The thing is you have a perfect comparable situation here... 2 paladins in the same fight. There is not of lot of variables you would have if it were 2 paladins in different instances.
No tactics changes, no raid buffs changes, same duration etc...

The only variables you have are lag/latency, gear, skill.

1) check boss damage vs adds damage. Even in a fight like jaraxxus there's ways to pad your total dps a bit by adjusting your position so you also do damage on the adds vs standing where you wouldn't hit them.

2) Check abilities used. If he gets in a lot more abilities (cs/j/ds/...) over the duration of the fight, that will make a big difference. Lag/latency will have some influence here, but so does skill and ability to hit the keys when the abilities come off cd.

3) Maybe he's better at stacking procs and buffs and combining them with AW. That can make quite a difference.

4) Luck.
WUT? Luck ?!?
Take jaraxxus as an example. If you have fel fire several times and he doesn't. well DUH!, ofc your dps will be lower.
Having crits (or lack thereof) at the right (or wrong) time can also matter. But that would mean you peak/plummet on one fight once. Can't pull this card if you consistently tend to perform lower.

5) Gear.
Gear matters. But if you check your DPS in rawr, and compare his, you can more or less extrapolate if the dps difference in a particular fight is comparable. If rawr sets you at 80% lower dps from gear alone, and you get 60% lower DPS in reality, then you're doing something wrong.
Don't expect that you can make a perfect comparison this way, but you should be able to get decent idea of relative performance between you and "jack"

Actually, the folks at WoL are continually upgrading and tweaking their site; the new Analyze option seems to provide a DPS breakdown per fight. I've just started playing with it, but it seems pretty handy for examining performance.

Something i found very crippling on jaraxxus hard mode makes a good example of how other people doing poorly can really impact your performance.

Normally, when i switch to a portal/volcano i can be back on Jaraxxus before my seal of corruption stack runs out. However the last jaraxxus fight i did i seemed to have lost over 1k dps. Now there was some lag on my end that night which accounts for slower target performance which i normally do quite smoothly by using ranged abilities to cover the movement time perfectly.

But the biggest loss I noticed was I was above several other melee for damage done to portals/volcanoes. Now any paladin would tell you that having to restack our dot would mean you expect to see other melee beating us on portals/volcanoes, certainly that's my experience in my guild. This explained why in the fight it felt like they stayed alive longer than normal and why when i returned to jaraxxus my corruption stack was gone, normally i return with a few seconds to refresh it but in several of the switches i did not which obviously lead to a loss in damage.

The point i'm making with the above is that it's very easy to take base figures and make an assumption, however when you see figures that don't match what you think, there is sometimes rather intricate or long winded explanations for them.

A good awareness of the encounter, how each person should be behaving and such can allow you to analyse things clearly. It could well be that the player with a higher dps is doing something wrong to cause others to be hurt. (ie. in this case, those that were lower on portal/volcano damage had much better dps overall because they remained on jaraxxus longer rather than switching imdeately - or at all -, this allowed them to maintain a simple single target rotation rather than switching and suffering the dps loss while moving)

The solution for my personal dps in this case would have been to switch back earlier, however since damage was already lower than normal on portals that could result in two mistress', so in this case it was worth my staying on portals and losing my stack despite what it did to my overall dps. This illustrates how doing the fight correctly can often trump a damage gain if there are other objectives (ie, i've seen people not swap target on twins for shields just to keep dpsing the unshielded target for more dps too, again inflating their damage but crippling the actual fight)

DPS for encounters in TotC is not a good indication of skill, gear, or ability. For example, the top parses on Jaraxxus involve guilds that simply cleave everything down, and don't focus burn the mistresses. I've even heard of some that intentionally let 2 mistresses spawn on heroic mode just for more cleave damage for their melee's parses. If you are killing the adds quickly, there is no way you are going to be hitting 9.5k+ DPS. The top parses on Twins are just a matter of RNG with orbs and vortexs, or how much of a hog you are (ie stealing orbs before they can hit the clump and impact everyone). Also on Twins, a quick kill often will negatively impact your DPS, because the only thing that matters on that fight is getting as many empowers as possible. Anub'arak is entirely based around how quickly your guild kills the adds; if the new adds arive right when the old ones die, your DPS will be much higher than a guild that kills them quickly. Also on Anub'arak, tank position for the adds is key. Since the SoC cleave mechanic's range is based on the center of the target, not the hitbox, you can do insane DPS if the adds are tanked DIRECTLY under his center and you use SoC. For most of us, however, SoV is going to have to be good enough since that goes off hit boxes.

