Competition for Cata Raid Spots for Rets

[Pickwickman]

I am so glad this thread one didn't turn out to be like the thread Sindy made a couple days ago.

So far I agree with you on most parts Badpaladin.

On another note: The new system with talents and masteries makes it a lot easier to buff/nerf classes.

This is the case, and I suppose Blizzard will enforce it. Don't think I like it though, as the new system benefits some classes more than others. So changing their mastery ratings will have less of an effect, while making them less 'special'.

Let's take the doubleattack from Arms warriors as an example, if they nerf that to 1% because Arms is OP, then the spec wouldn't have anything to be 'unique'.

If its a matter of maximum theoretical damage output - then sorry, another class is always, always going to beat you on at least half the fights.

Yes, theoretically. We are arguing about players that can achieve 95+% of that value, the real bleeding-edge hardcore players. In that case theoretical is almost practical, and that makes it so hard for Blizzards new view to work. As everyone should do the same DPS theoretically.

Now if we look at 'casual/average' guilds, the new view of Blizzard is superb, as most of the time these people do not get to their full potential, you can weed out the bads from the better ones and choose those to play with.

Q_Q Blizzard is catering to the casuals again. *chuckle*

[kaskadereno]

The homogenization of buffs was done for the purpose of, essentially, keeping threads like this from being made. They don't want you to be brought because of buffs you give. They want you to be brought because you are a good player. You shouldn't have to worry about if you can get a raid spot, because if you do, then you probably should find a guild with people that like you enough to give you one without you having a buff they don't have.

Sorry if I offended you with my thread. I was also trying to bring up an observation of the whole homogenization of buffs thing.... and whether or not Blizz has really succeeded in doing that. I mean, good raid leaders are still going to take into account what buffs are provided by each class, no? And there will still be talented buffs provided by only one or two classes (Moonkin Aura), aren't there? Forgive me if I have created a pointless thread. I sincerely think alot of Ret Paladins will be in somewhat of underdog postion. But I welcome other opinions.

[Willelm]

If 10 people could bring every buff in a 25-raid, that would leave 15 random spots to fill with good players, so you WILL get a raidspot if you are skilled.

Atm all these threads come down to: "Zomg, rets do crap damage and they lost their monopoly on buffs so my guild will kick me now!"

Well, your buff should never be a reason to take you to a raid.
And if retridin damage is enough reason to decline them from raids, Blizzard will buff it.

Your class will not compete for a raidspot, your personal skill will make sure of that.

This. Well said, sir.

[Pickwickman]

Sorry if I offended you with my thread. I was also trying to bring up an observation of the whole homogenization of buffs thing.... and whether or not Blizz has really succeeded in doing that. I mean, good raid leaders are still going to take into account what buffs are provided by each class, no? And there will still be talented buffs provided by only one or two classes (Moonkin Aura), aren't there? Forgive me if I have created a pointless thread. I sincerely think alot of Ret Paladins will be in somewhat of underdog postion. But I welcome other opinions.

Your thread is FAR from pointless. The people that say it is do not enjoy good discussion and most of the time cannot bring up the humility to accept other people's views.

Moonkin aura isn't unique, Shadow Priests also have it. (it's 5% spell haste at the moment for both, excluding selfbuffs)

Re: Cataclysm Utility of a Shadow Priest
At the moment, Shadow has the 5% spell haste buff, similar to Improved Moonkin Form. That could change as we iterate further on the buff and debuff design.

This is in addition to Shadow's existing healing debuff and general priest buffs such as Fortitude.

As posters above have pointed out, we aren't going to give any spec a buff so powerful that they automatically earn a raid spot.

This also implies that the classes will have little 'buffs' as flavour (Hand-spells), but no Heroism/Bloodlust just for one class.

[The Polarbear]

make urself unreplacable be amazing and top the meters or become a high officer in the guild

[theomegapoint]

Mmkay, I think I can appreciate where you are coming from then. Like I said, I tend to look at things with a much broader scope, and don't get to finicky about minor details. I'm a guild vet and bring much more than my personal performance to a raid, if I can say so without being too arrogant, I garner respect because of what my raid teams have accomplished under me. All I can say is that if your guild breeds this kind of attitude, where you are viewed more as a number, than as a personality, your officers are not doing a very good job and you probably have retention problems. If you any one is unwilling to step out of a kill so that the raid can swap in for an important raid buff, then there is a bit too much ego involved, and perhaps your officers should be a bit smarter about who they recruit and why. If you have to put up with that one douche because he brings that one buff, only do so until you can afford to lose him or replace him - which shouldn't be too hard if your guild is progressing well and has a good reputation on the server.

Also, while discussion about this topic is interesting, I don't think it will ever be resolved. Blizz has taken it upon themselves to design around the swell in the bell curve in Cata, and that means the very high end and the very low end are going to be kinda thrown to the curb. In that sense, I think min/maxxing your raid comp will be much less important this expac than it was in Wrath or TBC. I could be wrong tho.

Anyway, I think I've gotten off topic a bit. I'll lurk some more until something interesting pops up.

