Seal of Wisdom should be mana free. You already lose DPS from having not another seal up. You're already punished by having to repay the mana cost of a damage seal.

Warlocks don't pay mana for Life Tap. Hunters don't pay mana for Aspect of the Viper.

These other abilities are ways to increase your mana at a cost to your DPS. Seal of Wisdom shares the same mechanic, however, you need to earn 28% of base mana to cover the cost of sealing wisdom, and then resealing a DPS seal.

If they still have time budgeted to balance I would expect some sort of AP/STR->INT conversion. A lowering of mana costs on DPS abilities.

I suppose this is a moot point if JotW stays as it is, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't want any mana based class to operate at peak DPS forever without having to stop and do something with their mana.

[quote]
The issue is quite obvious. Retribution paladins have very low mana and burn through it too quickly.

You can band-aid this by adding ridiculous regen, but that fails the "mana classes shouldn't treat mana as an unlimited resource" test.

You can otherwise leave ret paladins with a smaller mana pool, but cheaper spells. This breaks down when you need to consider that other specs use the same spells, but have different mana concerns. (IE: now prot paladins have an impossible time running out of mana, and what might happen with shock DPS builds?). Also, any static (not based off max mana) mana gains give an unbalanced benefit to ret paladins than to other classes.

For Example:
A moonkin and a ret paladin have equal levels of gear. The moonkin has 15,000 mana, and the ret paladin has 5,000 mana. Both are balanced to go OOM after 10 minutes of fighting at their peak efficiency, all buffs considered, without having to do anything special to regen. At the 10 minute mark the paladin drinks a 4,300 mana potion, and so does the moonkin. The paladin now has 8.6 more minutes of peak DPS they can do, while the moonkin now has 2.8 minutes.

Also consider the impact that mana burn has on a class with 5k mana vs a class with 3-4 times that.


Or you could give ret paladins a properly sized mana pool somehow, and scale their mana consumption to match other mana based classes. This would mean that ret paladins have and spend about the same amount of mana as other mana based classes. It would mean that mana effects wouldn't have to take into account the special case of the ret paladin with 5k mana. It also means you don't have to give a ridiculously high mana regen rate to them as a special case, as you can see already, holy builds are already trying to figure out whether they can wrangle JotW into a healing build.

How do you make the paladin in the above example have 15,000 mana in warrior gear? The only way I can imagine it is to have it scale off stats that they are already looking for. It would also have to be something that holy paladins wouldn't want, or couldn't get. IE: don't bake it into Sheath of Light.

Something like a talent:

Faith in Strength
You gain 375%/750%/1125% of your strength in mana, but lose 33%/66%/100% of your intellect. Also, your melee critical hits cause Vengeance which makes you deal 1%/2%/3% more damage. Vengeance stacks up to 3 times.


Something like that would be interesting because it gives you about the same mana as a holy paladin, but your healing efficacy and diversity would be low (slow HLs, no BoL, no Holy Shock, Weak Heals, etc etc) but wouldn't preclude you from offhealing a normal instance or whatever in ret spec. (Despite the fact that you have 0 int).

It would also drive holy paladins away from trying to pick up the talent. Because if they really wanted that talent they would have to spec deep into ret, put on DPS gear, lose healing talents, and basically be a ret paladin.

It would allow retribution's mana pool to scale much more smoothly with other mana based classes, and make balancing regeneration easier.

I suppose the only fear would be that the ret paladin and their massive mana would be busting out 2.5 second holy lights all over the arena between doing massive damage. But if you've ever actually tried healing as a non-holy paladin (I have, while I was prot) it's pretty pointless, and only acts as an easy way to lock out the goof's holy school for a while.

With the changes to spell pushback, a Ret Pally with a ton of mana is a bad thing, since they will be about to heal a lot, assuming they don't get interrupted in the 2.5 seconds.


I think the 20% base mana + the normal mana buff from JotW is good enough.

