Concerns about ret - Blue Tracker

#0 - April 23, 2009, 10:53 p.m.

I don't expect you to respond to this, Ghostcrawler and I guess I'll just feel fortunate if this gets read by a dev and even considered.

I mentioned this in some other thread, but I thought I would make a post.

I play a Retribution Paladin (please put away you torches, I am not here to whine about the exorcism nerf), and I have to say...that I'm actually pretty happy. I will admit that I don't PvP that much, nor am I an incredibly hardcore raider, I only raid about 2-3 times a week. However in another post GC mentioned this:

Q u o t e:
We like the new Seal / Judgement system and aren't likely to mess with that. What we would like to do is take say CS, DS and Exorcism, make one of them have no cooldown, and make the others something you want to do at the right time. Here are some dumb, mostly fake examples. They all have problems and aren't very original (because I spent all of 20 sec thinking of them) but are in the right vein. We have some actual ideas but aren't ready to share them yet.

1) Your Crusader Strike stacks something on a target. Divine Storm then does more damage per stack (but consumes the stacks?).
2) Your Divine Storm has a dot component. The closer you get a Crusader Strike to the final dot, the more damage it does, but its cooldown keeps you from spamming it.
3) When someone under the effect of your Retribution Aura (or whatever) is attacked, your Divine Storm lights up and you can then make them pay for the affront.
4) Your Divine Storm has a dot component with a very short duration. However Crusader Strike has no cooldown and extends the duration by one tick. Basically you have to hit CS three or four times in a row quickly to keep the whirlwind spinning.

I know you said those were just "off the cuff" as it were, but you also mentioned they were "in the right vein". I hope you were joking or that they were at least WAY off from what you're really thinking.

I know a lot of people whine and complain that Pally DPS is "boring" or some such. I know you know this, but the people whom feel the need to post constantly are not a good representation of the community as a whole. They are the vocal minority, that unfortunately get heard more often then those whom want to stay clear of the insanity that is the WoW forums (On that note those of you devs whom read all of these must have the patients of the gods).

Please keep this in mind, but being a retribution Paladin is not ALL about DPS. It is the DPS build, yes. If I am not doing competitive DPS I will not be doing my job as the class/spec I have chosen. We do have a lot of other things to do as well. In any given fight I am watching my DPS buttons so I can push them as they come off of cool down; watching my raid members health so I know what abilities to use where/when; throwing Hand of Salvation on the Warlock; casting Sacred Shield on me, the main tank or the off tank depending on the situation; casting my Divine Sacrifice at the most opportune times; cleansing occasionally; maybe throwing a heal out; and casting the odd Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom when it calls for it. Now you're saying that you might want me to have to watch for some random debuff and spam a button to keep up with my DPS? I am trying to be a civil as I can, but I'm actually really concerned.

Warriors, rogues, and Death Knights all have more complicated DPS rotations and the like because in essence that's all they do (yes maybe a few tricks here and there, but MOSTLY all they do when they're in a DPS spec). If I wanted a combat like that I would have rolled one of those classes. I thought that the DPS rotations on a Retribution Paladin where more simple by design, so that we would have the opportunity to use all of the OTHER tools that we were given. If you want us to concentrate on nothing but our DPS they why bother giving us all of these other things to do? I know there are some people out there that will say "X mod will do all this stuff for you" but developers shouldn't (and I am fairly confident that the ones at Blizz hold true to this) design their game assuming anybody has any mods at all. Try this test: Turn off all of your mods. Now try to put slav on one person (at least) a fight, make sure you use your Sacred Shield on the most worthy target, use your Divine Sacrifice at the best time you can. Do at least that for every fight while keeping your DPS up and moving when you're supposed to. Now tell me that it's boring. I guess if you think that, then you might consider rolling one of the other melee DPS classes because your tastes may not actually be with the Paladin.

All I'm asking is that if you MUST change Paladin DPS, then please, please keep this in mind. I don't want to play a Warrior or Death Knight and I want to be able to use my helpful abilities. Not everyone can do 20 things at once. I know I am not the only one that feel this way. Really that's all I want is for you to keep this in mind when you make the

Ghostcrawler

#1 - April 23, 2009, 11:11 p.m.

That's a fair point -- paladins do have other things going on.

We're not talking about combo points here. But we keep running into problems with say Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, and now (until recently) Exorcism and perhaps even Hammer of Wrath all being unrelated. You can use one per global cooldown leading to just a ton of damage without there being much an opponent can really do. There is no poison or disease to cleanse. There isn't a self buff someone can remove. They often don't even have time to respond because the attacks are coming right on top of each other. Yes the abilities all have cooldowns, but that's small consolation to someone who may be in triple digit health by the time you unload.

Furthermore, it's not like there is much skill involved to that rotation ("GC SEZ RETS R FACEROLLERZ"). You hit the buttons and damage happens. Sure you can come up with other situations where a player just hits their buttons and unloads a lot, but in a lot of cases they do have other considerations to deal with. Warriors have to watch Overpower opportunities. Enhancement shamans want to follow up Stormstrike with Nature damage. Frost mages want the Frost Nova (or whatever) before the Ice Lance.

To some extent, Holy paladins even have the same issues. Simple does not have to mean boring. Having few buttons doesn't have to mean having few options.

Again, we've come a long way with paladins. Their aren't horribly broken. No class is. They just need a little more tweaking.

Ghostcrawler

#203 - April 24, 2009, 9:17 p.m.

Make sure you read the context of the original post. I started with "That's a fair point" because the OP mentioned that paladins have more to contend with than just maximizing damage. They do have heals, bubbles, cleansing and similar mechanics going on. That is why I said we can't take something as complex as a rogue's combat system and shoehorn it in for Ret.

But we can (and most likely will) change up the basic Seal, Judge, DS, CS, Exorcism buttons so that they can't all be brought to bear at once AND to make pushing those buttons a little more interesting from the paladin's point of view.

The model of "I bring burst" is not a good one for the game. You can counter stuns and bubbles and heals and even people running away from you. You can't counter someone unloading five digits of damage within just a few GCDs. That makes the combat shallow and frustrating. We're not convinced that is all Rets are about (because they do have heals, bubbles, cleansing and similar mechanics), but if we think the damage mechanics are too easy to counter, then we will compensate in other ways.

This isn't anything you will see get hotfixed in next week. I am more trying to explain our thought process so that the Exorcism change makes a little more sense in context.