I'd just like to note it would take more than 2 viper applications to OOM a Retadin. I'm not trying to pick a fight here or anything, I agree, Retadins are REALLY in trouble when it comes to mana burns. My two mains are a Retadin and a Hunter, and both of these classes are going to suffer from mana burns in PvP, albeit Retadins more so.
Anyway, just nitpicking. With any resilience whatsoever that 2 viper stings is an exaggeration, especially since it *is* cleansable.
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.
Improved Stings and resilience pretty much offset, making 2 vipers drain ~6k mana when we have 5794(for a BElf). Yes, it is that bad. And yes it's cleansable sometimes if we hit it through the poison stacks and it doesn't resist. Except Cleanse itself is a not-insignificant part of our tiny mana pool, so a pair of Cleanse resists just makes the situation worse. Mana burns and drains really are that bad for Ret.
Anyway another data set for JoW, with SoC this time.
234 melee
174 SoC
92 CS
74 JoC
58 DS
632 total JoW-proccing attacks(SoC still procs JoW, right?)
142 JoW procs
22.5% proc rate. I'm leaning towards a 25% proc rate on JoW.
Anyway another data set for JoW, with SoC this time.
234 melee
174 SoC
92 CS
74 JoC
58 DS
632 total JoW-proccing attacks(SoC still procs JoW, right?)
142 JoW procs
22.5% proc rate. I'm leaning towards a 25% proc rate on JoW.
I am thinking the internal cooldown is back. Burghy showed a much higher proc rate, but his results were without using instants, so if it had an internal cooldown you would definately see that. This sample uses SoC, which creates more proc opportunities and thus decreases proc rate (while increasing overall effect). Can anyone confirm whether or not a SoC AA can double proc, or whether a CS/AA to begin combat can generate a double proc of JoW? If they can, then our samples are just statistically skewed, but if double procs are out, then we are just dealing with an internal cooldown again.
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.
If you want to complain about hunter effects on priests, I'd suggest do it somewhere else. You're not going to find any sympathy here.
The problem, as you aparently don't understand, is that we're essentially mana neutral in PvP just keeping up a full dps rotation. If we start casting our Hand spells or try to cleanse a full round of lock/priest DoTs or even throw a few FoLs we're oom without any help from Viper Sting. That is a problem.
Improved Stings and resilience pretty much offset, making 2 vipers drain ~6k mana when we have 5794(for a BElf). Yes, it is that bad. And yes it's cleansable sometimes if we hit it through the poison stacks and it doesn't resist. Except Cleanse itself is a not-insignificant part of our tiny mana pool, so a pair of Cleanse resists just makes the situation worse. Mana burns and drains really are that bad for Ret.
Anyway another data set for JoW, with SoC this time.
234 melee
174 SoC
92 CS
74 JoC
58 DS
632 total JoW-proccing attacks(SoC still procs JoW, right?)
142 JoW procs
22.5% proc rate. I'm leaning towards a 25% proc rate on JoW.
I absolutely agree Ret's really bad off, and I should note I realized the error I made in my first post.
I could definitely see, simply to combat the drain issue, just adding a mana drain reduction talent somewhere in the Ret tree. I concur, no other class that relies so much on mana is so susceptible to being drained in the blink of an eye as Ret is.
Sartuk, we greatly appreciate your sympathies here! I think most people realize that we aren't asking to be OP or even topping the DPS charts again. We are simply asking for viability, which is on the line in PvE and completely shot to death in PvP. Maybe someone who's not a paladin adding to the postings to Blizzard about something needing to be done about mana would help greatly! Thanks again for your support!
Blizzard's inherent problem is that it keeps thinking of a Retribution Paladin's mana as a Caster's mana.
managing a 4.4k mana pool is not the same as managing a 15k+ mana pool;
With a sub-par JotW, a mana drain hurts our pool much more than it'd hurt a caster.
With JotW they seemed to finally understand that we work more like DPS warriors, with a blue rage bar; things worked great with it, but then they decided to nerf it to the ground, and stated that "Mana is not rage"
I can't help asking myself, why is that such a bad idea?
The blue rage bar concept worked great for Blizz in TBC for Paladin Prot spec,
why is it such a sin to treat Retribution in the same way?
