Quick question

Can Vindication proc Items like the Shattered Sun Pendant and the Hijal Ring, ETC?

It used to be able to proc [Darkmoon Card: Crusade], but I haven't even tested that since 2.4 since I don't use the darkmoon card anymore.

While not a definitive answer, I would guess yes, but both are limited by internal cooldowns so the added benefit is neglible.

Here you go!

In full DPS gear and a [Large Club]:
Normal CS: 440 damage
SotC CS: 583~585 damage


Difference: 140~


494 AP bonus = 35.3 DPS -> 128 CS bonus + Crusade/2h Wep. -> 140 CS bonus


If there was a 40% bonus on top of the bugfix, you'd expect to see 800~ damage CSs.

@Fiola: Thank you for the comprehensive test. I'll drop the subject

Without launching into a huge treatise on how and why, PPM does not limit anything in the way your are suggesting. Internal cooldowns do, but not PPM... Unless they've stealth changed something in a recent patch.

I meant internal cooldowns, I'm retarded. Thanks for not being retarded and catching my error

I'm assuming that the reasoning behind making us share DPS warrior gear is to tighten up loot tables. Having an item that at least 3-5 people can use vs. an item that only one spec of one class (and in almost all raids, only 1 person out of 25) can use. At least if they are planning the Sunwell route with regards to offset items (obviously none of this matters for set tokens) in WOTLK.

I'm still remaining optimistic even in the face of all the questionable retribution design decisions made since the inception of the game.

I just got a few new upgrades... naturally with no int on them. I'm down to a 5k mana pool unbuffed, which means I use over 5% of my mana pool just for one crusader strike. Saying that we need mana tweaking is a massive understatement, I'm constantly fighting to keep my mana up on fights.


On a side note... haste + expertise rule!

Now that we have the JoW and new SotC questions answered, maybe we can get back to the Windfury question that Fiola brought up. After the posted math, I am now questioning what the mechanics are. I would like to get into some testing. I'll see if I can convince our one enhance shaman to help me out.

Yea fingers crossed. To be fair, I really like what they did with Sunwell drops and having half of them replaceable for Sun motes.

Take out the Sun motes and just make it one-time replace-able class shared items and it would be pretty good.

The only difference better "warrior" gear and "ret pally" gear is Intellect. My bet is that they'll give us a nice fat Strength > Intellect (20/40/60% seems fair to me) conversion and call it a day. Not perfect, but it would help with a lot of mana problems, at least in the short term.

Either that or a strength > Mp5 conversion, which might be a little broken.

This one might be a little OP. In higher level content when you have more and more strength, this will scale disgustingly. I dont think I would be able to get rid of mana fast enough with r6 conc.

Even if this issue doesn't really belong in this thread, I agree. Boosting our mana pool would be somewhat stupid, it would only be a quick fix for PvE fights... Regarding PvP, I think we need some love on mana... Making something like str -> mp5 sounds better. It would also make us more suitable for non raid situations, or anything without another pal around to JoW.
But that would require YET ANOTHER items fix, since losing stats for int wouldn't make a lot of sense anymore. Oh well, they are the one getting payed to make things right after all...

Like a Str/AP coefficient on SoW. (And SoL, while we're at it)


And since we're talking wishlists, I want a flying pony. = D



But yes, it'll be interesting what those "WotLK fixes" will do, seeing how temporary/partial the current changes are.

The 51 point talent will turn you into an arms warrior.

I'm only comparing gear here. Again, the only difference between Warrior and Paladin gear is intellect, other than that we want/need the exact same stats (down to the 9% hit, which is amazing). Extrapolating from that it makes perfect sense that we will get a STR > INT conversion talent, as it literally and figuratively removes any difference between the two.

Just think of it this way, with a 60% conversion and 1100 Strength (what I'd expect for a T7 naxx pally) you'll be getting 660 more intellect, or almost 10000 free mana. So no, its won't solve our mana problems and you'll still be able to push yourself OOM in no time, but it would help.

I have been a staunch supporter of the Give Paladins a Flying Pegasus Mount movement for quite some time. Either that or let me fly when I pop AW.

That would be sweet.

Why downgrade? Brut: MS war 1.6k DPS, Ret pal 2k DPS. Only fury keeps up (or surpasses).

This is just an outdated stereotype really. Bad joke mate.



Just to draw a parallel, excuse this slightly illustrative excursion:

"Shamanistic Rage
Instant 2 min cooldown
Reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. Lasts 15 sec."

This is equivalent to a chance on every hit of the fight to gain mana equal to ~3.75% of your AP.

