so, i know some of this will change several more times before WotLK goes live. however, the direction this build is going is great for prot, possibly good for holy, and meh for ret.
prot pallies have 3 main changes this build and all 3 are great changes imo.
blessing of sanctuary doesn't seem to do threat anymore, but being 3% damage reduction it scales better with the content you're at and is useful to anyone that might take any damage including AoE. on top of that the mana/rage/energy/runic power return on blocks, parries, and dodges will help ease the mana starvation pallies have had. 2% max mana means every time we block, parry or dodge we'll get around 100 mana (assuming around 5k mana pool with warrior tanking gear).
toughness now reduces the duration of movement slowing affects by 10/20/30/40/50% in addition to increasing armor by 2/4/6/8/10%. i'll gladly take a free 50% reduction to things that slow me down.
shield specialization now increases shield block value by 10/20/30% instead of increasing the amount absorbed. this should mean the same amount blocked as before, but on top of that more threat from ShoR.
holy is just getting a redisigned Beacon of light that may or may not be better than Sheath of Light for group healing/tank healing. now instead of a 10yard AoE HoT it makes that target the beacon to everyone in 40 yards healing the target for 100% of the effective healing you do to those party/raid members in 40 yards. this allows us while tank healing to watch raid health and throw heals out there to keep your raid up too while not sacrificing your primary target to do so.
retribution pallies didn't get so much love this patch, however....
Improved Blessing of Might now only increases BoM by 5/10/15/20/25% putting it only 5% ahead of the current talent but half what they had been tempting us with in the beta up till now. and it doesn't stack with warrior Battle shout so its even more limiting for us and especially for warriors since theirs is only 2 mins.
Judgements of the Wise now is a similar mechanism to that of Hunters and SPriests. it now causes our judgements to increase the mana regeneration of up to 10 raid members by .5% max mana per second (2.5% max mana MP5). this means instead of keeping 3 nearby mana users topped off on mana (ok, so maybe it was a little OP... i still liked it) we now give up to 10 mana users between 125MP5 (for 5000 max mana pool) and 250MP5 or higher (for 10k max mana pool). really its not a bad talent, but far less attractive than it was before. Ret pallies will likely still be OOM long before many other classes (although Divine Plea will help with this too and GC posted saying they know its not fun to always go oom in the first minute so they're gonna work on it). also i have yet to figure out how this stacks with a shadow priest or hunters abilities.
one other indirect nerf to ret is rogues master poisiner talent or whatever it was called. no longer will you want a ret pally in your raid when a rogue can give the raid the same (non-stacking) 3% crit debuff so likey a raid will have a rogue for their dps (what good raid doesn't) and a hunter cause there's soo many of them and they are also great dps. there's the 3% crit, MP5 and AP buff that used to be the reason to bring a ret... that and scaling back ret dps (which again, was admittedly OP) and no longer being needed to keep up other pallies judgemnts means there'll be less reason to bring a ret as it stands now.
i realize much of this may change, as a pally i'm excited about our tanking (they've addressed my biggest frustrations with it),
curious to see how our healing will be (SoL build still seems very intriguing and even a BoL build now seems like a valid possibility) and just a little concerned about the direction the last couple beta builds have seemed to be taking retribution. Bliz's stated goal for retribution and balance for all class/spec combo's gives me hope for some change in the next 2-3 months before release. but at the same time i can't help seeing the directions they seem to be going and it worries me as a ret pally at heart. its bad enough that i've resigned myself to specc'ing prot for Kara/ZA runs and just being Ret for 25mans in TBC. unless blizz has something in the works to give ret a use in raids or keeps us at our current dps i'll likely end up prot for everything besides leveling/grinding... nice to know my healer will still be useful though.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 4:46pm by toolofjesus
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I'll still insist on the raid having a Ret around for the Improved Retribution Aura since I'll be resigned to my new Improved Devotion Aura ;)
Seriously though, I'm in agreement here. The first big changes to Ret really filled me with hope. Granted they were OP, but tweaking with numbers could have easily fixed that imo. Now it seems though that these new things given to Ret are going to become like the original Protection tree: a hodge-podge of abilities that don't mesh with each other and do the opposite of what they were intended to do.
I really hope that things will turn back around for Ret in future builds.
That said though, I'm getting really excited to see the new Prot stuff in action ^^ Yay! lol
Seriously though, I'm in agreement here. The first big changes to Ret really filled me with hope. Granted they were OP, but tweaking with numbers could have easily fixed that imo. Now it seems though that these new things given to Ret are going to become like the original Protection tree: a hodge-podge of abilities that don't mesh with each other and do the opposite of what they were intended to do.
I really hope that things will turn back around for Ret in future builds.
That said though, I'm getting really excited to see the new Prot stuff in action ^^ Yay! lol
Quote:
holy is just getting a redisigned Beacon of light that may or may not be better than Sheath of Light for group healing/tank healing. now instead of a 10yard AoE HoT it makes that target the beacon to everyone in 40 yards healing the target for 100% of the effective healing you do to those party/raid members in 40 yards.
Wow - if I understand this correctly, Beacon will now heal the target for 6k (just for example), AND HoT all raid memebers within 40 yds for a total of 6k per person? If that's the case, this just became a super powerful spell.
So Beacon could essentially heal 25 people on a 25-man raid? 6k x 25 = 150k healing...wow.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 9:02am by YJMark
No, as I understand it the old effect of Beacon has been replaced entirely. Now if you make the tank the Beacon and you heal some DPS for 6k the tank will also recieve 6k healing, but noone else will get any healing.
That sux. So it's a crappy version of Chain Heal. Only 2 targets get healed, and one HAS to be the Beacon. Yes, it's an improvement over what we currently have in TBC, but not nearly what I was hoping.
