FINALY! GC Fixes Ret PVP!

[lunchbox2042]

At what point did GC fix anything? All he did was give you back something you had for the 3 expansions prior. It's just one bandaid after another. Maybe next expansion.

[Cronosmash]

Yep, these are fantastic abiltiies and we DEFINITELY need to see more of those in the game.
Yep, more stuns and instant CC please! Wow, you are just full of original and impressive ideas.

Have you ever thought of going into game development?

If most specs can cast 20 CCs over 2 mins and Ret can cast 5 and most specs have a knockback or HUGE RBG utility like that and Ret have nothing exclusive (Holy have it all) therefore we have 2 possible solutions:

1) REMOVE 50% of all CCs from all specs that have more AND remove those RBG utilities from everyone also.

or

2) Give 50% more CC and a RBG utility for Ret.

What seems to be easier to happen?

And I have a degree in Game Development, studied Game Design since I was 12, I know what I'm talking about.

It's OBVIOUS balance. CC and utility help MUCH MORE than any BoP/Bubble for a RBG, ESPECIALY becouse of the lower cooldowns.

Ret on 5.2 will be balanced and good for ARENAS. The problem with Ret is RBGs. And the reason is obvious:

A single target dispel on 2 mins CD and a physical imune that won't let you physical hit on 5 mins CD - compare with a AREA ofensive and defensive dispel on a 15 secs CD. Think about the effect of both when there is 6 players arround for a death match and when there is 16 players arround for X objective. Think how usefull a knockback can be on a death match and on a BG like Silvershard: a knockback takes a person of the cart and works like a 1 hit kill and AREA. Smoke bomb on arena with the number of snare/stun/roots on a arena, compare with a RBG. 3 people max on silence with Solar on a arena vs the chance to combo with Ursol/Gorefiends and get 7/8 people in RBG. A Death Grip with 2 people DPSing target on arena and a Death Grip with 6 people DPSing and the amount of roots/snare/CC arround. How many people can be CCd for 8 secs with an area Fear plus being send 20yards from the objective?

Those spells are MUCH MORE potent on RBGs and therefore a spec that have it is ALWAYS desired and a spec that don't are NEVER desired. So here we have: Ret, Arms and Enhance are left behind because of this bad design. And this will NEVER be fixed until the game is balanced arround that too. Meaning give all specs the same amount of group/RBG CC/Utility.

If CC/Utility are so important, why take a spec that does not have if others have it? The game as it is is the same as giving some specs more damage than others on purpose for PVE: people will want specs that deal more damage. Obvious balance is obvious.

[gildra]

If most specs can cast 20 CCs over 2 mins and Ret can cast 5 and most specs have a knockback or HUGE RBG utility like that and Ret have nothing exclusive (Holy have it all) therefore we have 2 possible solutions:

1) REMOVE 50% of all CCs from all specs that have more AND remove those RBG utilities from everyone also.

or

2) Give 50% more CC and a RBG utility for Ret.

What seems to be easier to happen?

And I have a degree in Game Development, studied Game Design since I was 12, I know what I'm talking about.

It's OBVIOUS balance. CC and utility help MUCH MORE than any BoP/Bubble for a RBG, ESPECIALY becouse of the lower cooldowns.

Ret on 5.2 will be balanced and good for ARENAS. The problem with Ret is RBGs. And the reason is obvious:

A single target dispel on 2 mins CD and a physical imune that won't let you physical hit on 5 mins CD - compare with a AREA ofensive and defensive dispel on a 15 secs CD. Think about the effect of both when there is 6 players arround for a death match and when there is 16 players arround for X objective. Think how usefull a knockback can be on a death match and on a BG like Silvershard: a knockback takes a person of the cart and works like a 1 hit kill and AREA. Smoke bomb on arena with the number of snare/stun/roots on a arena, compare with a RBG. 3 people max on silence with Solar on a arena vs the chance to combo with Ursol/Gorefiends and get 7/8 people in RBG. A Death Grip with 2 people DPSing target on arena and a Death Grip with 6 people DPSing and the amount of roots/snare/CC arround. How many people can be CCd for 8 secs with an area Fear plus being send 20yards from the objective?

Those spells are MUCH MORE potent on RBGs and therefore a spec that have it is ALWAYS desired and a spec that don't are NEVER desired. So here we have: Ret, Arms and Enhance are left behind because of this bad design. And this will NEVER be fixed until the game is balanced arround that too. Meaning give all specs the same amount of group/RBG CC/Utility.

If CC/Utility are so important, why take a spec that does not have if others have it? The game as it is is the same as giving some specs more damage than others on purpose for PVE: people will want specs that deal more damage. Obvious balance is obvious.

except arms is not left behind and brings a lot of utility aswell. banners, shockwave, AoE fear, alternative flag carrier for if the tank is not there. then they also can spec tank (pala prot is a joke). not to forget they have good sustained and burst.

