UPDATED: 6/29/10 @ 12:03PM EST
Hello, all!
Tharvolde here and I have a small request: I need you to trust me. I need you to trust me because I have some information to share with you regarding Paladins in Cataclysm but I’m not going to site my sources as not to throw them under the proverbial bus. If you can trust me, then enjoy the following couple updates on Paladins (nothing HUGE but interesting nonetheless!):
1) Consecration appears to be changing from a spell you cast and forget about to a spell you can control a bit. Apparently Blizzard is adding a status bar specifically for Consecration. Blizzard likened this status bar to that of Shamans’ totems. Consecration now lasts 10 seconds (up from eight) but, due to the new status bar, can be cancelled at any time
2) The base statistics for Paladins at level 80 have been increased across the board. Base health at level 80 (your health if you were naked and untalented) is now 11,091 (up from 8804). Almost every single possible stat has been increased across the board for the Paladin in similar fashion although the health change is the largest.
As I stated, these are nothing HUGE per se but they are certainly interesting. Regarding the second update above, I should note that no other class received a similar buff.
Update
Here are a couple new updates to share with the community. No doubt to some this will be old news but to many will probably be new:
- Vindication has been changed from reducing attack power to instead reducing all physical damage done by 5/10% (good!)
- Blessing of Wisdom and Blessing of Might have officially be combined into one Blessing and are percent-based now instead of using flat amounts.
- Divine Storm now officially hit unlimited targets yet remains as the 51 point talent. No word yet on increasing its single-target viability via some means.
- Swift Retribution has officially been changed from 1/2/3% haste for anyone receiving your aura to 7/14/20% ranged and melee haste for anyone receiving your aura.
- All resistance auras have officially been combined into a single aura. This aura now improves resistance to Fire, Frost and Shadow damage.
- Divine Intervention has been removed from the game
Update
- Crusader Strike now deals 100% weapon damage by default. The Improved Crusader Strike talent in place of the old Crusader Strike talent still exists and is still just a 10% damage buff to the ability (although this is definitely a placeholder).
June 2nd, 2010 - 11:16 am
If the Consecration change goes through, maybe it’s intended to work in conjunction with our “turn ourselves into a healing stream totem” spell? Cool changes regardless, even if they are minute.
June 2nd, 2010 - 12:18 pm
+2287 hp? awesome change. do you know if they’re increasing the base statistics with all classes across the board, or is this a paladin unique change?
as for the consecration change? I was hoping they would take that out of our rotation =( maybe there is a change that it’ll be an aura instead of a fixed placement AE.
June 2nd, 2010 - 12:29 pm
Ignore
“do you know if they’re increasing the base statistics with all classes across the board, or is this a paladin unique change?”
I missed your last statement >_>
June 2nd, 2010 - 12:34 pm
so will paladins have a “consecration bar” that drains as it is up and fills when it is not? it would be nice to have our own unique function like that, even if it isnt that game changing. and ~2k extra hp is a nice bonus that will keep our survivability up even after the bubble nerf.
June 2nd, 2010 - 12:56 pm
The consecration spell has to be glued to pally’s buttoms and run with them , if they want to do something useful , and not retarded as adding another key to instastop u’re mana efficient conse
As for the +hp , blizz is buffing all the classes sky high. So this 11k will be something when we see it compared to other classes hp namely casTARDS.
June 2nd, 2010 - 2:17 pm
the consecration thing, im a little fuzzy on the idea. does it have a base mana cost or does it cost the same mana but it ticks down the longer it stays. ie: if you cancel it at 5 seconds does it only cost half the mana?
cause canceling it and still spending the same mana is rather pointless
the stats thing is awesome.
June 2nd, 2010 - 3:45 pm
Thanks for the update Tharvolde!
Most interesting in regards to Consecration, let’s hope they manage to make it more interactive in our combat rotations than it is now.
And woot, I just finished my Shadowmourne!
keep the news coming Thar
regards,
Anardil, Live to Tell
Terenas EU
June 2nd, 2010 - 4:33 pm
Glad you added that last part about point 2. While I was reading it, I was like, “but everyone else is getting more health and such too, right?” And so it looks like pallies are getting mini-auras where the pally becomes a totem. Become a healing stream or a magma totem. Kinda lol but interesting.
June 2nd, 2010 - 5:22 pm
Source please?
June 2nd, 2010 - 5:23 pm
Ugh, I wish I could edit comments.
For #2, is that true of other classes, or just paladins? Is it going to be true for other classes?
June 2nd, 2010 - 6:58 pm
To date, no one has gotten such a stat overhaul that I’ve seen which is the only reason I mentioned it.
June 3rd, 2010 - 7:05 am
congrats Anardil, i hope the its as amazing as it sounds so i dont feel like ive been wasting my time doing these quests.
