FINALY! GC Fixes Ret PVP!

[Matrlx]

so its not about PTR , its not about Testing the spec or tuning numbers , its not about some pvp or pve balance
its all about Represenation

[Nairobi]

Positive feedback on what basis? Because on the PTR the seal hasn't been working correctly at all.
While actual testing is the most valuable, I'd say we get 75% of our feedback just from player reaction and theorycrafting.

More infinite wisdom. "Please provide us numbers (and sims dont count) as to why you think X is good or Y is bad or Z is broken". Community then scrambles and gives them numbers. "Ok thanks. However, we think most players feel differently, so we won't be using those".

Basically, it's all a numbers (subs/representation) game and not an actual numbers game.

Ret is in a bad place, but it's a popular class/spec. Until such time as it's no longer popular, it will remain unchanged.

Lock's not getting a lot of representation: Quick, class overhaul!
Rogue's not getting a lot of representation: Quick, over-buff the ever-living shit out of them!
Nobody is playing monk (after we nerfed the shit out of MW): Quick, sweeping buffs for WWs!
Rets are complaining about poor survival and sustained damage: More Rets than other classes, don't worry about it.

[laughtrey]

Maybe if they found a way to make ret skill based again, *cough* seal twisting *cough*, the weekend warrior rets wouldn't be an issue.

Haha yeah, that's what made ret hard. Having to keybind seals. So difficult.

[Prometheous]

Haha yeah, that's what made ret hard. Having to keybind seals. So difficult.

You laugh, but I would bet that the FOTM rets would give up and reroll something easier.

[Valedus]

Haha yeah, that's what made ret hard. Having to keybind seals. So difficult.

Seal Twisting could actually be brought back with a large skill-cap.

[Prometheous]

Seal Twisting could actually be brought back with a large skill-cap.

I would love for them to come back, I think ret would be played a ton less and no longer considered faceroll.

[nyc81991]

Seal Twisting could actually be brought back with a large skill-cap.

I wouldn't mind seal Twisting if inquisition was removed and Seals were taken off the gcd.

[Valedus]

I wouldn't mind seal Twisting if inquisition was removed and Seals were taken off the gcd.

I would love that instead of Inq. The problem with Inq isn't that it is something to manage, all classes have that (from Savage Roar to dots). The problem is that it isn't an interesting mechanic. For instance, if we were rewarded for switching to Insight for a couple seconds to help relieve pressure from our healer akin to a Paladin Defensive stance, while SoJ was based around PvP mechanics, and Truth our full-out damage seal, that would be pretty interesting and support smart play in PvP with small changes to PvE, as SoJ and SoI would be largely used for Utility/heals.

[Malthanis]

I would love that instead of Inq. The problem with Inq isn't that it is something to manage, all classes have that (from Savage Roar to dots). The problem is that it isn't an interesting mechanic. For instance, if we were rewarded for switching to Insight for a couple seconds to help relieve pressure from our healer akin to a Paladin Defensive stance, while SoJ was based around PvP mechanics, and Truth our full-out damage seal, that would be pretty interesting and support smart play in PvP with small changes to PvE, as SoJ and SoI would be largely used for Utility/heals.

I can honestly say that I really enjoy this idea. Perhaps something to what Sona (from League of Legends) does. Not necessarily aura effects, but some kind of passive effect that remains active while a seal is active, plus for a duration after swapping to another seal.

Someone a few pages back mentioned an idea about having two seals active at once, and having additional effects based on the combo. You could add this to the seal-twisting concept along with the short-duration buff after switching, with the additional effects taking place while the previous seal's buff.

[Valedus]

I can honestly say that I really enjoy this idea. Perhaps something to what Sona (from League of Legends) does. Not necessarily aura effects, but some kind of passive effect that remains active while a seal is active, plus for a duration after swapping to another seal.

Someone a few pages back mentioned an idea about having two seals active at once, and having additional effects based on the combo. You could add this to the seal-twisting concept along with the short-duration buff after switching, with the additional effects taking place while the previous seal's buff.

