Retribution DPS Theorycraft - Page 62

flyingtoastr · 01/16/08, 9:20 AM

Originally Posted by Sheltim

I did my first Karazhan run as Retribution last night. The first thing that struck me was simply how mana starved I was. I had to use Blessing of Wisdom the entire night. On every boss fight I had to switch to JOWisdom and SOWisdom about halfway through, even though I was only using Crusader Strike and JOBlood/SOBlood (I dropped Consecrate from my rotation).

Aside from chain chugging mana potions, which I'd hate to do in a farm Kara run, is there something I'm missing?

If my math isn't wrong (its early in the morning, sorry), using a straight CS/JoB cycle will cost you ~315 Mp5. Between JoW (~100 Mp5) and BoW (41 Mp5) it looks like you will be spending ~174 mana every 5 seconds. That gives you (with about 5.1k mana with paw and AI) about 150 seconds of DPS time. In all honesty you might need to be potting in kara. Its easiest just to spend those AV tokens on some [Major Combat Mana Potion]s (as an aside, the new flavor texts on those things is awesome!).

One of the hardest things for me to get used to when I spec ret is that the style of potting is so much different than healing. When I'm holy its just the general "at -3000 mana pot and burn one every 2 minutes after". With ret it really depends on your cycle.

Originally Posted by galzohar

Ret pallies are simply suboptimal in kara. You require the raid buffs for mana, another pally to JoW for you, and windfury totem to do good DPS, and this is not something you usually get in a 10-man.

That's such an oversimplification it hurts. Of course you won't do 25-man damage in kara, but you can still do respectable personal DPS without an enhancement shaman.

The reason ret pallys aren't great in kara is the same reason DPS Warriors and Rogues aren't. The instance in general is melee unfriendly (excluding Aran) and more importantly all melee DPS classes scale with gear to an incredible degree. Once you start getting some nice heroic/T5/Za DPS loots you'll see your personal DPS skyrocket compared to the casters that rule kara.

Saltycracker · 01/16/08, 12:57 PM

Originally Posted by orkyben

Hey again.

I have a question about the DPS Spreadsheet; relating to "Expertise".

Does the spreadsheet assume you are stood in front, or behind your target?

If it assumes you are in front, then expertise would negate both Parry and Dodge; hence being twice as effective as it would be in reality (taking into account you stand behind targets most of the time).

This leads me to the [Shoulderpads of the Stranger] Vs. [Pauldrons of the Wardancer] debate. :S

Thanks.

If you have enough hit, expertise is a great way to increase your DPS. Im sitting at about 14 expertise which reduces dodges and parries by about 4%. I think the spreadsheet assumes you attack from the back.

I would still stand in back and here is why. A boss cannot parry from behind, only dodge. If a boss parries one of your attacks, it increases the speed if his next attack which is usually on the tank. So if you are getting parried, it means your tank is getting hit more often which eats up their shield blocks.

flyingtoastr · 01/16/08, 1:08 PM

Even if you somehow reach the total expertise cap for a frontal attack (I read somewhere its something like 10% for most T6 bosses) you still wouldn't want to. Most bosses can block from the front (in addition to parry and dodge), and WepEx does nothing for that.

• Zurm · 01/16/08, 2:42 PM

Originally Posted by Rheyah

A Ret paladin is perfectly capable of topping DPS meters without Windfury in a 10 person raid. I've done it myself.

Only when a large gear gap is present. My T6 ret pally beats out alts in t4/5, but I can never do competitive dps in Kara with people of equal gear without WF. Warlocks can still push 1800+ dps without a proper group, i can't break 1200. On the other hand, with a proper dps group, I sit anywhere between 1500-1800 dps.

