eMagdAeH

I look at it as a flavor thing. Divine Purpose is indeed very nice, but personally I preferred to go with 1 point in it and 2 points in Imp. Ret. aura. Since Ret. aura scales with AP plus an additional 50%, it's all the more damage added to a fight. It does add a little AoE threat for tanks albeit an insignificant amount. I don't think there is a single right way spec once you have the core talents covered just go with what feels best for you.

 

Durd57

So I ran another test this time using 167 hit rating (5.07%) with the same 0/8/63 spec and 400 axe skill using Recount for data collection. I got some interesting results.

On Heroic Training Dummy in Silvermoon:

Melee – 1000 swings
Miss: 25, 2.5%

Judgements
75 Judgement of Blood
75 Judgement of Righteousness
75 Judgement (Wisdom/Light)
19 Judgement Command
1 Judgement Vengeance

1 missed judgement of wisdom
1 missed judgement of justice
5 missed judgement of light

8 missed judgements out of 252 total = ~3.1%

Seals
198 Seal of Blood; Missed: 7, 3.5%
195 Seal of Righteousness; Missed: 0, 0%
31 Seal of Command; Missed: 0, 0%

First off, Recount is a little screwy with the way it records judgements so keep an eye out for that when doing your own tests. It records missed judgements separately from those that hit. The ones that do hit are further divided into JoBlood, JoRighteousness, JoCommand, JoVengeance for their respective seals; seals of wisdom and light get rolled into one category simply called "judgement." Misses are recorded separately and further divided into the specific missed judgement either Wisdom, Justice or Light.

There was one peculiarity i noticed while testing. I didn't decide to start messing around with judgements until I was a few hundred swings in and I'm inclined to say ~15-18 of the total misses occurred in the first few hundred swings. Clearly my decision to experiment halfway through makes this data set unreliable so I'll have to retest again (yay!), but has anyone else had any thoughts on miss chance being affected in some way by seals being active or the actual judgement debuff being on the mob? There was some speculation as to whether Vindication affected this but I believe that theory has been put to rest. Anyway, just some late night ramblings of someone who should be doing better things with their time.

 

Amant

Anyway you can show your list? At the moment im sitting completely unbuffed at 302 hit (yes im aware of how much im over the cap) 3375 ap, 31.14 crit and 10 exp. Been checking gear and still havent seen anything that will push my expertise that high and still keep decent stats. Look up my character and see what you would suggest plz.

Bleshu - Zul'jin

 

Gevlin

Just a note on Judgements and recount. If you're running SoB, and you Judge JoL, the damage is recorded as "Judgement of Blood hits for..." but if it misses, it will say "Judgement of Light misses..." thus, Judgement misses are not being recorded by recount, because the damaging portion of the Judgement only hits when the "spell" portion of Judgement hits. You'll see this in my screen shot on page 7. This could be partly why we're seeing ghosted Judgements.

Oh, and as far as sample size is concerned 10,000 swings will give you a confidence interval of ~ +/- 0.5% if people are concerned with accuracy, etc. With an unhasted 2.5 speed weapon you're looking at about 7 hours. Have Fun!

 

zenos

Have you recently added an on proc trinket that changes your ap?

I think this bug will remain until ptr when you can do some authorative tests without going broke. My opinion is that the bug is related to an AP calculation that takes place behind the scenes at the point of debuff.

The reason for my theory is anecdotal, however the bug takes place for me far more often when:

A) I have the Mirror of Truth equipped.
B) I'm grouped with an enhancment shaman.

I could be chasing the wrong path but it could be that old code that calculated the mana return of Judgment of Wisdom is still in there doing bad things to our judgment damage as I notice the bug far more often when my AP changes from one judgement to the next.

I can experience the bug even when swapping from wisdom to light or visa-versa, but I can not duplicate the bug when going from judged justice to either light or wisdom. As I stated earlier I haven't done a thorough enough test to make an authorative claim but the limited testing I have done leads me in this direction.

