And here are the Ret changesFollow

Is your dam log saying that DS is doing holy damage?

Actually Tommyguns, you're wrong. Beta testers COULDN'T provide any guidance, because they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing, dmg wise. There were so many pally bugs, that their dmg was completely insane, like DS critting for 16k dmg at lvl 73 insane. There were dmg modifier bugs and stuff which made it impossible for pallies to report anything other than "can't test anything due to bugs". Thats why the guys at EJ haven't been able to come up with the best rotation using rawr, cause stuff is still bugged. Thats also why we didn't get fixed before the changes went live. They weren't sure if our dmg was a result of the bugs. They removed the bugs before the patch went live, but didn't have time for testing before the patch.

Also, to Mikelolol, you said you have never seen a class/spec do such burst dmg...Ask ppl about the TOEP/ZHC mages. They would 1 shot ppl...evey time. 3 minute mages were only slightly less bursty against others.

A side benefit, divine storm now hits through Cloak Of Shadows.

Granted, not as hard.

Unfortunatly from what I have been able to learn, is that this nerf is only going to get worse, were gonna lose the 40% crit damage boost and get a straight 8 or so damage increase and a bleed, like deep wounds that works off of DS crits. So if they do take it that far, the class will go from 1000 dps, back down to 700 ish, that really disapoints me, I was hoping they would run with the one post, the one where CS gets made into a sundering secondary affect ontop of its damage to get our crit damage back, say like a buff we get that stacks up to 4 or so to get our 40% back, at least that way in pvp it wouldn`t be 3 second kills, and pve our damage would stay the same, Oh and I wish they could change DS back to holy damage again. I loved tanking as ret. Now I can`t hold agro.


Heres to hoping blizz doesn`t destroy us.

How so? Warriors have what, 11k armor in PVP with 50% mitigation? I know my mage has 4k armor self buffed and ~24% damage mitigation.

So divine storm damage is dropped 24% even on me, a squishy in PVP, and up to 50% on warriors, higher on sword + board warriors, and I'm not sure what kind of armor bears are rocking these days with the new changes but it's probably even higher then sword + board.

Where in PVE (I assume you mean raiding?) bosses don't actually have a great deal of armor to begin with, then it's reduced through sunders.

It definately strikes me as a PVP nerf vs. a PVE raiding nerf. Maybe by PVE you mean grinding high armor mobs, I guess it's slight there, but overall it's not much different in PVE but quite different in PVP.

Mages in PVP gear with frost armor have ~4k+ armor, priests with their armor buff have 5000+, leather wearers (rogues) have 4500+. I guess the squishiest class would be a warlock (2500 armor with no self armor buffs that grant +armor) so you might only see a ~15% DPS loss on those targest. But against anyone else in PVP it's between 25% to 60% DPS loss on them.

The only classes that really rely on their armour in PvP are warriors and druids shifting to bear form. DS screwed them over the most.

For the other classes it's really quite meh. For example, every single spell ever ignores armour totally, but I don't see warriors complaining about Ice Lance. It's just that before DS was a spell, like any other shock/bolt/dot any other caster could cast, and therefore bypassed armour. Now it's a physical move and really, kinda poopy considering that it's a 51-point talent. I mean, it hits for around 900 now.

I can't really argue because I thought it was physical damage initially, but it'd be nice if the healing % was buffed a little, to make up for the fact that it's not doing as much damage as it was probably intended to do. Still, the nerfs aren't crippling or even very significant, and I'm not having any less fun than I was before. And it certainly hasn't impacted on our PvE performance at all, seeing as I managed to out-DPS our guild's two best hunters last night in a ZA run.

I really think there's been too much immediate focus and controversy on ret, which has really clouded any analysis of the performance of the other classes. Feral druids put out just as much burst as retadins, I've seen mages take people in brutal down with two hits, and arms warriors are even scarier than they were before, even if they are afraid to go near the pally. The central issue is that every other class could take down another class in six seconds, but pallies could do it while applying a six-second stun, which gave people the false impression that they could have had a chance if they hadn't been stunned. The truth is that the massive DPS boost every class has received means that PvP is much quicker now, and six-second fights are kinda the norm. People just got the most upset with paladins and thus expressed the loudest complaints, and thus ret is the only class getting a nerf because all the others aren't showing up on the QQ radar.

Really? PvE nerf? You get to stun/incapacitate raid mobs now?

Hammer of Justice doesn't even interrupt raid mobs, much less stun..

ya, you can actually. not so much raid bosses, but everything up to.

think of the impact on 5man or 10man mobs and elites. not just your own 6s stun, but im usually excited to run with a stun happy rogue.

this will have more impact than your 1 stun every 60 secs in BGs.(2 if your a noob using CS instead of Judgement during a Repentence).

If you reread what he said, he was saying that the change affected PVE the most, but PVP wise, warriors and druids benefitted the most from the change, because now that it's a physical attack, their armor negates most of the dmg, whereas the nonwarriors and druids benefitted the least, due to the low armor. You basically questioned what he said, then made a statement that was exactly what he was saying.

Edited, Oct 20th 2008 12:10am by VRTFirestarter

I can see a distinct difference in PvP performance before and after the nerf. I'd say the situation is fine right now. A ret pally can still shred most melee, but they can get kited ridiculously easily, and now that the initial burst no longer one-shots people there's that three-second gap when the pally has no abilities off cooldown for his opponent to react; in the case of melee that's an opportune time to disarm and completely emasculate their damage. That DS change really did make a massive difference.

I've noticed no impact at all on my PvE performance. Topped damage in ZA last night basically in crappy PvP gear.

Something that just occurred to me: will the new Righteous Vengeance dot be a magic effect or a bleed? Solely in relation to Cloak of Shadows.

Gaud, you slightly overstate. The debuff that prevents invulnerability is now 3 minute duration; there is no way at all a pally can pop both DS and BoP on himself in the same fight. LoH is 20 min cooldown, so he has that once per BG. His standard cooldowns (Art of war/FoL, one invulnerability every 3 is minutes) give him the same survivability as a resto druid/disc priest, maybe worse, actually. And as of this week, I can waste people in greens before my hammer stun expires, but I CANNOT drop someone comparatively geared within one HoJ duration.

OK, you did overstate, you even admitted it after you claimed you didn't. No one is going to fight any singly other character for three minutes, you would normally have to "kill" a ret pally twice in a single fight, not four times. You claimed four times, which is flat out false, the limit is three if he has LoH off cooldown, and again, thats once per bg and as you point out not at all in arena.

Now you say its not burst damage that bothers you, but durability. I again say that this is now exactly the same as resto druid, disc priest, holy pally, and potentially several other builds. a geared resto druid pre patch could outlast anything, and isn't likely to go oom post patch, either. Why is it a problem to you that ret pallies are now the same as any number of other specs?