Hello all, long time no see. Don’t even begin to ask why there has been a lack of me on the front page as of late, all you’ll get in response is the lingering remains of what can only be described as the worst month of sickness in my life. Deathly illni (emphasis on the plural here) aside, I’ve decided that it might not be a bad idea to add my two cents on the recent announcements regarding 3.1. I can’t possibly go into detail about the entire patch without boring some of you or murdering civilians, so I’ll keep it just to Paladin changes for now. Though I warn you now, I won’t be covering any changes in deep protection, seeing as I have almost no experience with ProtPallotins and it’s almost irrelevant for a Ret site!
Holy Skills
Exorcism can now be used on all targets, but is now a guaranteed critical strike vs Undead and Demon type mobs.
- People really don’t realize how amazing this is. And oh man, is it amazing. Though I’m sure you’ve heard it time and time again from thousands of other sources, this changes everything. Ret isn’t looking so bad outside of Naxxramas, and Holy might find new ways to actually be offensive in PvP.
Judgement of Light now procs off spells as well. (Previously only “attacks” would trigger this)
- Thanks!
Holy Talents
Purifying Power (Tier 6) now reduces the cooldown of your Exorcism and Holy Wrath spells by 17/33%.
- Certainly still not a talent that’s really worth picking up unless you desperately need to do the massive holy dips.
Pure of Heart (Tier 5) now reduces Curse, Poison, and Disease effects by 15/30%.
- A change that needed to happen. DKs and Warlocks (and Shamans!) should be quite happy. Even I am one to admit that this talent is a bit ridiculous (yes, I have a Paladin now!). The poison change isn’t something to knock though, we’ll have to see if this really helps with Rogues (and Hunters!) applying poisons nonstop regardless of your fancy talent!
Blessed Hands has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4 and now reduces the mana cost of Hand of Freedom, Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Salvation by 15/30% and cooldowns by 10/20%.
- The mana cost reduction is still a fairly small bonus for the two points you need to sacrifice here, but at least the cooldown reduction on BoFreedom isn’t too shabby. To take away the dispel resistance is certainly a step in the right direction to free this game from RNG, but toes will be stepped on with this one. On the rocks about this change.
Improved Concentration Aura’s (Tier 4) reduced silence/interrupt effect now works while any aura is active.
- Sounds good to me. One of the many changes to make HolyPalotins have more survivability with this patch.
Protection Skills
Shield of Righteousness now deals 130% of block value + 520 at the highest rank. It no longer causes a high amount of threat. (Previously increased damage by a set amount)
- This is a change that I’m not quite familiar with. I do use this skill quite a lot when I need to do damage on my Paladin, and this just seems to buff that damage a bit more. No complaints for me really, but you’ll need to go to a ProtPalotin site for something more detailed!
Blessing of Kings is now a baseline ability. Trainable at level 20.
- Frees up 5 points for…
Protection Talents (again not covering deep protection)
*New* Tier one Protection talent, “Divinity”, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Obvious filler for HolyPalotins who want to go down Protection. No one can argue with 5% healing, and 10% healing when yourself at all. Well, if you’re not a Palotin I’m sure you could…
Divine Guardian (Tier 4) now has been changed to redirect damage “(up to a maximum of 150/300% of the Paladin’s health).” (Previously had no limit)
- I have two suspicions about this change. It will either only absorb 60,000 damage that the entire raid takes (assuming you have 20,000 life), making this one hilarious nerfbat for any level of content that you’re doing. Or, it will only absorb 60,000 damage per player, which is something that Ferraro touches up nicely on. Something about raid tuning or another, who cares about PvE anyways.
Improved Devotion Aura (Tier 4) now increases the amount healed on any target affected by any of your Auras by 2/4/6%. (Previously only worked with Devotion Aura active)
- Another talent that boost a HolyPalotin’s PvE viability (Frost aura on Hodir and still benefiting from the 6% healing for example), and PvP OPness.
Improved Hammer of Justice (Tier 4) is now a 2 point talent, reducing the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 sec. (Previously had a 3rd rank that reduced cooldown by 30 secs)
- This does free up a point, but most can tell why this change happened. Definitely not something that most Holy’s are going to be concerned with, but this is a straight nerf to a Ret’s PvPness.
