No but seriously; I think we all understand how important this heal is. It’s game changing, almost as much as your hammer of wrath critting on the target in PvP, so, the nerf to Word of Glory has a lot of us really worked up. Finally, after dozens of posts on the Blizzard forums we get a response, well…. a protadin got a response;

The assessment that Word of Glory is meant for more occasional use is rather close to the mark. That’s also part of the reason that we’re comfortable with employing a cooldown solution in this case. We think that it’s more interesting for Word of Glory to be a reasonably powerful heal that’s used infrequently, than if it were a weaker heal used more often.

I realize that Word of Glory is also on Retribution’s platter at the moment, and we have something to share about its role in that spec as well, despite this being the tanking forum.

We think the 4.06 changes overall gave Retribution too great a buff for PvP. We realize that there are those that disagree, but we’re pretty firm on that point and we needed to make some adjustments. Given that Ret is primarily a dps spec, we thought it made more sense to reduce their off-healing capacity, which had become quite strong, rather than their damage.

That’s not to say that we mind a hybrid dps spec occasionally helping out with healing – that feels cool, and it’s appropriate. On the other hand, we want damage focused specs to be primarily focused on dps. It’s true that there were other ways we could have reduced Retribution healing. We could have changed Selfless Healer or even Word of Glory itself. As I mentioned earlier, after looking things over, we arrived at the conclusion that having a powerful heal you can use infrequently is more compelling than having a weak heal that you can use more often.

So, how about that time where Blizzard didn’t spend a lot of time testing something, and we all spoke out against it, and they still didn’t listen, then took them 10 patches to get us back up to par. Well, we could start when Judgment only returned 15% mana (what a joke, sorry Kalgan, but I told you straight up you were wrong), or we could go into when Cataclysm was coming out and even in Beta we told them we werent doing enough damage at 85, in both PvE and PvP. The list could go on, but the biggest thing I see, is that Ret is ok right now, not downright OP like say, oh Fury Warriors, but we are in a pretty good sweet spot between not good enough and OP as fuck.

This nerf will make it so that again, only top tier players will enjoy the spec in 2s, and most 3s comps will be compelled to run with a different class.

Do you think it’s fair that a Warrior has more healing per a minute then you do now? But, of course, according to Blizzard’s standards, we are doing too well.

I’m not too impressed. It feels as if we are going back to “glass cannon” case and this will be a pivoting point in our self sustaining survivability. Bubble is currently pretty low on the totem pole for survivability buttons.  So, I guess we will see. Again we seem to be waiting for Blizzard to see the problems that are ahead, which probably wont happen until after patch and people fall in rating really hard.

If that does happen, I feel your pain, and I aspire you to post  a lot on the forums AFTER you have experienced and tested the new WoG cooldown.

-Slayton

Good morning, afternoon or evening, Retpaladin.com.

Tharvolde here with a twist on the usual. To date my posts on the front page have generally been informative with respect to in-game activity or upcoming changes while maintaining a certain “blog” feel. While I enjoy this format and certainly will continue using it amongst future posts, I want to introduce a new concept to the front page in the form of a rant. These rants are intended to adhere to the following format:

• 1) Title – a high-level summarization of the upcoming rant in few words
• 2) Subtitle – a lower-lever summarization of the upcoming rant intended to set the stage
• 3) Introduce the rant topic
• 4) …Rant…
• 5) Interactive discussion about the rant with possible updates to the original post to include quality points made by the community

I typically have a lot to say as my mind is constantly wandering yet I often find myself unwilling to put these thoughts down in writing. Today I intend to alter this course and share any thoughts I believe to be of interest TO the community WITH the community. I encourage you to participate via comments with your own thoughts. With that said, let’s begin with Rant 01:

The Curable Yet Never-ending Cycle of Balance

It’s 4:00PM in July of 2010 at Blizzard headquarters and Ghostcrawler is growing weary. The day has been long yet he acknowledges to have at least a handful of hours remaining before he can make the drive home. He’s been dragging along discussing class balance for what seems like millennia yet there’s so much more to be done. Season 8 has been under way for over five months now and issues around balance have been clearly demonstrated on innumerable occasions. Damage is out of control represented by the regular occurrences of players dieing within a single global cooldown. The damage has reached a point that it makes little sense to run with anything other than two casters. For those unwilling to take this route, the lone option of running a team that directly counters double caster may be attractive. All other compositions have a long and arduous road ahead of them. Ghostcrawler is silently aware of this fact. The looming question is not one of “when” but rather one of “how”.

