Corronach

I don't think they can tweak the numbers and come up with a solution that makes both paladins and non-paladins happy at this point. If they had changes in mind to things like Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Holy Offensive Utility for PvP and PvE, Prot 11 pointer, they need to implement them sooner rather than later so that people can actually judge the Paladin class.

This next part sounds like a whine, but I don't mean to indicate I feel this way. They need to show actions, promises that if we've undertuned we'll fix it just ring hollow to the vast majority of paladin players. Because frankly, the two talents I thought from the moment I got in beta were good, are now gimp versions of their former selves, infusion and jotw. They really have no selling point for why Holy Paladins or Ret Paladins should be excited for Wrath anymore. {You can use your same three heals, or You can now use the warrior baseline whirlwind!}.

I think generically at this point they need to come out an address, 2's and 3's concerns for Holy and Ret, because even in our supposedly "chuck norris" like state we still lost in the ESL tournament. And now we're less effective. And they should also address the ability to sustain whatever our end rotation is for variable durations, i.e. we don't plummet in DPS because they want to design a 10 minute fight because JoTW is just insufficient at this point. Bringing a talent to increase armor to int might be one solution so we can at least increase our mana pools to fight mana burns and somewhat scale with replenishment.

 

Rasputin

Almost confirmed. I am unable to proc Seals from Judging Righteousness or Blood with JoW, JoL or JoJ. I have however received SoC procs from judging Command. I tried both facing away from the dummy and faving the dummy and discounting melee-procced Seals, on the off chance that they gave Seals some odd facing requirement with Judgements. No go, only Command seems to be proccing from Judgements.

 

Khaelarys

On beta, I tried casting judgemen with my back to the target with all 7 Seals and non of those proc'd.

 

Aquaman7

What i think is absolutely astonishing is that GC thinks the major problem is hurting Protection's threat generation, and not the additional cut to Holy dps that is already roughly 75% of the other healers. Even after GC himself said that Holy dps was too low and they were going to do something, but now it seems that he doesn't remember that.

I'm not saying that Protection's threat generation isn't a problem, but right now that seems to be the only tree that is important to Blizz.

Why Holy Paladins can't have dps similar to Disc/Holy Priests?


On a different note, is there any feedback on how well Holy Paladins are doing in 2vs2 and 3vs3 Arena?

From my point of view the nerf to Infusion of Light was excessive and it may caused Holy to be not viable on those brackets, that are the only ones that matter, by the way.


On a final note, i'm sorry for all the Retribution Paladins that are feeling bad right now, i was even thinking of returning to the game to try out the new Retribution tree in pvp.

 

Denogran

Maybe because threat generation is central to a prot paladin's job while holy's damage is an ancillary benefit?

Don't get me wrong, I think that Holy damage should be increased, and that it does impact overall play. But it's not going to keep you out of raids or groups if your damage is even only 10% of other healers. Whereas with prot, reducing threat drastically would keep them from getting groups.

 

Arthaal

Player's were already concerned about prots high-TPS, but relatively lower DPS compared druid tanks in particular as it was. The thinking was that with fewer ways to differentiate tanks, high DPS ones might be favoured overall all other things being equal. Level-headed individuals rightly pointed out that the difference amounted to roughly 1.5% of a raids total DPS and posited that, perhaps, flasking would be easier than switching to a druid tank, but often times logic does not dictate such things as favoured classes (min-maxing guilds in particular are seldom making sensible decisions).

Percent modifiers R'US

 

flyingtoastr

Low Holy DPS further discourages prospective Paladins from leveling though. As it looks now ret will continue needing to drink every 5-10 seconds and holy damage is absolutely shit in every respect (say hello to the new lowest damage class in the game!). Meanwhile prot has never been known for exceptionally fast questing (where the bulk of your Northrend experience will be coming from). So right now the entire class is a little SoL for the leveling grind. If I can choose to level my paladin in full sunwell gear from 70-80 in 14 days versus leveling my greens and blues Mage from 70-80 in 7 days what do you think most people will choose?

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Noules

Actually, I think it's the other way around. The problem with the internal cooldown is with aliasing - consider the mana regen from something that hits every 1.9s vs 2.1s given a 4s internal cooldown and 100% proc rate. Flat proc rate without internal cooldown doesn't exhibit that sort of odd stepwise behavior.

 

Wrathblood

Arthaal,

I think it was more like 0.5% than 1.5% of a raid's dps, but, still, wouldn't that be a nice bonus to raid dps to get from a tank slot? Perhaps the equivalent of an extra +1% raid-wide crit.

