• frmorrison

The only issue is 20% of total mana on a judgement makes Holy really powerful, since they will have around 20k mana at 80.
JotW should be changed to 25-30% of base mana instead.


Divine Plea being like Bloodrage sounds neat (lose some life for rage).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Noctivagant

Well, DP takes care of the 0 state, *if* it's decent. If JoTW can hold us up long enough for DP to come around then we have the perpetual motion machine we seek. DP needs to be shorter than 5 minutes, more like 2-3. JoTW-20 and a 2 min ability that would cover say 33-50% would shut me up =)

I imagine working the work, getting mostly a profit, but slowly dropping until, ta-da, DP comes around, back to full, then back to slowly falling, slowly working it down, DP comes up, etc. I dont have a Shaman with SR, but again, I imagine this cycle to be like Water Shield + SR.

I couldn't agree more on Seals. Are we meant to switch them up or not? It takes a nasty 28% just to get out of your current seal, do something and come back. One of the JoTW-20 doesn't even cover a single seal change and back!

This is a big part of my resistance to SoW.

- If you balance around using it all the time, then its a crutch and it makes the damage seals meaningless.
- If its intended to be a mana regen mechanic, the first 14% you generate has to make up the cost of casting it, then you have to regen up (slowly) and then are going to pay 14% to get out of it and back to damage

If you think about it SoW is no different than a weak HoT that would do 14% damage to your health when it started and 14% damage when it ended!

Why do all the seals have to have the same costs anyway? Enc Shaman have say, shocks and totems that have various costs, why not seals? Furthermore, if the point of SoW is to get mana back, maybe it shouldn't have a cost?

 

Blackthought

I also think that having JotW return a set perecentage of base mana (regardless of the percentage) is a stupid idea. I am not a fan of non-scaling mechanics (other than the energy system). There should be some scaling component. I would argue that having it return a percentage of the damage caused on judgment or CS makes more sense. That would allow for scaling of rets and reduce the worry that it makes holy overpowered.

 

Geerock

I like what I'm hearing in regards to the mana regen, but they might be right in that it's too powerful for a Holy build.

So spec that deep into ret, would it hurt holy that much? I don't think it would. Especially with SP being the new mechanic and Holy Shock being a nasty nasty ranged spell now.

If they keep it as it is, we mught see a whole new version of Paladin... Wait, isn't that what they are going for anyway?

 

Hylo

Blizzard seems to be a fan of non-scaling mechanisms what it comes to mana-regen. It's easy to see why. Once your basic dps-rotations is set up, the cost of that rotation is not going to change when you move from Naxx to Icecrown. DPS-scaling comes from offensive stats, not from "ability to spam more". I believe this all has been discussed in this thread already.

In other words, rets don't need scalable sustainability. Rets should be self-sufficient from greens to the best epics from Icecrown. If you are self-sustaining there is no need for scaling.

Only healers should have scaling mana-regeneration and they also have it, in form of regeneration stats in gear.

 

levk

The mana regen from replenishment (the 10 person buff) scales as it should. It scales with int which rets don't have but that's not the point. This is because caster mana consumption scales with haste. Ret mana consumption doesn't scale with anything as it's cooldown limited. You could argue that ret regen should scale so that it would allow for more expensive rotations as your gear improves like the warriors get more rage and convert that to damage. This is a flawed argument I think - nobody will take rets to raid until they get better gear and they won't get better gear until they raid and warrior is a bad comparison, completely different class much more about gcd management than rage.

I think the JotW undocumented regen was meant to be based on base mana, and probably the 20% is what they're thinking. You should probably theorycraft off that. Most interestingly, does taking benediction allow a more aggressive rotation over a 5 minute fight as that will directly impact your talent choice.

 

Noctivagant

Well, first, you mention energy, and you never see scaling energy returns, its always fixed for fixed. If you think of turning our blue bar into an energy/rate/rp type bar, then % for % make sense. I think its going to end up base for base eventually. Really, its moot, it IS base for base unless they did something to change our mana from gear system.

If the much chewed on str->mana mechanic were ever to enter, then both the JotW-20 becomes scalable as well as replenishment. If they are ever toing to do that, they could consider just making mana for Paladins intrinsically come from the greater of STR or INT. Same formulas as now, just the second STR gets above int (which is any non-holy paladin) the mana reflects that gear.

 

• Voldin

This is not true. Rogues get energy back through Combat Potency on the Live servers, which increases in effectiveness as they upgrade their gear. Adding additional Hit/Expertise/Haste all generate additional energy that they can spend on more attack skills.