Retribution Talents
Righteous Vengeance (Tier 10) is now a 3 point talent. When your Judgement and Divine Storm spells deal a critical strike, your target will take 10/20/30% additional damage over 8 sec. (Previously a 5 point talent)
- 10% DoT nerf, 2 points freed up.
Fanaticism (Tier 8 ) is now a 3 point talent and now increases the critical strike chance of all Judgements capable of a critical hit by 6/12/18% and reduces threat caused by all actions by 10/20/30% except when under the effects of Righteous Fury. (Previously a 5 point talent)
- 7% Judgement crit nerf, 2 points freed up.
Improved Retribution Aura has been removed from the game.
Improved Retribution Aura’s effect has been merged into Sanctified Retribution (Tier 5).
- Uhh.. thanks?
Sanctified Retribution (Tier 5) now increases the amount of damage on by any target affected by any of your Auras by 3%
- An undocumented change that I’ve noticed. Not too shabby Blizzard.
Divine Purpose has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 6.
- Obvious nerf to HolyPalotins that have some variation of the XX/XX/22 spec for PvP. However, this does not change anything for the ones who spec deep enough to get JotW and Repet, making it a bandaid fix that won’t change much. However, do remember that this does require one point in Seal of Command now, making one chose if they want to drop a point from Sanctified Retribution (3% damage for teammate lost), Vindication or Eye for an Eye.
At a glance
It seems that Holy is going to be getting quite a lot of buffs, along with being able to use any aura for any situation in PvP interchangeably. The same now goes for your average Ret Paladin, effectively bringing the aura back into the game and not just some ability that you “set and forget”. This is a major change that a phenomenal amount of people have not only been discussing in this community, but in every other. And with Exorcism being able to be used in PvP, it adds an entire new layer to the class (mainly Holy, since Rets just get more damage :P).
Overall, I’d say that Blizzard is doing a very good job adressing the issues that Palotins out there have right now. Every patch is becoming to be a step in the right direction, things are beginning to look a bit better. Maybe that’s just because I’m Holy and OP, that could help too. I should also add that I mean that in a PvP sense, seeing as Ret DPS actually got hit down just a little. Though these notes have calmed me down a bit when it comes to defending the PvE aspect of the class, you can’t blame me if I’m just a little happy right now!
- Megaphone
PS: I might cover glyphs too if enough people care!
Don’t be afraid. Your new hero is here. Miniphone the Great is 80 and will vanquish evil with his spoonfed epics.
February 27th, 2009 - 1:49 pm
Um, you appear to have totally missed the boat on these changes. They are in fact nerfs not buffs for Ret (which is what this blog is about).
First multiple talents reduced in points cost and in overall effect is a nerf when there are literally no other +dps talents to spend the points in.
Second the Exo change. There are two problems with this, mana and global cooldowns. Currently Ret is mana balanced around a 4 ability rotation of Judgement, CS, DS, and Consecrate. Adding a 5th in is not planned for in our mana management…heck we had to argue with blizzard to get Consecrate added in there if you recall! Next global cooldowns, you cannot use all 5 abilities without clashes and wasting cooldowns. That means we are not simply getting an additional ability thrown in as full use/dps. We get a marginal dps upgrade from using it over another ability on those times when cooldowns clash. However, this marginal upgrade is significantly LOWER than the dps nerf due to talent changes.
Currently on PTR testing shows Ret dps has been nerfed about 8-10%.
February 27th, 2009 - 2:20 pm
I fail to see how having extra points is a nerf. Sure there’s nothing to stick them in, but it’s no nerf!
Also, these mainly cover PvP changes. It’s quite obvious to everybody that Ret DPS got nerfed (in PvE). It’s why I didn’t make a big deal about it in the first place. 8-10% sounds a bit harsh for the RV damage and 7% crit on Judges (since +crit is already pathetically high in raids right now anyways). Still looking for the magic fix however!
February 27th, 2009 - 3:17 pm
People should also remember that there is plenty of stuff for Blizzard to play around with:
-11 point prot talent
-6 new talent point options in the ret tree (2-3 new talents)
-Crusader Strike has yet to get a secondary effect
-Sanctified Seals needs a new secondary effect
-Imp. BoM is a group utility buff that doesn’t have a personal buff
-Swift Retribution is a group utility buff that doesn’t have a personal buff
-Sanctified Retribution is also a group utility buff that doesn’t have a personal buff (granted it probably doesn’t need one).