I think Sheath of Light just took a major jump ahead of Beacon (imho). Which is cool, because I like all the crit & heal bonuses in Ret :)
I think Sheath of Light just took a major jump ahead of Beacon (imho). Which is cool, because I like all the crit & heal bonuses in Ret :)
I also feel that they are swinging the nerfbat a bit too hard.
Art of War original was awesome (5/10/15% chance for judgements to do double damage), ok it was a bit OP but as Maul and ToJ state it could have been adjusted so it was a bit more realistic.
They instead changed it to decreasing damage taken by 1/2/3% and 33/66/100% chance of removing a stun which quite frankly is very poor compared to the original and I for one will not bother with it.
If they retain that change to AOW then they should rename it as the ability has nothing to do with art or war, an appropriate name may be 'minor damage reduction' or 'Spare talent points parking' or something.
They also nerfed vengance to stacking twice instead of 3 times.
Crusader strike is now just a hit and does not refresh judgements.
Now the changes to Imp BOM and JotW.
As Toj said there is (again) no reason (or maybe less of one) to take a ret pally anywhere. I don't know why they didn't just make some tweaks to the damage output i.e. AOW doing 5/10/15% more damage if procs for example instead of the double damage.
It would not surprise me if the final ret tree looke like:
ImpBoM - Decreases your attack power by 10/20/30/40/50%
Benediction - increases mana cost of your seals and judgenments by 20/40/60/80/100%
Imp Judgements: Does 10/20% of the damage of the judgement to you.
Heart of the Crusader: Increases the chance that the target will critically hit YOU by 1/2/3%.
Deflection (why in ret?) Increases all ememies chance of parrying your attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Vindication: Chance to decrease your stats by 10/20%.
Conviction: Increases the chance all ememies will critically hit you with melee and spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
SoC: Chance to cause 70% weapon damage to you, when judges causes x-y damage to you, 5x that if you are stunned.
Eye for an Eye: You take 25/50% of the damage of all criticals that happen within 40 yeards of you.
Imp ret aura: Increases the damage you take from each enemy hit by x-y
Crusade: Undead, humaniods and beasts do 1/2/3% more damage to you.
2h weapon specialisation: Decreases the damage you do with 2h weapons by 2/4/6%
Sanctified Retribution: You take 2% additional damage and 2% of the damage caused to any of your party/raid members within 40 yards.
Sheath of Light: You are covered in a sheath of light that makes it really easy for enemies to spot you from half a zone away, reduces healing on you by 30%. Makes you look like a glowing *****.
Vengeance: heals the target for 1/2/3/4/5% of their health each time you hit, stacks up to 10 times.
Judgements od the wise: Gives 20% of your mana to whoever is within 40 yeards of you at the time, if there are no mana users you take the amount in damage and dance uncontrollably for 20 seconds.
Sanctified Seals: Increases the chance of all enemies critically hitting you by 1/2/3%, also has a 5/10/15% of randomly sharding one of your equipped items.
Repentance: You are incapacitated for up to 1 min (20 seconds in pvp) you unequip all of your items and delete 20% of the gold you are carrying.
Divine purpose: You feel really good about yourself which compells all NPC's and players within 40 yards to attack you and mug you for your gold. Players attacking can take 10G from you each time they beat you down.
Fanatasism: You get all lairy and unreasonable and believe that you are right under any circumstances, you have a 1% chance of dealing damage equivelent to 100% of an enemies HP to a single target.
Sanctified Wrath. You have a 1/2/3% chance of recieveing 100% of your HP in damage every time someone spams trade.
Swift Retribution: You take 1/2/3% more damage 1/2/3% faster.
Crusader Strike: A weapon strike that causes 10% of weapon damage.
Art of War: you take 1/2/3% more damage and has a 33/66/100% chance of doubling the duration of stuns against you.
Righteous Vengeance: You have upset your god, each time you hit a target there is a 1/2/3/4/5% chance that 6 little cherubs will appear and start attacking you, each cherub is a ?? 25 man raid boss. These cherubs will GY camp you for up to 30 mins. Stackable.
Divine Storm A weapon attack that has a chance to do some damage to someone at some point, though not necessarily right now. Also causes a rain cloud to appear and rain on you, occasional lightning strikes hit you for 40% of your health, reduces healing effects by 90%.
...........................................................
I jest, I do think that they are starting to get carried away with the nerfstick, I like my pally and I really enjoy playing ret, it is just unfortunate that he will never see the inside of a raid instance and only gets to see inside dungeons as holy or a tank.
Someone has mentioned that before, that pallies were powerful at the beginning of TBC but got nerfed into the ground,then they got some reasonable abilities back so we are where we are now.
They were also worried that it was gonna happen again.
Art of War original was awesome (5/10/15% chance for judgements to do double damage), ok it was a bit OP but as Maul and ToJ state it could have been adjusted so it was a bit more realistic.
They instead changed it to decreasing damage taken by 1/2/3% and 33/66/100% chance of removing a stun which quite frankly is very poor compared to the original and I for one will not bother with it.
If they retain that change to AOW then they should rename it as the ability has nothing to do with art or war, an appropriate name may be 'minor damage reduction' or 'Spare talent points parking' or something.
They also nerfed vengance to stacking twice instead of 3 times.
Crusader strike is now just a hit and does not refresh judgements.
Now the changes to Imp BOM and JotW.
As Toj said there is (again) no reason (or maybe less of one) to take a ret pally anywhere. I don't know why they didn't just make some tweaks to the damage output i.e. AOW doing 5/10/15% more damage if procs for example instead of the double damage.
It would not surprise me if the final ret tree looke like:
ImpBoM - Decreases your attack power by 10/20/30/40/50%
Benediction - increases mana cost of your seals and judgenments by 20/40/60/80/100%
Imp Judgements: Does 10/20% of the damage of the judgement to you.