Foofu · 01/16/08, 6:14 PM

Originally Posted by bellator

Haste does effect SoB in the sheet

Briefly, how item calc works. Lets say you've set up your gear and it's saying you have 1000dps. When you run Item calc, it will first look at your head gear. It goes through each helm item and works out the dps if you had each helm. It looks at Helm X and the dps drops to 990. It then looks at Helm Y and dps is 1010, so it lists Helm Y with 10 (dps increase next it it). It does that with all items. The enchants you set up will stay the same, but every socket of every item it compares is filled with +Str gems (to keep things even), as it's impossible to know exactly how you would socket it. Ideally it would socket each item based on the gemming combination which gives the highest dps, but the calculation time would be tooo big

The hit cap is 9% hit

Socketing everything to str would be fine comparing 2 items in a void, but the spreadsheet compares 2 different items using the rest of your gear as a base. This means anyone without 9% total hit using any combination of 15 of their 16 items will have at least 1 item comparison that overvalues +hit since you're no longer capped and hit is the biggest dps increase stat when you're not capped. When you have sockets you can stick +hit gems in that is probably not the best comparison.

I've reworked my copy of v30 to socket to 9% hit and then socket str if that's something you would be interested in incorporating in future versions bellator. It helps keep the spreadsheet from grossly overvaluing items with +hit on them for people who have to socket some +hit to cap (or could be better off socketing hit to cap). I think this is a lot better way to work the comparison for anyone who isn't already several percent beyond the hit cap because it brings down the value of straight +hit vs. sockets to something reasonable. It could on occasion screw you out of a tiny bit of dps where it would be better to gem str and live with 8.x% hit instead of gemming to 9.x but I consider that an acceptable tradeoff. Gemming for +hit is the right answer over staying uncapped the vast majority of the time.

The spreadsheet is currently unable to tell you the very best combination of items. It can find a combination of items for which there is no single item that results in a dps upgrade however, which makes for a fairly solid ending gearset. The one I found had all str gems socketed, even with the option to socket +hit, so I'm inclined to believe people at high (T6 farm) levels of gear have very little need for this enhancement, but it may find some combinations you wouldn't otherwise see I suppose.

One more tip for people, if you don't want to see a socket bonus on an item broken up, you can add the item again yourself and use the stats you would have socketed instead and simply not include any sockets (except meta if applicable).

-----------

If anyone is interested in using what I wrote:

Changes the function of "Socket Strength" to fill with Strength Gems like normal and then backfill hit gems into yellow, blue, and red sockets in that order as needed to reach 9% hit (or run out of sockets).

Please note I'm using 8 Str and 8 Hit gems. You can obviously just change the 8's to 10's to go back to using 10's if they are available to you.

1.) Name your +hit total cell (H17) to "Hit" (no quotes)
2.) In the macro editor go to module2 and replace from Public Sub Socket_Str() to the first End Sub with the following

Public Sub Socket_Str()
    Dim PlusHit
    Dim CurCell As Object

    For Each CurCell In Range(Names("MyGems"))
        If CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "m" Then
            CurCell.Value = "12 Agi & 3% Increased Crit Dmg"
        ElseIf CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "y" Then
            CurCell.Value = "8 Str"
        ElseIf CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "b" Then
            CurCell.Value = "8 Str"
        ElseIf CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "r" Then
            CurCell.Value = "8 Str"
        Else
            CurCell.Value = "None"
        End If
    Next

    'only bother to socket hit if the base gear doesn't have it
    PlusHit = Range(Names("Hit")).Value
    If PlusHit < 9 Then

        'socket hit to yellows first
        For Each CurCell In Range(Names("MyGems"))
            If CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "y" Then
                PlusHit = Range(Names("Hit")).Value
                If PlusHit < 9 Then
                    CurCell.Value = "8 Hit"
                Else
                    Exit Sub
                End If
            End If
        Next

        'socket hit to blues next
        For Each CurCell In Range(Names("MyGems"))
            If CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "b" Then
                PlusHit = Range(Names("Hit")).Value
                If PlusHit < 9 Then
                    CurCell.Value = "8 Hit"
                Else
                    Exit Sub
                End If
            End If
        Next

        'socket hit to red last
        For Each CurCell In Range(Names("MyGems"))
            If CurCell.Offset(0, -1).Value = "r" Then
                PlusHit = Range(Names("Hit")).Value
                If PlusHit < 9 Then
                    CurCell.Value = "8 Hit"
                Else
                    Exit Sub
                End If
            End If
        Next
    End If
End Sub

orkyben · 01/16/08, 8:24 PM

Originally Posted by Saltycracker

I would still stand in back and here is why. A boss cannot parry from behind, only dodge. If a boss parries one of your attacks, it increases the speed if his next attack which is usually on the tank. So if you are getting parried, it means your tank is getting hit more often which eats up their shield blocks.