Druids don't really see the same benefit currently, although Omen of Clarity acts as an additional energy regen mechanic for the most part. This is also increased by additional hit/expertise. Druids are also currently able to powershift for additional energy returns, effectively converting mana into energy.

This is really that different from the positive feedback loop created for DPS using a rage bar. The more damage you are doing, the more fuel you have to push buttons more often. It isn't an unheard of mechanic by any means, and is largely in effect for the other melee DPS classes currently.

LodeRunner on The Baby Thread:

 

Khaelarys

At which point we're the only % for % bar that is drainable.

I don't disagree with anything in this post - I agree that % for % regen makes sense for a melee class, but I feel compelled to point out that the fact that we are without any significant passive regen, and combined with the fact that we can be mana burned into the ground in four casts (what, 5-6 seconds for a disco priest?), unless Judgement (our mana return ability) is free or very, very cheap, I'm still going to spend a lot of my time with nothing but auto attacking to show for it.

 

Altirias

It's been discussed quite a lot in the ret thread, but I still don't get why people don't see the issue that it would be for us to have a mana bar that behaves like rage, above all in a PVP environment.

It's all about the difference between enough and infinite. Balance, in a word.

Yet, I'm not going down that road again, I feel I've already said to much and I'm going to be harassed again by some regular readers....

Anyway, Mana regeneration is a real issue, yet it would be great to read people talk about it considering every aspect of our class, that's including all our arsenal and not only our dps tools.

 

Nhul

Because nobody fears a holy paladin in small scale PvP due to their inability to stand and heal while humping a pillar. Take that holy paladin into the open field and see just how difficult it is for them to heal outside of their bubble.

Infinite mana means nothing if you cannot use it, and using it to heal is not something easily done in the middle of the fight with ANY class near you besides maybe..another paladin.

 

Suicidal Zebra

I think, nay hope, that GC didn't mean Bloodrage-like in that you trade off health for mana. I think that she meant that you gain a large chunk of mana initially and then more mana every second for X seconds thereafter.

--

I agree that Plea could stand to be on a slightly shorter cooldown (3 minutes would be gravy) and Crusader Strike still needs some utility. While I wouldn't complain over the new JotW effect being rolled into CS I'd love to see something a little more imaginative and above all offensive as a secondary effect.

 

Blackthought

A Spellbreaker effect on CS would make a lot of people happy while not being overpowered in the arenas. It seems like a no brainer to me.

 

Redcape

Rogues get more energy from haste, hit, and expertise.

Cats get more energy from haste, hit and expertise.

Warriors get more rage from every offensive stat available.

Enhance shamans get more mana from AP, hit, expertise and haste.

Hunters get more mana by proccing JoW more from haste, which is a low return.

Ret paladins and DK are currently the only physical dps that do not get energy/rage/runic/mana from increased stats on gear.

While the original JotW was over the top, the idea of a scaling mana return on damage is not new or automatically overpowered, it is in fact the standard for melee dps. JotW in its most recent form is enough to make retadins sustainable, and that is great, but it does create issues with holydins regen. I would prefer a damage scaling return instead that gave the same amount of mana for now to prevent that issue.

I generally shy away from random wishlists, but this is one thing I thought of that has some very nice things going for it:

Benediction: Reduce the cost of your Judgement spells by 20/40/60/80/100%.

It offers enough mana savings to be actually worth 5 talent points and fixes some severe ret issues in arena. With this talent you could not shut out a ret paladin completely with mana burn, they can always get back into the fight after a judgement. It also means that every paladin feels ok about putting a few points into ret and notices a difference. The lack of being totally boned at zero mana is something prot and holy might even find useful in pve sometimes too.

 

Blackthought

By healers do you mean, hunters, locks, mages, elemental shaman and boomkins? Because they all get mana return scaling with replenishment (they have int on their gear) as it returns a % of total mana. The only classes that do not are Rets and Enhancement Shaman. Why does this make sense?

 

Smurrf

So, finally got a chance to play on a pally now on the beta. Couple of notes: HotR really needs to start auto attacks. Especially since on multi-mob pulls, you're likely to use that over Judgement to kick things off, it feels really odd to be spamming all these abilities...and not see your auto-swing going. I've already submitted that feedback.

