Dear god I don't know how many times I've posted this observation over the past few weeks on this thread... it's why Retribution talents always seemed so boring to me (with the exception of the later tiers now). So thank you for bringing it up! Consolidation should have happened a long time ago, but it's too late for that now

Thinking about how much of a time sink Judging remains for holy, essentially making JotP a wash from a throughput standpoint if chain casting, why not add a deep holy talent to reinstate Judgements off the GCD? Then we can just macro it in and keep the 10% haste buff up fairly effortlessly (after all, we sank 7 talent points to get it, it should be easier to maintain than the damnable LG's).

I'd still like JotP talent cost to be reduced to 3 (for a total 5 TPs spent with the mandatory Judgement range buff) and another 2 pointer added at that tier with a dual use, PvP/PvE aspect to it... maybe something like your X% of your HS now ignores MS-like effects/Does splash healing to all friendly targets within 10 yards (buff the HL glyph while you're at it to 10yds as well).

That's how PvE in WoW is - for all classes.
It's not much more interesting to use Slam every GCD and MS/WW/Overpower when the CD is up, or using 5 SS>SnD>5 SS>Rupture>...

I think 'exponential' is the word you were looking for. But not necessarily in the sense that you've presented here -- all classes scale exponentially in pretty much the same form:

Average DPS = BaseDmgModifiers * HitModifiers * CritModifiers * HasteModifiers

Basically, the value of one modifier affects the value of the others. As any one of the modifiers increases in value, it proportionally increases the value of the others as well. To GSH's point, each modifier in and of itself scales linearly, typically based on talents. It's on Blizzard to come up with some semblance of balance when one class gets higher base scaling (i.e. ret pallies, affliction warlocks) compared to another class that gets proc based attacks from talents (i.e. arms warriors, fire mages).

As to which is more fun, that's going to come down to one person's opinion compared to another.

EDIT: In terms of activity, I found myself pretty busy keeping DS, CS, Judgement, Consecration, and Hammer of Wrath on cooldown when I played around on the PTR. I wouldn't consider it any more boring than any other class that needs to keep their rotation going, and it's far more forgiving than warriors "missing" procs due to mobility or flat-out forgetting to use them.

Our class design is based around having ONE active combat ability on a 10 second cooldown? How is that possibly worth preserving?

Do you honestly enjoy this?

White: 200
SoR: 50
White: 200
SoR: 50
White: 200
SoR: 50
AMG JUDGEMENT COOLDOWN IS UP!!!!!
JoR: 150
White: 200
SoR: 50

ad nauseum for 80 levels? How do you think a brand new player would feel if all he got to do was press one button then go to make a sammich or have happy fun time? Our combat system is so simplistic and boring that we use our AoE abilities (Consecration and Holy Wrath) on boss fights because there is nothing else to do! Is that good design? Do you really find that fun? Is it right that we have to wait until level 50 to get a second combat ability?

Why was there the big argument about Holy solo grinding? Because our entire baseline combat system is "preserved" around autoattacking things to death, and a holy paladin's autoattacks blow something awful.

Maybe some people do enjoy doing nothing, but for a majority of gamers out there they will choose a more interesting class. That isn't a good thing.

One? I count 3 for Retribution. I like the way the paladin plays with 3 abilities on 6-10s cooldowns.

I agree that one is too few, but I think three is just right. Even Holy will have 3 combat abilities at 75.

I don't know. Three years in and people are still playing paladins. If anything, the class has gotten much better than at the start (remember 15s Judgements). If it was attractive enough for us to level up and keep playing, why would it not be attractive to new players?

The point is they are more interactive (thus requires more skill) instead of spamming your 3 (4 at 35%!) attacks on cooldown then waiting around a bit.

I like the Wrath mode of Ret game play, but I am used to not have many abilities in TBC as a Paladin.


I am really enjoying the DK (they have 3 main attacks + talented attacks + runic power attacks), but I think the appeal of Paladins (simpler game play while providing powerful buffs) is greater.

Toaster is talking about a Paladin pre-50.

