Daxxari posted a bit on the Word of Glory changes in Patch 4.1, and I’m going to break down my take on certain parts after I link the post. I agree with most of the reasonings, but I think there is a bit of reading between the lines as well.
The assessment that Word of Glory is meant for more occasional use is rather close to the mark. That’s also part of the reason that we’re comfortable with employing a cooldown solution in this case. We think that it’s more interesting for Word of Glory to be a reasonably powerful heal that’s used infrequently, than if it were a weaker heal used more often. We also like the way Word of Glory interacts with Vengeance because then the heal scales with the content. If you’re taking a lot of damage, the heal is more potent than it would be otherwise.
We also didn’t really think that healing was necessarily a problem for Protection paladins. We just weren’t happy with the style of gameplay it was causing players to adopt. We had tanks telling us “I just miss using actual attacks, like Shield of the Righteous. Every time I use SotR it feels like I’m playing wrong.” While technically a tank had a choice between threat and survival, we felt it was an illusion of choice because tanks often (and rightfully) worry about survival first and foremost. You still have the choice between generating threat and healing, but since the healing will be lower overall, the trade off should matter less.
The self-healing ability of other tanks has been brought up in this context. When comparing tanks, we look at the whole package, not individual abilities or talents. Deathknights, for example, are designed with less innate damage mitigation than Protection paladins, but they have a lot of self-healing to compensate. It’s okay, of course, for paladins to have some self-healing (they are a class with healing spells after all), but that has to be balanced against their better built-in damage mitigation. We try to tune tanking classes close enough so that they can all tank effectively, but without making them all function identically.
We’re not too concerned with keeping Protection viable in PvP. We know some players enjoy it, but the majority of Prot paladins are more concerned with their ability to tank, and that’s where we spend most of our Protection design effort. It’s a great goal to make all of a class’s specs viable in PvP, but it’s not always possible to do so and paladins have other options.
I realize that Word of Glory is also on Retribution’s platter at the moment, and we have something to share about its role in that spec as well, despite this being the tanking forum.
We think the 4.06 changes overall gave Retribution too great a buff for PvP. We realize that there are those that disagree, but we’re pretty firm on that point and we needed to make some adjustments. Given that Ret is primarily a dps spec, we thought it made more sense to reduce their off-healing capacity, which had become quite strong, rather than their damage.
That’s not to say that we mind a hybrid dps spec occasionally helping out with healing – that feels cool, and it’s appropriate. On the other hand, we want damage focused specs to be primarily focused on dps. It’s true that there were other ways we could have reduced Retribution healing. We could have changed Selfless Healer or even Word of Glory itself. As I mentioned earlier, after looking things over, we arrived at the conclusion that having a powerful heal you can use infrequently is more compelling than having a weak heal that you can use more often. [Source]
Word of Glory and PvP
He says we got to be too strong in Retribution PvP…I agree. Survivability with Word of Glory was through the roof, and I don’t blame other classes for complaining. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the perk while it lasted, but I can see the needed change in that regard.
Word of Glory and PvE
However, in PvE, it’s a pretty big blow. I’m going to ignore the protection aspect, because I think at times, Word of Glory was a necessity, based on the skill and abilities of the tank’s healers.
For Retribution, we are essentially losing the utility role, which I’ve stated before, I don’t mind. However, the excessive cooldown eliminates that free, much needed heal in case of emergencies.
Here’s where I have to read between the lines:
That’s not to say that we mind a hybrid dps spec occasionally helping out with healing – that feels cool, and it’s appropriate. On the other hand, we want damage focused specs to be primarily focused on dps. It’s true that there were other ways we could have reduced Retribution healing. We could have changed Selfless Healer or even Word of Glory itself. As I mentioned earlier, after looking things over, we arrived at the conclusion that having a powerful heal you can use infrequently is more compelling than having a weak heal that you can use more often.
Basically, what I am reading here is that while utility roles are neat to play, they don’t have a part in end-game raiding. End-game content and boss fights are designed to require maximum DPS from all classes available, leaving little room for a utility player. Completely knocking out the choice of Templar’s Verdict versus Word of Glory makes Retribution a pure DPS class, with no ways of stepping around the mechanic to jump into a utility role.