Viper sting fucking over everyone with a mana bar isn't a ret paladin issue, sure we got a smaller manabar, but other classes don't have cleanse.
Like, seriously. Viper Sting is retarded, you ought to see priests cry about it- for good reason. They have no way to deal with it, so ~30sec later with Chimera Shot they're looking at an empty mana bar.
Its one of those cumulative buff things they needed to crush mercilessly but let get out of their hands, since they started with 15sec Viper, sped it up to 8sec viper, increased the mana drained by 40% again, and then redesigned a talent to give it +30% mana drained on top of that. On top of that, on the way to 80 they up the base amount of mana removed by the skill by 120%, when Drain Mana goes up by 20% and Mana Burn goes up by 50%. At 80 It is competitive with Mana Burn (which requires constant casting) and is something like 5x better than Drain Mana, which requires channeling.
Viper Sting being ridiculous isn't a ret paladin issue; it's an everyone with mana issue.
I think everyone here is a little pissed off that we aren't over powered anymore. Get over it. It breaks the game as a whole if one class is trouncing everyone else in PVP and PVE. If they left ret as it was, everyone would roll ret and it would be game over.
Consecration was a viable option pre 3.0 because we could downrank it and eek out a few extra DPS with a relatively low mana cost. After downing twins I just stopped using it because my mana could be more effective through exorcism and other abilities due to the short fight nature of sunwell. Post 3.0 it is not viable to spam, even as prot you need to be smart about when you consecrate.
Even the 15% judgment of the wise is leaps and bounds above what Ret had pre 3.0. You can DPS indefinitely as long as you use your mana wisely.
Geared ret pallys are handing rogues, mages, and warlocks their asses in PVE right now. That needs to be pulled back a little. It does not make sense at all that a hybrid class is doing more damage than "pure dps" classes. The margin between pallys and DPS classes should be a lot tighter than it was in BC, but I was facerolling through sunwell and beating lots of other classes.
If you are GCD locked, its not the end of the world. Put the consecrate button out of reach. Naxx fights aren't all going to be tank and spank like Brut or Patch, and you will be MOVING around and those cooldowns will come back up.
Just take this all in perspective and quit crying. Ret nerfs are status quo, and most of us have been through it before. It's an emotional issue to a lot of us.
Blizzard's inherent problem is that it keeps thinking of a Retribution Paladin's mana as a Caster's mana.
managing a 4.4k mana pool is not the same as managing a 15k+ mana pool;
I quite agree with this. Aside from the double check issue of both limited mana and every ability being cooldown based, there are no real tools to manage mana, aside from pushing divine plea once you've lost 80-85% of your manapool (depending how quickly you are getting through mana) then pushing it again every minute. The only tool is abstinence.
When I raided as holy I used to derive a great deal of satisfaction from using divine illumination at exactly the right time. and it always amazed me when going through WWS the number of paladins who either underused this ability or used it at the wrong time. That is the sort of active ability that makes mana management an interesting part of the game. At this point ret paladins are told they need to worry about mana expenditure but are given no active tools that rely on the player's decision making to be effective. Slapping someone's hand for using extra abilities in their rotation to me isn't enough.
Nobody is pissed that we're not overpowered. We're concerned that we may have been overnerfed and put at risk of being less viable in raids, where we can and would be replaced by other classes who bring the same benefits as us while providing higher damage. We're concerned we may have been overnerfed and gone from the single best PvP class to one with about 4 viable comps, all of which would be better served with someone else in the Ret spot.
I know the majority of the WoW playerbase is taking these days and weeks to point and laugh at us because they were angry that we were overpowered for a week of meaningless PvP and PvE content, but to simply dismiss all the valid concerns backed up with math as being us "crying" because we're not god anymore is pretty stupid all on its own, and it smacks of the endless rogues and warriors spending their time on the official WoW forums making posts containing nothing but "haha" and "lol".
I think everyone here is a little pissed off that we aren't over powered anymore. Get over it. It breaks the game as a whole if one class is trouncing everyone else in PVP and PVE. If they left ret as it was, everyone would roll ret and it would be game over.
