Rational look at PvP Burst & Retribution

[PhoenixKatera]

I am not the original poster of this information, which is "Knowledge" and I take no credit for it, I thought I'd like to get this out there as I want to make sure a Blue sees it and knows our valid concerns. (Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...96528605&sid=1)

Fellow Paladins, I have some bad news. Retribution has zero PvP viability when 3.0.3 hits. This is a very painful repeat of our pre-release and tBC history and probably the end of the Retribution. I don't think it will survive a 4th year being the PvP underdog.

Retribution is on the longest run of underdog of any class in WoW history. Since day 1 of release until 3.0 it was “lolret” and with recent "lets balance for 70" nerfs it is back to "lolret" at 80. Denied spots in raiding, laughed out of PUGs, dead last in the arena… the list goes on. Did you know that Retribution S1 and S2 sets were the only sets without resil?! Yes, it took 6 month of petitioning to just fix that, so you have to excuse Retribution community for being skeptical about promised "future revisions". Season after season Retribution is an absolute bottom of the barrel spec, nowhere to be found in any competitive arena play. Did any Retribution Paladin ever get their S4 shoulders or made it into professional competition?

--- Running on crutches---

The fundamental problem is that Retribution is the only spec that relies on others to perform key PvP functions - interrupts, snares and healing debuffs. While other classes look for synergy, Retribution looks for "please make it work for me" partners when forming team composition. This greatly limits possible team compositions where Retribution can even get past the starting line. Typical arena team face the decision - Why have a retribution paladin on the team? What do they bring? In S3 answer to that was - to stop effing druids with Judgment of Justice and occasionally stop melee train on your healer with BoP. Yes, about the only reason to have Ret on 3v3 team was so your warrior could catch and kill druids easily. Considering how popular druid compositions were, literally more than half of all teams above 1800 in S2 & S3 had a druid healer, that wasn't such a bad decision. Now what happens if in S5 druids are no longer the dominant PvP healer choice? Ask this question with WoTLK in mind - Why do I want to have a Retribution Paladin on my team? As of 3.0.2 answer was Burst!. You take that burst away and all you are left with is lolret broken class passed by in favor of synergy with others.

--- Pressure, burst and time on target ---

In PvP, raw sum of total damage is largely irrelevant, there is no enrage timer and there are no metrics other than, 'are they dead yet?'. Due to healers designed to be able to counter damage delivered by raid bosses, all non-fatal damage gets healed right away, as a result your DPS will be countered by HPS, without any effort I might add, since Retribution does not have MS healing debuff effect.

In PvP you need to look at damage dealing abilities from the following point of view - pressure, burst and time on target. Pressure is an ability to deliver enough damage to get healer to use mana-intensive heals and abilities, if you can apply and keep pressure, the healer eventually runs out of mana and the target dies. If you are not pressuring the healer into full-time healing, they end up regenerating mana and/or using offensive abilities. Pressure is closest metric to PvE DPS... but Pressure alone never kills anyone in PvP .
PvP Burst is any large damage that leads to a kill. Against a competent healer, burst damage needs to be fairly large and in a fairly short time. Any burst that does not kill or cause use of cooldowns to survive is a failed burst, and gets counted toward pressure.

Retribution is clearly not a pressure class. Inability to stay on target due to vulnerability to kiting and CC, and lack of healing debuff makes Rets the worst pressure class in the game. For Retribution time-on-target is fairly low, but that gets offset by controlled nature of Burst. Now when you are talking about lowering Burst and compensating elsewhere you are still talking about DIRECT PvP NERF regardless of the fact that DPS (PvE metric) may stay the same. You will never find Retribution on a drain team, time-on-target and healing debuffs are just not there to make it work!

--- Missing "give" part of the Balance ---

You have to realize that ability to quickly kill is the only thing that Retribution brings to the table. If Retribution gets into your face you should die in a short time frame. You can counter Retribution by kiting, minimizing time on target and preparing for the Burst., but if you fail at that you deserve to die.

But what do I know? Let’s see what professional PvP players think about Retribution, that is when lots of money is on the table. Recently, the Montreal Arena Tournament even was held, using 3.0 ruleset before any knee-jerk Retribution nerfs were put in place. $15,000 top prize and $6,500 second prize. Few Retribution teams were brought into the play, but none made into finals or semi-finals. If Retribution, in complete pre-nerf state, was a problem, you would think PROs would take advantage of it, to get prize money and fame?

