Seals > Holy Power

[Unholyground]

It already does? It builds free WoG for prot. It builds free flash for ret. And I dont play healer but I know it does smt similar.

Those are abilities, I mean like a stacking throughput or utility buff with a decent duration based on spec that automatically procs with continued spending of holy power.

[RobertMugabe]

The Vanilla/TBC seals system was crap ngl and would've never ever worked properly either.

However the Wrath implementation is really good and should've been kept IMO.

[Swnem]

The seal system is fun much better than holy power.

Let's be honest here. Neither system is fun. Holy power is the least offensive of the two. Seals wasting a GCD where you do nothing but apply a buff to your auto-attacks is as bad as when damage CD's were on the GCD. Maybe even worse cause it only buffs your auto-attacks. It feels trash and we don't need that back.

[tomten]

Those are abilities, I mean like a stacking throughput or utility buff with a decent duration based on spec that automatically procs with continued spensing of holy power.

Do you remember inquisition for ret? It was universally hated having to maintain a short duration buff and my memory fails me, think it was 20 sec baseline but some talent made it possible to be 35 sec, or smt. So wasnt short short either.

[Binks]

I'm just gonna say Holy Power got introduced at the same time most "secondary resources" did and its the only one we still have complaints all the way up to DF.

I think we can all agree that HP failed where most were succesful, and in my humble opinion its because it resembles feral and rogue, something paladins should never be compared to.

Mechanically its less fun than previous iterations as proved by Classic.

[Unholyground]

Do you remember inquisition for ret? It was universally hated having to maintain a short duration buff and my memory fails me, think it was 20 sec baseline but some talent made it possible to be 35 sec, or smt. So wasnt short short either.

This would be automatic not an extra button, people don't mind maintaining things if they are synergistic to a rotation.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Do you remember inquisition for ret? It was universally hated having to maintain a short duration buff and my memory fails me, think it was 20 sec baseline but some talent made it possible to be 35 sec, or smt. So wasnt short short either.

10 sec/Holy Power, though I think at different patches it also got bumped up to 12sec/HP and 15sec/HP. Every iteration still felt like complete rubbish though, it was like a shitty version of SnD. SnD actually had an impact on your play in Cata as a Combat rogue, since OH and Main Gauche procs had a chance to provide energy. Inquisition added nothing in terms of gameplay, outside of having to waste 3 HP to keep up the most boring buff Paladins have ever had.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm just gonna say Holy Power got introduced at the same time most "secondary resources" did and its the only one we still have complaints all the way up to DF.

I think we can all agree that HP failed where most were succesful, and in my humble opinion its because it resembles feral and rogue, something paladins should never be compared to.

Mechanically its less fun than previous iterations as proved by Classic.

Its really not less fun then Wrath. Maybe not broken like Wrath but... I guess people prefer that.

[BeepBoo]

Seal gameplay and FCFS was pinnacle ret.

Between exorcism, art of war procs, DS, CS, and seal/judge combo, we always had a key press. In addition, it wasn't just "do things in order" like the poster above said. There were plenty of times where FCFS would tell you "judgment" but the cooldowns of the spells were such that if you waited .1 second more you'd have a better spell that hit harder and resulted in higher DPS, so people who just spammed what FCFS told them were only good for about 80% of their potential max DPS vs those of us who knew how to take it in context.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Ret's issues with getting into groups has nothing to do with seals, though, and holy power is not what is holding it back

[tomten]

10 sec/Holy Power, though I think at different patches it also got bumped up to 12sec/HP and 15sec/HP. Every iteration still felt like complete rubbish though, it was like a shitty version of SnD. SnD actually had an impact on your play in Cata as a Combat rogue, since OH and Main Gauche procs had a chance to provide energy. Inquisition added nothing in terms of gameplay, outside of having to waste 3 HP to keep up the most boring buff Paladins have ever had.

Yes, thats EXACTLY how i remember it now when you broke it down... It was just so boring, annoying and feeling useless.

[roboscorcher]

Seal gameplay and FCFS was pinnacle ret.

Between exorcism, art of war procs, DS, CS, and seal/judge combo, we always had a key press. In addition, it wasn't just "do things in order" like the poster above said. There were plenty of times where FCFS would tell you "judgment" but the cooldowns of the spells were such that if you waited .1 second more you'd have a better spell that hit harder and resulted in higher DPS, so people who just spammed what FCFS told them were only good for about 80% of their potential max DPS vs those of us who knew how to take it in context.