Oh of course you would always attack from behind; what I wanted to know was if the spreadsheet took this into account.

If the Spreadsheet assumed you attack from the front - then any "Expertise" would negate both dodges AND parry's. In reality you always stand behind your target; so "Expertise" only negates dodges. If this were the case then the spreadsheet would be effectively doubling the DPS value of Expertise rating - if you see what I mean. :P

If you are sure the spreadsheet assumes you are standing behind you target (and can't be parried) then this isn't an issue and the spreadsheet is accurate.

Avitus · 01/16/08, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by orkyben

Hey again.

I have a question about the DPS Spreadsheet; relating to "Expertise".

Does the spreadsheet assume you are stood in front, or behind your target?

If it assumes you are in front, then expertise would negate both Parry and Dodge; hence being twice as effective as it would be in reality (taking into account you stand behind targets most of the time).

DPSing "from the front" does not exist in wow and as such the spreadsheet only considers the dodge reduction.

Originally Posted by galzohar

Ret pallies are simply suboptimal in kara. You require the raid buffs for mana, another pally to JoW for you, and windfury totem to do good DPS, and this is not something you usually get in a 10-man.

But then again, the only buff that "really" matters for a ret pala is WF. All the other stuff is a roughly linear-ish increase for ret pala as well as all other classes, so there's no argument here.

Breaking the reply into two parts.

Ret pala in Kara without WF:

With equal gear, you can compete for top position, you can do very decent dps especially in places like Kara where you can spam undead. Probably won't be the very top (though possible, depends on group combo), but won't be at the bottom either, depending on the classes/individual players that you have.

Ret pala in Kara man with WF:

You can comfortably reach the top, especially in Kara with all the undead.

Personally when I do Kara for badges I'm lucky enough to have 1-2 shaman alts who can provide WF and SoE, just don't spam consecration too much or if you're geared enough in your ret kit/got reliable healers OT mobs for mana.

Use some cheap mana pots here and there and drink every chance.

And if you're doing ZA then you should worry about group synergy, been topping meters there but we do go with a good group synergy to go for timed run.

Tyrian · 01/17/08, 1:58 AM

Our raids almost always have a ret pally in them. I was a little surprised to hear him say he was one of the only ret pallys raiding on the server, not just for an Illidan killing guild but for all the major raiing guilds.

I usually keep him in the Windfury+Fury Warrior group but sometimes I mix him into the crit/agi+str totem group (feral druid + hunter + resto shaman) to take turns giving other people windfury. Heres the dps of our last teron kill showing his performance: (1361 dps)

WWS = WWS Loading... Other bosses available on request if anyone is interested.

Not trying to make any sweeping conclusions on spec viability - ill leave that to others to do - but we're very happy with how ret pallys perform in raids (both by themself and factoring in all the utility/synergy benefits) and with any upcoming Class Mechanic changes - it can only get better.

Ragnor · 01/17/08, 2:22 AM

I normally do hyjal and farm bosses as ret, progression as holy. However lately we are simply lacking quality holy paladins (and backup healers in general) who are attuned. The quality of dps applications has been great but we only see healers applying with 1500-1700 +heal and not attuned zzzz.

As for other guilds on Blackrock, I think Eminence will never have a serious raiding ret paladin. Eriond and some of their old school warrior officers are strongly against dps paladins. Before I joined I HitSquad pre TBC I considered Eminence and was told no because they didn't want another Blackreigns 2.0 lol. Well I did have ashkandi and full T2.5 but I also had some pretty awesome healing gear part way through naxx (rejuv gem, shard of the scale, widow's mace etc etc ).

