torn between the twoFollow

I have a problem similar to tehawesomeguy's but there is a difference: I am looking to do mostly PvP and only the odd heroic here and there. I cant decide between my Ret paladin and my Enchant shaman. paly:http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&n=Smokythanoob shaman: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&n=Maalee

With the info they have given us on Wotlk it sounds like retribution paladin's will be getting a huge buff in dps for wotlk but I keep hearing it gets back to lackluster or close to that at level 76. (if anyone can clear this up that would really help)

As for what I want to do in PvP: I would like to do good damage while being able to throw in an emergency heal or saving ability for my allies.

what they have shown so far is close but not quite enough in terms of emergency abilities for shamans and I know nothing on the dps paladins are getting.


Any help would be much appreciated.

i'll give you the best piece of advice:

stop spending your honor pts on leveling gear! you must of spent 30k on pieces that you will replace in a level or 2. thats enough to buy at least 2 pieces of Merc gear at lvl 70.

oh, and level both toons. WotLK is at least 3 months away.

Don't believe a word of what you hear about class balancing in the beta up to this point. Balancing has hardly even started yet. I guarantee what is currently in the beta will change entirely at least 20 more times before it goes live. There are two kinds of "testers" that I'm REALLY starting to hate in my time with the beta.

1. People who just want to "preview" Wrath and see what all the hype is about. Really, if they can't do their duty as a beta *tester* then what's the point in spending all that time playing only to have their characters wiped at the end of the beta. Not only that, they won't get to experience the "Wowness" factor when the live version actually launches because they've seen it (mind you, in a hodge-podged version).

2. People who post/discuss how the beta is balanced with people who aren't involved in testing. On the surface it's innocent, and some communities may enjoy hearing it... but NOTHING will be the same when the game goes live. All it does is create hype and opinions that will be totally invalid in a few months. The worst is when those people who aren't involved in the testing decide to hit the various forums and complain that someone told them the balance was screwed as if it was gospel.

In my opinion, all of the abilities that Ret needs to be unique and successful (and more useful than strictly 1 per 25 man raid) in both PvE and PvP are in place. All of the info on these abilities is available from official Blizzard sources -- what's left to do is balance these tools with the other classes. That's something that changes every build, so we can't make any judgments on it right now.

That's exactly what you should be thinking. Also it's been stated (per a blue post) the current pally ret damage is FAR above what it should be, so it will be nerefed. To what extent they did not say, but Ret pallies were never designed to take the place of a "pure" DPSer and Blizzard has a funny way of stikcing to their "vision" of what each class should be capable of.

This is particularly relevant to Ret in raids right now. Putting aside enjoyability and game-play factors (which are a little too complicated to make general statements about) the only real reason that Rets are raiding high end content is because it's almost necessary that you have one in your raid. SPLAT25 without one is a little hellish, and one contributes huge dividends to BT, Hyjal, and even lower content (where they can actually compete on DPS terms rather than on utility terms).

On the one hand, making them less required (one at least) for Wrath raiding will reduce the demand for Rets in raids. On the other hand, the same changes made to other classes will bring them back on par as a choice. I'm very excited to see how the Ret balancing works out by the time the expansion goes live. Though I don't actually play the spec, looking forward to seeing how the best utility class since the Shadow Priest turns out :D



Posts about the beta are fine. It's good that the community knows what direction things are going. I've made some very plain comments myself about the direction the beta is taking on a few forums. All of this information can be seen (either directly or by inferring) by reading Blue posts and patch notes for the various builds though. Blizzard might not come right out and say that they're nerfing Blood hard, but glancing at the Death Knight changes will say that. Reading Blue posts that say that Ret will be getting reduced but will start scaling a little better is the same deal. Posting about those things just raises awareness of Blizzard's plans, which is perfectly fine. Seeing people post "OMG Blood is so OP, I can walk all over the universe with my giant unstoppable army of the undead and wipe out all of mankind" followed by screenshots and/or videos of it doesn't really help though. It can be valuable in the tester community so that everyone can help in future balancing, but it just makes other communities whine and complain and think something totally false about the expansion.

You know how you seem a little worried that the reference to society's advancement as far as race is concerned might be a little controversial?

Kalgan is an even more controversial topic. The fact is that Kalgan is one of Blizzard's WoW developers. It is also a fact that Kalgan likes Warriors a great deal and that he's publicly announced his dislike for Warlocks (from a "playing against them" perspective) several times. The controversy comes up in that many people believe that a series of Warlock nerfs and Warrior buffs a good while ago were directly because of this, since he went on a hissyfit about hating locks shortly before they started.

Even now there are quite a few people that are convinced that "Kalgan's holding them back" or that "Kalgan is keeping Warriors OP". Read into it what you want, but remember this -- there are other Blizzard developers working on WoW. It's not like one person controls the universe over there.

I'm definitely not calling you a racist, but it's a little naive to presume that racism no longer exists in the 21st century. Racism is not an easy thing to get rid of. The only way to actually do it is to make the differences in race inconsequential.

I mean, the French used to hate the English until they both discovered black people and started hating them instead. It's only once you literally do not notice that someone's black that you get over racial prejudice.