Naudie

I noticed that myself as well. However the set bonus changes are now a large swing. I selected every item from naxx level on up for a full gear optimization. It took a while to run, and I tried as few changes here and there, but so far every optimal build I came up with had 4 piece T8, everything but the helm.

So yeah, it sucks that the pieces themselves are crap, but it seems the bonus makes up for it.

 

Dorvan

If you just look at the T8 pieces on an item by item basis, it'll be a DPS loss since you're breaking T7 4-piece for a single T8 piece with no set bonus. Make sure you equip all 5 pieces of T7 before doing a piece by piece comparison to remove this issue.

Even that doesn't really give you the full picture though. Hit is strong enough now that a hit piece will almost beat out a slightly higher ilevel piece without hit. Thus the T7 shoulders and helm beat out their T8 counterparts in isolation. Similarly the T8 legs and chest blow away the T7 versions. However, if you wear hit on all your gear you'll be well over hit cap. If you select both T7 and T8 sets and run the optimizer, you'll see that it most definitely goes with T8 (representing about a 300 DPS upgrade in the case of my gear set up).

 

Naudie

Any of you optimizing in Rawr on alliance side finding with current gear the optimal setup still puts us about 1.25% over the hit cap? Also I was delighted that so far the only non plate item it suggested was the crafted leather boots. (If you aren't a JC it also suggests a non plate helm, forget which though)

Most non armor items were strength versions as well. I was getting worried we'd be going after the "rogue" loot. Things could change with the unknown items but I'm happy with how things look so far.

Another interesting thing I found is that with Ulduar gear lvls, the haste enchant to cloak passes the agi one for dps.

 

cannadrys

It is pretty clear, that in a stationary fight the consecration glyph is superior to the blood glyph.

Mana efficiency and GCD collisions aside, do you think the ability to move your consecration more often could outweight the GCD collisions? From what I have seen so far it doesn't look like we are frequently going to be standing still DPSing (ala patchwerk). Being able to move consecration more often could be beneficial on a mobile type fight (as an example think Grobulous).

 

Chromy

Its been stated that our mana situation in ulduar is fine. Now for our 3rd and final glyph we have the options (realisticly) of conc and blood. Blood is a mana production glyph, if its not broken why fix it. Now on the flip side the conc glyph is both a DPS increase and mana efficiency increase. In pve its clearly a better option.

Edit: On the topic of mobility, that can swing both ways. Think about boss's you have to run away from but they don't move. Unglyphed your conc would fall off 2 seconds earlier, resulting in a loss of "off boss" dps. However, i can see in an encounter where you moved in and out rapidly that this *could* be handy, but our rotation does not change much when we move in and out quickly. (resulting in an 8 sec conc mucking it up.)

 

Alleyra

This Glyphing discussion has been beaten to death over the past ~15 pages. Judgement/Consecrate/Exorcism should be your PvE Glyphs. Glyph of SoB is not recommended -- it may be useful in PvP or specific situations, but if you're planning on raiding: it is not necessary.

Re: "mobility." We need to stop equivocating possibilities versus realities. Yes, it's possible you might lose a tick of Consecrate due to movement. It's also possible that you will not. This is not something we can accurately model our damage around. If a boss moves (like Grobbulus or Heigan) you just have to do your best to anticipate the movement. If we start factoring all of these contingencies and "what-ifs" that could happen during a fight, we will never get an accurate representation of our damage potential.

Unless there's been something new and groundbreaking (and there has not, as of yet) to offer regarding our damage/mana regen/Glyphs/talents: we're simply rehashing debate and discussion that was covered over a month ago.

Ghostcrawler: If there is a spec we want to avoid over-buffing so that we don't have to nerf them, it's Ret.

 

• frmorrison

114 (LW bracer enchant) - 50 (best enchant to bracer) = 64 AP profession benefit. I guess should be updated.


Glyph of Blood can be better than the Cons one if you mostly do 10 mans and don't have either enough mana buffs, such as BoW/Mana Spring or JoW. Also, it is nearly required for competitive PvP.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Alleyra

Please provide a source for this statement if it's from a Blizzard representative.

EDIT: I'm highly dubious that this information is even accurate. (especially considering the emboldened sentences.) Unless it's from a Blizzard rep, it is absolutely irrelevant.

RE-EDIT: Kristophoros sent me this link in which his quote came from: Paladin Schmaladin - Ferarro: Mini-hiatus over!

It's posted down about 3/4 of the way down the page, under April 3, 2009. Not even remotely "official."

Ghostcrawler: If there is a spec we want to avoid over-buffing so that we don't have to nerf them, it's Ret.

 

• frmorrison

I don't like to see posts from "wow insiders". The real WoW insiders are under a NDA, so that means why you heard was bunk.

Anyway, Ret dps in 3.1 is competitive, a few WWS reports have been linked to proved that, in addition, static weights are not accurate, since as you collect hit and reach the cap, then the value of hit in a list would be low.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

tarja

As a general rule, I ignore anything that is supposedly from "an inside source". But at this point I don't think you really need to be a Blizzard representative to know that the patch is coming out very soon and that Ret Paladins are very unlikely to see any more changes before 3.1 comes out. They fixed the game-breakingly low DPS that would've seen us being left out of raids, and they filled in the Prot tree with some mediocre utility talents which seem to be designed with one of our biggest PVE limitations specifically in mind (mitigating JoB recoil).

You also don't need an inside source to know that they must still have more plans for modifying Ret DPS that they just didn't have time to add in 3.1. Ghostcrawler's response to the accidental leak of the CS spellbreaker effect made that quite clear.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that those bolded sentences are pretty obviously true, and would still be irrelevant even if they WERE from a Blizzard source, because they don't really tell us anything we couldn't deduce already.