Read details what happened here:
http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=46965

Top 3 teams were Rogue Mage Priest. All fights against Retribution teams Rets got CCed and kited.
When professional Arena PvP players determine by competition that there is no problem with Retribution, perhaps Blizzard should listen? After all, these people make living from Arena PvP.

NEW! GC response:

Q u o t e:
Re: PvP
I never said the problem was Ret dominating Arena teams. The problem was that a paladin could defeat players with equal or higher skill and gear in very few hits and often while stunned. There was no way to counter it, even if you knew the paladin was coming. That is what we mean when we say their burst damage was too high. Rogues can also stun and kill opponents, but it takes many more hits and a lot longer overall. The opponent has a chance to get out of it or get help.



So "higher skill" players got outplayed, Retribution got into your face despite the fact of how easy it is to kite and peel off. Your healers failed to support you and prepare for the burst. You didn't use any of your escape cooldowns. You died. This is not working as intended?

Well I have to ask then, what is intended? Lolret? Getting kited to high heaven by a mage or hunter, never touching them, regardless of our burst, because we have no gap-close tools? Getting heal tanked by any healer with good resil, because we have no interrupt or healing reduction power?

Please do tell us, why would anyone want to bring Retribution to WoTLK arena team? What is out role in PvP?

Game over for Retribution

Q u o t e:

Retribution

* Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
* Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)



Class already was in a bad shape at 80, now it just not viable in any way. Here are some numbers to show it:

From 33 % down to 15% mana returned

That means :

Total of 5000 total pool at lvl 80, 5/5 in Benediction for -10% mana cost


+15% Base Mana every 7 seconds = JotW + 7 Second Judgments /w 4 set bonus
- 10.8% Base Mana every 12 seconds = Divine Storm
- 7.2% Base Mana every 6 seconds = Crusader Strike
- 4.5% Base Mana every 8 seconds = Judging
- 5.4% Base Mana every ~15 seconds = Cleansing
- 2.7% Base Mana every 30 seconds = Hammer of Justice
- 8.1% Base Mana every 1 minute = Repentance


(Does not include the mana costs for - Hammer of Wrath, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, Avenging Wrath, Re-Sealing, Consecration... or any type of HEALING)

Within 1 minute this means :

8.6 x JotW = 8.6 x 15% = + 128% Base Mana
5-6 x DStorm = 5 x 10.8% = - 54% Base Mana
10 x CStrike = 10 x 7.2% = - 72% Base Mana
8.6 x Judgments = 8.6 x 4.5% = - 38.7% Base Mana
4 x Cleanse = 4 x 5.4% = -21.6% Base Mana
2 x HoJ = 2 x 3% = -5.4% Base Mana
1 x Repentance = -8.1% Base Mana
0.25% mana per second * 60 = 1+5%

Total :

+ 143 % Base Mana Gained
- 199.8 % Base Mana Lost

= - 56.8% Base Mana Lost (Starting full this means down to less than a half of manapool)

This means that even if Divine Plea is used every cooldon we are still losing mana even without healing. This also means that shutting down Retribution via Mana Burns and Viper Sting will become effortless again.


Blizzard - design by QQ.

[Ntrails]

Some changes may be forthcoming at 80.

Epic QQ though.

[mcpain]

i really just want a gap-closing mechanism

the melee classes are:
1. rogue
2. warrior
3. shaman
4. paladin

1. rogue - crippling poison, stuns, sprint, various talents like shadowstep etc...

2. warrior - charge, intercept, hamstring

3. shaman - earthbind totem, frost shock, instant ghost wolf (if talented)

4. paladin - Judgement of Justice - limits movement speed (marginally)

paladins just don't have the tools to do what needs to do be done in modern pvp.
if i had to trade my bubble for MS or intercept or hamstring i would

[Spooh]

i agree 100%, time to reroll DK, i think that what blizz wants
btw rogues are OP i have a resto druid and in 2v2 they do more dmg than u can heal even shpeshifting bear and healing they eat ya

Spec tree of life and a rogue can't kill you (if you got improved thorns you'd win)


I have played both retribution paladin and a rogue for a long time now.. I do really think that paladins have been underdogs, even as holy in arena, and as retribution. But as the patch 3.0.2 hit, i quit pvping with my paladin, it was no fun at all..

