With changes to DS (becoming physical damage) and the 10% increase to level 83 raid boss armor, I would say CS would definitively take priority over DS in a FCFS rotation. The post you listed was last edited on the 14th and the announcement to the armor increase was on the 22nd, so I assume that isn't factored in.

That post is right. I just consider it irrelevant if you choose FCFS DMG over FCFS DPS since the difference between them is less than 0.001%. This could be changed by a .1s lag in any of these abilities.

EDIT: And, Secta is right.

Testing the changes on Live is that many more data points. Yes, it's L70, but Blizzard still gets to observe what talent specs players chase, how the various 51 point talents interact with each other, and get a better "feel" of how things are meshing together. And hey, it's fun for us to test-drive our 51 point talents. The server lag and instability I've been seeing seems to indicate a ton more players are playing WoW actively.


Ret paladins steamrolling everything in PvP diminishes the value of that testing, and causes problems if left unaddressed. (Paladins come to expect that level of damage, other classes demand to be brought up to the level of Ret paladins, etc) If the L70 changes are an over-nerf, then they can buff us again at L80 cap. (This, IMO, was probably the "best" response to the L70/L80 imbalance. Nerf at 70, buff at 80. With the amount of damage going around, players won't feel that gimped at 70, and at 80, new gear and new encounter design gives them room to buff it back up)

The parses that people have posted should tell you that everything is skewed at 70. As Avituus and other have said, they are mostly irrelevant. These are mostly incorrect because we still have int in our gear and because JoW isn't working as it's supposed to. The mana regained is really skewed which in turn skews our damage and our perception of the class. I am really bewildered by why they would release them with the excuse of "we need to see how they're doing".

As I noted in a previous post, I removed all int gear and did not use JoW, this made me go oom in 6 minutes using normal dps rotation. So IMO certain tests are still useful, provided you stage them to eliminate any factors that might influence your mana unduly.

The WWS parses don't tell us how balanced we are post-nerf, but it doesn't affect the justification for the mana regen nerf - mana wasn't a limited resource for the Ret paladin.

I personally never bothered with JoW pre-nerf because JotW covered everything I could cast, as long as I kept Judgement on cooldown. Even spamming everything with Consecrate, HoW, and Exorcism, I didn't push the limit of my mana regen. Heck, in some earlier discussions about Divine Plea and Holy, nobody cared about the spell's utility for Ret because JotW provided all we needed and then some. Based on what I've seen from the current Live Ret, now we do care about using Divine Plea (when we eventually get it), and extra mana regen will be useful (from group buffs, not saying we want it on our gear)

If it'll put some minds to ease, I ran Sunwell today as well and had no problems using a full rotation (including consecration). I have 0 int on gear (except negligible stats enchant on chest).

What we know will get worse:

-JoW will be fixed to not stack multiple times
-We won't have 2 piece T6 bonus in WotLK realistically
(-ICD/balance to JoW proc?)

What we know will get better:

-There have been blue comments indicating a change for JoW to help low mana pool classes (ret)
-Divine Plea(se)!
-7 sec Judgements with T7 bonus = 114% more mana from JotW
-Blue post saying they did not intend to say Consecration is not part of the rotation for PvE: It's "not not" intended to be used :P (= we're good to use it)

While some variables can still shift, I'd say overall it looks promising, we're more or less fine. I'm sure it still remains on some level a discussion whether our previous state (33% JotW) was fine and whether this reduction even had a point, however I don't think lingering on it will get us anywhere. Lets just call it a day with what we have right now as all in all it seems workable/fine.


You lose tons by prioritizing DS over CS not because 100% < 110%, but because of the different cooldowns (10 seconds vs 6 seconds). Delaying DS by 1 GCD (1.5 seconds) means you lose ~13% DS DPS in that cycle, delaying CS by 1 GCD means you lose 20% CS DPS that cycle. Keep in mind the differences in DPS between those two abilities is pretty significant before RV, weighing even more on those percentile losses.

As a guestimate, I doubt that if a point of inflection exists that it will be a realistic one (where DS overtakes CS), but feel free to actually do some calculations if you think it can be proven otherwise.

Judgement of Wisdom presents us with another "separate PvE/PvP knob", I think. In PvP, you can't always expect that it will be used, given a Paladin's other options, or that it will proc as often as you expect even if it is.

On the other hand, you can pretty much assume that any raid with one Pally is going to put it up.

If Blizzard feels that a 33% JOTW is giving so much mana that it starts being converted into heals and non-stop killing sprees since we don't use Consecration, then they can tune JOTW around our three core abilities (like they said they did) then pass the rest to JOW, especially since they've already acknowledged that Ret (and Enh) are currently getting too little mana from JOW.

