Agreed, Zurm. Especially if classes stick with their "preferred" armour-type. As you and others have pointed out numerous times, Leather gets better itemization due to more split stats. Rogues benefit, as will Feral.

Warriors (dual wield or not) and Paladins would have to "downrank" their gear to leather to gain these benefits. Some paladins do, some do not - no judgement on either group. Just stating for those of us who stick to Plate (I tend to for purposes of ensuring the entire raid gets geared) will fall behind the itemization curve due to this fact.

On the other hand, Blizzard is aware of this - they've admitted iLevel is higher than anticipated at Wrath launch due to normal/hard-mode splits. 3.3 (and 3.3.1, 3.3.2, etc) could see minor class tweaks to rebalance at this higher tier. This is also something to potentially fear - rebalancing has not always gone in our favour. We could go from top-5 on most fights to bottom-5, even on undead targets, all depending on what knobs are twisted and how. We'll theorycraft when we see changes, as always.


Veering 90 degrees - has there been any discussion on the PTR or boards regarding the Ret Aura issue? Namely if you're in any other aura with another paladin present, and move out of their aura, Sanct Ret and Swift Ret disappear until next time you change aura. This is still straightjacketing us into Ret Aura to keep raid buffs, which they appeared to specifically try to change by extending the effects to all auras.

I haven't seen that affect on Live. I have run out of Aura range of another Pally and the tooltip still says 6%.

Hmm. Probably the biggest implication of the 2 piece bonus is how it will change armor pen's importance to us imo. neither seal of vengeance or seal of command proc off this ability, so it will be pure physical power. Since we have less GCD's due to this, we will also use pure holy damage moves (consecrate and exorcism) less often as well.
Seeing as how Armor pen was almost the very worst melee stat we could get, this could be blizzard's way of bandaid fixing the issue.

SoV (with a stack up on the target) and SoC can proc off a Divine Storm hit. 2 piece increases the value of ArP, but not enough to make gearing changes. The crafted leather and mail is better than the crafted plate (only ICC items shown), partly due the fourth plate stat being Arp and because 5 stats is usually better than 4 stats.

What tooltip?

Group with another non-Ret paladin. Turn off all Auras and look at weapon speed. Turn on Ret Aura. Look at your weapon speed and you immediate see the 3% reduction from talents. Turn on any other aura. Run out of the other paladin's aura. Run back in. Look at your weapon speed - you've lost the 3% haste. The logical assumption is the 3% damage is also gone. It does not return until you change aura.

Someone reported this in the 3.2 thread ages ago. I took them at their word, and I only just tested empirically on live a week or two ago.

I can only guess the game sees a loss of an aura and strips the Ret Aura bonuses. Ignoring the fact it wasn't your aura that was lost.

Hmmm, I'll have to test further - it's possible when you get in range they will get the 3% haste and damage appropriately, but you never do (since your buffed aura is not reapplying to you - theirs is). Regardless it causes raid buff inconsistency.


@aleksandor - Divine Storm procs seals. It does not generate SoC cleave, but still gains a single proc on each of the (up to) 4 targets hit. Even if ArmPen minorly improves, it will simply be slightly less crap, not good. We'll take it because it's on otherwise good gear, just like currently.

The damage range one. However, I just checked and this bug is still there .

That swapping would work to "reset" the 3% damage buff, but it doesn't help if you lose the buff mid-fight. This happens if you are in any non-Ret Aura and then get out of range of another Paladin's Aura.

I wish there was a way to know if the buff turned off (you could look at the %damage buff) easily.

I agree with the scaling issues. Already an equally geared Retribution and Fury warrior will do nearly the same single target DPS, yet the Fury will put out significantly more AOE damage at the same time.

And of course our standing will also greatly depend on the type of encounter. From my experience thus far on the PTR, we'll be in the top 1-5 in SoV tank and spanks (Festergut, Rotface, Lady Deathwhisper) and quick target switch SoC fights (Valithria Dreamwalker, Icecrown Gunship Battle), but we'll perform poorly on single target fights where we're frequently reapplying our SoV stack (Sindragosa, Lord Marrowgar).

There are still a number of unknowns left - Deathbringer, Professor Putridcide, Blood Prince Council, Queen Lana'thel, and Arthas. Hopefully they'll fall into the the former categories rather than the latter.

Ash is correct. It functions like this:

You turn on Ret Aura - everyone in range gets your aura buffs of 3% haste and damage (including you).
You swap aura - everyone retains buffs.
Run in and out of range of people - as they gain your aura they gain, as they lose, they lose.
You group with another paladin.
You move into their aura - you have your non-Ret aura (with raid buffs) and their aura.
You move outside their aura - you lose their aura and your raid buffs. Your non-Ret aura remains, no 3% haste or 3% damage.
You move back into their aura - you have both auras, no raid buffs. Their aura does not restore the raid buffs your aura provides.

Random player in raid moves out of Paladin B's aura, but remains in your aura - they lose 3% haste and 3% damage.
*Random player moves fully out and back into your aura - regain 3% haste and 3% damage.

