Aramul

As with all spells, Righteous Vengeance will lose approximately 4.7% of it's DPS due to level based resistances. This is the same resists you'll see applying to Consecration, Exorcism and Holy Wrath.

 

• frmorrison

JoB can hit yourself pretty hard, since at 80 you can get around 6,000 crits, hitting yourself for 2k every 7-8 seconds.

RV is affected by anything that increases Holy Damage, like CoS. On KJ post 25%, I had some 1200 tic (25% extra holy damage + other buffs), while the normal tic is for 600. It is also can be partially resisted (never seen a full resist, it works like Corruption).

 

Saladin

Which is a big number yes, but don't forget to juxtapose that with our 15-20k health pools. I've seen quite a lot of stam-packed DPS plate pieces coming out of Naxx as well--for most scenarios, I would anticipate JoB to amount to a Chain Heal eater more so than an actual threat to survivability. However, there are inevitably going to be fights where survival is paramount, and Blood/Martyring simply will not be an option (lol enfeeble).

On survivability-intensive fights, are rets falling back to the ultra-nerfed SoComm or graduating to Corruption/Vengeance? I remember a while back reading about someone who tried going the SoC/V route fulltime by picking up Seals of the Pure, but the ultimate conclusion was that it was at best equal to or worse than Blood. It's getting harder and harder to justify spending a point on a talent as sitational as SoComm.

 

Valerys

I wish he'd also explain exactly what types of damage reduction it's supposed to bypass.

Incidentally, here is our SPLAT WWS from last night: Wow Web Stats

More specifically, here is my mana regen for Brutallus: Wow Web Stats

As said I was able to spam everything except Holy Wrath (just didn't find any GCDs for it, not for lack of mana), and finished the fight at full mana bar. Being 4th of damage done is not too shabby either (before 3.0.3 I was #1).

 

• Arikah

Well given the survivability fights in sunwell (which is to say, most/all of them) I have not even really considered falling back on socomm to play it safe. Between jol procs, VE/totem healing and the ability to aow flash myself in a pinch my healthpool really doesn't drop into dangerous levels - if it does, chances are something went wrong and I'm dead anyways, recoil or not. If you are really that concerned about raid damage you need better healers, or you could just say screw it and slap on seal of light until you feel safe :s Only reason I take command in my pve build is because at 70, I pve 2 nights a week, and it allows me to go around and casually pvp for the rest of the week.

On mana and damage issues, once I have the wws from tonight i'll post it here... but things still seem ok for us. 1 piece of int gear and 3 stat enchants should pretty much = DPlea, and my mana was just fine on brut tonight. Recount reported me as #1 at something like 3200 dps, and I ended the fight at 66% mana, without using pots/runes/loh. Mana is most definitely tighter than last week, but if you have been ret from before 2.4 you should be able to manage it. An interesting side effect of the jow nerf though, is all 4 of our hunters and both enh shaman were complaining about mana the entire night...

 

Affection

I agree. Personally, I really haven't gotten a grasp on what technically is bypassed.

Armor? PWS?Ice Berrier? Mana Shield?
The armor part is what I'm mostly interested in. Most plate + Druid + Shield wearers seemed to take alot more damage than usual when Wings up. Not exactly 20% more, but more on the grounds of 40% more or so.


Sorry if I missed a discussion on the subject previously. I might have just forgot.

 

Caggy

Well on farm fights you have an idea of how well you and your raid performs, but if for say less known situations (or enfeeble which means your next autoattack can kill you), you would probably want a seal that wouldn't drop you for anything. Granted blood's recoil, even from a judge, isn't that high, and can't be equated to the warlock that taps down to near death.

 

Trakor

My judgements with AW and trinket were criting for almost 10k, at lvl 70. In a way, its pretty good way to get mana back

Funny thing about JoB is that on those holy vunerable mobs in sunwell, I got a 35k crit JoB (without AW) and i didnt die. 400 was the actual dmg dealt and the rest was overkill.

The highest RV i had was ticking for just under 1400, so it can definetely be usefull in pvp as well.

Yeah, if SoC stays the way it is now, I will not be spending a talent point on it. Right now, even in pvp, I dont miss SoC at all. It doesnt matter how much dmg it does to me if i get to kill the other guy before he kills me. JoL + instant FoL is enough to keep me up till the other drops.

For pve, in fights like Lothaeb, I'll just have to use either SoV or SoR untill I can get heals, then switch to SoB when the time is right.

 

Prinsesa

For what it's worth, it definitely goes through Mana Shield (and from this I suspect all "absorb" mechanics).