Earlier paladins were the underdogs, but to succeed as a paladin you atleast had to know what you were doing, and if a class is a bit "under powered" you can't suck to win. After this patch i ran around 2 shoting warriors and rogues, within the hammer of justice, i never ran out of mana and i got instant heals with an insane hot. And ofcourse a nerf to lay on hands so we had to get killed three times every 20 second

I do think paladins did need a buff, maybe alittle mana and damage wise, but this was way too much. And all the paladins around whining that they get the nerfs, that's ridiculous.

Last night i did gruul's lair on my paladin, topping healing meater and 3'd at damage. I had far from the best gear, and i was topping healing meater as retri.. This tells me something's wrong and there needs some changes..

I don't hope they nerf paladins to the ground again, but i seriously hope they fix them better than this, mana regen seems fine after todays hotfix and we got enough mana to both get burst and last a while..

But i still think the amount of damage we could do, during a hammer of justice is too high. I did burst a 70 rogue 4/5 s4 geared down from 80% to 1% within 1 stun!! And something tells me this shouldn't be possable..


I'm glad we got these new nerfs, and i don't think there's anything to cry about, when it comes to these changes.

I'm happy that paladin is finally wanted and viable in both PvP and PvE, but making them way too strong wasn't really fun

[malkaviano]

paladins just don't have the tools to do what needs to do be done in modern pvp.
if i had to trade my bubble for MS or intercept or hamstring i would

You Sir.

Have a good point here.

But we have Hand of Freedom, what make us idiots able to run after other idiots?

Retribution class is epic!!!

[Spooh]

i really just want a gap-closing mechanism

the melee classes are:
1. rogue
2. warrior
3. shaman
4. paladin

1. rogue - crippling poison, stuns, sprint, various talents like shadowstep etc...

2. warrior - charge, intercept, hamstring

3. shaman - earthbind totem, frost shock, instant ghost wolf (if talented)

4. paladin - Judgement of Justice - limits movement speed (marginally)

paladins just don't have the tools to do what needs to do be done in modern pvp.
if i had to trade my bubble for MS or intercept or hamstring i would

You forgot, Hammer of Justice, repentence, hand of protection, hand of freedom and 15% runspeed.. also paladins can heal very good now and last very long when it comes to mana, they also need to be killed three times (world pvp) every 20th minute.

Paladins got their own playstyle, and their own stuff to use. No other class got spells like bubble, so don't ask for intercept or sprint. That belongs to other classes, if you'd like it so much, go play warrior?

And since you didn't know about repentence, hammer of justice, hand of freedom and hand of protection you should consider getting an "how to play paladin" guide, before you whine that you miss some skills in the forums, thank you

[Karpalo]

I`m not 100% about this since you haven`t really separated your calculations but looks like you are way off with the concept of basemana and total manapool concept. Also you should add in replenish and divine plea. Even without divine plea totally unbuffed you can keep CS/DS/judgement(7 sec cooldown) rotation close to infinity when judging wisdom. With concetration in your rotation you apparently go oom in 1.5 minutes but with but with divine plea and basic rotation you can regen your mana back up again.

And you gotta remember this is without blessing of kings, mana spring, blessing of wisdom, arcane briliance, water elemental, manatide ect.

[PhoenixKatera]

I`m not 100% about this since you haven`t really separated your calculations but looks like you are way off with the concept of basemana and total manapool concept. Also you should add in replenish and divine plea. Even without divine plea totally unbuffed you can keep CS/DS/judgement(7 sec cooldown) rotation close to infinity when judging wisdom. With concetration in your rotation you apparently go oom in 1.5 minutes but with but with divine plea and basic rotation you can regen your mana back up again.

And you gotta remember this is without blessing of kings, mana spring, blessing of wisdom, arcane briliance, water elemental, manatide ect.

This post has nothing to do with PvE, so you wouldn't have raid buffs, nor am I the original poster.

[Karpalo]

This post has nothing to do with PvE, so you wouldn't have raid buffs, nor am I the original poster.

