Probably time to roll back the class changes, Rets and ferals way too high on expected DPS

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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But your complaint is ferals are too high, so your fix is to just create the same problem, but in favor of you…

Like warlocks?

Yeah, holy paladins are kind of broken for tank healing, and prot pal has a cheat death the other tanks don’t.

It’s not because of ret.

Up until ToC, sure. That raid has lots of cleave to make warriors valuable, and ICC has your single target DPS reach top tier as well. The times fury needed buffs to be valuable are behind us. Your DPS is definitely strong enough to justify your raid slot from this point forward.

Why are you comparing warriors (which are most all a single role) to 3 different roles combined in representation?

Yes, we know holy and prot paladins are top tier. That’s not a reason for ret to be bad. Similarly, if prot warrior was the number 1 tank, that wouldn’t be a reason for fury to be bad.

You expect classes with multiple roles to see more representation than those with fewer unless that one role is hideously overpowered. This is a bit broken for warrior because of a distaste for prot warrior, not because fury has been particularly bad since Naxx ended.

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The class with battle rez and innervate should not be number one. Remove brez and innervate it from ferals and give it to warrior and that could also be a fix for the current problems.

Feral and ret should not be S++ or rank 1 dps specs with the existing game mechanics.

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Yes, I’ve said that the feral buffs were bad and that it’s dumb that they are above everyone else because blizz wanted to simplify the rotation a bit.

No one really should be S++ DPS… No one really is. Feral has like a 400 theoretical DPS advantage over the main pack of top DPS classes. That’s less than a 3% edge in DPS assuming perfect feral play and a 100% accurate sim on a standstill boss.

Warlocks have been a top DPS for 2 expansions with soul stones and healthstones without issue or complaints about their utility though.

There’s no good reason to penalize specs for having utility. Every spec has some. Blizzard just removed unique utility over time so groups felt even less need to worry about it.

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you simply cannot have high utility, mana-to-healing, raid cooldowns (brez, innervate, dsac) like classes being rank #1 or close to rank 1 dps without making the lower utility classes feel really bad

there is a reason many guilds run 4+ paladins while also running 0-1 warriors

there is a reason that world first guilds take 0 dps warriors if they have 1 prot warrior

Yes, paladins are stacked. Ret is among that list. 1-2 prot pals, 2 or maybe even more holy paladins, and 1 ret (now even can stack ret in ICC with how high their damage is). Warriors is 1 prot or 1 fury warrior if you want commanding shout, otherwise 0 warriors.

If we go DSAC we lose 350-515 DPS compared to the sim numbers. So if your argument is that we should be taxed for having that really strong utility like DSAC, we already are. Plus we must sacrifice a damage global to cast it, same as all our other utility. What other strong utility do we have? Salv, bop, sac. Are those really that big, when you already have 2-3 other paladin specs bringing those same things? Is the 4th one that big of an impact for your raid? And that goes for DSAC as well.

Once again people are conflating Retribution representation with Paladin representation in general (prot, holy), and using it to justify making Retribution worse. If Prot Warrior was the best tank and people took 1-2 to every raid, would that mean we should nerf Fury? In fact, the very fact that Protection and Holy representation is so good actually HURTS us to some degree because they bring all of the same utility (DSAC, AM, Bop, Salv, Sac) besides the 3% damage and 3% haste (that most already get from Boomkin). If you already have 3 DSACs/Bops/Salvs/Sacs then the 4th one isn’t a huge deal. For the first half of WOTLK, if you didn’t need the 3% damage buff from Retribution (such as by having Arcane Mage, which did a lot more damage than us), it was optimal to just not bring Retribution at all.

If you look at warcraftlogs statistics for TOGC, both Retribution and Fury are pretty well represented (Fury Warrior is #5 most parses logged, Retribution #6). So if your argument is that Retribution representation is so much better it just isn’t true, and if you are holding Prot/Holy representation against us, well that’s just stupid.

And no, Retribution stacking is not going to become the meta, at least not with these numbers. You’d still sooner stack Feral/Lock. Even Fury is a better class to stack at some level, because they have similar single target damage but also better cleave damage and never have mana problems.

Even with these sim numbers, Retribution is not the best class to stack, so I really don’t think that’s going to become the meta. It wouldn’t be awful, but it wouldn’t be optimal.

Also, warriors just optimized their slam usage on the sim, I updated the sheet, so their absolute DPS went up by about 80, their SM numbers on single target got a little better, and now they are higher than Retribution in raw DPS on every fight duration except 300s. Fury warrior on 180s is now the highest DPS besides Fire Mage and Feral (3rd place) and with Phase 5 gear on 180s they are +175 dps ahead of Retribution (+25 dps in Phase 4).

