[Ret] Blues understanding of SoB recoil unsatisfactory

[Shoju]

I'm not holding my breath. GC has just come off as a little too much of a tool the last week or so for my tastes.

[Fridmarr]

I'm not holding my breath. GC has just come off as a little too much of a tool the last week or so for my tastes.

His tone has definitely changed, and if I were a ret pally I would be concerned as well.

[Nich]

Losing the synergy with crit by swapping to SoR seems very odd. It makes the haste they spread on their gear less bad, but I'm surprised they're happy with that solution.

[Elsie]

Losing the synergy with crit by swapping to SoR seems very odd. It makes the haste they spread on their gear less bad, but I'm surprised they're happy with that solution.

It's also kind of dumb. Judgment, CS, DS love crit. Consecrate and SoR hate it. It's like by gearing for anything besides STR we hurt ourselves.

[Tonic]

Somehow, the tone of GCs latest posts on Ret give me the impression they won't dare to make any significant mechanics changes for Pallies, at least for this patch. Most probably in fear of causing PvP imbalance after reaching a somewhat of a balance, Paladins seem to be one of the hardest classes to balance afterall.

They've already shown they just want to take the easy way out regarding Ret whenever they can:
- You can find lots of amazing suggestions by the community to increase Ret PvE DPS without needing a massive mechanics change (Crusader Strike refreshing SoV DoT, for example) and making Ret gameplay more interesting while at it - yet they still keep stacking % damage increases over another.
- Exorcism on all targets
- Planning to simply increase JotW mana return instead of introducing a new mana regen mechanic for Ret. Although this does have one positive effect (which is just my personal preference though): if JotW is by far our most significant source of mana, we won't be able to afford missing a Judgement anymore, making aiming for the hitcap suggested. It just feels really skewed for Strenght to pwn everything by such a huge margin.

Regarding SoB recoil..
Wasn't Holy the main reason for taking baseline SA away ? Stabilizing Ret's mana regen seems to be a minor issue, as they don't seem to be making Ret worry about mana to the (not too huge) extend Hunters and Enhancement Shamans do - We don't have, and don't seem to be gaining the tools for it.

SoB recoil has failed to reach it's other target, making it unattractive for PvP, besides indirect mana regen. They should give SoC additional utility (or make SoB take some utility away if it comes down to that), if they refuse to remove SoB recoil in fear of making it the superior PvP Seal on all situations. But, they don't seem to be willing to do anything like that - and I don't think the reason is a lack of ideas.

[Lore]

I've never had a problem with SoB/JoB recoil damage. Honestly, it's not much different mechanically from the healer's perspective than a Warlock using Life Tap.

I think the "problem" is being severely overstated here.

[Dorvan]

I've never had a problem with SoB/JoB recoil damage. Honestly, it's not much different mechanically from the healer's perspective than a Warlock using Life Tap.

I think the "problem" is being severely overstated here.

If raid damage is ever a non-trivial encounter element, JoB is a major liability by definition (i.e. if raid damage has the potential to kill raid members, it's all the more likely to kill a raid member that's shaving off 4k+ HP every 7 seconds). On top of that it's a liability that no other class shares (Warlocks can delay their lifetap until a safe moment without losing DPS....we delay our highest damage move when we do so), and our damage isn't particularly stellar right now anyway.

Recoil is more punishing in PvE than PvP right now, and in PvP where they want a tradeoff to be involved it's not enough to nudge people towards Command. The mechanic as it stands isn't serving any clear purpose (unless our DPS is supposed to be balanced around SoComm with SoB only used when we're in the clear, in which case our damage is further out-of-whack).

[majiben]

Affliction warlocks (highest dps raid spec) also can delay life taps indefinetly through their other regen means.

[Lore]

(Warlocks can delay their lifetap until a safe moment without losing DPS....we delay our highest damage move when we do so)

Warlocks can't really delay lifetap until a safe moment without losing DPS -- if they're lifetapping, it's because they need mana, which they probably intend to use to DPS. We can delay Judgement for a minor loss of DPS if needed, or even just instant FoL and delay our swing timer.

Raid damage in a lot of ways makes JoB less of a liability, because there's fewer surprises and healers are already watching the raid and topping everyone off. The only real liability it brings is that the Priest or Druid needs to keep a HoT on you.

I also think you guys are exaggerating the "zomg big self-hit" numbers. Even a 20k judge does less than 7k self-damage. There's a couple Naxx encounters where that's possible, and it might be possible with cooldowns in Ulduar gear, but as it stands currently the highest I've been able to hit without encounter buffs is around 14k, or 4620 self damage.

Also, let's be honest for a moment -- Ret DPS is really, really easy. No rage to watch, Mana is rarely a concern, no DoT's or debuffs to keep active... hell we don't even need to refresh seals anymore. All we need to do is press the prettiest button that lights up. Health management adds just a tiny bit more to pay attention to.

[Dorvan]

Warlocks can't really delay lifetap until a safe moment without losing DPS -- if they're lifetapping, it's because they need mana, which they probably intend to use to DPS. We can delay Judgement for a minor loss of DPS if needed, or even just instant FoL and delay our swing timer.

