Equalizer

I think a lot of us are more worried about the lost flexibility with regards to the JotWise nerf.

DPS looks like it will come out ok...my problem is I came to this class from a hunter. I wanted to give up that 5% damage (or whatever it is), to be able to heal and do other things.

I was really more than anything else enjoying the flexibility of my ret paladin. Sure my DPS might dip due to reset swing timers from throwing out heals (as it should), but it was nice that if it looked like someone was going to die I could save them.

But if I have to worry about running out of mana, odds are I will stop healing, because no mana means my DPS will tank.

 

Cynar

I'm less worried about the loss of damage, than about my ability to not have to worry about mana, that was what was making Ret so much more fun than pre-3.0, I could actually do stuff other than wait for CS and Judgement to come off cooldown.

But now, like I said a couple posts above this, with JotW being nerfed to 15% I have to watch cooldowns again. And it's so damn boring.

 

tayedaen

I still think that the main problem lies within SoL.

My thinking goes like this:
Let's assume blizz achieves balanced dps at Lvl 80 PvE for Rets (with T7).
Now if better gear (T8) comes, the attack power will rise, and via SoL the spellpower too.
This double impact will rise Ret's dps far more then the dps of prot or holy.

So either prot/holy dps will fall behind, or ret will advance too fast.

So if we want to balance the whole class and not only ret, I still think SoL has to go.

I would suggest some really radical changes to fix this:
- Delete SoL
- Delete Touched by the light.
- Create a new talent for holy (21 or even higher), that converts ARMOR to INT and spelldamage (conversion rate can be mathed by blizz easily)

What would be the impact:
- No more need for seperate Holy plate (Holy gets their INT from "warrior" armor)
- Holy dps no longer abysmal (ret and prot only do seal damage +%AP, holy does seal damage +%AP + %SP, rate needs to be adjusted of course)
- Deep Prot and deep Ret get their dps increase via talented strikes (CD,DS, Shield of Righteousness, HotR)
- Dps for all specs can be adjusted seperately via strike damage!
- No more desire/need to get something else then plate for holy

I know this sounds a bit radical, but really do not see that our class can be balanced with SoL.

 

Equalizer

I don't understand why you think the problem is our damage relative to prot and holy? Neither of those spec's is suppose to take up a DPS slot.

The problem is our DPS relative to other classes, and our burst/utilities in arenas. Your proposed changes don't deal with that properly at all.

Stop trying to pimp your Holy Paladin DPS agenda here.

 

tayedaen

First think then answer. I am a Prot MT, not holy.
But I really care for all specs of the paladin class, not only for my own. That's something you try too if you do not want to look like a fool.
One of the advantages of deleting the AP->SP conversion is that RET dps is MUCH easier do balance without.

And about prot dps not beeing important: Assuming threat and mitigation is "equal" to the other tanking classes, then I can only justify a raid spot if my dps is also comparable to them.

P.S.
You are right, probaly the main thread is a better place for this discussion. I somehow got the wrong thread.
No need to get nasty.

 

Equalizer

Read the name of this thread. This is the RET PALADIN DPS thread. Not the PROT PALADIN DPS AND TAUNT thread.

 

tayedaen

Yes, sorry about that, Posted in the wrong thread.. I will delete my post instantly.

 

Pulout

I posted a few pages back and it's been a while. I just wanted to know if the new Rawr is accurate to reflect the importance of hit, str, etc. Also, does anyone have any idea what the new cast sequence priority will be? I'm still trying to figure it out myself, but if someone has already done the math, that info would be hugely appreciated.

Also, I wanted to add two more things. I'm glad that they won't nerf blood, but I'm going to miss using command. It was nice not having to worry about accidentally nuking myself. Finally, thanks to all of you for the constant posts on here during these last few chaotic days regarding the nerfs. It was nice fo have info from people that knew what they were talking about to see just how severe things actually were (or weren't). It helped to preserve what little sanity I have.

 

Siawn

One of the real disappointments out of this entire mess is that we are once again faced with a baseline ability being better than our eleven point talent. SoC is getting a 20% nerf, and it was only barely keeping up with SoB/SoM in conjunction with the glyph. What is the point in even having SoC if they are too terrified of the PvP applications to make it more powerful than a baseline skill?

 

aylen86

Does anybody know whether they fixed the gap between judgement of blood and judgement of martyr? Both should scale with .45 % of your weapon damage, SoM was definitely weaker.

