Cevil, that is the number one reason I loved JotW v1; it scaled alongside your damage, putting a noticeable difference between fresh 70/80's and endgame paladins (the reason I believe there is so much retQQ on live is because there really isn't much difference between a blue/s1 ret and an s4 ret). But I guess it didn't make sense to have gear and experience actually mean anything, right..?
Also on the topic of gearing, with RV rolling are we going to see raiding paladins stacking crit like arms warriors are currently? Perhaps with crit being more important than str, or a careful balance like ele shamans and their crit/haste ratio?
Isn't that exactly how arcane blast works? The more you cast it, the more expensive it becomes but the more damage it does?
Going from what you're saying, its little wonder arcane mages appear to be taking over from first DKs and then Ret pallies as everyone's least favorite PvP opponent.
I don't think you actually take any damage from Divine Guardian. It hits your shield and stops. Which is why they took the ability off of Divine Protection.
Well, while this makes most of my post obsolete, it does not really make Divine Guardian any less attractive. I guess a raidwide Last Stand is worth 8% crit as long as you do not consistently run into severe mana problems.
Also on the topic of gearing, with RV rolling are we going to see raiding paladins stacking crit like arms warriors are currently? Perhaps with crit being more important than str, or a careful balance like ele shamans and their crit/haste ratio?
Paladins don't have a way to easily get the stack rolling (like a fast dagger), and Strength is just so powerful. However, it increases the value for crit for PvE.
With 25% crit (the premade), the stack was up about 80% of the time.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I have to agree with the sentiment here. I can only hope that this is a buildup to some new base ability or perhaps some further tweaking of the talent trees. I remain optimistic that this is a transitional build and not just some knee-jerk reaction. GC admitted to letting the boards fume for a day or two before coming in to make a post after a nerf. I await his explanation, although I'm a little scared I will hear something I don't want to hear.
As someone stated on the re-rolling subject, I just myself joined a new guild for wotlk and we're discussing options right now. Since the guild has plenty of tanks, I was asked to choose holy or ret. Given that I simply refuse to play holy (it doesn't fit my idea of what a melee class should be), I'm honestly forced to park this paladin as a bank alt and take my 68 rogue to 70 as my main for wotlk, simply because it's illogical to play a sub-standard dps spec in a dps slot. This doesn't bother me too much, to be honest, since I will also have the option to PvP on the rogue (something I feel has been completely un-fun as a paladin due to it's lack of tools and interactivity.) I don't see paladins having a good future in any spec in either PvE or PvP at this moment. This isn't a whine, this is an honest opinion given the facts as they have presented themselves. There are simply better options for any of the roles a paladin can perform.
With all of the changes to JotW, I wonder if a different approach wouldn't be better. Since I think there is agreement in that Ret's mana should be an infinate resource, one that they can use to DPS with along side rogues and warriors, but not unlimited meaning that they shouldn't have enough that they DPS and heal non-stop without a worry. The live implimentation is such that we can DPS fully without a worry, but we can also do a significant amount of healing while regening a large amount at once due to a judgement. While the problematic effects of this at level 80 are open to debate, it seems that Blizzard deemed it necessary to make a drastic cut in this ability to regen. Although I do not know what Blizzard's intention for Ret's mana bar is, it seems they had an issue with the burst regen that we could do every 8 seconds. The fact that even with JotW as base mana it was still highly desireable to some holy builds probably factored into as well.
Since it seems that the burst regen of mana returns on a Judgement is the problem, it would seem to me that the best way to deal with it is to smooth out mana returned and base it on damage done. I would like to see something added to Two-handed Spec, giving the paladin back 5/10/15% of all damage done as mana. While the numbers would probably need massaging, I think it would be a good mechanic. It would give us the regen we need, but slowly so that we have to take the time to deal damage before we could heal again. If we were burned to the ground in PvP, a few auto-attacks would give us enough mana to start a rotation and build up more mana. Although this would make our weakness to kiting even more aparent, it give us a reason to be so powerful when we can make contact with our target.
I also really feel that the class as whole needs this mechanic as a base-line ability much like Spiritual Attunement, that's another arguement for another day.
Something like making JOTW instead "you gain 5% of your max mana on your successful melee attacks" would provide plenty of mana for pure DPSing, but also nerf the "play defensively and just heal" approach that ret could shift to at will in arenas and outlast the outlast teams.
That approach would effectively be a direct discount on your strikes. When constantly attacking it would still provide enough mana for rough sustainability in PvE, while ALSO allowing rets to be kited dry as a class counter, without leaving them 100% sucsceptible to someone just sitting there mana burning or mana draining them.
