◊ Lord BEEF

I think it's very important to factor in spiritual attunement. Obviously the amount you get from this varies so I looked at the naxx parse that someone did on beta this weekend

Wow Web Stats

On patchwerk he gained 4156 mana over 4 minutes 16 seconds, or 81mp5 from it. We can set that as our 'low end' since you take no raid damage during the fight.

On sappiron he gained 22078 mana over 5 minutes 18 seconds, or 347 mp5. We can set this as our 'high end' since there's a massive amount of raid damage.

If the glyph of blood actually was additive instead of multiplicative, it would double this amount.

The wording on it says it increases the amount you receive by 10%, but this just changes it from 10% to 11%. There's a 'generic' spiritual attunement glyph that increases it from 10% to 12%, which leads me to believe the blood glyph is just plain bugged.

With 20% spiritual attunement you're looking at adding a bare minimum of 81mp5, which is likely enough to solve most mana issues in raids.

 

Harrygoz

This isn't a bad idea or something similar to it, like:

Decreases mana cost of Retribution spells by X% and increases cost of holy spells by Y%.

 

Wrathblood

My assumption as to why "infinite mana" is an issue when it isn't for frost mages, or, in a different kind of way, say, rogues, is because the ret pally can use that mana to not just dish out damage but also to heal themselves. The ret pally doesn't just have a near-full mana bar to go after the next target, they also have a full health bar, which the rogue and mage may or may not have. As such, any nerf to ret pally healing would have to be pretty severe to be counterbalancing (I suspect. obviously I'm reading between the lines on this).

Since burst is ret's big issue in PvP, has GC ever put up a rationale as to why they didn't just nerf the duration/CD on HoJ? Even as a pally, I must admit that a talented, glyphed, and geared ranged 7-second stun every 20 seconds seems on its face to be VERY powerful, especially when combined with Reptentance. Seems like nerfing that one thing would accomplish as much as all the dps nerfs they've done so far.

Edit - Ah, ty, BEEF, I had missed that change.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

They did change the pvp set bonus so it no longer reduces hammer of justice cooldown by 10 seconds (It's now judgement by 1 second)

 

burghy

From my experience in beta at 80 mana was still a serious resource in pvp pre nerf.
If you go from target to target and smash judge/cs/ds + aow fols yeah you are at 100% mana. But at that point you're nothing more than a poor man's warrior.
Once you use sacred shield, cleanse to fill gcd, throw some holy lights and meet players that know how to kite a bit suddenly you are struggling. And ofc on top of that you have the mana drain mechanics.

 

Arcite

I think part of the bewilderment of the community comes from GC saying that they perceive certain things as wrong or overpowered when no one was really making that claim. Like others have mentioned, Ret dps in Naxx is/was strong (although by most accounts not even necessarily top 5), but this was before with two extra abilities added to the mix. Unfortunately now it looks like those abilities are either going to have limited or no use even in Naxx, and any self preservation usage is going to nuke down sustained DPS time.

Plus I don't even know that their tests for "infinite mana" included a fixed JOW, or the JOW with the changes described by GC since it wasn't made clear. I know I didn't have perfect rotations in Naxx but there were definitely times that, using every single ability (holy wrath, exorcism, consecrate, hammer, DS CS and occasional heal) that I'd burn through mana even using divine plea, especially if I missed a judgement ever (because not everyone is automatically hit capped!) Obviously that might be a little much, having the ability to do everything at once as others have mentioned, but it's gone from that to only having mana for ~6 minutes of only the main abilities.

Also, adding arguments like Ret being 4th in healing and 3rd in DPS on a Hyjal parse without showing a WWS (which almost certainly would've included JOL, which is their own fault for not limiting the procs given it's buffed healing state, and isn't unique to Ret) just makes things worse.

Hopefully they'll ease up on the JOTW nerf a bit and maybe on the DPS nerf, unless it really was needed and people really weren't seeing what Ret was capable of.

 

Redcape

I have done some calculations as far as mana sustainability goes, and it looks like there isn't really a raid concern at all. I modeled it as 10 mps gained from SA without even using Blood, which is probably a little low given what that WWS showed, but not right out of the ballpark. In the end a raiding ret paladin fully buffed should be getting back enough mana to do a full dps rotation limited only by cooldowns. You won't have any room to spare, and if you end up having to drop Holy Wrath or somesuch your mana will go down, but using CS, DS, Judge, Cons, Exorcism and HoW on cooldown should be completely sustainable.

