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

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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!