Retribution Paladin Raid DPS Questions
 

Let me begin by saying that I am a holy paladin in a guild that does not use a retribution paladin. While the idea isnt foreign to me, the specifics are. This may be a bit sprawling, because I have a lot of questions, so thank you for your input in advance.

Anyway, I have always been of the mindset that while a deep retribution paladin does bring many desirable things to the table – 6% bonus to healing on the main tank, 3% raid-wide crit, and judgement refreshes for all active judgments – its just not enough to warrant giving them a raid spot. Hell, even within those benefits problems arise.

For example, a ret paladin will obviously be in a group with the main tank for the vast majority of encounters. Sure, this might not be your warrior for every encounter, but no one is going to argue that the 6% extra healing doesn't belong on those taking the most damage. That being said, your ret paladin already loses out on many group composition benefits other classes will be receiving -

Stoneskin instead of SoE
GoA instead of windfury
No leader of the pack (unless a druid tank obviously)
No trueshot.


So this is my question to you: can a retribution paladin do enough consistent dps to warrant a raid spot in a 25 man raid?

Assuming yes, how do they gear for it? This basically boils down to a comparison of pure melee dps gear vs ret oriented spell damage gear vs a combination of the two.

Seal of Command, according to the information in THIS post benefits 20% from spell damage on a proc, and 42.9% on a judgement. Crusader strike, according to the tooltip benefits 40% from spell damage. Assuming you're using a 3.8 speed weapon, and that both crusader strike and soc procs are NOT normalized, that breaks down to 3.67 AP or 2.5 spell damage to add one damage to a CS, and 5.25 AP or 5 spell damage to add 1 damage to your attack for a seal of command proc (though the spell damage will also add something along the lines of 2.1 damage to your judgement of command) ~

With that math it seems pretty clear that stacking spell damage is the way to go, but with gear scaling will a paladin reach a +damage 'wall' that allows for attack power to surpass it in damage? Does stacking +dmg leave you without enough crit to have vengeance active the majority of the time? Hell, should I even be using Seal of Command?

Someone with a better grasp on this help me out, please. Keep in mind this is for raid dps, and assuming that I will be doing no tanking, I am not adverse to wearing non plate items, as long as it allows for the highest sustained raid dps available for a paladin.

Thanks ~

You should probably read this thread: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t10069-retadin_use_raids/

hm. to be honest my MT gets both SoE and WF. The benefits of Stoneskin are almost not measurable in terms of mitigation, and imho don't weigh up against +/- 200 AP from SoE (and the tiny added block value), and WF helps keep agro a lot better.

While i didnt notice that post, I guess my question pertains more toward how to gear a paladin for raid dps than what is addressed there.

Agreed. As MT for my guild I almost always have SoE and WF up. It's only on fights where aggro is a non-issue and survival isnt (ie. Maulgar) that I have GoA, but even then I still have SoE over stoneskin.

There are several paladins in the above thread who address the gear requirements. Read the thread :)

Uh if your damage was somehow entirely procs and crusader strikes, sure.

2h ret is comparable to an MS warrior, probably slightly ahead even but at the end of the day we know MS is a terrible spec for pve raid dps and middle of the road. People are theorycrafting 2h +dmg sor using 40 holy/21 ret spec's but I don't expect them to come close to what ret can do.

Finally... Remember you have to fight in melee range (so no -agro % range modifier) and paladins lack any passive threat reduction at all. Rogues have it, warriors have it in zerker stance and shaman got it towards the end of beta. No passive -agro % = bad threat profile = threat limited dps = pull agro and die alot.

Combine our terrible threat profile with bursty/crit streaky type damage FTL

This is an interesting discovery I just made. This is copy-pasted from a similar discovery post I made elsewhere. My apologies for the incongruency.


In other words.

Why is "generic hunter" gear so common on loot tables, when only two archetypes (hunters of all spec and Enhancement shamans) use it? Why is plate DPS gear so rare on loot tables, when two archetypes also need it?

Because three archetypes are supposed to use "hunter stuff", and the plate stuff is only really for warriors. Paladins are supposed to trade survivability for effectiveness and the forced downgrade to mail exemplifies that.

It was something so simple that I can't believe no one else had noticed it before. But apparently no one has, I guess like the parry haste thing it's something that simply slipped under most people's radar for the longest time.

If this was intentional rather than accidental, well, I'm actually rather amazed at the subtlety and foresight shown by blizzard.

Derivatives of this:
Mongoose is amazing for Paladins.

Being in the tank group for Sanc aura isn't actually harmful, because Grace of Air is so powerful for Paladins (and thus not as much of a sacrifice versus Windfury).

