Retadins right now seem to be much like the shadow priests of pre-TBC, with the exception that there's not even a syngery with another class. What I'm getting at is they do fairly poor DPS compared to the other melee classes, and the benefits they bring are either totally misunderstood or believed to be too small. Pre-TBC you didn't take a shadow priest over a mage for DPS, because that would have been silly, but if you had enough warlocks it was at least understood what else they brought to the table.
They need some kind of ability that sets them apart in raiding -- yet would be irrelevent in PvP because the implications there would be dire. Maybe they could have a 35 or 40 point talent aura that increases threat by their party by 20%. This would be totally meaningless in PvP, it would have no effect in 5 mans, but would raise the bar for DPS classes in raiding.
Not even that it's a GREAT idea, but it's the kind of idea that ret pallies need to add more benefits, something that people can say "hey, it would really be nice to have at least one of these in our raid."
A proper Ret DPS calculator would give us solid numbers to bandy about. If I care enough about an argument to open up my spreadsheet, I can tell you exactly what my Rogue's theorycraft DPS is. Being able to do the same for the hypothetical Retadin might be interesting, and a proper model with Vengeance uptime etc would allow us to discuss the truly optimized Retadin instead of gut feelings about what gear is good -- even experienced players can't take every variable into account. It's not nearly as complex a proposition as the existing Rogue DPS calculator, as Ret doesn't have cycles.
If someone doesn't link one, I'll write it myself. Just gotta dig up the relevant formulae (spell damage coefficients, calculating Vengeance uptime as a function of crit% and attacks/minute, etc).
I actually have one somewhere, it's crazy out of date however; it's something Nexous of <Pacifist> made long before BC, so it uses pre-BC math (meaning no Crusader Strike and no adjustment for Crusade or Fanaticism). I may have a more recent one somewhere that does incorporate those things, I know I've seen one. I can't find it ATM, though.
Wow, is that C++ in the source? I'm not a very good programmer but I found the code very readable. The only obstacle to modifying it (I think) would be that I wouldn't know what to do with it once I finish modding -- open in Firefox I guess? I don't have a webspace to publish it to.
Oh, it also doesn't include spell or melee hit, or armor reduction. Those can be coded in, I guess. Maybe it's just because of my familiarity with Pf's excellent Rogue sheet (especially being able to see my DPS real-time update as I swap pieces) but I think I'd still prefer a spreadsheet approach.
Wow, is that C++ in the source? I'm not a very good programmer but I found the code very readable. The only obstacle to modifying it (I think) would be that I wouldn't know what to do with it once I finish modding -- open in Firefox I guess? I don't have a webspace to publish it to.
You could E-mail it to someone who can upload it, perhaps. I know I don't use my webspace for much, I'm sure it could handle the traffic.
Do pallies gear for/use SoC or SoR for DPS? 2.3% spell coefficient is pretty harsh on SoC, but then it scales with melee DPS and raid buffs help that much more than +dam.
Do pallies gear for/use SoC or SoR for DPS? 2.3% spell coefficient is pretty harsh on SoC, but then it scales with melee DPS and raid buffs help that much more than +dam.
2.3%? The spell coefficients I had seen were that SoCom procs received 20% of spell damage (and 29% of Holy school spell damage), with JoCom getting 42.9% of spell damage. SoR scales with weapon speed, 9%/second for a 1 hander, 11%/second for a 2 hander; JoR gets a 73% coefficient. (These numbers from PTR data from a while back, but I have heard nothing to contradict them. I had a link to a similar page on the EJ forums, but it seems to have gone dead on me, I'll see if I can find the local post.)
2.3%? The spell coefficients I had seen were that SoCom procs received 20% of spell damage (and 29% of Holy school spell damage), with JoCom getting 42.9% of spell damage. SoR scales with weapon speed, 9%/second for a 1 hander, 11%/second for a 2 hander; JoR gets a 73% coefficient. (These numbers from PTR data from a while back, but I have heard nothing to contradict them. I had a link to a similar page on the EJ forums, but it seems to have gone dead on me, I'll see if I can find the local post.)
SoC gets 20% +dmg per proc, at 7 procs per minute. That's 140% of +dmg per minute, which averages out to 2.3% of +dmg in DPS. (a tad higher when crit rate is factored in).
