Judge 1
DS
CS
consecrate
1 sec wait time
Judge 2
GCD 1 (most likely you will want to put exorcism here vs undead/demons)
CS
DS
1 sec wait time
Judge 3
consecrate
CS
GCD 2 (which is where you will end up alternating the other abilities)
1 sec wait time
It sounds like a very good rotation for me. A bit difficult to learn, but it is more fail-safe then the standard priorize system.
With this roation you are using CS every 7 seconds (as stated before, more ist not possible). Also DS and Cons are used nearly everytime on Cooldown. Only Ex or HW is used a bit infrequent, but the strict use of Judgement every 7 seconds seems to compensate this on a long run.
On fancypants theorycrafting versus the reality of raiding
Yup, it's me again with the 21 second rotation. This time I'm going to change gear by bashing on it a bit
While it looks awesome on paper to have a rotation like this it falls apart due to the nature of fights requiring you to move and focus on other things rather than blindly looking at your cooldowns and tracking what point in your rotation you're currently at.
1)Moving
Movement often means that you find yourself in a position where you cannot use an ability at the time point stated in the rotation, which makes a FCFS priority system much easier to manage
2)Paying attention to things around you
Watching for void zones on the ground and the like makes it very hard to remember the little oddities and quirks baked into the rotation, such as when to use divine plea and when to reseal etc
When faced with having your seal about to run out or having your mana attrition rate being a bit higher than you'd expected you're most likely better off just smacking those abilities in whenever a gap where you don't have a DPS ability available pops up
So basically we're really back to square one with FCFS again, with a couple of twists
1)when after judging you find that both CS and DS are available, use DS first and CS second. This will prevent a clash between DS and judgement later on and improve your DPS
2)when after judging you find that both CS and Consecrate are available, use consecrate first and CS second, for the same reason as above (except with consecrate causing the clash)
Now. Most paladins seem to have already been using either the former or the latter of the two, but feel free to try out BOTH for a potential whooping 1%+ increase to overall damage done with really no disadvantages attached
While it pains me to bash on my own beautiful rotation, it really ended up serving no purpose but potentially confusing you as to which ability you should be using at what point etc.
Only possible exception would be a silly fight where you can just stand still and watch your rotation 100% of the time, such as patchwerk.
Having said that, the other points of the rotation offer very slim benefits (less than 1%) over just using FCFS with the priority system stated above
Regardless: the actual difference in DPS is so small that it won't matter much either way.
Setup, gear and RNG will end up changing it up a whole lot more
You'll probably run out of abilities to use at the 19.5 and 21s slots, so it may be simplified to:
16.5 DS
18.0 CS
twiddle your thumbs (enough to fit in another ability if present)
22.0 Judgement
23.5 Cons
25.0 CS
26.5 DS
Etc, which is essentially a repeat of the same cycle again after 22s.
Every 22s this will net you: 3 Judgements, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 cons, and 4 GCD slots for various abilities.
Compared to Banka's 21s cycle which gives: 3 Judgements, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 cons, and 2 GCD slots for various abilities.
In fact for every such GCD slots you do not use an ability (and choose to wait out the 1 sec instead), will shorten the FCFS "cycle" by 0.5s. So if you skip 2 such GCD cycles (i.e. the first and 3rd one), you'll essentially get Banka's 21s cycle.
However, question is, is lengthening the cycle by 1s worth the 2 extra GCD slots? I'm really not sure. Would the sheer damage we get from Judgements mean that we should strictly cast it every 7s without delay? Or would it be worth it delaying it a little here and there to squeeze in other abilities?
I'm tempted to go with the longer, FCFS cycle, i.e. its ok to delay Judgements by a little. Without the T7 bonus, with Judgements on 8s CD, by FCFS principle, we do not always cast Judgement every 8s anyway, yet this has been proven to be the way to get the highest dps. Similarly, even though now we get the 4-pc bonus, it doesn;t mean that strictly casting Judgement every 7s will net you the highest dps. I would think the old FCFS principle still holds true to achieve highest possible dps.
However, this then brings us to another related issue: 4-pc vs best-in-slot.
