djkillingspree

Do you mean pre-BC? Ret was a total joke pre-BC, way worse than BC ret.

 

Brick

The rogue on the bottom had a significantly higher miss rate (26% versus 18%), resulting in 25 fewer white swings. This meant fewer Instant Poison procs and less energy returned from Focused Attacks. He also lacked Exploit Weakness, which means these white swings, Mutilates and Eviscerates hit for less. Less use of Hunger for Blood, significantly knocking back Rupture damage, which was probably a product of having less energy from fewer Focused Attack procs.

 

Cevil

Is it just me, or do the mages never appear to use Evocation? the bulk of their mana return is in Replenishment, but I don't see any Evocation used. I'm surely just missing it, correct? I'll go back and see if Shadow Priests used their fiends, how long hunters were in Viper for (and still being insane DPS), etc. I think we need to focus on the amount of work needed to keep our mana up compared to other classes.

Also, our mana regen seems to be split pretty much evenly between JotW and SA, meaning Seal of Blood/Martyr is required, and any mechanics like, say, Prince's weakness are devastating to us.

I'd really like to see Darkphoenix join in the discussion on this, either on the wow forums or here. I don't think people use Dark Runes out of anything but necessity, but I'd like to hear about that.

Also, Consecration contributed 10% of Darkphoenix's raid damage, and as noted above, GC implicitly makes the case that Consecration isn't supposed to be part of a rotation. That means that Darkphoenix should drop down another 250-300 DPS on these charts, correct? There's no swap involved with another ability, it's either Consecrate Yes vs. Consecrate No.

 

Siawn

The problem with this evaluation is that we cannot determine to what extent gear is dictating the damage of the various classes. Until we know how equally geared they are, trying to evaluate it is nigh unto impossible.

 

Anauel

I agree. It will also derail this thread into an explanation of why other classes are doing more or less damage and how they're op and why they chose this or that talent. This thread isn't really the place for theorycrafting other classes' dps.

He said he can't read every thread himself (and who would?). This does not mean they've stopped monitoring us closely. I'm certain he gets a summary of the most important threads.

 

Ulthwithian

Cevil: Again, we can check with the Mages, but I do recall one point in Beta where Manly (I think) removed the cooldown from Evocate (in his model) to see what the increase in dps would be for a Mage, and the dps went down.

Considering that Evocation is channeled, Mages want to avoid Evocating at all costs. Except for limited DoTs, Evocate time = 0 dps.

Unfortunately, I'm trying to monitor the threads for 5 (soon 7) classes and their status come Wrath, so I'm not sure of the current status of Mages and Evocating. Check with Roywyn, Lhivera, or one of those notables.

 

Gevlin

Any word on whether the Judgement of Blood vs Judgement of the Martyr bug (or was it just a tooltip problem?) was fixed? And if it was, is it getting 25% or 45% of weapon damage?

 

Fqubed

Thats basically it for evocation. On no phase swap downtime bosses evocation is best not used, you try to make it so you can managem your way through the entire fight.

 

Gaizen

I believe i'm sensing a pattern here.

 

• Avitus

Someone please take the logic for why Consecration is a good thing for game balance (in general) and should be encouraged to be part of the Ret rotation and go staple it to something over there they can see. Jeez. I'd love to see them come up with a realistic counter logic to that one.

 

djkillingspree

This assumes that he was never in a mana-constrained situation. If he ever went OOM and thus skipped a non-consecrate ability, then there is a swap involved - if you avoid a consecrate at :45 it might theoretically allow you to get another CS/DS/Judgement at 3:45.

 

Morning

Ret paladin dps was too bursty. We all saw it. What wasn't seen was the nerf to JotW and the double limiting effect we have to deal with. We are limited by both cooldowns and mana pool.

I am not willing to be a second class joke DPS again. I raided all of TBC as ret and was only going for the the crusader debuff while struggling to keep in the top 8 DPSers.

This change was as surgical as a shotgun.