That having been said, I think prot's tps won't be a problem even with this cut. The big question, obviously, is what the final mechanics are for JoL. As it stands right now on live, in a 25-man raid, a pally tank can blow the doors off everyone else by judging light, thanks to its healing being affected by our threat multipliers (the math is tricky and the amount varies enormously from fight to fight, but the sheer amount of threat is very large in even the most conservative situations).

Pally threat on live is still extremely competitive or even slightly superior to warriors and bears merely with Wis judged. While I don't have personal data to run on level 80 (not in beta), threat progression from 70 to 80 should be very kind to paladins. Yes, Warriors and bears get some extra tricks and ranks, and in the early 70s will scale better than us with gear. However, nothing they get is as dramatically valuable as Shield of Righteousness, which seems like it should take over as our big gun after level 75.

Even assuming Blizzard nerfs JoL further (I think everyone still assumes a 4-second per/person CD will be instituted eventually), we'll have to see what form it eventually takes, but even in a minorly contributive form, its our trump card. I expect prot pally threat to remain competitive through t7 even with these nerfs.

Threat in 5-mans is a little different. I do expect to swap from Corruption to Righteousness for more front-loaded threat, though right now stuff is dying so fast it hardly matters.

Edit - Good point by Noules on why this might be the final version of JoL after all.

 

jdgaynor

I noticed in this analysis that you did not include mana return from Spiritual Attunement.

If you use Seal of Blood, the amount of healing you receive, even in a fight like Patchwerk, should amount to nontrivial mana return. All the DPS tests talk about using Command over Blood right now, but even if SoB is lower DPS than SoC, it might be more mana efficient to use Blood.

Incidentally, mana return from SoB--however small--scales with gear.

 

flyingtoastr

We never attempt to model SA. It varies so wildly from fight to fight it isn't worth attempting to rationalize.

And no one talks about Command over Blood unless you like gimping your DPS even further than using a crappy-ass rotation.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Denogran

Are we really trying to argue about leveling speeds here? We just spent the last 2 years at the level cap, with lolret in full effect, and you want to complain about them being hard to level? So you spend an extra week leveling? Who cares? Paladins are already the slowest class to level, they've been the slowest class to level, and there are still tons of paladins out there.

It's a problem, sure. But it's such a tiny, minuscule problem in the world of paladin problems that I can't believe we're even wasting bytes bringing it up. Lets fix raiding and arena paladins. Lets make it so there's a _reason_ to bother leveling, then maybe when that's solved (ha!), we can worry about the rate at which we level.

As for the last bit, in my guild at least, there are 3 pallies with rogue alts, one with a mage and hunter alt, and myself with mage/lock/warrior alts. We're all leveling our paladins first, even if it takes 4 times as long.

 

Ulthwithian

Denogran: Leveling speed has a definite impact on player perceptions. I agree with toaster in that a lack of a good leveling pace for Paladins in Wrath will affect how many 80 Paladins there are, and that will affect player perceptions.

Even with a compelling reason, why level a Ret Paladin when a Warrior fills the same job and you can be raiding a week earlier? You can't simply ignore leveling issues.

 

Anedris

A prot warrior (who levelled as prot) was among the first 70s in my guild. How fast someone gets to cap is mostly dependent on how much they play, and even the slowest of the slow (yes, that's paladins) won't be much delayed. A huge amount of levelling time is spent travelling (which paladins are actually better at due to pursuit of justice and crusader aura) and doing non-combat related things (picking up quest items, turning in quests, etc.). It's not a big deal.

And a paucity of paladins at 80, though obviously an indication that there's something wrong with the class, isn't actually going to harm those paladins who are at 80. Every raid is going to want a couple paladins for blessings.

I would certainly agree that levelling is secondary, but it's also bound up with the level cap issues. And levelling's not hard to fix - as has been said many times, just throw some kind of DPS boost in deep holy where no one but a holydin can get it and voila, holy can solo again (something like tacking on a 20% increase in SoR damage per point in seals of the pure should work).

 

Denogran

This just isn't true.

A) Ret levels faster than Holy or Prot, and will continue to do so even if Holy DPS levels are raised to those of the other healing classes( I suppose you can probably prot-grind faster if you find the right places, but I would say this is more atypical ). So the DPS level of Holy and Prot are completely irrelevant to the leveling argument, because if people aren't going to level paladins because they're slow DPS - they sure as hell aren't going to level as Holy or Prot instead of Ret.