The 4-pc bonus by itself nets us about 3% additional dps. However, since we are not strictly using Judgements every 7s when using the FCFS principle, we are not strictly increasing our dps by 3%. So the question now is, by not actually giving us 3% more dps, would it still be better to use the 4-pc bonus instead of best-in-slot gear?
On fancypants theorycrafting versus the reality of raiding
Yup, it's me again with the 21 second rotation. This time I'm going to change gear by bashing on it a bit
While it looks awesome on paper to have a rotation like this it falls apart due to the nature of fights requiring you to move and focus on other things rather than blindly looking at your cooldowns and tracking what point in your rotation you're currently at.
1)Moving
Movement often means that you find yourself in a position where you cannot use an ability at the time point stated in the rotation, which makes a FCFS priority system much easier to manage
2)Paying attention to things around you
Watching for void zones on the ground and the like makes it very hard to remember the little oddities and quirks baked into the rotation, such as when to use divine plea and when to reseal etc
When faced with having your seal about to run out or having your mana attrition rate being a bit higher than you'd expected you're most likely better off just smacking those abilities in whenever a gap where you don't have a DPS ability available pops up
So basically we're really back to square one with FCFS again, with a couple of twists
1)when after judging you find that both CS and DS are available, use DS first and CS second. This will prevent a clash between DS and judgement later on and improve your DPS
2)when after judging you find that both CS and Consecrate are available, use consecrate first and CS second, for the same reason as above (except with consecrate causing the clash)
Now. Most paladins seem to have already been using either the former or the latter of the two, but feel free to try out BOTH for a potential whooping 1%+ increase to overall damage done with really no disadvantages attached
While it pains me to bash on my own beautiful rotation, it really ended up serving no purpose but potentially confusing you as to which ability you should be using at what point etc.
Only possible exception would be a silly fight where you can just stand still and watch your rotation 100% of the time, such as patchwerk.
Having said that, the other points of the rotation offer very slim benefits (less than 1%) over just using FCFS with the priority system stated above
Regardless: the actual difference in DPS is so small that it won't matter much either way.
Setup, gear and RNG will end up changing it up a whole lot more
Lol
Should have waited for this post before posting my own lengthy one.
FCFS is still the way to go for me, even for fights like patchwerk. 21s rotations is just a bit much for my feeble mind to remember in the heat of battle.. ;p
But my second question still remains, with FCFS, we're not Judging every 7s, and hence technically we do not get a 3% dps increase from the 4-pc bonus. Would best-in-gear items come close to equaling or even surpassing the T7/7.5 sets then?
Should have waited for this post before posting my own lengthy one.
FCFS is still the way to go for me, even for fights like patchwerk. 21s rotations is just a bit much for my feeble mind to remember in the heat of battle.. ;p
But my second question still remains, with FCFS, we're not Judging every 7s, and hence technically we do not get a 3% dps increase from the 4-pc bonus. Would best-in-gear items come close to equaling or even surpassing the T7/7.5 sets then?
Just prioritize Judgement when it comes up. Then you're still getting your set bonus and you're still getting the mana regen. There's nothing that's best in slot that will offset +3% to our damage -- that figure scales. Breaking the set bonus to simply wear what Rawr considers to be "best in slot" is not necessarily the best way to maximize your DPS.
When you priorize Judgement (This is necessary, because it is the far most dmg spell),
This is fallacy is repeated so many times it really intrigues me. Prioritizing CS results in the same number of judgments over a period of time. The 5th judgment is pushed back one second compared to the standard FCFS judgment. The only way this could possibly net a loss in dps is if the mob died precisely during that 1 second. But you're also doing an extra CS for every 4 judgments. So by the 16th judgment you have done 4 extra CS. So even if the mob dies during that one second of pushback, prioritizing CS nets a damage increase... (CS-J-Cons-DS doesnt repeat as early as the standard FCFS, so it may be that the 16th judgment is actually pushed back 2 seconds from the standard. Still puts CS-J ahead...)
Getting 4partT7 is a LOT easier than getting those best in slot items, and going best in slot REQUIRES having both the best in slot chest AND the gloves.
Both of which will most likely have to be pried out of the cold, dead hands of your fellow raiders.