My numbers show that you don't need to Glyph for mana return or use SoB just to keep your rotation going, your mana should be fine without that. I would tend to imagine that in a pvp situation mana will be a big problem though, because many of the sources of mana I modeled aren't available and manaburns are a huge percentage of a ret paladin's total pool. Ret in raids looks completely fine, ret in pvp is another matter entirely.

Ret_dpsv1.7-Live.xls - FileFront.com is the spreadsheet link for the last version.

I am working on the newest one, but I need a couple pieces of information first before I finish it. The most critical one is the exact proc rate of JoW on the beta. If anyone wants to go hit a dummy for awhile and figure out the % proc, I would be much obliged.

 

GSH

One of our tier sets has a bonus with very similar wording to the SoB glyph, but works the same (10% to 11%). So I don't think it's a bug at all.

Lightbringer Armor - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

 

Caggy

Mana watching is something everyone has to do. Obviously its easy for a mage, who just has to time mana gem uses, or a warlock, who just has to tap between casts, but all classes have a resource to maintain. At some point this management will become second nature.

 

StormScion

How about Judgement of Light/Wisdom/Justice Mana cost reduced to 0 mana.



I got this idea today. This way even when we are at 0 mana we will be able to cast Judgement , our dmg will be low for some time but our mana will build up over time so we can have something similar like warrior play style , slowly building rage/mana for burst and so on , deference will be that we will have burst on start , and wars have to build it , on the other hand we will build mana slower.

It is very simple and i think it would solve few problems in pvp/pve and lvlup elegantly.
If someone likes the idea feel free to bring it up on wotlk/usa forums.

 

◊ Cathela

Unfortunately I think it's probably working as intended,. The SA glyph uses the extra word "additional" which I think is meant to signify that it's additive instead of multiplicative. The T6 prot paladin 4-piece bonus uses the same language as the SoB glyph and works the same way (10->11).

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

If it's working as intended then it is in fact Dumb.

It doesn't make any sense to have a major glyph be 100% better than another, while also being less situational. The blood glyph needs a change no matter how you look at it.

 

levk

This. Only rational reason for SoB glyph existence now is that you can stack it with the SA glyph. Are you really going to do that?

 

Arthaal

This was the reason why most were arguing for more than barely positive mana returns from JotW in the context of a standard DPS rotation in PvP. The debate came about when int removal from gear was first being discussed and the initial JotW mechanic (60% of damage caused) implemented, and the conclusion was that by reducing our mana pool to drainable in 3-4 burns, there had to be a mechanic that allowed us to regen from empty or near empty, or a way to go from drained to near full again following a time with just base regen. Basically, allow drains to take us out of the game for a set time, but not for the remainder of the fight.

As it is now, once drained fully, most retribution paladins won't be regenning the mana necessary to judge even once unless they manage to drop combat (0 mp5 while in combat). Divine Plea is dispelable, and if you've been burned, I'm going to assume you've also been purged/dispelled, so no hiding the buff. You're left running out of LOS, hitting DP, playing hide and seek for 10s and then having to re-engage with no closing move and no JoJ on whatever target (since it would have fallen off or gotten cleansed by then). That's a buttload of time off target and I'd argue too much time left a non-factor in response to 4 GCD worth of draining.

Percent modifiers R'US

 

StormScion

Yes i agree on that 100%. But dont u agree that if blizz would change judgement mana cost to 0 , that would solve that burn/dispel problem , or at least help deal with it?
It might be OP for holy or prot to be baseline but they could fit it in some deep retri talents , like RV or even JotW.

 

levk

Judgment cost shouldn't be zero. Judgment is a damage option in its own right and places a strong debuff on the target. You're screwed if you're burned out of mana, but the so are some other classes. Some other classes yet don't have this problem, but I don't see you coming up with a good reason for ret to be in this category.

 

Rasputin

I don't mind being vulnerable to mana burns and drains(in theory) in PvP. I do object to being so much more powerfully vulnerable to them than any other class. We are the single mana-using class with the smallest mana pools and no regen options outside of an ability which costs mana to regen mana and another ability on a 1m CD which is dispellable. I don't think you can adequately argue that there is another mana-using class with this many downsides to their mana usage in PvP.

