?'s most Paladins are wanting answers to.

Q u o t e:
1) Do you really think we'll use AW now other than select PvE encounters?

We understand that AW will be used much, much less than it is now in Arenas. That wasn't the intention, but we felt we needed to counter the standard winged bubble opening move that so many paladins were doing. If this change actually seems to make a difference (because to be honest despite the number of nerfs we've done to Ret, they were still overpowered) than we'll consider other ways of getting the same effect that don't involve Forbearance.

Q u o t e:
2) Why is it that you're so hot to balance out a class that has been a joke for 2+ years for two weeks of playtime when PvE progression and arena rankings are now all but meaningless?

We can't let one spec run around killing everyone just because they were underpowered before. I expect you'd be just as frustrated as other classes if it was Elemental shammies or Feral druids dominating everyone in PvP. Where Ret's history did come into play is we originally tried relatively small nerfs originally (though the paladin community didn't perceive them as such at the time). In retrospect, being gentle there didn't do you guys any favors because then we just had to come back two more times with big nerfs.

Q u o t e:
3) Where were our desperately needed hot fix buffs for the past two years? Is this new insta-balance stance going to swing both ways?

We made a lot of big changes to classes for LK and we need to able to adjust them as needed. I honestly wasn't doing this job for the past two years, so I'm not in a position to comment on why certain decisions were made the way they were. I have faith they were made for good reasons, but I just can't share them with you because I don't know. I will say that the perception around Blizzard was that the Ret paladin situation was very severe. I don't want to understate it. It was considered one of the most egregious balance problems we've had in some time.

Q u o t e:
4) Where were the desperately needed nerfs to certain classes in arena for the past two season?

See above.

Q u o t e:
5) Will problems such as lack of MS debuffs, interrupts, distance closing, and susceptibility to mana burns/silences be addressed?

Mana burns - yes.
Distance closing and interrupts - we are considering giving Ret or paladins in general some new utility to make up for all the nerfs we have made to their damage. It will almost certanly not be MS though. You can find a thread where I recently attempted to explain why we don't want to give out more MS debuffs.
I haven't heard a lot of silence complaints from paladins recently (more than normal I mean). Is this a new problem? Care to elaborate?

I can't honestly believe I'm asking this, but can you please explain this statement? I just don't understand it.

Q u o t e:
lies are being used to hook them along for a few more months

We never promised Retribution would be able to dominate PvP and PvE. Heck, we are usually pretty careful to never promise anything. :)

Q u o t e:
Ghostcrawler - I'm not understanding why the winged bubble move was such a big deal? Bubble in and of itself is overpowered, but that's OK because it's on a 5 minute cooldown. It sort of seems like it's possible that you're letting people's anecdotes guide this decision.

The problem was that the cooldown was irrelevant. The paladin could wing + bubble, then go in with a stun, DS, CS, JoC and maybe Consecrate, all within a few GCDs. If the poor sap on the receiving end was below 35% (now 20%), which was likely, he would get hammered as well. If somehow the target was still alive after all that, or had an ally, the paladin usually had enough mana to heal himself to full. Then, even if the battle was over, the paladin had enough mana to just go on to the next target (minus bubble). In Arenas this didn't matter of course, because with a death that early, the match is usually decided. This strategy was the entire PvP problem with Ret in a nutshell. It didn't take a lot of skill and was impossible to counter. Most other classes can't open with that many abilities at once (ignoring the bubble defense and healing potential). Players complain about rogues stun-locking them, but at least that takes some skill from the rogue to do things in the right order and usually requires an element of surprise.

Q u o t e:
nooooo don't feed the trolls =) I can't believe it when people accuse the developers of lying. That's completely absurd. It requires a delusional mind to make a statement like that.

I know. I'm certain I'll regret asking, but if there's anything we can do in the future to have players avoid feeling blindsided by nerfs (or any changes to the game) it would be nice to know.

Q u o t e:
You did say several times that ret was fine and there were no plans to change it however. You then said that nerfs would be "surgical". You also basically said you wanted ret to stay as is for as long as possible because ret pallys were "having fun".

I almost always say "We think they're fine." I'll be more careful in the future to caveat more, but I do it so much that I made the mistake of assuming players knew that. Ditto with "There are no plans to change them." That was the truth... at the time. We had convinced ourselves that the bugs were the problem.

The nerfs were surgical... and in retrospect so painless that they actually didn't fix the problem. :( Paladins were having fun. I heard from several of them who said that Ret finally played how they always dreamed it could. I think they were legitimately talking about the mechanics too, not the fact that they could roll anyone. We knew paladins would take it very hard, so we waited as long as we could to make sure it was a real problem before nerfing them. If we could have solved things any other way, we would have. I know it sucks. Believe me, I know.

