Maylander:

- The positive of having your mana supply depend on judgement (although don't forget about Divine Plea) is that it allows (in fact, it encourages) us to continue to dps to regain mana. Compared to SA which encouraged us to "stand in the fire" - not really of course... but somewhat at times. I feel the system could be tweaked to return mana on casting of judgement rather than hitting... but I presume it's working as intended atm (shamans's regen works on hitting as well).

- They have mentioned that they would like to make CS "more interesting", and so that's encouraging as well.

- I don't disagree with this statement... we can get pretty much all of our dps Ret abilities long before lvl 80. And they even reduced the number of talent points needed! (I won't complain about that for my pvp spec though)



I am not doing any of the boss testings on Patch, but how are people seeing the recoil from SoB effecting them? Any (or many) untimely deaths at this point? Is it really not as bad as we once thought? Is it worse?


Also, if needed I can run a macro test against a test dummy as well (although I currently only use recount... which seemed to have some mistakes in it). I can set it up tonight after our raid and let it run through the night and tomorrow as I'm at work. Anyone have any preference on skills, talents, or abilities I would use? Is it not worth doing if I only have Recount?

1000+ was an overstatement ofc, but it might aswell be 1k as 500, a weaker dps is quite simply the weaker dps. As you say, it's different from guild to guild and theres a difference when it comes to palyers, but in a guild, such as mine where people do perform at their maximum almost every raid, it's quite hard to convince the raidleader that my dps, the same dps that everyone else pulled with half the gear I have, is worthy of staying in the raid. doesn't matter if my number is 3 or 6k when the rest can pull ahead of me by miles anyway.
A raid that is looking to go all out from the moment it opens to the moment yogg goes down to make it top 10 can't have dps that is lagging behind, would it bring a blessing more or JoL that any other paladin just as easily could keep up. The unique buffs we can bring are not good enough to make up for it.

As I said, looking at the best performing paladins versus the best performing other classes, the gap aint narrow enough.

Before they made the change to seal/judgement DPS, it was pretty bad, especially on fights with very large damaging effects like Kologarn, Deconstructor, and Hodir (and phase 3 hardmode iron council). It's better now, for sure, but you still have to watch your health.

And jgRnt, 1000 and 500 are very different. If I were a raid leader, I'd give up 500 dps from say a rogue, warlock, or hunter to get the added benefit of a retribution paladin. Replenishment, blessings, extra raid damage, a VERY powerful hot-type effect on non-healers, and on PTR an extra divine sacrifice are QUITE good. In fact for all those even a 1000 dps hit might be worth it (which on certain fights, it can be if the fight favors ranged).

Id grab the Girdle of Chivalry from Naxx as it has the hit you are lacking. Your not losing much from dropping the Razuv belt either. Regardless, come Ulduar you shouldnt have as much an issue finding the hit you need.

What Libram were you using?

The nature of some fights requires more consideration on the raid leader's (or leaders') part than just "how much dps is this person doing?" A top rated guild will definitely cull the DPS machines from its raids if they can't operate properly in fights other than DPS burns. You also have to interpret DPS with respect to Damage Done; you can be doing the most DPS in the entire raid one second before the boss goes berserk or you die from recoil + splash damage + RNG nightmare #45123, but what does it matter then?

Edit: Zurm beat me to this point :P

I definitely see your point, top world guilds should keep DPS in mind when selecting their raiders. If they have a Ret pally doing sub-3k on important encounters, replace him. But there is definitely more to consider than the gaps, however large or small, between classes with respect to DPS when one class is capable of so much more than just DPS, or capable of following instructions and performing correctly on a given fight.

With that said, this argument is about as productive as the trinket one, so back on topic; Is recoil still a major issue and what can we expect from Crusader Strike in terms of PvE appeal?

This has been covered quite a few times in the thread. WWS includes recoil damage, which cannot crit.

Unfortunately, you cannot compare Paladin DPS to Rogue DPS. I sympathize with your sentiment, but this is an apples to oranges type of argument. What you can do is compare defined classes subject to the "hybrid tax" versus others; or defined "pure" classes to others. For example: Paladin versus DK. The DPS potential must be comparable/competitive. Assuming all things equal, the intent is that those two classes would do exactly the same amount of damage. If one is doing more, then there's a problem that needs address. Blizzard's stated intent is to have the hybrid classes within an approximate 5% of their pure counterparts. (practice versus theory notwithstanding.) If you're a hybrid and within that margin, competitive with your hybrid peer's DPS: you're working as intended.

