While leveling and in a 5 man with a normal healer it is likely better to use SoC.


However at 80, it is mostly a PvP one, but that is fine.

My guild is looking at adding a ret pally to our raiding roster. We already have a very crowded melee roster to incorporate into our raids (enh shaman, 2-3 rogues, 2-3 DPS warriors) plus a hunter group.

We really like the utility a ret pally offers and we want to bring one, but we're not sure we'd be able to find a spot for him in a melee group. Would having a prot warrior x2, prot pally, resto shaman, ret pally group generate significantly more threat through the combination of Ret Aura and Sanctity Aura that it would be worth a DPS hit for the ret pally to deny him UR and Imp BS?

If it helps, we have a holy pally with a decent amount of BT/MH ret gear, here is an Armory link which has him in his ret gear.

Sanctity Aura does assist in generating more threat for your Prot Pally, but he should be able to TPS sufficiently without it. It would make more sense to dump a Rogue from the melee group in order to allow the Ret Paladin in. The Paladin's ability to damage greatly increases with Windfury/additional melee buffs. Additionally, Improved Sanctity Aura is a considerable buff to that melee group. A Rogue can use poisons to make up for the Windfury loss. You could also likely place a Rogue in your Hunter group if they're receiving a Feral Druid's buff. There's several posts/pages in this thread that can cite evidence of this.

Very good point on the might thing. There will be no more Salv so the only other option after Kings and Wisdom would be Light. Light on non tanks is situational at best.
Looking at the detail about new spells, also on MMO champion, it has lvl 79 spell, Rank 5 Blessing of Might, as giving 350 attack power. Add on the talent for 50% increase makes it a 525 Attack power boost. The glyph then makes 10% of that, into 52 spell damage. which is not too shabby. I retract my earlier whine, though it still does lean too much to PvP stuff.

In terms of PvP, Paladins are crying out for some sort of interrupts vs casters. We got one now on, Exorcism. Wait Exorcism? aarrgg.

Blessing of light has been removed anyway. They simply buffed the power of FoL and HL accordingly.

This is intriguing - a spell interrupt for us? I'd be interested if this allowed Exorcism to be used on non-undead/demons just for interrupt (and no damage). Being melee without spell interrupt has always been painful, I'm sure our tanking brothers feel similar.

Quick point regarding the Paladin WotLK thread. I don't think we really need it. I don't really want to share a thread with tanks and healers and issues to do with them cluttering up Ret information. It's not like this thread is flooded with BC stuff anyway so happy to keep things here.

As said in the other thread, the "how" is actually not that hard, there's at least half a dozen ways to get the different Seals to where they're supposed to be. The main problem still remains with the general approach they're having with making all seals, scale with all stats, for all tasks. They're trying to accomplish too much, while sacrificing nothing (like having each Seal optimized for a niche and be crap for other roles as it has been so far).

Probably we're just missing another pass through our abilities where they'll adjust how Seals work, but the current complete lack of direction is definitely disturbing.


It's also discouraging when you look at the number of Seals we have now and compare how they work. In 2005 we found ourselves with 3 very distinctive damage Seals:

-SoR: Adds holy damage on each attack. Base Seal. Good with a 1h, crap otherwise. Later scaled with spelldamage.
-SoC: Chance to proc an extra attack, 100% holy damage (later 70%). Talented Seal. Best with a 2h, scales with weapondamage.
-SotC: "Makes you hit faster".

Sure, some of this was flawed in practice (and had no use like SotC), especially the different judgement effects (they were not all "does damage" though), but it doesn't change the fact that what we had at least felt like a very distinctive Seal system.

The approach or the "basic idea of how different Seals should be" was good. Each had their own niche, their own scaling and felt different when used.



Skip to WotLK beta, you now have a bunch of Seals which all pretty much act and feel the same, gain from the same stats more or less, supposedly work for all roles, work with 2h as well as sword and board, work in all gear sets.

It happened in gradual steps, the addition of two extra Seals didn't help it.

-SoR: Adds holy damage on each attack. Good with 1h and 2h. Gains from AP and Spelldamage.
-SoB: Adds holy damage on each attack. Good with 1h and 2h. Gains from AP and Spelldamage.

Those two are identical in feel and function.

Then looking at the rest, while not identical, they're much closer to eachother than if you compare the old models from 2005, not even speaking of Judgements which are all the same now:

-SoC: Still as it was on paper, but with ppm increased and damage decreased to 70%, it's closer and closer in feel to what SoB is and SoR on the beta. Gains from AP and Spelldamage.
-SoV: Adds holy damage dot, once fully stacked feels very much like SoR/SoB with extra holy damage each attack. Gains from AP and Spelldamage. Curretnly good with 1h and 2h.