And even if I had promised to never, ever change anything, is that really a promise you want us to keep just for the sake of doing so? Nope, the game is in flames, but I gave my word, so just suck it up. I know that's not what I asked, but I think that is why I am so perplexed by the effort to somehow catch us as if that will make us undo the changes.

Q u o t e:
My biggest question and I would REALLY like an answer is how do paladins go from fine in beta AND the ptr to blantantly OP and out of control on live only a few days later? How many months of testing did you have data and player feedback on about ret but again it was fine then but not on live. Makes no sense to me....

I have answered this a dozen times as well, so it surprises me that people who follow the story haven't heard the explanation.

We had several bugs that we thought were inflating Ret's damage. The most notorious one happened where players re-equipped weapons to stack buffs (think about that before you exploit bugs in a beta next time). There were a couple of situations where talents were increasing crit damage bonuses much higher than we expected. And there were a few numbers wrong in some of the new scripts we put into place to handle the new Seal / Judgement / Hand system. We thought that once those were fixed that Ret's damage would drop dramatically, and we even told players not to worry because Ret's damage would drop when those bugs were fixed. Unfortunately (really unfortunately) we were wrong, and fixing the bugs didn't have as much of an effect as we thought. By then, 3.0.3 was already out on Live. We thought it was better to make hotfixes right away to see if we could adjust the damage without overhauling all of the mechanics before Lich King shipped. You know the rest of the story from there I trust.

Q u o t e:
Part two was when they finally did comprehend the data but decided to hook as many as possible by allowing ret to "have fun".

I'm not sure if you are taking this out of context, misunderstanding my point, or just having a little fun. The point was that we were very reluctant to make unnecessary nerfs because Ret was finally a tree that people really enjoyed playing. In fact, our first nerfs were too weak in retrospect because we were paranoid about hurting the spec. :(

Q u o t e:
How about you saying the margin between pure classes and hybrids would be somewhere around 5%. That is something you said, so you either meant it, or you lied.

You're going to have to explain this too. I have backed off using numbers recently. What happened is that players (typically those that didn't quite get statistics or didn't realize their own playing skill) would post screenshots of damage meters with them at the bottom and then demand an explanation. The explanation was that they needed to L2P, but of course I can't say that publicly on the forums. In these cases it's probably better to leave specific numbers out of it and just say hybrids should be close. As soon as you use a number, that feels all precise, like a code of laws or something, and players only see the number, not the philosophy behind it.

Q u o t e:
GC on nerfs
We don't nerf anyone due to public outcry. If we did, there would probably be 1-2 classes left that were even PvP viable. :) At most seeing a lot of QQ about one class might get us to look at the numbers to see if there is any truth to the matter... So your telling me that the nerfs happened by coincidence when 3.0 hit live and the qq started, instead of being handled in the months and months of beta? interesting...

I explained this above. We knew the damage was too high, but we thought it was all the bugs we introduced by rebuilding all the abilities. We don't nerf classes just on public outcry, or all of you would be doing 10 dps by now. :)

Q u o t e:
GC on mana
As I posted in one thread, you should be able to use those core abilities (Divine Storm, a Judgement / Seal and Crusader Strike) without going OOM. Some players are finding that to be true, so please let us know if you aren't. ... To me, it seems obvious that taking away a larger mana pool and increasing the amount drained by maan burns with little mana return is a terrible idea, but Im not a developer or anything... And no mana % on drains will only cause higher mana pool users to QQ. Just fix JOTW

Plenty of paladins have supported our findings here. You shouldn't go out of mana that quickly. And even if somehow we're wrong about that, it still doesn't qualify as a lie. A lie would be if we said "We won't ever change Ret no matter what," or even "You can never, ever go out of mana." (And even the latter comes across more as misinformed than malicious.)

Q u o t e:
At Blizzcon
Q: "Concern about ret pallies doing burst damage." ..."Lots of bugs in beta that made [ret paladins] do more DPS... we don't think [current damage] is way off, honestly." GC: "Don't nerf me bro!" (Tons of laughter). Chilton: "We've tried to take it away from the uncontrollable proc damage...we want them to feel strong...we want to put a kill in the hands of a player [,not luck]."

I guess our damage went from not a ways off to being very op, Ill agree with you on this, our damage was ridiculous, but still, saying its not that bad to nerfing all damage is dangling the carrot.

Um, I'd say it pretty much the same way today. Lots of bugs in beta made [ret paladins] do more DPS... we don't think [current damage] is way off, honestly. "The we don't think" part turned out to be wrong. You can say we we were misinformed or hopeleslly naive, but that doesn't qualify as deceit.

