In an upcoming weekly maintenance period within the next few weeks we’ll be implementing the following changes:
A new Major Glyph for Paladins has been added to the game: Glyph of Reckoning - Your Hand of Reckoning spell no longer taunts the target and can deal damage to untauntable targets. This glyph can be learned from Inscription Trainers in Dalaran.
The Holy Vengeance and Blood Corruption DoT effects from Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption may now be applied by Divine Storm and Crusader Strike, in addition to normal melee hits.
The intent of these changes is to provide a small boost to Retribution Paladin damage via Hand of Reckoning, as well as helping with the ramp time needed to apply the vengeance/corruption DoT. The ramp time needed for this could be frustrating, particularly on fights with regular downtime or a lot of target swapping.
Goals
When examining Paladins and determining the approach to take here we had a few goals in mind, which we feel it’s important to elaborate on.
Goal - Give Retribution paladins a slight bump to bring them roughly on-par with Fury Warriors right now. Using the end of the previous tier as a baseline, Fury Warriors were also close to the bottom of the meters, but as new, more powerful gear is beginning to be acquired they are beginning to trend upward, and will continue to do so with an increasing pace for the rest of the expansion. We felt that Fury output at this moment and over the next few weeks is a fairly solid baseline for where Ret should be. We also wanted to be very careful not to overbuff Ret now, and cause issues for ourselves in a later tier such as Icecrown Citadel, where Ret has an extremely powerful tier set.
Goal – Minimal to zero PvP impact with this change. As it stands now, Hand of Reckoning does not deal damage in PvP or contribute to paladin burst at all in Arenas or BGs, and with this new Glyph, that will not change.
Goal – Smooth out the poor gameplay of having to build stacks of Vengeance/Corruption DoT effects when there is downtime or target swapping occurs. This is mostly a quality of life improvement, but it does help Retribution DPS ramp-up time quite a bit which we feel is a net positive.
Goal – Don’t make massive mechanical changes to how Retribution plays. Hand of Reckoning is off the GCD and can easily be weaved in between other abilities without adding a lot of mechanical change to how the class plays now. We feel that this is a fairly low-impact solution to provide a bit more output for players that want to opt-into this Glyph.
It’s also potentially more important to recognize what are not goals with these changes:
Not a Goal – Make Retribution competitive with the highest output specs and classes in PvE. The utility of all Paladins cannot be overstated here and is absolutely a factor to consider still. With access to critical raid buffs, auras, and raid cooldowns such as Aura Mastery and Divine Guardian, all flavors of Paladins have a vital place in any raid composition, and as we’ve previously stated, we are pleased with their overall representation in raids, as a class. We do not want to start seeing Retribution become stacked in raids. Most raid groups that run Retribution Paladins typically include a single Retribution Paladin, and we feel that 1 or 2 is still a good target number to have in each raid.
Not a Goal – Embark on an effort to provide ongoing balance to all classes phase over phase. We think its very important to WoW Classic that classes behave largely as you’d expect them to throughout the current expansion without constantly worrying about major design changes altering the feel of the class. This includes having them scale mostly as you’d expect them to. Warriors are a great example of this, and in almost every early expansion of WoW, Warriors start weak and scale exceptionally well with gear. This is especially true in Wrath where Armor Penetration becomes more prevalent and available around the midpoint of the expansion, and gear in the later tiers is more tightly optimized to allow Warriors to lean into their strengths and shine. This sort of ebb and flow feels right for classic and we do not want to change this paradigm, and feel that these adjustments will allow Retribution to stay more relevant now without creating a massive new imbalance or placing them well above where we’d expect them to be relative to other classes and specs during this or future phases.
