Just before I get into my big long post on SA mana returns for Ret, I’d like to ask GC what is the status on the Prot 11 point talent / Ret buff we were promised during one of our hotfix nerfs? It was hinted in this post (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/5/12065281480-upcoming-ret-paladin-pvp-nerf.html) that it was a possibility and later confirmed in another post that I can’t find on Blue tracker.

Anyway on to my Wall of Text! Paladins are experiencing a large difference in mana returns in different environments. PvP we can run out of mana easily. PvE can shift from one extreme to the other depending on AoE damage, healer coverage and fight length. One of the major contributors to this inconsistency is Spiritual Attunement.

Spiritual Attunement was brought in at the start of BC to allow all paladins to tank. It allowed Prot pallies to regen a lot more mana reliably. It was made baseline so Holy and Ret can tank in 5 mans, off tank if needed and such. At one stage overheals were counted in SA but were soon nerfed due to making Holy never run out of mana with its synergy to Shadow Priest abilities. Otherwise SA didn’t really affect those 2 specs in non tanking situations because health values were low and the AoE damage wasn’t that intense. Now in WotLK that health values have grown the returns are more substantial.

On fights that have a lot of AoE damage we can see a lot more mana returned than normal. In a fight like Sapphiron (Lots of constant AoE damage) we can get a lot more mana returns than a fight like Patchwerk (Only tank and OTs take damage). The problem is at the moment SA returns are too good to turn down. Art of War (Instant FoL on certain ability crits) was brought in to let Paladins manage their self damage. But at the moment with the mana returned from SA it’s easier and often better to let healers cover it.

As well it is often good to step into a survivable AoE damage effect to receive more returns from SA. Players should be avoiding AoE and not jumping in it. Then again I’m of the mind that AoE should punish the DPS and not the healer (i.e. AoE reduces their damage by x% and not causes damage to them).

Take the following WWS reports for example. The returns on SA for 3 fights (Patch for Non AoE, Grob for mid AoE and Sapp for Max AoE).

http://wowwebstats.com/rqiwul%*!kx4q?m

Confessor
Patchwerk: 3k
Grobbulus: 7k
Sapphiron: 18k

http://wowwebstats.com/55sfrcpfd6eny?m

Rockdwg
Patchwerk: 1.7k
Grobbulus: 5.2k
Sapphiron: 19.3k

Elewd
Patchwerk: 3k
Grobbulus: 4.3k
Sapphiron: 20.5k

http://wowwebstats.com/nhpuekb2baya5?m

Trajer
Patchwerk: 4k
Grobbulus: 11.2k
Sapphiron: 19.2k


In PvP though we can’t rely on SA because we often team with another DPS or you are forced to heal yourself more often (To reduce pressure on the healer) which does not add to SA returns. This can leave us starving for mana. With the current fast paced, over quickly Arena this isn’t a large issue yet. But as games get longer the issue will get bigger.

What I would like to see done to fix this is to lower SA down to 5% of healing done to mana instead of 10% that it is currently. Buff Judgements of the Wise up to 20% or 25% to balance it out. Prot would have Improved SA functionality attached to an existing talent. I'd suggest 1 handed weapon specialisation. Which could become Holy Body or something. Names aren't important. Holy would get either Illumination slightly buffed or something new added to their tree as well.

I’m not going to say my way is the way to fix it. My fix is probably very flawed and not right. My fix isn’t the point here. SA returns are inconsistent and promoting bad play (By wanting to be hit by some avoidable AoE). I just wanted to raise the issue for Blizzard to look at. And please don’t just nerf SA. All specs are affected by this ability so if one gets a change they all need an equal change.

Bugger. Meant to post on my Ret pally.

Last night on Sarth I barely dropped below 70% mana at times because of the AoE damage. I would have put that in the initial post but I didn't have proof.

Time for a Glyph of Seal of Blood rewrite.

Something like:
"Damaged caused by your Judgement or Seal of Blood or Martyr triggers the mana return from Spiritual Attunement as if you had been healed by another player. Disables all other mana return from Spiritual Attunement while the seal is active."

Actually, since this is the best place to ask.... does the seal of blood glyph mean 20% from spiritual attunement or 11%?

---

Q u o t e:
Just before I get into my big long post on SA mana returns for Ret, I’d like to ask GC what is the status on the Prot 11 point talent / Ret buff we were promised during one of our hotfix nerfs?

---

Prot 11 point - Light's Reprieve: Allows the paladin to bubble after casting Hand of Protection on another player.

:D

You do highlight the current issues with ret's (specifically) regen model fairly eloquently.

The origional poster has a very valid point a Spiritual Attunement nerf would very likely impair Rets mana regen during fights.

During long fights, even with hitting Divine Plea every time its up rets do run out of mana (especially in single target fights like Patchwerk).

Ret relies on the synergy of Spiritual Attunement with Seal of the Martyr / Blood for the healing it gets us and hence a fair amount of mana replenishment. (also note that the Replenishment buff affects rets small mana pool a lot less then everyone elses)

So why is Spiritual Attunement being nerfed for all paladins and not just holy ones? They are the spec free of worrying about mana impairments not ret. Could Spiritual Attunement just be shuffled into other talents in the Ret and Protection trees?

GC can you give us a response as to why all specs of the class which are affected differently by Spiritual Attunement are going to be impacted by this and not just Holy?

