Retribution Paladins and Firelands (also state of Ret in general)

[Talen]

I dont think its a good idea to run mana AND energy at the same time. Three bars under my portrait is a little meh, thank you very much

HP, mana and solar/lunar power.

IOW - its been done and such triple bar interfaces already exist in game. Honestly , though - I'd probably place pips around the character portrait, and modify the current HP UI to be the energy bar. That'd be enough for a basic UI interface, and it wouldn't be long before some of the mod authors modiifed their own UIs to work with this new system.

What may be more useful is to deemphasise the secondary resource for that spec, such as the way mana is shown for ferals - a small mana bar underneath energy/rage. Simply have them swap depending on stance.

EJL

[Jonuts]

As for stances, I fully agree they need to implement a well developed form of them for paladins

I still can't figure out why you need stances like this. Bake it all into talents, and viola, problem solved. Why should I require a stance to damage and a stance to tank, and a seperate stance to heal? After all, my healing will be shit in Ret gear with Ret Talents, because I'm missing everything that makes a holy paladin a holy paladin. Considering my total lack of block as a ret paladin in Prot gear, not going to be a very good tank. The separate bonuses you get for speccing are all the stances you need, since you need 3 wildly seperate gear sets for all 3 roles, unlike with, say, a shadow priest, where you can still deal out decent healing through sheer spell power, even with no holy/disc talents. And even then, a shadow priest will never replace a real healer for more than a couple seconds.

A ret in holy gear will never be a passable healer. A Holy in ret gear will never be a passable DPS. A ret in prot gear will never be a passable DPS or tank. You get the idea. Stances are an unneeded complexity at this point, and just add 1 more button to push before you can even get around to doing your job.

Look at warriors. If their stance bonuses we're baked into talents, would it affect gameplay at all? Nope. All it would do is remove the need to make sure you're in the correct stance. It's an outdated mechanic that isn't necessary, because the roles are so far different and have such differing requirements to do properly, that there is no need for yet another barrier and point of failure.

Boomkin/Resto druid? Yea, here you're using the same exact gear set, and everything is scaling off of the same stats. A stance mechanic makes more sense (though can be done away with through talent bonuses and spec bonuses alone). Shadow/non-shadow priest? Same thing. A stance mechanic makes more sense since the same stats are primarily used, but again, talents and spec bonuses along can do this job just as well.

What more do you need to seperate the specs other than massively differing gearing REQUIREMENTS (not "Well, haste is better for one, and mastery for the other" but "I use Strength as Ret, and Intellect as Holy") and all the bloody talent bonuses? Feral kitty/Feral bear is the only case where you truly need a separate stance mechanic, because they share the same gear and most of the same talents. The difference between the two is nearly non-existent. The biggest difference is a few talent points and reforging. You run off the same main stats, and even a feral kitty can take over if your feral bear decides to run off a cliff.

There ARE people out there who like the new system. And in many ways, it is better than LK.

In what way is the current method better than the LK method? Be honest now. And "made all the baddies reroll" isn't a good reason.

-Manapool needs to be base mana and only basemana. Intelect, or raid buffs, cannot be allowed to increase your manapool any further. Or we might invoke the wrath of Intelectadins who spam abilities because they got such large manapools.

Or scale it off maximum mana instead, so no matter how much intellect, your ability to spam strikes is constant.

[Talen]

I still can't figure out why you need stances like this.

Largely because Blizzard have kept to a vision where hybrids maintain some degree of hybridness. Look at the issues caused when WoG was used for off healing. If you are going to insist the class has some degree of viability as a healer then you also need some mechanism to ensure that the mechanic is balanced. Unfortunately, talents won't work...things are too interconnected and what may be balanced in one patch very likely won't be in the next.

Stances or another role differentiation mechanic sidestep that issue entirely. In some ways, its a blunt approach but its an approach that works.

The alternative is to design the class so that the roles are tree specific and drop any pretence at the class being a hybrid at all.

After all, my healing will be shit in Ret gear with Ret Talents, because I'm missing everything that makes a holy paladin a holy paladin.

Its nice in theory....but as we saw in this Xpac and before, not one that always works. You either drop hybridness entirely - but that is part of the attraction of a hybrid - or you put into place the mechanics needed to balance that nature. Relying on othe roles to be non-viable doesn't work when part of the class design is to ensure you have some viability in those roles.

All it would do is remove the need to make sure you're in the correct stance. It's an outdated mechanic that isn't necessary, because the roles are so far different and have such differing requirements to do properly, that there is no need for yet another barrier and point of failure.

