Hello paladins,
Sorry we didn't get a chance to pre-announce
these changes before the data were pushed to the beta. I won't try to
sugarcoat it -- these are nerfs.
As I tried to explain before,
we concluded a couple of weeks ago that Retribution was doing too much
damage in PvP. We tried to nerf the burst damage through the previous
changes to Divine Storm etc. Unfortunately, those changes didn't prove
sufficient. Not only were paladins still destroying other classes in
PvP, but we also found their PvE damage, even at level 80, was too
high. Many classes were concluding they were too weak based on
comparing their numbers to paladin numbers (and to be fair, hunters and
in some cases mages and warriors).
Here are the new changes:
1)
Judgements of the Wise: Mana gained reduced from 33% to 15% of base
mana. We spent many hours arriving at this number. For example, we did
a lot of Patchwerk fights, watching the mana bar to see when and if it
ever went down. In BGs, we were seeing paladins able to go from target
to target without pausing even when unleashing all of their attacks.
While we don't want you to go OOM in a few seconds, we don't want you
to ignore the mana bar either. Mana is not rage -- warriors can't
typically start a battle with a full bar.
2) Judgement of
Wisdom: mana gained reduced to 1% of maximum mana and proc frequency
cut by 50%. This ability was flat out better than Vampiric Touch when
the mana provided between the two really needs to be close in order for
the decision between Shadow priest and Retribution paladin to be a real
one.
3) Judgement and Seals: Damage reduced by 20%. This is the
major damage adjustment -- a lot of damage was coming from these. We do
realize this hurts Holy and Protection as well, and that is something
for which we are prepared to offer compensation (particularly if it
hurts Protection's threat generation).
4) Hammer of Wrath: Now
can’t be used until the target is below 20% health. Our rule of thumb
is that core "Execute-style" abilities work at 20% and talented
abilities work at 35% health. We originally had Hammer at 35% based on
some other limitations of the spell.
5) Art of War: Increased
damage bonus to Judgements, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. I'll
report back on the exact numbers here when we've settled on them.
I
also want to add that the token Blessing of Might change wasn't
intended as a joke -- it is designed so that Battle Shouts won't cancel
the longer and more expensive Blessing of Might in a group setting.
These
seem like pretty severe nerfs, but that was the intention. It is
difficult for some players to ever be truly objective with issues
surrounding their class, but in this case we felt Ret was severely
overpowered. This was not in the realm of small tweaks to fix (though
we did try originally). We overhauled the paladin class for Lich King,
so it is unfortunate but not too surprising that the numbers for the
dps spec require a lot of iteration. The mistake is ours, not the fault
of the player base or beta testers.
Nerfing a spec or class is
never fun. It means that our initial estimates of numbers were off and
we know that the community is going to react negatively (to put it
mildly). But we have to try and keep the game in a relatively balanced
state and that is going to mean making decisions that are unpopular
sometimes. If you need to blame someone for the nerfs, blame me.
As
always, if we over-compensated, we'll adjust the numbers again. But as
I said, our initial round of nerfs wasn't sufficient. Lest you fear
that Lich King is upon as and you won't see any additional changes,
that is not our point of view. We changed a lot in the game and we need
to be able to rectify problems. I would expect early patches or even
hotfixes to deal with class or balance problems, and hopefully these
will slow down as we get closer to major content releases. But nothing
is off the table after we ship, down to rearchitecting talent trees if
we think that is called for. This isn't to suggest we aren't happy with
the state of the game. Rather, my word that we will continue to iterate
on problem areas as they come up.
I also want to stress that we
do not make balance decisions based on the QQ of other classes. At
most, if there is a pretty vocal outcry that will encourage us to rerun
the numbers to see if something is amiss. As vocal, and sometimes
passionate and even logical as forum posts can be, they represent a
fraction of the entire fanbase and it would be foolish for us to
clobber one group of players solely based on the whining from another
group.
Go ahead and vent if you have to. We won't delete posts
or ban posters in this thread unless they are overly offensive. We do
ask that you not launch a thousand other threads so that other paladin
issues can still be discussed. Likewise, we have no problem with other
classes engaging in the discussion but outright gloating or trolling
will be frowned upon.
And I do apologize for putting you through this.
Sujet: Enfin 
Lun 27 Oct - 14:48
