Pardon the late response, but the boards were inaccessible for an hour or so.

And herein lies part of the issue. In order for us to remain competitive with other Classes, we're currently having to rely on Consecrate in our rotation. I know in some testing last night (on Live) against Target Dummies (the Level 70 one), Consecrate is comprising ~200 DPS.

My parse on Recount showed Consecrate making up 10.1% of my damage while Divine Storm contributed only 8.9% of my damage. I'm a bit concerned that our 51 point talent provides less of a significant contribution than a baseline ability. Granted this was a single target test, but nonetheless is worrisome. If Consecrate is not meant to be part of our core DPSing mechanics then, as Avitus has enumerated many times in well-thought and well-articulated posts: we need need some sort of compensation to offset the loss.

Tonight my guild will be headed into Sunwell and I'm looking forward to evaluating the WWS parses from Brutallus.

You hit a nerve because you decided to drop such an unsourced turd in the middle of this thread and act like you were bringing god's wisdom from on high. Your post was intentionally antagonistic and was based around "you're supposed to be on the bottom suck it up".

Did you expect people to be nice and happy after you decided to jump in with something like that?

No one here i saying we did not need a Nerf, the general consensus here is that we did.

What we are not happy here is the pigeon-holing that the new 15% JotW build 9138 has brought us, where anything outside our Judge>CS>DS rotation risks us going OOM; specially after having the freedom to choose our spells in the previous build.

As for us beating other classes at lvl 70, I don't think anyone cares about lvl 70 numbers anymore. All we want is what we were promised, and that is:

and what we received is THIS: A Skilled Ret. Pally, 'achieving' 10th place DPS on Naxx:
Wow Web Stats

@Zurm

I think you are right in the sense that people are overreacting. Our situation in raids as far as mana goes simply isn't that bad. My numbers show that our mana does depend on buffs and raid damage, but that with a totally normal raid composition a ret paladin can expect to use a full ability rotation including consecrate, exorcism and HoW. You won't be healing, but you will be going full bore on dps.

I am a rabid reader of blue posts though, and I never have recalled anything like the 3 tiers you posted, so I think that is probably a misinterpretation of something. If I am wrong I would love to know about it, but I don't think I am.


This is the latest version of my spreadsheet. It takes all of the newest changes to both our mana regeneration and dps and puts them all together. It is designed for level 80, and the default settings have a full set of Naxx 10 dps plate. There is a full section on mana regeneration customized for whatever buffs you want and detailed dps charts and comparisons which you can customize to the buffs, talents and rotations you have on hand. Enjoy!

<defunct link>

If there is anything people want added to the next generation, feel free to let me know. I won't be doing a full gear implementation like Rawr does, but if there are numbers you want crunched that aren't in the sheet, just let me know and I can see what I can do to implement them.

Edit: Use this link instead for 1.81 version, corrected 3 bugs. Conclusions remain the same, numbers shift a bit.

Ret_dpsv1.8.1-Live.xls - FileFront.com

If you think Ret pallies PvE dps is low, then they should buff the damage on some of the core damage abilities. You don't need to give us unlimited mana to make us competitive, which I am not totally convinced we aren't at 80.

A target dummy really isn't the best way to argue about how much DPS you are doing because you missing many buffs/debuffs. Also, when looking at DS dps, you need to take into account the dps of it from Righteous Vengeance procs.

Even though he might be skilled, what about his gear. Did all the people who did better them him have the same gear level he does? You can't just post a WWS of beta and say "SEE! not within 5% dps", since there is no way to compare the gear of everyone in the raid.

edit
Also you say he is skilled but he didn't seem to be getting off as many specials as it seems he should.
Divine Storm: 23, 11.1s effective CD
Crusader Strike: 31, 8.25s effective CD
Judgement: 26, 9.85s effective CD
Which seems like a pretty poor rotation to me.

Also his Judgement only crit 24% of the time, with Fanaticism it should be 50% easy (look at his other ability crit rates) so something is wrong or he got really unlucky. Which would also explain the low dps.

I urge you to re-read my post, as I did not advocate anything about mana in my post. Particularly, please note the final sentence:

I'm well-aware Dummies aren't the best way to test our DPS, however it still demonstrates that Consecrate still makes a notable impact (about 10% or ~200 DPS) on our damage output. If we're not supposed to use it, as Zurm implied, then we should be compensated for the DPS loss that results in.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one reading this WWS the same way. According to that report it looks like Ret pallies are right where they should be (top 10 in all but 3 fights, top 5 in 2 of them).