Fury is also a lot stronger on cleave, on the 30s cleave sim they reach 40.2k DPS whereas Ret is just under 35k. Fury does more raw damage on cleave WITHOUT SHADOWMOURNE than Retribution does WITH SHADOWMOURNE.

One spec that ABSOLUTELY should have gotten a buff, is Arms.

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ret doesn’t have utility

Auras/Hands/Blessings/Seals/AM/Vindication/Bubbles/DI/Cleanses/Replenishment
Don’t even need DSac, and yes, many people will have a DSac support offspec for specific fights.
Let alone a single Ret gives very good raid buffs, stacking or not, with 3% damage and 3% haste and 3% crit

A single warrior gives…commanding, which requires a global every 2min, up to 6 with investment.
Guess warriors shatter, which is pretty good?
Sunders? Rogues do it better. Rampage? Ferals do it better. Demo shout? Passively applied by Vindication for only 2 talents, having the same effect as 5 talents to use a global that might get resisted and barely lasts.
Even non-fury stuff is redundant. Bleed debuff? Feral does it better than arms. Damage debuff? Bring a combat rogue. Attack speed debuff? Better off with prot pally or any DK. Mortal Strike? Aimed Shot or Wound Poison. Vigilance? Prot pally blessing is better.
I think prot warrior excels at mobility and stuns, which is nice for dungeons? Burrower tanking?

But, I get it. “I don’t wanna do that stuff, I wanna do damage!” If you didn’t want the toolkit, then why did you roll pally? Hmm? Because, you’re going to get asked to use your buttons, you know.

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Auras/Hands/Blessings/Seals/AM/Vindication/Bubbles/DI/Cleanses/Replenishment
Don’t even need DSac, and yes, many people will have a DSac support offspec for specific fights.
Let alone a single Ret gives very good raid buffs, stacking or not, with 3% damage and 3% haste and 3% crit

A single warrior gives…commanding, which requires a global every 2min, up to 6 with investment.
Guess warriors shatter, which is pretty good?
Sunders? Rogues do it better. Rampage? Ferals do it better. Demo shout? Passively applied by Vindication for only 2 talents, having the same effect as 5 talents to use a global that might get resisted and barely lasts.
Even non-fury stuff is redundant. Bleed debuff? Feral does it better than arms. Damage debuff? Bring a combat rogue. Attack speed debuff? Better off with prot pally or any DK. Mortal Strike? Aimed Shot or Wound Poison. Vigilance? Prot pally blessing is better.
I think prot warrior excels at mobility and stuns, which is nice for dungeons? Burrower tanking?

Blessings? Those, and everything else you listed, can be brought by other classes (battle shout, mana spring totem) or even OTHER PALADIN specs that are more meta (Prot/Holy). Since Prot/Holy representation are so high, and those classes are more meta than Retribution, most raids already have sufficient amounts of these utilities, and Retribution ends up being harmed by the high representation of those specs.

Also, why did you mention seals? That’s not utility, that’s just our damage?

All those things you listed are not unique to Retribution, with the exception of 3% damage since nobody goes Arcane anymore. 3% haste is already brought by Boomkin, 3% crit by Assassination and Ele, and 3% damage was brought by Arcane Mage back when people played that spec. Besides Arcane, these are all meta specs that most raids will have. For the first 2 phases our utility was not enough to keep us viable pre-buff.

Since most raids already have 3 paladins or so, is the 4th DSAC on a Ret even that important? Also, going DSAC, once again, costs us 350-515 DPS. Once again, we are taxed to use our utility. We also have to give up damage globals to cast them, since we rarely ever get open GCDs as Retribution.

So what utility are we really talking about here? 3% damage, since you don’t bring Arcane anymore and mages went Fire. That’s our single claim to fame, utility wise. And sometimes DSAC/AM if your raid just doesn’t have enough Paladins, but most do.

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Battle shout is plainly bad compared to a 30min buff, totems are really cool but also inferior to a passive buff, and freeing up a totem is very useful. But I agree ret probably won’t be responsible for blessings - but the potential is there for zero effort or downsides. I definitely hope people bring moonkin, and I’m glad ele has been doing better than expected, they deserve it. Sin is simming worse than expected, but I’d say bringing a Sin rogue will still be good. That said, I already pointed out, they do much, much more than bring a blessing, and easy access to raid buffs make them no-brainer fills.

I wish I could choose to drop 300-500dps for a fight for super awesome raid defensives. And people will appreciate the ability over your global. In fact, I wish warrior had good enough support that I had the opportunity to complain “prot is so good that people don’t need fury!”

