Seal twisting, a mechanic that heavily uses spell batching to make it work. It is “clever” use of game mechanics, but basicly what your doing is abusing a system.
Now with TBC approaching some people want to keep this active so they can dps moar.
But is it really nessicary to introduce a deviation of original game design to allow those few people that actually know how it works to use (exploit?) it?
Heres what you can do in TBC
Apply Seal of the Crusader
Apply 5 Stacks of Seal of Vengeance (use a spell weapon + spell offhand for higher dot ticks)
Apply Seal of Blood
Keep Seal of Vengeance at 5 stacks
Use your normal Crusader strike, Exorcism and Consecration.
Do we really need a clunky change to allow for seal twisting?
Is adding a mechanic that introduces actual agency and skill requirement for a dps spec whos only other agency in the game is pressing crusader strike every few seconds a good thing?
HELL YEAH IT IS!
Why do you think do people enjoy playing builds like Affliction-Lock, or Assassination-Rogue over the cookie cutter builds? Because people like it if their class cannot be played by some Lego-contraption that smashes the same button over and over.
Seal twisting should exist, if you remove it then you make Paladins less competitive and you change the class balance situation. Paladins are really competitive dps from patch 2.3 onwards and started becoming more common in raiding guilds, but it’s already a class that has to work hard min-maxing to compete, including farming mana runes.
It would be a shame if they became less desired because a mechanic that worked and was in use back in 2008 was removed from the game. The same goes for Enhance Shamans Totem twisting, the melee dps literally rely on full buffs to be able to compete with ranged, anything you change will affect that.
class balance has already been changed, and the’ve already become more competetive with these changes. In tbc you never had access to both vengeance and blood, this change will be the same as a warlock that uses corruption + shadowbolt or only corruption or shadow bolt in its dps rotation.
This will not be the case, people will take ret paladins for their unique buffs and blessings, not how ever much more or less seal twisting will be.
Again not true. The majority of fights it makes no different if your ranged or melee, and on some fights ranged are also in unfavorable positions. Also the illusion that one class performs better is a private server issue that usually uses highly buffed mobs.
If you look at original 2008 videos, even from those of speedruns melee are performing really well. Also keep in mind that melee have access to way more powerfull crafted weapons compared to ranged.
If you try to simplify it like that, we can simplify warlock to shadowbolt till you have to lifetap, we both know that thats not the case in either class.
Having latency is not a quirk, if you like quirks that much why don’t you ask them to keep spellbatching, then nothing needs to change for seals.
First of all its not fun to rely on having a crappy connection simulater to do dps. We’ve seen what spellbatching has done for classic, and i’m for one glad to see it gone. I don’t think that emulating a spellbatching system just for seals is a good idea.
Melee are performing really well because they are running totem twisting enhancement shamans, + 3 pala blessings, feral druid in the group, LW drums, curse of recklessness from warlocks, Arms Warrior physical debuff etc etc. Melee (and in particular Warriors/Rogues, which have the highest dps ceiling) are completely reliant on buffs to deal competitive damage.
The melee in those speedruns were provided with such buffs. The only change to ret that has any significance is that Alliance now have Seal of Blood, which is nothing but aligning the factions. Now since people have caught on that they can do a lot of dps with Hunters/Mages/Locks in 2.4 even with no gear (and while they mostly help buff themselves) they are more reluctant to build a melee raid, we see this discussion all the time, everywhere.
So the worst thing you can do is introduce changes that would actively reduce melee dps output, while ranged get a free pass. Melee can do very competitive dps and top meters under the right conditions, but they are more gear dependant, more buff dependant, more positioning sensitive, more threat sensitive… And here you’re advocating for making that worse? Why exactly?
i’m not asking that they reduce dps output i’m asking specificly not to implement a spellbatching mechanic for seals, since spellbatching was oh so fun in classic. Regardless how you look at it, wether sealtwisting is in or not, the fact that you have access to both seal of vengeance and blood will increase your ret paladin dps.
Also the thing that is most concerning for me is the fact that you get your twisting damage by using rank 1 of the seals. Twisting SoC And SoB is both done at rank 1! Its not healthy to have spells that deal potentially thousands of damage with a rank 1 spell.
For your information, SoC can proc on hit effects, SoB is an on hit effect so for both rank 1 versions of the spell you would get 1 regular SoB 35% of weapon damage and if SoC hits an additonal 70% + SoB 35 % weapon damage (all scaling with holy damage debuffs / buffs).
Crafting already favors melee
Ranged need an equal setup for buffs / debuffs
Works both ways it depends on the fight
Ret paladins get an additonal -30% threat talent, with Salvation ( a paladin spell which they are themselves) threat is at -60%
With the changes to Seal of Blood / Vengeance Ret paladin dps will already be higher then original TBC
Because it introduces a unwelcome spellbatching mechanic specificly for one spec that will have unforseen impact, in combination with already big changes to the paladin regarding original TBC. eg, if the batch period is going to be big enough with enough haste you might be able to twist 3 seals into the batch period. It creates a potential damaging synergy with for instance shamans where bloodlust/heroism + winfury combined with SoC + SoB twisting in pvp situations. It gets its damage from using rank 1 abilities, which completely negates mana balancing factors, plus it introduces a gameplay mechanic that is not evident in any tooltip in game so a large portion of the player base don’t even know you can use it and how its used. And as a last but very important argument, it opens the door for other “balancing” factors for all of the classic contents (be it classic, classic tbc, or any later classic iterrations)
What the Progress guys are doing is a theoretical idea about running a melee comp in the long term with lots of gear, which is entirely different to how every other guild on private servers is doing (aka the easy method of just stack hunters/warlocks because you need them anyway, threat management is easy, they do good dps even in bad gear, and they don’t become crippled when they don’t have optimum buffs or janky strategies.