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but there are plenty of places for Blizzard to buff our dps, mana regen, utility and PvP control. I’m not going to start QQing until I see what Blizzard decides to do with all of those openings.
February 27th, 2009 - 3:21 pm
I like that points are being freed up, I’d like it even more if I knew if they were adding a new talent to drop them in.
And as far as exo and mana, I’ve been using exo in rotations every naxx run and I’m very rarely out of mana (read: never). If there was a way that I didn’t have to rely on plea and SA (especially with the changes) then sweet, bonus; But its not there and everything is working well enough.
February 27th, 2009 - 4:30 pm
SA is getting nerfed and healers are getting nerfed. So we do need a new mana regen mechanic because SA won’t be that great and it isn’t very compatible Dstorm or JoL (which scales the best with ret).
February 27th, 2009 - 5:34 pm
Due to official source http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=8136495630 we have
• Glyph of Last Stand: Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 90 sec.
Everyone, say hello to our 11 prot talent!
Damn, it took Blizzard so long to make such an easy and expected decision.
And no buff to our PvE DPS…
February 27th, 2009 - 6:01 pm
My take on Paladin mana and rotation is this: If you do enough damage to yourself with Seal of Blood, you have infinate mana. Low gear ret paladins or those who don’t judge blood often enough will run out of mana. Paladins who do a retarded amount of self damage (such as 4K to themselves) will gain more mana, and hense do more damage. Maneuvering to hit 4 targets with every divine storm you can is also an important part of doing as much damage to yourself as possible.
The higher your damage output, the better your mana will last for other stuff. Stack that AP high boys.
They’re going to add more talents. It’s obvious. Watch. I’m a career ret paladin.. been Ret since Kings was my 31 point talent … used to heal and smack things with an Arcanite Reaper. They’ll add talents. Things have been up lately, and I’m optimistic.
February 27th, 2009 - 6:22 pm
“PS: I might cover glyphs too if enough people care!”
I’ll always care, Mega. I’ll always care.
/cuddle
My life is now complete.
- Megaphone
February 27th, 2009 - 7:42 pm
I think my biggest concern at the moment with the ret tree is how bare it is. I’ve tried to build a spec with the current ptr build, and i have 11 points left over and NOWHERE good to put them… i really should feel bad about not using all my talent points, and i sincerely hope they’ll buff up the prot and ret trees with some really cool talents.
February 27th, 2009 - 8:08 pm
Thanks Mega.
February 27th, 2009 - 8:23 pm
I really do hope that the changes are incomplete. Divinity is missing on the PTR, so at least that is coming.
I disagree with the Exorcism change. Making it work on anything seems to be a cop-out rather than a real fix. It just adds to the burst problem in arena (if we still had any) and doesn’t help with the GCD clashing in PvE. It would’ve been better as an either-or ability in place of, say, crusader strike, just like Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst share a cooldown. It could then be tweaked to do a bit more damage to undead than CS.
The holy tree is still hard to access for Ret. There’s nothing good in the first tier or 3rd tier.
Ret PvE needs a damage increase in some form. Nerfing RV and Fanaticism, two talents that weren’t usually picked up for PvP seems short-sighted. Sure, you have 4 more points, but PvE ret already had leftover points.
It may look like Holy is getting buffed, but the Ulduar fights so far are tending toward movement and AoE healing intensive fights like those of Sunwell. Hodir is a combination of Keristrasza and Sapphiron and Iron Council has quite a bit of AoE.
February 27th, 2009 - 11:06 pm
dude how can you be happy?!? 3.1 ret looks terrible. Holy keeps getting buffed and ret is going back to being retlol.
February 27th, 2009 - 11:17 pm
Dude anyone with half a brain can tell you that they aren’t done with the ret tree, the QQ is in bad form. Do not QQ when you don’t know if we will be in good or bad shape. Otherwise you run the risk of looking like both a jackass and idiot if Blizzard actually does a good job. Hell you still look like a Jackass if they do a piss poor job because you decided to whine before knowing what any of the changes would be.
