Meh, got my edit in on my last post a bit later than I thought.

Two-Hand Weapon Specialization just affects abilities with a weapon damage coefficient, since it gives:

Apply Aura: Mod Dmg % (Physical)

as opposed to:

Apply Aura: Mod Dmg % (All)

like Avenging Wrath or Crusade does.

Strikes, Auto-attack, Judgement, and the like would be increased by 2HWS talent.

The text of the talent may be the important distinction

Vs say

Kind of an important distinction in language, and I'm guessing mechanics.

DKs have the same talent and it only affects strikes and auto-attack. Basically, it only affects abilities that you cannot use while disarmed (except Judgement, it is affected by 2H spec).

It is still a good talent, but it is more like a 4-5% damage increase.

Your calculations about Righteous Vengeance, Fanaticism and Sanctity of Battle are pretty close but you are wrong about Exorcism. We have Exorcism in our rotations now (with ~80% of raid bosses being Undead) and our damage is balanced around this too.

To put it otherwise imagine that they would make Crusade work on all types of mobs (a flat 6% increase). We wouldn't count this as a buff, we'll just remove those -3% we lost because of it. Same situation with Exorcism now, it would have been a -4% DPS decrease (like Crusade is -3%) if nothing was changed about it.

As it is now, Exorcism usable on all mobs it's not a gain nor a loss, we'll just keep those 4% we already have.

I know it's been a bit too detailed here, but I've heard it too many times how we gained 4% from Exorcism and wanted to clear this once and for all. Hope it worked.

So the total is around -4.5%. Even -5.5% if you count Holy Wrath but let's not go there, I'd say.

Has anyone tested how much better the T8 4set is now that CS is affected by RV?

No one can test 4 T8, they just can use math on it. Certainly 10% more crit to CS/DS is going to help now that RV can proc from both.

I am certain that 4 T8 is better than 4 T7.

It may not be the definitive answer, but it could potentially help shore up some DPs disparities: both of the other plate classes have a nice little Tier 1/2 talents.

Armored to the Teeth and Bladed Armor.

Given that all plate classes are technically hybrids, I don't see why we couldn't have an equal talent in Tier 1 Prot. It certainly wouldn't make up the missing 4-5% difference between Live and PTR, but it would certainly give us incentive to wear plate over leather/mail.

Has our dps priority order for our dps changed at all with all the modifications with patch 3.1? I can't get on the PTR to test and find out for myself.

If we assume this is true, when do we swap out of 4T7? Should I keep my 7sec judgement until I have the full 4 t8 pieces?

I'm all for an Armor>AP talent, since Warriors now have our 15% Str bonus in improved Berzerker Stance. So they have 2 reasons to stay Plate.

I guess it really depends on what you want to consider the baseline.

3.0 Undead -> 3.1 Undead? 3.0 Non-Undead -> 3.1 Non-Undead? 3.1 Undead -> 3.1 Non-Undead? You're right, though, my numbers aren't consistent with any one of those scenarios.

3.0 Non-Undead -> 3.1 NU,
-3.5% from 30% RV and Fanaticism
+4% Exorcism
+2% CS RV
+2% Sanctity of Battle
+1% DS w/ 110% weapon damage
Total +6.5%


3.0 Undead -> 3.1 Undead
-3.5% from 30% RV and Fanaticism
+2% CS RV
+2% Sanctity of Battle
+1% DS w/ 110% weapon damage
Total +1.5%

3.0 Undead -> 3.0 NU
-3% Crusade
-1% Sense Undead
-4% Exorcism
Total -8%

3.1 Undead -> 3.1 NU
-3% Crusade
-1% Sense Undead
Total -4%

3.0 Undead -> 3.1 NU
-3% Crusade
-1% Sense Undead
-3.5% from 30% RV and Fanaticism
+2% CS RV
+2% Sanctity of Battle
+1% DS w/ 110% weapon damage
Total -2.5%


I think we're better off assuming that Blizzard intends to balance around non-Undead, and consider the 4% Crusade to be a small bonus versus undead. We're really playing with pretty small numbers here, and this type of bonus shows up for several other classes (Rogues, Hunters). +-4% based purely on creature type does not determine if you're getting a raid or not. It's far outstripped by fight mechanics - is it a movement fight? Does it have adds?