One of the best uses of Sanctified Wrath is to use it to one-shot the Arcane Anomaly trash near Curator, who have very few hitpoints but a 100% undispellable Mana Shield.

It was actually our first indication that SancWrath was broken when I pulled two Anomaly packs just last week and our Ret Paladins cried out "IT'S NOT WORKING!"

As with a lot of mechanics, Judgement of Righteousness is going to be our go-to spell for testing everything except armor, since the lack of a damage range can confirm assumptions very quickly. For everything else, there's the 1-2 damage starter weapons.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

• Avitus

I've not had much time recently so I've only briefly gone over the last few pages.

I do however have some WWS results for this weeks Sunwell. Last WWS I posted did not have the nerf to JoW (2% -> 1% and not stacking) yet and my conclusion was: Damage fine, Mana fine.

This week after the JoW nerf (and possibly our last Sunwell run):

Brutallus (3.3k DPS): Wow Web Stats
Kil'jeaden (2.7k DPS): Wow Web Stats

Damage wise in PvE things are still excellent. I did run some battlegrounds and I can definitely say they've done a good job in reducing our crazy burst in PvP while maintaining PvE.

Mana wise, I was fine on most fights, but on Brut "all out" I had to stop casting consecration for a bit to recover. Keep in mind I have 0 int on gear (4008 mana unbuffed due to +stats enchant on chest) so this is as close as it will get to a level 80 example.

I did however have 2x T6 bonus and I did cast 3 Holy Wrath's as I wanted to see how this would go, however still I'd say mana is not perfect (if you add 1600 mana used over 1 min 30 due to Holy Wrath, it still doesn't amount to the mana I would have needed to keep consecrating with 0 damage taken in a fight).

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this:

(Though I would prefer they just raise JotW a bit instead as it's more usable, like when grinding mobs that die fast).

 

Samurai.One

Just wondering if anyone could tell me the current hit cap for ret paladins. I know it used to be 9% but for some reason cannot find out what it is at the moment.

 

Saladin

While preferable, I'm not sure how necessary or justified that would be. Replenishment is a buff that keeps ticking even if the mob is dead, so it's not like you couldn't get a prolonged benefit on grinding from a replenishment boost. It would just be more akin to drinking the entire grinding session as opposed to popping a mini-mana-pot on each kill.

I'm actually somewhat surprised at the mana issues enhancement shamans are having, since they've go Intellect stacked on their gear (which would give them a larger benefit from Replenishment). If they're really having that much trouble, that could shoot our "downgrade to mail" option in the foot.

 

• Avitus

??

That's exactly what I'm saying. A boost to JotW (whether through the initial mana return or a personal fix to Replenishment is irrelevant) would be preferred to a boost to JoW, if their goal is to give us a mana boost.

I don't care if they boost the initial return of JotW or adjust how Replenishment works for classes with a small mana pool, the point is that it wouldn't require hitting the mobs for extended periods of time to net a benefit (JoW). When you're grinding and 2 shot mobs, your mana goes down very fast otherwise.

 

• frmorrison

The 45 point talent gives instant Lighting Bolts, and without the Elemental talents the spell isn't very efficient. Also they are doing something nearly every GCD, so all those mana costs add up.

The int on their gear doesn't help as even in Sunwell gear it is around 250 int compared to a Sunwell Ret with 150 Int. That is only 1500 more mana and Enhance's active mana regen is Mana Shield/Spring and a 2 minute cooldown ability.


You are right that is helps show Ret Pallies that wearing Hunter gear isn't going to solve much with mana issues.


I expect a slight bonus to JotW at 80, but nothing until then.

 

Prinsesa

The hit cap for Ret Paladins is 9%, since we lost Precision. This works out to 142 hit rating at level 70 and 296 hit rating at level 80.

There have been reports of "ghost hit" allowing Paladins to never miss even while undercapped, but since we do not know exactly what is causing this at the moment, you should still aim for the actual cap unless you are sure that the ghost hit is applying to you.

Exorcism, Holy Wrath and Consecration are still under the spell hit table, but since they represent a significantly smaller portion of our DPS, it is not worth gearing to the spell hit cap for them.

Assuming you are melee hit capped, these 3 spells should have a 5.74% miss rate at level 70 (2.74% assuming Improved Faerie Fire/Misery debuff) or a 5.71% miss rate at level 80 (2.71% assuming IFF/Misery)

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Saladin

You are completely right, I misread the original post. Damn paladins and our acronyms being within one letter difference of each other (SoR, ShoR & JoW, JotW). Sorry.

 

• frmorrison

A few weeks ago there was a lot of discussion and by looking at many examples it showed that the Ghost Hit gives 3% hit to any Paladin that had Precision learned pre-3.0. Also there were a few examples of people with 1 point in Precision only getting 1% hit.