* - I believe, have not tested - matches basic game mechanics.

You can never "move back" into your aura (you never lost yours) so cannot re-gain the buffs. Only by changing back to Ret Aura toggles the buffs on for you.

In short - the game sees the loss of any aura and strips you of the raid buffs from your aura. The game must be assuming the lost aura was yours, stripping all raid buffs. It's likely just somewhat sloppy code which was designed to prevent infinite buffs (i.e. upi turn on Ret and gain 3%, swap to FR for 6%, back to Ret for 9%, ad nauseum).
Ret aura does not have this problem - it constantly carries the buff, moving out of other auras does not gimp you.

While this bug remains it's detrimental to use any aura other than Ret unless you're solo paladin. Even then, you may need to toggle to Ret Aura and back after any death.

Does the same limitation apply to imp.conc and imp.devo aura?

I remember getting silenced for a very very long time on Gormok with fire res aura up (but imp.conc talented) which would be explained by this bug.

It would not surprise me that imp Conc Aura's silence reduction turned of like Ret aura's 3% damage/haste if you are out of range.

Assuming the bug is not fixed, if you have a Boomkin and Arcane Mage in 3.3 that will cover the 3% damage/haste.

Oh dear. Allow me to inform you sir, because this unfortunately is something the truly uninformed continuously bring up.

If we had unlimited GCDs available, you would be correct; the highest damage buttons would be the best to push first. However, we do not live in that system. We do have a finite number of GCDs, and even after the 4s CS change we still have quite some downtime. As such, we have to look at each ability's potential DPS to maximize our overall DPS. While I don't have the time to go into exact specifics, if you bothered to read the 3.2 thread you would have read the answer about 5 times as to why you are horribly wrong. Also, just because YOU sit at the top 5 DPS in your guild is not empirical evidence that you are correct; for all we know the rest of your guild-mates could be just as ill-informed as you are and making the same types of mistakes.

Furthermore, exorcism won't be doing such good damage once you drop the glyph. Obviously SoV Glyph isn't ideal for you, but you've already proven your incredible prowess at ret with the fact that you wear 38 expertise instead of 26, a full 3% above the cap.

I look forward to seeing the post in The Banhammer after the mods have their way with you.

EDIT: Your math above proves nothing and is horribly wrong. While for your short window you may have higher damage, in the long run your system proves nothing. After you open with your awful exo-first system, you will have many more GCD's you're just WAITING on...that's lots of lost DPS because you move each ability's effective cooldown up.

I don't know what casual has to do with it. My guild raids 9 hours a week Max. We spend only 2 hours a week on Heroic ToGC 10 (we have it with 48 attempts last week). Link a log that shows your dps. Link a log that shows your dps using your FCFS and a log showing the proper FCFS. Don't come into these boards with anecdotal evidence saying your dps is so and so and everyone is below that. Anecdotal evidence is worthless. Post logs to back up your claims or don't bother posting.

Also, it isn't an opinion when many many paladins have tested it and found the FCFS using edps to be true. Its not an opinion when 99% of the people who contribute to these threads agree on it. Yours is not an opinion either. It is something you believe to be fact but is in fact, wrong.

If I was not at work right now, I could open up rawr, plug in both rotations and show the dps loss from using yours. Rawr isn't biased to one rotation, it just uses the numbers for what abilities hit for, you set up the cooldown clashes and it gives you dps. In fact, when I get an opportunity tonight, I will do this using your armory, so it is proven in your specific gear.

It's not opinion if it is mathematically verifiable. I can prove you wrong with math. Unfortunately, I'm at work and my ability to post and double-check a mathematically intensive reply is compromised. I'd be more than happy to oblige when I get home, though I'm certain one of the other posters here would be more than happy to prove you wrong on your crusade to misinform the ret community.

If you do Exo first, you end up with more gcd clashes which results in lowering the effective DPS on other abilities to the point where you hurt your overall DPS. That's a fact; learn it, love it, cherish it.

I will GLADLY read your breakdown of why you think "effective dps" should be the basis of prioritizing decisions, I just ask you please to give me a link good sir.

Simple example. It does expand to all cases.

Ability 1 does 7500 damage on a 15 second cooldown.
Ability 2 does 6000 damage on a 8 second cooldown.

7500(damage)/15(seconds) = 500dps
6000/8 = 750dps
total = 1250dps

We know that the two abilities will collide on CDs so what happens when you delay the abilities for the GCD of the other.

Ability 1 delayed
7500/(15+1.5)=454.5455dps
6000/8=750
1204.545

Ability 2 delayed
7500(damage)/15(seconds) = 500dps
6000/(8+1.5) = 631.5789dps
total = 1131.579dps

1204.545 > 1131.579

Edit: This has been discussed before. For more information please read the threads about paladin dps in their entirety.

.

The difference is that your "opinion" has been mathematically proven wrong. And you started the pettiness by calling respected EJ theorycrafters "g15 idiots".

