Foxconfessor

I actually meant it's nonsense in the sense that you suggested reducing survivability of hybrids in pve was part of Blizzard's plan of balance. Where is the evidence for this? I'm not talking about your opinion on what is balanced.

 

Nicolai

Is it just me, or is everyone missing the solution that would make more sense (and actually hit paladins harder in PVP): reduce damage done while DS is active by 30%.

This gets rid of stupid Forbearance problems in PVE and gives a tip of the hat to every other class that has always complained about us doing damage while invulnerable. I'd be way more pleased with a change like that than a nerf to AW because of PVP bitching.

 

• Theras

I'd go a step further and just halt all damage entirely while under Divine Shield. It's a defensive utility that's often used way more offensively than I think Blizzard ever intended, and until something drastic like that happens I think we're always going to be tied to having unintuitive (and often excessive) shared cooldowns between unrelated abilities. I really want to see this Divine Shield balance issue go away once and for all.

 

Deaus

I've seen this sentiment more than once in discussion about the nerfs Paladins are taking at the moment. I'm confused as to why you'd believe Blizzard would "rebalance" or undo the nerfs they are putting in place now, in 4-6 weeks when people start hitting 80? GC has made it quite clear that in PvE the devs intend for the "pure" damage classes, when played correctly, to be the top of the DPS meters. The amount they intend as a difference between pure and hybrid DPS has never been stated exactly, on that we can expect the gap to be smaller than it is now, without matching the pure DPS. Everything they've said so far would continue to be perfectly true if all the nerfs on the beta went live, and they never undid any of them. I'm just tired of seeing the Paladin community making concession after concession, expecting only a pat on the head and a promise for the future in return.

Maybe I missed them, but do you have dev posts stating that they will "balance for 80" post the hot-fix nerfs, or is this just what you hope Blizzard will do?

 

◊ Cathela

If AW simply caused a 20-second Forbearance, how would that affect PvP? Would you actually be likely to use AW in PvP then, or would the wings simply become a "Kill me now because I can't bubble" sign?

If it solved the problem, it seems like it would be a pretty easy way to get the intended effect.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Dram

AW causing any kind of debuff that prevents Divine Shield would be a kill me now beacon. I agree with Theras that you shouldn't be able to do any damage while you're Invulnerable.

 

Selenia

I agree completely with Theras. Either make it so you can't attack at all or change the Divine Shield drawback from a swingspeed penalty to a -50% (tweak number as needed) damage penalty.

It solves all the problems and it does so without hurting Holy and Prot.

In addition, it's getting rid of a penalty that is by now severely outdated. Lowering our swingspeed was significant back in the day when all our damage came from autoattacking for seal procs. Now that we have two strikes and hard hitting judgements, a swingspeed penalty is a negligible drawback.

 

Hylo

It is quite simple: if the nerfs are here to stay we might not be able to be that "competitive dps" at lvl80 we were originally seen in the eyes of developers. Some nerfs are quite severe and indeed might dip our PvE dps more than intended.

Taking in to account that we only scale with gear after lvl70 while other classes get new ranks of abilities and meaningful dps-boosting talents (warlock, warrior etc.), this concern is very valid. If they balance us to lvl70 we are, by default, not balanced (as in underpowered) at lvl80.

As much I hate to repeat this, as much it holds true.
Ghostcrawler also said the difference would be so small that that most of the times you shouldn't be able to say it's because this player plays rogue and thas player plays paladin. Paladin topping the meters shouldn't be something unheard of. If you get good streak of crits and play your best, that should be perfectly possible. It's when you take larger sample (say, 100 Patchwerk fights), when you start to see that there indeed is a difference in dps between "pure" and "hybrid" classes.

Sure, he never (quite understandably) gave us any actual number, but this suggest the difference shouldn't be more than 10%, most likely less.

That's what we were promised.
I'm sorry but it quite impossible to say at the moment. Not even Blizzard has the data to determine that yet. Please don't toss comments like that here.

I wonder if you are as tired as most of the paladin community is seeing blizzard repeatedly nerfing us because of lvl70 PvP balance, which, the truth to be told, means nothing.