B) Raid viability and need is far, far, far more critical in the public's perception than leveling speed. How many Shamans and Warlocks do you know right now? How many Rogues and Mages? We just spent 20 of the last 22 month at the level cap. We had folks re-roll 'locks and shammies - not because they were easy to level, but because they were needed in the raiding scene.

 

Redcape

We have two conflicting reports here, one claiming that SoC can proc off Judgements, one claiming it cannot. All other Judgements presumably cannot proc seals, everyone appears to agree on that.

Can someone do a very substantial test (maybe 25 judges) with Command to be quite certain whether it can or can not proc on Judgement? I will update my spreadsheet to show the new numbers as soon as I have that information confirmed.

Also, for those thinking ret in raiding is dead, look at my other post ->here<- in the Ret section. Our mana situation simply isn't that bad, we are going to be able to sustain a full rotation, though our mana to spare will be very slim. Note I don't suggest pvp is fine, because I don't feel I have the experience to comment on it either way.

The doom and gloom isn't warranted, ret in pve was over the top and we have been taken down a notch. (Again, pve only)

 

Corronach

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Retribution nerfs in the latest beta build 3

Some updates, not at all satisfactory. I doubt many have the patience to wait for Ulduar for Blizzard to get their act together, after all that's what a beta they squandered is for.

The lingering issues that didn't get answered.

Explicitly, mana burn and viper sting in PVP.

2's and 3's viability.

Holy healing is a whole different beast, but them thinking it's great doesn't mean anything when they said Sunwell Paladins were awesome healers.

We're still supposed to be burst? I could list a ton of classes with more burst than us now. And this is supposed to be our "thing" in PvP, not Healing? That's what we were led to believe all beta by actually having the mana to heal, art of war, and sheath of light.

Another thing is mentioning our PVE dps was too high when all the WWS I saw put us 500dps or so below the "real" dps classes. Isn't that where we're supposed to be?

That attitude is not necessary, if anything the anger should be indicative of failure on their part. If neither the class that plays it or other classes are happy, they failed not us. For a contrast, look at the prot warrior community on beta, we're happy. Because the spec feels strong, it feels powerful and the class has viable arena and pvp compositions. They can state all they want that they want Paladins to do well in Arenas, but they haven't done a single thing to improve our chances.

And frankly, those are all concerns with the mechanics they have implemented. One could go on another tangent about not fixing things like Sacred Cleansing, despite that being an issue from day 1. Or Divine Storm being a lvl 36 warrior ability, or CS being just an instant attack. They can claim they worked a lot on Paladins but the results don't show, reworking the Seal/Judgement overlooked the fact that it's a pretty bad system to begin with. Why it's so large a component of Paladin dps who knows? I couldn't draw you a picture of a what a seal or judgment looked like.

 

• frmorrison

I just did 25 Judgement of Command on Beta (while turned around) and got 11 Seal of Commands procs.

I also did 25 Judgement of Blood and got 0 Seal of Blood (while turned around).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Noules

Something was bothering me about this statement, and it took me a little while to figure out why. Isn't JoW a Paladin class feature, not a Ret spec feature? Given that all three specs get the exact same effect from JoW, and all three specs are apparently expected to be able to keep up JoW, what does the power of JoW have to do with Ret/Shadow desirability?

I don't know that this specific change is unwarranted, or is of significance on its own right, but it seems a little discouraging that they would confuse Ret utility with Paladin utility.

 

Corronach

Out of curiosity have you heard of anyone having trouble logging into beta? It's giving an error message of prepaid time being used up on my two beta accounts. I'd really like to get on and do some number crunching.

 

Ulthwithian

Deno: You actually proved my point. If I want to level as a Paladin, I should do so as Ret. I, however, do not have the gear to play a Ret Paladin. If Holy Paladins could do the DPS of _any other class/spec_, I might feel a bit better about all of this. My choice is to level as a 'full-out' Holy Paladin (doing the least DPS of any class/spec in the game), or a gimp Retribution Paladin.

Consider that Holy Paladin itemization is _unique_. This means I _do_ need two full sets of gear to do very much of anything as a Paladin.

Also consider that I can level my Paladin in 14 days... or I could level my Moonkin in 7 days. I'll note also that my Moonkin is probably just as good a healer as my Paladin, and once the dual-spec is realized, there really won't be much of a question.