That doesn't follow. Warlocks take quite a while to drain their mana pools. They don't have to lifetap every 7 seconds....they can delay lifetapping until an opportune moment and tap a few times, or more likely lifetap incrementally at convenient moments (for example, right after the boss uses a raid damage ability, so they know they're not in danger for a few seconds.

Raid damage in a lot of ways makes JoB less of a liability, because there's fewer surprises and healers are already watching the raid and topping everyone off. The only real liability it brings is that the Priest or Druid needs to keep a HoT on you.

If raid damage is capable of killing players (which is what I mean by "non-trivial"), then it's all the more capable of killing players that are taking extra damage on top of the mechanic....there's really not much more to say on the point, it's trivially true.

Also, let's be honest for a moment -- Ret DPS is really, really easy. No rage to watch, Mana is rarely a concern, no DoT's or debuffs to keep active... hell we don't even need to refresh seals anymore. All we need to do is press the prettiest button that lights up. Health management adds just a tiny bit more to pay attention to.

I'm fine with our DPS being more complicated to manage, but a random cooldown raid damage move isn't something I can plan around....there's no way to know if it's going to come .5 seconds after I judge, gibbing me. Furthermore, if seal-swapping and holding back a lot on our judgments is what we're being balanced around then we should be balanced around that, not going full out Blood all the time on cooldown. That's not the current state of things on the PTR.

[Lore]

Affliction warlocks (highest dps raid spec) also can delay life taps indefinetly through their other regen means.

Affliction isn't really highest raid DPS anymore in 3.1. Last I checked, people were getting better numbers out of a Demo/Destro hybrid.

Even when specced Affliction though, most locks won't even spec Dark Pact, because the pet needs the mana to DPS and the amount it returns isn't worth the GCD compared to Life Tap.

[Lore]

I'm fine with our DPS being more complicated to manage, but a random cooldown raid damage move isn't something I can plan around....there's no way to know if it's going to come .5 seconds after I judge, gibbing me. Furthermore, if seal-swapping and holding back a lot on our judgments is what we're being balanced around then we should be balanced around that, not going full out Blood all the time on cooldown. That's not the current state of things on the PTR.

That's the kind of fight I would just use SoR or SoComm on.

There's also never been a random cooldown raid damage move that gives no advance warning, does all of its damage up front, and has the potential to kill someone who's not completely topped off. Even Eredar Twins -- the posterboy random raid damage fight -- used short-duration DoT's.

If the raid team implemented a fight that went "Someone randomly is going to be hit for 90% of their health instantly and you're not going to know about it until it happens", then yes, using Blood would be a bad idea for that one fight. There's never been anything like that in the game though, so I don't feel a need to worry about something that doesn't exist. Furthermore... it's okay to use a different seal for one fight.

[Dorvan]

That's the kind of fight I would just use SoR or SoComm on.

There's also never been a random cooldown raid damage move that gives no advance warning, does all of its damage up front, and has the potential to kill someone who's not completely topped off. Even Eredar Twins -- the posterboy random raid damage fight -- used short-duration DoT's.

A short duration DoT like Dark Barrage is still that much harder to heal through when the player just knocked a chunk off their HP right before it hit. Same with ice block. It all comes back to the same point: JoB recoil is a liability with no benefit for PvE, and our DPS is balanced (in so much as it's balanced at all on the PTR right now) around doing nothing to mitigate that liability.

[Fridmarr]

I'm fine with our DPS being more complicated to manage, but a random cooldown raid damage move isn't something I can plan around....there's no way to know if it's going to come .5 seconds after I judge, gibbing me. Furthermore, if seal-swapping and holding back a lot on our judgments is what we're being balanced around then we should be balanced around that, not going full out Blood all the time on cooldown. That's not the current state of things on the PTR.

That's the kind of fight I would just use SoR or SoComm on.

There's also never been a random cooldown raid damage move that gives no advance warning, does all of its damage up front, and has the potential to kill someone who's not completely topped off. Even Eredar Twins -- the posterboy random raid damage fight -- used short-duration DoT's.

If the raid team implemented a fight that went "Someone randomly is going to be hit for 90% of their health instantly and you're not going to know about it until it happens", then yes, using Blood would be a bad idea for that one fight. There's never been anything like that in the game though, so I don't feel a need to worry about something that doesn't exist. Furthermore... it's okay to use a different seal for one fight.

What is the justification for the mechanic? It IS problematic, are the problems beyond the realm of human error, no but it does add a level of difficulty that really no other class has to deal with (and I play a lock), and ret pallys aren't exactly kings of the DPS meter.

There's just no reason at all for the recoil to exist anymore.

[Baelor]

There's also never been a random cooldown raid damage move that gives no advance warning, does all of its damage up front, and has the potential to kill someone who's not completely topped off. Even Eredar Twins -- the posterboy random raid damage fight -- used short-duration DoT's.

Kel'Thuzad's Frost Blast.
No warning, 104% HP over 4 seconds.

If you have 24k HP, strike/auto-attack and lose 1k to seal recoil, then Judge and hit yourself for 4k, and then immediately get hit with the Frost Blast, you're at 75% HP and stand to lose all of that in the next 3 seconds with no personal recourse.

I'm sure I could come up with examples from BC, but I forget what proportion of BC-level DPS health pools stuff like Tidewalker's Earthquake, Mother Shahraz's initial tick of Fatal Attraction, and other such abilities were.