They have assured us that they will continue monitor the situation even at lvl80 and make sure they didn't "overdo" the nerfs. If these nerfs indeed overdid it, we should see some rebalancing. If these nerfs brought us "in line" with other lvl70 classes, there is high chance that this is the case (see above).

If we shouldn't hope Blizzard keeps their word, then I don't know.

 

Fiola

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Retribution nerfs in the latest beta build
(emphasis added)


If you don't trust Blizzard to balance things 6 weeks down the line, then how on earth can you trust them to balance things now? I trust Blizzard to balance things, because they have a proven history of listening to paladin feedback. It's not a speedy response, but that's something that's outside developer control. (Large # of mechanics, huge playerbase ... you try satisfying everyone in every way at the same time)


If you consider this trust to be a "concession", what bargaining chips do you have to make the nerfs not happen? The ability to QQ on the forums? Your willingness to quit your subscription?

The most meaningful bargaining chip paladins have is to mass quit, since money talks and Blizzard is a business. But are you honestly going to quit because you can't Bubble + AW? Or lost 5%~ overall damage with the latest SoC/JoC tweaks? Or because you have to use Divine Plea in your L80 DPS rotation?


I'm personally disgusted with the typical "cry nerf" attitude that dominates paladin forums. Remember how -5% on Vengeance was trumpeted as a horrible blow to our sustained DPS? Now it's -6% and coupled with a handful of other -5% nerfs - and yet we're still pretty competitive overall. Every nerf gets blown out of proportion to its impact. Every buff that we get is "deserved" and thus nothing special. It's a wonder to me how anyone can maintain a constant state of outrage at Blizzard, yet still pay them money to "play" this game.


If you believe that L80 balance is the only thing that should matter, then stop griping about L70 balance nerfs. They'll go away at 80.

 

Multipass

Did some brain storming based on what you said here, so instead of flooding the thread going to put this here:

Instead of just lowering the damage on Divine Shield, fix it by making the paladin unable to attack while Divine Shield is active. As a bonus piggyback something onto one of the deeper talents in ret tree: While you are in Divine Shield your heals cost 30% less mana. This means while bubbled you can heal yourself to full and use the remaining time to touch up anyone you can around you, specifically in arena's. It would make use of bubble more of a "oh shit, lets see how I can help and save my skin" rather then a "BUBBLE EARLY AND 3 SHOT!" skill, and put a lot more strategy into it. With all our other CC protections (talented Divine Purpose, Blessing of Freedom, Cleanse, the severely nerfed Hand of Sacrifice) I think it would be a balanced fix.

On top of that but it can put more strategy and make Divine Protection vs Divine Shield a viable choice, specifically in arena comps with a healer. Say you are doing 3s, you start getting focused and your healer is fine with no CC issues. You pop Divine Protection preemptively and take 50% less damage for the time making it easier for your healer to get you back up and you can still dps.

Say you are getting focused but your healer is shut down and in trouble, rather then Divine Protection you can use Divine Shield, be unable to attack but be able to save your skin and assist your healer until you have things under control again.

This would put a use into both skills and make it quite a lot less over powered, as for PVE if you bubble to save yourself, even in its current state, as soon as I am at full health and safe I use my /cancelaura Divine Shield macro and go back to DPSing at full ability, so there really wouldn't be a negative change in PVE either.

This would also put a little more strategy in how you react in PVP, perhaps to offset the fix lower the Forbearance between the two spells to 1 minute or 30 seconds or remove it completely (I think 30 seconds to 1 minute would be a little more balanced however), it would still give us one of our bread and butter skills but it would also add a whole extra realm into how you play and what you do, and give the Divine Protection extra usage instead of a handy addition when you have no other choice. Avenging Wrath would remain the same as it is, no Forbearance, and would only be something you can use when you are not stuck in any form of protection.

Just an idea!

 

Deaus

I have never made any indication that I would quit or that outrage on the forum was a response, and would appreciate it if you didnt put words in my mouth. GC does an outstanding job communicating with the Paladin community as a whole and keeping us up to speed on things. I am glad to see that GC did post some assurance that if they over-did the nerfs they will continue to monitor and adjust as necessary.

Hylo, don't split up a single persons in multiple quote blocks. You might want to recheck the forum rules.

