Foxconfessor

The issue with that is if you remove SoC's ability to proc from strikes, and still allow other seals like blood to proc, you effectively kill SoC for pvp, levelling and any other purpose you can think of. The talent would need to be replaced completely as it would be dead.

What we seem to have with this constant burst/sustained dps struggle is yet another case of the tail of pvp wagging the dog of pve. This manifests itself in so many ways, and for every class. I just wonder how Blizzard can ever break free of this cycle. They've stated they want to, but doing it is a different matter. I'm trying to keep a sense of detachment about everything that is going to happen before November 13.

 

• Arikah

I was trying to stay away from pvp balancing talk but it seems we're trying to come up with solutions here... hmm. Well to restate what most rets already know...

We have:
-high, mostly unmitigated burst
-plate/shield vs physical classes
-a short ranged stun, talentable/glyphed to 7s duration, 20s cd (baseline 6s/60s)
-small instant heals via AoW, sustained by critting on damage abilities

We lack:
-spell interrupt on a short cooldown (ala pummel/kick/earthshock/silencingshot)
-baseline ranged pull/ability
-gap closer (only physical class lacking one, even hunters have their reverse blink)
-true snare

Now, you can't tone down our burst via seal/judgements or any other damage skills, or it adversely affects pve; so much so that you might argue we would become broken in pve again (CSSyndrome). Similarly you can't take away plate or the ability to heal at this point in the game. You could take away the small instant heals, but that drains a large source of fun and the unique playstyle/feeling of what ret should be. Lately people seem to be agreeing that HoJ is the culprit of the QQfest; it gives us a great deal of control over a fight on a fairly short cooldown. So what if they reverted the Imp Hoj talent to what it is on live (5/10/15s cd reduction), making it talentable to 45s/35s with a set bonus? At least this way people would feel they have a chance to fight back (trinket the first one, you then have 28s to kill me or you die). I also like the idea of reducing damage done while bubbled, since attack speed reduction does nothing when we have 3 hard hitting instants.

However... we would need something to cover our (quite exploitable) weaknesses. Although MS effects are running rampant on nearly every physical class, I don't believe we want or need one. There's a lot of options, and perhaps stuff we haven't even thought of, but big ones would be:

-an earth shock clone (ranged pull/ability + short cooldown spell interrupt, useful to all 3 specs)
-a death grip clone (gap closer + single target taunt, very useful to ret and prot, mildly useful to holy pvp)
-a feral charge clone (gap closer + spell interrupt + short snare, useful to all 3 specs)
-an intercept clone (gap closer + short stun/spell interruption, again useful to all 3 specs)
-add an earthshock effect to Judgements (or, just to JoJ)
-'tweak' the Imp Judgement talent to give it a 50/100% chance to stop spellcasting

It's not by chance that a recurring theme is that we want skills with spell interrupt effects, and on short cooldowns (read: 8-20seconds). Currently melee classes when fighting against us bend over when they eat our stun - this is exactly how we feel against caster classes. There is also the very convenient issue of protection lacking an 11 point talent... what a perfect spot to put such a skill, and it would encourage holy paladins to diversify pvp builds as well. Would giving paladins an option (not baseline, talented) to get an interruption skill be overpowering? A couple years ago, yes... in a game with almost all classes/specs having such skills, as it is today, no. As for class homogenization, they've already taken it this far... we should not continue to be the only class (yes, class, not spec) without a way to stop casts.

Summary: Revert Imp HoJ to 5/10/15s cd reduction (45s/35s cooldown.) Change DS penalty to either 40% reduced outgoing damage, or have it trigger/reset Divine Storm's cooldown. Add an 11pt protection talent that addresses our inability to do anything at range/stop casts, with less than a 30s cooldown; OR add the functionality suggested so very long ago - make Imp Judgements a 1/2s cooldown reduction with a 50/100% chance to interrupt spellcasting.

 

Tilted

I played a mage as my main for a lot of my WoW career, and the ret complaints sound a lot like the original (and revived) complaints around Arcane specs. If the mage had AP available, you were screwed. This was back in the day of stacking trinkets, and you can see what Bliz has done to allow these players to keep a "fair" amount of burst without completely crippling the spec (35% nerfed to 30%, trinkets no longer stack, more classes can dispel now, etc).

