They did, but you can still cover it with a snake trap pretty easily. Snake Trap deadly poison still stacks to 5 plus the cripple and mind numbing, its only the scorpid bullshit that got nerfed.

You insisted that viper sting was very difficult to cleanse for ret paladins in WOTLK so I was wondering if you had direct experience with it.

edit:
Yeah Sapp, but that means they are using snake trap instead of another trap, that's a significant opportunity cost as well. We do agree about how insane viper sting is, I just think Avitus was just wrong on his point since as long as there is no snake trap, it is fairly easy to remove viper sting.

The way I see it, if our mana is going to be the way it is then our dps needs to be damn close to the top. We stopped being a hybrid when we stopped having the mana to be a hybrid. Having to chose not to use our abilities for fear of going oom, not even being able to use all our damage abilities without going oom, that means we're really not a hybrid at all...we're a one or the other and mana starved in either scenario.

The argument that a mage can't spam all his abilities is a red herring, mages have a LOT of spells. I'm not mage expert but in terms of aoe they get flame strike, blizzard, cone of cold, arcane explosion that I know of. We get consecrate, a 51 point talent 360 cleave (it's target limited to 4 as well) and an ability with a 10y range that only affects undead/demons. We are very good at aoe now, but still not the best. Even in Hyjal, Warlocks and Boomkins and Mages will be beating the "old" infinite mana ret paladins on the aoe trash easily.

And about pvp, yes our burst was crazy OP but that's about it. Our healing is more effective now, but we're even worse off than holy paladins who constantly complain they're trivial to shutdown in arenas. We even lost some utility in 3.0 in that a good ret paladin can't stop most cc against him with sacrifice anymore. Really you take away ret's burst and even ignoring mana they're a pretty limited spec for arenas. At the peak of ret being "OP" RMP still ended up being the top arena team, beating out ret teams with cc and that was before the repent nerf. So you can't argue that our burst was balanced, it was too much, but ret is still in a position where it's waiting for something to be competitive in high end arenas...and now we don't even have mana to use the edge of bringing heals to dps heavy combos.

I don't follow the doom and gloom, I really think we're 1-2 good changes (personally I think new abilities would be the answer) away from being very close to where we need to be. They still have our burst to contend with now, since obviously they find it important to balance us for battlegrounds. Though of course any geared ret paladin with a resto shaman on his 6 dropping WF and heals was god mode in bgs before 3.0 was even a thought on anyone's minds and yet that combo I don't think anyone managed to get it above 1900 so you just can't compare bgs and arenas for competitiveness of a class.

This is actually flat out wrong. Blizzard said they were breaking DPS up into three tiers. While they didn't name tiers, they did say which classes were in each:

Tier1: BM Hunters, Rogues, Mages, Locks
Tier2: DKs, warriors, Enh Sham, Feral, Ele sham
Tier3: Boomkin, Spriest, RETRIBUTION, Surv Hunters

(Note that they DID say each tier would be closer than they were in BC, but still you could expect maybe a 10% dps difference between each. )

The tiers are based on utility vs dps. Tier 1 is highest personal dps, lowest raid contribution. Tier 3 is highest raid contribution, lower personal dps. The fact that you generate replenishment is, IMO, what mostly put ret in Tier 3. Not to mention a powerful aura and BoM (which IS better than shout in many ways). If you feel this is an aggregius error, take it up with the suggestion boards.

It states very clearly in the rules of these forums that "QQing" will not be tolerated, so I suggest the wave of you kids that have recently begun spamming this thread with pointless complaints watch yourselves before the banhammer comes and hits some homeruns. This thread is for constructive, informed posts that lead to a better understanding about the class. Crying here about nerfs will do absolutely nothing. We got hit with a nerfbat, but we were overpowered. Get over it, move on.

Zurm, could you possibly link the source of that? Last I heard the theory was still hunter/mage/lock/rogue as top-tier DPS and everyone else about 5% below them, ignoring various encounter-specific confounding factors.

That's actually a more solid idea. If JotW gave you a % increase in healing cost and a decrease in offensive cost then it'd work the same way without affecting the skillset for ret healing. Besides, levelling is important.

It's still very difficult. The poisons made it impossible but right now it's still very difficult. Having a cleanse resisted means you just lost the mana from the cleanse and the mana drained in 1.5s of viper. This is a very non-trivial amount of mana for a ret.

EDIT:

Can you provide a source? I remember the exact opposite saying they were considering everyone as either DPS, Heal or Tank regardless of spec.

Here's my source (post #2):

I'll try to find the link, it was by a blue (not ghostcrawler, that's all I remember), as an addendum to the first post listing the top tier. This was a later shift, because a DK or warrior would never provide as much raid utility as a Spriest or Ret pally, and they wanted individuals to understand that.

