3.1 Retribution Paladin Thread - Page 8

Eskostar · 04/15/09, 1:40 PM

Lol mate

Obviously, during the first 80%, you will not use HoW, so your rotation would be a CS > Judgement > DS > Consecration > Exorcism > Holy Wrath, on the last 20%, you will include HoW on your rotation, rather simple

Telumehtar · 04/15/09, 1:46 PM

Actually I do kind of question HoW being put second. Given that with our talents, gear, and raid buffs, HoW should be a crit damn near every time we use it, where as CS may or may not be, wouldn't this assure HoW being at the front of the line?

Khaelarys · 04/15/09, 2:02 PM

The priority is for a parked rotation. Leading with Exorcism, and then Judgement at range doesn't change the priority of the abilities in a clean rotation.

Avitus · 04/15/09, 2:02 PM

Originally Posted by Derp

I know where to DL rawr - but im at work so I would be able to use that. Where do I find these two spreadsheets you speak of?

First post, under FAQ. Please put in some effort.

Originally Posted by Telumehtar

Actually I do kind of question HoW being put second. Given that with our talents, gear, and raid buffs, HoW should be a crit damn near every time we use it, where as CS may or may not be, wouldn't this assure HoW being at the front of the line?

This is taken into account, CS is still ahead (remember each CS cast will proc SoB as well as an RV dot if it crits, don't just go by single ability damage).

Originally Posted by Exemplar

Your understanding is wrong, but results are vaguely correct. Rawr generates effective cooldowns programmatically based on your gear, buffs, etc. (I believe - this is where I could be wrong) and including Hammer of Wrath. I generated effective cooldowns once by an external program not including Hammer of Wrath.

Using HoW in your priority below 20% does affect effective cooldowns. This can, in theory, cause a clean, nice pretty-on-paper priority sequence to go to hell and become crap when you hit 20%. In personal experience, sub-20% becomes a (reasoned, intelligent) button-mashing frenzy, regardless. 1 more ability on 6 sec cooldown leads to few free GCD. As we know, simply hitting any available button is better than waiting on another, better ability. Therefore to a degree mashing the "wrong" button immediately is better than overthinking.

Apples and oranges - we cannot directly compare Rawr's prioritization with Bellator's spreadsheet. Fights are interesting and vary - in general I'd recommend try to hit your highest damage ability which can reach the target. 6 yds from target slap that Judge, Exo, or DS until you're close enough for the CS that's available.

Priorities are well-considered suggestions for Patchwerk-style fights, not absolutes or rotations. Ret DPS is fairly forgiving as long as you're not just leaving things idle. I'm personally inclined to try several possible priority setups and see which works best for me. My personal latency and reaction time may wind up making something non-standard my ideal because I accidentally stumble into the fewest clashes - or it may be recommended rotation is my personal perfect fit.

Also, a side note on priority - I'm finding that on bosses you want to move into position (i.e. tank is probably pulling from 30 yd distance) that Exo, then Judge while move to melee is functional - leverage Exo's 30 yd range, then Judgement's 10 yd.

What I posted has nothing to do with Rawr or Bellator's, I'm doing these calculations by hand. This is also regardless of HoW.

How is your post in any way related to what I wrote?

The script tries to avoid clashes over a fixed amount of time, correct? If this is the case, this is horribly unrealistic/useless as you can never replicate this perfectly with the assumed constant conditions to net any perceived benefit.

My suggested priority list is simply highest DPS first which should give a rough advantage without depending on clash avoidance for benefit (which remains in my opinion a random, uncontrollable variable and shouldn't be used for or against any priority suggestion).

Again, I'm not sure what your post has to do with what I'm saying.

Edit: Typo

madmardigan83 · 04/15/09, 2:13 PM

The section on the first page regarding the rotation is very helpful, but I do have one question regarding it.

I know with clashes, we should go with the highest dps ability first and use the priorities already discussed. However, what about when this scenario (or something similer) occurs:

Exorcism is the only ability up. CS has about ~.5 to 1 second left on CD. If we use Ex, the GCD will push CS back .5-1 seconds. Is it better to get the Ex in? or is it better to hold off and get the higher dps CS without any delay to it?

