The Way of the Sword: Retribution in Cataclysm - Page 10

Inverse · 07/21/10, 12:02 PM

Originally Posted by Glutton

Unless the seal behavior of Judgements of the Just is altered, one point in it (and two fillers on the first tier) is going to provide more DPS than any spec that invests in Judgments of the Pure. This is even more true now that the CD of Judgement has been lowered by an additional second. Although two points in Judgements of the Pure may be more DPS than two points in Sanctified Light depending on the increased valuation of haste given that it can increase the rate of Holy Power gain through white hits as of the current patch.

Am I missing something? Judgements of the Just increases the effect from Seal of Justice and reduces target attack speed by 20%? How would talenting that increase our damage over JotP?

Barogorn · 07/21/10, 12:08 PM

Originally Posted by Inverse

Am I missing something? Judgements of the Just increases the effect from Seal of Justice and reduces target attack speed by 20%? How would talenting that increase our damage over JotP?

The reason being that JoJ is currently bugged on live as well as beta. The bug procs additional seal dmg when you judge. I hope this is fixed in beta and prior to cata going live.

Aeonin · 07/21/10, 12:58 PM

[Specialization] Divine Purpose - Chance to generate extra applications of Holy Power on your melee autoattacks. (Placeholder until Mastery is fully implemented).

this is what world of raids said for auto attacks as it is a specialization bonus for speccing into the ret tree.

Stardusty · 07/21/10, 2:47 PM

This is a far more interesting mastery stat than the previous holy damage modifier. Not only does it scale with haste and mastery, it also raises the bar for exceptional play. It is unfortunate that holy power has a maximum charge of 3, and we will lose many of the procs at any point we are sitting on 2 holy power units due to the lack of any buffer. It would be ideal if our abilities had the consumption capped at 3 as they are now, but we are allowed to have a buffer of maximum 4 holy power stored at any one point.

silkens · 07/21/10, 3:30 PM

Originally Posted by Stardusty

It is unfortunate that holy power has a maximum charge of 3, and we will lose many of the procs at any point we are sitting on 2 holy power units due to the lack of any buffer. It would be ideal if our abilities had the consumption capped at 3 as they are now, but we are allowed to have a buffer of maximum 4 holy power stored at any one point.

Why would this be so? If you are at 2 holy power, getting a Divine Purpose proc puts you at 3 Holy Power. At that point you just use Templar's Verdict, which is always available since it has no CD. Our mastery seems to scramble our rotation, but unless you get a Divine Purpose proc within one GCD of using CS to reach 3 holy power, it is not going to lead to any wasted holy power.

Charmin · 07/21/10, 3:41 PM

I thought both 3% crit debuffs and 3% damage buffs were going to be scraped?

What is on the beta servers of our talent tree needs to be cleaned up quite a bit, that much is obvious. However, I like what we have been shown so far, but I wouldn't marry yourself to TV just yet. It hits like a mac truck, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets the Scourge Strike treatment somewhere down the line with the Holy Portion of the strike scaling with Seal of Vengeance(As you currently get the full benefit while using other seals). I find it strange that TV is full melee while Inq provides +Holy Damage. I guess I would expect more interaction between the two to keep TV balanced. Currently, we just push out a lot of damage with 160% CS, Judgement, 4 second Exo, and TV; so don't get too excited just yet as some balancing will probably take place down the line.

Rotation feels a bit sloppy; much of this, I assume, will be fixed when the appropriate UI changes go into place. One of the first things you will notice is AoW not always being available for use. If you've played an Enhancement Shaman you know what waiting for Maelstrom is like, but you almost always have a button you need to be pressing while you wait for your 5/5. AoW and Exo doesn't feel that way at the moment. Other than Cons, and possibly Holy Wrath there isn't much to do while waiting for AoW to proc, and usually CS is back off CD by the time it does. I am thinking now that the instant heal is gone if we need AoW at all or if maybe there isn't a better way to go about making Rets pay attention to a proc. Exo is for all intents and purposes, currently still just a gap filler whereas it's cousin Lightning Bolt is the main nuke spell of an Enhancement Shaman. I guess what I mean to say is that paying attention to Maelstrom is very, very important whereas paying attention to AoW doesn't feel important, and when a GCD filler isn't available then what's the point to the spell? Also, there is definitely room (especially when you don't have AoW up) to get a Consecrate in. With it's ability to crit, 15 second duration it makes for a great gap filler when you do not have to worry about breaking CC.