If they did that, I wouldn't mind if we did our pressure in 2 minute bursts. As long as we had some sort of effect on the other team between it, through Seal utilities and offhealing to buy time for another cooldown phase, it would be interesting. I wonder what effects would be on Seals, though. Perhaps effects like Judgment of Light from the past?

[Palatinus]

so its not about PTR , its not about Testing the spec or tuning numbers , its not about some pvp or pve balance
its all about Represenation

This is pretty much the reason to just quit now if the only thing you do is PvP. Whether its just GC or not, as long as all they do is balance around subs/class or spec rep (without even taking (arena/rbgs) ratings into account) then pvp will never even come close to balance. It also answers a lot about why....they just don't do anything, like constantly buffing and hardly nerfing mages, rogues etc and never actually bothering to even test any fixes or suggested ret changes on the ptr - which I thought was meant for testing. Aside from this SoJ change attempt, the last time I saw something new mid-expansion to test on the PTR for PvP ret was back in Wotlk when they 'accidentally' left the overpowered (50% healing) effect on CS. Obviously it was too OP for ret and had to be given to arms warrior, there must of been too few warriors bladestorming to glad back then

[Malthanis]

If they did that, I wouldn't mind if we did our pressure in 2 minute bursts. As long as we had some sort of effect on the other team between it, through Seal utilities and offhealing to buy time for another cooldown phase, it would be interesting. I wonder what effects would be on Seals, though. Perhaps effects like Judgment of Light from the past?

Well, let me just throw a few ideas that just come to mind. I figure each of these passives can persist for about 6 seconds after the seal is switched out. I also know this thread is about PvP, but I'm going to throw some PvE in to it because I'm talking about a full-on overhaul of the seal system for Ret.

Seal of Truth
Possibly a reflective damage mechanic here. I don't PvP much, but everything I've ever read points to Ret having an issue of being focused. Some kind of way to make other players leery of going full out on you might help.

The only issue that I can think of is in the numbers. In order for it to be a detriment, I'd think it would have to be high, to promote the counterplay of waiting for the Ret to swap to another seal (perhaps for another of these passive effects). But on the other hand, if it's too high, you'll have an avalanche of QQ and it'll be removed.

I figure you'd want this passive a majority of the time, for incidental damage, DoTs, and possibly for the first few hits of getting focused (before cooldowns or swapping to another seal).

Seal of Righteousness
I figure this probably gets no use in PvP, but I figure I'll go over it for the sake of completely covering the seals available.

I'm thinking that the passive on this should be something that increases damage output based on the number of hostile targets nearby. Since I know PvE AoE damage is a concern, it amps your damage when it's needed (i.e. everything's alive and wants to eat your face) but it can't be abused.

Values here would probably have to be in the single digits, possibly 3% to 6% per nearby enemy. "Nearby" would probably qualify as what the range of the seal's damage is (8 yards as of now).

I have no idea how often AoE pressure is needed in PvP, so I'm not entirely sure on where this would fall in PvP situations. In PvE, you'd have this for the start of a large AoE pull or fight phase, and then swap down to SoTruth to clean up (and still enjoy the benefits of this seal's passive for the few enemies left over).

Seal of Justice
I'm going off of the "slow on melee attack" version for this one. Now it has a strange kind of place in the seal setup, since it's damage, but also offensive utility focused on movement. So I'm thinking its secondary passive could be a reduction in movement speed slows. Perhaps keeping you from being slowed past 80% speed.

That number may have to be lower, since this would be a completely passive effect for as long as SoJ is up plus six seconds, but I'm not sure how that sits with the PvP community at large.

Obviously this would be used when you're attempting to reach a target with pesky slows (CURSE YOU FROST MAGES) or when trying to stick to slippery melee opponents. You'd also be able to swap to SoT after reaching them and still have the movement speed protection for the opening few seconds of cooldowns. In PvE, there's plenty of occurrences where you may have to deal with a large slow (hell, watch the Council of Elders video from ToT), so it could even see use there.

Seal of Light
To be perfectly honest, I'd love for SoL's passive effect to be Battle Healer. I can't remember the particular soul from Rift, but I know one of the melee oriented ones from the Cleric class had the ability to splash healing based on melee damage, and that was a full-on passive ability.

