You're forgetting Shield of the Templar in your factor lineup.

Adding to this, 1419 isn't unrealistic at all. Wearing level 70 epics at 77, with [Item not found!] and [Tome of the Lightbringer] active, I managed 1368 block value. It won't increase with WotLK gear, but it's very much possible now.

Exactly. I find it very discouraging when people post that we should not do damage that other classes can do now on live.

I can't believe you're actually buying into that junk. Labels mean nothing, they are changed on demand whenever the devs see it fit. To their credit though, classes evolve out of their "base definitions". Just look at enhancement shamen, I remember a time when "melee" was never really anything but a note in the fine print of their class description, then TBC happened and what do you know, they get dual wield and are suddenly amongst the highest melee DPS in the game.


If you want a charge to fit a "defensive hybrid", what if they made the new "Shield of Righteousness" ability have an innate charge in it too? Maybe added through a glyph. You'd have to weaponswitch to a shield to charge, then switch back to your 2h.

Would be sort of like the shield charge ability paladins had in D2.


Disclaimer: I just wanted to comment on this, but I'm not actually advocating giving paladins a charge. I do think "something" out of the charge/MS/interrupt would be useful however. A medium cooldown (10-20 sec) interrupt maybe.


Every expansion you see people trying to hold on to their old set bonuses. While the bonus itself might synergize very well with the changes, you have to remember that it's never going to be worth enough to use over level 80 gear past the first few heroic runs, no matter how good you think it is right now.

The very few exceptions (between pre-TBC and post-TBC for example) where it actually is worth it mathematically, get nerfed as soon as the first patch of the expansion comes out (priest t2 bonus?).

In all fairness he was probably assuming the bonus would remain the same at 80, which I suppose would make sense since HS seems to be what they're aiming to make the paladin holy experience based around. If Holy Shock really is getting buffed as much as it seems, and becoming an important part of pve tank healing, increasing it by 30% might be worth it even with wildly inferior stats, seeing as the t6 set bonus scalars also tend to overshadow the relatively large gear upgrades out of SWP today.

Thanks, that explains it quite nicely.

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On the subject of old gear/set bonuses:

What happened to the Libram of Souls Redeemed?

What happened to the Libram of Avengement and Libram of Divine Retribution? This new Libram (do you guys even have this?) seems to be a Northrend-version of the Avengement, but the new wording seems to indicate that Avengement is no longer compatible with the new Seal/Judgement system.

What happened to the Justicar Raiment - Item Set - World of Warcraft 2 piece bonus?

T6 -> SWP, is a few "item levels" difference. Same character level of gear. As a matter of fact, if you want to keep the 4 set, you only sacrifice 1 upgrade and mix that with the 3xT6 pieces from Sunwell.


S4 -> Level 80 gear, you'd sacrifice 10 character levels worth of gear upgrades for 4 items, for this set bonus. It's very possible the amount of +heal ("spell power") you would sacrifice in the process of wearing 4 pieces of level 70 gear would give you the same or more as 30% on your holy shocks.


Again, take this as a generally applicable rule: It is never worth it to use gear 10 levels lower than you, no matter what bonus you think could be worth it.

In the event that it does make sense, it's usually changed ("nerfed") very early on in the expansion.


It's really a moot point to discuss old set bonuses.

I think there's a slight difference between an instant effect once every few minutes that is capable of such damage and an instant effect that is capable of it once every 8 seconds which has no resistances and nothing to impede it when in conjunction with three other weapon damage abilities, two of which completely ignore armour.

It's very tempting to look at other class' burst and think they have more, but in practice they don't. PoMPyro mages are one shot wonders and more or less worthless in any kind of real PvP situation especially against someone prepared for their burst. A Ret pally is still comparable to the best in terms of consistant burst damage even now and this will only increase further with Wrath through more powerful Judgements and Divine Storm. I just question the motivation behind calling what we have right now 'balanced'. You could reduce Judgement AP coefficients by 60% and it would still be comparable to Crusader Strike.

I've always wondered why Hammer of Wrath didn't have a knockdown component to it. Hell, you could remove all but a small % of damage from it, make the cooldown 30 secs or so, remove the HP % requirement (or at least make it 50%), and it'd have much more in the way of utility than the current version does. More ways to do damage is good...more tools to be effective at what we're supposed to is better.

