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".

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.

I would like to add that Seal of Command is still useful in some PvE situations where doing damage to yourself is not viable. Malygos is the first example that comes to mind, one good crit almost killed me in that fight... when we stack 2 sparks I switch to Command.

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.

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.