It is purely a pvp change, since no pve spec uses it (because many mobs and all bosses are immune to it). It's a little bit of a /facepalm move, but in the long run it may be healthy (maybe it'll turn into our snare?)

Also I got around to posting on the official forums: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Ret&Prot paladin pve+pvp balance issues . I really wish the post length there were longer, but oh well it's all split up. It'd be nice to get a response from a dev, perhaps if enough people chime in with ideas and thoughts we can get something done?

In relation to the vindication change, what might be an interesting direction for the talent now they have removed the HP component would be to possibly make it like Demo Shout / CoW / Challenging Roar which would put it at a reachable height for protection paladins and an option for retribution to spec in to (if they were so inclined).

It'd add some parity (for protection at least) and it wouldn't be any worse off for PvP, however to make it work blizzard might have to have a PvE / PvP flag in the same way Exorcism does so that it removes the AP on NPCs and Stats on PCs.

I wonder if they are even going to try to fix our rotation now.. I mean seems like what they first said was a problem with our rotation being too much burst in pvp, they now at least tried to fix us by nerfing vindication. Reasoning being something like our burstiness combined with vindication being too much...

I think this is very difficult, mostly because encounters themselves are huge variables in potential DPS, and affect every class differently. It's all well and good to look at Patchwerk kills and say "Okay, rogues are here, mages are here, rets are here," etc, but if you use those rankings to justify bringing one class or another, then you'll find things changing on every fight in the game that isn't Patchwerk. I don't think that's especially surprising to anyone, but the point I'm trying to make is that when attempting to quantify DPS there are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

GC has stressed this numerous times, that different classes will perform at differing levels on different fights, depending on the mechanics in play. Certain classes will excel on movement heavy fights, others will do very well with +crit or +dmg modifiers (loatheb, thaddius), others will do their best work on fights with adds. The value of high performance in any of these areas is nigh on unquantifiable. How do you weigh the ability to burn through Freya's lashers quickly versus the ability to maintain close to 100% stationary DPS while dodging ice on Hodir?

I think qualification of DPS (ie "it's too low", or "it seems to be on par") is still valuable, mostly because it's about as accurate as we can get in any sort of real, meaningful sense. Any quantification would need to be done in a highly specific sense, taken on single encounters alone. The problem here is that this isn't exactly useful from a balancing perspective. Ret might be 8% behind certain other hybrids on fight X, but 4% above them on fight Y. How do you take that to the development table and come away with relevant and effective changes? Sure, you could attempt to implement tweaks to slightly raise performance on X while reducing it on Y, but again, from GC's comments I'm leaning towards the belief that this sort of behaviour is intentional. As I said, the value of high performance on X or Y style fights is highly abstract, so using it to try and assess any sort of overall viability is very difficult.

Currently, ret performs quite well on multiple target fights, Kologarm being perhaps the best example, although Thorim, Razorscale, and Freya are all relevant here as well (although they all encompass second, single target phases). By contrast, single target fights (Vezax, Hodir, XT) seem to highlight instances where ret DPS is lacking in comparison to other hybrids. This is about as far as you can really go when attempting to measure these differences, there's no real way to readily identify by what exact (or even approximate) percentage ret DPS is really out of line with the 'ideal'. At the very least, considerations regarding these sorts of changes need to be made with the fact that some form of variance will exist in mind, that on some fights ret will underperform relative to others, and on other fights it will overperform. I think that's fair enough, and it adds a measure of flavour to raiding without having overly negative repercussions.

I think in ret's case (and possibly in the case of other hybrids as well, although I can't say), the idea should be to reign in / pull up the performance on fights where it can be construed as way out of whack (ie taking into account both the hybrid 'tax' and the notion that this might not be a great 'ret fight'), without overly compromising performance in other areas. Ie, if you want to tone down ret's multi-target damage, you need to make sure that they're not crippled on single targets (this would be a very real concern). Similarly, if you want to buff single target damage, it needs to be done in a certain way that doesn't then make AoE performance too high (for example, an additional percentage modifier would be a bad idea in this case).

To be clear, I'm not saying that quantification is impossible or useless, simply that meaningful quantification is exceedingly complex and needs to be considered from a very wide variety of angles. Working on the assumption that ret is generally too low on single target fights, and pretty decent on multi-target fights (a qualitative assessment), I think some mechanism to force the choice between AoE and single target damage should be implemented. Currently the only difference between the two involves differing prioritisation on consecration and DS. Replacing consecration in single target cycles with a slightly higher DPS ability could go a long way towards remedying this, I think. It would allow rets to maintain their current AoE DPS figures, but would allow them to forgo that ability to gain higher DPS on single targets. This would obviously need to be tempered for PvP use somehow, but the basic idea I think has potential.

The problem is, that we are able to do full scale AoE while we don't have to stop our single target nuke to do so (creating the illusion that ret's dps is "ok" in Ulduar), because all of our AoE is part of the single target "rotation" which, by me, is broken mechanic, leading to us having too low single target dps (only the shadow priests and maybe elemental shamans suck more on OMG NUKE Brutallus like fight like Steelbreaker last) which cannot be buffed without making us overpowered in multiple target situations.

Some degree of passive AoE is fine. Fury warriors have it with WW, DKs have it at a fairly low opportunity cost (pestilence), or even as part of their normal single target rotations. In general, plate melee classes tend to use multi-target abilities as part of their single target DPS rotations, leading me to believe that this is at least somewhat intended. It makes a certain sort of sense, as these classes are generally better able to handle the repercussions of this (pulling agro on whelps / grobb slimes / arena adds / pummelers / etc) due to their high armour / stam, and it's a viable way to deal with adds in a lot of cases, I think, to just tank them on top of the boss and let the passive AoE take them down.

