At first, it seemed as though Blizzard was taking the opposite tack to this: No progression on our mana returns, but make the progression unnecessary by giving us considerable slack on the margins and keeping it balanced across all gear levels (which makes sense).

Now it seems they want us to both "worry about our mana" yet at the same time work with mechanics that don't really let us do anything no matter how worried we get besides "welp, time to stop hitting buttons".

At this point, I don't think it can work both ways. Either give us some more rope to hang ourselves with if JOTW/Ret's max mana remains static, or give us the ability to gear for efficiency.

I have nothing against having to switch to different sets depending on if its a 15 minute vs. a 5 minute fight, but only if we can actually do it.

I just want to agree, you have a pretty solid assessment. You can check Arena Junkies, but the PVP camp is also laughing at using Battlegrounds as an excuse for balance. Sure they want BG's to matter down the road, but they don't yet.

Also, just a question - are you guys considering glyphs in the picture? What if we use a 10 second consecrate rather than an 8 second consecrate? As the Consecrate glyph should be a significant increase in Damage/Mana for the ability, it seems like either it or the Crusader Strike glyphs would be a good buy in the new world of ret.

Additionally, in PvE, is glyphed Seal of Command better than SoB/Martyr? Because, if not, the glyphs you'd realistically want to use would include:

Crusader Strike
Consecrate
Seal of Blood/Martyr
Judgement
Maaaayyybe Avenging Wrath

Obviously there's some optimal pick there, but would we really have mana/rotation problems if we glyphed for CS, Consecrate and Judgement? Also, is it just me or is the AW glyph pretty awful for PvE? It seems like it's basically spending a glyph slot for 1 or 2 extra HoWs during a fight, unless most fights spend more than 2 minutes where the boss is <20%.

The Glyphs to go at 80 will be: Crusader Strike, Consecration, Judgement.

I´m not sure if it even still exists as I´m not in the beta but I´d pick glyph of seal of blood instead of crusader strike (for pve purposes obviously).

on the mana shortage topic in pve dps as a whole -
admittedly it´s been fun to be at full mana in any raid situation at all times unless I miss the judgement button on a faceroll, but at least to me, playing ret like that turned out to be pretty boring quite fast as there was no resource management involved at all. even tho the mana nerf is a big loss in efficiency and versatility I rather feel like I accomplish something by doing competitive dps than having it easy mode - of course, pve ret dps in general has to stay competitive for that.

once a bossfights´ mechanics and its estimated duration are known, one can adapt his mana throughput to that. just like for healers, there is no point in sitting on 90% mana after an encounter if it could have been put to good use (read: dpm). short fights promote mad consecrating while really long ones, well, don´t - but is there even an encounter that requires constant high dps over a very long period of time? the mana pot has been my friend in tbc and will replace haste potion slots in my inventory again I guess. as long as it´s not required to use glyphed lay on hands on yourself to have enough mana for an encounter, so be it. I´d love to see a change to exorcism and holy wrath to make up for the effective loss of our "omgpwnundead" trait as we´ll likely spend all our mana anyway, no matter on what target.

so the grass could be still green - if it wasn´t for all our "great utility" to cut down our potential damage output, quite a lot depending on what you do, beyond the loss of a gcd and a resetted swingtimer. oh well

Depends on what bracket your talking about. You certainly won't be seeing Ret + Healer in 2's anymore, that's for sure.

I think there is some space for Ret in 3's. They should still have higher upfront damage than any other Melee class, combine that with say a Warrior or Rogue, the cleave comp will be very popular.

So in a way I agree with you that Ret will still be very "selective", but I think they will continue to do what they do best pre 3.0, just better. Fundamentally, their PvP role won't really change much. I guess that is a big bummer for a lot of Ret Paladins out there.

First of all, thanks to Redcape for testing. I'm probably one of the more optimistic ret paladins around, and I've always believed that Blizzard would not leave us intentionally bad. Glad to see there is still hope.

A got a couple of questions about your testing to get a better picture on how we will operate.

1. Were you using JoW now? Or is JoL still usable as ret's "standard" judgement without concern?
2. Did you have BoW? Would you say that it will now be better for soloing than BoM, or can we still use BoM while soloing and still grind fine without having to drink very often?

Basically, although ret may be fine in raids with all the mana regen going on, I'm still concerned about soloing ability. I would not want to return to the hell that was ret solo-grinding before 3.0...

uh doh my beverage made me misunderstand the glyph to having 20% instead of 10% SA return my mistake

For PVP, you say it yourself: no way Ret + healer is doable in 2s; we're going to need a rogue for wound poison just like now. In 3s, we'll have a role, but it will be the same War/Ret/Dru or similar permutation, where we are the assist DPS. A sad state of affairs in PVP, for sure.