At the end of the day not enough healers = raid over, a ret pally is expendable easy to interchange for any other dps at a push.

Respec'ing at least once a week breaks up the monotony of raiding anyway heh and of not having enough time due to work to have decent alts.

Tyrian · 01/17/08, 3:22 AM

As for other guilds on Blackrock, I think Eminence will never have a serious raiding ret paladin. Eriond and some of their old school warrior officers are strongly against dps paladins

When we first let people know we were recruiting a Ret Pally we were met with skeptisicm (and a little criticism) from others, both in-guild and out of guild. Common comments included "Ret pallys are broken/shit" or "We dont need one" or "They dont justify their spot compared to other classes" or "What benefits do they even bring to the raid?".

When we looked around and researched a little - threads like this were very helpful - and WWS invaluable (I remember following Blood Legions' ret pally Grant quite alot on WWS for a while).

Eriond and some of their old school warrior officers are strongly against dps paladins

Well thats the thing - guilds really can only have ret pallys if their Raid Leader/GM are a little openminded and prepared to try it out. People who share direct raid/group spots with ret pallys (like warriors, rogues) naturally might be a little more hesitant. As a mage however, I was personally thrilled id be getting JOW up on fights where we needed *evil face

*

From the very start we made it clear that we were recruiting a good player and that that we'll give him a fair chance to prove what his class is capable of - and if it wasnt deemed acceptable we'd politely remove him - however that never happened. I think raid leaders have to get away from the idea of 'we are recruiting a ret pally - omg!' and instead focus more on the player.

Find and recruit a player who applies, who happens to be a ret pally, who can convince you of their determination/desire to be a core part of your guild and give them a chance to prove it. Guilds might be surprised at the results.

Perhaps off on a slight tangent, one thing blizzard REALLY need to do is change buff tooltips to be updated by talents that affect them. Some of my rogues still had no idea (after months of raiding with a ret pally in their group) that Improved Sanctity Aura gives them 2% more damage, hence encouraging people tend to question their worth.

People are much more open to hybrids if they see a fancy effect (windfury, LOTP heal and tooltip, moonkin aura tooltip, vampiric embrace) that visibly benefits them. The ret pallys ones are not transparent enough and IMO should be remade into something that much more obvious/visable that people can appreciate. 3% crit, 2% damage is nice, but its completely obscured, hidden by tooltips that dont even mention them - and therefore a little underrated and unappredicated. As a raid leader - thats the biggest problem I have with the class - give pallys a fancy 'ooh - look it procced' buff their group can admire, like windfury/lotp/vampiric embrace etc does currently. It makes you enjoy having them in your group more. It doesnt have to be overpowered obviously, just a little more interactive than the current very uninspired, dull "2% damage to group, 3% crit to raid".

CaptBooyah · 01/17/08, 8:22 AM

Originally Posted by Tyrian

The ret pallys ones are not transparent enough and IMO should be remade into something that much more obvious/visable that people can appreciate. 3% crit, 2% damage is nice, but its completely obscured, hidden by tooltips that dont mention them - and therefore a little underrated..

I could not agree any more with this statement. My personal opinion is these skills need to be increased -slightly- and add just one more piece of synergy to top it off.

One thought was consecration healing party members, either via a deep ret talent or just paladins in general. of course, the mana regen issue would need to be dealt with first.

Mearis · 01/17/08, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Ragnor

At the end of the day not enough healers = raid over, a ret pally is expendable easy to interchange for any other dps at a push.

Respec'ing at least once a week breaks up the monotony of raiding anyway heh and of not having enough time due to work to have decent alts.

This is basically the crux, and the fact that it is quite easy to get quality DPS, but quality healers are much much more rare in my experience. We have a raiding ret paladin, he was on almost all our BT guild firsts, but there was a long stretch of time when we were struggling for healers and he healed.