Yeah but he`s math if flawed anyways. Replenish is still part of pvp and odds are you won`t be running 1v3 on arenas, By this date most viable retri paladin combo has been retridin frostmage and i don`t really see that changing.

[PhoenixKatera]

Yeah but he`s math if flawed anyways. Replenish is still part of pvp and odds are you won`t be running 1v3 on arenas, By this date most viable retri paladin combo has been retridin frostmage and i don`t really see that changing.

You're assuming a lot there.
If you want to argue with the OPs points, go to his thread and do so. There's a link ^ there at the top of the thread.

[Karpalo]

What did i asume?

[awwsk1t]

You forgot, Hammer of Justice, repentence, hand of protection, hand of freedom and 15% runspeed.. also paladins can heal very good now and last very long when it comes to mana, they also need to be killed three times (world pvp) every 20th minute.

Paladins got their own playstyle, and their own stuff to use. No other class got spells like bubble, so don't ask for intercept or sprint. That belongs to other classes, if you'd like it so much, go play warrior?

And since you didn't know about repentence, hammer of justice, hand of freedom and hand of protection you should consider getting an "how to play paladin" guide, before you whine that you miss some skills in the forums, thank you

Sorry, but, if you truely knew the downside of those paladin abilities then you wouldn't come off as ignorant as you appear to be.

You do realize that none of those are distance closers or snares?

You do realize that HoJ is only now becoming a reliable spell.......just in time to see every other class get stun duration reducing talents?

You do realize that I have to use both HoJ and Repentance just to see a mage pop trinket and /lol while they shatter combo the me to death?

You do realise that sprint, travel form, ghost wolf, and charge/intercept are all faster than 15% run speed?

You do realize that they make gems and potions that increase your run speed and that since paladins lack their own distance closer, they can be kept out of range from using HoJ and Repentance?

You do realize that ret plate will no longer have int so Mana drains reduce paladins to auto-attack npcs............?

Obviously you missed all of that.

Just because paladins have a bubble (dispellable and on a 5 min cooldown) doesn't mean they should be denied the things that every other melee class has.

Your "Paladins have their own style" argument is borderline retarded. They are a hybrid and like other hybrids they have spells/talents similar to the classes that resemble. If we followed your logic then this would be world of 5craft with Hunters, priest, mages, and warriors only. Oh yeah your rogue can go too. Great game you got there.

I always find it laughable that the most consistantly op class since release is generally the ones that come on to tell other classes that they are fine and how to play.

[champ288]

godamn i thought this would be interesting but u type too fuckin much. break it down, most people will see how much shit u typed and just say "ah fuck it, this shit is too long"

[antidan]

I completely agree with the OP.

The nerf wasn't a nerf to burst it was a nerf to damage so ret will be nerfed again.

SoC needs to do less damage and proc more often, and ret needs a snare or interrupt. In 1v1 even with the 15% movement advantage server client lag can make it so you look right behind the opponant and still not hit them, this is not a problem with a hamstrung opponent.

[yiptastic]

I am not the original poster of this information, which is "Knowledge" and I take no credit for it, I thought I'd like to get this out there as I want to make sure a Blue sees it and knows our valid concerns. (Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...96528605&sid=1)

Fellow Paladins, I have some bad news. Retribution has zero PvP viability when 3.0.3 hits. This is a very painful repeat of our pre-release and tBC history and probably the end of the Retribution. I don't think it will survive a 4th year being the PvP underdog.

Retribution is on the longest run of underdog of any class in WoW history. Since day 1 of release until 3.0 it was “lolret” and with recent "lets balance for 70" nerfs it is back to "lolret" at 80. Denied spots in raiding, laughed out of PUGs, dead last in the arena… the list goes on. Did you know that Retribution S1 and S2 sets were the only sets without resil?! Yes, it took 6 month of petitioning to just fix that, so you have to excuse Retribution community for being skeptical about promised "future revisions". Season after season Retribution is an absolute bottom of the barrel spec, nowhere to be found in any competitive arena play. Did any Retribution Paladin ever get their S4 shoulders or made it into professional competition?

