I am rather interested in some maths on the value of ret paladins assuming windfury slots are taken, or assuming that the opportunity cost for taking a ret paladin is one melee ending up outside of the windfury group.
We tipically run with 1 enh shaman, 1 or 2 dps warriors, and 2 or 3 rogues and 2 feral druids. We almost always have the enh shaman with the melees, but the resto shaman is almost always with a shadowpriest and some casters, expecially on fights that require a lot of chain healing. We have been trying to recruit extra shamans with no luck.
Is it worth it to bring a ret paladin over an extra ranged DPS class assuming he won't get windfury? Is it worth it to switch a ret paladin into a group instead of a rogue and leave a group without battleshout/unleashed rage? It is obvious that a paladin gets more from windfury than a rogue, but does a paladin get more from ap than a rogue does? UR + BS is nearly ~700 AP or so.
It seems like at least for me the limiting factor is that melees require a hell of a lot more support than say an extra warlock, and the amount of support you can bring is limited wihout twisting your entire raid make up.
No matter where a ret pally is he will still be providing the same utility and support. He will always be CSing, always have the 3% more crit, always have the 2% more damage aura regardless of whether he is in the melee group or not. All you will be doing by putting him in a caster/tank group is gimping his personal DPS. Yuo have to decide whether the 122 Mp5, 2.2% crit and extra blessing (with gimp DPS) is worth the spot of another warlock (who most likely brings nothing other than an extra soulstone).
Unless your Rogues seriously outgear your Ret pally he will gain more raw AP from UR than the rogues. Classes that use 2 handed weapons typically have more Attack Power than duel wielders (for various reasons, such as the much lower hit cap), and since UR is a percentage increase the more you have the more you get. The math for figuring out who gets more actual DPS is a little complicated, but I'll do it later if you still need it (I'm running a tad bit late for work).
Every calculation so far indicate that instead rogue its always more raid DPS to put the retribution paladin in the melee group. All my ingame tests have shown 50-150% more damage from that 1 WF slot when its utilized for Retribution than rogue. Something we use is Rogue + Rogue + Warrior + Shaman + Retribution in our current raids. For me, and in our guild with our setup, it would be plain stupid to not put me in the melee group. Its not like the raid dps is magically better of quality somehow when the numbers go down.
How often could a retadin get away with using haste pots instead of mana pots to keep his mana up?
Only way I can think is when BoW, JoW, windfury and a shadowpriest is present... or perhaps spiritual attunement provides enough mana return to not worry about the shadowpriest? Maybe just on short fights under 5mins?
In 25 man raids when you have JoW on the mob, BoW, and a decent amount of aoe damage coming in that's enough mana coming back to not need super mana potions. I chug haste potions like its going out of style (guild bank funds them) and I never seems to have mana problems on any fight. In 10 mans I usually need to take a mana pot over a haste potion because raid buffs are the majority of your mana regen and in 10 mans it's much less likely to have BoW/JoW.
As for the windfurry discussion, I honestly wouldn't even DPS as ret without a windfurry totem present, I would most likely respec holy or bring in another dps class. I know that sounds extreme, but that's just how much windfurry adds to our dps. Thankfully 1 of our rogues is pve multilate right now so we stick him in the hunter group, hunter, hunter, feral, resto sham, rogue and he can do double poisions and gets a a ton of synergy out of this group. Normal meele group is rogue, rogue, enhance shaman, ret pally, ms war.
Every calculation so far indicate that instead rogue its always more raid DPS to put the retribution paladin in the melee group. All my ingame tests have shown 50-150% more damage from that 1 WF slot when its utilized for Retribution than rogue. Something we use is Rogue + Rogue + Warrior + Shaman + Retribution in our current raids. For me, and in our guild with our setup, it would be plain stupid to not put me in the melee group. Its not like the raid dps is magically better of quality somehow when the numbers go down.
In our guild's case, one of our main tanks is a prot pally.
So for me to be in his group (hyjal especially), he can put out infinite threat and do a considerable amount of AoE damage.
Maybe my dps will look shitty, but the boss and trash will die faster.