I think the ramifications of gear homogenization hasn't fully sunk in with this. Druids and Shaman have specs that share gear and perform two separate functions. Those functions are ranged/magic DPS and healing. That gear should be comprised of mostly, if not entirely, the same gear. Paladins, from the way they've changed the class, simply cannot do this. Now bring up the fact that Shaman and Moonkin have much faster leveling (due mainly to their lack of mana issues), and the concern should be there.

I find it very odd that Retribution Paladins are supposed to worry about mana, but Enhancement Shaman (the closest analog) do not.

Edit: Amera: The question, at that point, becomes how they defend that decision. If Ret Paladins are supposed to 'run out of mana', doesn't it make sense to give them more burst by way of compensation? I admit I don't PvP, but the basic math doesn't sound hard. If I go OOM in, say, 30s, that means I become combat ineffective in 30s. Therefore, let's say you're doing Arena. If I become an effective kill in a given time frame, I must have the ability to kill an opponent in that time frame. If I don't, no one will use me on their team, because I will be a dead slot. The PvE implications are similar. The timeframe changes, but the overall concept doesn't.

 

Amera

I'm somewhat surprised GC hasn't gone insane yet given the drivel he is spammed with on the forums. His posts are generally reasonable, and I can't imagine having to deal with that much player heat and frustration constantly. The longer the game goes, the more people get attached to their class and can't let go of things.

That being said, this particular quote:

Since the inception of Jotw, I don't think it was clear what their vision of Ret was. It really seemed like they were moving toward a model of endless resources balanced by GCDs, and we'd really gotten used to that. It had been that way for many months on beta and didn't seem like it would change.

So I'm actually glad he finally came out and said what their vision is. They want us to run out of mana, especially in PvP. I personally think it will leave us comparatively gimped compared to the other melee DPS classes, but at least we know. That's one thing they rarely come out and say, and it is nice when it happens.

It's disappointing because it isn't what I wanted to hear, but I'd rather know what they have in mind than have to guess what the next patch will hold.

 

Prinsesa

That won't work because Death Knights and Warriors have no use for Intellect. Even if we DID get a talent which would make INT worth a damn, we wouldn't be able to find any of it.

Unless of course they change it such that we INT replaces STR completely (as opposed to Mental Dexterity making INT slightly more beneficial). If we look at Holy Paladin gear with STA, INT, crit rating and haste rating, the only odd man out is INT, and if by some miracle we started to get 2 AP from 1 INT, then Holy Paladin gear would match up for the most part (with the exception of a complete lack of armor pen).

That being said, I think this is more indicative of Paladin stats/itemization/mechanics being a convoluted mess more than anything else.

On the topic of mana: Why do they want to eliminate Consecration from our DPS rotation? If we assume that their target for Paladin boss DPS is x, and we need Consecration to hit x, then that helps their PvP balancing attempts. If we're doing too much PvP burst, simply move more of our damage towards Consecration, because it's NOT burst and it's NOT something you cast in PvP.

On the topic of Judgement of Wisdom: One wonders just how much of this "can blow anything and everything without going OOM" and "we want a harder choice between JOW and VE" perception has been colored by the fact that the 4 second internal cooldown on JOW hasn't worked for almost half a dozen builds now.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

bv728

I think the issue is that they've been saying basically this - paladins should have long term worries about mana - while buffing the shit out of Ret paladin mana regen. The net result is people assumed that Infinite Mana Ret was the intention because it stayed for so long. I'm generally sympathetic to Blizz; Balance is HARD, and they're trying to do it under a microscope with all of us pushing them away from it. But their internal tests are, increasingly often, not matching up with real world numbers. So either their internal tests are using such different versions of the game, or their server doesn't work right (anyone remember the issues City of Heroes had where it was discovered some of the basic game logic was different on Live and the Internal Test servers?).

Personally, I'm Holy. And I REALLY hope they figure out what the hell they're doing with pallies. I think that the JoW nerf is kinda whatever - I can certainly see their arguement that a Ret Pally brought signifigantly more Mana Regen than a Shadow Priest with bugged JoW, but that's still true; a Ret can bring the new JoW + BoW. People have been saying that thus far in the beta it felt like they had a new development team - the design we're seeing now feels EXACTLY like the old development team.

 

Rook

The biggest issue for me is that the JoW change is completely changing the offheal mechanic. I was really enjoying dpsing and throwing the occasional heal out to the raid or tank. Numbers, data and theorycrafting aside - the changes are severely crippling that playstyle and spec just doesnt seem fun to me now. Why even have Art of War if we aren't expected to use it?