February 28th, 2009 - 4:50 am
And there’s no point in calling him a jackass either, Shadow Skull. This is the internet. Whining is allowed - like it or not, it still is allowed.
Frankly I don’t fancy getting a 10% dps drop in the PvE content. The thing is that I hate when blizzard is making changes due to whining in PvP, and they change the PvE-dps when trying to fix the PvP aspect.
Quite frankly I’d like two things:
1: Boost seal of command. I’d like to have another dps seal in PvE except just Seal of Blood. I like how SoC works, but it simply deals too little damage.
2: Secondary effect to Crusader strike
Give rets a talent that improves CS
example:
Glory of the Crusader:
- Increases the damage done by Crusader Strike by 15/30%
- Inflicts the target with Blood of the Holy
- Blood of the Holy - increases the target’s vulnerability to holy damage by 1/2%
Put it in the same tier as Crusader Strike, should be doable considering we have 11 talents now to play with? Naturally the figures I gave an example on here are subject to change. Who knows, maybe e0% more damage from Crusader strike is too much, then again perhaps it is not. Right now a CS deals 4000-5000 dmg at best in full Tier 7.5 and with raid buffs/flask/food buff. A blood strike from a death knight at level 70 can deal this much damage.
Ah well. I doubt blizzard would implement this sort of change for CS anytime soon, but it would make sense that it would be implemented down the road.
Patience is a virtue, as they say…
February 28th, 2009 - 7:48 am
was just wondering if speccing for imp ret aura and lets say imp devotium aura in a pvp spec and you then use lets say shadow aura will you then get both the imp aura effects or how does it work? will one take prio over the other? otherwise a 6% heal 3% dmg 3% haste 130 resist aura of doom is possible i guess
February 28th, 2009 - 10:56 am
Yeah, it seems a lot of people are wondering why the Ret tree was left so bare. I am quite happy for the changes that have happened so far, just because there is an open pallet left for the Paladins (hopefully) to decide which direction they want to take the class. If no more changes were to happen this patch, then maybe things would be a bit lackluster. But I still have high hopes that a few changes will come out to actually help Rets in PvE, they certainly won’t be needing the PvP damage now with Exorcism.
February 28th, 2009 - 12:23 pm
I think that the mana useage to perform the same amount of DPS needs to be looked at and discussed. Bliz has been saying lately that they do not like that most players are able to ignore MP5 and mana concerns.
Soo… they nerf the dps output of our normal spells (mana costs are the same), nerf our judgement crits (mana costs are the same) and throw in a new spell into the rotation (exorcism, which is mana intensive).
I know, I have rarely had mana issues in 3.09 but I am worried about what mana regen is going to look like in 3.1
February 28th, 2009 - 2:57 pm
Glyph of Last Stand?
Awesome, so we get a glyph to improve a prot warrior talent. How great is that? Great buff for warriors though if it goes through(to the right class, great typo blizz). They need it. Spec into last stand with this talent, makes last stand just 30seconds shy of the CD of enraged regen. Regen’s 30% of their health while numerically their health is 30% higher. Huge regen. Might see pvp arms/fury warriors speccing into prot for imp. survivability now. Doubt it, but eh, prot warr pvp will be better now lol.
Also, they took out the -10% health bonus for last stand because of the shorter CD via the glyph. Pretty nice.
lol
And I agree with Megaphone, I’m rather optimistic for a change about this patch, well for paladins anyway. I see a lot of nerf’s for ret, but they left the ret tree way too bare for them not to add anything else. Don’t worry all, change is coming. I understand that we’ve come to see how retarded blizzard has been in the past, and if you judge by the past, blizzard wouldn’t add anything, but times have changed. Lot better in WOLTK then the TBC. We’ll get something.
February 28th, 2009 - 5:35 pm
I agree with Keelval. but I am a little irritated about Holy buffs.
They’re being to tight lipped for them not to have some big things in mind for many classes. It’s going to be cool, I’m damned certain.
February 28th, 2009 - 8:58 pm
Lets not forget there will most likely be something in the righteous vengeance spot to fill in those 2 points that aren’t needed anymore. Also, expect something to happen to sanctified seals too.
