Siawn

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Retribution nerfs in the latest build, 2
One of the more recent quotes from blue regarding Ret. Maybe I'm not reading this properly, but it literally sounds like he's advocating reducing the damage and mana returned from Judgment simply so we can feel like we're doing more when we hit the button more often? That doesn't solve anything other than giving us more GCD collisions and making us feel like they've fixed us. It worries me that Blizzard feels hitting the same button more often for the same overall effect is much more enjoyable.

 

Endoscient

What do you call interesting for a DPS then? The mana change actual gives you legitimate choices of what to do, and it is not easy to do it 100% correctly. Which is to use Consecrate as much as possible, while always being able to do your higher dpm abilities (Judge, DS, CS, HoW).

But they were nerfing our PvE dps purposely wit h this change, if they didn't nerf it with less mana they would have nerfed it more somewhere else.

Yes, mana would be an issue, but mana is an issue to all casters. You'll be able throw out utility spells while still using your 3 main damage spells (Judge, CS, DS), and you might have to drink after a bit of it. This is no different then most other mana classes in PvP.

To all the people who keep trying to think of Glyphs or Talents to make Consecrate spammable. That is not what Blizzard wants us to be able to do, as said by GC.

 

Valerys

Uhm. So tonight in Hyjal with the nerfed JotW, I was spamming every ability on cooldown. EVERY ability, including Consecration, Exorcism, HW, DS, CS, Judgement, resealing, AoW procs, and HoSalv on myself. Never once did I go below 60% mana. And I was highly competitive on damage meters, achieving second place on Archimonde (a fight rather unfriendly to melee). Seems to me someone is overreacting somewhere. FWIW, I have only two pieces with int, the T6 chest and S3 gloves, plus the chest and ring stat enchants.

If level 80 is anything remotely similar, we don't have anything to worry about raid-wise.

 

Andread

Does the nerf to JotW make BE's arcane torrent any more interesting? Seems that 6% of total mana is about 10-15% of base mana for a decently geared lvl 70. Given that I'm horde and thus have no other racials to chose from this is purely curiosity, however I do wonder if a free consecrate every 4 minutes would be noticeable.

 

Volrath50

I don't mind consecration being unsustainable in the least, I actually like the idea of having a spell that we can choose to use, for short term gain, in exchange for long term pain. As it is, I'm not too terribly upset with the general changes and nerfs we got (for PvE, I don't PvP) as long as our actual DPS is competitive. And that is more a game of numbers rather than the overall picture.

Even with all the spreadsheets and theorycrafting being done, I think we'll have to wait until 80 to really see how things go. The big wildcard, in my view, is how much AoE damage we'll take, which may boost our mana enough to throw down some single target consecrations.

"As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgement, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me."

 

Anauel

This is promising. Are you certain this was after the hotfix? Did you confirm that the mana return in your log is 15% of your base mana? (Should be around 400 or so, I think)

Not saying I don't trust you, I'm just unsure if EU has been hotfixed already.

 

makotospeaks

My log shows 443 mana returned with no int gear, not that it should matter, about to do Kara and SWP later.... but outside it feels really low.

 

Fqubed

I guess we shall all get to test it out this week and see for ourselves. To note though at 80 you will only have int from your +stat enchants as GC has said we have to share loot with wars DK. Do you have a breakdown of your mana in sources? or a wws?

 

Valerys

Yes, I tested it before the raid and it was returning 400ish mana, although the tooltip is not updated and still says 33%.

Belf arcane torrent is nice I guess, although I only used it to silence the necromancers and did not need it for mana recovery as such.

Also tested a rotation for 6 minutes on a dummy only with self-buffs, BoM and using SoB and JoL. Was able to sustain Judgement/CS/DS indefinitely, resealing and AoW FoLs (to cover for Blood damage, once every minute or so) dipped my mana somewhat but never went below 3,5k or so, and that was rebuilt gradually (faster if I switched to JoW).

EDIT: To clarify, JoW still appears to be bugged on live and proccing like mad, as we confirmed on Kaz'rogal. However, I was using JoL myself and JoW certainly wasn't around on trash waves, yet I still had no mana problems whatsoever spamming AoE on them. With (bugged) JoW on Kaz'rogal my mana barely dipped even with his mana burns.

 

Multipass

Is the SoC nerf already on live? Does that push SoB back into the #1 spot for DPS due to the possible mana regen from spiritual attunement?


As for everything else, the change with Hammer of Wrath does make sense to me, I don't really see any problem with pushing such a high dmg attack on a lower health percentage, I do honestly feel it is a little imba when a target reaches 35% and one HoW can bring him to 1% or dead, depending. It didn't always do that much damage, but it often was close.

