I wouldn't discount the effectiveness of certain talents in the PvE scene that some people tend to pass over or perhaps label as PvP.

Divine Purpose: The removal of a stun for your MT (or even yourself) can be quite benificial for fights that have any kind of stun involved.

Imp Might: Of course depends on the group comp you have... but generally speaking I enjoy having this as an option when needed. Most of the time a holy pally will have this on their way to the 5% crit, however.


Improved Ret Aura: I used to laugh at this talent, but now that the aura does a considerably larger amount of dmg, it is something I enjoy having. Since I'm running this aura all the time and I generally have the extra points, I pick this up. I admit that the threat gain for your MT would be small for a single target, but it's nice to have when your tank is AOE tanking things.

SoC: I guess the crux of the debate would be if we should be using this or JoR/JoV with SotP talent. But the ability to swap to it in a quick PvP encounter without having to worry about a respec is nice.


In my opinion, the addition of all of these abilities and utility outweighs the (perhaps slim) amount of dps gain for using SoR/SoV with the 4-5 talent points in SotP.


Then again, if you want to do this kind of math, I guess this forum would be the place to do it, right?

In my PvE Ret build, the extra 5 points go to:

SoC, Divine Purpose (4% less spells landed is useful) is great on some of the Naxx trash and Utguard Penn, and Imp Might is great for soloing and 5 mans.

I didn't like imp Ret Aura because the soloing damage from Ret Aura is nearly worthless and tanks do not need threat help.


Those 5 points spent above is worth a lot more to me than an extra 100ish dps from SoR when I cannot use SoB.

Divine Purpose is really a required talent IMO for the stun removal. In 5 mans it goes without saying how useful this is but even in raids it has its uses. Instant web removal in the Naxx spider wing for example is very nice when the healer gets targetted.

Imp Might you can skip if you are 100% of the time with another pally who has it but really its silly to skip this.

SoC is well worth the 5th point if nothing else just for situations where you can't get a healer and have to be self sufficient.

Strength is better than hit or expertise in general. (It shifts in favor of hit at really really high AP levels, like nearly 9000 AP and expertise at 14000 AP). You do not have to wait until capping hit and expertise before stacking strength, in fact it's detrimental to do so.

Hit smooths out your attacks, and being uncapped will mean you miss some JotW effects, but in general, strength is a higher priority that hit or expertise.

The bigger issue is, when you're comparing the value of 2 items, you do not count hit that takes you over the cap.

IE: If you're not hit-capped and you have 2 items to choose from:

+60 str
+15 hit

And
+20 str
+55 hit

The former item is still stronger, despite the fact you're not hit capped.

However, if you have two other items:

+30 str
+55 hit

and

+40 str
+5 hit

The latter is stronger if you're hit capped, and the former is stronger if you're not.

Hit is just a dps + mana regen stat. It gets stronger with higher AP (like crit). It's not a magic number that you need to reach before doing anything else.

While this is true about threat from JoL, if your pulling aggro due to JoL in 25 mans then your tanks need to not suck AND OR your hunters and rogues need to learn to use their distraction abilities.

JoL should be our primary nuke assuming there is another paladin in the raid who is judging wisdom.

I've had WWS reports show me only 50,000 healing done below the "last place healer" with the same amount of overhealing as that last placed healer and I never pulled aggro.

Which is why STR is at the top of the list :> I feel it is important to not miss any attacks (or judgements for that matter) before gemming for full STR - missing an attack and it's respective seal with a 2H weapon is a pretty big blow to DPS.

Will update and change a few things... but I'll leave JoW vs JoL open to debate a bit longer. From my own experiences my threat can climb dangerously close to our tanks in 25's when using JoL, even with salv. Maybe I need better tanks!

If there's only one Paladin in the raid, he should use JoW.

If it's a Holy Paladin and a Ret or Prot Paladin, the Holy Paladin should be using JOL, while the melee Paladin should be using JOW. Not only will the melee Paladin ensure 100% JOW uptime, but we can expect that the Holy Paladin will have much less threat to deal with.

If it's a Ret Paladin and a Prot Paladin, then the decision is a wash. A Ret Paladin's JOL will be bigger*, while a Prot Paladin can leverage on the JOL threat more, and both of them will provide 100% JOW uptime.

*Can we get confirmation on this? My last test, pre-3.0.1, indicated that JOL (among other things) was not scaling with spell power gained from Sheath of Light.

On glyphs..

I have had a fair degree of success using Glyph of Divinity as my third major glyph alongside Consecration and Judgement. Being able to combo it with Glyph of Lay on Hands to refill my manapool in a pinch is golden. My main reason for preferring it over the CS glyph though, is simply that it gives me the mana when I need it. Honestly there are far too many fights where I don't run in any danger of going OOM and in those I just can't help but feel that the Crusader Strike glyph is a complete waste of a glyphslot.

That I can also throw my LoH at someone else and STILL regain close to half my total manapool is just icing on the cake.

I just got back from a heroic Naxxramas raid and after looking at my damage meter (recount) I noticed I didn't miss any hit/judgement/CS/DS of the night. It is quite strange since I was not hit capped and wasn't using any kind of hit buff. While I could have been lucky, having nothing miss for over 10 000 hits isn't very probable.

I had 242 hit rating (7.38%).