[Pickwickman]

But, in my opinion, they shouldn't have to. If someone has given up a reasonable amount of time to make the guild progress, it is their 'right' to be able to see the ultimate boss of that tier. It is only fair. And this is reached with the homogenisation of buffs.

[kaskadereno]

if an arcane mage or bm hunter is pulling more than you and you already have two sources of Replenishment, why bring the ret? You have absolutely no good reason other than favoritism, and this game isn't designed around that.

You hit the nail on the head, Badpaladin.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I am predicting.

[Pickwickman]

Random question Badpaladin, how the hell do you do it? I don't seem to get over 13/14k on Saurfang ;(

Yeah, you could change that. You paladins have it easy *rabble-rabble-rabble*

On the DPS question, we firstly need to know who you are, in order for us to give you specific advice on how to up your DPS. I suppose you know the FCFS-prioritylist by heart, and that your gear is at the very least exp-hit capped and sitting around the 264ilvl.

After that, it all becomes SPAM your buttons harder, or get a better internet connection. Your ping affects your dps by a wide margin, and even 150ms can influence your CD-usage and Attack-order.

But to give you more information, we need to take a look at your armory and probably need one or two logs.

Ps: Gozer, ga slapen D:<

[tekoix]

You usually only need 1 ret per raid simply because of the fact there is always a holy pally or a prot pally, or both. Gives you everything you need from the class itself, no need to have more then 1 ret. They just made it easier to get all buffs in 10 mans as well for cata.

[kaskadereno]

Your thread is FAR from pointless. The people that say it is do not enjoy good discussion and most of the time cannot bring up the humility to accept other people's views.

Moonkin aura isn't unique, Shadow Priests also have it. (it's 5% spell haste at the moment for both, excluding selfbuffs)

Ummm thank you kindly for the good words. I did say "one or two classes" when I referred to Moonkin Aura, so geez dude save me on one correction this time. I try to be somewhat right in my posts, lol.

[Korvax]

The point is that classes should be bought because the person behind the keyboard knows how to play, not because you bring a buff that no one else brings. Most if not all buffs can be brought by more than one class now so that you don't need a specific raid comp to get all the important stuff. What they did want to remove is situations where certain specs can get a more powerful version of an existing buff. Things like improved wisdom have been removed. Perhaps this is what you were thinking of.

If you're a good player you'll still get raid spots. If you suck you won't. This is how raiding should be.

[Vizardlorde]

Our Blessing of Might is not Wisdom and Might at the same time, this in comparison with other classes gives us an edge, as they only provide one of the two parts of the buff.

this is actually a disadvantage since you can bring a holy paladin to use might and any druid to provide mark of the wild and there go rets our blessings, replenishment is brought by so many specs that even resto druids have it which is kinda stupid... and the 3% buff is the only real buff ret provides, however this will only affect 10 man progression and hard modes but i dont think it will be a big issue on 25 mans, all you have to do is dps

[Badpaladin]

Random question Badpaladin, how the hell do you do it? I don't seem to get over 13/14k on Saurfang

Magic! :P

Requital and I have had many, many, many DPS tests over vent or skype where we practiced optimizing eCD's on the target dummy as much as possible. Getting engineering bombs down to the exact second, making sure to never miss a DS proc, lining up cooldowns with procs to the tee, taking advantage of "cheese" mechanics(DS during adds regardless of if you have wings so you can build TAiaJ motes faster), etc. Basically long hours at the target dummy. Ret DPS isn't just sitting on one target though, so it definitely does get more dynamic on movement fights like PP, Sindragosa, LK, etc. We're always arguing over what would be better to do in certain circumstances too. Basically, be a NERD! And also, my gear isn't exactly what you would call bad, so I think 17k is appropriate for my gear level.

Theomegapoint - I don't want to come off as somebody who doesn't know what you're saying. I definitely agree, raiding with assholes isn't very fun and often can be counterproductive to progression because they're so self-centered. I can't say much about cata raids, but I really do hope that they use Ulduar as their model for difficulty. The normal modes were somewhat challenging with no gear, and ended up being pretty easy after a few tried - but were still fun. The hard modes were most definitely hard, and most were incredibly unique and set themselves apart from the normal mode alternative, making it a completely different fight. Ulduar was certainly able to be cleared by casual guilds, but it also had plenty of stuff for the nerds like me. We'll have to see how it pans out. After all, we're still only arguing theoretics.

Pickwickman - I agree, it's nice that we're fairly civilized here! It's actually quite a wonder, that you can have people completely disagree but not throw insults back and forth to somehow prove they're better.

[Badpaladin]

Haha, ty.. in that case it might not be that bad.
Too bad I don't have many logs, since it's just an offspec. And you know how nice it is to have holy paladins on that fight.
But a 3k dps difference might be a lot tho, maybe I need to start a new thread about it xD

See, being a NERD isn't that bad! Honestly though, it's pretty futile to spend the weeks it takes to get everything down to the second now that 4.0.1 is right around the corner.

[Deleted]

The problem isn't really that rets have lost their buff monopoly. It's just that there's far more melee dps than ranged dps, and half of those melee dps are rets.

