The problem is your comments are based on one simple fact: how things are *right now*. Your argument has absolutely no value because you're looking at how things are in today's Sunwell raids; plus nothing is finalized in the Beta anyways. But assuming things stay pretty much like they are right now, we can surmise the following for a raid intent on min-maxing:

1) You will bring 3 Paladins for 3 Blessings and 3 Improved Auras (Kings/Might/Wisdom and Retribution/Devotion/Concentraton)
2) There are a very finite number of spec combinations that include my first statement
3) With the introduction of Death Knights and Blizzard's push towards making more specs truly desirable to a raid, we can also surmise that it will be very rare to see more than 3 of any one class - the exceptions being the 4 healing classes
4a) Considering the three above statements, that leaves us with 1 Retribution Paladin for Swift Retribution/Sanctified Retribution/Improved Retribution Aura/Improved Blessing of Might/Heart of the Crusader and Judgements of the Wise; along with two other Paladins
4b) You then want Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Improved Concentration Aura, Blessing of Kings and Improved Devotion Aura, split between your remaining two Paladins: your two options are either Sheath + BoL or Sheath/BoL + Prot
5a) Does your raid want to bring a forth Paladin, after your first three Paladins already have all their raid buffs/debuffs/synergies covered over another class? If you answer yes and willingly pick a Retribution or Protection Paladin, then Blizzard deems that the specs are overpowered and nerfs them - they've mentioned that they want to try to limit bringing more than one of each spec when possible although it obviously excludes healers
5b) Assuming 5a is true, that means we're left with bringing another Holy Paladin (exact spec irrelevant) versus bringing another Resto Shaman (second Earth Shield/Mana Tide/Ancestral Healing/Smart AoE healing/Bloodlust), another healing Priest (a Discipline Priest with their new tank healing toys or a good old fashion Holy Priest) or another Resto Druid (Innervate/Battle Rez/AoE healing/healing versatility)



With all that being said, I can't see bringing a forth Paladin over another class. So where does that leave us and more importantly, where does that leave a more or less full time Retribution Paladin?

Are the buffs your three Paladins bring to your sufficient to justify bringing them over a fifth or sixth Shaman? So far it certainly seems like it. What about Retribution in particular? The spec brings mana regeneration through Judgements of the Wise and its insane JoW scaling (I'm ignoring what I think is the very stupid Sheath/TbtL spec which would require bringing a gimp tank). The spec brings a large amount of raid DPS. The spec brings a large amount of extra tank threat.
That leaves only one thing: does the Retribution spec bring enough personal DPS to justify its raid spot, even with all the buffs and synergies it brings? We can easily surmise that, again, the DPS will be sufficient - Blizzard has said that their intention was to make the Retribution spec to be wanted and viable. And while not very significant, the results being reported from Beta players look very promising.



And nothing says that Glyphs are finalized: nobody except Blizzard knows where the Inscription system is going. How powerful the finalized glyphs will be and how many of them players will have access to are pure speculations at this point.

Sometimes it's important to restate fundamental points - they're easy to lose track of when you get distracted doing other things.

Blizzard has said things like this before - now, the other side of that is I've never seen reasoning and responses like we're getting from blue right now. That has done a lot for my confidence (which, to be honest was well past shaky.). But the truth is, confidence or not, the track record from doesn't really encourage me to assume that "We can easily surmise that, again, the DPS will be sufficient". I agree, we need to wait and see. I definitely agree that it's too early to make conclusions. But DPS in any form has been something that's been hard fought for, since the Original Nerf (TM).

But I don't agree that it's too early to discuss potential points of failure - you yourself said that the argument has absolutely no value because he's looking at how things are currently in beta and live - and then you turn around and say that assuming things stay the way they are now, you think we'll be fine - all he's doing is the reverse. He doesn't think we'll be fine, and he just wants someone to consider it as a potential issue and make sure someone puts an eye on it.

I agree with your assessment (especially with the Might Glyph making the third blessing so much more appealing), but I don't with your conclusion. Three paladins could very well mean Sheath, BoL, and Prot. If sheathe can do a full time pure healing build's worth of healing on the MT, and Ret can't do a full time pure dps build's worth of damage - then which one would you take?

I seem to be misunderstood, I'm not trying to make a doomsday prophecy.