Having said that, even grabbing those 2 items to replace set gear ups your DPS by less than 2% assuming optimum gear across the board (according to RAWR anyhows).
Having acess to the gladiator libram will increase this (albeit very slightly) due to the 7 sec judgement resulting in fewer crusader strike casts.
Now. Even if the 4-part bonus should end up giving less than a 3% benefit, it is highly unlikely that it would drop down to below the 2% required for the best in slot items to pull ahead
Simply put: With the current gear selection, 4 part T7 is king, though not by an astronomical ammount.
Personally I really prefer the rotation made possible with 7 sec judgement, but I'd assume this point will become moot once T8 gear comes out (would be boring if they put the SAME set bonuses on there)
Having said all this, do pick those items up if able.
Once Ulduar comes out you'll no doubt quickly find options strong enough to replace the T7 parts with, so during a transition period having those items available may well result in a nice boost to your DPS
And answering the post above: show me the rotation that gives this result if you please (with 4part T7). I'd be most interested in comparing it to mine and seeing how they actually compare
Seeing as how you seem to enjoy making 1 minute DPS tests. Here is mine:
1 minute of boss dummy: 9judgements, 9CS, 6DS, 6 consecrate casts (the actual rotation would end at 63 secs, but the last damaging ability, which was CS number 9, is cast at 59.5 secs, so you might opt to not include it depending on latency etc)
4part T7 versus best in slot off-set gear:
And answering the post above: show me the rotation that gives this result if you please (with 4part T7). I'd be most interested in comparing it to mine and seeing how they actually compare
It's not a rotation. It's FCFS-- CS-J-Cons-DS.
Seeing as how you seem to enjoy making 1 minute DPS tests. Here is mine:
1 minute of boss dummy: 9judgements, 9CS, 6DS, 6 consecrate casts (the actual rotation would end at 63 secs, but the last damaging ability, which was CS number 9, is cast at 59.5 secs, so you might opt to not include it depending on latency etc)
Since those results don't even appear to be possible on paper, I have to question your method of keeping time...
Havent we beat the FCFS issue over the head enough by now that everyone should understand by nature of conflicting cooldowns and changing boss encounters sustaining 1 pattern is impossible. Thats why we spent 6months discussing ablility prioritization and the risk/benefits of particular combos.
Writing an essay on ability cooldowns vs. rotations is admirable, but in the end futile. No raider will sustain a 21second rotation, and all the brain power needed to maintain such is wasted attention better spent being aware of your surroundings and maximizing ability usage rather than pondering the value of delaying this over that.
Agreed. My original post ended up proposing a rotation that was too complex.
The part that would make it extraordinarily hard to maintain was adding select positions on where to use abilities apart from the usual judge, CS, DS and consecrate.
Any benefit from doing this would indeed be of purely academic concern (and most likely well under 1% DPS boost for a MONSTROUS ammount of hassle) and thus it's no longer anything I'd be advocating
The rotation instead boils down to the following: Standard FCFS with highest DPS on prio
on 20%+health this will always be judgement.
Added to this I recommend to adhering to 2 rules regarding cooldown clashing that I've described a few posts prior to this one.
So really it's not so much about a rotation as it is clashing resolution setup in such a manner as to achieve (near) optimal results
These rules become void once HoW comes into play as maintaining 7 secs on judgement will be suboptimal from this point on. FCFS takes over from here
as soon as you have to move around etc the rotation will fall apart.
However, once you get one of the aforementioned cooldown clashes you're actually BACK IN ROTATION, which means they ALWAYS apply
When facing a non-undead opponent you'll be down to pretty much resealing and divine plea as far as additional abilities go. The 2.5sec gap at the end of the rotation pretty much BEGS to be filled with those, enabling you to sustain a 21 sec rotation
Target dummy testing continued: The rotation in itself is infact very robust. The only thing that causes it to average more than 21 seconds is your average time to cast judgement once it comes back from cooldown.
Assuming that is 100ms, the 9th CS will infact land at 60.5 secs or so, causing it to fall out of the 1 min window.
Mine indeed landed at 61 seconds due to latency etc
It works, mate, it really does
Anyhows. Not gonna make any more posts on the subject as I've already covered the finer points of the rotation several times over and I'm agreeing that it's starting to feel like beating a dead horse.