At the risk of digressing into discussion of how to balance another class, perhaps the solution is for mana burn to function in a way that it depletes a percentage of the mana pool, rather than a fixed a value.

I understand you're trying to rationalize different alternatives here, though I think you're operating under a false assumption, this "mana shouldn't be an unlimited resource" you mention.

Why exactly should this not be the case? You make the mana pool small enough (as they've correctly done with 0 int on gear and 0 int from talents) and you minimize any possible imbalance introduced from very high (rage like) regen.

Notice the wording on almost all blue posts: They want casters to worry about regen. Ret is a melee class, it should have the same treatment as all other melee classes. Why else do enh shamen operate completely outside the "mana shouldn't be an unlimited resource" rule you claimed? Wouldn't this make "cat form" almost too convenient since it changes the type of power a druid uses when it goes into melee? And somewhat outside the scope of what we're talking about (melee), what about warlocks?

Really, I'm not sure you have a case here.

Longevity should not be a constraint of the color of your "power bar", but a logical extension of your role. Melee class = self sustained regen. Otherwise we will not be able to keep up with all the other melee classes.


Why would this be any more of a solution than a small mana pool with very high regen? As a matter of fact, even with more limited regen, you're creating a problem where there is none: With 15k mana you can throw a ton of heals, pop divine plea and then you're back to 7500 mana.

You're also just moving the goalpost instead of fixing the situation: With a finite resource as our fuel, Ret will always be inferior to other melee classes. A longer fight, gauntlet, or any encounter where you can't get out of combat for extended periods and we'd be the weak link.

Blizzard stumbled on the best solution to any imbalance by making our mana pools so small. Even with "infinite" regen, you can only hold a very small number of potential heals in your hand at any time. It's almost identical to how enhancement shamen operate on live, so why all the fuss?

What if as an additional effect on Eye for an Eye:

Whenever you lose mana to a spell or effect, the caster of that spell or effect loses double the percentage of their mana that you lost.

Or something to that effect. Basically, you can manaburn a paladin, but there's a significant penalty for doing so.

Putting it in low ret also means that some holy paladins will have it (at a substantial cost), so manaburning a holy is not risk-free either.

Regarding Zeidrich:

The level of change to mechanics is getting less, not more sweeping as we move closer to patch 3.0 hitting PTR, so we can expect a relatively lighter touch from here on out.

By making the pool small, but the regen high, you both fix the mana burn problem, as well as the OP from healing problem. It's simple and easy to fix the Holy "abuse" of JoTW and that's just move it down or attach the 20% part to something higher up.

We know that

a) They talked up the removal of int from Ret gear for almost a year, since the DK announcement at least.
b) They itemized the entire xpac to support this
c) They made everything based off of base mana, not mana pool, clearly favoring those with smaller pools (whether from int or str, or whatever)
c) They gave us the original JotW, then pulled it, then replaced it with a similar, but % based mechanic.

The small mana pool + JotW mechanic now has momentum, and the onus would have to be on something else to replace it. Yesterday was a red-letter day for Ret Paladins in this game, as it showed that they are working with what is imho the proper mechanical idea.

Hopefully, its all over 'cept for the shouting, testing and proving if 20% works, and how the yet-to-be-seen Divine Plea 2.0 works.

A sheathbot holy paladin in the same situation will deal very similar damage and heal far better. Further he'll be able to sustain even when cc'd or otherwise starved of his regen tactic. Holy Shock every 6 seconds, JoR every 8 seconds, and instant Holy Lights.

When facing a warrior a common tactic is to ignore him, CC him and starve him of rage. There is no reason you couldn't do the same to a ret paladin, and no magical happenstance that makes rolling a warrior instead of a paladin guarantee a superior mechanic.

"But paladins can heal" is a canard. 50% healing reduction is superior in every composition of arena and pvp when compared to the healing potential of a ret paladin, even with "infinite" mana.

