That pretty much equals to stating "hold on, we'll soon give you a substitution for JotW".

I'd guess the only thing to do is waiting for the next build (or the one after).

Two things I find interesting with his statement:

1. "Managing your mana is something we want you to have to consider" - Why do Hunters, Warlocks and Enhancement Shamans have abilities that completely negate this?
2. "We don't want to balance a class around "well this guy can do a lot but runs out of mana really fast." That's not a fun mechanic. " - Why are ret pallys like that now?

Eh, I suppose it is at least getting addressed.

It's good to hear, but as far as "why have mana at all" goes: Paladins have mana because one of their roles (healing) is balanced around mana across all classes. The other tanks don't use it and all but enhancement shaman for melee DPS do not use it. It does not seem unreasonable for paladins to emulate them in sustainability.

You know the thing that always gets to me is, for the lack of better words: The principle of "character progression".

Basically through leveling and gearing up the goal is always to progress all aspects of your character. If you take any instance where this principle does not apply, it's pretty much bad design.

Now, I accept that as a retadin they made the choice not to increase our mana pools (from naked to best in game geared) due to having to stuff too many stats on our gear. Fine, this could be worked around with regen.

However, now, for the first time, they start making how much you regen directly connected to how large your mana pool is (all the new mana battery abilities go off max mana pool) and now we have a problem.

A mechanic to allow for "character progression" in the "energy/endurance" departement is a must, read: Personal mana regen that scales with damage. Anything less and we're going against the idea of "character progression". This is what the game is based on.



For the shorthand version of the above: Not being able to (practically/realistically) increase our mana pool sizes or our regen is game principle deal breaker and has to be addressed.

1. Hunters have to switch to AOTV, then switch back. Enhancement Shaman have to trigger Shamanistic Rage. Warlocks have to Life Tap.

All of these mechanics make mana regen practically moot, but they still require you to stop your normal DPS rotation to use. Now, I'm not saying JotW was a bad idea, but it seems like he's pointing towards wanting mana regen to be a conscious choice, as opposed to something that just happens.

2. I believe this is a simple case of: "We didn't have time to create a fitting mana regen talent for you in the middle of everything else we were doing, but I'm telling you now that we're aware of the problem and will be addressing it in the future".

While I generally understand what you're trying to say, I have to note that this is not true for Enhancement Shamen. At least currently, with jow, they never even need to look at their mana bars, even without using Shamanistic Rage. That and of course how shamanistic rage is not really an ability that forces you to change anything with/stop your normal DPS rotation (as is with hunters/locks).

I'm hoping Divine Plea is not part of the equation when they try to rationalize our mana regen.

EDIT : Too slow, much like the two posts above me.

So that's the equivalent of SoW, right? We already have that. Some portion of our dps for dedicated mana regeneration.

Shamans have water shield (0 mana) + mana totem (4% mana), and then when really in trouble they use shamanistic rage(0 mana 2 min cooldown). That's not a lot of dps impact, and the ability to go from drained mana to not drained mana cannot be undervalued - it's incredible.

How long do you think it'll take the hunter to regen mana - again, an ability he can do from 0% mana.

Warlock - 0 mana for the mana return.

I don't disagree with your assertion - that is that we have to give up some portion of our dps to get the mana back - but it should be accessible with little to no mana, and it needs to be short burst. A single cooldown, a 10 sec burst, etc - not 14% of our entire mana pool to give up 20% or so of our damage, + 14% mana to go back to dps mode.

It's possible they feel that divine plea is that answer.

There are so many ways to skin this its almost infinite. The ideas, just in a quick brainstorming session are hard to keep track of in my own head, and I am sure everyone here has a ton of ideas.

I would take a clone job of either the Shaman or Hunter concepts, personally. I agree that divine plea is not the answer, and does not achieve parity with the others. I do not, personally, want the answer to be keep SoW up, as this basically derails the other seals, and its like, well SoW is the seal. 14% is to high to seal twist, so SoW is out as the whole answer.

One pattern arising with the other classes is that this is a choice, an ability that is a separate thing, that is chosen, activated and the mana happens with some kind of cost, loss of dps, what haveyou. Something passive, like the old JoTW would not fit that, so there's a reason to strike out in another direction.

