Anyone else seen a huge difference between SotM/JotM Hit vs Swing Hit? Been looking at our first WWS from Ulduar and I got 1.5% miss with Swing, where 1% is Parry, and SotM 8.4% and JotM 7.7% miss rate. Can't help but thinking... Has Seal and Judgement of the Martyr been changed to Spell Hit? Or am I just missing something? Is WWS maybe bugged?
Wow Web Stats

Anyone else seen anything like this?

Probably has something to do with the recoil. It tends to mess with results in WWS and similar. It was most likely the recoil missing you, not the SotM/JotM missing the target. It has not been converted to spell hit, as Exo uses spell hit, and it only had 4,4% miss (SotM/JotM would have 4,4% miss as well if that was the case).

If you total up the number of CS + DS + swings in your WWS, it's about half the number of Seal of the Martyrs it's recorded, since WWS counts each seal proc twice - once for the damage and once for the recoil. Absorbed recoil is then being counted as a miss, hence the high miss rate.

Edit: and for those struggling with PW:S/Sacred Shield, you're not just facerolling damage are you? PW:S can't be reapplied for 15s once first applied, SS takes one swing/attack to remove then won't be back for 6s after the proc. Both these effects provide ample window to get damaging judgements off, even if they do limit the rate at which you can do so. Having resource negated by absorbs definitely seems annoying and unfair, especially given the recent changes to rage generation in relation to absorb, but you should be able to work around it.

Sorry to hold on to the PvP subject but I was running some arenas 2v2 last night and with the abundance of disc priests my mana regen seemed horribly broken due to my weak judgements time and time again got absorbed fully. I should mention that I was running the Seal of Blood glyph as well. Has this bug been recognized by developers yet?

I feel that unless this is fixed soon we will have a hard time in arenas this coming season.

I agree, but even if we end up sticking to a mana bar (as opposed to Holy Rage or whatever) it's going to be a hell of a long time before anything like that comes out. From what I've read by GC it sounds more like they're interested in tweaking our mechanics, not rewriting it - at least not yet.

Yea I agree. If he really is going back a few steps to redesign how Ret does his damage then it will be along the lines of Ability X applies a debuff, Ability Y consumes the debuff at the cost of increased damage. The idea of returning to the old CS that stacks a debuff for Holy Strike to smash the targets face in might also happen but considering he already stated he likes the Seals/Judgment system it does look more and more like Crusader Strike and Divine Storm are headed back to the Crabs surgical table for his own unique brand of surgical tweaking.

Sadly the chances of us getting "Holy Rage" or 6 forms of Purity Seals on our weapons to mimic Runes are little to none. A shame now they are admitting that Retribution is fundamentally broken.

But you have to admit, that would be very cool :P

They had said they like Seals/Judgments so unless they let, say CS and DS, stack the old Crusader debuff and bring back Holy Strike whatever they bring out will cause QQ in one form or another. Don't forget though our friendly Death Knights can Crit an Obliterate for in the region of 10k self buffed.

New version of Bellator's spreadsheet available - normal locations (here and here).

Tweaks for new armour mechanics per the Combat Ratings thread (based on GC's post and active player testing).
Direct support for Jewelcrafting (used in auto-gemming) rather than manual only.
Models % time in front of boss if desired.
More known Ulduar items.
Priority comparison moved so people don't blindly follow what's just a theoretical comparison tool.

As always, comments/suggestions/errors - please PM me.

OP always has links to the spreadsheet (see FAQ), links always have options for the most recent. No one should ever feel they need to hunt for a post to find the correct version.

After this second week of Ulduar, I'm going to go ahead and say that I think Ret's raiding spec is 0/19/54 (Imp. HoJ) as opposed to 0/17/54, if your raid can bring Imp. Might from another player.

In a vacuum, Imp. HoJ offers no DPS increase, but the mechanics of many of the fights in Ulduar really benefit from having it. Mimiron's assault bots are a great example. With 40 sec. HoJ, you can put a stun on an assault bot just about every time it's up, which helps tremendously with kiting and killing. On Yogg Saron, having an interrpt every 40 sec. as opposed to every minute for the Corruptor tentacles is a huge help. HoJing Evokers in Thorim's arena, or Razorscale adds allowing you to exceed the threat cap on a burndown, and even as a backup interrupt on Vezax fire nova spell for when the tank is running him, I've found it's just too valuable to have it up more often.

Ret is not broken, far from it. It is working better now then it ever has before. We function fine and have a unique playstyle in pve. The problem arises when they try to make the spec balanced for pvp at the same time. Ret specializes in burst, something that can be very useful in a pve enviroment. Who is better at nuking xt's heart or on burn phases of bosses? The problem for pvp is that our damage comes in burst, the one ability that is king in pvp. If we get our burst tuned down so that we can't kill anyone when our abilities line up we are dead, as our cd's limit our damage dealing for the rest of the fight. People QQ about ret because the whole design of the class, if unbridled would lead to a powerhouse in pvp. Honestly though have you ever heard one person QQ about pve ret? no. It works and it is a sad thing that a mainly pve game has to balance around pvp.