I'm not advocating for a mass exodus of Ret paladins; however, I will be canceling my account to keep from being constantly frustrated with my class. Which other melee DPS farms Demonic Runes to be viable?

 

djkillingspree

Does any serious testing from more than a single source indicate that you will need Demonic Runes to be viable in WotLK PvE raiding? We're not going back to BC levels of power/mana consumption here. We still get 400ish mana every 8 seconds from Judgement. We don't need to re-seal every 10 seconds. We can use JoW without hurting our DPS. We still get replinishment, and divine plea, and Art of War, and glyphs, etc.

Granted, obviously these are serious nerfs and I'm not trying to say everything is definitely okay. But as far as I'm aware they aren't done balancing the classes for PvE yet and there's not a ton of clear evidence available to us as players on what Level 80 balance is going to look like once people actually get to Naxx.

 

Sapp

They're also probably going to alter our mana consumption again anyway so don't panic about it. The latest GC indicated dev attention on it.

On Ret paladins:
<Fyr> its like they went from sniffing powdered sugar for 3 years, got real cocaine for 2 weeks, and are pissed that they're going back to the sugar again

 

• frmorrison

Redcape asked me to do two tests so here are the results:

Using Judgement of Righteousness (has no damage range), whether it was a crit or normal hit, Crusade gave 3% more damage. If it was one of the special types, like a human, it did 6%, therefore the talent doesn't double dip on crits anymore.

Sheath of Light is affecting Seal/Judgement of Righteousness by the formula for SoR's amount.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

joypunk

World of Warcraft US Forums - Why do we need to care about mana?

In response to the above post, Ghostcrawler said:

Is this implying that Divine Storm, because it is an AE ability, is a spell that we are not intended to use in our rotations?

I feel like we're getting mixed signals from Blizzard via Ghostcrawler. I believe him when he says they want us to have competitive DPS and that they want mana to be an issue but not a show stopping issue... but if Divine Storm's mana cost is set so that it isn't intended for regular rotation use then all the damage numbers that are being used to evaluate our DPS are wrong.

 

Corronach

There is some clarification on that, DS is supposed to be part of the normal rotation. But all the points Avitus and others have made regarding consecration still apply. If it's considered a boost, then our other abilities would have to do higher burst dmg to make up the difference.

This new philosophy is really bad for Arenas. You can drink in BG's or grab a leaf between fights, but that's just not an option. What this also indicates is that ret is not supposed to use Sacred Shield at all, and doesn't take into account cleanse and hands.

 

Ming

Damage control to a lesser extent in my opinion. They knew the back lash would be great and probably had the bullet points ready before the nerf was announced. You can't look at that statement and honestly believe that a Fury warrior should not use WW as a standard single-target rotation- it's nonsense, so the point does not follow precedent. Nor does it follow logic, which I feel is a factor that is being devalued in exchange for pacification on many levels. The development of this class is much to volatile at this point in time to draw any conclusions as to the possible motives behind the class changes or any drastic changes in the future. The bottom line is, if they tell us that Consecrate should not be used against single targets (again, I call this a paper thin excuse), then they are going to have to make up for it somewhere (credit to Avitus).

I guess I am a bit incredulous over this statement. Consecrate does not follow us and within a few yards, an enemy player can kite us out of it. If anything, I would suggest giving it a weak healing coefficient and increase (by reverting back to holy) the power of DS.

 

Cevil

I really can't imagine them giving Retribution at 51 pt. talent that is only supposed to be used in AOE situations. I also can't imagine them giving that to Ret and then nerfing DPS numbers across the board instead of just boosting Divine Storm's mana consumption.

They're now in a conundrum, and it's beginning to appear that their internal DPS testing was flawed. To be raising the questions about Consecration that they're raising now makes me think they didn't expect it to be used in a rotation, but maybe nerfed DPS because it was used in a rotation.