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This Naxx parse is somewhat encouraging, as it seems to show Hunters as outliers (which we already knew), and Paladins very tightly middle of the pack:
Wow Web Stats

What I find encouraging about this is the size of the RV ticks: average of ~750. If this is the case, perhaps RV is adequate compensation.

Her mana regeneration is top heavy with SA and JotW, at 382k and 300k respectively. It would seem SA is making up for the bulk of the mana gain lost by the JotW nerf. Divine Plea, by contract, is around 80,000 mana. There is no use of mana pots, that I can see.

The discouraging thing is to see the SoB hits for an average of ~300. I'm pretty sure on live that's what it hits for now, and it represents the extent of this latest round of nerfs.

As GC insinuated, some classes suspect they're OP and have escaped nerfing; the parses say Hunters should watch out. Hunters should still be the topline, but perhaps once they're fixed, our numbers won't seem so out of line.

Bottom line is these changes hinge on what happens to other classes now. I can deal being 200-300 DPS below other classes; I think everyone can.

Is your warrior abusing the DW bug? If so, throw his results in the bin, they aren't going to continue. I was playing with a t5 geared warrior using TG who really knows how to play and I was destroying him by an immense margin. Comparing yourself to currently overpowered hunters and buggy warriors isn't particularly useful. When I played in 5 mans with single target dpsers it was a joke, they weren't even making 50% of my damage due to insane Consecrate/DS AOE.

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement is probably worth 2 mana / sec. Glyph of CS is worth 8 mana / sec. 8 mana / sec isn't blowing my mind, but it may well be our next best Glyph. If seals aren't proccing off Judgements anymore then Righteousness and Vengeance just stepped up to being real contenders for top dps, so the third Glyph slot may be a little more interesting that was previously thought. I will post my thoughts and numbers for Glyph use once that fact has been established.

I don't have a beta account, I can't test the changes. I can look at raid buffed numbers and calculate mana returns, and I can crunch numbers on soloing mana viability. While soloing I currently spam every ability on cooldown, including Consecrate, DS and HoW. I fully expect to pare that back a bunch and hit CS, Judgement on cooldown and use DS, HoW sometimes. You can use JoW for more mana JoL for more healing, both have their benefits. Ret paladins will do tons of damage while soloing and hardly ever need to stop as long as you don't blow mana on Consecrate and DS on the cooldown. We will be more like other classes, in that for soloing our best option is a good, mana efficient routine that has us killing reasonably quickly but with almost zero downtime. If your standards are 3.02 ret you will likely be sad, but if your standards are 2.4 ret you will be ecstatic with ret soloing in wrath, I guarantee it.

I don't think you will see those. As far as I am aware Warriors still have the outrageous DW bug that raises their dps by 1000 or so, Hunters are still completely OP in general, and there are other bugs not tamped down yet. Just because ret isn't currently posting top numbers doesn't really mean much, there are other dpsers who are going to get the nerf/bugfix stick soon enough.

So, this is a little out of left-field here... but what about the possiblity that this was all done on purpose? I know it sounds a little like 1984 here, but it's interesting to think about.

Think back to pre-3.0. Ret was the laughing stock out of all the classes, and had been for quite some time. Granted, they were better than they used to be at 60 certianly (and smart guilds used us)... but by the general masses, Ret was generally the red-headed step-child.


How do they get rid of that bias and have the rest of the WoW community respect us as a class? If they just made us "even" with the rest of the group, there would still be a mass of people that would say "lolret" and ignore us the way they used to.

So they make us overpowered. They make other classes fear us and go "Whoa! Ret is pretty good!" They made the changes so large that it pretty much left NO doubt that Ret was something to be reckoned with.

And the stigma of "lolret" is dissapears. (think about it... have you seen it lately?)

Once that is gone, they nerf us back to where they wanted us to be all along. And in the end... everyone benifits.

They knew it would cause some pain and suffering from us. The wailing and gnashing of teeth was something they were willing to deal with... because in the end, we still benifit from it. It was for our own good in the end.


Perhaps far fetched and a bit Big Brother-ish, but at the same time... that's pretty much exactly what happened... even if it wasn't perhaps fully intended.


Sorry for the off-topic switch... but my musings got the better of me. In the end, I agree with the dmg nerfs, but I was quite suprised to see more than half of our mana regen removed from JotW. 33 to 15? Seems a bit extreme imo, but I guess we'll see, and Redcape's math shows it's not that bad. Overall, my feelings are if you want me to worry about managing mana, give me int on my gear. Otherwise, make me like other melee classes.