Here are the facts…

PTR 3.1 Parses showing ret PvE dps as well below average – proven by the multiple links in the forums and personal experience….

• No new glyphs that accommodate the loss in dps from the ret tree nerfs (Divine storm glyph?)
• Plate itemization is not up to par, what is up with all the +stam? Good post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129890141&sid=1
• With the overall nerf to healers in 3.1, SoM/SoB is becoming and has become too taxing, especially in gimmick fights.. Don’t even want to get into the SoC debate 21 page post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15671257853&sid=1
• Mana regen nerfs to all classes as well as loss of SA to ret is hurting rotations moreso than previously thought.. ret paly’s constantly going OOM now..Really good post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14132379462&sid=1
• Lack of replacement ret talents for dps…(i.e. Crusade) talent is useless for Ulduar.. 3 wasted points..not to mention the tree is all messed up anyways..


The general direction it seems with ret is that they are taking away our dps and giving us more survivability, as if we needed more?. Let me remind you, this is mainly a PvE nerf due to PvP reasons…hence the reason we have a lack of dps talents and have a lot of additional points to throw into prot and holy.. What I want to know is whether this is going to remain the norm for ret because in relation to the other hybrid classes we are on the bottom of the barrel now. I’m not asking for any handouts here, I’m just asking for some clarity on this. Why is ret being lead down the path of being benched in PvE again? Please bring some clarity so I can decide which class to re-roll to.

Also take a look at the parses for ulduar in GC's thread. Look at who is on the bottom...ret palys...

I don't agree with you that these were PvE nerfs for PvP reasons. PvP got buffed for Ret in this patch. The thining of the trees, an extra burst attack, all benefits PvP and nothing for PvE.

I agree with a lot in your post, but not jumping to that conclusion.

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Q u o t e:
I don't agree with you that these were PvE nerfs for PvP reasons. PvP got buffed for Ret in this patch. The thining of the trees, an extra burst attack, all benefits PvP and nothing for PvE.

I agree with a lot in your post, but not jumping to that conclusion.

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Alot of the mentality behind the class changes seem to point towards arena balancing because of all the QQ, but that is another thread..

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Q u o t e:


Alot of the mentality behind the class changes seem to point towards arena balancing because of all the QQ, but that is another thread..

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Actually if you were to look at the 3.1 changes, you'd have to assume that they wanted to nerf ret PvE and buff ret PvP.

I know this is completely opposite of what they *want* (they never did say they wanted to nerf ret PvP), but that's what these changes indicate.

In before "It's not final."

Any news on paladin relics?



or relics in general?

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Q u o t e:

When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

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Be careful though because buffing ds or really anything that can be used in pvp will cause even more imbalance with ret and their burst capabilities.

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Q u o t e:
I know Ret pallies have made many posts outlining their potential or realized problems. I'm sorry we haven't been able to answer those. We can only answer a very few a day.

But here is what I can tell you:

There is a bug in Righteous Vengeance that caused its damage to be too low (even accounting for the reduction in ranks). That bug has now been fixed. Note that even though the dot is Holy damage (which is normally not-resistable) mobs that are higher level than you can still resist some of the damage. This was not the actual bug, though some players made that assumption since they noticed RV had dropped (again even accounting for the rank reduction).

Spiritual Attunement could provide as much or more mana as Judgements of the Wise on fights with a lot of raid damage. To account for this, we are likely to buff the instant mana from Judgements of the Wise.

The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).

When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

Note that I made no promises. :) These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.

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Plans are to not have us go live as is though, yeah?

That's all I'm worried about.

Thanks for the update, it's noce to hear what you are discussing as possible solutions.

I'm still really concerned about the Blood Recoil. Gimmick fights aside, I regularly judge for 10K+ crits. My gear is near BiS. No doubt damage output and thus recoil will continue to climb as gear increases in uldar. By the time you factor in the judgement recoil, and seal recoil, I lose 25% of my HP every 8 seconds - just DPSing.

