3 Tree Paladin Changes for 3.2Follow

I'll apologise for my RAAAA like outburst on page 1 - I had a couple of 'those days' at work and logged on to see the 'Ret is getting a raping in 3.2 patch' and it was a bit much. I really like my Pally and have spent a lot of time on him (as have others) and the changes did not go down well. I, like many others, like the way it is at the moment and would prefer that they tweak rather than steamroll.

So I will be a bit more objective.

We are losing SOM/B which is actually 48% of weapon damage per swing. The new Soc is 36% weapon damage so that is a fairly significant nerf.

In addition the SOV change, although it will maybe match SOM/B with all 5 stacks and the 33% weapon damage but I actually think it will be less than SOM/B, BUT they have said that they will buff Veng significantly, my guess it will have to be pretty significant to be good.

The CS change as some of the napkin math has shown, should be ok in the long term on the basis that you have to mash it like a ****, one miss and it will become sub par though.

The plans indicate that they want to ruin Ret's burst, and the planned changes will certainly do that but I cant help feeling that they are picking on Ret - especially when considering that Mages, Locks, Shaman regularly hit me for 8-10k bursts.

Also many comment on the 'lack of rotation/skell' of a Ret pally but comparing Ret with a 'Defined Rotation' class doesnt really make sense, priority based would seem to have a greater need for planning/reactions/thought than a fixed set of buttons to mash.

Example

Btw this is made up for simplicity.

Ret: 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 5, 3, 2, 4, 5, 1, 2, 5, 3, 1, 3, 4, 2, 5, 2, 1

Other: 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4(Ooh special move), 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3

So whats the best move for dealing damage out of the ones coming up.

V

Do this move, this, move, this move and that move over and over again, if this other one turns up mash that as well but keep doing this list of moves in a cycle.

Any clarification avasilable?

Cheers all

Hey Tomm, hi again.

Here's for your thoughts... First



You got SoR, right? That's what "SoC" is turning into. Of course it will not have a C/D because it's not a proc, it's just SoR.

I have a SoC spec and I actually DO use SoC and with these changes I would remove SoC from my spec because SoV will give more DPS. Also because you already get SoR, what's the point of SoC? A different icon?



"We weren't given" is actually quite an omission. In recent patches:
- Hand of freedom duration reduced from 10 seconds to 6.
- Stun cooldown increased from 30 seconds to 40.
- Warriors get a new ability to remove the bubble.

The fact that they did it very quickly and without PTR testing and waiting for 3.2 doesn't make this not be part of the changes.



Wrong in this one. Burst comes from larger damage on longer cooldowns and not the opposite.

The constant kiting of PvP favors abilities with longer cooldowns and more damage per hit than short cooldowns with less damage each. (We prefer slow weapons for PvP remember?)

The other downside is that it's going to cause a lot of GCD usage which will obstacle your ability to use cleanse and fol. Or have your DPS be much more heavily impacted by kiting and use of defensive gcds.

CS was "an ability" not so much for it's DPS but for it's "one big swing". The 3.2 verion is "an extra attack that is weaker than an autoattack swing". It has no effect other than the damage it does so making it weaker than an autoattack swing is something that would be inferior to just adding the same DPS by means of a weapon haste effect. And IMO, if I could chose between that version of CS or adding the same DPS by means of a haste effect I'd pick the haste effect any day.

But since you're feeling optimistic, while you were wrong with SoC and CS there are buffs.

The new version of SoV isn't that bad. It will completely interfere with Repentance so having to use this seal is a huge nerf to Repentance. However, it will DoT and against melee that doesn't heal you might be able to mess them up by doing a DoT-kite keeping the 5-stack refreshed. This will totally mess up DK, Rogue and Warrior. I know DKs heal a lot but much of it is with Death Strike, if you kite-cleanse properly they will just tick to their death.

The stack also happens to be a dispelable magic debuff affected by stoicism. Maybe none of you remember the mess it was to heal when rogue's antiheal poison was a 5-stacking poison and they also used another stacking poison in the other weapon. A 5-stacking magic debuff affected by stoicism is huge dispel feeder. If you add vindication, judgement, HotC and r vengeance this makes it complicated to dispell any other magic effect that you or your teammates add to the target (takes longer to dispel it all than to let it expire). A warlock could put all DoTs and they will almost always tick to the end.