I'd be very interested in anyone elses results. I'm especially interested to know if someone can duplicate the bug judging either wisdom or light with the preceding judgment having been justice.

A few additional observations:

1)This bug can occur when you are the only paladin in the group or raid.

2)Swapping between judgments appears to lower the frequency of the bug but testing has not been done to determine if this is statistically accurate.

3)The bug can occur even if you wait several seconds longer than the cooldown.(It has been reported that improved judgments may be the culprit, but I ran 3 wings of Naxx last night paying careful attention to allow judgment to set idle for several seconds after the cooldown and still experienced roughly the same frequency of the bug.)

 

Exemplar

@Gevlin - Recount does record missed Judgements, under another heading. See screenshots for Meike's tests. If you had scrolled down in your own recount you would have seen this - sadly the screenshots do not allow scrolling down after the fact.

Ghosted Judgements do not show up in Combat Log, do not show up in Recount, other than eating your mana and going on GCD there is no evidence they occur. Hit Judgements show "Judgement of the Martyr/Command/etc hit/crit for xxx." Missed Judgements show "Judgement of Light/Wisdom missed" in Combat log and on Recount. As they have different spell names in the Combat Log, Recount sorts them separately.

I recommend 2H testing with [Dalaran Greatsword] - 2.1 unhasted is nice. Just make sure your 2H sword skill is 400, please! Or you can test with a 1H (since you're not measuring damage anyway) and use [Dalaran Sword] for even faster attacks. Both should make it slightly easier to get a reasonable sample size.


@zenos - I've theorized the ghost judgement can occur when you immediately hit Judge and another cooldown back to back with little latency. As if the 2nd ability may stop some judgement calculations before they complete and "eat" the spell. This could lead to the "hard to track" portion, since sometimes calculations would complete, sometimes be interrupted - all based on the reaction time of the player, server load, and latency interacting.

 

Rukiia

This could be a possible cause. Its annoying because the 3 trinkets i have are [Fury of the Five Flights] [Mirror of Truth] [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] i had i think 4 bugs on judgements when doing Sartharion with drakes up 10 man and it was stressful. All of the trinkets have AP procs so i am at a loss of what to do exactly to get around the bug until something "official" is fixed.

 

zenos

I pursued this line of testing after it was reported. I've given judgment a time priority by waiting until all abilities are clearly executed, judgment is deep in to its cooldown, and I've been careful to not follow the judgment with another ability until several seconds after the judgment. Even with this set up I can duplicate the bug.

I just had an odd idea. Under what circumstances could the game discard the current judgment because it considers the previous judgment more powerful?

Assume for example that the old code that calculated the amount that judgment of wisdom or light would proc for is still under the hood doing some pointless work. Your previous judgment was affected by the 1000 ap buff from Mirror of Truth and your current judgment is not. WoW could discard this judgment out of hand as attempting to overwrite a more powerful debuff and the game could not handle the issue properly as the ability is not tagged for the expected behavior.

If this issue still remains when they open ptr I'll test this as well. (actually this is an unlikely remedy but very easily tested by lowering ap between judgments, I'll test this evening.


I notice it is ret paladins reporting this bug, does it also affect protection paladins and holy as well? If so does holy receive the spell haste even when experiencing the bug?

 

Merovengian

I respecced Holy for a few days and was still getting the judgement bug, so unless it has something to do with what our talent spec was Pre- 3.0 Im inclined to believe it is affecting all pallys, it just hurts Ret much more when one fails bc of the major mana issues it creates.

 

Exemplar

Tie Rukiia and Zenos together and another possible cause occurs.

Perhaps the missing judgements could be when AP drops after a buff wearing off. I.e. you have 3500 AP. Mirror Procs. You have 4500 AP. Judgement of Light/Wis - hit, everything rosy. Mirror buff wears off. Back to 3500 AP. Judge - nothing, because the game still saw the "more powerful" previous version present. This would make sense with 8 second judgement and 10 second debuff.

