I don't see them changing, and if I die mid fight to something, anything then I'm in for a load of crap. I've update my profile. As you can see Seal of Blood is my staple, that doesn't do my hp the world of good either. I'm not going to complain too much though, in full dps gear as the armoury currently shows (yes yes I know the enchant on the axe sucks) i really do have low HP, it makes me squirm.

So you, alongside Blizz, still think we should wear mail/leather rather than plate? I personally am pretty tired of having to spend dkp in 2 set of gears (i pass on leather/mail till our hunters, ferals, rogues and shammies have what they need) and as a result, always be trying to catch up with them in terms of gear (ie, best in slots). I don't think is fair, to them or to us (im pretty sure they dont want warriors, paladins and DKs going after their gear before them, when they dont have the option for something else). But then again, why do I have to keep setling for less optimised gear? I do now coz its best for the guild. But im still geting gear which isnt as good for myself at first.

EDIT: links to mail + leather sets
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...aman_melee.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ax10_rogue.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...ruid_feral.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...x10_hunter.jpg

Don't see any gear that has stats split between both agi/crit and str/ap with hit and experise as well on those sets either...

eh? all of them have both agi and crit. It doesnt have str/ap. The point is that they need to split the stats. In BC, from T5 content onwards, I've found leather/mail to be superior to plate in terms of dps because they get more stats distribution. Is Divine Str, now with a little boost, really going to justify all the crit/hit/haste/expertise/arp we are going to miss out on?

EDIT: Yes, their gear doesnt have all that YET. Like you said earlier, this is the 1st set of gear on the 1st 10 man instance. But what's gonna happen later on, as you are going after the Lich King? Because the way itemisation works, the more of a stat you have, the more it costs on the item budget. Because they have split stats and we dont, they will get more "bang for your buck", with end game gear showing the most difference.

I don't see any gear like that, nor have I ever. Most of the gear you listed has one extra stat or on-equip bonus, with the exception of the hunter/shaman gear which has two, one of which is int. Int would be a bad thing unless we got an int->ap bonus like shaman are getting.

Currently I have no idea which of these latest sets would theoretically be best for paladins at lvl 80, assuming for the sake of comparison paladins could wear them all.

At level 70 some items such as my gloves are marginally best in slot, but the difference between them and the hard khorium battlefists is accentuated because the first has no hit, whereas the later does. It also has two of the right colour socket.

Let's compare the Ret DPS set with these then.

Compared to the Enhancement Shamans the ret set has
+146 Stamina
+244 Attack Power accounting for BoK and DS.
+61 Critical Strike Rating
-44 Hit Rating
-72 Expertise Rating
+212 Haste Rating

From a critical strike standpoint we have 1.33% more crit from rating but the agility is 5.22% crit. Of course the critical strike rating crit applies to both melee and spell crit chances, so the difference between the two from raw total crit is about 2.56%.

And some intellect which accounts for a whopping zero DPS.

So you're going to try and say that 1.4% hit and 3% crit are worth more than 244 AP and 6.5% haste? Are you daft? Our set is perfectly optimized for SoB usage; high AP and Haste with a large stamina buffer to prevent possible self-gibs.

Nah, I'm comparing how the sets would be on a pally, given that his point was how this "lesser gear" is better for us than our tier set and how we'll be "stuck wearing leather and mail for another expansion" (which naturally isn't the case).

Update on HoW: It is instant, but still only triggers a 0.5s GCD. Buff in every regard.

Well, I did say thats not the case YET. This is onlt entry lvl set. The point is that, as gear lvl goes up, because our item budgets is spent on less stats, they will cost more (as each stat gets higher and higher). To fix this problem, I suggested we should split the stats. Unless Blizz is changing how itemisation budget works, eventually, leather should become best in slot again.

I know it might not be a problem at first, but now is the time to give feedback and get things right. Right now, they are willing to listen and change things. I just rather fix a potential problem now then leave it for later when it's already an issue.

DKs for example get extra AP from armor. Our ret tree is lacking some useful talents. If SoB is going to be the dps seal we are going to use, then we only need 61 points (lvl 70 toon) to be fully optmised for lvl 80 raids.

Here's a link for all talents a pve ret pally would need to get, if SoB was the dps seal of choice.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Paladin -> Talent Calculator

Is it affecting the swing timer in any way?

Don't triple post. Use the edit button.

If you're a massive crit-whore you want split stats so that you can fit in the extra crit from Agility. However that crit is nigh worthless considering just how strong strength is as a stat now. A single point of Strength is worth ~2.53 attack power and ~.759 spell power. 1 point of agility (same budget) is worth ~.0192% crit. That's it. The Attack Power on those items gets no modifiers from Kings or DS. Armor Penetration is crap now that >= 50% of our damage is armor piercing. Things have changed.

And they haven't done a single polish pass on the pally class. Wait until the next push when we get our updated trees. Then you can complain about Death Knights and how their trees are changing twice a day.

