rldolph79

Mad,

We focus on the raid environment, because that has been the focus of this thread from day 1.

FoL, Hands, and Cleanses are essentially only PvP retribution abilities except in the most extreme circumstances, and (by design) we don't have the time or the mana to use them. It's not our job, nor do most of us want it to be or we wouldn't be ret. Frankly, there shouldn't be a single fight where you're called upon to use them if you have competant players around you.

Blizzard has, and always will, balance classes based on the best case scenario or people will easily find exploits that make them OP. PvP and 5 mans have always played 2nd fiddle, and I don't think anyone should expect that to change.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm fighting for inches. I want raid viability... That's it. Pending some further testing it's looking like we're just about there.

edit: I'm guessing most of the people who are complaining that our rotations aren't complex enough never played a lock, mage, boomkin, elemental shaman, etc. in BC...

 

Corronach

I agree to an extent that viability is important, but I think to a lesser extent playstyle also matters. Is just spamming 3 instant attacks fun gameplay? It was the extra mana opening up other choices that made the spec fun for me, and while the thread is a PVE discussion it's really hard to discount just how badly this gimps Paladins in PvP.

Regardless, if JoL stays this strong it will guarantee a raid slot for any ret. But I have a strong suspicion that ret paladins passively out healing other healers is an issue they'll have to look at eventually.

 

Gevlin

Spamming 3 instant attacks isn't fun. That's not what we're here doing either. Min/Maxing IS fun, and that's what this thread was doing since page 1, post 1. How do you use those 3 abilities, and time your larger cooldowns and trinkets to get 50 more dps out of the same gear? What kind of stats, armor, and weapons do we need to maximize our dps? What kind of theoretical and real utility are we bringing to the raid based on spec and stats? How do we manage mana, now that we know its not a 100% unlimited resource? Where can we strike a balance between DPM and DPS?

i.e. Not spamming 3 attacks mindlessly.

 

Elzam

Blizzard seems to have this gross misconception that we as Retribution Paladins want to be pressing Consecration every time it is up and all our other buttons are grey. Rather, they don't see that we have pushed it because formerly we had the mana to do so and there were no other viable alternatives. Hitting three buttons in an extremely sluggish and clunky-feeling rotation is not fun. Hunters do not volley in their single target rotations because they have better buttons to push. Mages do not arcane explosion for the same reason. Their cooldowns are all on a short enough timer that they don't sit around waiting for the next thing to pop up. It's unfair to compare Consecration to these abilities when aainst non-Undead: Consecration is the only button left to push. Concievably Blizzard could at one point have said that in those few seconds of waiting we could heal the raid, throw a hand spell on ourselves or anyone else (thus far at 70 it's been strictly myself; I'm the threat machine in Sunwell for our Warriors + Vigilance), but a Retribution Paladin's job in a raid is to DPS. We're there to provide utility while we do a job as suitably as any other "pure" class; not do half DPS and half utility, which is the BC mentality that Blizzard has stated they wish to currently avoid.

You know what was fun? Mid-Beta with 33% JotW return, spinning that GCD wheel on Naxxramas bosses almost continuously, just to hit them in the right order. For a moment, a Paladin could feel like an intense DPS class like a Rogue or perhaps even the new Arms Warrior (lots of things to hit, I have a lot of fun on my Arms Warrior in PvE at the moment).

There needs to be something to encourage Paladins to maximize their DPS during their extreme moments of downtime between ability cooldowns. Some sort of non-damage debuff that increases Holy damage taken, the single-target "Pillar" that Avitus has promoting; something to push for while most of the community attempts to find some sort of middle-ground on JotW returns that will entice developers into seeing that barely maintaining mana on a 3 button rotation is not fun in the least.

We are not straying far from the extent that Retribution in its current form possesses so little freedom for additional moves to "push" your DPS that I may be able to map Judgement, Seal, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm to my computer's remote and merely roll my fingers over them in order to DPS.

