World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Blizzard's Vision

Dallanna

< Malice >

Sargeras

180. Re: Blizzard's Vision 10/31/2009 11:17:33 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

Not that I disagree with your underlying point, but what an awful analogy!

It's true, though.

Old Dwarven Adage: Subtlety? What's that?
My first paladin: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&n=Iliya

Knowing

< The Prophecy >

Altar of Storms

181. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/01/2009 08:52:45 AM PST

Resil will fix it, right?

Kururugi

< KOPITIAM >

Barthilas

182. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/01/2009 11:09:57 PM PST

Q u o t e:

Ret should be viable in Arena and all aspects of the game. You have to be very careful when you analyze Arena statistics however. If say Shadow priests aren't viable in Arena, then many Shadow priests would rather stop competing than to go Disc. We have found that many paladins will switch specs at the drop of a hat for PvP purposes. You individually may not, but that doesn't prove the trend invalid. So if actual Ret spec paladins are low, you have to ask yourself how many of them are essentially behaving like Ret paladins but going to get a great talent deep in Holy or Prot. How many of them switched to Prot because Prot is too good at healing? You can't just jump to a "buff Ret" solution.

A despot will never admit to his mistake.

GC, so what if you prove the trend to be valid? It doesn't change the underlying fact that Ret are still not

viable in Arena. Faced with such problem individuals behave differently, and i have seen a fair bit of

them gone Holy or Prot including myself. Trend is ever changing, but don't figures backed with players

feedback mean anything? Rerolling aside, the crux of the problem isn't being tackled at all.

Circumventing the issue isn't being helpful in the least bit.

Sartecho

< Aftermath >

Korialstrasz

183. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 12:07:41 AM PST

First of all, yes, I will change from ret to holy if I need to in order to feel competitive. I've been resisting it for a couple of seasons now and it has finally gotten to the point where I feel that I have to. I don't want to. Lemme tell you, grinding out a full second set of PVP gear sucks. I've already pounded out my full Relentless set for ret. Having to do it again for holy is brutal.

With regards to using a Sacred Shield nerf in order to keep prot from being a healing spec:

Why on God's green Earth does prot need to have a talent that helps them heal? I tanked a ton in BC and I was excited when I saw that there were gonna be talents to help me be valuable when I wasn't tanking. I was imagining situations like Hyjal where I tanked trash and then I wasn't needed as a tank for the boss. Woot, with these new talents I'd be able to be still helpful as prot spec but not tanking.

The thing is, that situation NEVER comes up in Wrath. We never run as many tanks as we used to. In Hyjal we'd often have four tanks and rarely even five depending on who was in the raid. In Wrath it's almost always two, so you don't ever have that off-tank standing around with nothing to do. In addition to that change, we also have dual spec now. If we have a fight that requires three tanks followed by a fight that only requires two, we just ask one of the tanks to change over to a DPS spec. There's no need for the prot pallie to be able to off-heal. He just goes to ret.

Why not change Touched by the Light to only give the spellpower bonus and just remove the increased size of crit heals? It doesn't make any sense to me at all to have a talent deep in the prot tree that increases the size of heals.

Elecia

Arena Tournament 2

184. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 12:12:43 AM PST

Q u o t e:

Perhaps Retribution is tanky at his level of PvP play. Unfortunately it stops being tanky at around 1400 rating or so once people learn to attack the same target and form comps with healing debuff available.

Perhaps he meant relatively? Seemed pretty obvious.

I think you deserve a little credit. No one's ever dodged that shot of mine.. But nobody gets lucky twice, either!

Kilergoose

< So Frsh I bleed Fuhb… >

Eredar

186. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 01:59:50 AM PST

Q u o t e:
First of all, yes, I will change from ret to holy if I need to in order to feel competitive. I've been resisting it for a couple of seasons now and it has finally gotten to the point where I feel that I have to. I don't want to. Lemme tell you, grinding out a full second set of PVP gear sucks. I've already pounded out my full Relentless set for ret. Having to do it again for holy is brutal.

With regards to using a Sacred Shield nerf in order to keep prot from being a healing spec:

Why on God's green Earth does prot need to have a talent that helps them heal? I tanked a ton in BC and I was excited when I saw that there were gonna be talents to help me be valuable when I wasn't tanking. I was imagining situations like Hyjal where I tanked trash and then I wasn't needed as a tank for the boss. Woot, with these new talents I'd be able to be still helpful as prot spec but not tanking.

