Corronach

Ghost re: Holy DPS

I hope they realize there are two sides to this, one the one hand people want more offensive damage so they can do dailies/level/quest and keep their two specs PVE holy and PVP holy. But the other side is that Holy is looking for any offensive utility that will help in Arenas. Other healers found success in Arena for what else they brought besides healing.

 

Stardusty

More from the blue front
It looks like they are adamant against consecration being used in normal rotations, despite it being a good none bursty option.

I am assuming the optimal rotation now is still FCFS with a priority of Judgement>DS>CS? With DS and Judgement crits proccing RV I dare say they are much more desirable than lackluster CS when it comes to gcd clashes. It such a shame that we are reverting back to an auto attack class, for a while I rather enjoyed maximizing damage by managing cooldowns, twas such a fun minigame. Also, is the 9s Judgement still the best option or should we now aim for 7s?

 

Arthaal

I'm curious to see how they will achieve this... new ability seems the easiest since any SoR buff will make it better than SoB/SoC once more. I for one am praying for a baseline ranged ability scaling exclusively through SP. I doubt they could make it work without throwing the ret balancing act out the window, but it's something I missed sorely while leveling in early Northrend (or that one Netherwing daily, you all know the one).

Percent modifiers R'US

 

Unity

When comparing Ret to other mana users I think it's fairer to compare to Enhance than to a Mage since of all the mana using DPS specs only Ret and Enhance lack a spammable spell. I've been enjoying my Ret alt since 3.0 and hope it stays a spec that watches cooldowns rather than mana supply.

I do feel that Ret at equal DPS is currently stronger than other mana battery options since it has Blessing of Wisdom and Judgement of Wisdom to return raid mana in addition to Replenish. Not a big deal in 25's where both can be assumed but I'd always pick Ret over a Survival Hunter of equal DPS if I didn't already have either class present.

 

Hylo

If they don't take consecration into account when they rebuff(?) our seals, we push "more than intended" damage in high raid damage fights where we get surplus mana from SA, or, if we indeed farm those demonic runes, or get a shaman group...

Bleh, such an unending circle.

We did several Malygos 25 tries today and I didn't have a situation in p1 where I wouldn't have been able to drop Consecration according to my old rotation. I didn't even need to use Divine Plea all that much. Then again, self damage from up to 20k JoBs is hefty source of mana you are not seeing in most of the fights.

At least it's good they are now actively communicating us the reasoning and goals behind their balancing.

[edit:] Now looking the Retribution DPS thread, seems that so much misunderstandings and tears would've been prevented if they've done this much earlier.

 

Ngita

Except holy has improved blessing of wisdom and judgement of wisdom applied by holy Paladins provides the exact same benefit as a Ret Paladin. Bringing a ret paladin to provide these buffs means your not intending to bring a Holy Paladin at all.

 

djkillingspree

If the solution ends up being to buff SoB/JoB, that'll also probably help with mana, which could realistically get used to consecrate, also :P I don't want to do the math for how much a point of SoB/JoB outgoing damage is worth in terms of mana in the form of spiritual attunement, but I bet there's someone here who does.

Also, don't think we are getting to the point where our DPS cycle is non-sustainable. I don't think current indication is that we're going to end up having to go OOM over the duration of a fight to do competitive DPS once Blizzard tunes everything, and they do seem to be pretty responsive to balance things now as compared to pre-GC times.

 

bv728

They were too busy doing it with DKs. And, honestly, the DK Nerf->Buff sequence gives me hope that they'll get Ret Pallies rightish; if not right, at least as close as they were at the end of BC, because they nerfed DKs TO THE GROUND, BABY and then buffed them back up over a longish period. The only issue is the length of buff process.

 

Corronach

Per a blue post, they'll be hotfixing in these changes for live testing.

 

flyingtoastr

It depends. We might be flat out forced to use SoB just for the SA regen, but if SoC still procs off Judgements while SoB doesn't it would be a major tossup.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Rasputin

"Testing" deserves some pretty epic quotation marks. I don't believe anyone really thinks that this will actually get us any useful results. PvP paladins have some 3k more mana than they will at 80, PvE Paladins don't have Divine Plea, and all raid content is at faceroll zerg level. This can't be anything but a delaying action to make us think that they're re-evaluating us from the data we collect at 70, when we all know it would be insane to do so.