And does this matter when the abilities in conflict are 2 higher dps ones... such as Judgement and CS? or HoW and CS? etc.

Exemplar · 04/15/09, 2:15 PM

Derp - First post. Second FAQ.

Originally Posted by frmorrison

That wasn't in the last build of the PTR (they were 3.4 then), I wonder if that is a mistake making the weapons slower.

Odd, when I (and Rurahk) pulled data from Wowhead more than 2 weeks ago they were 3.5, as I haven't altered them in the spreadsheet since that time. I suspect either the very first iteration was 3.4 and they updated shortly after, or it went from 3.5 to 3.4 back to 3.5

Originally Posted by Telumehtar

Actually I do kind of question HoW being put second. Given that with our talents, gear, and raid buffs, HoW should be a crit damn near every time we use it, where as CS may or may not be, wouldn't this assure HoW being at the front of the line?

Nope, near guaranteed HoW crit vs average of CS hit and crit - CS wins. As I said above, for my gear DS also wins. Same happened for JoB in 3.0.x - average of JoB hit and crit was superior to HoW almost guaranteed crit.

Edit:
madmardigan83 - if your worst ability (including Holy Wrath) is off cooldown and your best ability is .5 away from finishing cooldown - press the worst ability. Waiting .5 seconds is universally a loss - we mathed it out in the old Ret thread.

Shegokigo · 04/15/09, 2:33 PM

So using RAWR and spredsheets it seems that I can't use a single piece of T8 as an upgrade, but the question is, are they right?

I'm using Obsidian Helm, Valorous Bp, Frosted Gloves, Valorous Legs and Valorous Shoulders. Misc others "Character name Slust on Muradin" but I hear the 2/4 pc bonuses are worth a certain value. As neither my spreedsheet nor Rawr take these into account, how would I best go about re-arranging my gear to suit these bonuses?

MisanduV · 04/15/09, 2:43 PM

Originally Posted by madmardigan83

The section on the first page regarding the rotation is very helpful, but I do have one question regarding it.

I know with clashes, we should go with the highest dps ability first and use the priorities already discussed. However, what about when this scenario (or something similer) occurs:

Exorcism is the only ability up. CS has about ~.5 to 1 second left on CD. If we use Ex, the GCD will push CS back .5-1 seconds. Is it better to get the Ex in? or is it better to hold off and get the higher dps CS without any delay to it?

And does this matter when the abilities in conflict are 2 higher dps ones... such as Judgement and CS? or HoW and CS? etc.

I may be wrong but my understanding is that since 3.0 you always always always want to use a damaging ability every single GCD. It boils down to pushing buttons = higher dps, even if the buttons you push might push back a higher damage ability by a few tenths of a second.

So in your example, yes, I would hit Exorcism and then follow it up with CS. As for if your two highest dps abilities are coming off of cooldown, it makes no difference. You always push the highest priority button you have available.

Vova · 04/15/09, 2:43 PM

The problem with looking for upgrades for your current gear is that if you are close to hit/exp cap, they lose value, so Rawr sees the higher ilvl Ulduar gear as a downgrade because it will put you above hit/exp cap. What I did was use the optimizer feature. Just go through all the slots and select the items to be considered for optimizing, usually the top 10 highest ranking items will do, since their ranking isn't affected by your current hit/exp. Gives me pretty much everything as an upgrade except for the leather chest off maly25, which is still BiS.

And once again, all this is useless because we don't know all the gear drops yet, but it's a good guideline. Some items should be the best no matter what, like wrathstone. I am reluctant to spend dkp yet because of this, waiting for all the items to be published.

Exemplar · 04/15/09, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by Avitus

The script tries to avoid clashes over a fixed amount of time, correct? If this is the case, this is horribly unrealistic/useless as you can never replicate this perfectly with the assumed constant conditions to net any perceived benefit.

Wrong. The script simply runs through every possible priority and figures out if you follow that priority for an entire fight without fail, what are the effective cooldown of each ability. Things WILL conflict - all this has told you was how frequently it happened and the results of those conflicts, as opposed to pretending it never conflicts.

If you do something assinine with priorities, it can horribly affect effective cooldowns.

