I was wondering if anyone in this thread would be able to help me maximize my dps output as retribution?

I seem to be having problems because i feel that my output is sub par in relation to my dps statistics.

Which sit at: 1670AP/27.5%Crit/200SD/9%HIT unbuffed.

I had a few questions about dps rotations for Retribution. I feel currently i am making inneficient use of Global cooldown management. I understand that in many cases i have to hit Crusader Strike/Judgement and reseal whenever i can; however, i believe there is more to dpsing as a paladin than this.

I was wondering if anyone had any examples of dps rotations i should follow to maximize that output and not be caught on the Global cooldown as much.

Another issue i have is with the swing timer. At 3.6 seconds its a much bigger deal if it resets. Right now i have an Attack button on my hotkey bar. Sometimes without realizing it i will hit the Attack key when i have an enemy targeted which seems to reset or delay my swings. Is there some other hotkey or macro i should use for targeting? Do most people use the mouse?

Another question i had about the swing timer was:

Is the swing timer more like an instant spell with a 3.6 second cooldown (in regards to the weapon speed). Or is it more like a spell that takes 3.6 seconds to cast? I realize that attack is not a spell; however, i find the comparison in this instance helpful. I asked on the wow forums and no one was able to give a straight answer unfortunately .

One other question i had was: Is spamming Level 1 consecrate worth it assuming i have the mana to do so?

Thank you very much for any help on these dps strings. If you know of any helpful mods to track things like that please let me know.

Can anyone tell me the spell damage coefficnet of rank 1 SoC?

I have found a way to estimate dps increase based on Int/Mp5 so will hopefully include that.

More spreadsheet feedback:

-When you do item analysis, it fills all items with str gems? This is a bit counterproductive since you lose socket bonuses like +hit which changes the results of the item analysis (offers hit items that you shouldn't need).

-Ticking on/off "2 piece Lightbringer" seems to have no effect "on time till OOM" number?

Hope v19 is out soon

As i mentioned in my previous post i'm working on a way to convert Mp5/Int/Mana etc into dps.

I'm working on the assumption that the fight is X minutes long. From this, based on base mana and +/- mana gain it's possible to work out in a 10 minute fight how much spare mana you will have for Exorcisms etc. The average damage over 10 minutes from this can then be converted into a dps number.

It show's that 2 Lightbringer is a must have. However aside from this, the results would indicate that in dps terms there is very little between additional ret-pala gear and warrior dps gear (with warrior dps gear winning slightly).

I'll hopefully get it out tomorrow (along with a Str/Crit point of inflection section) for you to have a nose at.

I'm not an expert on belf paladin DPS, but from what I can tell they usually ditch most of their spelldamage for pure melee stats and have much higher AP and much less SD than your setup.


The default attack button is a toggle. If you press it while attacking you'll stop attacking.

You got 3 options:

-Use mouse right click.
-Make a macro button with /startattack and put it where your current attack button is. This doesn't toggle off if you press it again.
-What I currently use: Incorprate it into your SoC button macro, just add a line with /startattack


Yes.

Actually spamming max rank (6) is worth it if you got the mana, it's tons of added DPS if you can keep up with the mana, especially with your current spelldamage levels.



Recount or any of the other DPS meters (assessment, SW-stats come to mind).

Bellator, can you add the arena weapons, and also perhaps some choice leather dps gear?

Also, I'm getting a strange bug, if I set a gem slot to "none" it gets the stats of outcast glyph (17 str/16 int), not sure though as I've edited the sheet a bit. Can someone else check if it happens for them?

Hello, Fanvast here. I have been tracking this thread for awhile, and I am a relativly new Retribution Paladin. I leveled with it for a brief time, then returned to holy for PvE. My arena team, Satori, is going to be achieving Gladiator this season (Pretty much 100% chance :P) and I may or may not retire, as I have a sweet netherdrake!

The netherdrake itself is a reason to spec ret, as I have zero prot gear and alot of arena points and some tier 4 all set for Retribution. I need gold!

As I am also in a raiding guild, I may get the oppurtunity to raid. I love your rotations put up, but I am curious as to the first Judgement. Are we judging SoC first, Seal of the Crusader, or even Wisdom or Light?

The way I see it, I am reading the rotation as

1. Judge seal of Crusader, Light, or Wisdom
2. SoC/B
3. Crusader Strike
4. Judge during GCD

Rinse, repeat. Any corrections? I am all set on what gear and gems to aim for.

So is it better to judge every nine seconds?

