The problem isn't healers taking it anymore. The problem is us using the mana to heal in PvP. Now we won't have the mana to heal in PvP anymore. Of course, we won't have the mana to do much else either. I'm going to laugh every time AoW procs because I don't have the mana to use it anymore.

Edit: On the plus side, now that new CS Glyph has a use! I wonder if it will be one of our best in PvE and PvP now.

Jesus Christ. Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that Holy DPS just took yet another completely unnecessary hit. The good news is that our DPS was already so god damn pitiful we probably won't notice the loss.

Honestly, I think this grand dual-coefficient experiment, while noble, has ultimately been a failure. The problem since the beta started has been the difficulty in balancing what are essentially three separate classes sharing one set of mechanics. In trying to reign in Retribution, Blizzard has crippled Holy soloing and nerfed Prot's threat generation (potentially with dire ramifications for paladin tanking if the mitigation and effective health gaps with other tanks remain or widen with gear progression) again and again, without revisiting the core issues that cause scaling to go so far out of whack at both ends. If the system as it is can't be fixed (and I don't believe it can be), I think Blizzard really needs to consider going back to static coefficients and scale with spell ranks again.

This is completely mind-boggling. Not only are these Seal/Judgements nerfs completely unnecessary, they were also completely unannounced, especially the JOTW change.

Every blue comment and balance issue up to this point has been about burst. Burst, burst, burst. Why are we suddenly being blindsided by a nerf to our mana longevity when nothing ever suggested that we needed it?

To contribute: Judgement of Light is already healing for 15% of AP + 15% of SP right now on Live. I posted about it several pages back. It seems the tooltip was mistaken, not the functionality. That being said, I also discovered that JOL isn't taking spell power from Sheath of Light, something that should be investigated for anyone who still wants to give Beta Ret a go.

Yeah, everything that was discussed prior to this was tuning multipliers / % increases on crits. Moving us away from being such a crit sensitive class is fine with me, but this is absurd. It's like they picked numbers out of a hat for these nerfs, I'm really at a loss.

I'd argue the problem is that Blizzard insists that special attacks proc Seals. This:

• Increases our burst
• Means Ret gets more Seal procs than Holy, so Seal nerfs disproportionately hurt Holy
• Leads to lackluster specials, because all specials have to compensate for the invisible Seal damage (Seal Tax)
• Couples special abilities tightly to Seals, which makes it hard to change one without changing the other.
• Leads to much higher potential burst with Seal of Command

That, and we would be much better off if we started level 1 with an AP seal, and got an SP seal at 64, instead of having SoR trying to accomplish both goals. It would match the available gear much better.

Ugh....It seems history is repeating itself yet again....

I really thought Blizz was on board this time, that they understood what Ret needed and lacked, but with each patch I'm just left scratching my head at the changes. What did JOTW nerf address? I don't think anyone was complaining that ret pallies had too much mana. Now that Divine storm is physical, seals are nerfed, JOTW is nerfed, burst is (supposedly) nerfed, I wonder what's next for us.

Just one thing, I just remembered. If you take blue pvp set on level 80 (I'm referring to the one you get with premade characters on Beta), four-set bonus is 1 sec less CD on Judgements (it was the case in last beta build at least). So you can squeeze out some extra mana regen right there, as you'll be judging more often.

So being as objective as possible, Ret needed serious nerfs for PvP - anyone with a brain has to realize this. Our burst is dumb, killing people in a bubble is dumb, and we also probably healed too much in a lot of circumstances while still being able to turn around and drop anyone in 5 sec. The original nerfs they had planned and announced weren't going to be enough because they didn't address bubble killing or healing output, really.

All that being said, the best part about all the Ret changes from LK has been JotW - finally freeing us from the absolutely stupid restraints of a mana bar. That change alone plus some minor additional utility like AoW and others, actually gave us a legitimate shot at being a real PvP spec that could compete with DKs, warriors, and rogues, even with some serious nerfs to burst damage. It gave us a real PvE rotation that didn't involve using mana pots or being systemically gimped by one of the game's worst mechanics - mana.

So then we get these notes, which are basically a one-two punch:

One, removing our infinite sustained damage (and making us vulnerable to drains) once again nicely displays our overarching weakness and cripples us compared to other physical damage specs. It also highlights the worst aspect of our class and of "cleave" teams in general: RNG burst damage. So we are now totally reliant upon that to compete for spots on teams because it is one of the only unique things we bring (along with minor utility), as we still lack snares, MS, and now infinite sustained damage.

