Ret and PvP - GC giving us the middle finger.

[Trel]

Blinding Light Emits a dazzling light in all directions, blinding enemies within 10 yards, causing them to wander disoriented for 6 sec. 8% of Base Mana. Instant. 2 min cooldown. 1.8 sec cast. 2 min cooldown.

(That's a joke, right)?

[Tangra]

Blinding Light Emits a dazzling light in all directions, blinding enemies within 10 yards, causing them to wander disoriented for 6 sec. 8% of Base Mana. Instant. 2 min cooldown. 1.8 sec cast. 2 min cooldown.

(That's a joke, right)?

This nerf is for Holy only, Ghostcrawler confirmed that Ret's Blinding Light will still be instant.

[Velshin]

This nerf is for Holy only, Ghostcrawler confirmed that Ret's Blinding Light will still be instant.

Yeah this change in fact makes me happy because it makes Retri finally can bring something in pvp that holy and prot can't.

[Reith]

Yeah this change in fact makes me happy because it makes Retri finally can bring something in pvp that holy and prot can't.

Prot still has the instant Blinding Light though.

[Tangra]

Yeah this change in fact makes me happy because it makes Retri finally can bring something in pvp that holy and prot can't.

Yeah it's nice that Ret actually brings something that Holy doesn't now, but I wish it had come in the form of a buff to Ret rather than a nerf to Holy. This also does not nearly address the issue of Ret's terrible utility, especially in rated bgs. Now that the spells have been separated for ret/prot and holy, the ret/prot version should get the current blinding light glyph baked into it so (3 sec knockdown and 6 second blind, and the glyph can be replaced by something new), so even if the target takes damage you at least still get a 3 sec stun; also drop the cooldown for ret/prot to 1 min and it might make Ret somewhat RBG viable.

[Reith]

Yeah it's nice that Ret actually brings something that Holy doesn't now, but I wish it had come in the form of a buff to Ret rather than a nerf to Holy. This also does not nearly address the issue of Ret's terrible utility, especially in rated bgs. Now that the spells have been separated for ret/prot and holy, the ret/prot version should get the current blinding light glyph baked into it so (3 sec knockdown and 6 second blind, and the glyph can be replaced by something new), so even if the target takes damage you at least still get a 3 sec stun; also drop the cooldown for ret/prot to 1 min and it might make Ret somewhat RBG viable.

I don't see how they can argue Ret has enough utility when all they have to do is look at statistics of Ret Paladins in RBGs and see there's something very wrong.

[Tangra]

I don't see how they can argue Ret has enough utility when all they have to do is look at statistics of Ret Paladins in RBGs and see there's something very wrong.

Ghostcrawlers' latest posts illustrate how inconsistent their thinking is. He say roughly "in MoP we wanted Paladins to have more offensive pressure... Holy ended up getting plenty of that due to Repent"... but then he completely ignores the fact that Ret got no increased offensive pressure because they basically took repent from Ret and gave it to holy... it's like they get an idea (and it happened to be a good one) and then got distracted and never followed through on their plan.

[Valedus]

Neither can I. I hope they are doing internal testing with new mechanics/spells for Ret or something, and just not telling us yet. It's pretty easy to tell that Ret needs something more than just FoL buffs.

[Nairobi]

Ghostcrawlers' latest posts illustrate how inconsistent their thinking is. He say roughly "in MoP we wanted Paladins to have more offensive pressure... Holy ended up getting plenty of that due to Repent"... but then he completely ignores the fact that Ret got no increased offensive pressure because they basically took repent from Ret and gave it to holy... it's like they get an idea (and it happened to be a good one) and then got distracted and never followed through on their plan.

I think it's more that they balance the spec around feedback from 1300-1500 rated and/or undergeared players who get bursted, and take no consideration about the actual viability of the spec in real situations. Bad players don't dispel bubble, don't CC through cooldowns (could we BE more visual?), don't train the ret and let us heal up...bad players are bad. Ret is so easy to counter for anyone with a hint of skill, and sadly our BEST counter is just to be pressured til dead.

Don't get me wrong, I like that we got some much needed love in the heals department back. BUT. Now that we're being told that we should use FoL over WoG, it really doesn't do much to help our survival (unless it's against bad players, where we will still do fine and likely look over-buffed and the cycle will continue...) as any monkey can pummel/silence the hardcast FoL. Yes, we can (and most likely WILL) take selfless healer, but if we have to use the instant FOL on ourselves, it once again takes away from our "utility" ideal/archetype.