Not a Goal – Bring all of the classes with poor PvE output up similarly. Frost Mages, Subtlety Rogues, Arms Warriors, and Beast Mastery Hunters are all at or below the output of Retribution in PvE and it would be easy to point to this change and say “What about [insert spec here]”. That’s fair, and this very argument was a motivator for us holding off on making changes here. A key argument that swayed us however is that all of those classes have very viable alternatives for PvE DPS, whereas Paladins only have Retribution in this role. All of these specs also have traditionally been viewed as PvP specs, and we are very leery to shift the meta in PvP while chasing a buff to PvE. This is why we went the direction we did for Retribution; as the impact to PvP shouldn’t be large. We’ll continue to evaluate things as time goes by, but we do not have any plans for other similar class adjustments after this one.
As we’ve previously stated, we do not make these changes lightly and we are extremely hesitant to make modifications to the original 3.3.5 designs of classes. We will continue to monitor class representation as we have been, and will make additional adjustments if things start to play out in a way that deviates significantly from how we and other Wrath enthusiasts would expect them to. We also may roll back these changes or make further adjustments if we feel this adjustment went too far. We will continue to be very cautious with changes in general, and will reserve these adjustments for specific situations.
We appreciate all the feedback we’ve gotten on this topic, and the changes we’ve opted to make here were inspired directly by the discussions and suggestions we’ve seen from players. We are thrilled to see how many of you are progressing through Ulduar over the past few weeks, and we hope you are all having as much fun as we are progressing, downing hard modes, and scooping that awesome loot!
Warlocks : 2 top tier DPS and 1 good tier DPS
Rogue : 2 top tier DPS
DK : 2 top tier DPS
Mage : 2 good tier DPS
Shaman : 1 good tier DPS and 1 ok tier DPS
Druide : 2 ok tier DPS
Then you have :
Hunt : 1 good tier DPS, 1 bad tier DPS and 1 worst tier DPS
War : 1 war tier DPS and 1 worst tier DPS
Why can’t War and Hunter get also at least 2 ok/good dps tier like the others ???
Why can’t you make BM Hunter like MM dps ?
Yeah we did, which is directly contradicting what they previously said not caring about the spec but the classes. Never mind that half of these aren’t even PvP specs.
“it’s important to highlight a few key words here. Namely; “class” balance is the key word in this statement, and this might be being conflated with “spec” balance.”
" Using Paladins as an example, we are hard pressed to think of a class that is more well-represented in Wrath Classic raiding across multiple specializations. Holy is one of the strongest healing specs in Wrath of the Lich King, and Protection Paladins have never been stronger tanks."
" The scenario in which we would step in to make a direct buff to baseline class functionality is quite specific and that’s when a class as a whole is at a point where they are almost never taken in raids across a broad spectrum of skill and performance levels. Having one spec be stronger than another is not a problem if the class itself is well represented."
They’re constantly lying to their teeth and making up new requirements as they go about. You can’t take these people serious. If Paladins get buffs now, so should the others.
What a dumb change, hope you’re ready to undo this for ICC. It’s about time they stopped messing with the tuning. Warriors have been nerfed twice, UH Dk’s once, Ret buffed. Ret participation in Ulduar is high already.
This just shows all you have to do is cry to get buffs.
This is where you’re wrong, Ret is really strong with the T10 set bonuses and Shadowmourne. This just means they will be stronger in ICC than they were before, people talk about how Fury gets good in ICC, Ret is right there with them without these buffs.
Blizzard have always been known to go back on what they say, Classic’s entire existence is proof of that.
This buff doesn’t really change much, it’ll likely just put Ret above tanks in the DPS meters.
What?
Arms warrior was traditionally a PVP spec. TBC offered a PVE variation. The TBC variation wasn’t a DPS spec fore it was outperformed by fury, it was however a great edition due to the bloodfrenzy debuff. Outside of that, Arms’ place was still PVP.
Frost was traditionally a PVE spec because arcane was an absolute joke and everything in MC and BWL had heavy fire resistence; offering mages zero alternative. After AQ and for the duration of the game, frost was primarily a PVP spec. Typically, the anti-melee spec.
Sub rogues? Again, PVP. Never had any use in PVE.
BM hunter? Great for levelling in Classic, but Marksman was the go-to PVE spec for the trueshot aura. If anybody was beastmaster, they were playing PVP or solo content. BM only became godtier in PVE (and PVP) during TBC.
