29 October, 2006

Why Fanaticism Nerf > CS/Vengeance Nerf

I'm posting this, mostly because I'm tired of refreshing PaladinSucks.com and still seeing McHammar's shpiel. Nothing against the man, I just like to keep things moving. Here's my take on the CS/Vengeance Nerf (which, according to Beta Paladins, did not go through in the last patch, while the Mage/Warlock nerfs did, so I'm still hopeful they're considering other options). I've modified it slightly from a forum post I just put up here.
For the TLDR Crowd, I'll keep this short and sweet.

A) Vengeance is something many of us have grown to know and love. We know what it means to neuter it by 1/3 after two years of reliable damage increase.

B) Increasing Crusader Strike's cooldown to 10 seconds defeats the purpose of its main utility - refreshing multiple judgments on a single target - in the likely event it misses or is dodged/parried in a raid.

C) Fanaticism in its present form is extremely potent. Imagine if Conviction gave 15% melee crit for just 5 talent points (as opposed to its current 5%). That's essentially what this talent does, only for our judgments. Since very few have had a chance to actually experience this talent, a nerf here wouldn't hurt as bad. At 10% crit or even 5% crit, if it means keeping Vengeance at 15% and Crusader Strike at 6 seconds, it will still be a worth-while ability and a better way to balance things.

In a nutshell, Blizzard:

You'd have a lot fewer angry Paladins on your hands if you modified a damage-increasing talent that's still largely unknown to the Paladin community, than by nerfing an old stand-by or an ability for which we have some basis for comparison and thus a feel for (Mortal Strike).
Honestly, I was surprised at how potent Fanaticism was initially. When you think about it in light of our Conviction talent, it's extremely powerful. Having read many of the beta Paladins' posts, a 6 second CS seems to make our class much more fun and interactive in many situations. When the nerf news hit, it wasn't so much our DPS cut that hit me hard as the thought of such an old faithful talent being nerfed along with the increased cooldown meaning that much less interactivity. A change like the one I'm proposing (I think 10% crit bonus on Fanaticism, or maybe 9% for max 3 points or 8% for max 4 points would be ideal) would allow us to keep our good old Vengeance intact as well as the short cooldown on CS and still present an ability that was attractive to spec into.

So what do you guys think?

4 Comments:

Blogger LordVir said...

I've mentioned the idea of a nerf to fanaticsm before, because I do believe perma-vegnece was part of the problem in the internal level 70 testing that pulled the paladin over the required raid dps mark.

Personally I like to pvp, and in pvp you don't often get buffed out of the wazoo to the point where perma-vengence is a problem.

Would anyone oppose fanticsm being totally reworked to something like:

Fanaticism - Increases the damage of your seal of command procs by 20%, and the damage done by your judgment of command by 20%.

I don't think this would lead to many problems, as it's basically what we had pre 1.9 with an extra PPM or two, and JoC actually doing some damage.

I'm sure most of you know this, but when you look at level 70 damage, you have to take into account that stamina is going to be very high since stamina has been devalued as a stat. Level 67 warriors are hitting 8000 HP easly from what I've read.

7:46 PM  
Blogger Suicidal Zebra said...

To me, the issue is that no matter how you nerf Fanaticism you're still going to get build and gear combinations which allow for Vengeance to be up 24/7, especially with Crusader Strike. Any crit level approaching 25% will do it for you with SoC, JoC, autoattack and CS all wailing on the target, and such a level should be pretty easy even in TBC.

I think your idea is interesting, but I wouldn't want it tied to just SoC/JoC, and 20% is maybe a little too much. Add in all damaging Seals and Judgements (giving it a chance for an anternate off-tanking for Alliance with SoV in a pinch).

I still have yet to be convinced that Perma-Veng is a problem given our still-low DPS and ever increasing HP levels. No, leave it as it is for now and release it as a talent in 1.13 and see how things progress in match-maker PvP (where gear levels should be roughly equal). The only way to properly test it in PvP is on a mass scale rather than rigged-fights with great gear disparity, and then we will soon know just how effective it is.

Hrm... maybe have CS do only 50% damage to a stunned target reducing our stunned-damage potential. I don't know, there just has to be a better way of balancing this skill in PvP than gutting the ret paladins PvE potential.

P.S. needing a blogger account to post sucks :(

2:08 AM  
Blogger Mastgrr said...

Had to remove anonymous posting unfortunately.

7:40 AM  
Blogger LordVir said...

I still have yet to be convinced that Perma-Veng is a problem given our still-low DPS and ever increasing HP levels.

I suspect it's a pve problem, not a pvp problem. I don't think perma-vengence alone is the problem, but perma-vengence along with avenging wrath every 3 minutes.


Basically, in pve you could just melee and bang on AW every 3 minutes for a 45% damage boost with vengence. Considering the time between encounters, it might be realistic to do this on almost every encounter. When you add sanctity aura, and spell damage on top of this...holy damage could be pretty high.


I think it's a non-factor in pvp. While vengence is nice, you still have to be in melee to actually hit someone to trigger it and keep up perma-vengence. We will still face the typical kite strategies in the expansion. I know I've mentioned this before, but the wings on Avenging Wrath will be a big "CC me NOW!" sign come level 70.


So basically, I think what is going on is blizzard is considering a nerf to abilities that would be fine in PvP, because they break the order blizz wants in pve damage charts.

5:26 PM  

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