Should a ret be cleansing? No, probably not, but they can. Is DI ever ideal? Only for weirdo strats with soulstones - but they can, and wipe prevention is stellar. Will you always need Hands? No, but need or not they are always useful. Ret seals are amazing. Aura Mastery is pure gold, and works so great even with redundant Auras. Replenishment can only help. Bubble is so clutch. It’s so hard to see someone with so much act like they’re starving.

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It is, isn’t it.

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Eh, it needs more maintenance, it’s not much worse. You might need to shout once or twice in a fight to keep up battle shout? Rets generally do that as well if they are smart enough to toss out might when wolves + treants get used.

It opens up a healing stream totem, which, not bad, but hardly noticeable outside of Anub. The water totems aren’t particularly crazy powerful. In any case, the point stands that after 1 paladin, the rest of the blessings can be covered elsewhere. If that slot is doing DPS significantly better than a ret, it’ll likely be brought by that rather than the ret.

Yeah, except that players are basically demanding that ret’s best DPS spec drop over 1k in DPS so that they can drop an extra 300-400 to have DSac just so warriors can feel better about utility differences, when that’s not what this expansion was balanced around.

Yes, I wish that prot was viewed less poorly as well. I don’t even think it’s bad, it is just actually the warrior spec held back by a lack of utility more than performance. There are a ton of DPS slots, so you typically hit overlap on those very quickly in terms of utilities. When tanks have a utility advantage (like a cheat death and raid defensive cooldown) you are far more likely to have issues given that there is only room for 2, sometimes 3.

The hands are not always useful. Vast majority of fights have absolutely no use for protection, freedom, or salv. The only fight I need to salv someone is Vezax. The only fight I need to BoP anything is northrend beasts to clear the impale (and “need” is a strong word there), and faction champs.

Yeah, it’s fine, but we are also entering the content where Mana just stops being an issue for most casters.

Ret certainly isn’t starving for random utility abilities. People just HIGHLY overstate how valuable these things are in a raid setting. If ret’s DPS isn’t competitive, which it wasn’t pre-buffs, and wouldn’t be if they hadn’t happened, it is really easy to get by without all of that and never feel the sting of a missing ret.

That’s true for fury as well once commanding shout is covered, which is why both of the specs should be competitive on damage. Neither needs an advantage over the other in DPS, but they both need to be good enough that people aren’t looking to cut them to kill the boss faster.

In ICC, both of them are in a good spot.

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Homie, you ain’t Dsac’in as a Ret.

Ret’s don’t touch “utility” unless their finger slipped or their hand got disoriented on the keyboard.

Ret’s don’t dispel. They don’t AM. They don’t HOP. They might Salv on General Vez when it’s below 5%, but it’s more likely they went AFK.

Ret’s pop wings and get global’d on pull.

The only melee getting stacked is Unholy.

You bring 1 Ret to ICC to give them Shadowmourne so 24 people can drink the tears of your 1 Warrior.

Edit: Dang, I typed this up and just checked your logs. All these bad takes on the forums by less than 80 average Warriors is gonna make me mental. Look inward before projecting outward.

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so without dsac youre still warrior dps but have blessings, bop, hos, salv, cleanse, 3% dmg buff (big, all the mages should be fire not arcane), loh, aura mastery if specced, the list goes on, etc. Every run wants at least one ret. Not every run wants at least one fury. In fact, if you have 1 prot warrior, its optimal to take 0 dps warriors. By contrast every raid is stacking paladins. 1-2 prot, 2+ holy, and 1 ret versus warrior which takes just 1 of either spec, or 0.

There is no world where it makes sense to buff ret paladins to be better than fury warrior without compensating warrior.

Frankly, it should have been no changes. We should be on 3.4 with no balance adjustments. But if we do get them, buffing high rep classes or high utility classes while leaving classes that are low utility in bad shape is just reprehensible.

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pretty much every run runs 1 fury, at least, this is why fury is more represented than ret, its incredibly difficult for prot warriors to get improved commanding shout which is unique warrior utility that is super powerful in end game fights that push hp pools, it is infact not optimal to take 0 dps warriors, that’s why no one does it

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By a super marginal amount. 271k vs 256k - both respectable representation. The specs are almost even on representation. Now - compare Warrior and Pally …

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It’s kind of just a bad idea to compare class representation when they aren’t able to fill the same number of roles.

Prot pal, holy paladin, and ret paladin should all be desirable in a raid. When things are perfectly balanced, you’d still see a large paladin representation advantage over warrior just because of the extra healing role.

Keep it to the same role. Ret and warrior are currently doing similar damage, and are currently about as represented. That’s not going to massively shift in Icecrown.

