The truth about Ret fixes
by Eliah Hecht 
Oct 16th 2008 at 1:30PM
Rumors and unsubstantiated news have been floating through the ether like confetti since last night, when Ghostcrawler predicted Ret was going to be nerfed. Today he's finally out and said what they've hotfixed in and what's coming in the future:
- Nerfs:
- Divine Storm now does physical damage instead of holy (live).
- Repentance down to 6 seconds in PvP (from 10, live).
- Buff:
- Righteous Vengeance now applies a DoT "similar to Deep Wounds" instead of upping crit damage. GC calls it "a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty." The DoT will not break Repentance. (coming before Wrath) Update: "It should end up at something like 10% of the crit damage each tick for 4 ticks of 2 seconds each (+40% and 8 sec total)."
- Righteous Vengeance now applies a DoT "similar to Deep Wounds" instead of upping crit damage. GC calls it "a significant buff to the ability to make up for the damage lost to Divine Storm, but is also less bursty." The DoT will not break Repentance. (coming before Wrath) Update: "It should end up at something like 10% of the crit damage each tick for 4 ticks of 2 seconds each (+40% and 8 sec total)."
- Neutral:
- Art of War improves damage done by Judgments, Crusader Strike, and Divine storm, instead of upping crit rate. GC says "net dps should be about the same but less bursty" (coming before Wrath).
- Glyph of Crusader Strike now reduces mana cost, since the devs felt pallies were able to do too much damage on stunned targets (coming before Wrath).
- Fixed a bug with Seal and Judgment of Light that would result in too much healing. Technically a nerf, but since it's a bug fix I can't really put it in that category. (live)
Overall, GC assures us that sustained Ret DPS remains the same as before this storm of changes; it's just less bursty at the front end of a PvP fight. He also says "if we overdid it, we'll be happy to back off some of the changes," so we'll just have to see how it works out, I suppose.
One more thing. This isn't directly a Paladin change, but it will primarly affect Paladins, I think: the damage reduction Warlocks get from having their Felguard out with Master Demonologist is being extended to include Holy.
Filed under: Paladin, Patches, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Matt Oct 16th 2008 1:52PM
Sad panda :(
The Glyph is the worst part. That was one of the more compelling PVP glyphs, and now it is.. not so useful. In my limited time with Judgements of the Wise, ret pallies don't really run out of mana now.
muffin_of_chaos Oct 16th 2008 8:57PM
I second that ret pallies never running out of mana is a problem.
Patrick Oct 16th 2008 1:44PM
Eh, as a player who is only planning on speccing Ret to solo through Northrend, none of these changes really bother me. I love being a holy pal more then anything, but right now it's just impossible to lay out decent DPS and I don't feel like being the last player to hit 80.
emptyrepublic Oct 16th 2008 2:00PM
Changes seem reasonable and in the long view don't really effect PvE which is all I care about. Diehard PvPers can QQ in their basements if they can't live with it.
xtyle Oct 16th 2008 4:11PM
I'd sign that agreement....
As a hybrid, I don't mind not being the best dps out there... but it's a very welcomed change, albiet temporary. Yesterday was the first time since playing my pally that I felt useful as a dps. I'm mostly a holy or prot pally, so it was very fun for me to just go out and dps. Tuning is inevitable and imho welcomed. For the intentional Ret Pallies out there, they already know how to get their dps to be viable. For the others...The only people any Ret nerfs would really affect are the QQers. The real Pallies will adapt. ;)
/shrug ... not worried. :)
ninjasuperspy Oct 17th 2008 8:20AM
I killed the Overseers in Nagrand last night in crummy mid-kara level gear without using a single potion and without resorting to any cheap kiting techniques. I only have the Glyph of Judgment changing my DPS, and I haven't even bothered to enchant/gem my craptastic Ret set. And this is without even our "buffs." I'm looking forward to the Deep Wounds thing. I'm not sure about the Strike Glyph, mana wasn't a problem.
I agree with my fellow paladin above. Real paladins will adapt. Somebody on EJ will run the numbers and the rest of us will mess about, and we'll be stronger than before.
Spearhawk Oct 16th 2008 1:45PM
It happens again and again and AGAIN!!
Something good comes to the Ret Paladins and then other dps classes QQ over it and BUHU!!!
Then Blizzard comes in and does its "small" changes and ""net dps should be about the same but less bursty"" up my arse...
I hope you all whiners are happy...
Eopie Oct 16th 2008 1:47PM
I think you are the QQer Spearhawk.
Spearhawk Oct 16th 2008 2:17PM
I got a reason to be angry. Every patch it happens, Retribution paladins are given something and then other DPS classes cry that they are getting beat so Blizzard goes in and nerfs the shit out of it to make Ret paladin useless again.
FFS we don't need more mana, and what do they do? They cut a perfectly good skills to go from damage to cost less mana...hmmm....yeah, that makes complete sense...not
Lets see rogues get nerf to their stuns or perhaps loose the 90% damage loss on CoS, perhaps drop it to 50% or so...lets see if they like that change...
Naix Oct 16th 2008 2:07PM
Less QQ and more heals.
deathregis Oct 16th 2008 3:42PM
When I first read this, I thought it was a parody of trolls. Sadly, I was mistaken.
Kraas Oct 16th 2008 2:23PM
Naix: As an enhancement shaman speaking in support of his fellow hybrid DPSers, stfu & gtfo, don't tell people how to spend their talents.
Ryan Oct 16th 2008 3:09PM
Very happy. Your tears are like nectar.
Seriously though, ret was overtuned and got a correction; it's not the end of the world -- your dps didn't go down, you just lost some burst and you won't be able to two-shot feral druids in bear form.
Naix Oct 16th 2008 4:31PM
@ Kraas
Shamans are next in line for the Blizzard nurf bat. You too should just respec heals and put some more sticks in the ground.
Terry Oct 17th 2008 2:03AM
@naix
wut? i thought shamans has been sticking with resto only since before pre bc thank u for ur delay input
Reinard Oct 16th 2008 1:45PM
Mana cost? ...Really? Oi. They can do better than that, I think.
That aside, the Righteous Vengeance change is pretty cool. The Repentance change is...kind of a step backwards, though. All in all, not terrible changes, not gonna complain. Not like I was complaining before, really. Ret needed a nerf, I'm not gonna deny that.
Dan Oct 16th 2008 7:46PM
@Ryan
Our dps did go down. These nerfs happened when I was mid-raid. The loss of dps was considerable. None of the buffs went live with this hot-fix. They'll show up at some unspecified time in the future, but supposedly before wrath ships. The hotfix last night was a nerf and nothing but a nerf.
mark Oct 16th 2008 1:46PM
i'm all for balancing stuff, but what is even the point of having the beta and PTR servers if they're going to ignore feedback from them, push the changes live anyway, and then do the balancing on live once the general population tells them the same thing the beta/ptr people told them ....
Jeff Oct 16th 2008 1:46PM
Having played a Ret paladin and nothing else from level 10 up, I am very happy with the changes they've made to the spec. These nerfs/buffs don't seem too terrible at all, and certainly not bad enough to warrant the "OMG the sky is teh falling!!!1!!1!!ONE!"
comments that seem to be populating many places. Heck, i'd have been happy if they'd have left the class how it was and just given us Judgement of the Wise for mana regen :) Everything else they give in whatever form is just icing on the proverbial cake (it isn't a lie!).
Arktic Oct 16th 2008 1:48PM
The Art of War change may keep our DPS about the same, but it lowers our chance of having the instant FoL buff up. Wouldn't this be considered a nerf?