Holy Wrath, what to do with Holy Wrath... Honestly, it isn't a very good gap filler, and with the changes to HP increasing DS damage and it's cooldown removal I do not see a need for HW at all. Sure it still stuns demons and undead, but I just do not see the point of it and attaching what will be a very good talent (supposed 1 min reduction on AW through Wrath of the Lightbringer) to it, I believe, is also a mistake and just leads to our current bloat. I'm just not sure what Blizzard's vision for Holy Wrath is.

We will of course see a lot change in the coming months to tweak everything, but ideally, it would be nice to pick up (assuming they fix JotJ) 5/3/33 with three of those points going to Rebuke, and Pursuit of Justice.

chippydip · 07/21/10, 4:26 PM

Assuming Imp CS really is supposed to give a 0.5/1 sec cooldown reduction, our base rotation seems like it will be (ignoring Holy Power procs for a moment):

CS, ?, CS, ?, CS, TV, repeat

This 9 second rotation has room for 2 fillers. Presumably Judgment has to be one of those to keep up mana regen and I think they intend the other to be filled by Exo.

Observations:
* Judgement only needs a 9 second cooldown here and unless you could get it down to a 6 second cooldown (to replace every other Exo) extra points in Imp Judge may only be useful for the increased damage.

* Consecrate actually looks like the highest DPCT filler spell now, even for a single target. Replacing every other Exo with a Consecrate would be more dps at the cost of some extra mana.

* If Exo is only being used once every 18 seconds, is it even worth it to spend 4 talent points to improve it? (Sanctity of Battle and Art of War) Holy Wrath doesn't seem terrible as a filler (though, again, more mana) and/or we may want a couple free GCDs every minute for things like Plea, Healing Hands, Sacred Shield, other random utility spells.

* If we are getting 40% of base mana back every 10 seconds, that gives us 36% base for the 9 second rotation. With Judgment and Exo, it ends up costing 48% of base mana, but replenishment and the new Blessing of Might are probably enough to cover this deficit. Adding Plea to the rotation gives a bit more mana to play with, but at the cost of a GCD. Still, it looks like a dps gain to swap out 3 Exos for a Plea and 2 Consecrates every minute.

Now lets consider what happens when we start procing extra Holy Power on auto attacks. The following rotations become possible:

3.0: CS, TV (only if swing speed < 3.0, and not consecutively--or if Zealotry is active)
4.5: CS, ?, TV (non consecutively)
6.0: CS, ?, CS, TV
7.5: CS, ?, CS, ?, TV
9.0: CS, ?, CS, ?, CS, TV

Observations:
* With back-to-back 6.0 cycles, you can't Judge on every filler and so would either have to delay a CS to fit the next one in, or Judge only every 12 second (leaving 2 seconds without mana regen per 12).

* With back-to-back 7.5 second cycles, a 7 sec Judgement allows you to still Judge every cycle.

* The more procs you get, the shorter the cycle becomes (obviously) but also the more mana you end up using up. TV ends up essentially replacing fillers and costs more mana than everything but Consecrate.

* When Zealotry is up, the mana expenditure is pretty crazy. Over 30 seconds you'll need to Judge twice to keep mana regen going which leaves time for 9x CS, TV cycles. Total mana cost: 235% base mana. Total regained: ~120%. Deficit after 30 seconds: 115%. Even with Replenishment and BoM you'll still likely go from full mana to almost empty.

Conclusions:
* TV seems too expensive to support pressing a button every cooldown if you proc Holy Power at all. If the costs and mana regen remain unchanged, we may end up skipping some filler use altogether to keep up the CS->TV spam.

* Interestingly, another option might be to throw some Word of Glory healing into the rotation. J+CSx3+WoG is a net mana gain since the heal is free and provides some nice raid utility. This might end up being a cool sort of "Evocation" mechanism for us ;-)

* Increasing mana regen to support a CS, TV, repeat cycle is unlikely since it would completely negate the penalty for using more expensive fillers.

* Cutting the cost of TV in half could work. However, if mana regen is balanced around our single target rotation and our AoE rotation ends up being 1.5-2 times more expensive, are people really gonna want to end up drinking between trash pulls to support the extra damage?

