Retribution DPS Theorycraft - Page 14

_Retribute_ · 10/21/07, 10:40 PM

Argh regearing is really sucking, I am trying to get at least full blues before 2.3 hits. Almost all the ret gear is from instances and noone will really take a ret paladin to any instance. I picked up Hammer of Naaru, my t4 helm, and some other random gear from before when I was healing. I am trying to get as much gear from quartermasters as possible. My guild muted me for respecing to ret.

flyingtoastr · 10/22/07, 1:02 AM

I'll answer your post for now, but this thread is about retribution theorycrafting in raids, not the merits of Improved Concentration Aura and Judgement. If you would like to discuss this further please take it to PM's, I'll be happy to argue to your heart's content.

Originally Posted by galzohar

Why is imp conc aura that good? If it adds to the talented % uninterruption you just get 100% both with and without it, as well as any other healer partied with you. Assuming it does work like that the only class that would benefit from imp conc aura is a partied warlock, but the only situation I see you party with a warlock is when you're using devotion anyway...

Because Auras effect your entire party. There are a lot of classes out there who don't get nice talented pushback resistance (Shadow Priests especially come to mind) and that 50% is huge with the amount of AoE damage in the current game. Not to mention the 30% duration reduction of all silence effects on anyone under the effect of Concentration Aura. This is 30% less time you have to spend silenced, and there are a lot of bosses out there where those 2 seconds can make the difference between a kill and a dead tank.

Its also nice for those of us who like to PvP in our off time, since it is the aura of choice there.

Oh and you almost never use Devo in a raid unless you're the Main Tank pally. The extra 900 armor won't save a clothie from anything.

Originally Posted by galzohar

Even though from what I heard it's not like that, if it actually multiplies and not adds (in which case you can never get 100%), changing conc aura from 30% to 45% would change you from having 79% uninterruptibility to 82% uninterruptibility, or reduce interrupts from 21% to 18%. 21/18=1.166 and I think getting interrupted 17% more is really not that big of a deal.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by galzohar

However comparing the value of the DPS loss to the value of the healing gained when you bring a ret pally is a very hard thing to do.

DPS lost? I think we already proved a long long time ago that a ret pally brings more to a raid than a third warlock or rogue (if anyone could find the numbers back in the old thread that would actually be a nice addition to the main post). Regardless, a holy pally can put and keep up any judgement he feels like. However, its not economical or even safe under a lot of circumstances to have a healer out jumping around reapplying a judgement every 18 seconds when you could have someone reapplying it for him every 6 while retaining a competitive level of continuous DPS.

I'm not saying "you have to have a ret pally to get Judgement of Wisdom". You can get this from any pally. But chances are if you have a ret pally in your guild you will see these numbers a lot more often than if you just run with holydins.

Kris · 10/22/07, 7:28 AM

Great news for those who had problems with Excel 2003 (or me at least ). Go to Options->Transition and check Transition Formula Entry. Somehow all the formulas start working

Ridan · 10/22/07, 7:45 AM

Originally Posted by Ysabelle

Anyone back from the PTR with some heavy raid dps tests from ZA? Curious to see the dmg we can put out now with the threat reduction. I'm hoping its something in the range of Enhance shamans now.

I ran ZA Sunday with a well geared Retrib paladin (S2 glad set, Storm Herald and a lot of plate items from Hyjal/BT). The raid setup wasn't optimal (only 1 paladin which means no blessing of might or king).
We had a good melee group (Def warrior, fury warrio, feral druid, Retribution paladin, and me as an enhancement shaman droping wf all the time).

On most single target encounter, the retribution paladin and me had a very similar dps.
I was going all out (full Shock and stormstrike rotation, trinket whenever up).
The paladin told me he was still holding back, with the lag the tanks couldn't generate as much threat as they Should.
Moreover, the paladin was using jugement of wisdom, being the only paladin in the raid he needed it to be able to keep his mana up.

I think that with a more optimal setup and beter threat from the tank He should be able to outdps me (save for mana problems).

