• Theras

I'd want to avoid being the only person doing Judgement of Light in the raid for the sole reason that its healing seems to be worth a pretty significant amount of threat right now. I know on my last raid with my old guild, I pulled aggro on Rage Winterchill and I'd largely attribute to that healing. Granted there were some other issues at play (see: inexperienced tank, me being callous about threat), but that's still a hell of a lot of threat. I'd rather offload that on to somebody who wants it (Protection) or somebody to whom it doesn't matter (Holy).

 

Mordekhuul

It is a very interesting mechanic, in my mind, and one that (as mentioned) is rarely a problem in any sized group. Further, we aren't alone in needing heals to keep our DPS going (see Warlocks).

 

sagas

Shadowpriests also are required to do self damage using Shadow Word- Death to maintain competitive DPS.

 

Gunn

I'm seeing people write about not running out of mana on certain bosses. Please bare in mind that Bosses like Felmyst have a high degree of raid damage. Running out of mana is not likely to happen when you're constantly getting healed and regaining mana from SA!

 

Sloppyjoe

I personally never complain about it simply because it's a mechanic that causes damage to a SELF-healing class. I don't see it as that big of a deal -- if you do end up taking a chunky SoB loss, Art of War should make up for it.

 

Peryle

I've had some fairly significant threat issues that seem to be related to the replenish effect on Judgements of the Wise. On incoming, mobs make a beeline for me (I'm out of melee range, no consecrate or DS), and the typical mutli-target threat moves (Swipe, TC, blastwave, etc) have been ineffective at countering this threat gain. This problem typically manifests any time there are two or more casters in the group.

My understanding is that the threat gained from granting mana or health was equal to 50% of the mana or health gained; I find it somewhat surprising that 0.125% mana/second for two casters is enough to overcome swipespam.

Am I missing something obvious? Are others having this issue? I realize it's entirely possible that all of the warriors and druid tanks I've grouped with since the patch have been terrible, but I'd consider at least one of them a quality player based on past experience.

 

zenos

That quote is going to come back to haunt GC. He's basically stating that ret damage is only up to par when using conescrate and holy wrath and of course their model doesn't account for that. I'd like to take blizz at their word that they are in fact doing "hours of testing and discussion" before making changes, but this statement betrays even a common understanding of a typical retribution dps cycle.

Source

 

abs0lut

You could say the same for fury warriors. "Why do I have to take 10% more damage to dps effectively?" Like others have said, SoB damage works hand in hand with SA. If I didn't have SA, I would question the logic of SoB recoil a little.

To get back on topic a little bit, it looks like the hotfixes rolled out aren't as bad as people think. For now. I am sure blizzard will be paying special attention to how things pan out 70-80 and in 80 endgame.

To add my experience to this, I ran ZA/Kara/Gruul the other night and using JoW, never had a problem. I did run a parse on a 70 training dummy using JoL full rot and I went oom around 2:30.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Are you sure about that? It seems to still be counted as a self heal on WWS.

All other similar effects (earth shield, prayer of mending, lifebloom, judgement of light) now count as healing done by the caster, but improved leader of the pack doesn't seem to. Confirmation that you're getting mana back from that would be great.


Except people are also reporting and showing data from Brutallus kills where there is no raid damage, and judgement of wisdom is not used. It's pretty safe to say that mana is indeed fine in PvE.

 

Exemplar

Heals from ILotP, PoH, JoL, and similar now attribute the healing to the caster (Feral, Priest, Paladin, etc) rather than yourself. Prior to 3.02 every JoL proc said the rogue healed himself, the warrior healed herself. And the feral proccing ILotP showed you healing yourself. Now ILotP shows the feral healing you, JoL shows you healing every melee.

As has been mentioned, this can generate non-negligable healing aggro, depending on the situation.

Edit: Or I could be wrong, based on Beef's post above mine. I thought they'd fixed all out-sourced heals.

 

Corronach

Really fast, to the guy at the top of this page, with salvation you have a tool to control that aggro, and if your raid has a protection warrior it might even be beneficial for the raid that you do that much TPS. It definitely worth having a ret paladin put up light on AE fights, it accounted for over 20% of our raid healing on KJ last night.
,
So far we've only seen one WWS showing a decent dps number on a 3 minute 28 second brutallus kill. He said he went oom before the end of that fight, and he still received mana spring, and improved water elemental for nearly half the total return JoTW returned. The issue is unlike casters who have 3 stats to improve their time to oom, no matter what the time to oom is set at that's what it's going to be for all of Wrath no matter how badly we outgear content. And even if we can make it through a patchwerk run, he's not exactly a long fight. What happens when Blizzard wants to design 10 minute long fights like Sunwell?

 

• Theras

Oh absolutely, I agree that if we had a Protection Warrior tanking with Vigilance on me that things might have been different. But we didn't. And I'm not advocating dumping Light entirely, of course; I'd just rather offload it onto somebody who can either use the threat or doesn't have to worry about it.