June 4th, 2010 - 1:12 am
Oh, I found the full stat change list:
Paladins:
Base Stat Adjustments at lvl 80:
- Health Increased : 11091 up from 8804
- Mana Increased : 5614 up from 5554
- Strength Increased : 166 up from 159
- Agility Increased : 88 up from 84
- Stamina Increased : 215 up from 205
- Intellect Increased : 100 up from 95
- Damage Increased : 79-80 up from 77-78
- Attack Power Increased : 552 up from 538 (due to STR increase)
- Melee Crit Increased : 2.35% up from 2.26%
- Bonus Spell Damage Increased : 90 up from 86 (due to INT increase)
- Bonus Healing Increased : 90 up from 86 (due to INT increase)
- Spell Crit Chance Increased : 3.94% up from 3.91%
Ability Changes:
- Consecration now deals 205 damage over 10 seconds down from 736, now has a status bar similar to totems and may now be canceled early
- Seal of Vengeance now has an updated graphic
- Improved Crusader Strike now shows under General in Spell Book
June 4th, 2010 - 5:34 am
I wonder how they want us to use the new version of consecration. Right now it does not even seem worth using, but I assume that it only seem like that due to us not seeing the whole picture yet. If they put that much effort into the ability it must be good for something.
There must be a reason why we would want to cancel it. I assume the cooldown will be removed so that we can apply it again right after canceling it. In other words be able to deal with moving targets. But there has to be more to it. It could possibly be some interaction with other abilities.
June 4th, 2010 - 6:57 am
Or it might be similar to the Death Knight’s Desecration in the sense that it triggers some kind of effect if stood in (not necessarily a movement impairing effect).
June 4th, 2010 - 7:33 am
Improved Crusader Strike triggering consecration that had an AE movement impairing effect would be awesome.
That, or it can have some sort of speed boost effect that negates slows while standing in the consecration.
DKs and Paladins already mirror each other in so many ways right now, and with cataclysm, having a guardian pet similar to the garg adds to the collection.
June 4th, 2010 - 9:54 am
link??? someone!! plz =(
June 4th, 2010 - 3:00 pm
I think (hope) that Arbitror is right. They’re cutting consecration’s damage by almost 75% and the assumption being since we can cancel it early, that the cooldown is going to be gone as well. It seems like making it be an aoe snare similar to desecration is not completely out of the question ( I can’t really think of any other aoe impairment that wouldn’t involve damage/movement….Maybe cast speed?). I just hope as Azium mentioned, that if this does go through that it is tied into IMP CS or whatever strike is going to be replacing it, so that we won’t have to bind
/cancelaura Consecration(Rank X)
/cast Consecration(Rank X)
To our abilities in order to lay this thing down like a DK does.
June 5th, 2010 - 12:50 am
Thanks Azium, and yeah – two-shotting people in battlegrounds really does happen. All the time :p
As for Consecration becoming Desecration with a yellow/shiny graphic – that’s very possible, especially if they tie some other spell into consecration to help it work as a snare, or possibly a glyph for consecration making it snare opponents for a short duration. I can’t see that they’ll be giving us an interrupt, taking away our only tool to stick with a target (cleanse) and then not giving us anything in return. If they did *that* it would’ve been a significant nerf for ther ret paladin, and it would be yet another reason why people shouldn’t take a ret paladin to a raid.
as for Seal of Vengeance/Corruption getting a new graphic…thank god. I seriously dislike the current one.
June 5th, 2010 - 5:34 am
I might be foolish being optimistic, but blues did state:
“We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas”
“In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility”
By powerful defenses, I am hoping they are referring to cleanse magic as one of them, as that is one of the biggest reasons why people take Ret/ProtRet Paladins on their team- as we are the only melee DPS that can dispel magic defensively.
There are currently 10+ talents in the Ret Tree that pretty much modify only +dmg and +crit, and since those will be replaced with “fun” talents, I am hoping that we would get at least
- A slow
- Gap Closer
- Defensive Cooldowns against Spell Cleaves in particular
June 6th, 2010 - 3:01 am
yeah that stuff about our defences holding us back always makes me a bit thoughtful. The lack of defence is why I started playing as prot.
Cleanse poison and disease is still there for us to use but there are not much you want to dispel. Have in mind that it will cost a lot more so you don’t want to waste it on minor debuffs or debuffs that are quickly added again. I would want them to remove it completely so they could balance us around not having dispels. I want to not have to focus so much on dispelling and spend more time on looking at my opponents. With a more complex damage rotation and more offensive abilities it only makes sense. Dispelling so much is really frustrating. Especially if you, like me, play a double melee setup. And yes, that really makes me hate mages.
June 6th, 2010 - 3:32 am
I completely agree with you Owro.
I hope they remove our disease and poison cleansing as well so we like all the other melee classes don’t have to worry about defensively dispelling anything.
Reason I propose this is because I fear if Blizzard lets us keep our dispel mechanic, they will not fully compensate us with the utilities they promised us on the grounds that we can still dispel poison and disease.