I wouldn't call stances an outdated mechanic. True, they aren't necessary if you design the system so an Arms warrior, for example, could never, ever tank under any circumstances. But thats not how the game works. Blizzard wants a degree of crossover in the roles. It wants Rets to be able to heal on occasion. It wants Arms warriros to tank. And so on.

Stances are part of a necessary balance system with that vision. And Paladins don't have it. You can't argue gear choice or specialisation or talent selection works - because all too often it doesn't. You can argue it could and would...but the truth is, if you want Rets to have any degree of viability as a healer any limitations you build in are going to be bypassed - at least in certain situations. They'll be decent healers, while wearing Ret gear, while specced for DPS and while not having any of Holys specialistaion bonuses or talents.

We've seen this.

The lack of stances is also causing other difficulties. Blizzard have to separate out and duplicate very similar tools via the talent trees, meaning the baseline toolkit is fairly weak. TV is effectively SotR, DS is HotR, etc. Not having stances means Blizzrad doesn't have any effective or desireable solution to the issues spell plate causes. And so on.

Stances allow for that hybrid nature that Blizzard wants to keep to shine through, and it allows the class to be balanced easier as the designers know that changes affecting one role won't have an adverse affect on others.

You do bring up some vbery good reason, but ultimately the issues you point out boil down to one effect:

Rets don't need a stance for X because without the right gear, specialisation or talents, they won't be good at it. That is an argument that has been proven false time and time again. Rets ability to offheal was designed to sidestep that issue but that, in turn, created many issues with balance.

If you want that ability, then you need a mechanic to balance it.

EJL

[terrahero]

HP, mana and solar/lunar power.

EJL

I didnt count Healthpool to one of the bars. With that, you'd get 4 for paladins. Health, Mana, Energy, Holy Power. Little much to focus on all at the same time. Especially if you really want to seperate class roles through stances, Mana has no bussiness for Ret or Prot. Unless they want to heal and then they have to switch stance. Or use a Holy Power-finisher or perhaps through spending Energy. So yes, mana is only relevant to keep track of for a "i wonder if i switch now, how much mana could i use..."

Or scale it off maximum mana instead, so no matter how much intellect, your ability to spam strikes is constant.

Holy Paladins are gona love you when they spend 30k mana to do an Interupt, or a Crusaderstrike or anything else prot and ret can also do.
So then we need to bake in special talents for Holy to bring down the rediculous manacost of spells and abilities for Holy. One way or another, we need to do something about that. Or make base%mana be max%mana for all prot and ret abilities through Spec abilities.

Aslong as, and this was the point, the manapools cannot become "larger" through mere stat stacking.

[Talen]

I didnt count Healthpool to one of the bars. With that, you'd get 4 for paladins. Health, Mana, Energy, Holy Power. Little much to focus on all at the same time. Especially if you really want to seperate class roles through stances, Mana has no bussiness for Ret or Prot. Unless they want to heal and then they have to switch stance. Or use a Holy Power-finisher or perhaps through spending Energy. So yes, mana is only relevant to keep track of for a "i wonder if i switch now, how much mana could i use..."

And you end with with spells costing X energy or Y mana depending on which stance they are in.

What you are saying is that you don't want to focus on three separate elemenyts ayt once. However, this is a UI issue and not gameplay. I don't envisage mana playing a big role for Ret/Prot...but at the same time, it doesn't have the skillset available to allow it to lock out abilities. What you want is a system where the stance determines what resource is focussed on, but where the second resource system is deemphasised, but still visible.

A Holydin casting spells would still rely on mana for his resource but would still make use of energy and HP for various finishing moves. A Ret may value energy and HP over mana...but he is still a Paladin and the option to use mana based spells may very well be a plus as they provide a possible option for dealing with kiting, and providing access to on demand abilities.

The system you seek was developed for druids, allowing them to monitor mana when in a feral form. Which is all that would be needed.

Aslong as, and this was the point, the manapools cannot become "larger" through mere stat stacking.

Currently, Ret works via STR and AP. Stacking INT would potentially provide a benefit in longevity, at the expense of actual damage output.

EJL

[Bonkura]

What should I focus on during fights vs Beth'tilac and Alysrazor? My role would be to climb up the net and interrupting those druids, but besides that where should my DPS be distributed to not wasting time not attacking and how do I get my raid group to help me out in that matter? (tanking being the obvious, maybe burst classes to kill druids)

Basically I wonder about positioning since they are not that melee favored fights.

[Andron]

That said, we think balance is in a good place overall, so anyone expecting huge pendulum swings will probably be disappointed

Well ... so much for decent changes. Let's wait for the changes to come, but I don't expect anything anymore. Surprise me, blizz.

[terrahero]

And you end with with spells costing X energy or Y mana depending on which stance they are in.