My point in all this is that you shouldn't be worried about a single number attached to the fight. Instead, compare damage done on the targets you were supposed to attack to other melee. Some guilds prefer to maximize DPS and have their members on rankings; other prefer to take a more defense strategy and play it safe. As another example, on Twins 25H, a lot of guilds chose to simply ignore swapping essence when you get the DoT applied to you and as a result you'd see more DPS if you were in one of those guilds. This, however, places, excess strain on the healers, so other guilds chose to play it safe, in some cases even opting for resist flasks.

We aren't raiding naxx and killing patchwerk anymore. Focus less on DPS and more on not diving into void zones and attacking what you're supposed to. Shiny numbers are nice but any guild worth its salt prefers a player who doesn't die to stupid shit and does reasonable DPS over a DPS all-star who faceplants all the time.

Measuring DPS is only effective if you can compare apples and apples. Comparing a Ret to another class has too many variables, any answer is meaningless. Comparing yourself to a Ret in another raid is also apples and oranges. You may have more/less raid buffs. Your gear is hard to compare - what they wore in that fight may not be what they're wearing now. Their strat may be wildly different (ranged on adds vs. melee on adds, AOE vs single target, etc).

The best comparison is yourself. Are you doing enough DPS? Study your own parse. How many attacks could you have made vs. how many you actually made. How many times did you have to start SoV stack from scratch. Did you use AW with procs or during their ICD?

Second best is another Ret in your raid where you can compare the same items. Even this can be hard to compare with procs and crit streaks.

Psykewne and Zurm both focused on something I find terribly important that I wish got more airing. Namely, following instruction and the gameplan. Those people who aimed to boost their meters rather than DPS portals/volcanoes actively hurt Psyk's raid. A bit less damage and they could have had an extra mistress or more infernals, which could cascade into a raid wipe. Raiding is a team event. Members should be willing to do what helps the team most, not just themselves.

Our raid utility spells are nearly guaranteed to reduce our DPS (GCD lock), but there are times when they could be the difference between a kill and a wipe. A timely HoP or HoF can greatly improve a raid's chances to kill a new boss. As example I'm strongly reminded of Divine Guardian back in 3.0 - we do reduced damage while under Bubble, but using that on Sarth 3D was insanely useful to the raid. Typically I wasn't even near a Drake to be within 40 yds of the tank. Losing my DPS entirely for ~15 seconds was far superior to losing the MT and a wipe.

Final note - just because we do have raid utility spells does not mean they must be used. Our primary task is DPS and we should do it to the best of our ability. However, if your guild's gameplan involves you using some utility, do it or explain why it's unwise/someone else should perform another task to make it moot and have the strat changed before the pull.

I suppose I'm one of those bad Paladins. At this point in time where content is on farm, the meta game of competition for top positions on meters or merely competition against yourself is a source of motivation and keeps each encounter interesting. However I would agree that such behavior is highly detrimental during progression.

Yes I can agree with Bluedeep. Right now....the only thing that really brings excitement to each raid is trying to max out your damage and beat your old records. Getting yourself on the WMO dps class rankings is a pretty cool thing to see sometimes. Unfortunately, guilds specific strategies do not always cater to your own personal dps gain, and thus make it a little more difficult to attain those records.

I was told that the majority of the dps records and rankings you see on WMO are usually by guilds that did the fight specifically to try to get certain if not all people on the rankings. Little things like stacking hysteria's/power infusions on one person is very common in those parses, along with general boss and add positioning. All of these things can greatly increase one or more classes dps, while doing the complete opposite for other classes.

As an example...if you look at the top 20 dps for a fight like Heroic Twins....you will see basically 19 out of the 20 are all mages. This shouldnt be a surprise to anyone with the way that fight is. However then you see one random warrior at #3 for the overall fight. It just seems odd to me that that person is just that good that he somehow is the only non mage class in the Top 20...#3 at that. To me...and from what others have said...its catering the fight to one or more people, which on Twins, is something that can be done with a pretty big result in dps increase. Oh well...I still try like hell though...those rankings are a great place to get your guild some exposure.

So I got a [Bloodbath Belt] the other day and I'm a little confused about the geming situation with yellow sockets. I know the Inscribed Ametrine are better if the socket bonus is over 4 strength but does that only apply if the two sockets are red and yellow or can they both be yellow sockets? Basically is it better to go 2 20str gems or 2 inscribed ametrines? Thanks

Basically you either go with 26 str and 20 crit vs. 40 str. So, 14 str for 20 crit. Rawr says that (atleast for my gearset) that the 20 crit edges out (by a very small amount of dps) but just by eyeballing it seems that they would be roughly even. Personally, I'm a big fan of crit (especially with 2pc) so I would go with two Inscribed gems.

