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These seem like pretty severe nerfs, but that was the intention. It is difficult for some players to ever be truly objective with issues surrounding their class, but in this case we felt Ret was severely overpowered. This was not in the realm of small tweaks to fix (though we did try originally). We overhauled the paladin class for Lich King, so it is unfortunate but not too surprising that the numbers for the dps spec require a lot of iteration. The mistake is ours, not the fault of the player base or beta testers.

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Q u o t e:

but we also found their PvE damage, even at level 80, was too high

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Q u o t e:
I am told that many or all beta posters are unable to post in the LK beta forums for some reason. I'm not trying to duck you or prevent responses, so I'll cross-post my beta post here. The same rules below exist for replying to the thread.

Hello paladins,

Sorry we didn't get a chance to pre-announce these changes before the data were pushed to the beta. I won't try to sugarcoat it -- these are nerfs.

As I tried to explain before, we concluded a couple of weeks ago that Retribution was doing too much damage in PvP. We tried to nerf the burst damage through the previous changes to Divine Storm etc. Unfortunately, those changes didn't prove sufficient. Not only were paladins still destroying other classes in PvP, but we also found their PvE damage, even at level 80, was too high. Many classes were concluding they were too weak based on comparing their numbers to paladin numbers (and to be fair, hunters and in some cases mages and warriors).

Here are the new changes:

1) Judgements of the Wise: Mana gained reduced from 33% to 15% of base mana. We spent many hours arriving at this number. For example, we did a lot of Patchwerk fights, watching the mana bar to see when and if it ever went down. In BGs, we were seeing paladins able to go from target to target without pausing even when unleashing all of their attacks. While we don't want you to go OOM in a few seconds, we don't want you to ignore the mana bar either. Mana is not rage -- warriors can't typically start a battle with a full bar.

2) Judgement of Wisdom: mana gained reduced to 1% of maximum mana and proc frequency cut by 50%. This ability was flat out better than Vampiric Touch when the mana provided between the two really needs to be close in order for the decision between Shadow priest and Retribution paladin to be a real one.

3) Judgement and Seals: Damage reduced by 20%. This is the major damage adjustment -- a lot of damage was coming from these. We do realize this hurts Holy and Protection as well, and that is something for which we are prepared to offer compensation (particularly if it hurts Protection's threat generation).

4) Hammer of Wrath: Now can’t be used until the target is below 20% health. Our rule of thumb is that core "Execute-style" abilities work at 20% and talented abilities work at 35% health. We originally had Hammer at 35% based on some other limitations of the spell.

5) Art of War: Increased damage bonus to Judgements, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. I'll report back on the exact numbers here when we've settled on them.

I also want to add that the token Blessing of Might change wasn't intended as a joke -- it is designed so that Battle Shouts won't cancel the longer and more expensive Blessing of Might in a group setting.

These seem like pretty severe nerfs, but that was the intention. It is difficult for some players to ever be truly objective with issues surrounding their class, but in this case we felt Ret was severely overpowered. This was not in the realm of small tweaks to fix (though we did try originally). We overhauled the paladin class for Lich King, so it is unfortunate but not too surprising that the numbers for the dps spec require a lot of iteration. The mistake is ours, not the fault of the player base or beta testers.

Nerfing a spec or class is never fun. It means that our initial estimates of numbers were off and we know that the community is going to react negatively (to put it mildly). But we have to try and keep the game in a relatively balanced state and that is going to mean making decisions that are unpopular sometimes. If you need to blame someone for the nerfs, blame me.

As always, if we over-compensated, we'll adjust the numbers again. But as I said, our initial round of nerfs wasn't sufficient. Lest you fear that Lich King is upon as and you won't see any additional changes, that is not our point of view. We changed a lot in the game and we need to be able to recitfy problems. I would expect early patches or even hotfixes to deal with class or balance problems, and hopefully these will slow down as we get closer to major content releases. But nothing is off the table after we ship, down to rearchitecting talent trees if we think that is called for. This isn't to suggest we aren't happy with the state of the game. Rather, my word that we will continue to iterate on problem areas as they come up.

I also want to stress that we do not make balance decisions based on the QQ of other classes. At most, if there is a pretty vocal outcry that will encourage us to rerun the numbers to see if something is amiss. As vocal, and sometimes passionate and even logical as forum posts can be, they represent a fraction of the entire fanbase and it would be foolish for us to clobber one group of players solely based on the whining from another group.

Go ahead and vent if you have to. We won't delete posts or ban posters in this thread unless they are overly offensive. We do ask that you not launch a thousand other threads so that other paladin issues can still be discussed. Likewise, we have no problem with other classes engaging in the discussion but outright gloating or trolling will be frowned upon.

And I do apologize for putting you through this.

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Q u o t e:
You have continually assured us week after week that the damage was fine because it was meant for Lv80, reassuring us that you were ignoring the whiny incompetants who just wanted us nerfed because it wasn't going to be fair to them for 3 measly weeks.

We expected the nerfs to critical strike damage because it was indeed a bit much, and we had no problem with that. You assured us you were going to be surgical about it, and that we had nothing to worry about, and up to this point you more or less kept your promises, so we trusted that you were being honest about it.

