sorry for the noobish question and i've done some looking but this is mainly for the Ret pally in our guild who i trying very hard to proove to us hes viable.

Should a ret pally be using rank 2 consecrate on a single target when dpsing? hell, should he be using consecrate at all?

My gut tells me no.~ =[

Yes, in fact he should use max rank (rank 6) if he's able to.

Of course this really dependent on his group/raid setup and what buffs/group synergy they can offer (and gear).


I usually have BoW, JoW, unimproved mana spring from my shammy to help me out + spamming mana pots on cooldown and I can pretty much keep up full rank consecration spam throughout most fights.

That's an added average +150 DPS or more on a single target with ~260 spelldamage on gear (and JotC, Sanctity Aura, Vengeance), which is not a small amount.


My rule of thumb usually is to look at my mana bar and make sure that consecration spam is not going to eat up into my ability to use all other attacks without pause.

My only fear is that they only do half a job. This would probably be even worse than leaving it as it is.

There's so many things that could be neglected/overlooked during this change and Blizzard does have a track record of introducing 10 oddities every time they fix 5 problems.

Anyway, trying to be an optimist and hoping that they "do" do a good job, here's what's missing:

-SoC benefits from AP instead of Spelldamage
-JoC benefits from AP instead of Spelldamage
-JoC changed to melee hit (!! - One of the before mentioned oddities that has been overlooked for ages)
-Ret Itemization (at least the Tier Sets) reworked with increased Melee Stats instead of Spelldamage
-Consecration/Exorcism/Holy Wrath/Hammer of Wrath all gain from BOTH AP as well as Spelldamage, this way neither ret or prot/holy paladins are cut out from upgrading these abilities, which we all do use atm in all specs.
-JotC now gives a percent damage increase to holy damage abilities on the target instead of flat spelldamage, balanced around how much +260 spelldamage from imp JotC now gives us. This way it would still remain the same benefit to ret/prot/holy without becoming an imba +AP raid buff (trying to maintain neutrality without buffs, but that would be a good idea).


My estimation:

Somewhere along the line they'll forget about the use of consecration/exorcism/holy wrath or muck up JotC. Maybe a forum post on blizz forums is in order to get some attention.


Of course alternatively they could have just given us an AP -> Spelldamage talent like they gave enhancement shammies, then all these changes wouldn't be necessary, but I assume that's not the case anymore considering the change to CS.

I don't understand much of the "dependancy" on spell damage. Right some abilities scale only with it, and it does increase ret paladin DPS, but both alliance and horde get noticeably more DPS from AP and STR per itemization point, which results in most/all cases with the spell damage gear providing less DPS than pure warrior gear (with possible few exceptions, which ATM I'm not going to look for as you have a spreadsheet to do it for you). If they do remove benefits from spell damage though they should definitely change the sets. Heck they should change the sets anyway comsidering the much smaller benefit from spell damage compared to STR/AP/crit/hit.

Bellator's spreadsheet needs to be updated with this change. I suspect it will cause some changes on relative item values...
Also, armor pen might become a useful stat for us now with CS being fully weapon damage.

With neither the dps plate from Zul'Aman nor from the badge vendor having any intellect on it I hope they come up with something to counter constant mana starvation.

Haven't seen Bellator post much lately, but if you want to help yourself do it : (in Excel)

(Note: this is using v23_2.3. If you're using an older version, the cell numbers might be different)

Format->Sheet->Unhide->DPS Calc
Go down to CS section->Average Hit(Pre Buffs)

Current Formula is :

[top]IF(Character!A100

0,0,((C6*C4+(Character!F16/14)*3.3)*(100%+2%*Character!A95)+0.4*SUM(Character!M16:N16)+IF(K22="Yes",18,0))*IF(K2 3="Yes",105%,100%))

Change it to :

[top]IF(Character!A100

0,0,((C6*C4+(Character!F16/14)*3.3)*110%*(100%+2%*Character!A95)+IF(K22="Yes",18,0))*IF(K23="Yes",105%,100%))

Isn't CS already full physical damage? With the 40% of holy spell damage being applied to the melee attack as melee damage? Because I only see 1 number pop when I use CS even when I do wear like 23 spell damage ;p
And it seems to not be affected by JotC's spell damage anyway? Or am I missing something?

Jotc on a target gives c-Strike a +100 or so bonus. The attack is just normalized, so for most people the end result is a Cstrike that still hits for slightly less than a white hit.

As a side note, where do we stand on Haste for ret nowadays? Wasn't it determined that the proc rate for Command specifically wasn't hindered by +haste?

I ask because I find myself wearing a matched set of Band of Devastation, and even with the haste nerf they're quite dandy items.

Haste will always be better for us SoB user. It's assumed (or so I believe) that SoC works the same way that over procs do regarding hast, and will proc less par hit if you are to attack faster. But since much dmg come from white attacks, hast is nowhere near bad, even for you allys. And it's *the* stat as ret BE.

Regarding the test I've been doing in Blasted, they were white attacks only, sorry I forgot to specify so.

Most of the posts in the last page have been about this

It doesn't work with SoB.