I won't argue on the mana issue... I think it is pretty stupid as well, especially due to fights in raids that drain mana (ie: the chain lightning KJ uses). However, it is POINTLESS TO QQ HERE. So stop, if you want to QQ blizzard has a whole network of forums for you.

What utility is lost by less mana? You can still judge on cooldown, run your aura, and use your primary abilities. Consecration should not be a core DPS ability.

Allow me to point out one more thing. As of the current live build, Ret Pally dps is entirely restricted by GCDs. No other class in the game has this luxury. Warriors and rogues are starved of their primary energy source at all times. Healers and casters are restricted by cast times. Enh sham have to wait for cooldowns. This is a flawed model, and you can't honestly say you believe it is OK to play that way.

I've never seen that anywhere either. And it looks like complete nonsense; the idea that shamans and warriors possess similar raid utility is completely absurd.

This isn't QQ, it's a discussion. And allegedly Blizzard does read these and other forums.

Yes, they do. And if they really feel there is an imbalance, they will base it off of in-game testing first. There's enough QQ in the live forums that I'm sure it's already underway, and leaving 3 pages of crying will get you no where at this point.

And nonsense? Battleshout + rampage + blood frenzy, just off the top of my head. 2% physical dmg, 5% melee crit, 30% bleed dmg sound pretty good to me. If you want to find it yourself, it was on on blue.mmo-champion.com, about 3 weeks back.

The balancing isn't done. Moonkins are flat out rediculous, and will likely get nerfs in the coming weeks. And spriests aren't doing half dps like they did in BC, but are certainly doing a good 20% below the primary dps classes... and their reviews are done. Don't believe me, just watch the meters about a month into BC.

It's your responsibility to cite your own evidence. We're not going to scale mountains of archived posts to find something you claim exists; that's your job.

And we're not going to debate Shaman vs Warrior raid utility here but suffice it to say "lol".

With or without the specific example of scorpid sting, my point which was about Cleanse and cleanse resists in general still stands. Please stop trying so hard to prove me "wrong" by trying to latch on to a throwaway comment.

At 80, cleanse costs roughly 240 mana (WITH benediction). Failing to cleanse 3 times (again with or without scorpid sting being the cause this is fairly common) means I just cost myself 720 mana (PLUS whatever the viper sting does. How is that balanced?



Equally (and this is a new point about our mana pool size vs drains/burns) at roughly 5.5k mana at 80, a disc priest with improved mana can get me from 100% -> 0% in 7 seconds (before resilience). I'd say with such a microscopic mana bar and the refusal to have rage like regen (which still makes no sense), the single remaining option is to give retadins some sort of passive reduction to burns/drains which would stack on reduction by resilience (something along the lines of "drains/burns do 50% less" or whatever balanced percentage of your choosing to compensate for having almost no mana pool).



Zurm, I would appreciate it if you don't place this bomb shell unless with a source. I know there's supposed to be a slight distinction between pure and hybrid, but I've never heard about the further distinction of "Tier 2" and "Tier 3" and I'd have a world to say about it if that's the case.

Please get a source or remove it mate.

Sounds like a pretty good talent spec for level 92 warriors.

Hunters are limited by GCDs (and short flips to Viper)
Actually warrior dps is mostly held back by cooldowns and threat
If you read their discussions, they almost always skip "effiency" talents, ie talents that decrease rage cost, because they simply aren't needed

The model is also flawed in that paladins don't have one dmg ability that isn't on a cooldown

I'm at work now and I can't spend an hour digging for a post that old. When I find the link, I'll repost it. Ignore it for now if you want, but don't be surprised when it's right.

While you don't lose the ability to heal (aow procs, sacred shield), without mana you most certainly do lose the option to do so, unless you relish the idea of dropping your dps long-term in order to function as a hybrid short-term. We shouldn't have to make this kind of choice - shaman's maelstrom weapon is balanced around the fact that they can use the proc for either a dps nuke or an emergency heal, but NOT based around their mana pools (mostly thanks to sham. rage).

As for paladins being restricted by GCD's this is false; we are restricted by both GCD's and ability cooldowns. And I believe hunters are our closest model, with their dps being largely reliant on steady shot, which is on the GCD but has no cooldown itself, but has a very short cast time (equal or less than the GCD). So today we will be restricted by GCDs and ability cooldowns in addition to mana. How's that for a flawed model?

Re: JotW fixes.

I know the Armor -> Int or Str -> Int talents arent very popular, but paladins really need a regen mechanic that scales with gear. I would think that the best way for mana regen to scale with gear would be to take advantage of replenishment. Here is what I am thinking:

Glyph of Judgement of the Wise:

Each time your Judgments crit, your personal mana regeneration from Replenishment is increased by 300% for 5 seconds.

