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Ret Paladin Cataclysm Beta – Build 12759
15 August 2010
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Today, I get to work and open my browser. I check the forums on this site here, try to answer a few comments, and then move on over to MMO Champion to see the latest WoW news. New Build info is up with class specifics! Sweet! Or so I thought…
For any of you Rets that are in Beta, is our damage that outrageous? I really, really am not one to complain, but it’s hard to sit here, and read the all the nerfs we just got, and try to justify without testing. It’s very difficult from my perspective.
Let’s just get the notes over with. You are forewarned. You may leave this post slightly unsatisfied. You can find the complete Beta build notes at MMO CHAMPION.
Judgement of Vengeance is now named Judgement of Truth. Makes sense. More Paladin appropriate name.
Seal of Truth now deals 16% weapon damage when it’s stacked to 5 times. (Down from 33%) Does not make sense. This just got knocked down 50%. One of our biggest DPS versions on live just got smacked down to Nerftown. I really hope to find the reason for this on EJ or the WoW forums somewhere.
Crusader Strike now has a 4.5 sec cooldown. (Up from 4 sec) Supposedly affected by haste. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Inquiry of Faith now increases the damage done by Seal of Truth by 10/20/30% (Down from 20/40/60%) and now also increases the duration of Inquisition by 50/100/150%. Mixed feelings here. Another trip to Nerftown, Seal of Truth (formerly SoV) damage increase down to 30% at max level from 60%. That’s pretty huge. However, one of the significant DPS boosts here is the Inquisition buff. With 3 charges of Holy power, Inquisition normally gives us 30% increase to Holy damage for 30 seconds. The 150% duration buff brings that total to 75 seconds, or one minute 15 seconds. Not too shabby.
Seals of Command now deals 7% weapon damage, down from 15%. Not even going to go there. My favorite Ret Seal buff got a severe demotion.
Divine Purpose revamped – The following attacks have a 20% chance to generate Holy Power: Judgement, Exorcism, Templar’s Verdict, Divine Storm, Inquisition, Holy Wrath Interesting, not sure how it will play out. More abilities with a chance to generate Holy Power, but at a reduced rate (20% from 40%). Essentially, they doubled the amount of attacks (3 to 6), and halved the chance to proc. However, with Judgement added, and some simple number crunching, this should give us Holy Power more often than the previous version.
The Art of War now has a 10/20/30% chance to proc (up from 5/10/15%) but the effect cannot be triggered while Exorcism is on cooldown. Why is everything, “Here’s the good!” and then “Oh wait, one stipulation!”. Exorcism seems to be becoming a very intricate attack to work around.
Divine Storm now deals 22/74/150% weapon damage depending on your Holy Power. (Up from 22/50/90%) Thank you. Much love for Divine Storm and well deserved.
Improved Crusader Strike is gone, replaced with Sanctity of Battle (NYI) – Haste effects lower the cooldown of your Crusader Strike. See Crusader Strike above.
Improved Judgement is now a Tier 1 talent, down from Tier 2. Now increases the range of your Judgement by 10/20 yards instead of increasing its damage. Trying to help with gap closers. This does not help my DPS as much as the previous version. PvPers however, rejoice. Seew Long Arm of the Law below. Not particularly happy about this change. It seems it was made to simply accomodate Long Arm of the Law.
Conviction is gone. Noooooo! Bye bye good DPS.
Eye for an Eye now has a 20/40% chance to proc from magic attacks. (Old – 5/10% chance from all attacks) Yay Tanks and PvPers. PvEers move along.
Rule of Law is now a Tier 2 talent, up from Tier 1.
Long Arm of the Law *new* (Tier 3) – Your Judgement has a 50/100% chance to increase your movement speed by 30% for 4 sec when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you. Will see minimal use in Raids and PvE content. Yes, it’s helpful, but it won’t make or break our DPS. In PvP, I think this is as close to a gap closer as you guys will get. 15 yards seems a bit high, you can still get kited pretty easily under that. If it were 10 yards I’d say it was perfect. Of course, every other class would then call us overpowered 
Eternal Glory *new* (Tier 2) – Your Word of Glory has a 20/40% chance not to consume Holy Power. I just don’t see this as beneficial to my DPS. 
and and
Okay, thought I was done? Haha! Let’s take a peek into the other trees. Oh yes, there is more.
- Hand of Reckoning no longer deals damage if the target isn’t attacking you. This is now a flat taunt. This really hurts the speed of our leveling, because this was our main tool for pulling mobs. Kicking me when I’m already down.