--- Running on crutches---

The fundamental problem is that Retribution is the only spec that relies on others to perform key PvP functions - interrupts, snares and healing debuffs. While other classes look for synergy, Retribution looks for "please make it work for me" partners when forming team composition. This greatly limits possible team compositions where Retribution can even get past the starting line. Typical arena team face the decision - Why have a retribution paladin on the team? What do they bring? In S3 answer to that was - to stop effing druids with Judgment of Justice and occasionally stop melee train on your healer with BoP. Yes, about the only reason to have Ret on 3v3 team was so your warrior could catch and kill druids easily. Considering how popular druid compositions were, literally more than half of all teams above 1800 in S2 & S3 had a druid healer, that wasn't such a bad decision. Now what happens if in S5 druids are no longer the dominant PvP healer choice? Ask this question with WoTLK in mind - Why do I want to have a Retribution Paladin on my team? As of 3.0.2 answer was Burst!. You take that burst away and all you are left with is lolret broken class passed by in favor of synergy with others.

--- Pressure, burst and time on target ---

In PvP, raw sum of total damage is largely irrelevant, there is no enrage timer and there are no metrics other than, 'are they dead yet?'. Due to healers designed to be able to counter damage delivered by raid bosses, all non-fatal damage gets healed right away, as a result your DPS will be countered by HPS, without any effort I might add, since Retribution does not have MS healing debuff effect.

In PvP you need to look at damage dealing abilities from the following point of view - pressure, burst and time on target. Pressure is an ability to deliver enough damage to get healer to use mana-intensive heals and abilities, if you can apply and keep pressure, the healer eventually runs out of mana and the target dies. If you are not pressuring the healer into full-time healing, they end up regenerating mana and/or using offensive abilities. Pressure is closest metric to PvE DPS... but Pressure alone never kills anyone in PvP .
PvP Burst is any large damage that leads to a kill. Against a competent healer, burst damage needs to be fairly large and in a fairly short time. Any burst that does not kill or cause use of cooldowns to survive is a failed burst, and gets counted toward pressure.

Retribution is clearly not a pressure class. Inability to stay on target due to vulnerability to kiting and CC, and lack of healing debuff makes Rets the worst pressure class in the game. For Retribution time-on-target is fairly low, but that gets offset by controlled nature of Burst. Now when you are talking about lowering Burst and compensating elsewhere you are still talking about DIRECT PvP NERF regardless of the fact that DPS (PvE metric) may stay the same. You will never find Retribution on a drain team, time-on-target and healing debuffs are just not there to make it work!

--- Missing "give" part of the Balance ---

You have to realize that ability to quickly kill is the only thing that Retribution brings to the table. If Retribution gets into your face you should die in a short time frame. You can counter Retribution by kiting, minimizing time on target and preparing for the Burst., but if you fail at that you deserve to die.

But what do I know? Let’s see what professional PvP players think about Retribution, that is when lots of money is on the table. Recently, the Montreal Arena Tournament even was held, using 3.0 ruleset before any knee-jerk Retribution nerfs were put in place. $15,000 top prize and $6,500 second prize. Few Retribution teams were brought into the play, but none made into finals or semi-finals. If Retribution, in complete pre-nerf state, was a problem, you would think PROs would take advantage of it, to get prize money and fame?

Read details what happened here:
http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=46965

Top 3 teams were Rogue Mage Priest. All fights against Retribution teams Rets got CCed and kited.
When professional Arena PvP players determine by competition that there is no problem with Retribution, perhaps Blizzard should listen? After all, these people make living from Arena PvP.

NEW! GC response:

Q u o t e:
Re: PvP
I never said the problem was Ret dominating Arena teams. The problem was that a paladin could defeat players with equal or higher skill and gear in very few hits and often while stunned. There was no way to counter it, even if you knew the paladin was coming. That is what we mean when we say their burst damage was too high. Rogues can also stun and kill opponents, but it takes many more hits and a lot longer overall. The opponent has a chance to get out of it or get help.



So "higher skill" players got outplayed, Retribution got into your face despite the fact of how easy it is to kite and peel off. Your healers failed to support you and prepare for the burst. You didn't use any of your escape cooldowns. You died. This is not working as intended?