An inquiry is brought to the floor of the conference room. “What is it about competitive PvP at present that is contributing to a lack of balance?”

The subsequent silence is broken with an answer and an observation. “PvP is too fast-paced at the moment. Players are not afforded enough time to react. We need to slow it down a bit. We should increase health pools at a faster rate than damage. Some class mechanics need to change”.

• Some class mechanics need to change…

The above accurately outlines a train of thought used by Blizzard for longer than I can remember. I would counter with the following:

• Why not adjust the effectiveness of these mechanics instead changing the mechanics themselves?

When I consider a Frost Mage, I think of both control and controlled burst. When I consider an Unholy Death Knight, I think of constant, strong damage and excellent peels. When I consider a Retribution Paladin, I think of an Arms Warrior with less sustained damage but more utility. What is it about these visions that is problematic? I can assure you it’s not the concepts themselves but rather that Blizzard can’t agree on them for longer than a single Arena season.

At present Retribution off-healing teeters on the precipice of ridiculousness. A logical reaction to this is the urge to tone down its effectiveness. On this much alone, Blizzard agrees with us. The implementation, however, is where ways diverge. My solution, and I suspect a large portion of the community would agree, would be to weaken Selfless Healer to something like 15/30% instead of 25/50%. To compensate, and in the interest of not having a worthless keybind available to two of three specs, I would increase the effectiveness of Holy Radiance for Retribution and Protection. What was Blizzard’s take on Retribution off-healing? Introducing a lengthy cooldown to Word of Glory. What is the difference between my suggestion and Blizzards? My suggestion tweaks the numbers to bring existing mechanics to a more balanced state. Blizzard’s implementation changes the mechanic itself.

As was pointed out on our very own Retpaladin.com forums, there is an interesting choice available to us at present. This decision must be made regularly by the Retadin. Should I consume my current stack of Holy Power on a heal or more damage? With Blizzard’s recent implementation, this is now simplified to the point of hilarity. The decision to shotgun a certain number of Word of Glories into a teammate has now been replaced with the following simplicity:

• - IF Holy Power = 3 AND Teammate Health <= Some Percentage AND Word of Glory = Available THEN /cast Word of Glory

Hell, you could probably put it in a macro now along with Templar’s Verdict and completely take the human element out of the equation.

This kind of change is certainly nothing new. The core mechanics of Retribution abilities have been changing seemingly every season. Here are some examples:

• 1) During Seasons 5 and 6, Seal of Blood damage was deemed overpowered. The result was removing Seal of Blood from the game and forcing us to use Seal of Righteousness. While this achieved the goal of toning down Retribution damage (too much actually), it completely neglected the fact that Seal of Blood was also used by skilled Retadins to time their Judgements in the interest of breaking certain CCs. Why wouldn’t Seal of Blood damage simply be toned down instead?
• 2) During Season 7, Sacred Shield and Flash of Light spam was deemed to make Retribution too “tanky”. The result was to remove the heal over time component triggered by Flash of Light landing on a target with Sacred Shield proc’d. Why wouldn’t you just tone down the heal over time or reduce the effectiveness of Sacred Shield for Retribution instead?

There are countless other examples that continually illustrate a fact that Exedore (among others) have been calling out for quite some time:

• - Blizzard has little to no idea what wish to do with many of the specs in their game and this results in constant, sweeping balance changes

Personally, I’m tired of the roller coaster ride. I’m tired of having to change my playstyle dramatically either between Arena seasons or even within the seasons themselves. I’m tired of the mental teleportation between being overpowered and useless. I’m growing tired of growing tired.

For once I would like to read a post blue in color that defines a vision for Retribution and explains the path to get there. For once I would like to be afforded the confidence of knowing that although the numbers may vary from time to time, the core mechanics of the spec will remain constant.

In closing I can only hope with mild optimism that Blizzard compliments this ridiculous Word of Glory change with increased damage to Templar’s Verdict or a similar implementation. Even still, it stands as obvious that we are in for yet another batch of mechanics adjustments. I leave you with the following questions:

• 1) Do you feel a cooldown on Word of Glory makes sense or should the effectiveness of Selfless Healer simply be adjusted?
• 2) If a cooldown is indeed introduced for Word of Glory, what should become of the Eternal Glory talent?
• 3) Should Templar’s Verdict’s damage be increased should the proposed list of changes go live?

