*UPDATED* v1.1

* Made a few changes to make the calculator easier to use.
* Added Seal of Blood DPS
* Added Seal of Righteousness
* Added lots of informative graphs showing how DPS scales with AP/Spell dmg/crit
* Calculates DPS per item value

http://files.filefront.com/Paladin_B.../fileinfo.html


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I created this calculator to get a feel for the best mix of spell damage gear vs. attack power / crit to maximize a Crusader Strike paladin's DPS. With the retribution paladin being a caster/melee hybrid that utilizes spells that benefit from both melee stats (attack power, crit) and spell damage, such as Seal of Command, other spells that benefit solely from spell damage (JoC), and especially with the introduction of the new mechanic of Crusader Strike benefitting from both attack power and spell damage translated into a physical damage strike, it's not easy to determine the best mix of stats. My hope is that this calculator will help people make more informed gear decisions.

Thoughts and opinions appreciated.

It looks great. I wonder on a few things here though.

It seems that you are taking into account damage reduction from armor, but I'm not sure if you took into account that SoC/JoC doesn't get mitigated from this. I'm still looking through all the stuff you have here though so maybe you did.

It looks good though so far and I'll make some more comments in a sec

I'm a little surprised how little crit effects the dps even with vengeance. I would've just expected more out of it so I suppose I won't be going after it too much especially with the addition of resilience which your calc doesn't take into account understandably since people are still iffy on its effects.

I have to look at this a bit more later tonight when I have some time. I thought that judgement would be the highest dps for a retadin outside of pvp epics, but avenger does have a chance with the agility increase it has it would seem. I might have to edit it a bit to take into account the 60dmg per hit from the 8/8 bonus which I think might be the tipping point.

Looks like a reasonable aproximation. Aren't there higher ranks of SoC and JoC in the xpac? Do we know those values yet?

It will be interesting to see how Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Vengeance/Blood stack up against SoC.

If you want to start getting really complicated take a look at modelling consercration and avenging wrath.

Yes, I took different armor reduction values into consideration. Yes, I factored in that holy damage is not mitigated by armor.

Yeah, with the way vengeance works, and especially with a new instant that can proc vengeance, you hit dimishing returns on your crit damage very quickly--a good thing IMO.

Well, that's an uncontrollable stat like +defense, +parry/dodge, or +resistance. There's not a whole lot you can really do about it. If you really want to, you can take the opponent's resilience into consideration by subtracting it from your base crit rate. That won't give the full effect of resilience because I believe it also reduces the amount of damage your crit actually does, but it should at least approximate it.

It's hard to compare the sets directly because they each have different number of pieces, but in comparing the common pieces, it appears Avenger's > rank 13 > Judgement.

do you know if JoC is getting the same coefficient from spell power that JoR is currently enjoying in beta, apparently 135% so says another thread here?

If JoC is still the same old JoC then JoR would probably beat it out, but it would be logical that if they changed JoR then they would do the same to JoC otherwise it would be obsolete as JoR would surpass JoC even with a stun.

No idea. I can't imagine the coefficient of JoR staying that high, though. In any case, a key to retribution DPS is going to be keeping vengeance up. Since SoC is based on melee crit rate and SoR is based on spell crit, I would imagine vengeance would be easier to keep up using SoC. The horde's SoB is going to be absolutely sick in keeping vengeance active.

As nice as Seal of Blood will be, it might be interesting to stack seal of vengance 5 high and then crusader strike with seal of command to keep the dot going. If JoTC and JoW was already on the target it would be a slight dps increase.

If crusader strike refreshes the SoV dot that is. I'll check on thursday :D

With JoW the target you can consercrate almost every time it's up with 5-6k mana after raid buffs for about 3-5min straight. What's your definition of "sustainable" 5min, 10min? Are there even any 10min fights in the xpac?

I hadn't thought of that. That would rock if that works. Of course, then you would need another ret paladin to keep JotC up.

Even with a lot of mana/5, I couldn't imagine being able to spam consecration for more than maybe a minute. You're going to eat a lot of mana spamming just CS, SoC, and JoC.

Let's see...

SoC / JoC with benediction: (178 + 76) / 8 = 32 mana/sec
CS: 276 / 6 = 46 mana/sec
consecration: 565 / 8 = 70 mana/sec

total: 148 mana/second

A 6k mana pool will last 6000 / 148, or about 40 seconds.

Good point, would be fun though ;)

Is this factoring in Sanctified Judgement or not? Because if you're going that deep into ret there is no reason no to get it.

Nope. I've heard different things about what Sanctified Judgement actually does, so I didn't figure it in. The description reads:

"Gives your judgement spell a 100% chance to return 50% of the mana cost of the judged seal."