I'd still like to see less buffing/reliance on healing and more focus on the actual RETRIBUTION part of being a ret paladin. Like....Touch of Karma, but pala style. Perhaps make it placeable on self or friendly target and call it Eye for an Eye. Hey look, utility people want! Hey look, a valuable defensive cooldown that doubles as pressure! Maybe...Chi Wave, paladin style. Purification: Send out a bolt of holy energy that strikes the enemy for X dmg, then bounces to a nearby ally healing for Y. Total 5 bounces, 20 yd range.

Basically, in playing my WW, I've seen SO many spells that SHOULD be part of ret's toolkit, but got shoved to them.

Expel Harm, Touch of Karma, Chi Wave, to name a few that encompass the basic idea of Retribution: Damage via healing, or healing via damage... it is what we're supposed to be about.

[Mcbenchpress]

I want Holy Bolt and Zeal from Diablo 2.

[Tangra]

I think it's more that they balance the spec around feedback from 1300-1500 rated and/or undergeared players who get bursted, and take no consideration about the actual viability of the spec in real situations. Bad players don't dispel bubble, don't CC through cooldowns (could we BE more visual?), don't train the ret and let us heal up...bad players are bad. Ret is so easy to counter for anyone with a hint of skill, and sadly our BEST counter is just to be pressured til dead.

Don't get me wrong, I like that we got some much needed love in the heals department back. BUT. Now that we're being told that we should use FoL over WoG, it really doesn't do much to help our survival (unless it's against bad players, where we will still do fine and likely look over-buffed and the cycle will continue...) as any monkey can pummel/silence the hardcast FoL. Yes, we can (and most likely WILL) take selfless healer, but if we have to use the instant FOL on ourselves, it once again takes away from our "utility" ideal/archetype.

I'd still like to see less buffing/reliance on healing and more focus on the actual RETRIBUTION part of being a ret paladin. Like....Touch of Karma, but pala style. Perhaps make it placeable on self or friendly target and call it Eye for an Eye. Hey look, utility people want! Hey look, a valuable defensive cooldown that doubles as pressure! Maybe...Chi Wave, paladin style. Purification: Send out a bolt of holy energy that strikes the enemy for X dmg, then bounces to a nearby ally healing for Y. Total 5 bounces, 20 yd range.

Basically, in playing my WW, I've seen SO many spells that SHOULD be part of ret's toolkit, but got shoved to them.

Expel Harm, Touch of Karma, Chi Wave, to name a few that encompass the basic idea of Retribution: Damage via healing, or healing via damage... it is what we're supposed to be about.

Yeah Ret has always been balanced around the bitching of scrubs, Ghostcrawler has even admitted that at times, since they want the game to be fun for casual PvPers too... the problem is that they don't compensate us with tools for serious PvP. Monks really did drink our milkshake; they have quite a few reflective abilities that Ret should have always had like Touch of Karma and Diffuse Magic. Windwalkers are what Ret should have been all along.

[Valedus]

I actually feel the same exact way on my monk. Touch Of Karma and Diffuse Magic just scream Retribution-y, like punishing people, but whatever - what's done is done.

[nyc81991]

Ghostcrawlers' latest posts illustrate how inconsistent their thinking is. He say roughly "in MoP we wanted Paladins to have more offensive pressure... Holy ended up getting plenty of that due to Repent"... but then he completely ignores the fact that Ret got no increased offensive pressure because they basically took repent from Ret and gave it to holy... it's like they get an idea (and it happened to be a good one) and then got distracted and never followed through on their plan.

They need to make Repentance work differently for Ret and Holy in order for it to even be a talent in my opinion.

Repentance should be an instant cast and 30 second cd for Ret paladins only.

[Cronosmash]

I think it's more that they balance the spec around feedback from 1300-1500 rated and/or undergeared players who get bursted, and take no consideration about the actual viability of the spec in real situations. Bad players don't dispel bubble, don't CC through cooldowns (could we BE more visual?), don't train the ret and let us heal up...bad players are bad. Ret is so easy to counter for anyone with a hint of skill, and sadly our BEST counter is just to be pressured til dead.

Nopz, they can do it right and they can see when something is missing. Look at what they did to Rogues and Monks for 5.2.

Repentance should be an instant cast and 30 second cd for Ret paladins only.

That whould be a start. Still worse than Quaking Palm and every monk have that. Still they don't realise that DPS spec from the same class has to bring better survival and CC than the healer counterpart. Shadow Priests bring an Def CD better than bubble and 2 extra CCs Healer Priests don't have. Even Enh and Ele Shamans have Def CDs Resto don't and they need fixing too.

I'd say that's just being lazy and feckless about those specs (Ret/Enh/Ele). "We can pretend and act as if everything is OK, just keep saying it's OK, keep saying that we can't change anything without an analysis and then ignore the analysis players give us proving that changes are needed, than launch another patch with something that will not solve the problem and HOPE people just reroll to a spec/class we care to balancing, rage quit WoW or keep on the frustrating UNFAIR competition. We already have enough problem balancing the ones we care about, the game will never be balanced anyway, whatever, fuck 'em."