I like tbc and wrath ret a lot, but they both have flaws. For TBC, the flaw is needing to twist too much, no aoe, and twisting requires a 3rd party swingtimer. Wrath's rotation fixes the aoe, but single target damage is poor and requires no timing skill.

If they ever do Classic+, they should take Wrath Ret and add 2 things: a baked-in swingtimer (with a 0.5sec notch at the end for the twist window), and a new ability (let's say Twisted Light) that adds another physical attack to your next auto. If you hit Twisted Light within the 'twist window', you get a bonus physical proc, or a guaranteed crit. The CD would be like 5-10 seconds, to give the rest of the rotation room to be used. The idea is that you'd want to press this button for ST, but only ST.

edit: Twisted Light procs would likely only work with Seal of Vengeance. Or maybe all the procs, except Command. Command would probably be too OP.

[Thundering]

Let's be honest here. Neither system is fun. Holy power is the least offensive of the two. Seals wasting a GCD where you do nothing but apply a buff to your auto-attacks is as bad as when damage CD's were on the GCD. Maybe even worse cause it only buffs your auto-attacks. It feels trash and we don't need that back.

Let's be honest here Seal system is fun you can use it for much more than just damage everything from healing and giving your party mana including urself it can stop enemies from running etc..... The seal system was not a smashfest only you need to think a bit to use it and seal twist.

[Segus1992]

Seal gameplay and FCFS was pinnacle ret.

Between exorcism, art of war procs, DS, CS, and seal/judge combo, we always had a key press. In addition, it wasn't just "do things in order" like the poster above said. There were plenty of times where FCFS would tell you "judgment" but the cooldowns of the spells were such that if you waited .1 second more you'd have a better spell that hit harder and resulted in higher DPS, so people who just spammed what FCFS told them were only good for about 80% of their potential max DPS vs those of us who knew how to take it in context.

Definitely loved Ret gameplay in TBC, it's just a shame it could do nothing but single target DPS and needed to be heavily carried by buffs to do even that. I wish that gameplay had remained in Wrath but with more cleave/utility. Ret went from one of the most engaging DPS specs to middle of the pack or worse.

However, a huge problem with TBC Ret: it's very casual unfriendly. This goes straight against what Blizzard is, so we're never seeing it again.

[BeepBoo]

Definitely loved Ret gameplay in TBC, it's just a shame it could do nothing but single target DPS and needed to be heavily carried by buffs to do even that. I wish that gameplay had remained in Wrath but with more cleave/utility. Ret went from one of the most engaging DPS specs to middle of the pack or worse.

I don't know how you think fewer buttons to press is more engaging, but APM is king of engagement to me. Especially high APM necessitating a specific order. You still had to seal twist in WOTLK as well; they just removed SoB early on because it was problematic.

I've had this argument 1000717263 times before, but suffice to say the difference between good rets and great rets in wrath was someone simply following FCFS's recommendations and someone topping DPS charts for the whole raid was knowing when it was appropriate to wait that .1 second for a juicier spell or banking your free exo for a downtime in rotation even when FCFS says to use it.

Ret had the unique circumstance of having a ton of shorter CD spells that were just slightly different enough coupled with enough procs that it never was a true rotation, nor was it so braindead that you could actually just hit whatever spell was off-CD for best DPS.

I suppose at the start of the xpac it was more "who can code a better single press macro with better conditions"

I digress. Yes, you can faceroll to 80% as good as a truly good ret, but that last 20% makes all the difference in both raid charts and ret percentiles. I'm someone who only cares about max potential, not "max easily obtainable" potential.

[Segus1992]

I don't know how you think fewer buttons to press is more engaging, but APM is king of engagement to me. Especially high APM necessitating a specific order. You still had to seal twist in WOTLK as well; they just removed SoB early on because it was problematic.

I've had this argument 1000717263 times before, but suffice to say the difference between good rets and great rets in wrath was someone simply following FCFS's recommendations and someone topping DPS charts for the whole raid was knowing when it was appropriate to wait that .1 second for a juicier spell or banking your free exo for a downtime in rotation even when FCFS says to use it.