The question is what is the choice? Hitting a button every time it's up, might as well be passive... What are we willing to trade periodically for almost infinitely sustained raid output, and low to no solo downtime? Just a GCD every now and then, or something more.

I agree with some of the above, that it should have some kind of scaling factor. One thought would be based off of SP (by way of AP and sheath), which kinds of makes sense, since mana is "spellish". With Sheath, this would of course, really be an AP thing, just converted to make more lore sense, or heck, maybe not. What we don't want is any connection to int or actual spellpower gear, to keep us on standard diet of DPS plate.

Here's another idea of many: a Ret talent that basically adds a new judgment to go with the other new ones. Instead of damage, it returns mana equivalent to the normal judgment damage. The "sacrifice" is the loss of damage that judgment cycle. It's always there, any time you want to jack your mana up, but you are going to have to sit out one cycle to get it.

Also, as a long time Paladin lover, I like the more corn-ball names, something like Battle Hymm, or Righteous Anger would be a good deep Ret talent name.

With regard to Ret dps in the current build can anyone elaborate with actual figures, particularly after the recent changes to Vengeance? I personally have heard varying reports and tend to take them with a grain of salt, unless I test myself (sad I'm not in beta). I presume we were actually outdpsing "pure" dps classes?

Also have they done anymore regarding the balancing of the seal damage? i.e. SoR v SoC etc. How is SoM and SoC stacking up. I was always critical of SoC as a talent being outdps'd by a racial, I just fail to get that concept i'm afraid, whether it's for PvP or not, as some people would argue.

I've read Avitus's comments in here and completely agree, Ret needs to be outputting near these "pure" dps classes to warrant a raid invite. I've personally been a long time advocate of this. We do not at the moment make up for 35% less dps compared to dps classes with raid utility. And it appears in WotLK that will be the same case, what with the CS change. I'm rather hoping that they will not come down on us too hard with regard to this. (the infamous T.C. comments always brings fear, particularly his recent one with regard to nerfing Ret paladin dps, which could be misconstrued) Because if they do, I personally can't see a spot for Ret, as much as I hate to say it.

Finally with HoS and general threat mechanics in Wrath, has anyone been able to work this out and elaborate please? Be interesting to know what direction they are moving with regard to this.

Now that you describe it, I'm positive this is what I was screwing up. Good to know.

Because the old way sucked?


I think the issue was/is simply Blizzards infamous pace of development, or the complete lack of it. Other Companies are often ignorant of their own issues game play wise, or worse, adamant that the crappy mechanics are fine. Blizzard is mostly aware of their own failings, but move so damn slowly, the frustration on our end is nearly the same.

Either that, or the Head Dev whose pet idea of finite resource pools finally came to his senses. Retard Rocks etc.




I also just want to second the idea of making Benediction the new Judgment of the Wise style talent. Prot Paladins still need a regen mechanic for when they aren't being smacked around, and I'm sure Holy could find a use for it.

Of course, if the dang talent is so worthwhile and virtually required for any kind of acceptable play style, why shouldn't they just make it a baseline ability of the class in general? Make the talent improve the baseline effect!

I'm sure, personally, that Divine Plea is the answer. It's just a matter of tuning the cooldown/effect until it works. They may well introduce a talent deep in Ret that either dramatically increases the effect or dramatically decreases the cooldown on Divine Plea, so as not to mess with Holy mana balance (as pointed out, all healers are balanced around finite mana).

This does have the problem of not scaling with gear, but it leverages a mechanism they have already implemented into the game. I suppose if you want to be a little hokey about it, you could have that aforementioned talent increase the effect of Divine Plea by some factor of your AP. But the problem with focusing on this as an area of character progression is this: while Ret mana pools will remain fixed, so do the mana costs. Therefore, once you reach infinite sustainability, there's no longer any concept of meaningful progression from improved regen no matter how you slice it. So it would be better if they balanced it that way from the start, rather than as a matter of progression.

