37 Responses to “Selfless Healer Nerf”

1. Exedore
   April 12th, 2011 - 6:16 pm

   Are you surprised at all that MLG dropped WoW arena? And do you really believe it was due to “technical issues”?

   WoW arena just isn’t a good spectator sport. I played the game and half the time I couldn’t even tell what was going on other than someone’s HP bar was low. Not to mention the huge downtime it had between matches (mostly due to breaks and respec’ing and technical limitations) and some teams just not showing up to events.

2. Retwell
   April 13th, 2011 - 5:17 am

   They accidentally had it set at 30 seconds per holy power, equating to 90 seconds. 30 Seconds (10×3) is what they wanted all along. Either way, thanks to the WOG cooldown and blizzards infinite wisdom, I will still probably have selfless healer up less than I did before in PVP. Or at least, that’s what would have happened if I had any intention of renewing my account. Now I know what your thinking, and let me just say I havent started playing rift or anything else!

3. Borigrad
   April 13th, 2011 - 6:13 am

   Actually mlg annouced they dropped WoW because of balance issues. They felt this arena season was really unbalanced this year and they couldn’t take the mocking anymore. Besides watching arena ain’t much harder then watching halo or w/e shooter they feature atm.

   Also 175 dollars for blizzcon tickets thats ridiculous, money grubby bastards.

   The selfless healer change is rather annoying, since it riled is up so much just to be taken out. It’s just depressing and it really makes me wish pallies had new devs.

4. Allinon
   April 13th, 2011 - 7:25 am

   Ex-air force helicopter crew chief here. Stay safe!

5. Baldwyn
   April 13th, 2011 - 5:14 pm

   Is Ghostcrawler even working on WoW at the moment. Do they have complete and utter noobs in charge while the experienced people work on the new MMO? Seems like it to me. The changes for a lot of classes raise eyebrows. Frost mage armour undispellable next patch – yeah right.

   These people need a shakeup, or perhaps they know numbers are dwindling anyway, no new player base perhaps. Writing might be on the wall.

   But certainly I concur with most on here, all the game has divulged into with the extra cc (i.e. snares/stuns/fears/silences) that every cass has been given (I brought this up in WotLK) it’s just a joke. I mean if you can’t make some new and interesting gameplay without adding more stuns, fears etc etc your at the end of your tether imao.

6. Slayton
   April 13th, 2011 - 7:54 pm

   Will do Allinon and thank you for your service.

   I do feel that Blizzcon is a bit too expensive this year, regardless if you can sell the stuff they give you or not, that shouldn’t be in the thought process of the price of the tickets.

   I think Blizzard knows that WoW is being burnt out, and that may be the reason we are seeing some rather sloppy changes. My guess is that a lot of their focus is on the MMORPG they have in development and that they are taking resources from WoW to work on it.

7. Mannaer
   April 14th, 2011 - 12:28 am

   “Actually mlg annouced they dropped WoW because of balance issues. They felt this arena season was really unbalanced this year and they couldn’t take the mocking anymore.“

   Seems that traditional: “Resilience will fix it.“ or “We are balancing it for 85.“ dont work uh? Would be much better if Blizzard admited that Arena is fucked and they dont have an idea how balance it, and started to change it towards to what players suggest (players pay the game) and not that “this is not how our devs want to the game to be played“, which is a complete failure concept.

   Do you know how clueless Blizzard guys are in therme of balancing the game and try to turn it into a (lol)E-sport when for example, they balance the game/classes because “You are too powerful at low rating bracket pvp, and ok at high arena brackets. But game must be fun to everyone, so we are nerfing you.“ Anyone remembers this?

   ps.:Off-topic A cookie to the first one to find me the original Ghostcrawler quote about the statement above! I cant find it : P

8. Allinon
   April 14th, 2011 - 12:32 pm

   And thank you for continuing to serve.