I can cut you a slight amount of slack since the effective cooldown discussion isn't in the 3.2 thread (which, incidentally, is where you should have posted this). However, I did manage to find the discussion without too much effort by searching the 3.1 thread. This post in particular shows a mathed out example, although you can read above and below for an informed debate on highest DPS vs highest damage priority.

So as of 3.3 judge>DS>CS right? or is that only with the 2pc T10. I was in a ToGC25 the other day and was getting out DPS'd by another paladin whose rotation was judge>cons>CS>DS>exo. As of 3.3 should CS still come before DS, while CS>DS get moved in front of Cons. From my understanding starting with cons early in a rotation was a DPS increase than having it later. Any tips on that?

We can't know for sure yet how priorities will look in 3.3, but I have some educated guesses. For starters, I expect we'll see Judgement below CS once again once you lose 2pc T9 (as that bonus is was propped up judgement in the first place). I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see something like DS > CS > J > Cons > Exo.

As for why someone with consecration so high in their rotation was beating you, keep in mind that the rotation we provide is for maximum single-target DPS. When fighting multiple targets in a cleave setup, bumping consecrate and DS up in the cycle will usually result in a DPS increase. You can use Rawr to determine what the best "rotation" is for what number of targets (it just won't work with a 2pc T10 bonus right now, as it hasn't been modeled yet).

Speaking of which, I have a question for anyone running spreadsheets (I suppose Redcape/Exemplar primarily). Have any of you figured out how to model the 2pc t10 bonus? Endoscient and myself are at somewhat of a loss for Rawr.

Redcape has an elegant solution already incorporated. It takes a specific 4 attacks out of 10 and makes them "proc" the DS cooldown reset. It won't match real-world, because RNG is RNG and he's using 4 set attacks out of every 10 (rather than 4 random attacks). However it's a pleasant approximation. He has variables to turn on/off Judgement, CS, and DS proccing (as I believe we're still unsure whether it's only autoattack or other items can proc).

I'm working on a effective cooldown model built into my spreadsheet (based off examination of Redcape's code - thanks again for the approval to reverse engineer!). This will replace the static table I'd derived from external use of Python. My plan is to use the random function within Excel, run the timeline 3 times and produce average effective cooldowns. I'll code for all the special melee attacks to proc, then once we know remove those ineligible. The end result would fluctuate between comparisons - depending on how long Excel takes to crunch I might run more than 3.

Since it's entirely proc based and a proc can throw off the whole rotation, I think the best option for Rawr would be multiple iterations (you can probably leverage a lot more than the 3 I plan to use) and create an average. Over the course of multiple fights it's "realistic". As far as we get.


As for priority - I'm waiting to know exactly what procs DS cooldown reset. That will heavily influence. If mana usage spikes from increased DS then Judge may become higher priority to ensure enough mana to spam all abilities. If mana's a non-issue, then it may well drop deeper down the list.

Sadly - a bad Ret with wrong priority can be just a few hundred short of a good Ret with good priority, as long as they're pushing buttons immediately off GCD. We've proven pressing the wrong button fast is less of a loss than waiting and pressing the correct button (same as delaying a "bad" ability for 0.1 seconds for a "good" ability). In equivalent gear it would be possible to dip below a bad Ret due to RNG fluctuations. But on average, over time, you will exceed them. Typically the bad Ret is also slow and easily distracted, so they don't even press their wrong buttons fast, shooting you far ahead. That and if they don't know the priority, they probably don't know how to gear, either.

I have set up the DS proc in my python code. It runs over 300 seconds and includes latency and haste on gcd. It also calculates dps on the exact number of cons ticks within the time period. HoW is activated at 18% (246 seconds).
It runs over 200 iterations and then takes the average for each priority. I've run these 200 iteration sets multiple times and the max discrepancy has been 5 dps.
I kept the seed the same for each run so each time DS procs it will proc for the same ability for every single priority in that run.
The numbers I used for the abilities are my own (hence the cons and exo glyph) and I obtained them from plugging my values into redcapes spreadsheet. NOTE: NO RV CRIT or any SET BONUS AT ALL.

So for my own numbers if the 10% DS proc occurs only on melee swings my priority wont change much, maybe HoW after cons. If it procs off all melee specials as well then a DS first priority looks to be the best. These numbers will obviously change dependent on my haste and dps numbers as I change gear,glyphs,etc.

If anyone has some dps numbers they want to plug in or wants any permutation feel free to pm me.

I find it somewhat strange that priorities with DS up front don't pull ahead. And that differences are so small between the rotations.
Did you model this without the set bonusses from T9 as that's part of what makes Judgement (and crit) as good as it is atm? The fact the Judgement first rotations seem to be favoured, leads me to believe you have T9 bonussed active.


What redcape's spRETsheet does (fixed 4 out of 10 procs) may seem less than ideal, but as strange as it may seem, it's just as random as anything else, with the one caveat that 'fixed' T10 procs matching weapon speed and the FCFS rotation could enter a harmonic state and cause a stable repeatable pattern to occur. When that happens, all bets are off as you can get really weird numbers when that starts happening. That's part of why an actual RNG to decide the procs is a good thing because it sort of prevents any such harmonic state to occur.