[Cronosmash]

Fairly truth, Gildra - still, those spells are MUCH weaker than the RBG utilities I said... War is 2 times better than Ret, but 10 times worse than a Rogue and a SPriest =/

Make Pala Prot viable is another issue: Paladin defensives are bubble that drop Flag and mobility/speed depend on Judge and not being CCd/Silenced for Freedom. Still, Prot is WAY better than on Cata. Look at my Prot talents and think about it: use ES on self, Daze/Silence with AS, WoG spam with Divine Purpose, the now undispelable SS... thinking about using Speed of Light too...

For Prot FC I think a COMBINATION of SOME of:

- Bring Lay back
- Buff WoG to DOUBLE (really, 25k heals are not survivability tools)
- Divine Protection remove fear/stun
- Buff SS (already long needed)
- Better CC for peels, maybe a knockback
- Buff mobility with: 30 secs or less Speed of Light or some kind of Leap/Intervene so it competes with Druid/War
- Absolve for Prot.

3 or 4 of those solve Prot PVP problem. Most of it solve Ret Surviviability too: Lay, WoG, DProt, SS and CC.

If a spec have low performance, low representation, there is math and logic to explain it, and things as it is makes players frustrated, WHY NOT BUFF IT?

[Deleted]

What room would a Warrior exactly have to complain about? Exactly nothing.

My point was that Retribution isn't the only spec with glittery spell effects to notify people that we're bursting and I used a highly represented class to prove my point.

[Deleted]

It's a change in the right direction. For those who are saying AW always was on a 2 minute cooldown, it wasn't. We had to talent into that, but since pretty much everyone took that talent, we didn't even consider the fact that the ability actually had a 3 minute cooldown. Besides that, even though I love this change, we lose getting a charge of Holy Power whenever we take damage, which was pretty damn awesome as well. How about making that baseline somehow instead of removing it?

Some other things I believe are absolutely mandatory and I would really like to see for Ret:
-Divine Protection usable while stunned, like a Druid's skin. Maybe even add a glyph to reduce the chance to be crit by 25%, same with a Druid's skin.
-Stun remover, like we had in WotLK. Maybe not on HoF, because then the cooldown is too short. Maybe add it to Hand of Salvation, so we actually have a use for this spell in PvP as well.
-Buff WoG for Ret. 25k heals with 3 Holy Power is nowhere near acceptable for having 350k+ health pools.
-Divine Purpose baseline, and a talent in place that reduces the cooldown of AW to 1 minute but also reduces its damage by 10%. This way, voila, more sustained damage, less bursty.

[thesmall001]

I used my Ghostcrawler translator:

We were going to provide a balanced, interesting fix to Ret PvP that added a certain amount of decision making and depth to the gameplay but instead of providing a good fix that will add something to the game long term we decided that what we're going to do now is just throw this messy, quick and easy fix that every Ret is asking us to make because as we all know the community should have executive power over the class design.

This change will create the illusion of on-demand burst and make Rets "feel" like they're applying pressure which is good enough until they realise it doesn't actually fix any of the problems they have. Essentially, it buys us some time to actually fix the problem without continuing to get Rets whinging at us 24/7.

Ret has many problems in PvP (and a handful in PvE) and this fix, whilst useful on the surface, will not go a long way towards fixing the real problems and I'm really disappointed that they reverted the change. It's a shame, you can tell GC knows that it won't truly fix much but he's run out of time to get it fixed. Greg's a good guy.

[Austilias]

Hm, so let me see...

Seal of Justice change; reverted. What good does this do us? We are essentially in the same position as before and frankly, Seal of Justice was the closest thing we had to a serious change since 5.1. 1 minute less CD on Avenging Wrath with a 4 piece set bonus next expansion, aw yeah. Except no, that was sarcasm and this is a bandaid fix.

Where not long ago I was seriously considering keeping my Paladin for PvP (Ret, given that I hate MoP's Holy playstyle), now once again do I consider another class.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Well.. at least they're trying to do something.

I'm just glad they seem to see the same problems we have been seeing for some time, now. The most annoying thing about Retribution news and changes is that us players and the developers do not see eye to eye, so a resolution to this is great.

Still, Blizzard really need to work on this spec, since anyone being around long enough to witness how they have handled Ret over the years should have some trust issues by now.

[Eon Drache]

I'm confused why they even bothered to move Avenging Wrath to a 3 minute cooldown in the first place if the first tier PvE set was to undo the change, and now our PvP set bonus is going to revert the change as well. It all seems a bit redundant to me. Also, it gives me less faith that they know what they are doing.