Paladins are already the most durable and sustainable healer in pve and they compare unfavorably to all the other healing classes by SWP. Even an infinite mana pool wouldn't change the mechanics that limit them. In fact, adding another GCD to the healing rotation compounds the problem.

Every other melee class in the game(save enhancment shaman) work from an infinite pool of resource over time. An enhancment shaman, even twisting SOE and Grace, which is an unintended mechanic, has 0 mana problems on any fight in the game.

You made a post a few pages back that seemed very reasonable, but now your back to disparaging the mechanic that would makes us roughly equal to our peers in the melee game. Your scenario where a ret paladin heals forever and does huge damage and is thus invincible is flimsy at best.

Just how frequent were these silencing mobs? And how long did their silence last (some TBC mobs have fun 6-10 second silences).

Don't ask me why but i am still a bit worried that we might be the only tanking class seriously suffering from bad encounter design that involves alot of silence. We still have our Seal damage but that's about all we have during a 10second silence.
We can tank while silenced for sure but it's hurting TPS very bad, so it should not be part of encounter design or we need a better counter for it.


Silence spamming mobs are simply not fun for me as a prot pala, was hoping they did away with instances that had 1 silencing mob per pack.

Wow, I could say the same thing, but this won't get us anywhere. A dozen pages of people agreeing certainly doesn't make it "my" dream.

Regarding the caster quote, this is what I was talking about: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Tons of spirit on the Naxx balance gear

"Mana management is a part of all caster classes, not just trying to maximize the pewpew. We got away from that a little in BC." He specifically states casters instead of "mana users". Now I'm not going to get into the habit of trying to interpret why he says "casters" instead of "mana users", but do keep in mind it was added on a post concerning spirit, which they want casters to gain more of.

As a spec that gains no longevity from gear, we need something else to work for us. Since we have puny mana pools that we can't increase and a rotation that eats up half of it every 8 seconds, "rage like mana regen" is the only solution here.

Oh dear, I really don't know where to begin. I'm breaking down what dozens of people have said about why they don't think higher mana regen would be imbalanced, your response is to question skill, tell me how to play a paladin in arenas (??) and comical attempts at making it about me when it's an opinion supported by a countless amount of people. You know I don't want to go there, but since you mention skill, I'm amused at someone with 1300-1400 rating across the board even arguing anything related to arena balance (before you point to my own teams, I've gone a few notches over 2.1k but I'm in a points farming team with 50% alts at the moment).

Anyway, I don't think it's worth going down a personal insult route further, so I won't even bother past this point as it seems using logic is an exercise in futility.


All our ("our" as in the dozens and dozens of people who support his view, not just myself) claims are based on the direction blizzard seems to be heading, first with the initial implementation of JotW and now with the latest hotfix, which is very close to what we're asking for. We're not making things up, this is not a wishlist. So I'll point you there, you can go argue why you don't agree with how the game works with someone at blizz.

I believe Altirias is under the assumption that when we say "infinite mana" he thinks of heal a few times till oom, then melee for a little bit, then back to full mana to repeat the process. From what I see most people arguing instead is that under a perfect dps cycle (maybe even excluding consecrate) there will still be a net gain of mana. How much mana that net gain is determines the difference between the healing all the time and being able to heal every now and then.

And if for some reason I'm the only one arguing this then yes: balance would be reached by defining just how much net gain of mana after a perfect cycle should be.

I think that balance was defined a few pages back. Using a full cycle we'd use ~32% of our mana pool every 8 seconds or 54% if you add consecration.

The balance I suggested was to gain ~60% worth of mana every 8 seconds through a combination of your abilities, meaning you'd gain 6% mana every 8 seconds with consecration or 28% mana (1 heal worth) if you forgo consecration.

60% is just a "off the top of my head" suggestion and one might argue to draw the line closer or further and I'm also leaving consecration open as potentially outside regular rotation, however it's going to be in the same ballpark range of "equal to full rotation + a small bit more".