Think about this: How many raids swap people in and out between bosses? I can think of a few fights in Naxx where swapping would improve a slot's DPS in excess of 10%. How many guilds actually care enough to swap? Considering the time costs of swapping - would there even be a net gain in kill time? (+10% on 1 out of 7 DPS is ... maybe a 1% boost to raid DPS? In a 3 minute fight, that can be 2 seconds saved! 10 minute fight? 6 seconds!)

Look at the current non-Undead raid bosses - with our current -8% penalty, do guilds shrink from bringing Ret pallies to Maly/Sarth? Is the -4% in 3.1 going to make it any worse than what it is on Live?

4pieceT7 probably has a more reliable DPS increase, whereas 4pieceT8 has a greater potential DPS increase.

Sustaining the Righteous Vengeace debuff isn't necessary for good Retribution DPS. It is not like Deep Wounds, which gets stronger and stronger the longer you sustain it. Yes, our uptime on RV will go up but the damage on it will remain largely consistent with current values.

A bladed armor / armored to the teeth facsimile wouldn't appeal to anyone other than Retribution Paladins, so it would just look wrong in any tree but Retribution. Why would holy paladins pick up a talent to boost their attack power at all? Yes, warriors and death knights are plate hybrids but each spec of Dk and warrior can benefit from an armor -> AP conversion, which is why the talents are easily accessable. Paladins, on the other hand, have one talent build that actually benefits from such a talent. Therefore it wouldn't fit anywhere but Retribution. It could replace Crusade as another talent to increase our DPS, one that isn't subject to mob-types, but the amount of armor -> would have to be just such that the 3% damage from the old talent would at least be matched.

As for Ret paladins in raids, Judgement of Wisdom is still a unique ability that few (if any) other classes bring. Sure, replenishment is a homogenized buff that shadow priests and hunters also bring, but mana refunds on successful attacks are one of a kind. You can make the argument that a prot paladin could fulfill this role, but there are unique talents deeper in ret that make them worth having.

You're forgetting that a lot (all?) tankadin DPS / TPS abilities benefit from AP as well as SP.[/quote]

Unlike the warrior / DK versions however, only tankadins can actually get Touched by the Light. If you really want a Ret-only version then bung it in with Swift Retribution or next to RV (as most penultimate tier talents have 5pts rather than 3 like RV). If you want to make it a little more unique you could also have it provide Str instead of AP. Eg:

Holy Armour: Increases your Strength by 1/2 for every 180 armour you have.
Scales with Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings for 2.53 AP per 180 armour. Assuming 14k armour you'd get 196.8 AP from this.
Increase the bonus to 3 Str for 180 armour and you get 3.8 AP per 180 armour, and 295.2 from 14k armour total.

Since when? I thought the whole point about RV was that it rolled like Deep Wounds ...

It should be in the Ret tree, but protection paladins probably would take it too depending on the position in the tree.

I was referring at 3.0 Undead versus 3.1 Non-Undead. Because of the very large number of Undead bosses in Naxx we can assume we've been balanced around that damage (Exorcism change stands to prove it) until now, but we need to be balanced against non Undead in Ulduar. So I think we can consider this baseline.

Balancing us using other means and leaving Crusade as a 'class' bonus only versus Undead is something I am fine with although it can create some complications.

As for us being swapped out of raids, it didn't happen indeed, and I can count few reasons for it:

- people were used to our damage in Naxxramas, which was decent compared to others (not great, but at least close enough);
- difficulty was so low that no one thinks about super optimizing raids anymore. Basically you can go with almost any setup and as long you have 3/4 decent players in your raid it's unlikely you'll fail;

But we had mages out of raids in Sunwell because of a 10-15% DPS difference compared to locks and although this is unlikely to happen now, it's not much fun to play a class which is by design behind most others, especially when it can be easily fixed.

