It’s more of an opinion post, some thoughts and reasons about why it shouldn’t be in the game. You have like 5.2k posts… hopefully you write a meaningful one one of these days.
Have a blessed day!
Alas, they have opted for “some changes.” It’s not a move I’m necessarily opposed to so long as it’s actually stated outright.
My big issue with Classic was that they told us no changes, then made changes. We were promised, and advertised, a faithful recreation, yet it was anything but.
If Blizzard says right away that Classic will not be doing that, and will instead opt for staying close to the original while explicitly stating they’re making some changes, then I’m willing to actually discuss the merits of each change.
To that point, however, Paladins and Shamans were made available to both factions.
It could very easily be argued that homogenization, to the extent that both factions have access to all tools in the game, was the intended design direction for TBC. This is different than removing race/class/spec specific benefits.
Racials still existed. Classes still brought unique buffs. Almost every spec brings some unique buff or debuff.
Blizzard appears to have made the decision by assuming that these Paladin spells were faction specific, not race specific, and thus needed to be homogenized in the same way Paladins and Shamans were.
I’m indifferent to the change, though I do appreciate that our Ret will be doing more DPS now, as little as it may be compared to others.
I don’t really agree with this assessment, actually. In fact, I’d argue it’s the exact opposite.
Horde has, all around, the stronger PvE racials, while Alliance generally has the stronger PvP racials, at least on the higher end of PvP.
As for Paladin specifically, Seal of Blood is clearly better for PvE overall. Depending on how long a mob lives, Seal of Vengeance isn’t the best option, and Horde Paladins can just use Seal of Righteousness for comparable TPS.
Hell, even Alliance Paladins still weave in SoR to maximize threat output, so Horde Prot Paladins are, at most, losing the DPS/TPS from the ticking of SoV, which is notably less than what Alliance Ret Paladins lose by not having Seal of Blood.
Also, Seal of Blood is not generally what Ret would use in PvP. You even state its use in PvE, which sort of lends weight to the argument that Horde is the more PvE oriented faction.
Yes, really.
The question is obviously “how much?” But to deny that it wouldn’t affect the raid negatively whatsoever is plainly wrong.
The argument that groups will clear the content entirely denies every other aspect of raiding beyond the boss dying. To most people playing Classic, there is more to raiding than the bosses dying. If that’s all that mattered, they’d have quit the moment the first time they killed the bosses, at best only returning for each raid tier. People don’t want to just kill bosses; they want to kill bosses better each time.
And since Ret is basically mandatory in any decent raid composition due to the raid sizes and number of Shamans needed preventing you from taking more Holy Paladins, yes, it matters that Ret’s DPS is lower.
Also, you’re just completely wrong about the DPS gain that Seal of Blood offers. It isn’t as simple as Seal of Blood > Seal of Command. Seal of Command isn’t faction specific. With seal twisting codified now, it’s Seal of Blood + Seal of Command > Seal of Command.
If you think adding a 100% uptime of 35% increased weapon damage is insignificant, you need to more deeply evaluate the DPS calculations.
Ret Paladins should account for maybe 3-4% of your raid’s DPS, even as little as they do. That’s just shy of a 1% raidwide DPS increase, which is not tiny when dealing with 30k+ DPS.
Not really.
The range of Judgement is less than that of Shadowstep by more than double. If a Rogue is coming to Sap you, you’re getting sapped well before you can Judge him.
The only situation where that isn’t the case would be hiding around corners where you can force him to get within Judgement’s range, but then Perception is useless to you because line of sight totally removes your ability to detect the Rogue.
One might argue that was intended, given that Human is the only race that has a racial that is only of benefit against stealth classes.
I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone arguing for these, so I’m not sure what point you’re making by arguing against this.
Good thing that Alliance is getting Seal of the Martyr, which perfectly fits the theme of Alliance Retribution Paladins.
That doesn’t make sense.
What sort of parasite hurts itself to deal damage to its victim? Parasitic would more aptly describe Warlock’s abilities such as Drain Life, Drain Mana, and Siphon Life.
Blood Elves get Mana Tap, so I do agree that Blood Elves are parasitic, but Seal of Blood dealing damage to the Paladin isn’t really indicative of parasitism. If it stole life, maybe…
But they removed Seal of the Martyr/Seal of Blood in WotLK. Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
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I agree that it is an odd choice to balance this 1 thing, but leave in so much other obvious imbalance. Maybe it’s because this was an easy fix? Afterall, Blizz never really managed to balance racials - they just ultimately removed them, lol.
I’m not convinced that you read some of these points in full detail.
Blizzard appears to have made the decision by assuming that these Paladin spells were faction specific, not race specific, and thus needed to be homogenized in the same way Paladins and Shamans were.
I’m indifferent to the change, though I do appreciate that our Ret will be doing more DPS now, as little as it may be compared to others.
This is the best feedback I could have asked for on this topic.