If you put your spec ahead of the guild progression, no guild should cater to your whims. There are also some fights where extra melees are a liability, like Najentus, Illidan, etc. Besides that - our ret paladin has done up to 1300 dps on some fights without windfury, and around 1500 at the very max with windfury and all the trimming - usually he hovers in the 1200-1400 DPS range though.

Antiock · 01/17/08, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by CaptBooyah

I could not agree any more with this statement. My personal opinion is these skills need to be increased -slightly- and add just one more piece of synergy to top it off.

One thought was consecration healing party members, either via a deep ret talent or just paladins in general. of course, the mana regen issue would need to be dealt with first.

I would like to see repentence made trainable, and add a new spell for ret. Maybe a new blessing that'd be useful for anyone in the raid, like add haste rating. I have no idea exactly how much haste would be "balanced" (maybe like 1%), but I feel like that would be pretty useful to anyone, and would be something very unique to ret paladins.

Rasputin · 01/17/08, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Antiock

I would like to see repentence made trainable, and add a new spell for ret. Maybe a new blessing that'd be useful for anyone in the raid, like add haste rating. I have no idea exactly how much haste would be "balanced" (maybe like 1%), but I feel like that would be pretty useful to anyone, and would be something very unique to ret paladins.

Blessings aren't the answer, because we need something which is very visible, applies to our party, and affects melee damage only. We need to not only justify our raid slot, but our melee group spot as well. We need Unleashed Rage, or Windfury level group buffs. Crit is take by ferals, AP is taken by enhancement shamans and warriors. Haste is open, as is armor penetration. Since armor pen is less useful to US, my prejudice would be to an Unleashed Rage type buff which increases party member haste by some amount.

To dream the impossible dream...

Antiock · 01/17/08, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Blessings aren't the answer, because we need something which is very visible, applies to our party, and affects melee damage only. We need to not only justify our raid slot, but our melee group spot as well. We need Unleashed Rage, or Windfury level group buffs. Crit is take by ferals, AP is taken by enhancement shamans and warriors. Haste is open, as is armor penetration. Since armor pen is less useful to US, my prejudice would be to an Unleashed Rage type buff which increases party member haste by some amount.

To dream the impossible dream...

Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe if it was added to vengeance, where you'd get your 5% damage, and 1% haste to the party (still stacking 3 times, up to 15% and 3% haste).

But you're right. This is all just dreaming for now.

And just to get this thread back into reality a little....when a boss drops below 20%, do you guys try to weave Hammer of Wrath into your attacks? I know it resets the swing timer, but I wasn't sure if it would actually be a dps increase if you used it immediately after an attack.

xellos · 01/17/08, 12:12 PM

As far as visible buffs go, I've always loved the idea of having an improved Avenging Wrath where the effect would extend to your group as well. Of course, the effect would be scaled down for the group since 30% extra dmg for the group every 3 min would be slightly crazy. It could replace the terrible improved retribution aura talent. Additionally, have improved AW switch places with Divine Purpose so it's a true deep retribution talent. Give mini-wings to the group members when you use it for good measure too. A man can only dream...

Tyrian · 01/17/08, 12:21 PM

Give mini-wings to the group members when you use it for good measure too

As funny as it sounds, its a good idea. Even if you think of a different effect for a new pally synergy group-buff (haste sounds nice), im sure people would love getting their own pally wings!

Saltycracker · 01/17/08, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by Antiock

hen a boss drops below 20%, do you guys try to weave Hammer of Wrath into your attacks? I know it resets the swing timer, but I wasn't sure if it would actually be a dps increase if you used it immediately after an attack.

I sometimes use it, like when killing Al'ar adds or if I have extra mana at the end of a fight. If you have mana left after a boss, you diddnt rank your spells correctly. I dont know if this is cannonically correct, but I have a fun macro attached to my hammer:

/y ITS HAMMER (of wrath) TIME!!!!!!!!
/cast Hammer of Wrath

My turn for a noobish question. Can you have a sharpening/weightstone on your weapon and still get the benefit of WF totem? I have been using sharpening/weightstones for a while and I ran out of them last night in BT, whereafter I saw a lot more <Windfury Attack>

Showing a little epeen, heres another retpally teron WWS where I blew him out of his shoes:
WWS Loading...

