Anaxie's Totally Revolutionary SoO Retribution T16 BiS & Theorycraft

[Deleted]

Today I simmed my character and was given these scale factors: http://i.imgur.com/p82V4Nm.png. Putting these in AMR, it suggests I optimize by going full +160 str in red and prismatic slots and even +320 str for the JC bonuses. Thoughts on this? I was planning to go str/haste in red, haste in yellow and prismatic, and haste JC bonuses.

I did something similar and found myself being told to ram loads of crit in through reforges and gems.

[Aeoniel]

How long did you set the encounter length?

As far as JC gems they are itemized differently than non-JC gems. You do need to use the strength JC gems as the haste JC gems only give 1.5x the rating (Whereas all non-JC gems are itemized for 2x the rating). Use your strength JC gems in Prismatic/applicable spots, use strength/haste gems in red/orange, hit/haste gems in green/blue (unless you cannot use any of the hit, then haste/stam is acceptable). And, of course, use haste gems in yellow sockets.

Here are my stat weights:
http://i.imgur.com/m2iY7Af.png

I never include hit/expertise as those will be capped regardless, nor do I calculate wdps as it will always be the largest increase in damage. One thing you may want to look in to is the "normalized" stats on the left. Remember that rating gems are given 2x the amount that a stat gem is, thus 2 haste > 1 str (1.32 > 1). SimC is a useful tool, but don't take what it says as gospel.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Simc work out on perfect execution, averaged out rng (like crit and trinkets and set bonuses) and to top it off it's on a patchwerk fight.
Simc tells you what should work in theory, not what's going to work when everything is in motion. Simc is a sick strong tool but you need to know how to use it and even when you've used it correctly you need to do "field tests" to see if something shows up that makes the Simc look stupid. Even in the end all things considered Simc is a simulator and there's a reason why you don't get a pilots licence just from having Flight Sim 2000.

[Deleted]

So, Just been browsing logs etc, How viable is this mastery build i have seen a few rets try? There a specific haste point people have been trying to achive e.g, 35% or how would a full mastery reforge and re-gem compete against a haste build.

Will most likely try out a full mastery build this coming reset myself. Just to compare

[Deleted]

So, Just been browsing logs etc, How viable is this mastery build i have seen a few rets try? There a specific haste point people have been trying to achive e.g, 35% or how would a full mastery reforge and re-gem compete against a haste build.

Will most likely try out a full mastery build this coming reset myself. Just to compare

I believe that at around 36.36% haste, you have 50% haste with 10% haste buff, at which point you're GCD capped. 36.36% haste is about 15453 haste rating. so at that point, you should try to maintain haste and keep stacking mastery after that.

[Torchbringer]

I got 4 crit buffs on primordius yesterday, 65% crit chance. Most fun I've had in a while.

[Deleted]

I believe that at around 36.36% haste, you have 50% haste with 10% haste buff, at which point you're GCD capped. 36.36% haste is about 15453 haste rating. so at that point, you should try to maintain haste and keep stacking mastery after that.

10% haste buff doesn't affect your CDs and shouldn't affect the GCD either (though not tested that).

[Solsacra]

Mastery is superior to haste at roughly ~540ilvl with a weapon of atleast 535 ilvl. you'll still want to maintain atleast 30-35% haste to maintain rotational fluidity aswell. keep in mind this is only possible in part to our current four piece and micro managing of our exorcism debuffs, and to a lesser extent of just how many fights in ToT work, double dipping damage increases, cleaving etc. the damage difference isn't massive, like most break points, but it is noticeable.

SoB also gains no benefit from any passive buff that you can acquire outside of boss mechanics and heroism. what you have from haste on gear is what you get, the only thing that serves to further decrease a GCD on a specific spell is 5% spell haste on exorcism.

[Footsz]

Interestingly enough, my simcraft stat weights are putting haste high enough that it might be better to use a haste JC gem. Math below:

My current stat weights are:

Strength = 5.26
Haste = 4.05
Mastery = 3.24
Crit = 3.00

A haste gem being replaced for a haste JC gem will give me the following: 4.05*(480-320) = 648 DPS.
A strength/haste gem being replaced by a haste JC gem will give me the following: 4.05*(480-160) - 5.26*80 = 875.2 DPS (minus the value of the socket bonus, which would be 315.60 for 60 strength bonus, 360 for 120 crit bonus, and 388.80 for a 120 mastery bonus).

A haste gem being replaced by a STR JC gem will give me the following: 5.26*320 - 4.05*320 = 387.2 DPS.
A strength/haste gem being replaced by a STR JC gem will give me the following: 5.26*(320-80) - 4.05*160 = 614.4 DPS.

