I agree that our 4 piece bonus is terrible. A nice 5% boost to CS or seals or something would have been nicer (and more in line with all the other DPS classes getting increased damage to their main combat attacks). But I digress.

Hammer of Wrath IV
440 Mana
665-735 damage
6 second CD

Ideal Situation:
Assuming you have unlimited mana and use it every 6 seconds, 3 stacks of Vengeance, JotC, 213 spell damage (5 pieces of T6), Sanctity Aura (with 2/2 Improved), 3/3 Crusade (active), 4-piece T6 bonus, and always hit.

Hammer of Wrath IV
Average Damage: 1294
DPM: 2.94
DPS: 215.67

Compared to Max Rank Consecration in the exact same situation:

Consecration VI
Average Damage (tic): 153
DPM: 1.85
DPS: 153

There are two things to remember from here though. First is that Hammer of Wrath is both capable of critting and takes your melee crit chance. This means your average paladin will be seeing about a third of his Hammers getting a critical, upping the actual DPS by a fairly good degree. The second thing to remember, and the most important, is that HoW does push back your swing timer. It is entirely possible that the extra DPS you gain from HoW is lost in the increased time on your swings, especially if you time it badly. A talent to remove the cast time to HoW would really be excellent for Paladin DPS though.

This of course isn't counting full or partial resists, since I have no real way to calculate the latter.

Really? You'd want a reduction to Hammer of Justice cooldown for a PvE set bonus? I'm no expert on tier 6 mobs, but I operate under the impression that most enemies in raid instances are immune to stuns. I'd like either of the t4 ret bonuses... or hell, even the t6 prot 4 piece bonus. Most any of the other set bonuses that don't apply to holy or prot-specific abilities would do.

He means the +5% damage to crusader strike. The bonus specific to the gauntlets. Not the 4-piece bonus of the gladiator's set (since hammer of wrath is crap, and CS is used every cooldown).

In fact, I would venture to say that the 4 piece PvE bonus would really be more at home on a PvP set.

If you use HoW like Slam (use right after a swing), the dps lose from the reset of the Swing timer is not much.


It still is marginal but a gain, assuming you use a swing timer.

I know about slam timing since I have a warrior too

The gain you're theorizing about, sounds more to me like a "what if batman and superman had a baby" sort of scenario, possible if you stretch your imagination, but realistically with the low spelldamage on retri gear, lag, delaying of swing timer which causes a double penalty of delaying white as well as SoC procs (as well as WF procs, triple penalty if you will), clipping with GCD of other abilities... need I go on?

Simply not worth it and in no way ever worth justifying the laughable T6 4 set "bonus".

Frankly I find the set bonus a bit insulting, it just shows how misinformed even the devs are about how this spec works.

First-time poster here. Please forgive me for any breach of forum-ettiquette. I would also like to apologise if the following post has been posted earlier, I haven't read all 63 pages yet.

What I am looking for is some kind of at-a-glance system for comparing ret gear, similar to the Tank Points mod. As a PvP ret pally pre-BC I used the following system:

Str = 1 point
Int = 1
Stam = 1
Agi = 0.5
1% crit = 10

...then compare the totals of the different items (obviously). This system worked well for me and was very easy to calculate (however, I do think I under-rated agi/crit and over-rated int).

What systems do you all use? Is there a mod around that will do the work for you? TY and peace.

Thanks! Time to confront my fear of spreadsheets.

As spreadsheets go, this one is very well made and extremely easy to use. I've used spreadsheets for other classes, and never seen one I liked as much as this.

Using a plate-only optimal DPS set like you did yields the following breakdown for your other actions:

White damage: 585 DPS
Seal of Command damage: 311 DPS
Windfury damage: 120 DPS

So that's 508 damage that's guaranteed to be lost to Hammer of Wrath cast time, with flawless timing. I'm also going to assume that you have 40% crit chance fully buffed, so that bumps up Hammer of Wrath's gross damage to 1825.

Using those numbers, the point to which you can delay before Hammer of Wrath deals less damage than using Consecration is 0.393 seconds. That includes both latency and reaction time. To put it in perspective, I lose about 0.2 to 0.3 seconds per cast to latency on my Mage when I rapidly hammer the Frostbolt button; that leaves less than a tenth of a second of wiggle room to ensure that Hammer of Wrath is an effective use of a cooldown.

However, all of this math is assuming that you have the four piece Tier 6 set bonus. If you don't have the set bonus, the point to which you can delay your cast is 0.230 seconds after your swing, which is impossible given my very normal North American latency.

Conclusion: Hammer of Wrath is only worthwhile if the following two conditions are met:

1. You are playing from the server room in Irvine California.
2. Your secret identity is Barry Allen.

So the conclusion we can draw from this is that HoW is pretty much useless in PvE situations (though in PvP it is quite fun) for a ret pally as long as it has a cast time. Seems like a simple enough thing to fix, and I would expect the devs could tack it on to some talent to make it instant cast (or replace Improved Retribution Aura).

[Cloak of Fiends] should be added to the spreadsheet, as far as I can tell it's currently the best cloak in the game if you are hit capped.

I think HoW is nice in a few very specific situations - such as when Leotheras is at 2%, whirlwinding, and we have to burn him down asap because our warlock tank just died.

Hmmm....is it just me, or does the spreadsheet not check to make sure you're meeting the gem requirements for meta gems? At least, that seems to be the case with [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond].

