Based off the coming itemization for plate: Blizzard also appears to be moving Retribution Paladins away from Intellect. Let's hope it's a sign of good things to come.

For 150 badges... you too can have the 2nd best retadin weapon in the game to date. Although you may have to wait until your server finishes their sunwell offensive super town! Im quite stoked.. altho it'll be like opening my xmas presents early considering I'm still in T5 instances (we just downed kael \o/).

Source: MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

Really didn't expect all that for badges!

Karazhan is back on the agenda.

The plate legs look amazing as well.

I could be wrong, but I keep looking at that weapon and its still coming out below Torch for Alliance paladins. 3.50 base speed with another 3.36% haste, and more than 30 lower topend. No thanks.

Sadly Apolyon only seems to be better than Torch because of the sheer difference in ilvels between the two, its still terribly itemized from an Alliance perspective.

If we don't get SoB this is going to be a pretty depressing patch.

I just plugged in the new Axe vs Torch in the spreadsheet with my ret gear and normal raid buffs and the Torch came out on top by 30DPS. So if you have access to BT loot dont waste the badges.

Really? Did you use SoB calculations? By all accounts, the badge axe is second only to Apolyon for SoB, and it's about as good as CE. Definitely better than Torch, just like CE is already.

I fully agree with you here, but unfortunately I see no other way to do it.

If only there was some way to give educated feedback (which has a chance to be read and considered by the devs) besides the spam fest that is the official forums, where "buff bubbl plz" is posted side to side with multi page mathematical breakdowns.

This is something I have my fingers crossed for, but I've been around long enough (US beta *cough*) to not get my hopes up, or even expect the worst, despite everything pointing towards a logical change.



Amen to that.


I've been doing some extensive thinking and weighing things up and down and I figured in order for me to consider "Ret fixed", it boils down to 3 Golden changes:


1. SoB vs SoC

This has to go. Give alliance SoB or upgrade SoC to be the ultimate ret Seal for all and to scale with haste.

There is no argument here, this cannot be overlooked if they want to fix ret. No other class/spec suffers from such an extreme faction imbalance as your MAIN spec-ability being different.


2. Spell mechanics

-Spelldamage: Spelldamage scaling has to be removed from SoC/JoC. JoC must scale with AP.

-Spellhit: Spellhit requirements have to be removed for JoC (and JoB?). This is a relic of utter ignorance and stubbornness/laziness... you tell me.

-Exorcism/Consecration: There has to be some way to make those scale with AP. Simply let them go off whatever you have more off (spelldamage or AP) so they don't break it for holy paladins/tanks. Scalability is what wow is based on, you can't just ignore half our spells.


3. Mana issues

This gains significant importance with the Sunwell gear since it seems we're being thrown into the same lump with warriors gear wise. That means we could very well be looking at 4k mana buffed.

Some way to "refresh our blue rage bar" based on hits or some sort of Str -> Mp5 mechanic or such should fix this.

This is especially the case for soloing, small instances (5-10 man) or PvP where you don't have raid buffs.

Maybe it would be better for "pure" dps but i dont like the NO STATS items so still like more torch than harbringer

JoB is already based on melee hit and cannot be fully resisted :/

It's yet another reason why SoB > SoC for raiding.

SoC gets a lot of partial resists atleast, very annoying!

Oh, I agree in a way. The stamina loss especially is quite significant with the axe. And hopefully we will be downing Archimonde soon (already working on him), so I might get my hands on CE, which is roughly the same (even better with certain gear setups stacking ArP).

The only problem I see with this is that with the amount of spell damage I wear on bosses my DPS can go all out, especially if the target is undead/demon. I never use SoV for tanking, I just don't like relying that much on chance when it comes to raid tanking. I stick my guns solely to SoR and it does the job just fine, provided none of my openers get resisted DPS can pretty much open instantly and go all out with no worries.

It is true that if you weave between SoV and SoR you can generate more threat, but with the mechanics of SoV you're setting yourself up for disappointment unless you're OK with the slow 1h spell damage mace from lower city rep.

In other words: even if they did buff SoV the extra threat isn't needed, SoR does the job just fine. Through gear I have made SoV obsolete, but between SoC and SoB the same cannot be said.

how kind of you to sacrifice yourself to be the better race for retribution.

Maybe I'm dumb, and simply can't understand what the dps cycle spreadsheet is saying, but looking at the dps cycle spreadsheet, but the best dps cycle seems to be-
Judge seal of Crusader as you're running to the target, then CS, then Seal of blood, then judge/CS when the cooldowns are up.

Is this correct, or is the best cycle is-

Judge seal of Crusader as you're running to the target, Seal of Blood, then CS?

