[Ret-PVP] Vindication Hotfix (nerf)

[majiben]

But this balance is coming from many poor options as opposed to many good/decent choices.

[Elsie]

If anything, the fact that it's not a clear mandate or dismissal (and actually worth discussing) is an indication of Blizzard doing something right: making the tree balanced enough to be flexible, and have room for variance to the infamous cookie cutter mentality.

I'm confused what you mean by this. Vindication is garbage now and not worth discussing.

[Levantine]

And yet, discussion is happening.

[Fedaykin98]

He's right, Vindication sucks. It went from being a strong offensive talent to a strictly defensive one. I don't need anymore defensive talents, I need ways to kill people. Love to hear more ideas from people about what to switch those points into.

[Lore]

So many tears in this thread I had to put on my waders just to respond. There's a very clear difference between discussion and QQ, and everyone in this thread is intelligent enough to know when they're doing the latter. Let's leave that at the door, please.

Regardless of the exact numbers given, the underlying point still stands in regards to the "60% of your health" reasoning given -- when fighting a Paladin, you have significantly less of your HP pool available. That's not very fun, no one else brings it, and although it's not really OP in a vacuum, it's absolutely devastating when combined with other abilities (most notably MS, which is more prevalent). It's easy to look at the nerf and go "wtf blizz y u nerf me i need that 2 fite wariurs", but what happens when the Warrior's on your side?

Ret still has a very high amount of very under-utilized utility. It's a shame that the class is based around burst damage, and I'm very much looking forward to the damage rework, as a Ret played defensively is very strong.

As for where to put the 2 points, there's lots of damage-increasing talents that you generally have to skip in favor of 20 points in Prot. I imagine I'll pick up Eye for an Eye again.

[Splug]

Regardless of the exact numbers given, the underlying point still stands in regards to the "60% of your health" reasoning given -- when fighting a Paladin, you have significantly less of your HP pool available. That's not very fun, no one else brings it, and although it's not really OP in a vacuum, it's absolutely devastating when combined with other abilities (most notably MS, which is more prevalent). It's easy to look at the nerf and go "wtf blizz y u nerf me i need that 2 fite wariurs", but what happens when the Warrior's on your side?

The real killer from what I've seen is actually ret-rogue, where not only are you coupling the high damage and reduced health with healing reduction, but with a significant extention to the main target stun time and stronger off-target control. I think Lore has a very good point here - in isolation it's strong but not entirely unreasonable, but when used in conjunction with other survivability-reducing effects the sum becomes quite overwhelming.

-Splug

[Robbo]

I've done around 44 arena games in the past 2 hours or so, and it has been infuriating a couple times (as arena tends to be). I recall one match vs Priest/DK where I managed to get the priest into HoW range several times. You could argue that if I'd had Vindication, I would have killed him. Maybe I would have. But every time he got that low, his DK had a gnaw, chains, deathgrip etc ready. So that's more on me for not timing my burst correctly, as opposed to relying on a talent that perhaps has carried me more than I know. I just need to play better.

*shrug*

All this to say, life will go on, and QQ if you want, but ret pallies are still a good pvp class/spec.

[Joanadark]

Regardless of the exact numbers given, the underlying point still stands in regards to the "60% of your health" reasoning given -- when fighting a Paladin, you have significantly less of your HP pool available. That's not very fun, no one else brings it, and although it's not really OP in a vacuum, it's absolutely devastating when combined with other abilities (most notably MS, which is more prevalent). It's easy to look at the nerf and go "wtf blizz y u nerf me i need that 2 fite wariurs", but what happens when the Warrior's on your side?

We already said this.
The issue with vindication was that it stacked with things like MS effects. And that it could be easily picked up by Holy Paladins paired with an MS-applying DPSer.
A much more thoughtful change would have been to move Vindication much lower in the tree (low enough that you couldnt get it and Holy Shock), or make it not stack with MS.

[Elsie]

Regardless of the exact numbers given, the underlying point still stands in regards to the "60% of your health" reasoning given -- when fighting a Paladin, you have significantly less of your HP pool available. That's not very fun, no one else brings it, and although it's not really OP in a vacuum, it's absolutely devastating when combined with other abilities (most notably MS, which is more prevalent). It's easy to look at the nerf and go "wtf blizz y u nerf me i need that 2 fite wariurs", but what happens when the Warrior's on your side?

We already said this.
The issue with vindication was that it stacked with things like MS effects. And that it could be easily picked up by Holy Paladins paired with an MS-applying DPSer.
A much more thoughtful change would have been to move Vindication much lower in the tree (low enough that you couldnt get it and Holy Shock), or make it not stack with MS.

This, in a nutshell, is a large part of it. I think we can safely say their reasoning is bullshit. However, the reasoning of Vindication with MS is also a bit unfair. Any double-dps will be bringing their own utility. It's akin to saying Shadow priests are broken because warlocks can apply Unstable Affliction. Or Power Word: Shield is broken because of Sacred Shield. Or Renew and PoM with Druid HoTs. Vindication's stamina effect combined with MS is by far not the only two abilities that can be stacked for a greater effect in a single area. In fact, it's almost directly countered by PW Shield with Sacred Shield. To not get caught up in examples, I'll restate my point that this is clearly not the only utility that works together for a greater effect - not even the only offensive utility.

At any rate, that's viewing things in a vacuum, and changes nothing with them stating that 'ret may be balanced' in one sentence and directly following it with 'There are too many paladins in lower brackets.' It means they have purposefully unbalanced ret which directly correlates to a greater inability to get Gladiator and Duelist.

If the problem is indeed holy paladins, which is quite possible and probable, then they have made a poor decision. Moving Vindication further down in the tree would have been a better solution. If nerfing vindication was the only solution, then there was no counter-balance utility given to Retribution.

The real killer from what I've seen is actually ret-rogue, where not only are you coupling the high damage and reduced health with healing reduction, but with a significant extention to the main target stun time and stronger off-target control. I think Lore has a very good point here - in isolation it's strong but not entirely unreasonable, but when used in conjunction with other survivability-reducing effects the sum becomes quite overwhelming.

I have seen a grand total of two ret/rogue teams over 2300 when I've been playing. In 3v3, I've seen one. Meanwhile I have seen over 10 mage/rogue teams 2v2. If this was the reason (ret/rogue) for the nerf, then clearly it should have been actually performing well enough to see it more often. I also do not consider this anecdotal since I have played a ton of games at all hours.

By far, DK/Druid is the powerhouse right now. How coincidental.