To me, that means you cast a seal, say SoC, which costs 280 mana at rank 6. If you judge SoC, you get 140 mana back. But, I've heard people on test say that it refunds half the cost of the Judgement spell--which seems pretty clunky wording if that's actually what it does. So who knows.

Regardless, the point was that consecration spam isn't really sustainable for any period of time. You can probably figure 5 minutes for a typical boss fight.

Makes sense that way. Otherwise it might as well say, "Reduces the cost of the Judgement spell by 50%."

That's pretty lame if it's just the cost of judgement and not the cost of the seal. Judgement in the current game is 6% of base mana, what is the cost in the xpac?

I posted an updated version of the calculator.

* Made a few changes to make the calculator easier to use.
* Added Seal of Blood DPS
* Added Seal of Righteousness
* Added lots of informative graphs showing how DPS scales with AP/Spell dmg/crit
* Calculates DPS per item value

http://files.filefront.com/Paladin_B.../fileinfo.html

Actually I'll look like an idiot and retract my statement. Sorry about that. Its 50% of the cost of the seal that's refunded. I was watching the scrolling combat text and regularly getting ~89 mana refunded on a judgement. My seal of command was costing 178 mana and my judgement was 100 mana. So yeah, 11 mana judgements I guess.

Sorry about the mistake.

Nice spreadsheet Holy.

I was wondering if you were planning on adding SoV damage to it. The reason i ask is that for pve damage (stationary target etc), i'm starting to believe that SoV could be a very damaging seal indeed.

I ran a rough setup using your model (1000AP, +300dmg, 20%crit, 10%spell crit, 3.2 speed weapon, 30% armour reduction), and came out with the following:-

SoC = 447.9
SoB = 490.0
SoR = 409.0

Then, using the same logic you have used in your calculations ran some numbers with SoV. The assumptions i took were all judgments would be on a mob with 5 stacks, JoB has a 53% coefficient, SoV has an 80% coefficient over the 5application. The numbers i came out with were:-

SoV = 91.46dps
JoV = 169.95
White Dam = 160.04
CS = 118.68

Total Damage = 540.1 dps

In addition to this, since SoV is using damage from the first 5 applications and not updating with later ones (much like ignite), proccing ZHC and Avenging wrath at the start when you first make the applications could add a further 45dps to this.

Furthermore, since SoV has a high proc rate, if done correctly, it would be possible to switch to SoC after a refreshed proc of SoV, and switch back in time to

I'm almost certain i followed the rules you did in your calculations, but would be nice to see it in a model.

I ran some further calculations to see the benefit to SoC and SoV with strength/crit or +dmg, and it appears that SoC still benefits far more from strength/crit than +dmg, but SoV is the reverse benefitting far more from +dmg. The effect of strength to SoC and +dmg to SoV to be very similar. (apologies, but the numbers were ran at home last night so dont have them on me at work).

It is now appearing, from my perspective anyway, that going for a +dmg setup and SoV could provide the maximum damage output in pve.

Edit: Noticed a couple of minor mistakes in my calculations. Have been changed, but doesnt effect total dps.

One...interesting...libram, that I've seen in game, but I should relist here (drops from first boss in Blood Furnace, hard mode, levle 68 req):

Increases Crit rating by 53 for 5 seconds after a Judgement.

At level 70, that's about 2.4% crit, and if you're spamming judgements that's a fairly considerable amount of crit rate for the libram slot- while I've seen basicly slightly improved versions of all the live librams that one is the first geniunely new effect i've seen.

Of course, I'm on horde, so it got sharded (bachi, sadly, was not on the run) so I can't report on it's functionality in game.


Since it's such a wildly different mechanic (at least...I think so?) than anything in game atm, I thought I should mention it here for your dpsadin enlightenment.

edit-

Should mention I was -not- on said run, I just happened to get linkage from the people on it, and the libram requires level 68. I only posted this because it's specificly something that a spreadsheet (at least, it seems to me..) would handle really well to model the effects of it.

That would be interesting to know. I'll have to add it to my "To do" list. A +dmg build with SoV could very well be a viable way to DPS. A fact worth pointing out is that CS benefits equally from AP and +dmg. Based on item value, 17 AP is equivalent to +10 dmg.

(17 AP) / (14 AP per DPS) * 3.3 = 4
10 +dmg * 40% = 4

Based on item value, equal amounts of AP and +dmg add equal amounts of damage to your CS. The only place you really get into some conflicts is that JoV is based on spell crit (can SoV crit?). Of course, your melee attacks and CS is based on melee crit. So from a min-maxing perspective, you're going to want all of your crit to be melee because normal attacks and CS will account for a larger portion of your damage. That's going to have an adverse effect on keeping vengeance up (especially if SoV can't crit).