I did actually suggest (well, echoed suggestions originally posed by others) replacing consecrate in a single target rotation with a higher DPS ability, via a shared cooldown or similar mechanic. This would have the effect of buffing ret single target damage without overpowering multiple target damage (where consecrate would simply be used in place of the single target ability). This is just one of a multitude of ways to tweak single target damage without affecting multi-target damage, though. All it requires is for some form of separation of the abilities, which as you noted, currently does not exist.

I will say that ret's performance, or perceived performance, in Ulduar isn't exactly what I'd call an 'illusion' though. On a fight like IC, multi-target damage (ie to two or more council members) has absolutely no effect beyond the damage done to the primary target, but in almost every other case the damage has at least some effect. It could range from slightly lowering the OT's damage intake by slowly killing their mobs, to being highly useful (eg damage on Kologarn's arms), to absolutely necessary (Freya / Thorim adds). Yes, in some instances it will lead to DPS numbers that are inflated beyond what was perhaps the ret's actual contribution to beating the encounter, but in others it's still a very accurate reflection of how useful the ret was on the fight.

The only issue is scaling. With a passive talent they can't give you new ranks every few levels, so it would have to be some odd "reduces the attack power of your target by 1.796875/3.59375 times your level" to be equal to a talented Demo Shout. There are much more elegant ways to bring prot up to parity with the other tanks.

Perhaps standing in Consecration stacks a buff on us (rather than a debuff on the boss), and using an ability (I still favour shortest cooldown CS) releases this buff for benefit. With a low cooldown attack it could be balanced to be a decision whether to hit as soon as off cooldown or actually wait for buff to reach X stacks.

You know - a decision. Not more button mashing.

The main point I'm seeing from Arikah's Q&A is that - hey, there are a lot of possible solutions to improve things using simple already-present mechanics.

Let us hope that some small, simple life-impacting changes (reduce cooldowns and tweak coefficients and poof - we have a rotation) occur at some point in the near future. It would not take a vast 3.1 DK overhaul in order to correct what are perceived as Ret's major issues.

In response to the AoE issue, i find it frustrating that 2/5ths of our rotation is made up of AoE abilities, without which our dps drops substantially. I like the consecration idea, but given the mobility required in most of the new encounters, we're already being penalized for not being able to stand still and wail away (which, when we're allowed to do, ends up putting us near the bottom of the meters, assuming it's not an AoE fight).

A better solution would be the previously talked about consecration debuff, which could be combined so that a paladin standing within 10 yards of a mob marked by the debuff could accumulate some sort of holy stack, leading to the use or powering up of another ability.

With that said, the clear answer is going to involve exorcism, as it is the only offensive ability we have that officially does not translate into PvP, so we might as well all start coming up with good ideas about how to improve exorcism (more mana efficient, shorter CD), otherwise the rest of the uninformed community will QQ about whichever DPS improvement they give to us, claiming we will now be able to burst down players in 1 GCD (lol). Unfortunately, it looks like Holy is getting the bulk of the changes so far in 3.2, but I suppose I can still hold my breath .

With that out of the way, and given than any major changes aren't likely soon forthcoming (unless they're nerfs which they hotfix - too easy with the recent blue post), I was wondering if any of you were having better marginal success using a modified priority system from the one listed on page one? I've been running CS-DS-J-Cons-Exo which has been slightly outperforming the standard on a personal basis. Just throwing it back out there now that people have acquired better gear and better set bonuses (yes, I understand the theory and math behind the priority system, but as we all know, theory isn't always reality, even if the supporting evidence will likely be anecdotal).

Latest down the Ret PVP pipeline.

It's another Pvp nerf/PvE null.

How about not rewarding us for using an AoE skill when it's not needed? We need a DoT that does as much damage as Consecrate to 1 target and has the same or cheaper mana cost, duration, and shares.a.cooldown. It's either consecrate OR <insert name>, but never both.

Heck, I wouldnt mind it having the exact mechanics of Seal of Corruption (stacking buff THEN you can either take it off with exorcism/something or leave it on)

I want to get away from AoE's for single-target damage.

I dont mind one that also has a perceivable single-target benefit like DS and Heart Strike, but Cons. (as a DPS aoe) is just...well retarded. That's not what it's meant for. If we liken our already homogenized skills, it would be the same as warriors using thunderclap for damage, except t-clap has an actual secondary component that makes it want to be pressed for something more than the numbers it throws up while you're DPSing

You, Exemplar, and everyone else are right though--mindlessly mashing buttons is neither fun nor skillful. It just means you have OmniCC and low latency/high patience.

I also cant blame DK's for Desecration either, considering it's on attack and has a secondary ability tied to Pvp/single-target damage. They maybe closer to our plight than I realize, though.

In keeping with the theme of this section I'd like to see: Consecrate share a cooldown with a new, single-target-at-a-time DoT that does the same damage with a same or slightly cheaper mana cost and duration. You could do a lot with this skill. Just off the top of my head I pulled the Seal of Corruption mechanics mixed with everyone's recommendation to put some variability into it. A stacking or non-stacking DoT with an option at a certain point. You have your sustained via DoT and your Burst via options. The trigger could be anything.

In case you havent been to MMO-Champ or anywhere else--it seems the stun-immune spell interrupt from HoJ was removed. Based on this and the Vind. nerf I'm inclined to think that they're going to give us spellbreaker, but dont quote me.