Moar Ret?

[Yatokth]

Our eventual plan is to put Divine Shield on a shared 30 sec cooldown with Avenging Wrath. We also plan on changing Divine Shield's attack speed penalty (which isn't really much of a penalty) and have it apply to all damage done while the bubble is up.

Divine Protection would no longer have the attack penalty, but since Prot paladins typically talent out of that penalty, it won't have a big effect on tanking (though obviously that talent would need to do something slightly different).

All of this assumes that preventing AW from being used with DS actually makes the Ret tree a little more balanced. We'll need to monitor that a little bit longer first.

We are going to go ahead and change the mana drains to a percentage of mana so that Ret paladins don't lose so much larger a percentage of their mana than casters with 15K mana.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/12065191999-s-most-paladins-are-wanting-answers-to.html

A good few other posts by GC on pallies in there.

This makes sense, if they put Bubble at a flat damage mitigation, and put Wings on a shared cooldown (so you CAN use both in an arena match, but it leaves you slightly vulnerable for a bit. Have to rely on your team to help you out here.) then it'll be an actual meaningful choice.

[Taknar]

I want to see how they end up implementing it. I'm hoping they just put AW on forbarance, make forbarance 30 seconds and be done with it.

What I really hope they don't do is make it such that you can't use bubble with the wings up, because everyone will just macro the bubble to remove the wings and vice versa. Better to do something similar to the shaman elemental totems where they have a shared cooldown of 2 minutes.

[Leoren]

The thing I'm concerned about is just how long they mean by 'eventual'. Hopefully if they can already identify a plan this early on we'll see the change implemented early on in Wrath as opposed to having us wait for over a year. *Cough* 2.3, anyone?

[Yatokth]

The thing I'm concerned about is just how long they mean by 'eventual'. Hopefully if they can already identify a plan this early on we'll see the change implemented early on in Wrath as opposed to having us wait for over a year. *Cough* 2.3, anyone?

It'll probably be in the same patch they fix bugged deep wounds:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/12353995769-gc-deep-wounds-is-bugged-eta-on-fix.html

[Fhenrir]

What I really hope they don't do is make it such that you can't use bubble with the wings up, because everyone will just macro the bubble to remove the wings and vice versa. Better to do something similar to the shaman elemental totems where they have a shared cooldown of 2 minutes.

This wouldn't be a problem. What people disliked about bubble/AW is that you could use both at the same time, so you were invincible with a 20% boost to your damage output, which was highly reliant on burst damage/instants and wasn't affected much by the 100% increased swing speed time.

[Taknar]

This wouldn't be a problem. What people disliked about bubble/AW is that you could use both at the same time, so you were invincible with a 20% boost to your damage output, which was highly reliant on burst damage/instants and wasn't affected much by the 100% increased swing speed time.


Oh, I'm well aware of that. I'm just saying that unless AW and Bubble are truely locked out from one another, there is no conqsequence for using one or the other in the wrong situation. You'd just stop using one when you needed the other. It doesn't force a decision, just penalizes poorly planned out ones (by having to drop wings or bubble early). It's a difference in philosophy, that's all.

[Fhenrir]

I personally have always disliked the way it forces a "decision", because to any smart paladin that simply means "don't use your wings". Because in my experience, using wings and giving yourself even a minute of forbearance tends to get you killed as long as bubble or BoP are still up.

Not that I really care at this point, I do fine without wings. It just seems a very easy way to null the ability's PvP usage (and easily hinder it's PvE usage) entirely.

[Naheal]

I personally have always disliked the way it forces a "decision", because to any smart paladin that simply means "don't use your wings". Because in my experience, using wings and giving yourself even a minute of forbearance tends to get you killed as long as bubble or BoP are still up.


This is true, but there are situations where wings > bubble.

[Averilyna]

Any idea what the percentages will be on the Mana Drain abilities yet? I'm thinking this could actually help Mana Burning out on higher mana classes, while giving the low-mana people a way to not get screwed.

[Fhenrir]

This is true, but there are situations where wings > bubble.

I should've clarified. I meant in arenas.

[Taknar]

Any idea what the percentages will be on the Mana Drain abilities yet? I'm thinking this could actually help Mana Burning out on higher mana classes, while giving the low-mana people a way to not get screwed.

I wouldn't hold my breath, at least not for burn mana. They never even mentioned it among the "mana drains" when they were listing them as a problem. I suspect it will be about 6%, or about two spells, based on what it is now.

[Averilyna]

I wouldn't hold my breath, at least not for burn mana. They never even mentioned it among the "mana drains" when they were listing them as a problem. I suspect it will be about 6%, or about two spells, based on what it is now.

Hmm. I really hope it doesn't go that low. Current Mana Burn does roughly 1k mana a shot if there's no resil on the target. It drops down to roughly 700 on a max resil target. Since most casters (in PvP gear) have 10-12k mana pools, that's about 8 to 10% against no resil, and 5 to 7% against max resil.

6% pre-resil would be an across the board nerf to Mana Burn, and would negatively affect Priests against any class with mana, not just Ret Pallys. Now, 6% but removing the anti-mana drain part of resil might be ok, as it would be roughly equivalent to current Mana Burn against a max resil target. If this is what they're planning to do, it could actually work fairly well. Helps the low-mana classes, but keeps the balance the same against the high-mana people.

The only potential problem with changing to a percentage would be in PvE. Priests burning 6% of a boss's 120k+ mana pool and converting half of it to dmg? Hilarious, but slightly boken, methinks.

[Taknar]

The only potential problem with changing to a percentage would be in PvE. Priests burning 6% of a boss's 120k+ mana pool and converting half of it to dmg? Hilarious, but slightly boken, methinks.

You know, I hadn't thought of that. Expect to see the damage portion cut off Mana Burn as well then.

[Fhenrir]

Regarding mana burn, if it isn't directly related to ret/recent ret changes, I've made a new thread for you here (http://wow-tng.org/showthread.php?p=239752#post239752).