[Ret] Judgment?

[Holtzmann]

You make some good points, however, I think that what has a lot of people very annoyed is that this nerf to ranged Censure stacking, and being silenced out of judgement, don't seem to be intentional. In other words, as far as I gather, we took two significant nerfs simply because Blizzard was doing some "house cleaning" and cleaned up Judgement mechanics without, seemingly, thinking of the consequences. Unintentional nerfs are about the most annoying thing I can think of in this game, so many people need a clearer acknowledgement from Blizzard that they actually considered these consequences and didn't just incidentally nerf the spec.

Fair point, but it still doesn't take into consideration the many other changes to Paladins. Those changes might seem like a nerf if you just look at what the ability does now, but you have to look at everything else Paladins can do in Mists. Yes, it would be bad to have Judgment not stacking Censure and being able to be Silenced in Cataclysm. Thankfully, this is for Mists of Pandaria: a lot more than Judgment is getting changed, and those changes all fit together to make a more streamlined, more agile spec that builds up and spends resources faster than it does on Live. Yes, Censure won't be stacking quite as fast now, but you'll also be delivering much more damage without having to rely on it. Yes, you may be silenced out of Judgment for literally a couple seconds on occasion. If you look at the entire Paladin toolbox in Mists of Pandaria, it really is not that big a deal for people to get so worked up over.

People have reason to be suspicious since this has happened before. For example, in 4.3 Ret and Prot almost completely lost the use of Holy Radiance, and this happened because of changes meant completely for Holy Paladins that had nothing to do with Ret and Prot. As pathetic as Holy Radiance was, it was Ret's only raid cooldown, and at least somewhat closed the gap between Ret and the healing brought by other hybrids such as Shadow Priests.

Thankfully, that's not likely to happen again. The specs are being made much more distinct in terms of abilities and mechanics they use to avoid having to break one spec to save another. If Retribution's self-healing turns out to be too weak/strong, it can be buffed/nerfed for Retribution only without breaking Protection's self-healing or affecting Holy's overall healing.

Just ignore him guys, his post history dictates he's stirring up other threads for no reason or just to boost his post count.

I just checked my post history. Turns out, I really need pick up the pace if I want to boost my post count! What with me not posting very often and sometimes taking the time to write long, mostly structured posts about various subjects. Guess I need to do more one-liners?

Actually, I don't mind being ignored by some people. I like good, reasonable arguments and I know I won't get that with posters who feel that strongly about any subject. Those people are also likely to insult my intelligence and provide ad hominem attacks. So... yeah.

[Tangra]

Fair point, but it still doesn't take into consideration the many other changes to Paladins. Those changes might seem like a nerf if you just look at what the ability does now, but you have to look at everything else Paladins can do in Mists. Yes, it would be bad to have Judgment not stacking Censure and being able to be Silenced in Cataclysm. Thankfully, this is for Mists of Pandaria: a lot more than Judgment is getting changed, and those changes all fit together to make a more streamlined, more agile spec that builds up and spends resources faster than it does on Live. Yes, Censure won't be stacking quite as fast now, but you'll also be delivering much more damage without having to rely on it. Yes, you may be silenced out of Judgment for literally a couple seconds on occasion. If you look at the entire Paladin toolbox in Mists of Pandaria, it really is not that big a deal for people to get so worked up over.


Thankfully, that's not likely to happen again. The specs are being made much more distinct in terms of abilities and mechanics they use to avoid having to break one spec to save another. If Retribution's self-healing turns out to be too weak/strong, it can be buffed/nerfed for Retribution only without breaking Protection's self-healing or affecting Holy's overall healing.

I just checked my post history. Turns out, I really need pick up the pace if I want to boost my post count! What with me not posting very often and sometimes taking the time to write long, mostly structured posts about various subjects. Guess I need to do more one-liners?

Actually, I don't mind being ignored by some people. I like good, reasonable arguments and I know I won't get that with posters who feel that strongly about any subject. Those people are also likely to insult my intelligence and provide ad hominem attacks. So... yeah.

People are partially reacting negatively because you're being an apologist for Blizzard, and defending their actions beyond what is called for in a rational discussion. We got nerfed, and when we asked about the nerf we were given a tangential and irrelevant response which did not in any way shape or form address our concerns.

We asked "why does Judgement no longer stack Censure?" and we were told "Because Judgement is now a spell".... well Exorcism is also a spell but it currently stacks Censure on live, so ultimately Blizzard's response is completely useless, did not address the issue at all, and also created a strong impression that these nerfs were collateral damage caused by efforts to simplify some of the technical aspects of Judgement. In other words, this is PRECISELY the appropriate time for players to raise a red flag and become concerned.