The live implimentation is such that we can DPS fully without a worry, but we can also do a significant amount of healing while regening a large amount at once due to a judgement.
Isn't this what we signed up for? Isn't this the reason we don't have an interrupt, an renewable cc, a snare, a charge / intercept - isn't this why we don't have anything to protect us against direct spell damage?
I mean, seriously - I pay a huge price for my ability to heal. I have, in the entirety of BC in which I couldn't even use it, paid that price.
If I'm not supposed to heal my buddies and smash faces then what the hell good am I? What else am I supposed to do the 75% of the time I'm off target in pvp if it's not throw heals? Chase a mage? Pillar dance with a druid?
The reason this change pisses me off so much is it's a core mechanic reversal of the ONE fix they made for WotLK that made me excited about the expansion. I could actually heal. Now, that seems a bit unlikely and I have to question - what the hell good am I.
I will not run anyone out of mana. My burst has been lowered to the point where it puts no pressure on a healer, and very little if a healer is active. I cannot contain a healer, or contain a kill target. I now, likewise, can't outlast most of my targets now, especially one with drain abilities (the most dangerous thing about having no int on itemization).
I'm literally back to running around chasing kill targets while I cleanse drain myself, trying to keep my rogue or warrior on the KT - that wasn't fun for the last 18 months - I can't imagine it getting more fun with all the new class abilities in Wrath.
Isn't this what we signed up for? Isn't this the reason we don't have an interrupt, an renewable cc, a snare, a charge / intercept - isn't this why we don't have anything to protect us against direct spell damage?
I mean, seriously - I pay a huge price for my ability to heal. I have, in the entirety of BC in which I couldn't even use it, paid that price.
If I'm not supposed to heal my buddies and smash faces then what the hell good am I? What else am I supposed to do the 75% of the time I'm off target in pvp if it's not throw heals? Chase a mage? Pillar dance with a druid?
The reason this change pisses me off so much is it's a core mechanic reversal of the ONE fix they made for WotLK that made me excited about the expansion. I could actually heal. Now, that seems a bit unlikely and I have to question - what the hell good am I.
I will not run anyone out of mana. My burst has been lowered to the point where it puts no pressure on a healer, and very little if a healer is active. I cannot contain a healer, or contain a kill target. I now, likewise, can't outlast most of my targets now, especially one with drain abilities (the most dangerous thing about having no int on itemization).
I'm literally back to running around chasing kill targets while I cleanse drain myself, trying to keep my rogue or warrior on the KT - that wasn't fun for the last 18 months - I can't imagine it getting more fun with all the new class abilities in Wrath.
This is exactly how I feel, and I think it's the cause of so much QQ. The idea of Ret being able to actually do something like this is anathema in the minds of so many, because of the perception of the class. We're always told "you wear plate and can heal!" but we've never actually been able to do that. That was always the rationale for Ret being compared to Warriors. Technically, we had heal spells, but we couldn't use them until now.
This JotW nerf seems to be aimed not so much at limiting a tight rotation of CS,DS, and Judgment, but more to nerf our supplemental abilities to heal and use Hand spells. It's a shame, really, because while I did think our burst was excessive, our secondary effects, while not charges snares or interrupts, had finally given us a flavor I think many of us intended when we rolled the class.
What about such a talent change:
Judgement of the Wise: normal effect (with 33% base mana back) and in addition to this: increases the mana cost of Holy Light by 200% (or even higher).
I think these changes are made because of the healing output at arena without having mana problems.
What about such a talent change:
Judgement of the Wise: normal effect (with 33% base mana back) and in addition to this: increases the mana cost of Holy Light by 200% (or even higher).
I think these changes are made because of the healing output at arena without having mana problems.
I think not actually. It's kind of a normal reaction when a thing you see as very important is heavily nerfed to want it back and in exchange propose that the nerf should be made elsewhere. However, this is not the case here. Many Retribution abilities where nerfed by huge numbers we rarely see applied (-25% to 55% damage or so to Divine Storm, -45% critical damage to Divine Storm and Judgements, -20% critical damage to Crusader Strike, -20% damage to all Seals and Judgements, -55% mana restored by JotW) in normal cases. Most of the normal tweaking is usually under 10%. So just asking for another nerf to compensate something that was not supposed to be touched in the first place sounds wrong.
"We plan on revisiting Divine Storm once we have a better idea of where level 80 dps and pvp stack up in general." - GC
What I find most frustrating about all of this is that with comments like this, it seems like they don't have a good handle on level 80, yet are performing sweeping nerfs regardless. We're really spending time balancing content that will be obsolete in a few weeks? Really?
