Ideally, I hope we can add Beacon of Light to both tank & raid healing scenarios as I'm very excited about BoL (conceptually anyway). Has there been any more word on the direction of the tweaking of BoL?

I've yet to see a compelling argument against this*, as it both solves all of the actual issues without creating any new ones. Suddenly SoR isn't the Jack of All Trades seal, SoV and SoB are clearly defined, and all specs have access, regardless of level, to competent solutions. I just hope that such an obvious answer doesn't get bogged down by players desiring some sort of ethereal sense of "variety."

* Baselining SoC, and turning both SoB and SoV into talents.

Now if only all the discussions, theorycrafting and number crunching would actually reach someone who can do something about it *hint hint*


Sorry to get back to a previous issue, before this is forgotten, do you have the blue source confirming it's a typo (the Stoicism change)? For reference.

Yeah I think at this point problems have been identified, a mountain of solutions were proposed and taken apart by pros and cons. There's nothing left but wait and see what they'll do.

Im sorry but that "sense of variety" is something that is very important to the game. I would agree that SoR outscales the other seals, but forcing the other seals into being best for a given role will remove significant player interaction.

I want to be able to chose a different seal to better fit a specific encounter. Seal of Blood should do less damage but provide the paladin more mana via spiritual attunement. Seal of Command should only do more damage when you judge it on a stunned target. Seal of Vengeance should be the best choice if you have the opportunity to stack it on multiple targets. Seal of Righteousness should always provide good unsituational damage.

I'm really beginning to worry about my ability to stay on a PVP target as Ret in Wrath. More and more classes are getting teleports and intercepts and anti-cc cooldowns and snares, and already a fair few of the classes have counters to our abilties (offense and defensive dispels). The classes I have to get up on and just stay on like Warlocks, Elemental Shamans, Moonies, and Fire Mages are getting some cooldowns to handle those situations - the classes that I already have trouble getting to Frost Mage and Hunters are getting extra abilities to escape for when I actually can close.

I can't think of anything that we've gotten in Wrath to help address the issue of pvp-ret time on target. I guess its possible I'm the only one that struggles with it.

Just a thought regarding the whole, largely not said in the open, war between the spec about who are going to get the two raid spots. (Aka, the reason people like flyingtoastr are so vehemently against the idea of a function holy spec that loads up on so much of the ret utility). And yes, before you all cry off: I know there are other reasons, but don't pretend for instant that you're not thinking "better those whateveradins than my spec o' choice". It's just a side-effect of the three classes in one mentality that has been with the paladin throughout the TBC cycle.

As anyone thought that hand of salvation might still be our magic ticket into three slots?

Now we don't know what raids are going to look like at 80. And, hell, maybe Blizzard will do away with threat restricted fights. And fights with harsh dps timers. And massively up the threat of the tanking classes (as they'll have new tools, believable, but then against all the dps has new tools too). But I wouldn't be surprised if elements like threat are still a major part of your average day whacking whatever loot pinata is put in front of us. (I'm rooting for a goblin raid boss - personally, just for the "where's the boss" moments).

So while they may not be as game changing as the blanket -30% threat (which still left me uncomfortably close the the tanks threat in most fights), I imagine hand of salvation is going to see some use. Possibly quite a lot of use. And the longer the fight goes, the more seriously awesome it gets.

Just think about it. If you get hit with HoS right of the bat, you're doing 90% damage, and will at the end of the ten second have 90% threat. But after 10 minutes, you're potentially cutting hundreds of thousands of points of threat off your total.

Sorry, for bringing up a totally different topic, but I hadn't noticed anyone really talking about it in any serious way. (And I've tried to keep up with this thread).

Bathoz,

With regards to HoS, personally i dont see it as our ticket in.

