GC's announcement as to our nerfs

[crabcrouton]

Yeah, because mages and shadow priests never go OOM, warlocks never need to life-tap and hunters never need to switch to Viper. Not bothering to list the rest, don't know their mechanics well enough.

Wait...

Most (every?) mana using class has "burst mode" and "endurance mode".

Oh, except pre-nerf Ret pallies, who use "burst mode" forever and never have to use mana recovery abilities.

The whole point of a mana bar is that if you go all out, you run out of mana (eventually) and have to do something to either moderate you use (skip consecrate) or emphasise recovery (hand of sacrifice the MT).

I hear what you're saying but this is not necessarily the case with melee dps. It's not fair to compare caster dps and melee mana dps. Casters do not have to worry about as many issues in a raid as melee, so they are put in a constant-oom threat situation as part of their challenge. As you point out Mages, Hunters, Priests and Warlocks (especially) have these issues. A fundamental design is: all range specs use mana and hence, worry about going oom.

However, in a melee situation, mana -- no -- all resources needs to be of lesser importance. Out of the (Arms/Fury/Unholy/Frost/Blood/Assn/Combat/Sub/Feral/Ret/Enhancement) 11 melee dps specs, only 2 of them use mana and are hence crippled with an outdated "if you have a blue bar you must go oom" concept. It's purely arbitrary but it gets worse:

The only real comparison I can see is Enhance Shamans and Ret Paladins who are both mana-based dps specs. Enhancement has no mana issues, ever, when going all out. They're able to keep a full rotation up relying solely on mana spring totem and shamanistic rage. They don't need to resort to water shield either, and rightly so because Ret shouldn't need to resort to blessing of wisdom.

In fact, it is so bad now because Enhancement has no difficulties using up the Maelstrom Weapon stacks (5 stacks => Insta Lightning Bolt) despite it building lightning fast. They're able to use insta-LBs or a quick spot heal with no worries about their mana bars.

[knaughty]

Most (every?) mana using class has "burst mode" and "endurance mode".

In fact very few specs HAD real 'burst mode'. In general pre 3.0, most mana using classes didn't have any burst at all. Or if they did have 'burst' it was by a trivial amount. Really only mages had real 'burst mana consumption/dps' through arcane.

The did have 'higher' dps versus 'lower' dps modes, but in general, you pretty much had to stay in 'higher' dps mode to be competitive.

• Mages have to blow GCDs on mana recover (gems, etc)
• Locks on lifetap
• Hunters in Viper
• SPs in Dispersion (or more flay time, skip devouring)

etc, etc

Ret have (deep breath)...
• Divine Plea (1 min)
• One Pot
• Hand of Sac (2 min)
• SoB (tiny)
• Skip consecrate
• Last resort: FIAR! IT BURZ!!!oneoneeleven (I've deliberately caught burn at brute, then bubbled it off at 1600-tick to recover some mana when I stuffed up my OOM avoidance)

Arcane burst was a bit retarded, I wasn't really meaning to include that as "burst" vs "endurance". Normally it's maybe 10% of DPS, not triple.

[Tats]

You're not going to change Bliz's mind by whining.

it worked fine for all the people that whined about paladins being over powered

[knaughty]

The only real comparison I can see is Enhance Shamans and Ret Paladins who are both mana-based dps specs. Enhancement has no mana issues, ever, when going all out. They're able to keep a full rotation up relying solely on mana spring totem and shamanistic rage. They don't need to resort to water shield either, and rightly so because Ret shouldn't need to resort to blessing of wisdom.

And ret can also keep up a full rotation excluding consecrate, while ignoring mana.

A better question is:

Is retribution single-target DPS competitive without Consecrate?

[Levantine]

To be completely fair, I have an extremely hard time running myself out of mana in my Shadow spec on live, and this is without Meditation and Inner Focus.

I think I've used Shadow Fiend mayyyyybeeeee once? I'm just trying to remember, and that was when I was totally stupid and ended up spamming Pain by accident cause I wasn't paying attention to what button I was hitting cause I was talking to someone at the same time.