Mana expenditure doesn't scale either though. The reason [non-arcane] mages never want int or spirit on their gear is because if they have enough mana to do a 6-minute encounter in Karazhan, they have enough mana to do a 6-minute encounter in Sunwell (pre-haste anyways; haste does change the picture). Our mana return doesn't have to scale so long as its sufficient to cover our mana requirements. (For the problems with scaling mana return see late-TBC shadow priests.)
A rogue's energy return doesn't scale, but this doesn't matter because the use that he can get out of that energy does scale. Same for the retadin - it's going to be all but impossible to balance the class such that a longer mana bar results in more DPS. A "mana-limited" class whose PvE DPS is balanced against other classes is always going to have spectacular burst in any circumstance where he doesn't have to worry about the long term (i.e., any circumstance in which he is effectively not mana limited). The prime example of a case where the encounter is likely to last less than a minute and burst is extremely valuable is, of course, PvP.
Rogue energy return does scale, with haste and crit for assassination rogues or haste and hit for combat rogues. Why do you think rogues spent the entire BC collecting hit rating? Combat Potency! Paladins are different than rogues. Rogues wait for energy. Paladins wait for GCD and ability CD. Rogues can make energy replenish faster. Paladins just need the mana to be able to hit abilities on queue.
Isn't this what we signed up for? Isn't this the reason we don't have an interrupt, an renewable cc, a snare, a charge / intercept - isn't this why we don't have anything to protect us against direct spell damage?
I mean, seriously - I pay a huge price for my ability to heal. I have, in the entirety of BC in which I couldn't even use it, paid that price.
If I'm not supposed to heal my buddies and smash faces then what the hell good am I? What else am I supposed to do the 75% of the time I'm off target in pvp if it's not throw heals? Chase a mage? Pillar dance with a druid?
The reason this change pisses me off so much is it's a core mechanic reversal of the ONE fix they made for WotLK that made me excited about the expansion. I could actually heal. Now, that seems a bit unlikely and I have to question - what the hell good am I.
I will not run anyone out of mana. My burst has been lowered to the point where it puts no pressure on a healer, and very little if a healer is active. I cannot contain a healer, or contain a kill target. I now, likewise, can't outlast most of my targets now, especially one with drain abilities (the most dangerous thing about having no int on itemization).
I'm literally back to running around chasing kill targets while I cleanse drain myself, trying to keep my rogue or warrior on the KT - that wasn't fun for the last 18 months - I can't imagine it getting more fun with all the new class abilities in Wrath.
You Sir, just won the campaign for Ret Pally President.
The only thing i would add in my Rant to GC:
How is a rogue stunlocking you from 100% to death, a mage blink/blocking out of your sad CC spells, or a warrior instakilling you with a full HP execute crit ANY LESS unbalanced?
Divine Storm as a melee ability w/o holy dmg is a slap in the face. Unbuffing HoW takes away one of my favorite things about the new Ret, the ability to constantly push the GCD with spells that matter.
But beyond any of that, why are you adjusting abilities and coefficients for lvl 70 content?
We need a sign, a big tacky RetLol purple sign with glowey edges to appear on the login screen:
All classes are supposed to be equal now, this means it will require skill to beat an opponent. Stop Crying about Ret Pallies killing you when you have a bag full of tricks and refuse to use them.
At which point i would yell something juvenile on the order of 'L2P expletive pure dps class'
Anyone have a shovel i can borrow? I Have a feeling its gonna take some digging to get out of this nerf.
Isn't that exactly how arcane blast works? The more you cast it, the more expensive it becomes but the more damage it does?
Going from what you're saying, its little wonder arcane mages appear to be taking over from first DKs and then Ret pallies as everyone's least favorite PvP opponent.
Arcane Blast has a 2.5s cast time and does low DPS. Everytime you cast it, you get a (de)buff that increases Arcane Blast damage by 15% and its mana cost by 200% (not a typo), stacking 3 times.
This (de)buff lasts 3 seconds, so if you have 0.5 seconds cast delay or have to move a tiny bit between casts, your stack will reset.
At 3 stacks, it does good DPS (not outstanding though) and costs around 1775 mana per cast with talents.
This spell is pretty much useless in it's current form for any fathomable purpose.
It used to be quite strong, but has undergone huge changes before and since then.
The only reason people complain about Arcane Mages is Arcane Barrage.
An instant spell that can be used every 3 seconds and actually does damage.