Heart of the Crusader: Increases the chance that the target will critically hit YOU by 1/2/3%.
Deflection (why in ret?) Increases all ememies chance of parrying your attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Vindication: Chance to decrease your stats by 10/20%.
Conviction: Increases the chance all ememies will critically hit you with melee and spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
SoC: Chance to cause 70% weapon damage to you, when judges causes x-y damage to you, 5x that if you are stunned.
Eye for an Eye: You take 25/50% of the damage of all criticals that happen within 40 yeards of you.
Imp ret aura: Increases the damage you take from each enemy hit by x-y
Crusade: Undead, humaniods and beasts do 1/2/3% more damage to you.
2h weapon specialisation: Decreases the damage you do with 2h weapons by 2/4/6%
Sanctified Retribution: You take 2% additional damage and 2% of the damage caused to any of your party/raid members within 40 yards.
Sheath of Light: You are covered in a sheath of light that makes it really easy for enemies to spot you from half a zone away, reduces healing on you by 30%. Makes you look like a glowing *****.
Vengeance: heals the target for 1/2/3/4/5% of their health each time you hit, stacks up to 10 times.
Judgements od the wise: Gives 20% of your mana to whoever is within 40 yeards of you at the time, if there are no mana users you take the amount in damage and dance uncontrollably for 20 seconds.
Sanctified Seals: Increases the chance of all enemies critically hitting you by 1/2/3%, also has a 5/10/15% of randomly sharding one of your equipped items.
Repentance: You are incapacitated for up to 1 min (20 seconds in pvp) you unequip all of your items and delete 20% of the gold you are carrying.
Divine purpose: You feel really good about yourself which compells all NPC's and players within 40 yards to attack you and mug you for your gold. Players attacking can take 10G from you each time they beat you down.
Fanatasism: You get all lairy and unreasonable and believe that you are right under any circumstances, you have a 1% chance of dealing damage equivelent to 100% of an enemies HP to a single target.
Sanctified Wrath. You have a 1/2/3% chance of recieveing 100% of your HP in damage every time someone spams trade.
Swift Retribution: You take 1/2/3% more damage 1/2/3% faster.
Crusader Strike: A weapon strike that causes 10% of weapon damage.
Art of War: you take 1/2/3% more damage and has a 33/66/100% chance of doubling the duration of stuns against you.
Righteous Vengeance: You have upset your god, each time you hit a target there is a 1/2/3/4/5% chance that 6 little cherubs will appear and start attacking you, each cherub is a ?? 25 man raid boss. These cherubs will GY camp you for up to 30 mins. Stackable.
Divine Storm A weapon attack that has a chance to do some damage to someone at some point, though not necessarily right now. Also causes a rain cloud to appear and rain on you, occasional lightning strikes hit you for 40% of your health, reduces healing effects by 90%.
...........................................................
I jest, I do think that they are starting to get carried away with the nerfstick, I like my pally and I really enjoy playing ret, it is just unfortunate that he will never see the inside of a raid instance and only gets to see inside dungeons as holy or a tank.
Someone has mentioned that before, that pallies were powerful at the beginning of TBC but got nerfed into the ground,then they got some reasonable abilities back so we are where we are now.
They were also worried that it was gonna happen again.
SamwiseTheBrave wrote:
Sanctified Wrath. You have a 1/2/3% chance of recieveing 100% of your HP in damage every time someone spams trade.
That one made me lol big time. If that were the case it would take a Ret Paladin longer to cross a capital city then it ever took me when I was playing on dial up (seriously it took like a half hour to cross IF ... how did I ever survive ...).
Back on topic though I did read that they are working on something with Crusader Strike to replace its old effect of refreshing Judgements, but haven't decided on what to give it yet. The way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if they just leave it as a pure damage ability, but I hope that maybe it'll have a chance to refund mana or something. Ret really does need more mana then what is currently in the beta build.
so, i did some more thinking about this, read some blue posts on the beta forums (sad that it takes me so long to read those...) and i think i kinda see where they're going with some of the ret changes. won't say i "like" them, but i think i understand and can live with it. the change to judgements of the wise was explained as being an attempt at greater raid utility rather than being necessarily a personal buff. it will hit the 10 people with the lowest mana (ret pally will likely always be there since we start out with the least... every time we judge and it re-procs it will reevauate who the 10 with the lowest mana are. while 125 mp5 for my ret pally won't be very much compared to what i use, it will be something. on the other hand giving over 250 mp5 to healers/casters when they need it will be quite helpful. on my holy pally if i got an extra 250 mp5 i'd be gaining mana even without stopping healing. assumably, this won't stack, but it would seem if you more than 10 mana users having at least 2 of either ret pally, surv hunter, or shadow priest will be good so possibly everyone in the group can be getting the benefit. we'll see how that goes, but i half think this might actually be a positive move now.
on the mana issue, GC said that they realize playing a toon that does a lot of damage but is OOM fast is no fun and that they are looking at addressing it :) we'll see that turns out. i've heard some suggestions i'm pretty sure won't happen, and the one i'd personally like to see is since CS isn't really doing much right now, let it give us back a % of the damage done as mana. even if its low % it would help.
the rogue poisons talent not stacking with the pallies heart of the crusader however still annoys me. also the warriors Battle Cry not stacking with BoM. pretty much it does seem like if they plan on each class getting 2.5 raid spots on average i can only see possibly 2 pallies (kings/sanc for tanks and melee, kings/wis for casters). if theres even only 2 warriors one will likely keep up commanding shout and the other Battle shout, so BoM will be used in 5 mans only as best i can tell.