Yes, maybe the other changes in MoP will compensate for our losses, and maybe they won't, what do you expect us to do sit here quietly and trust in the almighty Blizzard who has never failed us before? Blizzard's track record with Ret is downright pathetic, and there is absolutely no reason what so ever to give them the benefit of the doubt, we have 5 years+ of evidence that their knowledge and appreciation of the spec is superficial at best. Just look at tier 11 and tier 12, we needed hotfix buffs in the middle of a patch two tiers in a row!!! And, of course, by the time the buffs came any serious guild had already cleared most heroic modes. If a spec is broken at the begging of a tier, you might as well kiss serious raiding goodbye.

You response to my Holy Radiance argument also displays Blizzard apologism. All Blizzard had to do is take 5 minutes to code it so speccing Ret or Prot makes Holy Radiance instant and places some cooldown on it of 30 sec or a min, and there you go problem solved with barely any effort. The streamlining that will come with MoP will by no means guarantee that such unintended nerfs never happen again; Cataclysm already introduced specializations beyond just talents and even the old talent system of the pre-Cata years could still very easily be used to remedy such problems. The issue at hand when it comes to the Holy Radiance nerf for Ret and Prot, and possibly this latest one, is lack of concern on the part of the developers, it had nothing to do with technical limitations.

[Boogieknight]

Has anyone on the beta/PTR been able to determine if spell hit or melee hit is calculated for Judgment since it's a spell now. Will we need to shoot for spell hit cap for Exorcism and Judgment since they're both Holy Power generating spells?

[fears]

I just hate how they realized how badly we needed something to keep our damage up so they gave us the censure refresh/apply on our judgement and now take it away. Seeing for pvp in Pandatime that our bonus is 10 yards on judgement, I'd rather lose the censure stacking of exorcism and leave it on judgment.

Now I know people are going to see me say "I'd rather" and say something like "I'd rather my class have a bazooka but it's not going to happen" but our ramp up is the longest in the game even with all the neat stuff coming in Panda to smooth out our rotation.

It just feels like we always have to lose something and be constantly complaining for anything to happen. I remember part of the quote during firelands... "After 1000's of kills we decided that Ret damage was too low and were changing it". It was a very short time before the entire instance was nerfed so it was almost like "Ok we can let ret not suck now that it doesn't matter" at least thats how myself and others felt. Only our class does it take 1000's of kills to figure things out. They have all the numbers in front of them and should be able to account for any outside variables and know without having to wait so long.

If frost DK is bad and unholy is good, that class has the option of playing either dps spec. If arms is bad and fury is good, they can pick the dps spec that works better/does more dmg. If ret is bad we don't have a fallback other then to go tank or heals. Now I don't mind tanking at all but I like my ret dps spec and I'm quite fond of it however many times it's been broken over the years. Now don't take me mentioning these classes as I'm anti-warrior or anti-dk as I play all 3 plate classes and love them all for various reasons.

I don't need to be overpowered to feel good, I just like a level playing field and it just seems like a tilted scale when it comes to Ret.

@Requital; We will hopefully reconviene in a new thread where we're rejoicing over them rethinking this, or come together disgruntled and commiserate with each other lol <3

[Deleted]

Has anyone on the beta/PTR been able to determine if spell hit or melee hit is calculated for Judgment since it's a spell now. Will we need to shoot for spell hit cap for Exorcism and Judgment since they're both Holy Power generating spells?

As I understood it expertise will now also give spell hit meaning that if you are both melee hit capped and expertise capped you will also be spell hit capped

[JayJay09]

@ Fears: And in addition to that we bring nothing new to the game. We have a 3 min cd short range mass blind but lose repentance (in most pvp builds at least). What else do we have? We finally got a slow. Now we are in BC. While other classes have been in LK, Cata and now Mop, we seem to stay in BC. But we are supposed to be grateful to finally be in BC. Only 3 expansions later. What else have we got? Not much. Do we have Silence (we have a short anti silence. Can it be used if silenced? If not anticipation is king and anticipation never is reliable.) MS? NS? Roots? Spammable CC (we could, but only the right setup would allow us to take repentance)? Do we have anything, no one else has or that would make us special in any way? We don't even have an anti fear. The holy warrior can do nothing against fear! I recall the Paladin to be a roleplay class of charisma that strengthens others and overcomes fears. That leads people and is not the first to flee.. We cannot even fear a warlock that has transformed into a demon. Although we have a spell for that it just does not work on players! We have a shiny new bubble (now even blind people see us pulling bubble), which got nerfed so hard over the years that its 5 min cd is just a joke (esp. for Ret and Prot). We can help others to get out of slow, we have hand of protection.. That's all so old. We are stuck with the same old repertoire. With the same skillset.

