#1 - Aug. 10, 2012, 10:47 p.m.
For those who are unaware:
Censure damage reduced by 15%.
Hammer of Wrath damage reduced by 20%.
Judgment damage and AP scaling reduced by 20%
Exorcism damage reduced by 15%.
Sword of Light now jncreases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 10%, down from 20%.
That is a pretty steep list of nerfs for what is called a phase of balancing. Nearly every form of output Ret has got reduced, with the exception of the finishers, which actually got buffed:
Templar's Verdict now does 280% was (260%) weapon damage plus 1,918 (was 1,633).
Divine Storm weapon damage increased by 12.5%.
Now the said reason for all these changes is due to Ret doing too much damage. I'm inclined to agree. Ret was doing too much damage, but only when certain conditions were met. All cooldowns, strength potion and lust would jump Rets output to around 120k if played correctly. That is just simply too high. Every pull would have Ret shooting to top of the meters while the rest of the raid played catch-up. That is by no means compelling or balanced gameplay and I can see why Blizzard made the changes they did. But as the name of the thread implies, they overdid it a little.
Quite frankly, its the Ret burst that is the problem, not the sustained dps. I have a few ideas that could really even out the Ret damage scaled over a fixed amount of time without crippling the spec.
Remove Hammer of Wrath from Avenging Wrath.
Reduce Exorcisms upfront damage by 50%, add in a dot component.
Reduce auto attack damage. People dont realize now much damage it does, especially with wings.
Reduce the damage that Guardian of Ancient Kings does.
Add in some synergy between Censure and Judgement. Allow Judgement to only do full damage when at 5 stacks of Censure. Reduce the damage done by Judgement by x% per stack of Censure.
I think the goal should be to keep Ret's sustained damage in a respectable place while toning down the infamous Ret burst. The recent change to Holy Avenger seemingly goes against that, and if things don't change Ret will be known only for its insane burst damage nothing more. The utility toolkit and flexibility will be forgotten until the next time wings is up.
P.S. For the sake of discussion, lets try to keep this PvE oriented. While I'm well aware that changes aimed at one side of the game have sweeping repercussions for the other, I want to keep this more directed at casual to high end PvE performance.