Not feeling the love. I'm Newly Ret since 2.3 coming from Holy. Guild decided to give ret a try and since I was one of the few interested but having the best gear gave it a go. My gear is here: The World of Warcraft Armory Not fantastic but pretty decent. Hit capped, 1850 atk and 29.66 crit unbuffed.
I'm really surprised at the variety of my ranking on fights. It's usually bottom of the barrel, just above the tanks. See the lurker fight below. Killed VR for the first time too and it was comparable. On the other hand I did surprisingly well on our first Leo takedown coming in 7th.
My first inclination is that Lurker and VR require a lot of downtime for dps. Running away from pound or the whirls. Whereas ranged can keep on them all the time. On Leo everyones got downtime either running from whrilwinds or fighting their demon. So rather than me putting in a fantastic showing on Leo, its more a funtion of everyone else did crappily, due to the nature of the fight.
I think if I keep floating at the bottom of the dps charts I'm gonna be asked to spec back to healbot.
What if anything can I do to improve the performance. Note: No windfury, and unlikely to be (only 1 shammy). I'm using flasks and sharp stones and agi food already too.
Your performance was poor because you were not being utilized correctly. A feral druid and a marks hunter are not going to give you a substantial dps boost. You've got your one shaman in the caster group so your warlocks and that shadowpriest can get a little spell damage. Move that shaman into a group with your melee, and it will do more for your raid overall. One of the great things about doing 2h dps is that you have so much more to gain from raid buffs than other classes. If its any consolation, your rogues don't seem to be pulling their weight regardless of buffs.
Hmm.. a tip for the lurker fight, there are a few things you can do to increase your dps time. During whirls i usually just stand there on the inner edge of the platform and eat it, get a renew and my mana replenishes at the same time. It helps you to sustain your dps through the gain in mana, and during spouts move forward into the inner pool where he is stationed to continue dpsing through the spout. Just a tip to buy you extra dps time... Also, on VR i don't know how your guild does it by the melee in my guild usually just stand in and eat the poundings with a shaman chain healing or holy priest circle healing. It double benefits me because im pretty much at full mana the whole fight so i can drop max rank consecrates and everything.
What if anything can I do to improve the performance. Note: No windfury, and unlikely to be (only 1 shammy). I'm using flasks and sharp stones and agi food already too.
You can say the same about any DPS, if they dont have the proper party buffs, then their DPS is going to be horrible. Casters love boomkin/shadow priests/elemental shammys/ proper warlock curses, melee love Enchance shammys/ fury/arms warrs/ LOTP/ and on a raid wide basis survival hunters and hemo rogues. I think only pure DPS classes can hold their own w/o buffs and with buffs the blow stuff away. '
Also keep in mind the SotC buff. I have done a few back of the envelope calcs and I think it buffs your raid DPS by about 2-2.5%. So go ahead and put that extra DPS in your cap. This scales exponentially as your raid DPS gets higher. Here are my estimates based on who you can farm:
Until I get a weapon that outshines my BS one, I'm pretty much stuck with BS as one profession but I really have no need for mining anymore (have an alt miner with an epic if I need money or ore for something). But I'm at a loss about what really fills the gap best. I'm leaning most towards LW for the drums because no one else in our typical melee group has them, but LW seems a bit odd for a pally. Not to mention it's expensive, but if it's the best I'd be willing to foot the bill. I'm trying to weigh it against Ench for the ring enchants, or engi just for fun/repair bots I suppose. Alch seems out of the picture since the Alchemist's Stone isn't quite as impressive for BE. Any recommendations or input?
There was a post earlier about the benefits on an enhancement shaman for a ret pally, and you do something like 65% of your dps without one, meaning having an enhancement shaman is like a 50% dps boost. More than ANY other class, we get the most out of a shaman. And I'm willing to bet your raid dps will increase if you guys give some melee wf over casters getting spell damage. Just the nature of the totem is by definition a higher dps boost (figure casters in raids have 1200 spell damage, another 101 is a smaller increase than a 20% chance at another attack for melee). Maybe run THAT by your raid leaders
My guild is at about the same place it sounds like (a bit lower progression-wise) and my gear is decent but certainly has some weak points. Here's our last night's Lurker WWS for comparison :
The big difference is that I have battle shout and an enhance shaman in my group (and I'm a blood elf). I didn't use haste pots, I used manas, this is probably necessary because I actually do run in and out of whirls. As the WWS shows, I still maintain an 85% dps time, beaten only by our tank at 87% dps, so I feel that if you are aggressive and on the ball, running out should provide superior dps. However, this is a minor point. The main point is that WF of some type, even from a resto shaman, will make a retardedly large difference. Battleshout and the enhance AP buff are just icing - however delicious icing it may be - on the cake.