Why don't they change one of the lv75 talent to make it so that we can't be stunned or feared during Avenging Wrath? Retribution's biggest problems in PvP are our long cooldowns controlling our pressure, and how easy we are to CC. Change Divine Purpose to:

You have a 30% chance to proc Divine Purpose, allowing you to use 1 Holy Power spell as if you had 3 Holy Power without consuming any. Also, during Avenging Wrath, You are unaffected by stun and fear effects.

Let us still be able to be disoriented and slowed, but get rid of the 2 more annoying CCs.

[Matrlx]

Why don't they change one of the lv75 talent to make it so that we can't be stunned or feared during Avenging Wrath? Retribution's biggest problems in PvP are our long cooldowns controlling our pressure, and how easy we are to CC.

that would be op coz , Ret make a good pressure while his wing up and ur giving him immunity !!

[Strear]

that's not a problem. it's a weakness. all classes need weaknesses, and they all have some. locks in meta, shamans in ascendance, durids with incarnation, et cetera, all have this same weakness. big "Imma hurt you" CDs need to be extravagant enough to give people the chance to notice you're dangerous right now.

True. When I play my warrior, if I burst and someone can do it, I'm controlled (Avatar, Blood Bath ....) or disarmed (Bladestorm, Avatar or Bloodbath) and controlled. Not more, not less than with our Ret. I'm mostly speaking from BG point of view.

[Valedus]

I'm confused why they even bothered to move Avenging Wrath to a 3 minute cooldown in the first place if the first tier PvE set was to undo the change, and now our PvP set bonus is going to revert the change as well. It all seems a bit redundant to me. Also, it gives me less faith that they know what they are doing.

Why don't they change one of the lv75 talent to make it so that we can't be stunned or feared during Avenging Wrath? Retribution's biggest problems in PvP are our long cooldowns controlling our pressure, and how easy we are to CC. Change Divine Purpose to:

You have a 30% chance to proc Divine Purpose, allowing you to use 1 Holy Power spell as if you had 3 Holy Power without consuming any. Also, during Avenging Wrath, You are unaffected by stun and fear effects.

Let us still be able to be disoriented and slowed, but get rid of the 2 more annoying CCs.

It would have to be a one-time trinket. They already took that away from BM because it was too strong, and we have better cooldowns than them.

Honestly, they should jsut buff our 2h % or Inquisition bonuses, leave CD's at two minutes, maybe slight nerf to their power because we are getting a sustained increase, and make hand of Salv do something Unique in PvP. Boom. No more stupid AOE abilities that go bonkers in RBG and Ret gets some sort of utility on top of constant pressure.

Then, I would like to see and Insight buff for Ret. It is pretty much never worth swapping seals, ever. Besides, even with the FoL buff, there are still going to be other classes that put our healing to shame. Now, I've never supported Ret having noticeable heals. I would rather have defensive cooldowns. The problem with making heals stronger is that we can do it to other people, and then people complain (Last Word Ret in 4.3 I remember hearing lots of complaints).

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 01:12 PM ----------

True. When I play my warrior, if I burst and someone can do it, I'm controlled (Avatar, Blood Bath ....) or disarmed (Bladestorm, Avatar or Bloodbath) and controlled. Not more, not less than with our Ret. I'm mostly speaking from BG point of view.

While yes everyone gets CC'd during CD's, lets be honest, Warriors DO have Berserker Rage.

[Deleted]

Uhm with this change AND the one to Sac, I can't see why you want more buffs or utility?

Rets indeed have some VERY low sustained damage, and really high burst. Lower burst a little and increase sustained damage.
Well utility wise you are in a quite good spot. You got 2x BoP's, freedoms, sacs (assuming you play with Clemency which all does). You can dispell roots and magic slows on yourself, you got Bubble (which can be dispelled, still it's an immunity), your Flash Heals got buffed quite a bit aswell, you HAVE the option to get 3 CC's (rep, blinding light and HoJ).
I think rets are in a quite nice spot in 5.2 - Especially since some other classes have been brought down to earth.

I myself play a Moonkin, and I agree with people complaining about Moonkins burst - It's rediculous! But our sustained damage sucks aswell as ret's does.
Fortunate enough they buffed Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge which puts us abit higher on sustained damage.
I wouldn't mind some of the utility Rets have, but I think Moonkins are just as fine as Rets will be in 5.2, if all the changes goes through.

[Reith]

Okay I just came up with probably THE best temporary fix for Seal of Justice that allows Seal of Justice damage to be increased without increasing sustained damage. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, seriously. It's like the simplest thing in the world and there are multiple ways to implement this depending on how far they really want to go with it:

1. If you hit an enemy with Seal of Justice active and they have Censure on them, it removes Censure.
2. If you hit an enemy with Seal of Justice active and they have Censure on them, it removes all but 1 Censure stack.
3. While Seal of Justice is active, all Censure damage is reduced by X%.

