Ret Changes

R

RedSpider

Veteran XX
Ghostcrawler said:
As I stated yesterday, we are happy with Ret's PvE damage and sustatined damage in PvP, but were concerned that the burst damage in PvP could be too high. We discussed this for literally hours yesterday, which was certainly not the first time we have discussed the issue. Thus I hope these changes are not perceived as a knee-jerk reaction, but I am sure that will depend a great deal on which class you play.

Divine Storm -- the damage was changed from Holy to Physical. As you know, Holy damage is almost never mitigated and this talent could pack a lot into a very short time. This is a nerf to the ability's damage. This change is now active on Live.

Repentance -- this ability now lasts for only 6 seconds in PvP (down from 10). Obviously this is also a nerf. This change is also active on Live.

Art of War -- now affects all damage done by Judgements, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm (instead of critical strike damage). Net dps should be about the same but less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13.

Righteous Vengeance -- now applies a dot affect similar to Deep Wounds (instead of critical strike damage). This ends up being a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty. This change will be made before Nov 13. EDIT: The dot will NOT break Repentance.

Glyph of Crusader Strike -- now reduces mana cost (instead of increased damage on stunned targets.) We thought paladins could stack too much damage vs. stunned targets. This change will be made before Nov 13.

We also fixed a bug with Seal and Judgement of Light that could sometimes result in too much healing.

In our tests, Retribution dps remains the same over longer periods of time, but they can't do quite so much damage in the initial few seconds of a PvP encounter.

I know Ret pallies feel a little picked on since we've made this mistake before of having them come out the gate too strong and then had to correct them. For that I do apologize. It's a difficult spec to balance since part of its design is to have large crits and stuns, which have obvious PvP implications. We are pretty confident this will not nerf pallies into the ground as I facetiously promised yesterday, but if we overdid it, we'll be happy to back off some of the changes.

On the other hand, maybe we'll see fewer BGs with 20 paladins on the opposing side and can get some reasonable feedback on all the other classes in the game.

EDIT: To clairfy the new dot will not break Repentance.
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Edit: I guess this would apply to pallies too:

Ghostcrawler said:
The Felguard magic damage reduction now extends to Holy. I believe this was hotfixed yesterday.

Typically we don't change Holy resistance (which this is not), but it's consistent with other damage reduction abilities (which this is) to reduce all magic damage. This should help warlocks stand up to paladins in particular in PvP.
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Those changes all seem reasonable. It's definitely a huge nerf to our burst though. I don't like that they're making these changes so quickly. All classes seem to have had a huge DPS increase. PvP is retarded right now and is basically a game of who can target who first.
 
MountainDewMike said:
Those changes all seem reasonable. It's definitely a huge nerf to our burst though. I don't like that they're making these changes so quickly. All classes seem to have had a huge DPS increase. PvP is retarded right now and is basically a game of who can target who first.
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Yep. My only complaint is putting out that kind of burst when bubbled, and it doesn't really address it.
 
Pallies were always able to attack while bubbled, that's not new. Our attack speed is slowed by 100% while bubbled. What is new is a higher proc rate on Judging Seal of Command and a new ability, Divine Storm. We only get to bubble once every 5 minutes. It's not that different from fighting a rogue with all his cooldowns up. If I stun you, and you can't break the stun, you're going to die.

With 2 points in Divine Purpose our Hand of Freedom (formerly Blessing of Freedom) now breaks stun effects as well, and we can use it while stunned, so you'll probably find it difficult to keep a ret pally stunlocked. Furthermore, if they spec 3 points in Stoicism it reduces stun duration by 30%.
 
I went ret for few weeks before 3.0.2 patch until today, and if there is a ret paladin out there who thinks these nerfs weren't going to come, they're kind of dumb :(.
 
Yeah I specced ret for the first time a couple weeks before the patch. It felt fine/balanced as it was. Now it's pretty ridiculous. I'm not surprised at the nerfs.
 
hopefully is scales well at 80. i'm not concerned in the least about the imbalances now (@ 70). i'm just going to wait and see things are when everyone is @ 80, and with decent lvl 80 gear.

how concerned have people been about pvp @ lvl 60 the past year? thats not too far away from about being worried about current pvp right now i think.
 
MountainDewMike said:
Pallies were always able to attack while bubbled, that's not new. Our attack speed is slowed by 100% while bubbled. What is new is a higher proc rate on Judging Seal of Command and a new ability, Divine Storm. We only get to bubble once every 5 minutes. It's not that different from fighting a rogue with all his cooldowns up. If I stun you, and you can't break the stun, you're going to die.

With 2 points in Divine Purpose our Hand of Freedom (formerly Blessing of Freedom) now breaks stun effects as well, and we can use it while stunned, so you'll probably find it difficult to keep a ret pally stunlocked. Furthermore, if they spec 3 points in Stoicism it reduces stun duration by 30%.
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Waaaay back in the day they couldn't, and really, they shouldn't be able to now. The point of the bubble was defensive not offensive, to heal your brothers in battle! It's too bad that they nerfed it so quickly though, it would have been nice to see it scale with gear/levels and get a more long-standing view. Although, that being said, I'm glad for anything that reduces the Braveheart Retardins that will be running screaming through Northrend while I try to level :)
 
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