I can see it now…
Cataclysm Launch:
Us: Sooo where is all this utility you promised us. You did after all REMOVE our ability to cleanse.
Blizzard: Um, isn’t an interrupt good enough to compensate? Also we technically didn’t remove everything on cleanse, just the magic part. We can’t give you much more utility because you can still remove Poisons and Diseases which is a HUGE deal.
Us: ……….. *another expansion of neglect.
June 6th, 2010 - 6:52 am
Wotlk was not an expansion of neglect, it was an expansion of mistakes. Thankfully, Blizzard appears to be taking constructive criticism to heart and maybe….just maybe Cata will be different.
June 6th, 2010 - 10:50 am
Cataclysm is taking the mistakes in WotLK and making them worse. At the same time, it’d dumbing down or simplifying a lot of classes so that they cleanly fit into a DPS, healer, or tank role.
Cleanse has very little to do with Ret paladins being “too defensive”. That is purely from the BG hero aspect of the class and is a result bubble in BGs (forbearance is reset if you die) and AoW proccing a lot more against undergeared opponents (less resilience -> more crits -> more AoW procs -> More instant FoLs). Bubble needs to be balanced with itself, not with mass dispel or shattering throw, and AoW and the sheath of light proc need to not be based on crit.
Blizzard is very uninformed when it comes to paladin mechanics and why they’re seeing the results that they see.
June 6th, 2010 - 11:56 am
I’m not sure where you get your information from, and correct me if you are indeed in the Alpha. But everything you said sounds very, very misinformed. Or perhaps we just have different opinions. The mistakes made for Ret in this expansion (imo) was the blatant lack of a reliable interrupt that we so desperately need and the ability to close a gap. Also, depth to the cspec outside of macro’s set for your partners to cleanse, hof, hop etc.
Sure there are other things to complain about, but no spec is without its weaknesses. But the lack of a solid interrupt, ability to close a gap and an overall boring dps rotation is really what I feel is keeping rets down.
As far as your concerns for AoW, resil will no longer reduce the chance to crit in the xpac. So, we should very rarely be without. Bubble is the staple of the Paladin class, and has held us back since the days of MC. There have been countless rants and petitions to simply do away with the damned thing, sadly its probably not going anywhere. Sheath of light procs are easy to get if you time them with SS procs (You do…don’t you?) and the loss of cleanse is well….
Listen, I’m as skeptical as the next guy about Ret’s in Cata. But so many people seem to forget how far the spec has come. I’ve seen it all guys. I’ve been playing a Ret since S2, and my GM that got Grand Marshall in my old 60 pvp guild was a Ret. I know what they’ve been through and in all honesty, we’re not sitting too bad right now. I’m not saying settle, but lately retpaladin.com has been feeling more and more like the WoW forums with all the negativity.
June 6th, 2010 - 2:02 pm
I’m in the camp between Exedore and Kaiyo. Having played the Paladin class since F&F Alpha, I have seen what (mis)perceptions alone from the player base can do to this class. (Remember how the Forsaken had their status changed from Undead to Forsaken because of world PvP QQ’s?)
Ret has indeed come a long way since Classic. A lot of the improvements are for the better. A LOT of the suggestions to improve Ret went to the creation of the Death Knight, which was yet another slap in the face for the Ret community. Still, there have been minor improvements to Ret PvE to keep them viable. Ret PvP is still lacking when facing their geared/skilled peers… horribly.
June 6th, 2010 - 3:25 pm
@Kaiyo
Cataclysm is furthering mistakes because it’s making ret closer to a warrior or DK, and in fact, making all classes closer to each other within a role. I’d rather the game move back toward classic where the classes had well-defined strengths and weaknesses. The spec may have come a long way, but in a bad direction. Sure, the numbers are there, but is it fun?
I’ve probably said this before, but if you want a gap closer and interrupt, play a warrior.
As far as a “boring” rotation, all PvE rotations are boring to some extent. What makes them interesting is choices based on the fight or the current situation. In TBC, Ret paladins actually had that to an extent. Now it’s more frustration mashing your keys against the global cooldown and hoping SoV doesn’t fall off on movement fights.
Also, Divine Shield could be fixed easily with a duration reduction.
For AoW and Sheath, that’s great in BGs, where it’s a problem. But in arenas, the SS shield buff gets blow away so quickly that it’s near impossible to always get them to link up, especially now that most ret paladins don’t have Divine Guardian.
June 6th, 2010 - 4:31 pm
After reading through both Kaiyo’s and Exedore’s comments, I have to say that I’m leaning toward Exedore’s side of the argument. The direction they took with Wrath was a terrible one. It was a temporary respite that – predictably – was immediately squashed due to excessive QQ. Increasing straight up damage without really adding utility was doomed to fail from the start.