Theres been a blue post stateing that threat will be less of an issue in wrath. (i'll try to find it)

Aside from this, for HoS to be a ticket into raids, it has to be worthwhile on the majority of fights not just have a gimmicky use. I can't see how they can balance HoS into the majority of fights without messing up balance. Will we need one paladin per dpser without a threat dump. What if you can only get 1 pala to the raid, will it mean you cant bring dpsers with threat dumps etc etc.

Personally i see HoS as a tool that can be used if one dpser happens to have a lucky streak etc, is coming very close to pulling aggro, and thus can have their threat dumped whilst they still continue to dps. Or perhaps the odd fight where a tank transition is needed at some point on a non tauntable boss and this can aid that transition (ie situations where is can be useful and beneficial but from from a necessity for success)

However i dont see it being used as a standard necessary tool which would make it a magic ticket.

Anyone notice on the same patch notes that had the Stoicism typo, it also says Vengeance stacks up to 2x, instead of 3?

WoW EU Forum Patch Notes

I'm also worried about this, as of right now - retri is the only melee specc without a snare and/or quick way to get to our targets.

Enhancement: Frostshock and instant GW that removes snares/50% reduced duration on snares.
Feral: Feralcharge in catform, stackable slowing effect and they have what - 150% movementspeed in catform?
Deathknight: Ranged pull, icy touch or whatever its called - it makes the target stationary for 3 sec and after 10sec they reach 50% movementspeed just before it wears off.

Out of those, only frostshock is dispellable but shamans also have instant ghostwolf which is pretty handy. Warriors and rogues never had any trouble staying on their target, and i doubt that will change with WotLK. Paladins have JoJ and 115% movementspeed, i think that no matter how good the rest of the specc gets - we'll need some way to _really_ stay on our target, we can just about disregard HoJ and repentance for that purpose.

Don't forget that Shaman now also have Hex in their arsenal.

What I'd like to see is not a new ability, but rather an ability that provides synergy with existing ones.
Instead of Crusader Strike refreshing Judgements, why not have it empower them? Something along the lines of
"An instant strike that causes 110% weapon damage and increases the effect of the current Judgements on the target by 25% for 6 seconds."

This benefits both PvE and PvP purposes. Giving 25% more mana from JoW further increases the desirability of having a Retribution Paladin in the raid. In PvP, it would work with Judgement of Justice, limiting movement speed to 75% instead of 100%. The duration is shorter than other snares and requires more effort to keep up, unlike most that last 12 seconds and easily refreshed. With PoJ, the Paladin would only be 40% faster than the target, which is still less potent than others.

Ret is still just going to be tied at the hip to a warrior or rogue, just like now. They have the snare, interrupt, and MS that we do not. I doubt this is ever going to be changed, because if you gave Ret those things warriors would be largely obsolete.

Of course this is true, but giving us just one of those things (especially if it wasn't MS) would be a huge boost without obsoleting warriors/rogues.

Oh, and while I'm spamming links to blue posts we seem to have some clarification about Ghostcrawler's comment a few days ago that As it turns out, he was referring to an earlier build and not the current build. At the same time he still sits on the fence a little regarding any future revisions No real reason to panic though.

I'm a bit confused why people are saying that our heals are suddenly becoming less efficient. I only remember seeing one comparison done on the thread, and that seemed to be just considering base values.

At least in the past efficiency was mostly driven by how much it cost to deliver your scaling stats (i.e. +healing for heals). Since most spells are tied to base cast time for their coefficient, efficiency simply becomes whatever spell costs the least for the longest cast time - precisely why FoL(6) is the most efficient heal in the game given gear.

Looking at paladin spells vs priest spells, it looks like the % mana cost is roughly driven by cast time as well (32% priest base mana for GH, 18% Flash, 29% HL, 18% Holy shock) except for FoL (7! %). This means asymptotically, if we don't consider talents, FoL is more than twice as efficient as the standard priest single target spells (I assume pally base mana ~= priest base mana) even if you take the paladin spell coefficients to be tied to cast time.