 

Cevil

Agreed, and it's clear to me they're in deeper trouble than they realized, and that this "weapons stacking bug" red herring has really hurt them in regards to Ret. They're three weeks away from release, and saying Ret needs a complete overhaul AGAIN doesn't sound like the most far fetched idea in the world.

At this point, Seal of Command is a leveling talent primarily.

I think it's clear that right now the goal for Blizzard is to tune Paladins for a raid slot. All their moves and changes are designed completely towards this goal, sacrificing any PvP benefits we may have gained in the beta. As hard as it is to admit this, I think this is the right thing to do. Our acceptance as a spec in the mindset of players will be much more reliant on our PvE abilties out of the gate than our PvP abiltiies. Being able to hold a role in 5-10-25 mans is something Blizzard needs to get right immediately, or we'll have a hard time find acceptable raiding groups. PvP (which is my preferred playstyle) can be changed at a later, although hopefully not too late of date. If a mid-season patch takes Ret from marginal to exceptional, it's not going to take much more than a Ret PVP video and a 2300 rated trailblazer to make people start trying ret out in arena; the metagame there is dynamic enough to allow this.

They've got to get the PvE numbers correct or they kill their "30 specs, not 10 classes" philosophy. I think we're going to see PvP concerns thrown to the wayside, and later band-aided over in ways that don't upset the pve equilibrium.

 

eMagdAeH

I'm actually completely okay with that Cevil, to be honest. I would love for them to at the very least fix PvE before the xpac, but we'll see what happens with that.

My big question that has not, and probably will not be answered by a blue is in what way would having JotW return 20-25% mana break the class again? I have yet to see mathematical proof that adding that amount to JotW and changing NOTHING else would make us OP again. All I really want is to be able to maintain the standard rotation with enough mana left over to add in one extra ability each rotation...or even every other rotation. It forces us to be mana conscious still, but still use our utility. Any thoughts?

 

Hylo

Another big, partially related, question is what they are going to do with mana drains and paladins:
If they leave mana drains as they are now, effectively able to drain ~25% of our mana in a single cast, upping JotW return may be the only way to preserve any sanity when paladins are facing priests, hunters or warlocks. JotW needs to result in mana-positive rotation to prevent mana drains being utterly devastating when casted on us.

If they change those to be percentual (very good idea!), then upping JotW might be more problematic.

And I have to agree with the few above posters; PvE is more important at the start, but I hope PvP fixes are not coming months behind.

 

Redcape

I would like to make a request of all those out there with beta keys and 5 minutes to spare. I want to put out the latest version of my spreadsheet with detailed mana recovery breakdowns, but I need the new proc rate of JoW.

Could someone Judge wisdom and hit a target dummy for 2 minutes and check the proc rate?

 

Sparticusrex

The problem with this attitude is if you allot "utility mana" to even every other rotation, you are going to have a pretty significant potential increase of DPS when you are not required to use that utility. Any PvE encounter that doesn't hinge on your "utility" (read: all PvE encounters) will result in a much more dramatically mana positive rotation and put us firmly in the "grip it and rip it" realm of faceroll DPS again. It seems pretty clear that Blizzard is willing to take any and every action to avoid this.

 

Kroeger

Perhaps Seal of Righteousness combined with Seals of the Pure could be higher sustained dps than SoM/B now? Granted not taking any damage may hurt our mana as well, but we would be allowed to judge wisdom without having to worry about the backlash of Blood/Martyr killing us. I noticed the hotfix on JotW last night as the first thing I looked at was my seals. It seems untalented SoR was superior to SoM, but I am alliance, and did not get to check the numbers on my horde toon. Can someone else crunch the numbers?

 

Rasputin

Ask and you shall receive. I just blew a mana pool and some divine pleas to get a reasonable sample size. I used SoB which cut it short, but I figured I'd see if it was proccing wisdom. I'll try it again with command. Anyway,

119 melee
38 JoB
48 CS
31 DS


67 JoW procs

gives 28% proc rate. I was assuming JoB could proc it but now that I think about it I'm unsure of that. Withotu the JoBs it gives a 34% proc rate. I'll try with Command up and see what I get.

 

Redcape

Scroll back a page or two and find my spreadsheet link.

If you want the short version, the answer is no. As of 2 days ago Righteousness was the top seal by a extremely small margin if you had 5/5 SotP. With the new coefficients on Blood that no longer is true, and Blood is tops. The difference isn't huge, so if you do have 5/5 SotP then Righteousness is probably a rational choice, and doesn't have the danger of recoil. I don't know that I will be able to fit 5/5 in my build though, since once you have every utility talent and kings you end up with not enough points to fill out SotP.