As you said, it came several times recently and there seems to be a lot of confustion about this :

It was my understanding that in fact, RV now works exactly like Deep Wounds, and also like Ignite, the way Kinmaul just recalled (which is basically what's written in the first post of this thread).

For the sake of being sure, I just logged on my small Arms warrior, made him swing on a training dummy. With 1 crit, Deep Wounds ticks for 120 (EDIT: crit value is not relevant, seeing how Deep Wounds work). Waiting a bit before critting again, I got it tick for 145... and then a crit few seconds later, it then ticked for 165.
Now, I was also able to do 2 crits at the same time (slam + autoattack... obviously we can't have that with how RV works), and I actually saw DW ticking for 240.

This strongly confirms that it does not actually "roll", and just works the same way as our RV (I have no figure to propose for RV since I'm not in the correct spec tonight, but I'm pretty sure this has been extensively tested already).

Conclusion being : don't bother trying to "roll" RV, results will just be exactly the same. In fact, if you tweak your rotation, thinking that it will do better with RV, you will happen to have a worse rotation than the optimal one and you will possible end up doing LESS dps...

Would help if you posted the crit damage and the resulting tick. But from what I understand, consecutive crits do not result in any loss of RV damage, so it does roll.

I look at RV as a flat 40% crit damage increase that applies itself over time.

To be absolutely clear, Seal of Blood and Seal of Command and their respective Judgements, as well as auto-attacks, Crusader Strikes and Divine Storms are all affected by Two-Hand Weapon Spec.

Seal of Righteousness, Light, Wisdom and Vengeance and their respective Judgements are NOT affected by 2HWS.

A simpler way to say it would be 2HWS increases your weapon damage. Since SoComm, SoB, auto-attacks, CS and DS all use (a portion of) weapon damage, they are all affected by 2HWS.

The term "roll" is the issue, it was originally used to explain how ignites worked back in the old days, where consecutive crits would reset the damage from earlier ones. Meaning that if you got a 1k crit you would have an ignite for 400, if you crit again before it ticked to completion it would recalculate adding the initial 400 (even though it has already done a portion of this damage) to the new amount. That is what it means to "roll", the damage continually increases until you have one fire mage doing 40% of the raids damage on Loatheb (back at 60).

RV does not in fact roll in this way, it simply recalculates remaining damage, adds it to the new damage to be done, and deals it over eight seconds.

Like I said though, the problem is in the term, some people think back to rolling ignites in vanilla, so the term confuses them, since nothing works like that anymore. Others call "rolling" simply not losing the original damage due to a second crit before all the damage was caused.

So, GC responded to the thread regarding Glyph of SotB.

Source:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Mandatory glyph to fix a broken mechanic?

I think the biggest problem I'm having is our low dps. The fact we need the dps glyphs to even be on par with other dps is my problem. If they want these glyphs to be somewhat optional then our dps shouldn't be measured based on them. If I could do comparative dps without the Judgment/Exo/Cons glyphs I wouldn't feel as bad about switching one out to get the large mana boost. I probably still wouldn't unless I was having huge mana problems, but that is besides the point. I'm in agreement that recoil should go away, but as it seems they are going to keep it around, I am going to plan around it being here. So, let them fix what they have admitted is a large problem, i.e. our dps, and then I will be ok with glyphs being more optional.

@ Beta4Life:

I just wanna get this idea of how RV works in my head so I make sure I fully understand what you mean about the recalculation of the DoT in the following example:

You crit with A for 6k - you have an RV of 1800 over 8 secs (440 per tick)

after the first tick, crit with B for 4k occurs, a RV of 1200 over 8 secs (300 per tick)

Now, there are three ways I can perceive of this "stacking/rolling":

1 - the remaining 1360 damage of A is added to the 1200 of B, for a total of 2560, and then does that over 8 secs (640 per tick).

2 - the total damage of A is added to the total damage of B for 3000, for a tick of 750.

3 - the tick (440) of damage A and the tick (300) of damage B is added together, (for 740) doing this each tick over 8 secs.

Just so that I can make sure i understand what you are saying, just confirm which of these is how it works. If anything, I think defining how this works will remove any/all confusion people have over the talent.