Paladin Dual Twisting: Leave It In!

WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King Classic Discussion
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Kaivax

684 posts

Community Manager

3 Feb

We’ve made the following additional bugfixes and changes to the 1.13.7 PTR.

Classes

  • Paladin seals will now persist on the Paladin for a very short time after they’re replaced by a different seal.
    • Developers’ notes: The concept of “seal twisting” was only possible due to spell batching. With a greatly reduced batch size, we’re adding a slight buffer when you swap seals to allow you to proc two in the same swing. This was not an intended interaction in Original WoW, but it’s a fun quirk of WoW Classic gameplay, and we want to allow Paladins to retain the ability to do this. Please let us know how this compares on the PTR to how seal twisting currently works on live realms.

Blizzard, you find yourself tied by your own hands now that you took on the issue of spell batching and decided to get rid of it. Had batching continued to exist, you could’ve washed your hands in the decision altogether and just let quirky interaction of coding back-ends persist.

However, now that you’ve taken the stance to agree with seal twisting and keep it (see: quote above - Feb 2nd 2021), you’ve opened Pandora’s box so-to-say. Now you’ve come out and publicly stated that you intend to modify the back-end to allow twisting to work, and now you have to determine…how exactly will you do it?

Please, please keep twisting implemented with the ability to twist any seal into another seal and without restriction of which comes first.

During TBC, twisting seals was the single thing that kept Retribution paladins more interesting than existing as a bot that brought Blessing of Kings to raids, arenas and battlegrounds. Without it, our only role was utility. Damage was negligible. Impact was low. Nobody cared. But with it, a skilled and competent player could enter the fray. I was one of many that showed the world how to even claim Gladiator titles with it. I reiterate, without twisting, ret would be back to classic levels of engagement - low and laughed at.

For about a month, you guys had it right. We could twist from Seal of Command into Seal of Blood, and then twist again right back into Seal of Command. For a month, the Ret Paladin community saw hope that we might actually reap the benefits of what could’ve/should’ve happened back in the day.

We were competing in top 5 damage meter brackets for a few minutes there. It was difficult. It wasn’t easy. It took attention and skill. It took data driven itemization and lots of sad hunters/rogues/enhancement shamans/warriors to really shine, it’s not like it was an EZ-WIN mechanic in PvE or PvP by any stretch.

But then you guys walked back on your claims and decided to break twisting - but only half-way. Why? You’d already decided to include twisting when you opened pandora’s box, so why walk it back?

It seems like the intended change was to bring twisting back in line with the same capabilities it had in TBC…but then yesterday you said it again:

  • Spell batching removed

    • The 400ms “spell batch” window has been reduced to 10ms.

    • This should cause most player abilities to behave in a more responsive way, with damage and healing applied to targets faster. Certain operations in the game now resolve faster, such as purchasing multiple quantities of items from vendors rapidly.

    • Paladin seals will now persist on the Paladin for a very short time after they’re replaced by a different seal, so that “seal twisting” remains possible.

Keep double twisting all directions.

UPDATE: Please see below summations perfectly put together by Dyehead:

I feel like the arguments both ways have settled on the same repeating theme here lately and there hasn’t been much by way of meeting in the middle.

We’ve established the following pro-dual way arguments quite well:

  • 1-way rotation is super clunky and unfun
  • Leaving twisting in forces all competitive ret players to twist and use a clunky non-rotation
  • Blizzard is not afraid to buff underperforming classes or change mechanics, see Dragonslayer + DM buffs giving AP to hunters for a massive DPS boost in p6.
  • The meta for class composition in raids will not change with 2-way twisting.
  • Our DPS is super low and two-way twisting won’t impact meters as much as people claim outside of very specific fights where we stand still and can fully optimize all of our CDs
  • Twisting is fun with all seals and makes everything more enjoyable, including questing and grinding mobs.
  • High levels of haste make 1-way twisting even worse and more clunky. Haste is a primary stat for paladins in later phases
  • #nochanges doesn’t exist. In the tinnitus patch notes from yesterday,

The most prevalent anti-2 way twist arguments, some are actual nonsense but I want to show the stark contrast between the for and against position (Note I actually agree with some of the against but quite a few of them are absolutely just curmudgeonly and exist to shut down the discussion, and should be summarily ignored):

  • Ret is supposed to be at the bottom, paying the hybrid tax (cough shamans)
  • Ret have such huge raid utility that their DPS should be lower (cough shamans)
  • The meta is going to change because rets will be OP
  • Rets will now beat hunters and warlocks, their damage is going to go up 25+%
  • 2-Way twisting will be super powerful in pvp
  • If blizzard wanted to keep it in they wouldn’t have removed it on the Beta
  • Blizzard never intended twisting to be in, so be happy that you even have 1 way
  • When they asked for feedback it wasn’t about two-way twisting, they wanted to know if 1-way twisting was still working as it was.
  • Gear choices will be affected with stat priority adjustment around optimizing haste
  • Blizzard is bad at patch notes and the original note about all seals and twisting was a mistake
  • Blizzard sets the meta so we have no place to make requests

So if you take a look at both sides, it’s pretty clear that one is constructive discussion, and the other (for the most part) is just trying to stop the conversation entirely by not addressing what the key request is and why most of us want two-way twisting.