 

madmardigan83

I agree raid viability is vital (and quite honestly one of my main concerns as well). However, if we are given mana regeneration on par to give PvP or PvE hybrid viability, then the Raid PvE needs will also fall into place since they are easier to reach. Right now I feel that we are short-changing ourself by not including any other of the hybrid usages in our calculations (often times not even as "plus if I use X FoL, I'll run out of mana in Z seconds faster etc). I'm not saying we need to solely focus on it. But if the educated minds are fighting for something, shouldn't it include the rest of the Ret possiblies/playstyle?

I will also agree with the poster above me that said having the extra mana free allows for the fun factor as well. Knowing that you can toss a FoL to a raid member (or heck yourself) to keep yourself alive. It makes you more aware of the surroundings and (imo) allows you to be a better player overall. In my kalecgos example, it wasn't my job to help heal the demon tank. But if I hadn't, we would have wiped. In that case, me playing as a hybrid kept the fight alive, whereas if I had concerved my mana for the sole purpose of Min/Maxing my dps, we would have wiped. Should I save my LoH for my own mana? or should I use it on the tank that is about to die? Should I BoF the tank in Lady Vashj or should I wait for the holy pally to do it? I want that those kinds of options with my pally, and I feel other people do too. If I wanted to JUST do dmg, I would have rolled a pure dmg class a long time ago.

Thats why I think it's important to fight for the ability for us to be a hybrid... not just another pure dmg class. I mean... isn't that part of the reason why we do less dmg already? Because of our hybrid abilities? Why shouldn't we be able to use them?

 

Corronach

Excellent way to put it.
Edittangent) It's not a whole lot but the 1700 or so extra mana from a pot with an Alchemist stone will have to be weighed against other dps trinkets now.

 

rldolph79

Again, you're wanting to do the job of other people in the raid. We gave up our utility, gladly in my case, when we decided to be ret.

This is exactly what Blizzard is trying to tell us... If you want to dps, great, but you lose the ability to do jobs that were designed for other classes and/or specs. Seems reasonable enough to me... If we could do it all there would be 15 ret paladins in every raid.

That's it for me in this thread... Inane comments are making this a bloated mess. Unless someone has a novel idea or can prove or disprove a previous assumption, it's time the rest of us part-timers left this thread to the people who have been here fueling this discussion all along.

edit: A lot of people around here also really need to start using the search function. Most topics, such as how alchemy stacks up, have already been discussed in great detail, so reposting just adds to the bloat.

 

Saltycracker

I have a quick question/experiment

Relentless Assault vs. Demonslaying. Since Sheath of Light scales with attack power, does it know the difference between which kind of mob we are attacking with spells (Exor, Consecrate, Holy Wrath) when making that calculation. If demonslaying doesn't increase our spell power, would RA still be a better choice for raiding? My inkling is that Demonslaying still tops out because of the huge AP gap, but it might be worth considering.

 

Lavis Knight

How would you explain Art of war? It is deep Retribution and allows Retribution to instant flash of light. What about the HOT component on Criticals?

If they never wanted us to use these abilities as retribution why would they put those talents in the retribution tree? I see the placement of these talents as an encouragement to use more than just basic dps abilities.

 

Corronach

Someone linked a pretty interesting item on the beta forums,

Soul of the Dead - Item - World of Warcraft

At a 25% proc rate it seems like this might be a really good trinket especially against undead mobs where we can use exorcism.

 

madmardigan83

rldolph:


I will not argue with your personal playstyle, nor will I try to push a point that is moot because it purely comes down to what Blizzard wants for us as a class. And from what I've read, I have not seen them take a stance specifically on this issue.


I'm not asking to have my cake and eat it too. Nor amd I trying to "take over" anyone elses job in the raid. However, when I play as a Ret pally, I play with all of the health bars of my raid on the screen. If I see someone (especially a tank) getting low on health, I use my instant FoL on them. Often times it's on fights where there is an AOE tick dmg going on and my FoL keeps them alive long enough for them to run out or get healed by the "real" healers. Think of the Archimond fight if I didn't help do this at all? Where a death almost means certain wipe. Why would I not utilize my hybrid abilities? Any time you're learning a fight, extra healing and awareness always helps (the exception perhaps being Brutalis as you need every ounce of dps) Heck, we even have a talent for instant FoL. It's built into our tree!

