---

Q u o t e:
I looked at that parse and I have my own thoughts about it. I am more interested in seeing your analysis of it. If Ret was working where you wanted it, where do you think it would be on that list? I'm just trying to get a feel for what you think is the magnitude of the delta we're talking about.

---

Based on this parse:

Assuming that they were equally geared and skilled, within 1-2% of the top DPSer without using any more consumables than them.

After all, it's an undead instance, and you specifically stated that Naxx being an undead instance shouldn't be a factor in ret DPS balance.

Thus with our minor glyph giving 1% boost to our damage, and being able to use Exo. and Holy Wrath when up, we should extremely close with the top DPSers, if not exceeding them due to our proficiency against the undead.

I appreciate you trying to be clear here, and I want to make sure we have the same logic trains running. Going by the stated philosophy of 'equal gear, equal skill, ideally within 5%,' a paladin has to be within 2-3% or better in an undead instance. And this data is abundantly clear in showing that that is not the case.

---

Q u o t e:
Also people should stop exaggerating our DPS advantage on undead/demon bosses. We basically have Exorcism to add in .

---

Why don't you look through your spell book one more time idiot.

---

Q u o t e:


I absolutely agree that placement on the charts is irrelevant. The true point of analysis is actual DPS numbers. If you have 15 DPSers and they each do 1 DPS less than the next highest, someone will be in 15th place, but that person will also be within a fraction of a percent of each other.

However in this parse, using every mana boost he can think of, this paladin fell nearly 11% behind the average of the top 5 DPS. Not the top person, who he is 16% behind, but an average of DPSers including a death knight and a shadow priest, both of whom a ret paladin should be competitive with at the least, and beat on an undead boss at the best.

---

I agree here, those outliers are fairly disturbing. I don't think the Ret paladin is doing too little (Though he does need more mana.), rather I think those abnormally high players are doing too much. I say that because there is a lot of classes "clumped" in that 2700-3100 zone, its obvious that they are the median here. So, if we just use napkin statistics we can assume that they are the ones functioning fine, especially considering that they contain some of the same classes that make up the outliers.

The rogue doing 600+ DPS more than the "average"..Not cool, however, the most disturbing thing is the DK doing 10% or so more than the average, that to me is the biggest broken thing in this parse.

---

Q u o t e:
I looked at that parse and I have my own thoughts about it. I am more interested in seeing your analysis of it. If Ret was working where you wanted it, where do you think it would be on that list? I'm just trying to get a feel for what you think is the magnitude of the delta we're talking about.

---

Okay GC, lets turn you question back at you:
What is the unwritten "DPS/Healing Class Caste System" that you guys at Blizzard feel you must adhere to?

That seems to be the $10,000,000 question.

Lets have it...


"Bring the player, not the class"...
Really?

---

Q u o t e:

Secondly he had to mana pot AND use a dark rune for a 4 min 10 sec fight. He used a boatload of mana which implies he was going all out and still fell behind. I see your logic behind the JotW nerf, but I really think it needs to be a bit higher (try maybe 20%). Part of the reason JotW at 33% base was so fun was because you had enough mana to throw those clutch heals and it made you feel like a badass. At 15% I don't really feel comfortable throwing any heals at all which is a bad thing imo.

---

20% is not enough either. If the DPS is too high then cut back on modifiers, do not balance us around spell modifiers, gear AND mana reliance. It becomes far too complex. We either spam cast and have our sustained DPS taken down a little. Or play conservatively and have our spells buffed.

The latter is just a case of timing and waiting for spells, and so fairly boring. The former is constant action, and should be balancable with tweaks to modifiers.

I can already see that sometime in WotLK JotW will be returned to 33% (like CS changes through TBC), but even when that is done (too late in the xpac) it will not be enough as it will then become clear that the other nerfs were too big.

---

Q u o t e:
Also people should stop exaggerating our DPS advantage on undead/demon bosses. We basically have Exorcism to add in and while it is useful, it's not a massive DPS increase all on its lonesome. I always though HW on single bosses was odd and I dont' really imagine it can or should be used in non-AE situations. I differentiate it from Consecration due to the differences in cooldown and mob vulnerability, giving Consecration a preferred spot in a DPS rotation on a wider variety of fights.