March 1st, 2009 - 1:40 am
in response to the mana issues and especially for melee classes, one of our strongest aspects is not running out of steam ever. I noticed that they gave enhancement shamans what is effectively JotW on their stormstrike… now i don’t know about you, but i never had issues with mana playing my enhance shaman between watershield and popping shamanistic rage…. here’s hoping we get a wings–>regen talent like rage works… (could be a good use of those 2 freebie points deep in ret) now if only i had somthing to do with the other 9.
March 1st, 2009 - 1:53 pm
Anyone who had issues with mana as enhance… well… I mean jeez. The way mana flies at everyone with a blue bar these days, and having an 12k+ mana pool. >.<
When I first saw the initial changes to ret my thoughts were similar to Mega’s. It’s been stripped down, we lost [i]some[/i] damage to it, but exo in our standard rotation will keep it not too shabby. But it leaves a lot of room for them to add new things and change what’s left quite simply because they can’t leave it the way it is. You can take divine strength and then literally every talent point in the ret tree, or you can take only the pve dps talents (which can be as little as 52 points) and then go incredibly deep into prot and I just can’t see that going into live.
The last test realms have been incredibly long compared to older test phases and have always had a lot more changes and rebalancing than before. We’re past the days of being an autoattacking healbot, have a little faith. You’re paladins.
March 1st, 2009 - 2:16 pm
Hey,
I really wan’t someone else’s perspective on the new Glyphs that blizz has, maybe like a “Best in slot” major and minor for the three spec’s. I personally choose:
+ Major - Glyph of Divinity (for those crunches where you need to cast LoH on yourself for the mana)
+ Major - Glyph of Seal of Wisdom (who does not like mana efficiency?)
+ Major - Glyph of Holy Light (Paladin’s twist of a AoE heal… adds a lot of additional healing power)
- Minor - Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom (Save a regent here and there when not in a raid)
- Minor - Glyph of Lay on Hands (Allows you to use LoH more often when you need the additional mana)
- Minor - Glyph of the Wise (because there is really nothing else that could go here that would benefit)
New Glyph’s:
Glyph of Beacon of Light: Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.???
March 1st, 2009 - 3:27 pm
The only problem with Miniphone the Great, is that he is HOLY on a website called RETpaladin.com
March 1st, 2009 - 3:39 pm
Blizzard screws up balance, again.
Ret paladins around the 5k on patchwerk (horrible fucking test as he is undead but when does blizzard listen to paladins) but mage/hunter/dk allowed to do ~1500-2000dps higher. And the ever so classic excuse of players dont play at the same skill level is bs, everyone knows it. Anyone can mash buttons in a certain sequence. The amount warriors got nerfed brought them down to the ret paladin dps level lol no wonder why they are pissed?
People claim ret pallies do too much burst in PVP but I disagree (unless youre cloth). Most of the people with those claims are the ones that sit there and dont trinket HOJ not using trinket and/or they are just cloth wearers that die to any random melee cuz blizz is retarded about any direct damage. ANYWAYS they make the matter WORSE for pvp burst by nerfing PVE TALENTS and then allowing exorcism to be used on players.
Fucking mages/hunters/death knights need a pretty high damage reduction. Ret needs seriously fucking looked at in PVE—> more damage done, LESS SELF DAMAGE TAKEN or none, an actual mana pool/regen mechanic that WORKS for abilities that you can always use in a normal rotation that does COMPETITIVE dps…
March 1st, 2009 - 6:22 pm
Hey now. Miniphone the Great’s power knows no bound.
March 1st, 2009 - 6:40 pm
except the bound of how many talent points you have that are not in the ret tree
March 1st, 2009 - 9:26 pm
@Unstableone1
Your DPS comparison isn’t valid. You’re comparing your DPS to classes that are currently doing too much damage. Hunters and DW DKs in particular are big offenders. If you’ve watched the patch notes, DW DKs got a huge nerf and survival hunters (the current cookie cutter spec) are being nerfed.
Ret paladins have parsed up to ~5800 on Patchwerk, so from a DPS standpoint, they’re fine in PvE against undead. Whether or not it’s “fun” to get those numbers is another story.
