I'm a ret pally. Proud PvE Ret Pally for quite some time, before people even knew this buff was coming. And I'd like to say, that from what I've seen, 20% damage reduction across the board seems about right. My ret and boomkin are about equiv in gear, and my ret pally does (sustained, not burst), about 120% of the damage of my boomkin, even since they were buffed in 3.0 aswell. We're doing too much damage, this should bring us fairly much in line with the other hybrids.

That being said, this nerf to JotW is waaaaaaaaay to much. I've just been running some numbers, because that's the sort of person I am.

These numbers make a few assumptions, so bare with me. A ret paladin gets, for all intents and purposes, 0 int from gear, so unless they've got an int buff, they're at base mana, all the time. This can be buffed up, but its easier on the numbers to just go with it.

At the moment, most Ret's are using a four skill rotation - Judgement, Crusader Strike, Consecration, Divine Storm. This will just not be able to be maintained in the next patch, and, in my mind, for good reason, consecration is a big spell, it shouldn't be able to be up 100% of the time, and that's about a 7% total damage reduction on a single target right there.

With Consecration removed from the line up, we get a Judgement, Crusader Strike, Divine Shield rotation, with 2.5 seconds where you're twiddling your thumbs. This is a total of 25% base mana every 8 seconds (averaging the cooldowns). We gain 15% base mana every 8 seconds, plus 2% total mana from replenishment in the same time, but since for a Ret, total=base, its basically just 17% base mana every 8 seconds. That means, using our stripped down, boring arse rotation, we run out of mana (without pots, which can only be used once anyway), after 100 seconds.

One minute forty seconds. With an Int buff, and Kings, that can be stretched out to 2 minutes, maybe 2:15.

But wait, you say, what about Judgement of Wisdom, and Seal of Wisdom. Well, with the incoming nerf to Judgement of Wisdom, it only restores 1% total (base for ret) mana every hit. Over the course of our 8 second rotation, the average ret pally hits with auto attack 2.4 times (3.7 speed weapon, 10% haste), plus two special attacks (crusader/divine). For a total of 4% base mana back. Which takes us to 21% base mana back every 8 seconds back, which does take us out to 200 seconds. 200 seconds, using the most rudimentary skill rotation, ignoring the mana costs for our other pally spells which most groups expect us to use (cleanse, flash of light, to take advantage of art of war, etc.), and situational damage spells like exorcism, or hammer of justice.

As for Seal of Wisdom, I don't have the exact parses on hand atm, but from general observations, I can safely say Seal of Command and/or Seal of Martyr constitute about 20% of my total damage. Not to mention the fact that their judgements do a third again as much damage. So, during our mana return phase, we'd do about 65% of our total damage at the moment (loosing seal, judgement, and consecration damage). How long would it take us to get our mana back? As before, an average of 4.4 attacks every 8 seconds, 45 seconds. To give a comparison, a hunter, from 15% mana, turns on aspect of the viper, continues auto-shot, and does about 40% of their normal damage, but is back to full mana in about 30 seconds. In total, its about the same damage reduction, but with one small difference - hunters get mana on their gear. So they can up their mana pool quite a bit, and take more then twice as long to go oom

So, all things considered. Optimistically, 3 1/2 minutes before complete OOM. Call it 3 minute damage phase, followed by a 65% damage phase for 45 seconds. Which totals out to 20% of the time, doing 65% damage, or a total damage reduction of about 7%, given ideal circumstances. Call it 15% nerf from being OOM all the time. Combined with our 20% damage nerf?

That is too much.

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