[knaughty]

To be completely fair, I have an extremely hard time running myself out of mana in my Shadow spec on live, and this is without Meditation and Inner Focus.

Odd, my SP buddy needs to manage "George" (his fiend) and Dispersion carefully to avoid going OOM while raiding on live last two weeks.

If he uses the pair of them properly, he doesn't go OOM.

His gear is very good - almost full Sunwell.

[crabcrouton]

And ret can also keep up a full rotation excluding consecrate, while ignoring mana.

A better question is:

Is retribution single-target DPS competitive without Consecrate?

That's a good point, and I admit I don't know for sure. When I ran Ret yesterday, I fell from my usual 3rd spot to 7th behind 2 Rogues, 2 Hunters, a DK and a Mage. If the devs define 'balanced' as 'behind Rogues' then yes, we're balanced now.

One of the fundamental reasons why hybrids are balanced weaker than pure dps classes is b/c they have situational abilities / buffs. Even in LK, GC has said that hybrids should be close but they never intended hybrids to be equal. This is true before, and true now.

However, Enhancement can use their situational abilities (replace all LBs with offheals, Feral Spirit self-heal, Earth Elemental Totem offtank) but Ret cannot (Hand of Salvation, Art of War, Sacred Shield) due to mana constraints. Both are hit with the hybrid tax, only one is allowed to use their taxed benefit. Imagine if Cats had to use mana instead of energy so they're always oom and can never change to Bear or use combat rez. If the class' hybrid nature is gutted, why is it balanced around being a hybrid in the first place?

[knaughty]

That's a good point, and I admit I don't know for sure. When I ran Ret yesterday, I fell from my usual 3rd spot to 7th behind 2 Rogues, 2 Hunters, a DK and a Mage. If the devs define 'balanced' as 'behind Rogues' then yes, we're balanced now.

Given equal skill and gear, yes, they do define it that way. So long as you're making him work for it!

You bring more to the raid than all of those classes (% DPS boosts, blessing, aura, replenishment) so your DPS is supposed to be SLIGHTLY lower.

The number that gets bandied about is a couple of hundred DPS less than the rogue. And "great ret pally > poor rogue".

IE: 5-10% behind the "low utility" classes is the aim.

So the "hybrid tax" has gone from 50% to 5-10% - or that's the goal. In 2.4, a dead crap rogue would beat an awesome ret pally. 10%? NOWAI. My DPS would vary by about that much if I had a bad night or crap luck.

So "around seventh", given your class makeup, is correct, so long as the gap was small. How far behind were you?

[fafhrd]

We've been running with one Paladin main tank (me) since the release of Sunwell, and never had any issue with it.
We got a second one now, because we lacked decent tanks, and the only decent one i knew happened to be another paladin.
While it looks doable, i'm losing interest in my paladin, so we will still have a prot paladin in our tank core, he will still tank bosses, but that paladin might not be me at this pace, which would suck since i still love my paladin.

But as i said, 20 more days, they got time... hopefully.

I love your paladin too :X

[fafhrd]

However, Enhancement can use their situational abilities (replace all LBs with offheals, Feral Spirit self-heal, Earth Elemental Totem offtank) but Ret cannot (Hand of Salvation, Art of War, Sacred Shield) due to mana constraints. Both are hit with the hybrid tax, only one is allowed to use their taxed benefit. Imagine if Cats had to use mana instead of energy so they're always oom and can never change to Bear or use combat rez. If the class' hybrid nature is gutted, why is it balanced around being a hybrid in the first place?

Well actually, if cats had to use mana instead of energy, they'd just be in the same boat as hunters and enhancement shamans actually, heavily dependent on other classes to feed them mana via JoW and replenishment :)

[knaughty]

Well actually, if cats had to use mana instead of energy, they'd just be in the same boat as hunters and enhancement shamans actually, heavily dependent on other classes to feed them mana via JoW and replenishment

Oooh, nice point:

Enhancement might be having mana issues now with the nerfs to JoW and Replenishment.

