Patch 5.4 patch notes
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The latest patch 5.4 newsRetribution DPS too low
by Zach Yonzon 
Mar 4th 2009 at 1:00PM
Ghostcrawler had one line to say about a flood of complaints from Retribution Paladins who are feeling the pinch of a restrictive tree, effectively ending the argument: Blizzard feels that Retribution DPS, particularly in PvE, is lower than how they would want it in 3.1. This comes in light of the changes in the upcoming patch, which on the surface seems like a good thing because of the slimming down of the tree and freeing up talent points.What many players should understand is that unlike pure DPS trees or even other hybrids, Paladins simply don't have any room to be flexible. Retribution Paladins can pick up every damage-boosting talent already with points to spare, and there's just a DPS ceiling that simply can't be broken through. Whether Ghostcrawler's statement indicates that they'll be reversing the 3.1 nerf to Fanaticism and Righteous Vengeance remains to be seen.
The nerf to Fanaticism is very clearly aimed at PvP burst, but has deep implications to overall DPS considering that Judgement crits also proc Righteous Vengeance. Both changes result in massive performance dip in PvE. The continued nerfs to Retribution -- even in PvP -- no longer make any sense. A healer completely negates a Retadin, and with the upcoming nerf to Improved Hammer of Justice, this weakness will become even more glaring in PvP. The only consolation now is that Ghostcrawler and his team are aware of the problem. Whether that means anything will be done about it, of course, is anyone's guess.
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 7 of 7)
Ravenblack Mar 5th 2009 1:01AM
^ Indeed.
Too bad those teenagers screaming 'QQ moar', '/deleteclass', etc. won't actually manage to read any post longer than one paragraph before they need to vent more of their sugar-induced ranting.
Skitatic Mar 5th 2009 2:39AM
"What many players should understand is that unlike pure DPS trees or even other hybrids, Paladins simply don't have any room to be flexible.
Retribution Paladins can pick up every damage-boosting talent already with points to spare"
Don't QQ like you think you're the only ones. Look at ele shaman. Suck it up.
Draelan Mar 5th 2009 2:00AM
I actually had a laugh over this with a guildmate of mine. He plays a pally, and is more than happy to respec between prot pally, PvP ret pally, and PvE ret pally. When he goes PvE ret, he rips things APART in PvE. The thought that ret pallys don't do enough PvE damage is amusing. If played properly, pallys can do quite well.
But, Blizzard will do what they feel is best. So long as I can still enjoy the game, buffs and nerfs here and there are ultimately inconsequential.
Wavy Mar 5th 2009 5:35AM
Where's the love for mages huh? I think that mages should be given more tanking and healing abilities! Because right now, all they can do is dps.
Ravenblack Mar 5th 2009 6:56AM
What's your point? That we should just happily watch as the retribution spec becomes useless in PvE again and go back to healing or tanking?
Perhaps they should revert the Arcane tree for Mages back to the useless state it was in at the beginning while they're at it?
tgcam Mar 5th 2009 7:15AM
and i was always told my class, the shaman, was the loudest whiner. thanks for the laughs guys.
oh by the way, death knights, tough as they can be, are not op.
i can take them down with my enhancement shaman just fine, even the ones who actually know what they're doing.
Happy Bullet Mar 5th 2009 9:13AM
6k + judgment of the martyr / blood hits on an instant cast are ridiculous. That is comparable to the damage put out by spells with 2.5 second cast times. A 30 yard unmitigatable damage attack on a melee class is ridiculous.
Even with resilience ret paladins are taking players from 100 - 20% within a hammer of justice and instant cast hammer of wrathing them to death in the GCD directly afterwards.
Ret paladins are quite simply too cheap a class, take no skill to be successful with and do too much damage.
Not a lot of players are going to survive having a ret paladin near them, even plate wearers. Additionally, despite their whining about being kited, ret paladins are the hardest melee class to kite in the game with the exception of feral druids. The top mage in BG9 has confirmed this on the wow forums. The second last thing they need is any more 'utility'. The last thing being any more damage. The first thing being proper nerfs to their damage.
God hope you don't meet a paladin in world pvp because between bubble AND lay on hands, you are up against something which can practically instagib you if they get anywhere near you, yet which you must kill THREE times over.
It is absolutely ridiculous. Their damage needs to be LOWER. A LOT LOWER.
Ever since WoTLK came out paladins have gone from one of the least played classes to one of the most played classes. They are only marginally less played than death knights at 80. Their
population has absolutely soared. I would have to conclude that this is not because paladins are having any sort of trouble at all. We can see that classes who are known to be having trouble have had a declining population. Paladins popularity is far more likely caused by such things as what? 25% representation at the top of arenas as holy, constant topping of BG damage ladders as ret and generally being indestructible threshing machines.
Furthermore, I would go so far as to say that while ret paladins are ruining battlegrounds, when they respec holy for arena, their overpoweredness is responsible for most of the class imbalance you find in there, given their synergy with death knights.
Basically this game is a joke until paladins, especially ret, are nerfed properly.