The Paladin just does not get the respect from Blizzard that other classes do. We have nothing interesting.. Bubble destroyed our standing in the community and bubble still guides how we are balanced. Blizzard has never really worked on a way to make bubble both an accepted spell and a reliable asset to the Paladin.

From a roleplay and pvp balance point of view the Paladin in WoW is a joke. A pure joke.

But no. We are not allowed to have the space to actually get to Blizzard in regard of this. We cannot tell them how lacky this whole class is and how many weakness it has in PvP. No.. Instead we have to deal with nonsense like judgement having turned into a spell. This is just ridiculous. The Paladin will never see the 'light' at the end of the tunnel called WoW. Never. The class has been accepted to be out of line. To be top or flop.. It can never fit in. It will always be the stepchild. This is what's pissing me off. And seeing posts like those from Holtzmann is too much. There is just no structure in the Paladin class and it has been proven over the years that Blizzard really has no clue about this class or the consequences of simple changes to spells that as a result alter the class' whole mechanic and gameplay. In an all negative way.

The Paladin class needs to be rebuild from scratch. But since that won't be done, all we can do is to support this pathetic little cause of not becoming an even greater playball for mages etc in MoP. For the sake of not to completely suffer through the first tier of MoP, this is to be supported. Because the changes that will come with tier 2 are always at risk to eventually destroy more than they repair if we don't intervene to the time when Blizzard actually cares for MoP and is still in the development process.

---------- Post added 2012-07-27 at 01:39 AM ----------

As I understood it expertise will now also give spell hit meaning that if you are both melee hit capped and expertise capped you will also be spell hit capped

I am not sure how spellhit works in PvP since I have played melee classes only. If the amount of hit needed for melee and spells is the same then it won't affect us. But if it does, then this is pretty stupid for PvP since its quite hard to get the right amounts of hit, exp, haste etc. How silly would it be to miss a judgement although you are actually hit capped? On top of being a victim to silence, this would be too much for our battered judgement spell. And for our "mobility".

[Deleted]

I am not sure how spellhit works in PvP since I have played melee classes only. If the amount of hit needed for melee and spells is the same then it won't affect us. But if it does, then this is pretty stupid for PvP since its quite hard to get the right amounts of hit, exp, haste etc. How silly would it be to miss a judgement although you are actually hit capped? On top of being a victim to silence, this would be too much for our battered judgement spell. And for our "mobility".

as i understand it and it was a while since i checked on raid bosses you have a 16% chance to miss on spells but against players you have a 5% chance to miss so the expertise giving spell hit ratio thing really comes into play when facing higher level bosses, if i remember right the higher miss chance against bosses for spells is to balance between melee and casters since melee also has the expertise cap to keep an eye on.

[Requital]

Has anyone on the beta/PTR been able to determine if spell hit or melee hit is calculated for Judgment since it's a spell now. Will we need to shoot for spell hit cap for Exorcism and Judgment since they're both Holy Power generating spells?

Can't reforge on Beta ATM unsure of situation on PTR no toons there.

[Holtzmann]

People are partially reacting negatively because you're being an apologist for Blizzard, and defending their actions beyond what is called for in a rational discussion. We got nerfed, and when we asked about the nerf we were given a tangential and irrelevant response which did not in any way shape or form address our concerns.

We asked "why does Judgement no longer stack Censure?" and we were told "Because Judgement is now a spell".... well Exorcism is also a spell but it currently stacks Censure on live, so ultimately Blizzard's response is completely useless, did not address the issue at all, and also created a strong impression that these nerfs were collateral damage caused by efforts to simplify some of the technical aspects of Judgement. In other words, this is PRECISELY the appropriate time for players to raise a red flag and become concerned.

Yes, maybe the other changes in MoP will compensate for our losses, and maybe they won't, what do you expect us to do sit here quietly and trust in the almighty Blizzard who has never failed us before? Blizzard's track record with Ret is downright pathetic, and there is absolutely no reason what so ever to give them the benefit of the doubt, we have 5 years+ of evidence that their knowledge and appreciation of the spec is superficial at best. Just look at tier 11 and tier 12, we needed hotfix buffs in the middle of a patch two tiers in a row!!! And, of course, by the time the buffs came any serious guild had already cleared most heroic modes. If a spec is broken at the begging of a tier, you might as well kiss serious raiding goodbye.