Heya... Sorry if this isn't the place for this, and I don't know if anyone could bring this to GC's attention... but coming from GC's post here, a Ret Paladin "should be able to use those core abilities (Divine Storm, a Judgement / Seal and Crusader Strike) without going OOM."

I setup a little simulator that runs some timelines and watches mana usage and I'm rather concerned. I've setup a small site that has the data and generation tool available here - I'd greatly appreciate it if a few of you guys who know more about rotations and such could take a look and see if you agree with me about the grim outcome...

I know it's easy to say, "But we're fine with raid buffs" - when I'm in a PUG trying to be the most effective character I can be, I can't count on -any- effects outside of my own - nor should I. No other DPS has to rely on an outside class to maintain their core DPS.

Anyway, I'd greatly appreciate some other opinions on the data.

I mostly aggree with you Avitus, but not this time.
You are comparing 2 different "cycles". The 10 sec DS cycle and the 6 sec CS cycle.
In both cases you delay the other ability by 1.5 sec.


So lets assume both abilites would do the same damage first.
In the 10 sec cycle you can either delay divine storm by 1.5 sec from 10 sec. Or you can delay CS, which hits in this time 1.66 times. So you would loose 1.5 sec from 10 sec there too.
In the 6 sec cooldown, DC would hit only 0,6 times, which means in both cases you loose 1.5 sec from 6 sec too.

I think you mess up damage and dps here a little. It's not that every CS looses 1.5/6 sec, when delaying the first. It would really make NO! difference, which ability to dalay, when they were dealing the same damage.




But in fact DS is really dealing more damage on singletargets too, due to RV.

Lets assume you have 1000(only for calculating) basedamage and 30% crit.

CS = 1000* 1,1 * 0,7 + 2000* 1,1* 0,3 = 1430 average damage.
DS = 1000 * 0,7 + 2000 * 1,4 * 0,3 = 1540 average damage

So with only 3% crit, DS will deal 5,5 % more damage on a longliving singletarget, as DS scales so well with crit.

With increasing critchance, this gets even worse:
crit %/damageincrease %
0,25 5,5
0,26 5,9
0,27 6,4
0,28 6,8
0,29 7,3
0,3 7,7
0,31 8,1
0,32 8,5
0,33 9,0
0,34 9,4
0,35 9,8
0,36 10,2
0,37 10,6
0,38 10,9
0,39 11,3
0,4 11,7
0,41 12,1
0,42 12,4
0,43 12,8
0,44 13,1
0,45 13,5





There is a third issue with CS vs. DS.
We start at 0 sec.
If both are ready at the same time and you choose crusader strike, then Divinestorm straight after...
your next DS will be ready at 11,5 sec.
but your third CS will be ready at 12.0 sec.
This is almost at the same time.
If you highly priorize CS over DS you would probably choose to use CS first again, senden DS into delay again. You will end up using DS every 12 sec. Really loosing 16,6% of this abilities dps.
(This is not absolutely realistic, as judgment will often break this cycle.)

Its almost the same like choosing judgement very high over CS, which can let you end up using CS every 8 sec.



The only situation choosing CS > DS would be on multiple targets straight after pulling, or when having big manaproblems.
For Bossfights now the best would be finding the best rotation, minimizing this *ready at the same time* dilemma. I only worked this out for CS and Judgement so far, throwing in DS(or other stuff) only when those two are on cooldown, but I will have to think about that all over again.

As far as I can see, penguinicusaurus, your model leaves out mana regen from the JoW debuff. In a 5-man I guess that's not too far off realistic, but in a 5-man you can drink a runic mana pot every minute for an additional 360mp5.

This is factored in for the series tagged "JoW" - I assume a 1% max mana return at 8s internal cooldown, due to the fact that it's currently 2% at 4s now and GC said that both the effect and frequency are being reduced by 50%. Also, it's alright for me to have to burn consumables or end up autoattacking, even with absolutely no utility use at all? That's contrary to GC's original comments about us being able to maintain Judge/CS/DS indefinitely, with Replenishment + Int from TBC gear or Divine Plea to allow utility such as Hands, Art of War heals, or Consecration.

1% every 8 seconds is 25% of 2% every 4 seconds. But just nitpicking there

As for CS vs DS over a 5 minute fight they clash all of 3 times? Really the dps differance is laughable.

Correct. GC said they're both getting halved, i.e. a 75% reduction.

Just an update on the Rawr module...

