Ret RATED PVP: Analisys and Ideas to FIX IT

[Tangra]

How does this work?

"Ret is fine, it can take some nerfs"

"Ret shouldn't replace a healer, its healing needs to be nerfed and you shouldn't be compensated for it"

"Ret is where it should be"

"We are going to buff pvp power for hybrid specs to 25% extra healing"

"We are going buff flash of light for rets (self), though we thought their survivability and viability were/are fine"

While a buff is nice, you only have to read this thread to know that it isnt more healing that we need, this will change very little, we still lack everything mentioned...just prolonging the inevitable.

Besides, if this goes live, looking forward to the hotfix in the first week "We feel ret got slightly above 1700, thats not where it should be, their survivability against 1300 mmr players is too high, we need to nerf it. You shouldn't be compensated for something that is OP and is making you remotely viable".

Lol i love how they are basically admitting that our healing was fine at launch by giving us these latest buffs, and all the nerfs we took through all of MoP were undeserved. Haha remember a few years ago when Ghostcrawler openly admitted that they balance ret burst around random battlegrounds rather than serious PvP; they felt we could too easily burst down random people with no gear... but they gave us no compensation for serious PvP. This is still basically what they do, they see specs like Ret actually throw out a serious heal once in a while, and without thinking in terms of the realities of serious PvP, they nerf.

Overall, a buff is a buff of course, but this only makes me more pessimistic about the future of Ret. Off-heals are nice, but high-rated PvP has never been about good off-heals, at least not on their own. Shadow Priests aren't good just because of their nice off-heals, they are very good because of their fear, offensive dispell, mass dispell (via mass dispell they are one of the only dps that can dispell friendly targets, considering how few trash debuffs there are in the game now, mass-dispell very often removes polymorphs or freeze traps), they can also disarm, silence and so forth. Ret needs more utility, period; there is no way around it; off-heals are too hard to balance they are either too good in one case, or not good enough in another; a spec has to have multiple dimensions.

The easiest solution is to make repent instant for Ret and maybe on a somewhat longer cooldown (30 sec max). Burden of Guilt should be a root and Fist could be on a 25 sec cd and maybe have a 30 yards range to keep up with a repent buff. But even this does not make us viable for RBGS, where you need more AoE CC, sustainable pressure, and other noticeable utility.

[Palatinus]

Lol i love how they are basically admitting that our healing was fine at launch with the latest buffs, and all the nerfs we took through all of MoP we undeserved.

Well yes and no.

IMO I think they will just go back on the buff after its gone live and then we'll be stuck waiting till 5.3 for anything useful...again.

[Camaris]

Personally I think self-heals are the wrong way to go. It's a trap, because to make them our sole mechanism for survival is to make them overpowered. Our strength is supposed to be our flexibility in moving between damage dealing and off-heals. This is why we get trained into the ground every match - the opportunity cost for taking us out is very mild compared to our potential effectiveness when left to roam unchecked. It's why we make such powerhouses in open BGs but are extremely weak in any kind of organized play.

Ret is *almost* where it needs to be, but not quite. We need some changes in our ability to pressure an opponent, some buffs to survivability, and something unique to make us desirable without making us overpowered. What I would like to see:

1. Add a Mortal Strike effect to Templar's Verdict. As it stands we're the only physical damage class without one, and it would increase our ability to add pressure to a target in PvP without increasing our PvE damage and thus requiring rebalancing of our overall offensive ability, which is in a good place in PvE.

2. Add a fear break (not immunity, just a break) to Hand of Freedom.

3. Add a passive 10% damage reduction onto Righteous Fury via Sword of Light. Holy doesn't need more survivability and Prot doesn't need rebalancing to account for this baseline. As is we're the odd man out between warriors and DKs in not having any kind of tanking utility integral to our tank "stance," and this is potentially useful in PvE as well in emergencies.

4. Extend the damage reduction from the Glyph of Templar's Verdict to 9s.

5. Change the Glyph of Divine Protection to 30% damage reduction vs both physical and magical effects. It's a Glyph, it should be an improvement, not a shuffling around of an ability, and this would make it a strong option for all specs. Strong glyph options are good, particularly if there is more than three of them per spec.