a third pally isn't bringing a 3rd blessing. with LoH being on a 16 min CD for holy and 20 min for prot/ret and not costing mana, once you have a prot pally and a holy pally if for some reason you thought you'd need a 3rd LoH wouldn't you bring another 16 min CD one that also boosts your armor temporarily. after JoW and JoL what other judgement is so useful you'd fill a raid slot with a 3rd pally for it? aura? prot will bring devo increasing all healing done by 3%. any holy pally can bring their improved Concentration Aura. SoL specc'd healin Pallies can easily bring the 2% damage increase and 50% extra damage dealt from Ret aura on their way down Ret to SoL, so all a Ret has there is the little bit of haste they get farther down the tree.. so in the end we'll have (hopefully) competitive DPS with very minimal utility that a tank or healer can't bring (or a SV hunter or spriest in regards to being a mana battery). this would put us in a better position if it wasn't for other classes getting the same utility we have (sometimes better) and still have utility features we don't have (interrupt being probably the one i wish i had most since we're already getting a CC in the new repentance). and the haste we bring as a ret pally likely isn't ging to stack with an enh shaman's WF totem and will be less haste it seems.
all in all, i think solo'ing will be much easier as ret (already was easy, but easier s nice too), we'll get more 5 and maybe 10 man invites, but the 25 mans i think will be few and far between for us. there will too esily be other pallies to bring most of what we have and most of the other specs to bring the rest.
this is just my feelings and i'm hoping things will change again for the better. i'd honestly rather have a little more utility, but if we aren't getting that dps on par with the rogues, fury warriors, enh shamans etc would make up for it. if we all have equivelant utility, then the choice will be made based on our skill and gear compared to other classes/specs that bring that same utility. i understand they don't want any one class or spec to be "essential" anymore and are instead designing essential utilities and giving each one to a few specs to allow for more variety in raids... i just hope they remember this when they go to balance our dps. if they leave our damage as bursty as it is in the current beta build thats fine i guess..
sorry, i'm done for now. this turned out more negative than i intended. i really am hopeful for the future of ret, i just think when they turn their eyes to pallies both Ret and holy will honestly need some loving... prot is getting to be a lot more fun already on beta.
on the mana issue, GC said that they realize playing a toon that does a lot of damage but is OOM fast is no fun and that they are looking at addressing it :) we'll see that turns out. i've heard some suggestions i'm pretty sure won't happen, and the one i'd personally like to see is since CS isn't really doing much right now, let it give us back a % of the damage done as mana. even if its low % it would help.
the rogue poisons talent not stacking with the pallies heart of the crusader however still annoys me. also the warriors Battle Cry not stacking with BoM. pretty much it does seem like if they plan on each class getting 2.5 raid spots on average i can only see possibly 2 pallies (kings/sanc for tanks and melee, kings/wis for casters). if theres even only 2 warriors one will likely keep up commanding shout and the other Battle shout, so BoM will be used in 5 mans only as best i can tell.
a third pally isn't bringing a 3rd blessing. with LoH being on a 16 min CD for holy and 20 min for prot/ret and not costing mana, once you have a prot pally and a holy pally if for some reason you thought you'd need a 3rd LoH wouldn't you bring another 16 min CD one that also boosts your armor temporarily. after JoW and JoL what other judgement is so useful you'd fill a raid slot with a 3rd pally for it? aura? prot will bring devo increasing all healing done by 3%. any holy pally can bring their improved Concentration Aura. SoL specc'd healin Pallies can easily bring the 2% damage increase and 50% extra damage dealt from Ret aura on their way down Ret to SoL, so all a Ret has there is the little bit of haste they get farther down the tree.. so in the end we'll have (hopefully) competitive DPS with very minimal utility that a tank or healer can't bring (or a SV hunter or spriest in regards to being a mana battery). this would put us in a better position if it wasn't for other classes getting the same utility we have (sometimes better) and still have utility features we don't have (interrupt being probably the one i wish i had most since we're already getting a CC in the new repentance). and the haste we bring as a ret pally likely isn't ging to stack with an enh shaman's WF totem and will be less haste it seems.
all in all, i think solo'ing will be much easier as ret (already was easy, but easier s nice too), we'll get more 5 and maybe 10 man invites, but the 25 mans i think will be few and far between for us. there will too esily be other pallies to bring most of what we have and most of the other specs to bring the rest.
this is just my feelings and i'm hoping things will change again for the better. i'd honestly rather have a little more utility, but if we aren't getting that dps on par with the rogues, fury warriors, enh shamans etc would make up for it. if we all have equivelant utility, then the choice will be made based on our skill and gear compared to other classes/specs that bring that same utility. i understand they don't want any one class or spec to be "essential" anymore and are instead designing essential utilities and giving each one to a few specs to allow for more variety in raids... i just hope they remember this when they go to balance our dps. if they leave our damage as bursty as it is in the current beta build thats fine i guess..
sorry, i'm done for now. this turned out more negative than i intended. i really am hopeful for the future of ret, i just think when they turn their eyes to pallies both Ret and holy will honestly need some loving... prot is getting to be a lot more fun already on beta.
ok, you guys have finally pushed enough of my buttons to walk across the building to the machine that has all my log on info so i can post here.
here is a Blizz post for you all about the buff situation. also know this post, has been posted about 100 different times due to the very same complaints from EVERY class in the game, every spec in the game. not just Ret pallies.
Also, use a web site like MMO-Champion to keep up on the Blizz posting, they have a blue tracker program and post everything important that is said by blizz on their front page. Blizz have said repeatedly that they understand about the mana issues they created with Ret, they did it on purpose to test some number, Paladins are getting another pass again soon where they intend to fix it.
Blizzard is giving out so much information about their intentions that its amazing that people still complain about the current build.
Edit: im getting so worked up that im wondering if i should just make a new thread of this. and copy pasting it in every board.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 9:59am by RuenBahamut
here is a Blizz post for you all about the buff situation. also know this post, has been posted about 100 different times due to the very same complaints from EVERY class in the game, every spec in the game. not just Ret pallies.
