You're oversimplifying one issue and portraying it as the overall argument. I'm sure no one minds class balance, but it has to make sense too. Why nerf an ability that contributes to our overall DPS, but very little to the burst, when burst is being constantly portrayed as the real problem?
Giving two other classes the un-nerfed version we've been running around with for two years is just the icing on the cake, not the actual argument.



I think we have to stay as far away from "fixed" abilities as possible. Having it a "mix" as you say with base mana return and a small modifier that depends on your actual damage sounds like the best of both worlds.


Btw, I still haven't had time to get the whole beta patch, has anyone experimented with JotW to see if it now works in groups/raids?

Well, Blizzard has stated that they haven't done their damage tuning yet. Therefore, the damage of any spec or class is not finalized, or we could at least hope.

As far as the price of utility, there is another argument. If the utility is an option, particularly one of several mutually exclusive options, then it should always have a price. However, if there is no choice involved, the price if any cannot be as high. This is being discussed quite thoroughly in the mage thread(s).

We can use Retribution Paladins as an example. You bring large amounts of utility to any group. However, in an environment where you are likely to have 2-3 Paladins of different specs in a raid (i.e., 25-man raids), the marginal utility from a second or subsequent Retribution Paladin is naturally lower than the first. After all, the second Retribution Paladin's Retribution Aura will not stack with the first (presumably), and the paladins already extant have all of the useful Blessings and Auras covered. Thus, the second Retribution Paladin's utility must be discounted, and the Paladin's slot must then lean more heavily on the DPS contribution vs. those of other specs and classes.

The same cannot be said of a Warlock and his Curses. Certainly, you will have CoE up if you have one Warlock and any reasonable number of magical damage in your group. However, the utility of the second and subsequent Warlock's curse cannot be discounted, because there is a pure damage curse alternative (CoA or CoD).

This is what I'm referring to. I guess, in a nutshell, you can say, 'Utility can/does have diminishing returns. Damage does not.' If the situation is as you describe re: Warriors, then it would seem clear that either the utility of the Warrior must decrease, or their DPS needs to decrease. I fully believe that Blizzard will take the time it needs to ensure that the damage is where they want it before the product ships. We can hope that their concept of relative damage potentials meets with the community's approval.

Judgement is completely broken at the moment. So we can't say anything about JotW.

Also, is SoV working correctly for anyone? I'm getting less damage than the tooltip value, and the extra damage on refresh is gone.

Just as a note (off topic), some block value gear has started showing up:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...tstrath_03.jpg

More interesting on that item is that it has both strength and block value on it.

Also that's quite a lot of strength. An awful lot of strength. Tanks are going to be doing quite a lot of DPS come Wrath.

Ulthwithian, I really wish I could share your optimism, but the thing that concerns me most is this:

-Right now is the only time where actual changes will happen. The closer we get to launch and further they get through their tuning, the less powerful changes can be expected, right down till when WotLK goes live and we're more or less stuck with what we have (you can't bet your money on patches).

I suppose there's always hope they can get it right after the tuning as you say, however the track record so far indicates otherwise. I think what would put most people's minds at ease would be if they actually come out and say where they expect us and other classes to be balanced in the relative DPS scale.

Warriors with two big weapons can whirlwind and enraged assault in the span of a single gcd. Recklessness is a 5 minute cooldown. This isn't something you'll be seeing once in a blue moon, it looks like a very standard procedure. In the face of this much pain 12k judgments sure don't feel all that overpowered.

My intention for that post was more to point out that it would be an illogical talent for the developers to mess with. While you're correct that viability is the top priority, perception is extremely important, and it would be silly to make that change when you could just turn a different knob that yields the same result without angering anybody, irrational or not. It's not like they have to walk on tip-toes to avoid hurting feelings, but it's pretty easy to pick out which talents should probably be left alone.

Right. And really, aside from comparisons to other classes, a 10% damage buff as the culmunation of a 10-point talent change seems kind of weak. People are going to look at it and go "that's it?" It's not entirely rational, but I think there's a large psychological gap between "+10%" and "+15%".


Heh, no problem. I'd be doing the same thing to you if our places were reversed.

Yes, for the most part I've over-leveled the mobs I've fought. There was one brief period where I ventured into a level 74-ish area at 72, and still seemed to be doing just fine, but nothing extensive. And no, I haven't watched anyone else solo in WotLK for comparison. With the judgement bug, I'll probably lay off of Cath for now and level my warrior (Kara/ZA/badge gear) for a bit and see how it compares.

Anyway, that's another part of the reason why I really don't want to claim anything conclusive. Like I said, it just feels overtuned.

