Notes to GhostcrawlerFollow

Some of these things haven't been confirmed yet.

Vengeance
Seal of Command procs don't reset the timer on the Vengeance buff.

Judgement of Light
Does not return the same amount of health as listed in tooltip (less).

Judgements
Can cast judgements on targets that are dying, blowing mana and global cooldown, but without activating Judgements of the Wise.

Righteous Vengeance
Worst talent ever. How many Warriors would get Deep Wounds if it was in the ninth tier, cost five talent points, only proc'd off of Slam and Mortal Strike and could be dispelled? Increase damage or make it a vulnerability debuff.

Divine Storm
Low damage compared to position in the talent tree and the heals are ridiculous. Actually does less damage than Crusader Strike and heals less than Judgement of Light on single targets.

I've read some posts on the O-boards about people going OOM with a simple Judgement of Light -> Crusader Strike -> Divine Storm -> Judgement of Light rotation. Not very cool. I've skipped Divine Storm completely in my solo rotation. Only use it if I'm fighting multiple mobs.

At the same time, Death Knights are swimming in spells and attacks. Hell, my Death Knight is level 59 and already has:

Silence
Reverse charge (pulls the target to you)
Counterspell (melee range)
Pet (can stun)
Snare
2x DoT
DD spell

My Paladin still has to run up to stuff to pull them, because the range on Judgement is so short that you'll body-pull before you even get in range. How much would it hurt to give us a ranged attack? Give Judgement a 30 yard range, or make Hammer of Wrath usable at all times, but with a damage reduction.

We have heals to make up for the lack of silence (one might argue that a Blood Death Knight can heal as well - at least himself), but a counterspell would be nice, or something to prevent casters from kiting us.

::edit::
Wait, this isn't Notepad.

Edited, Nov 30th 2008 5:00pm by Mazra

I would love to see Divine Storm buffed. For where it is on the talent tree as you stated it does terrible damage and the heals are pathetic. I am assuming Blizzard has noticed this and will make some changes soon?

I'm extremely sorry that I have to single you out for this comment. I don't know anything about you and don't want to sound offensive, but for dramatic effect...

How long have you been around? Paladins in general were largely ignored through Vanilla WoW. Which was alright.. Holy Paladins were actually quite strong and DPS and Tanking were really just pipedreams at the time anyway. With TBC, Protection became extremely viable. Blizzard began listening to Paladin tanks and over the course of the expansion's life-time the Protection tree got buffed to on par with other tanks. The Holy tree was buffed to make Paladins very strong healers. They had a special role in groups that almost belonged exclusively to them.

This whole time... Ret was ignored. The Ret community has always been the most vocal aspect of the Paladin community. Through the entire history of WoW, especially TBC, Ret players seemed to make it a point to be LOUD and get their message heared. When it got unignorable, Blizzard would throw Ret players a little bone. Some threat reduction here, Seal of Blood there. But in the end, none of it really addressed the problem, it just shut people up until the novelty of their new toys wore off and they realized that they were still getting the shaft and being ignored about it.

Along comes Wrath. Rets *think* that their voices are finally being heared because early reports from the beta show an OP Ret tree. In reality, this all comes from a sweeping rebalancing of ALL classes and retooling for Northrend. Not only that, it also comes from the sweeping change across the board to normalized stats. Over the course of the beta, Ret was balanced and given the new abilities that are required when an expansion hits. And it brings us to today. Nothing has changed. Rets have some fancy new toys and their stats play much nicer together now than they used to. In theory, they have all the core abilities that make them as viable as any other DPS class. Not a result of the cries of the Ret community for change mind you, but rather the sweeping class balancing that EVERY class underwent.

For some people, some of that shine is starting to wear off. The nifty new Divine Storm is starting to look a little tarnished. Ret CC isn't all that was desired for raid use, and Ret damage output at 80 -- while buffed in general, does not stand on par with the other utility DPS classes. Of course it will be lower than pure DPS classes, but it should compete with utility classes. Some tanks, given favorable conditions, can generate more DPS than equally well played Rets. A testament to Ret's state, and the over-emphasis on tank power at the same time.

And after reading that whole post... this is the most important part. The Ret community is getting loud again, and what does Blizzard do? Ask for feedback on how to make Hunters and Warlocks OP again. The voice of the Ret community continues to go unheard. So yes -- I'm sure Blizzard has NOTICED, but don't count on them having devoted too many resources to fixing anything yet.

I have to disagree with Losie regarding PvE dps. I've found that, even just wearing a handful of heroic blue upgrades, i can easily compete or exceed the damage of a more traditional dps class. I know for a fact that a properly played and specced ret paladin does more dps than a either a combat or mut specced rogue. Of course rogues famously scale frighteningly well with gear upgrades but from venturing into a few heroics and raids upon just hitting 80, ret dps is very competitive.

I'd say the players that really do surprisingly high dps are hunters (don't know enough about hunters to comment on the why of it really) and Prot warriors/paladins. Tanks are invariably high on damage charts.

