bv23

Hi everybody - my first post here on EJ's forum, hopefully I'll get it right - an first of all let me say just one thing: sry for my bad ass english, it's not my native language so I hope you can look over that.

For those of you who don't want to read the sobbering stuff continue at "The actual questions"

How this topic came to be:
I played as a holy-priest for the last 2 years (starting with the EU-release of WoW) and, with a short break in between, played that char to lvl 70. For some reasons that would have nothing to do with this topic I grew sick of healing and wanted to play a class which does its dmg in close combat. So I was left with the more obvious choices: Warrior / Rogue and the less obvious ones nameingly: Feral / Schaman / Paladin. For some reasons even I don't know I didnt want to play a warrior or a rogue and even the feral druid didn't life up to my expectations and so I stoped leveling that char in its mid ages. Therefore I was left with two choices: shaman or paladin. Not having played any of these two classes before I made the tuff decision and chose the paladin, well knowing thats its raidability when it comes down to pure DPS measurement is behind that of an equally skilled and geared shaman. I made the decision anyway.

So here I'm today:
After I had to defend myself for a couple of weeks when it comes down to DPS-Sheets, and me standing and the lower end of the bottom half in the DMG-meters it finally started improving. As i play in a guild that just downed hydross 2 times and "only" got Kara/Gruul/Mag on something called farm-status (whoever made that word up should be punished :-) ), even I managed to get some decent gear together (more info on the left via armory profile). My dmg got boosted alot and now I am at the point where I could do more dmg if there wouldn't be such a thing as agro. Having played some time now with my Retadin and having an awsome amount of fun during that time I started reading a lot of topics and board discusisons about retribution specs / dps sheets / itemization and so on ... asking myself the same questions over and over again and when asking for them there were only two possible typ of answers: the not helping type and the not knowing type. So I ended up here, thanks Larsiak for the ref-link

I'm over with ... :
... justifying myself for me being a ret or if a retadin is of any use in 25 man raids. - because I know that I am and I am not interessted in the ones that are not or think that they are not 'cause they couldn't life up to any expectations they falsely made up for themselfs for what reason ever.
... the topics that state something like: Specc healing and you earn the raid spott - because I will not specc more than 5 points (at this time) in holy and and besides the fact that I dont care about healing in general anymore I am simply tired of the specc-healing-noob-roflmao "discussion" - if there ever was a discussion in a topic with words like "roflmao".
... talking about PvP simply because I don't do PvP - that you can easily see when you watch at my arena ranking or my honorable kills, nothing more to say about it.
So - having said all that stuff I hope for a reasonable discussion - you guys here are my last hope

The actual questions:
1) has anybody played a retribution paladin with 1K spelldmg ? If so what’s it like compared to the more obvious way of a retribution paladin who normaly goes for crit/str/ap?
2) What grants more agro points: 1000 points holy dmg done by SoB or 1000 points holy dmg done by SoC
3) Same as 2) with the correspoding Judgements.
4) Besides the slower agro buildup and the possibility to start swinging earlier in the fights is there any reason not to switch to from SoB to SoC after a reasonable tank agro buildup?
5) Haste rating: Does it affect the SoC proccs? – or in other words: Does SoC have a fixed ppm value or is it an actuel chance for a procc so that it would procc more frequent when you increase your swings per minute?
6) Swing times: Am I misstaken or can it be that whenever performing CS the Auto attack timer resets and you gotta wait for the next full auto attack swing? I tryed to test it and sometimes I would say yes sometimes i would say no – anybody got similar „problems“
7) Is there a swing-timer-addon that takes haste rating into account ?

 

◊ Abynthe

I don't know the answers to all of these, but I'll do the ones I know:

They both grant 1000 threat without righteous fury, 1600 with normal righteous fury and 1900 with improved.

Same applies to judgements.

Well, mostly there's the fact that SoB does higher sustained dps.

This gets asked a lot, which makes me think people are bad at using the search function. PPM works by producing a %-age chance to proc, based on you weapon speed, such that on average you get the target number of procs per minute (eg, 15 ppm would have a 100% chance to proc on a weaponspeed 4 weapon, and a 50% chance to proc at weaponspeed 2)

Haste increases the proc rate of SoC by the same amount it speeds up your other attacks.

 

bv23

So there is no such thing as a hidden cooldown timer of which i read about in some other topics where even SoC-proccs got taken into account? Or in other words: It is possible to have SoC procc in 18 of 18 swings in one minute and after that not to see it procc at all for the next, lets say, 2 minutes? - Sry if that sound dump, but even the the previously used search function didn't clearify that up for me or I simply don't get it and miss something viable for that concern.

