Argavaine

With 2k ap, 1200 max damage and your numbers it would be 780 damage -> 1200*0,3 + 2000*0,3*0,7. So the scaling should be 190% for 1500 damage oO -> not realistic-> bug

 

Pyralissa

I keep seeing this type of thinking and I have to ask, what makes Holy Paladins so special now? Shaman and Druids got significant improvements on their single target throughput. What is everyone still so hung up on the first paladin in a raid being holy when other classes fulfill the same role (Healing) and a Retribution Paladin brings more of the benefits that a sheathbot Paladin would.

 

Selenia

Fair enough on it being buggy (though I still maintain that you'll probably be able to get that high judgements in WotLK)

Still though, your example of 2k AP and 1200 max damage leads to
(1200*0.3) + (2000*0.3*0.7) = 780
780 x 1.4498 = 1130.844
1130.844 x 2 (stunned target) = 2261.688
2261.688 x2 (art of war) = 4523.376
4523.376 x 2.15 (crit) = 9725.2584 which is still a -really- hefty crit.

The thing about it is that due to that many percentage based multipliers and doubling-effects, it only takes a tiny increase in the base judgement size to create an enormous leap in the final damage. For example, increasing the initial judgement's damage by 20 increases the end-result by roughly 250. Increasing the initial judgement by 220 increases the end-hit by 2743.02.

Pop all trinkets and have really good gear already (Mrs. 21k had full t6/sunwell) and the final hit will be quite enormous.


(or is my brain being screwy? It's getting late after all)

 

Aramul

Assuming Judgements stay off the GCD, our damage rotations in WotLK will look something like one of these, depending on final damage numbers.

CS Priority
0s-CS, 1.5s-DS, 6s-CS, 12s-REPEAT
2 Crusader Strikes, 1 Divine Storm per 12 seconds. DS loses 2 seconds for every 12.

DS Priority
0s-DS, 1.5s-CS, 7.5s-CS, 10s-DS, 13.5s-CS, 20s-REPEAT
3 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms per 20 seconds. CS loses 2 seconds for every 20.

First come, first serve - rotates between the two.
0s-CS, 1.5s-DS, 6s-CS, 11.5s-DS, 13s-CS, 19s-CS, 21.5s-DS, 25s-CS, 31s-REPEAT
0s-DS, 1.5s-CS, 7.5s-CS, 10s-DS, 13.5s-CS, 19.5s-CS, 21s-DS, 25.5s-CS, 31s-REPEAT
5 Crusader Strikes, 3 Divine Storms per 31 seconds. CS and DS both lose 1 second for every 31.

All of these rotations have ample time to add in lower DPS abilities such as Exorcism, Consecration, reseal, or Hand of X. 31s rotation looks the "best" before knowing the relative damage of abilities, and can nicely fit a ~15-16s Exorcism in the niches. DS Priority looks like the best to macro.

One-Button Spam mode: DS Priority
/cast Judgement of Wisdom
/castsequence reset=10 Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Seal of the Martyr, Exorcism

Refreshes SotM every 20 seconds and Exorcisms every 20 seconds. Casts JoW every time it's up.

 

Balth

Relatively new to these forums, I'm an arms warrior by trade who recently started playing ret and building up my paladin, but I've fallen in love with the playstyle and have become obsessed with the new talents/abilities here. So please, pardon any ignorance, but I had an idea that I'd been looking at for seal-twisting in WotLK that may be worth some testing for those lucky enough to be in beta.

Basically outside of proc'ing wisdom, R1 Cons is worthless (was ~1% of my dmg on the last Brut kill we had) and we've all seen how DS could be the answer to a secondary attack for ret cycles. I currently use a FCFS method of priority (CS, Judge, Exor, cons) and will likely stick with that style since I personally feel that attack sequence macro's can get too tricky for myself when mana becomes an issue.

So here's my suggestion.

With Seal of Vengeance/Corruption now adding a DoT effect on EACH swing, would it be worth twisting that in?