This is true yea, no one has every told me to burst less in PvE, I've never read a forum post about how "QQ my raid, Why is ret bursty" unless it was from a Ret before we got the threat reduction.

I may have miss worded it but I think this new stance of 'Lets take some time to rebuild how Ret does damage' is a pretty clear indication that, while maybe not for PvE, Ret is not working for PvP. As you said burst is king for pvp. Ret is Burst. Stuns are very powerful as well in PvP, Ret is also stuns. My worry isn’t about them redefining the combat play style to make it harder to play by following some sort of rotation, my worry is in the rush to give the player base as a whole a Ret that the majority are happy with Ret will once again spend another season of PvP as something of an odd ball, be it lolret or the Holy Terminator.

Again, if you kill the burst, you kill Ret. Unless we get some added toys.

A final point is when they rebuild the system for Ret, will it have the same burst for PvE, most likely not. Will it have the same sustained damage output? We can only hope this new system fixes that as well.

I agree; after playing a DK for the majority of Naxx and ret pre 3.0, I must say the current ret system is decidedly faceroll. Honestly, you could bind abilities to each row of your keyboard, put on a safety helmet, and just release all pent up frustration built up in your life, and do almost as well as if you actually tried (all you'd lose is proper priority). There really needs to be some kind of system of ramping up; something like DK diseases, conflag, arms overpower... anything that makes the gameplay less mind-numbing.

I can agree with this sentiment. It's interactive, engaging to play a Rogue or a DK and to get up your Diseases/Combo points and having a payoff for investing the time to get your target debuffed. RV touches upon this sort of mechanic but does not really go anywhere with it. Arguably the closest thing we have to a "ramp-up" and a "pay-off" for it is a 3x stack of Vengeance. Bear in mind we are also comparing a class with finite resources (our mana is still finite, as it stands) to classes with infinite resources. (Runes/Runic Power/Energy.)

The trick with both of those classes is they do not lose DPS from using their "ramp-up" abilities.

Off the top of my head, let us say Blizzard elects to tap into a combo-esque system using CS/DS and Exorcism as the trigger. CS/DS applying some sort of debuff stack and Exorcism being the detonator to it. Fairly simple fix and would allow for us to stay within the scope of our skill set, as it stands currently. Being that Exorcism has a somewhat lengthy CD, it would prevent the spamming of said ability and allow appropriate time for the stacks to be reapplied.

This would require very little alteration to our resource mechanic. It would also allow us to regain some of lost burst on the PvP side, without knocking our PvE balance too out of alignment. (again, just an example for you nitpickers out there!) Should they go the other route and elect to have a "spammable" ability, we will be in serious trouble with regards to our resources -- the same would hold true if we had the magical "mana dump."

Maxing a Ret Pally was engaging and very demanding in TBC. Playing the spec in raids was a lot of fun, there was a fairly demanding rotation, and there was a huge disparity between a quality player and a not-so-quality player. What was not fun was the ridiculous mana-management we had to endure, and the obscene amounts of raid prep/consumables necessary to make us somewhat competitive. I don't think anybody here is stating that our DPS is currently broken in the PvE spectrum. (just hurting on the PvP front.)

Rotation versus button-mashing arguments aside, we do hold our own and bring invaluable utility to raids. What is being kicked around is the sentiment that hitting buttons randomly is not very fun and will not separate the wheat from the chaff.

My suggestion for an interactive Ret system is:

1. Increase the talent Vengeance by 2 points for 5 stacks of 5% each.

2. Change Crusader Strike to require 2 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 2 stacks of Vengeance when used.

3. Change Divine Storm to require 3 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 3 stacks of Vengeance when used.

4. If Crusader Strike or Divine Storm crits, they still generate a stack of Vengeance (net loss of 1 and 2 stacks respectively).

5. Tune the numbers so Ret puts out the damage you want. CS and DS probably still have cooldowns

Fairly simple system that works off a resource we already generate. Minimal amount of changes to Ret. Doesn't affect Holy or Prot. Theorycraft is non-obvious, with lots of choice. No front-loaded burst, but you can burst at a later point in the fight. Resilience acts as a brake on the system, which will separate PvP and PvE damage better.

They can sidestep the resource issue (because I doubt we're going to come off of mana, since prot and holy are designed to use it effectively) by making the spammable attack negligible in cost (1% base mana?) or entirely 0 cost. As long as it is inherently low damage it will be GCD bound. The reason to spam it is to gain the stacking buff. This would put us closer to Warlocks - spending several GCD to get DoTs up and running before they really benefit.