This time around, I’m really hoping (though not actually hopeful) they add far more utility and stay the hell away from our damage. The interrupt is nice, but it would have been nicer (and better for the game), if they had thought of something unique that, while keeping the Paladin away from slowly becoming a holy warrior or DK, fundamentally had the same affect.
As an example, they could have introduced a ranged ability (no gaps or snares right?) that when it strikes the target, it lasts for x duration (5 s) and any spell cast will have an extended cast time by x time (5 s for example), and if it’s instant cast, it consumes the cast, causing it to fizzle while still triggering the spell’s cooldown. Only affects offensive spells and heals (for obvious reasons – being able to consume bubbles and ice blocks is a bit much). 20s cooldown (or whatever, I’m not arguing logistics here).
In a sense, this is still an interrupt, but the mechanics are slightly different: it’s a way to stop casts (5+ seconds for a cast in an arena is tantamount to suicide, and opens you up to a class that DOES have an interrupt, and if need be, a Paladin has plenty of time to run), it aids the Paladin in both offense and defense (it can consume instant cast fears, heals, silences, disarms like Psychic Horror, and cyclones) without relying on more damage. And, it’s a bit different from the standard interrupt.
That’s obviously just an idea and I’m not saying it’s what needs to happen, I’m just trying to illustrate that we need more utility, and not more damage (like they did in Wrath).
June 6th, 2010 - 8:34 pm
I would love to go back to Vanilla, I dream of 1.0 servers being released…Really I do. It isn’t happening. This is where the game is and homogenization is where its headed. Sad but true fellas, we can’t be a unique little snowflake and still be successful. I mean, the whole reason that Rets fall behind are simply because we lack that, of which every other melee dps has. Homogenization is a good thing, to an extent. Do you know how many times I have literally cursed at my screen as I watch a 3 second Holy Light get cast right in front of me with nothing I can do to stop it?
I am totally with you, if you want interrupts, and ms, a bazillion gap closers; roll a warrior. You want snares beyond any reasonable measure and the ability to lock down a caster nearly indefinanlty? Dk is the class to be. Not me, I want to be that defensive support guy that can still hold his own against anybody. Notice what I said, hold my own. I don’t want to roll through people like they’re not there. Granted, that is fun as hell but what I really, really, really want. Is to be able to interrupt a goddamn polymorph more than once every 40 seconds.
I’m sorry if you don’t like homogenization. I understand where you are coming from. But simply saying that you want to be unique, different from the rest and still be viable…There is a reason that everyone else has these abilities guys, it is because they are necessary.
As for arenas exedore. They’re broken. They’re garbage. They are what has truly gone astray with this game and thankfully they’re being done away with. Blizzard has said they are balancing around BGS now, not arenas. These broken box pvp matches that favor classes with spamable cc and mana burns will be gone. Replaced with a similar feel, competative pvp but on a larger scale that is more forgiving to classes that can’t reset a fight an endless amount of times. And personally I have never had a problem timing my AoW procs with my SS procs. Usually, if a healer is so concerned with ripping my ss off everytime I want to throw it back up they’re neglecting the target I’m dpsing. Which usually does not end in their favor.
And ultimately if you don’t like where the spec is headed it’s probably best to just reroll now (or maybe you’re waiting to see the new zones). I appreciate the fact that you actually backed up your argument this time instead of just spewing forth doomsday cliche’s. As I said before, there is a difference between fighting for your spec and crying on the internet. A lot of the writers here tip toe that line.
Arbitror : I really like your idea for a silence/interrupt. I don’t really have much more to say. I highly doubt we’ll ever see anything like it…but it looks fun
June 7th, 2010 - 2:46 am
Arbitror:
I really like the “Interrupt Ability” of yours. It’s not just another kick/ pummel/ Feral kick/ mind freeze, but something along a different line of mechanics that achieves the same sort of utility.
Great job!
June 7th, 2010 - 3:44 am
I personally love the idea with the consecration. Especially on boss fights where we have to keep AE down right before adds spawn (sound familiar ICC?) So lay consecration down like normal in your rotation then pull it right before adds spawn, beautiful!
June 7th, 2010 - 6:01 am
the only fight with spawning adds you wouldn’t want dps on right away, and with potentially fickle threat is saurfang. your tanks should have no issues beyond that, and those adds take greatly reduced AoE damage so consecrate doesnt hit for piss unless you have wings going, but its much easier to time wings and just do full dps.
deathwhisper adds die so fast and the casters dont hit hard enough to be a threat, except in P2 heroic and even then its not that bad.
I think the only place it might be nice is on LK(H) with the stupid transition spirit guys, but again, a good MD or taunt or TotT will keep you safe.
on topic: i would very much like to see a buff/debuff for standing on our consecrate: something very much like desecration, only more powerful, since desecration IS a passive.
