I don't see it anywhere else on the thread, but I believe it has been stated that they plan to have haste lower the CD of retribution paladin abilities.

What I'm referencing is fairly recent. Let me see if I can find the source.

Edit: I can't find it, but I swear I'm not crazy!

They've said that they want haste to let you "do stuff faster," and just getting more mana regen would fail to accomplish this. Logically, the only way for a ret to "do stuff faster" is lower our cooldowns... I know I saw some sort of official post on it somewhere... eh...

Considering these two quotes (page 1 and 57, they will do something with it I imagine. Granted, the posts are from march, but I believe their intention is to make the 'extra' stats about as attractive. In the case of warriors and rogues(fdruids), having more resources directly converts into doing more damage. As this is not the case for retribution paladins, we are CD-limited, they will -at least try- to make haste worthwhile.

Okay, I might've seen it here: The Light and How to Swing It: New talent system changes for melee paladins
I know its not exactly an official source...

Well, I'm putting my money on DS and Conc being taken out of our single target rotation. I haven't a doubt that with the two new single target dps abilities they're adding - the level 10 ability and the 31 point talent - they will attempt to create an actual rotation for retribution rather than having this FCFS system we have now.

I highly doubt they'll make mana an issue unless you have enough haste, as that does not reflect the goal for haste that blizzard has stated ("doing stuff faster"). That scenario would just add another stat we would have to cap like hit and expertise, so overall we'd be forced to have less mastery/crit.

Considering they did have reduced cooldowns as the mastery bonus for a time, I wouldn't write it off. Especially because we don't know the 2 new dps abilities we're getting.

Making haste attractive for ret is fairly easy.

Make haste affect Cons tick time (faster ticks in the same duration) and make it affect the SoV dot (faster ticks). I haven't kept entirely up to date on the caster changes, but I do believe that faster ticking dots is how they planned to make haste attractive for SP's and affli locks. This may actually be the reason they decided to bake in the T9 bonus ( make SoV dot crit). With faster ticking dots, this would make haste quite a bit more attractive.


I doubt reducing ability CD's is going to happen. This was initially going to be our mastery bonus (as per the 2009 blizzcon screenies), and has been changed to holy damage bonus as per more recent posts.
We're close to being 'full' on CD's as it is, it's that small amount of "nothing" that"s actually causing us to have an erratic rotation which seems to be what blizz likes, they don't like anyone having fixed repeatable rotations (for top damage).
We would need only a very small amount of CD reduction to fill up the remaining gaps and effectively take us to a fixed rotation.


Edit: We also cast spells, whereas rogues/cats don't. So haste also affects the GCD on HS, Exo, Cons. Also actively changing the rotation (more stuff blizz likes) and allowingus to do more in the same time.

Given that Blizzard has repeatedly stated they like procs which break rotations, I doubt they'd try to move a class known for FCFS on to a strict rotation. Death Knights have been well known for their strict rotations. Part of the reduced number of runes is an attempt to shake up the rotation a bit with rune procs and runic power dumps.

Rotations are easy, not that FCFS is hard. Look at Rogues or Feral for more balanced design - priority based, but off of buff/debuff timers, not their ability cooldowns. The Feral "John Madden" flowchart is an excellent example of the decision structure. Press the button not on CD isn't much of a decision.

We have 5 attacks (discounting Holy Wrath) right now. That could increase by 3 (HS and the two you stated). Now drop Consecration and Divine Storm from a single target rotation. This still leaves 1 more attack than present. If my rough model was even vaguely accurate, haste currently would cause us to drop 1.75 of 5 attacks (no Exo, Cons 1/4 as often). Again, a haste reducing CD setup would cause us to entirely drop attacks from priority. No extra time/GCDs + more attacks = more attacks to entirely drop.

If Blizzard is taking the time to create new attacks, why would they want to make them (or CS or HS) unused as gear gets more haste (later tiers)? And we haven't even gotten into reduction of AW or GoAK CDs and how that would impact DPS, or have book length tooltips explaining exclusions to haste's benefits.

Blizzard will unveil a good plan for haste. Reducing ability CD is likely not it. It's always possible, just not likely at this point.

Haste in Cata isn't "doing stuff faster", it's "doing more stuff." Turning those GCD where the Rogue has no energy into a fresh attack. Not arguing for the following, by the way, I think it's a bad idea, but if mana is a limiter we can only put out so much DPS (self-throttling is horrible, reference BC) as you run out of resource. More haste becomes more mana resource, which allows more DPS. Again, it's a really bad design (especially since below 5% base mana you could not judge to regain mana), but it vaguely functions.

Zalinda is probably correct. If haste will speed ticks on HV and Consecration, it will be enough better than present to be a desirable stat (as opposed to the Wrath "at least it's not ArmPen" haste). As desirable as Str or Mastery? Unlikely, but closer and with a potential for points where too much haste makes crit superior and vice versa.

Seal damage is only partially passive. Roughly half of our seal procs are from Divine Storm and Crusader Strike. Seals from active damage sources should be considered active damage. Another chunk of our seals are a result of Manifest Anger. Its damage and subsequent seal procs are a hybrid between passive and active sources (and probably close to 50/50 split again.)

Trinket effects from current content shouldn't really be considered in a cataclysm context. If it ends up that the item is OP at 85, then blizzard will nerf the proc rate for characters over 80. That isn't to say that a similar item won't exist in cata at some point (they've reused trinkets in the past).

In my opinion, seal damage is entirely passive. We spend one GCD outside of combat to get 25% of our damage... how can that be anything but passive damage? We don't spend GCD's in combat to get that damage. We could choose to put up light or wisdom instead and passively regen health or mana. Although you can't judge without a seal, all other attacks can be made without a seal. Don't know why you would (go into a fight without a seal), but that doesn't change the fact that you can.

Seal damage going down would be a very good thing. We would get more control over our damage and it's a great opportunity to get a more interesting paladin design.

One of the basic tenets of Blizzard game design is that of “concentrated coolness.” We’d rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design.

Seals are a simple and shallow design. If they put most of the seal damage (ie the 33% weapon damage once vengeance is stacked) into some sort of synergy between our abilities, then that would be great. Even better would be if we had control over the dot damage as well. We could stack at the beginning of a fight far more quickly than we currently do and gives us something to keep an eye on. Sure, keeping a dot up doesn't require huge amounts of skill but it does require more skill than keeping the vengeance dot up.

And requiring a stacking DoT to "ramp" our damage is rather arbitrary. Yes, casters like Afflocks have to spend time building up to maximum damage (but does not need to move), however a Rogue or Warrior with reasonable resources (full Energy or high Rage) can immediately unload on a new target (after movement), then pause to recover resources. If we have everything off CD we can unload on a new target, then pause to recover resources (wait for CDs) - however we also need to stack the DoT or we're doing 66%-90% of our full damage. In short, we have the worst hybrid of both styles.

If our DoT were active (like bleed effects from other classes), that would be a different matter altogether.

UA cast a cast time, which is required for Afflocks. Rogues need to get up Slice N' Dice first before they can fully unload (takes a little bit to ramp up). You can save combo points and hit slice after the movement (this is advanced skill). Warriors need full sunder up to really put out the damage. Ret does suffer the most though, but every class has some ramp up.

DKs will have an ability that puts up their diseases instantly (which is their ramp up), it would be nice to have something to get up SoV stacks faster once in a while.

This is right, all DoTs (I believe HoTs as well) will benefit from haste and crit for "free". However, it will take much more haste/crit rating than before for every 1% increase.