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Community Manager
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.