Quote:
Class diversity in raid
That is pretty much the point. No class brings anything so unique that you want them to come at the expense of others. You should earn your raid spot because you know how to tank and have some decent gear and a guild who can back you up. Maybe you're a great leader or maybe you don't argue. Maybe you've got a great sense of humor or are a good guild recruiter. All of those are better reasons to get into a group IMHO than because your buff is a unique snowflake. Quite honestly I'd rather raid with my friends than some jerk who has the perfect buff. And I really don't want to send one of my friends off to reroll a level 1 dude because we both happened to choose rogues at first level six months ago and now our group is suffering for want of a buff. If you can tank, you'll get into raids.
That is pretty much the point. No class brings anything so unique that you want them to come at the expense of others. You should earn your raid spot because you know how to tank and have some decent gear and a guild who can back you up. Maybe you're a great leader or maybe you don't argue. Maybe you've got a great sense of humor or are a good guild recruiter. All of those are better reasons to get into a group IMHO than because your buff is a unique snowflake. Quite honestly I'd rather raid with my friends than some jerk who has the perfect buff. And I really don't want to send one of my friends off to reroll a level 1 dude because we both happened to choose rogues at first level six months ago and now our group is suffering for want of a buff. If you can tank, you'll get into raids.
Also, use a web site like MMO-Champion to keep up on the Blizz posting, they have a blue tracker program and post everything important that is said by blizz on their front page. Blizz have said repeatedly that they understand about the mana issues they created with Ret, they did it on purpose to test some number, Paladins are getting another pass again soon where they intend to fix it.
Blizzard is giving out so much information about their intentions that its amazing that people still complain about the current build.
Edit: im getting so worked up that im wondering if i should just make a new thread of this. and copy pasting it in every board.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 9:59am by RuenBahamut
ha ha ha - you're funny Ruen.
This post seemed more like a discussion and thoughts of some of the latest released information. Isn't that one of the reasons of the forum?
People are just describing what they think are positives and negatives.
This post seemed more like a discussion and thoughts of some of the latest released information. Isn't that one of the reasons of the forum?
People are just describing what they think are positives and negatives.
yeah i know, but i've just been lurking on so many other forums looking for WotLK info. and when you see so many of the same complaint, its starts to make judgment fuzzy.
but to add to the discusion.
its just that, even if we loose all our unique raid utility, they have buffed enough of Rets DPS to more then make up for it. even if they continue to nerf Ret through the floor, as long as they fix the mana issue, which im convinced they will. Ret will be far better off then before. the extra instant attack, plus the boost spell damage, did so much for the spec that it will be hard to keep Ret out of raids. not to mention the indirect buffs that comes from combining things like melee hit/crit and spell hit/crit. our spells get boosts from AP now too. Ret is the TOP DPS on Beta, and not by a small margin. they will get balance/nerfed down. but the point is, that blizzard figured out how to fix Ret, all they need to do is follow through.
the major problem with ret before, was that we didnt scale very well. now all of our abilities scale with our gear Melee DPS gear. and spells scale better with Melee DPS gear then actual spell power gear.
and for unique snowflakes, we still have our Ret aura, and BoM glyph that gives Spell Power. DS still has the healing. and even if the mana battery thing is not all that unique now, its still huge for our raid utility.
Also, the 3% crit is only for Rogue Mutilate spec. which is "currently" not the highest PvE DPS spec. they will be just as rare as Ret pallies. and the Warriors getting our AP buff, well, that only lasts a few minutes over our 30 minute version, ALSO they have another buff they can use in stead where they buff HP. which discussion has shown in other forums that they can/will use just as readily as the AP one.
we have not really lost anything, Ret in my mind has only gained by leaps and bounds. and lost nothing.
well, actually i lost the need to stay herb/alchemy but thats not related at all really. i really liked herb/alch. . . . /cry
Edit: i fail at engrish
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 10:35am by RuenBahamut
but to add to the discusion.
its just that, even if we loose all our unique raid utility, they have buffed enough of Rets DPS to more then make up for it. even if they continue to nerf Ret through the floor, as long as they fix the mana issue, which im convinced they will. Ret will be far better off then before. the extra instant attack, plus the boost spell damage, did so much for the spec that it will be hard to keep Ret out of raids. not to mention the indirect buffs that comes from combining things like melee hit/crit and spell hit/crit. our spells get boosts from AP now too. Ret is the TOP DPS on Beta, and not by a small margin. they will get balance/nerfed down. but the point is, that blizzard figured out how to fix Ret, all they need to do is follow through.
the major problem with ret before, was that we didnt scale very well. now all of our abilities scale with our gear Melee DPS gear. and spells scale better with Melee DPS gear then actual spell power gear.
and for unique snowflakes, we still have our Ret aura, and BoM glyph that gives Spell Power. DS still has the healing. and even if the mana battery thing is not all that unique now, its still huge for our raid utility.
Also, the 3% crit is only for Rogue Mutilate spec. which is "currently" not the highest PvE DPS spec. they will be just as rare as Ret pallies. and the Warriors getting our AP buff, well, that only lasts a few minutes over our 30 minute version, ALSO they have another buff they can use in stead where they buff HP. which discussion has shown in other forums that they can/will use just as readily as the AP one.
we have not really lost anything, Ret in my mind has only gained by leaps and bounds. and lost nothing.
well, actually i lost the need to stay herb/alchemy but thats not related at all really. i really liked herb/alch. . . . /cry
Edit: i fail at engrish
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 10:35am by RuenBahamut
I've been thinking about the changes to WOTLK and WoW in general. It appears to me that they are focusing more on 10-man raid setups rather than 25-man. If you look at the changes its pretty obvious. First, every raid is going to have a 10-man and 25-man version. Now there are 2-3 classes that can spec into the same basic ability (threat transfer, mana regen, lots more CC, etc). In addition, auras and the like now affect the entire raid rather than just your group. This makes it much easier to form a working 10-man from classes that your guildmates enjoy playing. In a 25-man you expect to have at least one of each class, so you will have an int buff, and blessing of salvation, and thunder clap. They are making it so that you can have these "required" buffs and debuffs even when you have less than half of the people.