Bottom Line: As of right now, I don’t mind the changes. But the final solution doesn’t seem to be in place yet. This seems more a temporary fix to the Retribution and Protection issues, with some future talent changes to the Holy Tree to make Word of Glory more accommodating. Of course, I could always be wrong. It’s happened before!
I am perfectly FINE with WoG being changed! I don’t PVP terribly often so I am not sure how this will affect those who do but honestly I don’t use WoG that often anyways. I always choose TV over WoG. In dungeons and raids I use Holy Radiance to help with healing rather then WoG.
I actually would like to see WoG bumped up to a 30sec cool down and have the ability to heal for 45% of the caster’s base life. Then I would like to see zealotry’s cool down lowered to 1 minute (I would be happy with 90 sec though). If they are only going to give Ret one consistent way to charge HP on a single target and want us to be more DPS oriented then we need a buff DPS wise. I think lowering Zealotry’s cool down (either universally OR even through a glyph/talent) would buff our DPS without getting OP. I am still out DPSd in dungeons and raids by mages and shadow priests… and for some reason a DK tank… but I have a feeling since he has raid epics on and I am still collecting heroic gear that it has something to do with it.
I understand the need for the changes, but I’m not completely happy with it. I PvP and PvE as Ret (before the changes to ret in 4.06 I also did prot.) and I beleive a better change to effect our off heals would be to get rid of selfless healer, or with the cooldown on WoG make it a smaller cooldown like 10 seconds or maybey 15. The changes the way they are now is basically going to remove ret, and pallys in general from competitive PvP.
Holy PvP works but is the worst choice for heals. Ret PvP is now an actual choice, but in 4.1 we will be back where we were. Prot PvP may still work as we can survive longer untill we can use WoG again, but it will never be as good. Patch 4.1 is going to kill PvP for Paladins.
I’m sorry, I just don’t see how Ret is an overpowered pvp spec atm. I agree that the offhealing provided by WoG is too much when combined with SH, but for self healing the result is really the base amount required to keep up with other melee healing abilities like recuperate. The more effective route might be to look at selfless healer as a talent, which would effectively reduce the capacity for us to throw out crazy heals on our temamates rather than neuter our self healing, which is by no means exceptional.
What I don’t understand is the shift in direction for the spec. Utility getting gutted? OK, theortically that means our pvp damage/mobility should be on par with “pure” dps classes. That doesn’t seem to be an option however, at least for the moment.
What really worries me is the tone of this post, there dont appear to be any forms of compensation to this huge survivability nerf since ret is considered “overpowered” I realize that this tends to be more of a PvE forum, and as such this nerf doesn’t feel as important, but I wanted to add my 2 cents because this will directly effect the gameplay of those who do enjoy pvp.
I fear after this change we have almost no hope of competing in pvp other than 5v5 arenas. We are the most squishy mdps class.
Rogues, fury warriors, and Dk’s all heal for more than we do in Arenas and Battlegrounds.
And edition to the above. We are having pretty much all of our utility taken away only to be compensated with mediocre dps.
I think that the problem with Ret and Paladins in general is that we’re always going to be seen as OP by the other classes. I say this because Paladins overall are built as an essentially hybrid class. Our trees are built in such a manner that being fully specced in one tree leaves us points to spend in another tree, and since we’re one of the few classes that have all three options available to us (DPS, Tank, and Heals) we’re always going to be a utility/hybrid. Since we switched from mana to Holy Power for most of our big casts I find myself not having many issues with mana, which gives us resources to spare when it comes time for big heals or whatever. Our ‘punishment’ for that type of utility is that ultimately we never really get to go whole hog in whatever spec we choose, so we’re always going to be outclassed by any other pure DPS, Tanking, or Healing class.