I'd actually argue to make the spammable ability generate mana and everything else cost it. Turn JotW into New Strike, whatever it may be called. To avoid a Replenishment issue, they could tie Replenish to the stack - 20% chance per stacked debuff to proc.

This would allow both boss and trash DPS setups. For a boss you stack debuffs and leverage them. For trash you use divine storm and consecrate for most of your damage while stacking debuffs on the most important target. Rather like Rogues with Fan of Knives for AOE and combo points they cannot build fast enough on the targets. FoK is spammable, but Cons is a DoT so they're vaguely equivalent.

PvP balance isn't hard since to stack the debuff you have to A) be in melee range and B) hit the target multiple times over multiple GCD. No instant burst, but if your target lets you get maximum stacking (3 stacks? 5?) and then utilize it, you can be allowed a large burst. Again, it would be like gaining combo points from a Rogue, without the movement slowing poisons, incapacitates, and interrupts they also deliver to keep their target in melee range. In short - anyone who lets stacks build up "deserves" the burst they earned, in the same fashion that a target "deserves" to be Ice Lanced if they don't break a Frost Nova.

It strongly sounds like they will go to a stack and release method. Possibly a hybrid of Rogue combo points and DK diseases.


Edit: GSH - you want us to be at the mercy of the RNG? Crits required to generate Vengeance stacks. No abilities unless we crit. A dry streak on crits and you're unable to do anything but auto-attack until you crit? Ouch. In PvP high resilience means pathetic crit rate, means inability to even use most of our abilities. Please, no.

I see no interaction, just waiting for a new resource (Vengeance stacks) in order to use the same abilities. You cannot perform action X to get the resource (Vengeance), just wait for crits to occur. So we'd be mana, cooldown, and vengeance bound?

I completely disagree.

This would gut our spec in multiple ways. The pivotal thing about classes built off a combo/charge-styled system is they aren't penalized for building up those charges. For example, Sinister Strike always hits for more than an auto-attack and when Eviscerate hits: it does substantial damage, but the Rogue continues to provide their sustained damage. The burst is extra. This would effectively kill Ret's sustained DPS and force us into a very lengthy wind-up process just to unload some burst. Given Resilience reduces crit, etc. the burst would have to be absolutely massive to offset the wind-up time.

Not to mention the comparatively lengthy cool-downs when juxtaposing Sinister Strike and CS/DS, it just would not be viable. Vengeance would have to proc off basically every hit and mana could not even remotely begin to be a viable or sustainable resource, as it currently operates.

The good player can use the correct gear, while the average player would just want more stats. For example, a good Ret could use gear with expertise/hit to help reach the caps.

However, it is bad that the best dps rotation is using a G15 keyboard.

Another way a good Ret can help stand out is using AoW to heal raid members that drop low, and using DiSac and maybe SS to help absorb damage. However, it is too bad log parsers cannot measure absorb's value very well.

The basic problem with Retribution is that White hit-Judgement-CS-DS at the very start of the fight is overpowered in PvP. Blizzard keeps dancing around this, but it's this basic fact which is destroying the spec. Any viable solution has to prevent that sequence, or give a reason why it is not overpowered.

You keep mentioning Rogues. Rogues do 1H weapon damage and thus can string together long sequences of attacks. 2H weapon classes cannot do this. 2H weapons hit slowly but hit hard, and any system that mimics that has to space out the damage.

Second, Ret is a paladin spec, and it needs empty GCDs to perform paladin spells such as Hands and FoLs powered by Art of War. A system that involves filler attacks fundamentally cuts against the nature of the paladin.

How is the best rotation using a G15 keyboard?

I've been chewing on GC's request for awhile now and thinking about what would make the game more interactive for me.

The main thing lacking for me playing Ret in PVE is choice. I just do the same thing regardless. My biggest choice being whether or not to refresh SS during a particular GCD gap, or whether to grin and bear through some damage vs popping an insta-FoL. Nothing offensively oriented is much of a choice for me. I mash buttons as fast as they come up, with a slight preference for some over others when clashes occur.

Latching onto this for a moment:
The idea I've been batting around that addresses the needs for choice, sustained DPS and burst DPS is something along the lines of:

Make CS have a 1.5 cool down (i.e. spammable) that applies a stacking debuff up to 4 (or whatever number) stacks and swap our mana regen mechanic from Judgement over to CS (and of course Damage, mana cost, and mana regen would need retuned). This becomes our bread and butter attack giving us baseline damage, "blue rage", and a Setup mechanic for our additional attacks.

Make a deep ret talent to let Exorcism be brought down to an 8 second cooldown (matching Judgement's CD and rebalance it's damage to be equal to our Judgement's damage). Have Exorcism and Judgement be the Executers of the "Choice".