 

Mearis

About hunters and manadrains: You do realize with chimera shot, every single class without abolish poison is at most on a 1 minute countdown until they are out of mana? Drains in PvP do screw over ret paladins, but at least you have cleanse, mages/priests screwed over even more.

If you can get a global solution to drains in arena, great, but don't think that drains are something that hamstrings only ret paladins. You do have a much smaller mana pool, but other classes lack cleanse all-together.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Rasputin

I don't think you can really deny that Ret Paladins are one of if not the most vulnerable classes to mana drains. Mana burn takes some 6-8 seconds depending on resilience to zero us, viper takes two applications, and mana drain is only slightly better. Yes, all classes need to worry about mana drains. Not all classes need to worry about mana drains to the extent that if they eat 2-4 of them they're completely out of the game until they can get out of line of sight and drink.

Anyway I proposed that mana drains work off percentage of total mana in the thread on this issue on the beta Paladin boards. It could be balanced to have the various drains work at the same effectiveness against classes with high mana pools(mage, holy paladin, etc) while not being a hard counter to classes with tiny, tiny mana pools(ret paladins and feral druids).

 

burghy

Using sol (3.48 weapon speed):
52 melee hits (3 misses)
14 judgement hits
32 procs of jow

 

Sartuk

Edit: I'm an idiot and misread the amount on rank 5, thinking it was half what it was. I'll remove my stupidity now.

Edit: I do somewhat agree with your % based mana drain idea. Maybe have part of the effect be % based and part be a flat (smaller than currently) number, so that it still hits people with smaller mana pools harder, but just not at the same rate as before. Just throwing some ideas out there.

 

Hylo

Untalented Rank5 Viper sting is 3092 mana over 8 seconds. With 3/3 Improved stings this is 1.3 * 3092 = 4019 mana over 8 seconds.

The countdown may be 1 minute for priests but for us it is more like 12 seconds. In one minute you can go out of LoS, communicate with your team to help the situation etc. - we either cleanse the poison immediatelly (remember trash debuffs and resistances) or just go OOM. Smart hunter also use silencing shot straight after Viper on paladins guaranteeing that at least 3 seconds (25% of our mana) is gone. Shooting Viper Sting on CC'd (feared, stunned etc) retri paladin is nothing less than a death sentance.


[edit:] Alright, I understand I didn't take resilience in to account here but I don't think neither did the Mearis in his example.

 

Redcape

When I use Judgement on Live I often get 2 procs, though not always. I assume this is because the debuff and damage both can proc the JoW effect. If we assume that those 38 JoB actually count as 76 attacks, the proc rate is 24.45%. I would say that it is a pretty good bet that they just made the proc rate 25%.

When I tested with Command I got procs off SoC. Sometimes my SoC proccing autoattacks made 2 JoW procs, basically. However, since in pvp we won't be judging Wisdom and in pve Blood (with its new (old?) coefficients) is the best, I think it is safe to say that Blood is the strongest option.

Thanks for the info, if you have more information to share (including SoC JoW procs on beta) I would love to have it.

One last thing: Does anyone know the actual coefficients they ended up using for Blood on the beta server? GC said roughly 95% of its old effectiveness, but exact numbers would be great.

Edit: Well, while I was typing this more information came up, and that information does not agree with the 25% number, but rather closer to 40%. Ugh. Thanks for the info burghy.

 

Thorin

Problem with having to use JoW is that it hinders our ability to use JoL to offset some of the damage caused by SoB. At the same time SoL healing our JoB was giving us a little mana back, even if minimal.

I agree with classes having to watch their mana, its part of the game, but being constrained/hindered by mana is something else. When our mana pool is as small as it is, the nerf to JotW makes our mana volatile to say the least,

Moreover, from what I had understood, Art of War was put in the Ret tree to help mitigate the damage from SoB, and hence is meant be part of our strategy, shooting one on ourselves every 4-5 rotations, and hence mana regen from JotW should take this into consideration, if not, what's the point of the talent?

Currently with 15% JotW any change to the Judge>CS>DS scenario (be it mana burn, need for more DPS [i.e. Consecrate, or Exorcism and Holy Wrath in Naxx], or a needed heal) will easily cause us to go OOM...

I still wonder how they arrived at that 15%.
23-25% seems much more appropriate to me.