Sometimes I miss the good ol’ days when we weren’t subject to the whims of an RNG but instead had a long cooldown on our big casts. Instead of hoping for 3 Holy Power I just want to be able to wait for that boss to be down around 10%, the doomsday button lights up and we go to town. I don’t miss the facerolling, any-idiot-can-play-paladin smacktalk, the “paladins are OP” QQing, but I do miss when we were the big guys in SW where we walked into a raid and it was “Ooooooh, we got a paladin, everything’s gonna be alright” instead of “Ewwwww, we got a paladin, everythings gonna be all wiped.”
My 2 cents…
Hello guys,
I was playing a prot paladin. I have started though as ret. I am more of a pvp player. The reason that i have spected in prot is that from the last patch before cata (sorry but i dont recall its number), ret palas lost their pvp ability. Okey, ret had the chance of enormous burst. Because i have equipped 2 tier10 pieces, i remember some occasions that my DS reseted 3 times in a row, while critted too! A very good healer died in about 2 sec! But when taking in mind the majority of time, ret had issues. Not an interrupt, one (HoR) and a half cc (repetense) and thus a moving crash dummy. If rets hadn’t bubble, they would just be unplayable. Taking these into account, I changed my play style to a prot (protribution). And the fun was back! Durability, a strong cc, silence etc.So i stayed prot after the launch of cata. I was happy. Then the nerfs started… A little bit every time. Nowdays a non-healer pala cannot heal! A class with some sort of magic capabilities cannot heal, where for example a warrior or a rogue with NONE magic capabilities can heal their ashes off… And then came the WoG nerf. It is just enormous. Apparently, even Bliz detected it: ”We’re not too concerned with keeping Protection viable in PvP.” WTF?? Why? Sorry for my big post, but I love this site. From now on I am quiting WoW. I am putting my hopes in Rift.
Farewell, Vavyl from Jaedenar.
I must be missing something here…
What’s this “powerful heal” of which is spoken?
Barring the use of Zealotry, is 12.5% health every 10-12 seconds that powerful?
Lol cmon guys, i have a paladin and a warrior, and all of you saying warriors heal too much are just QQing without a reason. glyphed and talented for self heals the warrior heal does 2.52% of max health (.84% each of the next 3 hits after you use blood thirst) The other heal they have is enraged regeneration which heals for 30% of total health with a 3 min CD (affected by mastery). My paladin heals for much more than that + bubble, and LoH, and we even have seal of insight if we really need more healing. I don’t mind the 20 sec CD. TBH i use WoG much more when i go holy, but as long as they don’t increase the CD on light of dawn i’m okay with it.
Khor i love your site
i’m a frequent visitor.
Love the site! I play purely Ret equally PVP and PVE. I disagree with Khor on the changes. I rarely use WoG to heal in PVE, usually in an emergencies only. I use the HP for Inq and TV. As far as I’m concerned not a big deal there…
This will absolutely kill Rets for PVP. Period. As mentioned in previous posts in WOTLK we were crash dummies. It’s funny how a plate wearing self healing class could have so little survivability but it was true. Since our DPS is so stretched out time wise we have to have sustainability in the fights. WoG gives us that. The problem for Rets now is that FOL simply doesn’t a) heal enough anymore and b) you have to stop doing damage to heal. Its so disappointing to finally enjoy being relevant in PVP and know that we are about to be booted to the curb again.
IMO this change to WoG will have a bigger impact on PvP. In PvE it might suck from a levelling and soloing p.o.v but in a raid environment it has very little impact. Last night I had a Divine Purpose proc chain of 5, for which every single one went into TV, to do otherwise would have been insane. My DPS is still very much at the lower end compared to my guildies, my only hope is that getting the 4set bonus will bring me up somewhat.
Now had the same thing happened in PvP, I prob would have used most of them to heal my Arena team but again this is very situational. The decision to heal your team or to nuke down an opponent at any given time during the fight can change in the blink of an eye. So being able to provide that utility as a DPS class is vital in those instances.
It appears to me that Blizz are keeping us in limbo. They reign in our DPS output stating they want to retain our Utility amongst the classes but when that utility proves too much to some in other areas we all suffer.