This would not make sense for Holy with 10 second cooldown (shouldn't be able to re-Judge until debuff gone, unless these "Holy" specs have had Imp Judgement for faster grinding). It also would not make sense with alternated Judgements via cast sequence (Wis, Light, Wis, Light) as it should not see a more powerful version, yet it has been reported happening to those with a cast sequence macro.

In short - still no common link detectable

 

Left

Not so; all judgements now apply a 20 second debuff, not 10. Thus, if you are using judgement on cooldown (talented or not), you are refreshing a debuff.

However, you're right that it doesn't explain why the bug still appears when swapping from Wisdom to Light or vice-versa. Since those are seperate effects, the new should cancel the old regardless of any nonsense about "more powerful effects" being active.

 

Exemplar

Aha, thanks Left. I don't pay attention to duration of Judgement, since I assume it's always present if I'm beating on things. I guess I just got it in my mind that cooldown=duration because Blizzard loves to screw melee on movement fights.

Cast Sequence could still fail for a sharp paladin with Imp Judgements.
0 - Judge Light - debuff starts.
8 - Judge Wis - debuff starts.
16 - Judge Light - debuff was still present, if your AP dropped and this was the cause you could "lose" this judge.

We may be on to something. Maybe a castsequence of Light, Wis, Justice (in order of your choice) to ensure 24 seconds have to pass before you're back to the first? You should be okay because yours is going to be stronger than a Holy or Prot judging (although the Holy or Prot could wind up with a lot of lost judgements). The only worry would be a two-Ret raid, the one with more AP may drive the other out of business.

This leads to a possible test - two Ret, one with clearly superior AP (oh, say, one with gear, the other naked?) both spamming the same judgement on cooldown, see if the naked repeatedly has lost judgements?

 

zenos

All you need to do is judge wearing only a non proc ap trinket. remove the trinket and rejudge. It seems if the issue were so simple we'd have stumbled on it already but thats the methodology I plan to pursue when I get home. Or so long as you have no ap procs you could judge with might up and then cancel might and rejudge.

If someone has access currently and wants to test this feel free. As I said it really cant be that simple but I'd like to rule it out.

 

• goss

I had missed this, but apparently the [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] has a mana cost associated with the proc, which is really odd. Here: Greatness - Spell - World of Warcraft. I haven't finished my card as of yet, but this seems like a fairly strong drawback. Anybody done any testing with this? Our rotations are pretty tight on mana as is...especially with the Judgment bug.

 

Buffie

If you go to the wowhead trinket page and click the effect in the box, it links to a different spell called Darkmoon Card: Greatness" with no cost.

Darkmoon Card: Greatness - Spell - World of Warcraft

The one you found is most likely unused.

 

• frmorrison

In the Holy Pally thread, a person with that trinket was just autoattacking for a while and lost mana (no had no mp5 gear on), he lost around 200 mana per proc, which is 6% base mana.

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

 

Left

I thought that when you judged it would remove your previous judgement effect if it was different? IE, judgement of wisdom cancels your previous judgement of light? Or is this not the case? (I haven't done any rigorous testing in this area.)

Even if it does overwrite your previous judgement, there could still be some unpurged code in the background that still thinks your old judgement is in place for purposes of "more powerful effect" calculations. I'll be interested to see some tests of this.

 

Questioner

Here is another one. I work from home so I was able to run this test for a good majority of my day.



Combining these results with my previous test seem to indicate about an 8.5% miss chance...so perhaps I was hasty in my judgement that I was getting 9%. There is a good chance I have an 8% hit cap and just have terrible luck. The only way for me to test that theory is to equip 8% hit, but I don't think I have that capability yet.

 

Protagoras

The front page states that "our only real option" for potions is [Runic Mana Potion]. This does not accord with what was stated earlier in one of the retribution threads, namely that [Potion of Speed] and possibly another strength potion (I do not recall which) would be DPS increases, assuming mana were not an issue.

 

Helot

Was the thread you were looking at pre- or post- WotLK?