At level 75, all Paladins are doing pretty well for combat, but that is poor design, especially if you level a new DK and see all this cool stuff, while Paladins are hurting .

Instant Flash of Lights are our interactivity I assume, if they reset the swing timer that needs to be fixed though.

By the way, I'm currently leveling a Blood Elf Paladin (rerolling Horde for WotLK) and it's a pain in the ass at Level 49 currently. I'm pretty much only doing auto attacks with SoC and the occasional Judgement/Seal macro before it fades and HoJ/Judgement when I feel like needing "burst". I'd really love seeing Crusader Strike and Repentance switch their places to make leveling more enjoyable.
Maybe they could even make Crusader Strike with 100% Weapon Damage trainable now that its second effect has been removed and replace the talent by a new Crusader Strike with the old 110% Weapon Damage and a new special effect on the same cooldown, like for DKs with BS and HS.

Edit: Anyway I'd prefer more dynamical boss fights, not in clicking your cooldown when MSBT shows an "Overpower now!".

The reason why Enhance has their instant heals not reset the swing timer is because it is meant for Lighting Bolt and I am unsure why it affects heals as well. I doubt instant Flash will be changed to not affect swings.

Swapping CS and Repent could unbalance Paladins at 80. Here is an exapmle forum post: QQ this Pally just healed this heroic with 37 Holy and then out melee'd me next run with the same spec. There is a reason why baseline Paladins are so underpowered, so future Paladins have to suffer like we all did until 50.

You won't be able to "outmelee" any real DD while having 37 points in Holy.

And the reason why Enhance instant spells don't interrupt the swing timer is because it's stupid to have to watch your swing timer to get an ability off without greatly reducing your damage output. That's the same reason why Steady Shot no longer clips Auto Shots and Slam doesn't reset the swing timer any more.

A good dps class would not complain on forums, they would try to find out how to do better than a gimped Ret Pally, but many of the WoW population isn't good .


My post was referring to Enhance instant heals. They should have been able to code Lighting Bolt to not mess up swings while Healing would mess up swings, however they choice to not do that.

Why should they? There's no reason your melee swings should be interrupted when casting an instant former 3/2.5 seconds Healing Wave when an instant former 2.5 seconds LB doesn't interrupt your swing timer either. You choose to get either an instant heal or an instant damaging spell.
Also I see no reason why instant FoL should reset the swing timer, most of the time in PvE you won't get to use it due to GCD/having full HP anyway and in PvP you're even more GCD limited so it's a choice of dispel/damage/utility or heal as well - it shouldn't further reduce your damage by large amounts.

Mana cost of seals
You know, the mana cost of seals seemed like a big hit to me when I first started looking at the Wotlk changes - but even though it's enough that I won't be trying to twist, it's not enough to deter me from switching seals for utility - Wis, Light, Justice. (Maybe swap command for blood against a rogue like I usually do now).

It costs me my seal damage, but I don't feel completely impotent without that damage and the effects (Sow/Sol, I'm looking at you) are finally significant. Two minutes is still going to be annoying until I get used to it, but I can see me alternating seals a lot more often than I do now.

AoW swing-timer reset
Also, I really don't mind the FoL-swing timer reset. I think it's weird that so many other abilities no longer reset the timer and AoW does, but really the only time I really want to feel like a hybrid is in PVP - and I definitely view AoW to be more of a pvp ability. In PVE I'd usually rather have the mana, and I can still use it on fights where I don't have 100% time on target. I guess in principle, I believe they should fix it.

I just noticed something a bit disheartening.

SoC and SoB trigger off all the same attacks, and SoC procs are exactly double the damage of SoB, right? If this is true, that means for the two to have the same sustained DPS that SoC would need a 50% proc rate on average. Assuming 7 PPM for SoC, that means you'd see a 50% proc rate at ~4.29s base swing speed. That seems realistic, because no weapon is that slow, which guarantees SoB to consistently outdamage SoC across the board and makes the penalty of recoil damage something to consider when choosing between the two.

However...