   I think you are right about the new MMO. In fact, I think they plan to announce it at Blizzcon and they are working furiously to get something they can either demo or even allow play time on. In addition to that, they have 2 Starcraft products and Diablo III which are supposed to be coming at the end of the year as well so I imagine Cataclysm is fairly backburner.

   http://worldofwarcraftmovienews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/blizzard-product-slate-leaked1.jpg
   For anybody that hasn’t seen it.

9. turkeyspit
   April 15th, 2011 - 5:05 am

   “I think Blizzard knows that WoW is being burnt out, and that may be the reason we are seeing some rather sloppy changes. My guess is that a lot of their focus is on the MMORPG they have in development and that they are taking resources from WoW to work on it.”

   This began with WOTLK – it’s just more evident in the cataclysm that is Cataclysm.

   @Baldwyn

   Actually, Ghostcrawler IS the n00b they hired to replace the experienced staff, who were moved to the new MMO pre-Wrath. If you’re suggesting the ‘B’ team has been replaced by the ‘C’ team…../shudder.

10. Baldwyn
    April 16th, 2011 - 12:27 am

    @turkeyspit

    Mate tbh, Paladins improved marketedly under GC’s eye compared to Kalgan. Kalgan was the prowarrior (who actually played a warrior) in Vanilla, where paladins bar holy were a fricken disgrace, even in TBC Ret was terrible and holy suffered even at the start, prot was hohum still. Wrath was where at least a remotely even playing field was realized with regard to all specs.

    So I wouldn’t say GC is the worst Lead game designer to stroll the corridors of Blizzard, I’d say the original team was worse and narrow minded. i.e. Kalgan in particular who was systematically responsible for the destruction of the paladin play system after Beta as far as I know (I didnt play Beta, but from what I read back in a day, Ret didnt do too badly), you know the 3 min. Blessings you had to continually buff in MC, or the what was it 30 sec seal and rebuff after Judge, or the Blessing of Protection that overwrote your other Blessign and you had to rebuff after it’s duration, our absolutely pathetic dps, 50% of a pure class max.? Need I go on…..

11. Exedore
    April 16th, 2011 - 8:54 am

    @Baldwyn

    No, you don’t need to go on. Because you’re completely wrong or vastly exaggerating the truth to support your position.

    Paladins only seemed to improve a lot under GC because Blizzard made it stupid easy to play Ret and the “melee group” in raids was eliminated. Honestly, the switch from group to raid buffs helped Ret far more than any other change. Ret was very good in PvE in TBC once they gave it threat reduction. But you had to be in the melee group in order to do well like every other melee DPS. Ret in PvP in TBC wasn’t that far behind, but the needed fixes never went in (AP -> SP conversion after 2.3 and slightly better mana returns).

    Are you talking about classic beta? I played a paladin in classic beta and paladins (not ret because we didn’t have talents until two weeks before release when they completely re-designed the class) were overall pretty terrible. No one knew what paladins were supposed to be in classic beta, and most of classic beta was 5-mans and leveling, so the DPS + support role seemed to work out. But honestly, it was very boring using only Holy Strike (short cooldown) and the occasional mana hog Crusader Strike. Other than that, you had 30sec seals (think more powerful version of blessings), the better of which had cooldowns.

12. Baldwyn
    April 17th, 2011 - 1:36 am

    @Exedore

    Yeah Ret was superb in TBC *eyerolls*, if you call 50-60% of pure dps (that’s in a specific melee group with totems, feral, hunter, warrior etc) “Good” then your the one vastly exaggerating.
    Whereas my “position” is supported by the fact, from personal experience, I topped the dps every raid in Wrath across numerous servers in top 5 guilds, so yeah hardly the 55% of a pure of TBC, we were more like 80% plus could heal, LoH, Div Sac, HoS, HoP, HoF in raids, so all the utility still, blessings and solid deeps.
    I’m talking generally across the board with my statements, We were very viable in PvE in Wrath, we were shit before that, lets face it, even in a specific group, we were hard to justify still. PvP however in Wrath, we were still susceptible to cc, as we are to this very day.
    PvP has always been a problem and still is for us, I’m not saying it isn’t. What i’m saying is, Blizzard whilst GC was lead designer improved a lot from Vanilla/TBC, you cant deny that, generally speaking. I mean even as we are today, we are far more viable than Van/TBC.
    That’s all I was saying nothing more.