Consecration was a viable option pre 3.0 because we could downrank it and eek out a few extra DPS with a relatively low mana cost. After downing twins I just stopped using it because my mana could be more effective through exorcism and other abilities due to the short fight nature of sunwell. Post 3.0 it is not viable to spam, even as prot you need to be smart about when you consecrate.
Even the 15% judgment of the wise is leaps and bounds above what Ret had pre 3.0. You can DPS indefinitely as long as you use your mana wisely.
Geared ret pallys are handing rogues, mages, and warlocks their asses in PVE right now. That needs to be pulled back a little. It does not make sense at all that a hybrid class is doing more damage than "pure dps" classes. The margin between pallys and DPS classes should be a lot tighter than it was in BC, but I was facerolling through sunwell and beating lots of other classes.
If you are GCD locked, its not the end of the world. Put the consecrate button out of reach. Naxx fights aren't all going to be tank and spank like Brut or Patch, and you will be MOVING around and those cooldowns will come back up.
Just take this all in perspective and quit crying. Ret nerfs are status quo, and most of us have been through it before. It's an emotional issue to a lot of us.
Have you read the last 20 pages? We aren't asking to be OP again. We've all stated that we have been OP since 3.0, and most of us have all said that needed to be fixed pretty bad. The problem is we are locked in to using ONLY the three DPS spells while no other class in the game is so locked in to the same concern. They have the freedom to choose to add in something else in tight spots (an enhance shaman stopping to heal himself when healers are taxed keeping everyone else up comes to mind). We do not have that option any more. We all know we can sustain our 3 DPS rotation, but the inability to do anything else what-so-ever makes us a subpar option to bring in to PvP and it's getting sketchy on the PvE front as well.
You brought up dropping Consecrate from your rotation for more valuable spells like Exorcism (and I assume HoW as well). Our problem is we don't have the mana sustainability to add ANYTHING but Judge>CS>DS without risking going OOM. HoW might be the only exception because if you save up enough mana you might be able to spam it and kill the mob before OOM. Twins, on the other hand, still doesn't allow that. You spam HoW on one while the other is still alive and you spend the next 1 solid minute auto-attacking on the other before you can start your rotation again. Even so, even with these nerfs I would, begrudgingly, accept that all I can do is the 3 skill rotation as long as it holds competitive DPS. I've seen plenty of WWS that show the exact opposite happening. DarkPhoenix is a perfect example...to be 10th out of 12 on DPS required using Dark Runes, Mana Pots, and LoHing himself 3 times. If that holds true we have to go out of our way beyond what all other classes need to do to DPS, and even then it's not competitive.
Lastly, our problem is not with BC content anyway...this is about balancing at 80 where things matter.
I think everyone here is a little pissed off that we aren't over powered anymore. Get over it. It breaks the game as a whole if one class is trouncing everyone else in PVP and PVE. If they left ret as it was, everyone would roll ret and it would be game over.
...
It does not make sense at all that a hybrid class is doing more damage than "pure dps" classes. The margin between pallys and DPS classes should be a lot tighter than it was in BC, but I was facerolling through sunwell and beating lots of other classes.
Quit calling paladins a "hybrid class" and using that as an excuse to keep us below everyone on the charts. ALL DPS specs should be able to come within 5% of each other if equally geared, skilled, and properly talented. Just because we can spec into Healing or spec into Tanking doesn't mean jack.
Tired of people calling us NON-PURE Dps, that just sounds dumb. Blizzard said that in the end if equally geared, skill will determine if a ret paladin gets above a rogue or not. Yes, we were OP in situations where AoE came into play during boss fights, almost guranteed to top the charts. And yes we were VERY OP in PvP. In straight single target DPS, we were actually fairly balanced.
The goal of this thread is to theorycraft our DPS, but when our DPS can potentially be brokedy assed, we need to make sure it isnt.
Have you read the last 20 pages? We aren't asking to be OP again. We've all stated that we have been OP since 3.0, and most of us have all said that needed to be fixed pretty bad. The problem is we are locked in to using ONLY the three DPS spells while no other class in the game is so locked in to the same concern. They have the freedom to choose to add in something else in tight spots (an enhance shaman stopping to heal himself when healers are taxed keeping everyone else up comes to mind). We do not have that option any more. We all know we can sustain our 3 DPS rotation, but the inability to do anything else what-so-ever makes us a subpar option to bring in to PvP and it's getting sketchy on the PvE front as well.