The reason for this is simple. Blizzard is very very smart. They have seen the trend in MMORPGs in the past, and they have seen their own number of players going down. Not at a fast rate, mind you, but they are already at the 3-year mark and most MMORPGs tend to begin losing a vast majority of their players at this time. It is a credit to their game that so many people have stuck around, and many people still have been starting to play.
So what are they doing? They are preemptively changing the nature of the game to require fewer players to experience the content. How many of us have a guild that can't regularly get 25 people to do the t4 raids? What about just kara? I'm sure we've all experienced a time where we have geared key players online, but just not the numbers. My guild, for example, has had to ally with another guild in order to do gruul's and mag. And there are often people from other guilds filling spots.
Personally, I like the changes. So what if hunters and shadow priests can regen mana like ret can. When there are only 5 slots for DPS (for 10-man progression) I doubt there will always be one of those other classes there, AND be the right spec. Same with BoM and battle shout.
Now, from what I;ve seen by not being in the beta, it looks like ret spec is going to be filler for when you can't bring those other classes. It has the replacement for rogue' +crit debuff which I don't know the name of, windfury, battle shout, mana regen, even some mild aoe damage/healing. To me, it looks like we will be incredibly overpowered in small groups, and get weaker the more other people are in the raid. Since I expect to do 5 and 10 mans, I'm really excited about ret.
The reason for this is simple. Blizzard is very very smart. They have seen the trend in MMORPGs in the past, and they have seen their own number of players going down. Not at a fast rate, mind you, but they are already at the 3-year mark and most MMORPGs tend to begin losing a vast majority of their players at this time. It is a credit to their game that so many people have stuck around, and many people still have been starting to play.
So what are they doing? They are preemptively changing the nature of the game to require fewer players to experience the content. How many of us have a guild that can't regularly get 25 people to do the t4 raids? What about just kara? I'm sure we've all experienced a time where we have geared key players online, but just not the numbers. My guild, for example, has had to ally with another guild in order to do gruul's and mag. And there are often people from other guilds filling spots.
Personally, I like the changes. So what if hunters and shadow priests can regen mana like ret can. When there are only 5 slots for DPS (for 10-man progression) I doubt there will always be one of those other classes there, AND be the right spec. Same with BoM and battle shout.
Now, from what I;ve seen by not being in the beta, it looks like ret spec is going to be filler for when you can't bring those other classes. It has the replacement for rogue' +crit debuff which I don't know the name of, windfury, battle shout, mana regen, even some mild aoe damage/healing. To me, it looks like we will be incredibly overpowered in small groups, and get weaker the more other people are in the raid. Since I expect to do 5 and 10 mans, I'm really excited about ret.
The RuenBahamut of Doom wrote:
its just that, even if we loose all our unique raid utility, they have buffed enough of Rets DPS to more then make up for it. even if they continue to nerf Ret through the floor, as long as they fix the mana issue, which im convinced they will. Ret will be far better off then before. the extra instant attack, plus the boost spell damage, did so much for the spec that it will be hard to keep Ret out of raids.
the buff to dps compared to live is nice, agreed. my concern is that their answer to the OP problems of Ret have seemed counter productive to really balancing us out. too much burst damage, mainly from stunned JoC procs and they reduce vengeance to 2 stacks from 3. we still have too big of a stunned JoC proc seemingly, and i'm sure our dps will likely be further nerfed. if SoC is your seal of choice you are somewhat lower dps overall for PVE, so if they do a similar overall tuning down of SoC it will be even more useless. but if they leave it as is, it really is OP in PVP. if i can go in and stun/JoC a guy in 2v2's while my partner uses his hardest hitting ability we can easily make arena's 2v1 in the first few seconds of the fight. you know blizz has to do something with Ret and my concern based on how i've seen them deal with Ret pallies is they will nerf us too much. without specific utility we are nothing unless our dps stays at least on par with rogues/enh shamans/dps warriors/and death knights. they have also indicated (in earlier blue posts) that they still want rogues to be able to be top dps (or close to it). this likely means ret dps will be toned down one way or another to (best case) rogue level dps or (worst case) lower levels. again we'll see. my point above and even now is that some of the things they've done seem to be leading in the direction of ret being poised for too much of a nerf.
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but the point is, that blizzard figured out how to fix Ret, all they need to do is follow through.
the major problem with ret before, was that we didnt scale very well. now all of our abilities scale with our gear Melee DPS gear.
the major problem with ret before, was that we didnt scale very well. now all of our abilities scale with our gear Melee DPS gear.
i agree that they did great things for our scaling abilities. and part of me really, really hopes they'll continue to keep us as one of the higher dps classes. as much as i'd absolutely love an interupt, i wouldn't even care if i knew that my ret would be elite DPS enough to warrant a raid spot on DPS alone.
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and for unique snowflakes, we still have our Ret aura, and BoM glyph that gives Spell Power. DS still has the healing. and even if the mana battery thing is not all that unique now, its still huge for our raid utility.