Well I have to ask then, what is intended? Lolret? Getting kited to high heaven by a mage or hunter, never touching them, regardless of our burst, because we have no gap-close tools? Getting heal tanked by any healer with good resil, because we have no interrupt or healing reduction power?

Please do tell us, why would anyone want to bring Retribution to WoTLK arena team? What is out role in PvP?

Game over for Retribution

Q u o t e:

Retribution

* Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
* Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)



Class already was in a bad shape at 80, now it just not viable in any way. Here are some numbers to show it:

From 33 % down to 15% mana returned

That means :

Total of 5000 total pool at lvl 80, 5/5 in Benediction for -10% mana cost


+15% Base Mana every 7 seconds = JotW + 7 Second Judgments /w 4 set bonus
- 10.8% Base Mana every 12 seconds = Divine Storm
- 7.2% Base Mana every 6 seconds = Crusader Strike
- 4.5% Base Mana every 8 seconds = Judging
- 5.4% Base Mana every ~15 seconds = Cleansing
- 2.7% Base Mana every 30 seconds = Hammer of Justice
- 8.1% Base Mana every 1 minute = Repentance


(Does not include the mana costs for - Hammer of Wrath, Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection, Avenging Wrath, Re-Sealing, Consecration... or any type of HEALING)

Within 1 minute this means :

8.6 x JotW = 8.6 x 15% = + 128% Base Mana
5-6 x DStorm = 5 x 10.8% = - 54% Base Mana
10 x CStrike = 10 x 7.2% = - 72% Base Mana
8.6 x Judgments = 8.6 x 4.5% = - 38.7% Base Mana
4 x Cleanse = 4 x 5.4% = -21.6% Base Mana
2 x HoJ = 2 x 3% = -5.4% Base Mana
1 x Repentance = -8.1% Base Mana
0.25% mana per second * 60 = 1+5%

Total :

+ 143 % Base Mana Gained
- 199.8 % Base Mana Lost

= - 56.8% Base Mana Lost (Starting full this means down to less than a half of manapool)

This means that even if Divine Plea is used every cooldon we are still losing mana even without healing. This also means that shutting down Retribution via Mana Burns and Viper Sting will become effortless again.


Blizzard - design by QQ.

for all those whining... base mana != naked mana
we were never bad at lvl 80. In fact, we were beating almost every pure dps class in PvP and PvE.

L2P.

[awwsk1t]

Learn to play.
Hand of Freedom and Bubble while running 15% faster and removing enemy runspeed increases.
How do you get kited?! Learn to play the game.
You still have burst and you still have Hand of Protection which is a great savior.
The only thing Blizzard did was make us NOT over-powered.
Seriously, QQ more, "Bawwww, I have to actually try to get kills, thats not fair, we're bad again!"
When on my server I'm seeing the top PvP mage saying in trade "LF 4 Ret Paladin's for a 5v5"
THATS NOT BALANCE.

The dominant team in 2's should never be 2 of the same class and you should never see
4 of the same class in a 5's.
Paladin's are fine now, learn to play the damn game.

PS: LEARN TO PLAY.

HoF dispellable, Bubble dispellable and on 5 min cooldown, Judgment of Justice....need to get within range to slow them. Hand of Protection.........only a savior vs melee oh btw dispellable.

Having pally/pally 2 mans or 4 pallies in a 5 man is somehow worse than seing the same rogue/druid or rogue/mage/druidor team over and over........... /eyeroll

I'm not saying that a nerf wasn't needed, but, to this degree and at this time..........it's understandable for pallies to be upset.

Remember how op feral druids were when tbc first came out................and how long it tool to fix them? So not only did they make it out of beta OP, they had some time to actually play it live before it was nerfed. I'd be pissed too.

I saw it coming so I just planned on switching to prot and rolling a DK

[zipobob]

lol at the "L2P" posts
ok heres the thing, if u play a paladin for a long time then u know ur pally will stills suck in 80
so, just roll to DK, its so much better than a pally, and fun
thats what ill be doing, im gonna make my pally eat dust
end of story

[Ufalah]

Learn to play.
Hand of Freedom and Bubble while running 15% faster and removing enemy runspeed increases.
How do you get kited?! Learn to play the game.
You still have burst and you still have Hand of Protection which is a great savior.
The only thing Blizzard did was make us NOT over-powered.
Seriously, QQ more, "Bawwww, I have to actually try to get kills, thats not fair, we're bad again!"
When on my server I'm seeing the top PvP mage saying in trade "LF 4 Ret Paladin's for a 5v5"
THATS NOT BALANCE.
The dominant team in 2's should never be 2 of the same class and you should never see
4 of the same class in a 5's.
Paladin's are fine now, learn to play the damn game.

