I started to add stuff into the requested topic. If anyone have important information that they feel should be worth mentioning in the OP, feel free to post it.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17193-p...ft/#post513954

Since when has Ret had superior threat generation than Prot?

For AoE situations, you have Holy Shield and BoSanct. Single target, you have reckoning, Holy Shield, and superior mitigation to boot. If mitigation isn't a factor, you can stack on even more +dmg and make better use of your superior +dmg->threat scaling.



In any case, that's not the issue. The question is whether a "raid-DPS" Ret spec should have gimped tanking ability. I'm sure that most Ret paladins are willing to make that sacrifice, but are you really sure you want to go down this route with no protest?

You mean other than this is the stance that pretty much every class and spec has about themselves? Yet this topic inexplicably remained alive for months while everyone stood around and nodded and said "yep, that lack of threat reduction sure does make paladins useless, if they had it they'd be good"? There hasn't been any actual discussion of anything new here for a while because of the threat limitation. Now that there is a way around it and they made CS better to boot, the question of viability is pretty much gone and it's on to figuring out how to make best use of it, which is what the CM forum is there for.

I'd wait for the finalized changes to go Live, but otherwise I agree that the threat redux change renders this thread done.


This thread started with the question "Are ret paladins viable in a raid?"

About 20~ pages ago, the thread consensus was, "We're pretty close to raid viability but we need a little boost and threat redux".

5~ pages ago, after the 2.3 preview, it was "We got a DPS boost, but it's all useless because there's no threat redux!".


Now, we're getting that threat redux. There're no more excuses for being "raid unviable".

The big difference here is that Paladins, unlike Warriors and Druids don't have any given tank "stance" or "form" tailored to the role. The best we have in Righteous Fury, which just improves the threat from Holy Damage. We've never had any control over anything besides this one spell so I fail to see what is quintessentially changing.

When asking a Retribution Paladin to tank for a 5-man, I'm positive the group will understand the ramifications of having one in place and will compensate. In my opinion I don't see a problem with this system since it's just as intuitive to expect, notice, and compensate for the differences between a Prot Paladin tanking, a Ret Paladin tanking, a Mortal Strike Warrior tanking, or a Feral Druid tanking. While it would be nice to find the threat reduction in Two-Handed Weapon specialization, I don't see how this deviates from the "class vision" or is a deviation unique to just Paladins, or how it might somehow disable another aspect of the class. In response to your final postulation: Since tanking changes so vastly between specs, I would be willing to see the 30% reduction go in with no complaints.

Back on topic however, between 6 Second Crusader Strikes, a 30% threat reduction, and improved DPS this is shaping up to be an excellent patch for the Retribution tree. A new thread would be excellent in preparation for 2.3 live WWS parses and constructive discussion.

Though, also consider we have a stance and form-free taunt. Which is a pretty huge boon for the sort of ghetto tanking a ret might theoretically do.

Really, I don't remember the last time I (intentionally) was tanking with a ret spec. Every time I've tried to do tanking seriously I've respecced for it, since I didn't want to make a pathetic ham-fisted mess of it.

I don't think this thread needs to die quite yet. Lots of changes are still in flux and once things settle and the patch goes live it should die and either move purely to class mechanics or be reborn in some way.


My two cents on tanking as ret:
In a 5 man you can just use salv on your group and be fine. Your group will miss out on kings or wisdom or whatever, but you should still be able to complete dungeons and likely heroics if geared well enough.

For raids I'd imagine feral druids and arms warriors would make better tanks anyway. I guess if there's a real shortage of those in most peoples raids they could try to adjust something to let ret generate more threat, but I doubt it'd be that big of a deal.

I could be completely wrong so let me know

Are you basing that on personal experience or as a theoretical solution?


I already use salv when tanking now, unless my group is composed of "average" DPSers.

I'd agree with this.

I know I've made some harsh posts in this thread but there's a general rule that you can apply to Blizzard's development:

Don't assume malicious intent for anything that can be attributed to ignorance or more commonly, the glacial development pacing of Blizzard.

I think the point that Blizzard is trying to make is to distinguish the 3 Paladin trees, not homogenize them. If Blizzard wanted every Paladin to be equally viable as DPS, Healing, and Tanking in every spec, both the Holy and Protection trees would likely look a lot different.

Passive threat reduction gives Retribution exactly what it needed for its exact purpose - raid-level DPS. If it compromises their tanking ability somewhat, how is that any different from any other class? I play a Prot Warrior - it compromises my DPS capability somewhat.

Honestly I'm talking out of ignorance so I'll shut up. I haven't played a dps role with a paladin tanking except for probably one time since the expansion.

I still think that it should be tacked to the 2 handed weapon spec and be flagged as only active while wielding a 2 handed weapon. But I do understand the reasoning of putting it where it is. Its clearly so deep in ret that a Holydin can't get it without sacrificing too much from the holy tree. It makes sense really, paladin heals already generate low threat, it would be even more overpowered to give them an easily reachable passive threat reducer.

I don't think having 5/5 will reduce your tanking abilities too much. Pop RF, put salv on your party, use sanctity aura. Your dps might have to lay off a bit, but its not quite as gamebreaking as many people seem to think.