13. turkeyspit
    April 17th, 2011 - 6:22 am

    @ Baldwyn

    2 points

    1st – you can’t really compare Ret DPS in TBC to Wrath because of the existence of the Hybrid Tax, which was plainly evident to any serious raider in TBC. On top of that, the abscence of an Enhancement Shaman in your group, or being Alliance (and thusly, without SoB) meant poor performance from a Ret. But Ret’s DPS was offset by the spec’s utility, namely refreshing JoL / JoW via CS, which was a REQUIRED raid buff come T6 / SWP. Brutallus was pretty much unkillable early on without the mana return for your raids eleventy billion warlocks.

    2nd – While GC was very polite and sympathetic to Rets early on in Wrath, the facts speak for themseleves, in that the spec experienced 24 months of nerfs, hot fixes, band-aid / ill thought-out / knee jerk reaction changes, all in the name of ‘balance’ and a ‘higher skillset’, none of which was ever attained. The auto-stack-attack introduced right before ToC was, imo, the epidomy of incompentence and laziness on Blizz’s part. And despite my negativity towards Cata, the Ret spec (and Paladins in general) didn’t come close to being as poorly implemented as I had predicted – they ended up far worse.

    I’m not saying GC is the only one responsible, but he is the leader of the team of interns and hacks that have destroyed the Ret spec over the past 3 years.

    I would, without a doubt, go back to TBC Ret in a heartbeat, where the good Ret could shine, and the bad Ret would tank or heal. That said, I would rollback the entire game of WoW back to TBC if I could…..

14. Exedore
    April 17th, 2011 - 9:55 am

    @Baldwyn

    You were either terrible at PvE in TBC or have an awful memory. Melee group in TBC was enhancement shaman (windfury totem and bloodlust), fury warrior (battleshout and rampage) and 3 melee DPS. Usually that was three rogues because they had the highest DPS potential when geared. However, a Ret could get into that group if the guild let them or they were short a rogue. In that situation, Ret, even an Alliance one, was easily top 10 and could place top 5 on a lot of fights. They were doing 90% of the DPS of the rogues, not 60%.

    Your 50-60% number comes from being outside the melee group. But if you stuck a warrior outside the melee group, they’d perform just as poorly. Rogue might do a little better, but would still be way behind a rogue in the melee group. Windfury totem was just THAT good! As I said in my previous post, the problem was getting in the melee group for Windfury totem (and bloodlusts being rotated through), not Ret being too weak.

    In fact, the “melee group” debacle is a good chunk of where “bring the player, not the class” came from. In TBC, you only had one melee DPS group because melee DPS wasn’t viable outside of one and it wasn’t viable to support two melee DPS groups. That meant you didn’t bring extra melee DPS no matter how good they were.

    And my utility in TBC was all that you mentioned and more. I was also responsible for keeping up three judgement debuffs so that the holy paladins didn’t have to worry about them. I had more free GCDs, so I could cleanse as well (which was needed a bit more often).

15. turkeyspit
    April 17th, 2011 - 2:48 pm

    I honestly miss my ‘melee group’..

    Bring the player not the class was about as successful as Obama’s ‘Time for change’.

16. Exedore
    April 17th, 2011 - 9:41 pm

    “Bring the player, not the class” was a good idea. But it doesn’t work for WoW. WoW’s class system is still too rigid and many players are still too dumb. In TBC, you could have a mediocre shadowpriest. But as long as they could keep mana return going, you could still do most of the content with them. In WotLK, with the simple but highly beneficial tasks eliminated, you still needed to bring certain classes or roles (bloodlust for example), but now everyone in that role had to be able to play well. You could no longer succeed at the difficult content with the mediocre players. And you couldn’t just have anyone switch at the drop of a hat. As a result, a lot of guilds still had some sub-par players holding them back because they needed the class/role.