Not only that but just look at how far the rogues differ in DPS there. One rogue is constantly in the top 3, the other in the bottom 3. Basically the WWS you posted does nothing for the argument that the nerf was too much. In fact, it does quite the opposite.

I was agreeing with the fact that if we turn out to not be doing good enough dps, that it should be tuned in some other way then allowing us to do 100% Consecrate uptime. Which is what a lot of people in this thread are advocating. Sorry if it was misleading that I was disagreeing with you, was just more of a general statement in response to what you said.

"Remember why we made these changes: it was to lower your dps and mana regen, so yes, those two things should be lower."

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Retribution nerfs in the latest build, 2

From GC's most recent post the intent was to lower Rets sustained dps as well, not just the pvp burst. I don't understand why people keep harping about the loss of consecrate, it was intended to hurt. If anything you should be complaining about the lack of interactivity in combat.

I'd just like to thank Zurm for all the good work he has done. If it wasn't for him and a few others it would have taken me a lot longer to get where I ended up in TBC and I'd have made far more mistakes along the way.

A few posts here have probably been too rabid, including at least one of mine. However, in general, I don't believe every post has to uncover some brand new fact fresh from the combat logs. Of course, that research is all very necessary for these forums to be relevant, and for utilities like rawr to be kept up to date. So there are the 'facts', but there is also going to be a discussion of the implications of the facts, and while contributors should attempt to stay as objective as possible, there is always going to be the human element. I still think that is an integral part of 'furthering our understanding of the class'.

With that out the way, I just wanted to say that my experience doesn't correspond to the statement that ret paladins are the only class limited purely by gcds, at least in the majority of circumstances. This was definitely true below 35%, and I think we all agree that 35% was too high for HoW. It is also true when exorcism and HW are usable and off their relatively lengthy cooldowns. The rest of the time there were collisions where the gcd pushed back the next ability, but also lull periods where everything was on cooldown. Playing the enchancement shaman post-3.0 to me feels amazingly similar, with seemingly unavoidable gcd collisions.

The point is that Blizzard doesn't want you to have 100% Consecrate uptime in most situations. They want you to decide wether or not you have to mana to use on it. Or even if you don't and might go OOM before the end of the fight, just say screw it we need to get this add down now or we will wipe anyway. Do you really want to DPS as a class that is a simple as, use these abilities in this priority scheme, and have no concern about anything else?

It's like deja vu all over again, deciding to use or not use consecrate is not tactical, it does not enhance gameplay anymore than spamming buttons. And at least with button spam you're doing something.

I strongly believe the reason they're leaving consecrate out of the rotation is because the mana can be used elsewhere in PvP, and without other abilities I just don't see how healing was OP when we're casting full duration holy lights. Interrupting ret paladins was the tactic other classes should have had to deal with.

Agreed that a simple WWS is not a scientific test, and maybe I should've added that that WWS is from In Harmony, and has been discussed on the official forums extensively, from that kind of guild (http://www.in-harmony.org/), I would not expect his gear to be crap as to come in @ 10th place. Currently EU armory is down, but if you want to check the gear on those WWS reports, later, feel free to, they're on EU-Thrall.

edit_______________
Also remember this is Naxx where paladins should excel, and rotation should include Exorcism and Holy Wrath.

Here's the link to the discussion on the official forums:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Post 9138 build Nax WWS Parse (Ret Fails)

As for the mana issue, strong mana-regen was the only thing keeping us competitive. Buffing core damage abilities seems to be opposite of what Blizz wants, due to our "Op'd Burst Damage".

We're not asking for both increased core dmg, and increased mana-regen, but by cutting both of them, we are hamstrung on both talons... effectively rendering us mediocre DPS, better than TBC, but still considerably low.

be it through rage-like mana regen for sustained DPS, or increased sustainable core dmg, all we ask is to remain competitive as promised.

EDIT___________________________________________________________
Of course lvl 80 figures from the various contributors to this thread would yield much more reliable numbers, but until we get those, WWS's like this and theorycrafting is all we have.

I disagree. Viper sting hurts us more than any other mana class, because of our very low mana pool. It will be even worse at level 80, where we'll be the only mana class without intel on its gear. Not to mention cleanse fails almost every time to remove it, leading us to be oom even faster.