My guild runs feral/melee heavy and recently we had the following two groups in a 25 man raid:
Group 1:
Enhancement Shaman (well geared)
Feral Druid
Ret Pally
Rogue (combat, highest geared in guild)
MS Warrior
Group 2:
Enhancement Shaman (alt with decent gear)
Feral Druid
Rogue (combat)
Rogue (combat)
Survival Hunter
There was a bit of discussion and no real consensus over the best way to set up these two groups in terms of maximum raid dps. Would it be better to swap the group 1 feral with a group 2 rogue and give group 2 the agility totem for example? Should we have swapped the Ret Pally with a group 2 rogue and used windfury for both groups? What would be the best setup and totem use given these 10 raid members?
In our guild's case, one of our main tanks is a prot pally.
So for me to be in his group (hyjal especially), he can put out infinite threat and do a considerable amount of AoE damage.
Maybe my dps will look shitty, but the boss and trash will die faster.
Why keep you in hes group at boss tho if it wont benefit anyone really?
Why keep you in hes group at boss tho if it wont benefit anyone really?
No clue; i was pissed that with all of our shaman, i couldn't have windfury
I still managed 900 dps, though!
Right now the officers are still pissed that they lost their best healer in exchange for my moderate dps.
I'm still trying to convince them it's better raid dps, but too many variables have been changing for me to be able to prove that fact.
My guild runs feral/melee heavy and recently we had the following two groups in a 25 man raid:
Group 1:
Enhancement Shaman (well geared)
Feral Druid
Ret Pally
Rogue (combat, highest geared in guild)
MS Warrior
Group 2:
Enhancement Shaman (alt with decent gear)
Feral Druid
Rogue (combat)
Rogue (combat)
Survival Hunter
There was a bit of discussion and no real consensus over the best way to set up these two groups in terms of maximum raid dps. Would it be better to swap the group 1 feral with a group 2 rogue and give group 2 the agility totem for example? Should we have swapped the Ret Pally with a group 2 rogue and used windfury for both groups? What would be the best setup and totem use given these 10 raid members?
If it were me, just gut feeling, throw both ferals in g2 and put one of the rogues from g2 in g1, use windfury in g1 and agility in g2.
Went as ret on monday for some Teron Gorefiend atttempts. I was pretty pleased with the results and my highest dps for the night was 1384 (roguex2, feral druid, enh shaman, myself). However, I did find that after the first bloodlust, combined with AW, I was riding a fine line with threat. I had to stop attacking or Crusader Striking more than I wanted. When I hear people cycling lusts in their melee group, I wonder what tricks they use for their tank to still keep hate. I assume windfury in the tank group or chain MDs are obvious answers, but if there's anything else that I'm missing, please let me know.
That experience almost makes me want to enchant my next cloak with subtlety...
Went as ret on monday for some Teron Gorefiend atttempts. I was pretty pleased with the results and my highest dps for the night was 1384 (roguex2, feral druid, enh shaman, myself). However, I did find that after the first bloodlust, combined with AW, I was riding a fine line with threat. I had to stop attacking or Crusader Striking more than I wanted. When I hear people cycling lusts in their melee group, I wonder what tricks they use for their tank to still keep hate. I assume windfury in the tank group or chain MDs are obvious answers, but if there's anything else that I'm missing, please let me know.
That experience almost makes me want to enchant my next cloak with subtlety...
When was the last time you updated omen? The older version will not take into account our passive 30% threat reduction. If you are running on the newest omen and you're getting threat capped at 1384 DPS then your tank is probably doing something wrong and I would suggest that you point him to the direction of some of the threads on EJ about tank TPS.
I had omen updated for the fight. Another indication that I was riding the threat line too fine was when teron turned around and smashed my face during 1 attempt.
I had omen updated for the fight. Another indication that I was riding the threat line too fine was when teron turned around and smashed my face during 1 attempt.
Bummer. Asside from giving your tank windfurry and having hunters MD him, the only other things I can think of is having a shaman lust him on engage, make sure he has prom, earth shield as healing aggro from these account to him, lotp with the extra 5% crit will help too. It sounds like the main thing is his TPS cycles are off, and no amount of raid support is going to fix that.