I'm skeptical that a raid would load up on only pure classes in a min/max fashion, since they would only be punishing themselves. Foregoing certain benefits, buffs, abilities, etc. that hybrids bring to the table help bolster the pure class' DPS or provide the necessary longevity/sustainability to the raid. If your raid leader fails to see this: perhaps s/he is not a very wise leader.

If you're saying Ret Paladins, specifically, are lagging 500-1000 DPS behind other hybrids: I'm in full support of your argument. I have yet to see anything that backs up this claim -- other than our Seal/Judgement system is bugged and will soon be fixed, therefore making it irrelevant.

Deadly Glad, no DS shenanigans. My DPS was somewhere in the 6k range on council. Seemed reasonable with the amount of movement involved, but maybe I just suck. I hovered around 1-2 on healing done meters, with 5 healers in raid.

As an aside, I much prefer the dps style on the PTR. Judgement is still good(I know it's too good for horde atm) but CS feels beefy and DS...is DS. It's all opinion of course but spreading out the damage and having CS feel like a real attack and having our damage just spread out a bit feels more natural. So assuming all the numbers end up where they need to be when 3.1 goes live, I'm going to enjoy raid DPSing more, so that's an intangible plus.

I've enjoyed PTR DPSing as well, Granted some things need fixed still but the only thing I still have an issue with is even adding exorcism in the rotation I still run into dead zones waiting for a CD to cycle and notice the drop in DPS this is mainly because we don't have a real rotation but so far the game feels a little better on PTR.

I was in the 6500-7000 DPS range with DS Libram and around 4800-5400 with Deadly. Council is a bad DPS test since runes are random and really give you a huge burst of DPS hoping we have some more bosses to test before release. Would really like at least one shot at General.

Ok so after the 3% crit discrepancy I was seeing yesterday, I did a run with just CS, no judgements or anything and there is still a 3% difference between melee and specials (or at least CS). Heres the numbers. Any thoughts? I was thinking maybe the Sanctified Seals, or Sanctified Retribution talent not working with specials? That's the only other 3% crit talents we have right? I'll set up some runs without ret aura on to rule out that one.

WWS Loading...

Pics:

Melee specials use a two-roll system, do they not? In which case, for Crusader Strike, you want to be looking at your crit rate across _landed_ attacks, not all attacks. That leaves you at 808/2875 = 28.1% crit over your test, which is still a bit off compared to your melee result, but unfortunately i've forgotten just about everything i ever learned about stats, so wouldn't even know where to start working out how signifcant that result is.

Greatritchie, i see just over a 1% difference from your white to your CS, but keep in mind that your sample size for CS is only about 1/3rd the sample size of your white.

oops. my bad, I was treating specials in the same way as melee attacks (forgot about 2 roll). 10% miss + parry would give a 3% reduction to crit. I'll edit my post to give the correct values in a moment.

Latest data from greatrichie (and me not stuffing up) gives

CS
Crit chance -> 28.17 ± 0.82%

Crit Reduction -> 6.38 ± 0.82%

Melee
Crit chance -> 29.57 ± 0.49%

Crit reduction -> 4.98 ± 0.49

Why are you doing this? Things like "woe is me, my DPS is low I can't bear to let the raid carry me through Naxx/Ulduar, I've told the raid leader to please sub me out, my utility is so low oh my god how dare this wretched I dream of being in a raid " have been rightly absent from this thread for a while now, because it is a silly thing to say. We are not playing this class to be highest in DPS meters. It is our duty to do everything there is to be as high as it gets, and this is what does, and rightfully so! earn us our spot in raids.

If you have arguments as to how your DPS is low on the PTR, and WWS logs to back this up, please let us hear/see them. Reports on the PTR have actually been quite encouraging so far. There definitely is and is going to be a place for one or several Rets in any raid.

Of course there is no reason to take two of any same-specced class to a raid, nevertheless there are 25 players in one raid. I am sure that literally every guild out there will not be able to run an idealized lineup for every boss.

I just logged into the PTR to check if they had done anything with Seal of Blood ("horde version of SoM"). And it looks like they did. I had very few time to make any testing since there were rolling restarts on the way (only 5 minutes left), therefore I had to hurry up. But some quick Judgement sample (done outside the melee range, using no other skills) showed numbers like these:

1802, 3602 crit, 1387 (347 resisted), 3536 crit, 1727, 3413 crit, 1655, 3584 crit, 3440 crit

I had 4200 AP (just imp BoM) and 3 stacks of Vengeance up during that time. No procs from trinkets whatsoever since I got rid of them to avoid getting odd numbers.