This is easy enough to do through tweaking Divine Plea.

edit for a bit of clarification: For example, if Divine Plea filled your mana bar to 100% and had a cooldown tuned to be exactly the amount of time it takes you to spend 100% of your mana (which is constant at all gearing levels), then there would be no problem at all, right?

Right now, the facts of Divine Plea are thus (per Wowhead)

5 min between uses
Two 25% of total mana hits, one at 3 seconds of channeling, one at 6 seconds.

It technically scales with gear from mana (vs base costs) but that is not a WotLK gear concept for Ret, so that's a non-factor really. Getting those two ticks in could be problematic with interrupts, and you would be doing 0 dps during the chanelling, so there is a cost (which is ok)

It works out to 10% of total mana per minute, if you were able to fire it every time it came up and succeeded.

A Ret talent to make it two minutes and uninterruptable would be 25% a minute and always there, and that wouldn't be too much of a crazy leap from the current one.

Is 25% of total a minute guaranteed enough? I feel nervous about it dropping much past two minutes as this feels like its too big of a delta from base somehow. Maybe make it 2 minutes, do 66% and be uninterruptable would still float, for 33% a minute.

Keep in mind, we will be getting replenishment most times, and thought its not up to the task of doing everything it would assist the mechanic.

Wait, what are the other three spells then?

I'm sorry, to be honest - ANOTHER ability that I have to park to use isn't the answer to our class' mana problems. Not for prot and ret, especially. It would still require AT least a DS/HoP cooldown, possibly a stun/repentance and it still might not go off. For farming, I can just throw on my healing gear out of combat and knock it out. For raids, I have so little issue now with mana I really don't suspect I'll have one - the problem is Arenas and BG's -

In an Arena, with the silly amount of CC out there, three seconds before the first tick to get back 1350 mana ( one heal, or a seal and crusader strike and 2 judgements, or seal and a divine storm) isn't likely to go off - no loss of channeling and no interrupt doesn't mean last through fear, hex, sheep, stun, incapacitate, cyclone, chastise, silence, pull, blind, etc.... might as well leave it on a cool down for five minutes at that point - we can only use it with a shield - and then only with no priest and for full effect with no warlock.

This can't be the answer. It's not a matter of tuning, it's a matter of mechanics. The warlock mechanic and the hunter mechanic is unstoppable. If they have a cooldown, they get it. They also don't have to wait till Northrend to get it. I usually agree with your viewpoint on most every concept, but I just sternly disagree with this.

Loss of dps DOES NOT mean stop functioning for 6 seconds for 2700 mana. For prot, especially - just use the good water and drink for 5 seconds out of combat. It's faster and more mana - and it's not like prot can use this in combat either.

It needs to not be channeled and have additional dispel mechanics attached to it, and it needs to be based on something more than current mana.

The biggest problem with mana restore is pvp not pve. Mana pool being excessively small, you'll be 'oomed' in about 10 seconds. Without a method to restore mana fast without cooldown (or a very low one), pvp will be just an exercise in frustration. They are kinda forced to transform it into a blue rage (if they care about paladin representation at all).

just pointing out that as of the latest push and the new version of Blessing of Sanctuary, Prot has no mana issues whatsoever. So that entire angle of your argument is moot. I was also not discussing PvP in any way, shape, or form. You will have mana issues in raids, just read FlyingToastr's posts -- unless they fix it. One method of fixing it is to tweak Divine Plea. Frankly I don't care in the slightest if you don't like it as a PvP ability; that's not the point.

The Warlock mechanic and Hunter mechanics are also very poor PvP abilities. The Warlock one requires them to damage themselves, hardly conducive to victory in PvP. The Hunter mechanic reduces damage dealt by 50%... and requires dealing damage to function. If their opponent is hiding behind a pillar, then they're not getting any mana back at all.

These are not intended as PvP discussions. In PvE, where mana will be much more of a concern than it is now, tweaking Divine Plea is a perfectly suitable method of addressing that concern.

You know as a paladin community we always seem to blindly make concessions, as if it will make us sound more reasonable or something. Sorry to hammer on this, but please observe the last 1 year+ of enhancement shamen (our closest relative in this area: melee class with a mana bar). Where are the concessions there?