Now this. Critical strike damage was nerfed as expected, but then so was EVERYTHING else. All our seals got nerfed by a large amount, something that hurt not just Retribution, but Holy and Protection as well, after you directly said that Holy DPS was a bit low and you wanted to correct that. So much for doing ANY damage as Holy now it seems. And just to top it all off, you went and nerfed Judgements of the Wise into the ground, weakening it so much that Retribution DPS sustainability has been destroyed, not just for Lv70, but for Lv80 as well, the level it was specifically designed for since there will be no intellect on plate, making the large return necessary.

The critical strike damage nerf was justified. We all understood that and accepted that. The seal nerfs and especially the JotW nerfs are completely unwarranted and unjustified. Now we no longer even have sustainability, and we cannot even resort to potion chain potting because there will be potion sickness in WotLK. How utterly convenient for you.

And now conveniently the Beta boards have been locked, forum moderators have been meticulously deleting our posts demanding answers while IGNORING all the troll posts from people laughing at us and making fun like the immature children they are, and most importantly, this was done on a Friday with no warning, so that you and the rest of Blizzard could safely ignore it for the weekend, leaving us to rot with no answers, with not one Blizzard representative making a peep about this and simply ignoring it.

You and Blizzard have deliberately and blatantly lied to not just Retribution, but all of the Paladin class. You have given us the single biggest and most devastating nerf in our entire class history, with 3/4 of it being completely unwarranted and the primary result of it being that Holy is dead, Retribution is dying, and Protection is hanging on by the skin of it's teeth.

And not just that. 3 weeks before the expac goes live, and you toss this disgrace our way, to guarantee that nothing can be done about it until sometime later in the expansion, or most likely "we'll get around to it.", which every Paladin knows translates to never. So in the meantime, Paladins will once again have to overgear more than any class to even be close to par and flounder with huge mana problems just like the last expansion, and be told the problem lies not in the talents but in the player and that we should just L2play and everything will be fine, because everything was fine the last 4 years obviously.

I honestly expected better of you GC. You AND Blizzard. I had hoped that you would not suscribe to stereotyping and once again ruin one class in particular just to placate the egos of others who have always been at the top and don't want to feel threatened. I had hoped that you would not stoop to such spineless underhanded tactics like this just to please a few thousand immature people out of millions.

If you want to have a Paladin class left by the time WotLK comes out and not 325,000 people leaving for another game, you need to do two things. You need to revert the seal damage nerfs and revert the amount returned by JotW back to the amount it gave previously. Why? The seal damage had nothing to do with the crit damage problem, it resided in certain talents that have already been changed. Not only did it hurt Retribution unnecessarily, it hurt Holy and Protection as well, and it is completely unnecessary. The JotW nerf had nothing to do with crit period, it is Ret Paladin's lifeline and the only means to function in the non-intellect plate gear we will start wearing in less than 3 weeks.

Bottom line, what you did was blatantly lie to us repeatedly and did a very underhanded and cowardly action in response to some very immature and impatient people. We expected alot better of you and Blizzard, and I sincerely hope that no other class will have to suffer like this.

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Q u o t e:
* Paladins were decent off-tanks but not great main tanks, this is fixed in WotLK. Paladins should focus on protection gear instead of spell power.
* Holy Paladins were good healers but couldn't do much in encounters where players are required to move a lot, however they definitely don't want them as a HoT class.
* Retribution paladins are supposed to deal a decent amount of DPS without running out of mana.
* Retributions paladins have to be in control of their damage and shouldn't have to rely on lucky critical strikes to deal most of their damage

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Q u o t e:
GC,

First off, no one told the Forum Moderators about not deleting our posts or suspending us. I was suspended and none of my posts broke the forum rules. Bascially I posted feedback and suggestions which were being deleted , so I posted asking why they were deleting our Paladin posts while leaving the troll posts. Apparently the forum moderators don't like it when people point out that they were trying to surpress our outrage.

Secondly, will you be as quick to rebuff us as you were to nerf us? Within 2 days of going live you did the first hot fix, and began working on the nerfs which rolled out over the next 2 weeks. Will you be as fast to buff us when you see that our PVE dps is poor? Or will it be like it has been for the last 4 years... promises to fix ret but done in baby steps that don't really help but take months to implement?

Thirdly, when you say that our dps was too high at 80, I find it hard to believe that it could have been SO much off that it warrants these stacking nerfs. In addition to the straight dps nerfs, the mana nerf means we won't be able to use consecrate, exorcism, etc, into the rotation. With the HoW nerf, we lose a big part of our boss dps as well All of these together means a giant drop in PVE dps. Raiding Sunwell at level 70 shows me under the rogues and competitive with the warriors of the same gear and skill level. How is that broken?

Plus, I thought the caster dps complaints was being addressed by the 10% increased armor on level 80 bosses? Isn't this just penalizing us twice? The armor increase was already meant to make those caster classes stronger in comparison.

GC, you say you tried doing small steps.... then why not keep doing small steps till you get where you are happy? You've seriously over compensated for a perceived PVP imbalance, and wrecked ret PVE as well as prot and holy. That is by definition a knee jerk reaction. Please reconsider the extent of these nerfs. There are better ways to balance PVP.

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Q u o t e:
They should take away rogues passive regen and give them an ability that costs 5 energy and returns 15 energy to them on an 8 second cooldown. Based on rogue reactions to the JotW nerf they'll be totally cool with this change.

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