If anyone wants to theorize as to why I always go from 1-3 down to 5-7 on Morogrim, I'd be interested to hear it I know I'm going to fall behind the people AEing the Murlocs, but if you look at the WWS log you will see that I fell behind the two hunters as well, despite only having been graved once. I roll with Pursuit of Justice so as long as DS is ready a grave isn't even that bad of a disruption.
Given a single target like Tidewalker, where he doesn't have to break rotation, your hunter's going to do optimal dps. Against a single target, r1 consecrate is ~50dps for a minimal amount of mana, so maybe you should try to work that in if you aren't strapped for mana. Other than that, the only way I can think of to improve your dps is to be very aggressive in your use of abilities and cooldowns. If you'd popped AW a little sooner, you could've gotten a third off before the fight ended. I try to coordinate my AW with bloodlust or trinkets to help it scale even better. Have a chat with your shaman and see when he's planning on using BL, every little bit helps a lot.
The reason that you're dropping in the overall damage done is simply because most everyone above you is AOEing. Drop a consecrate during the murlocs and you'll be back on top.
Bosses can still dodge even if you're hit capped and meleeing from behind. Not sure if Anetheron will parry if he turns around to cast Carrion Swarm, but that might be a reason too.
Bosses can still dodge even if you're hit capped and meleeing from behind. Not sure if Anetheron will parry if he turns around to cast Carrion Swarm, but that might be a reason too.
All bosses that can turn to cast a spell can parry during that turn. Recently of note I've been parried by Anetheron and Najentus due to them turning around to throw out some pain.
Bosses can still dodge even if you're hit capped and meleeing from behind. Not sure if Anetheron will parry if he turns around to cast Carrion Swarm, but that might be a reason too.
They will parry while they cast carrion swarm. Same is with Teron. Good tip for melee at Teron fight is have the boss be turned against raid, so majority of the cast will be away from melee, hence reducing parrys.
Salty are you wearing an SR piece that drops your hit rating or something?
Nope, our guild only has like 15 out of 225 Hearts of darkness you need for getting SR made...
I actually have way too much hit at the moment. Im wearing Shapeshifter's Signet instead of Garona's Signet Ring and still over the cap. Waiting for T5 shoulders to drop so I can wear those and the pants..
A quick note about parrys. We wiped on Najentus a few times last night because melee was attacking in parry range too far to the side. This will KILL your tanks literally. I know pallys cant contribute to this too much cause of our slow attack speed, but if a boss parrys your attacks, it will hit the tank quicker as a consequence. This eats up shield block charges and makes for some very nasty double crushing blow combos. Do it from behind not only to improve your DPS, but to keep your tanks alive longer as well. Remind your fellow duel wielders of this as well L2P newbs.
They will parry while they cast carrion swarm. Same is with Teron. Good tip for melee at Teron fight is have the boss be turned against raid, so majority of the cast will be away from melee, hence reducing parrys.
Ok, that makes sense. It would explain my abyssmal 15% miss rate during 1 Teron kill.
On a different note, have any ret paladins conducted testing concerning mongoose vs. executioner, e.g. replacing mongoose with executioner? I've seen theorycrafting saying that the dps difference between them is marginal and that it comes down to which glow you like better. However, it's difficult for my mind to wrap around the fact that 840 armor penetration for 70% of my damage could be as good as almost 5% crit and 2% haste. My guild has started working on Archimonde so I've been deliberating on what enchant to get on [Cataclysm's Edge] .
Last edited by xellos : 12/14/07 at 12:17 PM.
Reason: grammar
Ok, that makes sense. It would explain my abyssmal 15% miss rate during 1 Teron kill.
On a different note, have any ret paladins conducted testing concerning mongoose vs. executioner, e.g. replacing mongoose with executioner? I've seen theorycrafting saying that the dps difference between them is marginal and that it comes down to which glow you like better. However, it's difficult for my mind to wrap around the fact that 840 armor penetration for 70% of my damage could be as good as almost 5% crit and 2% haste. My guild has started working on Archimonde so I've been deliberating on what enchant to get on [Cataclysm's Edge] .
I have been swapping gear in and out on a ton of different boss fights and been doing a ton of theorycrafting to determine which is better for Retribution DPS. I have swapped out gear for Armor Pen even haste and Armor Pen while still maintaining my Hit rating but I can't find a quality happy point. It feels like the DPS is close to the same regardless using Armor Pen gear or not.