"Equal to full rotation + a small bit more" = to allow constant melee DPS without having to stop (like the other 5 melee classes) and a possibility to throw a heal every while (or more frequent if not doing a full DPS rotation).

Who's even arguing for this?

Well, you did -_-*
along with lots of others in the other thread

The rage-like mana bar thing was supported by the fact that mana regen scaled on damage. All I've been saying all the time was that THIS was to much, not that we did nto need another regen mechanic in addition to replenishement

I can't remember the last time anyone combined judgement damage to mana returns, everyone agreed that fixed based amount would be sufficient.

I think you latched on to the word "infinite" rather than actually reading what people are saying and started a crusade against something that no one is even arguing for. When most of us say "infinite regen" we mean that while DPSing you'll never run out of mana vs. "finite" where you're going towards a point of being oom and have to rely on outside sources to regen. Scalability was never something anyone argued for, all we want is to have self sustaining rotations.

"Infinite regen" = "Enough regen to be able to DPS non stop without staggering abilities indefinitely".


Jeez Louise, what a waste of time over a misunderstood word. I hope the drama is over now.

I'm going out on a limb and suggesting that from this post alone, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about in regards to Ret PvP or how poor Ret healing - even with infinite mana - would be in arena. There are of course situations where gear swapping and tossing a heal in arena is useful (though less so after the gear swapping GCD change), but you are almost always going to lose if you are forced into that situation. In the 2.5 seconds it takes for you to cast a 2500 heal (or half that against most teams), you just lost out on a ton of potential DPS that is almost assuredly more important than that meager heal. Even if ret paladins could chain cast heals right now on live it would make very little difference because their heals are so terrible.

In order to be a melee class in area PvP you need to have unlimited DPS potential or you will be replaced by someone who does. One of the most powerful things about physical DPS in this game is that it can win long games as well as short games, which dramatically increases the number and types of teams you can play on.

Ok, that's what I'm saying and supporting from the beginning... the only difference is rather than insisting that this is much required, I explained to JotW supporters how mana regen scaling on judgement damage was too much, that's all.

Anyway, end of parenthesis.



edit : clarification.

To return to a question I posted before, has anyone been able to test Sanctified Wrath? Exactly what kind of damage reduction types does it bypass? Priest shields? Cheat Death?

Understand, this comes with a caveat of 'not been able to test *much*', for various reasons.

That said, there haven't been too many. I've done Utgarde (Pinnacle? the top end version, anyway), Occulus, Violet Hold, and one boss in Naxx10 (Anub) and haven't had too many problems. Just a few sprinkled here & there, and our threat is certainly capable of surviving through the silence. Silences have been fairly short in duration for what I've been able to test, which is not to say that there won't be longer ones elsewhere. Perhaps, if there are, those will be fights like Maiden that will encourage multiple classes of tank to come in, like with Maiden of Virtue in Kara. A Paladin can certainly tank her without too much in the way of difficulty, but it's just annoying and might be a bone to throw at your Warrior or Druid.

All that said though, if silences go too long, it really does shut the pally all the way down, and that's just not very fun as a mechanic. More so, especially when you consider that usually the only way to clear a silence is through being dispelled by someone else if it's a targetted effect, or by bubbling...and losing all aggro. Here's hoping that silence will continue to remain lower key as it is now.

Edit: too many ellipses. Was horrid even to me.

I don't have any proof on this, but I would assume that it would bypass our own bubbles, Pain Suppression, perhaps it would get past Resilience? Block damage?

I'd like to get some official word on this as well.

Divine Shield is immunity rather than damage reduction, so I suspect it won't get pierced by this talent (though would be interesting if it did, make ret pallies good at killing holydins?). The new Divine Protection though, with its 50% reduction, would probably be affected.

Anecdotally, Power Word: Shield does get pierced.

Also another little tidbit, weapon swapping on beta is not triggering GCD at the moment. Bug? I would assume so but it was nice to see.