I am rather interested in some maths on the value of ret paladins assuming windfury slots are taken, or assuming that the opportunity cost for taking a ret paladin is one melee ending up outside of the windfury group.
We tipically run with 1 enh shaman, 1 or 2 dps warriors, and 2 or 3 rogues and 2 feral druids. We almost always have the enh shaman with the melees, but the resto shaman is almost always with a shadowpriest and some casters, expecially on fights that require a lot of chain healing. We have been trying to recruit extra shamans with no luck.
Is it worth it to bring a ret paladin over an extra ranged DPS class assuming he won't get windfury? Is it worth it to switch a ret paladin into a group instead of a rogue and leave a group without battleshout/unleashed rage? It is obvious that a paladin gets more from windfury than a rogue, but does a paladin get more from ap than a rogue does? UR + BS is nearly ~700 AP or so.
It seems like at least for me the limiting factor is that melees require a hell of a lot more support than say an extra warlock, and the amount of support you can bring is limited wihout twisting your entire raid make up.
***I asked this very same question in the shaman forums a month or so ago... this is the math someone did for me regarding it. I don't believe these include 2.3 changes, so I'm not sure if it would different at all anymore. If this math doesn't make sense, please let me know, and we can fix it so it's more on target and is useful.***
If we assume that swapping in a Retribution Paladin means swapping out a Rogue, we see the following changes.
The Rogue loses and the Paladin Gains the following buffs:
Battle Shout
Leader of the Pack
Windfury
Strength of the Earth Totem
Unleashed Rage
The Party gains Imp Sanctity Aura.
To summarize, the Rogue loses 510 + 10% of normal AP (assuming 710 total), 5% crit, and 20% MH White Damage, which the Paladin gains. The other four members of the party gain 2% damage.
With a 3.8 speed weapon, a Retribution Paladin will swing 15.8 times a minute. Windfury effectively increases this to 19 times. Seal of Command will proc approximately 8 times during this time.
710 AP will add 78 DPS from the Paladin's MH swings and Windfury Procs, 35.8 DPS from Crusader Strike, and 28 DPS from Seal of Command. Alternatively, it will add 34.5 DPS from Seal of Blood. 5% crit will increase the total of these numbers (using Seal of Command over Blood) to 148 DPS.
In addition, the Paladin gains a 26% (Windfury and Crit bonus) increase to their previous white damage, and a 5% increase in previous Crusader Strike, Seal of Command and Judgement of Command damage.
A Sword Rogue maintaining Slice and Dice with a 2.6/1.4 combination will be attacking with speed 2/1.08. In one average minute's time, they will swing their main hand 34 times (including Sword Spec procs) and their off hand 55.6 times, and Sinister Strike as many as 18 times. Windfury will proc 6 times.
710 AP will add 87 DPS from the rogue's MH swings and Windfury procs, 38 DPS from the OH Swings, and 37 DPS from Sinister Strike procs. The total, factoring in the 5% crit, is 170 DPS.
In additional, the Rogue gains a 26% increase to their previous MH white damage only, and a 5% increase in previous OH and Sinister Strike Damage.
So, we have the following equation.
26% * Paladin White + 5% * (Crusader + SoC + JoC) + 148 + 2% * 4 Person Party = 26% * Rogue MH White + 5% (Rogue OH White + Sinister Strike) + 170
If someone could contribute the stats of an equally geared Sword Rogue and a Retribution Paladin, we could see which is almost factually better. The following, however, is pure assumption.
Assumptions:
The Paladin's DPS is split 50/50 between White and Yellow. [AKA: PW = PY]
The Rogue's DPS is split 50/25/25 between MH, OH and Specials
The Rogue's DPS is 1000 ungrouped.
The Party of 4's DPS is 3750 (another Rogue, a Druid, a Warrior and Shaman).
So, a Paladin in 2.3 can have 65.8% a Rogue's ungrouped DPS while outside the group themselves and be even with a Rogue for being put in the DPS group.
Bummer. Asside from giving your tank windfurry and having hunters MD him, the only other things I can think of is having a shaman lust him on engage, make sure he has prom, earth shield as healing aggro from these account to him, lotp with the extra 5% crit will help too. It sounds like the main thing is his TPS cycles are off, and no amount of raid support is going to fix that.
