It was in my post?
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Cool, so other than Blizzard not knowing what they want. I don’t care about that.
Why is it an issue TO YOU if different classes get the spotlight.
Why is it an issue TO YOU if different classes get the spotlight.
Because it’s classic? This is a reasonably solved game and Blizzard doesn’t have the time nor the resources to actually balance 30 specs. I further don’t really believe that an attempt to actually balance the whole game would be a better outcome than just “it is what it is”.
Ret and Feral are in a far different spot in ICC than they were in Uld, the buffs no longer make sense. Blizzard shouldn’t just have large buffs to 2 specs and not actively balance the others.
However when Blizzard makes such a long post about justifying why they are buffing a class, then I expect we should engage with their reasoning.
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The classes do scale as you mostly would expect them too.
This does not mean “Scale relatively to their position in a tier ranking list”.
It means that the class scales in the same way, that if a piece of gear was good for you back then, the same piece should be just as good.
Ret wasn’t that powerful in Ulduar dps wise. They wanted to stay true to that and succeeded, the buff did not make them too powerful.
Ret was powerful in ICC, and they will be today. Their statement has everything to do with how character’s scale with themselves, and nothing to do with how they scale relative to other classes.
This is what you are taking out of context. Aggrend is clearly referring to Phase 2 and Phase 2 only.
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As someone who has basically played since Vanilla, I’ve enjoyed the adjustments. Feel free to hit up Classic Era if it’s too hard/confusing for ya. Many Classic Andy’s went straight back to Era when prenerf Ulduar kicked their a$$.
Yes because it’s only 2 specs that have had large buffs given to them.
There’s a certain irony to you complaining about a lack of context only to post even smaller parts of the quote.
For reference, the actual quote:
Upcoming Adjustments to Retribution Paladins:
It is explicitly about how classes scale relative to each other and doesn’t mention anything about specific pieces of gear.
This goes for every class except for the 2 that received 10%+ buffs that put them right up the top of the meters.
Ret (and Feral) aren’t anywhere near where they were in Ulduar, the buffs should be reverted as they have significantly impacted the relative scaling of classes.
The full quote once more:
Continuing the discussion from Upcoming Adjustments to Retribution Paladins:
Tell me, where is this specific to phase 2? Contrast this to other parts of the post that do talk about current (Ulduar at the time) balance, or other parts that talk about later phases.
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At the end of the day none of this matters.
Ret and feral are in great spots when you look at them in phase 3 bis. (Phase 4 bis numbers do not matter because the game is over by then anyway)
The most important thing for phase 4 is the gear you have for ICC progression. Things are in a great spot right now, and anything done to upset that is detrimental and hurts the game.
If we want to nerf them in phase 5 because they are beating the next closest classes by 10% or more, go for it.
I just hope that blizzard is listening to the rational takes about progression and not listening to the crying and winging (From a very small amount of people complaining that their top 5 class isn’t top 1 as ironic as that is) about dps numbers in gear that people will not have for months on end.
I would support Ruby Sanctum being released ~6 weeks into ICC and have that coincide with a 5% physical damage nerf to the Feral Glyph.
This way…
- Speedruns will just be getting started and won’t be dominated by 4+ feral cats
- ICC progression will get a slight boost
But this is the question.
Speedruns are always dominated by class stacking so why does it matter if it’s Ferals vs the Unholy DK meta or the Affliction Lock meta, or the probably Fire Mages meta or the Classic 25+ Fury Warrior meta
Like why is it bad that it’s Ferals
Because why should ferals get a 10%+ damage increase but the other specs don’t?
You realise this is Classic?
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And Blizzard has already said they gave up on #Nochanges so that’s irrelevant.
If you want to argue about the worse specs getting buffed along with Ferals and Rets, sure I’d agree with that.
But most of the time this argument comes from Fury Warriors being mad they are only #3 instead of #2.
Should we nerf Fire Mages? They are above Feral and weren’t even buffed.
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This is why I think you don’t even read threads you’re commenting in.
No one is calling for fire mage nerfs because they didn’t receive poorly thought-out buffs.
