Cataclysm: Future of Dk/Rets

[Shodokan]

I for one am excited beyond belief with the paladin changes and think that this team will continue to be just as good. Though there are obviously some exceptions. With battlegrounds being more the focus of PVP and not arena i think this team will excel more than any other at this point in time.

Pros


DK can now spell reflect
DK now has a mortal strike like ability to help with killing more efficiently
DK now can use an off-gcd spell that puts both diseases on a target for switches for no runes (important for bursting down healers)
With blood being changed to a tanking spec (which frost was for the most part before) it provides the DK more survivability if we stick with that type of build (hybrid)
Paladins get pets on a 3 minuet cooldown and they last 30 seconds.... so we get 4 pets to help with burst! Similar to totem pets i'd assume but with less strength. Similar to the staff created pet from ICC which if people have been hit by it know it's not a pleasant experience.
Paladins get an AOE heal similar to healing stream... more passive healing. 6 second duration 15 second cooldown. This can obviously be staggered or used all at once depending on the situation.
Ret is now able to use holy shock, which will allow for more damage or healing and help fill those few seconds where we aren't pressing anything
Crusader strike being changed by talents and such or a new spell is being added in it's place in the ret tree (this would give us even more damage possibilities if it is a damaging move)
Blinding shield. Paladins NOW have a cc. Yes i know it has a cast time but we already spec into prot as it is for divine sacrifice so we can hope that the instant cast isn't too far from that. If we can't then we can simply round robin a macro for it to switch to shield and cast.
Sacred shield changed to a 30 minuet buff and not a 15 second buff. This is a HUGE change for us as it increases the amount we heal with FoL on ourselves by close to 50% (the increased chance to crit)

Basically now as a TEAM they have given us more survivability, more burst potential, and given us pets...given the DK the ability to help with keeping targets healing under control and with the new system for talents they get damage reduction for early blood talents which means more survivability for them as well.

Cons


Paladins lose their ability to dispel magic unless they are holy
This is a problem because dispeling anything that is not a disease or poison such as curses or fear is no longer possible. Since the bubble duration is being reduced i would not be surprised to see the cooldown reduced as well
They want to give us less survivability but more damage.... yet want to keep burst down... dunno how they are going to do this
The diversification of talents we use now will be changed for DKs and might change how we need to use their abilities.

To be honest i'd trade the ability to be feared once more or for a bit longer for all the tools they have given us. There are few character types that can use magic to dot us up and with the amount of healing we have it doesn't much matter anyway. Locks that would be dotting up our party would have UA anyway so we would just be killing ourselves if we cleansed it anyway.

Yes this is just a preview... but from what was shown i'm really digging the changes and it has inspired me to finish my team ASAP.

[Myc]

yes yes...
now we play the waiting game...





Your move Blizz.



o wait.. yeah just release Cata

[Fat Tire]

shodokan you left out some cons....


FoL they said would cost alot of mana

All current pvp gear being equal plate classes have an 8-10k hit point advantage over cloth/mail. Cata will even this out taking away that big current advantage giving -example mages as much hps as warriors . Armor will not mitigate as well as it does now(nerf plate) and will up the armor on cloth/mail to be more inline with other classes(again nerf plate). Something to keep in mind

[Mosg2]

I'm totally psyched by these changes.

You're trading the ability to defensively dispel to get:

More damage.
More healing.
A better-than-MS effect.
Click-Pets.

[Shodokan]

shodokan you left out some cons....


FoL they said would cost alot of mana

All current pvp gear being equal plate classes have an 8-10k hit point advantage over cloth/mail. Cata will even this out taking away that big current advantage giving -example mages as much hps as warriors . Armor will not mitigate as well as it does now(nerf plate) and will up the armor on cloth/mail to be more inline with other classes(again nerf plate). Something to keep in mind

That is only a con if your mana isn't suficient enough. That is negated by the nearly auto crit chance for FoL IMO.

[Sephice]

with the informations atm we have i would prefer 3 DKs and 2 Rets, more Grip and a Heal Absorb. This can be really Nasty and we had the 2 Buffs from the Paladins, life is getting mcuh a higher pool and with some point in Blood we had a great heal too for 3 times.

But without the talent trees its really hard talk about it ;) but a full heal Absorb is really awesome

[Mosg2]

@Sephice
I'm waiting to see if the heal absorption stacks with itself and its cooldown before I go all in. If it does stack and/or has a small or no cooldown... Dk's it is!

[Shodokan]

@Sephice
I'm waiting to see if the heal absorption stacks with itself and its cooldown before I go all in. If it does stack and/or has a small or no cooldown... Dk's it is!

It'll likely work like all other spells, on the rune cooldowns. Which are going to be longer with little haste.

[Mosg2]

If it doesn't stack (ie, 4 DK's hit it and there's still only one debuff for x amount of healing) then DK+Rets it is. If it DOES stack (ie, each successful strike means that much more heal eating) then I'm really likely to run Ret+4 DK's :)

[Firstcow]

I'm totally psyched by these changes.

You're trading the ability to defensively dispel to get:

More damage.
More healing.
A better-than-MS effect.
Click-Pets.

I'm still worried by the loss of Cleanse for rets. One game in arena I lost against a lower rated team because one mage was spamming blizzard on my team and a priest mass dispell. My rets went down in HP all of them as the same time, while not being able to move at all. I could have escaped if I spammed Cleanse each pally on itself, instead of spamming Cleanse with all pallies on one target at a time.

Now imagine Cleanse is gone, and you're at -70% speed and freedom is on cooldown, and a mage is spamming improved blizzard. You're toast, you can't use any melee abilities. All you can do is bubble during which you have 50% less dmg and they probably run away from you anyway during bubble.