You brought up dropping Consecrate from your rotation for more valuable spells like Exorcism (and I assume HoW as well). Our problem is we don't have the mana sustainability to add ANYTHING but Judge>CS>DS without risking going OOM. HoW might be the only exception because if you save up enough mana you might be able to spam it and kill the mob before OOM. Twins, on the other hand, still doesn't allow that. You spam HoW on one while the other is still alive and you spend the next 1 solid minute auto-attacking on the other before you can start your rotation again. Even so, even with these nerfs I would, begrudgingly, accept that all I can do is the 3 skill rotation as long as it holds competitive DPS. I've seen plenty of WWS that show the exact opposite happening. DarkPhoenix is a perfect example...to be 10th out of 12 on DPS required using Dark Runes, Mana Pots, and LoHing himself 3 times. If that holds true we have to go out of our way beyond what all other classes need to do to DPS, and even then it's not competitive.
Lastly, our problem is not with BC content anyway...this is about balancing at 80 where things matter.
So you agree that you can spam Judgement, DS, CS without ever going OOM, and that you can't spam whatever filler spell (like consecrate) in between without going OOM. You need to find a happy medium between the two, instead of just spaming moves on cooldown. So you can get the most out of the filler spell, and go OOM just as the Boss dies, that is where player skill comes in.
What Blizzard is doing is making it so you have to actually think what is the best way you can use your mana.
Is it a long drawn out fight? I will save most of my mana until the phase where we need to burn him down.
Is it a short burst fight? I'll go full out from the start.
Is it a survivability fight? I'll use my extra mana throwing out some heals.
Previously your only limiting factor on your dps was CDs. Which is really quite boring, just make some priority system and then anyone can DPS as a Ret Pally. Now you actually need balance using filler spells, and tossing out heals if the fight needs it, to your mana pool. Which gives a lot more room for player skill to impact how well you DPS.
Sure it hurts soloing, but it was too ridiculously easy before. I can count on my hands how many times I had drink leveling from 62-70. Compared to pre-3.0 when I was leveling from 58-62, I probably used 5 stacks of water easily. You might actually have a reason to use mana now.
There might be the issue that your dps in average case of mana usage is too low, but that is something they can fix with buffing other abilities. Which is what they did when they mostly reverted the nerf on SoB/SoM.
I read this thread many times a day, I know what goes on. We aren't "locked" into using only three abilities. We are chosing to use those three abilities to yield the best results. You could make the same argument that a mage is "locked" into scorch/fireball rotation because they dont have the mana to support arcane blast spam. Judgement, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm scale the best with gear, and also provide the best results.
The new JotW lets us do our top three DPS abilities without limit. I am fine with that. Good players will find ways to stretch that out with runes, pots, pleas and LoHs. Bad players will go oom and afk autoattack. As far as utility goes, Paladins have such weak heals as it is, they are wasting their time to heal in a raid environment unless it is self preservation; DPS focuses on damage, healers focus on healing. 5 mans, maybe if the healer is bad.
I dont evny the developers, because they have put themselves in a deep hole. If JotW gives us too much mana back, we have no throttle, only full speed; not enough and we lose some utility which is at the heart of the paladin class. If it was me, I would put the JotW right around 20% so there is some thought going into what spells to cast, but there is a little extra mana regen to recover from times where you have to dump mana for self FoLs or other junk.
As far as DPS is concerned, they have JotW right; it puts a reasonable limitation on our resource, however it lacks some gear scaling element like other melee classes. It doesnt NEED to scale with gear, but it would make it more unique. Maybe if a judgement crits, it returns double the mana or something like Omen of Clarity.
Bringing up the seal co-efficients is the dial they need to turn to play with our damage. Make Blood the PVE seal and tune it's DPS. Seal of Command is the PVP seal, and tune the burst right around that.
@Quit calling paladins a "hybrid class" and using that as an excuse to keep us below everyone on the charts. ALL DPS specs should be able to come within 5% of each other if equally geared, skilled, and properly talented. Just because we can spec into Healing or spec into Tanking doesn't mean jack.
