Seal of Command procs are determined directly by your white damage. Your white damage will increase with ArP, so yes SoComm will get a boost from armor penetration, but indirectly.Sorry, Ive been told this is incorrect. See below for details.

I'm still curious as to where ArP falls on the scale of worth for a ret pally though, I lack the time and patience to test it myself :-D

I was under the impression that SoC damage is determined by your unmitigated white damage (shown on your character screen). ArP makes the amount mitigated by the mob's/boss' armor smaller, but it does nothing to SoC.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe this is correct, from my experience. If this were the case it would calculate the targets armor rating, too, as armor pen is simply a - modifier on a target's armor - not a damage calculation itself. This would mean it calculates the targets armor, which we know isn't used in SoCo.

Thanks for the replies, how does this figure in for CS dmg then, i notice a trend of CS hitting for roughly 10% more than melee white, and never seen a noncrit hit for more than my listed melee dmg in raids, that makes me believe it is therefor affected by armor and gains from ArP, is this correct?

in the end i think Ilvl for Ilvl haste would be better then Arp for ret

Seal of command is 70% of your normal weapon damage. This would imply that modifiers such as armor penetration are not factored. Meanwhile, Crusader Strike is 110% of your weapon damage and thus modified by armor penetration. Armor penetration is still a pretty good stat, but it's somewhat limited since it doesn't apply to all of your damage and is dependent on raid debuffs, boss armor value, and how much of the stat that you have.

well, based on that, ill aim more toward the haste plate pieces in BT over the ArP ones. Thanks for all the replies and feedback

ArP affects white hits and CS.
Haste affects white hits. With faster auto attacks you gain a bit more from judgements (JoL, JoW)
It's not that simple and cannot be solved by: "I'll go with haste plate". It depends a lot on the armor of the boss and the amount of ArP you can stack (without gimping your other stats too much).
The above goes for Alliance Paladins.

This is actually completely incorrect and misleading.

As others have stated, SoC is based on "unmitigated weapon damage" * 70% * Holy damage modifiers, therefore ArP has no effect on SoC at all.



Since CS is physical damage, yes it's affected by ArP.

As a rule of thumb:

Is it physical damage? Then it's mitigated by armor! Therefore it is affected by ArP. Examples: White hits, "Windfury Procs" (white hits), Crusader Strike

Is it holy damage? Then it's unmitigated by armor! Therefore ArP has no effect on it. Examples: SoC, JoC, Consecration, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath


It's unfortunate to say that for us alliance paladins both ArP and haste are of relatively low worth, when compared to traditional stats such as Str/Crit.

That's not to say that they're "bad" since they still offer small dps upgrades, but similar to spelldamage, the real question becomes "how much damage is X amount of ArP/Haste/spelldamage worth compared to Y amount of Str/Crit".

I highly recommend going over the spreadsheet linked on the first page, adjusting it to your own gear and then running the graph calculation to see which stat is more worthwhile for you.

It should read out something like (Hit if you're not capped) > Weapon Expertise (unfortunately missing itemisation here really) > Str > Crit > Agi > AP > ArP > Haste > Spelldamage, for alliance paladins.


My general advice is to aim for pure stats heavy items, though not neglecting the off piece here and there of high level ArmPen/Haste item which could prove an overall upgrade. Use a "value is the sum of its parts" mentality basically.

Sorry, you'll think im a noob but I play in spanish so i dont know in the table whats GDC when youre talking about rotations.

Thk anoyone who can tell me

GCD is Global Cooldown, a 1.5 second period after you use a spell. You cannot cast other spells in that period (hence the cooldown name).

can anyone show where swiftsteel shoulders rank in the item calc portion as i cant do a user inputed item it just crashes.

It ranks them currently below everything and i think they are really good, and it doesnt show that they are.

Season 3 ret gloves are currently the best in the game. You need to go pick these up, also work on getting the Heroic BF libram, or at least something you can get a benefit from.

I'm hoping you're not using SoC as a BE for PvE DPS.

@Bellator: As I was playing with gear in spreadsheet, I think it would be nice if you could include WE racials in it. If I as human use Sword or Mace, I should have get 5 Expertise points.

@all: I wonder about [Darkmoon Card: Crusade]. Many fights today needs me to run away, stop hitting for some time etc. Do not you have problems from loosing buffs stacks? Do you use it situationally only at fights without hit interruptions?

This is definitely a significant problem with it. I recommend having a backup trinket for the fights where you know you're not going to be able to keep it stacked up. Those 10 seconds go by fast.

You can also manually add the WE racial. Just change the value of WE at Base Information (L17) to 5 if a sword or mace is equiped.

Hmmm a small option at the top to select which race and have the correct base stats + racials reflected would be great.

I'm currently not raiding and our enhancement shaman left for other shores and I've been been offered his spot for my shaman alt. Now my problem is that I'd like to start raiding again but I was waiting for a spot for my ret paladin into who I put a lot of time already.
I was wondering whether I could have a point in arguing with more raid utility with the paladin than the shaman.
So long story short, for a raidgroup with neither a ret paladin nor an enhancement shaman, which class would be more beneficial to the raid?

What do you think?

I have a question, one thing popped few days ago on my guild forum, where they were trying to make best possible 25-man group setup. In their idea for max raid dps, it's better to have a warrior/enh/druid/rogue/rogue in meele group instead of warrior/enh/druid/ret/rogue. According to their plan, retribution paladin is placed in tank group with BM hunter and another feral druid.

Can anyone confirm that such setup will provide more benefit for overall raid dps considering similar level of gear for everyone?

Well here are the benefits of both:

Ret Paladin:
Raid: Boss Judgements: Mana, Health, Crit
Raid: Extra Blessing
Group: +dmg aura
Raid: Emergency Lay on Hands
Wipe Protection: Divine Intervention

Shaman:
Group Totem buffs
Group Unleashed Rage
Group Heroism/Bloodrage
Wipe Protection: Ankh

I would lean towards bringing a Retpally simply because their skills enhance the total raid more than a shammy. Now, your personal DPS as well as the DPS of the melee is going to be severely nerfed due to the lack of WF and totems. It depends if your raid has better geared casters than melee I suppose. Shamans and Paladins are both support classes.

The enhancement shaman.

Just WF for melee blows anything a paladin can provide out of the water, including the (very often not applicable) 3 judgements on a boss.

I think you guys are ignoring the fact that a shaman doesn't have to be enhancement to drop windfury and strength totems.

Granted, its not quite ideal to have a resto shaman in the melee group, but if his mana tide isn't needed elsewhere, all you're really losing by him not being enhancement is Unleashed Rage. Plus, what if there's only one or two other paladins in the raid? I've often found that having less than 3 paladins in a raid can be a problem with regard to blessings.

My point is just that if you have to choose between an enhancement shaman and retribution paladin, I think it would help to know how many other paladins/shamans there are in the raid.

There was a post made by madmardigan somewhere back in this thread doing the math. The result was that a ret paladin not in the melee group had to do 65% of a non-melee group rogue's damage in order to break even. So if your rogue vastly outplays/outgears your ret paladin then it'd be better to put him in the melee group instead. But if your ret paladin is that bad, then he shouldn't be in the raid at all.