Any possibility the author could update the main post with a discussion of enchants? Looking at a lot of the geared up raiders I see a lot of variance between mongoose and savagery... plus executioner is coming (although from my understanding its not going to be very good for us since we do so much magic damage).

Well from previous discussions, it's been pretty much accepted Executionner will perfom subpar to Mongoose and Savagery.

Then between Mongoose and Savagery, it seems between SoC, JoC CS and normal melee attacks we can up the chance to proc per min to around 2.4 if I remember correctly, giviing it a slight edge over Savagery. But then again Savagery stays the most stable of all three, not being a proc, but being a permanent AP bonus.

With regards gems, i have found that on average a socketed item is more likely to show a higher dps increase if socketed with strength gems than if sockets with gems providing socket bonus. I will try and see if i can get the item analysis to look at items under both situations and report the best. Not sure how much longer it will take to run though.

With regards "2 Piece Lightbringer" in "Playstyle Mana/Info" section, there is a slight mistake in that there shouldnt be an "On/Off" tick box there. When you equip 2+ pieces of lightbringer the box in this section will calculate and show how much mps is being provided by the lightbringer bonus. Will make it clearer in next version

The "none" bug is fixed in the next version. If I get time will add arena weapons (it's on the to do list, not 100% sure it it will make next version, but definately one after that).

With regards leather that is a little further down my list sorry. I did include some leather in versions 0.001beta of the model but i found it generally performed poorly (far too much hit, AP not str, Agi not crit). However i'm sure there are some good pieces out there. If you have the time to have a nose and provide me with a list of a few, will try to add them when i add arenas weapons.

Yes, as it is impossible to judge faster than every nine seconds, keep SoC at 100% uptime and CS every 6 seconds. At nine seconds CS can be done every 6 seconds and SoC can be up 100% of the time.

Is that based off of a 6 second or a 10 second or both? It would be more of a matter that SOC cannot be kept up rather than it being impossible to judge every 9 seconds right? As it is on a different Global cooldown.

Has anyone ever experimented with different weapon speeds to any success?

It is based off a 6 Sec CS

And yes, judgement is not on global cooldown. The problem that judging ever 8 second is that either:-

a) You choose to refresh the seal after every judgement and the GCD of the seal overlaps with the CD ending of CS forcing it to be delayed

b) If the judgment comes just before CS and you choose not to push back the CS, thus are forced to wait until GCD of CS is done and then refresh seal meaning 100% SoC uptime is not achievable.

Best option in terms of DPS is to do CS on cooldown and judge whenever possible so that the instant re-sealing does not effect CS. This turns out to be a nine second minimum average between judgements.

In terms of weapons speeds, it is irrelevant to the rotation of SoC/JoC/CS since they are all instant casts which dont effect the swing timer. I guess there is a potential possibility that you could get a certain weapon speed so that using CS and judgement on cooldown only results in the SoC downtime to occur between hits. However whether this actually exists is another question (too late to think about it), and to be honest the practical implementation of this would be next to impossible i would imagine

So then the easiest way to track this would be to only judge when Crusader Strike is on cooldown?

Although in seal of bloods case, aren't there times when JOB will do more damage than Crusader Strike?

lol yes that is what i mean. I suppose we don't have too many numbers to choose from typically. Either 3.8 or 3.6 for the most part with maybe a slight tweak depending on haste rating.

With a very slow weapon wouldn't it be sometimes possible to judge earlier and recast the seal later, but still in time for the autoattack so you actually don't lose any SoC DPS?

As for int, think how much damage is 500 mana... It's really not a lot at all. Regen is something else though, but still seems to cost too much. I guess we'll haknow exactly once the spreadsheet is updated.

Remember when you theorycraft your base mana, to include EVERY mean of mana regen you're going to use - raid buffs, party buffs, mana pots, jow, 2pt6 and anything else I forgot. Heck many fights usually include some ticks outside the FSR too and time when you're not DPSing and thus not spending any mana.

Using the spreadhseet with its pre-made T5 gear set I got almost 50k mana you can use over 10 minutes, out of which a bit over 45k gets used by the spreadsheet, leaving you with ~4300 mana to spend in those 10 minutes on exorcisms and concentrations. Looking at that it really shouldn't be hard to add mana usage to the spreadsheet at least if you assume 100% DPS time (and no out of FSR regen). Just use the extra mana on exorcisms/concentrations (and HoWs?).

What I wonder is how the SEP system (and optimal DPS rotation) changes when you add exorcism on cooldown, not to mention concentration, as if there aren't errors or bad assumptions on the spreadsheet you have quite a bit of mana to spend on those, even if not on every cooldown. My current rough math shows you can exorcism ~1/2 the time with that leftover mana in a 10 minute fight. Then again (didn't go into exact numbers here) it looks like it would only add 10-30 DPS depending on your spell damage if you cast exorcism 21 times in a 10 minute fight.

