Totally agree here, it's problematic solo/AoE and only gets that much more crazy/compounds when you're a MT...!
Otherwise it'd really help to have at least some of our bread and butter skills available to us while silenced.

Let us make a few base assumptions here.

-Ret paladins have no extra intellect from gear. With the base class intellect (~100) we'll say a ret paladin has a mana pool of roughly 5600.
-Holy Light costs 29% of base mana.
-The standard PvE rotation is a 6/9/11 cycle.
-In PvP you're facting a Hunter/Priest/Warrior/Shaman/Mage and therefore have no additional buffs due to dispels.
-In PvE you are fully raid buffed with a mana pool of about 7400.

A 6/9/11 rotation costs 3.7% of base mana every second. With the PvP mana pool of 5600 that means you can maintain the rotation for ~37 seconds. With a PvE mana pool you can maintain the rotation for 47 seconds (not counting external regen). Not very good.

Now lets assume we get back an ability that gives us mana from Judgements. The absolute bare minimum to sustain a cycle would be ~34% of base mana every 9 seconds. Great, let's assume Blizzard is generous and gives us 60% back like Avitus proposes. We gain an excess of 26% of our base mana every 9 seconds. We can do all sorts of fun things with that mana; hands, cleanses, exorcism, consecration, sacred shield, etc.

Now look at what that mana gets us. Other than the piddling Consecration we gain zero DPS. CS, DS, Judgement... all of them are still on the same cooldowns as before. Our autoattack doesn't hit harder because we have extra mana. The extra mana changes nothing in PvE, they could even balance our DPS around keeping down Consecration to keep things balanced.

In PvP this extra mana could be spent on heals. Remember though that Holy Light is a massive cost, nearly 1200 mana. Even with a full mana pool you can only cast 4 Holy Lights. Ignoring the fact that 4 holy lights is 10 seconds of not doing any damage, cleansing, handing, whatever... You're still looking at a net mana loss. It takes 2 cycles of Judgement to make up the mana that you spent healing. 18 seconds. Is that so overpowered that we will have mana for one 8k heal every 18 seconds? Boomkin Druids and Shadow Priests can both shift out and heal and still have heavy regen (Innervate and Shadowfiend). Enhancement Shamans are getting the ability to throw instant full strength heals from Malestrom Weapon. Why is giving ret pallys the same option suddenly "OP"?

I would take that further, flyingtoastr, and say that our ability to heal in pvp is a requirement to balance given that we are completely lacking snare, healing debuff, gap closer (shadowstep/charge/etc), short cooldown stuns, aoe fear, etc.

The most common argument that gets thrown around against letting us have any of these abilities that warriors/rogues get is that we can heal. Then when healing comes up it's argued we shouldn't be able to heal because that would make us OP. Either we can heal or we can't, but if we can't we need to get a lot of other things to address pvp concerns so I would assume just letting us heal is the logical route.

Like has been stated so many times, it's not like paladins are really strong healers anyways and it takes us out of the equation dps/cleanse/hand wise. Don't forget Ret heals aren't Holy heals either.

Well remember Retribution Paladins are going to have a glut of spell power through Sheath, so Ret heals will be making up a lot of ground on Holy heals in Wrath compared to BC.

Another thing that occurred to me last night about the silence thing: When I reported earlier that HotR could be used while silenced, that was when it was bugged and doing physical damage. At the same time I recall that Divine Storm could be used while silenced, and it was also doing physical damage. So I think it's likely that in fixing the physical-damage bug, they also turned these from physical abilities into holy spells.

Assuming that's what happened, what I'm curious about is what the developers intend for these abilities. Because right now it looks like they're just setting them as physical or holy and taking whatever silence restrictions come along with those damage settings, rather than actually having some independent idea about whether they should be usable while silenced or not.

Having played both a holydin and (more recently) warrior in arenas, a ret pally healing isn't a concern at all. Even throwing Sheath into the mix, there's no way a retadin will be brought as an "offhealer" on an arena team. The simple fact is healing debuffs such as Mortal Strike and Aimed Shot utterly destroy healing effectiveness, and a ret's mana pool will be dry in seconds if he tries to keep up. Smart teams pick a focus target and the vast majority of the time a debuff of this nature is up on the person you need to heal. The biggest advantages you bring are heavy burst along with blessings (specifically BoF, BoP, and BoSac) and Cleanse, and the new talent tree options for ret don't change that. Divine Storm will be a nice buffer, but if anyone thinks ret heals will be used for anything other than a last resort tactic, I feel you need to see a few 10+ minute arena matches to fully understand how 30 seconds of weak healing doesn't mean a damn thing against a team who knows how to exploit your weaknesses.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying ret pallies shouldn't ever heal in arenas, but it really needs to be an emergency situation like, "oh shit we'll lose if I don't toss soandso a heal RIGHT NOW."