June 7th, 2010 - 7:55 pm
@Kaiyo
Homogenization happened in the past because of the philosophy, “Class X has ability Y. Class Z isn’t doing so well, so it should have ability Y too”. Instead of looking at what was wrong with the under-performing class Z and adjusting it, they simply add a new ability mechanic in that used to be unique to other classes. And then when a few classes have and it’s powerful, then everyone else wants it to remain competitive. If it remained unique to class X in the first place, every other class wouldn’t need it; the other classes would have their own unique abilities. No ability is necessary.
Yes, homogenization is where the game is headed, mostly because of 10man PvE in order to maintain “bring the player not the class”. It’s also a potential downfall of the game as a whole. Just because the game is going that way doesn’t mean that direction is good. What I and many others enjoyed were some of those class mechanics and uniqueness. Cataclysm is effectively destroying and unless you’re interested in playing what is essentially a new game, it is bad.
Arena in WotLK is broken because DPS and HPS is too high. Arena in mid TBC was pretty good and fun before gear scaling and legendaries got out of control. Sure, some classes were less viable in TBC arena, but that was also true of a lot of TBC PvE as well. Small scale class balance wasn’t a priority then. Blizzard is still balancing around arenas in Cataclysm, and most battleground balance has a big overlap with arena. They’ll most likely look at arena as closely as they do now, but when they can’t balance it, they have an excuse.
June 7th, 2010 - 9:32 pm
I know its Alpha, but is it just me or does it feel like we are getting just pummeled with the nerf bat? I really don’t have any faith that we will get compensation for these nerfs. No cleanse, conc does 75% less damage, DS does 55% less weapon damage, won’t be removed from 51 pointer (WTF seriously), and weaker heals than we have now.
My predictions:
New interrupt will require 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance to work.
HoF duration reduced to 6 seconds talented, no longer talented to remove stuns
New talent increases holy damage taken by 1/2%…. stacks 2 times.
SoC will still break every CC in this game that isnt a stun.
CS now double procs SoC to make up for Divine Storm. (I bet you thought vengeance but that will never happen)
Starcraft II will kill WoW.
June 8th, 2010 - 5:28 am
Now that Benedictous has presented to us the pessimistic side of things, I’ll try to balance it out by stating why I am optimistic regarding Ret Paladins in Cataclysm.
Interrupt: Feral Druids are receiving this:
Skull Bash – 1 Rage/25 Energy, 8 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown. You charge and skull bash the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 5 sec.
Now if you notice, this is even better than pummel/ kick, because it has a 8 yd range (has opposed to the normal 5yd range, and “charges” you to your target, while interrupting them)
Blizzard has stated “Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt. : )” and I am 99% sure it will be somewhere along the lines of pummel/kick or maybe even better, like Skull Bash.
HoF Duration: It’s already been nerfed once from 10 sec to 6 sec. I doubt they’re going to make baseline 2 seconds as that would be just absurd and I also doubt they’re going to nerf the talent, as it’s one of those “fun abilities” they might not want to touch.
If anything, they might buff Guardian’s Favor to grant us an additional speed increase while under HoF or grant it even more dispel protection, etc.
DS doing 55% less weapon damage: While this still may be our 51 tier talent point, make no mistake it will be revised heavily and adjusted to make it more fun.
This is what Blues had to say about DS:
“we don’t want single target abilities to get free bonus damage when in groups. That’s not balance-able. For the warrior the solution is to make Whirlwind not cost-effective against single-targets. For the DK, it’s about getting Pestilence back towards a utility role (getting diseases up on groups) and not a massive AE attack. For the paladin, we still want them to use Divine Storm (and you can’t cost-effect a Ret paladin anyway) so the solution will have to be something different. ”
Pretty much what this means is, Blizzard is trying to find a solution which tones down DS’s AE component against multitargets while maintaining it’s solid damage on single targets. They may implement a change like below:
“Divine Storm now does 110% damage to your target and (add new fun effect here), and 55% damage to all targets within 8 yds”
June 8th, 2010 - 5:30 am
@ Benedictous
That’s the biggest pile of doomsayer horse s**t I’ve ever seen posted here
June 8th, 2010 - 5:39 am
when he stated “New interrupt will require 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance to work.” I went from 90, to 100% sure he was trolling =T
June 8th, 2010 - 7:36 am
I have a feeling Divine Storm will be something like:
An instant weapon attack that causes 55% of weapon damage to all enemies within 8 yards, and an additional 55% weapon damage to targets affected by Judgement. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 25% of the damage caused.
Just a feeling.
June 8th, 2010 - 10:21 am
That would be an option, but kinda suck because it would make judgement act in a way like Combo Points, and Divine Storm being the finisher.
So imagine we just used our judgement and the guy died so we went to a new target. We would have to wait 7+ seconds for it to come back up so that we can use our DS. If we just used DS, it would be a pretty petty hitting ability.
What do you think?
June 8th, 2010 - 5:33 pm
Benedictus is correct.