Cathmor · 10/22/07, 12:04 PM

Ret paladins, have any of you considered the use of [Mark of Vindication] (Mark of Vindication - Items - World of Warcraft) for long fights to support your DPS cycle? I realize it would be a downgrade from many active use and epic trinkets available (DST, Bloodlust Brooch, etc) in terms of raw damage gain, but would the mana return on Judgement (and Consecration if you use it in your cycle) combined with Sanctified Judgement practically completely refunding your Seal cost be enough to justify its use?

galzohar · 10/22/07, 12:08 PM

So still the devo pally of the MT won't lose anything speccing out of imp conc aura for the 3% raid crit. And you generally run with a pally in the MT group, don't you? In such case the effectiveness of concentration aura isn't even relevant.

The bottom line is that in the fights where the holy (and prot...) pallies can keep the judgements up, the only DPS the ret pally brings to the raid above his own is the 2% aura to his party... I had yet to see the theorycraft that shows that 2% extra damage to party makes up for the lack of ret pally DPS. Still waiting to see a high-quality spreadsheet (of a level such as leulier's warlock sheet) to know for sure. Anyway the point is that in those fights the benefit of having the ret pally is having 2-3 healers spending more time healing and less time in melee range.

Granted there are fights where not having a ret pally simply means no judgements, and in those fights you can completely ignore my comments, but those fights are far from being all fights and afaik not even close to being the majority.

Fiola · 10/22/07, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Cathmor

Ret paladins, have any of you considered the use of [Mark of Vindication] (Mark of Vindication - Items - World of Warcraft) for long fights to support your DPS cycle? I realize it would be a downgrade from many active use and epic trinkets available (DST, Bloodlust Brooch, etc) in terms of raw damage gain, but would the mana return on Judgement (and Consecration if you use it in your cycle) combined with Sanctified Judgement practically completely refunding your Seal cost be enough to justify its use?

Huh, never noticed this before: Mana Restore 2 - Spells - World of Warcraft

15% proc rate on 150~ mana, or roughly 23~ mana per spell cast. I know it works off of Judgement and Consecrate, but I don't think it triggers from CS or SoC (typical abilities used by a Ret paladin)

I don't think it will give you much mana for typical Ret ability use. Good trinket for leveling or at L70 if you don't have anything better, but quite replaceable.

Prepared · 10/22/07, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Cathmor

Ret paladins, have any of you considered the use of [Mark of Vindication] (Mark of Vindication - Items - World of Warcraft) for long fights to support your DPS cycle? I realize it would be a downgrade from many active use and epic trinkets available (DST, Bloodlust Brooch, etc) in terms of raw damage gain, but would the mana return on Judgement (and Consecration if you use it in your cycle) combined with Sanctified Judgement practically completely refunding your Seal cost be enough to justify its use?

I find it pretty hard to fit Consecrate into my rotation as it is, just by virtue of global cooldowns and not wanting to skip a CS or queuing up SoC before my weapon swing is due. So that would probably lower its effectiveness right there. Unless it's each consecrate tick (which I doubt) it might not be worth it.

Still, interesting find, and definitely a good trinket choice for a Paladin in place like Kara, I think, where there's lots of chances to use Exorcism for extra damage, to balance out the mana cost.

Sapp · 10/22/07, 12:47 PM

The pally/shaman Mark of Vindication has an internal cooldown, making it much less awesome than it initially appears to be.

I thought the same for a long while and then actually noticed how little power gain it yeilded in a WWS.

Sapp · 10/22/07, 1:28 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

However comparing the value of the DPS loss to the value of the healing gained when you bring a ret pally is a very hard thing to do.

I'm assuming your impression here is because you're either at the start of or not yet in t5 content though. Paladin healing is really... lame at best in t6, most of the time, and it starts to really hurt a bit later at the end of t5.

Switching to a holy/ret/prot dynamic for your three blessings lets you free up healer slots for the more effective PvE healing Druids, Shamans, and Priests.

There's still situations where an Imp. LoH in the raid is useful on the tank (prefiring for Reliquary p3 comes to mind), but most of the time nowadays the only things a holy paladin brings that another healer wouldn't is his LoH and possibly a Devo aura for the tank, but he likely needs a shadowpriest anyway to keep up with the real healers on a tank if he isn't meter farming the raid damage that lifebloom and chain heal should be healing.