And finally the SS-FoL change also means that your FoL will heal and HoT you adding up to 200% of FoL's heal, in addition to Sheath if it crits.


Edited, Jun 22nd 2009 12:48am by xorq

Current version:
Vindication forces people's HP to be maxed at 87% of their full HP, from there you have to burst down to reach to 17% of their HP and HoW. So in average you have to burst about 16-18K and then HoW before the healer can heal them.

Pretty much you have to try over and over until one of your tries gets enough consecutive crits to reach that point. Even if everything crits at the same time if the healer just knows you are landing hits on the target (he'd have to be retarded not to know it!) and just casts any kind of heal while you're attacking he can extremely easily deny you the kill.

And to tell the truth I've had plenty of occurrences where I DO get it done and the target survives HoW and gets healed to full very quickly.

3.2 version:
From 100% HP to 20% is an 80% gap instead of a 70% gap. So you need to burst trough 18-20K on average and then HoW at a point where the likelihood of surviving HoW is greater. So you'll have a larger HP gap to burst trough and do it with less burst.

Simply put, your burst already doesn't burst enough until you get several cummulative crits, at 3.2 it will no longer burst, so you'll just have to DPS until the healer runs out of mana.

And with the current version, killing a healer or someone that recieves heals already takes long enough to have up a 5-stack of SoV.

The only exception is if you are doing focus fire with another class (for example a hunter), that's the only case where your "burst" may work but if you're doing focus fire the difference will be little imo.

Now, if you were killing someone that isn't getting heals (like 1v1 on warriors or something like that) then DoT + defensive maneuvering will work perfectly. That one even works with the current version of SoV so with the next version it will be even easier.



CS-Judge-DS-CS and move on to the next mob while your current target ticks away.

Also, SoR and the advertised 3.2 version of SoC seem to have a very small difference. Might as well go with SoR and pick imp SoR/SoV.

Might also want to look up WHY they said SoR will be the tanking seal. Do you know why? Not me, but PvP, leveling and solo all have a partial tanking element on them so if SoR gets turned into something that somehow buffs your tankability or survivability it could easily be the seal of choice for leveling and solo and there's even a chance it might beat the 3.2 version of SoC at PvP.



Edited, Jun 22nd 2009 7:33pm by xorq

That was my plan, but I've recently discovered that I'm horrible at rogue raid DPS. I was mediocre with sporadic moments of awesome as ShS in BC, but with Wrath PvP playing a rogue is basically a game of dodging giant cannonballs in Wintergrasp and Strand, while avoiding all ret paladins and death knights. My only advantage versus those plate classes is my stealth, and with all the AOE that gets thrown around in the average Wintergrasp, it's impossible to stay in stealth.

So, I suck at raiding (compared to my pally) and I suck at PvP (compared to my pally). The only reason I still even play my rogue is because I want to get him his chopper.

The argument of "we can't kill a healer" is much weaker considering 2s is being turned into the practice bracket. With more focus on 3s and 5s there will be more teammates/CC to assist.

I'm not saying it doesn't suck, I'm just shifting focus.

Well, in BGs there are plenty of other things to do than just picking the hardest target to kill and feebly attempting anyway. The "we can't kill a healer" argument ONLY applies to arena. In world PvP, if you can't kill it, run away or call for back up. In BGs, if you can't kill it you have those options OR the option of killing something else. Arena is the only death match scenario where killing the healer is important. And the healer is only a major obstacle in 2s.

That wasn't my point. My point was that in a BG rarely will you be facing a healer solo, with no help for either of you and no choice but to stand and fight. The game is not supposed to be balanced around 1v1 and 2v2 encounters. If you can't kill a healer 1v1, too damn bad. Some specs and classes fair better against others. You can QQ all you like about it, but what is your solution? Just make some OTHER class the one that can't kill healers? Or return healers to the Vanilla/Early BC status of being entirely unable to take care of themselves?

Effectively, you need burst in general to become _unpredictable_ in the damage you deal. It is not only heals, but also abilities like Last stand and others, that become harder to use at the right time if you are more unpredictable. So burst is more than just overcoming heals.

And on this:



If you put it this way, you must also take into account that you yourself have a partner/ BG mate (be it a healer or dps or whatever). Teamwork should then be able to drop the healer (or their teamwork drops yours). You can not expect to encounter a healer and "another" and be able to burst the healer solo.