Holy ***** an EpiphanyFollow

i was pondering imp SotC just now. in the Ret tree SotC is imp'd 2 times and Blizz wants to imp it even more. however it is not really SotC that gets the real imp, its the JotC. this lead me to thinking about how mundane starting with SotC is when all you really want is the judgement. then it hit:

you want support? make ret pallies able to judge as many(or up to 3) seals as they'd like, regulated by judgement CD. these judgements would all be kept up by CS. maybe this would be a low-mid tier ret talent, 1|2 points, each point adds an extra judgement allotment. golden on boss fights, kinda useless in short pvp fights. comments?

Well, mana would still have to be spent to Seal yourself and then Judge it, right?

If so, it would just cost a ton of mana to keep it up on all mobs all the time, I'd think. More than JoW would give back.

Unless there's something I don't see, it sounds like it could work.

I didn't mean to imply it would not affect it at all, just that it would not affect it much.

As Holy I could judge SoR about thrice per battle and I'd expect a battle as Retro to be even faster. Of course, with Imp Judgement, you could maybe squeeze a fourth judge. But since the battle would be faster, I'd guess it would balance out and remain at around 3 Judgements per battle.

So by the time JoW and JotC are up, the battle is over and the Pally has barely used SoC or at least couldn't used it as much. I dunno, it sounds like the Pally would be wasting a lot of mana for no reason and wouldn't gain much efficiency from it, if any at all.

Bliz, since they look at every aspect possible to see if a change is necessary.

Will it balance in group PvE?
Will it balance in raid PvE?
Will it balance in Arena/BGs?
Will it balance in Solo grinding?
Will it balance in wiping their ***?

If tipping the scales one way tips another scale too far they don't do it. We may argue the point, however they tend to have a final say in what they think is going on.

lol too true. they will often throw a rediculous new change out there and nerf it down bit by bit til they get something acceptable.

i see this judgement change ONLY affecting pve groups. every other aspect of the game is too fast paced and sporadic to allow this kind of stacking. outside of raids, the first judgement cast is usually on an unaware mob or pvp player, one(specifically ret) wouldn't "waste" the next CD on another minor debuff when they have a dmg dealing judgement stewing.

this idea isn't too far-fetched after all. think of casting JotC and then JoC, in essence this is a two way stacking of judgements, one has a 20 second duration and the other has no duration...its goes against the 1 judgement/pally rule.



on second thought, this whole idea might be overpowdered. ;D KT

as ret, i can usually take down an equal lvl mob in less than 10 secs. in pvp i'd better be able to take someone out in less than 20 secs. there really is no time to deal 2 judgements, when dmg dealing or defensive skills take precedence.

in a 12min raid boss this is a different matter.

In PvE solo it isn't a matter of killing quicker, it is the matter of removing down time completely. In terms of leveling alone it would be huge, but also in terms of farming I could take a Paladin out and grind none stop for twice the time before needing to rest up or drink.

In PvP stacking Damage + Mana Return + Stuns, well if you can't see the flat out OP of having 2+ ret pallies in one 5v5 stacking seals and judgements then you must have no grasp of arena balance at all.

As it stands right now a Ret Paladin can use CS to keep judgements up, and in raids you can have a holy paladin joust in and put JoL/JoW up no problem.

So all in all it is more than imbalanced in solo pve, in group pvp and serves no purpose in raid settings.

Hell, made a rather large edit to my last post, only it being deleted due to me being silly and browsing backwards. Happens.

I just read, again, that Blizzard are happy with the way Retribution Paladins are, currently, threatwise, what they want them to be, is "Support" class.
This is quite vague I have to admit, so it let's each of us translate "Support" however he wants.
Personnaly I think that "Support" for Paladins should be DPSing, at least above the tanks, while healing, not on par with full healers of course, and being able to heavily buff everyone around in addition. I was thinking somewhat in the way of a Shadow Priest, but less damage, more buffing.