Ret had the unique circumstance of having a ton of shorter CD spells that were just slightly different enough coupled with enough procs that it never was a true rotation, nor was it so braindead that you could actually just hit whatever spell was off-CD for best DPS.

I suppose at the start of the xpac it was more "who can code a better single press macro with better conditions"

I digress. Yes, you can faceroll to 80% as good as a truly good ret, but that last 20% makes all the difference in both raid charts and ret percentiles. I'm someone who only cares about max potential, not "max easily obtainable" potential.

I'm not talking about Wrath of 15 years ago, I'm talking about Wrath Classic. Ret is boring in Wrath Classic. APM is not engagement if that APM is spamming the same button with no thought behind it, which is why seal twisting was fun. It also had a much higher skillcap than Wrath Classic Ret, but also a very high skill floor.

[Swnem]

Let's be honest here Seal system is fun you can use it for much more than just damage everything from healing and giving your party mana including urself it can stop enemies from running etc..... The seal system was not a smashfest only you need to think a bit to use it and seal twist.

If that is what you are hoping to get back, i can confidently say it will never happen. Mana batteries aren't a thing anymore and shadow priest will be it before paladins are again.
As for the healing one, there is this nice talent called judgement of light. Does the same thing. Seals are total unnecessary trash. What we have now is by far better.

[Peacemoon]

Seals would be good if they changed how core abilities worked. For example change seals to make crusader strike and judgement do different things

[Deferionus]

No they were not.

Remember that in the none-classic version of TBC that only Horde Paladins had Seal of Blood - Which basically left Alliance Paladins up a creek without a paddle. Seal Twisting was a mechanic that wasn't really known about until years after the fact with Private Servers becoming popular. It wasn't something that was routenely done with any kind of intentionality.

Further to that, Seals were a complete mess for Prot Paladins and forced them to spread their stats across defenses, melee stats and spell stats in order to be effective. That often led to their stats being either highly focused on one of those area, which led the others to suffer, or to spread themselves thin on all of them for more rounded effectiveness. Combined with also needing to hit uncrushability it made gearing up as Prot a complete headache. Thats before you even factor in the gameplay considerations of which seals to use at any given time.

Holy had pretty much zero use for any seal outside of very niche Shockadin builds which, while fun, were a very degenerate playstyle and only really viable in 2v2 Arena.

Why do I bring up the history lesson? Because the gameplay you're describing never actually existed in Vanilla or TBC. It's a modern construct for an old game.

It couldn't exist in the modern state of the game, backend changes to the servers would prevent seal twisting.

It shouldn't exist in the modern game. Its a straight up knowledge check for a hidden mechanic - that's at the heart of bad design.



I'm really not sure why people are clamouring for an out dated, broken system back either. I do agree that Ret could use some improvements, but rewinding the clock back to the very begining isn't the way.

The biggest issue, as I see it, is that Templars Verdict hits so hard that it needs the rest of the class to be balanced around it. That invariably means that everything else needs to be weaker to compensate. It leads to very high highs when TV crits, but very low lows when you're waiting to use it again. Shuffling some of the damage around would make things much more even.

I say this in full knowledge that some people are only going to be satisfied when every single skill Ret has crits so hard mobs explode into mushroom clouds.

In terms of extra utility, I'm not sure it's the answer. Most of what Ret has is situational, but extremely powerful already to the point of invalidating mechanics. It needs it's utility rebalanced too. Like it's DPS its got highs and lows which leave it with an unsatisfying power curve. Evening that out more so that it's got more universally applicable utility would be best here too.

Which, of course, is going to have people crying about "Homogenisation!". They can be unique and unwanted, or homogenised and desirable. There's no way to reconcile the two.

Was reading but I had to say that TBC prot was my favorite version of prot paladin. The things you listed as a negative were what I liked. I am glad I got to experience it again in classic. I had multiple gear pieces and would tailor my stats to the content I was doing and enjoyed the depth to min maxing "I am going into a heroic, so less mitigation and more spell power" vs "I am tanking a boss that hits slow and hard so I want avoidance" vs "Okay, faster hitting boss so I want to wear my block set."

[schwank05]

I love Holy power it is why I finally leveled a pally with the Scroll of Resurrection on my other account in CATA, I think all classes should work like that. The Secret World did this and it is still to this day my favorite MMO.