I honestly wouldn't consider a non beacon build as healer logical. What does the extra crit percentage net you really? With DS and gear, you have 50%+ crit rate on FoL and and HS. With Beacon, your healing throughput is roughly doubled by default.

Like really, what does a few extra points in crit through the ret tree gain you?

@avitus: all beta (except those patches without working regen). I have s3 gear and I can solo the big 81-82 giants in icecrown finishing with 100% hp/mana. I barely even care of the amount of mobs when I go in a pack. For a while I attributed it to the extra amount of mana from jotw/replenishement. But the situation didn't change in last build when jotw was changed to base mana.
I'm talking only about solo questing when I say ret is overpowered. The game feels as hard as it was at lvl 1-2 tbh.

Some sort of bug with beol, it doesn't stack but the buff doesn't disappear. That's why you probably see that difference on some fights between paladins, if both keep it on the tank only 1 is active.

First time poster on the EJ forums here, but I been wondering something about wotlk ret raid DPS:

Has anyone tried interweaving a 5-stack of Seal of Vengeance inside of a normal SoV or SoB rotation?

As in only judging with vengeance to keep the DoT up, then switching to SoC or SoB for in-between judgement DPS while the SoV stack is ticking away? And you would only judge with vengeance since it seems, to me, to be the highest damaging judgement we have anyway, in addition to refreshing the SoV DoT stack. Might be a nice DPS boost if worked into a rotation, maybe?

I agree with this. Sacrificing BoL only to go as high up as added crit (no jotw, no sheath) in the Ret tree is pointless.

There might be an argument for Sheath vs. BoL, but that's in my opinion theoretical at best (I'll leave that to other people to argue about ).


You missed my point. How good you can solo a high level mob is not what I'm getting at. That's something Hunters and Locks have been able to do for years through kiting. I know we can solo some relatively crazy odds/pulls, even more so with SoL.

The point is the "speed" you solo it at that creates all the "overpowered soloing" outcries/evaluations.

At level 70-71 in Sunwell gear I could pull 10 mobs and kill them in ~8 seconds or less (roughly the time of two DS, laying down consecration and spamming abilities).

At level 79-80 still in full Sunwell or S4 gear (the point is "leveling gear"), pulling 10 mobs will take quiet a bit to get through.

Speed-wise, you're not the Holy Stampede (tm) of grinding content you were at 70 and it all boils down to the gear that made you feel so overpowered (in speed) has lost its worth now that you're 80.

Keep in mind, upgrades at 80 have nothing to do with this argument since this is about leveling.



Welcome. This has been discussed a couple times, the general consensus is that given the amount of abilities we have now and the added GCD delays this would add, it ends up an overall DPS loss/not worth it.

The wording on BoL (BeoL? which are we using :P) and the HL glyph seem to suggest that the 50% splash would also heal the Beacon? A quick serch did not reveal anything specific, but if this holds true, it has some very powerful potential, mainly with crit chance.

The following should be true given that, A) the HL Glyph works with BoL, and B) all heals are 100% effective, and C) the Glyph uses holy crit. By 'Scaling', I mean how much the heal, 'H' in this case, is modified by the 'x' crit chance. This does not take into account the mana gain from Illumination, which would further increase crit's worth.

Scaling on a Heal (x% crit):
H(1 + 0.5x)
- ie, up to +50% from crit

Scaling on a HL + Glyph:
1.5H(1 + 0.833x + 0.166x^2)
- ie, up to +100% from crit

Scaling on a HL + Glyph + BoL:
3H(1 + 0.75x + 0.444x^2 + 0.0416x^3)
- ie, up to around +123.6% from crit

Did I miss some obvious reference to Glyph of HL + BoL, or is this how it works?

Edit: I suppose if the Glyph did work, it would be counted as 5 individual heals? That would alter the scaling...

I remembered your post on Holy Shield, but I couldn't find it when I searched and couldn't remember who posted it. Updated that, thanks.

JoV is... weird. So, by default it does 7/8 of normal judgement damage I guess, up to 10.5/8 at a full stack? Huh. That makes it just barely better than JoR. Anyway, updated, and thanks.

Sadly, you're right. Updated and thanks.

I don't recall seeing anywhere whether glyphed HL interacts favorably with Beacon.

Say the entire raid is down 10k health, and the two tanks are down 30k. I have beacon on the MT, and DF+HL the OT.
Let's say the HL crits the OT for 15k, and therefore splashes to 5 people for 1500 each. The MT will definitely get the 15k from the real heal, but will he also get the splash of 1500*5?

What's the timing on the healing?

I did a Hmgt last night on the PTR, and it seemed like the splash didn't hit the MT, but that might have been because it was all overheal...

Yes avitus but you don't kite mobs, and don't wear them down slowly. Anyway that was just an example.
I'm not complaining I kill too fast, I'm complaining it's just way too easy. I've never been even close to dying (with the exception of elite mobs) and I was playing totally careless towards the end.
As for the killing speed... you are "cruising" at max dps with absolutely 0 downtime. That's not right imo. Yes it's fun, but it feels too much like playing single player games with god mode on. Whatever you do those bars are most of the time at 100%.

I think our strength in solo play is a by-product of us having high dps and good survivability. I don't think its a problem it just means we kill stuff at the same pace as Hunters, Warlocks and Death Knights.