    Why so many players are still bad at WoW PvE, I’ll leave it up to debate. But it’s definitely true.

17. Baldwyn
    April 18th, 2011 - 6:33 am

    @Exedore
    I used to pull 1.8k in T1-T2 PvP gear, I was top 5 every raid, I ran with a enhance shammy, feral druid, warrior, hunter. Ret was 50-65% of a pure dps prior to patch 3.0 in this group. Ret with SoC used to pull 2-2.3k absolute superb conditions required, and warriors, hunters, locks were pulling 3.3k at the same time in T6. Our damage could range anywhere from 50-65% of a pure pending on the boss encounter. If I was outside this melee group I used to pull anywhere with Seal of Casino in the same gear from 700 dps – 1100 dps, in the group 1300-1800 on a single target in my gearing.

    We were shit in TBC and no way would I ever want to go back to those days, it was terrible. Your opinion is your opinion, and I have one too, and I’m glad they moved away from it, because we were fuckin lame generally, we deserved our dps buff we received in Wrath (although the overall game was still broken with the ease), our utility wasn’t that crash hot to justify where we were dps wise, regardless of what you say. That wasnt fun not being able to compete, when locks stacked haste and cast 1 spell to faceroll to 3.3k dps, the game was broken.

18. Baldwyn
    April 18th, 2011 - 8:50 pm

    @Turkeyspit

    I’m not with you on your viewpoints sorry mate, for the simple fact regardless of being revered and talked about if you timed your judgements/CS right with a swing timer, and produced the best dps you possibly could, we were shit overall and certainly in PvP totally unviable, moreso than now, and imao, our “utility” as you call it, was no different realistically than Wrath, in fact we had more useful damage soak utility in Wrath, as opposed to what? CS refreshing judgements lol, what a fucked up system that was, and certainly not utility to justify a 35-50% damage reduction over a pure. No thanks.
    It sucked farming Scholo for Dark Rune’s so we had enough mana all the time on top of mana pot chugging among other items, just a ridiculous setup and time waster.

    As I said, I’m not sayng we are “superb” at all, were ok, and thats it, in PvP this feels to me the most viable we’ve ever been regardless of the extra cc in game, sadly were getting a massive nerf next patch and we will be screwed, agan unless you have an absoultely superb partner backing you up, which are very few and far between.
    As for PvE, I still top the damage done and dps in my current guild pretty much, as I did all through Wrath, that’s what I like to see, if people are actually good at what they play, better than a pure failing, they deserve to be on top of the meters and showing people up, totally impossible in TBC/Vanilla, no matter how good you were, was the built in hybrid tax as you say which was total BS.

19. Tharvolde
    April 19th, 2011 - 2:24 pm

    I’m going to have to side with Exedore on this one – partly because of what he’s said and partly because of my own thoughts on the subject. There were just more “skillful” mechanisms available to a Retadin in TBC. You had Seal Twisting which was an absolute MUST for cutting-edge DPS. You had Blessing of Freedom getting people out stuns. You still had the ability to cleanse magic defensively. Ret was in a better place overall back then.

20. Baldwyn
    April 19th, 2011 - 2:24 pm

    @Exedore Apologies above 1.8k in T4-T5* my mistake.

21. Baldwyn
    April 19th, 2011 - 2:43 pm

    @Tharvolde
    Thought you guys were talkign about the retribution class itself? It appears youve branched out and are talking about the “game overall”.
    There was nothing distinctly skillful about stacking a group with buffs, downloading a swing timer and ensuring you CS or Judged prior to it reaching the 75% mark and all our damage coming from a buff from WF totem. It’s just common sense. And my argument is, other classes gained more from those buffs than we did, sady enough.