We don't need to keep up the he said - she said debate though. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something as to why paladins projected such malicious intent on us. But I think it comes down to us having to make several nerfs in a row after initially indicating that we didn't think we'd have to, on a spec that has historically felt that it wasn't taken seriously.

I've apologized for having to do it. I've stated that our intent is still to make Ret viable in PvP and PvE to a greater extent than in BC. I think it's time for us all to move on (he says to the stunned relief of the other 9 classes in the game).

Q u o t e:
GC, I don't know if you're still reading this thread, but could you please please consider the above suggestion? I think a lot of people seem to agree that it would be a much better solution than the current post-hotfix implementation.

We will definitely consider additional changes to Ret or alternate ways to implement the current design (such as exclusivity between DS and AW). First we need to make sure that the data nerfs do in fact nerf the spec, because so far our changes have had nominal effects. If we can Ret in the ballpark, then we can iterate on the numbers a little bit more. For several weeks they haven't even been in the ballpark.

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.

Q u o t e:
I don't like the idea that we're getting a patch tonight that has to be reversed later (reversals have a habit of coming late), but it's a good plan nevertheless.

As I said, we need to make sure that the last nerf fixes the problem. We've had a few rounds now where changes that we thought would tone down the damage didn't do it enough. If this does the trick, then we can stop nerfing Ret and try to smooth out the rough edges like ths.

Q u o t e:
...where the attack speed penalty is wiped and the damage is halved. The two would cancel each other out

Yeah, there is no reason to keep the attack speed penalty if damage is halved. The attack speed penalty was a very old construct that made sense when white swings were such a huge chunk of paladin damage. It just hasn't kept with the times.

Q u o t e:
If after this change, the numbers show that damage is now too low, burst is now too low, sustained is too low, will action be taken to rectify the problem, or will Retribution suffer the same fate it has for the last 2 years and have absolutely no representation in high ranking arena teams?

To the ground? No? Anyone?

Seriously, we are strongly considering letting Vengeance stack up to 5 stacks (perhaps for more points) to make sure sustained damage is still good enough. We may still add a secondary effect to Crusader Strike too. Burst is certainly easy to add if we need to, though I really hope we don't have to. :)

When you think about things from our perspective, we spent a lot of time and effort to overhaul paladins in general and Retribution in particular. If we wanted Ret to be a joke, we would have just left the tree as it was, and maybe kicked it a little for good measure. But when you think about what we did do (and how long it took, and the bugs we had to contend with) it should be clear that we want to see the spec out there taking names. Just not quite so much as it was a couple of weeks ago. :)

Q u o t e:
This is a fine example of the information the community craves. You don't just have to tell us about upcoming buffs/nerfs that are definite. If anything, telling us about changes you're actually considering, even if they don't actualize, gives the community better insight into the development process. It also gives us a chance to offer feedback and our own insight on the ideas you guys have been getting.

I’m cool with that, but the downside is there will be some people posting tomorrow demanding the “changes that were promised.” We’ll just have to see how it goes. If nobody freaks out, I am happy to keep offering some information on what we’re working on for the future. It is useful – sometimes -- for us to get feedback before we implement features or make changes. If we end up not making these specific changes, and there are a dozen more posts about my lying to the community, we’ll just keep our cards closer to our chest in the future.

Q u o t e:
DOT effect is a poor fit for Retribution class, it lacks any kind of synergy with existing abilities and in PvP suffers from large number of problems – being affected twice by resilience, first time as “critical” effect and second time as damage over time effect and being prone to dispels.

We are trying to keep it from being a major source of damage in PvP. This was an example of shifting burst damage to sustained damage.

Q u o t e:
Ok, so what happens to Prot and Holy? How do you buff seals without buffing Ret? If you keep these specs the same, what is to say PvP + Prot won't happen for burst?

We are probably going to modify a deep Holy talent or two to add additional damage (J of the Pure maybe). That’s pretty safe. We’re not hugely worried about Prot, because there’s this thing they can do with their shields that can do some pretty sweet burst damage….

Q u o t e:
Mages are horribly overpowered right now despite what they admit, and it really was a slap in the face to all your beta testers not to put these patches and hotfixes initially in only Beta, to start or get better feedback from them. Jayde and many others myself included have worked exceedingly hard to ensure the game was in excellent shape and it tells me our work was substandard or just not appreciated by the Devs for you to behave as such.

Ooh… slaps to the face. Nuclear escalation! As I’ve said, we don’t think mages are overpowered, certainly nothing to the level that Ret paladins were. I really hope anyone doesn’t feel like their feedback is useless just because we don’t always agree with you or don’t run off to implement every suggestion we see. The feedback is still useful, and always appreciated, even if we don’t agree. Who knows… we might end up agreeing down the road.