The nice neat little categories are all well and good when speaking generally, and of course all the baseline character abilities will remain no matter what you spec or what your role turns out to be. Paladins as a base, unspecced class are defensive in nature, and so certain of our abilities will be focused that way. That doesn't mean you need to dismiss every non-defensive ability the class has based solely on that very broad description. Going that way you might as well remove all seals but light and wisdom, restrict paladins to 1H and shield only, and remove the Ret tree entirely, along with the new Judgement, the offensive component of Holy Shock, etc etc. Certain gameplay realities must be allowed, and dismissing the(specifically Ret) need for a snare or some ability that allows us to maintain melee range simply because such things don't fit a single person's idea of "defensive" makes no sense at all. You can always reinterpret the abilities defensively as much as you like. A Death Grip mechanic is less offensive than a charge; bring them to you and your team isntead of putting yourself out there. I don't see how a slow(or more generally any non-damaging debuff) can be called anything but defensive. What else do you call it when you reduce the enemy's capabilities for hurting your team?

Honestly the blase nature of the dismissal irritated me because it is a very real weakness(along with lack of interrupts) which makes Ret a handicap in the arena today. I enjoy PvP, and I would like to be able to participate in it competitively while not knowing the entire time that my team would be far better off with a rogue, warrior, enh shaman or feral druid.

The damage shown was based on all CDs and item procs being stacked. Those numbers will not be seen every 8 seconds.

Why wouldn't it be combatible? I believe "your Judgements" include all the three new judgements. The new libram is placeholder as it shows in wowhead - not sure if it's updated in beta yet. Even this green libram is better than that.

I think in a lot of ways Ret plays a similar role to a Frost Mage. Both classes can dish out huge amounts of damage when put in a situation to do so, but tend to rely on a second DPS (rogue/warrior) to be able to perform at peak efficiency. Both Mages and Paladins have the opportunity to use their utility either offensively or defensively (think sheeping a healer vs sheeping a dps).

I think all of the utility DPS (mage, lock, shaman, paladin, priest, druid) classes have a good mix of both offensive and defensive capabilities and if blizzard is focusing on Retribution being a defensive hybrid, it would be pigeon-holing us into a specific type of setup. Our abilities need to have some sort utility which has both an offensive and defensive capability such as BoF/Cleanse/Repentance. All 3 of those can be used to either cause more damage or prevent more damage.

From a fun standpoint. I want our utility to be more integrated in to our specific role. Playing on a 5s team and trying to cleanse all 5 players and BoF/BoPing specific people is a pain in the ass when you are trying to keep moving and keep your weapon on the skull of an enemy given the control scheme of WoW. It is more reasonable in 2s/3s being able to make macros to cleanse specific people without giving up your mouse control. I feel like if Blizzard intends for casting heals to be a more important part of our role then it is compounding the problem and creating more of a division between our damage and our support instead of an integration.

Changes I'd like to see to make ret more synergized in Arenas:
1. Make Vindication debuff a % of AP/Spell Power. Could be used offensively to lower healing output or defensively to lower damage output.
2. Give Crusader Strike a unique secondary effect with power some where in line with Arcane Shot's dispel effect.

Edit: Even better, scrap Vindication and fold that effect into Crusader Strike. Would alleviate some of the bloat in PvP Ret.

Its not a old set bonus, it is THE arena healing set bonus. I was assuming that the next season, be it 5 or what ever they want to call it, would also continue to have the same set bonus. Blizzard went back and changed every arena set bonus to have the +30% to holy shock healing.

Arena sets (look at set bonuses):
Gladiator's Redemption - Wowhead Search

Granted we won't know what the next season will hold in terms of set bonuses, but seeing Blizzard's history with the arena set bonuses, will [Level 80 Gladiator Gear of Redemption] also include the +30% to holy shock bonus? If so, that is a substantial amount of healing we get with instant heals.

That is what I'm looking at Avitus.

Clearly it's too early to know, but I would speculate that we'll be seeing some very different PvP set bonuses from TBCs. Personally, I'd like to see something more utility oriented.

I didn't, actually. That was where the 2.30 factor for ShR came from. I should have stated it explicitly, but SotT actually changes the tooltip for ShR to read 230% instead of 200%.

Interesting point about the block value libram. Hadn't even occured to me to use that with ShR grinding, but it's a pretty obvious choice.

I only wear s3 armor, s2 shoulders and weapon, FULL PvP gear. And i crit for 6.2k with SoC judgement on a mob in wotlk with lvl70. Without popping wings, trinkets, libram +AP proc, or whatever. So what ?