I'm not saying "boo hoo look at what they have", I'm simply trying to point out: All these concessions are not needed, "all" other melee classes have short cooldown based systems with infinite energy bar. So why should rets be the exception?
Some might argue it's because we can heal which should reduce our downtime, but you only need to look at feral druids and enhancement shamen to know that's not true. Additionally heals go off the same resource so it really doesn't make anything faster, I know on live I occasionally just bandage up while grinding.

Really these concessions are not needed. There's no logical explanation for having any less of an infinite DPS cycle (whether pvp, solo or pve) than any of the other 4 (now 5 with DKs) melee DPS classes, so lets stop trying to come up with excuses, please?

Are you honestly arguing that Warlocks are powerful in arenas despite their mana regen mechanic? A dps class simply doing dps to get mana back, likewise, seems like a dream to me.

We are obviously at completely different points in this discussion. I disagree with your premise, and your conclusion, so we can just move on.

This is not a raid forum. You're welcome to limit your scope of vision to 25 man raids only, but I will not until the thread reads as such. This thread is intended to be encompassing for paladin changes in WotlK - artificially limiting the argument to the point where you feel like your argument holds the most value isn't terribly useful.

Not to contradict myself from an earlier post, but I am in agreement that we shouldn't HAVE to make concessions, or be diplomatic. "This is what we need, so give it to us", should be an acceptable declaration. I more FIND myself being conciliatory as a rhetorical technique , subconsciously trying to get them to actually do it this time. The bottom line is the existence of a new DPS/Plate/Tank class being so "modern" in design with a fast-recharge mechanic (that gets 54 free levels on a re-roll) is really pushing this issue into Blizzard's lap. Everyone knows that Ret Paladins (lore fans non-withstanding) are the PRIME cantidate to jump ship to the new class.

At the expense of sounding buddy-buddy with everyone, almost every idea offered has been decent, the question is finding the one that makes the most sense across all the scenarios and is "balanced".

Earlier I posted that the fix to all the what-the-hell-seal-to-use mess would be to start with assigning a role to each seal, then cleaning them up. Similarly, we can't really begin to find what this mystery regen mechanic should be without a framework for what we need in those scenarios.

In PVE leveling/farming, its keeping on your feet, keeping moving, keeping going mob to mob to mob, having to stop and slow down only after a large number of pulls similar to other classes. This can be easily tested and calibrated from just observation or datamining.

In PVE group/raid, its being able to fight trash, pull to pull to pull, and the ability on bosses to "go to town" and keep going, running out of gas either never, or after an amount of time commiserate to a similar class at a similar dps point. Again this would yield well to testing.

In PVP its being able to keep going when you can't get out of combat for long periods, and being able to have mana draining be a nuisance not a death sentence. This is a hair harder, imho, but I am sure it can be worked out.

Our mystery mechanic has to work in all those situations. It has to come up often enough to be used, and not held, it has to be effective enough to allow us to really play (none of this holding back to the point of absurdity) but still prevent us from being everything at all times; healer/buffer/tank/dps all in one spec all at once, with not a care in the world about resources.

I think the right mechanic for this is simply what JotW was doing before this latest patch, affecting only the paladin and with the mana return coefficient tweaked to whatever is needed for balance: 30%, 45%, whatever. I've played it that way, and it's fun, because the mana return gets woven into what you're already doing: dealing damage.

Our healing spec gets mana return linked to the healing it does, through Illumination. Our tanking spec gets mana return linked to avoidance and blocking, through the new BoS. Both are good, because they link the mana regeneration into something you presumably wanted to do when you decided to spec that way.

So just do the same for Ret.

Probably ranks of the old BoL. I didn't look at the tooltip, and I don't remember seeing more than one in my spellbook (but I wasn't checking closely.) However, when I specced into BoL I got several lines of "You have learned a new spell: Blessing of Light" and I remember thinking that was odd.

Old JoTW has a lot over the other mechanical ideas.

-It's based on something you want to do, and should be doing whenever its up
-It scales with gear
-Its more-often-for-less than a clicky, which is better against mana drain.