    I’m in agreeance on the button pushing/mashing FCFS, it’s still the same really, but no less skillful than anytime previously. It’s just you guys got a kick out of being talked about by others, because you remotely obviously had half a brain like me and ensured you were in a group that increased your personal dps (and more than likely had to fight tooth and nail to get that group, which further increased the ego through hard work others didn’t have to engage in).

    That doesn’t change the fact we were broken as hell, even more back then, what with mana consumption problems (zero ability to regen bar pots other extreme measures), threat problems early on (until in their infinite wisdom they fixed that) among other items.
    That was not a fun period for Ret i’m afraid, coming top 10 pending on the boss encounter and severely limited in every way because we were a “hybrid”, and on the “hybrid tax”, why didn’t enhancement shaman pay the same tax? They were pumpin out 2800 dps at T6 level.

    Btw Exedore, if you were horde and used SoB, obviously you would have pulled a few hundred more dps than ally, I was and still am ally, was a different story for us, BE’s had a distinct advantage, again which was BS and poor design.

    I want to rely on myself thanks, not others, it’s my political motto in life as well. Bottom line is your arguing with me over a different issue seemingly, I care about my class spec, and we were shit prior to Wrath, we couldn’t compete toe to toe with anything, now we can. Im not saying the game is excellent, or GC is a legen, but to me under his time as lead designer, at least I’ve hit harder and had more fun personally and am rightfulyl at the top of the dps in PvE through reflexes, stat collation, boss dummy beating, instead of some two bit lock spamming shadow bolt.

22. Exedore
    April 19th, 2011 - 5:49 pm

    I’ve never been Horde. They’re primitive scum. Ret paladins on Alliance did perfectly acceptable DPS. As much as any other hybrid. Horde would obviously get a little higher. If you had trouble with that, I don’t know what you were doing wrong.

    Everyone could run out of mana in TBC. Ret mana usage in TBC needed tweaked a little, but it was far better than the current system (starting in WotLK) of infinite mana.

    Seal twisting, even for how little it was used in Alliance, was far more “skillful” than WotLK’s FCFS system. Even without a mod for most of WotLK, if you just mashed whichever ability was off cooldown (putting judgement and consecration behind since they were obviously less powerful), you could do well. But TBC had far more than that. You had mana management (when and how often to use consecration to boost DPS in the short-term at the cost of long term dmg if you went OoM). You were responsible for keeping a debuff running. You had to watch threat (though that was a meter, so it was kinda dumb). You had to watch consumable usage.

    But what made all that better than the current system is that you weren’t staring at a random proc. You knew about when your 3.5 or 3.6 weapon would swing. You knew about when your consumable would be off CD. You knew about how much threat you were accumulating. All without watching your UI like a hawk.

23. Nikolcelove
    April 19th, 2011 - 6:32 pm

    Exedore stfu. You are typical wow emo garbage.
    You made posts about how bad ret paladins are going to become in 4.0.6 with the slower HP generation, yet I and many of my fellow rets are getting frequent procs with high burst dps. There is barly any downtime what so ever for rets and I personally am in the top 3 dps when raiding heroics (25-30k).
    So I hope you just fuck off and stop posting garbage about how bad rets supposedly are. Right now rets are in an excellent place. I just fucking hate emo nerds like you bringing everyone down about rets.

    Fuck you.

24. Kierlak
    April 19th, 2011 - 11:47 pm

    Ret in BC was a mess in a different way than it is now, but it was still a mess. It’s attack pattern didn’t make your eyes hurt or make you twitch involuntarily because you are gnawing on your desk waiting on a random proc that won’t come, but the damage was pretty awful, all things considered. The mana situation was…was a burden that we should not have had to endure. The whole ‘seal twisting’ escapade was nothing more than paladins grasping at the most pitiful straws to try and do more damage, while rogues simply rupture/blade flurried in cruise control 800dps ahead of you.