Rather than multiquote, I'll just make a general reinforcement of my position to Avitus.

Mana, as a design, is a limited resource. Like energy which regenerates at a fixed rate, rage, which starts at 0 and ramps up as you "do your job", and runes/RP, which work like a bowl of neopolitan energy icecream and rage syrup.

Rage, you are expected to start at 0 potential and work up as time goes on.
Runes + Energy, you are expected to start at full potential and blow through it in < 10 seconds.
Mana, you are designed to start at full potential, and operate at full potential for some amount of time until your mana runs dry, at which point you need to recharge somehow (SoW, AoV, Evocate, Innervate, Lifetap etc) which lowers your potential.

Each form of power has a limitation on it that keeps you from working at your full potential. Or is intended to. If a class runs at a positive regen rate while maintaining an optimal dps rotation, then they're broken.

The issue with enhancement shaman really is more to do with the fact that they are a 1 button class right now. They will have a moderately sized mana pool anyways due to sharing gear with hunters and converting int into AP.

The issue with JotW continuing to return 20% of your mana has nothing to do with ret paladins healing. It has far more to do with the fact that you can get JotW in a holy build and only end up missing out on judgements of the pure and beacon of light. This is not a ret paladin healing. This is a holy paladin speccing into ret, wearing holy gear and healing that I'm worried about. It's now once again broken paladin healing because they're now the 'unlimited mana' healer that they were in 2.0 when all of the other caster have been balanced to run OOM.

Trying to turn mana into energy sounds to be what is the goal. But it's not really. You want to be able to maintain a maximal rotation forever without running OOM. Energy classes can't do that. A rogue can't mutilate every GCD, a warrior can't heroic strike every attack, a deathknight can't obliterate for 12 seconds in a row once he's got his runes up. If you always run with negative mana expenditure, there's no point in having mana costs on dps spells anyways.

Not to mention there are other roles that share the same mana pool that you're using in the paladin class. Protection is slightly different because I'm not worried about BoSanc or SA giving too much mana to healing/retribution paladins because if you're getting hit as those roles, you're doing it wrong. But a mechanic that relies on casting a judgement is something that all 3 specs do anyways, and a healer, who is designed around a mana mechanic, but can talent to turn it into an energy-like mechanic is not going to work.


Mana is based around the classes who use it actually having a mana pool, and potentially running out of it. That is the whole essence of the mana mechanic. Every spec who actually uses mana gets mana, except ret paladins. Enhancement shaman get Int on their gear. Feral druids use rage or energy. Ret paladins are the only mana class running around at their base mana scores, at least in their tier gear.

Putting the ret paladin in a situation where mana regen mimics energy causes a lot of problems with other roles, especially if the tools to get that mana regen come at an accessible level to other specs. It also wreaks havoc on balances that are done around the mechanic. IE: mana burn, mana regen, mana potions, etc.

The mana burn issue is a nasty one. You can't make mana burns scale at the size of your mana pool, that would be fine for ret paladins, but for other classes that would make having a larger mana pool a liability. Especially those with mana restore abilities. If a mana burn deals twice as much mana damage to someone with a double sized mana pool, it also takes twice as long to recover that lost mana.

I'm sure the only reasonable way to manage retribution paladin mana issues is to treat a retribution paladin's mana like other mana classes. Which means that you can't be running around with a 5000 point mana pool.

But there needs to be some way to give ret paladins a reasonable amount of mana without a: stopping using warrior gear, and b: allowing that option to synergize too well with holy.

And the only way to do that is to give mana based off str, sta, armor or crit, as those are the only values you can expect to find on warrior gear. And only STR and armor can you expect to scale fairly linearly. Armor doesn't seem to fit with retributions playstyle, so I chose STR.