Also, I now understand why the Glyph for the alteration of AS (hits two less targets, but does 100% more damage.) With the insanely long amount of time it dazes targets for, you can hit that one, get primary aggro on it, then get it CC'd by someone else while it's away from the group, and switch to hitting other stuff as it races in to eat your face. If CC pops, it'll still come to you due to the amount of threat you put on it. It's a flavor glyph, but used properly, it'll work really well. HotR works well as an in-close version of AS anyways, and has the advantage of being instant. While you can certainly use AS while being swarmed with the casting change, I like it for use one-on-one on mobs for more threat being Glyphed.

Finally, got silenced by several things in dungeons the last couple of days...HotR and SHoR are NOT physical abilities. When I got silenced, those abilities were not able to be used. If anyone else has different results, I'd like to hear it.

 

• Avitus

Nice to see them do something about JotW, I'll wait for the signed blue post stating it's an intended change that's meant to stay this time before getting out the champagne.

I agree that changing the mana return to a fixed "base mana" rather than "max mana" percentage would probably be the most elegant solution to keeping it from being overpowered for holy spec. Alternatively, tying it into CS would also be a good solution that's out of reach of abuse.

Have to say I'm not 100% on this. I'd rather we continue doing SoR/SoV calculations with the assumption of SotP adding 15% as Redcape is doing and then worry about logistics later.

Note the latest blue post where they did say that t1-2 of paladin trees are getting some major reshuffling to make useful things more accessible (and they know about the BoK problem), so lets not fuss around too much about point distributions on trees that won't exist anymore soon.



I think it's because people have actually listened to this concern, thought about it and even replied to it in this (and the other) thread. There's a difference between "not seeing the issue" and "seeing the concern and thinking about it, but ultimately having the educated opinion that it's not a problem".

Let me break it down:

• We agree that "very high" (or infinite) regen is necessary to support our "very high" (over half mana bar used every 8 seconds) mana consumption (relative to our mana pool) for keeping up DPS rotation. This is what most define as "rage like"/"infinite" mana regen.
  
• I assume, we agree that "infinite" regen cannot be abused for healing purposes in raids/solo in a way that would make it imbalanced. You can't DPS in any decent way if you have to heal constantly.
  
• We disagree about how balanced "infinite" regen would be in arenas, you say it would be overpowered.

Here's what people have responded with so far (rough summary from multiple posters):

• With a 4k mana pool you will never be able to throw more than 3 HLs at a time, before having to go back in combat. This is a pretty big limit to how useful our regen can be.
  
• Healing in melee range in Arena is "impossible". You would actually have to manage to get out of melee range to heal, which is a penalty to the damage you should/would be doing. You can't heal and DPS at the same time.
  
• There are so many abilities spread across so many classes that deal with heals, healing reduction debuffs, interrupts, cast time increases, silence/counterspell effects. Most people see it as a balanced mini game.
  
• Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, "healing" as a utility ability should not be regarded as something different or superior to utility abilities other classes offer, such as: Stuns, CC, healing debuffs, slows, sheep/hex, interrupts, fears, the list goes on

This is why people don't agree with your concern.

Anyway no one is harassing you, I hope it doesn't come across this way, but please do actually address the responses to your concerns ("discussion"/"debate") rather than repeatedly going "I feel this is bad, hey guys why is no one agreeing with me".

 

◊ Cathela

I'm pretty sure I was able to HotR through a silence at one point, but that was many patches ago. Seems stupid to me that a weapon strike and a shield slam should be silenceable, but apparently they are.

On the plus side, if things stay this way presumably it means that haste-stacking will be an interesting way for paladins to bulk out the threat rotation a bit more.

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

 

• Avitus

Not disagreeing, but it's always been the same with Crusader Strike. The solution so far has been to create a macro with /startattack /cast <ability>. Obviously this will get very tedious if we have to do it for a whole number of abilities.


Changing SoW to 0 mana cost could be a possible fix. Agree on the rest of your post ("Seals -> Dispel immune imbues" bit).


Minor nitpick: Actually, the only spec/class is Ret (again).

Enhancement Shamen will have tons of int on their gear (http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...aman_melee.jpg), which is actually desirable now considering it gives them AP (1 int = 1 AP), a larger mana pool, as well as the scaling mana return you're talking about: [Mental Dexterity]

This is not to say I think we should get equal treatment here, I'm fine with a supercharged jotw and keeping with intless plate.

 

Dorrinal

Just because the result is a weapon or shield strike, doesn't mean the paladin isn't casting a spell to invoke the power of the Light. An interesting, if needlessly complex, compromise would be a HotR and ShR that connected but did physical damage instead of Holy. Silence would negate the "spell" aspect and harm your threat but still permitting you to hit the monster upside the head. But I digress.