You know im not really aware of any huge problems with ret spec so far just switched from prot to ret not long ago and im still wearing some of my tanking gear and im pushing out numbers i never even dreamed of before.

As far as mana goes i havent had a problem so far at all just keep judging though until 71 you will have slight mana issues but you butcher things so quickly that it should more then make up for the time lost drinking every now and then.

In pvp i still wouldn't want to face a ret pally over a deathknight at least with them i dont die instantly (usually).

Edited, Dec 1st 2008 10:16am by Aldredge

And here is my problem with the whole... "Ret thing". I don't understand why the bolded part there is not common sense. You should not be able to spam every ability in your ******* all the time and expect to never go OOM. That's not a problem. That's natural. It's the curse job of every class that functions on the mana mechanic to balance output with duration.

Now, back to Mazra's original post...


For starters, I would say replace JoL with JoW in that rotation and then let's see where you stand. Me personally? I've never seen a Ret Pally come even remotely close to going OOM when maintaining a Judgement > CS > DS > Judgement rotation whether they're using Wisdom or not, but I haven't yet partaken in 10-minute raid boss battles, so I'm willing to believe the possibility exists.

However, based on the Ret community's reactions to all the recent changes (in particular to Righteous Vengeance, which you highlighted nicely, Mazra), I would, in fact, need to actually see Ret Pallies being so "crippled" by their mana management before I'd be willing to buy it.

That's great advice, but the problem is that we're running out of mana with a standard rotation. That's just using judgements, DS, and CS. It's very bare, and we're still running low using it. It doesn't happen in the first minute of a fight but it definitely happens in the third and fourth. The early bosses in Naxx which I've seen have been mostly quick fights, but there are guaranteed to be longer ones, and it's kinda odd that retadins are being cherry-picked out of all the melee DPS classes and told that they have to hobble their DPS or run dry halfway through and become totally useless. Other mana-based classes can afford to build a large mana pool; their class is designed that way. Paladins can't do that.

I never run out of mana soloing and only very rarely in 5mans. The mana concern is coming solely from the raid area.

Why not? What other melee class runs out of mana?

Warriors, rogues, and DKs don't even have mana. Druids don't either, as long as they stay in Bear/Cat. Don't know much about shamans, but I doubt they ever run out unless they're wasting time on casting lightning bolts.

I run out of mana using the three core ret abilities. No heals, no consecrates, maybe a stun every once in a while.

Why do I have to drink when the other five melee classes don't?

Edit: But at the same time, any change to Ret mana control would be a problem to holy. As ret, doing DPS, I run out of mana. As ret, in holy gear and healing, I rarely drop below 80%. Judge, gain mana. SoW, run up into the AoE and Divine Storm, and I gain mana. Either of those crit and I get an instant heal to make up for the GCD I used. The heal crits and heals 60% more, so I use less mana. Its very rare that I'd prefer to be Holy to heal something.

Edited, Dec 2nd 2008 11:55am by Ehcks

Actually, Shaman do use a lot more mana now then they used to (Enhancement Shaman being the focus here). The difference between them and Ret Paladins though is Shamanistic Rage. They can go oom and then pop SR and go right back up to full mana, even while continuing to cast their full rotation. At least this has been my experience. Ret Paladins have Divine Plea, which is better than nothing at all, but certainly isn't a nigh guaranteed full second mana bar.

*tap tap*

Soloing, it's Judge Light, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, dead mob. Repeat for 2 minutes. OOM.

In a 5-man, it's still Judge Light, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm. It just takes two or three rotations per pull. Every two pulls I'm below 30%.

That is ALL I DO and still. I'm only slightly better off when I'm able to justify judging Wisdom, which did not happen yesterday.

Edit:


I'm claiming that as a MELEE class, I should not have to drink. I end fights with more mana as Prot. I usually end fights with more mana as full Holy. I end fights with 95% mana as ret in my healing gear. I drink every two pulls actually trying to DPS with just Judge/CS/DS.

Edited, Dec 3rd 2008 11:50am by Ehcks

I'm level 78, and still wearing my arena gear from 70. I must admit, I'm pretty scared to see what happens at 80 when I trade it all in for gear that doesn't add any Int.

I've been considering swapping my belt,bracers,and boots for Hunter or enhance shammy gear at 80.

It still has attack power, it's mail so it does have less armor value, it has agility which isn't optimal but still provides minimal crit+, and most importantly has intelligence on it.

Blessing of Wisdom - unimproved by talents - restores 492 mana per minute.
Base mana at 80 is 4394 (per wowwiki).
Assuming tabstopper's numbers are correct, and I don't see an obvious flaw - that's a perpetual motion machine.

From experience questing as ret with wisdom up, I leak a little mana when I throw in heals, exorcism, stuns, and the like, and a tiny bit when I don't get the rotation quite right, but I basically don't have downtime in the wild.