I don't care how they do it, my talent idea probably sucked. But all I know is in order for a mana class to work, it needs to have mana, it needs to potentially run out of mana, and it needs to not break when exposed to mana regen/degen abilities. The current situation does not satisify those criteria.

the damage reduction bypass effect is still bugged in 8905 iirc, not bypassing certain effects. Tested against Divine Protection and Pain Suppression (as well as blessed resilience procs) with no notable increase. Didn't find a rogue to test cheat death because they are all interested in mutilating my face for 16k

Something i have been wondering about the direction prot is headed: are we going to be reliant on both str AND spellpower to tank? The devs have decided to retroactively outfit paladin tanking gear with str in place of spellpower... but prot has spells that scale off both (though a bit better scaling with str). With the change to the sets, why not just take us the full step further and reduce protection's reliance on spellpower to 0? Change Touched by the Light to increase STR equal to 30% of your stam, make us use warrior tank weapons (and change hammer of the righteous to be normalized for weapon speed) ect.

edited for speeling

Nor can we, since every single attack we have apart from autoattack is cooldown-limited.

Giving ret pallys bigger mana pools solves nothing. We're still crippled by mana burn, we're still entirely dependent on outside buffs to regenerate, we're still the only physical damage class hampered by running OOM.

Clearly your notion of "mana should run out" is not what the devs have in mind. Shamanistic Rage. Aspect of the Viper. Life Tap. All of these are examples of giving classes that infinite resourse system with mana pools. Wouldn't you say that goes against your design philosophy idea just a wee bit?

The fact that a mechanic does not precisely match any existing mechanics doesn't mean that it is broken. This is what game design is *about*. If you come up with some situation in which retadins regenning mana through judgements is overpowered, by all means tell us. Generally though, what you can come up with are flaws in implementation - yes, holy paladins with the current JotW would be overpowered. Mana burns affecting us would be *less broken* with the new mechanic than with the old.

Everything you know is wrong.

In order for a mana class to work, it needs to do roughly similar dps in raids to other dps classes, roughly similar dps to other classes in pvp, and not be utterly helpless against specific opponents. Those criteria are the same for energy classes, rage classes, and rune classes as well, by the way.

Manaburn will remain an issue for us, as well as for a number of other mana based classes, but being able to regen it quickly seems like a step in the right direction. The other 'rules' you pulled out of your donkey are arbitrary, and based on nothing but 'tradition'; not even a stable one, as enhancement shamans' current mechanics ripped the 'use up mana, then wait for it to regen' model to shreds.

Aspect of the Viper and Life Tap have (non-mana) costs associated with them, indicating that while those classes should be infinitely sustainable, it should be sub-maximal (not necessarily sub-optimal) for them to do so. In these cases, mana is a long-term limiting resource, but it's only limiting the "full burn" cycle rather than limiting the ability to DPS at all. Following the same model, retadins should be able to sustain some good cycle indefinitely, and have an alternate way to dump their miniscule mana pool, be that extra damage in PvE or healing in PvP or whatever. In theory, mages are supposed to work this way: get a sustainable nuke cycle and dump excess with Arcane Blast (the specifics of how good a dump this is got messed up, but it's a good idea). The thing is, being able to quickly fill up this pool, sort of breaks this idea and makes it part of a (larger) cycle.

IF you're following the model of viper/lifetap, then your standard regen options get you to basically steady-state, or a 15ish-minute OOM horizon (basically longer than realistic fights), but with a way of leveraging excess mana to the point where mana stats actually have DPS value. There are other models to follow, including "blue rage" or a longer-term indefinitely-sustainable cycle based on cooldowns (enh shamans are a combination of the two).

This is important. Rogue DPS abilities cannot be used every GCD because they are limited by their resource, not their cooldowns. Mages and Warlock abilities can be used at every cast because they are limited by their resource, not their cooldowns.

We cannot use our abilities every time we have a GCD because they are on cooldowns. Let me reinforce that.

Every damaging ability that a ret paladin has aside from white attacks is on a cooldown. Crusader Strike, Judgement, Divine Storm, Consecration, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath. All of these abilities are limited in the damage they can do by their cooldowns. If they are additionally limited in the amount of damage they can do by running out of mana, you have a dual restriction on damage dealt. The only other class that even comes close to that style of play is the Warrior. The difference is that warriors generate resources from doing damage instead of running on a fixed pool or a constant regeneration rate, and they also have a mix of cooldown and non-cooldown abilities. It's not too useful to compare us to them unless we're getting a passive ability that gives us 20% of our mana back per white swing, double on crits, and SA is getting ramped up to some 30% of heals as mana.