Let me put it this way:

Any comparisons being done of any WotLK DPS are futile (and so are any posts stating "omg our DPS in beta is great, what's your problem"). We don't know how any of it will look like at level 80 endgame in comparison.

All we can compare at the moment are buffs/utility/synergy, the things that are already mapped out.

Now what I'm doing here is interpreting what we have at the moment and following that thought to come to the conclusion:

1. If our "relative DPS" is comparable in WotLK to the top tier DPS classes, we're good.

2. If our "relative DPS" remains where it is today (~75% of top tier DPS), but we get further utility to validate our spot (more than what we have at the moment), we're good.

3. If our "relative DPS" remains where it is today (~75% of top tier DPS), along with what we know about buffs/utility/synergy now, we're in trouble.


Now if you follow those 3 statements, you'll notice there are two variables: "Relative DPS" (=relative personal DPS) and the lump sum of "buffs/utility/synergy" (=group utility). One unknown and one available.

Make sure you notice the if clause, in no way am I making any statements regarding our "relative DPS", this is all just a breakdown based on possible cases.

I hope I'm getting through here:

If you try to argue against what I'm saying with anything related to "relative personal DPS", your argument is void. (Read: We don't know how it will be at level 80 endgame).

If you try to argue against what I'm saying with anything related to "group utility", then I'd love to hear more about it.

My personal "opinion" is that given what we know about our easily mirrored group utility, it will be too little to validate usefulness if our relative DPS remains the same. You'd be much better off with a 100% DPS + a sheathbot taking care of judgements (comfortably while benefiting from doing it) + one of the many other classes working as your mana battery.

What's your opinion?



Edit: Thanks Khaelarys, that's exactly what I'm trying to bring across.

Isn't it a buff vs current version? Spellpower has bigger return than spell damage.

I mean that if int is for example 800, then 280 +healing (current version) << 280 spellpower (wotlk version) in the value added to heal. Value of the talent almost doubled.

It is.
1 spellpower is roughly what ~2 healing are right now? So return is roughly twice as much? Not sure I got that right, anyone know the specific scaling of heals with spellpower compared to TBC? 200%? 150%?

Let's be honest here: if a Sheath spec can output comparable, if not nearly equal healing compared to someone who's doing full time healing all the while returning a massive amount of mana to the raid through JotW and beefed up JoW, then the spec falls under overpowered.

If anything, my opinion is that the reason a Holy Paladin would include Sheath into his spec should be because the rest of the raid is more than able to fulfill any AoE healing requirement, this enabling the Sheath Paladin to focus on more powerful single target healing *AND* have the potential the put up a better JoW/JoL compared to a BoL Paladin. Important to note that what I mean by potential is entirely dependent on raid make up, 10 man raids and encounter specific requirements such as keeping Heart of the Crusader/JoW on two targets while the Ret and Prot Paladin are busy somewhere else or pushing daisies.

What I feel would be overpowered for a Holy Sheath spec would be to use a spec like this http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...00000000000000 and still be able to output good healing numbers/mana regeneration numbers. I also feel that the mana regeneration aspect of JotW/JoW should be too weak for a Paladin focusing on healing (Sheath bot) to be noticeable/acceptable, but should more than good enough to warrant a lower-than-pure-DPS-class Retribution Paladin to have a permanent spot in a 25 man raid. Like I said, I feel this would limit bringing a Holy/Sheath healing hybrid for the Retribution aura along with a full time Holy Paladin with BoL/Imp Concentration Aura; it would encourage bringing a Retribution Paladin instead.



On the topic of Retribution's desirability: huge *if*, but IF Retribution Paladins are intended by Blizzard to be mana regeneration bots for raids (kind of like Shadow Priests are shaping up to be in the expansion and not like they are on live right now), then that intention alone would go a very long ways towards making Retribution wanted. Even though I said that stuff like this has no value until things get finalized, I'll still point out the following: if Blizzard truly intends for Retribution Paladins to be mana batteries/buff bots along with Shadow Priest and Survival Hunters, then Retribution Paladins should have very little to fear in the long run. All three of these specs are seemingly being tailored towards being so good that every raid would want at least one or two, probably three considering the other buffs these three specs bring.
Going back to how things are *on live right now*, we all know that Shadow Priests are an integral part of high end raids. And while Blizzard wasn't happy with just how much mana a Shadow Priest could give back to the raid, they still liked the idea enough to allow Shadow Priest to be brought into high end raids even with their very poor DPS and pathetic scaling. They were brought in because of the synergies they gave.

