When will the "fix" come to the poor retadins

#0 - June 11, 2009, 8:42 p.m.

First off, I'm a mage...and just like any other relative squishy I don't like getting facerolled by the big mean melee. Yet to be honest, DKs, rogues, warriors always gave me more problems than the rets. However I've been noticing the trends coming from the devs slowly nerfing away the rets and I'd have to say I'm pretty disturbed by it.

Ghostcrawler, you made a lot of promises to the community that I think need to be adressed,and soon...inlcuding these:

Q u o t e:

"Going with a “not on players” solution is not ideal and we will be re-designing how the ability works in a future patch (the plan is sooner rather than later). "

I see that the language of "sooner rather than later" is quite vague but all there has been is a series of nerfs and hotfixes further bringing the class down and no "re-designing.

Q u o t e:
In the same patch where we remove the “not on players” limitation for Exorcism, we are going to change the way paladins do damage so that their normal combat moves have more depth to them instead of just using abilities every time they finish their cooldown. This should make causing damage as a paladin more interesting and also less bursty. While we have some ideas on how to accomplish that, if you have suggestions or your own ideas about how this could work, this would be a good time to share them.

Well that just didn't happen...I've been looking at the forums, here, paladin forums, arena junkies, etc. There has been quite a few suggestions on how to "fix" things, complex and simple that could have been implemented. For example making exorcism DoT damage that could be dispellable, decursable, what have you, and also giving at least a slight more amount of depth to the ret in choosing who and when to put a dot on as to not break a repentance or CC, etc. Now of course that is a simple example, and exorcism aside there is a lot more to come...

Ret and arcane was out of control at the end of BC and right before Wotlk. Everyone knows, so the nerfs started then. My ret friend and I were planning on getting into arena and were dissapointed but not crushed, we admitted that the damage was too much. Yet the nerfs kept coming, stripping a lot of arcane away, but completely destroying the ret. Changes to avenging wrath, forbearance, bubbles, bops, and the like...

The thing is it never stopped. It seems with every maintenance something else is stripped away from these poor retadins, yes in 1v1 they hurt, the defensive utility + the offensive burst makes them powerful. In open BGs where opponents gear is not always up to par, a ret with that much holy damage is gonna spank out the KBs. My friend was always afraid to perform like that in PuG bgs, he would say "I'm going to get us nerfed again." Yet here is the thing, you've been nerfing and NOT fixing a class based on open PuG bgs, and low level arena, and basically low skill players are the only people that have real trouble against ret in arenas...where PvP counts (as you set it up this way, if you're competetive in PvP you have to do arena by your design).

Q u o t e:
If an class is so powerful among less skilled players that it dominates but totally ineffectual against the best players in the world whose skill is high enough to counter it, we don't think that makes it balanced.

You need to fix these guys, rather than just straight out removing moves (sometimes w/o prior warning). It is pretty insane. That's not balancing, it's emasculating. The only thing I can think of is that you really do not care...that you really want paladins to fit inside this little box because it is easier to constrict them there. My ret friend is now quitting the game after 4 years of solid play since your release pretty much. He likes ret, its the class that works for him, he played it when it was really terrible lol. But with these empty promises, these random hotfixes and nerfs whiel you allow DKs to go on like they do, the glimpse of hope with an MS on crusader strike, then the nerf to the poor man's MS of vindication, which btw doesnt reduce health by 20%, but stam...

Q u o t e:
Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left

So...woudlnt that be less than 20% of overall health, or maybe I'm wrong? Also the assumption that the last 20% is removed by a HoW is another hugely misleading statement, given shields and other damage absorbtions/mitigations, as well as I don't know...a heal? So that quote from a developer is extremely misleading, if not flat out a falsity. It just seems that HONESTLY you don't care....remember the ZG doll? Without even going there, something needs to be done, and SOON! I mean new druid skins on forms...cool right...but game mechanics for an entire set of players should probaly take precedent don't you think?

Ghostcrawler

#94 - June 12, 2009, 8:29 p.m.

Q u o t e:
He also said sooner rather than later when talking about fixing ret. He won't give us any ETA and the the problems the community has with GC will further continue cause he fails to correct some of his communication issues.

Q u o t e:
Definitely how it feels. I'm getting close to quitting this game if they don't at least give us an ETA on when we get fixed

We generally don’t provide ETAs. Sorry. The consequences (in terms of the same kind of public response you are talking about) for providing an ETA and missing it are far, far worse than for not providing one at all. That is why we say “soon.” Posts about threatening to quit the game will get you banned. Threats were not effective at getting your way in elementary school and they don’t work now.

Q u o t e:
The question is...will blue ever address the issue?

Yes. We said we would. There is a limit to what we can hotfix both in terms of the technical implementation and the testing time (both internal and PTR) required.

Do note though that about half of these threads are “finish nerfing Ret” and half are “Ret has been nerfed to the ground.” This isn’t the kind of issue upon which the community has built a consensus. We need to get Retribution to be viable (in PvP and PvE) but not overpowered.

Q u o t e:
Prot needs more cooldowns (blizz has admitted this).
Holy ought to have more utility in general, only being able to tank heal sucks. (blizz has acknowledged this).
Ret needs reworked for aforementioned reasons.

I think this would all go over a lot better if people stopped saying "BUFF RET" "NERF RET"
Ret doesn't need buffed or nerfed, it needs redesigned so that the skill cap is raised considerably.