Once again, if we are limited in damage by both cooldowns and a fixed resource system which can run completely dry, we will be uniquely crippled in the damage we can deal in both PvE and PvP.

zeidrich, as I see it, you have three arguments:

1. "Mana is based around the classes who use it actually having a mana pool, and potentially running out of it".

I'm sure pretty much everyone understands the principle behind each power type (so there's no point listing them), but clinging to those principles irregardless of situation makes no sense.

Is this all just about a blind principle? "If your power bar is blue, you have to run out of it"?

The mana bar Healer/Melee-hybrid classes (feral, enh, ret) have is simply a vestigial remainder of their role as healers, NOT a power type chosen to reflect those roles. Ferals have the fortune to justify a real energy bar due to the shape shifting business, enhancement shamen pretty much have a constantly full bar if they want to (if twisting which is not an intended mechanic, jow covers it).

There's no reason ret should be any different, especially since we're the one class that gains no improvement in longevity through gear. You can't enforce "mana management" on a class that has no tools to mana manage to begin with.

2. "Other classes can't really spam non stop and have power bar constraints":

You're missing the point. There "MUST" be constraints on abilities in order to create a "realistic" dps cycle, however it is not REQUIRED that this constraint be the power bar in all cases regardless of conditions.

As others have mentioned, it's an "either or" situation not double restrictions as you claim. Either abilities are constrained by power type or cooldowns. The examples you mentioned:

-Rogues: They don't have cooldowns on their DPS abilities, energy is in essence a glorified shared dynamic global cooldown.

-Warriors: While they do have double restrictions, you can argue that the way rage is designed, you always have enough for your abilities with a cooldown, indefinitely, every time they're up. Rage is there to manage the abilities without cooldowns (heroic strike).

-DKs: It seems to me like a cross between the two, closer to rogue mechanics than anything.


3. Your 3rd argument is equally pointless/bizarre as the first ("principle") one: "Ret mana regen shouldn't mimic rage/energy since it would be abused by other specs"

-> Then simply move whatever talent it ends up being out of reach of other specs?


I'm sorry, but your position based on three very weak arguments (one is clinging to a blind principle irregardless of conditions, the other is simply not true and the last is suggesting a problem where there doesn't have to be one) makes no sense to me.

Naturally I agree with you that mana management and juggling it with DPS is a good idea (though I still feel obligated point out that enhancement shamans get an incredibly well scaling zero-DPS loss free mana bar every 2 minutes).

Ideally you would think Seal of Wisdom would fill this gap for us. We drop a bunch of our outgoing DPS (~26%) to go into a "regen cycle". The problem is that SoW as it is now absolutely sucks.

1) It's a proc chance. That mean theoretically you could go 10 swings without it proccing (though the chance of that happening is about 1:97656, but according to Murphy's law it will happen eventually) which isn't great when you want to spend as little time as possible in regen phases.
2) It doesn't scale. SoW restores 4% of your total mana per proc. 4% of my mana in blues and 4% of my mana in tier 10 is the same. AotV, Life Tap and Shamanistic Rage all restore more mana the better your gear gets so you can spend less time in your regen mode. Even Evocation and Mage Armor, as crappy as they may be, follow this design.
3) SoW costs a ton of mana. You can't use SoW when you're empty. You need almost 600 mana just to cast SoW. So you end up going even deeper into the hole just from casting your regen spell!
4)Hard to balance. You can't just slap "SoW now returns 50% of your mana per proc" because it unbalances the other pally spec (in this case holy).

Addressing these concerns is going to be rough, which is why I think most people would rather see the simpler and more elegant solution of the old Judgements of the Wise.

So, just to mix things up here:

I got ambushed by a DK yesterday while running through Lake Winterchill (the PvP zone). I won without much difficulty; BoSanct kept my mana up nicely, and I was in my T6/Sunwell tanking gear (which is what I wear for soloing) so avoidance was plentiful and SotR was doing nice damage. The coup de grace was fearing him when he did his rez-as-undead thing. Now, the result isn't very noteworthy; I didn't get the impression this guy was all that good, and a Prot paladin owning a melee class isn't exactly earthshattering news.

But what is noteworthy is that it was the first time in two years that I've actually had fun being a prot paladin in PvP. Having ShR really is a PvP game-changer in that it gives you a significant offensive punch, for the first time I really appreciated the 10-second snare on AS, and BoSanct meant that a tiny mana pool wasn't a liability.