Tharvolde here

I’d like to share with you some insights on a particular 3v3 composition I’ve been running lately with moderate success. It is fun, it is fairly simple and it can bring the @!#$%^* pain once every two minutes. What I’m referring to is Retribution, Enhancement Shaman and Restoration Druid. Before I proceed, however, I have to ask the following:

- Get it? He pops wolves and I pop wings and when we’re training someone it looks like the wolves are flyi…. nevermind.

Anyway, the comp is fairly intense in playstyle but, in my opinion, is no more intense than the version of Ret/Hunt/Sham you see Vanguardy playing in his video he shared with us here: here. Just as with that comp, our comp revolves around rapid and frequent switches with opportune switches to our designated kill target whilst blowing all cooldowns. Imagine any healer in the game attempting to survive a six second Hammer of Justice they have to sit through while an Enhancement Shaman with wolves up and a Retribution Paladin with Wings, Inquisition, Pet and Zealotry and five stacks of Censure are beating on them. Let me tell you how this ends: unless the other team is insanely good with peels and literally utilizes every possible one of them at that exact moment, the healer’s going down for a nap.

In preparation for actual strategy discussion, however, I’d like to first list out the benefits of this particular composition:

• 1. Two reliable interrupts with one being ranged and a third semi-reliable interrupt that is also ranged
• 2. Grounding totem for that huge, incoming spell that can’t be interrupted at the time
• 3. Purge spam
• 4. Extremely strong burst with cooldowns popped
• 5. Respectable CC between Cyclone, Hibernate, Bash, Hex, Repentance and Hammer of Justice
• 6. Two ranged roots (Entangling Roots and Frost Shock with Frozen Power talented) that allow both you and the Enhancement Shaman to stay on your target easier
• 7. Rather decent survivability with Ret off-healing, Shamanistic Rage, Sacred Shield, Divine Protection and a host of other abilities
• 8. Difficult to utilize spammable CC against given Rebuke, Wind Shear, Grounding Totem and Hand of Sacrifice
• 9. Every kind of dispel available in one comp: Curses, Diseases, Poisons, Offensive Magic and Defensive Magic are all capable of being removed.

Some weaknesses of the composition, all of which revolve around peeling in some form or another, would be as follows:

• 1. Death Knights who know what they’re doing can be especially annoying between Chains of Ice, Desecration and Death Grip.
• 2. Shadowcleave (Aff/Unholy/X healer) can be extremely annoying on maps like Dalaran Arena Blade’s Edge given the Lock’s ability to portal and the Death Knight’s ability to Death Grip between levels.
• 3. Rogues, especially Subtlety, can prove particularly infuriating

Granted there are assuredly other weaknesses to this comp that I am failing to mention here as I have to claim that I have played a mere forty games or so with this comp. However, I feel it is definitely a strong team and I’d like to share some strategies with the community so you can go tear it up with some flying wolves:

Those *Poor* Mages

Typically you’d never hear that adjective used for a class such as the Mage right now. Frost Mages especially are the bane of many class’s existence and are on the fringes of overpowered with the huge burst potential being partnered with the most control of any class in the game. Whereas many Mages are able to Ice Lance spam their way into the 2400s, our comp encourages this behavior – particularly because it is the only thing they’re ever going to land. When facing any team that contains a Mage (99% of which will be Frost right now), our regular barrage of rapid switches goes out the window in favor of the occasional break from training the guy that had Ice Barrier up for a half second. My Shaman gets almost every Freedom and spam Cleanse on myself while he spams Purge on the Mage. Every Frostbolt gets interrupted. Every Polymorph gets interrupted. He can’t get away to Evocate and his Ice Blocks are an exercise in futility due to the fact, as I alluded to, our lone switch comes at this time when we immediately switch to the healer and completely disallow anything with a cast time. The moment Ice Block is gone we are back on the Mage and it’s only a matter of time before he dies. We’ve faced some fairly exceptional Mages so far in our games but even still these Mages were merely able to lengthen their lifespan by perhaps a minute or two through quality use of cooldowns. For the reasons I’ve specified here partnered with the obvious simplicity of dealing with Mages for this composition, I’ll forgo explaining how we handle popular compositions such as MLD and PMR and instead just tell you train the Mage like a champion with your only switches coming when he Ice Blocks.