Here's an example which would be even worse back when Judgement hit very hard. Say your priority is Consecration, Divine Storm, Judgement, blah blah (as I said, assinine). You Consecrate. 1.5 later you DS. 1.5 later you Judge. 7 seconds later you Consecrate, then DS, then Judge. Your 8 (or 7) second Judgement is now going to be used every 10 seconds - or worse when Consecrate is pushed back a half second by something else. Obviously this would do unpleasant things do your damage output. The effective cooldown of Judgement becomes 10 seconds.

Thankfully abilities do not, even on paper, recommend such a priority setup.

If you cannot understand what Rawr and Bellator's have done, then please ignore it and continue to "do it by hand."

Dragonlover · 04/15/09, 2:58 PM

Originally Posted by Avitus

This is taken into account, CS is still ahead (remember each CS cast will proc SoB as well as an RV dot if it crits, don't just go by single ability damage).

In that case, DS is better than CS, because it also procs SoB (if I'm not mistaken), RV and has slightly bigger crits (even with the libram) and heals as well.

TheEnder · 04/15/09, 3:08 PM

@above poster:
CS has higher damage potential than DS, even with 2piece t7. Especially if you are using one of the CS librams.

evilstooge · 04/15/09, 3:08 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonlover

In that case, DS is better than CS, because it also procs SoB (if I'm not mistaken), RV and has slightly bigger crits (even with the libram) and heals as well.

CS has a much shorter cooldown, which is one reason why it is considered better.

• frmorrison · 04/15/09, 3:14 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonlover

In that case, DS is better than CS, because it also procs SoB (if I'm not mistaken), RV and has slightly bigger crits (even with the libram) and heals as well.

The base damage of CS is significantly higher than the base of DS and both proc Seals and RV. Also while the heal is nice, its heal isn't enough to matter most of the time.

If you need a heal (like you just got blasted by Fire Whirlwind), it is better to cast Flash of Light.

Avitus · 04/15/09, 3:27 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonlover

In that case, DS is better than CS, because it also procs SoB (if I'm not mistaken), RV and has slightly bigger crits (even with the libram) and heals as well.

??

Both proc seals, both proc RV on crits. CS hits significantly harder and has a much shorter cooldown.

Originally Posted by Exemplar

Wrong. The script simply runs through every possible priority and figures out if you follow that priority for an entire fight without fail, what are the effective cooldown of each ability. Things WILL conflict - all this has told you was how frequently it happened and the results of those conflicts, as opposed to pretending it never conflicts.

Yes. Benefits through clash avoidance (!). You simulate a couple hundred keypresses given a "fixed" time, "fixed" constant lag/delay and assume 0 mistakes and see which of them nets the least clashes, thereby giving you the lowest average cooldown.

It assumes as you so bluntly put it, that you "follow that priority for an entire fight without fail". If you fail, (and you will given human reaction times and variable lag) then any perceived benefit is void.

That's why a rotation of say 3-6 moves is realistic, but a dependable sequence which requires you to (again your words) "follow that priority for an entire fight without fail" (=hundreds of moves, perfectly, with constant delay, over several minutes) is NOT.

As you say, "things WILL conflict", but this is an uncontrollable variable, unless you're a simulator operating with fixed (static, constant) conditions.

Originally Posted by Exemplar

If you cannot understand what Rawr and Bellator's have done, then please ignore it and continue to "do it by hand."

Please watch your tone my friend, I've had a hand in the inner workings of most of the tools posted here probably before you even arrived on the scene or started maintaining Bellator's sheet.
Believe me when I say, I understand what's being done, you simply fail to understand the logic presented. You can't simply say "the tool said so" if it's based on false assumptions.

What the script does is all nice and dandy, but it's going off unrealistic assumptions which make it pointless as repeatedly explained to and ignored by you.

So lets keep it civil. Answer my question:

Once again, how is it realistic to base an optimum sequence on lower average cooldowns netted by reduced clashes if it depends on the perfect execution of a couple hundred keypresses given a "fixed" time, "fixed" constant lag/delay and no changing fight conditions?
You do understand that if at any point you delay, get a minor lag spike, boss moves out of your range momentarily, you cast some other spell which eats a GCD (AoE FoL, Sacred Shield or what not) this advantage is wasted and everything changes?