We are a hybrid class. You don't roll a Paladin if you want to deal an 18wheelers worth of DPS. I'm not using the hybrid argument as a crutch, I am calling a spade a spade.
Last edited by Saltycracker : 10/28/08 at 1:58 PM.
Reason: Save extra Posts
[snip]
DarkPhoenix is a perfect example...to be 10th out of 12 on DPS required using Dark Runes, Mana Pots, and LoHing himself 3 times. If that holds true we have to go out of our way beyond what all other classes need to do to DPS, and even then it's not competitive.
[snip]
I agree wholeheartedly with this point and I'd just like to develop a little bit more since I think it's really important.
I think that most of us are fine with being below the "pure" classes by a couple percentage points. The deal here is that we don't want to bust our asses to do it. I don't mean this in a lazy way. I mean that we want to be close to them when we're on top of our game, but bringing dark runes, mana pots and LoHing is really crossing the line. A rogue does not farm consumables to be sustainable. He farms them to improve. The fact that DarkPhoenix had to use them to sustain his damage is really a consequence of a bigger issue.
The problem, as mentioned before a couple of times, is that we're a very, very complicated class to balance. Our PvE rotation consisted of CS, DS, Judgement and Consecrate. In order to maintain this, they gave us the JotW that we all love. The problem was that Consecrate is a very big chunk of mana. So when you're pvping, you get 900 extra mana or so to spend in heals, hand, cleanses, et cetera.
So the question arises. How do you balance it? You cannot have a mana return that's too big, because it risks making us too good in PvP (which is what happened) and you cannot have a mana return that's too low because it risks making us a sub-par DPS (which is what I think is happening).
One of the things that really caught my attention (I'm unsure if it was in this thread or in the Wotlk Pally thread) is that there should be an added cost to Holy Light in one of our core spells. The most logical would be JotW. I'm trying not to wishlist, but something along the lines of 250% (someone mentioned 200% and I think that's too low) cost of Holy Light, coupled with the old 33% mana return would be great. This way Holy Light becomes 72.5% of base mana making it overly expensive to cast, and that's fine. I don't think anyone would miss Holy Light. We're not supposed to heal and you cannot seriously expect to have awesome heals and awesome dps. If there's really an emergency in healing you can try to help with FoL, which isn't bad at all.
This would serve a twofold purpose. In PvP, you wouldn't be able to throw out 3 or 4 Holy Lights, then judge and go to town with your damage, which is very possible; I've been doing it in a lot of arenas. If you really need to heal, you use AoW heals (which reset swing timer) or just plain chaincast FoL. It's a tradeoff. In PvE, we can sustain a complete rotation, using CS,DS, Judgement and Consecration, just like now. The trash problems go away (you can keep going and going) and Blizz gets a way to adjust our damage via cooldowns.
I want justice for a voice that can't be heard. Vindication for every suffering and hurt.
Let retribution hold dominion over earth. Because judgement day's not coming soon enough.
Sunwell did feel like a faceroll, and I achieved a constant 3k dps on trash up to Kalecgos this wednesday gone (ie with DS nerf but no other changes), which did not go unremarked on by my fellow raiders. However, as discussed many times, trash is trash, if you're top on trash good for you but you won't be brought to a raid because of that alone. Plus, my playstyle bordered on ridiculous, deliberately pulling aggro/getting cleaved by several trash mobs to achieve extra damage through ret aura. I don't expect to be doing that at level 80.
As for the bosses, I did extremely well on Mu'ru because of phase 1 adds, Felmyst because of air phase adds. On Brutallus I did pretty well, placing 5th (which pre-3.0 wasn't that unusual a position for me), but my experience did not seem to mirror Saltycrackers'. I achieved roughly ~2900 on recount (which if I had WWS for this would be over 3k). Pretty nice dps, and certainly in comparison warlocks seemed to be suffering a little. However, I was marginally beaten by a Fury warrior using 2 one-handers (may even be an advantage over TG currently, not sure), and was absolutely destroyed by an arms warrior and a combat rogue, who clocked ~3300 and ~3400 respectively on recount. Now, I'm aware arms warriors may be broken currently, but I thought I'd season these stories of destroying other classes in Sunwell with my own experience. Trailing me by a handful of dps was an enchancement shaman.