After deciding to save a Torch of the Damned from being DE'd last week, I got lucky and 6 pieces of BT/Hyjal loot dropped that no one wanted. I've been Ret for about a week now and am still trying to figure out all the intricacies of the spec. I've pretty much got the basics: SoB > SoC, Str/AP > Crit/Agi > spelldmg, 9% hit with talents is all I need, the relentless earthstorm diamond is the best meta gem, and Haste is a really good stat. However, I still have a few questions and I read way too slow to make it through 63 pages worth of posts . I apologize in advance for any questions that have been asked and answered a million times, and I'll make my list short and to the point.

Assume: Seal of Blood, only doing heroics through ZA (guild would kill me if I showed up to BT as ret), I have access to every piece of PvE and cheap PvP gear, no access to epic gems, gold not important for consumables or enchants.
The World of Warcraft Armory

Questions:
1) "Best" weapon enchant(s)? (Solo and raids)
2) Elixirs, Flasks?
3) Best dps rotation? (Do I need to time crusader strike with my auto attacks? Questions like that.)
4) Suggestions for gear/talents? ie. obvious or easy to obtain gear upgrades, better enchants, and talents I should/shouldn't have.

Thank you in advance for the help.

Rotation is in the first post, talents... it varies but usually its something like 5/8-10/46-48. If you want an idea look at my armory.

The rest can be answered by the spreadsheet bellator makes... enter your gear and plug away.

Bellator's spreadsheets

Edit: And in case it hasn't been said enough, TYVM for your hard work on this spreadsheet Bellator. It IS much appreciated by the members of this thread.

Thanks for the quick reply. I read the first 10 pages or so of info, but I was just wondering if any "new and improved" rotations or theorycraft stuff like that came up in the following 50 pages. The few uber ret pallies that I checked all have mongoose so I guess I'll go with that one :P. Also, I'm terrible at figuring out how to use spreadsheets but I'll keep at it :P

Your guild sucks :p

While looking at your armory I noticed that you have 115 hit rating and 3/3 Precision. All you need is 9% total hit (~142 hit rating), so you could drop 1 point out of precision or adjust your gear when you get upgrades. Additionally, pick up the S3 gloves. Getting the best hands in the game for only 1125 arena points is unbelievable.

Troof on the S3 gloves. Best, bonus, ever.

Get a new helm glyph, it looks like you have all the hit you could ever need. Get Glyph of the Outcast from lower city (+str/int).

You arguably have better gear than me, and heres a WWS of our first night on Bloodboil to show you how viable ret is, especially with seal of blood on your side. Start talking to your raid leader to bring a ret pally. The utility and damage we bring to a 25 man is very valuable.

Wow Web Stats

Salty, that is by far the oddest placement of classes in a WWS for gorefiend I have ever seen... warlocks not first? O_o

I guess you guys are still gearing up...most everyone in my guild only needs 1-2 pieces to be fully endgame, and I usually place 5th-8th. Can't touch the over 2k dps the locks do and the 1800+ dps rogues. I usually sit around the 1500 mark for gorefiend.

Edit:

Actually... our guild placed 24th on world dps on gorefiend this week. I got first ghost though, so I didn't do that amazing.

If you guys are curious what ret dps looks like on gorefiend, I frapsed the kill linked above. Gearwise, I'm missing [Dreadboots of the Legion], [Belt of Seething Fury], and [Lightbringer Breastplate] from being fully endgame. Also good for those who haven't been ghosted yet. Please don't critique my video editing skills; I made the video in about 10 minutes for one of our shaman who wanted to see what my damage looks like.

Enjoy

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll definitely have to get those S3 gloves, that libram, and maybe a new glyph for my helm. It would probably be a lot of fun to give ret a try in BT, unfortunately we already have a ret paladin that's been ret since 2.3, and I'm pretty sure he'd try to find and kill me in real life if I took his spot.

I posted a Grutogg Bloodboil WWS, but I can show you a Gorefiend as well =P We were just learning the fight so the locks were spamming drain life a lot. As far as the locks go, they should be shadowbolt spamming/ CoDoom and wtf ever else they do. Usually out best lock (Caps....Caps lock get it?) is throwing out mad deeps and is on top a lot of the fights. Dont hate on me for hammer of wrathing at the end, that was prior EJ discussion.

Wow Web Stats

Why are you shooting for that belt [Belt of Seething Fury]? The [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths] is mo better imo. The expertise REALLY cuts down on dodges.

But no, they can't give us a "ranged instacast execute", that would be imbalanced *cough SW: Death* :P


1) Mongoose. Supposedly for Belf stacking haste Executioner is arguably equal, but you can't go wrong with Mongoose imo.
2) Flask of Relentless Assault. If you want to use pots, depends on your stats, but Str pot or Agi pot (surprisingly good), Str Food
3) CS everytime it's up, JoC/JoB everytime it's up and won't conflict with CS, Consecration inbetween if you got mana
4) Spec looks good, you could arguably dump your Benediction points into Imp BoM (if you're the disgnated BoM buffer), though difference is marginal either way
4*) Gear looks pretty good, maybe try to lose some hit (-1.2%) and get str/crit instead, maybe drop your neck and get the one from SSC trash if you still can get there, you HAVE to upgrade your libram farm [Libram of Avengement] in heroic Blood Furnace, possibly invest in a [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] for sustained pve dps

Hope all that info wasn't too tightly packed to read