Alleyra

Patchwerk is one of the few bosses that does not require much raid-healing. Should bosses be brought more in line with Patchwerk, where there is little-to-no AoE/raid damage, you will find that mana will become even more of a concern. Additionally, the only reason you're not hurting for mana on those other AoE fights is due to Spiritual Attunement: which is being altered.

Mana and our sustainability, once again, (see the old Ret thread) is not an "eventual concern," sadly. It's an immediate concern.

 

Venir

Bear with me here, been reading this site a long time, never posted before. :p

I've seen some mention of this here and was wondering if anyone had confirmed it. I've seen dramatically reduced damage since 3.0.8 went out and I'm not sure of the reasons why. In our Naxx-10 last week I usually do ~4k on Patch, but that time I did 2900. At the time I thought it might be because our DK was not there and I did not get abom's might or horn of winter.

After the raid I started digging through recount and found that not only were my judgements a much smaller portion of my dmg than they should have been, but they weren't hitting as hard as they should either. Recount counted my highest judgement that raid as ~8900. With all the "stars aligned" (mirror proc, greatness proc, AW etc.) my judgements crit in the 12-13k area.

Have I been having really bad luck with the RNG? or maybe this ghosting bug is tied somehow to the procs of trinkets, hence my lack higher crits in recount? Has anyone else had the damage issue along with the ghosting?

 

Melu

Since the topic of mana regen and efficiency came up I'd like to pitch in my 2cents.

I remember I used to have mana problems, especially on patchwrek. I'd resort to using a mana pot and while keeping up divine plea on cooldown I would still have mana issue - we are going all out here using every ability we can. It was never that big of a deal because all i needed to do was to back up slightly into the green slime (the mana slime) and the healers would give me back mana.

I decided I would give 4 piece a shot since I did not do my research on best paladin pieces I figured a straight upgrade from Heroe's wouldn't be too bad of an idea. After trying out 4piece bonus all my mana problems where gone. In fact, I could start a fight with half mana or 25% mana and regen to nearly 100% mana without potting.

I think this set bonus helps a lot with dps - provided that the offset pieces don't give a higher dps boost than the extra mana. I think also 4 piece helps the raid more since they will get more replenishments. I'd say if there is more than 1 ret paladin in the raid have at least 1 with 4 piece since ret paladin dps is only close to being competitive compared to that of rogues, dks or warriors. We will always be lower than any of those classes if they are equally geared and skilled as the person playing the ret paladin.

 

Azrealdnt

I don't even spec SoC in my pvp build. I'm #1 in 5s, and #3 in 3s. Even when my healer dies I still use SoB in the 2v2/3. PS ninja edit: I soloed my way to 1950 in 2s, the only way it was possible is Blood.

The only time I EVER switch to another seal is 1v1 a healer, and I use, wait for it, wisdom, I'd never use command. If it's 1v2 vs a dps + healer, I need to roll dice anyway.

 

trv186

For those who are having problems/ want to know how to prepare for mana problems I have farmed some items which I am sure you may find helpful as well

Each of these items uses NO GCD and takes your healthstone cooldown meaning they can in some cases get you just enough mana to get by to make to your next judgement/divine plea/arcane torrent cooldown to refil your mana and still let you chug a dps pot.

Night Dragon's Breath(farmed in Felwood restores about 500 mana no gcd with a 2 min icd)
Demonic/Dark rune( farmed in felwood/scholo 15 min cd take ur HS cd of 2 mins and no GCD penalty)
Runes were nerfed but it still is the most mana back around 1000 or so so use these first easy to farm too can get while you farm night Draon'g breath

The item Lea of Lillies can spawn one lilly root which refils about 500 mana just like Night Dragon's breath above but it's only 1 per hour but free

My favorite and one I am saving for a riany day has 3 charges from a quest in EPL

Tea with Sugar (restores over 1,000 mana and health 2 min cool down does not interfere with GCD)

I farmed all of these items in case I run out of mana in future progression not currently having any issue

Was able to test them out in Naxx 10 man cause our pally tank was judging light instead of wisdom like he was assigned and it kept me from going oom just long enough for my Divine Plea and Arcane torrent cool downs Fight last a little under 3 mins so only got to use one of these 1 time but in longer fights were we are not taking an excessive amount of dmg to proc extra SA heals will prolly come in handy.