Really, I think the PvP issue simply revolves around what can happen in a 6-7 second stun, as many others have already said. If we bait a trinket early that means our next stun is very likely to last full duration, assuming a gimmick-less target (i.e. mage blink, orc stun resist, warrior stun resist, another ret with Divine Purpose, etc). During that time we're virtually guaranteed 3 GCDs to use on that person, with 2-3 auto swings in between. Those 3 GCDs can easily be Judgement (guaranteed crit with SoC active), CS, and DS. On top of that, all those swings can proc a SoC swing as well. Those 8-10 attacks will do a ton of damage when you can also easily plan on popping AW before the stun. This will either drop most players to the sub-35% range for instant 80%+ crit HoW finishers, or kill them outright. This is a problem.

Right now, to pick up the 18 points in prot needed for Improved HoJ means losing 3 points of the 56 needed to grab all the damage and PvP talents from ret (ignoring Swift Retribution since it means little to nothing in PvP). Say you take 3 out of Righteous Vengeance for slightly smaller DS and Judgement crits, and that gives you an offensive juggernaut on the battlefield that can keep a target stunned for upwards of 1/3 of a fight since diminishing returns reset after 15 seconds.

One solution might be to move Imp. HoJ a tier or two deeper in prot. That would require yet another 5+ points to be removed from ret to make it work, which then forces the player to choose between control and raw damage. However, that does screw up the versatility of prot specs a bit so I'm not exactly a fan.

 

levk

Problem I have with moving Imp HoJ out of reach of ret is it also moves it out of reach of holy. Imp HoJ is the only reason to pick up beacon for pvp right now as opposed to going with a JotW build by default.

 

Phayne2355

Honestly is allowing us a bit of control in a game (pvp) that is all about control all that bad? HoJ can be dispelled. Nothing has really changed to make a paladin less controllable. Just like with a holy paladin, if you do not control his actions he will just heal the hell out of his team mates and likely win the day.

All arguments aside, I would much rather not see a bunch of nerf for balance requests when we really dont know that we are actually imba for pvp. Beta arena and BGs are hardly played the same as those on live.

 

Anauel

I'm uncertain of HoJ's current state. Even without the glyph, a talented HoJ from a pally with the PvP set bonus will incur in DR. This reminds me of how rogues (a long time ago) didn't use full improved KS, because it would make it go into diminishing returns. This is obviously a mistake. It shouldn't be this way.

EDIT: I also meant to add that DR is in effect with a 20 sec HoJ because they start counting when the effect ends, at least according to WoWwiki. You'd have to use HoJ Rank 4 for it not to collide.

The whole problem has been that the Devs refuse to give us an interrupt, probably because coupled with our burst we'd be unstoppable killing machines. They have to, however, give Prot some means of interrupting bosses, so the decision they took was putting an interrupt into HoJ. In my opinion, it was really more of a band-aid, because a 1 minute interrupt is terrible. So they then reduced the cooldown to 30s, via talents. This breaks Ret PvP, partly because of our pvp set bonus and partly because it's a lot of control (7s out of 30 is still ~25% of the time, no DR)

What they should've done is give Prot an interrupt added to their judgements. This would put it somewhere along the lines of shield bash, and would make life easier. You could then have imp. HoJ reduce the total time by 45 seconds, as it is in live, instead of 30. The best thing I could come up with is to add it to Judgements of the Just, but I'm not actively involved in Prot, so I don't know how that would go...


Well, you have to make choices. You cannot have everything. Either you have burst or you have control (think Assassination vs. Subtlety). Having a class that has great control (a 7s stun on a 20s cooldown, along with a 10s disorient) and great burst (2 instant weapon abilities and judgement) is a little broken. You either have to nerf their control or their damage. That's why I'm proposing we go back to 45s HoJ, give prot pallies a real interrupt and keep our damage as is. This makes us viable in pvp with a partner that offers control (such as a rogue), gives us pve viability and stops some of the whining - because you'll never stop all of it. :p

 

Khaelarys

Anauel - sounds like we agree. This was my post on the WotlK forums.

 

Suicidal Zebra

Just listening to the Class Q&A Panel on WoWRadio, and Ret Paladin burst damage was brought up in the context of "Ret Burst is too high for PvP, so how are you going to address that without making us un-viable in PvE". The reply was to the extent of:

"We don't think it's way off"

It seems that Blizzards worries of Ret Burst were more from early Beta when we had a number of exploitable 'bugs' (see: poorly thought out mechanics) which they reckon are now solved. The closing comment was that right now they're not sure that it's all that far of where it should be, from which I gather that there won't be many changes (if any).

