The argument between which Judgement to use if you're lacking paladins should be decided by encounter, and not always by group makeup. If it's an encounter where AOE damage is ticking indefinitely, then JoL is probably going to be advantageous. Take for example an obvious one in current content - Sapphiron. My JoL accounts for at least 20% of overall effective healing for that encounter. However, if it's a battle where the damage is more bursty and more concentrated towards players and not everyone, JoW would take precedence.
There's also the third scenario where a lot of damage is going around, but the battle is 10+ minutes long. That would definitely be one for JoW.
The flood of "I am outraged that GC would say this" posts are adding nothing at this point. This isn't a "vent my frustrations at Blizzard's game design" thread. Show some numbers, or vent elsewhere.
There's no reason to be testy, with all due respect you also didn't provide any substantive data in your post.
My average damage for Judgement was 8097 damage (not including RV). At a 7 second cooldown that is 1156.714 DPS. Extending my cooldown for just one second drops that to 1012.125 DPS, a loss of 144.589 DPS, 12.5% of Judgment's total damage (incidentally, this is why the T7 bonus is so damn awesome). The pattern continues, delaying 2 seconds is a 22.22% loss, 3 seconds is a 30% loss, etc. until you reach a 7 second delay (14 second cooldown), where you're sitting at a 50% DPS loss from Judgement.
Again not counting RV, Judgement was 26% of my total damage. That means that for extending my effective cooldown from 7 to 8 seconds I lose a whopping 3.25% of my total damage. ONE SECOND is nearly the difference between most "pure" and "hybrid" classes according to Blizzard's design for DPS balancing. Being even more pressed and being forced to delay by 2 seconds drops me almost 6% of my total DPS, right there.
In addition each second you delay Judgement costs you mana. With the live-15%-of-base JotW a 7 second Judgement is 65.857 mana/second. An 8 second cooldown drops your regen to 57.625 mana/second. 2 seconds of delay drops you to 51.22 mana/second, and anything past that and you're getting into the realm of not even being capable of sustaining a base rotation. If they continue to ratchet up JotW it grows to even more of a loss (though you would be able to sustain a base rotation with a longer cooldown wit higher returns).
In short, for any reason you can not afford to ever delay Judgements and maintain respectable DPS. It all comes down to tying our regen and a large portion of our DPS into one ability that happens to also be the leading cause of ret paladin suicide (though I'm sure Divine Sacrifice will be a contender for that honor once 3.1 hits live).
And remember that this doesn't even include Righteous Vengeance! The actual values for loss are even larger. It is simply bad design.
Guys, due to the fact that I didn't have any new WWS parses of my own active and that my gear isn't @ 5k dps yet, I took the liberty to take a Loatheb WWS parse from Bulwyth who posted a complaint on the GC thread, showing how Sob/JoB is a liability.
20:56'17.342 Bulwyth suffers 250 Nature damage from Loatheb Deathbloom. 250
TOTAL Self-Inflicted DMG: 8,732 (59.3%)
TOTAL External DMG: 6,000 (40.7%)
TOTAL DAMAGE IN: 14,732 (100.0%)
Sample Period Time Span: 00:00'09.697
Yes this is a gimmick fight, but nonetheless, It illustrates clearly how Ret, unlike any other non-tank class has such a spiked damage-in graph, and how every 7 seconds we inflict ~4k dmg onto ourselves,
combine that with a 5k random damage from an external source [Loatheb's Inevitable Doom in this case] (which is nothing compared to Ulduar and its AEO damage) + the nerfs to healing + our scaling with better gear, and Ret is a recipe for disaster.
The only real way to make SOC a real, competative DPSing seal now - in all realism - is to remove the PPM and the internal cooldown. It doesn't need a damage boost - it does "acceptable" judgement damage (enough that RV could be boosted way up to 50% of crit damage and not be OP). The seal damage is more than effective is the damned PPM was just non existent.