Well, what I showed earlier was that at base, Flash Heal and Greater Heal were slightly gaining efficiency going from 70 to 80, whereas Flash of Light and Holy Light were losing a good bit of efficiency going from 70 to 80. So all I really proved was that paladins were losing ground on efficiency compared to priests, but that doesn't say anything about whether either class is actually gaining or losing efficiency on its own terms. Basically I came to a very limited conclusion, but one that I thought had some weight to it.

However, now we've entered the land of spells costing a percentage of base mana, so it's impossible to make any kind of comparison. In other words, even if I was right before (and I'm not even sure about that now), I can't prove it anymore.

Intuition is fine at this stage. What's important is that the final tuning is based on hard evidence. But since that hasn't even started yet (or so they say) there's no reason not to try to take an educated guess about what to use as the starting point for the tuning process.

I did this kind of thing a lot with numerical simulations in grad school, where I was trying to tune a system to achieve a certain result. You don't actually do the tuning by intuition -- you need hard data or people are going to laugh in your face. But when you're trying to decide where to start tuning from, making an educated guess is usually a good way to go.

It's better for the class that has the stacking (or unique) buff, but it's not better for the raid leader who has to assemble a 25-man raid from 30 specs. It's also not better for the game as a whole if encounters have to be tuned around unique buffs that only one class/spec can provide -- unless you make those buffs comparatively weak, in which case it's not better for the class concerned.

There's a tension between making every class/spec interesting and unique and useful, and providing enough redundancy that no one single spec is required for an effective raid, and classes have to be balanced between the two.

The new Fury buff is a good balance; it gives a Fury warrior good raid utility but doesn't make it a requirement.

That's kind of unexpected, because it violates their "multi-class use" philosophy. It also creates a kind of gear that is suboptimal for DK tanks, where there's no equivalent way to make gear that's suboptimal for paladins/warriors (so far as I know, anyway).

With those changes in health values and new abilities, even people in full season 4 are going to be tissue paper by level 80. I hope they stick the blue set in factions from the start, though I'm guessing it will just be sitting on BG vendors, which is pretty frustrating.

I finally got the patch and not sure if this has been mentioned yet or not:

Judgements currently do not work at all on beta. They do no damage regardless of Seal or Judgement type used and leave no judgement effect (only the 3% crit effect is applied if you talent that). Kind of a bummer for leveling on beta.

Directly in response to your question from earlier, and Cath also mentioned it just a bit ago. And those are on this page.

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but anyone happy to see that the Retribution 4pc bonus remains?
18 points deep in protection and you'll be sporting 20sec CD Hammers of Justice.

Also, with the nerf to vengeance i think we just found the perfect place to unbloat the tree. Vengeance could be 2 talentpoints instead of 5, it seems like a pretty balanced change to me at least.

How is ret bloated? Unless you want a spec to do both PvE and PvP there is hardly any way to justify calling it bloated.

I noticed you seem to have not added my discovery that the threat modifier on Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness appears to be 20% extra threat. In black text obviously as I'm just a single beta tester.

I'm not seeing any returns from Judgements of the Wise, either. Right now I'm just keeping Seal of Wisdom up and whacking stuff, it's not nearly as much damage, but there's virtually no way to keep your mana up otherwise in the current build.

Since it's based off of judgement damage, there's no way to tell if it's been fixed. Also makes it hard to figure out if they fixed the holy judgement > haste talent, too.

I just tested this and didn't get any haste from it. (Although perhaps it's only meant to work on damaging judgements?)

Did however confirm that SF uses the new anti-pushback mechanic. Updating the OP.

EDIT: Shield Spec still broken (unless it's intended not to affect blockvalue from strength.)

EDIT AGAIN: Also started a bug list in the OP. Other beta testers, please report anything you find. Let's get our bugs "out there" as early as possible.

BoW, SoV(SoCorr) and whack things. Don't judge, CS, or DS unless absolutely needed. You can heal yourself reasonably after a few mobs, and BoW will regen you decent mana, especially when you get the level 71 rank of 73 mp5. It's honestly the same as leveling a paladin is right now on live, and only painful if you got a taste of endless mana ability use. Which is not to say it's ok; the paladin in live and in this build is the only class where the best way to level is to autoattack and tab out.

Using SoW I can CS and DS every cooldown while remaining topped off, and still have plenty of mana to heal. I'm preferring this route because it's more interactive, and stuff is still dying very fast.

I always expected that we'd still see class/spec specific itemization, but only in places where they wouldn't "collide" with other classes, such as tier tokens, rep vendors and craftable gear. That being said, it's just one item of one dungeon, and the different stat weights among shared armor-type classes virtually guarantees we'll still see optimization anyway.