These anti-twisters target the folks who brag about their arena accomplishments in vanilla tbc and formulate an argument against ‘buffing’ a class instead of understanding what the actual issue is behind the request and responding to the key points.

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Amen. Clunky as hell with one way but not always. Just do two way.

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Let us do the twist.

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I’m sorry but your “vouch” means very little to me, can you elaborate a little here on what the issue is for the non-auto-attack classes?

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Instructions unclear. Lmk

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Are you asking what seal twisting is, or are you insinuating by your comment and snark that the unintended change to the mechanic (unintentional nerf) is a good thing?

I’m leaning towards your comment not being a productive one because seal twisting has been fairly well discussed and the OP lays it out pretty well. If seal twisting had been deemed unacceptable it would have been removed while batching was still in, there’s no argument against it - just a plea to prioritize getting it back to where it was.

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This isn’t true, there’s a pretty well circulated video of a ret doing Brutallus and being near the top of the meters without twisting.

Yes, it was a boost to those that were able to do it properly.

This wasn’t correct. The current version where you can only go from command to blood is the correct form. This is confirmed by every guide and video on seal twisting that exists from tbc.

It’s more accurate to tbc era twisting.

They implied they were aiming to some degree of accuracy in the original notes on the ptr when they asked for feedback on how the new behavior aligned with batching enabled realms.

And you are advocating a form that doesn’t align with the old behavior and is a significant buff to the mechanic and ret dps even over someone correctly twisting from 2008.

Keep twisting as accurate as possible in the tbc remake!

Seal twisting was considered an unintended use of game mechanics, it was never going to be expanded back then. Had blizzard stepped in, it would have been removed, as it worked around the intended balancing of the class.

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Instructions seem pretty clear. From all of your blathering I know not what the issue is, or how Blizzard has played a part in creating it, or that there is anything here that needs immediate attention to fixing due to it potentially threatening the integrity of TBC mechanics…you just groaned for several paragraphs about what you want Blizzard to do so Paladins can be relevant but I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re even attempting to do here.

Maybe for some of us non-gladiator Paladins, you can expand a little on what you’re saying here so we can work up the inclination to support you, but at this juncture I’m not seeing the validity to your complaints.

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I would be super down with twisting interactions going both ways. It is a more interesting rotation, it is what everyone assumed would be the case when twisting was given the nod in the batching patch, it keeps ret competitive in PvE and PvP without breaking it, and it creates a dynamic where the players who care to learn how to do it will see a noticeable difference over those who don’t put in the work. The larger the skill cap disparity between someone who masters the class and someone picking it up for the first time, the more fun the class is.

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then he was playing with dog**** players.

im leaving my signature for two-way twisting. the rotation it has is much more fun than one-way, and one-way twisting hard locks you into no faster than 3.0 attack speed, making any sort of haste bump detrimental to gameplay. I hope you dont have too much haste because then bloodlust is going to mess you up.

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It appears to me that you didn’t read the OP, or the blue post that he included.

A cursory google search for ret paladin seal twisting would give you plenty of information if you genuinely don’t understand what it is or how it’s done.

The very simple breakdown is that if done properly, a ret paladin has the chance to gain the benefits of two seals every couple of auto attacks if they have impeccable timing - which was made possible by 400ms batching. Blizzard removed batching which killed it, and then stated they would try to reinstate twisting (in OP’s post). In the beta it currently only works with 1 seal and not all seals as it did previously.

As for what benefit a ret brings to the raid - that’s a personal choice as to whether you are willing to put in the extra effort, practice, sweat and consumables to DPS optimally with seal twisting. If you want to be an auto attacker, that’s completely fine with those of us who want to seal twist, we’re not advocating for anything other than the capability to take our gameplay up a notch through more dedication to consistency and preparation.

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The bottom line is that Blizzard said: We are OK with seal twisting and we realize that the spell batching change disables it. So we are adding in a special mechanic to allow seal twisting.

However, right now seal twisting does not work the same as it did with spell batching. For whatever reason, certain seals can’t be twisted with one another. This is counter to what Blizzard said in the post, so we want them to make it work as they’ve stated they want it to work. “Two-way” twisting just means you can twist any seal into another seal. “One-way” means some spells can be twisted into, but not the other way around.