The two most likely scenarios are the first and last ones listed, which is a str/haste being replaced with a pure str JC gem, and a haste gem being replaced with a haste JC gem. With these weights, haste JC gems pull ahead. Please feel free to check my math in case I messed up somewhere.

EDIT: I should probably note that I'm in almost full heroic/heroic TF gear, which is easily a good bit higher ilvl than the average ret.

[isadorr]

Ret is a difficult spec to have faith in for RL. I am posting this here only because I want to ask, do Ret have a hard time getting raid spots as I have talked to Other solid raiding guilds on other servers and they either dont take him at all until progression is on farm or they only take one. Our ret is 550 ilvl and does well on some fights and horrible on others or is that Ret isn't that good? He rnks 76th for Ret on Council and is in the lower middle of the meters, he ranks and is beat by 10 other people, that seems odd. We are gearing up our melee with range alts for 5.4 but Holy should be strong again, it is really difficult to keep a Ret in the raid, even with all BIS.

Any opinion on this? I have talked to other very good RL on illidian and the EU side and have gotten similiar responses. We don't look at numbers for everything as people have to do different things in raids. I myself don't even feel like raiding but we are looking at who to have as bench for 5.4, and range is looking really good for 5.4 as it does for every patch. We are leaning to Dk's and rogues as they on average do more dps and can swap targets easier.

We went as far as to let some of your melee tunnel on bosses and have range do most of the work which isn't realistic on progression and it helped a little but we are running alts right now and some alts are beating some of our melee main, our alts are geared well but not as well, our ret ranks constantly but is still beat, are there any other ret's in high end progression guilds that are sat or have gone holy? OR maybe changed guilds so they didnt have to heal?

[Footsz]

Ret is a difficult spec to have faith in for RL. I am posting this here only because I want to ask, do Ret have a hard time getting raid spots as I have talked to Other solid raiding guilds on other servers and they either dont take him at all until progression is on farm or they only take one. Our ret is 550 ilvl and does well on some fights and horrible on others or is that Ret isn't that good? He rnks 76th for Ret on Council and is in the lower middle of the meters, he ranks and is beat by 10 other people, that seems odd. We are gearing up our melee with range alts for 5.4 but Holy should be strong again, it is really difficult to keep a Ret in the raid, even with all BIS.

Any opinion on this? I have talked to other very good RL on illidian and the EU side and have gotten similiar responses. We don't look at numbers for everything as people have to do different things in raids. I myself don't even feel like raiding but we are looking at who to have as bench for 5.4, and range is looking really good for 5.4 as it does for every patch. We are leaning to Dk's and rogues as they on average do more dps and can swap targets easier.

We went as far as to let some of your melee tunnel on bosses and have range do most of the work which isn't realistic on progression and it helped a little but we are running alts right now and some alts are beating some of our melee main, our alts are geared well but not as well, our ret ranks constantly but is still beat, are there any other ret's in high end progression guilds that are sat or have gone holy? OR maybe changed guilds so they didnt have to heal?

It's more a problem with melee in general than ret in particular.

[Solsacra]

I'm not sure to which player your entirely refering to, but this sounds like a classic case of PEBKAC, as it stands now ret is one of the best melee dps specs you can bring. thats without even including utility, which obviously paladins as a whole bring some of the best defensive cooldowns that exist. sure, we can have some target swapping issues, but any decent ret can work around this with ease. not sure how factoring ranged DPS superiority matters much. thats something melee dps as a whole has to deal with.

[isadorr]

I'm not sure to which player your entirely refering to, but this sounds like a classic case of PEBKAC, as it stands now ret is one of the best melee dps specs you can bring. thats without even including utility, which obviously paladins as a whole bring some of the best defensive cooldowns that exist. sure, we can have some target swapping issues, but any decent ret can work around this with ease. not sure how factoring ranged DPS superiority matters much. thats something melee dps as a whole has to deal with.

I thought that too but when talking to people/RL in very good guilds that are above ours, i got the same response. Moving to Dk's and Rogue's with a large mount of range. I am simply trying to get some different views as some RL talked as if it was fact. Solsacra you are talking about Ret being one of the Top melee but they can rank and be very far behind rogue's and dk's.

[Reith]

I thought that too but when talking to people/RL in very good guilds that are above ours, i got the same response. Moving to Dk's and Rogue's with a large mount of range. I am simply trying to get some different views as some RL talked as if it was fact. Solsacra you are talking about Ret being one of the Top melee but they can rank and be very far behind rogue's and dk's.

They could regret that if those classes get nerfed. DPS tuning hasn't even started yet.

[Deleted]

I thought that too but when talking to people/RL in very good guilds that are above ours, i got the same response. Moving to Dk's and Rogue's with a large mount of range. I am simply trying to get some different views as some RL talked as if it was fact. Solsacra you are talking about Ret being one of the Top melee but they can rank and be very far behind rogue's and dk's.