And if this was to ever happen, I think I might actually cry tears of joy.
But lets be realistic, blizzard aint gonna turn our "windfury weapon wannabe" seal into something actually good enough to be effective. Still, it would be a nice dream...
Originally posted by Ghostcrawler
The fires typically do a lot more damage than Seal of Blood. What is the most you have ever been bled for on a Judgement crit? Maybe 10K? And that’s a crit. No offense, but your healers probably laugh at the kind of damage you are inflicting on yourself. The tank is getting hit for much more, much faster and the fires or big AE sprays generally do more. A stray PoM or CL can probably top you off. I know you don’t want to use Command, but if you’re sitting at 10% of your health or you know the dragon is about to breathe, it may be an attractive option until you get healed back up again. I know the self-damage is a concern of the paladins though, and we’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t feel like too much of a liability in raids.
I think a penalty to increase damage received from all sources while SoB/SotM is active is a much better way to tackle the issue.
Also a healing penalty attached to the seal and or JoW is also a possibility I have no qualms with... be it an increase in cast time, cooldown or a decrease in the potency of our healing spells.
The recoil isn't a very fair penalty to a spec which already has to risk the dangers of constantly being in melee range.
The spike damage alone isn't the issue... it is the spike damage coupled with being exposed and susceptible to splash damage, close range AoE, void zones, whirlwinds, flame breaths, tail swipes, cleaves, poison clouds... etc... I don't think the developers seem to realize how annoying it is being melee in a raid much less a melee who cuts himself to bring dps which is below other melee hybrids (which is another thing that needs to be addressed).
There is a reason why many competitive world first guilds take zero melee dps on their progression raids. And whether the developers choose to accept it or not, a Melee dps who does damage to himself is a liability to any progression raid. Period.
Random comparison: Even with haste valued 30% better, Major Agi to cloak still beats Greater Speed. That's how weak haste is, even post-buff. Sigh.
SoB vs SoC/SoR
Per Fiola's request. In my current gear in 3.0.9 or 3.1:
The difference between SoB and non-glyphed SoC is 5% drop in total DPS.
SoB to 0/5 SotP non-glyphed SoR is 8% drop in total DPS.
SoB to 5/5 SotP non-glyphed SoR is 3% drop in total DPS.
If we cannot spare the glyph, but can spare talent points, looks like 5/5 SotP is effective and SoR is the seal to use when you cannot risk self-damage. As I've previously shown, my numbers show that SoR or SoC glyph is an overall loss compared to Exo glyph. We want Judge, Cons, Exo Glyphs and I guess SotP.
Your mileage may vary - different gear, different number crunching. I trust my spreadsheet.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Random comparison: Even with haste valued 30% better, Major Agi to cloak still beats Greater Speed. That's how weak haste is, even post-buff. Sigh.
SoB vs SoC/SoR
Per Fiola's request. In my current gear in 3.0.9 or 3.1:
The difference between SoB and non-glyphed SoC is 5% drop in total DPS.
SoB to 0/5 SotP non-glyphed SoR is 8% drop in total DPS.
SoB to 5/5 SotP non-glyphed SoR is 3% drop in total DPS.
If we cannot spare the glyph, but can spare talent points, looks like 5/5 SotP is effective and SoR is the seal to use when you cannot risk self-damage. As I've previously shown, my numbers show that SoR or SoC glyph is an overall loss compared to Exo glyph. We want Judge, Cons, Exo Glyphs and I guess SotP.
Your mileage may vary - different gear, different number crunching. I trust my spreadsheet.
This is a good way to look at it. I'm seeing more and more reasons for SoC to either be dropped all together or made a baseline skill. Continuing to say SoB is the PvE seal and SoC is the PvP seal doesn't have any merit any longer. The reason so many arena ret. paladins use SoB is because it's the only way to out damage incoming heals. This is something that I encourage others to bring to the table with the list of reasons why SoB recoil needs to be removed.