Also I noticed that items that proc direct damage (like the SSO neck and various trinkets) are unaffected by this talent. The talent said "Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons and spells by 3%" so it makes some sense.

 

Affection

Speaking of 2 piece T6
I'm really going to miss the 2 piece bonus. I think its going to be a pretty nasty nick in our mana return at 80. Tho Divine Plea was a Miracle on beta when it was implemented. Leveling wise, and farming wise, its a perfect ability to have. I personally don't see us having much of a mana issue past 71, except for PvP. Before they took beta down, mana became a rocky road similar to how it was pre 3.0 where I used two piece T6 for PvP purposes. Speaking of course for PvP and not PvE.

I think their idea of reducing the cooldown on Judgements from our tier and pvp gear will increase our mana return. It naturally would, but GCD clashes really won't match what T6 2 piece sets us up with, with it being more of a passive mana return rather than on use. ( I'll leave it at that, you could go into all the numbers on which is better, but I don't want to get back into that atm)

As like all Paladins, I personally wouldn't mind seeing a small boost to JotW, Who knows what will happen, I'll take my seat and wait for it and try not to get my hopes up.



Back to the Intellect subject. Adding INT, or going with mail to come up with our mana solution, or thinking of it as a solution becomes more of a band-aid more than a reliance. But if the item yields better stats for dps and has INT on it, there is without a doubt no hesitation on using the item.

 

Killmour

Anyone having problems with judgment randomly failing? It just says in the combat log that it fails, does no damage, doesn't refresh anything. Happens on low level mobs, raid mobs, pvp, everything.

 

aylen86

This seems to be a bug in the latest build occuring when spamming our judgement key. It should be reported.
Look at this: Cromfel.Battlefield.fi Forums-viewtopic-Judgement Bug?

 

Inu

Salutations readers of the [Paladin] Retribution DPS Theorycraft thread.

It has become apparent to me an anomaly exists amongst our ranks as Paladins.

The selectivity of armaments existing in the world of Azeroth and the way our class is designed, allowing us to wear armaments otherwise not generally intended for us to wear, have become more favorably valued than our assumed attire of "Plate" armaments.

I understand their are few of these superior armaments.

I am in a quandary over the idea that we perhaps should wear armaments not fortified and merely chain-linked, giving us the visual of a non-Paladin presence. As well as giving cause for conflicted armament distributions among guild factions.

This induced a state of cerebration for myself to interpret a carefully constructed solution to this situation.

I propose a talent of sorts that enhances our abilities and skills through the use of plated armaments.

I am conscious of the fact that many of our valued readers here have suggested a similar solution. I merely want to quantitate the reason why this issue isn't more fervently pressed forward as a hard pressing issue.

Are there any cerebrated junctions that i may have come to miss in previous postings as to why this is?

 

Bruencairn

God I wish I was allowed to troll you...
Anyways, most of us feel that its sort of lame when Blizzard just copy and pastes class mechanics from one class to another. We much prefer it when they solve a balance issue by adding something unique to the class instead of just copying and pasting over a talent that other classes have.

 

• frmorrison

DK and Warriors both have talents that reward you for using Plate (more AP) and also Hunters and Shaman have talents that reward them for using Mail (get AP from the int).

All physical damage classes have a talent that gives 1% crit per point, so there is precedent to giving many classes the same talent.

However, Ret does have 15% extra strength talent, so that may be the "reward" for using Plate talent (it used to be 10%).

 

Cayse

The change from 10% to 15% is supposed to be what motivates us more to using plate over typically leather. We have a talent that's the same intent, I personally like that it's done in a different way than warriors and DKs have theirs done. (plus ours tends to be slightly better, on the pieces I've checked) I don't think it's enough in a lot of cases, some non-plate pieces are just going to still be better, but that's probably fine as long as we're not shooting for leather in most of our slots.

 

Aurarius

What Glyphs are you running Valerys? I've been trying to figure out what would be the best set-up of the limited Glyphs that are currently in the game, and for when we unlock our 3rd slot.

If mana is going to be such a rare commodity, [Glyph of Holy Wrath] would likely be #1 choice. But if you don't run with it... well you see the logic here.

I guess I never thought about it this much, but there should be a break-point somewhere where our AP/Crit and such becomes big enough that the mana regen from spiritual attunement from backfires (on judgements) will be large enough to outweigh the mana spent out in the Judge/DS/CS rotation, allowing for more liberal use of consecrate and other abilities since our mana pool will be staying at a set amount (more or less) and our health will be making bigger drops and thusly larger mana gains from spiritual attunement.

Thoughts?