Ret and PvP - GC giving us the middle finger.

[laughtrey]

Back in my day

we complained about not having an interrupt

or a slow

and we wanted to punch Ghostcrawler in the face when he said JoJ was our gap closer.

I try to block those memories.

It's not working oh god I'm gonna have the seal twisting nightmares again thanks a lot.

[Valedus]

In case you never noticed, I think WoW has been giving PvP in general the middle finger for many years, getting more in its face each expansion.

If you want to take a PvP game seriously, you should not look to WoW, or any MMO for that matter. They will never be balanced or competitive.

Not really sure what you're talking about: pretty much every change to skills recently has been in the name of balance.

---------- Post added 2013-01-12 at 12:57 PM ----------

While I agree that rets are not in a perfect place in the current state of the game, I think many of you fall to the hype a bit too much.

Certainly, we can be cc'd during our burst but be prepared for that - have bubble and trinket available before blowing. Once you go through their instant cc, they are just trying to stay alive - the burst we provide in that short window is incredible. In RBGs, beyond that point we make a good nuisance, which is important. I typically either TC on my ret in RBGs, or I am glued to a healer/warlock. My goal is to mess them up, they cannot get rid of me, and I probably won't kill them, but they are inevitably trying to get away or get me peeled. This distraction allows my burst teammates to burn someone down, or relieves pressure on heals.

If I am TCing, I remain valuable b/c I'm rarely focused due to what I am, so my CDs will often go unnoticed and I can reliably offer support to whoever is being focused (sacrifice on CD, always, BoPs on need, selfless healer crits when heals are being chain cc'd).

Also, for node-based maps, we make godly defenders. I can survive even a full out zerg if my CDs are all up in time for my team to come and take over defense.

I truly believe our sustained will become better as time goes on as Blizz nerfs healing and many of the top burst classes atm (as GC has said is his intent). I do not believe his "ret is fine" comment is a middle finger, but a declaration of intent to reduce the burst other classes have.

How is a Ret a better node defender than a Hunter? A better lockdown class than a Rogue? The problem is anything a Ret can do, other classes can do better - and if you want BoP's and Sacrifices, it's better to just bring a holy paladin, as they are probably the 2nd strongest healer, and share all utility with Ret.
I thought Aura Mastery would have been a pretty good Ret-specific utility, as it can clear silences and such from teammates, but Holy gets that too.

[Veliane]

Whoever said Ret is an excellent node defender is leaking grey matter.

A Ret can get node-capped by a single Rogue, thats how bad it is.
Sap.. which you have to trinket, (8sec duration vs 7cap) immediately get Blind and capped.

If you Divine Shield to get a hit on the Rogue and make your Guardian chase it the Rogue will proceed to Cloak/Vanish to reset the Guardian (which means the Guardian won't hit anything regardless of you being in combat or not for a few sec) wait a whole one second and Sap you full again.

Congrats you lasted 15sec tops.

In the same situation:

Shamans have pulsating AoE totems.
Warriors incapacitation break.
Warlocks, Hunter's and Frost Mages have a Pet.
Rogues can remain hidden and counter-CC as needed.
Priests can stand at range and Halo which takes 3 sec off Sap to run back and forth.
Druids can remain hidden and CC as needed, Nelfs can 'reset'.
Unholy DKs have Desecrated Ground and a Pet.
Monks have a Pet, can port in/out of CC Range.

So the only thing more useless than a Ret for node defense is a Frost DK and a Fire Mage. Nice.

Unless you play 1500 RBGs nobody is going to come and back you up 1v1 because you can get capped, thats why they bring better classes.

[Valedus]

Whoever said Ret is an excellent node defender is leaking grey matter.

A Ret can get node-capped by a single Rogue, thats how bad it is.
Sap.. which you have to trinket, (8sec duration vs 7cap) immediately get Blind and capped.

If you Divine Shield to get a hit on the Rogue and make your Guardian chase it the Rogue will proceed to Cloak/Vanish to reset the Guardian (which means the Guardian won't hit anything regardless of you being in combat or not for a few sec) wait a whole one second and Sap you full again.

Congrats you lasted 15sec tops.

In the same situation:

Shamans have pulsating AoE totems.
Warriors incapacitation break.
Warlocks, Hunter's and Frost Mages have a Pet.
Rogues can remain hidden and counter-CC as needed.
Priests can stand at range and Halo which takes 3 sec off Sap to run back and forth.
Druids can remain hidden and CC as needed, Nelfs can 'reset'.
Unholy DKs have Desecrated Ground and a Pet.
Monks have a Pet, can port in/out of CC Range.