I really feel compelled to comment on this. What passes for skill is apparently deciding to use consecration or not deciding to use consecration. That is not skill in my mind. To me skilled is something like twisting blood and command every few attacks with a 3.1 weapon speed pre-3.0. Deciding whether to use consecration or not isn't skill, but instead simply having something dangled in front of your face that you could grab but you won't, because you know the consequences will be dire.
This is also one of the reasons I dislike having such mana constraints. "A mana class has to deal with mana", well, maybe as a healer where spamming and overhealing can be controlled (and could be attributed to skill(!)), maybe as a caster/ranged with tools (lock/hunter are the best example), but as a Retadin there is no skill involved in mana management, since we don't even have the tools to do so.
You can't overspam a rotation or shift things smartly "with skill" to make a difference, it's just press buttons on cooldown. (There's skill in DPS, mainly how you time your cooldowns and GCDs, like rogues, warriors and all other melee classes, but not in 'mana management', an empty term they like throwing around these days as if it should mean something).
Summary: "Having to deal with mana" is an empty statement that means nothing. We have no tools to do so, it's not fun, takes no skill and makes no sense. (Think it makes sense? Tell me why with any other answer than "cause it's blue!").
Note: This is not a response to Foxconfessor (though it might appear so since I'm quoting him), but just building on something he said (the "skill" involved).
Originally Posted by Turik
Just did 2v2 with a disc priest on beta... and I had no mana to do anything but rejudge. Whenever the hunter remembered to viper sting me, I was out and had to sit and wait for the 5 second rule to kick in, and judge a nearby target. I've been very patient about the changes, but the mana was just way too hard.
The sad fact is this shines a light on another major weakness: Cleanse.
Trying to cleanse viper sting, on average you lose about the same time due to all the dispel mechanics that it's not worth it. Pets that can quickly give you a 5/5 stack of poison or anything else in between literally make it "impossible", there is no counter to that. Even assuming your strat is to kill pet first (which you should if it's one of those damn scorpids), the outcome is the same: With 4-5k mana pool you're oom in a few seconds irregardless.
As soon as you go oom, you will be running on fumes between each judgement unable to fully get back on your feet again. I'm sure at this point the blizz dev logic is "but Divine Plea!", but with unbuffed Ret mana pools Divine Plea feels like trying to grease up a 2 meter square slab of sand paper with your tongue.
Edit: I understand there has been a post about mana drains/burns, but I still maintain that a lot of the trouble comes from Cleanse not receiving any buffs over the years, while everything else seems to get stacked against it.
Last thing: Saltycracker, no idea where you're coming from with this mate, I think besides the initial 2-3 knee jerk posts (of "oh noes it's the end of the world") after the nerf announcements things have been pretty far away from any real whining.
Regarding Consecration (and yea I'm probably stuck on a loop here, but I'm still waiting on a real response), no one cares about its function per se, it's just that the logic not to have it in our rotation makes no sense from a balance standpoint: It will force needing all our other abilities to do more damage, meaning we'll get more whining about burst and this is something the devs are blindly walking into it seems. Consecration is a perfect DPS tool to offload some of burst into, since it's not much of a PvP tool and not overpowered on single target PvE (where it's needed to raise the DPS without raising burst).
Idea: *New spell* single target Consecration? Same cooldown, same damage, less mana cost and no AoE effect. (No not Righteous Vengeance, that's something else making up for something else entirely).
I'd say 90% of people who know what's up don't really care about any damage nerfs as long as we stay competitive, the only concern is JotW/mana regen.
So you agree that you can spam Judgement, DS, CS without ever going OOM, and that you can't spam whatever filler spell (like consecrate) in between without going OOM. You need to find a happy medium between the two, instead of just spaming moves on cooldown. So you can get the most out of the filler spell, and go OOM just as the Boss dies, that is where player skill comes in.
What Blizzard is doing is making it so you have to actually think what is the best way you can use your mana.
Is it a long drawn out fight? I will save most of my mana until the phase where we need to burn him down.
Is it a short burst fight? I'll go full out from the start.
Is it a survivability fight? I'll use my extra mana throwing out some heals.
Previously your only limiting factor on your dps was CDs. Which is really quite boring, just make some priority system and then anyone can DPS as a Ret Pally. Now you actually need balance using filler spells, and tossing out heals if the fight needs it, to your mana pool. Which gives a lot more room for player skill to impact how well you DPS.