Anyway, Stop preaching undead mobs as mobs we should beat rogues on. We SHOULD beat other hybrids on them who do not have similar mob-specific bonuses, but it shouldn't necessarily catapult us to the top of the DPS meters.

---

yeah using holy wrath and exo is only a 400-500 dps diff...cause thats not big or anything.

---

Q u o t e:

---

Q u o t e:
fix JotW and make us able to exorcism and holy wrath everything (doble damage to undead or something)

BAM... problems solved

---

Doesnt fix our mana problems

---

Yes it does.
simple solution.... if we can have this damage on every boss, and the mana regen (I assume the paladin didnt dps as he should because of mana issues) we would be fixed
Then again, 2x exorcism and holy wrath not only helps at pvp (with glyph of exorcismwe would have 2 lovely interrupts), but help us on PVE... paladins should shine against undead mobs

---

Q u o t e:
There does seem to be a consensus that in an undead dungeon, every Ret pally should be at the very top of the charts. Is that what you're arguing?

---

Now you're just trolling us. Seriously, wtf Blizz? Your dev is trolling. Because that's not what we said and you damn well know it.

---

Q u o t e:
I looked at that parse and I have my own thoughts about it. I am more interested in seeing your analysis of it. If Ret was working where you wanted it, where do you think it would be on that list? I'm just trying to get a feel for what you think is the magnitude of the delta we're talking about.

---

I'd like to ignore numbers like 5% below pure DPS classes, because numbers like that vary greatly on the encounter, the gear, and the skill level of the player. That being said, I would expect to be below rogues, hunters, mages, and warlocks somewhat consistently when all of the above considerations are roughly equal. I would expect that when these things are slightly in favor of the ret paladin, that their dps and overall damage output should become roughly equal. And I think it's fair to expect that when a player is terrible, or their gear sucks, that I would out damage them by a fair margin.

I'm not saying that some of the above aren't still happening - when a player sucks, for whatever reason, I will be able to kill them. I'm not in the best gear; I switched from prot at 3.0 as I'd been playing it in beta (and leveled on it) and thought it would be fun. That being said, I did over 1k dps overall in Kara while being afk from the pulls after Nightbane until Illhoof. The group I was in generally consisted of players in better gear than me, and not AFK. I don't think thats right, and so I'd agree that our dps should be lowered. I haven't gotten to play with the new patch yet, but if it turns out that our mana regen is insufficient, or that our damage simply is lagging far behind classes in equivalent gear, skill, and rolls, I would expect that our damage would be boosted quickly. I think that if we can be nerfed this much in two weeks, we can also have our damage boosted this much in two weeks.

Answering where this particular paladin should be would be a lot easier if we knew what gear he was using.

Clearly he was still using t6 gear. What weapon did he have?

Without knowing that we have no way of knowing if his DPS is high or low. If he has no t7 and is only using BC gear (t6) then his DPS is high.

If he has some level 80 blues, maybe an okay weapon, and a couple of t6 his DPS is still high.

If he has a few pieces of t7 and has a really good weapon then his DPS is low.

Gear is a very important part of the equation. We don't know if the top DPSer happens to be fully outfitted in t7 or what.

In terms of overall, I stand by saying that this paladin is either 'about right' or a little low whereby a couple percent more damage would do it. So 1-3% more damage may be appropriate.

Mana regen does seem to be an issue in that he was going all out and consuming extra mana sources to make ends meet (don't know how much mana he ended the fight with though).

---

Q u o t e:
I don't hear anyone defending the rogue who was low in a lot of these fights. You have to make a lot of assumptions that all of these players had equivalent gear and skill in order to have the expectation that this paladin should be in the top 5. Someone said this was a very skilled paladin, so I guess we'll have to take your word for that.

The use of consumables, especially things like Dark Runes is interesting. It's too bad we can't calculate what his dps would have been without the consumables. You don't gain that much mana from the consumables, but as you point out, it could make a difference.

Consecrate is a very mana-intensive spell. I'm not sure I would use it except when tanking or in a mana-rich situation. Many if not all classes have abilities that they know are not damage efficient for their cost. Sometimes you want to use these anyway depending on the situation.