Two, the volatility of the paladin class design has to be a big turnoff to many players. One morning your class is able to do something and a few days later it can't again. Talents like Sta->spell power or JotW are fundamental aspects of the class that completely define a spec; a small change to them and it can cripple everything else. The base design/mechanics of the class are so weak and so distributed among completely different gameplay elements that there is no cohesive whole. Rogues or warriors get plenty of changes, but they usually amount to a modifier here or there, or changes to preferred weapons or top DPS specs - but in the end their basic mechanics remain mostly the same over time. Comparatively, you could take snapshots of paladins over the years and not even recognize the class. You could even do this in various incarnations of this beta.

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that not only are the nerfs silly because they miss the point of the problem and destroy the sustained damage of the spec, but they also highlight the volatility of a class with such poorly designed base mechanics that it relies on talents to be able to do any of its jobs.

Undocumented but HoW isn't "enabled" at 35% anymore, unless server has some wierd lag it's 20%.

Currently, a Retribution Paladin's support in PvP served as something of a mirror to that with which a Warrior provides. Both snares and stuns could be removed rather than applied, while healing debuffs were counteracted by actual heals. Defensive vs. offensive support, in other words. Now? It feels as though Retribution Paladins at 80 will fall into the same hole they found themselves in prior to this patch. A place where they again have to choose between DPS and support, rather than bringing both. Where the priority is to maintain enough mana to cleanse, by judging with extreme caution, and foregoing the overwhelming majority of their action bars.

Well there should be a choice in either offense or defense. Being able to have the momentum of a warrior with a built in pocket healer is rather absurd. The mana return on JotW is rather absurd, allowing all your strikes and then some. I would figure its return should have just evened out between what ret should only do and anything else just starts gambling in risks. It should hurt every time you cleanse or heal. You should have to result in some downtime here and there, not like after every pull like before, but my warrior had to at least cannibalize after 5-6 straight kills grinding, while my pally could go on pretty much indefinatly. War's and rogues are only held back by their health, as it stands rets have the momentum of these two without the drawback.

That said, I would agree cutting the wiggle room between your base moves and everything else in a way takes out a unique aspect from their play.

Also, both rogues and warriors have their downtimes, and don't spam a move each gcd, while that's how it looks for pally's now. A warrior can spam away his rage and then need to wait for it to build up, rogues have to pool energy to time their finishers with the rest of their cooldowns. Shamans, feel like hunters, which is dump and regain. I'll have to look into their camp to get something definite. But last I heard its hard for them to keep mana up, even with water shield.

However, considering how mana in pvp works, by prealloting a certain set of moves and in a way limiting the amount of diversity before you reach zero, if a paladin is too restricted, especially with the weaknesses of melee, it gets kinda lame.

Leveling is more of the base case you build off of before moving into the higher end stuff.

I agree that the burst was too stupid, don't quite agree with the judgment damage changes. As for the JotW nerf, in a pve stance you should have to maintain resources to maximize your potential. As it stands, being able to keep going non stop at full blast is probably too much.

PvP viability I can understand though.

And yet in PvE our damage was balanced around exactly that. Our damage was not ridiculous or even overpowered in raids. Perhaps the ability to use our cooldown-limited abilities when they have cooled down was balanced around some consideration, like their cooldowns? The JotW nerf was almost certainly implemented in order to remove our PvP healing abilities, and it has done that very handily. It has also crippled us in PvP and PvE. There were far better ways to go about fixing that particular problem which didn't severely hurt our raid viability.

I thought it was established that ret paladins should be grouped with other melee classes, and none of the other melee classes have any problems going full out because they do not have to worry about a finite amount of power source (rage,rune,energy).

JotW was really far too strong, there really was no other way to fix it imho. What I think you should be asking for, if you have mana problems while doing a DPS rotation, is for a reduction in spell cost for your damage abilities, just like mages had their cost reduced on frostbolt/fireball/etc.