A thought about balancing a scaling Judgement of Wisdom. Make its base mana regen small, maybe 15% of base mana. Then add a component that scales with AP. Tweak the numbers and it can remain a useful spell for healers to regenerate mana while still providing the reliable scaling "nuke-regen" many of us are looking for. Tanks would benefit from the effect greatly in a situation when they're mana-starved, too.

Another idea would be to allow the mana regen to crit; this would benefit healers more than tanks assuming Holy paladins still like crit in LK. It would also favor Retribution because it would be affected by talents like Sanctified Seals, Fanaticism, and Righteous Vengeance. Protection (I assume) won't be stacking crit but no one's complaining about their mana regeneration mechanic.

 

DarKNecross

I don't see what's so wrong with this change. It's less than the original JotW, which is obvious, but it isn't so much less that we'd find ourselves stuck in a rut.
A few pages back, the ideology of having enough mana to sustain our damage, but not heal, seemed to be accepted by most.
For a Raid buffed Paladin, they have ~7640MP, and get 1,500MP from JotW.
If you spend 41% base mana on damage in 8 seconds (Judgement, 2x CS, DS), you're spending 1687MP.
The net loss is 176MP. Of course, you need to look at this on a bigger scale.

(The following idea was taken from Methyldruius of Draka)
Compare consumption of % Base Mana elongated over, for arguments sake, a 10 minute fight, with an unprecedented perfect damage rotation. Assuming you have 7640MP.

Divine Storm - 1200% Base Mana
20% per cast, 60 casts

Crusader Strike - 800% Base Mana
8% per cast, 100 casts

Judgement - 375% Base Mana
5% per cast, 75 casts

Seals - 56% Base Mana
14% per cast, 4 casts

Avenging Wrath - 40% Base Mana
8% per cast, 5 casts

Hammer of Wrath - 420% Base Mana
12% per cast, ~35 casts

Consecration - 1650% Base mana
22% per cast, 75 casts

Our total base mana consumption is 4541%

If we compare that against our gains;

Replenishment - 300% max mana, 557% Base Mana
0.5% Max per second, 600 seconds

Judgements of the Wise - 1400% max mana, 2600% Base Mana
20% Max per cast, 75 casts

Judgement of Wisdom - 600% max mana, 1114% Base Mana
4% Max MP, 4sec CD

Improved BoW - 318% Base Mana
109mp5, 120 ticks

Improved Mana Spring - 310% Base Mana
42.5mp2, 300 ticks

Our total base mana return is 4899%. This doesn't even concern Divine Plea, a Mana Potion, or our starting Mana.
It looks like, for PvE, they gave us an ability that supports our damage rotation, and not much else.

For PvP, it's a little trickier. In PvP gear we should have about 5700MP. Each cast would return 1140MP, the equivalent of a 1900dmg Judgement before the change. That's about as much for either 1 Holy Light, or 1 DS+1 CS. The glaring issue is Divine Storm's mana cost is balanced around hitting multiple targets, like Consecration.

I don't think they want to give us infinite mana, but rather enough mana to perform without burning out too quickly. Also, I think their focus is on PvE right now, and they'll balance PVP afterward.

http://crimson-guild.com

 

Selenia

Everyone assumes we will have Replenishment with 100% uptime, but is that really realistic?

I haven't seen any parses on it, just curious since it was listed as ten targets only and picking intelligently. If it picks based on actual mana, Ret and Prot will probably be among the lower ten most of the time. But if it picks by % of total mana, will retadins/holydins/protadins still be among the lowest?

 

Qalor

Everyone is assuming there will be 2 classes providing replenishment and that it is/will be coded to be smart enough to cover 10 each. That leaves 5 out so it assumes you either have 5 total warriors, rogues, DKs and feral druids, or the remainder were full and didn't need the mana.

 

Rustik

DarkNecross: ONe minor nitpick: There will be 5 seal casts, not 4(0 min, 2 min, 4 min, 6 min, 8 min). It still doesn't change the end result much. We're still in the positive.

Selenia: In a 25 man group, we can assume you'll have 2 mana batteries for an optimal group. You only need 5 rogues/warriors/DKs to make those two mana batteries cover the entire raid. That is assuming that replenish will not stack with multiple mana batteries, and simply select other raid members.

For a 10 man group it's even easier. Everyone will get replenish with a single mana battery.

 

Selenia

Fair enough. I was personally operating on the assumption that new replenish would overwrite old replenish if cast by two different people, ie that there'd never be more than ten people in a given raid with the buff active.

My thanks for clearing it up!