Overall, I definitely like the new model. It seems to give us a lot more ways to optimize dps here and there, but I do hope that mana doesn't end up being a huge constraint due to procs.

• frmorrison · 07/21/10, 4:26 PM

Originally Posted by Charmin

I thought both 3% crit debuffs and 3% damage buffs were going to be scraped?

I guess what I mean to say is that paying attention to Maelstrom is very, very important whereas paying attention to AoW doesn't feel important, and when a GCD filler isn't available then what's the point to the spell?

Holy Wrath, what to do with Holy Wrath... Honestly, it isn't a very good gap filler, and with the changes to HP increasing DS damage and it's cooldown removal I do not see a need for HW at all. Sure it still stuns demons and undead, but I just do not see the point of it and attaching what will be a very good talent (supposed 1 min reduction on AW through Wrath of the Lightbringer) to it, I believe, is also a mistake and just leads to our current bloat. I'm just not sure what Blizzard's vision for Holy Wrath is.

The 3% damage buff is staying in. The 3% crit may just apply to the Paladin (it is only one point, so that may stay in), but certainly no one else gets the crit.

AoW and Exo are going to stay in, it shows some "skill" if you hit the button at the right time, rather than lose your swing timer. Having a power ability filler that don't break CC is important.

HW is nice for Prot to get a more AoE damage (they don't have Command anymore) and it is a nice AoE/gap filler for Ret that doesn't take time to do its damage and sometimes counts as CC versus Warlocks/DK. More tools are better than less.

Elamahpla · 07/21/10, 6:14 PM

After having some time to think about it, the probability of Wrath of the Lightbringer decreasing the CD of Zealotry by 30sec/1minute (going from 3 to 2min CD) seems like it's possible. >Under the assumption that it's a 3 minute baseline CD, instead of the 30 listed<.

Also, as far as Sanctified Ret. and Swift Ret. I hope other classes are "forced" to spec into these raid buffs (assuming others can bring besides us). That alone will allow us more room to spec freely.

Jeh · 07/21/10, 9:50 PM

Expanding upon chippydip's post
I'm assuming we AW within Zeal as it will be our strongest phase; if so, there is no room to use HoW at all.
If cds on abilities stay the way they are Holy Wrath will not be a part of our single target rotation at all.
Agree 100% on the points you made about exo usage.
A lot more changes obviously to come as there are a few talents that are a little useless.

Qolie · 07/22/10, 2:37 AM

It was stated that "Judgement is considered a melee attack for purposes of restoring mana via Seal of Insight." Does this also mean that it will now proc all Seals? If so, the value of Judgement, especially at a 7 second cooldown, could inflate significantly. This would subsequently increase the value of Inquisition. Perhaps someone with beta access could shed some light (lolol) on this topic.

Yuski · 07/22/10, 2:42 AM

Originally Posted by Qolie

It was stated that "Judgement is considered a melee attack for purposes of restoring mana via Seal of Insight." Does this also mean that it will now proc all Seals? If so, the value of Judgement, especially at a 7 second cooldown, could inflate significantly. This would subsequently increase the value of Inquisition. Perhaps someone with beta access could shed some light (lolol) on this topic.

No judgement on the beta currently procs seals, not even Seal of Righteousness anymore.

maeklund86 · 07/22/10, 4:05 AM

It was stated that "Judgement is considered a melee attack for purposes of restoring mana via Seal of Insight." Does this also mean that it will now proc all Seals?

It has been considered a melee attack so far (even before the beta), and afaik it has not procced seals in WotLK. I think it's just considered a melee for mechanics. Mainly the part of not having to stack hit till you reach spell cap for it not to miss, as its vital for the mana regen.

cremor · 07/22/10, 5:17 AM

Judgement does proc seals on live. GC just confirmed that Holy Paladins will still be able to regen mana with Judgement in Cata.

Elamahpla · 07/22/10, 6:24 AM

Found HERE is the correction some might be looking for for HoTC and Swift Retribution.

Edit: As clarification, Heart of the Crusader is cut. Judgements of the Wise is also cut as a talent. Instead, Ret and Prot generate mana on Judgement passively. Ret then has a 1 point talent to add Replenishment to that effect.

Edit 2: It also seems that Divine Plea will not be needed as much as it is currently (According to GC). This will be nice not having to use that extra GCD for mana.