As in, if I have seal of blood active, and I cast seal of command right before my swing, I will benefit from both seals. However, if I then cast seal of blood off that new seal of command, it won’t work the same way. I’m not sure which way works and which way doesn’t, but I’m demonstrating how it’s broken right now.

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2 way twisting does this far more rigidly. 1 way twisting can comfortably go faster as you aren’t trying to bracket Crusader Strike in twisting cooldowns.

2 way twisting sees a massive drop in haste value when you go under 3.0.

Good news, seal twisting is in the tbc beta! It just isn’t expanded to be 2 ways! You can still use a higher difficulty rotation and see dps gains!

It was made to work more closely like it used to, where not all seals could be twisted.

This is how it would have worked if blizzard had not removed batching.

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As someone who has played a Retribution Paladin in Classic. I too was hopeful for the potential I could see with seal-twisting any seal with another in TBC Classic. While it might have given us the opportunity to overtake many other dps specs. The gameplay rotationally isn’t something that everyone would be capable of but it would make it easier for a larger amount of players to attempt rather than the clunky 1-way twisting we have now.

From experience testing things on the ptr even with the unintended manner of twisting two separate ranks of a seal. It was something that felt as a player far smoother than what is on the beta currently.

As of this morning running through the motions with 1-way seal twisting it absolutely feels like something that would be unintended. With both methods of twisting the closer you get to your GCD the more difficult it becomes to twist. However, with 1-way apparently it is a bit easier to do since you are already skipping and only twisting on every other swing. “edited because I originally was incorrect with my statement”.

This is completely anecdotal and lacking in hard data of course. However, it is from the perspective of an individual who has endured the vitriol of the community over the past almost 2 years as a Retribution Paladin in Classic. I attempted to perform as well as possible regardless of this.

I have pushed my spec as hard as I can in Classic and hope to continue this through the use of Seal-Twisting in TBC Classic, hopefully two-way. I didn’t utilize seal twisting in Classic primarily due to the limited seals that are available along with the mana drain it would have with using SotC and SoC.

If the current iteration goes into effect it will most definitely limit the capability of rets to execute seal twisting in a smooth and enjoyable manner also limiting them in itemization choice as they would be locked to slow weapons, again. We want to be more than just the raid’s utility machine and auto-attack bot.

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I had the highest combined Arena rating in NA and #2 in the world of all Retribution Paladins during TBC Arena season 3.

lol no you weren’t. Provide evidence of such a claim.

I know how twisting worked, and I might be the best surviving information bank on how it used to work.

Unlike Classic they actually had TBC data to recreate 2.4.3, so you knowing more is extremely unlikely.

Keep double twisting all directions.

There are not only numerous documents and websites proving you wrong, there is actual TBC footage and Blizzard has actual TBC data.

Why do you feel the need to lie on the internet?

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2 way twisting does this far more rigidly. 1 way twisting can comfortably go faster as you aren’t trying to bracket Crusader Strike in twisting cooldowns.

2 way twisting sees a massive drop in haste value when you go under 3.0.

Preposterous misrepresentation of data, but good try. We get it, you want to shill for #nochanges but you’re getting left in the dust. No comment.

Good news, seal twisting is in the tbc beta! It just isn’t expanded to be 2 ways! You can still use a higher difficulty rotation and see dps gains!

Which is not what BOTH (TWO) explicit blue posts said it would do, so let’s get this two-way implemented correctly.

It was made to work more closely like it used to, where not all seals could be twisted.

The point is if blizzard likes twisting, then they should let us twist like they’ve said TWICE. REITERATING: we get you want #nochanges, but why parade against your own benefit?

Blizz wants all seals to twist. We want all seals to twist. Let’s encourage Blizz not to forcibly half-break what EVERYBODY WANTS just because of one or two loud minorities from the #nochanges team, especially now that the ENTIRE BLIZZCON was all about #somechanges.

Don’t be a dinosaur, vote dual twisting!

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It sure would be nice, yeah. I’m leveling a warrior for pvp in case twisting ends up being a non-starter, but I’d really prefer to actually have a chance with paladin.

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Amen brother. It would be nice for Ret to have an actual skillcap and compete with ranged classes through hard work and dedication.

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I think this boils down to this.

One-Way Seal twisting is in the Beta now and works similar to, if not exactly, how it worked in original TBC.

Two-way Seal Twisting was never something Original TBC ever had but now you want it because you had it for a month in the Beta.

So essentially you are asking for a special change to your class that is not in-line with how TBC played so that you can get a DPS boosts.

You do realize this opens pandora’s box and every class that wants a special change is going to be screaming for it to help their DPS.

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If the other classes are losing a competitive edge from batching removal then have at it, they should campaign the same. Spread the love of #somechanges

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