However, take these WWS parses for example:
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

Three Sunwell clears, all of which have a ret Paladin in the number 1 or 2 slot on overall damage. Compare that to his performance in beta Naxx 25 on Oct 26, so just about as up to date as you can get:
Wow Web Stats

In a primarily undead dungeon, and he drops all the way to 11th against the exact same people he was playing with in the SW clears. 1st to 11th is a pretty significant drop, even for anecdotal evidence. I'm 100% in agreement with you Fiola that 80 balance should be the primary goal. However I'm not going to pretend I don't see hot-fix nerfs going into place that affect level 80 DPS either.

 

Multipass

That is really striking, thank you very much for posting this. Even if it isn't hardcore SET IN STONE evidence it is incredibly eye opening and kind of emphasizes what so many people keep ignoring about paladins feeling long term PVE nerfs due to the knee jerk PVP fixes.

Hopefully such good WWS evidence will be useful for getting things where they need to be for level 80.

 

Wrathblood

Deaus,

This is nitpicking, but the initial 3 WWS reports weren't 3 Sunwell clears. Its a BT clear, a Sunwell attempt (stopped after 1 try on Felmyst) and a Sunwell clear. That having been said, he certainly was #1 or #2 on all 3, and the variety of content covered across the different reports, IMO, strengthens rather than diminishes your point.

 

Unity

Given their stated goals 11th as a long term average is actually pretty good - if pure DPS comes first just two players per class will take spots one through eight leaving the hybrid DPS specs to fight over spots from nine onwards. That it was 11th in a Paladin friendly instance despite high consumable use is a concern but 11th in and of itself is not a cause for complaint.

Even in that specific WWS ThePhoenix's 11th puts him ahead of all the Warriors and Death Knights in the run. He healed more than they did too. I'd say his raid spot was safe for next time.

 

osmigos

Looking at that Naxx WWS report, if anything I think it strengthens the position Blizzard has that it should be more about skill than class. It doesn't seem to me that any class is really clumping up at any position on those reports, but rather multiple members of the same class are spread sometimes a great distance on damage done.

 

Arthaal

The fact that we have no way of establishing the relative gear levels of any of the beta participants compared to the T6 characters from the Sunwell parses really limits the usefulness of any comparisons. Additionally, by blizzard standards he's the only "hybrid" dps in that Naxx group and ended up middle of the pack... I'm more surprised by the spread of damage done by all the classes overall than I am with where thepheonix ended up.

To me, those parses show poor scaling more than anything else. He barely gained any DPS by reaching lvl80 and that's pretty much what I've been telling my guild. Whatever I'm doing now, I'll be doing when I step into Naxx.

The only thing that will increase our DPS on the way to 80 is AP and weapon damage ranges going up. All the "rating" dependent attributes are going to drop back down to pre-T4 while we level and we don't have any new ranks coming up. Reducing the damage scaling ranges on seals/judgements not only affected lvl70 DPS numbers, it also affected scaling through those values as well, flattening the curve as it were. That's what I'm concerned about. Those parses make it look like we might be ok in T7, but how's that flatter scaling going to translate in T8-T9?

Percent modifiers R'US

 

Milou

Did you actually look at those parses? He only actually came "1 or 2" on Illidari Council and KJ (Ignoring gimmick fights). He's generally middle of the pack. And as has been pointed out, we have no idea of gear spread so this really is irrelevant until real (non-beta) naxx parses start coming out in a few weeks.

All those reports show is that ret is quite good at aoe on nerfed trash.

 

Eligos

This is a problem specifically with Retribution's use of Avenging Wrath, so I wouldn't be so quick to nerf Divine Shield. Honestly, a shared cooldown strikes me as a fair compromise. I don't see a problem with a 20 second opportunity cost, it's linking Avenging Wrath to Forbearance that changes this from something you have to think about using, to something you flat out avoid using.

 

Killmour

I always thought they were going to make DS make us unable to attack, no idea why they had to put forbearance back on the ability, seems like it would have been easier and more effective for just that.

That from Ghost as well, quite hilarious.


Anyway, I hope we get an interrupt or something out of this mess.

Any thoughts on a Strength to Int talent in place of the absorb piercing effect on Sanctified wrath? When Using seal of blood in heavy aoe fights I do alright on mana, but in zero aoe damage fights It feels like even with Divine plea I'm going to oom fairly fast.