JoC gets around 4.3%~5% of +dmg in DPS, assuming frequent judging. So considering the overall seal, that's around 6~7% of +dmg in DPS, before damage multipliers (crit rate, weapon specialisation, Veng., etc) are considered. That doesn't seem too bad to me.
SoC gets 20% +dmg per proc, at 7 procs per minute. That's 140% of +dmg per minute, which averages out to 2.3% of +dmg in DPS. (a tad higher when crit rate is factored in).
JoC gets around 4.3%~5% of +dmg in DPS, assuming frequent judging. So considering the overall seal, that's around 6~7% of +dmg in DPS, before damage multipliers (crit rate, weapon specialisation, Veng., etc) are considered. That doesn't seem too bad to me.
Ok, but for the sake of comparing the two, the judgment part doesn't help Command, since the judgment has basically the same mechanic and base and a worse coefficient.
Just looking at the seal part, with a 3.8 speed weapon, SoC gets 2.3%, SOR gets 41%, that's a potentially big difference (sure, it has some slightly better multipliers, but multiplying something so small doesn't affect much). Seeing people talk about using SoC, I was just wondering if it was obviously better, given possible gear.
Since I don't actually play a paladin, I could be miles off on everything, though, and it would probably be a better question for the mechanics thread anyway.
Ok, but for the sake of comparing the two, the judgment part doesn't help Command, since the judgment has basically the same mechanic and base and a worse coefficient.
Just looking at the seal part, with a 3.8 speed weapon, SoC gets 2.3%, SOR gets 41%, that's a potentially big difference (sure, it has some slightly better multipliers, but multiplying something so small doesn't affect much). Seeing people talk about using SoC, I was just wondering if it was obviously better, given possible gear.
Since I don't actually play a paladin, I could be miles off on everything, though, and it would probably be a better question for the mechanics thread anyway.
SoC is better for a deep-Ret build because
(a) it scales with physical damage stats (AP/crit) as well as with spelldamage, where SoR scales only with spelldamage; so a Ret-adin can boost white damage, SoC, and Crusader strike damage simply by boosting AP and crit rate
(b) it can crit, meaning it can proc Vengeance, where SoR can't.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Of course I realize it scales with physical damage stats, otherwise there would be no debate at all, I was just wondering about the relative magnitude. Doing back of the envelope calculations with perhaps unrepresentative stats it didn't seem clear which effect dominated.
Point b) was what I was missing, though, Even without the Vengeance part, the fact that SoR can't crit greatly reduces its relative damage. Pretty stupid mistake, especially since the ability to crit would make SoR very powerful for Vengeance - I guess having a shadow priest as a main has made me forget about crits altogether
Part of the problem with ret dps is that it is exceptionally gear dependent. There aren't a whole lot of items floating around with all of str/crit/hit/int/spell hit/spell crit/spell damage on them. I had always had my doubts about ret dps in raids until I transferred to Hyjal.
I finally ran into a paladin here with the gear and skill to pull it off. While I don't have hard numbers his competitive DPS, sanctified crusader, the n+1'th paladin buff, and occasional nightfall (lol), are more than enough to earn him a raid spot.
The gear barrier for ret paladins to be competitive feels much higher than for other hybrids, and their utility to a 25 man raid drops off -significantly- for each one after the first.
He would be referring to me and thanks for the compliment Stent, appreciate it man. I raid as a ret paladin and have worked my ass off for a long time to get the correct style and balance of gear down pat to make it 'work' so to speak. My armor link is in my signature and you'll see I have never shirked on my mana pool for the sake of damage. The comfort area to me is around 6800 and tonight I snagged the mail belt in shadow labs from rotting which knocked me up to 7k - not arguing.
The problem with getting hard numbers to bring to the table comes from the fact that at any given point in a big pull I may have to roll backwards and start healing. This is especially true on boss fights where any number of things from healers going out of mana to a bad luck toss on Gruul can remove healers from the fight. So from a DM perspective, it would appear I was doing less damage than in reality I am capable of doing.
Yet at the same time I think that is where I should be...if I was just staring at the DM like a crack addled monkey and ignoring all other factors, then I'd just be playing like an idiot, especially with all of the utility paladins can bring to a raid. It's all about balancing yourself against your groups composition and adapting to the situations as they present themselves.
The other holy paladins in the guild whom I run heroics with love having me there when they are main healing; as if they get kicked or gibbed, I can immediately bubble up, drop back and start rolling heals on the fly. Also I try to be extremely quick on BoP's whenever a mob has an agro dump that would send the mob careening out of control (Can we say Felguards in heroic Shadow labs?).