Basically without Cleanse even if you can hit 10 times harder there's nothing to hit. Unless you fight scrubs who stay near you.

[Shodokan]

I'm still worried by the loss of Cleanse for rets. One game in arena I lost against a lower rated team because one mage was spamming blizzard on my team and a priest mass dispell. My rets went down in HP all of them as the same time, while not being able to move at all. I could have escaped if I spammed Cleanse each pally on itself, instead of spamming Cleanse with all pallies on one target at a time.

Now imagine Cleanse is gone, and you're at -70% speed and freedom is on cooldown, and a mage is spamming improved blizzard. You're toast, you can't use any melee abilities. All you can do is bubble during which you have 50% less dmg and they probably run away from you anyway during bubble.

Basically without Cleanse even if you can hit 10 times harder there's nothing to hit. Unless you fight scrubs who stay near you.

What skilled mage puts into improved blizzard? Take the loss to the random scrub and re-que.

[Fat Tire]

Divine Storm will get the Whirlwind treatment (less damage per target but unlimited targets).

[Iceorbz]

Pros


DK can now spell reflect (Good)



DK now has a mortal strike like ability to help with killing more efficiently (good as well, MS never hurts -- however the mortal strike effects will only be 20% now, which is also a buff to your common survivability as well as a buff to your dk)



DK now can use an off-gcd spell that puts both diseases on a target for switches for no runes (important for bursting down healers) (Bursting down should not take effect from what they said -- now maybe in 5's it can, but with increased health pools, strong heals and the like I don't know. Blizzard wanted matches to take a bit not be a WoTLK Global.)
With blood being changed to a tanking spec (which frost was for the most part before) it provides the DK more survivability if we stick with that type of build (hybrid) (good buff, but who knows what they will take out or put in when talent changes come through)
Paladins get pets on a 3 minuet cooldown and they last 30 seconds.... so we get 4 pets to help with burst! Similar to totem pets i'd assume but with less strength. Similar to the staff created pet from ICC which if people have been hit by it know it's not a pleasant experience. ( I wouldnt worry to much about those pets, a fear bomb will prolly take care of them, and you gotta figure out how much health they have; none the less, it is more dps then we have now)
Paladins get an AOE heal similar to healing stream... more passive healing. 6 second duration 15 second cooldown. This can obviously be staggered or used all at once depending on the situation. (Obviously a buff, but the question is mana efficiency)
Ret is now able to use holy shock, which will allow for more damage or healing and help fill those few seconds where we aren't pressing anything. (Holy shock is very mana inneficient, so i don't know how it will be used for heals.. maybe emergency but I wouldnt consider very common useage of it)
Crusader strike being changed by talents and such or a new spell is being added in it's place in the ret tree (this would give us even more damage possibilities if it is a damaging move) (I think this more of a buff for prot then anything, especially considering prot is already more viable in arena then ret)
Blinding shield. Paladins NOW have a cc. Yes i know it has a cast time but we already spec into prot as it is for divine sacrifice so we can hope that the instant cast isn't too far from that. If we can't then we can simply round robin a macro for it to switch to shield and cast. (This will be very unreliable for a melee boxer, if you hit it while they are swarming no telling who / what it will get lol. They said they wanted to make it like the boss from ToC the radiance effect sot heyw ould have to be facing them).
Sacred shield changed to a 30 minuet buff and not a 15 second buff. This is a HUGE change for us as it increases the amount we heal with FoL on ourselves by close to 50% (the increased chance to crit) (VERY BAD NERF, when durations of buffs go up -- so do the mana cost, however with dispel mechanics being reworked it's possible that these buffs may actually stay on for more then 3 mass dispels, also for non boxers, this raises the chances of being switched to if Sacred Shield is NOT up)



Paladins lose their ability to dispel magic unless they are holy (This will be a huge problem, you will no longer be able to trinket and dispel fears, or drains and the like.. I personally believe this change will be the ender for ret paladin teams, at least at a higher bracket)




They want to give us less survivability but more damage.... yet want to keep burst down... dunno how they are going to do this (A reduction in the duration of divine shield so that a paladin is not able to heal to full is something that's headed your way for paladins, making aoe moves hit more targets but for less damage overall is another thing)



Locks that would be dotting up our party would have UA anyway so we would just be killing ourselves if we cleansed it anyway. ( I don't wait to dispel a UA, i rather eat a 3 second silence then get hit with a UA - agony - corruption - mana drain going, puts me way behind in mana and hp's, i think the silence is worth it. Now that resilience affects UA's explosion you should be cautious but not afraid of UA imo)


Yes this is just a preview... but from what was shown i'm really digging the changes and it has inspired me to finish my team ASAP.

Hrm -- added some stuff in your quote for you to think about.

[Mosg2]

@Iceorbz
Nice comments--Well thought out and down to earth. Instead of replying to each one I'll kind of make a general reply.

After everything is said and done with the MS changes and DK's getting the no-heal strike the DK+Rets total damage output relative to every other 5's team DOUBLED. Before, everyone but us had MS. Now, we get something even better than MS for this team (we burst--I'd rather them get NO healing for X amount than a flat 20% reduction).

At the end of the Paladin preview they stated that it might take 3 big heals or 2 crits to take a tank from death's door to full--That's going to be hard to get off with all the CC that exists. Basically, they said that they didn't want burst to be the *only* option available--Just one of a number of viable strategies. A 5 DPS team (us) that can also heal and MS and CC is going to be insane.

I do lament the loss of defensive dispelling. I foresee this being the biggest block to us making it.