With the focus on 10-man raiding in cata people will be very hard pressed getting a raid spot as a melee dps, because they will be A LOT of competition. If you are one of the bazillion rets out there, it's gonna be even worse.

[Esuna3]

The problem isn't really that rets have lost their buff monopoly. It's just that there's far more melee dps than ranged dps, and half of those melee dps are rets.

With the focus on 10-man raiding in cata people will be very hard pressed getting a raid spot as a melee dps, because they will be A LOT of competition. If you are one of the bazillion rets out there, it's gonna be even worse.

Agreed. I'll be switching to a shaman for cata because of the overwhelming number of melee dps (mostly due to every hybrid except priest having a melee spec).

Also I've seen the hand spells mentioned several times and feel that such optimism for their potential importance is wishful thinking. No one is gonna bring a Hand of Freedom over a Misdirect or a battle rez.

[Requital]

Agreed. I'll be switching to a shaman for cata because of the overwhelming number of melee dps (mostly due to every hybrid except priest having a melee spec).

Also I've seen the hand spells mentioned several times and feel that such optimism for their potential importance is wishful thinking. No one is gonna bring a Hand of Freedom over a Misdirect or a battle rez.

Coming from a top rated US 6 Guild I'm more concerned now then I have ever been. I've been running Heroics with them in Cata nightly as we all get more acustomed to our classes. Now back in TBC the joke was it you can't beat the Ret you're a bad player. In Wotlk that was lost forever and well it's back now. I run heroics and the first thing someone will say after a fight and someone posts recount is " How did you lose to Requital? "

I'm not enjoying it at all in fact I'm downright pissed off about it. There is a definite concern you should worry about more in progression then any other time. If we are pushing for a World or US First kill a Ret could very easily be dropped in favor for a class that not only brings replenishment but can also do considerably better DPS.

I'm not worried about my skill level or attention to detail during progression I'm just worried that we have been overly nerfed as usual and for the first 1-2 tiers of Cata content we could find ourselves bored o the bench.

[Requital]

Attempting to be postitive:

"Unique Snowflake" buffs are bad, as is one class bringing everything, in principal I am fine with most of retri's raid buffs going out of the window. Previously classes with a lot of buffs (usually hybrids) would lag a little behind those that didn't (usually pures) on DPS. This model is now clearly gone, no class brings a massive number of buffs, and now many pure specs bring just as many buffs as hybrids.

This means that, in theory at least, every spec will need to do competitive DPS in order to earn its raid spot.

Right now that is not the case for retri, a return to TBC days?

No. The crucial difference from TBC is that the developers are committed to each class having a viable DPS spec. Retri was not competitive for most of TBC, but it wasn't intended to be so it didn't recieve much support. If retri's cataclysm DPS is so bad that it can't earn itself a raid spot (it certainly cant earn it on buffs anymore) then changes will have to be made.

I am expecting retri to hit live underpowered, and that is a shame, but I do not expect it to last.

Off Topic: With the increased number of buffs from hybrids like rogues, I no longer see a reason for a PvE "hybrid tax". A retri paladin doesn't contribute any more healing (under the current beta model, the rogue will actually do more) or tanking during a boss encounter than a rogue, why should it inherently contribute less DPS?

Unique snowflake buff that gave us our raid spot? That was back in TBC all of wotlk there have been other options then Ret for the buffs they bring. But you get to a point where as a Raid Leader you look at what the class brings. You say ok x, y and z can all bring replenishment but Z does better DPS with it. However Z is already in the raid so lets bring Y because he brings it + something else and still has good DPS where X brings it but has rather lacking DPS.

Ok well in cata we went from Z or Y imo those two classes would be S Priest and Ret down to X which is where that Lock would sit who was asked to spec replenish because Z or Y wasn't there. We aren't in good shape for a number of reasons but I'm still more worried about progression and not farm. Sure when it's on farm Rets will be welcome but I don't want to listen in vent during progression.

[Requital]

I think you've misinterpreted my post, the first paragraph was not specifically to do with retri. Unique snowflake buffs do still exist on live, but retri's fall under the second example I gave, that of "one class bringing everything".

You also talk as if Retri's low DPS is completely deliberate and an effort to stop them from raiding. Clearly with the "bring the player not the class" mantra that cannot be the case. Retri's poor DPS on beta must be for other reasons, perhaps an underestimation of the ability of players to get close to the optimum so fast, or a gross miscalculation on the actually damage numbers. Remember there is quite a divorce from the developers and the players.

There is no testing like live testing, when retri goes live and not even the best players in the world can get good DPS out of it, then they will recognise its got a problem.

Actually there aren't any unique buffs anymore aside from maybe lust which it's on two classes now. I also don't talk as Blizzard made a deliberate attempt to stop the class from raiding or where you even got that idea from though I do find it comical to say the least.

You realize blizzard has been trying to preach bring the player and not the class for 5 years now and have also been failing at that for exactly how long? You got it 5 years until they make that work it means nothing and should be dismissed as fast as it was be read.