I had some good luck in Naxx 25 yesterday, coming out with 3 big upgrades. However this has now meant that my hit has dropped to just under 5%. Now I know the current belief is to not worry about hit, gem for strength and so on but I'm wondering: at what point, if any, is low hit too low?
Ideally I'd have 2 alternate items to make up the hit, Surge Needle ring to replace Circle of Death and the bracers from Gothik to replace my badge ones.

I've long ago argued that Consecration (or alternatively a Consecration-like single target replacement with a linked cooldown and reduced mana cost, think Zul'jin "Pillar of Fire") would be the way to go.
If I recall correctly it was about "decoupling PvE and PvP damage", this is something I still believe they *have* to do at some point if they don't want to keep walking the razor thin line of balancing both PvE and PvP, every patch.

It is very obvious at this point that the "SoB-experiment" has failed, it's being heavily used in PvP and at the same time they can't keep making it infinitely punishing without significantly affecting PvE in the process. Giving a Consecration buffing talent to Ret (or the described single target Consecration) would be the perfect solution to this, it wouldn't be usable in PvP (sidestep would get you out of it), but you could keep increasing it if you think we should do more damage in PvE. Movement fights would be a minor issue I guess, but there are few fights where a mob doesn't stand around for at least 8 seconds before moving.

Definitely. As it would have no combat implications, I don't see any arguments against this, it's simply streamlining a cumbersome mechanic (with the GCD this has always been incredibly annoying).

Neither, I'm pretty sure they're not finalized yet.

In any case, if we have to go up to Divine Int to function then something is seriously wrong.

Now that you've mentioned it, how about finally making our auras 45 yards range as every other aura and raid buff in the game? It's plain silly us being only class with 30 yards auras now that they buff the entire raid and I am quite surprised they didn't do that a long time ago, when Wrath was launched.

Of course I am talking about Retribution and Protection specs, for both Aura Mastery is out of reach. That talent should have been so gone long time ago and all auras range made 45 yards default to be consistent with other classes auras or raid buffs.

As for single target consecrate, making a small circle the size of the lunar stones for instance, while on humanoid movement fights it would end as a useless spell, for fights with movement but big hitboxes, the boss could be moved a good bit before the hitbox was out of the fire.

Only reason we ain't getting what we need yet is because previously blizzard have overdone it and had to nerf retadins and when they did there was like sending a fluffy kitten into the fiery gates of hell, the whine was immense.

This time, and they have said they would do it like this, they bring us a little something to start of with (the exorcism change perhaps) and then work their way up to the bigger stuff when they know how to balance it so that they won't have to strike out the nerfbat and make baby paladins cry rainbows. I prefer it this way, atleast there is always something to look forward to instead of the nerfocop haunting my dreams because my crusaderstrike oneshot mages and the next few weeks will be filled with torment and damage changes.

Fully agree with you there, and Holy could do with a more interesting 11pt talent as well IMHO. Well, so could Prot, seeing as it lacks one altogether ATM, but I'll put that to one side for now. On the subject of auras, baking Crusader Aura into the others would also be a good idea.

Something akin to the Warcraft 3 immolation spell? Think of it as a damaging aura: you'd have predictable, steady damage, it'd work on movement fights, and in PvP it would be both easy to handle (ie, it's predictable damage) and easy to avoid (get out of the way).

Just as a note in general, it feels like all 3 paladin 11 pt tree talents feel lackluster.
Few people if any use SoComm anymore (I know I no longer do even to pvp), I agree that our auras should be 45 yards just like everyone elses (points to 11pt Holy) and then prot is STILL w/o an 11 point holy talent. Just my 2 cents.

I would say neither at this point, there are likely too many changes yet to come. They have announced the new prot tier 1 talent but its not yet on the talent trees on PTR so adding that would likely change the first linked build just as one example. IMO, once you take the dps talents the rest are flavor and it probably will not matter drastically which flavor you go with. However, if there are more encounters like Sarth 3d I could see a particular talent, such as Divine Guardian, becoming important enough to influence that.

Completely disagree. PoJ is an amazing talent because of the movement speed while running. Even with the talent, I still usually switch to Crusader when flying. But the point is, Crusader Aura has absolutely no impact on PvE encounters (I don't think it works with vehicles?). Aspect of the Pack (the daze penalty not withstanding) would be an absolute huge PVE/PVP buff if it was active all the time, and if they did that it would essentially become mandatory to have a hunter in your group (similar to unholy aura from DKs - which got nerfed/changed btw because Blizzard doesn't want the entire raid to have perma speed buffs). Run speed buffs are on a whole different level than meaningless travel speed buffs because of their impact on fights. If we are always going to be moving 15% faster while running, then Blizzard would just have to tune encounters around that.

For leveling, SoC is very useful. I still use SoC for PvP (battlegrounds I am holy in Arena) because I run out of mana really fast healing myself (after the target is dead). I could try judging Light (I hate eating food/water) to fix that issue, but I thought Justice was important.

Trees do not need an 11 pointers to function. I'd rather them work on Ulduar than worry about that minor issue. However, if they add an "Aura Master" to each of the tree's 11 pointers, that should work if they still refuse to make it baseline.


Here is a nice change for Ret in 3.1, Repentance no longer resets the Paladin's melee swing timer. I haven't checked to see if instant Flash of Light still resets.

Any ret paladins currently planning on doing some Ulduar on ptr realms? If so, would appreciate if you posted some dps meters. thx.