They did right that - 50% proc chanse with no internal CD.

At this point Sheath of Light has indeed become obsolete. If they left Seals to scale with AP and spellpower, but Ret didn't HAVE spellpower, the seals would be fine with much higher coefficients. Holy would have reasonably scaling Seals and Judgements, Ret wouldn't be able to heal with our previous limitless mana, and everything else could simpyl be using an AP coefficient in addition to a spellpower one. I never wanted a spellpower talent for this very reason. PEople clamored for it for months and I always had the same response: don't bandaid us, leave us with strength and AP, and fix our Ret abilities to work with it. Sheath of Light has done more harm in the background than any other talent. It worked too well with JotW, it worked too well with dual-scaling Seals and Judgements, it worked too well with the heals of a non-healing spec. Instead of fixing our problems at the problem point, Sheath, they bent over backwards to let us keep it and nerfed every single thing it affected instead.

Would anyone really be unhappy if they had removed Sheath, rebuffed Seals on AP + SP coefficients with the idea of only one of those being present, and left JotW where it was? I know I would have been more than fine with that, and Ret would probably be stronger as a spec if they had.

Rasputin: It's a good idea, but what about Touched by the Light? 30% Stm -> Spellpower would mean that Prot Paladins (who IIRC are also not supposed to be using 'caster gear') would have double scaling. Whether or not this is even a bad thing is arguable, but I think it's good to bear in mind that there are two talents that convert a stat to spellpower, not just one.

It's hard to control scaling when everything is baseline. It's the reason Holy Light is such a problem for Ret to be able to cast with any regularity. Holy Light is the strongest heal we, as a class have. Seal of Blood is the strongest damage seal we have as a class. Everyone has both. Now trying to balance across specs becomes a real challenge. If you give Ret mana, they can choose to use the best heal the class has.

Not that NI is particularly powerful in its current incarnation, but model it off of a Feral Druid's Nurturing Instinct. It only affects healing spells and accomplishes the same thing.

Sheathe of Light, upon first encountering the talent, signaled to me the Ret Paladin dynamic: Crits and Heals. What bothers me the most about this nerf is that they hit both our damage—burst and sustained—and our mana regen, so we cannot see if we'd be effective DPS/healers. Had they gotten to these damage nerfs early, and not been hampered by an obscure weapon switching bug (which seems to me to have wasted about 2 months time on beta) we might have been able to effectively test a lower-damage Ret with offheal capabilities in PVP. As it stands now, one holy light taking 30% mana, and one judgement returning 15% mana pretty much eliminates that, except for a post-combat heal in BGs, to save on food costs.

More than anything, its the hypocrisy of the whole argument that is infuriating to me. We simply do not have any way to scale our regen, or longevity. At all. Hunters have Viper. Warlocks have Lifetap. Mages have Evocate. Druids have innervate. Shamans have Shamanistic Rage. Priests have shadow fiend. All of these scale, and all gain their effectiveness from Int. Replenishment helps all these classes by orders of magnitude more than Ret Paladins, simply because they have int. Even Divine Plea helps holy more. Yet, Ret is told it must be saddled with the burden of a mana bar, yet all our offensive abilities have cooldowns, thus negating the benefits of being mana based. As for our heals, their cost compared to our mana makes them prohibitive.

It simply feels like Blizzard is unaware or ignoring the main factor of Ret: we have no way at all, via gear, to improve our mana situation, in either longevity or regeneration.

Their argument that we shouldn't be able to go from target to target without drinking doesn't hold water, when the alternative is to drink between target to target, especially in light of so many classes that DO go target to target.

This is where the lolret stigma and perceived bias against Ret Paladins surfaces from, I think. The fact that the JotW nerf contradicts other ret talents, namely SoL, furthers this feeling.

Blizz giveth, blizz taketh away... I was ready for a change and got interested in Pallies 2.3/2.4 and the change up 3.0+
So I'm a bit fresher to the crew, but even in my limited play however these things ring true.

- Mana drains absolutely kill us, e.g. are we suppose to be DoA to hunters? Really?

It's very frustrating being not able to do anything, forget silence and stunlock, at that point we're just funny to watch.
Energy builds up, Rage builds with damage taken and has some building/charge mechanics, but Mana?
It looks like we may get some help with Divine Plea... has a ring to it, a message from Paladins to Blizz in general
- But hey thanks for making everyone wait to 71/wotlk... and now it's already dispellable so... yeah it'll be great
In PvP, how many abilities sack Energy, Rage, and the forthcoming Runes/Runic Power? Ones that did got removed.
And with Prot and Ret having no pool to begin with these mana drains just devestate.

This isn't just pvp either, PvE vs Mana drain mobs as Prot - AFAIK no other tank has mobs sack Rage and Runes/Runic
[One] Potting hasn't done the job for me to date, - maybe it lets me do a thing or two, and then I'm flatlined again.

- I always thought Ret was about the big slow 2h wind-up, and *if* they get a swing or two off its supposed to HURT.

Paladin's frankly have been generally a bit boring on most fronts. We don't get much for interrupts, we have glaring weaknesses (e.g. vs spell and range), but oh we can shell-up and heal... which usually just seemed to mean we're a longer kill in PvP, and/or just drain our Mana and get to us when you want to bother.

CS and DS nerfs are glaring and dulled us right out. Hammer of Wrath 20% once again, good luck if you get it off/its any use.
Shield of Righteous is yet another flat tps/dmg... we can't get any interrupt/mechanic there either? Really?
The list goes on. The class seems to be flushing out as a boring mess, 2 weeks away from live WotLK.

My 'saving grace' is that I've been mostly interested in the Prot Pally PvE lately, but Ret/Holy/PvP look boring, if not bad.