For a brief summary (at least this is my opinion on how things stand):

-Savagery: Best enchant for low end gear, +70 AP is massive.

-Mongoose: Once you start equipping T6 level gear you're going to be overloaded with AP and losing a lot of crit. The 70 AP from Savagery starts looking less and less useful as 120 agi and 2% haste @ estimated 2.4 ppm when spamming all cooldowns. bellator even mentions it might be better overall.

-Executioner: Haven't done any real tests, but I assume based on the nature of our damage (which is 35%-50% unmitigated holy damage) that it loses a lot of worth for us.

Keep in mind spreadsheet theory craft is different than practice. Most of the time I personally don't get BoW (if we're raiding with <4 paladins), many times it's too hectic to keep up JoW 24/7.

In many fights you can't rely on incoming damage and spiritual attunement.

Just mentioning that you shouldn't be prepared for the theoretically optimal situation.


What you say about mana regen >> mana pool is true mostly, but there's also some exceptions to that.

Short, pure burst fights like Shade of Akama where you barely get time for 1 mana potion mean that your mana pool is basically what caps your total possible damage in that fight.

I currently spam Consecration almost 80% of the time in that fight and it gives me a huge edge over a ret paladin that can't due to using warrior gear.


Also remember, the 530 mana you quote is just from one item (helm), now consider many paladins who opt out for full warrior gear, then we're talking 2k-3k mana loss for usually very minimal DPS increase.

And in practice, it's a DPS decrease since you can't keep up consecration spam or exorcism.

I guess I'll just leave it to the spreadsheet to figure out really *how* better the warrior gear is compared to paladin gear ignoring mana, and then how better is the extra mana on the paladin gear, and see which grants a net benefit.

Just generalizing though, 500 mana is ~33 int and increases your mana supply by ~1% in 10 minutes. 33 STR is ~20 DPS with the default "best of the best" setup which is about 1.2% increase to your total DPS. Since 1% DPS is by far better than 1% mana I'd say that at least per itemization point, STR>>INT.

I bet you'll get not very different results even in short fights. Remember in short fights, while your regen is less significant, the oom factor is less significant as well and the extra mana is spent in a less efficient way anyway, so while it's easier to get 1% increase to your mana in a short fight, the actual benefit from that 1% is also smaller.

I suppose you're right about not having wisdom most of the time (although with the 2.3 buffs to ret and prot you might just start seeing 4-pally raids more often), I doubt it would make much difference regarding how much your DPS increases when you get more mana.

Maybe my intuition is off and the spreadsheet will say otherwise, but it just doesn't seem likely.

Trust me, I don't need a spreadsheet to tell me what I know from practice. We really do need any mana we can fit in and ret gear is godlike for that.

It's not for any reason that everyone who goes retri asks "how do you keep your mana up"?


That's exactly the problem with generalizing though. Your assumptions are all based on optimum mana regen (JoW/BoW/Shadowpriest?/Spiritual Attunement and what not) I guess.

And if you're considering a shadow priest, you'll never have a shadow priest as well as be in the melee group (enc shammy and warrior for BS) and melee group > shadow priest.


Definitely. But there's a point where people are just ditching int left and right for very minimal damage stats and that's what I'm trying to point out.

Like for example Helm of Illidari Shatterer 5.7 more DPS vs 530 mana.


Lets take a real example.

5x T6 offers ~2100 mana with BoK, 9mp5 and 2 set bonus (50 mana proc).

Assume you're wearing 5x warrior plate with 0 mana and 0 regen.

Now take the Akama fight which lasts ~3-4 mins for us, which gives you only 1 chance for a mana pot and there's most definitely no JoW on each of the channelers.

I'll let you do the math of how much more damage can be done in ~3-4 mins with ~2100 more mana in consecration spam.

Also while it's horribly inefficient, an added ~150DPS from consecration is not a small number.

In the akama fight, you can use it on the non-aggroing channeller mobs for example, for X*150DPS where X is the number of channelers

This is the most extreme example, but there are many others.



End of the day I don't think the question is "would you take 1% damage or 1% mana" since that's very very general and those percents you give vary wildly depending on time of the fight, buffs, debuffs, group composition. The question is: Would you take a ~5.7 dps upgrade for ~530 mana loss (illidari shatterer vs t6)? (And similar numbers for most other warrior vs ret gear choices).

Rank 1 SoC is 20%, the same as max rank.