By any guess, Ret raid DPS is going to improve 20-30% from 3.0.8 to 3.1. This is a huge increase, far beyond the scope of "minor tweaks." Is ret playing with a handicap in raids right now? GC has always said they'll tweak the numbers if X class falls behind. Ret has only been "tweaked" down and is now getting huge sustained damage buffs, if it needs a "tweaking" of over 20%, shouldn't this have been addressed much earlier?
Seems like we're back to the buff/nerf rollercoaster.
Lets look at recent changes to Ret DPS from the PTR:
Buffs:
SoB/M going to 46% Weapon Damage, with a minor nerf to JoB. This is huge as it is a large increase to CS/DS/White.
Haste/ArP - Benefit increased.
Divine Storm - 100->110%
Exorcism - Glyph 20%, now works on all types, 15% from Sanct Seals
Holy Wrath - All types.
Crusader Strike - 15% Sanct Seals, now procs RV.
Nerfs:
RV - 40%->30%, no longer double dips from damage modifiers.
Fanatacism - 25->18%
Fanatacism change is minor as a majority of SoB's damage is moving to the seal.
RV change also has less impact as judgement becomes a smaller contributor to DPS, the addition of CS to RV as well as the improved DS/CS weapon damage coefficients greatly offset the reduction.
The question at hand is whether or not these changes are made to turn consecration into a cooldown active/mana dump move as opposed to a sustained damage ability. A reduction in blood recoil, even paired with the glyph, may result in insufficient mana for a full damage rotation including consecrate.
In any case, Ret will be far more competitive in 3.1 than it has ever been. I would seriously expect nerfs after 3.1, especially to the most recent SoB change. Huge implications to controlled burst in PvP as it adds near SoC-equivalent damage to all attacks with no internal cooldown.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Seal of the Martyr
This spell used to be the holy grail of paladin dps. Scaling with haste/heroism/windfury, it was the alliance dream, especially because paladins had nothing in the way of regen mechanics as ret back then.
Now the feedback damage is becoming a problem. Fights with damage amplifiers, extreme unavoidable aoe damage, or other gimmicks make use of SoTM tricky to use.
Gluth - If you do not have a decimate timer, its very possible to kill yourself with a single judgement.
Thaddius - You become a terrible burden on your healers if your judgements crit. Also possible self kill with a bad chain lightning+judge crit and low health/no priest.
Sapphiron - Constant frost damage, blizzards, throw in some feedback just to make ret a liability.
Loatheb - A trivially easy fight to be sure, but you become a healer attention sponge as you can do 10k+ in feedback to yourself between reflections.
The issue here is that the feedback will start to become a liability on harder content. Currently its not an issue because there is plenty of mana to go around, and plenty of globals to heal with. As damage scales out, both player and enemy, judging with martyr will begin to be a liability. Making martyr the "pve" seal and command the "pvp" seal needs work, unless Blizzard wants to try to balance paladin pve dps and pvp burst in one seal(unlikely). Also, I still don't see the reasoning behind a baseline ability being better for dps than a talent, but I'll accept that as long as martyr stops being a liability in raids. Being forced to use command will be a significant dps loss(though not as much as recount will show, as self damage is credited to the paladin doing the damage). This pushes paladin damage well below "competitive dps."
Summary : Martyr requires additional healer burden that is simply unacceptable as content difficulty increases. Why bring a ret paladin when someone else can provide the same damage with no health loss that could possibly contribute to a healer OOMing or a dead dpser?
Now the feedback damage is becoming a problem. Fights with damage amplifiers, extreme unavoidable aoe damage, or other gimmicks make use of SoTM tricky to use.
Gluth - If you do not have a decimate timer, its very possible to kill yourself with a single judgement.
Thaddius - You become a terrible burden on your healers if your judgements crit. Also possible self kill with a bad chain lightning+judge crit and low health/no priest.
Sapphiron - Constant frost damage, blizzards, throw in some feedback just to make ret a liability.
Loatheb - A trivially easy fight to be sure, but you become a healer attention sponge as you can do 10k+ in feedback to yourself between reflections.
The issue here is that the feedback will start to become a liability on harder content. Currently its not an issue because there is plenty of mana to go around, and plenty of globals to heal with. As damage scales out, both player and enemy, judging with martyr will begin to be a liability. Making martyr the "pve" seal and command the "pvp" seal needs work, unless Blizzard wants to try to balance paladin pve dps and pvp burst in one seal(unlikely). Also, I still don't see the reasoning behind a baseline ability being better for dps than a talent, but I'll accept that as long as martyr stops being a liability in raids. Being forced to use command will be a significant dps loss(though not as much as recount will show, as self damage is credited to the paladin doing the damage). This pushes paladin damage well below "competitive dps."
Summary : Martyr requires additional healer burden that is simply unacceptable as content difficulty increases. Why bring a ret paladin when someone else can provide the same damage with no health loss that could possibly contribute to a healer OOMing or a dead dpser?
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