Just for fun I farmed a stack of Strat holy water to use in the rare times I have no moves ready to use in my FCFS rotation small dmg boost but fun and who knows maybe someday it will come in handy

I may be thinking too far into this but I had read that the mechanical Yeti in Winterspring quest scales with your level all the way to 80 so I farmed him too figured it cant hurt

I know the Yeti and strat holy water may be crazy but the mana regen ones are actually very useful and worth farming. I often finish a full night of raids with the orginal healtstone I picked up at the first pull and these items allow that cooldown to put to DPS increasing usage. Of course it is not worth it to use these items in fights where you may be in danger of dying without a hs so use judgement

 

• frmorrison

You are one of the top Ret Arena players, but that is really impressive.

I doubt Blood will be buffed to hit you for less, because of players like this.


Anyway, Blood is the tax for being PvE Ret, just like dps Warriors have to take 10% more damage to dps, Ret must self-damage to do dps. Perhaps the 10% tax on Warriors is going away, but I doubt it.

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

 

Sanglier

So I wanted to both comment on 3.0.8 dps and ask about what people are seeing for their dps numbers. Basically I wanted a sort of measuring stick so I can see if I'm playing well enough or if my gear is much better than my ability and I'm sucking hardcore because I don't know how to play ret. I feel like after the patch today my dps was lower in comparison, usually in overall I'm about 6th or 7th but tonight I was 10th pushing 11th. But I noticed around a 700 dps boost, part of this is that I've finally nailed down how to kill dead time between spells and hitting hit cap. I'm in 2 pieces of valorous, 1 piece of heroes, I have 10-man leather shoulders..., the stupid JC emerald boar trinket and the rest of my gear is either best in slot or near it. I pulled 3200 dps on Patchwerk, Instructor Ravinous, Anub, grand widow, Maexxna, significantly less, 1600, on grobulous (I hate that fight), 4 horsemen I tank one of the peeps in the back, and gothik the harvester. Do these numbers seem right? Am I vastly underpowered? if you want more detail about my gear I'm the only lvl 80 Sanglier. Look me up. I appreciate input.

 

• Avitus

In 5v5 I can understand, in 3v3 you must have astronomically good healers (given by their rating, that is correct), but that's not a default situation for the general population is it? Once you're healers are down it's only doable in a burst tactic where you can guarantee you can drop your target, any other situation (if they heal up) and you're on the losing end. In any regard, using SoB in Arena has very little to do with Retadin skill and everything to do with their healers.

Your playing with extremely good players (yourself included) which can deal with this extra penalty and use its advantages making this an exception rather than the general trend.

Soloing to 1950 in 2s, well, you might have to fill us in here, was this at the very first week with "relatively" tricked out gear (rushing level70 geared players on s5 day one)? Could you potentially reproduce it now? I don't claim to know much about US battlegroups, but as BG competitiveness/difficulty how's your BG like (on EU Cyclone = US BG9, with a sliding scale until you reach some joke BGs)?


Really not sure what the relevance here is. In all regards, using SoB in arena is down to your healers if you're a burst tactic and has very little to do with general viability of the Seal in Arena. In 2v2, well, we'll need a bit more info as indicated.

That's weird. You can easily get >5k DPS there spamming DS and Consecration and netting damage on the adds. I've finished first there a couple times. Assuming you don't get the "bomb" every time, even without AoE damage you should be at least twice as high.

I suspect you're not moving in melee range as the tank is moving the boss around and you're losing a lot of auto-attack/CS.

Try this: Get RedRange and make sure your CS is not red at any point (always move as the tank moves) and see if there's any change.

 

Everix

Nevermind

 

tarja

I have to agree that with the current state of burst damage in arenas, SoB is vastly superior to SoC. I still spend a talent point in SoC for 3v3 since I'll switch to it if I'm getting focus fired, but I don't even bother taking SoC for 5v5 arenas. As powerful as Judgement of Blood is in PVP, I really don't see how Blizzard could reduce the recoil damage without making some sort of other change to also nerf its actual damage done. The only thing keeping JoB remotely in line for PVP is that it's dangerous to use.