Better yet, a smart shammy will use a trinket at that point (+~400 AP with Zerker's Call) if he has one and since it's based on AP, it will work with all the AP procs from equipment (rings, trinkets, necks, yada yada).

So realistically we're talking about 3.75% of Sham's max buffed AP.

A fully pimped BT enh shammies has ~1800 AP unbuffed, throw in BoK, Unleashed Rage, SoE, BS, BoM, MotW, Imp Hunter's Mark, Flask, Food, that's ~3500 AP buffed (let me know if my math is off).

Add in a few procs and on use trinket, it can easily reach 4k at peak, at which point Shamanistic Rage is used best.


Still, lets take the slightly lower than perfect case value of 3500 AP, this would mean there's a chance per hit to restore 3.75% of that = chance to proc ~131.25 mana per hit.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on the chance to proc mana when SR is used, neither by googling or by searching the incredible amount of enhancement shaman data here on EJ. I guess it's probably my searching skills failing me and/or mana regen being a pretty unimportant issue for enh so it's not mentioned that often.

It seems earlier results concluded it was a 35% proc chance, however this later turned out to be false and is now regarded as a ppm since faster weapons seemed to proc it less.

However, due to the lack of information, I'll assume the 35% proc chance. Even though it's wrong, it's a good enough value to illustrate a point, I assume the 35% chance was gathered using a ~2.6 speed weapon (preferred enh 1h speed).

Now we're looking at 35% chance per hit to proc ~130 mana in fully pimped enh gear and buffed AP.

Assuming dual wielding 2.6 speed weapons, no haste, windfury weapon enchant, and the 35% proc chance, it calculates to something around 250 mp5.


Now I know this is incredibly rough napkin math with a lot of assumptions and it's definitely inaccurate on more than one front, however the 250 mp5 puts us at least in the correct ballpark range of what this ability is worth.

I also know that in practice Shamanistic Rage works very differently since during those 15 secs you can either get very lucky or unlucky, making the RNG especially tricky here since it's only over 15 secs at a time, not averaging out like a passive ability.

However, suspending nitpicking for a moment and using this 250 mp5 number:

An equally geared ret Paladin should have around 1k str fully buffed (800 ish base, 17 from GotW, 96 imp SoE, 20 from food and BoK on top), for a Str -> Mp5 talent to give us equivalent mana regen to 250 mp5 it would have to give 0.25 mp5 per 1 point of Str.


Anyway, just seen lots of questions about what would be balanced and what wouldn't and thought this would be a good parallel to draw from.

MS warriors have lower DPS then retribution paladins starting from early tier 5 gear and the gap gets wider and wider as you progress with gear. The reason for that is much better scaling of the paladin damage, related to the multiple talents rising damage by % and big part of the damage ignoring armor completly. In general, paladin hits for more and his DPS rotation is easier to manage (no need to use abilities that reset swing timer).

If end game raiding ret paladin got lower DPS output then MS warrior (with rougly the same gear and in the same melee group), then there is something wrong with him.

Regarding our possibly impending mana problems, I'm honestly not worried as long as the itemization team is on the ball, like so:

For 5-man drops, which can be farmed over and over with no lockout, continue making Ret Pally-specific DPS plate with Intellect. The fact that only one spec of one class can use it is immaterial since you're not limited to one chance at a drop per week.

For raid drops, go ahead and make plate that we share with DPS Warriors, but make sure that the Tiered Ret sets have Intellect. That way, we step on no one's toes when it comes to Bracer/Belt/Boot/non-set itemization, but still have viable options for keeping our mana pool healthy.

Fel Mana Pots + Darkmoon Crusade

Fel mana pots leaves a debuff reducing spell dmg. Assuming we have 0 spell dmg gear, only JotC to work with, would this debuff decrease the dmg from Darkmoon Crusade, consecration, JoC, exorcism and SoC? Or simply have no effect at all since the gear and charecter sheet themselves have 0 spell dmg?

Thanks for the answer

Someone else tested this, and found that the -dmg debuff only works on spell damage from gear (ie: Darkmoon Crusade trinket), but does not other +dmg effects (JotC). Having 0 + -dmg debuff is apparently the same as having 0 +dmg.

I'm not sure how things like iDivine Spirit or Wrath of Air totem fit in. (Though the former has minimal effect, and for the latter, you should have WF totem instead)

Not always true, I did 2031dps (never gonna beat my 2033 =() on brutallus this reset and our MS warrior still did more dmg then me (Wow Web Stats).