If you want to penalize paladin for being overrepresented, hit prot and holy. Weakening prot pal will do more for warrior representation than buffing fury will.

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nerf all pally specs

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Nah, just make wrath “classic” like original wrath.

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All that utility, as I said, is brought by the more meta paladin specs (holy/prot) and more meta damage specs (except for 3% damage, since Arcane is not meta). Is your 4th salv/bop/sac going to have a huge impact on your raid? The most impactful defensive utility is a 2nd or 3rd Aura Mastery. We are actually harmed in this regard by how meta and overrepresented Prot/Holy are, since they will be brought first and bring that utility, and our utility is just extra, since it’s not typically required outside of Algalon progress.

Also, we already pay a tax to spend utility - we give up damage globals, (or just raw damage for DSAC) which can cost us a lot of DPS to give out Salvation during Wings etc. You can’t compare simmed DPS to a Retribution who is casting lots of utility spells, they are not compatible.

You keep saying Retribution is better than Fury, but I think you should check the sims again, bud. See here where I already stated this:

Also, warriors just optimized their slam usage on the sim, I updated the sheet, so their absolute DPS went up by about 80, their SM numbers on single target got a little better, and now they are higher than Retribution in raw DPS on every fight duration except 300s. Fury warrior on 180s is now the highest DPS besides Fire Mage and Feral (3rd place) and with Phase 5 gear on 180s they are +175 dps ahead of Retribution (+25 dps in Phase 4).

Fury is also a lot stronger on cleave, on the 30s cleave sim they reach 40.2k DPS whereas Ret is just under 35k. Fury does more raw damage on cleave WITHOUT SHADOWMOURNE than Retribution does WITH SHADOWMOURNE.

Retribution is 5th on 180s, 9th on 120s, and 3rd on 300s. We are always at least 500 DPS below the #1 spot, on 120s we are over 1,000 DPS below #1. I really don’t think Retribution is going to be as insane as you think we are, do you really think people are going to replace their Fury for Retribution when they are doing pretty similar simmed DPS, but the Fury does way more cleave? Just for the extra 4th set of paladin utility?

Also, let’s wait for some raid data with ICC gear before we start freaking out? Sims can change, sims can be wrong.

Yes every raid wants 1 Ret, and every raid will and does also want 1 Fury, in ICC especially. To say otherwise is just blasphemy and disingenuous. Fury is more represented than Retribution right now, we have done similar damage for the entire expac to this point, Fury didn’t get replaced by Ret because of our utility.

Don’t conflate Retribution representation with Paladin representation.

If we go with the #nochanges sentiment, just subtract ~1300 dps from our sims and you’ll see a ballpark of where we’d be without Phase 2 buffs. We would be middle of the pack or slightly below it, with a legendary weapon (low 15k). Without the legendary weapon we would be one of the single worst DPS specs in the game (low 14k). Oh, and that’s with TAJ and full bis, 2pc & 4pc T10, which, by the way, in this scenario, TAJ is still well over +1000 DPS trinket over Greatness, and we still end up below the middle of the DPS with a legendary. The taunt glyph, the majority of the buff, at the very least, needs to stay to keep Retribution relevant on DPS.

I’m starting to think that Retribution was never going to be close to a good DPS, even in ICC, without the Phase 2 buffs, if the sims are anywhere near accurate, despite what private server players & people who haven’t played since 2010 say.

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I generally agree though I think there are limits where it impacts on dramatic class population imbalances overall. I also note that there are still those that don’t agree with this model who still hold that people play a class and not a spec or role - and those views are also valid (though that’s not my view).

It’s just not a fun gaming experience when raids are basically filled with one or two classes with a smattering of other classes as “extras”. Class stacking wasn’t fun for everyone else when Warriors were stacked in Vanilla, and it’s not fun now when Pallys fill out most of the roster - unless you’re a Pally.

But I agree that the ideal is to have every role for every class be viable. This is why I have favoured the approach of rebalancing Prot or Holy rather than Ret.

Having said this, I think the balance will be a lot more even heading into phase 4 as it is a much better balanced phase. People aren’t shirking Prot Warriors as much, Blood DKs are becoming useful again … etc. It’s just generally a better balanced phase. Over reliance on DSack and Ardent Defender are still problematic in my view.

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Yeah - I’ve never been sold on the case for the classic devs foray into class balance from the start, and it would probably have been less drama to just play the expansion out without a lot of interference.

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This is the mostly correct answer. Either 1) dont touch balance or 2) if you do, have some math to back it up. We instead went with option 3) where there was no math and it became Aggrend’s private server.

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