As for my full out damage I'll have to just try to gauge it on an instance where I won't be needed to heal at all, I can usually out pace shadow priests and hover around the mages during Karazhan clears. If there is enough interest, I'll try to run some DM's on heroics next week and keep screenshots on file to bring back to the thread at a later date.
The basic fact is the spec has its uses in raids, you just need to expect that you won't ever be an all out damage dealer allowing tunnel vision to keep your attention off the raid. Also, you have to know when sacrificing your personal epeen for the good of the raid is needed. I dug Nightfall out of the bank for our first two Gruul kills the other day and may very well have to use this thing forever if the caster 'OH MY GOD I CRIT FOR X' tells have any say. We're going to see what happens when I use my normal main weapon next week on him since we've got him down twice now.
His HP at 3 minutes should give me a feel for how much 'actual' damage the debuff is providing instead of simply perceived from the off crit during the 5 seconds it's up. If the debuff really is kicking that much damage out though, I'm all for using Nightfall. Whatever gets the raid mobs down is what matters in my book.
Last edited by Teleyn : 03/18/07 at 5:29 AM.
Reason: forgot a word in a sentence, thanks 5:30 am posting~
I think it's pretty clear now that the shadow priest has the winning design; the reason being 2 healers grouped with a shadow priest are better healers, thanks to vampiric touch(and the patch healing from VE). The problem is they ran out of design space for benefits, and they seem to be trying hard to keep the various mechanics from becoming too similar:
Group Mana Regen while DPSing: Shadow Priest
Group Healing while DPSing: Feral Druid, Shadow Priest
Caster Damage Increase While DPSing: Shadow Priest(Misery), Elemental Shaman(ToW), Moonkin
Physical Damage Increase While DPSing: Arms Warriors, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druid
The ret paladin is attempting to combine two of these types of ideas: an all around DPS buff, to both physical and caster classes; and a +healing aura, which is a fairly unique mechanic (especially considering ToL's original effect, it seems they wanted Sanc aura to be the "special flower" ret paladins could bring.) The trouble is all those classes listed above actually DO decent dps. I've even seen moonkin put up some pretty good numbers. Since paladins are so "defensive-oriented," the buffs they give out should be the BEST of any of these, which they really just aren't.
It seems like the mana regen idea is the least used, as it is largely a new mechanic to 2.0. Since carbon copy ideas are bad, why not add a reverse blessing of sacrifice type deal(Blessing of Whatever, restores 5% of paladin's damage as mana to raid member; can only be on one person and one blessing yadada).
Anyway, didn't mean to clutter up the topic with random ideas, but I think that's the point we're at; until Blizzard comes up with a new idea, it's just not worth it.
Maybe it's pushing too close to the idea of shadowpriests, but it'd be cool and nice and such, I think, if we had some mechanic to return something via our holy damage.
Would a percentage of holy damage returned as health/mana be too OP? I don't know.
Would having some passive threat negation tacked onto something deep in the ret tree be too OP? Not, I think, if they also manage to continue capping out burst damage output via itemisation.
They need some kind of ability that sets them apart in raiding -- yet would be irrelevent in PvP because the implications there would be dire.
I don't see why this would be true. Ret paladins are near the bottom of the barrel for specs in 5v5 arena, why would an ability that provided a PvP team buff while you melee be so problematic?
I don't see why this would be true. Ret paladins are near the bottom of the barrel for specs in 5v5 arena, why would an ability that provided a PvP team buff while you melee be so problematic?
People have bad memories of what happened in 2.0.0 and on the PTR, when they pushed live a patch that still had numerous overpowered additions for Warlocks and Paladins (most of which had been abandoned on BC beta a month earlier).
I assume cloth players just remember Johnny Lightforge running up to them and onerounding their T2+ with a welfare hammer, and those memories color their current opinions.
As for my full out damage I'll have to just try to gauge it on an instance where I won't be needed to heal at all, I can usually out pace shadow priests and hover around the mages during Karazhan clears. If there is enough interest, I'll try to run some DM's on heroics next week and keep screenshots on file to bring back to the thread at a later date.
Ran the DM's tonight during our Trial clear of Shattered Halls Heroic.
That is the DM for the whole instance through the Ogre boss; I died from him deciding to continuously target me at about 35% which caused me to fall back on it some. I had the hunter spam the DM so it would contain his full damage including his pet, since it doesn't register pet damage on mine.