What they really should do though is put a cap on how much recoil damage you can take from a single JoB (say something like 25% of your max HP). The recoil is disproportionally dangerous in PVE because you do way more damage with full raid buffs, plus have lower stamina in raid gear. Then on fights with gimmick damage modifiers like Thaddius or Malygos, you do absurd amounts of damage to yourself (I've 1 shot myself for 200k damage on Razuvius, that's just stupid). If they put a cap on JoB recoil, it would have very little effect in PVP (lower judgement totals, higher stamina gear, and no gimmick modifiers at least in arenas), and I think it would solve the main problems with the PVE recoil damage scaling too high in Ulduar and beyond.

 

Nhala

After I killed myself 3 times due to Twilight Torment + Judgement of Blood, I started switching to SoC when the third drake landed and reverting to Blood once he was dead. Might be something for you to consider, assuming you want to stop gibbing yourself on that fight. The DPS loss is pretty negligible from what I've been able to tell, but it depends on how fast you kill the third drake. Despite that, not killing yourself is infinitely preferable to killing yourself, especially on 3D.

 

jointhelgc

Ive never had the experience of the tridrake encounter but i understand that does become the big issue. As regards mana regen for patch i have had no problems at all since gettin 4pc t7.5. The judgements/replenishment/plea is plenty without gimping my output. I dont however understand how i can pull just 3.5k to 4k (chadz - eu - azjol-nerub) like this when people are linking wws parses at 5.5k+

 

Fqubed

It depends on raid composition. If you are missing some key buffs it would lower a good bit your dps. If you don't use any armor reduction debuffs on the bosses that can cause a very important dip in dps. And most importantly it depends on kill speed. If you kill Patch in 2.2 minutes you spend a large portion of the fight with wings and bloodlust, thus giving you a higher than expected dps. Post a wws with your rotation and pertinent fight parameters (laggy, etc) if you want specific suggestions.

As for SoB the spell itself could be changed to deal a fixed amount of recoil, that could crit if you crit the Judge (to keep it fair and disadvantaged for pvp) glyphed it reduces the recoil by x% Or simply forget the glyph as a fix, and stick with Consecrate, Judge, HoW, CS.

 

Azrealdnt

My 3s paladin is new to the class, and for the first x games, was pretty bad. Using SoB has nothing to do with healers, and everything to do with knowing when to Judge. The damage from every other attack is joke town. If your Judge doesn't crit, it doesn't do any real damage to you, and if it does, you can simply flash yourself if you need it (timed with SS.) Every single paladin I see above 2k is using Blood. Even in triple DPS 3s and double DPS 2s.

As for Blood vs healers, you are basically throwing your HP at them. The 3k damage it does to you is 3k extra on them. Any class with high survivability would make this trade.

Bg6 has some of the best (known) players like Serennia (Nathyrra) and many others who did well on a cross BG scale like on Tournament Realms and Lan events. Would I be #1 on another BG? Probably if I kept the same DK / Hunter on the 5s and played with 2 better healers.

Btw, pro pvp tip: Hand of Reckoning totem macros. You can kill Grounding and repent or HoJ in the same global as long as you wait .2 seconds for grounding to break.

Hand of Reckoning focus to apply vindication / keep healers in combat.
________________________

I recently discovered a new trick for PvE DPS with adds: Mouse-over Hammer of Wrath. It's kinda basic, but I usually swapped targets and lost the x seconds of auto attack.

As for Grobulus, remember you can cleanse yourself as soon as you are away from the melee, and go back to DPSing. If you do it right you should only lose 1 auto attack and you can Exo or Judge running in/out.

 

Mearis

1950's solo in 2 vs 2 is pretty amazing, can you post a video or share some of your strategies? In a competitive BG I really did not think this would be doable even playing a powerful class.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Dutcherino

Did anyone notice lower damage in raids after the patch? Unfortunately I can't link my WWS because the recorder was absent. At first I thought that 50% of all judgements were ghosting, but just damage wasn't happening, however it still applied the judgement debuff. I analyzed recount but all judgements were there after counting them per encounter.