This would encourage paladins to build mana regen around our strengths, burst DPS. This would work both for arena PVP and PVE.

Funny, because our combat rogues all talk about having almost too much energy than they have to use these days. Cast bar is a limitation now? Spamming shadowbolt non-stop with only a lifetap if they run low on mana is not similar to our mechanics? I can't remember when our warrior was rage starved, even pre-3.0. Sure our mana bar should do something other than look pretty, but you can't claim that every other class somehow is in the same predicament as we, that's simply untrue. Blizzard seems to think DP is the solution, if that's the case they really should've made jotw 20-25% and left this nerf to 15% until 13 Nov when we actually have access to this new ability as it would've saved a lot of current nervousness.

And a point about those three buckets/tiers, first I've heard of it but if it is true I've got a serious issue with shaman being T2 while ret is T3. A shaman brings far more buffs to a raid than a ret paladin, really we bring replenishment and arguably 3% haste to melee (since a boomkin may be out of range). I'm not sure how blizzard balances replenishment, but with only two needed in a 25 man raid and three classes able bring it I'd be upset to hear that they were over valuing this buff.

I believe Zurm is referring to this blue post from the beta forums:
This was the famous "hunters, mages, locks, rogues" post. I haven't seen the other tiers outlined as explicitly though.

I think you either have wrong information or they're going against all they've been saying in Beta, because all I've been reading is about how hybrids aren't supposed to lag so much behind pures anymore. You cannot seriously come here whining about uninformed people and then cite something that goes against what we know without sources. Besides the list does seem a little bit skewed; having an Enh Shaman providing around the same utility as a warrior?

I'd also like to point out that everyone is limited by something. Rogues are limited by energy (which is a glorified global cooldown), warriors by rage, we're limited by GCD, mages by mana, locks by GCDs (arguably, since lifetap helps a lot with mana) and so on... Rogues don't worry about cooldowns in their damaging abilities. Warriors do, to some extent, but they can keep doing damage with non-cooldown abilities (such as slam, heroic strike). Casting classes pretty much have to worry only about mana. So why should we have to worry about both mana and cooldowns for our basic dps abilities? It's a weak argument, but it's there.

EDIT:

This is something we've known for a while. The fact that I'm not designed to lag 20-30% anymore is, personally, one of the reasons I'm still playing my ret paladin.

Ignore the tiered post until I can find the source. I'm done posting here for now since I obviously struck a cord. I've stated my view of the situation and obviously you all disagree. Having played a ret paladin on beta, and pretty much all of end-game raiding since BT, I felt that ret was severly overpowered until these fixes.

I think there are a few things to keep in mind. Balancing is by no means done, and I expect it will continue at least 1-2 months into WOTLK, much like it did in BC. Even with these coming nerfs, I expect you won't be severly dissapointed with your performance at level 80. Regardless of these changes, ret is in an infinitely better place now that it was.

I agree wholeheartedly that the mana regeneration nerf is severe, but three pages of complaints about it doesn't help anyone in my eyes. Being the current owner of Rawr.Retribution, I have turned to these boards for my models for a long time. I judge the quality of the posts based on how much I can use for the model, whether it be confirmation in something I've already done or a tweak/correction. I have seen nothing in the last 5 pages that really contributes to this (opinion, of course).

It was another post by another blue, highlighting that all hybrids were not equal in their eyes due to raid contribution. I don't agree with it either, but I saw it. It was never on MMO-champion's main page, but I read it through the blue tracker they have at MMO-Champion BlueTracker. Again, since I can't find it, ignore it for now.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. If I have any questions or need advice for the rawr module, I'll ask.

Lifetap and Warlocks isn't a fair comparison to an unlimited resource mechanic. Since Warlocks lose a lot of DPS when they need to Lifetap.

Well Replenishment is a pretty huge buff, but I also never remembering seeing anything besides two tiers (hybrid and non) and only being 5% away in ideal circumstances. Which means equal gear, skill, and a fight that doesn't favor one class over the other. The problem with having such a clearly stated limit is you will have people posting WWS parses all over the place with that not being true. No matter how much they balance it there is always going to be someone in last. Wether it was because of skill, gear or being not balanced, people will try to use to show there class being underpowered.

Viper sting destroys all casters; we really don't need to pretend we are this special little victim. The issue is that we aren't casters (with a double size mana pool and regeneration tools) as Ret, so vulnerability to an ability like this puts us at a serious competitive disadvantage to 3 other melee classes. With that kind of a weakness - especially if hunters somehow managed to rise in representation - it is going to be really hard to fit into any 3s matrix given other choices.

With Cleanse in general though, this expansion is going to be a nightmare for it now that mages and DKs all have dispel resistance. I fully expect holy and ret paladins to be spending a massive amount of their GCDs just attempting to cleanse themselves or teammates.