Hell, even Alliance Paladins still weave in SoR to maximize threat output, so Horde Prot Paladins are, at most, losing the DPS/TPS from the ticking of SoV, which is notably less than what Alliance Ret Paladins lose by not having Seal of Blood.
Also, Seal of Blood is not generally what Ret would use in PvP. You even state its use in PvE, which sort of lends weight to the argument that Horde is the more PvE oriented faction.
I mostly agree with this. However, since Classic is bursty, many of the things that give advantage in PvP are found on the Horde, like Blood Rage (Big burst), Berserking (Big burst), Will of the Forsaken (Finish up your combo), and War Stomp (War Stomp → Chain Lightning?). Alliance has a more methodical and defensive approach to their racials. Perception (Deny opener), Stoneform (Become tanky), Escape Artist (Escape), Shadowmeld (Escape, surprise attack, eat and drink safely). It’s much easier to pick racials that augment your damage, rather than your survivability/maneuverability so I will commend you on your point that the higher end of PvP can favor Alliance to a degree, but with that much thought you have to put in, it doesn’t appear to be 50/50.
Any high level ret would seal twist command into blood in PvP. If it works in a similar way to Shadow Word: Pain, Seal of Blood will be a very significant thing to look out for with when it comes to putting breakable instant CC on a paladin, Ret or Holy.
yes, it matters that Ret’s DPS is lower…
… If you think adding a 100% uptime of 35% increased weapon damage is insignificant, you need to more deeply evaluate the DPS calculations.
This is wrong. It’s more like 90-95% uptime (depending on how fast the fight lasts), if the raid group allows you to take that Seal of the Crusader debuff slot, and 35% of normal and not increased weapon damage. I will say that Rets are much more viable than they were in Classic WoW by a lot, but is it really significant if 1/16 of 3/10 of your damage is slightly increased?
I ran some numbers based on 1000 damage per swing 3.60 speed weapon at 40% critical strike chance (to simulate full buffs) with Seal of Command averaging 4 procs per minute, and Seal of Blood proccing every swing.
On a 5 minute boss fight for full uptime:
20 Seal of Command Procs (75% weapon damage): 1500 crits * 20 procs = 30,000 damage * 40% crit chance = 12000 damage total.
83.3 Seal of Blood hits (35% weapon damage): 700*83.3 = 58310 * 40% = 23324 damage total.
The difference is around 11000 damage total. This is something a hunter or warlock could do in 6.5 seconds at 1.7k dps.
What I didn’t show:
Crusader Strike (110% weapon damage, 6 sec cooldown) = 2200 x 50 = 110000 40% = 44000 damage total.
Regular white hits (100% weapon damage) = 2000 x 83.3 x 40% = 66640 damage total.
It’s not even significant in a vacuum.
Blood Elves get Mana Tap, so I do agree that Blood Elves are parasitic, but Seal of Blood dealing damage to the Paladin isn’t really indicative of parasitism. If it stole life, maybe…
Maybe the “stealing from the host” definition you are pedantically hinging on could come in the form of “breaking CC.”
Not really.
The range of Judgement is less than that of Shadowstep by more than double. If a Rogue is coming to Sap you, you’re getting sapped well before you can Judge him.
Try faking your movement towards someone some time. I juke warriors into dismounting in Warsong Gulch all the time, and let the ranged on my team get the opener. The arena pillar comment is true.
I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone arguing for these, so I’m not sure what point you’re making by arguing against this.
If you had read below “Human axe specialization? Orc sword and mace specialization?” you would have hopefully understood that I was arguing for consistent themes in their storytelling (Me orc me slay with axe, I’m a human and I perfect my swordsmanship).
People don’t want to just kill bosses; they want to kill bosses better each time.
People should aim for clean boss kills, but if by better you mean speed up their clear time, gear would have a greater affect on this outcome. I was in a guild that let me play Ret since phase 1, and I was lucky enough to get Might of Menethil. We just don’t have anything on record to brag about until Wrath.
Good thing that Alliance is getting Seal of the Martyr, which perfectly fits the theme of Alliance Retribution Paladins.
How? And I would rather have that theme in Wrath and not TBC. They will never touch any story aspect of TBC WoW to justify this change, like add a quest or something.
But they removed Seal of the Martyr/Seal of Blood in WotLK. Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
That depends on how WotLK classic goes, but there’s no way of really knowing that right now, is there? It was added in Patch 3.0.2 and removed Patch 3.2.0 out of the last Patch 3.3.5.
You do cast.
Steady shot has a cast time.
Literally the only change they need to make for Mages is to undo the Stealth -10% damage from spell damage on Improved Fireball and Frostbolt. That would be enough alone to bring Mages into the Hunter, Warlock realm and was something the developers themselves admitted was a massive mistake.
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I fully support giving both factions both seals.