So the only thing more useless than a Ret for node defense is a Frost DK and a Fire Mage. Nice.

Unless you play 1500 RBGs nobody is going to come and back you up 1v1 because you can get capped, thats why they bring better classes.

This exactly, combined with if that class really can't CC chain you to cap your node, they can just tear you apart. As has been said a million times in this thread, all utility Ret has is used on allies. None of it actually helps ourselves.

[Frozen Death Knight]

How is a Ret a better node defender than a Hunter? A better lockdown class than a Rogue? The problem is anything a Ret can do, other classes can do better - and if you want BoP's and Sacrifices, it's better to just bring a holy paladin, as they are probably the 2nd strongest healer, and share all utility with Ret.
I thought Aura Mastery would have been a pretty good Ret-specific utility, as it can clear silences and such from teammates, but Holy gets that too.

Anything Ret can do, Mage can do better!
Any spec is better than Pallies too!

Just reminded me of a musical. XD

[Vash The Stampede]

Back in my day

we complained about not having an interrupt

or a slow

and we wanted to punch Ghostcrawler in the face when he said JoJ was our gap closer.

Back in my day we complained about not having a strike, like Crusader Strike. Cause we had such ability in beta and was taken away.

[Deleted]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...04770599235586

and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...975?page=7#133

I'm glad Ghostcrawler listened to our feedback.

We genuinely needed ret healing to scale with some PVP Power.

---------- Post added 2013-01-12 at 11:21 PM ----------

Back in my day we complained about not having a strike, like Crusader Strike. Cause we had such ability in beta and was taken away.

Yeah I remember. Ret would have been much better in vanilla if it had Crusader Strike from the beginning. We spent most of our time waiting for damage to happen.

[Tangra]

The 25% healing buff will make us somewhat playable again, but nothing will truly change as long as we share all of our utility with Holy, a dps spec has to bring something more than a healing spec. Ret basically runs around mindlessly whacking things and shooting out off-heals, there is barely any strategy to the spec and that really has to change.

At the very least they could make our own version of Repent, plenty of talents like Solace/Insanity change with spec, so it's not like there is no precedent. Ret's repentance needs to be instant cast and maybe on a 20-30 sec cooldown, to make the rest of the tier more attractive, Burden of Guilt should also root for 2 sec, and Fist can go down to 25 sec cd and maybe a 30 yard range. They just nerfed repent cast time on the PTR, this is the perfect time to admit that the ability can't really be balanced for both Ret and Holy.

[Lumineus]

Can Sac polymorphs, blinds, warrior fears, Blinding Lights, Repentances etc.

Is that what you believe Hand of Sacrifice does? Is it really?

No, what Hand of Sacrifice does, for you, is to set off the enemy player's SpellAlert causing him to waste one GCD and a trivial amount of mana purging your target. That's it. Even if the other team is stupid enough to let you get away with this, you WON'T be CCed as Ret until you use cooldowns, at which point you will be spam purged anyway to keep you from using Freedom, which I might add overwrites Sacrifice anyway.

All that other stuff you listed? Much more useful to Holy. Ret works best with melee partners, melee can't DPS through HoP; run as Holy with Wizcleave to see actual benefit from this spell. Freedom is often self-cast as Ret. Mandatory, in fact, unless you think auto-attacking while spamming Emancipate is fun. But it would be more powerful when cast, by Holy, on a DPS that already has good mobility without it, such as a Mage or Warrior.

they have a VERY high burst with barely no ramp-up time

A heavily telegraphed burst phase that lasts 30 seconds and is easily countered. Compare to 10 seconds for FDK or 6 seconds for Arms. SIX. By the time you see Skull banner populate on your screen, the execute that will kill you is already queued up.

a hard hitting ranged attack (judgement)

LOL

a guardian you cannot CC nor kill (which hit rather hard aswell).

And prevents all CC on his target, while you exist as a winged sheep.

So the only thing more useless than a Ret for node defense is a Frost DK and a Fire Mage. Nice.

Actually both can fish for Rogues with Arcane Explosion/Blood Boil, so no, Ret is still worse.