Besides, i didn't say we shouldn't do damage, at all. But not this kind of crap burst once in a century "aka our stun CD is up" and we are fucked if they trinket it, blink, or we get CC'ed, slowed, whatever in the same second. That's why i said i would like to see this lowered and traded in for a snare.

It also becomes completely obsolete if we get away from PvP and focus on PvE, where stuns don't work most of the time or at least consistent "on demand" damage is key.

I don't feel each tree is being homogenized simply because they share similar roles. A frost spec death knight will tank differently than a blood death knight. So long as every class or spec has different approaches to how to tackle tanking, dpsing, or healing than I don't feel its uniqueness is lost nor its specialization.

LoSR did not change, so in Beta it does nothing since Light is gone.

In an build a few months ago the two librams did nothing, because Judgement is not a spell anymore. They likely fixed it since then so it procs on any of the three judgements. That blue libram is a placeholder.

2/5 Tier 4 didn't change, it is still a bad set bonus.

They'll most likely go back and change the percentage-based set bonuses to prevent people from wanting to use them at level 80, just like they did when BC came out.
On the topic of nitpicking the little changes that haven't been made yet (see the talk of Librams), just wait it out. The Beta is still running strong, and I'd assume changing those level 70 items isn't a high priority right now.

As for frmorrison's comment about Paladins as a defensive hybrid, I'd like to cite where a lot of inspiration for WoW gameplay and abilities come from. Look at the Diablo 2 Paladin. They had Charge. Personally, I'd rather have a snare than Charge or MS.
Segueing to Lockdown's comment, the problem you're proposing is being exaggerated. How many Melee classes will have a snare in WotLK? 5 out of a possible 6. How many total classes will have a snare? 8 out of a possible 10, ignoring Mind Flay. Adding one more snare won't change the dynamics of Arena for anybody but us.
As for interrupts, returning to the previously mentioned 6 classes, the same 5 have spell interrupts.

It's time to stop excusing Retribution's shortcomings, because when WotLK hits the spec will be a definitive melee class, and not having the necessary tools every other melee class has is going to continue pigeonholing Paladins the same way as now - requiring another Melee class to cover faults and be competitive.

Personally, I want to evolve past having to run double Melee to stay above 2k rating.

Melee aren't the only classes that can snare. Mages, Shaman, Feral Druids (in WotLK), Warlocks, and Hunters can all snare. The only one of those that doesn't have a spammable snare is the Shaman, and it's on a short cooldown.

All this talk about what our class needs though makes me wonder why the developers refuse to give Prot Paladins an interrupt.

All I´m saying is that I think it´s really not creative or good for the game if every class had the same abilities with different names, numbers and some little flavour to them. I think it´s perfectly acceptable to have some shortcomings in PVP-DPS, when you´re fairly capable in other areas, say PVP-healing, PVE-healing, PVE-DPS or tanking. Also, you should think about what a paladin brings into a raid or arena team: blessings, hands and judgements.

What would be the point if a retribution paladin is just as good as every rogue in arena and on top of it refills mana and brings his secondary skills along? Think about it, you are playing a class which can walk around the corner to the trainer and comes back as a "new class", e.g. tank and/or healer, which is still an important point in class balance discussion in my opinion.
In the end it would all come down to:"Hey, why should I play warrior or even a rogue, they can only dps/tank or even only dps, while a paladin is able to fulfill every role in the game, in PVE and PVP and brings some amazing secondary benefits." Automatically, all classes that can´t heal/tank would be much less fun.

As long as there are 9 other classes, one given class just can´t be the king in everything, vs. all classes, in every role, in every aspect of the game. Compare this to the live version: It´s fine for me to be totally destroyed by every priest that knows what mana burn is, as long as I can beat a warrior with both hands tied to my back (exaggeration, but you get the point). It´s ok to want some little buffs to make some things less painful (AoE healing or healing while on the move anyone?), but as long as it´s not vanilla WoW again, we all should be grateful. You should be aware that paladins (and most hybrids) are already complaining on a very, very high level since they´ve come a very long way since release.

There's a upgraded green version (granting 61 crit rating) available from a quest in Borean Tundra, and it works with any judgement/seal combination. The Libram of Avengement has had it's wording changed to match the new one, but the Libram of Divine Judgement remains unchanged so far (i'd imagine they'll get around it to eventually, though).