*fingers crossed*

 

Anauel

I've already posted in the Ret Pally DPS thread, but I have to say that this is definitely comforting and it's good to know that they understand where we're at. As always, this might contradict earlier statements, but since they said it at Blizzcon, I'd like to think this is the final word on the subject. Somewhat along the words of 'Ret pallies are not overpowered. They may need a couple of adjustments, but they're mostly done.'

All I have to say is... Rejoice! It's done! Ret is viable now!

 

Mode

That's the charitable way to view it; I'm going to wait until there's a transcript (or until I at least can download a copy of the audio of that and make one myself), but here's Wowinsider's 'transcript':

4:28PM Q: "Concern about ret pallies doing burst damage." Applause. "However with that said I've raided as a ret paladin. Are you guys going to tone down burst damage in PvP for ret paladins and keep good damage in raids? We've been waiting for a long time to become raid viable and don't want to loose that." GC: "Lots of bugs in beta that made [ret paladins] do more DPS... we don't think [current damage] is way off, honestly." GC: "Don't nerf me bro!" (Tons of laughter). Chilton: "We've tried to take it away from the uncontrollable proc damage...we want them to feel strong...we want to put a kill in the hands of a player [,not luck]."

Assuming that's mostly accurate, you could read GCs comments as 'Ret paladins have burst in pvp and we're fine where it is' (as you are interpreting it) or you could view it as 'You do good PVE damage; it was too high when there were bugs making it too high, but now we're cool with where it is' and the only actual comment on pvp balance came from Chilton vaguely saying they don't like procs.

 

Malleus

Interesting comment at Blizzcon on the "Current Classes V" slide, which covers Paladins - "Holy: needs heals for movement and groups". Movement heals I suspect would qualify as covered from IoL-Flash and 6s CD Shock, but that reads to me like they plan to address our current lack of a mass heal with something more significant than Beacon.

 

SirSilk

What I don't understand, is why can't ret. be a little op in arena?

While Blizzard makes an attempt to balance arena, you can't honestly look at s4 and say they succeeded. Looking at the top teams from the most recent tournament, you see 0 paladins, shamans, and hunters. These classes are vastly inferior in 2's and 3's. Resto Druids are clearly not balanced in comparison to other healing classes. There will always be better/best classes for Arena, why can't s5 be a chance for paladins to know what its like. (Especially for those of us that werent around when Illumination was amazing).

 

Andorien

While it's possible it can shake out like that, certainly the design goal should be for no class to be a little overpowered. That way, if they miss by a little, some class ends up a little overpowered. If the design goal was for a class to be a little strong, and they missed it, that class could end up very overpowered. Not a good plan.

 

bv728

Because there's a difference between unintended consequences and intentional unbalancing. One is mostly acceptable by the population, the other will drive people away and is a sign of bad design. If you intentionally leave a class in a state you don't believe is balanced for non-technical reasons, you have a series of issues:

A) People decide that the unbalanced class is where everyone should be
B) People decide that if they can't fix this class which is clearly and obviously broken, they shouldn't PVP
C) People decide that the unbalanced class is where THEY want to be and reroll/respec/enjoy their 'long deserved day in the sun'.
D) People don't give solid feedback because Class X is known, publically, to be deliberately OP.

Blizzard fixes things six months later. Now A and C are both unhappy: A because they didn't get buffed but had to put up with not working, C because they 'were fine' not in need of nerfs. B was unhappy all along. Spending the obvious time and effort to balance, even if it misses the mark, results in a happier playerbase and better feedback.

 

Sloppyjoe

Bear with me here boys and girls. I've been doing a LOT of research both on EJ and elsewhere, and I'm getting very different answers.

Given Alliance and PvE only, what is the new preferred dps cycle? Does it involve Martyr or Vengeance? I have read folks that swear up and down that each are the best way to go. Any guidance is most appreciated.

 

midnightwinter

Frankly, the idea that its alright for Retribution to be notably "OP" in pvp irritates me, as it'll give rise to another flock of flavour of the month rerollers in the same fashion that the resto druid/shs rogue/arms-warrior population on many servers (or mine at any rate) doubled or tripled over the course of the last few months thanks to PvP.

