Ghostcrawler may as well say "lol, go re-roll holy".

If paladins are so quick to reroll then that means a large number of the 2200+ club atm are former rets. So wouldn't buffing ret just even the spread between specs? Unless of course they believe holy is in fact OP which does not explain why ret is being nerfed.

wattadouche.

Edit: I also like the reasoning he throws out there. Basically spriests are more stubborn so it's more of a priority to make sure they keep doing arena. Really you have to look at the history of the specs. Shadow while never exactly top-end DPS nor over-represented gladiator material has had a much longer history of success. In BC I did arenas ret, but I went holy for 5s because PvE gear = mad skillz. And why did I have PvE holy gear? Because it was go holy or go home. Spriests on the other hand- it didn't matter that one of ours was still in t5 and only pulled 1100 dps, we still brought 3 to Brutallus because they were so awesome. To be fair we started to bring a ret paladin at that time too, but if you look at any guild it was pretty much the same. You brought ONE for raid stacking in sunwell and prior to that they were all but non-existent.

You also have to remember the fact that a lot of these s5 heroes were rerolls, former holy paladins, or people with alts that rarely played them. I think if you were to dig deeper you would see that most ret paladins are as stubborn to respec as any shadowpriest. What's really happening is a lot of the people who went ret in s5 are going back to holy where they started.

I got the same from reading that.

I have a bad feeling.

Yes, I had the "lol ret, stfu and go holy" feeling again aswell haha

For the context of the thread, his response wasn't a "go fuck yourself and healbot things" the way you make it sound. Blizzard has said (and I agree with this) that arena statistics aren't a good measurement of what classes are or aren't struggling.

The thread was straight up asking what the devs vision for ret is, and he told them. Viable in arena and all aspects of the game. It was a vague answer, but the question was vague as well. With as many ret changes as we've seen in WotLK, I wouldn't be surprised if they more planned. While it might sound like I'm just a blizzard fanboy putting too much faith in them, I'm not. I'm simply waiting to pass judgement on the whole thing until we see more PTR builds and we see the patch go live.

People are freaking out over him making an observation. He didn't say what the dev team was doing because of that observation, he just mentioned that they've seen it. I didn't see him mention that they liked that observation, nor did he say they didn't like it. The statement was made to set up his next one, about how they have to look at more than just arena rep when looking at class balance.

Verssiia, you're in denial. Wake up and analyze what was said here and in other threads. Any PR mouthpiece will wordsmith their replies to make it seem like they know what they're doing or that it's not as bad as it actually is. Even though he's a lead developer, it doesn't mean he isn't doing that. We all do it too when we post on forums.

Look at his first paragraph. By his comparison with shadow priests, he says that ret paladins tend to switch specs to compete in arena rather than quitting or sticking it out with Ret. And then he says they're doing it because holy is better. That means that either holy is too good and should be nerfed or ret is too bad and needs buffed. Ok, nothing that wrong yet.

But you have dig deeper at his assumptions and identify which of the two scenarios is true. By saying this, I'm showing my bias, but why would a player that enjoys Ret switch to holy if ret was just and holy was OP? Unfortunately, statistics can be used to say whatever you want. But as a community we know Ret is lacking in high-end arena based not only on representation, but first-hand accounts. That's just become implicit in most of our arguments by now. And in fact, Ghostcrawler said more than once that they wanted to give ret more utility once they reigned in the damage.

The end result is that this statement is just and excuse to not have to deal with Ret because they have no clue what they're doing with paladins (more on this later).


His second paragraph is an awful excuse. Yes, if he gave a stated class vision, people would use it to argue buffs and nerfs. But at the same time, how can the playerbase communicate back to the developers what's working and what isn't if they don't know how it was supposed to work in the first place? For example, is my FoL too weak or is it where it's supposed to be? No clue because no one has said what our heals should be capable of. If someone won't give you a straight answer when asked a question it's because they themselves don't know or don't want you to know the real answer.



And here's how I know that Blizzard has no clue what they're doing with paladins: The designs over multiple patches have shown a lack of full understanding of the class mechanics by leaving them incomplete, or the designs are just so outwardly awful that there's no rationale explanation for how anyone with a basic understanding of the class could consider it a good design.

