I don't like the lack of shield in pve either. By adding to Avenging Wrath "while divine shield is active this effect does not apply" would fix the issue. I'd like to be able to shield and remove it then hit AW.

it's like on felmyst. you needed to wings a couple of times and couldn't divine shield an encap if the encap came at a point where shielding would inhibit wings during bloodlust on the final burn. DS should be like cloak of shadows in pve.

Does anyone have any idea or loose napkinmath that might be able to equate what this means for Retribution Paladins in PvE (the bubble change). Forebearance on live is reportedly still lasting 2 minutes, and fights such as Patchwerk in Naxxramas are floating above the 4 minute mark. While on Patch you certainly have no real need to bubble, but what about any other comparable fight where aoe damage might force a bubble?

If anyone has hard math on the kind of overall DPS effect the periods of AW created, this could possibly be applied as if you still need to use DS in a fight you're now looking at 1 (maybe 2) AW before the end of combat. Of course, with the function of the Glyph of Avenging Wrath, does it make it most advantageous in any fight where you might use DS to merely wait until the last 20% to use the 3s HoW CD? Of course, if you have to bubble 2 minutes before the end of combat, you might just have to reconsider that glyph.

Intrigued by this post on the blizz forum i went ahead a model the thing on my own. Problem is: it's not verified on the dummies. and i would like to check with you guys where my maths went wrong. =)

Hypotheses:
lvl 80, PvP gear (Mumur pre-made)
No glyph
3/3 JoTW, Imp. Judg, pvp set bonus (-1sec Judg), using JoL, using SoC
on the lvl 80 dummy (not boss)


Replenishment is adjusted to base mana (~0.350267%) total adjusted is the MPS compared to the maximum mana (not based)

This means we should get OOM in ~161sec.

I laboriously tried to test this, with wow crashing a lot on a cmath.cpp missile vector problem...anyway i got 2 full tests in.

first i got oom in 178 sec, second in 235 seconds.

Recount gave me this for mana regen:

which is an error of +1.49% from what was expected. it's not so bad, i can live with that. however 161sec *101.49 = ~163sec. and we can last much longer.


i checked my numbers of DS/CS and Judg, they are all in what is expected for the 2 time frames. I couldn't save the first time but for the second, i got 38 CS, 22 DS, 33 J.

Any ideas?

PS: recount doesn't track mana expenditure, does it?

Excellent idea. It makes me mad that another ret pvp nerf hits our defensive abilities while raiding so hard. Hopefully this was just an urgent hotfix and not an everlasting change. I couldn't live with that.

Are they aware that JoL is being attributed too the casting paladin?
Are they aware that we were rarely off GCD?

Im concerned that ret having mana too do healing isn't really the issue here I know i couldn't out heal a healing spec even if i could be in melee range with a boss.

This statement confuses me..

That statement definitely is worrying. I was also a little confused about this one:

First off, they never even implemented the PvP nerfs yet... I'm wondering if the devs are even aware of what they're doing with ret nerfs. There was even a thread where the poster asked them to patch in the rest of the ret nerfs to which GC responded:
Secondly it shows that they're nerfing us based on the level 70 PvP game which hardly even matters anymore. I certainly haven't seen ret dominating at level 80, especially since the nerfs that haven't gone to live yet.

They didn't link bubble and wings, that wouldn't be a problem. Instead they went back to forberance on aw, which even with a 2 min duration is a completely dumb system.

And it's obvious they are concerned about pvp at 70 because they hotfix everything that's possible to hotfix. It's like someone in charge told the class designers to fix mass forum whining asap.

Wings had forbearance added to it (Forbearance down to 2 minutes). At the same time Judgement of Justice was reduced to 10 seconds and Sanctified Wrath no longer allows us to bypass damage reduction.

Sorry to doubt you Osmigos, but do you have a link for the all the changes? This is the first I've heard of a nerf to JoJ and Sanctified Wrath.

Osmigos,

Are those changes on live, Beta or both?

Just tested on beta, It's not.

Tested on Live. I can confirm what Osmigos said, Sanctified Wrath no longer allow any damage to ignore absorption shields, and JoJ is 10 seconds duration in PvP.

I can't count the number of times I've died in 25 mans with Bubble ready but forbearance due to using AW, usually when my healers expect me to use bubble (brut burn, or conflagging alone in a corner at twins).

In threat sensitive situations, 5 mans or 10 mans and mostly in PvP, using AW is more often than not a death sentence if you don't have bubble. I know in Arena if a paladin used to pop wings early on, it would be the usual joke on vent "lol what a noob, focus on him" since he just gave up his bubble for a minute.

Forbearance mechanic to AW always made it horribly cumbersome to use, meaning you skipped using it a lot of times.