There does seem to be a consensus that in an undead dungeon, every Ret pally should be at the very top of the charts. Is that what you're arguing?

---

I think the argument is. the Paladin would have been much much lower if this was a non undead dungeon. Using our undead only abilites helped his DPS a lot.

Ghostcrawler,

This parse looks like a disaster for the Ret Spec:
- one of the best ret pallies in great gear
- using every trick to get back mana: pot, dark rune, LoH himself
- on an UNDEAD boss, where we have a unique, instant cast, high output damage spell AS WELL as 1% more dmg thanks to glyph

And we're 8th on the damage meter? That's ridiculous.

And we've got a death knight and a shadow priest beating him by several hundred dps? In my opinion, ret paladins should be top 3 on any undead boss fight. It fits the lore, it fits our talents and unique abilities, and quite frankly, top 3 on undead bosses means that on other bosses we'll be middle of the pack at best.

Personally I think the gap between hybrids and pure should range from 0% to 6% depending on the class. I think that replenishment specs(yes ret is a spec not a class), and druids should be closer to the 6%, and classes that don't offer big time necessary buffs should be closer to the 0%. I would say the tank/dps hybrids should be higher than the healer/dps hybrids as if you suck at dps there is very little chance you are going to be able to become a tank in your guild where as more healers being needed is a far more likely scenario. Ideally all classes that don't provide some kind of huge utility(like battle rez) should be right up there with the pure dps classes, they just need to make sure hybrids are not ahead, being equal is not a problem in most cases.

You aren't going to stack fury warriors or death knights if they have equal damage to a rogue, you would however stack druids if they were equal.

---

Q u o t e:


yeah using holy wrath and exo is only a 400-500 dps diff...cause thats not big or anything.

---

The two combined are less DPS than Consecration alone.

Using his numbers, his Exorcism would provide about 193 DPS and Holy Wrath 70, if used on cooldown. These abilities would never be used on cooldown because they fall behind other non-UD abilities in efficiency and DPS, pushing each of them back a significant amount. Make the total increased DPS somewhere around 200. So yes, it's useful, yes it's powerful, no it doesn't mean you should beat the rogues on every undead or demon fight.

It's like you people don't even read posts, you just jump on anything you can to spew hate.

---

Q u o t e:
I don't hear anyone defending the rogue who was low in a lot of these fights. You have to make a lot of assumptions that all of these players had equivalent gear and skill in order to have the expectation that this paladin should be in the top 5. Someone said this was a very skilled paladin, so I guess we'll have to take your word for that.

The use of consumables, especially things like Dark Runes is interesting. It's too bad we can't calculate what his dps would have been without the consumables. You don't gain that much mana from the consumables, but as you point out, it could make a difference.

Consecrate is a very mana-intensive spell. I'm not sure I would use it except when tanking or in a mana-rich situation. Many if not all classes have abilities that they know are not damage efficient for their cost. Sometimes you want to use these anyway depending on the situation.

There does seem to be a consensus that in an undead dungeon, every Ret pally should be at the very top of the charts. Is that what you're arguing?

---

No, undead should be a boost, but I think its healthy for the class if it remains very very marginal. Especially in an "undead rich" expansion, really, I can't forsee any class actually *wanting* to be balanced around a mob-specific type skill, that stinks.

The rogue at the bottom, from his hits parse, ect, has some big gear issues...I think the main problem here is the variance between what appears to be an extremely defined "average" and those people who have spiraled way above it.

Also, his reliance on dark runes...Yes, you might not think he should use consecrate, but without it, he would have done 10% less DPS. In short, there would be a real problem with his DPS without it, he would definetly be way behind that "average" group there. Given that he needed it to stay within that "average" we should, rationally, assume its meant to be used, right? If it weren't, then things are a bit broken. (Also consecrate isn't a "burst" skill, its a great way to work in that "sustained" DPS without worrying about giving paladins too many "one hit wonder" moments in PvP..Its a *very* PvEish tool, between being static and consistent, so it might make all of your guys lives easier if you exploited it for balance on raid damage.)