What am I saying here? Maybe that it's necessary to rework Seals in general, even cut out one or make the higher level ones replace the older ones in function (i.e. SoR) to maybe get back to a somewhat distinctive feel when using different Seals.
Not every Seal has to scale for both 1h and 2h. Also there's no harm in completely reworking when Seals become available when leveling (if that's the main concern). I see no harm in giving SoB at level 30. If you level from 1 in WotLK it's going to be a different leveling experience anyway.

Anything really except this wishy washy do everything with everything approach they have now.


Unfortunately it seems that's where most ret posters decided to go. I'm sure once there's actually any real numbers to be brought to the table (you know, things that don't seem like they'll be changed any second) you'll have some detailed discussions coming back here.

However feel free to start/continue any discussions here, I'm sure most rets are following both threads.

Hey all. I just got back to WoW after 3 months absence and have been reading up on the WotLK ret changes. I notice that on MMO-Champion there are some new seals, Seal of Corruption and Seal of the Martyr, both available at level 66 and seemingly identical to SoV and SoB. Does anyone know if those are replacements for the current seals (presumably available to both sides), or what are they?

Corruption is the Horde equivalent of Seal of Vengeance.
Martyr is the Alliance equivalent of Seal of Blood.

They are exactly the same, and are meant to be mirror images of each other. Both factions will now have both Seals.

Ive been a long time reader and very rarely a poster here, but a couple things you said made me think Avitus.

Particularly this. Frankly i agree with what you are saying here, i would just like to make a certain distinction. Frankly the fact that we scale with stats makes us for the most part unique. Most other classes use Base Damage sets for deriving their damage done. However since Paladins (Ret in especially) works in a dynamic sense such that we thrive on % based abilities. This is obviously shown with the previous Art of War talent and AW. The fact that when we are gearing up, our dps is not in a proportional relationship makes us look very bad in the beginning being out dps'ed by almost everyone, however once the gear comes your DPS climbs so fast because its all based on your percentages.

I realize most of you already know this but personally i believe this is one of the most enjoyable parts of playing my Paladin.

On the other hand, the fact that blizzard is trying to make Seals so they are more "general purpose" i strongly disagree with. Its counter productive at best if its not teaching people who are new to the class bad habits (using the wrong seals at the wrong times).

I think its pretty obvious that i disagree with blizzards policy to make all the classes "viable", but from a business stand point its probably the best thing they can do. Im not sure where this is going to leave us paladins in the future? Will we be able to tank or heal as Ret? Is that not the ultimate in viability from Blizzard? The time old question " Where are we actually headed? " beckons to be answered, in my mind at least.

I personally do not have an answer to that Ranger, however i do see a problem coming up. If say the new WF is dropped there is 18%(talented) another 3% from us, 15% from DK (if it stacks with WF) i see melee approaching the diminishing return on haste VERY quickly with no effort needed. Because they all deal in % and not static Haste numbers blizzard cant just change the haste:% ratio like they did before, 18% is 18% no matter how its spun. Frankly my felspine is going to be swinging so fast i dont need haste pots anymore, or mana pots for that matter (SoB)

So I just really started lookin at this huge thread a couple days ago and found it amazing. You guys might have answered this already but through my fast reading and skimming of the 200 pages I might have missed it. I would like to know which shoulders are better for me to obtain.

Pauldrons of berserking (Pauldrons of Berserking - Thottbot: World of Warcraft)

Shoulderpads of Vehemence (Shoulderpads of Vehemence - Thottbot: World of Warcraft)

Demontooth Shoulderpads (Demontooth Shoulderpads - Thottbot: World of Warcraft)

I love the sockets in both the berserking and demontooth but don't know whether I should stack all haste or have a good amount of haste and some armor pen. Another thing I was thinking was maybe just keeping the vehemence shoulders for when I replace my dreadnaughtboots of the legion with lightbringer boots (this will make up for the loss of hit). Plz give me your ideas.

In maxed out "mostly plate" gear set (which is pretty much all SW plate + CVoS leather helm from Illidan + Mail gloves from KJ) the difference between the three is incredibly minimal.

Leather ones are ~5DPS upgrade over the plate ones, mail ones only ~1.5 DPS.

