I, the ret, approve 3.2
People whine whatever they get, yes. But what most do not realise, is the insane potential and FUN that the 3.2 ret has to offer. Let me explain.
- Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
Now, this is a great damage boost to us, the biggest buff in the patch, it is a great opener, makes you think twice before you use it, and it is even made instant by AoW.
- Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
So, I’m not sure if this is usable in PvP or not next patch, but i can say: if it works, then it is FREAKING AWESOME! A non-gcd ranged spell that if used right crits for 4000, what else would you want.
- Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4 second cooldown.
Nothing much to say here, lesser burst, same damage, which is good anyway in the current state of PvP.
-Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
Awesome, no more self damage, the oldschool SoC days come back.
-Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.
Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME? Crits dealing DOUBLE DAMAGE, plus a DoT??? If this seal is used well, it becomes a true killer.
-Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant.
A slight nerf, but reasonable as it makes Exorcism instant as well.
See, it’s not that bad after all, after re-evaluating everything, is it? I am sure that many will share my opinion 
Support me/Comment at http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9521378017&sid=1 !
Tags: 3.2
June 20th, 2009 at 5:55 am
hmm yes i do believe ret paladins needed more instant damage, huzzah for aow + excorsism raising paladin skill cap ever higher
June 20th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Except for the nonrets
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 pm
“-Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.”
Pretty sure they mean the 33% weapon damage on each swing will have double crit damage. As in, criticals will do double of normal damage, whereas usually spells only do 1.5x more damage on crits unless otherwise improved by talents.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. Any way
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!
June 24th, 2009 at 4:05 am
Oh well,
1. You have to crit on crusader strike, divine storm or a melee swing in order to “activate” AoW. When s7 hit live servers people will run around in 1000~ resilience so you aren’t going to Exo that often. Especially when you consider dropping the instant FoL for exo. When you are focused or assisting you ever have a lower uptime of AoW.
2. its a real big nerf to our seals. Martyr was a very very good seal and with the use of SoC we will drop from 48% weapon damage to 36%. This does indeed nerf the BURST, but Burst ist nearly all we got atm and without any replacements รก la ms debuff, pummel or form of survivability besides bubble we wont shine once 3.2 hits live.
3. seal of vengeance does sound good, but it is by a wide margin weaker than martyr.
First: try to get 5 stacks in pvp onto a target. Every parry, dodge or miss can easily break the stacks.
Second: if your damage is absorbed by Sacred Shield: Power Word Shield or even the Val Anyr buff it wont stack.
Third: It is dispellable, When one decides to dispell ist very often you absolutely will never be able to use that seals full potential.
and btw. its a spell so double damage critical strikes are just increased by a factor of 2x.
Every seal atm deals 2x damage as critical strike so overall its a big fat nerf to our seals.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Ahh uhm
sorry i dont wanted to be that harsh.
^this is just my opinion
ah and 1 thing more Hand of Reckoning won’t be useable in PvP as a damage spell. Atm it does no damage in PvP and with the 50% ap buff to it, it wont damage opponents in PvP in the future.
This would be absolutely counterwards the design behind the exo nerf.
greets
June 24th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Akope speaks truth, all these retards saying “haha ret going to be shit now” or “wtf more ret nerfs????” are brain damaged.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Seal of command is still bad. The judge damage it does is so bad, that it’s hardly worth the mana cost and will mostly be used for the debuff and mana regen.
Seal of corruption/vengance wins over command by a big margin. This will however make fast target swaps much weaker. And since this is basicly the thing rets win by, the nerf hits much harder than it first seems.
And as a last note. Even with these changes, ret is still just as faceroll. And we will still roflstomp newly dinged players in BGs
June 27th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Art of War now procs from melee swing in addition to CS and DS. haven’t tested if it procs from judgements but don’t see why it shouldn’t since judgement is technically a melee attack. SoC still sucks. Seal does less dmg than blood on live and the judgement dmg is god awful. Go on the PTR and try JoV with 5 stacks. Judgement is back to the powerhouse it was pre-3.1
June 28th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Art of war now procs with ALL crits (excepts seals) , it will doesn’t matter, you’ll can continue spamming exorcism on your targets …
July 11th, 2009 at 6:23 am
The reason the judgement damage was important for AoW is that it had a higher crit chance than melee swings, so altogether it is a nerf.
Ret may have high burst, but it isn’t high enough to make up for the fact that our lack of utility makes us weak, due to the fact that we are low attended in top-end arena.
People want to us to be balanced around low grade arena and Bg’s. But that is not the balance of PvP, and it is a good thing it isn’t either.
If Blizz balanced it around bg’s, then it would allow bad players to do even better than they should be, and what’s the point of balancing arena around low ratings? That doesn’t even make sense.
All in all, ret is actually weak where it counts.