The only thing I’m not in favor of is condoning seal twisting. It will cause problems giving a hybrid spec that much dps (ret sims as the top melee dps with twisting) in pve, and it’s to get very stupid in pvp. Ret can literally already global you with just socomm, windfury, wings, crusader strike, and a little luck from RNGesus… Add a seal of blood hit on every single one of those hits and things start getting nutty fast.
This is so far from true it is kind of cringe. Seal of blood is 95% a PvE spell. In PvP you seal twist righteousness. No one wants to deal a ton of damage to themselves in PvP.
Blood offers better threat than vengeance…
Blood almost doubles ret pally damage making them go from the literal worst dps in the game on alliance side to a top melee contender horde side. It is a massive imbalance.
Perception & stone skin are not game breaking nor is torrent. Those do not creat imbalances. However, if you want to run a successful arena team you can basically never win high rated 2s or 3s without torrent for clutch interrupts. Which handicaps alliance paladins into running warrior ret as one of maybe 2 viable options alliance side.
Please play the class thoroughly as my guild and probably half the population would’ve rerolled horde just to get our hands on BE paladins, orc, UD, and tauren racials…
Cast in the sense silence effects stop it.
Way to take one little part of an explanation to try to make it sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But hay you have already proven that’s how you troll on these forums with the AV threads.
Agreed here. “Sunwell” was a verb for mages back then, which meant to bench. Most M’uru killing guilds brought 0-1 mages for the fight (applying AB outside the instance in extreme cases).
Seal of Blood AND Draenei aura?
Ally looking pretty nice right now
Seal of Blood is such a tiny difference over Seal of Command that it’s not worth mentioning. Oh boy, 24% of your damage comes from the seal instead of 20%; that’s really gonna shoot you up the dps charts. The math gets even more damning against this change when you look at a ret being 1/16th of the raid’s dps.
And it was given the summary dismissal such a post deserves.
You still need to mechanics, just like any other caster.
Hunters can’t move while casting steady shot.
What you said was just wrong.
Mechanics effect you as much as any other caster.
Moving cuts your dps, just like any other caster.
By this logic, everything is dumb until retail’s changes are applied as they currently are today. It is done for faction balance but it is not true to the identity of the game. I understand some basic QoL changes but this isn’t QoL.
Blood vs socomm is about an 80 dps upgrade in bis t4 (roughly 4.5%)
But you are ignoring seal twisting.
Double twisting socomm (different ranks) is about a 390 dps increase over just socomm (+23%)
Twisting socomm and blood is a roughly 650 dps increase over socomm (+39%)
Ret will be the top melee parse until some one gets war glaives or blizz breaks seal twisting, and seal of blood is a large reason as to why that is.
SoV was always garbage. Someone obviously plays horde and isn’t happy about leveling the field of play.
Some mechanics that effect casters are a silence, hunters can ignore that for the most part (I think it effects kill command but can’t fully remember) on top of that hunters have instant spells to use when they have to move like arcane shot (much better scaling in tbc) and if we have the time, we can stutter step to cast multi shot AND not lose out on auto shots due to them having up to a hidden .5 second cast time when ready (the wind up time after stop moving and the cast time of multi shot)
Hunters are not effected nearly as much by ranged mechanics as other ranged because hunters are not casters (we have some cast times, but also instant cast abilities when we need to move and silence doesn’t stop most of the hunters damage abilities on top of being able to do a good amount of our damage while moving with stutter stepping, or stopping when the ranged auto attack is ready, shooting, and then moving again, explaining what stutter stepping is since you clearly don’t know hunters for crap). Your trying to paint your arena experience as a holy paladin as knowing what your talking about again for hunters, when in fact, you are making yourself out to be a fool, again.
What are you even saying?
I literally played hunter in classic and retail.
I raided as bm in mythic raids. I have more hunter experience than you do…
You were suggesting that mechanics dont apply to hunters as a ranged, yet they do.
You have a cast time. Your literal dps rotation is steady shot and kill command, steady shot HAS A CAST TIME. Sure it can’t be interupted by a silence or pushback, but mechanics that make you move just like any other caster hurt your dps.
Which is what I was calling you out on, moving hurts your dps. Mechanics hurt your dps. You aren’t immune to it, you are like any other caster.
I didn’t raid much in tbc, but name some boss fights that silence casters? Are there any?
Moving hurts all ranged who cast, hunters cast.
You literally wrote a bunch of nothing to deflect you getting called out for saying something dumb.
Hate to break it to you but other casters have instants…they also use them while moving…what you’re saying is just you backpedaling like always.
Replace “seal of blood” with “shaman” and it is lword for word a post from 15 years ago. Sounds pretty TBC to me.
The difference here is we are forward in time looking back at exactly what is to come, the first iteration of TBC we didn’t have the burden of knowledge to see what was a head. In light of that I dont have a problem with this change (or the drums one) but I respect that you do, I am sorry we will never see eye to eye on it.
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