Sure it hurts soloing, but it was too ridiculously easy before. I can count on my hands how many times I had drink leveling from 62-70. Compared to pre-3.0 when I was leveling from 58-62, I probably used 5 stacks of water easily. You might actually have a reason to use mana now.
There might be the issue that your dps in average case of mana usage is too low, but that is something they can fix with buffing other abilities. Which is what they did when they mostly reverted the nerf on SoB/SoM.
While I definitely, definitely agree with this, the problem comes from things like Spiritual Attunement, and Dark Runes, and all sorts of other mana returning effects. Our mana pool being so low makes it more sensitive to movements than other classes. Whereas a Dark Rune to a Shadow Priest isn't worth much, to a Ret Paladin it can really upset the balance of the class. They're worth ~25% of our mana. Same with Spiritual Attunement. This is a mana regen aspect that is almost entirely out of our control. Seal of Blood is an indirect way to control this.
So then the question becomes are we going to be balanced with these things taken into account? Our mana pool, being as sensitive as it is to increases and decreases, operates on a totally different level than other casters, and isn't subject to their same considerations. There are a lot of ramifications of this, notably the ones I mentioned above.
The thing about consecration is that it isn't a bursty spell. It's a solid DPS increase, but I wouldn't call it a zerg-down spell, Hammer of Wrath would be that, save for it's 6 second cooldown. Warriors, conversely, have no cooldown on Execute. Thus, the "spam execute!" phrase finds its way into WOW culture.
As for your leveling experience: I assure you, 60-70 at TBC release was painful. Painful. We don't want to go through that again, and it looks like we won't. Using consecrate on one quest mob at a time is ridiculous, of course. With the prevalence of dailies and such, this is a real concern to have, but I think it's taken care of.
Trying to cleanse viper sting, on average you lose about the same time due to all the dispel mechanics that it's not worth it. Pets that can quickly give you a 5/5 stack of poison or anything else in between literally make it "impossible", there is no counter to that. Even assuming your strat is to kill pet first (which you should if it's one of those damn scorpids), the outcome is the same: With 4-5k mana pool you're oom in a few seconds irregardless.
How much PvP have you done in beta Avitus? I was almost sure that in wotlk they nerfed scorpid stacking, I might be wrong but that was my impression.
How is that relevant to what I'm saying about cleanse mechanics (which have not changed)?
Edit: If you're going to insist on posting in the ret thread, at least try to have it more concrete than "I vaguely remember something, but maybe I don't, dunno, maybe" fodder posts.
How is that relevant to what I'm saying about cleanse mechanics (which have not changed)?
I was under the impression that they nerfed the scorpid keeping up a 5 stack of poisons as dispell cleanse fodder, which should make cleansing viper sting much easier. I might be wrong, but from a few fights in beta I remember noticing it and being surprised.
Edit:
When I get home I'll try to dig up some duelling SS, it might have just been bad luck.
GC also said they are looking into Ret Paladins being very susceptible to mana drains in PvP.
Mana drains are still something we are looking at. We could also change those to a percent of base mana. But the effects seem to vary wildly with the hunter version being fairly powerful and the warlock version much less so. Yet we aren’t exactly trying to nerf hunters in PvP either so it’s a complex problem to solve.
A flat HL cost increase on JotW talent has really serious repercussions on ret trying to heal a 5 man. I know it's leveling and who cares but that's just a huge number and would severely hamper such a situation. Severely discourages the new players as well from using the skillset. I actually liked the cost buff/debuff idea, don't remember if it was this thread or the other thread - where JotW would give you a buff reducing cost on damage abilities and increasing cost of healing abilities. But I would guess they're in a feature freeze now, it's too late for new mechanics just tuning.
EDIT: Yeah about the scorpid, I think one cleanse removes the whole stack now for scorpids, but I'm not sure just heard about it.
EDIT2: Mana burns for percent of base mana change is pretty meaningless since it would only vary it between classes and not by that much. I don't really see anything changing with this other than them possibly trying to hit classes with more base mana harder. Percent of total mana would be ridiculous.
10/28/08, 12:24 PM
