Ret loses Spiritual Attunement. Opinions?

[shoju]

I'm trying not to be doom and gloom about the loss of Spiritual Attunement, but GC's Comments really have me confused:

We think Protection needs Spiritual Attunement for obvious reasons, so we are making it a deep Prot talent.

We don't actually like Holy and Ret having SA. It makes their mana regen depend too much on the encounter specifics. On fights like Patchwerk, they have no mana from SA. On dragon fights, they have a ton. That makes it hard to tune on our end because they are either starved in the first case or drowning in the second case.

We want to tune Holy through Illumination and Ret through Judgements of the Wise and let Prot use SA. All 3 can Divine Plea, but Prot can do it more often. (Source)

Spiritual Attunement
Spiritual Attunement is a great mechanic for a tanking paladin who needs the mana and gets it from taking damage. For other paladins it just complicates balance. On Patchwerk you get no mana from it as Holy / Ret and on Sartharion it gives you just a ton of mana. So you're either bone dry on one fight or drowning in mana on another, totally depending on raid damage.

The best knob we have for tweaking Ret mana return is to up Judgements of the Wise from 15% to 20% or whatever it needs to be. (Holy has Illumination.)

GC... you do realize that everyone in the paladin community is taking this as a promise you will buff jotw, right?
Such is my lot in life. We need to get some numbers for Ret mana after all of these changes and make a call at that time. I was just pointing out that we have plenty of knobs to tweak to balance the class without SA.

Remember, the goal here is not to nerf Ret mana. It is to make it more stable instead of varying wildly depending on the encounter. While encounters will always be different to some extent, when you look at the mana provided by SA on different fights, it can be pretty extreme. Ulduar balance is going to be tricky because we want the normal encounters to still be accesible to most raiders while the hard modes need to be balanced on a knife's edge. Having so much variation is just going to get in the way of that.

The Seal of Blood glyph will most likely have to be changed to accomodate this change. (Source)

He says that he doesn't like Ret and holy because it relies on encounter specifics. Um.... Has he not read Seal of Blood? I hurt myself with that ability the last time I checked, and I'm fairly confident that I can rely on that damage.......... oh, Every fight? I know that on Patchwerk, I'm going to hurt myself, and I know that I'm going to get mana back from heals. Sure, on Patch I still have to be a little conscientious of mana usage to make sure I'm not OOM by the end. And in 10 mans on Saph, I have had to be even more conscious because I'm normally the only paladin, and I'm judging light, not wisdom. I Have LOH'd myself on that fight just to get mana back, not because I needed the health.


It may not be intended to nerf ret mana, but it really is kicking it in the pants. Buffing JotW to get the mana return back "could" be a valid way to fix it, but it seems very band-aid ish.

I also wonder why ret has to manage it's resources so tight anyway? Warriors and rogues have a resource pool. They get it refreshed from being in combat. Hunters have a way to get mana back. I assume Shaman are somewhere in there as well, as I don't see shaman screaming about their mana problems. Why does it feel like Ret Paladins are getting the short end of the stick?

I can see it from the holy side of things. I understand that Holy paladins never go OOM, and that they need a mana nerf. But I have to wonder if this is the right thing?

I also understand that this is still the PTR and that things can be tweaked, but I'm really not happy with the direction this is heading. Now, they will either need to nerf the recoil from SoB which kills Seal of Command and makes us a little OP in PVP, or buff SoC so that it is at least competitive.

They also need to fix the Seal of Blood glyph. If they use this as the way to get rid of the recoil, then they are again just making a band-aid. It's yet another required glyph that takes away from the idea of glyphs being used to customize the way you play. I'm falling out of love with glyphs a lot lately, because they are becoming "You will run these glyphs or you will suffer" instead of augmenting game play, but that's another debate for another time.

I've been watching the WWS parses from the PTR, and since the changes went through, Ret Damage is WAY down. Like I said, I'm trying not to be doom and gloom at this point, but I'm starting to level my mage just in case they ruin ret again.

Anyone else have some insight? I know, I need to chill, watch the PTR and wait for the changes. I just hate that they inplemented the first part of the change without the second. Sure, maybe they needed more data, but by doing it this way, how am I not supposed to feel that they didn't have an idea how to fix it before they broke it?