If its the case that you are undercapped on hit, then two of the str/hit gems (assuming you are undercapped by around 20 hit or more) would definitely be better than 2 bold cardinal rubies.

With the Bloodbath Belt it's really a matter of what other yellow sockets and socket bonuses you can pick up.
Sometimes when you need 20 Hit you can actually benefit from picking up two other set bonuses in other slots then using both in the Belt.

For example say that you can either pickup the set bonus in the Belt, 6 Str, from two +10 Str and +10 Hit gems or if you use the two +10 Str and +10 Hit gems in two other slots you can pick up 4 Str and 6 Haste. In this example there would be 3x+20 Str in the Belt. Then the latter option is the one where you will gain most dps.

Alrighty, patch is going live tomorrow. Rather than create a new thread for this patch cycle I've decided to just update/replace/edit the existing thread, because 3.3 really isn't much different in terms of ret mechanics (compared to fairly large changes from 3.1->3.2). Updated the OP for 3.3 - some things, like 2T10 and its' effect on FCFS, will not be 100% accurate until we have supporting data. For now, the theorycraft we have available to us is sufficient to create gear sets and such (frmorrison I'm sure will create a 3.3 bis thread).

Bring on icecrown....

I've been wondering about this too, I mean Is this a correct Translation, that the "Raid Wall" Effect continues even when Divine Sacrafice Is removed meaning we wouldn't need bubble if we make a macro saying cast then cancel aura?

Even if it were true dsac wouldn't really have any applications for ret, we would take a substantial damage loss from going 17 points in prot.

I'm still debating if aura mastery is really worth it.. I still found the reduced cooldown on Hand of Protection was really useful in raids to save people around.

I'd be tempted to spec into Vindication and Guardian's Favor. I know vindication can be replaced by other classes, but so is 3 other of our buffs, better safe than sorry.

I guess it depends on the amount of paladins in your raid.

Basically this. Unless you have a second ret pally covering utility talents (or, for example, a Boomkin to cover Swift Retribution) you would have to drop points in Seals of the Pure to get far enough down prot for Divine Guardian, which is a sizable DPS loss. If you are lucky enough to have your utility covered than it could be useful to go down prot for the additional raid cooldown, though. The wording does imply that you could make a /cancelaura macro for DSac and still get the raid damage buff while ignoring the self damage issues.

Aura Mastery (for a specific type of magical damage) provides roughly 20% more damage reduction for 6 seconds over the normal aura. It can be very nice for bosses with magical raid damage abilities (Hodir, Twin Valkyr, etc.), but outside of that isn't terribly useful. In addition, Aura Mastery requires you to have an aura other than Retribution running, so it can cause problems with the strange SR/SW fading bug that occurs when you use something other than Retribution Aura (unless it was fixed in a recent PTR push that I missed).

I personally feel that Vindication is still one of our best raid utilities. For 2 talent points we can get the effect of a fully talented Demoralizing Shout or Curse of Weakness that applies passively on our autoattacks. The damage reduction it provides is massive against bosses, and it frees up my guild's Warlocks to use a DPS curse and our Warriors to spec into damage talents instead of improving Demo Shout, while costing me nothing outside of some other utility talents.

Again though, its more of a raid comp thing. If you have a second ret pally with perfect attendance who can cover the utility you can easily drop it to pick up different talents like AM or DSac.

I rather like Vindication. Procs on Divine Storm, so it's AOE AP reduction for no loss of DPS. Warriors and Druids rarely spec for improved debuff, so Vindication is superior. Additionally they must use rage to shout/roar - rage which could be directly translated into DPS. I consider it a gain for the raid.

While Vindication is without a doubt useful, the way I see it you have to pick two of three forms of utility. These three possibilities include imp BOM, vindication, and aura mastery. Which two of the three you pick will vary largely on your guild specifically, but I'm going with AM and imp BoM. While vindication is nice, there are other sources to get that debuff in my raid, and AM (even in its nerfed form) is still very powerful. Plus, holy paladins really aren't speccing into ret anymore as their secondary tree, so it's either a ret pally picking up imp BoM or depending on warrior shouts (which my guild is not prepared to do).

