I would like to start a discussion forum specifically targetted at the 41 pt Retribution Paladin in BC.

DISCLAIMER: I am not arguing for the dps paladin, only exploring the viability of one given the changes in the Retribution tree. I am a Holy healing Paladin who is also a Paladin class leader. If you don't want to explore the viability and are already closed minded, please do not read this thread.

I started out as a Ret Paladin (some say "Retnoob") for leveling but learned that our maximum contribution to the raid is found in healing while we use our "hybrid" talents. I settled on a 21 0 30 build after using a 33 18 0 build for a long time. I enjoy healing in raids and dpsing in smaller instances ... bring more of a variety to our play style. I am a MC and BWL veteran with some experience in AQ40 and we are just starting Naxx, so certainly some of you are more experienced than I.

I am interested in how well a ret pally will do in BC, time will tell. With the 41 point talent "Sanctified Crusader" we will be adding a 2% increase to the crit rate (melee and spell crit) to the raid. This will of course limit our protection and holy abilities to be no higher than 20 pts in those trees. Therefore, our healing and tanking will be average at best. Because crusader is not affected by Lasting Judgements, the judgement will only last 10 seconds so it is best to have the paladin in melee vs. the judged mob.

For a 25 man raid, let's assume there will be 15 dps classes so our 41 pt talent will give a 2x15=30% dps increase of one dps class. That means the "retnoob" must dps at 70% of a dps class (mage, rogue, fury warrior, ...) to legitimately be considered a dps class (DISCLAIMER2: I am not promiting this). It remains to be seen how well our dps will be scaled compared to the other classes but we will no doubt need a slow, high end 2her along with dps plate with plenty of agi/crit and str. I think we will need less mana due our new spells (lvl 66 spiritual attunement - regaining 10% mana of healing) and talents (Benediction/Empowered Judgement to lower mana cost of Judgements).

Let's just assume we will be at about 70% of the dps of a full dps class ... but how will we get there? We will be using the rank 7 seal of the crusader, judging it, and then using the new rank 6 seal of command. We will be judging the new seal of command every 8 seconds and using Avenging Wrath every 3 minutes for 20 seconds, and perhaps other trinkets/abilities with a cooldown. I assume we will not be using consecration since it is a very mana inefficient form of attack on a single target, saving that attack for quicker fights with 2 or more enemies. That will be our basic attack sequence, agree?

Given that we are a dps class, we will also be benefitting the raid via the new Improved Sanctity Aura ... giving our group (prolly the MT group) a 6% bonus to healing. In addition, we will be providing an additional blessing (4 instead of 3 perhaps, or 3 instead of 2) allowing certain classes one more blessing. We will also be able to use our blessing of protection/spell warding every 3 or 5 minutes to help protect a class from an attack and our lay on hands every 60 minutes. Perhaps these abilities will be focussed on the MT?

I am sure you have noticed that Blizzard is changing the spells/talents in alpha. They changed Fanatacism from a 10% crit increase to Seal of Command/Judgements to a 15% increase to Judgements only ... a nerf. I have seen the rumors of the higher level spells but they are not confirmed:

Seal of Command rank 6 280 mana 289.5-350.5, 579-640 stunned lvl 70
Consecration rank 6 670 mana 592 damage over 8 seconds (74 dps) lvl 70 (confirmed on Blizz BC website)
Seal of the Crusader rank 7 inc holy damage by 190 lvl 62

There you have it, the basic outline of the rise of the ret pally for BC. Comments and commentary are welcomed! I would like your addition and corrections...

Question 1: Is Sanctified Crusader a viable raid buff at 41 points? (and Improved Sanctity that is a 23 point talent)
Question 2: If the paladin has to have 41 points in the Retribution tree, (while still playing his hybrid role) does he focus on healing or dps? This has ramnifications on both talent selection and gear. Admittedly, this question is not answerable until we have more info from Blizzard.

Edit: removed retnoob, replaced by ret pally
Edit2: added DISCLAMERS
Edit3: added Questions 1,2

Do you really have to call it a Retnoob?

Don't sign your posts.

A Ret Pally (Retnoob is a WoW forums term, I don't like it) will be useful, but only one Pally can be the SoCrusader bitch, however, since one pally is hitting to keep up Crusader, another Pally will be needed to keep up Wisdom, so 2 pally will be hitting away at the mob.

It remains to be seen how much dps a Ret pally can do and if it is worth using one of them.

Good point, but seal of light and seal of wisdom can be affected by Lasting Judgements so Holy Paladins can simply judge every 40 seconds to keep those seals up. Seal of the Crusader needs to be refreshed every 10 seconds, forcing a paladin to be in melee.

To the other point, I guess retnoob is given by those classes skeptical of paladin dps ... hence retnoob. Of course, we prefer to be called holy warriors, err ret pallies. To do a fair comparison, a retnoob will have have to have similar dps plate and weapons as a fury/mortal strike warrior.