Yes, as I said once the changes go live I'm all for killing the topic. But the TR talent was just introduced an hour ago. Heck, we can't even test it because its not on the PTR's until the next build gets released. Combined with Blizzard's usual ability to switch things around I think it would be a bit premature to begin a true theorycraft thread until these changes are finalized and go live.

Hang on there a minute.

Ret is still not for everyone, unfortunately.

Don't forget that ret is losing Sanctified Crusader as unique utility. 15% extra damage is not enough to make up for it (30% extra damage maybe, but we know that's unreasonable).

Don't forget that it is still not optimal for every raid (only certain raids) to put their ret in the WF group.

Personally I would have liked to have increased group damage buffs. The changes so far are basically changing ret into a rogue with less damage that can refresh judgements (assuming you already have 3 pallies).

The changes certainly make Ret paladins raid viable, but I still don't see them being raid optimal unless you have a ton of shaman perhaps. You cannot ret DPS that well without a shaman and given the choice of war/3rogue/shaman vs war/2rogue/ret/shaman I'd still take the 3 rogues every time.

I think one final touch of raid utility that would be amazing is if Vindication actually worked on bosses, even if they had to change it to lower % reduction in stats.

But hey you never know maybe Ret will start ripping off 1400 dps, but until then you probably won't see cutting edge progression guilds toting them around.

Isn't that exactly what the end-state goal was? You do moderately less damage than the class that is admittedly supposed to have the highest single-target DPS, and you bring specific raid utility (or in this case, utilities - Blessings, Judgements, Judgement refreshing, Auras, etc.) - that sounds like an almost ideal state for a class-spec combination that, up until this point, arguably didn't really exist in a raid-viable form.

This has been my experience in raids. Of the few times I was ever asked to tank while raiding as Retribution, the group had me tank the last mob to be killed, or hold onto something for a really short period of time while a Warrior's add was killed and mine was taken over by him. To clarify, this was while on trash in my SSC/TK days.

The only boss I have ever had to off-tank on was during Al'ar, and I was assigned to tank one of the small phoenix spawns (not even the boss). Threat generally wasn't a problem, and a 30% reduction to just threat from physical damage (as well as a reduction to the bonus from Righteous Fury) would probably be pretty irrelevant as well since my add was killed last to help pad as much extra threat as possible.

My point is that when I was put into a tanking role (as rare as it was), the group knew exactly what to expect and compensated properly in order to smooth out any potential problems. Retribution off-tanking in raids isn't a desirable choice by any means, but when it does happen for whatever reason the Fanaticism change won't have a very noticable impact.

Not really.
It's being moved to a shallow point in the tree, yes, but it's simply not possible based on talents for a Protection paladin to get it without giving up something far more useful, and for a raid bitch to get it they'd have to throw out Blessing of Kings and imp BoWis.

It won't be 100% unique but it'll be close to, no reasonable build can grab it with ease.

And even then, it retains all the issues of any other judgement in that it'll be incredibly annoying for a non-ret to hold it up, along with mana drain associated with having to seal and judge every 20 seconds.

I think your argument is flawed, in that you assume that the other general benefits of bringing a Paladin (universals like Auras, Blessings, etc.) don't apply. Judgements are more than a nice finishing touch, too - they do have meaningful impact on longer raid encounters.

When given the choice between taking another Rogue or a 4th Paladin (Ret), shouldn't the value-added benefit be calculated including the additional Blessing, Aura, survivability, etc.? And with the threat cap issue for Paladins substantially improved (a net gain of ~21% threat reduction, since we'll assume no useful Ret Paladin raided without Salv), isn't the potential for their DPS on threat-sensitive encounters improved by a degree more dramatic than you're accounting for?

Overall, I think these changes are reasonable, and that it is unlikely that Retribution will see any further 'major' buffs or changes.

Really? Holy raid bitch builds can get it and give up none of the blessing talents:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Very few specs are viable for every raid, very few classes are viable in every situation.

As a raid leader, I ask my paladins to keep up judgments as much as possible, and they do a pretty damn good job. The up time though on wisdom is around 40% (Less for light). Having a class that can make light and wisdom up time 100% is just invaluable.

In my opinion, the benefit of having JoW constantly up+ok DPS+another bless is more then equivellent to what other hybrids bring.

I also see that in your sol kill you have 5 paladins on your run..You have to look at it from a less "crazy" point of veiw. Most of us bring 3, so that third paladin, who will probably be ret, is going to bring improved might, +3% raid wide crit (No, our holy/prot paladins won't get it, that is a one of the reasons ret's are now valuable), 90% up time on wisdom *and* light, 2% increased group DPS, moderate DPS of their own and an additional BoP/LoH for emergencies.

Perhaps I am missing something here, but for most guilds who will bring 2 holy+1 ret, the ret is more then viable. Your mileage may vary if you bring 4-5 paladins. Then again, what class can you bring that many of and have eac be as valuable as the last?

Well, these changes are probably going to be very good for the ret paladin that is already raiding. But these paladins already have good reason to be ret in their raids. Ret has always been raid-viable, just not for all raids. My argument is that the changes do nothing to change the outcome of the decision point of whether to bring one into the raid in the first place, because everything you're talking about (blessing, aura, judgement) was there before already. In fact I believe the changes actually slightly hurt the chances of a paladin to convince their raid leader to allow them to raid ret.

My dps gain calculation is based on non-threatcapped dps (a few fights fall into this category), so it is 15% dps gain assuming the ret isn't threat capped.