From this point onwards, just feel free to PM me with any questions regarding the rotation.
Feel free to ignore the mammoth essay one, though. It just ended up being too impractical to ever apply in a real boss encounter
Edit. Actually, I misread my logs and failed at remembering my own rotation. I hit the 9th CS at the 60 second mark. In the ideal circumstance (with 0 delays and latency, which won't happen) the ability would have hit at the 59 second mark. You really DO get 3 judges, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 consecrates in every single 21 second rotation.
I think there are two questions we are asking when it comes to FCFS "rotations". The first is, "what should the priority be?" The baseline logical answer is "the abilities which do the most DPS", but after looking at several of these last posts about conflict resolution, clash avoidance, etc, it seems like it's not so simple as that. Another logical answer would be, "the FCFS priority that, on average, results in the most casts of my highest damage abilities". This second answer is harder to answer, but should be possible through some extended modelling of FCFS rotations across 1-2 minute time periods. I've started a spreadsheet to work through this for myself, especially since latency becomes a significant issue and I want to be able to address that. I may address the issue in Python or another scripting language as well; we'll see.
The second question is, "should I ever delay an ability?" So far, the only answer I've ever heard from thread gurus is "no, never ever delay an ability... you'll lose DPS". This approach, however, doesn't quite make sense to me. The reason is that even assuming no clashes whatsoever, you can't cast enough of the standard set of Ret abilities to fill 40 global cooldowns every minute. Even adding in Exorcism and Holy Wrath, you wouldn't hit 40 GCDs. (More on this in a second.) Since your density isn't 100%, then it seems that in certain cases delaying for a second or so would not be the end of the world, and could even improve DPS if it avoided future clashes. What those situations are, I am not sure, but hypothetically they could exist. It would be worth exploring.
First, let's address theoretical maximum density of Ret abilities. There are 40 GCDs in 1 minute of time (1.5 seconds each). That is, if you string abilities back-to-back for a full minute, you'll use 40 GCDs. Due to cooldown times, however, this is more GCDs than you could actually use, even if there were no GCD clashes. Why? Well, here are the maximum casts for each Ret ability in 1 minute's time, assuming you only cast that one ability:
Assuming you have 2pT7, got to cast everything as much as possible, and you were fighting a demon/undead boss, you end up with a maximum of:
9+10+6+8+4+2 = 39 GCDs
A more common situation is when you are using a glyphed consecrate:
9+10+6+6+4+2 = 37 GCDs
And next patch you may not see as many demon/undead bosses:
9+10+6+6 = 31 GCDs
The point is, even against a demon/undead boss, you ideally have 1-3 GCDs per minute for other things, like Divine Plea or resealing. In practice, your FCFS "rotation" will likely cause some clashes, so you'll get some extra downtime. It seems to me that a FCFS priority setup that consistently comes closest to matching the ideal per-minute numbers of each damaging ability will be the optimal one... and that might involve delaying up to X amount of time to get a better ability for the purposes of clash resolution. A delay doesn't inherently lose you DPS, as you if you don't delay too much you just eat into the natural flexibility in your # of GCDs per minute. This is something worth looking into, I think.
So far, all I have done is model 1 minute worth of J > Cons > CS > DS, no exorcism or holy wrath, no latency assumed. The result was 9 judgements, 6 consecrates, 9 crusader strikes, and 5 divine storms. This is 29 GCDs, which is only two off from the "ideal" number at 31. What I'd like to do is start running some different priority systems (probably where the scripting will come in) and see which ones get closest to the "ideal" numbers. I may extend the analysis period to 2 minutes, as this is a chunk fairly reasonable to work with that matches straight DPS sequences for several bosses. In any case, I wanted to present the idea behind the analyses to let others mull over it as I proceed.
Since those results don't even appear to be possible on paper, I have to question your method of keeping time...
I'm guessing the discrepancy is caused by the fact that you're not factoring in the first ability is cast at 0s? I dunno... Thelgar's ability use map a few posts ago (and my own napkin math which I unfortunately ran through before seeing Thelgar's post) seems to support Banka.