The mechanic then works in full with us building up a stack (curable for purposes of PVP balance) with our new spammable CS and then us choosing between Exorcism or Judgement for a specific effect. Have Exorcism apply in addition to it's regular damage, an extremely strong secondary burst of damage based upon the number of stacks in the CS applied Debuff which also consumes the Debuff. Have each stacks additive effect be scalable with AP and SP to keep us in line with our dual mechanic.

For ease of use in this example(these numbers are pulled from thin air), say each stack tranlates into a 500 DMG burst additive. so a stack of 4 would be a 2000 additional burst on top of Exorcisms damage. Or once amoritized for the duration of Exorcism's cooldown this results in a 250DPS gain over time. Attractive for damage NOW situations, unattactive for general purpose DPSing.

OR

We could drop a judgement which on top of it's normal damage, and debuff effect (light/wisdom/justice) would consume the CS debuff stack and apply an 8 second DOT. The full damage value of this DoT should be more(I would argue at least 33% to make it attractive) than the Burst damage from the Exorcism based attack. So going back to our previous example, this effect should apply a 3000 damage DOT over 8 seconds or a gain of 375DPS.

And since it's spread out over 8 seconds it presents to us a nice choice in both PVE and PVP circumstances. Do we get the front loaded burst at the expense of long term DPS, or do we take the long term DPS in exchange for delaying burst.

From the PVE side of the game our primary choice will most likely remain to choose Judgement and it's DOT most of the time(which makes sense given our role as Light/Wisdom Debuffer), but on certain burn phases (like Kologarn's grip, or Emalon's adds) choosing that burst during those critical seconds is probably what we want to switch to.

For PVP, it means we have a counter balance to our burst mechanism but still remain dangerous if we are not checked, and more over we still have a tactical choice. We now have to guage whether or not it's worthwhile to blow our shot now knowing it's going to be 8 seconds more before we can again, or do we kick off a DOT to put added healing pressure on now in the hopes this will open up an oppurtunity in the next couple of seconds for us to rebuild our stack(not even a full one is required if the right chance opens up) and burst them at the right moment. I would still argue we need probably one additional PVP offensive utility such as a healing reduction effect, or snare, or closer.

For some additional twists...

If they really wanted to keep us on our toes, they could even institute a percent chance where the CS debuff does not get consumed on the first application of an Executer skill, allowing us to execute the other Executer skill for a double whammy on occasion(you get your burst and your DOT if you are paying attention).

Or perhaps add a chance upon application of the CS debuff that our Hammer of Wrath becomes active for a few seconds pre-20%, enough to fire one off if we are paying attention(say a 3 second window?) similar to the Lock and Load mechanism of SV hunters.

Or if balanced well, we can retool DS to act as an Executer for a third Choice, and have it so that it spreads a DOT effect ,similar in power to our Judgement DOT, to other targets based upon the CS stack built on your current target.

Consecrate sadly I think will remain part of our base rotation since it happily ticks away doing damage while we still get to go on doing all this other stuff, all at the cost of a GCD every 8(10) seconds.

Just a quick observation: you're basically turning PvE into a 3 button spam fest from a 4 button one aren't you? I mean if Exo is burst and Judgement is stronger DPS over an 8s DoT... you'd build for 8s then Judge then repeat. PvP would be the same except Exo instead of Judge... I'm not sure how that's more interesting.

Sorry, perhaps I should've been more clear, while the base line of our "rotation" is as you say reduced to a 3 button selection as opposed to the 4 or 5 we currently have, it's the initial decision from that 3 button selection that adds a modicum of choice or complexity, as opposed to currently where facerolling random abilities grants almost as good a DPS as selecting them in priority.

But you are right, that choice *alone* would be extremely boring and as monotonous as the current system. Where things would be livened up would be from the "twists" I was proposing at the end of my previous post. Reactive events in which we need to quickly make the choice to either hit that CS to apply another stack, or else react to hit whatever skill just opened up for us (i.e. the Lock and Load HoW, or the Double whammy Executers).

There are of course other meta-games that could be proposed, but simply relying on reactive events alone does nothing to alleviate our Faceroll "rotation". Introducing some level of choice to our base line up(s) in conjunction with reactive events, or some other event is where the other classes illuminate their skilled players from their non-skilled ones.

Rogues choose, do they want a bursty nuke with their combo points, or do they want a haste buff.

Hunters, play meta games with their DOTs and what effects they want from them via Chimera shot, or they watch like a hawk for those lock and loads, or in same cases through traps and black arrow(if I remember correctly) try to force lock and load events.

Elemental Shamans queue their skills to maximize damage based on applying one debuff(Flame Shock) followed by the right Damage spell Lava Burst. While ideally not destabilizing their bread and butter of Lightning Bolts.

It is choice that makes those classes fun, and choices that seperates the good players from the soso on the meters.