Throw the SoC glyph into place and the PPM jumps up to 8.4. That means that for a 50% proc rate you need a ~3.57s weapon for the two to break even. Anything slower favors SoC even more. Granted, this ignores the hidden internal cooldown (1 second?) of SoC procs, but it also ignores the higher judgment damage of SoC over SoB as well as guaranteed crits on stunned targets.

So that begs the question: Why use SoB when you can get your hands on the SoC glyph? The only "advantage" that comes to mind is the added mana return, but that's a bit misleading since it also causes added strain on your healers.

I agree. I remember *preferring* the paladin to the warrior back when choosing a character to level on Skywall - and that's with 15 second Judgements, non-scaling seals, no weapon strikes, and BoK as a 31 point Ret talent. My (original) warrior never made it past 39. My paladin, on the other hand, has been my main for 3 years and counting.


That said, it's hard to judge how new players will see the class now. Sealing and Judging is a tad more interactive than Sealing once every 2 minutes and judging every CD - but I suspect that people will enjoy being "OP" more than they'll miss losing a few button presses. In any case, I know it'll be easier to level a paladin in 3.0 than in 2.0 than in 1.0, no matter the spec or skill level.


Reliability is one. There will also be new glyphs over time, and balance tweaks will change things up. SoC didn't always scale with haste, after all.

Leveling with auto attack and judgement:

Holy shock, crusader strike and hammer of the righteous all have a 6 second cooldown and are all specc defining abilities come wrath.
The same could be said for tbc warrior with shield slam, blood thirst and mortal strike.

My point being that all these abilities could be lower in their respective talent trees and share cooldowns.
This way, leveling is less boring and you'd still have to sacrifice a lot of talent points to get that second tree defining spell which shares cooldown with the other tree defining abilities.
Either 11 or 21 point talents would make leveling as an paladin less punishing.

The only problem with this is holy shock and TbtL and ShoL, but aura mastery could always be made baseline (I'd vote for a baseline SoC as well but that's besides the topic) and an holy strike could be added that heals all nearby party members when JoL is on the target which would share cooldown with HotR and CS instead.

The reason SoB will still come out ahead is because of that internal cooldown. Unless they either remove it or rebalance SoC to always give you the same number of procs regardless of the ICD (which would be a major feat of programming) you eat so many procs or delay your instants outside of the cooldown by so much that SoB will come out ahead for sustained DPS.

Now that Reckoning-bomb builds are a thing of the past though I can't see any reason for the ICD to be on SoC. If they removed it (and it truly does scale with haste) a glyphed SoC would be roughly equal to SoB, albeit much more bursty, but good for fights where heals are scarce and you don't want to gib yourself.

Would removing the ICD open up the potential for SoC proccing off itself? All speculation, since we'll never see the code, but that'd be an amusing reason.


In any case, I think it's balanced enough as is - SoC doesn't have a health cost, and it'll still come pretty close to SoB. (5~10%, I'd guess)

Hm. Interesting thesis, and it would explain why SoC procs JoW on live while SoB doesn't if SoC procs acted like a melee strike (which could then proc another SoC strike and so on).

I think the reason they don't remove it is that you can have insane burst in pvp. Imagine white, cs, and ds all proc'ing soc?

EDIT:

Even if you put it that way... they have already fixed similar problems with Sword Spec and WF before... Unless this one was a completely different situation, they should be able to fix soc procs off soc procs.

They can right? You just can't do it if you load the CS or the DS at the same time as your white swing. So all it prevents is a (DS | CS) + White + 2*command. Not really that bad compared to an instant pyro up your keester.

My guess is the reason this is there was that it was an easy way to solve windfury/command procs back in the day.

By removing it, all you do is allow all the DS strikes to have a chance to proc (which is a good thing (tm)) and slightly more random burst damage. Now, if there's a code reason that they can't easily make Command not proc itself - then that's another story, and makes sense.

How many grouping opportunities did you have while leveling your paladin? How many would you have now?