March 1st, 2009 - 11:05 pm
Exedore:
On the PTR paladins do less damage than in live. I havent seen a top end best of gear WWS from a ret paladin on the PTR but i doubt a top end pally is 5800 on patchwerk on the PTR, maybe closer to the 5500 range? Fury warriors used to be at or near the top of the dps and now they are nerfed down to the ret paladin dps level, why do you think they are so angry?
You can choose to say mage/hunter/dk do too much damage or you can say paladins do too little damage. It’s a mix of both IMO. If blizzard could fucking learn how to test it themselves and then NOT DO TESTS ON UNDEAD MOBS or aoeing 3-4 targets on top of attacking a boss then maybe they would get an accurate idea of the damage capable of every class…
But blizzard goes in the wrong direction. Deathknights - nerf the piss out of frost and then buff the shit out of unholy. Unholy already had a PVE dps spec that was *decent* on live, now it will probably be the absurdly high 8k dps crap. I doubt the hunter change is enough and I dont see a mage PVE damage reduction (I have never counted arcane spec as pve, ever.) They just increase the mana regen for mages, give something to enhancement shamans who already had mana on their gear, then nerf ret paladin mana regen even more via SA with currently no compensation.
March 2nd, 2009 - 6:25 am
I’m not really sure how to feel about the changes.
Our dps seems fine even outside of Naxx. Myself and the other ret paladins I’ve confered with (Read as: ones I know to be good players from experience) have no problem maintain damage on our dragon friends in EoE and OS, but aren’t leaving anyone behind enough to warrant the nerfs we got.
The only nice thing I see to this for PvE is for our mana. For those such as myself who do 10 mans with no intellect buff, you know that we’re on a fairly tight mana rotation with our 4 abilities without throwing in the excess mana dump into exorcism or Holy Wrath if you’re feeling gluttonous on mana. In 25s, I’ve been able to use just about any button I can hit and be carefree about it. So for those 10 man players out there being able to get that 5% healing to self is a nice reprieve for your healers. Fewer heals from them is the same mana from SA backlash for you, or you could drop down and grab Divine Intellect. Why would you? Where the hell else are you going to put those points, nothing amazing in prot right now either. So either way, you can now open up a little bit of mana room for yourself or a healer.
I’m unsure of how I feel about the exorcism change. Great for PvP, but I see little benefit to it in PvE if you’re not a 25 man player, and not an amazing amount even then.
Personally I’m hopefully that this is a preliminary wave and if they do what blizzard wanted we’ll see them move into a second phase of changes that follow up on what they started to make better sense of some of these changes.
March 3rd, 2009 - 8:32 pm
Hey there,
Let me know if this is a good PvP ret pally build for 3.1, plz. If you have a better build let me know =)
My build;
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=052320512033313221332313010000000000000000000000000053250002000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614
March 3rd, 2009 - 8:37 pm
Or would a build like this be better pvp build sence we have some mana concerns..
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=052320512033313221332313015005200000000000000000000050000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614
March 6th, 2009 - 7:42 pm
I Hope Blizz puts Reckoning on T3 and changes it, so das every hit we do gets the proc, would be a good talent 2 put the point´s in
March 9th, 2009 - 6:59 pm
Fucken Ret pally nerfs..
i don’t care what people say they took 10 secs off HoJ!.. SOOO GAY! iether then that idc about other changes..
March 14th, 2009 - 1:20 am
Shadow Skull and anyone that says we should just wait and see:
Obviously, you didn’t play ret since the LOLret days. How long did blizzard leave ret spec in the shadows? Too long… a little over a year or even longer I believe. That’s way too long for people that want to play ret because they don’t want to be stuck as a healing support bitch(excuse my language). So we should all just wait and see again huh? Right… Not everyone wants to be the healing bitch stuck in the back. Shadow priests have gotten huge buffs in their dps. Makes no sense taking away ret dps when we’re suppose to be the DPS spec for paladins.
Paladins already lack interupts/CC to make them really competitive against high ranking teams in arenas. Why nerf improve HOJ? Makes no sense for pvp or pve since bosses are immune to HOJ anyway. So far, druids can play rogue, dps, heal and be a ranged spell caster. If paladins are suppose to be hybrids as well, why keep nerfing us to point of LOLpaladin? Especially the ret tree? Naive fools can say wait and see because we trust blizzard despite the fact that we’re paying money to play their game, but I choose to voice my opinions against pointless nerfs that seem to always hit rets the hardest.