 

djkillingspree

Uhm, I think he meant WotLK beta testing. You know, where most of the Naxx/Malygos data is coming from :P

Edit: Oh, wait, hotfixing into Live. Uh, well, yeah. Testing on live now is going to pretty darn goofy. Maybe they're just trying to verify that they've fixed the horror of PvP ret burst.

 

Corronach

Yeah I did mean "testing" it's pretty apparent they're still giving into the QQ against ret paladins and putting them in a gimp state while they fix them.

 

flyingtoastr

The "testing" on live is nothing of the sort. We're pretty much tearing GC apart on the beta boards, we've got the data to support the position that the JotW nerf went too far, and we'll get it changed to suck less eventually.

This is simply a PR move to stop the whining about Ret on live. By pretty much ICBM'ing the class now they can get everyone off our back for a little while.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

burghy

Why are they balancing pve damage using sob when you can't use that skill in 100% of the fights? They shift the low performance from long fights to fights with special mechanics or heavy raid damage.

 

Prinsesa

By refusing to give us Consecration as part of the rotation, both PvE and PvP Ret Paladins will use 5 attacks: auto-attack, Judgement, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and sub-20% Hammer of Wrath.

Since these 5 abilities are common across both halves of the game, and since Seal procs are tied to all but HoW, then we only have one big knob: DAMAGE. Turning the knob one way affects both sustained and burst damage.

There are a couple of ways to "split the knobs", so to speak:

1. Let us use Consecrate as part of a normal PvE rotation. This allows Blizzard to tune our PvE and PvP damage separately by nudging towards or away from Consecrate as necessary. Need more PvE damage? Give it to Consecrate, tune down everything else. Need more burst? Take away some Consecrate damage, give it to the other 5.

It's possible they do not want to do this because if JOTW is balanced around providing enough mana for Consecrate, and we're not casting Consecrate in PvP, then that extra mana translates into heals, utility, or as they put it, going from one target to another, blowing everything we have without regard for the blue bar.

2. Remove Seal procs from instant attacks. This would also allow Blizzard to tune our PvE and PvP damage separately by adjusting Seal procs (which would only happen from routine and predictable auto-attacks) for sustained damage, then changing CS and DS numbers for burst.

I'm not sure why they didn't take this route, as this gives them separate knobs for tuning while at the same time letting them stand by their No Consecrate rule.

3. Enforce specific Seals for PvE and PvP. Just as we never cast Consecrate in PvP, we also never use Seal of Blood in PvP. This allows Blizzard to tune PvE and PvP damage separately by passing the PvE buck to SOB, which is precisely what they did by keeping it un-nerfed.

Of course, this does have the problem you mentioned above, namely inferior DPS if it's a fight where SOB is dangerous.

There's also a potential point of inflection where Paladins will use SOB in PvP anyway, damn the recoil damage, if only because it adds that much more damage/burst than Seal of Command.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Jarlyn

There's a lot of comparisons to mages going on this thread and I thought I'd clarify the mage position.

We've been asking for a reliable way to return mana for the entirety of beta (really the entirety of WoW) and thus far our only changes have been dropping Evocation's cooldown from 8min to 5min and a slight cost reduction on our core spells. I understand the argument about retadins being particularly vulnerable to mana drains, but it seems fairly clear at this point that 1) Blizzard wants everyone to pay at least some attention to their mana and 2) Blizzard isn't going to give every mana-based class some version of Life Tap/AotV for infinite returns.

Whether that makes sense or not is up for debate, but given the state of other classes I don't think it's reasonable to expect that you'll ever have unlimited mana (or a "blue rage bar", which incidentally is hilarious).

 

burghy

Which is exactly what you'll be doing when trying to burst someone down. SoB->AW->Bubble -> blow stuff up.
And then we're back to "too much burst dmg that ignores armor" etc etc...

 

tayedaen

I posted this on the ret thread as a mistake, sorry about that.
Perhaps we can have some meaningful discussion about SoL here in the main WotLK thread.
-----------------

I still think that the main problem lies within SoL.