No, 2pc T10 is not enough to make ArP better than haste. It's still going to be our worst "green" stat, but it's better than nothing. I expect we'll have a piece or two with ArP in our BiS set, because it's on a lot of ICC gear and Blizzard will itemize for the majority (Warriors and DKs) before the minority.

Armor Penetration is going to take a significant bump upwards in usefulness with t10. Once we spend more time doing physical attacks (Divine Storm) and less time using purely magical attacks (Consecration, Exorcism, HoW) the value of ArPen jumps.

To be sure it is still going to be the lowest value stat we regularly see on gear, as even with the most optimistic valuation of 2pt10 haste outperforms ArPen, but it will get a lot closer than it is now. Because ArPen also gets improving returns with itself I would not be surprised if our BIS list actually includes quite a bit of it. It may even end up the case that a heavy ArPen set is quite good, though even then ArPen would never outperform crit, agility, 2AP or expertise. It may well be though that we end up valuing

str/sta/crit/arpen

over

str/sta/crit/haste.

I worked up some numbers using my gear (245 ilvl across the board pretty nearly) and ended up with a ArPen value = to haste at 422 ArPen. I had to add 200 ArPen to my gear to make them equivalent. Given this, I suspect that with full 264 or 277 gear we will easily have enough ArPen to making stacking it viable. Note of course I am ONLY referring to stacking it as our fourth stat on gear, with any realistic amount of ArPen it is inferior to crit/agil/str/hit/exp still.

DiSac only lasts 6 seconds in 3.3, so it is further dropped in value.

I would get Aura Mastery, however the not using Ret Aura makes 3% haste/damage turn off bug may still be around with another Paladin present (lessened by Arcane giving 3% damage and Moonkin giving 3% haste) and I prefer to "fire and forget" my Aura choice before combat.

Regarding BiS lists, I could do it once Rawr has 2 piece T10 modeled and most of the items loaded. The new Rawr build has a limited PTR item list, so it isn't worth making one yet.

E: Rawr's item list is incomplete.

3.3 version of Bellator spreadsheet is now up. Links in the original post.

Hope you like the upgrades to functionality. Expect regular updates as more loot is discovered.

Got a bug here that I'd like tested/confirmed - in VoA25, DS was doing nothing against the 3 boss giants. It was doing damage as usual against everything else tonight (the non-boss giant trash, everything that I noticed in ICC), but DS did zero damage to koralon et al. Used the CD, ate the mana, even hit an emalon add... no damage to the boss. I don't have a log to support this sadly, but I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior anywhere else, before it's added to the bugs section.

As for non-bug observations, I find myself wondering if it might be worthwhile to expertise cap thru gear alone, without the SoV glyph, due to the nature of several ICC fights. Depending on your guilds' strategy on some bosses, you might be unable to use SoV reliably or at all, or be subject to quite a bit more seal swapping than we are used to. Marrowgar normal sure you can just sit on him and take the damage, but in heroic I'd imagine that you will be seeing SoV fall off more often than not when he whirlwinds. Same story with deathwhisper and her adds - on normal they are pretty easy, on heroic you'll need to actually focus/kill them, but they don't have enough hp for SoV usage. Gunship is also in the same boat (HEH BOAT) where SoC is superior for most/all of it.

Also completely unrelated, our mut rogues were stomping the rest of our dps tonight in ICC with a solid 1k lead on anyone else. Even running on all cylinders (sup undead instance) I'm peaking at ~9.5k on Saurfang. I thought the gap between classes was supposed to be closer than ever in 3.3?

The current state of 3.3 Mut Rogues is an aberration that I see getting nerfed in short order. Their DPS gain was meant to be a minor offset for the loss of a weapon swapping mod. It's turned out to be a 2k+ monstrosity.

I agree SoC is the ideal DPS seal for Gunship as well as Dreamwalker. On Deathwhisper I can see us staying on her shield full time. You have to remember that adds are generally not level 83, so you need far less expertise in order to push dodges from behind off the table. This does mean that you can squeeze out a bit more DPS by gearing for that lower expertise cap for a specific encounter.

I picked up Bryntroll tonight. I must say, this weapon is crying for a nerf. Yes, this is a test dummy, but the results speak for themselves:
WoW Meters Online - Combatlog Replay

8.5% of my damage comes from Drain Life - more than Exorcism, Consecration, Righteous Vengeance, Blood Corruption, or Divine Storm! This is roughly 503 DPS when fighting a Mechanical self buffed. Add in 3% spell hit, 13% spell damage, 3% more damage from Crusade on Undead, and 1% damage from Sense Undead and Drain Life will probably top out at around 590 DPS.