A few other things I don't have time to fully analyze yet. Perhaps someone else can examine how this shakes out fully in terms of LOLPALLYDPS? I think it may be rather dramatic.

very interesting. only druids get more crit per agi?

unfortunately, most "generic enh shaman/hunter" epics (in kara, at least), are ap+crit+sta+int+mp5, with no agi. forced to choose 2 from ap,crit,agi, the choice ought to be ap+agi (for hunters, and shaman as well if they only need 23agi per crit)

Druids are 25:1 so slightly worst.

I'll be amused to hear about how effective paladins using mail DPS gear are ...

Anyways, that Agi->Crit ratio is off. 17 agility made my crit rate go from 14.78->15.46, or 0.68%. That corresponds to 25 Agi: 1% crit. Same as druids, if they're 25:1.

Don't think the agi:crit ratio for paladin is confirmed yet, 33 like claimed in this thread sounds more familar (simply drop ~ 30 agi from your gear and check if you lose more than a crit or less..). I've read about 25:1%, that may fit, to..

There are some serious problems about Ret Paladin DPSing.

a) limited by PPM of SoC
b) limited by CS CD
c) low benefit for the raid
d) no aggro management
e) no controlled damage
f) oom = lol whitehits + soc

Warriors instead have less problems

a) they are only limited by cooldown and aggro limit with nearly infinite rage from wf
b) ms/bt/ww/overpower are on a lower cd
c) bunch of ap for your group versus 3% for all your raid, meh pala wins
d) -20% in zerker/battle stance + bos is just ok
e) nearly absolute controllable damage while not using wf
f) lol that red bar fills up by magic hands

Well, SoC is quite nice and add a wf totem for a paladin, he can deal some damage. But it will allways be a lot more worse then a feral's dps or a arms or fury warr's one.

Positive aspects:
- Vindication can be quite handy
- imp Sanctity Aura is really cute (but spending your time in a mt group, will there allways be a shaman to push your damage? The Tank may use commanding shout, while in a pure dps group you gain another ~ 400 ap from battleshout. Lock for imp and a drood tree will need some space as well) - but -%dmg from devotation aura is good, to.
- CS is on a very long timer and if you can't refresh all applied judgements from the other 2-3 palas because of aoe/etc you will only be a filler with less damage then a 60 dps weapons rogues :/ This is maybe the key role of a retadin, keeping up jow/jol and your joc to assist the whole raid while your holy teammates can do their healing thingy without hitting the mob once every 20s.

Well, for me it doesn't sound that excitingly , judging once every 8s and using cs every 10s - 13.5 hotkey pushs per minute may let you fall asleep, soon ;)
Oh, you could add some dps from consecration & exorcism vs demons & undeads, but you will run oom even faster while doing this.

25 agi = 1% crit for paladins @ 70

looks like you're right, but I thought there wasn't a "base crit"; 25-1 looks right, but these numbers seem to support the idea of a base crit.

I looked at a few charsheets and divided agi by the mouseover "crit gained from agi". Here's what I got.

(wearing gimmick Dreadmist and a Sulfuras when I checked this)
http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...=Eonar&n=Sushi
<Sapp> @calc 128 / 5.77
<dongbot> Sapp: 22.1837088388

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#...c&n=Accountant
<Sapp> @calc 169 / 7.41
<dbot> Sapp: 22.8070175439

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#...krock&n=Ragnor
<Sapp> @calc 247 / 10.53
<dbot> Sapp: 23.4567901235

<Sapp> @calc 247 - 169
<dbot> Sapp: 78
<Sapp> @calc 10.53 - 7.41
<dbot> Sapp: 3.12
<Sapp> @calc 78 / 3.12
<dbot> Sapp: 25

I guess it starts you with with 16 agi worth of crit? I thought that extra sliver of crit was from human weaponskill bonus but that doesn't calculate right.

I don't think so. Looks more like half and half to me. Actually, the count is 5 with agi and 4 with crit.

Also, I thought hunters preferred crit rating? Since even with their more advantageous agi:crit ratio since 2.0, isn't it still high enough that crit rating beats the tar out of raw agi?

Fiend Slayer Boots
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28746
Agi, Sta, Int, hit, AP, (Red + Blue)

Girdle of the Prowler
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28656
Agi, Sta, Int, Hit, AP, Mana/5

Stalker's War Bands
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28454
Agi, Sta, Int, AP

Steelspine Faceguard
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28671
Agi, Sta, Int, AP, Mana/5

Beastmaw Pauldrons
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28589
Agi, Sta, Int, AP, Mana/5

Ferocious Swift-Kickers
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28610
Sta, Int, Crit, AP, (Yellow + Blue)

Gloves of Quickening
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28519
Sta, Int, Crit, AP, Mana/5 (Blue + Red)

Rip-Flayer Leggings
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28740
Sta, Int, Crit, AP, Mana/5 (Red + Yellow + Blue)

Scaled Breastplate of Carnage
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28599
Sta, Int, Crit, AP, Mana/5