For me, grouping was the really fun aspect of the class while I was leveling. This was back in the day when basically everyone was still leveling up, and it was easy to find PuGs to any instance you wanted to do. I didn't particularly mind soloing, but I think what kept it from being boring was just the newness of WoW (my first MMO), and exploring the content and such.

The experience at the level cap has improved tremendously since then, but the leveling experience really hasn't -- at least not until you get enough talent points to really flesh out one of the trees. I tried leveling a belfadin alt a year or so ago just to see what leveling was like now, and I didn't even finish Ghostlands. It's just boring, especially when you're mostly soloing.

By comparison, I've leveled two warriors now, and I wouldn't mind leveling a third if I had good reason to do so. There's a lot more to do early on, and a lot more to learn and experiment with. For the second one, I had a lot of fun trying a 2-h fury slam build with a swing-timer mod at level 30, which is something that wouldn't have even begun to occur to me while I was leveling the first one.

Can you imagine any way you could level a second paladin to 30 and be experimenting with a genuinely new and different playstyle than when your first paladin was level 30? I can't. Holy and Prot don't even start to become distinctive playstyles until level 40 (shock and holy shield) and Ret doesn't get its own flavor until 50 when you get CS. (Yeah, SoC is different from SoR, but it doesn't play any different: seal autoattack, judge, repeat.) Until then you're pushing the same buttons no matter what your spec.

Now when you get to 60-70-80, there are real differences. The three specs feel very different from each other at 80; and as I've said earlier this is something the devs have really done an amazing job on this time around. But that's all due to the new spells and the new deep talents. There have been changes that affect the basic class mechanics; the revised seal/judgement system for example, or the separation of hands from blessings. But these are really just streamlining changes; they're good changes and very necessary changes, but they don't change the leveling feel of the class much at all.

If I were redesigning the class from scratch, I'd make Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, and Holy Shock all baseline skills, trained between level 10 and level 30, with a shared 6-second cooldown. That way, instead of having to wait til level 40-50 to make a serious playstyle differentiation, you'd have divergent playstyles built right into the base mechanics of the class, and your shallow talents could immediately begin enhancing and differentiating those playstyles. (Similar to the way the early warrior talents immediately begin to differentiate the 1h/DW playstyle (Imp, Heroic Strike) from the 2-hander playstyle (Deflection, Imp. Overpower, etc.))

[e]: Looks like DdarkDemon beat me to the punch on cooldown-linking.

I think the idea of 'too much burst' from SoC proccing on multiple abilities is fairly weak. Yes, if SoC had a 50% proc rate and did twice the damage of Blood your maximum burst goes up but the total shift in the amount of damage you deal isn't actually all that high. The chances of proccing a SoC on many consecutive attacks is quite small.

I suspect SoC had that cooldown because of the stupid way Reckoning used to work (though I doubt we have any confirmation of this) and that is obviously unnecessary now. It really adds a very tricky element to balancing the seal in addition to making it hard on new players who don't have any idea about the internal cooldown with no substantial benefit to my mind.

A far better way to reduce burst (if that is indeed the reason behind the cooldown) is to simply make SoC proc more often for less damage. If they made it proc 70% of the time and decreased the damage by 33% none of the raiders would care but it would reduce the issue of increased burst from procs. I am very much against powerful mechanics that impact skill choices that don't appear on tooltips and are unintuitive.

In the case of WF the internal cooldown can lead to cases where a new player equips his shiny new epic and vendors his old green weapon and his dps _drops_ by a noticeable amount because of weapon speed. That is the extreme example of this, but it illustrates how silly it is to have invisible mechanics that impact skill selection. Finding the perfect stat weighting for gear should not be trivial (as we want the game to be interesting and require thought) but it should always be true that a random guy who is reasonably intelligent but does not read strategy threads can put on gear and have a pretty good idea of what it will do to his character. When you have invisible mechanics like these you really remove common sense from the selection process in favour of combat log parsing and spreadsheets and that is a shame.

Of course I will be parsing logs and building spreadsheets and testing, but I strongly feel that players should be able to figure out how the game works by simply playing it and looking at what happens. Doing lots of math should increase the precision of your understanding, not totally reverse your ideas.