 

◊ Abynthe

To the best of my knowledge, hidden cooldowns have only thus far been applied to trinkets and the windfury weapon imbue.

Certainly I've seen 3 SoComm procs from 3 hits, so I don't see any reason why you couldn't have an even longer chain.

 

DarKNecross

No, there's no hidden cooldown. As for your last questions in the OP, CS shouldn't be resetting your swing timer, and Quartz is a really good addon that contains a swing timer (takes haste into account). As a Blood Elf paladin, you should be using Seal of Blood exclusively except for fights where it's risky.

I'd like to touch base on your comment about refusing to heal - that's the exact reason Ret paladins get a bad reputation. Personally, I see it as being really stubborn and childish, regardless of whatever reasoning is behind it. A good feral druid can pop out, throw a healer an innervate, toss a few HoTs or Heals, then pop back and continue DPSing. While I understand mana is much more of a constraint for Paladins/Shaman, not healing just seems really self-centered. I'm not talking about healbotting, either. I'm talking about stopping your auto-attack and maybe throwing a heal to someone who looks like they're about to die, or throwing a BoP on a mage

http://crimson-guild.com

 

bv23

Rest assured that I put my healing gear on when its needed or even throw a heal with my last mana in ret gear, even when knowing that this will criple my dps from that point on. I am neither childish nor stubborn when it comes to a fight where someone is about to die he will get his heal, and if some mighty wow-god wants to, he/she will even get it in time. I don't refuse to heal, I just refuse to specc healing, which in my eyes makes a hell of a diffrence, you just got me wrong at that concern. no offense taken nor dealt - i hope :-)

thanks for the Quartz-addon-tip - I will check that out imediately.

 

Thalshara

For someone with a +holy/spell damage build, would SoR not be higher sustained dps than SoB? That's considering a build including Imp SoR, while running Sanc Aura and striking a target with Imp SoCrusader judged on it. Per the initial question, that's something that seems a little less dependant on str, crit, and ap, and relies almost entirely on +spell damage. I wonder how that SoR spec would stack up against SoB?

That begs the question, what type of bonuses does SoB get? It does holy damage based on weapon damage. Is SoB's holy damage increased by +spell damage? Is the weapon damage component basically "white damage", and therefore boosted by str and ap?

 

• Chicken

+spell damage is generally not used because such gear lacks in melee crit, which you'll want a lot of to keep Vengeance uptime as good as possible. That's also a downside to using Seal of Righteousness if you're heading the DPS route; Seal of Righteousness can't crit, Seal of Command and Blood can. Simply put: You want to minimize the chance to lose that +15% damage buff from Vengeance.

As for how Seal of Blood scales: Seal of Blood gets no benefit from any spell damage; and is basically as if dealing a normal attack that does 35% of your normal swing damage would, which also ignores armor.

Outside of Judgements all standard used Retribution abilities either scale best with attack power, or they scale equally from an equal value worth of spell damage and attack power. Auto-attack in particular shouldn't be discounted, since it's one of the larger sources of damage of any melee class, and auto-attacks only scale through physical stats.

That's not to say I'm not interested in someone trying it out, but I'd be surprised if it worked well.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

bv23

Thats what I'm wondering too :-)

According to a Sticky on the official german pala board are the spelldmg-benifts as followed:
* 9.2% per 1.0 weapon speed, One-handed Seal of Righteousness
* 10.8% per 1.0 weapon speed, Two-handed Seal of Righteousness
* 73% Judgement of Righteousness
* 20% Seal of Command
* 43% Judgement of Command
* 76% Consecration
* 43% Holy Shock
* 43% Hammer of Wrath
* 43% Exorcism
* 19% Holy Wrath
* 20% Holy Shield (5% per Block)
* 9% Avenger's Shield
* 17% Seal of Vengeance (per tick)
* 43% Judgement of Vengeance
* 0% Seal of Blood
Source here - click me

 

Thalshara

Hmm, like Chicken said, looks like the major disadvantage of a +spell damage SoR build is the lack of attack types that can crit and keep your Vengeance running.