    And it’s a mess now with non-proccing RNG bullshit OR total GCD lock with too many procs. Mana isn’t a problem, but holy power without procs generates about as quick as mollasses rolling uphill. Inquisition is about as fun to keep up as barb wire underwear.

    Contrast that to the arms warrior I dropped my paladin of 6 years for, and DPS in PvE feels a bit like a more full BC paladin rotation, but with MUCH more rewarding results. In similar gear, I’m 5000 DPS ahead of my paladin with less stress, only a single random proc that needs to be cared about, and most of all: the rotation is very stable. There are no dry spells or GCD locks, unless I heroic strike without enough surplus rage. There is always a button to push, without feeling rushed or frustrated. The arms versions of Inquisition, lambs to the slaughter and rend, don’t drain your resource pool 100% dry before you can begin using them, one is passive and the other is cheap. All in all, arms is what ret should be, but wont be, because blizzard is dumb.

25. Dodge
    April 20th, 2011 - 5:10 pm

    Nick-cocklove should stfu.

    You self flaggelating, obviously one toon functional retards are an entire reason to stop playing paladins.

    Your sky is blue mentality through hellfire rains is so detestable and an exceptionally poor appreciation for the amount of time retribution has been sub-par in this game.

    Maybe you’re new, maybe you haven’t felt the lengths Blizzard go to hold the spec back, or maybe you’re still in the grip of addiction, maybe posting as one of the many paladin haters… Who knows, but your exceptionally poor and hateful post should be deleted. Just trust the knowledge of far better and far more experienced paladins. When they all say the same thing, it’s most probably the correct summation.

    I have moved to my warr, sad as it is, they are more like a paladin from wotlk than a ret will be very soon. The burst, the self healing, the mobiility. It’s just depressing… If ret has an ‘I win’ button like colossus smash, you know that shit would be nerfed in weeks.

26. Exedore
    April 20th, 2011 - 5:53 pm

    @Nikolcelove

    Holy power generation in 4.0.6 is lower than at Cataclysm’s release. It’s statistically supported. Just because it seems like you’re getting a lot of procs doesn’t mean that you’re getting more holy power over a longer period of time. But when you do get a lot of procs in a short time span, that high burst is also a problem from a PvP perspective.

    My complaints about Ret have almost always been from a gameplay perspective than a numbers perspective. You could make a class have one ability that dealt 30000 damage and had no cooldown, and that class could achieve that 30000 DPS number. But is it fun to spam one button over and over? I would say no. Similarly, mashing whatever semi-random button lights up is not fun either. It’s even less fun (because it lacks a challenge) when there’s no way to improve your performance because it’s so dependent on the random factor.

27. Nyalóka
    April 21st, 2011 - 4:14 pm

    I was going to ask what the hell was wrong with you guys, flaming each other, calling each other names but meh… At least Exedore handled the situation well. 10/10 Sir.

28. Jasonius
    April 21st, 2011 - 5:48 pm

    I was going to comment about Nikolcelove as well. No need for that here. Grow up. I don’t always agree with Exedore and think he needs a woman to work him over, but I have never once heard him call anyone names or degrade them. He is very opinionated, but has always, ALWAYS, backed up what he said. Childish name calling, especially to that degree, doesn’t belong here or anywhere as far as I am concerned.

    @Exedore

    I applaud you not lowering yourself to his level and keep it at a mature level.

29. Mannaer
    April 22nd, 2011 - 7:34 am

    Damn I just got my lv85 dk and started to do some pvp…. Damn Im feelin so gimped when playing with my ret now :/ This is so sad man….

30. turkeyspit
    April 22nd, 2011 - 9:06 am

    The issue isn’t if Ret was more ‘viable’ in Wrath/Cata than they were in TBC. Obviously, Ret is more viable, given that it’s a DPS spec and in Wrath / Cata, their DPS is comparable to other DPS specs. The question is, really, about skill.