I always saw Retnoob more as a person who stacked melee damage gear / talents far beyond the point where paladins drop their hybrid versatility, which in the case of stacking melee damage would be the ability to heal. But yeah don't call any paladin with points in Retribution a retnoob because that's basically a slur.

Nothing new here, I already posted the calculation showing that a DPS Pally needs to do 70% of the average DPS class in the other Pally BC thread. Actually, yours looks just like a re-phrased version of my "calculation".
There's also not much to discuss, because we have no way of telling now whether a Pally will be able to hit ~70% of the average DPS classe's damage. We got no idea how the talents will work out in the end, and whether we will be able to hit those 70% will also depend on how much dmaage the DPS classes can put out.
But considering that this talent was obviously created to make a DPS Paladin viable in 25 man raids, it's not far fetched to assume that he will be...

Personally I always called them Retardins.

Anyways, there's a big difference between viable and optimal. For example, Bear Form tanking is viable... but it's definately not optimal.

Well, lets assume your are going to have one pally with 41 points in Retribution and using sanctified crusader to get the 2% crit buff to the whole raid.

Another way to look at it is this ... is it better for that paladin to heal with 20 points in holy, tank with 20 points in protection, or dps with 41 points in retribution? Personally, I think it comes down to a pally healing while swinging to refresh crusader or a pally dpsing with a 2her to maximize dps. Or, could a paladin switch back and forth based upon the needs of the particular boss encounter?

I vote Gimpadin.

Anyway assuming a 10 healer 15 dps split on a fight which im guessing is Easars number you get the 70% bit. The problem with that though is it assumes 1% crit increases dps by exactly 1%.

This only holds true with 0% dodge parry block miss crit. Whenever some hits fail to hit percentage of dps increased by crit goes up. Whenever there is already crit percentage of dps increased by crit goes down. Heres 2 examples:

50% crit 50% hit = 150
add 1 crit and it becomes 151, going up by .66%

0 crit 80 hit 10 miss 5 dodge 5 parry = 80
add 1 crit and it becomes 81, going up by 1.25%

Also DoTs cant crit and some spell schools only crit for 50% extra damage. Then some abilities such as impale cause crits to do extra damage.

Basically i think the paladin needs to be higher than 70% around 80-85. But it will be easy to test post expansion running damage comparisons.

Another problem is i am dubious whether a paladin would provide more benefit than a shadow priest or other off spec.

Well, for defense of ret paladin - his damage bonus from 41 pointer is universal, while shadow weaving in TBC will lose most of its charm with only 2 (3 tops) warlocks per raid, with good chance of them using fire nukes instead of shadow ones. So shadow priests are left with VE as raid benefit really.

How desirable do people think Imp Sanctity Aura will be? (+6% healing done to people affected by Sanctity Aura) Seems like if it were good enough to make 1 Paladin go 23 points into Ret, that Paladin might as well go 41 into Ret?

But I suppose you could go 38/0/23, so Imp Sanctity Aura isn't as good of an excuse?

Frankly, it seems as though even one Ret paladin is something of a waste... the real question for me is about how good of a tank Prot paladins will be.

Am I the only person for whom the use of the "word" "prolly" brings on an almost irresistable urge to claw out my own eyes?

Nice subject/verb agreement. Next time try "to claw out his own eyes."

Edit: Assuming you're male, of course. But the point is I'm guessing you're not asking me if I have the urge to claw out your eyes because Demetrius used "prolly."

To think I worked so hard to try and ensure that didn't happen. Ah well. Still, not nearly as bad as prolly.

Hi. Former paladin here, used to be holy before I quit WoW. We're going to do a bit of theory crafting now.

I'm going to make a few assumptions here, regarding gear and hopefully none of the mechanics have changed in the time I've quit WoW. Feel free to ask any questions or correct any mistakes I may end up making.



Assumptions. 1750 AP, 40% crit rate, Might of Methenil weapon (3.8 speed,) 100% vengeance uptime, no glancing blows, no enemy mitigation. Should skew the results higher than reasonably attainable, both with somewhat unrealistic gear, and missing negative effects.

A = Listed dps on character sheet, weapon included. Critrate not included.
W = Weapon Speed.
C = Melee critical rate.
P = Average number of SoC procs per minute. I believe it's 7.
B = SoC damage on swing modifier. Listed on talent as .7.
V = Vengeance modifier. 1.15%.

(A*(1+(P*B/(60/W))))*(1+C)*V = Autoattack DPS running SoC with no spellpower.

(220*(1+(4.9/(60/3.8))))*1.4*1.15

(220*(1+(4.9/15.8)))*1.4

220*1.31*1.4*1.15

~464 = Autoattack DPS with SoC, and no spellpower gear. Does not include Judgement DPS. Note, I'm ignoring the efffect of spellpower and JotC on SoC procs because I can't remember the coefficient for SoC beyond it not being particularly high, and you're not going to have much spellpower with those stats anyway.