My thinking goes like this:
Let's assume blizz achieves balanced dps at Lvl 80 PvE for Rets (with T7).
Now if better gear (T8) comes, the attack power will rise, and via SoL the spellpower too.
This double impact will rise Ret's dps far more then the dps of prot or holy.

So either prot/holy dps will fall behind, or ret will advance too fast.

So if we want to balance the whole class and not only ret, I still think SoL has to go.

I would suggest some really radical changes to fix this:
- Delete SoL
- Delete Touched by the light.
- Create a new talent for holy (21 or even higher), that converts ARMOR to INT and spelldamage (conversion rate can be mathed by blizz easily)

What would be the impact:
- No more need for seperate Holy plate (Holy gets their INT from "warrior" armor)
- Holy dps no longer abysmal (ret and prot only do seal damage +%AP, holy does seal damage +%AP + %SP, rate needs to be adjusted of course)
- Deep Prot and deep Ret get their dps increase via talented strikes (CD,DS, Shield of Righteousness, HotR)
- Dps for all specs can be adjusted seperately via strike damage!
- No more desire/need to get something else then plate for holy

I know this sounds a bit radical, but really do not see that our class can be balanced with SoL.

Our taunt has really some problems.
I am NOT speaking of the problem that it's not a single target taunt, I can adjust to that.

The problem is that it does not taunt a hostile target.

This mechanic has got me into trouble late, because DD do not want to wait at pull.
I know they should, but if they do not need to wait an other tanking classes, this makes my life harder.

I have had a lot of situations lately, where DD pulled aggro before I got it.
Now if i click taunt, then i often did not get the mob back because of latency.
What did happen?
- Player A has aggro
- I click Righteous Defense (goes to player A)
- Player B casts something critical. Since general aggro levels are very low, he instantly has aggro.
- My taunt lands on player A, but is completely wasted due to latency

Of course this is no problem after the first seconds of a fight.
But since especially these seconds are the most dangerous ones, I think our mechanic is flawed.
This is why a vote for a 11pt prot single target taunt THAT GOES TO A HOSTILE TARGET instead of a player.

 

Caggy

Hum, that would be some really strange aggro and lag for that to behave like such. Perhaps its just the logic checks to see who can be affected. Debug that and you should be safe. Except for the ones that pull and then run.

 

Prinsesa

Technically, SOB recoil penetrates Divine Shield, but yes, that kind of behavior was what I'm referring to.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

djkillingspree

If they are pulling threat at the beginning of the fight off of Avenger's Shield + Consecrate + JoV/JoR, someone is doing something wrong. Not saying for a fact that it's you, but...

 

tayedaen

I agree completely.
But still other tanking classes do not have this problem due to the different game mechanic they are using.
So: 11pt Prot -> Single hostile target taut would be great.

 

djkillingspree

The more I think about it, the more I think an increase to the mana cost and damage of Consecrate would be a handy fix to several problems. It would make Consecrate (even) less appealing as a spammable ability for Ret, but would make it a more interesting/important chunk of your damage when you did choose to use it. And it'd also be a nice way to improve the DPS of Prot, which I've heard is an issue.

I'm assuming that prot gets enough mana back from SA to essentially give them near-infinite mana on any fight where it matters, though. Is that not the case? Are prot paladins mana-limited?

Also I'm not sure if this is a silly idea or not, but wouldn't just messing with the coefficients of spell power vs. ap for one of the judgements (I'm thinking judging SoW or SoL) help with Holy DPS without overpowering Ret or Prot?

 

djkillingspree

Well, I'd like a pony, too. But the fact remains that Prot Paladins have all the tools they need to hold aggro just fine - and Prot Warriors/Ferals can get into the opposite problem on AoE pulls (not being able to taunt off all of the various obs that are going after the AoE caster). Again, unless there's something I'm not aware of, burst threat at the beginning of a fight has never been one of Prot's weaknesses and in fact has always been one of their biggest strengths relative to Warriors and certainly Druids.

Again, in the specific situation you're describing - in 3.0+ WoW - you just aren't generating enough threat if you are behind two people as a Prot pally. You have to really try hard to pull something off of a good tank.