Really really dumb question here, but what is considered an acceptable level of dps for a dps class in a raid?

I lead raids, but I'm always either tanking or healing. I keep SWStats up so I can see who's doing what fraction of the damage, and I can tell in a broad sense whether we have "enough" dps for a given encounter or not, but I've never looked at actual dps numbers.

I've been running Recap and watching guild members' DPS on 5-man instances. On average it seems to run around 350-400-ish for people that I consider 'reliable raid DPS', but the hard-hitters can hit 500-600 or so. We had a shadow priest doing 500-ish or so while also healing the Black Morass run for a similiar amount, and that's a pretty long series of battles.

Our gear level is around T2/basic level 70 blues, so I think there's room for improvement. I'd want a ret-paladin to bring 450 DPS because of the melee AOE factor increasing the 'cost' of his raid spot, as it were.

Oh I 100% agree, this is really rough math. Its a calulation off gear I threw together in two seconds just grabbing stuff of wowhead, I didnt cacluate out spell damage, glancing, poping AW, misery on the mob, MS debuff on the mob, zero potions for the paladin, zero raid buffs, etc etc, etc, a lot of assumtions and Im sure my numbers a really off.

However, saying a ret paladin only pulled 250 or so DPS is really really low IMHO, I was just refuting that number. In my personal experience with a ret pally friend of mine who is not very well geared pulling down 400 or so DPS is pretty trival to do.

Im not sure what DPS range we should be looking for, but saying that we cant break 250 is just plain untrue, that thats waht I was responding to.

Ragnor said it pretty well, among other things ret paladin itemisation has barely improved above level 60 epic pvp gear, judgements while theoritically quite good are problematic in practice especially with the long standing bug that melee hits do not refresh the judgement if it hasnt been refreshed in the first 10 seconds.

We used a Ret paladin in naxx pre-tbc, his dps was excellent but on the constant edge of pulling aggro even with salv. But even with a 6 second crusader strike judgements were dropping and the best numbers I could come up with said that he was deserved a place in a 40 man raid but not 25.

38/0/23 is a very nice holy build and provides most benefits of a retribution Paladin.

Perhaps in a few months a ret paladin with a good selection of arena and farmed T4 gear will be able to be a acceptable part of a raid doing exclusivily 25 man content but 10 man?

About paladin dps in 5 mans...

I've actually found pre 70 5 man dps ok. I was overseas for the first month or so of the xpac but at the moment I've level 68, I'm using the lvl 68 quest reward polearm, full 5/5 T2.5 and crit/ap/hit rings, necks and trinkets.

In successive Auchenai Crypts runs last night over the whole run my dps was 450-500 (measured using recap).

What I find hugely disturbing is my stats are hardly better than at 60 because there are no suitable upgrades. In 8 levels my AP has gone up by ~200-300, however my crit % has decreased due to crit rating scaling. My hit and +dmg are largely the same.

I keep seeing shaman and feral druid blue melee dps drops that are awesome but nothing but tanking or holy gear for paladins.

Next step is working towards crafting thunder and pvp'ing for arena gear. Thunder will be a significant upgrade but the arena gear is pretty meh.

That could actually be interesting by making a talent along the lines of say, "Your melee [hits/crits] [have a N% chance to] [increase/reduce] the [effect/cost/cast time/whatever] of your next Y by N%, stacks up to X times.".

If we're going for the idea of the Warcraft III Paladin (Swinging it up at the front lines while supporting with heals), giving your melee hits a chance to reduce the cast time on your healing spells for example would be an idea. Of course, typical Ret itemization isn't much good for healing.

Unfortunately this appears to be the official viewpoint

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...eNo=2&sid=1#23

woah, rage bar for paladins! Warriors would be up in arms and fury!

Retribution paladins need a buff to sustained DPS (or raid utility) if they're to ever be considered as worthy of a raid slot (other than as a pity invite).

I was lucky enough to pick up a Despair on our second R&J kill ... even with this (and a gear set aimed toward ret dps), I was routinely getting trounced by mages, locks, hunters, rogues and tanking feral druids (and probably shadow priests, too, but I didn't run with any of them before I packed it in and went back to holy), by which any and all of those were doing 30% more damage than I did (and in the first two cases, 50%-100% more damage depending on gear and ability/aggressiveness).

It seems to me to be fairly obvious that the dev team have their knickers in a twist about potential burst dps paladins *can* do (and yes, when all the planets out to Jupiter were aligned correctly, I could hit something for ~5-6k damage instantly and still have 5 seconds left on stun). The answer to this also seems fairly obvious to me ... Seal of Command is the prime cause of our streaky damage, so double or triple the proc rate and halve or third the damage done per proc.

However, it's still a thorny problem because then you have to balance having plate, heals, the best defensive group support tools and somehow fit reasonable DPS in there as well. I wonder if there's any way to introduce a talent, something like say Spirit of the Avenger, increases all damage done by 15% but disables healing/blessing (so yes, basically shadowform for paladins) in order to sacrifice group utility for individual DPS. Sanctified Crusader is a nice group buff, but as others have said you don't need to be DPSing to get the primary benefits of being a ret paladin, so you either need to add group buffs that revolve around being in melee or add enough raw DPS that ret paladins aren't lagging significantly behind (as-is, I can only beat anyone on DPS if they're either AFK or dead).


PS: Should I be happy or sad that even when I was full ret spec, I was outhealing priests in heroics with better mana conservation?

Please Thelyna, don't say things like that without pointing out that either a) you were rolling with some piss-terrible priests or 2)you have really really good healing gear, and up to Illumination in the holy tree. =D

I do agree with the rest of your post though. Paladins are capable of decent burst damage right now. The reality of it though, is that it requires some nice gear, and a really good spot of luck to boot. A string of crits sucks to see when you're on the receiving end, but let's be honest with each other here.

The other classes have stun/immobilize/root effects at their disposal. The other classes have the capability for huge burst damage, and in most cases, lots more than the Paladin can put out. Why pick on the Paladin? Is it the fact that a Paladin has some amazing utilities and defense mechanisms? So do other classes. You can look across the board and find defensive skills and abilities for each class. It's completely unfair to ask that this one single class in the game should not have the ability to deal respectable damage, if they spec/gear for it.

The classic example to me is the Shadow Priest. I know people hate to see this, but it's the straight truth. The priest is hands-down the best healing class in the game. Yet they are still given a talent tree and the gear to go along with it to make them one of the better damage classes out there. When a priest specs Shadow, he gives up a lot of the healing power he had when specced Holy. Why can't a Paladin have that same ability?

The obvious answer is the fact that he wears plate armor, and has blessings, and can heal really well. Priests have fear, mass dispel, heals(even in shadowform)... I don't see the problem here.

Please. Give the Paladins a chance, Blizzard. Everyone else gets to do damage, why can't we?

According to previews, Warrior-Priests will essentially charge up their spells (buffs and heals, presumably) by hitting people. Then again, you should realize that WAR is being designed such that every single class is a damage dealer, with some of them having abilities such as buffs/debuffs/heals. There is no primary healer class in WAR.