I'm well aware of that data collection being really tiny, but I didn't intend to spot anything but the damage range on judgements and it looks like it's lower overall now. I hope I can do some more testing later, or anyone else for that matter since the servers refuse to go up apparently.

Confirming this and what narshanna posted. I'll post my recount once the server comes back up. (I was hitting two dummies in order to get more DS hits to test something else).



My only buffs were Might and 3x Vengeance, and the occasional Berserking proc, with AW on cooldown.

One interesting note, Avenging Wrath is completely off the GCD in 9757 instead of how it acts on Live. This may've been put in in an earlier build, but I've only discovered it now >_>

The [Venture Co. Libram of Retribution] appears to be fixed but the tooltip for Divine Storm seems bugged. It's tooltip isn't updating based on multipliers (2pieceT7, Art of War) and it's heal's range is shown as 0 yards. However, it doesn't seem to be dealing incorrect damage based on a comparison between my CS and DS damage (3851 Average DS to 4111 Average CS). (This could possibly be tied to the DS glyph which I was testing out).

Lastly, on occasion, Seal of Blood crits do not seem to be proc'ing Vengeance. I noticed it a couple of builds ago but I couldn't duplicate it, but tonight I saw it occur multiple times. Mkay, it seems SoB procs from CS and DS do not proc Vengeance if they crit.

I hadn't seen it noted anywhere whether Glyph of Seal of Blood mana return was affected by absorb shields. That is to say, I was worried that recoil absorbed by Sacred Shield would award 0 mana because it technically did no damage. After a few quick tests I found the glyph does in fact still work even if the recoil is completely absorbed.

Sacred shield is looking pretty amazing now that it finally scales for ret and has a new talent supporting it -- the relatively heavy mana cost won't be much of a worry anymore either.

Seal of the Martyr is working correctly now too. Will update with a pic here in a sec.

Woot for almost 3k Seal procs.

Well yesterday I managed to an extensive white (30k hits) and CS (7.7k hits) test. It was all done in 1 go, but because the test was longer than 12hrs I had to split the combatlog for wws.

Here is the recount data for the white hits


and here for the CS


And the wws report(s)
WWS Part 1
WWS Part 2

Seems special attacks do, in fact, have a different critical reduction than normal swings. However, it is a bit odd that it differs on data this big (1% and 2%). Since the 2nd log is 1780 CS swings, I assume it's merely a matter of getting 10-18ish (1%) "lucky" crits (RNG), and that the 1st log is actually correct.

Same thing for the misses - I assume that the 1st log is the correct one, and that the values 14% (normal) and 15% (CS) are correct.

Edit: How many crit talents did you pick up in order to get CS? All 8% making it a total of 13% I take it?

My WWS reading skills are subpar (as I have displayed previously), so correct me if I'm wrong.

Normal strikes:
16438 hits
1315 crits (8%)
2301 misses (14%)

Crusader strikes:
4297 hits
301 crits (7%)
645 misses (15%)

One of the reasons I am confused is the fact that there is no total to base the calucations on. You have to calculate the total on your own. This could lead to varying results depending on how you calculate it (which might actually be the reason people are posting different results).

Saying 8% should mean 8% of the total number of hits, which is not the same as 8% of 16438. The real values should be:
16438 hits is 78% of the total 21074, in which case the numbers are:
21074 swings (100%)
16438 hits (78%)
1686 crits (8%)
2950 misses (14%)

However, since dodge/miss is calculated before crit in the rolling, you have to recalculate the actual crit chance by comaring it with number of hits, not total swings:
16438 hits, 1686 crits -> roughly 10%

In any case, with 13% crit chance in total, and a boss mob being 3 levels higher, the total reduction *should* be 3%, and I think it is - WWS is just plain horrible at showing numbers, leading to all sorts of odd results.

Yet another edit: I'll update with Crusader Strike numbers.
5509 swings (100%)
4297 hits (78%)
386 crits (7%)
829 misses (15%)

4297 hits, 386 crits -> roughly 9%. The special strike is still 1% off from the regular hits, but that could be RNG based. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if there is indeed a 1% difference.

The one problem I'm seeing is that Sacred Shield won't proc off the recoil itself. So while it is nice to have a way for dealing with the recoil in certain encounters, Sacred Shield won't be of much use if there is no AoE damage involved.