Judgent of Command, at L60, hits for ~110 every 8 seconds. Fully talented, JoC has a crit rate of 55%. 110/8*1.55 = 21.3

Total DPS = ~485.3 This is disregarding enemy dodge rate, enemy armor rating, glancing blow damage loss, 100% vengeance uptime, and any minimal boost from spellpower. Also, stats are, if not currently unattainable, atleast high.



Conclusion: From scanning the sustained DPS thread, 485 dps is hunter dps, without pet. Also, it's not using several boosting factors, such as no glancing blows and Kel'Thuzad loot, but is based on real world achieved results. The gear and raid-slot for a "DPS" paladin could be much better spent on a real dps class. Autoattacking your way to victory (ok, slight exaggeration) is not a viable raid role.

Caveat: This is solely in regards to the playstyle of a retnoob in a raid situation. In my opinion, the only real raid useful talents for healing, stop at 20 points in holy. Several of the talents beyond Illumination are quite nice, but for the most part are not necessary on every paladin your raid brings. So, if a paladin wanted to spec 41ret/20 holy for usability outside raiding, they could still provide a benefit to the raid force as long as they focused on healing, and only attacking enough to keep the crusader buff up against the target.

In a 25-man raid with 10 healers, how many Retnoobs are guilds gonna want?

I'm gunna go with exactly zero.

When will paladins learn that Paladins will never be a dps class.
Please stop trying to say "Well if I do 90% of the dps of a rogue I should be brought to dps". The minute you start thinkign of your paladin in terms of being a one-dimensional class, or that your role will be "Do as much damage as I can and nothing else" you are underplaying your class.

Ignore the numbers and understand that using less than 1/3rd of your class abilities means you are not contributing as much as someone who manages to use 100% of his class.

Paladins, Druids, Priests, Shaman will never be a dps class. They will always be brought because of everything else their class offers, because every single class in wow can deal damage, and therefore it is all the abilities OUTSIDE of your damage that makes you worth bringing.

I am not and never have been a paladin.

The irony here is that this is exactly what people are trying to do. They are trying to figure out if it is possible contribute damage effectively and provide buffs, and heal in a pinch, or if this is mathematically feasible.

I think this is your cue to leave these forums.

Healbot Holy paladins don't use their Ret abilities. Please explain.

It seems to me that you're being as short sighted as the people you're criticising. Ignoring the dps a hybrid can bring to a raid is as bad as focusing purely on dps. It seems pretty clear from the new talent trees that Blizz is really trying to give each tree a role in a raid environment (hopefully to the point where the most diverse raids are the most effective).

Is a ret paladin inferior dps to a pure dps class. Of course. Hopefully by a large margin if it's balanced. But whilst they're doing their sub-par dps they're also boosting overall raid dps with their talents, providing blessings and an aura, and can heal / tank / use their other abilities as required. This should make their overall raid contribution as strong as any other class / spec. This is however, all dependant on using their large range of abilities intelligently and at the correct time. I expect all the healer hybrids expecting to be always dpsing once they spec ele / ret etc will be in for a shock, but that dps will still form a significant proportion of their raid activity.

The important things a pally brings to a raid remain constant regardless of spec, just like most other classes. You still have the important blessings and auras no matter what tree you go down. It's really just a simple question, is the dps of your raid more important or is the healing(probably changes based on encounter). No a pally isn't a pure dps class. But they could do decent dps, boost raid dps, and still give devotion/kings/wisdom/salvation/all the things you bring a pally for. They're just not tweaked to support as much as a holy pally is.

A Paladin having to generate 70% of the DPS of normal DPSers to be viable is simply wrong. You are assuming that the 41-point Ret Paladin completely ignores all their other class skills, in favor of DPSing. Keeping Crusader judged is not a fulltime job. This Paladin SHOULD be in hybrid gear, keeping an eye on the health of other melee and spot healing, cleansing, making sure Blessings are refreshed, etc... Of course, going 41-points in Ret means he gets to do this while hitting the mobs.

The question isn't whether the Paladin should take up a DPS slot, but whether it will make sense to have those sort of Hybrid slots in the raid. Does the damage the 41-point Paladin add to the raid make up for the loss of efficiency and focus on healing.

I think the main problem is you're saying that 2% crit is the end all damage debuff (it's not) and that for some reason, a Paladin would be allowed to just autoattack and recast Seals/Judge the boss. Maybe many fights will require you to be spamming cleanse and heal other people, that will cut into your autoattack timer. Maybe there will be fights with 20% enrages which requires DPS to burn... what's a Retardin gonna do then? As long as they don't have proper styled attacks and a decent haste ability, Paladins are going to be substandard dps.

Make em do what they're best at, which is keeping JoW up, cleansing and healing people with their infinite mana supply. Oh, and I guess off-tanking in the xpack.