- Consecration now costs 55% of base mana, up from 22% of base mana. Yes please! I would love to see over half my mana disappear from one apllication of Consecrate!
- Sense Undead is gone. Buh?
- Seal of Righteousness additional Holy Damage reduced by 50%. You guys already blasted Seals of Command, now you are stripping my main trash and PvE seal, too? Are we seriosuly doing that much damage in Beta?
It looks like an onslaught of nerf bats chasing wiffle balls on pink cotton clouds, while dancing with butterflies. The one comforting thought is that it’s still early enough in Beta that this will more than likely get remedied. It looks like they bottomed things out to see where they can move up. I think they set eveything too high in the beginning, and by taking this approach, the can move abilities and talents up more carefully, without breaking or injecting steroids to our DPS. That is my take on this slew of nerfs.
Let me know what you guys think. If I have misinterpretted any of these things, let me know! I want to know what you guys think about all this!
Today, I get to work and open my browser. I check the forums on this site here, try to answer a few comments, and then move on over to MMO Champion to see the latest WoW news. New Build info is up with class specifics! Sweet! Or so I thought…
It is a mixed bag, mostly for the negative, but it is still just a Beta and things will continue to change. I really think they are going a bit overboard, but that’s what they typically tend to do. Maybe on a positive side, if they nerf us too much fewer people will play Paladins and it might help curb the population a bit. Just wish they’d just bite the damn bullet and do what Warhammer did, which is have skills/talents that have both a PvP and PvE effect, so they are useful in both cases. The PvP only stuff is just annoying. And they need to rename Hand of Reckoning to something less powerful sounding, maybe Hand of Waving.
How about Hand of Poking. Or pestering. Lets just tap the guy on the shoulders and say hey. Why taunt? you might as well just run up in to the mob.
I don’t like consecration. It damn well better cause 4times the damage it does now for over half of my mana.WTH cost half of ur mana? there has to be something to it. IT better last the whole fight! or we better have a bad as Proc
Sense undead. Good bye glyph of sense undead. This is one of the least “nerfs” i am concerned about.
HOw about they just give us a smoke grenade to thro like the rogues and consider it a job well done, for nerfing us.
I am a retadin by heart it was my first toon and i will never give up on them!So come hell or high water i will be playing with my pally no matter how bad he is.
I never understand why they nerf a ton of stuff at once instead of a few things at a time to balance it out. Doing so much at a time seems to me it would be harder to find what the real culprit was to start with giving us too high of dmg output.
Well it is still in Beta testing and we know how Blizz makes changes then with some of them realize how stupid it was and changes it again. I would not bank on everything staying like this. I looked at it and alot of it is pure stupid. I am talking about the 50% reduction stuff. Oh but wait the new Paladin Mace – a stick with cotton candy on it that hits for -15.. WOOT can’t wait for that. I completely understand that Paladin’s are overpowered abit but seriously this much nerfing? Ok then lets request that the warriors Mortal strike be reduced by 50%. lol then we can hear them cry about that. Ok blizz put the thinking caps back on and redo this…maybe some of them forgot to put them on hmmmmm…maybe….
Yeah, as I said above, it looks like they bottomed everything out. To us, it looks awful. But my hope is that they are using this as a way to start slowly increasing our DPS to balance it out with the rest of the classes.
I am sure we will see better builds than this one, but it still doesn’t take away the WTF factor
Long Arm of the Law not that useful in pve? Blasphemy! It’s perfect for movement fights, such us PP hc or BPC hc. More of that plz, i wish i had it aleready…
As for the rest… Well, our rotation is still not formed. We’ll see how it’ll all work out, i expect lots of changes anyway.
Not to mention, good bye consecration, good riddance that you’re gone. I won’t miss you. Won’t have to worry about mana issues, and won’t have to use this “filler” spell.
Overall, some interesting mechanic changes here and there, some dissapointing nerfs here and there, but it’s not the end of the world. Lot’s of time will pass till Retri is polished to a nice shine.
Cheers,
Elbozo
Inquisition’s duration has not been increased for Rets. It has been decreased for everyone else. Inquisition now has an untalented max duration of 12 seconds. All that talent does is bring it back to 30 seconds for Ret.
I do like the PvP changes because basically that’s the place where I feel Retribution Paladins need more help (I always dreamt about 30 meters Ret Judgments), although any nerf to Paladins is not welcome by me. The change that I’m unhappiest is Seal of Command because that’s my favorite Seal.