There has been a long and sordid past of disservice to paladins. No one should be looking at the changes in a favorable manner at this stage especially when matched with the high quality previews for the other classes.
June 8th, 2010 - 7:33 pm
That is true to Dodge.
But it’s good to be optimistic. Remember, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
June 8th, 2010 - 7:35 pm
@ Exedore
I agree, the reason for homogenization is to even the playing field amongst classes that are similar, but perform poorly. Why is this an issue for you? As I said before, the answer isn’t an off the wall ability that may take an extraordinary amount of time to implement but to simply give the other class that ability because it is so essential to their spec’s success. We’ll use an interrupt as an example. I cannot kill an equally geared Healer, nor will they be able to kill me. A DK on the other hand can lock a healer down via interrupts and a cc chain, while putting out an insane amount of on demand pressure. Not always will this kill a healer, but I would give them two to one odds that they will kill a healer, where as in the same scenario, I would not be able to.
Can you come up with a reason, besides the fact that DK’s have interrupts/silences that they would be able to kill a healer when I cannot? Going back to one of your main points of ” Instead of looking at what was wrong with the under-performing class Z and adjusting it, they simply add a new ability mechanic in that used to be unique to other classes” What is your proposed solution? That Ret pallies have burst beyond that of which a single equally geared healer can outheal? (A small caveat to this, I assume that you are mostly a PvEr since you have referenced it several times in context where I would have mentioned PvP. I apologize for only using examples in one aspect of the game. It’s what I do, and it’s what I know best)
You say that no ability is necessary and that class z should just work. But, it sounds like what you’re saying is, if your computer was broken…Let’s say a hard drive failure. And the solution is to buy you a new hard drive. But you don’t want one, instead you would rather just boot off of 16gb thumb drive with an OS on it. Why? The solution is simple, you need a new hdd. But what you want is a cheap (parallel to unique) alternative to the situation. What you want in theory is going to work, it’s janky as all get out and it’s rate for failure is so astronomically higher than that of the preferred solution that it’s not really worth the risk…Just buy the damn hdd and be done with it. Does this make more sense?
“Just because the game is going that way doesn’t mean that direction is good. What I and many others enjoyed were some of those class mechanics and uniqueness. Cataclysm is effectively destroying and unless you’re interested in playing what is essentially a new game, it is bad.” I don’t feel that it is bad. Now when I’m running rated bgs and a holy pally is about to get a huge holy light off on the efc I can focus pummel that sob and keep beating the efc and laugh as I run by. See, what this is doing is raising the skill cap for the spec, something that Ret’s desperately need. I’m not sure why you see it as such a bad thing. It’s not unique so it’s not fun?
“Blizzard is still balancing around arenas in Cataclysm, and most battleground balance has a big overlap with arena. They’ll most likely look at arena as closely as they do now, but when they can’t balance it, they have an excuse.” Up until this point I have been able to least see where you are coming from. But this is garbage man. I can post links to GC saying that Blizzard is leaving arenas in the dust (in so many words) and the focus is going to be on rated BGs. And the fact that you feel that bgs and arenas, share any balance issues outside of one spec being ridiculously OP is absurd, and kind of discredits your whole argument. Granted, there will be arena type fights in a BG. Small, constructed/planned skirmishes are what is going to make it a hell of a lot of fun. But bgs are about positioning, knowing where your enemy is going to go before they go there and making sure you’re able to counter it. How can you balance 5v3? You can’t. But it’s going to happen….all the time in rated bgs. How can you balance 1v1? You can’t. And traditionally, classes (specs) that don’t do so hot in arenas can be BG gods just because of the change in scenery. Let me give you an example, I was doing 2v2 with my cousin the other night to try and get him the rating to buy all of his wrathful offpeices. We were runnin Ret/Arms and we faced Rogue/Mage. We killed the rogue the same time my cousin went down, and it was me and the mage. I had bubble/trinket/Salv(tied into a BM trinket). Basically every CD that was truly important to win. I lost exedore. Do you know why? Because the mage was able to reset the fight…over….and over…and over and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. I outgeared him greatly. I’m in full wrathful he was a mix of furious/relentless and I played the match perfectly. There literally was not a damn thing I could do differently that would have changed the outcome of the match…I was outclassed.
And it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, but you can’t win them all and I’m ok with that. However, I am 13 wins away from my battlemaster title, while guarding a tower in AV a full relentless mage decides he wants to recap what I’m holding on to. I won, and I embarassed the hell out of this mage. Because I had places to actually LOS a poly, I was able to use my engineering toys to help interrupt some of what he wanted to throw at me. And, most importantly, I was able to call for help just in case I was not able to handle the situation ( I was ). I’m rambling at this point…Good talk bro
June 8th, 2010 - 7:39 pm
I am hopeful, but there is one thing that scares me.