Anarkii · 01/17/08, 12:36 PM

No you can't use stones if you want to get WF.

xellos · 01/17/08, 12:38 PM

Haste would be nice, but it would be too similar to Bloodlust/Heroism in my opinion. The other idea I had for improved AW is faster mana/energy regeneration and rage generation. It'd be like Shamanistic Rage, Adrenaline Rush, and Endless Rage rolled into one.

flyingtoastr · 01/17/08, 12:41 PM

Originally Posted by Saltycracker

My turn for a noobish question. Can you have a sharpening/weightstone on your weapon and still get the benefit of WF totem? I have been using sharpening/weightstones for a while and I ran out of them last night in BT, whereafter I saw a lot more <Windfury Attack>

Sharpening Stones overwrite a Windfury buff, so no you don't want to use them if you get the shaman. If you're stuck in a tank group or something though I could see use for them.

Originally Posted by Antiock

And just to get this thread back into reality a little....when a boss drops below 20%, do you guys try to weave Hammer of Wrath into your attacks? I know it resets the swing timer, but I wasn't sure if it would actually be a dps increase if you used it immediately after an attack.

If you have the mana for it, HoW is a pretty sizable DPS increase. However, it does reset the swing timer, so you have to be careful to do it right after an autoswing so you push that back as little as possible. The fact remains it is the biggest mana sink Paladins have, so you have to be careful with it so that you don't blow too much mana and can't CS for the last 10% or so.

I honestly would like to see some additional utility added to the actual Judgement Spell, like making successful Judgements increase party damage by X% for 10 seconds. Just something to make it completely worthwhile to keep up a full Judgement cycle other than slightly higher personal DPS. It would be nice to get some uniqueness to the buff too, maybe armor penetration, critical strike bonus damage, haste rating... Lots of options there.

Saltycracker · 01/17/08, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by flyingtoastr

I honestly would like to see some additional utility added to the actual Judgement Spell, like making successful Judgements increase party damage by X% for 10 seconds. Just something to make it completely worthwhile to keep up a full Judgement cycle other than slightly higher personal DPS. It would be nice to get some uniqueness to the buff too, maybe armor penetration, critical strike bonus damage, haste rating... Lots of options there.

Im pulling for seal of blood, but I had the thought of more of a "Prismatic Seal" that joined light, wis and crusader into one judgement so you dont need other pallys to rejudge light and wis in case they get pushed off by other debuffs. Trivial, maybe.

I'm also liking the group AW buff. Maybe "Increases party damage by 6%" something like 30%/5 or something of that nature.

Shalymar · 01/17/08, 2:36 PM

Originally Posted by Tyrian

As funny as it sounds, its a good idea. Even if you think of a different effect for a new pally synergy group-buff (haste sounds nice), im sure people would love getting their own pally wings!

Can you say Pally's version of Bloodlust FTW! I love the idea.

Avitus · 01/17/08, 3:49 PM

Sorry to say, but my experience with HoW spam, even with 4 set T6 bonus (+10% to HoW), is that it's completely useless, not only does it delay your swing timer, but in effect it delays your chances to SoC (due to that swing delay) too, which is a double penalty that's just not worth taking.

You're better off just continuing your rotation or spamming consecration if you want to blow your extra mana.

Makes me really wonder what they were thinking with that set bonus in the first place since you won't use T6 in pvp (and if you do, the benefit of that set bonus is very marginal) and in PvE it's beyond worthless... I'd trade it off for 10 str, or 1 str even, anything for that matter.

Compare to all other DPS classes, their set bonuses pretty much give them a flat ~5% DPS increase (warlocks, mages, rogues) or at least a significant buff to their main attack.

♦ Theras · 01/17/08, 4:28 PM

Ideally I'd like to see the Tier 6 4-piece bonus steal the [Vengeful Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets] bonus. It's never a sign of good design when a best in slot PvE item is from PvP.

Still no luck finding a mob that's immune to Vindication and that won't stomp my face in.