So I use SoB while raiding because I get mana back when I get healed because of spiritual attunement. Seal of Blood makes sure I'm not topped off so I actually require heals. Plus it hits like a truck. If I don't have spiritual attunement because I can't get far enough into the prot tree for it, SoB is getting put on the shelf. It'll then be Seal of Command or Seal of Corruption for me. I've tried all 3 and SoB is a solid K dps above the others. Lame-o.

Edit - no int on 80 ret gear because of SA. Take it away and we have all of a 6k mana pool. 3 rotations gone.

Good post OP.

This is a very flawed mechanic in retribution.

On a fight like patchwerk mana is extremely dire on the 10 man version, slightly better in a 25man but still hard. I am forced to mana pot and lay on hands myself during it to keep up any competitive dps. Not to mention I'm a blood elf and get an additional 6% mana spamming arcane torrent whenever I can, I feel sorry for the other paladins that fight. On sapph of course there are no problems, but no other class has its damage affected depending on if the boss does aoe damage or not.

Now with SA nerfs incoming, judgements increasingly hurting us for more and more, healer regen nerfs, we will be in a very bad place regarding optimal viability come Ulduar (this on top of worst single target PVE damage currently PTR).

We shouldn't have to hurt ourselves to do equal dps.

Our mana regen shouldn't hinge on SA.

We need to be balanced to fight a full fight with a full rotation on JOTW and Divine Plea alone.

Nice post OP, but you're skirting the underlying, and much more important issue, that is: We are the only class in the game who is forced to do damage to ourselves in order to continue damage aganist the mob.

This is, coupled with increasing amounts of Paladin DPS (more DPS done against Paladin due to SoB and JoB due to inreasing gear levels) and raid AoE damage, causing Rets to become more and more a liability to bring to raids. This is of course FURTHER exacerbated by the fact that our 3.1 DPS is at the bottom of the barrel.

So, essentialy we are left with being a healer liability (in progression. The tank is hardly a healer liability in Naxx lol) without compensating with high DPS.

Basically this can all be solved by the removal of a very outdated mechanic: The SA Mechanic, and the Blood recoil damage.

Proposal: Blood no longer does damage to caster, but causes Paladin to receive 10% increased damage from all sources. Divine plea is refreshed on Divine Storm cast. JotW is buffed by an appropriate number to compensate for loss of SA+Blood, but not high enough to allow an inappropriate amount of extra-spec (meaning beyond the scope of your spec) utility.

---

Q u o t e:

Proposal: Blood no longer does damage to caster, but causes Paladin to receive 10% increased damage from all sources. Divine plea is refreshed on Divine Storm cast. JotW is buffed by an appropriate number to compensate for loss of SA+Blood, but not high enough to allow an inappropriate amount of extra-spec (meaning beyond the scope of your spec) utility.

---

Agreed on most points, but WHY do we need a drawback? Blood should not have any drawbacks. It only had a drawback to differentiate horde paladins from alliance ones in TBC like how priests had different abilities depending on their race. This is now outdated because we didn't do nearly the judgement damage in BC that we do now.

It's not like we are doing more damage than other classes with no drawbacks on their main attacks/stances. For instance DK's in PVE use Blood Presence, granting them 15% extra damage and self healing on their attacks. They do competitive dps WITHOUT penalty.

SoComm should be removed, it's useless with blood around and an RNG seal for PVP is NEVER going to work unless the proc damage is overpowered. We could use some utility in that 11 point talent that no one takes.

"Ret Talent tree has been widened to allow 6 talent options in each Tier. All interesting talents and talents that Holy paladins like to take have been moved to Tiers 9, 10, and 11. We hope we have made leveling a Retribution Paladin as boring as ever, even more-so."

Hopefully ret gets an ability that gives them mana when they take damage, not when they are healed, making our self healing abilities useful for once.

---

Q u o t e:
Nice post OP, but you're skirting the underlying, and much more important issue, that is: We are the only class in the game who is forced to do damage to ourselves in order to continue damage aganist the mob.

---

Warlock.

---

Q u o t e:
Spiritual Attunement is a great mechanic for a tanking paladin who needs the mana and gets it from taking damage.

For other paladins it just complicates balance. On Patchwerk you get no mana from it as Holy / Ret and on Sartharion it gives you just a ton of mana. So you're either bone dry on one fight or drowning in mana on another, totally depending on raid damage.

The best knob we have for tweaking Ret mana return is to up Judgements of the Wise from 15% to 20% or whatever it needs to be. (Holy has Illumination.)

---

So will blood still have recoil, now that it has no benefit?

---

Q u o t e:
Spiritual Attunement is a great mechanic for a tanking paladin who needs the mana and gets it from taking damage.

For other paladins it just complicates balance. On Patchwerk you get no mana from it as Holy / Ret and on Sartharion it gives you just a ton of mana. So you're either bone dry on one fight or drowning in mana on another, totally depending on raid damage.

The best knob we have for tweaking Ret mana return is to up Judgements of the Wise from 15% to 20% or whatever it needs to be. (Holy has Illumination.)

---

thanks for the update my. crabs

now whats up with the seal of blood glyph since its going from useless to "might as well not exist". no prot pally will use SoB unless they REALLY hate their healers.