My biggest concern in the PvE environment is actually when tanking, more so HC’s as the only ‘raid’ I tank is BH. There have been numerous times when I have saved myself with a 2-3 WoG chain due to the Healer going OOM or otherwise engaged in something else due to mechanics. The addition of the WoG CD will make times like this a thing of the past. Why should my survivability through self healing suffer because of other players? (DPS are a nightmare at times)
Sometimes I wonder if Paladins will be end up with just two specs, Holy and Prot with the Ret tree being turned into an extention of either. So you would have a Prot tree with a more single target focus and one with a multiple target focus with the third for Holy. Or on the flip side, a tank healing and raid healing tree with a generic tank tree. It’s the last thing I would want to see but given recent times it sometimes feels like an inevitablity.
No matter what Blizz do Ret is just lacking, my enjoyment for the spec has been wavering and this porposed adjustment to WoG is just another change that further reduces what little we can currently offer.
@Eulogy – personally never had an issue with Warriors self healing but you have to admit that out of the plate melee classes they are by far the most mobile. All that jumping and charging about, they’re like hyperactive bulldozers
Too much QQ imo. Ret is perfectly viable in Arenas. I do just fine on my ret pally in 2v2′s. It’s all a matter of using abilities that are in your spell book; too many people focus on a small subset of abilities from there class and spec, ignoring the other abilities that, while not as strong in the current spec, are still useful. Even in the current environment with WoG having 0 CD time, UH DK’s still heal for more than Ret. But they don’t Mitigate as well as Ret. Nor do they have any CC which we do. Very rarely will I use WoG to self heal in Arena’s. I generally don’t need to through liberal use of mitigating abilities.
As far as survivability in PvE- I raid 25m with 11/12 down and WoG is the last ability I would use for utility when I have abilities like Hand of Salvation, Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Shield, Divine Radiance, etc. My purpose in a boss fight first and foremost is to survive. You don’t survive by casting WoG’s. You survive by not failing at raid mechanics and raid awareness. Second is to DPS. If I was supposed to be healing then I’d be Holy, there are 5-7 other people in the raid that are supposed to be healing. Hand of Sacrifice on the tank or some other person, mitigating the damage, is way more helpful than a 12k sub par heal that could have been a 50k hit.
As far as I can see, This nerf is not going to change the landscape much. It may affect certain arena compositions. I really don’t see how it will change PvE at all, even during times of emergency, if you’re using WoG more than once every 20s in a raid then either a. you need to stop failing at raid mechanics. b. you need to replace your healers that know how to use their abilities correctly. or c. you need to replace tanks with tanks that know how to use their abilities correctly. Killing a boss with only 20% of your raid active isn’t a success, it’s luck. Even fights like Chimaeron that have a death mechanic for his last 25% of health you can manage with 1-2 deaths if people know wtf they are doing.
Well this is neutral too me…It has happened a lot to me as a tankadin MS and retri OS to use only WOG in heavy dmg fights like Cho gall last week…Its kinda hilarious for a pally to block-block-block block for 9sec then on 10th second pop a 35k+ self heal…feels OP and it is also tbh.and this 20sec CD isnt that much,it takes 19 sec to pop 2 WOG after poping one so a tank can use WOG then gather HP for 1 shield then by the time it takes to gather the other 3 HP its just about time for the CD to reset right?
I do PvP a lot and this is a bad, really bad and low punch to Retribution survival at Arenas and even BGs. This shouldn’t change much at PvE but on the occasional Heroic when you have a bad tank or healer WoG is the difference between paying little on repairs or an unhealthy 8G.
BTW WoG is the only heal we have for PvP and the fact is that we trade a powerful attack for a heal. There is just no time to cast anything else without being interrupted, CC’d or whatever. Also mana cost and heals amount is a joke. 15k from a heal when anything can hit you for at least 10k and a health pool of 130k I can’t figure out what Blizzard is thinking.
I’ve only recently begun doing 2v2s in the arena with my warrior friend and I’ve spec’d my ret pally to be a combination of DPS and support so WoG is really important for me. This cooldown on WoG will totally destroy my usefulness as a utility class in PVP. To be honest, most of the time our off healing isn’t all that crazy, it’s mainly when we receive procs from Divine purpose or Eternal glory that you’ll suddenly see some massive healing, but that doesn’t happen that often and it’s not something I rely upon in a fight… But if that’s a problem then why not change selfless healer and reduce the effects of that?