Q u o t e:
Given the Divine Shield and the Sanctified Wrath nerfs is it even necessary to have these two abilites share a 30 second cooldown?

Can someone explain this “Sanctified Wrath stealth nerf” you all keep referencing? Unless I am misunderstanding the issue, we actually didn’t make any changes to it.

Q u o t e:
so GC, why are you forcing us to be laughable once more? note that we don't need to be overpowered to be taken seriously, but this is getting ridiculous since we're getting nerfs left and right while everyone that can make mincemeat out of us are getting buffs.

It’s not about who gets buffs or nerfs. When you’re building a chair, you want the seat to be at the right height. It doesn’t matter if you add to some legs or cut others off. I realize nerfs feel bad, but really it’s the final numbers that matter. The worst class is NOT the one that gets the most nerfs – it’s the one that does the least damage (in the case of this forum at least).

Q u o t e:
GC, I understand the changes you are making now and for the most part they make sense, at least at level 70. However, I would think it would be wiser now to wait till level 80 before anymore nerfs/buffs since the expansion is so close.

We spent by far most our effort testing at 80. You can find plenty of threads from people who are angry that we let class balance be knowingly off for a few weeks at 70 since we think it will be better at 80. There is a (mis)perception among some of the angry Retadins that we hotfixed nerfs based on a couple of days of forum QQ at 70. We had already been working on those changes. We hotfixed them because we wanted to make sure we had time to get feedback on them and see them in action before everyone reached 80. We completely understand that raid and PvP balance at 70 will be largely irrelevant in a little over a week.

Q u o t e:
we need buffs and fixes. we need to be A WELL DESIGNED CLASS GC

I agree you need a well-designed class. Being able to beat everyone in PvP and top the damage meters in PvE with mediocre gear is not well-designed (though it might be fun for you (and only you)).

Q u o t e:
I think its funny how GC never addressed when other players asked about the OTHER classes/specs that do unfair amounts of damage in PvP and arena.

Sure, I do. There are posts all over this forum. We have hotfixed mages and boomkin. A big nerf to hunters (WF only benefiting melee) is coming today.

Q u o t e:
Another note, you have lied. When you hotfix JotW, AW, and judgement damage without warning players in game, that is a lie. I was fortunate enough to come on the forums and see the hotfixes for myself.

I don’t think that word (lie) means what you think it means. A lie would be “We didn’t change JotW, AW and Judgements.” And even then, more likely it would be a just bad information on my part.

We don’t always post changes before they go out. When this hotfix went out, I was out of town touring wineries or something. I checked in on the beta forums, saw no discussion, and figured we weren’t going to make any changes for a few days. (I am involved in all the class discussions, but a lot of other people have to weigh in on when we do a patch or hotfix since so many different folks are involved.) Hours later I read EJ or Wowinsider or something and saw a reference to the hotfixes. Uh oh. It was only then I checked the live forums and realized that players couldn’t access the beta forums (I could, so I just assumed traffic was light). Meanwhile, the live forums looked like the After picture of a mountain that decided to respec volcano.

In retrospect, I should have posted the upcoming changes sooner, but we sometimes wait to release big announcements like that to make sure we can make them globally at the same time. There was a recent buff to warlock spells and I didn’t announce that one before the fix either. It happens. This was just a divine storm of a lot of complicating events (unannounced nerf, victimized spec, forums being down, weekend) all at once.

Q u o t e:
Can I kiss you?

I’m kind of salty.

[Post limit increased]

Q u o t e:
Sanctified Wrath is not giving us the "bypasses 50% of damage reducing effects" effect when we pop AW. It hasn't been since the 3.0.3 patch. Can we please get a response on this GC?

We think we accidentally broke this effect. It wasn't an intentional nerf, but we're still looking into it.

Q u o t e:
Go in paladin forums if you don't want to see me... this is damage dealing forum... I deal damage... I'll read these forums... and when i see 50+ post in this thread whining and complaining then i'm gonna call them out.

The basic idea here is sound. Part of the problelm with paladin only threads or forums is you don't get any other perspective. Instead we just get multiple pages of paladins (though it is the same with any class) saying that they are underpowered and need buffs. While the discussion may be contentious at times, we do want other players to be able to weigh in on what you're saying. We will take their comments with a grain of salt, as we do with all comments.

We will try to stay on top of banning trolls who don't have anything useful to contribute.

Q u o t e:
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Q u o t e:
Sanctified Wrath is not giving us the "bypasses 50% of damage reducing effects" effect when we pop AW. It hasn't been since the 3.0.3 patch. Can we please get a response on this GC?
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We think we accidentally broke this effect. It wasn't an intentional nerf, but we're still looking into it.

Update: We did break it. We should be able to hotfix this soon.