Why are they nerfing Spiritual Attunement?!

#0 - Feb. 22, 2009, 1:16 p.m.

GC quote:

Q u o t e:
Since paladins don't rely on any of those abilities for mana regeneration, we lowered the healing penalty of Divine Plea to -50%. We are also likely to make Spiritual Attunement provide less mana for non-tanking paladins. We are not touching Illumination for the moment. Nor are we lowering the effects of Replenishment (though as I have suggested, it would be our likely next target if we aren't happy with the results of these changes).

Ret paladins in raids already rely on Spiritual Attunement (through SoB/M backlash} and you want to reduce this? Why? We can only Divine Plea once a minute and even though you said it's not meant to be, consecration is a part of our pve rotation. Not to mention exorcism will be usable as well.. How are we supposed to stay a float with all our regen (First Jotw nerfs xover900intotheground now this) being nerfed?

Ghostcrawler

#21 - Feb. 22, 2009, 7:37 p.m.

Our intention is not to nerf Ret mana generation. Our intention is to nerf Holy mana generation. In our tests, mana generation for Holy healers was quite variable depending on whether the paladin is taking damage or not. Since we don't want fights that do raid damage to always be easier than fights that don't do raid damage, Spiritual Attunement is something we are looking at.

This is not the actual solution that we are going to do, but if it make you feel better, imagine that SA becomes a talent in both deep Protection and deep Retribution so that non-healing paladins are not mana starved.

We're also not trying to cripple Holy paladins. But they are very dominant in Arenas at the moment (which is partially a function of what is happening to other classes), and they have very few mana problems even on challenging PvE content (like Ulduar). We do need to look at them.

Ghostcrawler

#31 - Feb. 22, 2009, 8:25 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Smart healers should almost never take damage.

Because of the way we design encounters, we disagree. I assume you are really saying that smart healers don't stand in fires. They shouldn't, but that's not really what I am talking about. Take a fight like Saphiron. You can't avoid the damage. Holy paladins take damage, get healed, and get mana. Now I know Saph is srs bzns and all that, but you can see the encounter design problem we can get into.

In PvP, they can't really opt out of taking damage either. Granted SA isn't a factor for most 2-player teams.