I actually develop software, so I have some insight on these things should work. What normally happens, is that you come up with high level requirements or design. The developers then break it down into more detail. Or you may be looking at some small aspect already. But once a design it put out, it should be reviewed by knowledgeable parties. They'll point out flaws in the design, possible problems when interacting with other elements aspect of the software, or scrap the design altogether. Then the design gets coded and tested.

Step back to 2.3 in TBC. In that patch, Ret paladin gear was changed from having both strength and spellpower to just strength. Yet all of Ret's abilities had a sizeable component of damage from spellpower. This was pointed out immediately on the forums, as anyone who is knowledgeable about ret paladins would point out that flaw. Yet it wasn't fixed until WotLK, over a year after the patch was released (the patch started months earlier). Now we have this latest sacred shield change that is just so awful, you wonder how no one brought up how pointless it made SS for prot and ret the second the idea was proposed. But no, it got all the way to a PTR build. If you look at the initial WotLK beta builds, they added a huge amount of RNG to judgement damage, so the point where paladins in lvl 70 gear were getting 20k crits by stacking buffs. It took players about a day to post those screenshots. That's a pretty obvious flaw that experienced paladins pointed out by just looking at talent trees.

These continued obvious flaws that anyone who is familiar with ret would point out demonstrates that although Blizzard may have a lose idea of how paladins should work, none of them have any knowledge about how it actually works and how potential changes would work. They're not even to the level where they can understand why things don't work how they want them to.

No fucking way.If they want Holy to be viable in arena and not other spec's i coudl just delete my paladin.

Exedore, you say they don't know what they want to do with paladins, but didn't they also say they wanted to give us more utility? Wouldn't that seem to indicate that they DO know what they want to do with us? Or are you going to write this off as blizzard just hushing the masses like you have the other recent blue posts about ret?

We're nowhere near the end of this PTR. We don't know what other plans (if any) they have for ret. I don't see a reason to get upset and frustrated by changes that they already said they don't think will work. If they don't think it'll work, why would they implement it? I can't think of anything that blizzard has implemented knowing it wouldn't do what they wanted it to.

As far as the SS nerf, I don't think it will be nearly as bad as people make it sound. Think about how many dispel teams you fight. Against those teams, SS isn't staying up much anyways. Are you really going to notice it not being there against them? I doubt it. Sure, you'll notice it against the teams without dispel, but that amounts to what, less than half of the teams we encounter? Don't get me wrong, this is a stupid nerf. But people are acting like it completely kills ret in arenas, and I don't see how it does.

Your post makes it sound like we're completely broken and unplayable, but I don't get that feeling when I play. I feel fully viable. I don't feel like I'm bringing my team down. My first-hand account of ret is that I'm an asset to my arena partners, and that I can get us where we want to be. It may not be the same way another class does it, but I think thats a good thing. I don't play the same way a mage would for example, or a DK. If I wanted to play with a warrior and druid, I don't feel like I have to be on a DK to do so, nor do I feel I have to be a mage to play with a rogue and priest. I can play with them as ret, and be successful. In the end, isn't that whats important?

I see no reason to be upset by the post. While I don't like the sacred shield change, I'm fairly confident it won't get implemented as is. I'm going to bide my time on the whole thing, and let PTR builds develop, while continuing to post on the official forums about the changes that come not just now but in later PTR builds. That's my best shot at making sure blizzard understands how the changes affect ret.

Verssiia, no offense, but you're wrong on SS on Arenas, it is that bad (the nerf) at high rated arenas in which you probably have not played that char at, and I only have played for a few weeks when I actually cared about it. It's really, really good even against dispel teams because it's so easy and cheap to make it work, as soon as you pop it, it will proc the absorb effect after the first damage tick (roughly 2k, then another every 6sec, that totals like 20k damage over the span of one minute). Yea you DO notice when you have it and when you don't (check Hoff's last movie in which he points this out). Ever noticed that there is pretty much no one using 3/17/51 builds? That happens for a reason.


And Exedore meant they do not know in detail what the want for Paladins, and Ret in specific. Sure they can think "a melee class with some holy damage and defensive group utility", but that's way too simplistic, when it comes to detail and mechanics to make it actually work, they have lost themselves (or, never found it).

Today i will kill all, better not be in a BG and run across me

I'm staying ret ti'll i quit the game. Ive been ret since july 2006.