I have finished adding all the changes for 3.0.3 (as well as any outstanding issues with the previous version). These changes are not in the current version (2.0.3, although 2.0.3 does have the racial fixes and DS doing physical damage) but will make it to the next version, which at this point may very well be 2.1 for WOTLK. I am starting to work now on a way to model mana usage in rawr, and having it affect your DPS should you run oom before a fight ends. No promises that this will make it in the next version, but I'll try. Also, I should be able to get HoW modeled in the next release.

Small scientific nitpick:
You write either 14% more mana from JotW or 114% mana from JotW. Both are the same thing.
114% more would mean over twice of the original amount.

I've updated my model's data with level 80 stats - the situation is even worse, with ONLY a judge-priority rotation with both BoW and JoW being sustainable...

Nêver, you can't argue around a "10 second cycle window", you have to look at a whole fight. Consider this:

WWS log where you had 8 clashes of CS vs DS (8x 1.5 sec delays = 12 sec DPS of one ability lost):

-> You would lose 2 CS casts over the period of the fight if you prioritize DS.
-> You would lose only 1 DS cast over the period of the fight if you prioritize CS.

2 CS casts > 1 DS cast.

For example, if we put it to (unrealistic) extremes: 20 GCD clashes: 20 x 1.5 = 30 sec delay on some ability over the course of the fight

Loss: 5 CS casts > 3 DS casts

It's obviously a sliding window, but it only goes further in favor of CS the more cast time you lose.

From a straight blind theory standpoint (excluding other constraints such as lucky clash avoidance and other abilities), over the course of a fight:

0-4 clashes: It doesn't matter
4-6 clashes: Prioritize CS or you lose
7 clashes: Prioritize DS (this would be the only exception)
8-infinity clashes: Prioritize CS

Hence the general rule of thumb would be to prioritize CS.

If we try to go for a limit it ends up being 5x CS casts lost vs 3x DS casts lost.

Point of inflection: Where 3x DS casts will do more damage than 5x CS casts. Calculate.



This is a dilemma as said since it's not down to logic, but mapping out a "lucky rotation", however we've had dozens of people run simulations, the ultimate answer was: Everything ends up withing +/- 2% and it's virtually impossible to fix yourself to a rigid 2 minute long (120 seconds) non repeating rotation to squeeze out that damage, since if you miss by 0.5 seconds at any time, you lose any "perceived" advantage.

Conclusion: FCFS DPS


I should watch my wording I guess, don't want to end up as misleading as some blizzard tooltips


Well, in a 5 man (which I assume is your concern), you'll want to use JoW and Judgement on priority. Looking at your tool "Priority, JoW" would have you oom in ~1250 seconds which is over 20 minutes, so I'd say it's fine.

Is this using consecration (not that I'd expect it to in a 5 man)? And does this have Divine Plea implemented?

I have the same question, on consecration/DP use being present or not in your rotation.

Honestly, I'm ready to embrace the no-consecration philosophy GC has been espousing. It just means that he expects to tune us so that we are competetive in terms of raid DPS based solely on SoB/JoW, DS, and CS alone.

With that as the goal, it leaves us a lot of free cooldowns to make decisions like whether to spend mana on FoL, Exorcism, or Consecration, in fights where our mana is coming more freely (such as fights where the raid takes significant damage), and means Blizzard should buff our core abilities as needed to make sure we are competetive even in low mana regeneration situations.

It apears they have turned back on the no consecration. Basically its consecration or heal/utility. If you use DP and JoW priority you should be able to keep a full J, DS, CS, Consecration rotation. This came up a little while ago, either here or on the general pally thread.

Now I understand what I was missing, thanks a lot for the clarification, hence the need to look at CS/DS DPS and not only pure damage...
And in the same way, it also nullifies my previous remark about mana cost of DS, since once again we have to look at mana per second, and not pure mana, which leads to have CS and DS pretty much costing the same.

Very interesting subject anyway, I had not encountered such logic previously, being for retadin prepatch or for any other class I've played.

the thing is that excluding consecration from our rotations won´t really work.
for instance, if they changed consecration in a way that makes it less attractive to use, i.e. lower spp coefficient, higher mana cost, etc... we´d still manage sneak it into our rotations at all costs if it proves to be a net dps gain, even if it would cost us all other utility in a raid situation - that´s what the ret palas had to do all the time - putting a lot of effort into even the slightest dps increase to be viable - and this is probably what they are best at.
so (at least to me) it´s the more solid approach for blizzard to plan with consecration being cast basically whenever it´s up, instead of trying to stop us from using it without breaking it for prot palas.