Those *Poor* Discipline Priests

Again, “poor” is an adjective you typically wouldn’t hear in conjunction with the words “Discipline” and “Priest” as they are currently teetering on the precipice of ridiculous in terms of strength. Regardless, it stands to reason that Discipline relies on mitigating damage rather than healing through it. Certainly Discipline can heal decently with Penance, but the sweeping majority of the survivability they provide their team comes from Power Word: Shield: something that is immediately removed complements of Purge. As such, you have options against Priest-based teams. The rule of thumb is as follows: if they have a Mage, then he or she is your target. If they do not have Mage, then balance between ease of “stickability” (the ability to stay on someone for extended periods of time) and damage mitigation (staying on someone primarily for the purposes of mitigating incoming damage) and pick whomever you feel is the best target. Start on this target and then, simply bounce between that target and the Priest. At an opportune moment, such as when one or both of you and the Shaman are at decent health and both are on DR for a particular CC, switch over to the Priest and pop your cooldowns. If you don’t land a kill there, get back on your secondary target and repeat the process once your cooldowns are back up and when you find a good opportunity.

TSG, TreeSG and any DK/War/X Composition

I admit from the start that we have not entirely figured out our strategy to this particular opponent but what I can say at this time is that you do NOT want to attempt a healer trade by letting them get on your Druid while taking on their healer as well. This will not end well for the simple fact that Death Knights are perhaps the best peelers in the game at the moment (rivaled perhaps by Frost Mages) and a single Death Grip on either you or the Enhancement Shaman could effectively stifle your quest to kill their healer while still allowing the DK and Warrior to continue with business as usual. That said, we’ve found it reasonably effective to bounce between the Warrior and Death Knight. We typically start on the Death Knight and force AMS at which time we promptly switch to the Warrior. When AMS falls we don’t immediately get back on the Death Knight but rather gauge how we are doing on the Warrior as well as who is healing him. In the case of a Restoration Druid who may, by this time, have full HoTs rolling on the Warrior, it may be a good idea to go ahead and switch back. For other healers, you may be able to train the Warrior a bit longer. The times we have lost to this comp it almost always was due to mana as the damage mitigation both a Death Knight and Warrior provides is superior to that of Enhancement and Retribution. This could possibly be remedied through more defensive play on my part and regular Word of Glory usage on their kill target but I fear this might only delay the inevitable.

RofLS

That’s “RLS” for those that haven’t yet had the pleasure of witnessing you or a single teammate of yours getting trained into the ground for 10 minutes while the Shaman spams purge despite Blizzard’s intention to make dispels costly. We haven’t faced an RLS yet, nor do I predict we will, that performs many switches. I my mind, I have the Skype conversation playing out already:

(4:03PM) Shaman: Okay get on the Retadin
(4:21PM) Rogue: He bubbled. Let’s get on the Druid instead.
(4:21PM) Warlock: K switching.
(4:22PM) Shaman: Back on the Retadin please
(4:38PM) Rogue: Ret’s dead – nice work guys.

Typically the above scenario is how it plays out (only with us usually winning eventually instead of the Retadin dying). We handle this comp with rapid, constant switches on Earth Shield. Literally the moment the Shaman puts Earth Shield up on a target, we are gone and to a new kill target. The words “kill target” here are misleading as we never really have a “kill target” against this comp but rather just a target that will eventually drop dead. Here’s a snippet of our Skype conversation when facing RofLS:

(4:41PM) Tharvolde: Start on the Warlock and pop cooldowns right off the bat.
(4:41PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Switch Shaman.
(4:41PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Back on the Warlock.
(4:42PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Get on the Rogue.
(4:42PM) Tharvolde: Evasion. Get on the Shaman.
(4:42PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Get on the Lock
(4:43PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Get back on the Rogue
(4:43PM) Tharvolde: Cooldowns coming back up in 30 seconds.
(4:44PM) Tharvolde: Earth Shield. Switch Shaman. Pop cooldowns.
(4:44PM) Druid: CYCLONINGS TEH ROUEG.
(4:44PM) Tharvolde: Shaman’s dead. Good job.