That's not to say a proposed +spell damage build doesn't look appealing and have some definite advantages. The main would be the obvious ability to hybrid better. Because of gear itemization, you're going to have more mana and spell casting potency than a standard ap ret paladin. You're going to be able to immidiately fill in healing where needed without any sort of gear switch. Also, your holy damage judgements will be a lot stronger. Assuming you're geared in offensive pally spell damage plate (Arena gear let's say), you're going to have a ton of spell crit, and that will have to be your source for powering Vengeance. Add the spell crit from Gladiator pieces to the +15% crit chance of Judgements deep in the Ret tree, you have a pretty good chance of critting at least once every 8 seconds. If you're fighting undead or demons, which is a high probability in TBC, you can toss in Exorcism for more chances to crit and keep Vengeance up. Plus, based on the stats above, it looks like you're not sacrificing all that much if you dps with a 1h and shield over a 2h weapon, while gaining better survivability and more caster stats. A good mage sword + a +spell damage shield looks like an attractive combo for SoR dpsing.

Can't deny I'd like to see someone try it.

 

Thalshara

Also, Crusader Strike scales up nicely with +spell damage (40% of holy damage), however what is its crit source? Does CS crit from +crit or +spell crit? I'm guessing the former, no?

 

• Chicken

Crusader Strike is indeed melee crit, and with a two-hander it'll get about equal damage gains from two different fictional items with one purely having attack power and the other purely having spell damage. I do believe it'd scale quite a bit better with spell damage with a one-hander, the spell damage scaling being independent of your weapon speed.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

◊ Abynthe

If one was trying to maintain a vengeance stack using SoR, something like the gladiator polearm might come in handy - the attack speed would allow a lot more opportunities to get crits in, and if you're packing +dam over ap anyway, the loss in damage Crusader Strike damage might, in part, be countered by the 40% +dam coffecient on it

edit:

nevermind.

 

◊ Zoid

Hello, bv23. You're the first person who's I've seen apologize for your "bad ass english." However, your english was actually pretty "bad ass" throughout your post.

Most of the Retribution paladin discussion has occured in the Retadin use in raids? thread in our public forum. Teleyn is our raiding Retribution Paladin superstar and you can see some good posts about his gear choices and performance in raids in that thread.

 

Ragnor

SoC is melee crit, Crusader strike is melee crit, JoC is spell crit.

Roughly speaking 1 spell damage is about the same dps increase as 1 AP. However AP is generally cheaper in terms of item budget so you get more AP on items of a certain item level than you get +dmg. Furthermore you'll always find melee crit and ap on items together (woo non set plate) but you will only find +dmg and melee crit on ret paladin specific set gear.

Another thing to consider that you need 8.6% hit to not miss against lvl 73 mobs with crusader strike. There is no plate with +dmg & melee hit apart from 1 piece of T5 and 1-2 pieces of T6 you have to get your melee hit from trinkets, rings, back, neck and non set plate.

Basically most of your damage will come from auto attack, crusader strike and soc/sob, these are pretty mana efficient and all benefit from AP & melee crit. Consecration and JoC are mana inefficient and will probably only make up 20% or less of your damage.

Basically stacking AP, Crit and 8.6% hit will give you higher sustained dps with less mana used. If you stack +dmg you have to spam mana hogs like consecrate and jugements you also need spell hit as well as melee hit.

It's starts to get impossible the number of stats you need to be effective:
Melee hit, melee crit, spell hit, spell crit, +dmg, ap

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

DarKNecross

Actually, this isn't true. JoC uses Melee crit as well, not spell crit.

You don't essentially need any spell hit, and you for sure don't need any spell crit.

With the normal build (3% hit in Protection), 90 hit rating is all you need. The rest is just Crit/Ap/Dmg

http://crimson-guild.com

 

Amera

Depends what you want to pull off, I tend to spec 18/0/44 or something close just to have the healing talents so I can heal on fights where additional melee isn't useful, but it does own you in the hit department.

So really depending on how comfortable you are with your raid role/spot whatever will probably dictate how you spec, and to some extent how much hit you are going to have to pull off. I'm really low on hit at the moment despite tossing in some gems, and it is pretty annoying when a judgment falls off because of a flat CS miss.

 

Fiola

CS is based on weapon damage + normalized AP bonus + 40% +dmg.

Your switch would trade a lot of the first two for a little bit of the latter.


For example:

Warmaul of Infused Light (blue)
Damage Range: 245~408
Damage Avg.: 326.5


Gavel of Unearthed Secrets (epic; slowest +dmg 1H available)
Damage Range: 45~177
Damage Avg.: 111


http://www.thottbot.com/i28393
http://www.thottbot.com/i30832


Going from the blue 2H to the Gavel, you gain 160~ +dmg (64 per CS) but you lose 200~ weapon damage. The difference is worse with higher end weapons (since +dmg 1Hs do not gain weapon DPS). Also note that most +dmg 1H weapons are usually much faster than the Gavel, so you'd be losing more than 200 damage per swing (and CS) for using them over a 2H weapon.