Racial changes for blood elf:

If that goes to live, blood elf retridins just got a pretty massive mana regen benefit over Alliance (especially with no prior mana tapping required). We lose the ranged pull against manabar mobs, but well...

It's tecnically comparable to other DPS-friendly racials such as Expertise (for Humans , and Dwarves get it now too) and +hit (for Draenei).

Well, i think that of all the racials the Draenei one is the less desiderable at the moment since capping hit as retribution is (was?) fairly easy due to plate itemized looking at Fury Warriors (which instead require a lot of hit).

How is the DPS on beta with the most recent build's change to judgments? There have been some posts here or there about the changes to the values coming down, but I haven't seen any anecdotal accounts of effectiveness in DPS role with the current build.

Also, and this could be a big can of worms, where *should* Ret dps be at relative to other classes going into WoTLK? Back in the EQ days, there was a quasi-official system of wanting each class to be x% of a Warrior, so it was pretty clear where people should fall out relative to each other.

The blue text tea leaves seem to be indicating that Ret DPS (for everyone, geared and the average joe) relative to the curve is coming up some, but the bigger question is where should it live and is it there in Beta?

The answer is simple now: equal.

Here's the Premo/VM Naxx25 WWS:
Raid History

At first glance, Retribution (Supyo and Trajer) is fairly below the curve.
Keep in mind their Rogue is exploiting the Poisons bug. Why he exploited a bugged damage spec for testing purposes baffles me. Warlock damage looks too high.
If you just ignore the Rogue in all the fights, melee classes in general seem to be incredibly far behind the Ranged DPS. Retribution's damage is about in the middle when compared to the other melee classes.
Is this just a case of melee not scaling as quickly early on as casters, and can we hope the differences level off as gear improves?

Another concern is most of the fights are between 2-4 minutes. Obviously, as it stands longer fights aren't going to be necessarily forgiving for Retribution. From a balancing perspective, it's harder to gauge class-relative DPS on shorter fights, especially when a lot of the fights in Naxxramas aren't straightforward tank-and-spank.

Necross, I believe most of the caster damage is "bugged" as well.

Apparently the Glyph of Blessing of Might is adding far too much spell power, either 100% of BoM's AP (550), or 100% of the target's AP, which seriously skews the numbers.

It's nice, but I'm not too fussed. <400 ish mana more or less won't make it or break it regardless if they choose to mana fix us.


You can itemize around 1% less hit and gain the full benefit. It's a fairly strong racial, especially considering it's a party aura. I use different gear when I have our draenei warrior in my party.

According to this the GCD is increased to 1.5 secs:

That post was made July 17th. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, they've made further (and some undocumented) changes. i.e. not resetting one's swing timer.

EDIT: I see they've updated that post. But I do recall those specific changes being posted quite some time ago.

The paladin was holding back on mana rather a lot. Based on average damage, given enough mana to sustain a full set of cooldowns plus Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath the pally is capable of quite a lot more even before you throw in Seal of Vengeance.

Yeah, makes sense. I even read somewhere on a feedback thread that a paladin used wisdom as their main seal to dps in Naxx!

Things are at a pretty sorry pass if mana is going to be the limiting factor for dps. There's nothing more frustrating than having to hold back due to fuel. I experienced it in my early ret days but currently on live I'm used to a bugged JoW, t6 bonus and copious raid damage on several Sunwell encounters allowing me to be as extravagant as I want on most bossfights without fear of going oom.

Anyway, it's been said a thousand times by as many people. Everything now hinges on what happens with the JoTW mechanic. Fingers crossed that the devs lose their apparent myopia that allows shaman to enjoy shamanistic rage for the best part of two years with no mechanic approaching equivalent power (or scaling) for paladins ever seeing the light of day.

Not sure what to think of this...

I like the possibility of changes for Kings and T1/2 talents across the various tress,

I don't like what they doing about our mana regen...
Seems like JotW will be staying in its current state to remain on par with the rest of the classes' group regen talents (which sucks, as it has no personal benefit for us)... and they are pushing us towards relying on Divine Plea... on a 5 min cooldown...

basically telling us, "we are not bringing the old JotW back, so stop asking for it"

three things disturb me from this post,

1. I understand your mana was dependent on this ability. We'll just have to buff that in other ways as well. 2. That is one of the main reasons why a group would want to take a Ret pally over another dps class. 3. Having too many talents that just lower mana costs feel like a band-aid, so we'd rather not overdo that route. Instead we'd just like to make sure you have enough mana.

1. What other ways?

2. There are a lot of mana batteries out there now, hence this doesn't really differentiate us much from the other DPS classes, and no one will want to take a ret pally that needs to drink after every pull, and runs OOM halfway through every boss fight.

3. By 'Enough Mana' they better not Mean a Larger Mana Pool... for as it's been said, without good regen, a larger mana pool just delays the inevitable.