I'm guessing the discrepancy is caused by the fact that you're not factoring in the first ability is cast at 0s? I dunno... Thelgar's ability use map a few posts ago (and my own napkin math which I unfortunately ran through before seeing Thelgar's post) seems to support Banka.
Yeah, apparently I miscounted CS. There are indeed 9. My inability to reproduce those results in game is no doubt due to latency. (comcast has been failing pretty hard of late)
That doesn't really change the fact that using FCFS with the priority on CS is producing more CS's and the same number of judgments for me, both in game and on paper. (Unless my napkin is wrong, which is entirely possible, but I've gone over it a few times now)
Left, I think you're on the right track. That's really what I've been trying to get at, but you expressed the idea much more succinctly. I'd be very interested in seeing what you come up with...
Just a small reality check on optimal rotations and the like before I move on completely to researching other aspects of the retribution mechanics
On a non-undead mob above 20% health, also assuming no movement whatsoever (not very likely), this is what you get in terms of the time required to use the same ammount of abilities (DS and consecrate are interchangeable due to having the same cooldown):
FCFS J>CS>DS>cons:
First cycle 21.5s, following ones at 22s <-this is actually false. Following ones are 21.5s
5 cycles=109.5s <-it's really 107s
FCFS J>DS>CS>cons:
First cycle 21.0s, following ones at 21.5s
5 cycles=107s
FCFS J>CS>DS>cons while always postponing CS to being the second ability used should there be a clash directly after a judgement (don't know a shorter way to put it):
All cycles at 21.0s
5 cycles=105s
Now. The 100-20% part of your DPS rotation will account for aroooound 50% of your total damage done (melee+seal does a good bit of damage, and you can also expect a higher damage output during the last 20% where you will be using standard FCFS most likely)
applying this to the numbers above we can see that over the standard priority system versus a completely defenseless non-undead boss you could gain 2% DPS done. Compared to the second option (which is one that many already use), you gain less than 1%
Now: versus undead mobs you have additional DPS abilities at your disposal.
Putting these in such a spot that they will not conflict with your rotation is too difficult and also results in using said abilities less, which means that you might not even gain anything from doing so
Ergo: assuming a FCFS exo and HW will introduce some additional clashes that postpone your rotation somewhat.
With the first 2 options, the clashes already introduced will sometimes make room for exo or HW by "freeing up" a global cooldown due to extending the rotation
So to summarise: Even assuming the most perfect of rotations, you won't be getting more than 2% DPS increase over standar FCFS by using my clashing resolution variant. In reality this will most likely be a lot less. We're still going to need those 2 extra stacks of vengeance or something equivalent to remain competitive in Ulduar
Edit: now I'm done for real. Hopefully it's plain for all to see that simply using standard FCFS is more than fine.
Infact there are a myriad of variants you could apply that would all come within a few percent of "optimal".
Just go for the one you feel most comfortable using, as that will no doubt end up being the rotation that works best for you
Last edited by Banka : 02/06/09 at 11:43 AM.
Reason: In case somebody bothers to read back to this point, enjoy the bit where I admit to being blatantly WRONG
So to summarise: Even assuming the most perfect of rotations, you won't be getting more than 2% DPS increase over standar FCFS by using my clashing resolution variant. In reality this will most likely be a lot less. We're still going to need those 2 extra stacks of vengeance or something equivalent to remain competitive in Ulduar
Thanks.
On to another subject. Has anyone has anyone else noticed the 'ghost' judgment bug returning over the last week? I have noticed two occurrences myself where no miss was registered and my judgement failed to produce any damage or debuff effect on my target. However I have only had the chance to test it in Naxx 10.
Yes, the Judgment bug seems to have returned with 3.0.8.
I had noticed my scrolling combat text not registering anything when I fired Judgment occasionally. I had assumed that there were so many numbers at the time that Judgment's damage had just scrolled off too quickly. Upon reviewing a WWS for the evening I found my damage/DPS was lower than it had been in previous weeks and that there were missing Judgments.
I've seen a few threads about this posted on the Bug Support Forums. Hopefully Blizzard will have an answer soon: because it doesn't seem to behave in the same manner that the first bug did.