WoG is a useful ability for my survival as well as my partner in PVP, and it seems kinda dumb to introduce a cooldown on a holy power ability that doesn’t even need a full 3 bars of holy power to use anyway. There are times in combat where I might have to use just 2 bars to keep myself or an ally alive long enough to finish a fight, but if it’s still on cooldown from when I last use it I will still be waiting for it by the time I could get 3 bars up again, by which point we could be dead anyway. As DPS class we’re only good while we have abilities like Avenging Wrath or Zealotry up for good burst damage, once they’ve run out I’m going to need to those WoG heals to keep me going while the come off CD.
This nerf to WoG just doesn’t make any sense to me as a ret pally in PVP.
For good or bad, I’m seeing a trend from Blizzard making everything cookie cutter. Consolidating buffs like kings and mark and slowly eliminating any type of hybrid class/play style. This trend continues it will be time to check out other games less mundane, stop making our decision to heal or dps for us blizzard, let US play the game.
I play a lot of pvp and have switched back and forth between ret and prot. Even with no cooldown WoG is so nerfed that it cant really keep you alive in an extended fight. It did have serious healing but the ret just gets pounded right now. With Cata its hard to kill the other classes to being with, especially shamans. But the ret dps isn’t that spectacular and now the healing is just too slow to keep you going. The fact is the two second heals are two little too late and they run you out of intellect. Most of the ret and prot healing spells are minor. In fact so many of the awsome spells of the past have so dramatically diminished effect (HoW is ok) that its like they are just taking pally off the table.
Prot still has some staying power and still has some dps but if WoG goes to 30 second cooling I’ll play my hunter which has serious dps. I’d even play holy but they already nerfed that and a cooldown would just pretty much nuke all three specs. So unless the ret dps is hike up big time to compensate I think its gonna be pretty boring.
Eulogy says:
March 2, 2011 at 6:10 pm
“Lol cmon guys, i have a paladin and a warrior, and all of you saying warriors heal too much are just QQing without a reason. glyphed and talented for self heals the warrior heal does 2.52% of max health (.84% each of the next 3 hits after you use blood thirst) The other heal they have is enraged regeneration which heals for 30% of total health with a 3 min CD (affected by mastery). My paladin heals for much more than that + bubble, and LoH, and we even have seal of insight if we really need more healing. I don’t mind the 20 sec CD. TBH i use WoG much more when i go holy, but as long as they don’t increase the CD on light of dawn i’m okay with it.
Khor i love your site
i’m a frequent visitor.”
Eulogy, are you stupid or are you just a pvp idiot? It’s obvious you haven’t played a ret pally long enough or you don’t main one. In arena matches, I’ve seen rogues, warriors, and dks survive way better than a ret pally. Why? They have self healing that are usually instant and heals for quite an amount… especially when combined with what their healer tosses on them. About the LOH and bubble thing: PALADINS CAN’T USE LOH IN ARENAS AND LOH CAUSES FORBEARANCE SO YOU CAN”T BUBBLE AND LOH!!! Learn the facts about a paladin before you make stupid claims about ret pally healing.
What you’re failing to see is that warriors and rogues are not suppose to have healing abilities to match or even trump a hybrid dps such as a druid or paladin. Rogues and warriors shouldn’t even be able to heal period (other than bandages, racials, and potions). Blizzard made classes become too similar since WOTLK through Cata and it’s just becoming retarded. Lucky procs that allowed WoG procs is what currently helps a ret/prot pally survive and sets them apart from a dk, warrior, and rogue. Ret pallies are HYBRID DPS WITH HEALING CAPABILITIES and should have MORE utilities than a warrior, dk, or rogue BUT LESS sustained damage output. If blizzard wants to treat ret pallies as a pure dps, then they should improve ret pally sustained dps and give them more burst to make up for the loss in survivability and utilities.