 

levk

Well I'm looking at enhancement and they are far more vulnerable than paladins - more susceptible to snares and, I know it sounds dumb but it's true, they don't have bubble. I'm at a loss to hunters, but I'm assuming it's a work in progress, we're not seeing the final class.

 

Sapp

They don't have bubble, but "more vulnerable to snares" isn't very true. They get the earthbind totem talent, which is linked to something with a shorter cooldown than freedom, and lasts longer than the cooldown if not destroyed, and works on their party as well. They also have Spirit Walk from their wolves as a mulligan for when the totem is killed or they need another earth totem down.

Plus instant ghost wolf for closing distance when not snared.

On Ret paladins:
<Fyr> its like they went from sniffing powdered sugar for 3 years, got real cocaine for 2 weeks, and are pissed that they're going back to the sugar again

 

Arthaal

Sorry, I meant to touch on that point in my previous post and it slipped my mind after all that typing. Yes, I agree that free Judgement (or possibly better, free -insert name of JotW proccing ability here- to not impact other specs) would give us something akin to free water shield for resto shaman and allow us to at least regen from completely dry without having to drop combat or hide out and plea. Hiding out and plea-ing would still be possible, for the situation where, say, you'd like to come back at full strength, and end someone. But if pressure absolutely had to be maintained it could be.

Percent modifiers R'US

 

djkillingspree

Not trying to argue about the numbers themselves but more theoretically - how is this any different from the perspective of paladins vs. mages? Mages afaik can't just chain cast their highest DPS spells with no regard to their mana, can they? If your fuel tank is running empty then your burn rate is too high when compared to your regen rate for the duration of the fight. Not saying that this is the case, but from a theoretical design perspective we could end up with a situation where we need to increase our DPS and increase or burn rate on shorter fights in an effort to do the maximum amount of total damage, whereas on longer fights we conserve mana by removing certain abilities from the rotation so that we don't end up dry. Obviously that's a tough tightrope for Blizzard to walk in terms of balancing as we'd be stronger in shorter fights (from a DPS perspective) and weaker in longer ones than classes like warriors or rogues. But, as long as you've got a class that has a resource pool that works like mana, and where you are mana-limited, meaning you *can* get your burn rate higher than your regen rate, that will be the case.

 

djkillingspree

Well, I think just due to the glyphs that exist in the game right now you are going to be glyphing for mana return no matter what. The only glyph that we get that really improves our DPS is Judgment, unless I'm mistaken.

 

Fqubed

Mages from what I gather about their thread as mine never got to raid much, try to spec gem and gear so they can spam their max dps abilities. The issue with mages is that if LivingBomb (51 point fire) is too expensive to cast for your gear and your raid group, you spec out of it and gain other dps talents instead. If we Rets dont have enough mana to fully sustain a full rotation dropping DevineStorm does not open up a 21 pointer someware else that gives a dps boost. Also didnt Redscape or Cal say something that as long as in PvE we only dps our mana is sustainable (sans consecrate)

 

• Avitus

Well the question is, how is your damage balanced (something discussed on the previous pages somewhat)? Going to a traditional example of an arcane mage using arcane blast, if you could sustain infinite arcane blast you'd woop everyone to the ground, however it's realistically modeled around a rotation where you don't fully stack, let stacks drop and continue (or at least this was the case around the BT/T5 bend when I had a go at a mage char for a while).


For paladins, personally I don't actually care if we can't spam all our abilities ("the mechanics"), if the constraint is met that we can do competitive DPS in the end ("the goal").

However, the frustration about NOT being able to use consecration (as explained elsewhere) comes from the fact that it makes no sense to allow us not to, it actually hurts game balance considerably. If they reduce our mana regen to the extent that we can't use consecration in our rotation anymore, it would mean our DPS will "only" consist of Judgement, CS and DS, meaning those abilities would have to hit THAT much harder to make us competitive. ->Result: "Oh noes, too much burst, what can we do".

What I'm saying is they're shooting themselves in the foot with this, it would make so much more sense to include Consecration in the intended rotation than not to "for balance sake".


This is one side of the mana argument. The other side is that we shouldn't have a fixed "shutdown time" where we go oom and become useless. Here's hoping this will not be the case.

 

Fqubed

On the plus side for consecrate being a standard in PvE is that for PvP you can move away from it, and it can cause serious problems with CC so its a way to "nerf" our damage in pvp or condition it so that any decent 2v2 will stay clsoe to avoid getting CCd out.