WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion - Page 377

levk · 10/27/08, 5:21 PM

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 · 10/27/08, 5:25 PM

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 · 10/27/08, 5:33 PM

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 · 10/27/08, 5:37 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Arthaal · 10/27/08, 5:47 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

djkillingspree · 10/27/08, 6:04 PM

Originally Posted by Avitus

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.

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 · 10/27/08, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 10/27/08, 6:14 PM

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 · 10/27/08, 6:39 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 10/27/08, 6:45 PM

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.

Corronach · 10/27/08, 7:13 PM

Ghost re: Holy DPS

As soon as we're comfortable that we haven't over-nerfed Ret, and a couple of other things, we're going to look at healer dps again to make sure you can solo or throw the occasional damage spell in a group.

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 · 10/27/08, 7:30 PM

More from the blue front

Since then, what we're finding is that Ret's dps seems okay on PvE but only if they use a lot of expensive AE spells like Consecration and Holy Wrath even against single targets in long fights (e.g. raid bosses), which in turn causes them to run out of mana too quickly. Players suspect that if they don't use those spells that their dps won't be competitive. That is what we are looking at right now. Buffing Martyr / Blood might be an option since those are more often used in PvE and riskier to use in PvP.

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 · 10/27/08, 7:35 PM

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).

Unity · 10/27/08, 7:40 PM

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 · 10/27/08, 7:47 PM

Originally Posted by Stardusty

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

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.