Frankly add to this their constant whining and any request for buffs couldn't be any more vomit worthy.
So /puke. /puke on ridiculous pvp imbalance caused by paladins. /puke on the whiny ret paladins in this thread and /puke on this retarded article.
Ravenblack Mar 5th 2009 10:39AM
I find it dissappointing that, while you take the time to write such a lengthy post, you obviously haven't taken the time to read up on those before you.
If you did you would see that many/most paladins agree that we are OP in PvP. Your entire post goes on about how OP we are in PvP. Not once did you consider how all this affects the other half of our game - PvE.
Burst damage plays a major role in PvP. Unfortunately for ret paladins, we have become the definition of burst damage. At the same time we suffer from a lack of scalable, substainable DPS - a fact that only recently has started to surface as more and more players finish gearing up. This leads to us being hated in PvP, and us falling behind in PvE.
Then comes a patch which we hope will balance us, nerfing our burst damage in PvP and buffing our sustainable DPS in PvE - but what do we see? A nerf that affects our PvE DPS more than it does our PvP bursts (some would say we're even getting buffed in PvP), bringing an even greater imbalance!
We ask for balance, yet you're blinded by hate and decide to /puke on us instead..
Duranin Mar 24th 2009 7:04AM
Blizzard has been doing the same BS to paladins for over 4 yrs.
Stop giving them your money and quit the game imo. I did since almost a yr now.
You keep playing and they keep jerking you around. When will you all have enough??
Btw thx Zach for your work on paladins here on insider. I've been a fan of ur blogs here for a while now.
Frodo34x Mar 5th 2009 10:36PM
Why shouldn't hybrid classes be able to rival pures on the DPS meters? Because they can re-spec to healing/tanking? How's that any different to someone who plays a mage switching over to their holy priest?
Chebu Mar 6th 2009 1:37AM
Just answer this:
What is YOUR armor?
What can you do if you're down to 10% health?
Can you stun a target without healing it?
Seriously - can you draw up a comparison chart comparing mages and pali's? Do you agree that if once class has advantages in one aspect the other has to have advantages in another? If so, where should the mage's advantages be?
Ravenblack Mar 6th 2009 12:36PM
Let me boil this whole scenario down abit:
Paladins: "We're starting to notice a design flaw where we don't scale as well as was intended."
Blizzard: "Yes, we see this and we're trying to fix this."
Trolls/QQ'ers: "OMG! You're already OP in PvP!! HYBRIDS < PURES!!!"
See what I mean? My suggestion to you: READ the comments before RESPONDING. Here, I'll even help you out by quoting a couple of the highlights:
"[..] And saying that pure dps classes should always, no matter the circumstances do more dps than hybrids is proof you don't really know the game has evolved since TBC. That's equivalent to saying warriors are still the only MTs. Blizzard has even stated that lowering the gap between pure and hybrid dps is a design decision. This means that you can't be a clicker and expect to do more dps than a ret who knows how to play, just because you rolled a mage."
- Crill
"[..] Now PvE. In PvE, ret paladins lack damage. They just don't scale well enough. Think aboud shadow priests and affliction warlocks in TBC. They were great in first tier, then they went down in meters compared with the only classes. But they had utility, that's why they were brought in T6. Now, ret pallies don't even have that. Replenishment can be brought by classes that have higher dps, judgements can be done by prot/holy paladins, buffs too. In naxx, paladins should be topping meters. Is a design failure, but paladins get about 7-8% extra dps on undead (glyph, holy wrath, crusade talent), and if they aren't topping chars with that, anywhere else they will be last on meters, no matter what they do. Our guild's best ret did about 4k dps in 25 man patch, with heroic gear. Now he got almost every BiS, including betrayer of Humanity, and he's doing 5.5k. That's not right. Paladins don't scale well, and that's also part of the OP problem. They do very good with bad gear, so everybody in the bad gear zone will complain.
It's ok that ret paladins don't top dps with equal gear, skill and latency (that's also an issue) than pure dps classes, but with the numbers that are being pulled atm, they might be like 30-40% behind top dps. And if you give the "but you can specc holy/prot", well, you can leave the game and I wouldn't care less. Retribution should be a viable tree. Not OP, nobody but idiots would ask for that, but not clearly behind other dps. And yes, it needs to be nerfed for PvP, but needs buffs for PvE. Problem is, all QQ comes from either PvP people, or bad PvE people."
- Casjo
FoxOfWar Mar 6th 2009 10:46AM
It's funny, really.
Our guild's consistent top dps for over a year now is a retri paladin. He puts up 4-5k dps easily(or seemingly easily, like I would know how he does it). He was our top dps way back in BC when retri was a joke.
And no, rest of our dps is not much worse, so it's not that. Other players just about constantly in the 4-5k dps and top three dps are shadow priest, fury warrior, frostfire mage and elemental shaman.
They might nerf the class, but they can't nerf the player.
Point is, if they nerf something, good players will usually find a way around it. Bad players will focus on whining about it instead of resorting to(el gasp) thinking.