And yea, go for the sub enchant to cloak.
Due to how threat modifiers work, Subtlety won't be a gigantic difference in TPS if you're already "riding the line", as it were.
Assuming Salvation and Fanaticism, threat for a Paladin would be:
0.7 * 0.7 = 0.49 threat per dmg
Or 51% threat reduction, and with Subtlety to cloak:
Yea I agree and understand how threat reduction works, but the thing is if he's already threat capped on tank and spank fights, it would be logical to use the threat reduction enchant would it not ? Even as minimal as it is. Also if your tank doesn't have 2% threat to gloves, I recommend he gets that aswell. Those two things should help your situation. Agreeably minimally but it helps!
Yea I agree and understand how threat reduction works, but the thing is if he's already threat capped on tank and spank fights, it would be logical to use the threat reduction enchant would it not ? Even as minimal as it is. Also if your tank doesn't have 2% threat to gloves, I recommend he gets that aswell. Those two things should help your situation.
Oh, no doubt... I wasn't knocking the enchant, but just illustrating how it wasn't a magical cure for anything. :P
Due to how threat modifiers work, Subtlety won't be a gigantic difference in TPS if you're already "riding the line", as it were.
Assuming Salvation and Fanaticism, threat for a Paladin would be:
0.7 * 0.7 = 0.49 threat per dmg
Or 51% threat reduction, and with Subtlety to cloak:
0.98 * 0.7 * 0.7 = 0.4802 threat per dmg
Rounding off to 52% threat reduction.
In terms of damage done per point of threat:
No Threat Reduction: 100%
Fanatacism (30%): 143% (1 / 70%)
Fanatacism + Salv: 204%
Fanatacism + Salv + Subtlety: 208%
Put another way, Subtlety allows you to do more 2~% more damage without pulling aggro (assuming you're riding your tank's max threat) That makes it a lot better than something like +12 agi (~0.5% crit, which isn't quite 0.5% more damage).
In our guild's case, one of our main tanks is a prot pally.
Back in my tanking days, I always said my ideal group would be:
Protection Paladin
Retribution Paladin
DPS Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Warlock (Blood Pact) or Restoration Druid (Tree of Life Aura) depending on the fight. Could sub in another melee DPS on most encounters, really.
Running with a "melee DPS" group like that would produce maximum threat for the tank, and wouldn't significantly hurt DPS output for the group except in situations where the Warrior would want to use Commanding Shout over Battle Shout.
One trinket that I have yet to see on the Bellador spread sheet is [Prism of Inner Calm] from Vashj. I was able to obtain it and it use it when ever I find I am threat capped. It especially pays off when you get the insane crit sprees flowing. With it, I was able to just attack constantly without pulling on Voidreaver with out having to throw any concern to the 3 tanks threat. When I looked at Omen, I was way below all the tanks even when delivering the windfury bombs.
Even Cromfel would use it as I seen in some of his videos, he HAS to swap to SoW because he is at the threat cap. I would even go as far to argue that it is one of the top dps trinket for paladins even though it doesn't have any melee friendly stats on it.
Even Cromfel would use it as I seen in some of his videos, he HAS to swap to SoW because he is at the threat cap. I would even go as far to argue that it is one of the top dps trinket for paladins even though it doesn't have any melee friendly stats on it.
I'm almost positive, correct me if I'm wrong Cromfel but those videos are before 2.3 and our threat reduction buff. I dont think that he would need to go to SoW now.
It's one of the better trinkets if you're threat capped of course, doesn't matter what damage you're going to get out of another trinket if you're having to slow down your DPS.
With that said, has threat over-all been an issue for most people since the changes ? I have 0 issues whatsoever with pushing myself to the max, admittedly, our tank does some amazing TPS, but I'm curious as to how other paladins are finding it.
At worst I get some red flashing as I touch 90% tank thread, if I trinket blow early in hopes of getting a third round of trinket in right at the end of the fight. I've had exactly 0 issues with actually pulling threat except on like random shit in hyjal trash if I attack something that is only being held by the prot pally's 600sp Consecrates.