I am now back in Orgrimmar hitting the level 83 boss dummy with 222 hit rating (6.77%) and after over 1000 hits, I still havent missed the dummy. I will extend this test for probably the whole duration of the night.

This makes me question the real hit rating cap, even though most people state it is 9% (295).


Also, you stated that Art of War instant FoL doesn't reset our swing timer. I have found this to be false. After getting AoW to proc, I looked at my swing timer (using Quartz) and casted FoL in the middle of my swing. the swing time still continued, but my swing was still delayed as if it reset. For the delay between my swing timer's anticipated swing and the actual swing of my character, my swing timer bar just disappeared and reappeared for the next swing. It was also not a "lagging" swing, so I did not get two hits off on the next swing.

Would appreciate if anyone could comment/test/discuss on these two "issues".

Regarding hit cap, I have regained my ghost hit (when I was Holy I had the 4% hit talent, but I had lost my ghost hit). Now I have between a 6-7% miss rate on bosses, so have about 3% ghost hit from Precision, but only when I spec Ret.

So at least for me, I have a lower hit cap than others have, so I don't need as much hit. It isn't fair that not every Pally has it, but that is how it is.

Yup, this is what I'm having too. Except that it seems more. With only 2% hit, I am getting a 2.5% miss chance, so that would be a 4.5% extra "ghost" hit that I am getting :\. The 2% hit test was only done on a 200 swings period though. I am now testing with 4.85% hit and will let my character swing for a very long time this time.

The only fight i do not use Blood is Loatheb, every other encounter "should" be safe. Yes, i include Thaddius in that statement. Even with 21k judgments crits you should still not instagib yourself. Heigen is a little random but you should still be safe using Blood.

We had our ret paladin judge one of the razuvious adds after razuv died for over 156k, needless to say he died instantly.

Did they hotfix the boss to include something that increases your damage that much or are you being sarcastic?

I find having an offtank vigilance me helps a great deal.

As an example, on patchwerk tonight I was at 70% of MT threat ~45s into the fight without vigilance. During the Lust/AvWrath(2nd use) sequence around the 3:30 mark I was hanging out at 66% MT threat, spiking high on crit strings before settling down to ~45% when the Lust ended.

That's from a moderate 4k dps player as well. The geared people pushing 4.5 must be riding the threat line extremely tight. The healing is just all-world though, Grobbulus is good times.

Rukkia:
Oh, for what it's worth, Blood is fine on Loatheb, just have a priest shielding you, it's more than enough to get you to the next phase of healing. It's not like they have anything else to do during that phase anyway(yay wands?)

I disagree regarding the FCFS (First Come First Serve) rotation.

Some abilities are always better than others, going to the redcap thread and the old ret 3.0 thread someone went deep into gcds regarding which should take preference. I dont want to quote it here as I am likely to make a mistake.

On a further note due to problems regarding mana regeneration certain rotations can be used in fights with high raid dmg therefor where you basically have inf mana and fights where you have low raid dmg.

because of this we basically have 4 proper rotations

normal high raid dmg boss fight
normal low raid dmg boss fight
undead/demon high raid dmg boss fight
undead/demon low raid dmg boss fight

It needs a bit of work to figure this out though.

Smite spam >> Wands, and mana isn't an issue there for healers .
I just use Command there so healers don't need to worry about healing non-tanks.


Another time Blood can kill you is on Gluth when he knocks everyone's health down. Easily countered by running away a little before the Decimate so a SoB hit doesn't kill you.

An SoB hit should never kill you on Gluth with raid buffs. I sit close to 27k HP raid buffed, and SoB also only hits you for 10% of its damage, not 33% like JoB. For a SoB to kill me it would need to hit me for 2700, which means the hit itself would need to be 27,000, which clearly does not happen.

However, it is a good idea to hold off on JoBs around the time of Decimate, since those can and do easily kill you, needing to hit me in this example for 2700, which translates into a mere 8100, easily attainable.

I tested this with quartz as well spending some time on a dummy. Anytime I hit myself with AoW (I was using Martyr so I forced myself to heal) it would complete the swing timer on quartz but my character would not actually swing.

Now one question I have for you Dugarax is, do you have auto self cast? Just asking because I do as well and I wanna see if someone who doesn't have auto self cast activated in the blizzard options has the same problem.

I recently read somewhere on these forums that people were seeing ghosted judgements. In other words when they went to judge a mob/boss the mana would be taken (but not returned), the boss would take no dmg from the judgement, and its effect would not be refreshed. Included in the thread was a blue post saying this was being looked into, but it was pre-Wrath, shortly after 3.0 so I assumed this had been fixed as it is/was an enormous bug for ret DPS.

However, since reading that thread, I am noticing this QUITE often, and I have to wonder how much DPS I'm losing to it. I've even checked my combat log on occasion to the same ends. Not only is it a DPS reduction, but the hit we take to mana regen if/when this happens is staggering. Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone have any new info on it? I've checked the remnants of the pally forums, but there is no mention of it.


sio

Yes I have auto self cast activated. I would test it without it, but I don't have the time right now

But I guess it would reset your swing as well because you would have to target yourself, which makes you stop attacking the mob, unless you use self cast key (alt).

I haven't specced Ret since I hit 80 but in terms of dual specs I'm planning on making it my offspec. How is the PVE mana situation at 80 say in heroics or Naxx? If you spam all your abilities including Conc, Exor etc are we still going oom by the end of the fight?