Group Composition:
Asmo: Hunter (one of our best, if not the best, hunters)
Aristal: Shadow Priest
Zest: Prot War
Reiss: Holy Paladin
Teleyn: Ret Paladin
We wiped twice because of bad blade dances on the last boss so it through the DM's off at the end, but that should give you an idea of the kind of sustained damage a ret paladin can maintain over the course of an instance.
We wiped twice because of bad blade dances on the last boss so it through the DM's off at the end, but that should give you an idea of the kind of sustained damage a ret paladin can maintain over the course of an instance.
We had a similar experience on a Botanica the other day (normal, Sha'tar rep farming...). One of our Ret Paladins kept ahead of me untill we had killed the first boss (I'm guessing that's his arena gear in his profile at the time of posting). Basically, my burst dps is not too good, but his is very much so, and with trash dying fast you'll see impressive dps numbers from ret paladins. How did your pala fare on longer boss-fights? Generally I out-dps'd ours by quite a bit on longer fights. And in the end that is usually what matters, though there are boss-fights that where burst is nice (e.g. Curator, my TBC raid experience doesn't stretch further than High King and Karazhan).
And I reallly wish I had taken some screens now so this would be a bit more substantial. (Blast that he had to end up in a different Karazhan group than me)
On a related not, is Dr. Boom melee-able? I might be able to persuade a priest to spec shadow and our pala to come run some tests if so, though I guess a boss instead of a lvl70 elite will screw him more than us casters though, what with glancing and his lack of hit/spellhit.
Really all they would have to do is invent something similar and you'd create a viable raiding tree.
I can think of one small change and that will do the trick. Have crusader strike add a buff or debuff that will give raid wide benefit. The beauty of it is that it will not affect pvp balance at all which is obviously a huge concern for Blizzard
This is an interesting DPS comparison of a rogue vs a retadin that I just saw. I asked Viludin if I could repost it here, and he agreed, but I guess the link will suffice: http://forum.celestial.st/viewtopic.php?t=266
In short, he theorises that retadin raid dps contribution > rogue dps contribution. As you can see, the discussion request he made was happily ignored, so I would like to see if you could provide some input on his numbers.
If he is right, then the problem would be aggro and mitigation I guess.
Would a tank be able to hold aggro vs 1100 paladin dps? Would BoSalvation be enough compared to feint/vanish?
Would the lack of dodge compared to a Rogue be outweighed by Crusader strike benefits? In this post Sebudai suggests a dps warrior is viable: http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.p...585#post306585 What does a dps warrior have in terms of mitigation compared to a retadin? Is the base hp difference the key or would they be comparable?
I'm sorry if I put forward too many questions, but I would like to see your input on this.
His estimates of class DPS are probably high, and the math pretty much illustrates the reason why Sanctified Crusader sucks: in the face of that estimated 13k DPS, it adds about 400. Whoopee.
Some random thoughts I've had over the last few days (while I'm posting anyway):
- Sanctified Crusader needs to be either 5% or higher, or apply to any Judgment at 3%. Crusader is a selfish Judgment and unless you're the third Paladin you better have either Light or Wisdom up on the mob or have a damn good reason not to. The big fundamental problem with Sanctified Crusader is that it is poor in small groups while being good in raids, whereas VE/LotP/UR are all group abilities, and no, Sanctity Aura is not a comparable ability. I'm not really sure what to do about this.
- Crusader Strike should be on a shorter recast timer with its damage lowered to allow 2 chance to refresh Judgments if the first attack is parried or missed.
- +AP -> Healing talent of some sort. Druids get this in the Feral tree, there's no reason why Paladins and Shamans shouldn't.
- Passive/Buff haste ability that has a threat-limiter in it, possibly a unique blessing within the tree that's self-only to prevent buff stacking abuse. This would be akin to the Hunter BM talent that improves their sustained DPS without jerking their burst DPS up.
His estimates of class DPS are probably high, and the math pretty much illustrates the reason why Sanctified Crusader sucks: in the face of that estimated 13k DPS, it adds about 400. Whoopee.
Maybe Blizzard calculated (wishful thinking) the amount of dps SC should add to motivate adding one retadin to a raid?
It will also add imp LoTP and other crit procs on top of that 400 dps.
03/17/07, 11:10 PM
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