We comparing pre-patch enhance with post-patch ret. Have the shammies started QQing yet?

[Fridmarr]

And ret can also keep up a full rotation excluding consecrate, while ignoring mana.

A better question is:

Is retribution single-target DPS competitive without Consecrate?

That's a good point, and I admit I don't know for sure. When I ran Ret yesterday, I fell from my usual 3rd spot to 7th behind 2 Rogues, 2 Hunters, a DK and a Mage. If the devs define 'balanced' as 'behind Rogues' then yes, we're balanced now.

One of the fundamental reasons why hybrids are balanced weaker than pure dps classes is b/c they have situational abilities / buffs. Even in LK, GC has said that hybrids should be close but they never intended hybrids to be equal. This is true before, and true now.

However, Enhancement can use their situational abilities (replace all LBs with offheals, Feral Spirit self-heal, Earth Elemental Totem offtank) but Ret cannot (Hand of Salvation, Art of War, Sacred Shield) due to mana constraints. Both are hit with the hybrid tax, only one is allowed to use their taxed benefit. Imagine if Cats had to use mana instead of energy so they're always oom and can never change to Bear or use combat rez. If the class' hybrid nature is gutted, why is it balanced around being a hybrid in the first place?

Out of curiosity, are you talking about live or beta? I don't think ret's DPS will scale as well as other classes and so we should be a bit high right now at 70. Remember, ret won't get any new DPS skills, and unless I'm mistaken, ret doesn't even get a new rank of anything that ups the baseline.

[Macha]

Is retribution single-target DPS competitive without Consecrate?

No, it isn't. It kinda needed HoW, undead abilities and Consecrate to be subpar in Naxx. With all of them; Ret was already behind the other specs.

Now, to use consecration occassionally as well as DS, CS and Judgement, and never use Exorcism or HoW, Paladins need to use mana food/oil/elixir, not actual dps food/sharpeningstone/elixir.

That does seem to be quite a problem.

Edit: Know these 4k Retri Naxx parses? They're now barely 3k-3.2k after the nerfs.

[Belarkan]

I just can't understand they're doing BC mistakes once again.
I mean, it just sounds like it is again.

retribution being buffed.
players wining, retri reported OP.
retribution being nerfed.
retribution being useless, see you next extension.

Protection tree being reworked so that it allows us to tank but still subpar.

Other classes still having things we are denied.

[fafhrd]

Yes crabrouton, there is a Santa Claus.

Awww why you gotta be so mean?

(warning: offtopic)
Besides, if LK still has lolret / subpar tankadins and a 2-button healing style, I'll take that with stride. One of the reasons I rolled a Pally tank back a couple of years ago was because they were the underdogs. I'm sure a lot of people did so too from the sentiment on the threads here in the early days of the beta. Despite BC's precise goals to keep us down and cripple us, the class went really far.

So be it if we're not represented in their arena eSports or have trouble healing or can't tank some bosses... Classes like Warriors or Hunters or Rogues have never felt the sting of being bottom rung and will never be motivated like Pallies. Guys like the one Ret paladin in my guild will continue to dominate the charts just because he's so damn hungry for it. Put him on another class without that kind of down-trodden motivation (read: good sustained dps) and I guarantee his dps will fall.

If they want to keep us down then that's fine, b/c quite frankly the Paladin class is fueled on a high octane mix of indignation, disobedience and pent up red-haired-stepchildism. We eat nerfs, spit skill and don a Proletariat complex.

Wildly off topic, but wtf? Hunters have never "felt the sting of being bottom rung"? What game have you been playing all these years? Other than a brief spell when one particular 3.4 speed weapon was new and attacks weren't normalized, hunters enjoyed being the lowest DPS class in the game, for the entirety of 1.0 wow. And that was before misdirects, so hunter utility consisted of Aspect of the Wild and Tranquilizing Shot. And while I don't PvP, I hear hunters are still the least represented class in high-ranked arena teams. Warriors and rogues have had their share of dry spells too. If you're going to wallow in self-pity, get your story straight at least.