We do have reduced dps because of these abilities however. And since I am taking the penalty for these abilities, why are we focusing our theories around not using them?


And some of us Glass Joes actually have been for a while. I first came here on page 22 and I've been reading it ever since. I don't feel the input of "casuals" are bloat unless they are bringing up topics that have been focused on over and over.

If I had the time (and perhaps if I find it) I will add some of my own math of how FoL, Hand of Freedom/Protection, and HL's work into these calculations. But overall, I feel we need to focus on this more actively.

 

Fqubed

If we imagine it has a 1 minute internal cooldown its works out tp 75 mp5 if you can keep it on cooldown, given how it will only proc on Judge and exorcism/HoW/HolyWrath, the "uptime" should drop a good bit until we get to sub 20%. Then it should be up almost every time the ICD is up.

Given a 8 sec between Judge, and 40% chance to crit on judges it takes 3 casts to have a 94% chance to crit. Add to that the trinkets then 25% chance to proc and you find that its perhaps unrelialbe if we cant spam a critable spell.

This Mirror of truth probably works out better, although doesnt adress mana issues.

 

Milou

Judgements have a much higher chance to crit than that, remember that when JoB crits the recoil cannot, so it artificially lowers the crit rate. A good guestimate is to add 25% from your melee swings, same goes for seal of blood.

And what's with the crit rate on hammer of wrath? I've not seen this mentioned but it just always crits. Last night in Sunwell, 73 crits, 1 miss, 2 hit (non-crit). I'm not complaining but something seems amiss.

Edit: of course sanctified wrath, silly me.

 

Valerys

Assuming you have Sanctified Wrath, HoW can reach close to 90% crit rate in raids, which may well cause all of them to crit.

 

• Juice

Look, we really don't care. This line of discussion needs to be muted significantly. Stop telling each other what's fun or how you want to RP your paladin or whatever else. If you don't have ret paladin theorycrafting DPS contributions to make to this thread, gtfo. I don't want to read anymore emo shit about how blizzard's changes don't match up with what you like.

(I'm not aiming that at Mad, his post just happens to be the one I quoted. There are lots of you who should be listening to me)

 

djkillingspree

PvE here -

Has anyone complaining about not being able to use insta-FOLs or Consecrate actually been playing with the nerfed JotW much? Or gone into raids with great gear and seen the interaction between SoB/JoB and SA play out?

Remember that as our damage increases, so will our self-damage via SoB and JoB, and thus our mana regen via SA (assume you are getting healed ). That is a scaling source of mana-regen that we do not need to gear for outside of our normal gear progression. I also think that it any realistic scenario it is going to be a large source of mana regeneration from unavoidable environmental damage.

There are some negatives though. I think that SA being a larger source of our mana regen encourages some odd decisions on the part of ret pallies (i.e. being sloppy about avoiding environmental damage in order to regen more mana). Additionally, going forward I will only use an AoW'ed FoL on myself if the alternative is death, because not only am I spending mana on the FoL but I'm also losing another hundred or so mana from SA.

But unless we have data showing that, yes, ret is clearly underpowered or that we are running out of mana, this kind of dramatic brinksmanship doesn't really make the game any more fun. I know that on Live, with nerfed SoC and JotW, I can go and slap on SoB and do DPS that outshines my gear level without running out of mana. Also remember that when they un-nerf SoB on Beta, you will also get a significant amount of mana-regen back via SA.

 

Milou

Exactly, until 3.0.3 changes things ret's current raiding dps is very good and if anything too good at lower gear levels in part because of devalued hit and haste ratings.

 

7anman

I feel that 15% mana for JotW is just a little bit to low. When 3.0 first came onto live, I felt a little more liberated in my choices for rotations, or to throw a couple of heals on the tank when a boss encounter got nasty. I do stand by the fact that 33% mana return was a little bit to much, Ret paladins should have a breaking point. But I noticed that if my judgement failed to land, whether it be resisted or missed, I suffered alot on my mana bar. JotW shouldnt be restricted so much that a couple of resists or misses will run your mana dry.