Ravenblack Mar 6th 2009 11:51AM
A valid point, albeit irrelevant in this case.
Point is, we've hit our DPS roof. Compared to other classes, our current DPS scales badly. This is currently hard for others to notice, as we've only recently reached the roof, and our current end-game consists mostly of undead.
We know this. Blizzard knows this. They have acknowledged this.
At the same time our burstiness is too high, and combined with our supreme survivability, we excel at PvP. Again, both we and Blizzard knows this.
In an attempt to address these issues in the upcoming patch however, the changes so far have had the opposite of the supposedly intended effect. We remain as bursty as ever in PvP, and instead receive additional nerfs in PvE. This makes no sense, and we speak up in the hopes of this being corrected.
What will happen if these existing PTR changes remain? The hate towards paladins in PvP will grow (just take a look at the haters in the previous comments), the class representation in PvP will be further imbalanced, and retribution paladins in general will stop being competitive in PvE. In addition, we would not be surprised if future patches would continue to nerf retribution paladins' DPS simply because they remain strong in PvP.
Sure, a good player can make any spec/class shine, no matter how bad it is. But even those good players will suffer in the end when everyone regards their spec to be a failure..
FoxOfWar Mar 7th 2009 4:41AM
Ravenblack, agreed.
(I was a bit too tired, and biased when I wrote that.)
I didn't argue that Retri's PvE couldn't use a buff - I am aware of their scaling problems. I just find them amusing when our consistent top dps(quite often outside Naxx too, btw) is of said spec. But if I take a look further down the line, yes, Retri might have some scaling problems.
We can just hope Blizz fixes this.
(I play tank myself, so I've never personally had problems with gear scaling for obvious reasons.)
Ravenblack Mar 6th 2009 12:37PM
@ Chebu:
Do I really need to teach you how to play your class?
Your argument against our plate armor fails. We mitigate about 40-50% PHYSICAL damage. Your cloth mitigates 10-15% of the same damage. However, as Arcane mage you most likely have Arcane Shielding, which improves your mana shield to a 1:1 damage/mana ratio, and a couple talents improving your magic resistances. This means that you are only limited by your mana when it comes to a 100% mitigation of BOTH physical and magical damage. When it comes to mana, arcane mages nowadays can have 80% mana regen WHILE CASTING (100% it seems in the next patch), in addition to a bigger mana pool. In addition, your resistances would mitigate alot of all types of magic damage cast at you (barring holy).
Most of this is however irrelevant when a mage is properly played, as a mage should never get hit by melee to begin with.
Oh and did you say you had NO healing abilities? Did you forget your glyphed evocation perhaps?
Ice block is your only means of escaping harm? Have you forgotten all your slowing/rooting spells, combined with Blink? Oh, not so viable in group/raid content? Well how about Mirror Image to effectively work as a PAUSE button on your threat, and Invisibility to remove it altogether?!
Regardless of your inability to play your class, I and many other paladins do not have any intention of doing as much DPS as mages (when not considering skill nor gear). We are more than happy to fall in where Blizzard has clearly stated they want us to be - that is 5% behind pure DPS classes, together with the rest of the hybrids.
muffin_of_chaos Mar 6th 2009 6:23PM
I'd say classes should fall behind pure classes based on the number of roles they can fill and buffs they bring. Retadins bring far, far better buffs than mages (an extra blessing and Replenishment), and can fill two more roles.
Given that, I'd say they should be at around 20% less damage in order for it to be even.
And more importantly, fix the scaling! Retadins have complained to the point of ear-bleeding that their damage doesn't scale well "even if it scales really well at first." So change that! For The Love Of All. How hard can it BE to make them scale worse and then better?? Lower their base damage, increase coefficients, it isn't that hard. Minimize their spike damage while you're at it.
Ravenblack Mar 9th 2009 5:12AM
20% is too much of a difference - you have to give the player a chance to compete with the top or he'll eventually start wondering what's the point in playing as hybrid DPS. Regarding buffs this has already been stated, and I'll quote it again:
"[..] Think aboud shadow priests and affliction warlocks in TBC. They were great in first tier, then they went down in meters compared with the only classes. But they had utility, that's why they were brought in T6. Now, ret pallies don't even have that. Replenishment can be brought by classes that have higher dps, judgements can be done by prot/holy paladins, buffs too. [..]"
- Casjo
Yes, frost mages already have some replenishment through their water elemental, and this will be changed in the next patch to be tied to Frostbolt instead.
Zorrol Mar 29th 2009 10:59PM
I've played a Ret Pally since WOW came out and I can state unequivocately every body thinks a RET Pally is a Joke. I have never been invited to a Raid except by personal friends. Can't get invited to A good Guild. I tell them I'm Ret and it's like Oh Ok, sorry.
Everybody wants Healers and Tanks, sorry I don't give a crap about either. I just want the retribution tree to be fair interms of DPS. I get tired of being beat down by rogues and DK's because my DPS really really sucks. Hence all the jokes about "Retadins", Retarddadins" and etc. We deserve to have DPS just like anyone else. I refuse to Tank or Heal just to make other people happy.