    Blizzard, Noobcrawler in particular, goes on and on about how they wanted to up the skill requirements of Ret – ‘no moar faceroll plox!’. That was supposed to happen in 3.3. Result? The ever so awesome auto-stack-attack. Even in Cata, the skill required to be ‘viable’ as a Ret is pretty arguable.

    I challenge Slayton to go make us a PvP vid as a Ret, and we can compare it to Slayton3.avi (which I still have on this drive) and we’ll see which iteration of Ret took more ‘skill’ to work.

    If nothing more than having to overcome stupid, outdated and illogical mechanics (esp non-Horde), the TBC Ret had to excercise more skill than current players. That is why so many TBC rets got pissed at the whole Wrath ‘faceroll’ crap.

    In TBC there were 3 (as in, 1, 2, THREE) Alliance Retribution Paladins on my server running T6/SWP content, and I knew the other 2 by name. Not surprisingly, those same 2 individuals were clearing Hard Modes in LK while all the wanna-be Rets who were Holy/Prot in TBC were struggling, riding Holiday Drakes and stacking +Haste Gems to get the socket bonus.

    I trully enjoyed Ret in 3.2, but even running H Mim, I still felt that I was displaying less skill than I had in TBC. I’m grateful that I’ve been spared having to play the abomination that Rets (and Paladins in general) have become in Cataclysm.

    Ironic that the ‘WoW killer’ that everyone talks about ended up being Blizzard lol.

31. Brakkyn
    May 6th, 2011 - 5:30 am

    Have you seen paladin T12? Not another skirt…I could do without the mask, too.

32. Baldwyn
    May 10th, 2011 - 10:19 pm

    Sorry and I screwed up above in my first post to Exedore, namely “T1-T2 – 1.8k”, I meant a mixture of T4 – T5 gear. Pretty much T4 PvP gear actually, and 2-3 T5 items.

    @ Exedore
    I wasn’t doing anything wrong, you obviously haven’t played Ret since patch 1.9 like me. I have screenshots mate still of the dps disparities, ask Slayton or anyone at that time. The pures did 3.3k+ in T6 (locks stacking haste/SP and casting Shadow Bolt geezuz that was hard wasn’t it) and Ret ally with SoC did about 2.3k absolute max. in pristine conditions, Ret horde with SoB could get upto 2.8k, but generally quite a few hundred higher dps generally than ally Ret. I remember distinctly looking at the guild reports from the top guilds.

    Now with regard to the ally Ret, it was pure arse to get 2.3k and totally reliant on procs, sound familiar? Although I must say, as we are atm, isn’t as bad as those days obviously, but still frustrating, as it ruins PvP predominently, we may get 5 DP procs in a row (which is the reason for our little WoG nerf that has pretty much screwed us over entirely now) or we wait patiently while another dps class stacks whatever they have to, to get their big numbers up in an ordered, predictable fashion. I’m totally with you on this side of the argument, and the fact you mention the game generally is boring, and generating Ret dps is boring and possibly unskilled. However I would still regard timing of skill use as still “some sort of skill”, but can certainly understand your side of ther argument, which is valid.

    What I won’t ever agree with you on, is the fact that you think we were good in TBC, or the game was better. A game is broken when Pure dps with massive cc faceroll their way to 35-50% more dps disparity for merely being a Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Hunter or Warrior for that matter in the raid setting, That is truly pathetic game design and restrictive, unbalanced and unskilled. The game still is this way, just not with as great a disparity, and that’s my point, I want the numbers more even regardless, but I do agree that the game is still crap in many ways totally.

33. Exedore
    May 11th, 2011 - 10:50 pm

    I’m keeping this brief because I just don’t really care about WoW anymore.

    @Baldwyn

    You’re downplaying the design goals and overall mechanics in TBC because you don’t like them. In TBC the DPS design was either you were a DPS powerhouse as a pure, or you were significantly behind as a hybrid, but brought a good chunk of utility. Comparing the raw DPS of a TBC hybrid like a Ret paladin to the raw DPS of a pure like a warlock should have had the ret paladin noticeably lower. Why is that design broken?