It was during Cataclysm that “PVP” specs were altered slightly to be more viable in PVE. And then in MoP all specs were altered so that you could play any spec in any role.
TL:DNR Monkeyboy is still wrong and still stupid for having not read the post that he immediately responded to.
I’m all for reverting this buff and telling cryadins to shut the hell up, personally.
Sigh, I don’t mind buffs for Retri per se. But I mind the 180 degree turn on what they told us a few months ago and the stuff they’re now making up as to not buff other specs that feel unwanted in a raid environment. (well yeah, no acxually it’s ‘traditional’ pvp spec, yeah no axcually that spec comes in phase 5, yeah no axcualy you can choose another spec,)
For 5 months I’ve been forced to play a survival hunter because bm wasn’t viable, but sucking it up nonetheless, even though I do not enjoy playing it. Now Paladins who had 2 viable alternatives in the class they rolled, get to have their third viable tree, for 3 different roles.
And I’m supposed to hear because I rolled a pure DPS class, that can’t do anything but DPS, I should be happy that one of my specs is somewhat viable and it doesn’t matter if I enjoy it or not?
But making an exception for Paladins who don’t want to heal or tank. Because as a ‘hybrid’ all 3 of their specs need to be viable for everything.
Where are my alternative tanking and healing specs as a hunter then?
And that’s besides the downright lying and just making up requirements that suit them as they go along. Yuck, never been so sick with these people.
Meanwhile, the hunters that hated playing skillmaster spec in TBC had no other choice because it was outright OP for both pvp and pve. Marksman is at least playable now, and will likely be superior come ToTC and ICC.
The worst part is that ret isn’t “unwanted”. The addition of an extra paladin in the raid, as well as providing the 3% damage aura so that mages can play fire instead of arcane was worth bringing one, even with their subpar DPS.
But the ret paladins with their constant and endless whining never looked at it like that. They just said “but this pug doesn’t care about actual set ups or downing Algalon, they just want big dps and me no allowed in :(” constantly. Blizzard in Blizzard fashion have given in to the constant stream of tears instead of standing their ground.
I’m with you on the buff not being justified. But I’m not with you on using this as an excuse to justify buffing other specs.
I think I’m gonna decline all group invites from ret paladins now, just out of spite.
I’m sure we can make up endless details in specific situations where it makes sense, and argue back and forth about other classes in classic/tbc/wotlk having it worse, etc, but my bottom line is:
I think it’s a very unfair and bad idea to just buff retri Paladins, while making up excuses why others should not get a buff. It’s either no balancing for anyone and we all take wotlk remastered as is, or we make adjustment to other specs also.
In addition, as I linked in the post before about (class vs spec balance) that specifically took PALADINS as THE EXAMPLE about why it didn’t matter if one spec wasn’t viable if the class itself was.
Devs should be ashamed of themselves. They completely lost any credibility (again) and it’s just a clownfest, if not downright lying to our face about what their motivations and reasons are.
I know, I know, they do it more often. But considering them actually using Paladins as the example there why changes aren’t justified, to a complete 180 degree now why ONLY paladins are justified for change, takes the cake.
BM was nerfed by intention in WOTLK, Blizzard wanted people to play the reworked SV along with MM. BM being turned into the world questing, dungeon soloing levelling spec was not an accident, it still actually does Ret/Fury levels of dps.
And who cares about the real experience? I do, infact that is the whole point of classic. It has been perverted by new developers and in almost every case they miss the mark. We accepted the compromise and we play with ICC class tuning, which also means my class sucks balls despite that I was topping meters in 2008 as a Fury Warrior.
But that’s WOTLK. Ret gets good in ICC, now it’s apparently going to be too good because they also buffed it. So I guess we just cry for buffs for Fury Warrior too, just make a new thread every day whining like a baby for the sake of being a little higher on the damage meter.
Or maybe not, because that’d be pathetic.
But you’ve done precisely that if you don’t revert this by ICC, Ret is already competitive with the top specs in ICC.