However, paladin spell coefficients are also apparently higher than they should be given their cast times (except holy shock, which is apparently ~86% or right where 1.5s spell should be). At 100% for FoL and 166% HL, their coefficients are roughly 10-12% higher than the priest spells.

This presumably is the "baked in" (really starting to hate that phrase :P) version of Blessing of Light. What's interesting is that a coefficient increase obviously scales a lot better than Blessing of Light does when at the level cap (i.e. it's as if the bonus +heal from Blessing of Light scaled with the +heal from you gear).

And i presume paladins should tied at the hip as far as tanking and healing goes, i mean - whats the point in rolling a warrior or a priest if you can tank and heal as a paladin?

The days where hybrids could fall short of pure classes in every specc have come to pass, with the introduction of smaller raids and competitive arena theres no room for speccs that don't carry their own weight in a given scenario. Like was mentioned before me, enhancement/feral/DK - all have these tools with the exception of MS/WP.

I think 50% healing reduction and a rogues/warriors unique gameplay makes them interresting on their own, without justifying the lack of a spellinterrupt and/or slow effect for paladins - those aren't really the abilities that sets warriors and rogues (as "pure" classes) aside from the rest of us. However, those abilities pretty much make or break melee for arenas.

So a flat 5% DPS reduction. Quite a big nerf, I would say.

Whether this is something that will pop up in the next build or not, but currently on beta, vengeance is stacking three times.

I really hope that vengeance thing is yet another "typo". If anything, I'd expect them to nerf the DK [Bloody Vengeance] the same if they do this since it's pretty much a direct rip of our talent.

What more variety do you want than having each Seal fill a role rather than a pile that's good for everything? Additionally you'd two seals for each role, SoR and SoV for different situations in tanking, SoB and SoC for different types of damage.

You also have "useful" SoL/SoW that you'd throw in when necessary (vs. "never" on live), so that might add some combat variety.

I'd argue that what we have right now in beta is the complete opposite of "variety" with every Seal being good for every role, they all feel unvaried/the same. Really now we're just talking semantics/nitpicking.

.

I'm not disagreeing on the importance of the Big Three (snare, MS, interrupt); I just don't find it likely that Blizzard will give us any of them for fear of pushing out the pure melee classes. Just some examples:

Rogues are a unique beast, because they do more damage than anyone else, have immense survivability, and offer the best control over any target. As it stands now, rogues are already uses in any matrix where the melee needs to be mostly self-sufficient and offer control. A 4 DPS team, for example, should always use a rogue because they lock a target in place so their casters can destroy them, and they can function without dispels on their own for some time. The same basic principle applies to RPM or any rogue 2v2.

The rest of the time, you use a warrior. Warriors are better in prolonged fights because they don't rely on cooldowns, and are a constant source of pressure as long as they are getting dispelled. They are actually not particularly good at locking people down barring ridiculous luck with mace stuns since they only have one interrupt and a slow attack speed.

So the question is, what niche can we fit other melee classes into? Rogues, warriors, and death knights only have one option in PvP - doing damage. If enhancement, feral, or ret are able to take over their position as melee in traditional matrices, those pure classes become very weak (and yes they are all pure classes in PvP, because they only have one possible role). Right now you take a Ret paladin to support the other melee with freedom and cleanses, while still offering potentially huge burst. You bring an enhancement shaman for constant interrupts, pushback, purges, and windfury. You don't bring a feral druid at all for various reasons, but largely because they can't use their classes best ability (cyclone) as a cat. In competitive tournaments, you don't bring any of the above.

I would love to see Ret get MS or something (what paladin wouldn't?), but realistically I don't think we are likely to get any of the Big Three because we would be encroaching on the default territory of now three entire classes in PvP who have no other spec options. Instead we should just hope that we can play support as Ret in some viable combos with these other melee classes and be successful.

I would be happy with just some form of range-closing ability (rather than a combination of unreliable abilities and talents as we have currently). When a retadin is hitting someone in melee it's pretty much fine, the problem is getting there.