Yes to all of that. We’ll try to announce what we’re working on soon (there’s that word again).

Q u o t e:
A large part of the problem Blizzard has, is they don't think about how something sounds,(i.e. to the ground, baby,), check facts before they post. Using the Vindication nerf as an example of bad math, 20% of stamina does not equal 20% of hp. Same with Hammer taking the last 20% of health. One problem, with vindication the window to use hammer was lowered. Yes, it's a simple mistake to use forum qq as a basis for justification of a nerf, but when that example is flat out wrong and not supported by any facts , the nerf seems totally unfair. Using facts from math is solid, forum qq that has no factual basis in reality, is emo kids raging.

Vindication was overpowered. Period. Trying to portray it as a misguided nerf based on us not understanding the mechanic is unlikely to be effective at getting the nerf reverted. When we announced this change, the typical forum response was “Thank goodness.” Now you can try and spin that as community being misinformed about how the talent works (that happens sometimes). You can try to spin that as the community just hating you and wanting to see your class destroyed. In this case we find both of those explanations unconvincing.

Health is not stamina, but the two are closely related. The fact remains that Vindication did the equivalent damage of a very big hit.

Q u o t e:
You need to fix these guys, rather than just straight out removing moves (sometimes w/o prior warning). It is pretty insane. That's not balancing, it's emasculating. The only thing I can think of is that you really do not care...that you really want paladins to fit inside this little box because it is easier to constrict them there.

It sounds like you (and several others in this thread) are arguing either that it’s okay to be overpowered for a little while, or that we should only nerf a problem a few times and then let it remain overpowered if we haven’t gotten there. We hear this as “Don’t nerf me bro.”

Q u o t e:
The problem with ret paladins, or with most of the people playing ret paladins, is this roller coaster ride we have been on since release. Many people, including myself, are sick and tired of it. As the Devs put so many times: no one likes being nurfd, but the paladins are seeing it as: hey, why am i the only one being nurfed? Why did you let DKs run wild last season, 3 shotting all the high AND low rated players and now you are nurfing me because i am 3 shotting just the low rated players... this doesn't seem to fair....

We nerfed DKs plenty of times. As with Ret, the nerfs were not sufficient. The conclusion is that we are too gentle with our nerfs. Think about that for a minute before you complain about how mean we are to you.

Ghostcrawler

#95 - June 12, 2009, 8:29 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Another thing i'd say to blizzard is, hotfixing paladins week after week for whatever reason without giving any notice in advance is just adding fuel to the fire. Please stop it, coming out with a post a week in advance to say "hey this or that MAY change to this and that..." is something you really, really should do next time.

When we make balance changes, we don’t always provide advance warning. If it’s something coming in a future patch, we might offer a preview. If it is something that is currently a problem AND it is easy for us to fix (not everything is), then we act on it. We see no reason to sit on a balance change for a week just so the medicine goes down easier. That isn’t fair to everyone else that isn’t your class.

Q u o t e:
This should be looked at by Blizz. I even reported it for sticky for some extra attention :P

It is mostly a QQ thread. We are much more interested in discussions on class mechanics (and there are a few of them in here) than we are at how mean the developers are to you. Re-read some of this. If it was about a class that you didn't play would you say "Wow, that makes so much sense!" or would you roll your eyes? The definition of a logical argument is not one that agrees with your point of view.

Ghostcrawler

#184 - June 13, 2009, 12:29 a.m.

Q u o t e:
You said sooner rather than later.... well it's now later. I know the term "soon" is subjective but I think most people took it as "not the entire course of a content patch."

You are trying to define "soon" into a specific dates. If that was our intent, we would just use those dates. :)

Sorry, I would love to be able to give you more concrete dates, but that hasn't historically worked out well for us. I know it's frustrating, but "soon" is the company line.

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Ghostcrawler

#187 - June 13, 2009, 12:32 a.m.

Q u o t e:
The biggest thing here is, you say offering the solution, well, I'll quit, is a bannable action. But I think that says that people are unhappy.

It's fine to say you're unhappy or that you'd like to see something changed. No problem there. Just don't go into the mode of "Change this or I will toilet paper your house" kind of stuff. Threats are a weak negotiating tool.

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Ghostcrawler

#189 - June 13, 2009, 12:35 a.m.

Q u o t e:
However, now it's patently useless. Who is -really- going to waste points on a talent that provides, at most, a negligable effect on what it hits? What Vindication really did was serve to give Ret a -chance- to kill a healer if they threw everything they could at one(Like most melee have through their various mechanics, save, currently I think, Ferals). Now? We might as well just let the Healer swing their DPS spells at us and finish us off. Vindication was, effectively, Ret's MS. All Ret has now is two multi-function moves(HoJ and Repentance) on cooldowns that are too long to make them effective as anything other then CC, at this point.

The design of Vindication was not for killing healers. The design was that you could debuff your opponent. The mana and health consequences of the debuff were so severe that they totally overshadowed lowering the target's damage by decreasing their Str or Agi.

Next patch we will more than likely change the talent to be a debuff that feels more like a debuff and is usable in PvE and PvP.

Ghostcrawler

#191 - June 13, 2009, 12:38 a.m.

Q u o t e:
The "community" has shown that it is only satisfied when we are reduced to "lolret". Back in the middle of BC, when we were firmly entrenched in lolret, you STILL had posts here wanting ret nerfed more.

This is why our job is "make the game fun" not "make the community happy." Those two overlap, but not by 100%. :)

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