If you're talking to RLs who don't take ret in their raids, then they have a perception based on opinion. Not saying they're wrong, but how can they say that rets are no good if they don't take them? The spec has been made much better since 5.3 and may continue to be strong in 5.4 However, in fairness to the doubters, retribution is not a spec that is always strong. Blizzard bugger about with us so much that we can sometimes be a risk.

On the other hand, there are plenty of top guilds out there who use them and you don't see their retribution paladin languishing on damage. Has to be said, though, you don't see many guilds with more than one in their roster, and I don't know of any that have more than one who is always included in raids (not saying there aren't any).

In my opinion, Blizzard need to instill some confidence in the spec by not allowing them to drop below the competitive bar again. I personally like where we are now and long may it continue.

Edit: With regards rankings, what difference do they make to your raid? Is your retnub a benefit to your raid or not is the question you need to ask. If they are winning their raid spot on merit against others in your guild, then I can't see the problem. If they are just along for the buffs but otherwise might as well just sit in a corner until it's time to use them, then that's another matter (though I suspect that's not the case).

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

for this tier (and the previous one) I'd agree with very high end raiding guilds not taking ret paladins (unless they're actually keeping up, which is hard) but for next tier (SoO) ret is looking really solid. Even me Mr.QQ is looking forward to it!

The problem with ret this tier is that the majority of fights are absolute horror for a ret to do well in, quick target changing hurts, burst aoe is meh, cleave is meh and our single target dps can be matched by other melee specs and ranged specs who are better at everything else I said. To top it off if you have 2-3 paladins in the raid before (prot + 1-2 holy) which most top guilds have then ret devo and other utility abilities aren't as useful and certainly not a reason to bring rets.

Lets keep in mind that it's during progress this tier that top guilds benched their rets, whatever happens after progress or when gear makes progress easier is pointless in this discussion. For a very top end guild there was perfectly fine benching rets if they needed more dps (which other class/specs brought), disagree? sure, fine. Still doesn't change the fact that this tier was fucking piss for ret because fights favored ranged, cleave and multidotting, ret has no power compared to others in those fields and covering your ears and yelling doesn't change that fact.

I'm not even going to discuss 10man.

[Revvo]

for this tier (and the previous one) I'd agree with very high end raiding guilds not taking ret paladins (unless they're actually keeping up, which is hard) but for next tier (SoO) ret is looking really solid. Even me Mr.QQ is looking forward to it!

The problem with ret this tier is that the majority of fights are absolute horror for a ret to do well in, quick target changing hurts, burst aoe is meh, cleave is meh and our single target dps can be matched by other melee specs and ranged specs who are better at everything else I said. To top it off if you have 2-3 paladins in the raid before (prot + 1-2 holy) which most top guilds have then ret devo and other utility abilities aren't as useful and certainly not a reason to bring rets.

Lets keep in mind that it's during progress this tier that top guilds benched their rets, whatever happens after progress or when gear makes progress easier is pointless in this discussion. For a very top end guild there was perfectly fine benching rets if they needed more dps (which other class/specs brought), disagree? sure, fine. Still doesn't change the fact that this tier was fucking piss for ret because fights favored ranged, cleave and multidotting, ret has no power compared to others in those fields and covering your ears and yelling doesn't change that fact.

I'm not even going to discuss 10man.

Eh, idk I felt pretty good during PTR testing.

[bigred]

throwsbigrok - gnomeregan...there may not be one, but looking for a definitive answer as to whether or not heroic thunderforged upgraded 2/2 primordius talisman of rage is better than regular upgraded 2/2 spark of zandalar...i'm way over on hit and have a lot of haste as is...my current set up has my CS at 3.3 secs...thanks...i can give more info if needed...with my luck, this has been talked about and i just can't find it. thanks.

[anaxie]

The reason you see so few rets used in top world guilds is because there are only a handful of top world rets that even play the game. Most of which have no desire to do launch week nolife raiding a huge amount with mandatory alts/multi raid farm Infact you just got the opinion from myself and Solsa arguably 2 of the best players in the spec. If you don't like the answer then you are just fishing for the answer you want to hear.

Why is this even a question for your guild. Bairdy is dominating the other melee. Quick better bench ret guilds with shit rets are saying the class sucks.

[Bonkura]

The reason you see so few rets used in top world guilds is because there are only a handful of top world rets that even play the game. Most of which have no desire to do launch week nolife raiding a huge amount with mandatory alts/multi raid farm Infact you just got the opinion from myself and Solsa arguably 2 of the best players in the spec. If you don't like the answer then you are just fishing for the answer you want to hear.

rofl drop the crap. most top guilds have big parts of their rosters swapping mains between tiers all the time. if ret was an option for them then players at that level would have no issues whatsoever to master the spec if needed.