I don't really have something like WWS for Arena to provide evidence, but I've been doing some testing using SoC exclusively in 2v2. Granted, I am not a top PvPer by any stretch of the word, but I'm not bad either. My 2s partner is a fury warrior, which I'll admit is not the ideal combination with a ret. paladin. But, we got to 1750 without too much hassle when I used SoB. However, over the past 3 weeks I've been using nothing but SoC to test out the difference it makes on 2v2 match-ups. Our rating has dropped by 50 to 100 points depending on the night. Lag has remained the same, my partner and I continue to use the exact same spec and glyphs each week, and our play style has not changed. We typically go up against a healer/DPS. Again, I have no way to provide evidence, but it's a pretty safe estimate to say that about 65% of our match-ups are against healer/DPS in this bracket. Even with the MS effect from my partner we cannot burn down either the healer or the DPS faster than the incoming heals when I'm using SoC. We also chain CC as well using something along the lines of Repentance --> Hammer of Justice --> Intercept the next heal --> Fear the healer. We've gotten good at coordinating these, but heals still get off and it's enough to keep the DPS alive long enough to kill one of us off.
I wish there was a way to provide hard evidence of what I'm stating, but unfortunately, the only thing I can provide is for people to click on my name to get my armory link to see the 1600s rating our 2s team currently has.
tl:dr - SoC does not cut it in Arena evidenced by top arena ret. paladins using SoB almost exclusively. Stating that SoB recoil is meant to keep it out of arena has become a moot point. We need to use this as just one more example of many for the Blues that SoB recoil just needs to be removed all together.
tl:dr - SoC does not cut it in Arena evidenced by top arena ret. paladins using SoB almost exclusively. Stating that SoB recoil is meant to keep it out of arena has become a moot point. We need to use this as just one more example of many for the Blues that SoB recoil just needs to be removed all together.
I'm worried that the argument of SoB being the only viable seal for PvP, though, will only warrant it getting a nerf. Especially if people continue to say things in the terms of "The only way to out-dps a healer."
I'm not knocking you for your semantics, because what you stated was true. I'm just concerned that said semantics is going to get us an SoB nerf rather than a buff. I also don't think that arguing that SoB must be used in PvP is going to fix the key issue here, which is low DPS overall - using PvP as an example can be helpful in some ways, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that it's probably the least effective way to prove a point in where we are lacking as a class.
GC's "well, you take more damage from fire" comment is pretty ridiculous too, as I've gone back to look through old WMO parses of previous raids, and on fights like Thaddius and Malygos recoil makes up fully 50% of my damage in. On one Maly parse in particular, removing said recoil would have taken me from 4th on damage taken (below two melee who took an arcane breath) down to 23rd. I'd say that's a pretty substantial amount of incoming damage, before worrying about how bursty it is.
WMO also has a "real time damage taken" chart, similar to the one Thorin posted, and it shows the same kind of spiky, hard to predict damage that we're talking about. That a lead developer is willing to put on Joo Janta Paladin Complaint Sensitive Sunglasses about these kinds of issues really disturbs me. Then again, it's about what I've come to expect after so long.
I'm worried that the argument of SoB being the only viable seal for PvP, though, will only warrant it getting a nerf. Especially if people continue to say things in the terms of "The only way to out-dps a healer."
That is true, but potency is a necessity for a DPS with no secondary effects like MS/Interrupt/Snare. In order for us to be effective we have to do a large amount of damage when we get close. I may be off base, but I don't see it needing a nerf when the counter to our class is kiting or in the case of a rogue Dodge/Resist everything we can do. Our large damage when we get close is the only way for us to do well in arenas. SoC does not provide enough and SoB puts us at a serious risk. However, I would gladly retract my argument if we were given a secondary effect. In that case I would completely agree that SoB would be too powerful for arena.