Gimmick fights included, this week I dropped a 31400+ judgement recoiling over 10K on myself on malygos, jsut as he arcane breathed me. The combat log entries were about .3 seconds apart. Recoil+Random boss attacks are already killing players for no fault of their own. It's not because I was a bad player. Why do you allow players to randomly die like that?

If this is the route you wish to go, why not just add an abilty to every boss to the game, so it may occasionally randomly target a player and one shot them? If this is the route you really want to go, spread the love around and don't just target paladins.

Why does ret need to pay a penalty to DPS, with no benefits? Why not just tack on 33% mutilate damage comes back to rogues, you know - "just because". When it all boils down to it when doing challenging content, and the chips are on the table, where DPS1 = DPS2, but DPS2 requires a lot more healing in an already stressed healing environment, who are you going to take? DPS1 being every other DPS spec in the game, DPS spec 2 being ret paladins exclusively.

Well... thank you for keeping us informed. Even if you have nothing certain to tell us it's good to know you're aware of the problems.

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Q u o t e:
Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

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Other paladins might disagree with me, but I would actually like to see the buff added to attacks that hit single targets as opposed to buffing our multi target attacks. I don't have any suggestions but my reasoning behind the request is:

A) for times when AE is not feasible (also assuming that I can sustain a heavy AE rotation due to mana issues)
B) for fights where I only attack one target, the sustained DPS might be slow--the potential DPS being lost...


Also, RV is good, but since it doesn't stack, without parsing, it just doesn't sound like it would increase DPS by a significant or even small margin...

I'm sure you must have done some testing on JotW already, do you have any number in mind? 20% doesnt seem like enough. What spells do you plan to allow us to use in our rotation, is consecration one of them?

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Q u o t e:


When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

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a little low? well there's an understatement.

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Q u o t e:
I know Ret pallies have made many posts outlining their potential or realized problems. I'm sorry we haven't been able to answer those. We can only answer a very few a day.

But here is what I can tell you:

There is a bug in Righteous Vengeance that caused its damage to be too low (even accounting for the reduction in ranks). That bug has now been fixed. Note that even though the dot is Holy damage (which is normally not-resistable) mobs that are higher level than you can still resist some of the damage. This was not the actual bug, though some players made that assumption since they noticed RV had dropped (again even accounting for the rank reduction).

Spiritual Attunement could provide as much or more mana as Judgements of the Wise on fights with a lot of raid damage. To account for this, we are likely to buff the instant mana from Judgements of the Wise.

The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).

When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

Note that I made no promises. :) These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.

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i would love you forever if you reverted divine storm back to holy damage.

also please give crusader strike a secondary effect. its the only talented melee strike in the game that dosnt have one.

2 things i want to see from ret.

blood recoil tuned way down. or even just make command a better blood.

more things procing RV (and i don't know if they fixed it on the ptr but.....its breaking repent :'(

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Q u o t e:
i would love you forever if you reverted divine storm back to holy damage.

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i would to but, i donno in order for me to kill tank like things i just kite and judge go more on a healbot mode. but meh w/e floats your boat.

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Q u o t e:
The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).

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How about this Ghostcrawler:

Glyph of Seal of Blood: When the paladin recieves self-inflicted damage from Seal of Blood and its judgement, he/she will regain 10% of that damage as mana.

If I worded it wrong: you get mana back based on how much SoB hurts you (10% worth). Isn't this what SA did for us anyway? Also, the other 2 specs could benefit slightly from this, but not nearly as much as a retadin. Other than that, I'm glad to hear you guys haven't forgotten about us.

So the plan is to leave the emo damage a ret inflicts upon himself with martyr alone. Why are paladins the only dps class that take more self inflicted damage then an off tank? What justification is there for this? You have a bunch of dps classes, all doing X damage, and then there's ret paladins who deal X damage but also in addition to that take significant self damage that no other dps class takes. How is this balanced?

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Q u o t e:
When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

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So your going to increase Paladin Burst? Cool

also, am i the only pally who doesn't have mana issues ever? you do have wisdom judged up no?