Hello I was wondering if anyone could help me with some math. Basically right now I'm raiding Ret with WORLD BREAKER and using SoB. The problem that arises is that most times I'm put into a group with an enhancement shaman who refuses to throw a WF totem or totem twist even though there is a 2h user in the group. I have seen math that shows combat rogues get a dps increase from WF over GOA and I know that I myself would get a huge increase while getting WF and partially because SoB scaling with the AP that WF gives. I was wondering if there was any math that shows how much dps a BE ret pally using my type of wep would gain from WF and from GOA so that I can show my guild the difference, and also better understand why I'm not getting a WF totem in raids. If I'm wrong and the overall raid's dps is lowered by getting a WF totem then I'm cool with not having one. I really care less about my overall dps then the guilds since it's a team game. I believe that myself and a 2h warrior and a rogue's benefit from a WF will outweigh the whole groups benefit from a GOA totem unless there is a tanking druid in the group. I have the math that shows the dps increases for the other classes but cannot find anything on BE ret pallies. Any help would be much appreciated.
if more than one person in a group can use windfury, you drop windfury. GOA is notably worse for every variety of rogue, and a warrior or ret paladin without windfury will do pathetic damage. it only even comes close for the two flavors of dagger rogues, and that doesn't really count since dagger rogues are incredibly suboptimal in raids, between doing less damage than sinister strike builds and being incredibly finicky DPS.
Dropping GOA is lowering overall raid DPS by a notable amount. Especially in a group of Ret paladin, Arms warrior, Combat rogue, (enhance shaman/some other fucker who is presumably a feral or hunter).
Basically, GoA is roughly ~3-4% increased damage for the recipient, depending on class. Windfury is ~25% increased white damage for the recipient (remember the AP bonus on windfury attacks), and White damage is 50%+ of total DPS for nearly all melee classes. Even without considering the multiplying factor that means for warriors and the ret paladin in terms of rage generation and seal procs, 25% more white damage from a ret/warrior/rogue is a hell of a lot more damage than any gain for your hunter and enhance shaman.
Basically, it's raid optimal to make sure ALL melee has windfury as your first priority. Only when you run out of melee to give Windfury to do you start considering WoA for casters or GoA for hunters/ferals.
If your Enhancement Shaman isn't lazy, he can easily keep Windfury and GoA up in a raid environment. First night I mentioned it, our rogues shot up about 100DPS each fight.
I heard Sigurd scored an infinity on Rock Band and ascended to heaven.
I did something odd and play with Crazy Shaman's DPS & AEP calculator (c) Yo. That is shaman simulator. But with right adjustement you can think that is simple retripaladin swing sim. Firt turn off DW and flurry. Then switch shock off. Put flametongue(You can think this is SoB or SoC) instead of wf. Then put all your gear values and buffs. Then adjust spell crit so much that flametonue damage is 43% of melee dps.(70% melee 30% spell damage. 0.3/0.7=.43) And there is ret paladin simulator. I know this isnt perfect but you can test mongoose vs executioner.
My result was that any gear levels in game mongoose => executioner. There is many basic thing that is wrong when using different class sim but give it a try. Biggest flaw is that SS is 10s CD and CS is 6s CD.(little over value to mongoose. there is option to get SS CD to 9s.[4-pieces set bonus -> Eartshaker) Did I wake up any thoughts?
If your Enhancement Shaman isn't lazy, he can easily keep Windfury and GoA up in a raid environment. First night I mentioned it, our rogues shot up about 100DPS each fight.
It's not a question of them being lazy or not. It's a question of the shaman playing smart or not.
Yes. Totem weaving is possible.
No. It shouldn't be done.
Realistically in a raid encounter this does two things to the Shaman. Gives them horrible mana efficiency, and seriously hinders their own Dps by wasting global cool downs. The uptime of a totem buff after the totem is gone is 3 seconds 4 at the most. To keep WF and GoA up constantly the Shaman would literally have to do nothing but weave totems. Taking away a large chunk of dps to slightly increase the dps of 4 others. I would wager that would either decrease overall performance or just balance out.
It'll be a moot point eventually anyway. Blizzard is aware Totem weaving is possible, and intends to find a way to make it not possible.
12/12/07, 2:05 PM
I know I'm going to fall behind the people AEing the Murlocs, but if you look at the WWS log you will see that I fell behind the two hunters as well, despite only having been graved once. I roll with Pursuit of Justice so as long as DS is ready a grave isn't even that bad of a disruption.