I will say that I haven't tried out Divine Plea yet, so I dont know how affective that will be at regening my mana, and ultimately higher dps.

(And Milou, awesome avatar, Tintin ftw)

 

Stardusty

Was in a BT raid tonight, and the end result was 21% melee damage, 19% Judgement of the Martyr and 21% Seal of the Martyr, 12% DS, 10% Consecration etc.

Thats just about more than half my DPS being holy, I think Divine Storm being physical, allthough flavourless, will help us balance out pieces in WotLK which may potentially be heavy on ArP. Otherwise, it will be a rather unwanted stat for us.

 

Amphi

Im not sure about you guys, but i have already started some rough gear templates for WotLK, and im sorry if im de-railing this ongoing discussion, but i would really appreciate your opionion on which one to prefer of these two librams:

[Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude] or [Libram of Radiance].

 

Fiola

Quick rough math:

106 AP contribution to DPS
Autoattack: 106/14 = 7.57
CS: 106/14 * 3.63 /6 = 4.57
DS: 106/14 * 3.3/10 = 2.50
SoB: (assume 32 PPM, 3.6AS) 4.07

Total: 18.7 DPS


115.5 CS damage:
115.5/6 = 19.25 DPS

Total: 19.25 DPS


If you include AC, at 20% DR,
106 AP - 15.8 DPS
+115.5 CS - 15.4 DPS

Overall, the AP libram scales better when you include exorcism/HoW/Consecrate. But they're still pretty close, I think.

Edit: Oh, and then toss in haste from gear, and various other raid buffs (haste, especially). AP should pull ahead in a raid buffed situation, which is about what I'd expect.

Edit x2: I can't believe I forgot Judgement. That puts the AP libram squarely ahead. Thanks for the reminder, Starfox.

 

Starfox

3.6 speed 2h
[Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude]
7.57 dps whitehits 106 / 14 * 1.03 * 1.2
4.58 CS dps 106 / 14 * 3.3 *1.1 / 6
2.49 DS dps 106 / 14 * 3.3 / 10
2.12 SoB dps 106 / 14 * 0.28 * 1.03 * 1.2 (HOLY) (3% ret aura, 20% melee haste raidbuffs)
5.17 SoB Judgement dps (106/14*3.6*.45 + 106*.2 + 106*.3*.25) / 8 (HOLY)
----
24.21 dps pre mitigation
26.63 with +10% ap raidbuff

[Libram of Radiance]
19.5 dps pre mitigation 105*1.1/6

That's just plain stupid, the PvP idol provides more sustained dps, and the PvE drop increses your burst

Hello.
Light the fuse.
For all my homies.
Do not run, we are your friends.

 

• Insom

Hey all

Thought id share my experiences last night from SW.

Ive just started raiding as ret, so im not as experienced as everyone else here, but i can share some WWS from last night.

Wow Web Stats

This is the mana gained from my Brut kill

And KJ

I never went oom, or even close too going oom once during either fights. I was trying to do rotations, keeping a lower priority on DS, and cons was up the whole time. At the moment, i cant see mana being an issue in a 25 man raiding enviroment (havn't tried it in a 10 man yet) and i guess only time will tell about level 80.

 

Elzam

A few new GC posts popped up this evening while I was raiding. The relevant ones to my musing are below:

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> 15% JOTW leaves Rets With Zero Utility
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> 15% JOTW leaves Rets With Zero Utility

When taken into context, it may appear that there is hope for Consecration after all; even if this involves a bit of backpedaling for 'ol GC.

If the comments are made deliberately, it may be able to be inferred that there are possibly JoW tweaks on the way that would allow a constant stream of Consecration at 80 as long as Divine Plea is used each cooldown.

It does shed a bit more light on it seems what they want Retribution to be able to do; from what I understand they might be looking at us, if Judging Wisdom, to be able to sustain a Judge-DS-CS-Cons cycle or a Judge-DS-CS-Heal cycle, but not a questionably busy Judge-DS-CS-Cons-Heal-Everything Else rotation.

 

Nefarium

Isn't this due to the buggyness of JoW? I do know I've gotten double procs when testing on dummies.