 

Valerys

Ok, further testing. I removed all my int gear (T6 shoulders/chest and S3 gloves) and replaced it with tank gear since I don't have int-less dps gear for those slots. So the only regen I had was JotW and Replenishment. Used SoB, JoL/CS/DS rotation with prioritizing Judgement whenever possible, testing on the level 70 dummy. I went OOM in about 6 minutes, using AW twice during that time and resealing as needed. There was no mana for AoW procs but those were not needed as JoL/DS kept the Blood damage countered nicely. I hovered on 200-600 mana for quite a while at the end as I judged for regen, which let me use CS/DS, then by the time Judgement cooldown came up again I had enough mana to repeat. With Divine Plea I would get another 1000+ mana every minute which would enable me to go on for a lot longer. In a raid situation SA and JoW (the unbugged version) should give enough additional regen to use a full rotation along with utility and/or Consecration etc. I do feel that JotW could be bumped up to 20% or so just so we can still use those fun extra tools while soloing, but 15% won't kill the spec.

As a further test, I emptied my mana pool and went on to whack on a dummy with SoW, using only JoL (to not skew the test with bugged JoW). Took me about a minute to get mana bar back to full, will be faster when using unbugged JoW. So if you happen to run oom unexpectedly in PvE, SoW for 10-20 seconds should get you back up and running.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It honestly sounds like it'll only be a problem if it's a 10 minute fight against a demon or undead who has no raid damage, and the ret paladin has to judge light himself.

When you add in divine plea, I don't think it'll be much of an issue.

 

Redcape

If the boss has no/minimal raid damage, the ret paladin really isn't needed to maintain JoL, since its real application is in heavy raid damage encounters. At that point he can judge wisdom, which helps a little.

If there is high raid damage then the paladin is going to be getting real heals anyway, so his mana should be fine. The main issue of course is that JoL might end up just being too much aggro in many cases, but I don't think we have a really great handle on that yet.

 

Valerys

By the way, they talked about making JoL affect ranged and spell attacks, but I did not see it in latest patchnotes. Has that been done yet?

 

Hylo

Yes, it counts as my own heal in WWS, but I still get SA mana out of it:

Check this link for pre-filtered combatlog.

Remembering times before Ghostcrawler, this responsiveness is nothing short of astounding. Seems that they really want to fix us now and finally understood that it needs active communication with the playerbase to achieve this (or at least taking the worries of selected community in to account, *couch* EJ *couch*). Almost all the issues discussed here has been commented by Ghostcrawler in official forums.

 

Phayne2355

I ran into this last night while raiding. I do have to admit that the warrior tank we brought was under geared compared to many of the dps myself included. I found that Hand of Salvation worked fine so long as I was able to wait for a short while before using it. There were two occasions that I had to back off on dps to avoid pulling. The dps warrior we had with us seemed to complain about the same issue though and was constantly asking for salv from the holy paladin. I changed to judging wisdom half way through the night and no longer seemed to have threat issues. JoL was recorded as 3rd on overall healing done with 46% overheal.

 

Foxconfessor

My experience is healers who know about it kind of like it and view it as an opportunity to increase their own healing by throwing a cheeky hot on me every now and then. Raiding in Sunwell though is basically constant raid healing spam, from shaman and priests especially. and it is literally a drop in the ocean for them. Everyone takes so much damage all the time I don't think some of them even know I damage myself a little when dpsing.

 

Cevil

Yes, I totally agree with this. The 9 months to revert Crusader Strike days appear over, in my mind. That's what's giving me the confidence to continue. PvP is another story, but this isn't the thread.

I do have problems, however. Their testing doesn't seem to be thought out; most likely a consequence of their time crunch now. First of all, they keep mentioning the "weapon stacking bug" that prevented them from really seeing Ret's numbers. Even thought it wasted far too much beta testing time, fine. But we now have a JoW bug/non-fix that negates their reasoning for hotfixing SoC and JotW. I'm not sure any pre-80 testing is worth a damn at all right now. Between int on gear and JoW doing the heavy lifting, all conclusions are tainted, just like all their beta conclusions were tainted by the weapon stacking bug. All the data they're going to pull from Live won't be useful of effective, imo. The lack of RV, and it's ineffectiveness on target dummies sucks, too. This is an ability these forums have not really looked at. More light shined on this would be fantastic. For instance, can you roll it?

We need more Naxx parses, and preferably by people who are able to discuss them here (their gear, rotation, skill level, experience, etc.). My hunch is we're balanced around 15% JotW + JoW + SA, and without consecrate. i'd love to see a Paladin's numbers where he purposefully leaves out consecration while using the unnerfed SoB, and see if the gap closes.