It can do good damage every 2 minutes when combined with Arcane Power and Presence of Mind (no Pyroblast at level 70).
It is however generally seen as not arena viable because Arcane Mages are too easily trained, offer too little control for their team and run out of mana too fast.
It works for BG's however where you can slow single players that receive no support.
Arcane Blast however has no place in in PvP at all.
Rogue energy return does scale, with haste and crit for assassination rogues or haste and hit for combat rogues. Why do you think rogues spent the entire BC collecting hit rating? Combat Potency! Paladins are different than rogues. Rogues wait for energy. Paladins wait for GCD and ability CD. Rogues can make energy replenish faster. Paladins just need the mana to be able to hit abilities on queue.
True, combat rogue energy regen scales. But a TBC mutilate rogue's energy regeneration does not, and yet they have no trouble doing spectacularly more damage in Sunwell gear than they are able to do in Kara gear.
The point is that if we can run a full DPS rotation in blues over an average to long length encounter, we do not need any more regen, ever. Our ability costs will never increase. And if we can't run a full DPS rotation in blues over an average to long length encounter in blues, we're either going to be useless because we don't do enough DPS to be worth bringing, or our burst is going to be out of line because we're balanced around not using some of our attacks. Arcane mages work without being overpowered in PvP because arcane blast is a pretty bad PvP spell (easy to lockout, no pushback resistance, have to remain stationary to cast it). Balancing retadins around a pared back DPS cycle is simply going to further increase what is already widely acknowledged to be excessive burst potential.
Sorry we didn't get a chance to pre-announce these changes before the data were pushed to the beta. I won't try to sugarcoat it -- these are nerfs.
As I tried to explain before, we concluded a couple of weeks ago that Retribution was doing too much damage in PvP. We tried to nerf the burst damage through the previous changes to Divine Storm etc. Unfortunately, those changes didn't prove sufficient. Not only were paladins still destroying other classes in PvP, but we also found their PvE damage, even at level 80, was too high. Many classes were concluding they were too weak based on comparing their numbers to paladin numbers (and to be fair, hunters and in some cases mages and warriors).
Here are the new changes:
1) Judgements of the Wise: Mana gained reduced from 33% to 15% of base mana. We spent many hours arriving at this number. For example, we did a lot of Patchwerk fights, watching the mana bar to see when and if it ever went down. In BGs, we were seeing paladins able to go from target to target without pausing even when unleashing all of their attacks. While we don't want you to go OOM in a few seconds, we don't want you to ignore the mana bar either. Mana is not rage -- warriors can't typically start a battle with a full bar.
2) Judgement of Wisdom: mana gained reduced to 1% of maximum mana and proc frequency cut by 50%. This ability was flat out better than Vampiric Touch when the mana provided between the two really needs to be close in order for the decision between Shadow priest and Retribution paladin to be a real one.
3) Judgement and Seals: Damage reduced by 20%. This is the major damage adjustment -- a lot of damage was coming from these. We do realize this hurts Holy and Protection as well, and that is something for which we are prepared to offer compensation (particularly if it hurts Protection's threat generation).
4) Hammer of Wrath: Now can’t be used until the target is below 20% health. Our rule of thumb is that core "Execute-style" abilities work at 20% and talented abilities work at 35% health. We originally had Hammer at 35% based on some other limitations of the spell.
5) Art of War: Increased damage bonus to Judgements, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. I'll report back on the exact numbers here when we've settled on them.
I also want to add that the token Blessing of Might change wasn't intended as a joke -- it is designed so that Battle Shouts won't cancel the longer and more expensive Blessing of Might in a group setting.
These seem like pretty severe nerfs, but that was the intention. It is difficult for some players to ever be truly objective with issues surrounding their class, but in this case we felt Ret was severely overpowered. This was not in the realm of small tweaks to fix (though we did try originally). We overhauled the paladin class for Lich King, so it is unfortunate but not too surprising that the numbers for the dps spec require a lot of iteration. The mistake is ours, not the fault of the player base or beta testers.
Nerfing a spec or class is never fun. It means that our initial estimates of numbers were off and we know that the community is going to react negatively (to put it mildly). But we have to try and keep the game in a relatively balanced state and that is going to mean making decisions that are unpopular sometimes. If you need to blame someone for the nerfs, blame me.
