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  1. #1

    The state of Retribution in 5.1

    Im currently playing elemental shaman and doing very well. Due to a newly recruited elemental shaman I choose to reroll to bring better balance to the raid.
    So I was wondering how ret is doing in this tier. There are a few things I would like answered, so detailed replies will be appreciated.


    1) How is the overall DPS? Is it stong singeltarget, weak AOE.. Or the other way around?

    2) What would you say ret's current weaknesses & strenghts are?

    3) How is the rotation/prio list? Lots of downtime or GCD capped?

    4) Are there many tweaks and tricks that can greatly increase your DPS?

    5) How do ret's DPS scale with gear comparing to other classes? Falling behind? Pulling ahead?

    6) Is there any clear signs that there will be fixes to the ret paladins in the near future? (Blog hints/obvious bugs etc)




    Thanks

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkeVF View Post
    Im currently playing elemental shaman and doing very well. Due to a newly recruited elemental shaman I choose to reroll to bring better balance to the raid.
    So I was wondering how ret is doing in this tier. There are a few things I would like answered, so detailed replies will be appreciated.


    1) How is the overall DPS? Is it stong singeltarget, weak AOE.. Or the other way around?
    Fairly high single target, moderate AoE. We could use a non-targeted AoE for things like Lei Shi's hide, but overall our AoE isn't that bad but glyphs and talents seem to effect Ret hugely with regards to our amount of burst and our strength of AoE.

    2) What would you say ret's current weaknesses & strenghts are?
    Our weakness and our strength are almost the exact same thing. We're a very high burst spec with a lot of - often unused - utility. We rely on CDs that can send our DPS skyrocketing and if you know when to use LoH, devotion aura and our various hand spells you'll be a great asset.

    That said, our sustained is often pretty low though it increases pretty darn linearly with haste due to our current mechanics and by the end of expansion we're probably going to be monsters. Also since our highest dps is tied to cooldowns and buff stacking our overall DPS looks like a roller coaster. This can be leavened a bit by your talent choices - holy avenger vs sanctified wrath vs divine purpose - DP is one that generally keeps your sustained high but you'll be playing a bit of a slot machine. HA and SW give you far more control over when you do your damage but by that same token they lead to much spikier damage profiles.

    Oh and our biggest weakness is Inquisition. This is a 30-second buff we're required to keep up, it increases our holy damage done by 30% and when it drops you'll experience a 25% or so DPS decrease. This thing sucks, Monks are one of the only classes that I know of with a similar mechanic of a buff they are required to keep active, most other classes have it either hardwired into their spec as a proc - warriors - or it's built into other mechanics - mages.

    To Blizz these mechanics are what separates good/great players from everyone else. As a member of the player base it's mostly just an annoyance that removes a lot of my fun. Like buying a cool sports car but finding out it leaks oil so having to put in a can every 30-miles.

    3) How is the rotation/prio list? Lots of downtime or GCD capped?
    In general you'll be fairly close to GCD capped with a button to press every second. The priority works out well and it's more important to know when to switch your priority, like forsaking judging for hammer of wrath during wings or an execute phase, knowing when it's time to hit templar's verdict or if you should wait a sec for a holy power generator that's going to come off CD for you before the GCD catches up. That sort of thing. In general 5.1 Ret plays very smoothly and most proc-buffs stay up long enough that you can get an idea of when to delay an attack.

    4) Are there many tweaks and tricks that can greatly increase your DPS?
    Practice, practice, practice. Also talent choice, glyph choice and the like. Talents and glyphs seem to matter more to my Ret than any of my other characters - though to be fair the ret is the only one at 90. I'm constantly swapping out the TV glyph for maybe the mass-exorcism and double-jeopardy glyph. So it really comes down to knowing what's expected of you in the fight and switching things up accordingly.

    5) How do ret's DPS scale with gear comparing to other classes? Falling behind? Pulling ahead?
    Very linearly. Haste is king of secondary stats at the moment and while there's no "cap" to it I think by the next tier without significant changes we're going to start throwing in more mastery to our builds and then probably some crit as well. Since our secondary stat priority is haste > mastery we experience a nice smooth DPS increase as we add more. We're also a melee dps class so 1/2 of our bread and butter attacks rely on weapon damage so when you get a new weapon you really do feel the improvement.