6. New ability: Eye for an Eye. I can see this working one of two ways - either a raid-wide Devotion Aura type cooldown that reflects 20% of damage inflicted to raid members within 40 yards back to their sources for 6s, or a personal cooldown that reflects the next three attacks hitting the Ret back to their originators. 3 min cooldown. The former brings a unique ability to RBG and arena play, the latter is more of a self-survival mechanism to give us more of a chance to use our burst and offhealing capability. And quite frankly I've always loved the idea of this ability even if Blizz never could seem to balance it for effectiveness in BC and Wrath.

The new ability might be overpowered, it's a ballpark idea that would need tuning, but I think if we had the other mild increases to pressure and survivability added, we would find Ret to be much better able to fulfill the role we seem to be intended for in PvP.

[Tangra]

Personally I think self-heals are the wrong way to go. It's a trap, because to make them our sole mechanism for survival is to make them overpowered. Our strength is supposed to be our flexibility in moving between damage dealing and off-heals. This is why we get trained into the ground every match - the opportunity cost for taking us out is very mild compared to our potential effectiveness when left to roam unchecked. It's why we make such powerhouses in open BGs but are extremely weak in any kind of organized play.

Ret is *almost* where it needs to be, but not quite. We need some changes in our ability to pressure an opponent, some buffs to survivability, and something unique to make us desirable without making us overpowered. What I would like to see:

1. Add a Mortal Strike effect to Templar's Verdict. As it stands we're the only physical damage class without one, and it would increase our ability to add pressure to a target in PvP without increasing our PvE damage and thus requiring rebalancing of our overall offensive ability, which is in a good place in PvE.

2. Add a fear break (not immunity, just a break) to Hand of Freedom.

3. Add a passive 10% damage reduction onto Righteous Fury via Sword of Light. Holy doesn't need more survivability and Prot doesn't need rebalancing to account for this baseline. As is we're the odd man out between warriors and DKs in not having any kind of tanking utility integral to our tank "stance," and this is potentially useful in PvE as well in emergencies.

4. Extend the damage reduction from the Glyph of Templar's Verdict to 9s.

5. Change the Glyph of Divine Protection to 30% damage reduction vs both physical and magical effects. It's a Glyph, it should be an improvement, not a shuffling around of an ability, and this would make it a strong option for all specs. Strong glyph options are good, particularly if there is more than three of them per spec.

6. New ability: Eye for an Eye. I can see this working one of two ways - either a raid-wide Devotion Aura type cooldown that reflects 20% of damage inflicted to raid members within 40 yards back to their sources for 6s, or a personal cooldown that reflects the next three attacks hitting the Ret back to their originators. 3 min cooldown. The former brings a unique ability to RBG and arena play, the latter is more of a self-survival mechanism to give us more of a chance to use our burst and offhealing capability. And quite frankly I've always loved the idea of this ability even if Blizz never could seem to balance it for effectiveness in BC and Wrath.

The new ability might be overpowered, it's a ballpark idea that would need tuning, but I think if we had the other mild increases to pressure and survivability added, we would find Ret to be much better able to fulfill the role we seem to be intended for in PvP.

Yeah exactly, balancing us around healing only will never work, if it's all we have it has to be super OP, and that will just get it nerfed. Pressure is deffinitely the way to go, and a root is just plain mandatory, we have to be able peel. All we can do is slow by 50% and well guess what basically everyone else can too, so our partner and the person we are trying to peel just both end up moving at 50%, thus giving our partner no breathing room at all.

[Cronosmash]

Agreed. The fact is that those changes are NEEDED. Looks like Blizz is always afraind/lazy to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT and fix PVP. And it's always up on our butts.

The way I see it from all foruns, everyone thinks THE SAME. Different specifics, but EVERYONE AGREES that Ret must bring something unique to PVP and need more peels and better survival CD or CC breakers - Ret only.

It's a fact.

Shame is they realise mistakes and fix Rogues - Ret is in the same place for about 2 years now and it keeps fixing 1 problem an creating another WORSE.

[CaptUntsAhts]

Did anyone ever write a tweet to GC about the specifics of what we, having a sensible discussion, are asking for? As you guys have said, Self-healing isn't enough. I would rather have seen something else. But oh well, a buff is a buff, I guess.