Originally Posted by Prettyboi
I'm not knocking you for your semantics, because what you stated was true. I'm just concerned that said semantics is going to get us an SoB nerf rather than a buff. I also don't think that arguing that SoB must be used in PvP is going to fix the key issue here, which is low DPS overall - using PvP as an example can be helpful in some ways, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that it's probably the least effective way to prove a point in where we are lacking as a class.
Oh, I absolutely agree that it's the least effective way. I just mean that it is one small piece to add to all of the evidence we have stacking up that SoB recoil serves no real purpose any longer.
I know Ret pallies have made many posts outlining their potential or realized problems. I'm sorry we haven't been able to answer those. We can only answer a very few a day.
But here is what I can tell you:
There is a bug in Righteous Vengeance that caused its damage to be too low (even accounting for the reduction in ranks). That bug has now been fixed. Note that even though the dot is Holy damage (which is normally not-resistable) mobs that are higher level than you can still resist some of the damage. This was not the actual bug, though some players made that assumption since they noticed RV had dropped (again even accounting for the rank reduction).
Spiritual Attunement could provide as much or more mana as Judgements of the Wise on fights with a lot of raid damage. To account for this, we are likely to buff the instant mana from Judgements of the Wise.
The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).
When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.
Note that I made no promises. These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.
1 - I am not a native English speaker, so my interpretation of the RV bug is not very clear. Does he mean the RV ticks being resisted at something like a 75-90% rate is intended, and the bug they fixed (I assume in an internal version), is actually another bug?
2 - He has mentioned buffing JotW before, I'm guessing they're watching how the current build is in terms of mana starvation to us in order to figure out by how much it needs to be buffed.
3 - I don't know if this version he mentions would be a good one, as this would probably mean our mana regen would be tweaked with the assumption that we were using it, and we would end up with yet another mandatory glyph.
4 - I dislike the use of the words probably and "a little low" because, it IS low, but with all that goes on in the forums blues need to be as careful as possible with words and I just appreciate the fact he acknowledges that something needs to be done and changed, and the 2 possible changes he mentions have been mentioned way before in this community and wouldn't surprise anyone.
Looks more promising, although his talk of the possible new SoB glyph makes me thing that we'll still be too dependent on judging SoB for mana... and it'll make SoB even more useful in PvP as if you've got a healer you'll be getting even more mana.
1 - I am not a native English speaker, so my interpretation of the RV bug is not very clear. Does he mean the RV ticks being resisted at something like a 75-90% rate is intended, and the bug they fixed (I assume in an internal version), is actually another bug?
He means that RV being partially resisted by a bit (the usual 5-10%) is intended, but having 90% of the damage resisted is not (and has been fixed). In addition there was a bug where it flat out wasn't doing the right damage, which has also been fixed.
Last edited by flyingtoastr : 03/17/09 at 8:11 PM.
Looks more promising, although his talk of the possible new SoB glyph makes me thing that we'll still be too dependent on judging SoB for mana... and it'll make SoB even more useful in PvP as if you've got a healer you'll be getting even more mana.
The thought of our JotW buff being balanced around having that glyph seriously irks me a bit... lets hope it's not going to be like that, or else we'll still be in the same position, with wildly fluctuating mana bars depending on the AoE for the fight. Seems like they take 2 steps forward and 2 steps back on the subject...
I am utterly confounded by GC's latest post. He's spent multiple posts now explaining, rightly, how Spiritual Attunement makes it hard to balance Retribution. He has also made multiple posts now about how they will need to buff JotW to compensate for our mana issues now that we don't have Spiritual Attunement. Yet in this post, he says that there is a possibility of changing the Seal of Blood glyph to make it give us back mana as if we had Spiritual Attunement... Why do 1 and 2 matter, if you're just going to do 3? Why take away spiritual attunement from Ret if you're just going to put it on a glyph that becomes the mandatory glyph of all mandatory glyphs? Am I reading it wrong?