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This thread is people whining that Ferals (and a lesser extent Ret) are too good because of their buff.
But if the reason the buffs are “bad” is because it made Feral too good, then by that logic a spec that is better should get nerfed if Feral’s buffs are reverted/nerfed for being too good. Literally anything else means you’re against change for the sake of being against change.
Or - and stick with me here - or we are playing a game that is 15 years old and people have expectations about how classes work. Nerfs would go down very poorly in this game.
So feral being on top is viewed as “unfair” whereas people accept fire mages pumping because that’s just what Wrath is.
I am in the camp of viewing this buffs as unfair because they only made adjustments to these two specs.
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Wasn’t the Feral change not even a buff? I thought people just found some mega degen interaction that made feral do more damage than people not playing that way, and Blizzard fixed the interaction but added a glyph so everyone playing feral could do about the same amount of damage without being required to do jank stuff.
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Blizzard has never promised an authentic experience at least after Vanilla Classic ended.
You can argue with that being good or bad all you want. But that’s how it is. So using “that’s just what Wrath is” as an argument is completely irrelevant.
If you have a problem with that as an overall design element go ahead. But that’s a lot more than just balancing changes.
And like I said if you wanted to argue for giving buffs to other lower performing specs then I’d agree with you, it shouldn’t have been only Ret and Feral.
It was definitely a buff. Though it was intended to stop “bear weaving” (and many other iterations of Feral degeneracy) which is what you were talking about.
But it was definitely a large dps increase even over the degen methods.
Imagine if the Glyph of Hand of Reckoning not only removed the taunt, but also eliminated the cooldown on Hand of Reckoning. That’s what feral got.
Blizzard had a good fix ready to go, but since there are about 3 feral druids who play arena they reverted the change instead of putting the 5% reduction on the glyph itself.
Sure, TAJ is uncontested, and we will get it if it drops. And we will get tier for free. So we can hope to be bottom DPS if we get every item except for SM. Awesome. And even if we do get SM, it will take months to farm that and we will be bottom DPS the entire time until we get it, and finally become lower middle.
Like DKs are projected to be?
Yeah pretty much, without SM would put us on par with Arms again, & Blood DK, but with no hysteria DPS. Once we finally got SM, we’d be tied with Blood DK +SM with no hysteria DPS, near the lower end of the middle. DKs fall off hard in full bis ICC, that’s just WOTLK. It’s not a great place to be.
The big thing is that Ret without these buffs in ICC would be in a far different place to where Ret was in Ulduar when the buffs were designed.
Not really. Ulduar pre-buff we were bottom DPS tied with Arms. It would be the same in ICC except for being tied with Blood DK (-hysteria) & Arms instead. If we got SM after a few months, we would be slightly better off than we were in pre-buff Ulduar, yes, but it would be pretty similar to where we were at post-buff in Ulduar, still not far from the bottom, lower end of the middle of the pack at best.
Taking DSac is a choice
Not always. Such as Algalon progress, sure AM has slightly less reduction on the AoE damage, but it does nothing to reduce tank damage which was a big factor in Algalon progress. On a fight like Saurfang, it will be very important to have on progress to reduce the Mark damage which is physical in nature and cannot be AM’d. If you’re going to say that we are good because of utilities like DSAC, then you need to consider the DPS loss that it requires. And we’ve already gone over utility many times, our real only claim to fame is the 3% damage buff that no other meta class brings now. If we were nerfed to bottom damage without SM, people may look to other sources.
It’s the same scenario, classes that were quite bad in Ulduar getting buffs for that tier, which see them top tier and above lots of other classes in ICC.
How is it the same scenario when Feral is a tier above classes like Ret/Fury/MM/Spriest on DPS, S+ tier tied only with Fire Mage? When Feral is outDPSing all these classes, including fully buffed Retribution by 500-1000 dps. Feral is in a position to be stacked in ICC. Retribution is not.
This includes having them scale mostly as you’d expect them to.
Note Blizzard looks to player expectations here. Retribution has always been expected to be a top 5 DPS in ICC. I don’t know what the problem is with that statement there. You’re also twisting it out of context to fit your argument. Such as this quote:
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.
