Seals > Holy Power

[EpicusMaximus]

You are aware that Seals were tested by QA internally for a grand total of three days before being tacked on, because a certain someone who I will not name (yet) had a melt down that his precious warrior was being overshadowed by the Paladin Class? I believe the statement he made while drunk was "WHY THE F--- IS A PALADIN DOING MORE DAMAGE THAN ME? HOLY DAMAGE!? BULLSH---" I am not trying to be cold hearted or even rude, but Seals were never a part of the Paladin Class. Blessings were to be sure.


As a fun anecdote from the past, Blizzard Entertainment also caught considerable internal flack for that because of the fact that Prima and other groups had ALREADY published strategy guides for the burgeoning MMO, which listed the Paladin's abilities rather erroneously. In the words of one Developer. "Hey man, not to say I told you so.. but I told you so."

We used to have a running bet in the office when someone challenged "the Big Daddy" on how many seconds it would take before one of the Senior Devs would turn blood red and then say something to the tune of "..The fuck do you know? Your nothing. Nobody!" or "Oh shut up and stop being a dumb whore."


If you want truths? Seals were an effort to give something 'anything' to Paladins after the powers that be ordered us to delete Holy Strike and Crusader Strike. They could of worked, but they needed help. My suggestion was briefly when they made Seals into Stances, but that wasn't what was needed as it came at the expense of Auras which were arguably more iconic to Paladins. The was the idea I pitched was to have Seals, Judgments and Auras interact (and it probably means anyone who knew me, knows me now). The idea would of been Crusader Aura causes Seal of Crusader / Judgment of Crusader for the Paladin, Retribution / Judgment of Righteousness, Insight / Seal of Wisdom/Judgment of Wisdom, Devotion / Seal of Light / Judgment of Light. Etc.

Holy Power would of been a secondary system exclusive to Prot and Ret alone since they were melee, whereas Holy was more of a classic "Cleric"

Sadly this was vetoed. It's a shame Gregory isn't as invested in Paladin design as he once was. Without him poking in to check on the designs of the class and keep a handle on the various Beavis' of the office, it is abundantly clear that the wrong people are once again working on the class. I say this because no sensible developer without extreme bias, would of green lit the ideas that they are currently running with. They were probably presented and approved in a grand total of thirty minutes.

It won't be doom and gloom like everyone on the WoW Forums is saying, but to say that Paladin is a low priority is a fair assessment.

[BeepBoo]

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.

I'm confused as to what happened in wrath classic and what changed, but wrath from 15 years ago you still judged first with crusader then followed up with vengeance/righteousness (I think? been too long.. whatever the cleave seal was) depending on target type and had CS, DS, exo, judgment, re-casting seal, Hammer of Wrath during execute phase, etc. Seal twisting in BC wasn't more complicated than that. If you were horde paladin (the only rets that got to raid) it was just SoCrusader -> judge -> SoBlood -judge/crusader strike/repeat until crusader debuff was falling off. Half the mobs you couldn't exo.

[Segus1992]

I'm confused as to what happened in wrath classic and what changed, but wrath from 15 years ago you still judged first with crusader then followed up with vengeance/righteousness (I think? been too long.. whatever the cleave seal was) depending on target type and had CS, DS, exo, judgment, re-casting seal, Hammer of Wrath during execute phase, etc. Seal twisting in BC wasn't more complicated than that. If you were horde paladin (the only rets that got to raid) it was just SoCrusader -> judge -> SoBlood -judge/crusader strike/repeat until crusader debuff was falling off. Half the mobs you couldn't exo.

Sounds like you haven't played Classic at all? TBC seal twisting was swapping seal right before auto attack went off to get both seals proccing at once. Only worked with Command -> other seal, an interaction Wrath never had as Command was the cleave seal from the start.

[Stormdash]

I will say this about Wrath Ret - after all these years it feels wrong without A) rebuke and B) a big single target hitter like Templar's Verdict. Don't need to have HP for that, could be that it has like a 20-30 second CD and requires 5 stacks of SoV on the target, or some other spell based conditional.

EDIT: seal twisting wasn't fun, it was quirky. It existed at all because the internet was bad and Blizz had to make the game think the internet was bad to even bring it back.

[BeepBoo]

Sounds like you haven't played Classic at all? TBC seal twisting was swapping seal right before auto attack went off to get both seals proccing at once. Only worked with Command -> other seal, an interaction Wrath never had as Command was the cleave seal from the start.

Timing seal swapping with a reverse progress bar set to your swing timer made this incredibly easy to do... Also, it was boring because no one likes to sit there and wait. What you're describing is quick-time-event gameplay, probably the most boring form of gameplay in existence. 2 buttons, no matter how precise you have to be, cannot be skilled in a game like wow IMO.