Pre-Wotlk, yes. Speed/Str would be better, since you could chain-chug pots. With the new potion limit in, given that most cycles will be mana-negative, you will be getting more DPS out of a Mana Potion, than a DPS potion.

Mana potions let you DPS long. 15second buff potions increase your DPS for 15 seconds.

The spreadsheets should tell you how long you can maintain a cycle until your OOM, even with popping DP on CD. If a fight is over that length of time, mana pots will be better. Especially since one mana pot is more than one DP, so your saving on GCD's.

On a side note: Dark Runes/Demonic Runes are still usable at 80, restore ~1000 mana, and have a 2-min cooldown. If your really hurting for mana, even with DP/Runic Mana, it's an option.

Chaith logs on
<zyl> Actually, I do like my paladin. He's fun to play, but don't tell Chaith.
<chaith> Looks like i logged in at the right time
<zyl> ....
<zyl> I pressed enter half a second after you logged on.

 

Protagoras

Post-WotLK. The qualifier "assuming mana were not an issue" addresses your point about the potion limit. If, for example, one knows that one will be receiving a significant amount of healing during an encounter (and thus a significant amount of mana via SA), a non-mana potion may very well be preferrable.

 

• Arikah

The bit about potions is because not only are you restricted to one potion per fight (4.3k mana gain vs ~20% haste for 15s) but also because haste has greatly reduced in benefit since BC. If you know that a fight only lasts 1 minute and you won't need mana, sure pop a haste potion, but then if you knew/do that you don't really need most of the advice in the consumables section.

About judgement bugs, let me dispel a few of the theories we're seeing:
- trinket and/or weapon procs, specifically those that increase AP, have no effect or bearing on the bug occuring, see below.
- Imp judgements and the T7 4pc bonus have nothing to do with the bug, other than you "seeing it more frequently" due to more judgements
- this bug is not unique to retribution; protection and holy paladins also suffer from it, but it is far less noticeable to them

Browsing the mess that is the official wow forums this afternoon I came across a gem of information with how to reproduce this bug with a 100% success rate:

1: Use seal of command
2: Stun a mob using HoJ
3: Judge light
4: wait for cooldown
5: Judge light again, and it will fail

You can do this naked, or in your full raid gear, or in pvp gear with no procs, it doesn't matter - it works. This indicates that the problem comes from following a judgement that crit (which is why you hoj then judge command) with another that may not crit (and this is the one that fails). I am told that this ALSO works with blood and martyr, which is pure /boggle to me... but everything seems to indicate that critical judgements are being given debuff priority over "normal" judgements, causing them to fail. This might also explain why judgement juggling drastically reduces the frequency of the bug; you aren't trying to overwrite jow with jow, you are replacing jow with jol (and vice versa).

No idea why judgements can fail on critters, though.

 

bsod

I have the trinket as well and never noticed the mana loss until now. While hitting the practice dummy's I'm losing 263 mana per proc.

 

Jitterberry

That is interesting information but slightly confuses me since I haven't had a Judgement bug in a very long time. Almost every time it occurred, it was whilst leveling and the initial Judgement that randomly failed.

 

Aleph.Durotan

This bug is actually pretty noticeable for me as a prot paladin, especially in 5/10 mans. Often I don't have a warrior along with improved tclap so my judgment is the only attack speed debuff available. Due to threat no longer being a concern, I usually wait until a few seconds before the judgment falls off to renew it in order to conserve mana. With a 9 second cd, if that judgment fails, I now have a several second window where none of judgments of the just, heart of the crusader, or judgment of light/wisdom are up. It's not wipe causing, but it's also not optimal.

In regards to critical judgments, as prot I can tell you that my critical judgments are few and far between. One thing I have noticed is that the more people present in the party/raid, the more frequently I am seeing this bug. I never see it solo, almost never see it in 5 mans, sometimes see it in 10 mans, and often see it in 25 mans. My guess is that some component of my judgment is being considered weaker than an existing debuff and it fails.