Another post from GC that quite clearly indicates that they are afraid to make any big changes at this point. To the relative balance and mechanics of Seals, to our mana regen mechanics, to the DPS contribution of our talented abilities..
They seem to want to take the easy way out on everything regarding Ret - at least for this patch. From simply making Exorcism function on any target, to intending to buff JotW instead of introducing a new mana regeneration mechanic for us etc.
I wouldn't be too surprised to see us end up live with roughly the DPS we currently have on the PTR (which is assumed to be roughly that of a pre-3.0.8 Ele Shaman), even if they do get our mana regen to a sufficient level. We can't do much to prevent that for 3.1 if that's the direction we're still heading this late in a Public Test, but let's hope we're next to be taken a harder look at.
I am utterly confounded by GC's latest post. He's spent multiple posts now explaining, rightly, how Spiritual Attunement makes it hard to balance Retribution. He has also made multiple posts now about how they will need to buff JotW to compensate for our mana issues now that we don't have Spiritual Attunement. Yet in this post, he says that there is a possibility of changing the Seal of Blood glyph to make it give us back mana as if we had Spiritual Attunement... Why do 1 and 2 matter, if you're just going to do 3? Why take away spiritual attunement from Ret if you're just going to put it on a glyph that becomes the mandatory glyph of all mandatory glyphs? Am I reading it wrong?
The mana regen from the glyph will be similar to what we get from SA, not that the mechanic of the regen will work like SA.
ie: "SoB regens 1% of your damage done as mana" or "chance to restore X mana per SoB proc"
Something like this would work pretty similar to what we get from SA now: SoB deals 10% recoil -> SA converts 10% of healing received to mana, which is 1% of SoB DPS -> mana. However, the glyph version would not cause Ret mana regen to scale with the amount of AE damage we take.
edit: Judging the necessity of the glyph will have to wait until we see actual numbers for the rest of the changes ... If the glyph gives the same mana regen as the last iteration (+30% mana from SA), that's something like 0.3% of SoB DPS as mana.
I'm partially satisfied with GC's answer, with the real proof being in what they do with dps buffs and JotW.
IMO, GC has been totally consistent on SA. My read on his comments re: the SoB glyph is that the glyph will allow ret pallies to get SA, but only from the damage that SoB/JoB does to the pally (which strikes me as a non-trivial change unlikely to be doable in a bug-free fashion in time for 3.1, but perhaps I'm wrong). If this is the case, then Ret pallies no longer get SA from raid damage (which is highly variable) but can still get it from SoB/JoB damage (which is far more predictable).
Yes, I'm annoyed as well that recoil will still be a fact of life, but at least it'd still be justifiable because of the partial SA.
Regarding GC's latest post and RV being partially resisted: I know deep wounds can't be resisted, as it's a physical bleed... can Ignite? If not, that's a pretty harsh Paladin-only penalty.
Regarding GC's latest post and RV being partially resisted: I know deep wounds can't be resisted, as it's a physical bleed... can Ignite? If not, that's a pretty harsh Paladin-only penalty.
I'm partially satisfied with GC's answer, with the real proof being in what they do with dps buffs and JotW.
IMO, GC has been totally consistent on SA. My read on his comments re: the SoB glyph is that the glyph will allow ret pallies to get SA, but only from the damage that SoB/JoB does to the pally (which strikes me as a non-trivial change unlikely to be doable in a bug-free fashion in time for 3.1, but perhaps I'm wrong). If this is the case, then Ret pallies no longer get SA from raid damage (which is highly variable) but can still get it from SoB/JoB damage (which is far more predictable).
Yes, I'm annoyed as well that recoil will still be a fact of life, but at least it'd still be justifiable because of the partial SA.
My only qualm with it is that, there's one more Glyph that will most likely be "mandatory", and most likely it'll be a major. If it's a minor, fine, but usually glyphs that change how skills work are majors. Which Glyph are we losing? We already have Judgement (Dead set required), Consecration (Required), and now Exorcism (From what the majority here saw, will be required for Max DPS). Which glyph are you going to sacrifice for the LOLSA Glyph?