[Riptide]

The 25% healing buff will make us somewhat playable again, but nothing will truly change as long as we share all of our utility with Holy, a dps spec has to bring something more than a healing spec. Ret basically runs around mindlessly whacking things and shooting out off-heals, there is barely any strategy to the spec and that really has to change.

At the very least they could make our own version of Repent, plenty of talents like Solace/Insanity change with spec, so it's not like there is no precedent. Ret's repentance needs to be instant cast and maybe on a 20-30 sec cooldown, to make the rest of the tier more attractive, Burden of Guilt should also root for 2 sec, and Fist can go down to 25 sec cd and maybe a 30 yard range. They just nerfed repent cast time on the PTR, this is the perfect time to admit that the ability can't really be balanced for both Ret and Holy.

According to a recent tweet by GC I expect prot and holy, specifically holy will be losing instant cast blinding light.

I would like burden of guilt to be baseline for ret with an 8 second root as you mentioned for a replacement talent for Ret only or completely separate from judgment. Disable can be on more than 1 target and reapplies itself if within 10 yard of the monk, if you disable a target already disabled it will root.

The reason I ask for this is we need more peels to be desirable or even tolerable in the upper tiers of pvp. I'd also like an additional ret only utility ability, hell the root could be it. Holy shackles/prison or something. I don't care really. Long as they don't make holy cc's any better than it is. Making ret a desirable addition to an rbg or arena team, instead of being a liability.

They should also change sac to be like soul link both ways. Forbearance feels too long as well.

[Deleted]

What really frustrates me at the moment is the fact that we have to choose between insane burst every 2 minutes (in the form of Holy Avenger), or random Divine Purpose procs. Divine purpose is great if it procs a few times in a row but you can't rely on it, and Holy Avenger is great but you have nothing in between those 2 minutes.

I suspect things will stay that way as well.

[Valedus]

What really frustrates me at the moment is the fact that we have to choose between insane burst every 2 minutes (in the form of Holy Avenger), or random Divine Purpose procs. Divine purpose is great if it procs a few times in a row but you can't rely on it, and Holy Avenger is great but you have nothing in between those 2 minutes.

I suspect things will stay that way as well.

GC has already somewhat hinted at buffing sustained and nerfing burst. Honestly, I think the way they should nerf burst is take Hammer of Wrath off of wings, make it a real execute(hit like a truck like warriors and DK's), and scale pve dps around it. Being succeptable to CC is fine, lots of classes are during their cd's. It's about the only way to stop a melee with like 4 cooldowns up. The only super strong part about our burst is that it becomes Hammer/TV/Exo all chained together, which all hit hard. If we had either of those talents baseline it would be too strong.

[Tangra]

According to a recent tweet by GC I expect prot and holy, specifically holy will be losing instant cast blinding light.

I would like burden of guilt to be baseline for ret with an 8 second root as you mentioned for a replacement talent for Ret only or completely separate from judgment. Disable can be on more than 1 target and reapplies itself if within 10 yard of the monk, if you disable a target already disabled it will root.

The reason I ask for this is we need more peels to be desirable or even tolerable in the upper tiers of pvp. I'd also like an additional ret only utility ability, hell the root could be it. Holy shackles/prison or something. I don't care really. Long as they don't make holy cc's any better than it is. Making ret a desirable addition to an rbg or arena team, instead of being a liability.

They should also change sac to be like soul link both ways. Forbearance feels too long as well.

Well I hate to see nerfs for my fellow paladins, but yeah Holy CC really should be inferior to Ret's by quite a bit, not the other way around. Would rather see Ret buffs than Holy nerfs though.

[Reith]

Well I hate to see nerfs for my fellow paladins, but yeah Holy CC really should be inferior to Ret's by quite a bit, not the other way around. Would rather see Ret buffs than Holy nerfs though.

There is the PVP Power half-healing buff coming to hybrids while Shadow Priests will get their heals nerfed at the same time, so Ret is getting a buff.

[Bonkura]

How are they nerfing Spriest healing? I can't see any specific info.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I wish that they'd stop balancing our brittle defenses around bubble. This 8 year old albatross around our necks has stood still or regressed (for us), while other top tier classes consistently get additional hard counters to it, or better versions of it themselves. Yet, people don't bitch about Dark Bargain (which, IMO, is FAR superior to bubble given it does not nerf damage and is not dispellable (I don't think) and is shorter cooldown, and does not cause forbearance), but every 1500 hero knows that "BUBBLE IZ OP!" All bubble is good for now is a debuff clearing tool, given that it's dispelled in 1-3 sec in competitive play.

