The problem isn't that the feedback or help was or wasn't requested - the problem is that the discussion has been hashed and rehashed to death, and people are posting gear/specs/item lists without any kind of frame of reference. A two-page long post full of Wowhead links with absolutely no information on the settings used to arrive at that list is useless to anyone except the person who posted it. That, and since Rawr and the spreadsheets are openly available, everyone can get this information for themselves.

If people don't, or won't, use the tools provided to find out what gear upgrades they should be aiming for, that's their problem, not the rest of ours. The whole concept of best-in-slot is great and everything, but with the advent of Rawr and the ability for everyone to map an ideal upgrade path (such that they retain hit/expertise caps, etc.), it's mostly worthless. Everyone will eventually reach the best items available to them by following the advice of the tool, and that's infinitely better than any post here saying, "These are the items you should get, period."

The difference between understanding a basic mechanic (how attacks are computed by the server) versus an arbitrary gear list is that the former applies to everyone, and the latter - again, particularly without the necessary reference information - is all but useless to everyone except the original poster.

If you want to develop a best-in-slot list formally, PM Arikah and ask for your name to be listed as the person to send Rawr outputs and data to, and you can crunch through all that spam and garbage to arrive at the One True Set™, and then PM it back to Arikah for addition to the first post of this thread.

Now, per Kaubel, let's drop this pointless discussion, and focus on issues specific to Paladin mechanics and play style stemming from changes in 3.1.

I use a Mac. WoW is currently a Mac game, and I know many members of these forums use Macs. Rawr on Mac requires something called Mono, which for all intents and purposes is an emulator for the Windows framework that Rawr was written in. Rawr on a mac--- while technically feasible--is effectively unusable. You cannot use it as a tool.

Both spreadsheets use VBscript. Again, Mac versions of Excel and OpenOffice do not support VBscript, and thus, these spreadsheets are limited to non-functional. The spreadsheets therefore are also not an option.

I would love to use either of these tools. I cannot. I do use EJ forums for the discussion on WoW, and Ret in particular, and I think BiS is a valid part of that discussion. I am sure there is a strong urge to find a high horse and climb up on it about the Mac vs. PC issue, but frankly, I'm not interested. WoW is a Mac game. Players on these forums use Macs. They do not have access to Rawr, Redcape's, or Bellator's spreadsheets.

In the end, it's obviously up to the thread and forum moderators as to whether a BiS list or disccussion is pertinent or not. Just realize there are players who cannot use those tools, no matter how much they wish to. IMO, the conversation on BiS still has value.

So you can get a program that can run Rawr on a Mac and both are free, so that makes it unusable?

Mono 2.2 Downloads is the link for the correct version (2.2).


Anyway, what I believe Kaubel is not saying that no one should talk/post about BiS at all, just in this thread it doesn't belong. Making a new thread should be fine though. Edit: I went ahead and made a thread.

Just a note, it would be best to include a download link to the file used and all the parameters used.

I'll post this because I haven't seen it posted in redcape forum post. IF you use a mac, and have problems with the script, you can still download the spreadsheet, and upload it as a google document where you can access via your browser. The sheet then runs slowly, but it still runs. All you need is access to the internet and a web browser to use redcape's sheet, and if you're reading this, then you qualify.

My spreadsheet (available in another thread in this forum) uses zero VBscript. It only uses basic Excel functions. That said, I will be publishing a new version (tonight, I hope) that uses VBscript quite a bit to ease use and also make my development time smaller. For the new version you will need to be able to use VBscript to make much of the sheet work, but the current published version does not.

Your difference total damage done is somewhat significant, but your DPS difference isn't all its cracked up to be. Your rival ret has a 13% miss rate with SoB alone as oppose to your 1%. Most of his other abilities hover around the 7-9% miss range. It is really no surprise you did better than he did. So I'm not sure where you tag us as a "skill" class. It simply seems that you have itemized for hit and he hasn't and thus suffers because of it. Are we a poor choice of a raid slot? By no means; however, I really don't think we are "very competitive". I really can't wait until our changes our unveiled, but I am really only in favor of them if it is an overall DPS increase. Rather than a complication for complications sake that leaves us lingering around 6 - 6.5k dps range after BiS Ulduar gear is all farmed up and we are gearing our alts. If we are at the end of Ulduar in BiS gear and only capable of doing what some classes did in BiS Naxx gear I will be sorely disappointed. Our DPS ceiling is just too low atm; and a large portion of that comes from how we are built. There is very little difference between a good ret and an average one. Crit RNG factors for most of it.

I also disagree with your opinion of Ret Paladin performance on Iron Council as well. I typically find it to be one of our weakest fights in Ulduar. We would really need more powerful dots to be competitive on large movement based fights. Righteous Vengeance is really very underwhelming at the moment. I find myself getting destroyed by rogues and even druids on fights like Mimiron where to be competitive you really need to have reliable dots to DPS for you while you are off target. When Judgements use to hit big we were very reliable dps on fights with multiple target swaps, because we could change target and unload a large barrage of damage, and then relatively quickly do it again, but now I find that since the largest portion of my dmg requires me to be there auto-attacking the boss that when fights require me to switch targets often that my dps suffers greatly.

After saying all of that we are lucky that the large majority of Ulduar bosses are more about survivability that DPS races. Yes the faster a boss dies the less healing and CDs need to be used to keep the tank/raid going, but these fights are more about staying alive and that comes back to the player regardless of class.