It's a holy DoT with 18 sec duration, so theoretically, you could:

Throw up SoV on the run in (added benefit of a threat cushion)
Throw up SotM/judge wis (or whatever)
Reseal martyr and continue the attack cycle of choice
In GCD downtime, twist in SoV to keep the 5stack going.

Thoughts?

I don't THINK that it'd be worth taking 5/5 Seals of the Pure over talents lower in Ret, since the tree is so bloated now past 30 points, but perhaps you could sub it in as follows?

World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Paladin -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

We don't know how Judgements of the Wise will behave, so if it ends up being too random to be useful, perhaps 15% dmg on that DoT wouldn't be a bad trade?

As it stands now, there's a fair amount of downtime between GCD's (esp coming from playing a 33/28 war) so I'm thinking of things to add in to keep it interesting, and I'd gladly trade our subpar cons. damage for a decent (thinking lacerate-esque) DoT.

Rotation: assuming a 5stack of SoV is ticking and 8 sec Judgements.
CS(0s), DS(1.5), Judge(3), open*(4.5), CS(6), Reseal SoV (7.5), melee to refresh, Reseal SotM(9-11 depending on swing timer), repeat!
note: can judge again before continuing with 8sec judgements, but at 12 sec your CS will be up, and in order to take full benefit of AoW, I opted to hold judgement until after CS was used.
* Exorcism, else R1 Cons

Not the MOST efficient, as it is hard to model based on swing speed without a baseline (assuming 3.5ish?) If AoW remains as it is currently, we'll want to prioritize CS before Judging, clearly, but working in DS (mana issues notwithstanding) to fill gaps still leaves time to exorcise and seal twist in a roughed out 12 sec cycle. The only issue that I can see is the DoT lasts for 18 secs, so the cycle doesn't maximize that. But since we'd be re-sealing at LEAST every 16 sec's or so to guarantee the stack stays up, its not TOO much of a sacrifice to cut that to 12 secs if it means a steady rotation can be attained.


Edit: Rotation clarified.

 

Sapp

Righteousness and Vengeance in wotlk are scaling with AP too, there's a lot of broken scaling going on right now.

Melee seal judgements are probably about where they should be, if a bit on the high side.

Caster seals and judgements are wildly out of whack in melee gear right now and need to be re-evaluated significantly (by which I mean nerfed).

Art of war is imba in its current state.

We can all agree on that stuff, right?

There's so many bugs right now, along with implicit holes (like the mana return not splitting mana to anyone but yourself, and the lack of a judgement effect on justice/light/wisdom seals now) that it's hard to really theorycraft and expect much value to come out of it, until further development is done.

On Ret paladins:
<Fyr> its like they went from sniffing powdered sugar for 3 years, got real cocaine for 2 weeks, and are pissed that they're going back to the sugar again

 

Selenia

Not really to be honest. On it's own there is nothing more wrong with Art of War than there is something wrong with SoComm doing double on stunned/incapacitated.

The problem is that they all stack on top of each other. Easiest solution is to make Art of War not be consumed if you're judging SoComm on a stunned target. Or make them somehow not stack in another way.

 

Orcdestroyer

Could work. However unless they give raids more debuff slots (Although it's likely they will [assuming it hasn't already been added] with the debuff heavy Death Knight) using one for SoV could be harmful at best. Also the swing speed would be much lower than 3.5 with the new WF. Finally at the 35% mark I doubt you will be able to keep the stacks up with HoW coming into the rotation.

 

Antiock

I expect them to change it to 100% chance to crit, rather than doing double damage on an ability that will already have 50+% chance to crit.

 

Selenia

Also a very good solution. I personally prefer leaving it and making it unable to stack on top of SoComm's doubler but that's just me

[edit]Your solution does remove the added non-OP benefit of current AoW in raids where you can't stun the mob you're fighting though.

 

Forthright

I'd personally prefer they rework Seal of Command entirely.

The seal has always been screwy, the x2 on a stunned target has always been worthless on bosses, and the base judgement has always been too low.