However, what bothers me is the mana changes. Though I have read conflicting reports in this thread, ("No effect shut up whiners, we're fine!" to "OH GOD WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING USELESS") one of the big things I was excited for with WOTLK was the blue announcement ages ago that they wanted to make it so we didn't -have- to worry about our mana bar so much.

Towards the end of BC WoW (seal twisting, pre-3.0 days) mana was usually not to big of an issue during the average sunwell boss encounter as long as Judgement of Wisdom was up, but during trash, pvp and just about every other aspect of the game the 99% of the time was worrying about your mana, and it has been freaking amazing to no longer be focused on such a thing now only to have it ripped away from us. Just so many of these changes seem knee jerk and poorly planned in how they directly conflict with things they have stated before.

I just don't see why it wouldn't be easier to build on the system of differing PVE and PVP effects. I know this has probably been discussed to death somewhere in this thread, but 250+ pages is a lot to read through to check for this topic so please excuse me while I rant a bit here. But they already have a simple version of it implemented with the duration of CC skills on a PC vs NPC mob, so why not take that effect and make it further reaching? Ret is doing to much burst in PVP? Change the baselines of skill damage for PVP encounters. For instance, in PVE Judgement of the Command will do 992 to 1057 holy damage, change it for when you are against a PC target it will do around 600 to 700 holy damage. It will allow gear to still scale your potential damage, but with the inclusion of Stamina and Resilience into the picture the fights will still last longer and give more of a chance for tactical play rather then SPAM BUTTONS KILL TARGET. I know this isn't some new or exciting idea, but DAMN WOULD IT BE NICE!

Of course implementing such a system right now in such a late stage of WOTLK is impossible, nor would I think they could do it as just a patch... but it would just be a nice feature for a future expansion. It's a little ridiculous that every sweeping change to nerf us in PVP also has wide reaching consequences in PVE, which is a tired argument but... Hey it feels good to rant

 

• Zurm

I haven't been able to find the 5% post or the post I found that distinguishes hybrids, but I did find this for now:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - @GC, Could we get a straight answer?

 

Corronach

You don't think that seals and judgments doing less damage is sufficient? I don't think anyone here is complaining about nerfing dps as much as the nerf to JoTW. I really don't remember, but the only time I think I mentioned the seal/judgment change were both PVP concerns, with Holy Offensive utility and replacement for our burst.

But here are the tactical decisions I did like with old JotW.

I liked being able to act like a healer for when Maexxna enraged and a web is going to happen (aka putting sheath up), I liked being able to act like a healer for Loatheb and cover two targets helping out my healers. I liked being able to throw out that AoW proc to someone who needs it in PvP. JoTW didn't just open up consecrate, it opened up Paladin abilities for Paladins. For once I actually felt like ret had something to work with. Did it need tweaking? Absolutely, but healing and doing melee damage sounded like how the class should play.

Whatever our dps is our dps is, we'll work it out and maximize it because JoL/Replenishment is nearly enough to justify a raid slot by itself. It's just really disappointing to see the one thing that really made me like the beta Ret Paladin removed, and told that it's not how a ret paladin should play when it felt exactly how a ret paladin should play.

 

Selenia

Re: never running out of mana on live in a raid.

Currently on live, it's possible to have multiple judgements of the same kind up on a mob and Judgement of Wisdom seems to have no internal cooldown and a very high proc rate.

Tested it out with a friend on the Shadows of Doom elites for the Scourge invasion event.
Two JoW on that mob and I couldn't empty my mana pool no matter how hard I tried.

 

• Avitus

Yep, this is what all of us know and expect (pure DPS being slightly higher than hybrids under optimal conditions, with cross overs based on skill).

The point of conflict is the further Tier split between hybrids themselves which you claimed. I can't find anyone who's seen a blue post about this.

 

Endoscient

Nothing about this change is stopping you from using AoW procs. Sure you lose some dps, but so does any other hybrid who throws out heals. Shamans have to waste a Maelstrom Weapon proc to toss out their instant heals. You can do 3 FoL for the cost of a Consecrate which really isn't that high of a price. Before the change you could toss out heals all the time while spamming all of your abilities and still be at/near max mana the whole time.

You keep on asking to make tactical decisions, but you want dpsing (not the utility part of what you do) to be just a spam fest of cooldowns without ever having to make a decision. What about fights where you are just totally maximizing dps (like Brutallus was for 2.4), you want those fights to be the easiest for you?

 

Anauel

The problem with this is that it opened up a monster. You had someone that could heal for 4k without much worries (at 70, I cannot say anything about 80), have incredible burst, good survivability and excellent sustainability. As you said, it needed tweaking and that's exactly what they did. You should be able to last a while by dpsing, throwing out AoW fols and hands sparingly. Some people have confirmed that they can go indefinitely with CS/DS/Judge, so there is room for you to throw around some heals and in general use your hybrid utility. But you must understand that you aren't supposed to be the holy saviour of your team. You can't expect to have great burst and great healing at the same time.