Ret Aura can be brought by that SoL spec "holy" pally except for the haste, which is a very minor buff by itself. BoM glyph can again be brought by the SoL pally since the extra AP and SP from imp BoM will actually boost his healing anyway. DS healing is nice and i'm glad that seems to be unlikely to be removed, but it is pretty minor too. the mana battery is the best part imo. it only likely allows for 2 of the classes that can be a mana battery, but while nearly useless for ourselves its great for healers/casters as long as i can keep judging. (yes this is a change of view from my OP lol)
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Also, the 3% crit is only for Rogue Mutilate spec. which is "currently" not the highest PvE DPS spec. they will be just as rare as Ret pallies.
admittedly this is merely forum talk and beta speculation, but a few posts on th wow beta forums were prdicting Mut spec rogues would be the new top choice spec. if its not then you're right, this would be more likely to allow us a spot in raids with a shadow priest as the second mana battery (25mans take 2AA batteries, 10 mans just need 1AAA battery). this will i guess be another wait and see.
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and the Warriors getting our AP buff, well, that only lasts a few minutes over our 30 minute version, ALSO they have another buff they can use in stead where they buff HP. which discussion has shown in other forums that they can/will use just as readily as the AP one.
i'll admit i did forget that battle shout was only 2 minutes. as long as its not more than imp BoM this actually is bad for stacking dps warriors instead of pallies. it isn't hard to have 2 warriors though and one can keep battle shout up and one can keep commanding shout up if need be, so there should be at least 2 warrior spots in a raid.
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we have not really lost anything, Ret in my mind has only gained by leaps and bounds. and lost nothing.
i do hope so. i really do. i just know that we need certain issues balanced down and am concerned they'll be balanced too far down because Rets are considered utility by so many. GC has seemed to want us to beleive they want Ret to be fun to play though more so than it is now, so we'll see.
all in all, i'm sorry Ruen if i was complaining. i started my OP with the prot and Holy changes because i really am excited about the direction Prot is goingand am very curious about how holy or Holy/ret will be for healing come Wrath launch. i might go back and modify my OP to tone down the parts i had since read blue posts about... but that feels soo much like cheating lol.
Zeynothix wrote:
Personally, I like the changes. So what if hunters and shadow priests can regen mana like ret can. When there are only 5 slots for DPS (for 10-man progression) I doubt there will always be one of those other classes there, AND be the right spec. Same with BoM and battle shout.
Now, from what I;ve seen by not being in the beta, it looks like ret spec is going to be filler for when you can't bring those other classes. It has the replacement for rogue' +crit debuff which I don't know the name of, windfury, battle shout, mana regen, even some mild aoe damage/healing. To me, it looks like we will be incredibly overpowered in small groups, and get weaker the more other people are in the raid. Since I expect to do 5 and 10 mans, I'm really excited about ret.
Now, from what I;ve seen by not being in the beta, it looks like ret spec is going to be filler for when you can't bring those other classes. It has the replacement for rogue' +crit debuff which I don't know the name of, windfury, battle shout, mana regen, even some mild aoe damage/healing. To me, it looks like we will be incredibly overpowered in small groups, and get weaker the more other people are in the raid. Since I expect to do 5 and 10 mans, I'm really excited about ret.
yep, i agree. i think i even said something to this effect as far as 5 and 10 mans go in my second post in this thread. it would be very easy to get 3 pallies in a 5 man instance or a 10 man instance.considering 10 classes and one class can fill 3 spots in 5 man that is alittle OP. 25 mans get a lot of mention by bliz posters though, so i don't think they intend 10 mans to really replace 25 mans as the real top raids. its in a 25 man raid that ret loses so much of its utility value. odds of having a BoL and a SoL pally in a 10 man to keep up ret and concentration aura's -- low, odds in a 25 man -- pretty good. odds of having a shadow priest or SV hunter in a 10 man -- about 50%. odds in a 25 man -- almost guaranteed.... etc. this is a curious change from currently where the only size raids you really WANT a ret pally is a 25 man, but in a 10 man we have to either be begging, be the raid leader or know the raid leader really well...
Stunned JoComm right now is pretty OP, but right now all the seals and judgments just got all messed up from the spell power buff we got. and the CS glyph doesnt help either.
i think once they fix those Ret DPS should be sufficiently nerfed.
i just had an idea to fix Stunned JoComm, instead of double damage, just make it a 100% chance to crit on stunned targets. which would achieve the same thing without the double-double happening making it OP.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 1:00pm by RuenBahamut
i think once they fix those Ret DPS should be sufficiently nerfed.
i just had an idea to fix Stunned JoComm, instead of double damage, just make it a 100% chance to crit on stunned targets. which would achieve the same thing without the double-double happening making it OP.
Edited, Sep 4th 2008 1:00pm by RuenBahamut
yeah, that 100% crit chance has been tossed around as a good solution to the double damage. i think it would really be less of a bonus to having a stunned target than people think (judgements already can have well over 50% crit chance) but it would tone down the double damage crits that make this one shot killer in pvp... i'd be content with it i suppose if it meant they could leave most of the rest of our damage alone. we'll see though.
On the subject of Beacon of Light, it is a powerful ability (in reality it's giving you 100% crit chance, after which you can crit again) but still doesnt hold a candle to Sheath of Light. Sheath is in essence a 60% critical effect bonus to heals, the biggest in the whole game, and simultaneously fills the gaping hole in Paladins healing mechanics, HoTs. A Holy Light crit would proc a HoT equal to any in the game, and that's after the initial ubernuke, which didnt even cost that much since it was a crit... a well-geared Paladin crits for over 9k on Holy Light, that's a 6k free HoT over 12sec. I'm not sure I can overstate how excited I am about this talent, and how surprised I am nobody has nerfed it.
And of course, it gives you an excuse to spec a little Retribution and get yourself some solo grinding power, win-win really.
And of course, it gives you an excuse to spec a little Retribution and get yourself some solo grinding power, win-win really.