Also, I don't know the changes to the fights in Naxx; I did it way back pre BC, but don't know what's changed to accomodate raid size. Wasn't Loatheb a zerg fight, but also an Elemental? That eliminates Exorcism and Holy Wrath. Might parsing that fight be a little bit of a better judge for where we are? If he's in fact undead, apologies, but I do know not all bosses in Naxx are undead, and Malygos certainly isn't.

 

Vhex

As a healer we've been dealing with it forever. And honestly as a healer I prefer the near constant drain of SoB to the more spiky crap that warlocks pull where they lifetap 5 times during a transition phase and are suddenly at 10% health, or lifetap right after a huge AE spike or something.

Fights in WoTLK just don't have the same emergency spike either, at least not to the same degree so it shouldn't be much of a liability. Bubble/LoH should be enough to counter the occasional accidental "boss just AE'd the raid for 10k, JoB crit for 3200, crap!" moments.

 

madmardigan83

I've been watching and reading a lot of these happenings for the past week (and months prior). Being a long-time Ret player, I've had my concerns as well. But something about this entire conversation from both Blizzard and us doesn't make sense to me.


Why are we focusing on the Raid environment? Why are we spending our time and energy in this direction with all of our tests, theories, spreadsheets and arguements? Did Blizz ever say "we are concerned that Rets can fight like the rest of the melee and use abilities on a regular basis." I mean, if it was about raids that we were able to use EVERY ability when the CD was up (while other melee can't) then heck... just balance the output of the dmg to put us where you want us on the meters. Problem solved! Why are we even talking about Ret's ability to maintain in a long-term fight? Is that the core issue? Do we honestly feel like thats why blizzard is nerfing our mana regen? So that we have to watch our abilities and not use concecrate, off-heal, hands etc? (concecrate I'm ok w/ not using because it's true... no other class can use an AOE ability as a regular rotation on a single target) Do they want us to be less like hybrids by limiting these other abilites?

I don't think so.

I think it's a problem of being too powerful in PvP, and so they are trying to find the maximum they can nerf the pvp, while still keeping us alive in PvE. But if PvP is a situation that is MORE mana intensive, and we are making it so we BARELY can get by in PvE (a less mana intensive situation) what will be the situation in PvP? Keep in mind, pvp fights are going to last longer than the 30 seconds they do now!

Long story short... why are we arguing for bare bones survivablity in PvE, which will translate to not much utility/survivability in PvP? Is it because it's easier to mathmatically prove? Well, shouldn't we add in some FoL, hands, and other things that can be used in PvE (and PvP?). I mean, how many bossfights are there that it's strictly a straight up fight where no one takes dmg and we never have to help out? Not many. Just the other night on Kalecgos I had to help heal the demon tank while a 2nd healer went through the portal (ran through the tail and got stunned). I put out 2 HL's and 3 flashes. Should my dps fall through the floor in that situation because I no longer have mana? Thats the kind of stuff that happens in many PvE fights, and almost all PvP fights.

I feel like our efforts (and Blizzard's testings) are focusing mainly on a single target, straightforward fight with every available buff! That's the BEST (and not normal) situation! And if we balance our mana regen around that kind of data, what about when we're actually out there fighting in pvp and 5 mans etc?

Is 33% too high? Perhaps. But trying to get the just-right balance on a 25 man boss with all available buffs isn't the best way to go about it either. Because the other 85% of the game does NOT have those buffs available to us.

Am I missing something major? I just feel that we latched onto GC's Patchwerk conversation and started to prove and disprove him using it. We started out in the wrong direction. Unless of course I am having a large oversight on something, which is not out-side the realm of possiblity, I feel like we're fighting for inches, when we need feet.

 

Roywyn

It's implemented on beta. But don't tell your Disc Priests!

Arcane Missiles + Judgement of Light = Self-targeted Penance
(Penance is a channeled talented heal that cannot target yourself by mechanics.)

Every Boss except Faerlina (Humanoid) and Maexxna (Beast) is Undead.



Proc Rate of JoW in beta?

I was casting Arcane Missiles at dummies that were judged with wisdom.
Came out at 25% over 130 spell hits, no cooldown.

Can anyone check/confirm that it's indeed a 25% proc rate without cooldown now?

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Foxconfessor

I already touched on this back here. I'm not saying GC et al have been strictly dishonest, you cannot hold anyone who deals with large numbers of the public and gets everything they say dissected to absurdly high standards. However, just because we don't go around shouting 'liars!' like the idiots on the official forums have been the last few days, doesn't mean we should be hopelessly naive as to the motivation for these nerfs, even JotW.

The main reason why people are mainly dealing with pve scenarios here however isn't that we're suffering from some group delusion or have been duped. It's because pve has always been the focus of these boards. On top of that arena is still apparently unplayable, and you can only gather good non-anecdotal evidence in arena by a lot of people playing a lot of games over an extended period - ie December and beyond, and not until then. Raiding at 70 may be a flawed system of testing these changes, but at least people can bring their logs here to be examined.

 

• Avitus

This seems to comply with other results done a few pages back: Retribution DPS Theorycraft