 

Corronach

I don't believe the combat system as it currently is designed favors any tactical decision, you do a set rotation with regards to the highest dmg ability and mana dump when you can. But with heals I'm not talking about a flash here or a flash there. I'm saying being able to stop dps'ing and throw out non-trivial heals. It was fun in PVE, and I thought it would play an important role in those seeking the Immortal title. But it was necessary in PVP as some reason why we have zero tools needed to be a competitive Arena class.

The shaman comparison is an interesting one. Their mana does get periodically refilled which is a distinct advantage, because whatever the time to OOM is set will never increase no matter how much better our gear gets, and how old the content is.

But the complaint about interesting damage rotations is so common amongst people I talk with. I've known many good players who just lost all interest because their combat is boring, and a system of uncorrelated instants will never be interesting. Looking at the Death Knight is a good example of how every class should be.

 

• frmorrison

It is about 400 mana everytime (so you are right about a free cons every 2 min/6 min since you can torrent at the start), so it is better than nothing especially when you have lots of free GCD.


Interesting, since I have about the same mana pool now at an 80 would and combined with a lower base mana means I don't have mana issues at 70. I have 2 Tier 6 for the 50 mana on melee hit. However, Ret is in trouble because they will have little int (just from buffs and 10 stats to chest) at 80.


Edit: I did some dummy testing and got 1% dps difference using SoB/SoC (however I don't have the crit libram) and JoW has no cooldown, it has some % proc rate.

Edit: I wonder why SoC is still so close to SoB in damage for me, and if the ghost hit is still around wtb a 73 dummy.

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

 

Corronach

For sure it was a monster, and yet it still couldn't beat a PMR team. It seemed like the counter balance for all the other flaws in PvP. But there should have been a significant dps trade off, I agree. I think the flaw lies in having 4 instant attacks (HoW included). They should have introduced more strikes and spread out our dps. So when you heal you're losing your rhythm, several gcd's and have to start building your damage back up. But I really don't want to go off on a tangent of what I would have designed.

 

Foxconfessor

Just made a quick test on a dummy on the hotfixed live server. SoB, JoL (necessary with SoB). This basically achieves what the devs set out to do. A Judge/CS/DS rotation seems to be maintainable almost indefinitely, I stopped after about 4 minutes and my mana had hardly budged. Adding consecration I ran into problems after 1min 40secs. So this does exactly what they intended to do, whether or not people agree with it. In general I was being fairly kind and waiting on judgement if it would get pushed back by more than half a second through pushing another button.

It would be interesting to see how the nerfed JoW increases longevity but that will require a second paladin and the 3.03 changes. Oh, and I have 2 parts t6. Might be interesting to get some data on the wisdom proc from that.

Update. Just did a round on a 70 dummy after breaking my set bonus but keeping my manapool the same (removed the 3 Sunwell t6 items). Rotation was the basic 3 abilities. Got a few dodges due to not being expertise capped, but all my judgements landed fine. Anyway, without t6 2 part bonus and still using JoL I ran oom after 6 minutes exactly, the 3rd reseal effectively killing my rotation off. How 2pts t6 compares to divine plea it will be interesting to discover.

 

yamamoto

My mana return from JotW was 443 tonight. We just finished Brutallus and I was spamming EVERYTHING without having to look at my bar once. (At the end of the fight I had 100% mana)

I was NOT burned at any point, nor did I use consumables. I was 3rd on DPS behind 2 Killing Spree Rogues. Barely behind the rogue with one glaive, a considerable distance away from the dual glaive rogue.

 

• frmorrison

Did you mean mutilate with Glavies? Do you have a WWS?


Anyway, a few differences exist now compared to 80.

Many people posting here have 2 Tier 6, which you will not at 80 (at least not for long if you raid). It is worth about 10% of your mana gain.
Many people here have some Int on gear.

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

 

yamamoto

Posting WWS once we're done with the night, on M'uru now.

Apologies, both rogues were Killing Spree (They were Mutilate last week)

One thing we need to realize though before we celebrate is that JoW is still bugged (returning mana more than once every 4 seconds)

 

Foxconfessor

Yes, only SoC and JotW have been changed currently on live. The rest comes later.

 

Lunkhedd

What if JotW could crit? It seems to me that would create a considerable difference between PvP and PvE returns as well as encourage paladins to take crit over int for longer fights.

Something similar might work in the opposite direction for mana burns, too. For example, if Righteous Fury provided mana burn protection, it shouldn't create too much of a PvE issue due to threat and shouldn't be too unbalancing in PvP since all mana burn classes have dispels and RF is fairly expensive to reapply.