In regards to some of the other topics that have been lingering around this forum:

I definitely do not apply to this school that rets need to be healing when they have a free CD with AoW or babysitting another player waiting to press HoS or HoF or some other utility. To be honest if you are playing as ret and you are having to heal your raid then something has gone wrong and you need to rethink your boss strategy. If I am in the raid as Ret (which I always am) then I am concentrated on maximizing my DPS and surviving the encounter. Yes you will have those rare 1% almost wipe boss kills where your Bubble saved the day or something, but you don't want that every week. You want to kill bosses quickly and efficiently, and we should want to be a strong DPS class that helps in that regard; and not a class that band aids our healers when they get over-whelmed. We bring plenty of passive utility. Leave the cleansing and boping for those Holydins bored of spamming Holy Light.

Well, this has not been yet mentioned in the current reincarnation of this thread, I believe.

WWS SoB crit rate includes SoB damage to you, which will never crit.

I noticed this 2 weeks back just after the 3.0 patch was launched, it just didnt feel that I was in the mana positive <20% in raids, I even tried using the SoB glyph but it never felt the same as it was on the PTR. I dont know why it has taken me this long to post about this possible bug but anyway it seem for me atleast that judgement of the wise isnt returning enough mana back after I judge. As a human paladin my base mana is 5584 and when I judge I get 1099 mana back from JotW where I should be getting 25% base mana back per judgement which is 1396 mana.
This to me seems to after looking at the tooltip of JotW that it is not giving me the right amount of mana back or I am reading it wrong. Even if I add the cost of the judgement (I dont see why it should be added) with the benediction added to it, it still doesnt add up. Can any see where I am going wrong or can anyone confirm this as a bug?

I'm also sure that some function of the two roll system probably affects our crit rate on the seal procs.

I've been putting up some decent numbers on some fights so really I haven't been worried about our pve dps too much.

What worries me is thier pvp based insistence that our dps rotation should be more "complicated" as if serving in a dps AND support roll isnt complicated enough.

Well, considering our dps rotation consists mostly out of 4-6 buttons spammed when they get off cooldown and our "support" is mostly there without us doing anything special, it would be nice to have something more complicated and perhaps if done really well, would yield higher personal dps for the paladin that pulls it off really well, creating some kind of gap between a good paladin and a great paladin.

Basemana is Total mana - Mana from Intellect.
At level 80 a paladin's base mana is 4394.

Arikah, i see there's no macro for rotations, i personally hate using too many buttons, so made one. You may, or may not be interested in a macro for the suggested rotation, so here what i use and proved to be 100% working on 3.1:

/castsequence reset=1, Crusader Strike, Judgement of Wisdom, Divine Storm, Exorcism(Rank 9), Crusader Strike

Now you may wonder "but why CS again at the end of the list? To prevent a bug where you have to wait until EXO is out of cooldown to start your rotation again. Did not put HoW or HW because they're only situation-specific, so use em manually, i would suggest putting em close to your macro-rotation button.
Any number before 1 in the reset time will make it not work.

Delete, double posted accidentally because of connection lag.

The reason there's nothing about macros is because there's really no reason to have a macro for our rotation. It basically serves to take an already simple rotation and make it lazy. The only reason there would be to post a macro would be if it somehow improves our dps. "Too many buttons" doesn't really touch on that. Also consider that a macro that causes one to pay less attention to the game would also lower one's utility.

I doubt that this macro will work as it is just a sequence, it doesn't prioritize.

I recommend Thaeryn's Serious Help In Timing (S.H.I.T) addon for this:
Ret FCFS Rotation Helper

It wont make it a one button solution, but c'mon who want to play by constantly pressing 1,1,1,1,1....

I haven't tested the macro that you wrote specifically, but did notice that you did not include consecration in it, and it definately doesn't work if you do put consecration in.

Just thought I'd point out (in case some people haven't read/realized yet) that high miss rates being reported by WWS for seal of blood or judgement of blood are almost always partially attributed to damage absorbed by Sacred Shield. If you look at that report closely, you'll see the paladin with the high miss rate had 77 sacred shield buffs, while the paladin with the low miss rate had only 7 (these numbers are taken from all boss fights).

Both paladins appear to be hit capped (zero recorded actual missed swings) but the one with the high miss rate has low expertise, while the other one is almost capped. Proof again just how important getting near the expertise cap is now.

Also, if you Armory both paladins, the one with the higher dps has 4pT8 while the lower one only has 2pT7 and about 500 AP less. Kinda hard to make a good comparison when there's such a disparity in gear level.

I'm dumb, sorry.

Consecration should be done manually, because it's AoE and drain a huge amount of our mana, putting it on a macro would make you go OOM when you can avoid it, whoever, you can put it anywhere you want on this macro, just doesn't change the reset timer or remove the aditional CS on the end of it.

Consecration should be hit every time it comes off CD on stationary fights (rare occasions where you might want to wait). When I put it in this macro, the end result was the macro would wait for CS to come off CD while other abilities like DS or judgment were ready to go. It does not use all abilities on CD, just the next ability in the sequence when it comes off CD.

There is a reason why the Hunter forums have a moratorium on Shot Macros. I propose we may want to have a similar policy with this thread, as well.

The "do it all for me macros" will not work. As Lightbender pointed out: Consecrate, regardless if it's "AoE" or not, it is higher in priority (usually) than Exorcism is. There are far too many situations where a player's judgment needs to be a factor, and simply mashing a single key cannot account for this. As it stands, player judgment is the only thing that sets a good Ret player apart from a mediocre one. (i.e. prioritizing Judgement over another ability when low on mana.) I appreciate that this is an attempt to be helpful, but this forum is about maximizing your damage potential: something a "play for me" macro can never do.

On a more helpful note, I find a self-cast macro on SS to be quite useful. I'm no macro genius, but it makes it a one button affair and allows me to continue focusing on DPSing.