What's even better than just being viable is the fact that it felt like PvP'ing as Prot. In TBC, PvP as prot is basically playing a very weak but somewhat-more-survivable version of a Holy paladin. (AV is kind of an exception, but only because AV is really more PvE than PvP.) I did some arenas early on in TBC with some other PvE-specced guildies, and while it wasn't terrible (we weren't trying all that hard anyway), I definitely felt like the spec was constraining me while offering really nothing positive to counterbalance it.

But in WotLK (well, at least in that one fight) it really feels like Prot. Ghostcrawler made a comment in the Warrior forum that if you wach the movie Gladiator, you notice that Maximus doesn't use his shield as something to hide behind; he was getting up in people's faces with it and using it offensively. That's what it felt like.

Now obviously it's a long way from "Hey I beat a DK!" to actually being viable in competitive arena or whatever. But I don't particularly care if Prot can make it over 2k or whatever in arenas; I just want it to be (a) not useless, and (b) fun, and that's what it feels like (again with the caveat that I'm basing this on one fight). You're a weak healer if you PvP as prot, just as you are in BC, and strictly speaking Prot is probably still the least powerful PvP spec. But the point is that by gimping your healing (or conversely, gimping your damage if you compare to Ret), you at least get something useful and fun in return. Less powerful overall, but you gain strength in some areas and you get to play the way you want to play.

Now, the issue: Gear. Right now, the PvP plate available appears to sort into two categories: dps plate, which is obviously optimized for Arms/Fury/Ret, and healing plate. There's really nothing designed for the Prot specs of either warriors or paladins.

The obvious reaction from a lot of people is going to be along the lines of "prot in arenas lawl". And that's not incorrect really; I'm highly skeptical that either a Prot warrior or a Prot paladin is going to be seriously competitive at high levels in arenas. But if people want to give it a shot and see where it can go (and at this point I know I do) then why not provide the gear? GC has spoken in the warrior thread about Prot warriors possibly becoming competitive in group PvP as more of a controller/disruptor role; if the devs want to consider this, why not make the gear available now and see where the current versions of the Prot trees can go with it?

I'm not entirely sure what such gear would look like, but at a first guess I'd want:

• Stamina
• Strength
• Resilience
• Block value
• Block rating?
• Intellect for paladin gear? (Depends on how much you emphasize the off-healer role versus the offensive/disruption role.)

One positive is that if there is no prot PvP gear, then PvE gear can at least serve as a not-terrible substitute at low levels; defense kind of serves the same purpose as resilience (very imperfectly however), and tanking gear has a crapton of stamina anyway.

But real prot-designed PvP gear would still be far preferable.

JotW position in the tree should be determined on more or less when in the leveling process as ret do you run into mana shortage problems. Since it should be based on base mana I wouldn't worry about holy going for it. Int offers excellent scaling for holy, people will be gemming and generally trying to stack int, I wouldn't be surprised to see 30k max mana paladins fairly early in the expansion cycle. Even if JotW returns 100% base (4.5k was it?) it's not big a deal compared to top holy. I think its current position is great since it lets lower geared healers go for it and opt out when JotW returns pale in comparison to top holy tools.

Cathela, have you had difficulty becoming uncrittable versus mobs your level while leveling up so far? I have no doubt they'll implement our itemization, but I could see running instances along the way as slightly annoying if the defense gear just isn't there (and with the rating system scaling so high to 80, requiring much more defense rating than now to become uncrittable).

I like the potential of this.

Maybe have "Wisdom Strike", "Light Strike", and Crusader Strike all on the same cooldown. Then you have a trade off of damage for mana/health regen. You could then change the Seal system to be more shaman weapon imbue like, having Righteousness, Blood, Command, and Corruption.

I think if a personal base mana return was added as a secondary effect to Crusader Strike it would solve most problems and make sense at the same time:

-Out of reach of holy/prot
-CS would get the secondary effect most people expect
-For leveling it should be a non issue as consumption only really increases once you get CS (level 50) and DS (level 60). Until then, you'll only be Sealing up every 2 mins and judging every 8 seconds, which replenishment and JoW should take care of.

Source: MMO Champion beta client parse

Divine Plea (Instant, 1 min CD)
You gain 25% of your total mana over 10 sec, but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50%.

And the 20% max mana was officially added to JoTW.

Head over to MMO Champion or Beta Forms for more info, several major changes are rolling in.

The change to Kings is...interesting.