The state of ret in 3.1

#0 - March 17, 2009, 9:02 p.m.

Here are the factsâ€¦

PTR 3.1 Parses showing ret PvE dps as well below average – proven by the multiple links in the forums and personal experienceâ€¦.

â€¢ No new glyphs that accommodate the loss in dps from the ret tree nerfs (Divine storm glyph?)
â€¢ Plate itemization is not up to par, what is up with all the +stam? Good post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13129890141&sid=1
â€¢ With the overall nerf to healers in 3.1, SoM/SoB is becoming and has become too taxing, especially in gimmick fights.. Don’t even want to get into the SoC debate 21 page post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15671257853&sid=1
â€¢ Mana regen nerfs to all classes as well as loss of SA to ret is hurting rotations moreso than previously thought.. ret paly’s constantly going OOM now..Really good post here - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14132379462&sid=1
â€¢ Lack of replacement ret talents for dpsâ€¦(i.e. Crusade) talent is useless for Ulduar.. 3 wasted points..not to mention the tree is all messed up anyways..

The general direction it seems with ret is that they are taking away our dps and giving us more survivability, as if we needed more?. Let me remind you, this is mainly a PvE nerf due to PvP reasonsâ€¦hence the reason we have a lack of dps talents and have a lot of additional points to throw into prot and holy.. What I want to know is whether this is going to remain the norm for ret because in relation to the other hybrid classes we are on the bottom of the barrel now. I’m not asking for any handouts here, I’m just asking for some clarity on this. Why is ret being lead down the path of being benched in PvE again? Please bring some clarity so I can decide which class to re-roll to.

Ghostcrawler

#5 - March 17, 2009, 11:38 p.m.

I know Ret pallies have made many posts outlining their potential or realized problems. I'm sorry we haven't been able to answer those. We can only answer a very few a day.

But here is what I can tell you:

There is a bug in Righteous Vengeance that caused its damage to be too low (even accounting for the reduction in ranks). That bug has now been fixed. Note that even though the dot is Holy damage (which is normally not-resistable) mobs that are higher level than you can still resist some of the damage. This was not the actual bug, though some players made that assumption since they noticed RV had dropped (again even accounting for the rank reduction).

Spiritual Attunement could provide as much or more mana as Judgements of the Wise on fights with a lot of raid damage. To account for this, we are likely to buff the instant mana from Judgements of the Wise.

The glyph of Seal of Blood is reasonably nonsensical now, so we will probably change it to something similar but actually useful (e.g. you get mana back as if you still had SA for purposes of Blood).

When all that is said and done, Ret's PvE damage is still probably a little low. Buffing Divine Storm or allowing RV to benefit from Crusader Strike are two possible places to add more damage.

Note that I made no promises. :) These are all just things we are discussing. The eventual solutions could end up different.