    6) Is there any clear signs that there will be fixes to the ret paladins in the near future? (Blog hints/obvious bugs etc)
    Nope. Our problems lie in our burstiness and we've had them since BC. At this point our wings are too iconic to really change out and while they did alleviate some problems by giving us one activated on use CD (holy avenger), one passive on use CD (Avenging Wrath) and one passive proc (Divine Purpose) but as long as we have to deal with wings and *shudder* inquisition we're going to have some problems.

    But overall I'm not foreseeing a lot of Ret changes in MoP. The spec is playing smoothly and we'll be scaling evenly with gear as each patch is released.


    Thanks[/QUOTE]

  3. #3
    Ret bursts high on the start of a fight and then dips low throughout the rest of the fight with more burst in between when CDs are back up. Dunno if that's something you enjoy.

  4. #4
    Thanks alot for the detailed answer Shelly Will be leveling my retri and gearing it this christmas. Hope I can pull world ranks on this toon as well

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkeVF View Post
    Thanks alot for the detailed answer Shelly Will be leveling my retri and gearing it this christmas. Hope I can pull world ranks on this toon as well
    Folks do manage to - not me, I suck and I'm an LFR casual whose guild probably still won't move to 10's after the holiday and ya know what? I'm totally cool with that. I do miss the reward of the challenge but people have been wearing me OUT. Like the moment vent comes on it's a cue to drop F-bombs all day.

    Sorry, got side-tracked.

    Go drop over to world of logs and check to see how the best performing rets are doing against elementals.

    Also there's one other thing you need to take into consideration, MoP has so far been almost punishing to melee compared to range in terms of ease of fights. The pain starts with the stone guardians and there's not really too many - if any - fights where I think melee is preferred. So take that into consideration as you're learning.

    Good luck and enjoy swinging the light!

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by pkm View Post
    Ret bursts high on the start of a fight and then dips low throughout the rest of the fight with more burst in between when CDs are back up. Dunno if that's something you enjoy.
    Ya i see ret skyrocket then go down to the middle of most fights in 25man. Full clear with a few heroic, usually pretty much below our mages/locks.

  7. #7
    Be ready to be gear-dependent at least in t14. Without 4t14 and Orders your dps will be laughable.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkeVF View Post
    1) How is the overall DPS?
    The numbers below should NOT be taken as an 100% truth about each class dps, but they will give decent hints if a class is one of the best, one of the worst or in the middle of the pack.

    This is what the logs from 10-man heroic says, only listing the highest dps-spec from each class:
    1. Warlock
    2. Mage
    3. Warrior
    4. DK
    5. Hunter
    6. Priest
    7. Druid
    8. Rogue
    9. Shaman
    10. Paladin
    11. Monk

    Source (with exact numbers):
    http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...default/#4b7j4

    Simultationcraft of how each class would do in full BiS heroic T14-gear (only listing the highest dps-spec from each class):
    1. Mage
    2. Warlock
    3. Warrior
    4. Shaman
    5. Rogue
    6. Hunter
    7. DK
    8. Druid
    9. Monk
    10. Priest
    11. Paladin

    Source (with exact numbers):
    http://simulationcraft.org/510/Raid_T14H.html

  9. #9
    The Lightbringer Highlord Hanibuhl's Avatar
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    What I cannot understand is that even if glyphed, the Divine Storm does WAAAAY more damage than the Exorcism...

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by DarkeVF View Post
    1) How is the overall DPS? Is it stong singeltarget, weak AOE.. Or the other way around?
    Decent for both but great at neither.

    2) What would you say ret's current weaknesses & strenghts are?
    + Good burst and decent utility with hands and emergency off-heals.
    - Low sustained damage and can't really do anything in terms of damage that a warrior or DK wouldn't do better

    3) How is the rotation/prio list? Lots of downtime or GCD capped?
    Much better than in MoP because of a faster holy power regen but there's still a lot of waiting time. Most people have gone for full haste just to get rid of this.