What you are saying is that you don't want to focus on three separate elemenyts ayt once. However, this is a UI issue and not gameplay. I don't envisage mana playing a big role for Ret/Prot...but at the same time, it doesn't have the skillset available to allow it to lock out abilities. What you want is a system where the stance determines what resource is focussed on, but where the second resource system is deemphasised, but still visible.

A Holydin casting spells would still rely on mana for his resource but would still make use of energy and HP for various finishing moves. A Ret may value energy and HP over mana...but he is still a Paladin and the option to use mana based spells may very well be a plus as they provide a possible option for dealing with kiting, and providing access to on demand abilities.

I cannot imagine any purpose Mana would have for Ret or Prot. casting heals is the thing we want to shackle with a stance system where Energy and Holy Power are more then capable of covering for (self)heals. A Redemption is cast out of combat anyway so the paladin could break to "Caster-mode". Any relevant cooldowns such as AW, HoJ or Guardian could just aswell be completely free as a manacost would be completely redundant on a relative large manapool with fast regeneration.
If however mana becomes yet another resource you need to manage the whole combat style will be lost in the chaos of watching your energy, mana, holy power and selfbuffs (Inq.)

Currently, Ret works via STR and AP. Stacking INT would potentially provide a benefit in longevity, at the expense of actual damage output.

EJL

And such a system is 99% likely to not work as Rets will focus on Str anyway, but im not gona take any chances on the offchance someone finds a very creative way to stack Int to some strange benefit. And then patch that up. Just like we got with Enh. Shamans right now, using Spellcaster weapons and hardcasting spells in their rotation. It wasnt intented and turned out to be beter dps. And now Blizzard has to patch that up as we can see in the upcomming changes for Enh. Shamans.
I dont want to invite the offchance something like that happens to Ret, running around in a dress with a massive 2H because i need exactly 700 Int so my manapool is large enough to squeeze out an extra Finisher or something crazy. So IF Mana substitutes as Energy it should as closely as possible emulate Energy.

[Talen]

I cannot imagine any purpose Mana would have for Ret or Prot.

As I said...casting spells. Holy Wrath, Consecration, Exorcism, Divine Shield, etc...spells that may be used as Ret/Prot even if melee. While Holy, you'd also want access to Energy and HP to help constrain and enhance the use of finishers such as WoG....for which part of the oint is the fact itt isn't connected to mana.

If however mana becomes yet another resource you need to manage the whole combat style will be lost in the chaos of watching your energy, mana, holy power and selfbuffs (Inq.)

IF it was set up that way. It'd be important to have Ret monitor mana, for example, because that gives him access to various offensive and defensive spells. How much management that would actually entail is another matter - for example, how much attention do Rets really need to pay to mana these days? Not a lot because the regen rate is sufficient to cover the typical usage. What it does more is limit how many spells he can cast.

Take that same system and, just as mana only really counts for when he heals and can largely be ignored otherwise, and add an energy bar that constrains finishers and melee. You put him in the same situation as rogues - HIS job is now constrained by energy/HP with mana largely meaningless to him; still important he has some way to measure and recover it because various spells may still form part of his toolkit but not something he really needs to manage.

That leaves the UI and, as I said, the Feral mana bar shows a way to do this. Simply swap over the bars depending upon stance.

EJL

[terrahero]

If Ret and Prot dont have to concern themselves with Manacost, since they regen it so rediculously fast as they do now. Then i ask you, what is the point of still having Divine Shield, Hammer of Justice, etcetc still costing Mana for prot and ret? Just make them completely free. No manacost. Like you said, we dont care much about our mana now. What about when we only use it for a few odd abilities wich generally already cost very little to begin with?

Exorcism, on my mind, fits in the "casterform". If Ret or Prot wants to use it, either give it an energy cost equivelant and have it generate holy power. Or make it only available as a proc. Some procs every now and then would still be nice. Holy Wrath needs to be reworked anyway, many diffirent ideas but basicly it should just move to a utility spell. And consecration could do alot beter job as a much harder hitting Finisher.

So Ret and Prots combat system rotates around Energy and Holy Power. Spells that dont feel good to put on energycost (Divine Shield is a good example) are simply "free". The build in cooldowns hold these back, and they are abilities that should be useable on the get go. If Ret or Prot wants to hardcast heals, for mana, he/she has to change "Stance". Thats part of the trade-off and means to constrain simply casting heals, outside of the expenditure of Energy and/or Holy Power.

