FYI for all theorycrafters:

Rebuke procs nothing on the beta. I tested it with Landslide, Avalanche and seals and absolutely nothing procced. We can safely ignore the 'macro Rebuke to everything to max dps' issue.

There is one last thing I need to get my spreadsheet completely up to date for Cataclysm, and that is data on how exactly the ret version of Guardian of Ancient Kings works. As in the attack speed of the critter, its miss chances, what affects the damage of the explosion, etc. I am going to try to work on it a bit myself but if anyone has this data I would greatly appreciate sharing it so we can make sure the models are correct.

Depending on the speed at which Guardian of Ancient Kings stacks its buff, it seems reasonable to assume that we would gain the highest DPS boost by using a Golemblood Potion (1200str / 25s) in combination with Avenging Wrath partway through GoAK's duration, especially if the buff will also scale the added strength from the potion.

Is this something that can be easily tested / modeled once the mechanics of the spell are known, or is there any glaringly obvious or logical situation that would prevent this from being the case?

I think we all agree that it needs to be desirable once there are 3+ targets, I just don't see the need for it to be a CS replacement, rather than a CS alternative. If both gave a full HP, we'd be too similar to prot imo. Slightly more damage or, though less likely, dealing holy damage, would seem like a more fun fix.

It really comes down to what their intentions with DS are. GC recently said they still think it's an iconic ret ability and they want us to use it pretty often and if that's still the case then it should probably beat out CS on anything but one target or I don't see it being used much at all.

The changeover should be 3 targets, not 2. 2 would encourage its use far too frequently, especially situations such as PvP or Arena - that free heal would be extremely useful as well. At 3 targets it's about the change point where other classes AOE begins to (marginally) pull ahead of single target attacks.

Whether it's a higher coefficient, holy damage (unlikely/hard to balance), guaranteed HP procs, or further HP interaction (at 3 HP DS does X effect in addition (random example: eats HP and doesn't go on CD)) really doesn't matter as long as the change point isn't 5 or 9 targets or similarly high numbers. If CC is intended as they keep stating, then having sufficient targets would only be in meaningless situations (pathetic targets en mass, think bugs on Putricide's clean room) or when you have multiple important targets, some of which you need to CC to avoid raid deaths (thus you couldn't DS them).

Guaranteed HP procs seems the most simple/logical since it's how CS behaves, but it's not the only option by any means.

Another option would be to have DS proc some sort of seal damage in addition to the physical hit. (I'd rather have DS do all its damage from the ability so I get bigger heals while soloing old content, though ;-))

As good as DS dealing holy damage would be, both in terms of uniqueness and synergy etc... The issue with switching it to holy damage is that when it was released it did holy damage and was very overpowered because of it, so they'd be overly cautious of it happening again.

That is a problem with a simple remedy though. DS wasn't dealing too much damage specifically because it was dealing holy damage, the problem was the weapon coefficient was too high for it to ignore armor. They never should have removed the holy damage portion, imo, they should have simply reduced the %weapon damage.

Holy damage strikes aren't inherently overpowered, they are just overpowered when they are trying to balance them with similar coefficients to normal melee strikes. It is simple enough to balance caster damage (well perhaps not considering what we saw the last two arena seasons) around being unmitigated by armor, DS being holy wouldn't be terribly difficult either. I am fairly certain the reason the hotfixed it to deal physical damage was simply because it was too late to spend the time finding out what %weapon damage mod would have been balanced if it were to stay holy.

Well, in terms of PvP, a holy damage weapon strike would be more effective against higher armor classes since it avoids it, and could at some points be a better attack to use against a single opponent than CS due to that fact. For example, a rough estimate using boss armor mitigation would mean that (in cata) DS would have to deal ,(115% WD *.5919)/1.3, 52% weapon damage as holy damage to deal equal damage to CS, or 52% + ~21%, 73% if holy power were to be calculated in. This in turn would make it substantially weak compared to CS vs lower armor mitigations. It shouldn't be better to DS over CS in a single target situation, but a holy damage DS with reasonable damage could lead to that.

It's possible to get it to work, but it would take some balancing towards pvp. There are simpler ways to make it a more desirable attack in PvE with allowing for that type of PvP balancing issue,. A combination of seal procs, full holy power generation, damage tweak, and/or talents effects would solve it. Just not in as cool a way.

That's enough wishlisting about Divine Storm. If Blizzard feels like it's not being used enough, they'll do something with it.

4.0.3a Patch Notes are up and....
I wonder if that's a typing error, just a mistake, or did they alredy revert the 20% buff deployed on the Beta?

The tooltip showed 80% on the PTR server I was on. I find it unlikely that they went live with another patch as the one they tested, but you never know. European servers will still be down for some time; I'll update my post as soon as possible.


Update: confirmed 80% tooltip on EU live.

Not that its a major factor for dpsing, but rets should be aware that casting WoG does indeed reset your swing timer.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker

Looks like meta's are going back to not retarded requirements.

I can confirm that the live tooltip (EU servers) was updated to 80% weapon dps and that the 60% number from the 4.0.3a patch notes were off.

Furthermore when using the Glyph of Exorcism, the tooltip is supplemented with the 6s dot portion. 4774 direct damage (affected by Blessing of Might) and 187 dot portion (not affected by BoM) in my case.

On another finding: I asume it's a bug but Lavascale Minestrone - Item - World of Warcraft already is available with some effort (finishing the new cooking daily quest). Considering the stat weightening, this should beat our regular 40 str food, right?

Wrong. In Redcape's sheet at 85 Mastery is about 1/8th as powerful as Str. At 80 in my sheet it's around 1/7th. 90 Mastery is far weaker than 80 AP (Fish Feast) or 40 Str.