be able to kite a Ret Pal for 5 minutes straight, but if he gets in range and does an insane amount of burst, or he is partnered with enough support to get me within his range (which is nearly always the case), he suddenly loses that "weakness". That's just a fictional example, in case you guys try and quote me on it.

The Arena game is complicated, as I said above. Giving a class insane damage at the cost of some other penalty, or vice versa is a terrible way of balancing the class. Because variables create situational possibilities that can undermine this balancing act. Right now we have a class that does too much damage up-front, and has a huge RNG damage potential. This is a problem.

At level 70, there are 3 or 4 specs that are on par with Ret burst. Arcane Mages, for example, can do very similar burst at the moment (using Cd's). However this is far less of an issue at level 80, because their damage sources are instant cast spells with CD's, so their coefficients turn against them rapidly. Their upfront damage at 80 is barely higher than it is at 70, and then they have to wait for their short cds to come back up in order to deal damage again. At 70, that upfront damage is devastating, while at 80 it is average.

Brutal Gladiator

 

watersrog

This discussion is getting nowhere. What we have here is someone who, without actually backup his sayings with numbers or even logic, insists that Retribution PvP damage is "too high" because no PvP class can kill a druid and the fact that a Retribution can with its only CD (Wings) popped and with a big RNG help is "unbalanced".

Now the affirmation makes no sense whatsoever and bring that in any serious discussion is laughable even if it would actually be true. To hell, druid representation in high ranked teams last two arena seasons, especially in 2vs2 and 3vs3 was huge (guessing more than 80% of healers in 2vs2 and 60-65% in 3vs3) and none of us went trolling druid forums to say just that.

So can we please stop this meaningless discussion, shoo the troll out of here and get on with our usual business?

 

Xavias

retlolz.wmv - FileFront.com

Purpose of me linking this video is ONLY to show you "numbers", not to suggest anything more than that.

My logic is backed up by the fact that I have more PvP experience and success in Arena than 99.99% of the PvP population.

Brutal Gladiator

 

watersrog

Read the tooltip on Sanctified Wrath and stop making a fool out of yourself. Or maybe I'll do it for you and bold the important part so you understand:

Sanctified Wrath: Rank 2

Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath 50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects.

Got it now? Or do I have to copy/paste the description of what Dispersion does too and then do the math for you?

P.S.

And I did hope you were out of our thread.

Edit, to Xavias: we all know the numbers from crits with Wings on and that kind of movie, although I'm sure is deeply admired and highly looked at as a great argument to whatever the place you usually hang, bears no value here. There are thousands of these movies sporting most of the classes currently polluting the web and while you might be very impressed by it, we are not. Now, can you please leave.? I am out of this discussion.

 

Xavias

You really need to calm down and stop being so aggressive with people who oppose your point of view. His point was that a Shield wall type ability couldn't even save him from Ret. Its a valid concern to have, since a lot of classes depend on these types of defenses, particularly against burst, which is the bread and butter of Ret.

Brutal Gladiator

 

teeny

If you were such an "experimented and successfull" Pvper, you'd know numbers come and go, only mechanics matter.
Read the thread you're trolling and bragging in, you'll see nobody complains about numbers beeing nerfed, but vital mechanics beeing slaughtered. It's not Rng, philosophy, or theology, it's freaking mathematics: you just can't beat them.

And by the way, getting a Glad title (especially on a Druid ) doesn't make your opinion more valuable than other people.

 

Briefcase

I realize that this'll sound like a whine post but so be it.

I just wonder, what will it take for Blizzard to realize that PvE and PvP require different sets of talent trees and skills. Classes are constantly nerfed/buffed in PvE just because they are over-/underpowered in PvP, and vice versa. This set of retri nerfs (I won't go on about how stupid it is to nerf lvl80 talents because of lvl70 whine, but it IS stupid) just shows how big this problem can be. Obviously they won't do that, so at the very least, they have to realize that losing "flavor" (which is what they call retri being bursty) is much preferred if the other option is to have the spec completely castrated.

I'm also wondering when a blue will actually respond to the outcry from paladins, the least they could do is offer us an explanation for making the wrong changes.

 

DdarkDdemon

Of course it isn't a valid concern if we have an ability designed to counter that shield wall ability.
Or didn't you know that priests counter our defenses just as badly?

 

Xavias

Well I've only ever commented on the burst "numbers" of Ret, not about your "vital mechanics being slaughtered" so I don't see why your being so argumentative with me. I've made no comments on any other aspects of the Retribution spec. So yeah, exactly what are you arguing with me about? I mean you said it yourself, nobody has a disagreement with the numbers being nerfed, which is exactly what I've exclusively talked about in this thread.

Your trying to draw blood from a stone here. I'm not going to be the target dummy for you to vent your frustration out on =]

This isn't a Priest vs Ret pally argument, and I wouldn't dare try and converse about the delicacies of class vs class balance. Took this comment way out of context.

Brutal Gladiator

 

DdarkDdemon

Why discuss something at all if nobody has a disgreement?
Hell, why post at all of the only thing you're going to talk about it numbers if nobody has a disagreement about numbers?

 

Nicki

Judgements can now miss at the same rate as melee attacks

When your judgement misses you do not get damage done, the reapplication of the target debuff or mana back from Judgements of the wise.

While that moves hit up the food chain it is a severe deficit in regen for early gearing and for pvp.

I know we shouldn't talk about how bad this last push is for us but really it is a significant loss, enh shammies will no longer have trouble keeping up with us no matter our gear level. As sadly with the last push my dps has gone down by a minimum of 100 where i was tie in single target dps too an enh shammy when solo and above when grouped. (And we could both sustain rotations for endless amounts of time.

The righteous vengeance change is nothing more than compensation for not being able to use consecration it is a great idea but really its compensating for something else then its meant too which is our crit damage bonuses which are gone.

My fear is SoC has been buffed and well sadly that means ret paladins will still have burst they just wont really be able to kill anyone with it.

Also realise that prot is heavily affected by the seal/judgement nerfs. Ultimately I wanted burst too be nerfed as i dont care for pvp much I found it irratating that i kept getting called op because i could 3 shot someone in pve gear while i myself was wearing pve gear. However the current build on ptr utterly decimates every good change they made too paladins in wotlk.

The star burnt out before the world even got too see it shine.

 

Xavias

Wait so now your upset that I posted something that everybody agrees upon?

Discussion doesn't have to be initiated by the product of a disagreement.
The disagreements began AFTER my initial post, quote:

So no, the numbers were not agreed upon, which is what started this round of arguments.

Your still trying to create a fight where there is none. =]

Brutal Gladiator