The thing is, that situation NEVER comes up in Wrath. We never run as many tanks as we used to. In Hyjal we'd often have four tanks and rarely even five depending on who was in the raid. In Wrath it's almost always two, so you don't ever have that off-tank standing around with nothing to do. In addition to that change, we also have dual spec now. If we have a fight that requires three tanks followed by a fight that only requires two, we just ask one of the tanks to change over to a DPS spec. There's no need for the prot pallie to be able to off-heal. He just goes to ret.

Why not change Touched by the Light to only give the spellpower bonus and just remove the increased size of crit heals? It doesn't make any sense to me at all to have a talent deep in the prot tree that increases the size of heals.

believe me i want to cry aswell

"Sorry, we can't hear you over the sound of air hitting our face from the servants that are fanning us with 100 dollar bills."

Vampîre

Uther

187. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 04:28:45 AM PST

Q u o t e:
Resil will fix it, right?

Resil will make it better, right?

Schadrach

< Noble Assembly >

Arygos

188. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 05:37:55 AM PST

Q u o t e:
The point of that whole post I made was that nearly always when experienced players are asking what the vision is, it's not because they don't know or because not knowing somehow affects their gameplay. It's because they want to have a handy weapon in their arsenal for arguing for buffs or nerfs. "Blizzard said we have potent defenses. I die too fast. Therefore Blizzard has to buff me."

Players who are very new to WoW might legitimately wonder the difference between a paladin and warrior or a mage and warlock. If you're here posting almost by definition you are not new to WoW.

I want to throw out an alternate reason why those particular questions come up: Sometimes, Blizzard makes a change that seems outright bizarre based on current conceptions of how things ought to work. This often leads to "If we aren't supposed to work like *this* then how are we supposed to work, especially if we also aren't supposed to work like *that*" where there may or may not be a false dichotomy in the statement.

I for one would love to see a list of every spec in the game from Blizzard with a paragraph or two about what role Blizzard sees them filling (both wrt the class as a whole and the game as a whole), what mechanics they are meant to use/emphasize (which strikes we *should* prefer on a given spec of DK, why Affliction relies on Destruction but not the other way around like it does, etc) including some notes on the long term (Cataclysm and later) vision of how it *should* work over how it *does* work.

At the heart of every Warlock nerf, there lies an angry Mage.

Thantor

< Entombed Souls >

Scilla

189. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 06:57:02 AM PST

Q u o t e:
So if actual Ret spec paladins are low, you have to ask yourself how many of them are essentially behaving like Ret paladins but going to get a great talent deep in Holy or Prot. How many of them switched to Prot because Prot is too good at healing? You can't just jump to a "buff Ret" solution.

so ignoring the problem is a more preferred solution? face it the class is broken. your "smart" remarks aside, something drastic has to be done.

rets arent very arena friendly for 1 reason....need of offensive, pvp utility. loosing a defensive one without compensation of an offensive one is a recipe for disaster. (or just "pigeon hole"ing us into holy.).

[ Post edited by Thantor ]

INTERLOPERS! prepare to face NOT ONE, BUT TWO JORMUNGAR WORMS!

Thantor

< Entombed Souls >

Scilla

190. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 07:07:22 AM PST

Q u o t e:

I want to throw out an alternate reason why those particular questions come up: Sometimes, Blizzard makes a change that seems outright bizarre based on current conceptions of how things ought to work. This often leads to "If we aren't supposed to work like *this* then how are we supposed to work, especially if we also aren't supposed to work like *that*" where there may or may not be a false dichotomy in the statement.

I for one would love to see a list of every spec in the game from Blizzard with a paragraph or two about what role Blizzard sees them filling (both wrt the class as a whole and the game as a whole), what mechanics they are meant to use/emphasize (which strikes we *should* prefer on a given spec of DK, why Affliction relies on Destruction but not the other way around like it does, etc) including some notes on the long term (Cataclysm and later) vision of how it *should* work over how it *does* work.

this is an interesting post...the thing is when it comes to arena or pvp in general the players vision is simply to win. it doesnt matter how they have to do it. It the holy tree doesnt offer enough pvp utilities needed to do that and the prot or ret tree do, people are going to migrate over to the one that makes them win, especially if they are so dedicated to do so. a post about what ought to be isnt going to change that. not many classes have the same mechanic problems as paladins have. if you want (and when i say you i mean blizzard) want all specs of the paladin class to be viable there has to be an overhaul of the talent trees. maybe use seals in a different way...like stances or forms.

INTERLOPERS! prepare to face NOT ONE, BUT TWO JORMUNGAR WORMS!