PS: LEARN TO PLAY.

You get to pick. Bubble or HoP. Not both. 3 min forberance. And HoP is purgable and does nothing to stop spells.

HoF. Purgable. Pretty much a "get out of stun free card" Not bad but not a closer.

15% move speed is nice. JoJ can be purged.

We are the only melee spec that does not have a way to both slow the enemy and move faster. JoJ only makes their run speed 100%.
Warrior - hamstring + intercept
Rogue - Crip poison + sprint
Enh Shaman - Frost shock/earth bind + ghost wolf
Ret Paladin - JoJ + HoF... wait a minute... something isn't right here.

Oh well. We were OP 3.0.2 if you let us get close to you. The arena tournament showed we were still not viable because even with our over-the-top burst we couldn't close. It doesn't matter. Blizzard refuses to address ret-paladins in a manner that is suitable. They cling to some outdated idea of what they want a paladin to be and feed us bullshit. w/e. it happens.

[yiptastic]

lol at the "L2P" posts
ok heres the thing, if u play a paladin for a long time then u know ur pally will stills suck in 80
so, just roll to DK, its so much better than a pally, and fun
thats what ill be doing, im gonna make my pally eat dust
end of story

You basically told us you have no skills.

go reroll, pally is not for you.

[fudgems]

HoF dispellable, Bubble dispellable and on 5 min cooldown, Judgment of Justice....need to get within range to slow them. Hand of Protection.........only a savior vs melee oh btw dispellable.

Having pally/pally 2 mans or 4 pallies in a 5 man is somehow worse than seing the same rogue/druid or rogue/mage/druidor team over and over........... /eyeroll

I'm not saying that a nerf wasn't needed, but, to this degree and at this time..........it's understandable for pallies to be upset.

Remember how op feral druids were when tbc first came out................and how long it tool to fix them? So not only did they make it out of beta OP, they had some time to actually play it live before it was nerfed. I'd be pissed too.

I saw it coming so I just planned on switching to prot and rolling a DK

you seriously need to shut the hell up and quit whining.
you have 2 ranged distance closers: HoJ and repentence.
judgment of justice slows, and you can do it at a range. along with your talented 15% run speed increase, where you can enchant your boots and meta gem for more dps/life/stats/hit rating/etc., others are forced to enchant and gem for run speed increases.
hand of freedom drops all snares on you.
your bubble removes all snares, breaks just about every cc thus acting as an extra trinket, and can only be dispelled with mass dispel, which takes time to cast and can fail to remove it.

sprint = once every 3 minutes and is useless if a rogue gets a snare on them after it becomes active.
crip poison = must be in melee range and only has a certain chance to hit unless it's shived. however, it is easily dispellable by druids/paladins/shamans.

intercept = on a long cd. when talented, you should be able to HoJ a warrior everytime he intercepts you.
hamstring = must be in melee range to apply, and it can miss, be dodged, etc. it can also be dispelled by your hand of freedom

frostshock = easily dispelled.
ghostwolf = costs mana to shift everytime, doesn't break snares, and once snared, is virtually useless for shamans. they must also have imp ghost wolf for it to even be viable for the uses you speak of.
earthbind = easily killed. hand of freedom negated the effect.

travel form = can be snared just as easily as ghostwolf, and though they can shift again, IT COSTS MANA TO DO IT. druids are nonetheless incredibly squishy when in this form.

you wear plate, have incredible RANGED distance closers and stuns on short cds, judgement of justice, a cc-breaking invulernerability snare removing bubble, 15% run speed increase talented, hand of freedom to remove snares again, incredible damage, the ability to heal, incredible regeneration of mana EVEN AFTER YOUR MUCH NEEDED NERF.

PLEASE LEARN TO PLAY YOUR CLASS YOU TRASH. PALADINS ARE STILL RAPE.