Couldn't a simple mana fix be attached to crusader strike such as: Crusader Strike: Does X weapon damage (no change here) and increases the effect of Judgements of the Wise by 100% for 10 seconds.
I had a somewhat similar idea (have JotW return x% and cause the next y attacks in z seconds to each return w%). What I like about both ideas is that they give a natural role for Divine Plea--on fights where you're more likely to miss mana from followup attacks due to running around or whatever, you're also generally less likely to lose dps from using DP.
If Blizzard does end up having to increase JotW returns as much as people in this thread are calculating, I'd expect some sort of spread out effect to make it less bursty and less attractive to healers. I got the impression back when JotW was 30-something percent that one of their concerns was people getting so much of their mana back so fast.
Unless I missed something, Ghostcrawler has only indicated that Blizzard is looking at JotW for managing Ret mana needs. Since the loss of SA will devastate Holy tanking, though, and increase the opportunity cost of JotP, it would make sense for them to add some attack spells to Illumination, which is barely within reach of Ret. Assuming they care about Holy tanking, that is--there's certainly a precedent in non-feral druids being unable to tank without a second set of PvP gear.
Has anyone from Blizzard indicated that they think Seal of Command needs help? It's obviously another candidate for something to modify for mana regen purposes, though that'd likely make it redundant with Seal of Wisdom.
Something I was thinking of, now that SA is gone, that I have yet to see (I might have missed it) anyone mention is to balance Ret's DPS around SoComm, while having SoB/SoM as a sort of Health-spending Afterburner. Obviously the logical conclusion if SoB/SoM is left the way it is, is to just "Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!" and use it all the time, which would create an imbalance. But, if the penalty for using SoB/SoM were more severe (ie healing taken debuff, or mana-regened debuff) might make for an interesting solution.
Did XT-002 Deconstructor on PTR today and mana wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. With use of Divine Plea and Arcane Torrent on cooldown and 100% uptime on JoW, I ended the fight with well more than 80% mana, and that was with tossing out relatively frequent AoW'd Flash of Lights. Fight duration was only like 4 minutes or so though, I did remember Hodir being tougher on my mana but we spent the whole 9 minute berserk timer on that.
I know Ret pallies have made many posts outlining their potential or realized problems. I'm sorry we haven't been able to answer those. We can only answer a very few a day.
But here is what I can tell you:
There is a bug in Righteous Vengeance that caused its damage to be too low (even accounting for the reduction in ranks). That bug has now been fixed. Note that even though the dot is Holy damage (which is normally not-resistable) mobs that are higher level than you can still resist some of the damage. This was not the actual bug, though some players made that assumption since they noticed RV had dropped (again even accounting for the rank reduction).
Spiritual Attunement could provide as much or more mana as Judgements of the Wise on fights with a lot of raid damage. To account for this, we are likely to buff the instant mana from Judgements of the Wise.
The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).
When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.
Note that I made no promises. These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.
They'll have to make sure that the new glyph of Seal of Blood isn't just SA if you have Seal of Blood active, as there's nothing then to stop a holy paladin from using it (I imagine in raid damage heavy fights, that glyph would greatly outweigh Glyph of the Wise.)
Straight out buffing Crusader Strike and Divine Storm is still a bit confusing to me, however. Divine Storm was nerfed pretty hard in the beta because of how destructive it was in PvP, but now it's coming down to sustained DPS nerfs with burst DPS buffs as compensation. This is either implying that we needed some shuffling in PvP as well as PvE, or he is simply not anticipating the nerf cries that might ensue if these two abilities are buffed too much.
Also, if he does buff Divine Storm, I hope it's not in the form of a % modifier talent.
03/17/09, 4:15 PM
These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.
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