Sinstralis wrote:
On the subject of Beacon of Light, it is a powerful ability (in reality it's giving you 100% crit chance, after which you can crit again) but still doesnt hold a candle to Sheath of Light. Sheath is in essence a 60% critical effect bonus to heals, the biggest in the whole game, and simultaneously fills the gaping hole in Paladins healing mechanics, HoTs. A Holy Light crit would proc a HoT equal to any in the game, and that's after the initial ubernuke, which didnt even cost that much since it was a crit... a well-geared Paladin crits for over 9k on Holy Light, that's a 6k free HoT over 12sec. I'm not sure I can overstate how excited I am about this talent, and how surprised I am nobody has nerfed it.
And of course, it gives you an excuse to spec a little Retribution and get yourself some solo grinding power, win-win really.
And of course, it gives you an excuse to spec a little Retribution and get yourself some solo grinding power, win-win really.
i don't know... i can double every single heal or get 60% more heal about 30% of the time.... so its 100% increase versus 18% (60% x 30%) increase + a small amount of additional spell power.. the HoT itself doesn't impress me that much compared to the new BoL. the ONLY reason i would spec SoL is the Spell power bonus and conviction. the hot is ok but i'd rather know that if i have to stop healing my tank to heal a dps, my tank will get all the heal too. to me a 2.5k FoL on my tank is better than 500 for 1.5 seconds of a 4k HoT. and hoping i happen to have that HoT up in the first place. the 5% crit from conviction and the couple hundres spell power would both be nice however. i'd say with the way specs are going now i'd love an SoL pally as primary MT healer to keep a hot on him, but i'd really prefer to bring a BoL pally who can be MT healer by healing the OT or DPS or healers. also BoL spec is more than just 100% increase in heals because you now can take that extra 6% haste that you had to miss to get deep enough in Ret for SoL and you are still able to get conviction since it only requires 15 points in Ret.
so final comparison numbers as the talents stand now:
both specs can get 5% crit in Ret - tie
BoL spec = 100% bonus heal (regular and crit)
BoL spec = 6% bonus to haste
total for BoL - 106% bonus healing done
SoL spec = 60% Hot on crit, so assuming 30% crit = 18% average bonus heals assuming you're not overlapping HoTs and wiping the old one out...
SoL spec = 200-300 bonus spellpower = at best 15% or so bonus to healing assuming around 2k sp at 80ish.
total for SoL - ~32% bonus to healing ability
both of these % assume certain conditions. BoL assumes someone other than your main target is taking damage somehow. SoL assumes you don't get a FoL crit right after your HL crit thereby overwriting a 4k HoT with a 1.2k HoT. assuming 30% crit you'll crit almost 1 in 3 heals. this means if you're spamming FoL you'll possibly overwrite the HoT every 4.5 seconds, cutting off just under 3/4 the HoT. with HL it'd be about every 7.5 seconds cutting off just under half the HoT still.... when BoL was garbage this was the better alternative, but IMO BoL is much stronger than SoL now.
i'm sorry some of my numbers were approximations... i usually like better math in these threads but even the sad math in here should illustrate the difference.
Does anyone know the duration of Beacon, and the CD? That would be critical.
If you could keep it up the entire fight, then it's better than Sheath of Light. If you can't, then I'm not so sure.
I also heard on other forums that Beacon will essentially allow you a double heal too. So if you cast Beacon on the tank, and then heal the tank - then tank gets an automatic 200% heals. If it crits - even more. That is HUGE! Who needs a HoT when your heals are doubled in size?
If you could keep it up the entire fight, then it's better than Sheath of Light. If you can't, then I'm not so sure.
I also heard on other forums that Beacon will essentially allow you a double heal too. So if you cast Beacon on the tank, and then heal the tank - then tank gets an automatic 200% heals. If it crits - even more. That is HUGE! Who needs a HoT when your heals are doubled in size?
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If it crits - even more. That is HUGE! Who needs a HoT when your heals are doubled in size?
The downside being, healing aggro. At those levels, even with the global threat increase, it will become very easy to get a critheal and pull an add onto yourself. I did this last night in ZA with a double HL crit for 15k when the tank got slapped around, so Beacon isnt something you could just use with impunity. It also costs mana, and Paladins don't generally stack mp5 (spellcrit being better, usually) so I doubt very much you could keep it up forever. I'd see it as having the most use after a big AoE like Ground Slam/Shatter or Shadow Bolt Volley on Kazzak, when a huge number of people have <50% but the tank is still getting prawned.
Although the math works out in Beacon's favour (as well it bloody should, 51pter versus what amounts to a support talent) I still consider a HoT best for pure raid maintenance. On continuous-damage fights it is absolutely insufferable trying to spam FoL on about ten slowly dying DPSers while watching the tank and my own positioning; the HoT would help keep those folks alive and ease the stress a bit. You can also expect Paladins with SoL to rocket in the healing meters, as those HoTs can fill in the little gaps no Paladin wants to waste a FoL on, but Priests and Druids can happily drop a low-rank HoT for.
In the end you are right, the new Beacon is a supremely unique and powerful raiding talent, but in terms of pure class mechanics a proccable HoT is just a dream come true. Luckily, we are in a position to choose from one of two awesome talents.
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It also costs mana, and Paladins don't generally stack mp5 (spellcrit being better, usually) so I doubt very much you could keep it up forever.
That is the info I'm trying to understand. Does it only count for 1 heal (like Divine Favor), or is it a duration (like lasting for 10 mins)? And is there a CD? If it's only for one heal, then yeah, it just lost its pizzaz. If you can cast it once, and it lasts for 10 mins...then it would be primo.
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The downside being, healing aggro.
Yeah, you would have to watch that closer. But, a good tank can hold threat against the heals they need. Especially from a Paladin.
according to wowhead, Beacon of Light will be a 1.5 second cast, cost 35% base mana, no cooldown and last 1 minute. this means it can be kept up 100% of the time. i'll respec holy when i get home and give this a try to see how it really works.
Thanks. I'm curious to see what happens :)
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