Prepared · 10/22/07, 2:46 PM

Originally Posted by Sapp

The pally/shaman Mark of Vindication has an internal cooldown, making it much less awesome than it initially appears to be.

I thought the same for a long while and then actually noticed how little power gain it yeilded in a WWS.

I don't see anything about the internal cooldown. Can you tell me what the timer on it is? Because, really, if anywhere close to an interval or 8 or 10, it shouldn't affect the numbers that greatly.

jusion · 10/22/07, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by Sapp

I'm assuming your impression here is because you're either at the start of or not yet in t5 content though. Paladin healing is really... lame at best in t6, most of the time, and it starts to really hurt a bit later at the end of t5.

Switching to a holy/ret/prot dynamic for your three blessings lets you free up healer slots for the more effective PvE healing Druids, Shamans, and Priests.

There's still situations where an Imp. LoH in the raid is useful on the tank (prefiring for Reliquary p3 comes to mind), but most of the time nowadays the only things a holy paladin brings that another healer wouldn't is his LoH and possibly a Devo aura for the tank, but he likely needs a shadowpriest anyway to keep up with the real healers on a tank if he isn't meter farming the raid damage that lifebloom and chain heal should be healing.

And this will especially be true in 2.3.

I'm still not totally sold on whether a retadin will be worth bring to raids yet, until I see some decent numbers on PTR on test. I'm just a skeptic of everything until I see hard proof. :p

Agonar · 10/22/07, 4:21 PM

Didnt got the time to test stuff on the PTR yet but im wondering about something.

Does Vindication(the one from the 2.3 build) affect non-players mobs(non-boss)? I know about the story of raw stats, etc... but i need a confirmation on that. If i remember correctly when i was able to log-in 5-10min on the PTR last week, i attacked a mobs with a mana pool and i noticed the mana pool cap was lowered by the Vindication debuff. Didnt had enough time to test if the hp pool cap got lowered too.

Also, IF it work on non-players mobs, are the trash in ZA all immune to this debuff?

Another question totally out of subject is: Do you know the existence of an addons that will keep track of the jugement debuff on my target? Even if the jugement are not from me? Something to filter out and tell me if JoW/JoL/JoTC are still up etc... I know some paladin in my guild interested to find an addon like this.

Thanks in advance.

Fogel · 10/22/07, 4:54 PM

I believe if you search for filter debuffon on curse you'll get what you're looking for. Works like a charm for keeping track of jol/jow/jotc.

Fiola · 10/22/07, 5:15 PM

Originally Posted by Agonar

Didnt got the time to test stuff on the PTR yet but im wondering about something.

Does Vindication(the one from the 2.3 build) affect non-players mobs(non-boss)? I know about the story of raw stats, etc... but i need a confirmation on that. If i remember correctly when i was able to log-in 5-10min on the PTR last week, i attacked a mobs with a mana pool and i noticed the mana pool cap was lowered by the Vindication debuff. Didnt had enough time to test if the hp pool cap got lowered too.

Copied from my post in the paladin tanking thread:

Originally Posted by Fiola

Observation of Vindication on PTR:

Using pitbull to see the exact mana values, Vindicaiton reduced caster mob mana from 3231 to 2916.

That's a difference of 315 mana points, or around 10~%.

Not knowing mob health values, I couldn't really test how much it reduced their HP, but I was able to test if it had any effect.

I attacked a self-healing mob (treants in NE part of Auchindon crater), applied Vindication, allowed the treant to heal to full, and then watched Vindication fade. When Vindication dropped, the mob % hp dropped from 100% to 96% (there might have been a regrowth tick in there, but I was mostly interested in seeing if it affected HP at all). So the % Sta reduction does work, though it won't be 15% of their total HP, obviously.

In other words, Vindication does indeed affect mob stats if the debuff sticks.

Originally Posted by Agonar

Also, IF it work on non-players mobs, are the trash in ZA all immune to this debuff?

From my very, very brief time in ZA, I noticed it proc on some of the humanoid mobs. I noticed because it was showing "IMMUNE" on other mobs (the trolls on bear mounts).