Blue Post: “Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards.”
ughh
June 8th, 2010 - 11:27 pm
@Kaiyo
I’ve actually PvP’ed far more than PvE. I was a Field Marshal in classic and have been in the top 2% for 3v3 arenas on a somewhat competitive battlegroup in TBC and WotLK. Unfortunately, I never had teammates who could get gladiator stick around long enough. I cite PvE a lot because WoW is a PvE game first, and it’s also easier to achieve number balance there (i.e. competitive DPS or damage output).
For your DK vs healer scenario: No, not really. In WotLK, very few classes can kill healers quickly in a 1v1 and the ones that can usually only do so in lop-sided match-ups (like priest vs. warrior). You’re definitely taking the “grass is always greener on the other side” approach. I have played on a DK and a disc priest and other than warr vs. priest, there hasn’t been much difference compared to the Ret vs Healer match-up.
What gets a DK kills on healers is ghoul stun -> silence with a gargoyle up, not their interrupt. Ret is close, but doesn’t have the second chainable CC. Ret also doesn’t have defensive mechanisms like AMS to prevent healer CC after the silence ends. Ever notice why you don’t see blood or frost DKs in high level arena? It’s because they don’t have ghoul stun or burst like the gargoyle.
Your computer analogy is poor. If your hard drive (say CC) is bad, you replace it with a new or better one. You don’t add more RAM (an interrupt) and leave the hard drive as-is.
What you can do as a Ret in a BG is kill the DPS while using HoJ and Repent on a healer in chain to stop them from healing your target. Ret has problems with that because those abilities also double as ways to limit your target from using their cooldowns to kill you or survive and their long cooldowns are prohibitive. The problem is not that Ret doesn’t have an interrupt. An interrupt is just one of many potential solutions to the problem, but like all other solutions, it has pros and cons.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
Blizzard continuing to balance around arenas is not garbage. They are in no way forsaking arena in Cataclsym. They’re just making rated BGs an alternative while not having to worry about getting arena balance perfect – something they’ve never been able to do in the past anyway. Now they just have an excuse for arena balance not being so great. If you don’t agree, find a quote that says they’re no longer supporting arenas.
And if you think rated BGs won’t be anything like arenas, you’re sorely mistaken. Rated BGs will have people with gear that know what they’re doing. They’re not going to run off solo, and they’re not going to rely on pure numbers to win. They’ll CC some targets while focusing others. They’ll protect their vulnerable partners while you try to take them down. The two differences is that there’s less pillar humping and you don’t always have to kill your opponent to win – CC can let you cap a node and then stalemate at it.
June 9th, 2010 - 5:09 pm
Having recently changed to BE after 4 years as human, it really feels like arcane torrent was used to placate the player base, albeit for the horde…
the difference is frightening in pvp and arena. A single additional 2min cd interrupt has been the difference between winning and losing arena, and allowed me to stop punching my monitor attempting to kill healers in bgs.
Such a small difference is so crucial, and yet it isn’t gamebreaking. It only helps against casters which ret has many and varied problems with. It feels so sad to me that Blizzard has so many near misses… Like the UA style debuff they were going to give CS. They just drop the ball for the class despite so many good suggestions, often sterring well clear of homogenization, yet they don’t go through with it.
Now we’re supposed to be excited for a Nibelung/gargoyle style… Thing (as far as I know it’ll be like anyway). Not happy Jan.
June 16th, 2010 - 8:50 am
I think we need a new [updated] front page topic.
The blood elf silence has always bothered me. I know there was alot of rerolls solely so they had a character that was of a class that didn’t have a silence/interrupt. Thing is, the silence isn’t just a new ability for one class–its available to the entire race. Horde racials have always been more aggressive.
In my opinion, Whirlwind and Divine Storm ought to do less damage if you hit multiple targets (less damage per target) but full damage to a single target. That, and more melee strikes baseline/talented (as in how death knights are now, which should have been the original paladin combat system).
Also, it’s wrong to think we must have a counter for everything that can be thrown at us. Arena would be terrible if nobody died because everything was counterable.
Balance and homogenization sometimes cancel each other out.
June 20th, 2010 - 5:47 am
There is hope yet! Ghostcrawler addresses Ret and Prot specs in Cataclysm (skip to 2:40)
“Paladins still need some work… both the protection and retribution paladin don’t have enough kinda going on, we wanna work on that some of stuff”
-Ghostcrawler
June 20th, 2010 - 9:54 am
“You can’t just give up hope because it’s hopeless! You have to hope even harder and cover your ears and go ‘lalalalalala’.” – Fry, Futurama
Blizzard is pretty good at identifying problems with paladins at a high level. Blizzard is very bad at determining the underlying source of the problems and at fixing the problems.
June 21st, 2010 - 7:49 pm
Blizzard is very good at inadvertently creating more problems in their efforts to fix the problems, too.
June 22nd, 2010 - 3:20 pm
NDA drop coming soon. Maybe.