Slightly different topic for a second, wouldn't it now be a good time to ask for a seal duration increase? 14% base mana every 2 minutes seems painfull.

Out of Combat maybe not, but in combat, ouch.

Are you referring to Zurms numbers or some other "5%" source? I have a feeling I've seen a post about "hybrids" intended being within 5% of "pure" classes... I tried to find the source but to no avail. Anyone else remember this or am I just dreaming?
I had 32% Judgement crit rate during almost 4 hours or Malygoss 25 tries (over 800 judges) while my melee crit rate was 42%.

[edit:] Of course the self damage from JoB can't crit...

Slight off topic: Been talking to Zurm, though I don't think his outburst was justified I understand the main frustration comes from there being simply too much spam in this thread at the moment. By the time some of us get home there's already 2-4 new pages every day, mostly about the same 2 or 3 things over and over. However given the sheer number of unique posters during patch/expansion times I guess I can understand why it's happening and it can't "all" be attributed to whining.

Lets all try to reduce repetitive circular posts (myself included, assuming that people actually read things before they argue the same points again), I understand a lot of people want to vent, but this really shouldn't be the place for it, at least try to have something new in every post otherwise it brings the thread down.

/end off topic

Great work.

At first glance shouldn't base armor be significantly higher? Assuming my previous info was correct (~9k for low armor, ~10.85k for high armor) and the new 10% armor added, I'd set the base to ~12k armor. Or do you have a different confirmation for 10k?

Also is "time below 20% - 19" in seconds or percentile of total time? If it's 19 seconds out of 360 it needs a major bump, if it's percentile it probably should be something around 16% of total time (guestimate assuming around 20% total raid dps increase).

Possibly also good to tie in Consecration Glyph with Consecration Delay (it's set at 10.50 despite glyph being at 2).

Anyway it's going to take some more time going through all the additions beyond these quick first impressions, but very nice indeed

Making it a Glyph that turns Consecration into single target would be fitting indeed, though I'd argue if they do latch on to this idea it would be too important of a Glyph that it should be made baseline (though it would fit the bill either way they go of course). As I understand it, the only reason consecration is a no go is that it's AoE (can anyone come up with any other reason?).

You think spamming a button when it lights up is more fun and interesting then deciding when and wether you should use it? One is mindless, boring and something everyone can do, the other is a way people can use skill and thought to maximize there effectiveness.

Yes, one reason for the nerf to unlimited mana was so in PvP you can't just spam all your abilities and stay at full mana. Which you could except if you get mana drained, but that is something GC said they are looking into.

As has been said, our mana pool is small but we can cleanse. Even with dispel resists, it is still better than anyone but druids. It's also arguing about a difference between a small amount of time before anyone is oom; even if you get some resists but don't let them tick to full, you are probably looking at 30-45sec til oom, versus a minute for basically everyone else. It destroys anyone with a mana bar.

Besides, the point is actually not really how it affects us versus other casters. You don't bring a ret paladin to substitute for caster DPS; you bring them to substitute for melee. And it is a huge comparative disadvantage versus other melee who are immune to drains.

Neither are interesting, but given the choice between plus or minus 200dps, I'd choose the spam each time. My other char is a prot warrior so I'm okay with spam in the abscence of tactical decisions.

I did think of two things earlier that could help only PVE, but either a simple mana reduction on consecrate tied with a deep ret talent. Or have art of war also give the option for a free consecrate which wouldn't effect PVP balance at all, and give ret something to look for.

Depends a lot what you expect ret to do in pvp and maybe GC cand clarify their "vision" like he did with consecrate.
My opinion is that ret should actively use utility spells (sacred shield, cleanse, hands) and heals to counter the utility of other classes. And if you did that mana was an issue with lvl 80 pvp gear.

I found my ret paladin (at level 70, mind you) could keep his mana up infinitely, but ONLY when he stuck to using FoL, HoJ, CS, Judgements, Seals, and Divine Storm. Once I started deviating from the basics, I found my mana was dropping rather quickly, and this is without any mana drains. I feel that paladins were only not running oom in pvp because they were just quickly killing everything. With only a few moves, of course their mana isn't going to go down a noticeable amount.

Has Blizzard considered the increase in killing time (and additional utility required) vs the decrease in available mana?