Yes, the Judgment bug seems to have returned with 3.0.8.
I had noticed my scrolling combat text not registering anything when I fired Judgment occasionally. I had assumed that there were so many numbers at the time that Judgment's damage had just scrolled off too quickly. Upon reviewing a WWS for the evening I found my damage/DPS was lower than it had been in previous weeks and that there were missing Judgments.
I sometimes don't see my Judgement damage either, but I always assume it landed/crit based on the refreshing of the JoL/RV debuff. I dunno though, my mana or damage hasn't really been different from what I've noticed.
Went and did some extensive testing on consecrate using 2 different sets of gear. The first being a gearset with a ridiculous ammount of hit on it and the second being my healing gear with 0% hit
All tests were done on the heroic target dummy while meleeing it using seal of wisdom to keep up mana
With the hit gear (607 hit rating, WAY over the top)
30 consecrate casts resulted in 300 consecrate ticks
100% hitrate on 300 ticks was good enough for me to abort this test
with 0% hit I got a very dissimilar ammount of consecrate ticks in:
I fail at post formatting btw, so bear with me.
Ended up with an 18.5% percent miss rate on consecrate.
Monitoring of ticks was done via recount while the monitoring of casts was done using pen and paper (kinda fail, but I'm not very experienced in this type of thing), which means that the accuracy not the best.
However I find the discrepancy to be large enough to definitely suggest that ALL consecrate ticks (not just the first one) are affected by spell hit.
Doesn't mean you should aim to gear to reach the hit cap on this (or even your melee abilities), but if additional testing seems to support this I guess it will result in some changes to the DPS estimates for consecrate
In your combat log this ends up looking something like this just before you experience a lost tick.
"<Player>'s consecrate fades from <target>"
Doesn't show up on recount or the like (and shouldn't, due to the expiry of the consecrate from disappearing from the ground results in the exact same message), but a miss nontheless
Any further testing done by other players to test the reproducability of this mechanic would be much appreciated
Last edited by Banka : 01/31/09 at 8:13 PM.
Reason: Put the info back in, seems it actually WASN'T covered
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the J > CS system looks far superior to me. I mean, even before I added up the numbers, it was clear the CS > J one was clashing worse. Maybe you are doing some other prioritization trick that I am missing?
Just prioritize Judgement when it comes up. Then you're still getting your set bonus and you're still getting the mana regen. There's nothing that's best in slot that will offset +3% to our damage -- that figure scales. Breaking the set bonus to simply wear what Rawr considers to be "best in slot" is not necessarily the best way to maximize your DPS.
There are a few problems with this. First 4-piece is not a 3% increase in dps once your gear gets better. For my last Patchwerk kill the theoretical maximum dps gained from 4-piece would have been 2.6%, assuming every judgement is used instantly after coming off CD (which will happen rarely, normally you end up waiting a few tenths of a second, which cuts into the dps gain significantly, if it averaged out to 1 tenth of a second wait it would lower the gain to 2.3%) then you have to take into account the lower priority given to CS when using 4-piece. CS is our second highest DPS ability, delaying it a few seconds every 4-5 rotations is a dps loss(the loss obviously does not out weigh the gain from 7 second judgement, however it does reduce the true dps gained from 4-piece), this dps loss is compounded when you have the deadly gladiator's libram.
I personally have seen a significant dps gain overall after switching to best in slot gear instead of 4-piece. I topped out just over 5400 dps using 4-piece, and hit 5844 this week using best in slot.
I will do a little further testing on the boss dummy, and report back with my findings in a few hours.
There are a few problems with this. First 4-piece is not a 3% increase in dps once your gear gets better. For my last Patchwerk kill the theoretical maximum dps gained from 4-piece would have been 2.6%, assuming every judgement is used instantly after coming off CD (which will happen rarely, normally you end up waiting a few tenths of a second, which cuts into the dps gain significantly, if it averaged out to 1 tenth of a second wait it would lower the gain to 2.3%) then you have to take into account the lower priority given to CS when using 4-piece. CS is our second highest DPS ability, delaying it a few seconds every 4-5 rotations is a dps loss(the loss obviously does not out weigh the gain from 7 second judgement, however it does reduce the true dps gained from 4-piece), this dps loss is compounded when you have the deadly gladiator's libram.