You'd be able to use it while possibly weathering your way through the opposing team's burst, then when you swap to dealing damage you'll maintain the splash healing for the highest point of your damage (which means the healing itself will be higher). PvE players could go from SoT to SoL when raid-wide damage phases start, meaning you maintain the damage reflection for the damage, but start helping out your healers through heavy raid damage.


As for the whole system, I'd say pull seals off the GCD, but put them on a shared, 6 second CD. However, add seals to the Sanctity of Battle ability list (I'm not 100% about this, because I'm not so sure haste needs any more value). The 6 second buff after swapping from a seal would remain 6 seconds, meaning that at high points in haste (i.e. Heroism, trinkets, etc.) you could have the passive effect rolling from three seals (albeit at maybe a 1 second window).

[Valedus]

I think the idea of having seals affect other spells we have would be pretty interesting. For instance, have SoI make Cleanse magic like a healer on a 15 sec CD and Battle Healer baseline, or an old Judgment of Light effect like people punching the target have a chance to heal for 3% of their max hp or something. Obviously this would be counteracted by the fact that we are losing seal damage, which would become a big part of our damage with this system.

Could make SoJ cause TV to root the target for 3 seconds, etc. This would require reworking and retweaking, but honestly Ret needs a skill-cap of some sort.

[Deleted]

I would love that instead of Inq. The problem with Inq isn't that it is something to manage, all classes have that (from Savage Roar to dots). The problem is that it isn't an interesting mechanic. For instance, if we were rewarded for switching to Insight for a couple seconds to help relieve pressure from our healer akin to a Paladin Defensive stance, while SoJ was based around PvP mechanics, and Truth our full-out damage seal, that would be pretty interesting and support smart play in PvP with small changes to PvE, as SoJ and SoI would be largely used for Utility/heals.

These ideas sound really fun and I honestly believe it would have a positive impact on the paladin community. An interesting and awarding seal switching mechanic. Somehow reward our DPS for switching into "support mode" to help out our healers and then back, without making it a mandatory DPS rotation (like Dream of Cenarius).

Go, Blizzard, go!

[Omaski]

Its worth spreading out our use of cd's sometimes. Holy Avenger and wings are both strong cd's even when used alone. With Wings being lowered to a 2min cd we have the option of using both every 2mins or one cd every minute or so.

Its also good to wait untill you have Dr on cc's before you blow your cd's.

by the time u have complete immunity from CC's due to DR you are alrdy dead

[Palatinus]

Another positive tweet from GC regarding ret;


@Ghostcrawler Take a look at this http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/23...diator-titles/ … Ret pala rep for Glad spots as low as monks, even with high overall rep. Ret is much less viable at high ratings? % of players in glad range is much lower than any other spec/class

@DerbyyWoW It is really hard to isolate the effects of paladins who just go Holy because heals are always good and Holy is a little imba.

Oh wait no, that answer had nothing to do with the question. Sorry

[Reith]

Another positive tweet from GC regarding ret;


@Ghostcrawler Take a look at this http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/23...diator-titles/ … Ret pala rep for Glad spots as low as monks, even with high overall rep. Ret is much less viable at high ratings? % of players in glad range is much lower than any other spec/class

@DerbyyWoW It is really hard to isolate the effects of paladins who just go Holy because heals are always good and Holy is a little imba.

Oh wait no, that answer had nothing to do with the question. Sorry

Then obviously they should nerf Holy... but they won't, except Blinding Light cast time and the pvp 4-set, which won't be enough to determine if his hypothesis is even remotely correct. Burden of proof is on him.

[Velshin]

Then obviously they should nerf Holy... but they won't, except Blinding Light cast time and the pvp 4-set, which won't be enough to determine if his hypothesis is even remotely correct. Burden of proof is on him.

Even if they do indeed nerf holy paladin spec it will remain powerful and playable. I always see holy spec of paladin something like Frost mage spec it will either be OP or very powerful playable. It will never ever be in a situation of being so weak and unplayable like how Retri spec be treated.