Comment #50.
June 24th, 2010 - 7:37 am
“Paladins are the last class to be worked on, so what I’ve seen hasn’t exactly blown my socks off. But we do have a gap-closer that I sort of approve of.”
-From Ferarro’s site.
Pure speculation at best until the NDA is lifted and we get some more concrete information, but as far as rumors go its certainly an interesting one.
June 24th, 2010 - 10:39 am
That seems to be walking the line between NDA breakage/non-breakage.
Besides, we already have a gap closer: first, use Judgment of Justice on the target, make sure you have two talent points in Pursuit of Justice, and then use Blessing of Freedom and/or Cleanse (in its current form), and boom, GAP CLOSER!!1
June 24th, 2010 - 10:55 am
^
And of course pray the target is within 10 yds, HoF doesn’t get instant dispelled, and that you don’t have 10+ debuffs to cleanse off (that is if it’s even dispellable) as well before you reach the slow debuff (Winter’s Chill *cough cough)
:]
June 25th, 2010 - 4:42 am
Hey Overweight, how does Ferarro know this regarding the gap-closer?
The latest alpha patch is Patch 12266 and all the data being mined do not discover any new paladin changes.
Just curious.
btw, what is his site?
Thanks!
June 25th, 2010 - 5:57 pm
her site is ferraro.blogspot.com
it’s actually from a question answered on her fromspring site, and as far as where the information comes from, I have no idea. Last i heard she was a Blizz employee and was on alpha, but again, pure speculation on my end.
like i said, an interesting rumor at the moment until we get more concrete information.
June 26th, 2010 - 1:30 am
Thanks overweight for the source!
By the way, does anyone know that when the Pre-Cataclysm Patch comes out, will current items with AP, SP be converted to Agi, Str, Int etc? or will they remain the same and the new stat mechanic only applied to new items.
June 26th, 2010 - 11:50 pm
So what’s the point of removing Divine Intervention? It’s a fun little ability to play with and has saved me hundreds in gold…..
Most of the updated changes I see being worthwhile (Paladins, now with Heroism!) but really I am still finding the proposed Divine Storm changes to be rather lackluster.
June 27th, 2010 - 12:21 am
unfortunately, thats probably the biggest reason it was removed Harven: it used to be used as a raid-wipe prevention move, so that you could rez up and keep going. Now, its used to pull targets out of a fight (think Sindragosa Acheivment, saving someone who might hit 6 stacks), or, as you said, to just save the paladin gold.
Vindication change just makes the ability more clear, its just a simple change.
Blessings – meh, cool, but nothing huge, further consolidating buffs.
Swift Ret – will be another source of the WF buff. nice for solo and small group content.
Resistance Aura- Awesome, assuming the shaman totems will do the same.
June 27th, 2010 - 2:47 am
Wipe Prevention is out-dated now. It was really good in classic 40man raids, especially Temple of Anh’Qiraj where the run back took something like 10 minutes. But now that most instances have teleporters and a really close graveyard, the run back is nothing at all.
As overweight said, it was no longer for wipe prevention. Just saving money and more importantly, exploiting some game mechanics. Soulstones can be used in-combat and you still have to die to use it, so it’s most like a combat res and not wipe prevention anymore.
June 29th, 2010 - 9:00 am
@Overweight
The Vindication change is a bit more than just a clarification but rather (to me) a nice little buff. It is going from a flat reduction amount: 287/574
to being percentage-based: 5/10%
574 attack power would be 10% of 5740 attack power which is already obtainable and breakable quite easily by any physical DPS class today. At level 85, I wouldn’t be surprised to see 7000 attack power as obtainable (I throw that number out there simply as an idea as I don’t yet have solid values for what level 85 stats will look like – all we know is that they will go up a bit).
Yes, a mild buff but a cool one nonetheless.
June 29th, 2010 - 12:47 pm
Is there any other melee attack in the game that doesn’t have a secondary affect aside from doing damage?
June 29th, 2010 - 5:24 pm
@Tharvolde
It’s not that big of a change in PvP though, especially once gear scaling gets reigned in. The main reason that it’s changing is to make it more clear what it does, because raid-level PvE mobs calculate their damage by multiplying their base AP by a lot. Vindication and other -AP abilities affected the base AP. But if you were new, you’d think a boss had like 20,000 AP, which might be confusing.
All abilities that reduce AP, like demoralizing shout, are being changed to physical damage reduction and all tanking specs will have access to the physical damage reduction ability.
June 30th, 2010 - 5:22 pm
Well the NDA was lifted(supposedly) and MMO-champ hasn’t been able to datamine anything we didn’t know from the alpha.
yay.
June 30th, 2010 - 6:09 pm
Quite the leap in stats all across the board. I’m still chuckling at the poleaxe with the 2600 damage top end and 623 DPS. I’m one happy smithy.