Again, very little value, but if that's the role Blizzard intends for Retribution Paladins to fill, does it matter if they only do 50 or 75% of a top DPS class? E-peen aside and with another big if thrown down: if the utility numbers are tweaked properly, does it really matter that much if Retribution Paladin DPS is sub-par to classes who don't bring as much utility?



And for argument's sake: if Blizzard doesn't intend any of the above and just wants Retribution Paladins to be brought in for their personal DPS and the small amount of utility they bring it will most likely mean the end of JotW and scaling JoW/JoL.




Want to fix the problem? Nerf the SP scaling on JoW/JoL and balance out the numbers so that the JoW/JoL scaling follows this order in terms of best to worst numbers: Retribution Paladin > Protection Paladin > Holy Sheath Bot > TbtL/Sheath gimp tank spec > BoL spec.





Edit: In reply to the Holy Guidance change. You are right, it is a buff: on live it's 35% Int into spell dmg and healing. If you get 200 healing/spell dmg on live, it increases your Holy Light healing by 142. On beta with 200 SP, it'll give a greater coefficient to your Holy Light, returning more than 142 health.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the new mechanics that I have seen repeated several times in this thread, often in reference to the Shaman Mental Quickness talent. Spellpower == Spell damage/healing, they are two terms for exactly the same thing. Spellpower does not provide twice the healing of spell damage/healing, they are the same thing. It is the coefficients on healing spells that have changed, not any mechanic related to the naming of spell damage. Healing spells no longer follow the (casting time)/3.5 * spell damage rule in any way, shape, or form.

Maybe I've misunderstood its potential but won't a scaling JoW alone be enough to justify our position? We can't hold up light from another paladin with these changes but that's a small loss when compared to the improvements to JoW, and the fact that it is now 'our' buff; we don't need to rely on a holy to use it.

Even considering the increases in spell mana costs and the small internal cooldown for JoW procs, JoW should still be massively more impressive in relative terms than it is now (unless I am completely mistaken). The ease of use will be a factor as well. Currently it is limited to bosses but any add rushes/target switching/phase change situations will not prevent or hinder its use. A few seconds of JoW may be lost due to judgement being on cd when switching targets, but with that exception JoW coverage should be constant throughout a raid.

At the moment as a ret I generally prefer the simpler fights (Brutallus etc) over much more inventive fights (Kael 25 man is an old one but probably the best example) simply because I dread the colossal ballache of cajoling holy paladins into rejudging targets with wisdom when they have other important things to be doing. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy the better fights for what they are now because my contribution is wrapped up in one judgement and I won't have to rely on others as much.

The change to crusader strike is, I suspect, nothing really to do with retribution, it's to do with holy and encouraging them to judge even when a ret is present. I guess the idea is wait until you get an instant holy light and everything feels safe, judge for utility and haste, and even with the lost gcd you're still 0.5s ahead of a holy light with a cast time. A bit clunky maybe, but sounds plausible in the endgame.

One thing I'm still unhappy about is the scrapping of the old Art of War and its replacement with pvp-fodder. The spike damage was silly, but space in the tree had been allocated to something that is useful in both pve and pvp; the new talent should follow that pattern.

As a quick note, I think people are being a bit disrespectful towards Avitus. Others may not share his fears, but his comments are reasoned and cannot simply be swatted away as simple negativity. As a person learning to raid as ret since around Christmas his posts were among those that I read with the most interest.

[E]DarkNecross' post suggests I'm probably not wrong about JoW.

People keep bringing up crusader strike, noting how without the utility, it's gimped. I mentioned that myself, before the patch notes reflected that crusader strike is intended to proc all seals.

How hard does your Seal of Blood hit for? My crappy geared paladin procs SoB for about 300-450 depending on buffs and vengeance. So your Crusader strike will be 110% WD (physical) + 35%WD(Holy).

Crusader strike hits like a truck.

Unless they have reversed their change to our instants?

Cath brings up an excellent point. Warriors are currently in an uproar because arms has blood frenzy, but fury brings nothing for raid buffs. BF is a 4% boost to just physical dps, and there are talks that it is a talent that cannot be passed up in a raid environment. Yet, you all want to shrug off a 3% bonus to ALL damage AND healing?