Well it does seem like they nerfed us pallys a lot so they can move up from there. Please tell me they are doing the same with all of the other classes too because this would be crazy if only Pallys are being nerfed. Are changes being made to other classes as much as the changes are being made to us pallys?
to tell you the truth
to compare we need to see how OTHER hybrid classes are doing
1 DK’s
2. warriors(yes they are hybrid)
3 shamans
4 druids
and last but not least
5. priest
the pure classes as mentioned by blizzard development should always be top dps (yes yes i dun like to see scrubs top just cause of class difference and we have to play our best, push the potting limit and gimic our damage by not switching targets just to make sure SOV stays up)
but as of this moment, the maths/gear/end game content is not out atm/ skills/raid awareness is another issue… not to mention boss hp/ gear changes/mastery/stats/ and rotations are not really out yet for general testing
crying to early is not going to help atm and in cata beta… the raiders are mostly in top end gear + underleveled… when all hit 85 with all the new stuff included n geared .. then only can actual comparisons be done and i bet not many of those will be available till cata actually launches
so sit back relax n pray we get more PVE buffs and less stupid stuff to worry about…
UNless there is in an issue with the talent not having been implemented properly, Divine Purpose still makes the attached spells have a 40% chance to generate Holy Power, after the second point of the talent
The consecration “nerf” isn’t really a nerf. Paladins, regardless of your spec are expected to run in and cast it on every pull (sometimes even if there’s only 1 mob). Because Ret already has Divine Storm and Holy pally’s shouldn’t be running in to AoE dps anyway, Blizz is putting Consecrate back to where it’s supposed to be “situational AoE threat” for Prot Pally’s. If you noticed, they also added “Hallowed Ground” to Tier3 of Prot. Increases Consecrate’s dmg by 40% AND decreases it’s mana cost by 80% what’s 20% of 120% (the consecrate now costs 120% of it’s original value)? that’s means blizz has made Consecrate cost 60% less for tanks and a crap ton for Ret. Simply stated, Ret’s don’t use Consecrate anymore. It was just a button you hit for lack of anything that wasn’t on cd. Blizz gives you more buttons to hit, but takes this one away.
The only thing i can really say ’bout this is………
WHAT THE FLOGGITZ?!!!!!!!!!!!!
But i know the reason for this mess
what happened in fourms before this :
RETS : (They complain about having a merciless rotation like lolferal while having lolmobility thats a shame….)
Blizz : WHAT DO U WANT….PINK KNIGHTS?….U HAVE GOTTA AN INTERRUPT…AND WE WILL GIVE U A LOLLIPOP TOO!
RETS : WE WANT MOBILITY TO BE ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH THIS LOLROTATION
MAGES : yeah yeah give em…..they wont catch up with us anywayz
ROGUES : NO WAY!…THEY WEAR PLATE AND….. PLAPLAPLA
DKS : sigh……
PRIESTS : go give em a 50% snare and let ‘em stfu
WARRIORS : IF PALLYS GOT A SNARE AND/OR A GAP CLOSER…GIMME MY BUUUUUUUBLE
RETS : GIVE US MOBILITY PLX CUZ WE HAVE SUPERIOR MOBILITY PROBLEMS AND OUR CLEANSE IS NO LONGER AND LOLHOF IS DISPELLABLE……
BLIZZ : Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmf ! OKAY OKAY WE WILL GIVE U LOL
(talking with itself)…..remember rets…..u asked for it….hahaha!
and now we suffer that……
i dont say we were wrong in our complaining…..but thats what i was seeing in fourms
RETS : NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
BLIZZ : MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
thanks for watchin’
Hmmm, To be honest i feel this is more a test thus being beta than something written in stone. its like eliminating the obvious. like Thats to high, But thats to low. so well go for the middle. by the end of beta id expect most of that stuff to have been updated to be in the middle
And I thought the BC beatdown on pallies was bad. Here is what I don’t get… As I combed through the many articles for some shred of truth or verification of how bad the nerfs were going to be (and they are bad), I keep reading the Blizz perspective that pallies are going to be more ‘challenging’, ‘hip’, or ‘fun!’ Really?
Questing for me is a chore. Guildies are always crying for me to walk them through their levels… what outlet do I have left other than to say eff it all and create a hunter twink? PVP!
As has been stated more times than bears repeating, where is the Holy gap closer to make Ret Pally more competetive in arenas? Now you want to steal my cheap heals too? Why not take my girlfriend Blizzard? Blah!! As my name implies, if you are going to nerf me from behind, at least give me a courtesy reach around … perhaps, well, blah! There is no real hope at this point if the beta nerf translates into a complete gay on Ret Pally.