March 14th, 2009 - 1:30 am
Another note to mention: what the hell is up with Seal of Martyr? The dps isn’t even superly outrageous. Why does it still cause so much damage to us Ret pallies after all these years? As if using that seal will make us outdps good hunters, mages, rogues by a million or something. The backblast damage suffered from this seal is just plain stupid. I’ve heard stories of “glitches” on Instructor Raz fights where ret paladins suddenly do 50k judgement of martyr to the boss and one shot themselves from the 25k backfire damage. Way to go blizzard.
March 14th, 2009 - 1:24 pm
There have been some changes in the ret tree, I accualy think that the retribution paladins pvp is better but and for pve are damage will probably stay the same. The only change that pisses me off the the 10 sec nerf to HoJ for pvp retadins.. Anyways check out are new tree, play around with it and have fun.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin
March 30th, 2009 - 4:45 pm
This site should Update it’s pvp section and not only pve section
April 14th, 2009 - 11:03 am
If you take a look at the patch notes there is a savior to our mana concerns:
Judgement of the Wise: The immediate return of base mana from this
spell has been increased to 25%, up from 15%.
This was a relief for me as we get 10% more mana back for a skill that we (let’s face it) spam like our life depends on it.
Another issue I’d like to talk about:
Seal of Blood/Seal of the Martyr: The damage done by these two seals
has been increased but the damage done by their judgements
decreased. The balance is now roughly 60% from either seal and 40%
from a judgement on total damage done. The total damage done should
be roughly the same. Please note that the 3.0.9 tooltips had
incorrect values for the damage done, but the tooltips should be
much more accurate in 3.1.0.
If you recall we receive around 10% of the output damage of the seal to ourselves and 33% of the output damage of the judgement to ourselves. I’m not too sure about the damage being “roughly the same”, but we are definitely not blasting ourselves as much anymore.
Divine Storm: Damage increased.
Awesomeness. I’m gonna be moving this skill up in my rotation especially with [Venture Co. Libram of Retribution].
Sanctified Seals: Renamed Sanctity of Battle. Now also increases
damage done by Exorcism and Crusader Strike by 5/10/15%.
Very nice.
It looks like Blizzard is trying to put more emphasis on the other skills besides judgement. The fact that exorcism is potentially in the main rotation brings the issue of spell power. Now we have 2 skills that rely on SP: consecrate and exocism. I seriously doubt that putting spell power on gear for ret pallys will help us at all, but with the 11 extra points from the ret tree i really wish the spell pwr in the holy tree was easier to get to.
April 15th, 2009 - 4:08 am
Kindreaper - Good comments. I agree about the spellpower problem. Really, the solution for us in the short term is to stack attack power and strength over anything else. (as per usual) Due to sheath of light, we would gain +30% spell power. Blizzard could buff this by 10-20%, and it would probably help out mildly. This could potentially raise any lost dps.
With my current rotation (And an unspent 7 talent points) I’m pulling 3.2k DPS in H UK. I used to pull around 2.9k in there. So I really can’t complain. I have no burst damage really to speak of now, so i don’t depend on judgement crits like I used to. That’s a good thing. Bringing exorcism seems to have helped a lot.
ALso, I forsee hit being more important for paladins now. Our melee damage comprises so much more of our overall damage, being hit capped or close to it is probably desirable.
My advise, after doing a heroic or two and a 25 OS and getting a feel for my paladin:
1. Get hit capped, or close to it.
2. Stack strength and crit (as per usual)
3. Use exorcism. It should be your second most important attack on single targets, with Crusader’s Strike right behind it.
I think with my play style, my dps went up. It may be play style that’s causing problems with people’s DPS. I say, try out new rotations, try switching out gear. Try crit stacking.
Mana is almost no longer an issue. The glyph for Sob/m is pretty sweet. I tried it off, then tried it on, and saw a huge difference. Glyph of Exorcism also helps.
Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a talent centered around exorcism, increasing crit/cooldown/damage, or a talent to boost spell power a little bit.
-Horde Ret Paladin (Since pre-wotlk)