 

aylen86

In other words: They don't believe that they have hurt us enough. Forbearance won't be fixed for PvE, until this change will have a greater impact to 70's PvP. Never ever.
Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - ?'s most Paladins are wanting answers to.

 

Trakor

If you really think ret is dominating dps charts at lvl 70, you are wrong:
WOW Meter Online - More logs!!!!!!

I do end on top of the dps in my guild, but i suspect thats more to do with me trying harder then them. As you can see above, other classes, in the hands of other very good players, still do way more dps than us. That said, warriors are bugged and hunters were benefiting from infinite mana as well (JoW). But taking warriors and hunters apart, the top paladin dps recorded on WoWmeter is still roughly 500-600 dps lower than the top rogue dps recored. Just follow the link above and select the classes you want to compare them yourself.

In regards to AW and Divine Shield.... man, this sucks. Pre 3.0, forberance was on a 1min cd and I couldnt really use it, neither in pvp nor pve. In pvp, AW was dispelled, purged, spell stolen and gave me forberance, while bubble could only be removed by mass dispell. In pve, just in sunwell, I had to save bubble for burns on Bruts, Encapsulate on Felmyst, conflag + high debuffs stack on twins, and end of phase 2 on muru. They gotta remove the forberance debuff from AW (so that we can use it in pve). Just make it so the 2 abilities cant be used together at the same time, kinda like the 20sec cd on similar trinkets.

Some people here are suggesting pallies shouldnt be able to attack while bubbled. If thats the case, then mass dispell should no longer get rid of bubble. If you are gonna nerf it that much in order to make it a defensive spell only, then let us use it defensively and heal in it. And evne then, classes such as locks will always coutner us as well, because they can just keep that fear spam going (nowadays the only way to kill a good lock is to use trinket + bubble - without AW - offensively).

Talking about bubble, yesterday I've killed myself 2x with JoB while bubbled. I never noticed this before, but the recoil damage from both SoB and JoB bypass bubble. Is this a bug or intended?

And if they are nerfing ret because of lvl 70 pvp, then id like to see them nerf other overpowered classes as well, such as mages doing spamable (some instant) casts that crits for over 3-5k and moonkins criting for over 6k on each cast. And no, I wasnt using pvp gear, but the only attack that we have that could crit for that much on somebody without resilience is JoB with AW (both have cd), and if we have to be in pve gear as well.

 

Hobs

Has anyone done testing with SoMartyr since hotfixes? I was messing around with it this weekend and in every situation, I was doing much more dps then with SoC. Did Blizz fix the spell coefficients?

 

Inu

Im sorry if this has been mentioned before, although ive been reading this thread fairly religiously since 3.0.
Im finding relentless earthtstorm diamond being edged out by the 24 attack power meta. [Potent Unstable Diamond]
Now that i think about it, was this always better before?

 

Arthaal

Hobs: was this on live or on the beta? Beta features unerfed SoB so there SoB DPS should definately be higher than SoC. Live doesn't have the unerfed SoB yet, but the large SoC nerf from the latest hotfix may have sufficiently reduced its damage to allow SoB to pass it.

Inu: under the new mechanics, AP scales doubly well (through AP itself, and SP indirectly) for all abilities, so it very well may be that 24 AP is superior to 12agi + 3% crit damage.

I finished plotting SoB/Judgement under SoB damage for various AP ranges and MHW damage ranges under both the old and new scheme and something interesting came up: for all weapons, SoB/J scaled linearly with AP, but the new version is slightly flatter than the old (poorer scaling with AP), however the lines intersect between 2k and 2.5k AP for all weapons which would mean the net DPS difference for most paladins at 70 should be negligible, with lower AP pallies actually gaining damage (sub 1500 AP) and most of the nerf to that seal actually coming in the form of reduced scaling with AP. This is one change that may actually be aimed at lvl80. Whether it was required or not remains to be seen.

Percent modifiers R'US

 

Tromeo

Chaotic Skyfire Diamond give 12 crit rating and the same 3% crit damage. would it make it better for those still holding to the relentless earthstorm meta? a friend hinted that one to me last week.