I'd much prefer if we still had to -think- to be really good dps players. Rotations, proper gearing, seal twisting and the like in terms of pve. I don't want us to become so needlessly "win" in pvp that I have to spend another expansion grouping with second rate players who rolled a class they used to be /rofl at so they can "own" in arenas. It'll be dodgy enough with all the flocks of shiny uncertain Deathknights.

Regardless, sorry, I'm going off topic somewhat.
I would like to know now from some of our Beta raiders, now that the dust has settled somewhat, and most of the meaner bugs have been dealt with, are we staying on the ball in level 80 raiding? I can see that at 70 its an undisputed increase in our pve dps, but Ive seen dps parses showing us as fluctuating between tank level dps and being very close to the top. I know what Blizzards stated intent is with our dps, but when glyphed, geared and raidbuffed, are we performing?

*edited for a typo*

 

Andrast

1. Clearly you haven't done "a LOT of research" because if you had simply read this thread (or the ret one) you would know the answer.
2. Alliance and Horde now have the same abilities although they have different names. If you see us saying "SoB" or Seal of Blood feel free to translate that to Seal of the Martyr for alliance paladins.
3. There is no "dps cycle". You hit whichever ability comes off cooldown first. If there is a clash you use a priority system to resolve that collision. It is called FCFS, but you know that because you've done "a lot of research". Right?
4. Martyr does more DPS than Vengeance.
5. If you think I'm being condescending I am. Try not to refer to people here as "boys and girls" and you'll get a much more pleasant response.

As a ret paladin in my beta raids I'm consistently towards the top of the DPS depending on the fight. It is more difficult for melee to win Malygos ,and on a fight like Gluth, where I assist off-tank, my DPS naturally takes a dive. Otherwise I am consistently towards the top of the DPS meter. I have no doubt that as time goes by some classes will scale better, but at this point ret is extremely competitive.

 

Sloppyjoe

Number 4 answered my question, thank you very much. =) The rest is signal to noise, so I'll just ignore it.

Please don't take me saying boys and girls as an insult. I come from Maryland, it's a very widely used "greeting" in these parts.

 

Redcape

If you can get 5 points in SotP then Righteousness is going to be the top dps seal. If not, then Blood/Martyr is top. Whether you can get 5 points in SotP is questionable. Command is only 1% behind Blood if you are glyphed for it, so that is a great option in many fights, depends on mechanics.

 

Rasputin

I very much agree with midnightwinter. I have no desire to be the new fotm class and no real desire to be overpowered. All I want is to be able to form some viable arena comps as ret without knowing in the back of my mind that if my friends simply grabbed a rogue or a warrior in my place they'd be better off. Like it or not, that's been the case in TBC; we could get onto some teams and it might work, but the team was simply not as good as it would have been with a warrior or rogue. If we have a decent place on some viable comps, I'm more than satisfied. I'd much prefer to be decent and not op than have 2200 handed to me because the devs didn't balance my class.

 

SirSilk

You seem to think that they can reach parity. Why do you think that? Clearly arena's have not been balanced for quite some time, and nothing was done to fix it. Sure, Blizzard can say how much more proactive/reactive they are going to bein Wrath, but I'll personally believe it when I see it. It is all conjecture at this time as to how OP ret may or may not be at 80. We can all math it out and look at beta tester results, but we can't really know until the masses get ahold of all the finalized classes and practically apply it.

 

Rasputin

The point is that the implication was that it would be ok to DESIGN ret to be slightly op. That is clearly a mistake and unfair. Trying to balance and ending up with one or two op specs is pretty much unavoidable, but planning it out and implementing it is terrible design and should never be condoned, for anyone. Ret could have been useless for 10 years in pve and pvp, and it would still be a terrible idea to design it to be noticeably op.

 

Darcnes

I have done some maths behind the return from Illumination with the glyph of SoW. With the addition of benediction as well it see's a even greater return on holy shock plus the 6% crit from Sancified Light to Holy Shock makes it even better than FoL.

Holy Light returns ~765 mana on a crit with the reduced mana cost being 1211 having a return of ~63.17%.
Flash of Light returns ~185 mana on a crit with the reduced mana cost being 292 having a return of ~63.17%.
Holy Shock with Benediction as well returns ~475 mana per crit and at a cost of 676 having a return of ~70.18%.

In my eyes this is a huge buff over glyph of SoL, with the extra 6% crit to Holy Shock and Holy Light from Sancified Light we would see a rather large mana/5 return overall. When Divine Illumination is acivated as well you would gain a small amount of mana per crit which is a nice bonus.