That soulds pretty clear to me. When someone say something is OK, you say it's not and make a point, the person says it need an analysis, ou make and give an analysis proving it's NOT OK, and the person ignore. That just lack of good will. That's just saying "Whatever, I don't care if you're right, I have the power here and I'm not doing anything, so what you gonna do about it?".

[Psilar]

Way to prove that we have not gotten anything strategically useful in 4+ years, and just had our damage shifted around to different abilities that have no secondary utility of any sort. We had no emancipate, but we could cleanse magic, so we actually lost massive utility and could still dispel ourselves out of many snares. You quite literally pointed out EXACTLY why Ret sucks, while trying to argue to opposite.

Guardian is just flat damage, we're talking about utility, not shiny animations on long cool downs.
Inquisition made out damage worse and reduced our burst.
Exorcism worked completely differently.
Repentance is no longer exclusively our spell and has been redesigned for mainly holy paladins.

You are totally right... Also to note, emancipate was baked into cleanse meaning we now need 2 buttons :P

I agree that survivability is the issue.

I think selfless healer is the problem really. Bombing people for 150-200k heals still happens in BGs....too bad it's not a heal for me...

Sustained needs helps as well....

I'd like to see consecrate make a comeback....adds good utility.

Someone mentioned Denounce. Perhaps only on Exorcism PROCS would you get the effect. Quite often I find exorcism going the whole 15 seconds without resetting so wouldn't be 100% uptime.

A pain suppression ability would be nice too... You could even call it contemplate - just like the spell already in the game and it would use the same graphical effect. Only usable while stunned , feared, or silenced.

Honestly I'd be fine with removing sacrifice and BoP from Rets. To compensate, give them the pain suppression I suggested as a strong defensive cooldown. Furthermore, Nerf Guardian so we can use it twice as often for 1/2 the effect. I'd also like to see Repentance as instant for Ret.

Self-less healer needs to be changed, the current change on the PTR is decent (buffing FoL, but slightly nerfing SH). Perhaps bake a -% damage when used to heal another person. This could have PvE ramifications as well.

Just a couple thoughts after staying up all night...

[Velshin]

For retri sustain dmg fix and lowering our burst our best solution in my personal opinion will be buffing our sword of light passive to make it 15% increase dmg using two handed weapons instead of just 10% and reducing the cd of wings by 2 mins and make it increase our dmg 10% instead of 20%.

By doing that we will have a better sustain dmg but at the same time we don't have as crazy burst as now when we pop all cds. It may not solve all of retri problems but it will be a good start.

thoughts?

[nyc81991]

For retri sustain dmg fix and lowering our burst our best solution in my personal opinion will be buffing our sword of light passive to make it 15% increase dmg using two handed weapons instead of just 10% and reducing the cd of wings by 2 mins and make it increase our dmg 10% instead of 20%.

By doing that we will have a better sustain dmg but at the same time we don't have as crazy burst as now when we pop all cds. It may not solve all of retri problems but it will be a good start.

thoughts?

Yeah, 15% increased damage with 2handers would be great. However, I don't think our burst needs to get nerfed. Warriors and DK's have much more damage and burst than we do.

[Velshin]

Yeah, 15% increased damage with 2handers would be great. However, I don't think our burst needs to get nerfed. Warriors and DK's have much more damage and burst than we do.

Yeah well I don't know I usually see ret pala in the first 1 min with full cds and guardian top dmg because of the crazy burst. The reason I mentioned the nerf of burst is for the pvp issues I rather trade my impressive burst to a very good sustain dmg to keep the pressure in pvp all the time instead of blowing up someone every 5 mins.

[Riptide]

Yeah well I don't know I usually see ret pala in the first 1 min with full cds and guardian top dmg because of the crazy burst. The reason I mentioned the nerf of burst is for the pvp issues I rather trade my impressive burst to a very good sustain dmg to keep the pressure in pvp all the time instead of blowing up someone every 5 mins.

Warriors and DKs have more short duration burst with much higher peaks(at least warriors). Over a 20-30 second window ret is pretty much top melee though.
This is part of what makes warriors and dk better in pvp though, you never get 20-30 seconds of uninterrupted pressure, because if you do the game is over. But really any dr has time to reset 2x over in that duration, so you're going to be cc'd for a big portion of that.

[Silmaloke]

I would love those changes, too. Especially to have a standard 2mins wings. The rotation/priority list just seems so much smoother with the pve 4set bonus this current tier. The only point that might really speak against it, could be that retris would be in danger of having sth too similar to the 1minute Pillar of Frost cd, in turn making us more and more resemble a Frost dk. .. not sure