As always, if we over-compensated, we'll adjust the numbers again. But as I said, our initial round of nerfs wasn't sufficient. Lest you fear that Lich King is upon as and you won't see any additional changes, that is not our point of view. We changed a lot in the game and we need to be able to recitfy problems. I would expect early patches or even hotfixes to deal with class or balance problems, and hopefully these will slow down as we get closer to major content releases. But nothing is off the table after we ship, down to rearchitecting talent trees if we think that is called for. This isn't to suggest we aren't happy with the state of the game. Rather, my word that we will continue to iterate on problem areas as they come up.
I also want to stress that we do not make balance decisions based on the QQ of other classes. At most, if there is a pretty vocal outcry that will encourage us to rerun the numbers to see if something is amiss. As vocal, and sometimes passionate and even logical as forum posts can be, they represent a fraction of the entire fanbase and it would be foolish for us to clobber one group of players solely based on the whining from another group.
Go ahead and vent if you have to. We won't delete posts or ban posters in this thread unless they are overly offensive. We do ask that you not launch a thousand other threads so that other paladin issues can still be discussed. Likewise, we have no problem with other classes engaging in the discussion but outright gloating or trolling will be frowned upon.
And I do apologize for putting you through this.
Already posted in the Ret thread, but I thought it was worth putting here as well in case someone missed it.
2) Judgement of Wisdom: mana gained reduced to 1% of maximum mana and proc frequency cut by 50%. This ability was flat out better than Vampiric Touch when the mana provided between the two really needs to be close in order for the decision between Shadow priest and Retribution paladin to be a real one.
This is a bit strange. Are they staying with the 'bugged' version of no internal cooldown then, but move back to a limited proc rate?
I would've thought a 4 second internal cooldown, but a 100% proc rate would be much easier to balance (since you could just fiddle with the amount of mana returned).
This is a bit strange. Are they staying with the 'bugged' version of no internal cooldown then, but move back to a limited proc rate?
I would've thought a 4 second internal cooldown, but a 100% proc rate would be much easier to balance (since you could just fiddle with the amount of mana returned).
Yes, there is no internal cooldown at the moment, you can end up with 2 ~ 3 procs in a very short time frame. (Less than 2 seconds.)
But at other times, you can end up waiting the entire Judgement's duration before proccing Judgement of Wisdom a single time.
Correct, mana isn't rage. But why are we being saddled with ALL the limitations of mana, but none of the benefits? Currently, Intellect increases a classes longevity, and regen via replenishment and VT and Seal of Wisdom. The benefit of Mana is that as your gear scales, your staying power scales. We do not get that benefit on mana. As for frontloading attacks because we "start with a full rage bar," i'd like to point out that every single attack we have—every single one—has a cooldown of at least 6 seconds. Steady Shot, Fireball, Shadowbolt, Sinister Strike; these do not have cooldowns. The first three are limited by their mana cost, and cast time, but they can, and are, spammed over the course of a fight. And, as their gear gets better, their ability to keep spamming them increases. We do not have that ability. From Patchwerk to Arthas, our Time-to-OOM will be constant. We will never see any gear, buff, or ability that will make our, say 3 minute rotation become a 5 minute rotation. On every fight, at every level, we have a defined and finite cycle that at some point will run out. There is no way in game for this to ever improve. The infinite mana of JotW took that out of the equation, and made the mana management aspect of our class revolve around the utility: do I want to cleanse dots/debuffs or straight heal?
Personally, I think a better solution is a more dynamic mana bar; bigger swings in mana lost and gained. That way, your decision windows revolve around the 8 second judgement: Do I want to burst or support in these next 8 seconds? I really liked the idea of Ret as a healing melee class to make up for the fact it brought nothing but melee. I can understand the concerns about infinite mana for healing, but the new interpretation doesn't seem effective.
Perhaps Ret is no longer an arena tree.
Last edited by Cevil : 10/26/08 at 5:37 PM.
Reason: editing for Forum Compliance
Correct, mana isn't rage. But why are we being saddled with ALL the limitations of mana, but none of the benefits? Currently, Intellect increases a classes longevity, and regen via replenishment and VT and Seal of Wisdom. The benefit of Mana is that as your gear scales, your staying power scales.
I was thinking about this. Couldn't they add a talent that does the same thing as the Shaman talent Mental Dexterity. That way we would gain a benefit from Intellect. That way we have a choice aswell. Do I get Strenght and increase my AP, or do I get Intellect and increase my staying power.
Yes, and this doesn't bode well for Paladins in any PvP, since Holy hasn't had a place in 2v2/3v3 for 2 seasons, and our role in 5's is now completely diminished with the removal of BoSac and all other healers having far more utility.
I'm not even sure at this point what can be done to fix us.
10/25/08, 6:28 PM
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