You response to my Holy Radiance argument also displays Blizzard apologism. All Blizzard had to do is take 5 minutes to code it so speccing Ret or Prot makes Holy Radiance instant and places some cooldown on it of 30 sec or a min, and there you go problem solved with barely any effort. The streamlining that will come with MoP will by no means guarantee that such unintended nerfs never happen again; Cataclysm already introduced specializations beyond just talents and even the old talent system of the pre-Cata years could still very easily be used to remedy such problems. The issue at hand when it comes to the Holy Radiance nerf for Ret and Prot, and possibly this latest one, is lack of concern on the part of the developers, it had nothing to do with technical limitations.

Blizzard apologism? I'm answering from the point of view of someone who thinks in terms of project management. I like to know how things work and what the reasoning behind decisions is. I'm not trying to justify Blizzard's decisions, because I strongly disagree with quite a few of them. What I am trying to do is to understand and communicate what the likely process was that brought us to the current state of the Beta. Why? Because it gives us an insight in how they think, what could come next, what we could suggest that would be taken seriously and how to adapt to what we know is coming. Do you know what old cliché "know thy enemy"? Well, it's really handy to know what Blizzard is thinking.

And tell me this, what good does being hostile to the guys who are developing the game do? What is the purpose of making demands and calling them incompetent when they have made it very explicit that that is not a good way to get yourself heard? Having strong opinions on something is great, but letting yourself be blinded to basic rules of communication because of your strong opinions is most definitely not. Getting to the point of criticizing me with the strawman that I'm a "Blizzard apologist" when I'm trying to be neutral and show the core of the issue is a good indication of that.

I have never said that you should sit down and take whatever Blizzard gives you like good little sheep. In fact, I have multiple times stated that it is your right (and your duty if you're a beta tester) to go out there and try to get your point across to the developers. If you don't like something, this is the time to tell them that. But that hostile attitude is not going to help anyone. I'm trying to present a broader perspective of what's going on with Paladins because I think it'll enrich the discussion because it seems a lot of people here are hell-bent on an idea without looking at its implications, and I honestly cannot fathom why you seem to take that as something offensive. People need to see how and why things work the way they do before they can provide meaningful feedback. They don't have to agree with the reasons, but they need to keep them in mind. That huge Beta Class Balance Analysis thread is a great example of that: even if it's not directly focused on the "why", the blues' answers are still very informative of how the development process occurs.

I personally don't have any stakes on Judgment proccing Censure or being vulnerable to Silencing. I like how it works as it is, either of the changes being suggested here would only make Judgment more powerful and I'm fine with that. I don't think it's necessary at all, but I'm not against it either. I am trying to make people think outside their "things need to be this way!" box, because I think it's important that people recognize the dynamics of the game are not as easy to isolate as this, and that what might seem hugely important to them might not actually be all that serious if looked at in context. I'm probably not succeeding, but writing all this stuff is still fun.

As a technical aside, we can't ever assume a fix is "easy" or "simple" to implement because it's conceptually easy or simple. And yes, I've made this mistake in this very thread. Anyone who's ever worked in IT will tell you that the smallest things tend to crash the biggest systems. I have personally had a missing semicolon create such a bizarre and random error that I had to go through over a thousand lines of code just to find out what the hell is going wrong. World of Warcraft is an old system that's been constantly updated through its entire existence, and I have the distinct feeling its programming standards weren't quite up to scratch in its formative moments. There is absolutely no way WoW's code is not as impenetrably tangled as this dude's hair. It's functions within functions, objects within objects. Change the wrong thing and suddenly Retribution Paladins are doing a million damage a pop and Rogues are one-shotting people left, right and center with an auto-attack. It's not incompetence, it's a fact of life when it comes to programming. In technical terms World of Warcraft needs to be fully rewritten, but it's far too late to do that.

Now I know people are going to see me say "I'd rather" and say something like "I'd rather my class have a bazooka but it's not going to happen" but our ramp up is the longest in the game even with all the neat stuff coming in Panda to smooth out our rotation.

I'm not even going to touch the rest of that post, but this part needs some attention. Fears, you do realize that Retribution ramp-up is slower in Mists, but that the ramp-up itself is also a lot smaller now, right? Seal of Truth has the extra damage from 5x Censure baked in, so all you need to do is to keep Inquisition up and you'll likely have 90% of your damage potential up-front in four (haste-affected) GCDs without any RNG involved at all. And without even having to use any abilities with a cooldown longer than 15 seconds. That's more than a lot of other DPS specs can claim!

[fears]

@Boogie, the only thing that would make sense would be to have it be like Dk's are on live. If you're melee hit capped you're spell capped. Don't quote me but unless they wanted to cripple us that seems like what they would do.