This was clearly speaking about Phase 2, and even if you insist it applies to ICC, we aren’t that close to Feral/Fire, which are 500-1000 DPS above us. So no, we aren’t really competitive with them. If you include DSAC then you can add ~350 DPS (515 DPS if you have to get 2/2 imp might) to that number. They are aiming for each raid to have 1 or 2 Ret Paladins and not be stacked, and that is exactly the case now. Nobody is stacking Retribution in ICC if things stay the same. If you reverted the buffs, the number of Retribution Paladins may well go to 0 for many raids, at least on progression, because we would once again be, the literal worst DPS, even if we managed to get set bonuses & TAJ after a few weeks we would still be at the bottom. But it would be far, far worse than just bottom DPS on progression before we gear up, it would be a mile below everyone and probably unviable period.
And personally I have always said that Blizzard overstates the importance of our utility here, even in Phase 2, in their own post they say that prot/holy representation is so good, and that’s one of the things that hurts our utility the most, as they bring basically all the same utility besides 3% damage.
They mention DSAC, which again costs us ~350 DPS to use (again, 515 if you need 2/2 imp might), and puts us a lot further from the top post-buff. Many of our other utilities, once again, are already provided by better classes pre-buff, including other paladin specs that would be much more meta (prot/holy).
Ret and Feral shouldn’t be this high on the meters in the tier they were originally supposedly balanced around.
Once again, most people did expect Retribution to be somewhere near the top 5 here in ICC BiS. This has always been a common talking point. “Wait until ICC when Retribution will finally be a top 5 DPS class” etc was a common sentiment. I’m not super familiar with 2010 but I’ve heard many people say that Retribution was quite strong in ICC originally, which it wouldn’t be in Classic without the taunt glyph.
What exactly do you think changed from Blizzard saying Ret’s overall strength was fine when they were at the bottom with Fury in Ulduar?
I already answered that, Retribution players began rerolling, raids began to take Arcane mage instead for 3% damage, and Retribution fell further and further behind literally every other class on logs. We literally were unviable if you didn’t need the DSAC for Algalon. They claimed representation was fine and then a month later changed their minds on that.
In order to justify a nerf you need to explain why it’s a problem for Retribution to be where it is in the DPS rankings. If we aren’t topping DPS, not even among the S+ tier classes Feral/Fire, and we aren’t affecting class representation of, for example, Fury, and we aren’t being stacked, then you accomplish literally nothing with a nerf, except for making Retribution mediocre DPS all expansion long, and less fun to play for everyone. On top of that, it subverts the expectations that everyone has regarding Ret being a strong DPS in ICC.
If we want to nerf them in phase 5 because they are beating the next closest classes by 10% or more, go for it.
I know you already know this, but Retribution isn’t going to ever be in that position if the sims are accurate. Fire/Feral will likely continue to be a tier above everyone else by a hundreds of dps. Retribution AM will likely stay tied with the other DPS classes on the 2nd tier, SP/MM/Fury/Affliction, with DSAC spec falling toward the upper middle of the pack.
Also, let’s say we nerf Ferals to remove them from that S+ tier. Now instead of having Feral stacking, you just have Fire Mage stacking instead. Sure, they didn’t get any changes besides the munch/vomit fix, but still. Maybe it’s more agreeable to some to have that instead, idk. I don’t think it is that important.
Or - and stick with me here - or we are playing a game that is 15 years old and people have expectations about how classes work. Nerfs would go down very poorly in this game.
You should re read this comment to yourself again Snipsy. Apply that to Retribution and it’s literally exactly the same. People expect Retribution to be strong DPS in ICC.
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So, why they aint buff arms huh? Why cant they let me spam thunder clap huh? Beside pallys are in a great spot, basically kings of the game. I can see why you dont want any changes. No more ez mode hur hur super op pally. The point is pallys dont need the buff to be great in phase 4, now should they take away it and leave ya super sophisticated class with nothing? No, absolutely not. You guys get to sit next to arms warriors, yeah? sounds fun right?