[Cronosmash]

Tweeted this topic on WoW Forums. Got the buff the next day. Really waiting for the rest of the stuff.

[nyc81991]

I would like to see them buff Sacred Shield. As of right now it is the least usefull talent when compared to the recent flash of light buff and 100% self healing on Eternal Flame.

In a way I think they should bring back the Cata version of it where it went off at 30% health and absorbed a nice amount of damage while increasing our heals crit chance when used on ourselves. Ideally it should absorb 100k damage and have an internal Cd of 30 seconds.

[monoroth]

I would like to see them buff Sacred Shield. As of right now it is the least usefull talent when compared to the recent flash of light buff and 100% self healing on Eternal Flame.

In a way I think they should bring back the Cata version of it where it went off at 30% health and absorbed a nice amount of damage while increasing our heals crit chance when used on ourselves. Ideally it should absorb 100k damage and have an internal Cd of 30 seconds.

That would be nice but then there's prob with prots Sacred Shield many ports use it as another spell to help them in active mitigation. They could buff SS absorb for ret and to add most important thing SS to become unstealable and undispelable.

Edit: For prots it may become even more powerfull the cata verz of SS, cause it scaled of AP and tank being on low hp he'll get more vengance which means crazy SS absorb for him. This is prob why they wont change it back to old verz. If they could make it ret only that would be nice but we'r sharing talent with 2 other specs which is hard to balance around. Same as it's with CC's.

[nyc81991]

That would be nice but then there's prob with prots Sacred Shield many ports use it as another spell to help them in active mitigation. They could buff SS absorb for ret and to add most important thing SS to become unstealable and undispelable.

That is true but they could simply make it work differently for Ret and Prot. It could stay the same way for prot and for Ret work like the Cata version.

However I wouldn't be against a staight up buff to the amount that SS absorbs.

[CaptUntsAhts]

Druids and Priests already have talents change by spec, why can't Paladins? Sanctified Wrath does, somewhat. As a class that can play 3 roles, global talents are going to be hard to balance, but not impossible. Ret SS does need a rework or more scaling, though.

[Castlevania]

Great thread, hopeing to see some changes to Retri soon...

[ipoststuff]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...me-into-an-RBG
This is a problem blizzard has to address. Buffing our heals is great but that alone will not fix us.

[Martinbella]

Our strength is supposed to be our flexibility in moving between damage dealing and off-heals. This is why we get trained into the ground every match - the opportunity cost for taking us out is very mild compared to our potential effectiveness when left to roam unchecked. It's why we make such powerhouses in open BGs but are extremely weak in any kind of organized play.

Spot on Camaris.

[akon]

You ppl are forming a great post with lots of really good ideas but honestly its me or noone cant see it? The hole Monster of game development, yes BLLIZARD, admit it that they messed up with us when they just admit it "we dont know how to fix the wog bug with targeting" and now in order to missdirected us they give us free T2 weapons, so we will continue playing our weak class. Most ppl are saying that writing down this im not helping the situation and i bet u are well known of these issues BUT honestly we cant help it, we have to admit it we cant, what is needed is a full redesign for the retri build cause any boost will give us GOD mode FOTM class with ofc our really strong CD's or they will keep doing sh1ty changes just to pretend they are working over the problem. Honestly blizz atm is just figuring how will make more money, yes again T2 weapons means that ppl will try pvp now too even if they dont know how to form an arena team.
Back to the problem? my suggestion? Templars Verdict off gcd, specific talent where we can pick pvp power for healing boost and old repedance back to action but with the talent just to remove the cd and adding cast time it may sound dumb or op or i dont care i just wanted to write down something, im totally sad with my retri now although it was my secret love for ages ( i was playing since vanilla my destro lock)

[Rasstapp]

Bring back that talent we used to have that gave Holy Power when we get stunned/rooted, etc., but make it 3 holy power. Combine this with the return of Hand of Freedom breaking stuns aswell and I reckon we'd be in a good place. That being said I haven't really done any PvP apart from ganking people in Halfhill and the occasional moron trying to gank me out in the world with all my cooldowns ready/up.

[Cronosmash]

Compiled ALL the threads about it on ONE topic on Blizz forum. Let's BRING IT UP!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7592802082