Cata sacred shield made sense for ret; I'd like to give up bubble for old sacred shield again. It's a passive, non-damage-nerfing ability that works synergistically with our self heals (and even promotes smart use of our self heals to maximize our heals per GCD). I'd like to see EITHER a change to DivProt OR an increase to ret self healing via WOG/FoL, but not as much as I'd like sacred shield.

I also vote to remove SH from the tree, as all it does is serve to open a can of worms when abused and nerf us around a stupid/gimmick ability anyhow. I'd vote to see something like Protector of the Innocent put in there in it's place, or something that works like Binding Heal which would foster the intelligent use of Hand of Sac on teammates, and efficient partner healing, which is what the ret archetype/playstyle should be about anyway.

Finally, I agree that we cannot have the above without giving up something. I have already offered up bubble for those trades, but I'd be open to losing some burst CD's in favor of a return to some actual defenses. Maybe someone has an idea on what to give up (without adversely affecting PVE), but I'm out of ideas at the moment.

I agree with this. My first character was a Paladin in Vanilla. I have always sort of agreed that bubble is OP. That is, until every expansion, like you said, it gets more hard counters, or spells similar/better than it.

I got fed up with trying to pvp as Ret, (or maybe I am just bad) so I switch to pvp as a Lock. The first few times I faced a comp in arena with a Pally, I was kind of worried about bubble. That is, until I figured out to just leave that Pally alone. TPing away and then focusing his partner worked fine. Like You said I think its kind of bringing our other abilities down, even though, every expansion it gets weaker/countered harder..

[laughtrey]

Is that what you believe Hand of Sacrifice does? Is it really?

No, what Hand of Sacrifice does, for you, is to set off the enemy player's SpellAlert causing him to waste one GCD and a trivial amount of mana purging your target. That's it. Even if the other team is stupid enough to let you get away with this, you WON'T be CCed as Ret until you use cooldowns, at which point you will be spam purged anyway to keep you from using Freedom, which I might add overwrites Sacrifice anyway.

All that other stuff you listed? Much more useful to Holy. Ret works best with melee partners, melee can't DPS through HoP; run as Holy with Wizcleave to see actual benefit from this spell. Freedom is often self-cast as Ret. Mandatory, in fact, unless you think auto-attacking while spamming Emancipate is fun. But it would be more powerful when cast, by Holy, on a DPS that already has good mobility without it, such as a Mage or Warrior.


A heavily telegraphed burst phase that lasts 30 seconds and is easily countered. Compare to 10 seconds for FDK or 6 seconds for Arms. SIX. By the time you see Skull banner populate on your screen, the execute that will kill you is already queued up.


LOL


And prevents all CC on his target, while you exist as a winged sheep.


Actually both can fish for Rogues with Arcane Explosion/Blood Boil, so no, Ret is still worse.

I don't know why you bothered to reply after he said use sacrifice on CCs. I don't think he's even played a paladin.

[Theholypally]

Blinding Light - Disorient for 6 secs.

Repentance - incapacitating for 8 secs.

Hammer of Justice - Stuns for 6 secs.

So please tell me why paladin's CC are "Worse" than ever? No, I'm not ignorant, i'm all for discussion instead of insults and give me arguements with facts instead of WHY you want a buff and WHAT buff you want when so many classes are gonna get so much massive nerfs in the 5.2 patch notes...

Try casting repentance against any team with a brain.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Blinding Light - Disorient for 6 secs.

Repentance - incapacitating for 8 secs.

Hammer of Justice - Stuns for 6 secs.

So please tell me why paladin's CC are "Worse" than ever? No, I'm not ignorant, i'm all for discussion instead of insults and give me arguements with facts instead of WHY you want a buff and WHAT buff you want when so many classes are gonna get so much massive nerfs in the 5.2 patch notes...

Looks like this post is coming from a Warrior.... LOL. CC in general is shortened through various racials, passive, talents etc, so most of the time those are shortened by a lot, not to mention 2/3 of our CC's go away upon damage dealt... I see what you mean, but 3 CC's isn't even that many to be honest.

[Deleted]

Yea, Ret Paladin CC and Utility are really str.. CHARGE SHOCKWAVE HEROIC LEAP CHARGE "MOTHERFUU"... *dead*