I personally have seen a significant dps gain overall after switching to best in slot gear instead of 4-piece. I topped out just over 5400 dps using 4-piece, and hit 5844 this week using best in slot.
I will do a little further testing on the boss dummy, and report back with my findings in a few hours.
Let me clarify:
That post was oriented at Thelgar's concerns that we would not be receiving the bonus from the set if we're delaying Judgments. Personally, if I have 3 CD's coming up at once and one is Judgment, that's the button I will hit: that's what I mean by "prioritize." Secondly, a difference of 400 DPS may not necessarily account for your gear: it could very well be RNG, group composition, lag, Bloodlust timing, etc. I can't take anecdotal evidence as gospel: a WWS would help tremendously in evaluating 4piece versus gearing best in slot. But my point remains true: wearing what Rawr tells you to wear is not always the best way to milk the most DPS out of your spec. Additionally, a -1 second on Judgment scales in damage. By your own argument, as gear gets better, so would the reduced cooldown.
While I appreciate the lengthy response, I think this topic has been beaten into the ground. Participants in this thread (and the previous one) spent the better part of six months theory-crafting, creating "optimal rotations" and gear sets, as well as a myriad of other things. The thread is still there for everyone to read, as are the previous pages in this one. At this point, it seems like we're debating minutia.
Unless someone has something groundbreaking to offer, I would like to see us move away from rehashing old debates about DPS rotation and gearing.
We disagree on what is important and pertinent discussion in this thread I guess. You say the discussion on 4-piece versus best in slot has been beaten into the ground and the discussion on it is over, the victor 4-piece. However I continually find that best in slot gear produces more DPS than 4-piece T7. Personal testing in both a raid environment and on target dummies best in slot gear has always come out on top for me. I figured hey, this is interesting seeing that it goes against the general wisdom discussed within this thread and Redcapes thread.
In the interest of finding the truth I decided to pull out Bellator's Spreadsheet (thank you Exemplar for keeping this beauty up to date), and plug in my gearsets and see which comes out on top according to the spreadsheet (which in my opinion most accurately models the true CD's of abilities due to clashes that occur during combat). Just as I expected from my personal experience the spreadsheet also had best in slot gear out-performing 4-piece. Again, going against the generally accepted wisdom.
Now I ask, if the general wisdom is turning out to be wrong (which at least in my case it appears to be) than is it my duty to inform the community and ask for more people to do their due diligence and test it themselves? I believe it is.
Besides, in a ret DPS theorycraft thread what else is there to talk about other than rotations and gearing? There is only one spec, that needs no discussion. Gemming is extremely simple for us, and as a result requires no discussion.
We disagree on what is important and pertinent discussion in this thread I guess. You say the discussion on 4-piece versus best in slot has been beaten into the ground and the discussion on it is over, the victor 4-piece. However I continually find that best in slot gear produces more DPS than 4-piece T7. Personal testing in both a raid environment and on target dummies best in slot gear has always come out on top for me. I figured hey, this is interesting seeing that it goes against the general wisdom discussed within this thread and Redcapes thread.
In the interest of finding the truth I decided to pull out Bellator's Spreadsheet (thank you Exemplar for keeping this beauty up to date), and plug in my gearsets and see which comes out on top according to the spreadsheet (which in my opinion most accurately models the true CD's of abilities due to clashes that occur during combat). Just as I expected from my personal experience the spreadsheet also had best in slot gear out-performing 4-piece. Again, going against the generally accepted wisdom.
Now I ask, if the general wisdom is turning out to be wrong (which at least in my case it appears to be) than is it my duty to inform the community and ask for more people to do their due diligence and test it themselves? I believe it is.
It is your due diligence to provide data to back up your claim and disprove the work others have done: not anyone else.