Hopefully the above wall of text clears up the comp for you and perhaps even entices you to give it a shot yourself. I consider the comp strong but I question its Gladiator viability just yet. We will see once we start facing higher competition. Our MMR is 2300-2400 at the moment, which is certainly way below Gladiator-quality MMR, but, given the MMR reset with Cataclysm, that MMR is misleading. We have faced quite a few teams with far lower MMRs than even that who clearly were far better than the number implied. Last night I remember we fought Ret/Hunt/Sham where the Shaman and Hunter were both Wrathful Gladiators and the Retadin was a Gladiator (Xonk!). We came very close to landing a kill a few times but our gear is still lacking compared to that which we were facing (jesus Xonk – full heroic PvE gear including a weapon already?).

If you ever have questions, please feel free to stop by Mal’ganis and ask me!

Hey all. Megaphone here bringing you a super quick video that should get you a little pumped / clear any confusion when downloading the patch tomorrow. Pair this along with the 4.0.6 Goodness video and you should have a solid clue as to what’s comin’! Also, enjoy your relaxing music to the read of Tharvolde’s post below.

Hail

With patch 4.0.6 ready to launch tomorrow, I feel it’s time to provide my final thoughts on Retribution. These thoughts come as a result of extensive dueling and Arena on the PTR across the last three to four weeks partnered with a potpourri of playtime (alliteration intended – BOOM) among several other classes/specs. So strap yourself in and take a moment to consider the following.

First and foremost, and I kid you not, there is a perception on the PTR that Retribution is OP. This is undoubtedly caused by two factors. The first is a genuine lack of understanding when comparing live Ret to PTR Ret. Mages can’t fathom the concept that spamming Spellsteal isn’t going to rid us of Zealotry and Shaman can’t understand that Inquisition is going to be up for the next 30 seconds whether they like it or not. The second is that classes whom previously would exclusively rely on kiting us are finding that this particular tactic is a bit less effective. This is largely due to the rate at which we can stack Censure now such that once we are back in melee range, we still have our five stacks up and put out some respectable burst. All in all, however, Retribution is nowhere near OP on the PTR. It is, based on my own experiences, strong but not at all overpowered. To put this in perspective, I had not played a Mage since level 70 yet was able to take a premade Frost Mage with a terrible spec (I was told this by several people), terrible ench/gemming choices (I was told this as well) all the while fumbling around my keybinds and still manage to pull off some 2v1s in Arena against semi-standard comps (one of which was Ret/Arms – the poor Ret sat in CC the entire game with the lone exception of his 8 seconds of Divine Shield).

So how will we fair? Well, better than we have been for sure. I think you will now see people looking for the occasional Retadin for threes. I would expect a strong comeback for both RRP and Ret/War/Druid. I think you might also see some new comps such as Ret/Feral/Disc (Feral burst is ridiculous on the PTR and a Retadin who knows how to use Freedom effectively will prove the perfect remedy to the mobility nerf they received to balance their ridiculous damage output). Strangely, I also see the potential for the old Holy Play comp to have its boots dusted off and to show its face again. A strong case could be made for a Retadin in half PvE gear to run with two healers where one is a Priest and the other is a Shaman. The damage output of a well-geared Retadin can be quite strong and given the damage output of Priest healers on the PTR, this particular comp has the possibility to be successful.

Is Ret where it needs to be? Not entirely although we are heading in the right direction. Many claim us to be starved for Holy Power but after such extensive testing of my own, I’m having a hard time believing these people have even copied a character to the PTR let alone done any PvP with one. I found that Divine Purpose more than offset our slower, natural HP build-up and allowed for a similar expectation of Holy Power throughput as we have on live today. An argument could be made along the lines of the “Judgement adding 1 HP” line of thinking but, quite honestly, this would put our HP generation way over the top and we’d have to compensate for that in other departments – something I don’t wish to do.

So here’s what to expect when you log in Tuesday evening for some PvP:

• 1) Kiting us is a bit less effective now
• 2) We hit Warlocks and Mages like trucks
• 3) Our survivability has gone up significantly
• 4) Repentance is now a slightly better CC
• 5) Just in case you haven’t already, make sure to completely unbind Seal of Righteousness
• 6) If a Mage or Priest is trying to kite you, there’s a good chance his or her shields are all going to be gone by the time you get in melee range again
• 7) Expect QQ from opposing players about how overpowered you are even though you are not

- Tharvolde

This post is a collection of all the changes that are going to be affecting your Paladin this upcoming Tuesday (from a Ret’s perspective of course!) A video is also in the works for how to properly spec on patch day, and weigh your stats correctly.