    4) Are there many tweaks and tricks that can greatly increase your DPS?
    Get high DKP or be the leader of your raid. Grab all gear ASAP.
    If you fail with this, reroll.

    Sorry. What I personally think I'm good at is spreading censure and keeping it up on multiple targets. I use very simple macros for it.

    1st: /focus [target=mouseover]
    2nd: #showtooltip Judgment
    /cast [target=focus] Judgment

    Another thing I think I do well is tracking my procs and time them with execution sentence as well as using my holy power accordingly. You don't want to put more emphasis on this though since it can get you out of sync with your rotation. With the improved holy power regen this was way more important in Cata.

    5) How do ret's DPS scale with gear comparing to other classes? Falling behind? Pulling ahead?
    I'd say bad. Some people here seem to think Rets are doing great with gear but don't realize they just have better gear or play with bad people. The ret numbers close to BiS are laughable.

    6) Is there any clear signs that there will be fixes to the ret paladins in the near future? (Blog hints/obvious bugs etc)
    Ret is gonna stay as mediocre as it has always been. They nerfed them during beta and haven't done shit since then (except nerfing them again with the 4-piece).

    Just compare Rets with Mages. Fire got a huge nerf but got fixed within a week. It's obvious which classes/specs Blizzard care for and not.
    Last edited by Bonkura; 2012-12-12 at 12:27 PM.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by MickM View Post
    What I cannot understand is that even if glyphed, the Divine Storm does WAAAAY more damage than the Exorcism...
    Exorcism should never hit harder than TV or DS in their respective roles - it would feel like a complete waste to have a finisher hit for less than a filler. HoW is an exception here, because it's only up for AW and execute phases. Imagine if Revealing Strike for Rogues hit harder than Eviscerate - they'd only Evis if they knew they were Energy starved.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by MickM View Post
    What I cannot understand is that even if glyphed, the Divine Storm does WAAAAY more damage than the Exorcism...
    The Exorcism glyph just spreads 20% of your initial hit to every enemy in melee. It's just a "put it on for AoE situations" glyph and won't result in huge AoE numbers.

    Paladin AoE is incredibly dependent on spec and glyph for high numbers - in later tiers it will also depend more on swapping to Seal of Righteousness but we don't have the haste levels or weapon damage range at the moment where that's really viable. So for AoE we go from Execution Sentence to either Hammer of Light or Holy Prism and we put on glyph of double jeopardy and mass exorcism.

    Also with regards to the rankings posted be sure to list how much damage on average each class is doing and how much top-end damage we're doing.

    OP, it's not an entirely rosy situation, but neither is it as bad as many folks are making it out to be. No one is setting aside a well played Ret for another class. Learn to use your utility in your open CDs and how to spec for each fight and your raid group will love you. Anyone who says we're being ignored and shunned from the proper heights our damage should be at though is a wacko. This doesn't mean that Blizz is infallible, but they have a set plateau for each tier where they want every spec to be and they've pretty much said Ret is where they want us for the moment and we scale very well with gear - just still annoyed to be tied to strong burst with lower sustained.

  13. #13
    i have a lvl 90 monk and 90 ret. granted, the monk has about 10-12 ilvls on my pally BUT, if they had the same ilvl which class would preform better in dps? i know alot of factors are involved. just trying to get an idea on how well they scale with higher gear vs other classes (esp. monk)