If Seal of Command is meant to be the premier Retribution seal, the best option in raiding and in PvP, it needs an overhaul. 40% chance on hit to proc rather than PPM, so it scales with haste. Judgement hits for a better base amount and doesn't deal x2 on a stunned target.

If SoC is meant to just be a PvP tool, and Blizz wants us twisting SotM/SoV for the holy DoT in raids, I would probably argue for the exact same changes... unless they intend for the ridiculously high AW/ stunned target/ Art of War/ crit/ vengeance/ crusade/ trinketed numbers to be our new tool to finish off healers.

The Art of War really isn't that strong in terms of controllable burst... it'd be far better off as a 1 minute cooldown to deal double damage on your next judgement.

Anyone have information from Beta to determine whether the new Judgement system now sucks up a GCD?

 

bellator

Not sure if you've seen this, but a ring from a level 77-79 dungeon



I hope we see more AP+Str items, as its a great way to get more bang for the book in terms of itemization

 

Gevlin

I just saw that ring this morning. It works out to 196 AP and about 1% crit unbuffed at level 80. That's a lot of AP on a ring, obviously at the cost of other stats, but there are no complaints. I think its the first ring (item maybe) in the game with both AP and Str, instead of the standard AP/Agi combo. Hopefully we will see more itemization like this now that there are 3 classes that will benefit from it.

Edit: 4 classes will benefit.

 

Aeverius

http://elitistjerks.com/f30/t25480-w...65/#post821866

Also, Shaman no longer get 2:1 STR:AP scaling, so it's pretty much a Pal/War/DK item in terms of ideal itemization.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Mlkmn

With SoV working on every attack, you could just use a 1.5 sec 1h-sword to put 5 stacks up at the beginning of the fight, and then switch to your two-hander. You could do it while the tank builds agro, since you don't have to worry about large white crits.

That gives the tank 8-10 seconds to build agro before you start to pour it on.

 

• frmorrison

Certainly subject to change, but the DK's top raid dps tree is Blood, which has an attack that eats all diseases on the target. So they will be using a few debuffs, but then remove them.

 

• frmorrison

Quick Strike Ring back in MC had Str/AP, and there was a green quest reward 2H that had both stats. Certainly rare before Wrath.

 

partime

Hello having just reroll i am currently level a paladin to be retribution at 70 having looked throught the first page of this thread i still have some questions.

First off its about intellect and if it worth having on my gear as a main stat or if it is just an added bonus stat on the item?

Secondly gem choices, i understand strenght gems are better then pure ap one but are they better then crit one before say 30% crit chance etc.

And lastly what stats in the start should i go after for example getting crit till i have 30% crit to keep vengeance up.

 

CaptBooyah

Check the spreadsheet or rawr on the first page.

Strength is always better than crit (and any other stat, value wise), you'll naturally gain more crit value as you put on more dps gear. That said, the orange 5 str/5 crit gems are pretty decent for getting socket bonuses working.

With vengeance's generous 30 sec buff time, it'll be very hard to see it go down when you're attacking.

 

◊ Rodimus Prime

Ok, after spending a fair bit of time in the Beta looking at numbers and conditions to generate huge numbers I wanted to throw a few things out there.

Seal of Command & Judgment of Command

First, the PvE ramifications of the Current Damage scaling involving Judgment of Command put our DPS more in line with what Fury Warriors/MS Warriors/Death Knights/Enhance Shammies are able to push out in terms of sustained Damage output. I'm not going to lie to you, it is very much possible to pull out an 18k Judgment of Command crit, but it requires pretty much a perfect storm of conditions to do so - Need to 1. Get a Critical Strike Judgment 2. On a Stunned Target 3. With Art of War up and 4. Have Wings going also.

The first time I heard about this, I tried to duplicate it through normal gameplay; in pretty good PvE Gear, my Judgments of Command were hitting/critting for between 1k and 7k on non-stunned targets. I had about one of these overpowered procs per half an hour. Comparing the speed at which I was farming mobs compared to the above mentioned Melee Direct Damage classes, I was moving along at a very comparable clip without having to stop for mana using Judgment of Wisdom & Seal of Command.