I don't know. It seems like GCs latest statements reflect a real fundamental misunderstanding of the class:
Help me, here. What gear will improve our longevity? I can't think of anything. I suppose he may mean at what % in the fight we'll go to fumes based on group DPS, but that seems unlikely.

His mentioned solution: to up the damage of seal of blood/martyr seems like a good one; it helps DPS and helps SA regen, but it suggests once again that Consecration is not considered part of our DPS cycle, and is instead a burndown/group mechanic.

That Naxx parses showed pretty much universally that Consecration was a good chunk of DPS makes me think they went after the wrong target. PVE damage wasn't an issue: Consecration was.

According to the Darkphoenix Naxx parse, Consecration was 11% of his DPS. If these across the board nerfs equate to 10% drop in DPS—and I suspect they do—then maybe the case needs to be made that Ret consecration needs to be looked at, and not the ret tree as a whole.

PVP mana issues will still exist.

 

Selenia

We can see some of the reason why the devs were caught so much by surprise re: the outcry over JotW here, I think.

They appear to've balanced around CS/DS/Judgement being a mana neutral rotation -without- Divine Plea and that Divine Plea opens up the options to use more/other abilities.

In my personal testing (solo-testing, granted), I needed Plea to run mana-neutral on that basic rotation and any further abilities would drive me OOM despite it.

If someone could get GC to clarify a bit more on that, it would shed some welcome light on the situation.

 

Arthaal

If that's the case, they're setting themselves up for an impossible task... since making our PvE DPS competitive under these assumptions means blowing everything in a short PvP matchup situation will have to lead to some 1-2-3 shots. If this is what they intend, then the seal nerfs we're not only unnecessary, they counter-current to their intent.

Percent modifiers R'US

 

Imentet

PvP perspective.
Is it me, or do they seem to be assuming that ret paladins in PvP just run single target DPS rotations as if attacking Golemagg?
I believe the main reasons to bring a ret paladin along as the 2nd melee in a 3v3 cleave setup are Cleanse, Hands, Judgement of Justice and possibly Art of War heals + Sacred Shield. Those things chew up quite a bit of mana as well.

If mana stays this way, 0/25/46 is starting to look really good for WOTLK PvP. Praying for reckoning to proc definitely beats not having the mana to use Divine Storm. Doesn't take a GCD either.

 

Ulthwithian

The best possible counter to 'DS is AE and thus shouldn't be used in rotations' is to point squarely at Living Bomb. It is also a 51-pt. talent that also is 'primarily' an AE ability. It, however, is required in Fire rotations to do their listed DPS.

I'll also point out that Starfall is a DPS increase for Moonkin, and is also a 51-pt. talent. IIRC, Moonkin also have the mana to use Starfall (especially with the mana regen they get through Moonkin form).

 

• frmorrison

I don't think so, the soon to be 25% of damage = healing of DS is pretty hard to give up, plus the ability to hit a few targets is very nice.

Also Reckoning does give 4 attacks to slower weapons, it gives 2 extra swings with a 4.0 speed weapon.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Wrathblood

If the problem with ret overachieving in PvP really is tied to them not assuming Consecrate is part of ret rotations when we think it is, there's a possible solution that would actually cure a number of the major problems of all 3 specs with one shot.

Double the cost of casting consecrate, make it also heal any friendly units standing within its radius for the same amount it does in damage to enemies (non-stacking, so no piling 10 pallies on top of each other for abuse), and significantly increase the scaling it gets from spell damage. The missing 11 point prot talent can then be "Improved Consecrate" which cuts the cost of consecration by 50%.

Ret will never cast it again unless they're genuinely AoE tanking, or during some extreme boss vulnerability period like Curator's evocation, thus fixing their "too high" PvE dps. Perhaps giving Blizz some leeway to bump JotW back up to 20% and maybe put Command and Blood back where they were. Prot gets back the threat it just lost via the seal nerf, and Holy gets both a HoT and an AoE heal (too expensive and limited for general use, but I'm sure folks would find a way to use it) as well as a needed bump to their grinding dps.