 

Dorvan

If you're trying to say that Blizzard still has tweaks they'd like to make to Ret that aren't going to be in 3.1 then....well, that's true of virtually every spec. It's inherent in the genre.

 

Alleyra

Assumption is a bad thing.

Patches and changes go through many iterations and tweaking before coming to a final release. Sometimes changes are outright scrapped because they're not workable or balanced. I do not doubt that we will see more changes to our class, (i.e. Crusader Strike effect) but you cannot link something as if it were gospel by virtue of the fact that s/he worked with Blizzard at one point. This does not automatically give someone credibility. I doubt she is attempting to mislead the community, but the information s/he may have could be dated, problematic, etc.

Until it comes from a poster that is flagged as a Blizzard representative, it is merely rumor or speculation: nothing more.

With regards to an optimal gear set from Naxx going into Ulduar, this discussion was posted about 10-20 pages back. There was a list for items, complete with enchants, and gemming.

I was aiming my concerns more at the latter part of the post regarding extensive overhaul that would, "push the patch back till June." And then upon further consideration, (given the changes that have occurred with 3.1) I was pointing out that this statement discredits the source's accuracy. I'm not really sure what there was to disagree with there.(?)

Ghostcrawler: If there is a spec we want to avoid over-buffing so that we don't have to nerf them, it's Ret.

 

J1M

Others were just trying to be polite, but I'm going to call a spade a spade. Your post was full of shit and has no place in this thread. Even if the "inside information" was accurate, what does it tell us? A change might happen in the future. Wow, thanks for the pro-tip.

Just so THIS post won't also be a total waste, I haven't noticed anyone talking about the relative value of hit rating beyond the 8% cap. Given how hard it has been for me to stay under the hit cap with ilvl213 gear, I think it would be important to know how much each point of hit rating over the cap is worth.

 

Aeonin

On another related topic. If there are those that would be planning to use a hit gem in their gear you might want to get to fishing as soon as 3.1 goes live. There is a new unique-equipped gem being released from the daily. Rigid Stormjewel from Bag of Fishing Treasures.

 

Jphawk164

Yea, however I don't foresee those gems being unique for only people with fishing. Otherwise they'd include something similar for like cooking/first aid. Chances are their probably purchasable and you can only have one and mine will be 20 strength

 

Logicality

I've been following the changes pretty thoroughly, and had a question regarding our new FCFS rotation. Granted CS will be better than Judge during a fight. However, would it be beneficial to lead with Judgement, just for the initial extra 3% crit, causing more RV damage through CS? Or would that just make for some early GCD clashes that would not be beneficial?

 

flyingtoastr

They've had absolutely no problem with unique gems from fishing rewards ([Eye of the Sea] in TBC) so I don't think its particularly wise at this point to consider that we're going to buy them outside of fishing. Besides, they are tradeable so people who can't be bothered to fish can just dump some gold into the AH.

 

Nibb

What about the fact Judgments have a longer range if u hit them first on a mob then move into the short "melee range" that is Crusader Strike. The time between 10 yards and 5 ;\

 

Khristophoros

Yes, the quote wasn't intended to highlight a future change. And maybe my information was wrong about the value of hit rating. I apologize I didn't intend to get anyone upset. I'll request for my posts to be deleted.
-
EDIT, please delete this post as well. Thank you.

 

Aeonin

Not that they are unique just that they are rare. Expect to pay a hefty AH fee to buy one on your own. Doing your own dailies would probably increase your odds of getting one signifigantly. I did not realize until I searched that there are 20str gems as well..so nvm I'm going for that instead.

 

• Arikah

Just like now, hit over the cap is wasted and useless. You can't avoid consecration partial resists with hit, and it simply isn't worth capping spellhit for exorcism alone.

Thanks for the various profession corrections, it'll all be updated in the new 3.1 post in a few days. Also, with the haste rating changes and basically even stat weight with agi, haste might be our new cloak enchant (though it is a very very minor difference).

 

Dorvan

Actually, the "phantom" misses from consecration (where the ticks simply don't appear in the log) are tied to hit rate. That said, hit rating past melee cap is a pretty terrible stat....I have it at .32 DPS per point in the latest version of WoW...by comparison haste and armor pen are around .7, and spellpower is at .22

 

Wrathblood

Well, right, he wasn't saying +hit over cap would be a GOOD stat. However, saying that its "wasted and useless" is inaccurate, as you yourself note. Just because haste is a crappy stat on live doesn't mean its valueless (yes, I recognize +hit over cap is worse than haste is/was, though the gap is smaller than you might think. I'm just making a point), and not worth modeling. It has some small amount of value. We know there's going to be tons of +hit gear in Ulduar, and while obviously you'd take +1 STR over +1 hit (over cap), how about 1 STR vs 2 hit? 5? 10?

According to RAWR, with my ret set, the equivalency is pretty close to 6 hit (over cap) = 1 STR, or about ~41% of 1 AP, with the "true" cap being something I'm unlikely to reach. Exp, of course, does go to zero pretty quickly if you're stacking it, except for the odd accidental swing at the front of something. That's going to happen infrequently enough that zero will work.

 

greatrichie

When you consider it's barely better than SP, it's about as close to "wasted and useless" as you can get for a DPS stat. While it's possible to stack hit to kingdom come, it's a solid DPS loss over maximizing other stats and keeping overcapped hit at a minimum.

 

Piiqo

Weren't there partial resists in our RV this time around? Does hit rating help get rid of them?