Also, am I right assuming that if there's a half second left or something left on the CS cooldown and I can judge seal of blood, I should judge/renew instantly, then CS even though I will have let CS be up for .5 to 1 second due to latency?

Forgive me for saying so, but the SoV and SoB difference at least makes sense. As someone mentioned a number of pages back, Blood Elf pallies are all about destruction and revenge at any cost, while Alliance pallies are much more noble defenders of the masses. Just read through the story lines.

Compare that to the priest racial spells. Thre is no reason why humans and dwarves get Desperate Prayer (which at rank 8 heals the caster for 1601-1887 with no mana cost and a 10 minute cool down) and the trolls get Shadowguard (which at rank 7 gives them a 3 charge shield that does 130 shadow dmg to things which attack the troll priest and costs 270 mana) and Hex of Weakness (which at rank 7 weakens the enemy reducing damage caused by 35 and effectiveness of healing by 20% with a mana cost of 295). Threre seems to be a bit more of a gap between these abilities then there is between Seal of Comand and Seal of Blood.

So if SoV is broken Blizzard should fix that. They shouldn't give away an ability which is based on plot when there are so many other abilities which were assigned randomly.

No.

Seal of Blood is hands down the best seal in the game for retribution. There is no downside to using it (aside from gimmick fights where you can kill yourself).

Seal of Vengeance is terrible at high gear levels. Resists, lower damage as you gain more spell damage compared to SoR, and a non-gaurenteed proc chance with 9/10 tanking weapons (making you lose stacks if you try to weave and lower your TPS) make it a pretty awful tanking seal.

Unless SoV is made a 100% proc chance regardless of weapon speed or is made unresistable it will remain a very useless seal except for annoying rogues in PvP.

I'm all for lore, but something as drastically gamebreaking as SoB vs. SoC needs to be retconned. I don't care how they do it; just give the same seal to everyone, rename it Seal of Fury (lol) for alliance, whatever. There is no reason you should be vastly superior at retribution just because you rolled your paladin 2 years after me.

Sorry to say this my friend but you need to read up on the lore in the up coming patch, you bloodelfs are about to repent and join the good guys, so either we get SoB or you loose it when you switch sides, as after all if your going good you couldnt possibly use such an evil seal.

Unless of course the seal isnt evil? i which case there is no reason for alliance not to have it

Would hardly call it going to the "good side".

Here's what confuses me.

They gave shamans to both sides. They gave their "faction spell" different names (Heroism/Bloodlust), but it does exactly the same thing, showing that while maintaining faction flavour, they want balanced factions. Both factions are balanced, everyone loves shamans.

They gave paladins to both sides. They give their "faction spell" different effects (SoV/SoB), resulting in a faction imbalance. They maintain that "faction flavour" is the reasoning behind it.

This is completely inconsistent. I'm horde. My wife's paladin benefits from the "good" seal, but it's still stupid.

Take SoV. Keep the name, make it exactly the same as SoB. You restore faction balance, you maintain consistency with your other "faction flavour" decisions, and you make a great step forward towards making Retribution raid-viable for everyone.

1) SoV is not clearly the best tankadin seal for several reasons:
a) It limits your weapon choice to slow weapons.
b) It becomes less effective than SoR as spell damage increases.
c) It's proc is random, can be resisted.

SoV gives a THREAT advantage to paladins who have low spell damage. The risk here is that it has a chance to fall off, resulting in virtually no threat to the tank, especially as he now has little spell damage to fall back on to quickly regain threat and very little mana to work with. For a tank that is a very risky position to put your raid in.

2) SoB is clearly the best PvE retribution seal:
a) choices to more weapons (ie faster)
b) more base damage than SoC.
c) more stat benefits.
d) superior Judgement.
e) superior mana regen.
f) not random.

The biggest advantage with SoB is not just the damage advantage. It's the fact that SoB backlash damage can be turned into a mana regen advantage and Horde gain access to more weapons and more gear improvements than an alliance paladin has access too.

Priest racials do not make Horde SPs > Alliance SPs, nor do they "replace" any mainstream spells.
SoB makes Horde Ret > Alliance Ret. Which does not make it any more fair if SoV made Alliance Prot > Horde Prot. They are still two different talent trees.

Also 90% of the new itemization is biased towards SoB, if SoC scaled at the same rate and Alliance was given proper itemization for it then it would be a different story. Blizzard atm either straight up doesn't understand how to itemize for SoC, is too lazy to bother, or out right doesn't give a damn about Alliance Ret Pallies. Take your pic they all suck.

To the gentleman making lore comments, I suggest you read your lore, the first paladins were Knights that were taught to make their attacks more powerful by harnessing the power of the light to augment their attacks. This is what Ret is meant to reflect no matter what faction you are from. Alliance Ret does not = less offense minded.