[Talen]

If Ret and Prot dont have to concern themselves with Manacost, since they regen it so rediculously fast as they do now. Then i ask you, what is the point of still having Divine Shield, Hammer of Justice, etcetc still costing Mana for prot and ret? Just make them completely free. No manacost. Like you said, we dont care much about our mana now. What about when we only use it for a few odd abilities wich generally already cost very little to begin with?

Because Rets still have to live with Holy and their need for mana. The point is, Rets generally don't need to manage mana now. This is a large part of why the mechanics don't work. There needs to be another resource for the system to work off. But mana as that resource, while possible, has issues and connections that make it sub optimal...so a dedicated resource (Energy) would be far better.

Exorcism, on my mind, fits in the "casterform". If Ret or Prot wants to use it, either give it an energy cost equivalant and have it generate holy power.

Or keep the system as is now where it uses mana.

You've had two main objections to this...UI, which is easily dealt with and the idea that Rets shouldn't manage 3 resources - which they don't. Even now, mana is used to restrain spellcasting by providing a limit on how often they can heal, for example. But the fact that rets don't really manage mana now isn't being taken as a reason to remove their ability to cast spells entirely. Spell casting forms part of their toolkit.

So..should Rets have access to mana? The answer is yes because otherwise you either need to develop two entirely different resource systems to account for the possible permutations or create a duplicated toolkit to fill many of those same roles you've just locked out. Maybe sometimes Rets will want to use a healing spell or cast HW. Do they cost mana? Energy? What about out of combat? Switch stances to ress? That'd be highly annoying. Its already annoying enough having to stand still to cast HL after a kill to recover health when other classes can do it passively or as part of their rotation so I really can't see the need to switch stances to fill basic roles as being desireable.

If they don't then you are locking them out of the healing spells which should, IMO, form at least part of the basis of class survivability, or you need to develop them with two separate resources in mind. That latter part is not going to happen. Nor is it needed. It doesn't add anything to the game or class. If you want a lock out system via stances then a simple "Requires DPS Stance" will work just as well.

Holy Wrath needs to be reworked anyway

No - it doesn't. Whats wrong with HW is not the mechanics, but the fact it seens as a DPS move and used as a one sized fits all filler when it is poorly designed for that purpose. It works great as a Utility spell that deals some damage. Its very, very, very bad at being a DPS that has some utility.

And consecration could do alot beter job as a much harder hitting Finisher.

Consecration is a static, AOE DoT with a massive mana cost and a hefty CD. To make it a viable HP finisher, you'd need to design an entirely new spell that would effectively be Divine Storm with the Consecration name.

So Ret and Prots combat system rotates around Energy and Holy Power. Spells that dont feel good to put on energycost (Divine Shield is a good example) are simply "free". The build in cooldowns hold these back, and they are abilities that should be useable on the get go. If Ret or Prot wants to hardcast heals, for mana, he/she has to change "Stance". Thats part of the trade-off and means to constrain simply casting heals, outside of the expenditure of Energy and/or Holy Power.

As I said, you are arguing for a lockout system. I don't believe Paladins have the toolkit necessary to support a lockout, nor do I see expanding that toolkit to the point where it can be supported to be either desireable or necessary. Nor do I see spells being available for free being a realistic choice. Many spells - HoW, DS, Cons, HW, heals - etc offer a lot of potential for the DPS/Tank specs even if it is only situational. I see little benefit to locking out various spells simply to provide energy based equivalents, nor do I see any potential or need in redesigning spells to have two different resource costs depending on stances.

You are arguing for a purely energy based system for Rets/Prot - but if Holy is to keep WOG/LoD, then Holys need to use Energy and HP. I don't see any need to discriminate unnecessarily. Its one thing to suggest Rets/Prot should be centred around Energy/HP...but I see no advantage at all to saying they should be deprived of mana entirely.

It can be done, certainly. But the amount of work needed, the potential balance issues, the epxansion of the necessary toolkit, the loss of flavour and the sheer lack of need to actually do it argues against this.

If you take the class right now, what is it lacking? It has sufficient mana management capability to manage its spellcasting..be they heals, or defensive/offensive spells. For melee, that aspect doesn't matter so much, but those spells do fill a role in the Paladins arsenal and its one which can be expanded upon, even if Paladins are given an energy equivalent. What it lacks is a resource that fills the same role for melee abilities, and to constrain and resource its finishers. That system need not work for spells and so you have a clear divide set up. Energy is needed and viable for the melee aspect....but it isn't needed for the spell casting. Mana is very viable for the casting route, but not for the melee route.

Should Rets be able to cast spells at all? Sure they should. But your solutions just aren't that viable to me...because heals (for example) aren't going to be allocated an energy cost for DPS stance, and they aren't going to be made free of mana as standard. They need some control mechanic and thats already provided by mana.

EJL