2.3 Retribution Changes
Here are the changes officially announced so far, with my take on them. Note, I've only shown the ones put up by Drysc in this forum post.
The Good
Yawn, yawn, and light clap. Mana efficiency is always a good thing, and important for Ret, but hardly fanfare and fireworks info here.
This is good. Good for PvP and PvE DPS.
Some have complained that they took our only viable utility (Sanctified Crusader) and placed it within easy reach of Holy/Prot. To those, I say big deal. It rightly helps Prot with threat generation, and I don't foresee many Holy Paladins suddenly running up to swing their 41DPS healing maces in order to keep the judgement up. In any case, it made room for sexy time as revealed next.
Undispellable seals - it's about damn time. I've got to give Blizzard a standing ovation here. Never thought it would happen. I've even seen some non-Ret Paladins whining to make this baseline. It's nice that Ret will finally have something other specs will actually want. More crit is also welcome in this brave new world of abundant resilience (at least in PvP).
Should never have been raised to 10 seconds in the first place, but I'm glad they've come around. This alone should help raise Ret's DPS substantially.
Now here's some real honest to goodness group utility that's unique. It remains to be seen whether or not they allow it to function in PvE (my guess is probably not), but it will be very nice in arenas/BGs. That 15% reduction will include health and mana pools (via Stam/Int), as well as reducing melee damage a bit.
This one's made of win, especially for leveling up. And just so people hang onto it after reaching the level cap, the spell avoidance is enough icing on the cake - at least for me. Well worth the 3 points IMO.
The Bad
PvE Ret Paladins are already up in arms over no mention of threat reduction - something even I'll admit the spec direly needs. There has been at least one blue post acknowledging this fact, but offering no info otherwise. Many have been speculating as to what will happen with Ret. We could be very pleasantly surprised and Blizzard could tweak SoC so that its bonus procs generate no threat. They're doing this with Elemental Shamans' Lightning Overload procs. We might also see SoB/SoV lose their faction distinctions and be given to both Alliance and Horde. At this point, though, it's just guessing.
There's also no mention of what they plan to do with regard to Ret's itemization pitfalls. The forums are flooded with ideas. Some want spell damage turned into straight-up +healing in order to give Ret a true hybridesque feel. Personally, I think this is stupid. The most spell power laden gear in the game right now only totals about 400, which would end up being around 800 healing. Ret already has too many stats to mess around with. It needs simplifying. I favor the complete elimination of spell damage, with its item points distributed into mostly Str/Int. A couple simple tweaks to Crusader Strike and SoC so that they scale with Int or a melee stat, and they'll have essentially fixed the bulk of the problem
The Ugly
What worries me most is what we don't see being heralded all over the forums and fansites - the hidden nerfs and fundamental changes to spells and abilities that will probably come from way out in left field once 2.3 hits the PTR. They may try and tweak SoC again, further reducing the damage dealt by the bonus attack and slightly increasing the PPM rate to balance it out. It already happened once (100% weapon damage and 5 PPM to 70% and 6.8 PPM). A change like this would partially address threat (smaller spikes in damage) as well as help them keep Ret's burst damage under control - something they've expressed as a desire before.
I may be wrong. Things might truly and finally be improving for Ret and I'm simply drawing on past experience and fear. I even hope I'm wrong, but we'll have to wait and see. In the end, though, there's always the Death Knight and of course, WARHAMMER!
The Good
Yawn, yawn, and light clap. Mana efficiency is always a good thing, and important for Ret, but hardly fanfare and fireworks info here.
This is good. Good for PvP and PvE DPS.
Some have complained that they took our only viable utility (Sanctified Crusader) and placed it within easy reach of Holy/Prot. To those, I say big deal. It rightly helps Prot with threat generation, and I don't foresee many Holy Paladins suddenly running up to swing their 41DPS healing maces in order to keep the judgement up. In any case, it made room for sexy time as revealed next.
Undispellable seals - it's about damn time. I've got to give Blizzard a standing ovation here. Never thought it would happen. I've even seen some non-Ret Paladins whining to make this baseline. It's nice that Ret will finally have something other specs will actually want. More crit is also welcome in this brave new world of abundant resilience (at least in PvP).