Perhaps i'm paranoid but something didn't feel right.

 

Sutech

Regarding to SoM/SoB in Arena use: I would say that's very independent of your personal style in PvP. Most Players would prefer surviving rather than dealing that much "dps" and burst. I tried both: SoM, SoC and a few more (pervert) Specs in a few Brackets:

SoC suits me currently best in 2v2 oder 3v3, because of the intense burst if it really does proc. and combined with few stuff collected in PvE that can work quite well minus the risk to become focus and die faster than any paladin can heal. So less risk, nice output. SoM is not quite as "care free"-damage Output and can be your doom, if there's a fast-trigger Priest oder Mage who dislikes the Divine Shield.

But....in fact I do use SoM sometimes in my weird 5v5 Reckoning Spec. (using 27 Points in Protection to grant Reckoning and more stamina, rest in retribution to combine it with crusader strike). In a quite well constructed Team where you seem to be the week spot (stealth team for example) that's really a unique surprise and even in 2v2 it has a few opportunities, because you really do survive alot. Lesser Mana-need, constant damage (but less controllable burst), many nice supporting stuff like 30% damage less to your team mates, and so on.

So my conclusion: I don't think we can say: "That's the one and only seal for PvP", because there is no standard situation.

 

• Avitus

Timing Judgements with Blood is a no brainer and not really worth mentioning. The problem with the healers I've played with hasn't been outhealing gib damage, but on the elementary level of providing a steady stream heals despite a cc heavy team. It comes down to how good your healer is and how good your team is at controlling the other team to allow the healer to do his thing. I still maintain it speaks more of the quality of the group than an argument for the Seal.

Anyway, I don't want to further derail, so I'll take your word for it. I'll see if I can fit in SoB if I ever start doing serious arena again (my current arena team was for the sole purpose of getting the Deadly Libram for PvE use and we barely play), though it's seems fairly hard to find motivated/competent people on my (PvE) server for arena since PvE->PvP transfers opened up.


One last thing: (Before Mearis pulls out his Pitchfork and Torch) Your 2v2 rating is a product of rushing the season early or do you think it would be reproducible now (after people started getting some decent resilience)?


Yep I can second that, been using it since Wrath with great success. Should be added to the OP along with the missing DS/autoattack macro.

 

Azrealdnt

I'm making a video and I run xfire streams. A lot of the fraps footage I have right now is pretty amazing / funny.

I was running Rogue Ret Druid before my druid quit. We had what we called "Paladin strat:" Sap DPS, open on Paladin hard and make him bubble. It worked about 90% of the time on new teams and about ~75% if they see it coming (dps peels hard at start). One game the Paladin bubbled at 250 Hp, and I poped wings to kill him with taunt (crit for 270). If you didn't know, HoReckoning works through immunities since it's a taunt (should be changed/nerfed). In that game, the DPS that was sapped didn't move the whole game. Sap > Cyclone > Roots > Repent > Hoj > Blind > Sap.

The video has some old s2 as holy, and s3 as Ret/Druid/War, and includes one of favorite games vs a mage. He was sheeping, so I put sac up, so he stopped sheeping to spellsteal, starts sheeping again, I taunt his water elemental, he turns off pet attack and sheeps me, drops a shatter on my warrior and he dies. It just looks really smooth on both our parts.

1950 2s was week 2. I had betrayer and 4 pc hateful that I bought with badges and 1 piece I got with arena points. I had full deadly offset and trinket, and I face rolled my way by 7k judging people in 0 resilience and ~15k HP. It's probably impossible now, unless your hidden is ~2500 and you win 20 points per game and lose 2. I haven't changed any of my gear since week 2 beyond swapping out Hateful for Deadly. Sad that I had nothing to look forward to than 10 more strength every 2 weeks. Although a DK could probably do it vs non DK teams.