Seriously, seriously?! I only heal the ones that I like. Blizz stop forcing me into being a Holy pally at best, and the live action version of the Lock’s Blue Meanie at worse — big, ineffective, and there to take the initial brunt of damage in a run.
Now that I got the initial ‘uh oh!’ reaction out of the way, consecration is a useless dps made even worse in anything but pve. If consecration in pvp is going to decide a win or loss scenario for me, I might as well alt tab back to the smurfs in the other window.
Bliz, here is a wacky concept… cheap heals, strong seals, a choice of dps, and for those moments that I am forced to watch porn while waiting for the kite to wear off, a mediocre gap closer since you won’t give us anything else? It might not bring more ret pallies to the table but it would sure as hell be an olive branch to the ones that you have pissed off!
God I pray they fix this nerf. How many times can they take ret pallies to the woodshed needlessly?
Last thought (I promise!), if Blizz is going to give us a pet which seems the hip thing to do (wtf?!), why not make it a lvl 85 player priest we can conjure to do the things that clearly we aren’t meant to do? More and more I feel like the Blizz idea of a battle paladin is that of the character Mugsy from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons — big, somewhat intimidating, yet ultimately ineffective in anything other than running headlong into the fray screaming “I got him boss!”
Are Ret Pallies going the way of customizable pets in the Wowiverse? I thought that was what druids were for. At least druids get to transform into a cow to make up for their lack of a true concept.
I’m seriously.. Im a retri paladin and I always loved my class.. but now I really had enogught.. Why blizzard continue to harass paladins?? Why? Is the most controversial class of all times!! Every expansion paladin dps continue to grow or fall down -.- why no one cares if aa warlock critts 15k with a spell or if a felguard can do whirlwind or shaman can critt 10k with only a spell like mage?? Why blizzard gave to paladin an other source of low dps??? And monokey classes like all casters are always the same??? Why?? I don’t understand but I think that paladins are the black ships.. and players decided to criticize all together paladins so blizzard focus on paladins and not on all other problems of that stupid game…
I think the best way to look at this is that we are playing a new breed of Ret Paladin. I think at level 85, the DPS will be there. It will be different, and it might take more skill to get there, but it will be obtainable.
One thing we often overlook is how POWERFUL we are in WotLK. In PvE content, we are a one-man wrecking ball, more so than any other class. In PvP, well, that’s another topic entirely. But in all truth and honesty, we love our class right now because it can do just about anything we want. Cataclysm puts us on more of an even playing field with other classes.
Yes, tons of our current abilities are getting hit with the nerf bat, but we are gaining others as well. Time will heal these wounds, and I think we will still enjoy the class tremendously!
F cataclysm swtor is around the corner . gotta walk in a pallies shoes to understand we are not steamrolling anyone with adequate gear I keep seeing the same b.s that we just kill everything. That is horse crap we are decent at this moment but I do alot of pvp I see alot of duels its just not the way everyone says it is. we can get kited spell stole silenced all very easily and we still depend on a rotation of big crits to be copetitive with other glasses this is not patch 3.o where we were running things so I think the face rolling killing everything scenerio is abit played out.
You have absolutely got to be kidding me!! Nerfing our judgements, giving us increased movement speed? We are a damn mdps class, stand behind bosses and beat the hell out of ‘em!! Who the hell cares about PvP? I play to have fun and down the end game bosses. PvP is a side note (which by the way pallies can dominate PvP still with massive amounts of damage, now the damage seems to be going away). And essentially holy power is a version of combo points. If I wanted to play a rogue, I would roll one. A pally rotation is based on your ability to make instant decisions at opportune times, especially with two piece t10 set bonuses for Divine Storm. This pally is not happy at all about these ludicrous changes to the style of play.
Well, installed the patch and can confirm 100% that we have been nerfed to the hilt. On the test dummy i’m lucky to get 4k dps (my gs is 5.9k). WTF?
Meanwhile, locks and mages standing next to me getting between 9-12k on a TEST DUMMY.
Seriously. This pisses me off no end. And the holy power thing and rotations completely changed, it’s like a whole new class.
I’m returning to hunter
I quit wow today and switch to Eve online. I am tired from paladin nerfs in absolutely every update or patch presented in last two years.
yeah its very frustrateing.. And i agree with both sides..”Pros and Cons” Especially goin from 6k dps down to 3k..lost 10% of my crit rateing right off the bat… And 1k +! To my atk power.. I dont mind the changes.. Seems easy enough to get used to.. But we did get hit hard.. And they implemented the change way to fast.. Blizz say’s ” here a bunch of blah, figure it out! ” now protadin tanking.. I like it much better now..