[Boogieknight]

Thanks Fear I was hoping that would be the case, but we are talking about Ret and a change made 2 months prior to launch. Figured it better safe than sorry to bring it up and ask rather than swear unendingly at my monitor after release because I keep missing exorcism and judgment or my mastery/haste/crit sucks because it's all reforged into hit so that I can land those 2 necessary abilities.

[fears]

It's all good man and I hope thats the case. I mean theres always another 60 days between now and pandatime to mess with us so who knows =)

[Elovan]

They've changed the way hit and spell hit work. You need 7.5% hit to be melee hit capped and 7.5% expertise to be expertise capped. Expertise also gives spell hit, and the spell hit cap is 15%. So if you are hit and expertise capped you will have 15% spell hit and be spell hit capped.

[Fredzilla]

@Boogie, the only thing that would make sense would be to have it be like Dk's are on live. If you're melee hit capped you're spell capped. Don't quote me but unless they wanted to cripple us that seems like what they would do.

Implying they would be against crippling us.

[Malthanis]

Implying they would be against crippling us.

As Elovan posted above you...

"They've changed the way hit and spell hit work. You need 7.5% hit to be melee hit capped and 7.5% expertise to be expertise capped. Expertise also gives spell hit, and the spell hit cap is 15%. So if you are hit and expertise capped you will have 15% spell hit and be spell hit capped."

They have absolutely no reason to break a blanket system simply to the detriment of Paladins. Seriously, we need to tone down the sensationalist garbage in here.

[Rucession]

They've changed the way hit and spell hit work. You need 7.5% hit to be melee hit capped and 7.5% expertise to be expertise capped. Expertise also gives spell hit, and the spell hit cap is 15%. So if you are hit and expertise capped you will have 15% spell hit and be spell hit capped.

This means that Ret will not be spell hit capped in PvP, causing Exorcism and Judgement to miss unless we reforge to both hit and expertise caps.

[JayJay09]

This means that Ret will not be spell hit capped in PvP, causing Exorcism and Judgement to miss unless we reforge to both hit and expertise caps.

Can you compare PvE hitcaps with PvP now? On live you need 8% melee hit for pve and 5% for pvp. I am not sure if we will really run into miss problems in pvp. Just can't tell. But the main problem is still at hand. And that is simply the fact of Judgement being a spell now. Let's not allow this to get out of sight since theorycrafting about spellhit is like already accepting this change. But this change needs to be reverted or at least somewhat explained and improved.

Regarding exorcism we could debate spellhit, but we should do that in a seperate thread.

[Arthur-the-exalted]

As stated by many here I find this to be a very poor thing to be done to Judgement, I for one saw nothing wrong with it and I do agree this feels like Blizzard did not think it through all the way. I see mop starting out like cata did...no matter how "Good" I was and no matter how hard I dpsed I could barely hit top charts..and it was very frustrating when other classes who i out geared could out dps me by barely trying. With our CS/TV nerf and now this I truly feel like I should just go play my mage until next patch when we get "Fixxed"..I love my paladin and it sucks to see things like this happen, Judgement has been a deciding factor in many pvp/pve situations for me, being rooted in place and being able to refresh my dots on someone while they run away is sometimes the deciding factor in if you win an arena, in pve having bosses that fly away you can atleast maintain some dmg with the dot and having judgement refresh it...I having being in the beta, think I have access to the beta forms and I would like to bring this up in them and reading thew this all have been a great help on some topics to use...I do think Holtzmann makes decent points but I see why no one agrees with him, I get the impression he does not play a paladin as fully as the rest of us, I could be wrong but he is literally the only one I have seen to not see and issue with this becoming a spell and it being able to be countered/silenced and so on ect. No disrespect but I do think you are wrong in most of your posts.

[Deleted]

Can you compare PvE hitcaps with PvP now? On live you need 8% melee hit for pve and 5% for pvp. I am not sure if we will really run into miss problems in pvp. Just can't tell. But the main problem is still at hand. And that is simply the fact of Judgement being a spell now. Let's not allow this to get out of sight since theorycrafting about spellhit is like already accepting this change. But this change needs to be reverted or at least somewhat explained and improved.

Regarding exorcism we could debate spell hit, but we should do that in a seperate thread.

just a quick answer before this tread gets back on topic again but spell hit has always been alot lower for pvp then for pve so im pretty sure that if you just ahve your normal hit cap you will be spell hit capped in pvp.

[JayJay09]

just a quick answer before this tread gets back on topic again but spell hit has always been alot lower for pvp then for pve so im pretty sure that if you just ahve your normal hit cap you will be spell hit capped in pvp.

That makes a new thread pointless. Let's hope you're right for the sake of exorcism -_-.