Iteration 1 and 2 would be the most PVE-lenient if you're multi-censuring. There's not much difference between them in PVE but there is obviously a difference between them in PVP: the first one would allow you to remove your Censure DOTs manually allowing them to possibly be CC'd for longer if you're planning a switch soon and the second one would keep the DOT on them still at 1 stack, making sure that you have ~15 seconds of leeway against a stealther even if the DOT itself is not ticking so hard, it'd still pop them out if they tried to stealth within that time frame.

The third iteration would be the most reduction in PVE and would obviously be to discourage switching between Seal of Truth and Seal of Justice when you're multi-censuring, and is effectively the same as iteration 2 for PVP if it reduced the damage of all Censures by 80%. This is probably the overall best one to go with because it covers all bases in PVE and has the same effect as iteration 2 for PVP.

With any one of these iterations, the following net results:

-Seal of Justice can be safely bumped up to 24-25% weapon damage and there would be no increase in single-target sustained damage whatsoever by Seal manipulation
-It'd still be lower overall damage for Seal of Justice, but you would have the snare effect to compensate and that makes it a good choice for PVP to stick on targets
-For mobs that die quickly (or that you want to kill quickly), Seal of Justice actually becomes a more useful Seal to use in PVE for that purpose specifically (good example: Energy Charges on Elegon)

[ipoststuff]

I dont think ret will be a top pvp spec now but people are being overly cynical. We are getting bunch of buffs this patch. And it doesnt matter if we had some of the stuff years ago its still a buff -.-

Ofc there are things i think ret needs like slightly higher TV damage, longer inq, rbg utility. Regardless im happy about the buffs.

[Valedus]

Uhm with this change AND the one to Sac, I can't see why you want more buffs or utility?

Rets indeed have some VERY low sustained damage, and really high burst. Lower burst a little and increase sustained damage.
Well utility wise you are in a quite good spot. You got 2x BoP's, freedoms, sacs (assuming you play with Clemency which all does). You can dispell roots and magic slows on yourself, you got Bubble (which can be dispelled, still it's an immunity), your Flash Heals got buffed quite a bit aswell, you HAVE the option to get 3 CC's (rep, blinding light and HoJ).
I think rets are in a quite nice spot in 5.2 - Especially since some other classes have been brought down to earth.

I myself play a Moonkin, and I agree with people complaining about Moonkins burst - It's rediculous! But our sustained damage sucks aswell as ret's does.
Fortunate enough they buffed Wrath, Starfire and Starsurge which puts us abit higher on sustained damage.
I wouldn't mind some of the utility Rets have, but I think Moonkins are just as fine as Rets will be in 5.2, if all the changes goes through.

We don't want more. We want different, better(not bandaid fixes. a 2 minute dispell? really? Shadow Priests have a 15 second cd one. Ours isn't unique, or strong.) ones.
Read through the thread. BoP isn't as strong as people make it out to be. Purge and Dispell Magic from competent players make it last 2-3 seconds, Freedom is good but again dispellable, Sac is good but doesn't actually stop any damage just transfer it, and 90% of the time we are the focus target, Ferals and Monks can self-dispell Roots/slows with very little to no cost while ours is about 1/6 of our mana bar, Dispersion is also an immunity... on a 2 minute CD, and it brings mana back to the spriest that they can use on strong PWS.

Ret will be OKAY at best in 5.2. I don't even play Ret anymore, and probably won't until 6.0 if they are stronger. Moonkins are by far more than fine in 5.2. They may not be extremely arena viable, but every damn RBG team needs a moonkin. That is the exact opposite of Ret. Not a single RBG team wants a Ret. Other specs being brought down to Earth are just being replaced by other specs becoming strong. Monks, Rogues, and Unholy are all receiving really strong buffs compared to Ret.

[Cronosmash]

Baenesur, Repentance is out of question for Ret PVP since can't stop for casting. And Ret is OK for arenas, BoP/Sac/Free for 3 people on arena are very different than for 10 on RBG. A knockback/smoke/area silence/area fear/grip make a HUGE difference for RBGs. There is no way to compare...

And GREAT idea Reeth, post it on PTR topic!

[Tangra]

I'm still a little surprised that no one is mentioning how awesome our old 4pc was: 5-6 holy power per minute was really helping our pathetic pressure between cooldowns. Now training a Ret is even more of an instant win.

[Valedus]

I'm still a little surprised that no one is mentioning how awesome our old 4pc was 5-6 holy power per minute was really helping out pathetic pressure between cooldowns. Now training a Ret is even more of an instant win.

Yeah, they really need to stop doing weird side-buffs. They admit Elemental is in a bad place, give them Shamanistic Rage no strings attached. Admit Ret is in bad spot, proceed to try to rework things oddly and take away things like snares in order to buff. I appreciate the 2 minute wings, but honestly our 4 set was one of the few deterrences to training the Ret.