I went Holy tonight for 2s to get arena master, was pretty simple getting 2.2k. We only really lost to complete RNG (dying in strangulate at 85% HP with sacred shield / dancing rune weapon and sudden doom 4x death coil for 16k in one second / 3x tnt procs / etc.) and to extreme counter comps, of which we only fought 2. I really wanted to get it all as Ret, but I never found a good comp for 2s. A few people told me Ret Shaman and Ret Disc Priest is good, but it sounds like it gets ripped by DK Holy. Has anyone played Ret in 2s above 2.2 as non Ret / Mage? I prefer healer comps since I like outlasting and lining up cc more than straight up "bam ure dead sup kid."

Back to PvE: I think my gearset is done, but should I start picking up good offset pieces for when I eventually break t7 for uldur loot? I've been eyeing Malygos leather chest / gloves for a while.

 

Mearis

Can you give us a link to your xfire stream Azrael?

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Lightbender

Hi, I'm new here, but I've been reading the conversations the whole way through.

The World of Warcraft Armory

I just picked up the betrayer to replace my death's bite, and I noticed that in the next naxx 25, my damage dealt on several bosses actually went down. I'm not sure whether I was RNG screwed or to attribute this to other problems, but our hunters and rogues actually did significantly more damage than usual. Has anybody else been doing less damage since this patch?

 

AloySerenity

I've seen a noticeable drop in my DPS since the new and improved, non-replicable judgment bug returned (especially since I recently acquired 4pc T7). Yes, the RNG could, in theory, drop your DPS by a very significant amount if you were repeatedly unlucky, but that's why you can't look at just one fight. You'd need more results in order to confirm that the difference in damage you're seeing is not just one anomaly that falls outside your normal DPS distribution pattern.

Speaking of the judgment bug, I had recently checked the WoW bug forums and neither seen a blue response posted there or elsewhere regarding that they are "re-aware" of the issue and looking into it. I have seen a few posters here mention that they had noticed a difference post 3.0.8 but was wondering if the issue had simply not gotten enough attention or if the fact that this time it's nearly impossible to duplicate has caused a delay in response time from Blizz (they could also be working on it behind the scenes; I understand this is a possibility).

Could someone re-post how to identify in a WWS report that your judgments are landing despite a successful cast (obviously not counting misses)? I've only been able to confirm through recount in combat thus far. Thanks.

 

• frmorrison

Here is the HoW Macro that should be added to the OP that you mentioned:

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm] Hammer of Wrath; [target=targettarget,harm] Hammer of Wrath; Hammer of Wrath

Thanks for the totem killer macro idea with taunt, I hate totems so much. I think I will add the totem killer macro to my Judge macro.
Taunt can go thru bubble/block, and Taunt will always proc Vindication. I hope it doesn't get nerfed .

With Mages being nerfed yesterday, Ret just can't go higher than 2.2 anymore , maybe that will change if Ranged Earth Shock says in.


Towards PvE, it is a good idea to get any item level 226 leather, but in Ulduar there will be 226 plate that will be itemized better, so the leather will not last long but will help in the first few weeks.

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

 

GSH

You can rewrite macros with multiple conditions, but the same spell, like:

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=targettarget,harm][] Hammer of Wrath

It saves some space if the macro gets long.

 

Dragonspear

@Venir - Although I'm sure that the judgement bug did cause a significant portion of your dps drop, lacking Abom's Str and then Horn of Winter is huge. Horn is about 3% crit and ~360ish AP and then you take all your raid buffs (Might, Kings, MotW, Horn) baseline and I get about 460 AP just from that up, more when you include extra AP on trinket procs.
TLR - You are down about 800 AP just from missing those 2 buffs and then 3% crit on the side.

@Melu - The reason we are bringing up mana issues is that while the 4p Set Bonus is amazing atm, it is to be expected that Uldalar gear will be enough of a gear increase to make the 4pt7 outdated. So we have to assume that our mana by BiS late Uldalar will be on an 8 second Judgement CD. And at that point many of us will have mana issues again, especially if SA gets nerfed.

Disclaimer: All math I did for Venir was off the top of my head, please feel free to correct it with more accurate numbers. Can't work everything out in the middle of class.