It remains a personal choice whether you want to take the armor hit for that, for me I didn't think it's worth it (and they look like crap).


For all other gear questions, get Rawr: Rawr - Home

I am not in Beta, but I have read from numerous posters that have tested it, that it stacks with everything else.

Now i suppose the question is left, does DK and WF stack together?

If this is the case, now please check my math here because ive been known to mess it up before :-P

rating from % from item Haste Rating
talents (talents)
3.5 / ( (1+(0/100)) * (1+(36/100)) * (1+((250/100)/15.7)) ) seems to me to be the average Hasted Felspine at the beginning of wratch with 1 WF, 1 DK,1 Swift Retribution + passive haste rating from gear (approx. 250)

Bringing you a grand total or 2.22 Felspine swing time.

If we were to take this one step further and say "hey what about BL and haste pot?" we can do that as well...

3.5 / ( (1+(0/100)) * (1+(36/100)) * (1+((250/100)/15.7)) * (1+(40/100)) * (1+((400/100)/15.7))
would be a lovely little 1.263755. Now i dont know about you guys but frankly that makes me alittle warm inside in regards to the Mace2Face theory.

(someone please check my math, its early i could be way off)

Im wondering the same thing about my professions come wrath.

I stayed with blacksmithing so thats convenient that its going to be awesome.
As for what to use as the second choice, im not sure. i personally have a 70 gatherer for me so a miner would be a waste really.

Alchemy comes to mind frankly. Mixology + new haste potions should turn out to be pretty good

Engineering also has the tradition of throwing down some awesome helms very early on, potentially use that as a basis for leveling/early 80 raiding?

the rest im kind of "blah" on based on the fact that they are not going to bring enough to the table.
Jewelcrafting is interesting though. With some of the new gems JC are going to become VERY high in demand. But thats also a downside. unless you have exorbitant amount of cash floating around you will not be the first with X recipe thus handing over your sales to the next guy

I'm probably going to be sticking with the current combo of LW/Alchemy I have now.

The new 100AP/50SP drum is decent even if we get the drum debuff, and the BoP leg patch will be useful independent of other gear and progression level. Even the early BoP leatherworking armor (does this exist) will be useful in a PvE environment.

I'm really excited about the alchemy buffs, and as a part-time healer, the alchemist stones are forever going to be useful, even with the potion sickness. I expect the new stones to be buffed accordingly.

Mixology doesn't work with potions anymore. Only elixirs/flasks.

Not sure what you mean with jewelcrafting, the epic "self only" jewelcrafting gems are what it's about.



I didn't know about the BoP leg armor, great find, I'll add that to the previous post.

Regarding Drums, as soon as you have more than one person with leatherworking in the party, they instantly become worthless, so I'm really not too sure about that.


I hope they make new alchemist's stones, but as it stands the "40% more" equip bonus has become relatively weak considering the overall use of potions has been severely reduced (10 min fight, 40% more mana from 1 potion is not that great. Not sure if they'll even make new stones with this new direction potion use is taking).

Flask of endless rage is 180ap base, so if it's a 50% increase through mixology that's 90ap. For comparison's sake that's 10ap more than 2xassault on rings (ignoring the haste enchant on rings for now) but only while your flask is active of course.

As for the hyperspeed accelerators, according to Blizzcast 4 an engineering enchant such as rocket boots would replace your normal boot enchant, I'd lean towards it being the same for the glove augmentation as well (could be completely wrong though).

You can add "money" to Alchemy, if nothing else for the new transmute cheap primal to rare primal transmute.


Also, until the new alchemy trinkets are known, it is hard to balance that with other professions. In TBC, the attack power trinket was "meh" for Ret, but perhaps the new one will be better.

Avitus, thankyou for such an excellent post. It's something that i have pondered recently but without access to the Beta i've not been able to formulate any opinion on.

Right now I have Jewelcrafting/Enchanting. JC is something I'd find really hard to let go of. I'm not so worried about Enchanting. Stats on rings are "ok" but not blow you away stuff. If they let enchanters also be able to enchant necklaces and belts, then it might become more appealing. Then again, that make make it the new leatherworking in terms of power. The thing I like about Enchanting is the ability to Diss your old gear. Voids are never a problem for me. Is that enough to miss out on Smithing for? Probably not.

It might be a good idea to level Smithing now, before the prices for mats become astronomical. Much to Ponder and I can't decide. At least JC is safe enough and as one of my guild's more regularly used JCs my guild might help somewhat with regards to gathering recipes. Maybe.