I am not trying to stifle discussion in this thread, however what I am attempting to do is to cut back on the repetition of the seemingly exact same posts that have flooded this thread as of late. Nothing that has been stated with regards to gearing or rotation has been anything new or revolutionary, your posts included. The seeming ignorance of what has been stated previously in this thread as well as the old Ret thread is what is concerning. Arikah has done a great job condensing everything, but in the interest of possibly getting back to more positive discussion, I encourage everyone to go read through the old thread. Many of these debates have been had, repeatedly, you can find the thread here: Retribution DPS Theorycraft
Anecdotal evidence and claims without numbers, parses or anything to back them up are not welcome. They are nothing more than conjecture.
Now certainly I understand theory versus practice. There are certainly contributing factors that adversely or positively impact your performance on certain fights. If you'd like to debate the T7 4 piece versus best in slot topic, then by all means, please do. But come here with conclusive, hard evidence. A good example of theory versus practice is Rawr. (v2.1.9) Plugging in my gear from armory yields a theoretical 5671 DPS with raid buffs, glyphs, food, and a flask. Loading up your profile with the same buffs, consumables, etc. shows you at 5629 DPS. I don't know about you, but I don't normally do 5600 DPS due to fight mechanics. Rawr doesn't account for that. My gear is nowhere near your "best in slot," and yet it yields more DPS -- how can this be? Additionally these programs and spreadsheets sometimes incorrectly value items.
Using the same Rawr, we can see the [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] isn't valued correctly. The item shows 90 Str, but has no account for the proc. The program also does not account for the 4 piece Judgment bonus the T7 sets provide. Rawr doesn't account for Hit/Expertise cap or being over these numbers. This has been my point. And while you may have better results gearing and playing the way you do: fantastic, keep fighting the good fight. But coming to the community and people who have been part of these discussions, invested themselves, done the math, the research, and field testing and found opposite of your conclusion: you espouse your claim and bring no evidence to support it. So you expect me to take your claim at face value with no proof; all the while people like Avituus, who have been proven, long-time contributors of this thread have found otherwise and provided the math and parses to back it up.
CS is our second highest DPS ability, delaying it a few seconds every 4-5 rotations is a dps loss(the loss obviously does not out weigh the gain from 7 second judgement, however it does reduce the true dps gained from 4-piece), this dps loss is compounded when you have the deadly gladiator's libram.
Really? I have difficulty believing that a little extra Attack Power yields a larger damage gain than a +2.3%-3% gain to Judgment in a fight, if we're going to compare them against each other. Also, with Judgment yielding more damage in general and the ability for it to proc Righteous Vengeance, it ultimately far exceeds the amount of damage Crusader Strike could ever do, even with the Libram. I also submit that with talents like Fanaticism applied toward Judgment, you further increase your ability to do damage with the ability, as well as proc Righteous Vengeance. I feel you may have overlooked Righteous Vengeance in your assertions.
It is not my intent to be combative here and my apologies if it does seem that way, but this thread seems to have derailed. We've gone from theorycrafting to nitpicking each others words. Speculation and theory are welcome. But if you're going to make a claim: bring support for it.
I would recommend using Bellator's spreadsheet instead of Rawr if you want to get more accurate dps values that take into account your rotation. You can find it on the first page of this thread. Take the time, plug in different gear sets, some with 4-piece, some best in slot, and see if you find, like I did, that best in slot setups are normally higher than 4-piece.
Here is my last Naxx raid if you care to peruse. Perhaps no one that uses 4-piece has similar gear, but I have yet to see a 4-piece parse that is even close to this one. Clearly this evidence is anecdotal. I have also spent loads of time on dummies testing it, best in slot came out in first by a decent margin, not great evidence without raid buffs.
Yes, the Judgment bug seems to have returned with 3.0.8.
I had noticed my scrolling combat text not registering anything when I fired Judgment occasionally. I had assumed that there were so many numbers at the time that Judgment's damage had just scrolled off too quickly. Upon reviewing a WWS for the evening I found my damage/DPS was lower than it had been in previous weeks and that there were missing Judgments.
I'd like those parses posted, both of them if you will. Is this only happening on one boss (patchwerk) or multiple? Are other paladins judging ect (will be revealed in the wws)... it's interesting that if it is truly back it is certainly more sneaky than last time, since the newly buffed JoW and its' crazy proc rate seems to cover the bulk of our mana issues.
01/30/09, 6:32 AM
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