There were plenty of ways to nerf it. Have AoW make your FoL instant but cost triple the mana. Have DS debuff you to make your HL cost 1.5x and cast at 3.5s. There are almost limitless ways to nerf our healing without hurting our damage by dealing with the actual healing spells themselves instead of massacring our longevity in PvP and PvE. We simply do not have the mana to sustain anything outside of a very basic attack rotation anymore. We get a little bit better with full raid buffs, but still not enough to bring us back to the level of DPS that we had before this nerf, which was stated several times as being balanced. Again, PvE raiding. Not PvP. This change with nothing else is excessive and is far more wide-reaching and powerful than any that we've had yet. JotW was the single most important talent we had which made us viable outside of a raid situation. It now barely serves that purpose, if indeed it still does.

For consideration: I tested on a dummy in Org using Judgement, CS, DS and Consecration. This was a standard basic attack rotation before this latest build. I was oom in 48 seconds.

Caggy, the problem with that is that J/CS/DS/Seal does not provide the level of DPS that puts us at the supposed 5% shy of pure compete with them for DM slots balance. Those abilities plus Consecration, HoW, and sometimes Exorcism and Holy Wrath does. To remove HoW and Consecration from our rotation at the least(and this nerf does do that) drops a large chunk of our DPS, putting us down below everyone else back into noncompetitive land. Combine that with the continuing nerfing of our Seals and Judgements and it begins to look poorly for Ret as a raid DPSer. Coming up with theoretical minimal DPS rotations doesn't help us unless that rotation is itself buffed to provide enough DPS to offset the loss of the other abilities we cannot afford any longer. And when 2 of those abilities(seals and judgements) were actually cut by 20%, you can begin to see the problem.

Ah but they do have a finite source of energy, its just mana works on a 2-5 minute size while they work between 10-30 seconds. Right now your max dps is doing something each GCD, because you won't expend enough mana that the next judgement wouldn't make right back up. A rogue will hit 0 energy if he keeps spamming SS, and then let SnD fall off. A warrior can burn all his rage chaining slam or queuing heroic strike, in which he will need to wait before the next move is avaliable. Being able to time these waits during naturally occuring downtime is what would fall under player skill.

It's not finite if after 8 seconds they have maxed out their resource again, which is the case with warriors and rogues. Shamans barely even use their resource. Paladins who burn all their resource, wait eight seconds.. still have not enough of that resource to do anything useful. That's a massive difference, the difference between being finite or not.

And for us, it's much less than 2 minutes. If rogues had only enough energy to dps for 2 minutes, you would bet they would be 1) awfully pissed off, and 2) not getting raid spots.

Your analogies are horribly flawed. You postulate a rogue that would chain SS, ignoring combo points, as if that is equal to a ret paladin rotating his abilities based on their cooldowns. You postulate a warrior chaining an attack which costs rage and another which not only costs rage but denies him rage generation and try to equate that to us again. What you've described is stupid people playing stupidly.

Ret was balanced around the cooldowns on our attacks, as are warriors. We cannot spam them whenever we have the resources as rogues or mages or warlocks can. We are limited by those cooldowns. An infinite mana source is literally meaningless to our DPS because EVERY ATTACK WE HAVE IS LIMITED BY A COOLDOWN. The only thing restricting us based on mana does is force us to deal with the downsides of both systems for no reason. Please stop trying to insult us by saying that appropriately using our cooldowns is the same as ignoring our abilities and consuming all our resources in a completely retarded manner.

Caggy, you forget that if the Ret Paladin isn't doing something each and every single CD, they are a useless burden on your raid. Since you know, even with going 100% on every GCD spamming an ability, they are still not beating Rogues and Warriors who have to "manage" their resources.

Not to mention this just buries holy DPS in a matter that instantly bars us from competing in pvp in anything other than 5v5 AGAIN. I don't know what Blizzard thinks, or how they do things, but this is the stupidest most arbitrary decision I've seen them make in a long, LONG time. This is about as bad as the Gruul/T5 nerfs, and just as hamfisted.

That I can agree to. If this just drops overall numbers down to nothing then its pretty much pointless. Since there isn't a reason to balance around utility, reducing the DPS contribution is unecessary.

What I really think is this is the hatchet and scalpel remedy. The AoW/RJ change was completely understandable. Those changes would not have affected overall PvE dps and the situations in PvP. You lost that gib ability, but that just means thinking an extra few steps ahead because the damage is still being done. You still had the defensive abilites. The JotW nerf just meant more caution in your move choices, because not everyone is going to trinket KS knowing blind was still there. But just to be sure they dropped judgement damage across the board, which I really did not see as that needed.