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

191. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 09:53:19 AM PST

Q u o t e:
People are failing to realize the actual point of the SS change and what Blizzard is minorly attempting to do with this patch. The Paladin class has always suffered from one core issue - too much of their healing utility is base-line with very little actually coming from Holy talents. We see this time and time again with each and every real change made to the Paladin class. Holy simply does too little in terms of providing healing out-put. this puts down an issue where not only does the Holy talent tree need to change drastically, but so too does the base-line Paladin abilities.

Quoting Murmurs here, and it's probably worth going back to read his whole post.

I'll add it's also a problem where paladins as a whole are too defensive and not just the Protection spec ones. You see people describing fighting a Retribution paladin as a three phase boss fight. You might get them down, but then they can reset the fight with Lay on Hands. You get them down again and they bubble and heal. Compare this to an Arms warrior -- do they do great damage in PvP? Yes. Are they invulnerable? No. It's cool for paladins to care more about healing than do warriors, for I hope obvious reasons. However, if you are up against a Holy paladin, you should know that one of your greatest challenges should be dealing with their capacity to heal. If you are up against a Prot paladin, you should be concerned with their capacity to take hits. If you are up against a Ret paladin, you should be concerned with how much damage they should deal. You should not, generally, be nearly as concerend about the Prot's ability to self-heal or the Ret's ability to tank you.

I said this recently, but to reiterate, for most of the other hybrids, picking a role in a fight is much more of a commitment. Sure the Arms warrior can go Defensive Stance and put on a shield, but that doesn't turn them into a Prot warrior. Nobody is super concerned about Feral druids shifting out to heal. We had big problems with DKs earlier being able to tank and deal damage with the same set of tools, but that's in a better place now. Shaman maybe the only other class besides paladins that are able to shift on the fly from dps to healing, but with their mail armor and lack of major defensive cooldowns they just don't feel as hard to kill.

Q u o t e:
The post you made seems self-defeating, or I'm not understanding it at all. At the beginning you say Ret should be viable in Arena... yet at the end of the paragraph you're saying Ret paladins are going deep into Holy and Prot--doesn't that mean Ret *isn't* viable? Ah, but I know what you'd say--you'd say "representation doesn't necessarily reflect viability."

Yes, that is all I meant. When A >>>> B, you can't really claim B is too weak vs. other classes or specs based only on the evidence that so many people choose A. Try to focus less on linking to easily found statistics on Arena comp or max dps. Most players are aware of them and without really strong analysis, just linking them is rarely contributing much to the discussion. Many threads between this one and my original mocked this as “GC sez go Holy.” Make fewer inane conclusions like this and you will probably see me post more.

Q u o t e:
I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard keeps changing the "view" of each paladin spec. The OP is correct in that Blizzard HID the fact that the only end-game viable spec in Vanilla was purposely Holy.

“Keeps changing” = Vanilla has 1 spec. BC has 2 specs. LK has 3 specs.

I don’t think it was much of a mystery that paladins were supposed to heal in Molten Core. There was no Arena back then, so it’s impossible to talk about what the Arena-viable spec was supposed to be. All of the changes since then have been to prop up Protection and Retribution as “real” specs. Sometimes we overcompensate and make them too good, at which point we have to nerf them. We haven’t really changed the vision of the paladin other than embracing that the class has multiple specs and some players like one more than the others.

[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ]

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

192. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 09:53:28 AM PST

Q u o t e:
1. Why are you targetting SS when it was never a big factor to begin with? Why can't ret, which had it damage reduced use SS as it does now? Where is Ret utility. We have very little. Why is SS being targetted to Holy when Holy is the spec that needs it the LEAST.

Holy needs it the most in our opinion. Holy needs to be a tree that specializes in healing (and damage prevention as a source of healing), not just the more healing-focused tree of a very healing-focused class.

Q u o t e:
2. Why does Blizzard use an AXE when a knife should be used? I think there were 1000 ways presented to fix SoC before the huge nerf. Now that SoC is next to useless in almost all scenarios we aren't even taking it. SoC is THE ret seal. What gives?

This is just “don’t nerf me, bro” talk. We have been so gentle with paladin nerfs because we’ve been so concerned with returning to lolret, that paladins as a class are still very powerful in end-game LK in both PvE and PvP. Yes, it’s not fun to be nerfed. We get that. There is very little evidence we have over-nerfed paladins at any time in the past couple of years. There is plenty of evidence that we haven’t nerfed them enough.

And now for a housekeeping note:

Q u o t e:
Quite honestly from the responses the only thing im gathering is their intention is to never help ret paladins at all because holy is way too much OP. so i guess It's time to start leveling a new character.