    When I rolled a paladin, I never expected to do the damage of a rogue, or even a warrior for that matter. I rolled a paladin to have decent damage and utility. If I wanted to just be a damage dealer, I would have rolled a pure DPS class. By keeping pure classes as pure classes, you have significant differences in how the classes play, without have to develop specialized mechanics for each to keep them from becoming too similar. Is WotLK or Cataclysm better now that every class does similar DPS and most of them just smash some buttons? In TBC, we weighed damage vs. utility. Increasing your own over increasing the group’s damage. Now, we just accuse each other of pressing less buttons and proclaim superiority because we press more buttons.

    I liked TBC and classic compared to late WotLK and Cata because a ret paladin was a paladin. Not a crappy warrior. Other classes were unique as well. And the mechanics for most classes allowed a good player to distinguish themselves from a bad player. Yes, there were a few exceptions in TBC, but is it any better now? I’m not saying TBC or classic were perfect. But I believe that with some tweaking (adjusting numbers, not completely new abilities), Ret would’ve been fine in TBC in both PvE and PvP.

34. Typhron
    May 17th, 2011 - 8:43 am

    Enough is enough. And when you hear that I’m blowing the whistle you know shit’s about to go down (…’cause I’m usually the one bitching. Moving on).

    You’ve been comparing bad and good mechanics across the board, but you know what? In the end it doesn’t matter because throughout Vanilla, tBC, and Wrath we, as Proud Ret Paladins, have been shafted and changed so many times that we have a larger libary of good/bad things to remember. And it’s all for naught ’cause Blizzard usually switches the old with the new in it’s entirity.

    We will not see Seal of doing-something-other-than-Casino again.

    We will not see Seal Twisting again.

    We will not see Reckonbombing again.

    We will not see Holy Strike, 30 second, 2 minute, or even DISPELLABLE seals again.

    Because that’s not how Blizzard rolls. I can NOT be the only Paladin who’s been playing the same game for the past 6, 7 or 11 (too tired to count) years who isn’t living in nostalgia for the good ‘ol days, pining for a time when the game felt like work because it was eating away at our pride and sanity in one form another. It doesn’t matter what good came from the past, ’cause right ‘now’ and possibly in the future? It won’t make a lick of difference. And that’s how Blizzard designs this particular class/spec.

    I’m not going to go over how all of us carry the same [emotional] wounds from caring about a spec so deeply, either. It goes without saying that for the most part, we all remember what it’s like. And why Cata affects a lot of us so, and why we want something that we’re used to (because more than anything, it’s a pain we know and not one we don’t).

    And that’s really the only thing that matters now. The future of the class and spec, and the game itself. And how many are willing to go through even more hell for that future.

    I’m going to bed.

35. Rex
    May 19th, 2011 - 8:20 pm

    Exedore, please enlighten me on something.
    How can you judge rets in cata when you cancelled your account mid 2010? Did you have another toon you played? Please tell me that you didn’t judge everything simply off numbers and here say…
    From my experience in a 13/13 guild, Rets in PVE are awesome. Yes there is downtime in the rotation, but you can work your way around this in accordance with the mechanics of fights. The core of ret PVE is capitalising on what is given to you whether it’s RNG or cooldowns. That takes skill.
    I am just glad that our class is no longer face roll. To maximise dps we must have careful planning on what spells to use and at what time. To me and my guild, that’s far more entertaining than the bland wrath ret.

36. Exedore
    May 21st, 2011 - 8:22 pm

    @Rex

    PTR doesn’t need an active account. I also leveled my friend’s ret paladin and did some PvP early in cata.

37. Kierlak
    May 21st, 2011 - 9:24 pm

    Yeah yeah, rets are super awesome in PvE. Skill and all that fluff shit. Arms warriors are just more awesome and don’t make your eyes bug out looking for ‘skill based’ class mechanics.

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