This comparison doesn't count the +dmg you might get from a shield (typically 30~40?), but I doubt it'd make up for the difference. There's a similar difference with 1h vs. 2h SoR. (2H SoR's base damage almost makes up for the +dmg advantage 1h/shield has, and has slightly better scaling. Last I checked, JoR ends up favoring the 1h/shield combo though)

 

Hawzy

I'm just doing some random theory crafting and I thought this might be a good place to do it.

I'm thinking about speccing ret towards the end of season 2 as soon as I start getting a near full set of gladiator/honor scaled gear. I'm aware that most ret paladins seem to prefer pure AP over spell damage because item budget wise you get more bang for your buck. This results in paladins with small heals and a small mana pool and thats not the way I want to play my character.

my plan is to stack spell damage enchants/gems in scaled gear. Ill just list off the top of my head what I'm thinking. If we assume that point for point AP and +SD are effectively the same (not including auto attacks) I'm going to just calculate the loss in effective AP from switching to spell power.


+20 damage to gloves (-10 ap from 15str)
+35 damage to legs (-15 ap from expensive ap enchant)
+15 damage to shoulders (-15 ap)
+36 damage from the 4 red gem sockets in merciless gladiator gear (-28 ap from +8 str gems)
+40 damage to weapon (-30 ap from savagery)
+15 damage to bracers (-9ap from brawn)
----
+161 damage (-107 effective ap)


Merciless gladiator set has +153 damage
Veterans scaled set has +86 damage

I don't really have time to do the math on how much AP you would have with a full scaled set with rest of the slots honor gear or whatever you want, but lets just take a fairly conservative stab at it and say 1400 AP

which derives into 2 choices

1400AP and +400 spell damage (effectively 1800 AP)

-or-

1668AP and +239 spell damage (effectively 1907 AP)

Now, obviously the pure ap build is going to do more damage as we can see by the effective AP - but I think the extra spell damage is an acceptable tradeoff for increasing your heal utility while not entirely gimping your damage.

for yellow slots Im leaning towards the +4 crit +6 stam green gems, but if the pvp gear has enough crit on it to keep vengeance up on its own I might replace some of those with red +SD gems.

For extra fun I might go for http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31856, which I've heard reports that SoB procs both and I'm hoping SoC does too.

 

Floria

Seal of Blood has a zero coefficient for spell-damage. If you need to heal, put on healing gear instead. Otherwise, stack your AP into that Gladiator gear. It has enough Stamina by far for PvE purposes, so just go with the 8 Strength gems, and ignore the socket bonus, you don't need resilience.

You may actually wish to socket in a little hit though, missing really sucks, especially when it's the CS you needed to refresh your buddy's judgements.

 

Ragnor

Healing with +400 heal/dmg is going to be fairly useless and in my experience when you focus on doing the best dps possible (which is required to justify you spot as a dps'er) you will not react to heal people in time before dedicated healers (or chain heal spam) heals them.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Hawzy

I will be using SoC not SoB.

I should point at that this will be mostly for pvp where gear swapping while possible isn't really a workable solution once in combat. I would be looking to fill a spot as a 0.5 healer dps on an arena team or just BGs in general.

And to ragnor I might be able to get +500 or so by ignoring socket bonuses, but I would probably rather have the stamina/resilience.

 

DarKNecross

[edit] misread

http://crimson-guild.com

 

Kasonic

Sorry to revive this thread but I've been putting some thought into this lately, mainly in the vain hope of the eventual Retribution threat fix.

Can Seal of Blood/CS be resisted? I'm pretty sure no, but if so the Spell Strike glove enchant seems like a must.

And as far as spec, I'm assuming that 4 points in Benediction will beat out 4 points of Divine Intellect in almost any encounter? I'd assume this would be the most preferable build.

 

Fiola

All Holy damage you do can be partially resisted. CS does not deal Holy damage, however.


Assuming you spend most of your mana on seal + judgements, maybe.

In my current set of Ret gear, I have 290 Int (w/o DI). 10% of that is 29 Int, or 435 mana. To gain more from benediction, you'd have to spend... 2900 mana on Seals and Judgements - that's about 9~10 Seals + Judgements.


If you plan to drink after every encounter, you *may* get more out of int (deeper mana pool; if you switch to healing gear, DI is definitely more useful). If you plan to fight long sustained battles, then you may get better use outta Benediction.