Should never have been raised to 10 seconds in the first place, but I'm glad they've come around. This alone should help raise Ret's DPS substantially.
Now here's some real honest to goodness group utility that's unique. It remains to be seen whether or not they allow it to function in PvE (my guess is probably not), but it will be very nice in arenas/BGs. That 15% reduction will include health and mana pools (via Stam/Int), as well as reducing melee damage a bit.
This one's made of win, especially for leveling up. And just so people hang onto it after reaching the level cap, the spell avoidance is enough icing on the cake - at least for me. Well worth the 3 points IMO.
The Bad
PvE Ret Paladins are already up in arms over no mention of threat reduction - something even I'll admit the spec direly needs. There has been at least one blue post acknowledging this fact, but offering no info otherwise. Many have been speculating as to what will happen with Ret. We could be very pleasantly surprised and Blizzard could tweak SoC so that its bonus procs generate no threat. They're doing this with Elemental Shamans' Lightning Overload procs. We might also see SoB/SoV lose their faction distinctions and be given to both Alliance and Horde. At this point, though, it's just guessing.
There's also no mention of what they plan to do with regard to Ret's itemization pitfalls. The forums are flooded with ideas. Some want spell damage turned into straight-up +healing in order to give Ret a true hybridesque feel. Personally, I think this is stupid. The most spell power laden gear in the game right now only totals about 400, which would end up being around 800 healing. Ret already has too many stats to mess around with. It needs simplifying. I favor the complete elimination of spell damage, with its item points distributed into mostly Str/Int. A couple simple tweaks to Crusader Strike and SoC so that they scale with Int or a melee stat, and they'll have essentially fixed the bulk of the problem
The Ugly
What worries me most is what we don't see being heralded all over the forums and fansites - the hidden nerfs and fundamental changes to spells and abilities that will probably come from way out in left field once 2.3 hits the PTR. They may try and tweak SoC again, further reducing the damage dealt by the bonus attack and slightly increasing the PPM rate to balance it out. It already happened once (100% weapon damage and 5 PPM to 70% and 6.8 PPM). A change like this would partially address threat (smaller spikes in damage) as well as help them keep Ret's burst damage under control - something they've expressed as a desire before.
I may be wrong. Things might truly and finally be improving for Ret and I'm simply drawing on past experience and fear. I even hope I'm wrong, but we'll have to wait and see. In the end, though, there's always the Death Knight and of course, WARHAMMER!
posted by Vaelin at 12:33 AM
4 Comments:
you've got like abused wife syndrome goin on.
a lot of those buffs are just de-nerfs from older patches
and im sure every other class gets some sort of instant zero-cost nuke with +2000 percent damage against paladins.
Heh, no, I've got "WAR doesn't come out 'til next year and there's nothing else that fun to play at the moment" syndrome. Trust me - I tried. Did a couple months in EVE Online, even preordered LOTRO and played it for a while.
I know as well as anyone that those buffs are "just de-nerfs from older patches." I was there, and I quit and deprived Blizzard of several months of my subscription fee. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because when I left nobody would have dreamed any changes like this would be going into the game.
The one of the bigger "hidden nerfs" I'm expecting is for them to add is changing the mechanics of lower ranked SoC. At it stands right now, rank 1 SoC and whatever the max rank of SoC is do the same damage. The only difference is in your Judgement damage, but unless the Judgement undergoes a major overhaul, with the change to Crusader Strike, it'll probably be the best option to just stack mass amounts of STR/AP and AGI/melee crit, and just go to town with Rank 1 SoC, spam CS, and forget about judgments. At least for PvE, white damage accounts for around 40%+ of our guild's ret paladin's overall damage. Since it already represents such a large percent of his damage, might as well keep bumping it up and use it to bump his SoC and CS damage up as well.
Also, a change in the amount of PPMs for SoC, even at the cost of some of it's damage, would be welcome IMO. Our Ret paladin's primary weapon is the second stage of the crafted 2H sword (Lionheart something or another). This has a 3.6 speed. Even with that, he only has around a 42% chance to proc SoC. That's not too hot, IMO. Something like a 10 PPM (with same weapon would give it at 60% chance to proc per swing) would be much better, IMO.
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