Three seperate points I want to bring up.

1) This is a bit nitpicky, but I believe Acts of Sacrifice should get an honorable mention in the spec section. With only one point invested into it, Cleanse will remove ALL snares or immobilizes regardless of debuff type, from Hamstring to Curse of Exhaustion to Feral Charge. This gives the Paladin both the freedom to use HoF on allies rather than himself and extra mobility duration high frequency snares. Maybe the current raid landscape won't provide any use for it, but I've already found uses for it in heroics at least.

2) I'm curious if anyone has found a workaround to the wonky GAK mechanics, namely him swapping targets liberally and just milling around without attacking anything?

3) I'm unclear as to whether or not I'm actually correct in my assumption, but does Mastery Rating give partial Mastery bonus. For example, my Paladin has 10.72 Mastery (something like 499 rating) but the tooltip only lists 10%. Is it just hiding that .72% or is it cutting it off?

All that prelude brings me to my actual point. If it's the latter, would there be any point where reforging into Mastery to get to a round number (such as bumping 10.97 to 11.01) or not reforging Mastery out to achieve the same goal ever be a valid option in gearing? Perhaps at certain levels of other stats?

This is false. Shaman testing has shown that actually % counts and not whatever rounding your paper doll shows.

1) Fair enough, I do note that there is no completely wrong choice.

3) The OP clearly covers this topic under Mechanics.

Firstly, thanks for all of your hard work compiling this stuff, Exemplar! A few things did stick out to me when reading over the latest version, though:

1) Have changes settled down enough that it's perhaps worth giving people some rough stat weights again? It's kind of weird that the section about reforging tells you to reforge to the "next best" stat, and then refers you to the above section where that info has all been removed.

More specifically I'm wondering what the current theorycraft is saying about crit vs haste. I know @ 80 we were all reforging to haste like mad to get the CS cd down to 3 seconds, but at 85 this is much less realistic, leading me to believe that reforging for crit would be a better option, but I have no numbers to back up that theory currently.

2) Guardian of Ancient Kings should probably get some info added about it in the DPS cooldowns section. I assume that since it has such a long cd that in most circumstances we're just going to want to pop it during bloodlust/heroism, but maybe there are some weird situations that I'm not thinking of. Also, would his attacks benefit from bloodlust such that we would want to be sure to have it out already when lust goes off? I believe things like shaman spirit wolves benefit, so I think it would be safe to assume that it will, but someone should confirm. I haven't had any shamans or mages in my level 85 groups yet :-(

It's probably a question of how much haste we'll need before we switch from CS-filler-filler to a CS-filler rotation. Not hitting CS every other button push seems to me to be a big nerf to the relative value of Haste after all.

It also has some "interesting" targeting issues I believe, which ought to be documented if possible.

You can pull stat values from Redcape's spreadsheet. My spreadsheet needs some tweaks and I personally like to compare it to Redcape's before posting values (i.e. if there's a large variance, it would do to investigate to see which is more correct).

We need more info on GoaK to model properly to give advice, whether Bloodlust impacts it is not yet known. Personally in dungeons I'm using it, then 10 seconds in popping AW. This is a "seems most logical to be best DPS" application - you gain some stacks of the Str buff, then have AW for the last 20 seconds of its duration, to maximize the gain.

My spreadsheet is currently showing that at only at CS CD at 3 seconds (actually below, due to latency) do you CS+Filler, even at 3.01 seconds you CS+Filler+Filler for more DPS. I'm not 100% positive this is accurate, but don't currently see a reason to disbelieve it.

Regarding our Mastery - Blizzard is offbase. It's not the damage source that's the issue, it's the limitations. Most Masteries are passive. At most another Masteries has 2 limitations (GCD and Resource, such as Blood DK requires rune and GCD to engage), while Ret has 4 limitations: GCD, Reactive Proc, Time limit to use, and RNG. We're the only reactive usage (anything else that procs is automatic and requires no keypress) and the only one with a time limit before it's lost (not to mention potentially losing a new proc earned before last is used). Since we already have DivPurp and AoW for RNG and our resource unit IS the GCD (mana's still a non-issue), it's hampered heavily. I'd be perfectly happy going to a flat passive (or auto-proc Elemental Overload style), but I know Blizzard seemed most enthused by HoL because it was an active skill. We will hope to see a new solution before Firelands is released (I hope the same for metagem fix).

Blizzard's statement about our Mastery is also completely offbase for other reasons. If they want to make Mastery desirable they don't have to change the functionality at all - just double the % bonus we get per point and all will be well. Mastery at that point will still be very different from other classes but it would definitely be competitive with haste and crit, which is honestly all that we are concerned about. As long as we benefit reasonably in terms of overall dps I don't see any reason to overcomplicate the problem. Clearly there are a million and one alternate implementations that could also work fine but the current one can be entirely workable with a simple increase to the rate of return.

Honestly, I'd like to see Exorcism get a reliable cooldown in a 8 or 7 second range. I find in many cases I can't use Holy Wrath, because of CC, and without HW or a 3 second Crusader Strike I find that I don't have enough buttons to push most of the time, and when you get back to back AoW procs it borderlines on the OP. Make Exo a reliable spell and adjust the numbers accordingly.

Divine Storm also needs a change to how it generates HP. Either it needs to be a guaranteed 1 HP upon use or it needs to regain it's old ability to generate multiple procs of HP. I find our AOE to be woefully lacking, and without the HP generation to back up DS I just find it hard to justify using it unless there are a lot of mobs. Do we even have an idea on how many mobs makes DS more valuable than Crusader Strike?

Hand of Light is a very fun spell, but it should really be a talent point and take the place of Art of War.

I know what I just said may possibly count as wish-listing, and I don't want to derail this thread into that direction, but it's just an evaluation of running heroics and running Bastion of Twilight.

I believe the thread says it is optimal to switch to an AoE rotation at 5 mobs or more. Most pulls in 5 person dungeons are less than 5 mobs if I recall correctly. Individual mobs also tend to survive long enough for SoT to stack to 5 and then some.

I think ret DPS is a bit low right now in general. World of Logs posts show that paladins tend to peak around 15-16k DPS in 25 person raids while other specs are performing in the 20 thousands. This could be caused by a weak mastery, greater sensitivity to capping hit and/or crit, or just player error. We are not, however, the only spec in this situation and I expect that changes are forthcoming.

I totally agree. I actually like the mechanics, although they should really bring it off the GCD and make it so it doesn't fade until out of combat, so you don't lose if you are CC'd for some seconds.

But other than that, I like the proc itself and the fact that it lets us literally do more: we can use it to keep Inquisition up most of the time, or land another hard-hitting Templar's Verdict, or maybe even heal with an unexpected Word of Glory...Someone should toss the idea to Blizzard, although I'm not sure they would listen.

I am wondering what the your reasons/maths are for this rotation Inq > HoW > Exo > TV > CS > J > HW > Cons. First of all Tv hits for almost twice as much as HoW. Tv does 18k non crits and How does 23k crits and about 12-11k non crits. This is with inq up.It really doesent make senes in my eyes at all. Also Tv hits as hard as exo. I am in full hc gear and some raid epics. I also would suggest to drop cons. out of your rotation because it cost too much mana. Instead i would use holyradiance in aoe dmg situations (incoming) to help healers. You cant do both with your mana and cons. dmg is pathetic. My Rotation would be Inq>Tv>exo>how>cs>J>HW and occasionly holy radiance.

I would apreciate some feedback on my ideas.