Honestly, I'm sorry to say I don't believe this "vision" has always been the same. It feels like flip flopping and saying "oh well that was our original plan (despite everything they've been doing so far)".

Anyway, I'm getting tired of this whole pre-WotLK mess in general and I've reached a point where I don't honestly care about the details anymore. There's been so much back and forth and questions about what paladins expect and what not.

If I was to sum up all my broad concerns with Ret it would boil down to this (in no particular order):

-PvE damage: As advertised in blue, I want us to do enough damage to be "close-to-equal" to pure DPS (on non-undead mobs), "equal-to-better" than unskilled pure DPS (or skilled pure DPS on undead mobs) and "equal" to other hybrids. How, where and with what means is not my job to design. I don't care as long as it lands within these advertised boundaries.

-PvE resource/endurance: I don't want to be a gimp/liability any more than the other hybrids. I don't want to have to sit down and drink when I see an enhancement Shaman or Feral continue non stop, classes that are melee hybrids just the same (as has been the case for a year). I don't want to have a fixed "shutdown time" in any given fight where I go oom and become useless due to having an ultimately finite resource, because that's not what any other melee class/spec has. I don't want to mana manage when I have no tools to mana manage indefinitely. I don't want us to be the only melee class that has this deficiency when all other 5 melee DPS do NOT have this constraint, including two that have/or should have mana (enhancement and feral). Why are we the exception?

-PvP: I want to see us able to fill more spots than Rogue+Ret (2v2) or Druid/Sham + War/Rogue + Ret (3v3) at a successful level. This is too limiting. Specifically we should be able to be the DPS in Healer + DPS combo. To be desirable in such a role just as any of the other melee DPS classes are (and not jut a "technical viability" that would be taken as a last choice). How they want to achieve this I don't care, I care about the ultimate goal not the method here. Whether it's by giving us enough burst to be able to balance against a team that has MS/interrupts (while we don't) or whether it's to give us one of those tools and reduce our burst.


Those are the 3 conditions I believe need to be met, irregardless of the mechanics, coefficients or systems they chose to settle on (those don't matter, only the outcome does) in order for Ret to be competitive and fun.


Yes. Do that. Understand that being the only melee class with our limitations is NOT fun and will always be inferior due to it. It's the fat kid that's out of breath. This is not something people "don't like because they're picky", this is something that simply does not work. Melee classes by design should have infinite regeneration, balance any concerns of DPS with cooldowns or something else ("energy bar", "rage", "runes", "insert new mechanic"), not by a fueltank that WILL go down to 0 during an encounter.

What's better, creating a good mechanic that will work everywhere or if you balance every single fight in the game to a fixed retadin "time till oom" that you want to enforce, think about it?


Name the imbalance and give us choice.

Healing? Add a high level talent in Ret to gain everything we want for the sacrifice of "Holy Light" ability (or for HL to be put at 10 sec CD).

The second bit aligns with my own views about the class, we're fine with whatever methods you chose, as long as the goals are met. The only problem is that it's hard to "assume/trust" that the right thing will be done, given history (prime examples as comparing Ret and Enh shammies over 1 year of TBC, two classes that should have been at the same level in viability, DPS, desirability but were nothing alike and nothing was done about it).

Rets need the ability to sustain a cycle -close- to indefinitely, but shouldn't be able to move between targets without drinking.

Blizzard needs a way to reward momentum.

Change Judgements of the Pure to just offering Replenishment. It's a decent buff, make it at 1/1. I realize that breaks from the 3/3 schema of the other ones, but whatever.

Add in:

Furious Vengeance 3/3:
Your Judgements give you a buff reducing the cost of your Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm spells by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times (90%). Fades when combat ends.

This reduce the effectiveness of mana burns, make DPS cycles sustainable and make the Mana Bar more a reflection of Utility than of DPS. It also ensures that for most situations, a paladin would have to drink after completing a PVE or PVP encounter, but wouldn't be limited in the duration of the encounter in terms of their basic ability to contribute DPS. Utility could be limited, but DPS is (for the most part) not.

The difference between warriors and paladins is that warriors "start from zero". Using this method, we don't start from zero, but we pay a heavy cost each time we do start. We're looking at 50% of our mana bar to get going, but the rest of it we get a _lot_ more use out of. Would we have to drink after combat ends? Yeah, probably, but if combat doesn't end, are we screwed for damage? Not so much.

And to top it off, we're not building up toward damage. Our damage is the same - it's just the cost of maintaining.

That's my 2c as a new paladin.

Care to explain why? I have a modestly geared 70 mage (950 spellpower) which when specced frost rarely runs out of mana between evocates unless I blizzard 10 mobs at once, which is slightly different. Again, I have a 70 rogue with rubbish gear, don't recall having to pause much on that either. I have a level 57 shaman in greens, don't seem to experience too many pauses on that either. The list goes on.

I find it revealing that I couldn't even be bothered to do Netherwing/Skyguard rep on my paladin pre-3.0 (now doing it for achievements/mounts) despite it having T6/Sunwell gear, and I prefered to instead do it on a 70 Shadowpriest in epic craftables (around 1050 sp) despite the gear being about 40 ilevels different. I don't know about shadowpriests post 3.0, but before it was a class where one didn't have to pause.

A commenter on my blog points out an interesting observation. GC says:

Why is GC comparing Vampiric Touch to Judgement of Wisdom?

Vampiric Touch provides Replenishment, which is exactly what Judgments of the Wise does. Those two are identical in effect. Judgement of Wisdom is a complete extra on top of Replenishment. It seems odd to be directly comparing the two effects. Now, maybe the combo of JoW + Replenishment made Ret Paladins better mana batteries than Shadow Priests, but it's still odd, especially since any paladin can provide JoW.