[Segus1992]

Timing seal swapping with a reverse progress bar set to your swing timer made this incredibly easy to do... Also, it was boring because no one likes to sit there and wait. What you're describing is quick-time-event gameplay, probably the most boring form of gameplay in existence. 2 buttons, no matter how precise you have to be, cannot be skilled in a game like wow IMO.

That's cool.

[roboscorcher]

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 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.

So you're talking about skill floor and ceiling. You care more about having a high skill ceiling, and don't care if the skill floor is low. This is actually a key mantra of videogame design: "easy to pick up, difficult to master." I'd say that TBC Ret had a high skill floor AND high ceiling, pprobably higher than in Wrath. Also, half the difficulty was the setup: swingtimer, windfury totem, good haste procs like DST, heroism, etc. You could say that every class had this problem, but it was especially true for Ret.

All that said, there was a beautiful simplicity in TBC ret. It was kind of like playing a golf game - if you timed it right, you were rewarding. Then when haste procs rolled in, you had to adjust your twist timing, while being mindful of your other CDs.

Wrath is now here, and the update is massive for QoL. We now have cleave, and we're one of the best at it. We don't need a Shaman to do damage. We have more buttons and don't go oom anymore.

And yet...

Our single target sucks. Our abilities mostly revolve around aoe now. And while I still use Swedgetimer, auto attacks are not as important as they used to be. Some see this as a win, but I don't. One thing I loved about classic Ret was actually feeling like I was swinging a 2handed weapon. White damage matters, as do all the stats that improve it (hit, exp, armorpen). Retail ret feels floaty, like we're casters that happen to flail foam bats around as we casts spells. Wrath kind of feels like that too, and I just wish it had a good twist-like mechanic to make single-target fun again.

- - - Updated - - -

I will say this about Wrath Ret - after all these years it feels wrong without A) rebuke and B) a big single target hitter like Templar's Verdict. Don't need to have HP for that, could be that it has like a 20-30 second CD and requires 5 stacks of SoV on the target, or some other spell based conditional.

EDIT: seal twisting wasn't fun, it was quirky. It existed at all because the internet was bad and Blizz had to make the game think the internet was bad to even bring it back.

I like your idea of TV, but I'd rather have twisting. Autos are cool, swingtimers are cool, adjusting to haste procs are cool, and a lot of TBC classic players agree. If Ret could have this feature to Wrath ret (in classic+) without all the baggage TBC ret needed to function (WF, hero, etc), it would be amazing for minmax players.

[Wrecktangle]

I like your idea of TV, but I'd rather have twisting. Autos are cool, swingtimers are cool, adjusting to haste procs are cool, and a lot of TBC classic players agree. If Ret could have this feature to Wrath ret (in classic+) without all the baggage TBC ret needed to function (WF, hero, etc), it would be amazing for minmax players.

Respectfully disagree. TBC and Vanilla were easily the two worst experiences of the spec I ever had (I have been playing ONLY Ret since 2004, yes classic). Auto damage is passive and boring and swing timers were an awful tedious mechanic I hated worrying about. Seal twisting was easily one of the worst things we ever had. It's just more passive damage and buttons that don't have a meaningful impact.

I'm in full support of the easy to pickup, difficult to master paradigm to gaming, especially as I get older. I don't care for Holy Power as a resource at all, but it's infinitely better IMO than classic and TBC.

[StrawberryZebra]

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."

So you liked juggling gear around to find a stat balance you were happy with? That's fair, I guess. Warriors and Druids did that too to suit the encounter, so it wasn't unique to Paladins, we just had more conditions and stat breakpoints to hit as part of that process. Needing to mix in spell casting stats and melee stats to make your seals work properly though was a big ask, and far more than other tanks had to do.

But that still doesn't change the fact that it was quite a janky gameplay experience and that your choice of seals made no difference at all to your moment-to-moment gameplay. It's a bit of an exageration to say it was a working mechanic.

The idea of a the Paladin as a tanky melee range spell caster stat based tank is also a solid idea, and TBC Prot was a workable foundation to expand on the idea. Though it would have really benefited more from WotLK type itemisation where secondaries like hit were all no longer exclusive to melee or spells. Its fun to think about as a "what if", but it's long passed the point of ever happening.

I will say this about Wrath Ret - after all these years it feels wrong without A) rebuke and B) a big single target hitter like Templar's Verdict. Don't need to have HP for that, could be that it has like a 20-30 second CD and requires 5 stacks of SoV on the target, or some other spell based conditional.

I've been spending a bit of time in WotLK Classic and I'm wondering how long it is before people realise that Ret's not at all the spec they remembered it being. There's no real big hard hitting skills in there, and although you'll crit a lot the damage of any individual skill isn't going to be all that impressive by itself.