I've had zero threat issues except on Morogrim when I don't get graved for a long period of time. I have to hold back on bosses with a hateful strike a little bit as well. Letting the tank top 4k threat before I start in seems to be sufficient in most cases, pre-patch I was at about the same comfort level with 8k (a few seconds later).
***I asked this very same question in the shaman forums a month or so ago... this is the math someone did for me regarding it. I don't believe these include 2.3 changes, so I'm not sure if it would different at all anymore. If this math doesn't make sense, please let me know, and we can fix it so it's more on target and is useful.***
If we assume that swapping in a Retribution Paladin means swapping out a Rogue, we see the following changes.
The Rogue loses and the Paladin Gains the following buffs:
Battle Shout
Leader of the Pack
Windfury
Strength of the Earth Totem
Unleashed Rage
The Party gains Imp Sanctity Aura.
To summarize, the Rogue loses 510 + 10% of normal AP (assuming 710 total), 5% crit, and 20% MH White Damage, which the Paladin gains. The other four members of the party gain 2% damage.
With a 3.8 speed weapon, a Retribution Paladin will swing 15.8 times a minute. Windfury effectively increases this to 19 times. Seal of Command will proc approximately 8 times during this time.
710 AP will add 78 DPS from the Paladin's MH swings and Windfury Procs, 35.8 DPS from Crusader Strike, and 28 DPS from Seal of Command. Alternatively, it will add 34.5 DPS from Seal of Blood. 5% crit will increase the total of these numbers (using Seal of Command over Blood) to 148 DPS.
In addition, the Paladin gains a 26% (Windfury and Crit bonus) increase to their previous white damage, and a 5% increase in previous Crusader Strike, Seal of Command and Judgement of Command damage.
A Sword Rogue maintaining Slice and Dice with a 2.6/1.4 combination will be attacking with speed 2/1.08. In one average minute's time, they will swing their main hand 34 times (including Sword Spec procs) and their off hand 55.6 times, and Sinister Strike as many as 18 times. Windfury will proc 6 times.
710 AP will add 87 DPS from the rogue's MH swings and Windfury procs, 38 DPS from the OH Swings, and 37 DPS from Sinister Strike procs. The total, factoring in the 5% crit, is 170 DPS.
In additional, the Rogue gains a 26% increase to their previous MH white damage only, and a 5% increase in previous OH and Sinister Strike Damage.
So, we have the following equation.
26% * Paladin White + 5% * (Crusader + SoC + JoC) + 148 + 2% * 4 Person Party = 26% * Rogue MH White + 5% (Rogue OH White + Sinister Strike) + 170
If someone could contribute the stats of an equally geared Sword Rogue and a Retribution Paladin, we could see which is almost factually better. The following, however, is pure assumption.
Assumptions:
The Paladin's DPS is split 50/50 between White and Yellow. [AKA: PW = PY]
The Rogue's DPS is split 50/25/25 between MH, OH and Specials
The Rogue's DPS is 1000 ungrouped.
The Party of 4's DPS is 3750 (another Rogue, a Druid, a Warrior and Shaman).
So, a Paladin in 2.3 can have 65.8% a Rogue's ungrouped DPS while outside the group themselves and be even with a Rogue for being put in the DPS group.
Mostly correct, but this does not include the fact that Ret pally get 2x AP benefit from Str that rogues do and another 10% from Divine Str, thus get much higher benefit from SoE totems. Also, Ret will typically have higher AP than Rogues to start with, so 10% from UR is higher.
Right now the officers are still pissed that they lost their best healer in exchange for my moderate dps.
I'm still trying to convince them it's better raid dps, but too many variables have been changing for me to be able to prove that fact.
Im in the same boat here... going from #1 healer (mostly) to moderate support dps has been a tough sell.
The other problem I see is that being the raid leader, my view of the raid narrows considerably when I switch from watching green bars go up to watching red bars go down. (altho this most likely stop me from yelling over vent over little things)
Thanks to those who answered my previous question about mana issues, I guess I'll start stacking haste pots now in preparation. =]
11/28/07, 10:26 AM