I think the way to do this would be to just make Divine Shield and AW cancel eachother out when cast: Using AW, cancels currently active Divine Shield. Using Divine Shield, cancels currently active AW.


I'd love it if there's some blue post informing us of changes rather than things quietly happening through hotfixes. Does this mean Sanctified Wrath is getting some other effect, is this intended? No one knows.

Well, on one side, I could see this contributing to a lot of our burst and it needed to be toned down, as well as our excessive amount of crit modifiers. On the other hand, we're - once again - seeing nerfs to PvE because of PvP which really gets on my nerves. As other posters have mentioned, it seems that they are both balancing things around 70 pvp (which will be irrelevant in a couple of weeks) and they're testing things half-assedly (they're testing these changes with the old RV and AoW). We've been hotfixed so much that it surprises me they haven't build a patch for paladins only. It would make a lot more sense (but I suppose some people would whine that the class is being picked on, et cetera).

I trust the devs, but they need to come out and say things like they are. If they tell us "We're balancing you at 70." Then fine, at least we know what to expect. If not, then what's going on? Hotfixing some things, then saying we're still OP when they haven't hotfixed others is really a little illogical. Hopefully they don't tone down our burst severely, but they did say that if they did, then they'd give us other means to compete via interrupts, MS or some such - probably through Prot's 11-point talent. I'm not sure how that would work out, the class has always been about burst. We'll see.

I disagree with people saying the AW nerf affects PVE. Blizzard has always stated they wanted to get hybrids on a par with pure classes in the dps department, and that's exactly what they are doing. That includes getting close in terms of dps output (overall, mission accomplished), but also having the same survivability, hence putting back forbearance in AW.

About the threat issue, the tanks' threat is so high right now that even with wings popped, it's hard to get close to pulling aggro if your tank knows what he's doing. If you are still scared, you can /castsequence hand of salvation in your AW maccro to lower the threat, since both abilities have the same cooldown.

Now on the pvp front, that's a whole different story: we're basically back in the lolret days, when AW was left unused in the spellbook. The DivineShield/AW combo was only used by some retards in BGs who tought blowing their only defensive ability with a full life bar and no debuffs was a cool idea.

So rogues and mages are unable to use iceblock or Cloak of Shadow when they want to dps in PvE? This is in fact not the case. And don't forget about our protection counterparts, who use AW as a pulling device and won't be able to shieldwall themselves. Not even mentioned that no holypaladin would use AW when he knows that he won't be able to use DS for the next 2 minutes.

Draw some hope from the obvious way they've decided to balance for level 70; it at least possibly implies some or all of these nerfs and stealth-nerfs might be reverted in the fullness of time at 80. Admittedly that's small comfort, considering we're seeing a reprise of 2.0, but its at least something.

I didn't forget anything, those are valid issues, but they belong to other threads.

I think half the problem is that they tried to hard to avoid "another 2.0". So we get a big buff with 3.0, and a stream of gradual nerfs that don't quite fix their problem.

"Nerf for 70, balance at 80" is probably the best option they have in terms of placating non-Ret for now without hurting Ret's end-game prospects. (They have a month after WotLK release for most players to hit 80, I guess?)

At this point it really is "another 2.0", so rather than dance around it they should just embrace the concept and say that "we're nerfing you now because of level 70, we'll unnerf you in about a month and a half, suck it up".

This is absolute undiluted nonsense. Nowhere has it ever been stated by Blizzard that achieving parity between 'hybrids' and 'pure' classes involved reducing personal defensive abilities, which incidentally several 'pure' classes enjoy in pve anyway, for 'hybrids'. I'd invite you to support your statements.

Previous posters have mentioned the huge value of bubble in pve. For example, going through a portal with a huge number of debuffs on Kalecgos and then getting a shadowbolt in the face. Burn on Brutallus and there are already multiple burns active. Encapsulate. Conflagration and your trinket is on cooldown. Going back even further, poison/blizzard simultaneously on Illidari Council.

Hey no one argues about the utility of DS in Pve context, of course there are plenty of situations where you can use it, it's more about about balance and commen sense here. The only concerns about ret dps should be damage output and mana regen, because nerfing one or the other takes away the purpose of the spec.

If you want to be on par with pure dps class, you have to accept the weaknesses than comes with beeing a dps spec, meaning lowering your survivablity. Where you see nonsense, I just see balance and common sense. Somebody above mentionned ice block and CoS as a counter-argument: let alone the fact that these abilities are much less powerfull than DS, let's not forget those classes can't heal at all, ret paladins can still throw an instant FoL once in a while on themselves if needed, I'm pretty sure lots of pure classes would kill for such an ability.