Personally (opinion!) I would label ret leveling being overpowered, if we still killed mobs at 80 at the same relative speed we did at 70 and it wasn't just a byproduct of overpowered gear/crit rates synergizing so well with our new mechanics at low levels.

However, being able to kill mobs at full DPS with very low downtime... hmm ever grinded as a rogue taking almost no damage (dodge/stuns), "bandage every 30 mobs" throughout WoW classic and TBC?

I simply don't get why it is that whenever things start looking up for us (even with things that have nothing to do with balance, but simply "comfort"), people from the paladin community itself have the incessant need to start calling their class OP and start asking to be nerfed.
Sure I see the merit in fair assessments especially when there's reason to be biased, but I've seen so much borderline crap given to other classes/specs over the years without a peep from the communities themselves. Paladin community = masochists? Think about it

Anyway, this was just "opinion". Carry on.

Moderators please delete this post.

The BoL HL splash is a good one to look into. I'll try it out tonight on Beta*.

New GC post:

Heh. It's funny how everyone eventually comes out and sheepishly says "Gee, I kinda hate to admit this, but Ret leveling is really really fast." Welcome to the club.

Personally though, at this point I think it's fine. I'm finding that Prot is actually quite fast as well once it reaches full power (level 75) and I'm thinking the devs may have just decided to buff everyone's soloing speed a bit to give leveling a bit more of a powerful feel.

[e]:

Good news on the buffs. I still think deep Holy needs a talent to extend judgement duration (even if only by 10 seconds or so) and Bacon could be a little less unforgiving about overheals (I liked toaster's idea about giving 50% benefit for overheals) but these are good steps in the right direction.

The RD change is welcome, but IMO 10 seconds would be fine if we just had some kind of backup taunt.

Righteous Defense -- cooldown lowered to 8 sec. It had been 10 sec recently and is 15 sec on live.

Infusion of Light -- now affects Flash of Light or Holy Light. Flash of Light is reduced to 0 cast time with 2 ranks, meaning that if you're running around and get a Holy Shock crit, you can also Flash without stopping.

Judgements of the Pure -- haste benefit now up to 15% with 5 ranks (was 10%).

Enlightened Judgements -- range benefit is now 30 yards with 2 ranks (was 20). This means you can judge or heal from the same range without having to run around so much.

Bacon of Light -- no change here, but I can never miss an opportunity to call it Bacon.

From GC.

The IoL change is solid. Not sure 5% more haste was what we needed, but I suppose its better than nothing. EJ still seems weak since it really is part of a 7 point talent.

It is a start I suppose.

Again, it's not about the killing speed, it's just the lack of any real danger. Rogues need some subtility, they can't just "jump" into packs of mobs without a problem, same for warriors. Also all those classes go without downtime only when overgeared. And at some point (lvl 77+ or so) you shouldn't be overgeared even with sunwell gear.
I can only compare ret soloing atm with a feral druid, which imo are overpowered.

I'm not asking for nerfs because the game should in no way be balanced for solo pve (and sadly I'm pretty sure ret will get nerfed, mostly because of their stupidity of making undead/demon abilities so strong). But when someone asks an opinion about leveling, mine will be that ret is overpowered, even in s2 gear. Or maybe is just the expansion that is just too easy...

I don't see a problem with making any judgement last 1min in PVE with 5/5 in JotP.
Also, still nothing about sacred cleansing, which is imo one of the worst talents in the game.

S2 gear? The entry level zones in Lich King are designed for 68-70s coming in with quest greens. A zone designed to give S2 a challenge would murder new characters being levelled up.

In my opinion, levelling as a paladin never posed any danger. We have plate and heals. It was just slow. Now it is not really slow anymore.

I wouldn't worry about leveling "overpoweredness" at all. Hell, on live I have a frost mage where his only downtime is an evocation every 10 minutes or so, and the occasional resummoning of a mana gem. And this is a spec that's getting major efficiency boosts with 3.0. Most classes are going to shred their way to 80, which is good -- it takes a ton of XP to get there, and I want to start in Naxx ASAP.

Let me put it this way, you can start with a paladin geared in s2 and cruise with it to level 80. And keep in mind that set has 2 almost useless stats. And that's about the minimum gear level for someone who played his char at 70.
Anyway, that's my opinion, it's just too easy, exactly like ferals (and Nax :p).

IoL change = step in the right direction.

Burghy, please read Anedris and JettJaguar's comments. If you think "easy soloing with little downtime" is overpowered, then pretty much every second class in wow is overpowered by your definition. Given this and that the word "overpowered" is supposed to signify "special individual greatness as compared to the rest", isn't the word "overpowered" starting to lose meaning?

And yes. WotLK leveling is very easy in general. Anyway, this is the last from me about this as there's no point to it.

Well, mobility is more or less solved now I guess. And 15% haste is a lot (it's what fully geared SWP palas has now). If they won't nerf anything again the current state is fine with me I guess. Giving us some good AoE heal would mean they would nerf our single target healing by a lot, otherwise palas would be OP.

Do we have a bearing yet on whether the changes to JoW and JoL are bugs or intended changes? If they are intended then frankly there's no real point to extended Judgement durations, nor really the Judgement Debuffs themselves.