Warrior dps is great, they have the best cleave in the game, 3rd best AOE and very good single target but if you invite them in low gear they will do no damage. I should know this, I have mained a Warrior since 2007, but they are also along with rogues the most gear dependent class. So lets take for example week 1 of TBC, you’re never going to be able to get Dragonmaws Hourglass, Bloodlust Brooch, Fel Leather, Ragesteel etc for all your Warriors, meanwhile your Hunters don’t even need gear.
So short term week 1 progression Warriors/melee are actually just bad, medium-long term (during farm) when they have their pieces they are good. But if you run Fury Warrior stacks you’re going to run into huge mechanical problems, particularly on bosses like Gruul, Vashj, Kael’thas. Like for example on Kael’thas, Warrior cannot generate any rage on his pyro shield, so you’re screwed.
Fury is extremely powerful with the right setup and gear (and is good even in T4 eventually), just like Rogues can be. But I don’t think the Progress guys method of going Vanilla Fury Warrior stacking is gonna work out, run 1-2 sure, but 8? You have a setup for clearing trash, but are you gonna screw yourself on the bosses?
Yes but were not talking about warriors at all, were talking about ret paladins and i particular if blizzard needs to accomodate seal twisting when they remove spellbatching. I don’t believe that altering the game, to allow a mechanic that only is possible due either (original) high latency or spellbatching, is designed for the game.
I don’t think we should accommodate such a change, or want it.
Just like you can decide not to use consumables and world buffs.
Let’s see how many guilds that do 15/15 Naxx would allow you in with 0 WB’s and 0 Consumes tho.
You can do everything in this game if you know the right people, have a lot of gold or respect. Asking to get carried will obviously not work for the average player. Also not every class benefits the same from worldbuffs, for some it’s not really needed. I always laughed at players who pretend to be hardcore raiders that spend hours on getting every buff in the game and then they just die on some trash packs and get mad. I rather play well to compensate for the lack of buffs. By the way I also asked for a change in the guilds loot system or I would not join them anymore and so the loot system got changed.
Sealtwisting is something different, your char will do more damage if you know how to play. Worldbuffs have nothing to do with knowing how to play…
Dying to a trashpack can be down to other people not playing well. If you play at a high level then every single dps in a raid is doing enough dps and expected to be doing that dps that they would pull agro off your average tank and die. Sometimes a DPS dying to a trash pack isn’t their own fault.
If the tank is good and consistent with his gameplay he won’t lose agro and the players will get a feel for the threat of the tank. If a player is playing well but the tank is inconsistent and it causes a dps death it’s the tanks fault. So saying things about people getting mad because they lost their buffs, of course they got mad because they lost their buffs, those buffs make more difference than anything.
Like it or not in Classic the world buffs give you most of your dps, you can’t compensate for lack of world buffs by playing well, unless you’re assuming everyone is bad and you’re just that much better at mashing your 1-3 buttons than other people, which is obviously impossible. Which is why people are gonna be like “lol lets see those logs then bro” and then you link your non world buff logs and your dps is predictably terrible.
that’s true, in a team environment there are always others around to blame as well. Still some people die way more often than others. Playing well is not only about pressing 1-3 buttons, it’s also knowledge on where to stand and when, making no mistakes with boss mechanics even tho these things aren’t that hard for most human beings but the truth is some people can’t even concentrate for 1-2 hours… some people afk a lot, die to those slimes after patchwork, die during the logan dance… it happened every time, so yes going through Naxx with the least amount of deaths in the raid was not uncommon for me.
I am not even playing dps in raids, just spec into heal and people kiss your hand. I only raided for a few items that could be good in pvp.
I would never care about logs and i think it’s pretty cringe when people do it but they can play the game how they like, it does not have to make sense for me. Why would tryhard-pve players play classic where raids are so easy even dad-gamer guilds like mine can do it? I heard retail has more difficult raids - wouldn’t it make more sense to tryhard and care about logs there?
its not necessary just a bunch of ret players and streamers where crying about it. they will do bad dps regardless if seal twisting is a thing or not lol.
This is why ive always played holy, i dont feel like being a liability on my raid just so i can play a meme spec.
Ret isn’t a meme spec in TBC, they bring a lot of valuable buffs + mana regen for the raid and they also do competitive dps. If you weighed up the actual value of a ret paladin with all these combined they are an extremely strong raid class for 1 raid spot, but no more.
I mean if you think Ret is a meme in TBC you don’t really understand TBC at all. In Vanilla they are a meme, in TBC patch 2.4.3 they are very good.