If Retribution Paladins are to "Support" the tree must be changed. Currently it looks like a tree that only increases personnal damage, and buffs it's party to some extent. If Blizzard wants Retribution Paladins to off heal, give them off healing talents. If you want them to buff, give them more/stronger buffs/debuffs.

For example, Improved Blessing of Might and Improved Judgement of the Crusader can both be gained with an investment of only 8 points. Also Vindication, not sure how effective it is against bosses, 5 man or raids.
Also, there is not a single talent in the tree that improves healing(Well, you may say Crusader Strike helps keeping someone else's Judgement of Light/Wisdom on, but that's plain silly). My point is, that if a Retribution Paladins is supposed to throw a heal here and there as part of it's rotation, those heals MUST count, it's nice being able to heal for 2196-2446 damage with a 2.5 second cast spell(every Warrior would kill for that), but when tank has 18K health, and takes more than that every hit, those heals will not count in the large picture, they are just not time efficient enough, nor are they mana efficient, which should be addressed as well, therefore such "Spot heals" will more likely put a huge strain on the Paladin's mana pool and not give the healers any breathing space. Maybe a talent to transform attack power or +spell damage into more +healing(which in turn, will not be transformed into +spell damage in 2.3), pretty much like the Enhancement Shamans get in 2.3. Another problem with healing is threat, even though a heal will only give 25% threat(being a Paladin), it still gives threat, which Retribution Paladins have hard time keeping low as is, granted, a 4K heal light will only generate 1K threat over 2.5 seconds, for 400 threat per second, but if the numbers Tommyguns gives are accurate(him making ~500 DPS because of threat limitations) this will not give the Retribution Paladin alot of threat breathing room. Maybe an ability that gives the tank the threat of healing? Like Prayer of Mending?
Retribution Paladins are limited by threat, and might be limited by mana as well I guess, if Blizzard wants them to "Spot heal" they should be able to do so without it playing on their biggest weakness, and on a lesser one(or at least make a weakness where non was).

Selverein said that the change Tommyguns suggested is not viable, because every Holy/Protection Paladin in a raid can add it's own Judgement, and therefore it's unneccessary to give the Retribution Paladin ability to put more than one on, I agree with Selverein when it comes to 25 man raids, but in 10 man raids and parties, you'll rarely see more than 2 Paladins. I think it's 100% OK to have a talent that is not amazing for raids, but is very nice for solo/parties, many talent trees sport this.

Another change that might be nice, is to allow the Retribution Paladin to give targets 2 blesses, but second being weaker(half the ability, maybe quarter), will give them some more buffing power. Or maybe a blessing of their own?

Again, the tree doesn't look like a "Support" tree from my point of view. If that is what Blizzard wants, it needs a major change to allow it.

Yuval.

i really hate statistics, they can prove anything, or nothing.

this only applies if you fight something that never dies.

in practice however, i bet you will only get 4 procs max before you fight another. and it takes 3 procs before you get ANY benefit of the judgment.

JUDGEMENT of wisdom is not terribly usefull for a ret pally for saving mana. and neither is seal of wisdom when your using seal of command.

Edit: this can apply to SoL/JoL also. the amount of extra HP you get by the end of the fight would be nearly the same if you spent that mana to kill faster and simply took less hits.



Edited, Oct 8th 2007 1:11pm by RuenBahamut

Edited, Oct 8th 2007 1:12pm by RuenBahamut

next time you are in BG tell me how many times a pally judges anything at all on you besides dmg ones.

and goddam if i had more judgements while grinding every beast in Nagrand for quests. my mage and W/E plowed through 30 Windrocs, Evocated, killed 30 Windroc IIs, mana gemed, and solo'd Daddy Windroc. i'd rather just skip those ***** quests as a pally.

It would give a bit more usefulness to Ret in 5 mans where you may not have more than the one paladin, but yeah, CS does fill that role in raids where you likely have 2-3 other paladins to put up a judgement for the Ret paladin to keep up.