Sigh. Banned for excessive QQ. QQ won't help you here. All it will do is silence you. Make us spend less time deleting the garbage and we would have more time to make posts that players actually care to read. Why is this such a difficult concept? Go back and look at how much the post numbers jump around in this thread and you will get a sense for how much moderation it has required (and to be fair, not just from paladin posters).

Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Reygahnci

< of Calamitous Intent >

Laughing Skull

193. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 10:02:54 AM PST

Q u o t e:

Holy needs it the most in our opinion. Holy needs to be a tree that specializes in healing (and damage prevention as a source of healing), not just the more healing-focused tree of a very healing-focused class.

This is just “don’t nerf me, bro” talk. We have been so gentle with paladin nerfs because we’ve been so concerned with returning to lolret, that paladins as a class are still very powerful in end-game LK in both PvE and PvP. Yes, it’s not fun to be nerfed. We get that. There is very little evidence we have over-nerfed paladins at any time in the past couple of years. There is plenty of evidence that we haven’t nerfed them enough.

And now for a housekeeping note:

Sigh. Banned for excessive QQ. QQ won't help you here. All it will do is silence you. Make us spend less time deleting the garbage and we would have more time to make posts that players actually care to read. Why is this such a difficult concept? Go back and look at how much the post numbers jump around in this thread and you will get a sense for how much moderation it has required (and to be fair, not just from paladin posters).

I'm not sure why it has taken a post from GC for Pallies to understand that Healing abilities are supposed to be GREAT for the healing-specs and LESS-GREAT for the other specs.

SS is a Holy ability which is used in the healing role.

Prot is not DESIGNED to heal primarily.
Ret is not DESIGNED to heal primarily.

Why is this concept SOOOO hard for pallies? They didn't make Nourish any good at all for Balance/Feral druids... we aren't complaining about it, either.

[ Post edited by Reygahnci ]

The only way to fight pretentiousness is with pure unadulterated trolling, please enjoy some of my best of the latter.
http://druidify.blogspot.com/

Judacis

< VoS >

Sargeras

194. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 10:06:56 AM PST

Q u o t e:
You see people describing fighting a Retribution paladin as a three phase boss fight. You might get them down, but then they can reset the fight with Lay on Hands. You get them down again and they bubble and heal.

It took the paladin almost 3 lives to defeat his opponent's 1 life but yet you are nerfing the ret paladin. Clearly the ret paladin's survivability wasn't too much. Rets are tanky but his opponent was able to "kill" him almost 3 times? A retribution paladin isn't tanky in PvP. The most basic strategy in high arena (where ret paladins are rare) is to force bubble and kill the ret paladin.

Rets are not tanks in PvP. Stop saying it. You're a developer. Stop plastering these forums with this fallacy.

Rets are not tanks in PvP.

Reygahnci

< of Calamitous Intent >

Laughing Skull

195. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 10:08:55 AM PST

Q u o t e:

It took the paladin almost 3 lives to defeat his opponent's 1 life but yet you are nerfing the ret paladin. Clearly the ret paladin's survivability wasn't too much. Rets are tanky but his opponent was able to "kill" him almost 3 times? A retribution paladin isn't tanky in PvP. The most basic strategy in high arena (where ret paladins are rare) is to force bubble and kill the ret paladin.

Rets are not tanks in PvP. Stop saying it. You're a developer. Stop plastering these forums with this fallacy.

Rets are not tanks in PvP.

Pretty sure that requiring a Ret pally to "die" 3 times to get an actual kill is the definition of "tanky".

The only way to fight pretentiousness is with pure unadulterated trolling, please enjoy some of my best of the latter.
http://druidify.blogspot.com/

Judacis

< VoS >

Sargeras

198. Re: Blizzard's Vision 11/02/2009 10:16:50 AM PST

Q u o t e:

Pretty sure that requiring a Ret pally to "die" 3 times to get an actual kill is the definition of "tanky".

Tanky would mean the opponent didn't score a single "kill". LoH has a cooldown of 15 min (glyphed) and isn't usable in arena. So once every 15 min, a paladin has 3 lives. It's fair that the paladin was able to score 1 kill in the time the other person scored 3?

In arena, after our bubble is gone we're pretty much done. 2 minute forebearance assures that. Add a hard counter (I thought these weren't supposed to exist) and bubble won't last more than 2 seconds. Divine Sacrifce and Hand of Sac are not defensive cooldowns. Divine Protection and Hand of Protection can't be used after bubble. Sacred Shield will be useless next patch. Once our bubble is gone, we're left with little defense.

Going immune for up to 12 seconds out of 5 minutes isn't tanky. The sooner people (including devs) get that through their head, the better.

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