The other part i have been looking into is the mana/5 we would get via Intellect main for gem slots. With the item value of 1 for 1 intellect and 2.5 for 1 mana/5 I calculated the return from Divine Plea, Replenishment and Mana Tide with Divine Intellect plus Holy Guidance and then again including the benefit from Kings.

Looking at epic gems we can get 20 Int.
Without kings we get: 20*1.15 = 23 Int total
This gives overall:

• 4.6 Spell Power
• 345 mana
• 0.14% crit
• 345*0.25/12 = 7.1875 mana/5 from Divine Plea (used every CD)
• 345*0.0025*5 = 4.3125 mana/5 from Replinshment
• 345*.24/60 = 1.38 mana/5 from Mana Tide (used each CD)

This is a total of 12.88 mana/5 overall compared to the epic version of mana/5 gem is a increase of 4.88 mana/5 plus the bonus of crit, spell power and mana.

With kings we get: 20*1.15 = 25.3 Int total
This gives overall:

• 5.06 Spell Power
• 379.5 mana
• 0.15% crit
• 379.5*0.25/12 = 7.9 mana/5 from Divine Plea (used every CD)
• 379.5*0.0025*5 = 4.74375 mana/5 from Replinshment
• 345*.24/60 = 1.518 mana/5 from Mana Tide (used each CD)

This is a total of 14.16 mana/5 overall compared to the epic version of mana/5 gem is a increase of 6.16 mana/5 plus the bonus' again.

One other thing to look at is now holy pally's will be judgementing once a minute of once every 20sec to keep the debuff up. Assuming JoW is on the target when judging you would gain extra mana/5. This is a free gain as it is assumed you would be Judging anyways.

With the int without kings you would get:

• Once every 60 sec: 0.575 mana/5
• Once every 20 sec: 1.725 mana/5

With the int with kings you would get:

• Once every 60 sec: 0.6325 mana/5
• Once every 20 sec: 1.8975 mana/5

Therefore the total mana/5 is:

• Without kings and judging once every 60 sec: 13.455
• Without kings and judging once every 20 sec: 14.605
• With kings and judging once every 60 sec: 14.737
• With kings and judging once every 20 sec: 15.887

Myself personally would gem for int over anything else. The gains are pretty huge and when comparing for say a red gem you lose 8.5 spell power (factoring in the spell power from int), if you go for the spell power and int gem, but gain nearly 8 mana/5 with the best buffs plus the mana and crit.

With the bonus from Illumination with glyph of SoW I see that paladins wont have too many mana issues.

 

Eligos

I have a hard time buying Retribution's current status among the player base without first seeing widespread Arena play. The sheer difference between where Retribution was, and where it has to be is cause for most to cry nerf, let alone the fact that the majority of players have little more than PTR duels to go on. Now sure, Retribution Paladins could be the new 2.0 Feral Druids, but until I see that played out at level 80, in something more than scenarios Blizzard itself is disinterested in balancing the game around, my default position is that Retribution is just as likely—if not more given Blizzard's history with the spec—to be underpowered when all is said and done.

 

• Avitus

One thing to note that very heavily affects all of these parses is gear level. Even going from top of the line, best of TBC Sunwell gear to the lowest of level 80 epics (ilvl 200) creates gigantic strides in DPS.

You don't have the case that everyone in a raid instance is geared the same (as would normally be on live), some are actively farming beta for upgrades, enchants, gems and what not, some are just taking it as it goes since it's just a beta and will be vaporized soon.

I'm more or less of the latter group and I've seen pretty radical changes in "relative" DPS depending on upgrades. Running Naxx in all Sunwell gear I was in higher midrange. A month or so ago I got a new high level weapon (Black Ice) to replace my Apolyon and got 3-4 drops in a lucky Naxx run and I was comfortably topping the meters. Skip a bit, people who've been farming are now full WotLK epics, vs my 50/50 gear and I'm back to ~top 5 in a 25 man raid.

Gear differences is just a very heavy random variable that is usually not accounted for in any parses, I'd say however the one meaningful result out of all this is that it's at least possible to say now that we're not DPS "hard capped" as we are on TBC live at the moment (where no matter what you do, we cap out much lower than other classes, ~2200-2400 DPS vs ~3000 - 3400 DPS), we can go all the way with the right gear .