Now I havent gotten into much Dungeon Content or Raiding content yet, however, as I said earlier, I think the PvE coefficients for this mechanic will scale well and help keep our DPS on par with other melee classes as we progress further into the Beta.

The big area of concen is PvP obviously, where having the ability to unleash an 18k volley in about a second is not only overpowered, it's silly. There has been some spitballing on how to fix this mechanic w/o killing PvE DPS by doing so. The most popular suggestion is to remove the Double Damage component on a Stunned target, although, long term, I dont know how this will work out.

Further, without a healbot, I'm using this seal to level with, and am finding that it can proc on multiple mobs from one Divine Storm. Kind of nice, but again, RNG for the win, right?

Salvation

Because of general changes to the aggro and aggro generation mechanics, I don't really envision Hand of Salvation being too useful, unless you have a raid member who is inept at controlling their threat, or a set of conditions causing threat not to reset; specifically a Warlock that fails at Soulshattering, a Mage that fails at invising, etc. Pairing with a slightly lesser geared Fury Warrior as my 'tank' and being reasonable with my attacks, I was unable to pull aggro off of him. The one mob we've been using to test is the Flesh Golem Southeast of Wintergarde Keep, as it seems to have enough HP currently not to instantly explode under the both of our attacks.

I should have more testing after next Wednesday when my schedule opens up considerably.

Gearing

This is probably self evident if people are reading MMO Champion at all, but the gear reset is nowhere near as steep as it was in Burning Crusade. While I'm only lvl 73 currently, none of the quest gear I've seen has been significantly better than Kara level gear, with the exception of [Chain of the Tolling Bell] from a Borean Tundra Quest, which, IMO, can be better than [Choker of Endless Nightmares] situationally.

I will post more as I see it, or think of it.

EDIT: My toon's name in Beta is the same as in Live, holler at me if you want to chat, or test. Will be occupied studying for the Bar Exam until Tuesday & Wednesday (when I *take* the Bar Exam), but hit me up after that.

 

Nicolai

So, is the general consensus that for PVE DPS seal twisting between SoM and SoV (for Alliance) is going to be the way to go on bosses? Get that fast stack up, then switch to Martyr while switching to SoV every 18 seconds... with seals costing 6% of base mana, that might get expensive.

Intriguing changes though. They've got me interested in WotLK again, over WAR.

 

Gevlin

Just a quick thought... Can we come to a consensus on what to call Seals moving forward. Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance....lets call them both SoV. And Seal of Blood and Seal of Martyr....lets call them both SoB. I see confusion coming up very quickly when horde start talking about opening with SoC, then moving to SoB, but if SoC scales with haste it becomes better that SoB when dealing with the combination of spell damage and the SoC dots.

 

Cathmor

I don't mean to rain on your collective parade guys, but should the discussion of WotLK talents/abilities/gear & the beta in general not go in the Paladin WotLK discussion thread? The Ret DPS Theorycraft thread is long enough as is, let's try to stick to current events and live talents/abilities.

I am the light that brings the dawn.
http://e4ae.blogspot.com/
-Cathmor of Malfurion
formerly Baelor of Runetotem

 

◊ Rodimus Prime

I'm actually moving forward with the assumption that This Spec - WoW Europe WotLK Calculator will be the ideal end-game raiding spec... at least until I get there to do testing.

At Lvl 73, I am at 3.4~ Swing Speed with Torch of the Damned in still mostly Black Temple/Sunwell gear. I can get down to a 3.3 speed by using some of the Proc on Demand Trinkets with base haste on them from early Borean Tundra quests, so if you want to wrap your model around that speed or faster (as most items we're seeing that are 2h weapons are really Fury Warrior/Titan Grip type weapons unfortunately) it might give us a more definite answer.

True enough, will move future posts to that thread.

 

flyingtoastr

As I said last page, nothing new has happened to ret or will be happening until 3.0. There isn't much to discuss in regards to current theorycraft, everything is pretty much nailed down.

Divine Favor still costs mana.