Protadin.. Divine plea seemed useless to me i had no mana issues w/o it “very suprisingly” and was tanking HoR at the time last night.. Now back to Ret cause i preffer Mdps.. Alot of us worked hard to do great raid DMG to compete with other Dps classes and pretty much all of us feel that the reward we got for time spent was a nerf butt plug =/ im optimistic like the OP of this thread.. But they changed it all way to fast..
Only good thing lol being way over hit cap.. I just reforged all my hit gear for mastery.. And stayed at 8% to hit.. They added a socket to librams too.. Woo +20 more strength.. Doesnt fill the gap for my lack of dps now.. Mastery didnt help fill the gap either..even with the no charge holypower proc.. Soo i dont see any significant dps increase to put me back at what i was dealing “pre 4.0.1″ after beatin a dummy for about an hour.. Only worry now is bein the nerd on the bench that never gets picked for the basket ball team “raid” because other Mdps and Rdps can do more dps..
honestly i havent tested Ret spec in raid nor Random heroics yet so i havent seen how bad any other classes dps has gotten..when it comes to recount.. But it would be a shame to go from top dps to under the tank dps lol..guess we’ll find out kek…
on a side note…funny a couple of posts above mine have the word “flahblah” all in it… I use “shindig” and it got modified to say “Blah” instead
/fixed
Thanks for the heads up
hehe yer welcome.. I like shindig!
Heh, I tried to get everything awhile back, obviously I missed some
no worries there chief. Shindig blah happens =P ppl couldnt rant w/o them.. Anyhoo im curious as to how the new talent stacks up in raid and was hopeing some new posts might be up..” bored at work using the cell to check in ” i personaly like the changes, as in rotation and holy power..it adds a good dynamic Imo.. Just really not liking the loss in atk power and crit after the respec.. But meh.. Atleast we have a month and a couple weeks to figure it all out.
All, alot of the changes across paladin talents/abilities are just moved around. A reduction in one ability is actually mirrored by the addition to another. Hand of reckoning iis now just a taunt. it does not matter because the 30 yard range judgement talent in tier 1 ret tree is available to prot paladins and replaces the hand of reckoning as a pull. This kind of removal of effect in one talent to another is common with many effects across the board.
Again, consecration dmg tick is lowered, but hammer of righteous is now a full 8 yard frontal AOE. It has the same range as consecration, but frontal, so we are still AOE tanks. Also, the consecration cd is increased from 8 to 30s, but the cd on hammer is from 6 to 3 seconds, where we can spam it.
For the similar AOE effect, prot paladin uses hammer of righteous instead of consecration.
Note: hammer of righteous used to be only a 3 target effect, where it is now a frontal AOE.
1 point in seals of command in the Ret tree pretty much turns seal of the righteous into what seal of command used to do.. And beefs up your other seals some.. Exorcism is still insta cast off the art of war talent and is not tied with holy power. With just a little tweeking i got my dps back to 6.5 and 7.6 as an initial burst in the beginning expending CD’s Zeal, AW and HW and using Templars verdict soon as the mastery “hand of light” procs.. And i jus spammed TV when i used the Zealotry..or how ever its spelled.. Lol
Divine Storm gets pushed to the back burner along with Concencration..since T-10 no longer has the ability to refresh the DS cool down.. And holy power charges make TV the choice to use with the +255% weapon dmg.. So pretty much makes DS and concencrate situational for AoE trash mobs..
Assuming now that Holy wrath no longer just effects the undead just the 3 sec stun.. Which if glyphed can stun other garbage too.. Havent really confirmed it myself since most junk we fight is undead atm.. Soo guessin AoE trash mobs im gonna use Seal of the Righteous .. Then../judgment/ CS/ zealotry/ DS / Consencrate /holy wrath /CS/DS.. Or something to that effect..i havent tested this sooo.. Its jus a theory atm. But heh with plenty of raid AoE *cough* mages or locks *cough* would be a waste of time since trash drops extremely fast..
raided the weekly “patchwerk” lastnight.. Ppl musta been dustin off thier mages was 4 of them, 1 tank, 1 heal, 2 hunters and 2 mdps mages totally cranked the Recount.. The trash we killed along the way.. Was like kickin a empty cola can outta yer path while yer walkin through.. Soo ICC would be a tougher place to set an AoE trash rotation =/
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