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Faulkal View Post
    i have a lvl 90 monk and 90 ret. granted, the monk has about 10-12 ilvls on my pally BUT, if they had the same ilvl which class would preform better in dps? i know alot of factors are involved. just trying to get an idea on how well they scale with higher gear vs other classes (esp. monk)
    I think a skill factor is more involved. Ret does not scale with gear as well as some classes. Although I'm not sure about monks. Although when I see a monk fighting his way to the top of the charts, he's usually geared. So I'd assume they scale a bit better than ret does.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Umira View Post
    I think a skill factor is more involved. Ret does not scale with gear as well as some classes. Although I'm not sure about monks. Although when I see a monk fighting his way to the top of the charts, he's usually geared. So I'd assume they scale a bit better than ret does.
    Part of me agrees, but there are a ton of factors to look at. Most paladin tier sets lately have been based around take something from ret and give it back to them. Our 2 set makes our finisher a proper spell and our 4 set allows cd syncing like we had with zealotry and wings before. This alone is a huge scaling thing for ret, but one of the most important things to look at is your weapon damage. A new weapon for ret results in a large increase of damage because you have your base attack that goes up and obviously the str gain. Then on top of all of that there is our mastery which kicks the damage on those spells that much higher. So we don't scale amazing with gear, but tier set bonus + good weapon should put us pretty close to other classes. The issue though is that ret is sitting towards the bottom of the simcraft chart right now. Its a big difference from the top, but those are ideal fights that gap closes with skill, but its not going to hold anyone back.

  16. #16
    After u get 4 tier pieces and a good weapon, gear scaling is just terrible after that really, nearly all classes ( some even multiple specs :/ ) perform better than us DPS wise, but the thing about retris is the support they bring to the raid, u have 2 extra bubbles/sacrifices, Devotion aura is super great ( 20% decrease magic dmg for all the raid ), and they can self heal in dire situations *Gara'jal hc, Vizier hc and some other bosses*

    TL;DR if u want a class that is just for the damage, retri isn't the best choice for you, but if u want a class that deals moderate dmg and has a really nice support to the raid then this is yours

  17. #17
    Main problem with Ret is that it seems to scale more with weapon damage than even the other melee specs, especially when you got 2-set bonus an upgraded weapon can mean absurd dps increase.

    As for overall dps it more or less depends on how smoothly you can get your cd's off. If for instance a boss is killed right before your cd's become avaiable again you'll probably lie rather low.

    So very few factors can mean enormous discrepancy in dps. Obviously fights with lots of target changes like with twins arent great either

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Wysmark View Post
    Main problem with Ret is that it seems to scale more with weapon damage than even the other melee specs
    Ret's melee affinity and dependance has been defined since mid TBC when they revamped CS and the Vengeful paladin gear.
    In WotLK, Divine Bladestorm made it scale but fillers weren't bad.
    Cata gave us holy power and it will forever be reminded as the expansion that made all fillers complete garbage.

    However MoP has given us the most ranged damage we've ever had, and while big weapons mean a dramatic increase on DPS, I'm not bothered because Judgement hits harder than CS and HoW than TV.

    Remember cata 4.0 judgement? yeah...

  19. #19
    I feel like rets struggling to keep up on single target only fights are just not playing aggresive enough or wasting reduction on the GCD by being to slow.

    also IDK what prio system you guys do but during wings i dump a TV every 3 holy power unless the 4th hp is from exo then i dump TV after HoW at 5 cap.
    1) How is the overall DPS? Is it stong singeltarget, weak AOE.. Or the other way around?

    2) What would you say ret's current weaknesses & strenghts are?

    3) How is the rotation/prio list? Lots of downtime or GCD capped?

    4) Are there many tweaks and tricks that can greatly increase your DPS?

    5) How do ret's DPS scale with gear comparing to other classes? Falling behind? Pulling ahead?

    6) Is there any clear signs that there will be fixes to the ret paladins in the near future? (Blog hints/obvious bugs etc)
    1. Very strong single, average aoe
    2. Burst, % Damage taken bosses, scaling, only weakness is aoe and having to hold back cooldowns it cripples you
    3. If you aren't gcd capped you are doing it wrong or hitting things too slow
    4. Cooldown stacking, Keeping yourself on the GCD not wasting .1 sec by not using AHK
    5. Ret scales absurd with mastery, haste, and weapon damage
    6. We don't need any fixes, just seal of rightiouness buffed 250% to buff our aoe and to make the seal not worthless.
    Last edited by anaxie; 2012-12-15 at 05:32 PM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by MickM View Post
    What I cannot understand is that even if glyphed, the Divine Storm does WAAAAY more damage than the Exorcism...
    exorcism is a power generator while divine storm is a power dump, if the power generator did more dmg than the power dump why the hell would anyone use the power dump?

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