Anaxie's Totally Revolutionary SoO Retribution T16 BiS & Theorycraft

[Kowloon]

That shows how much of the progression race at the top 5 world you understand then.

Maybe the problem isn't the retribution class as a whole but the individual players themselves.

[Deleted]

Throwing a few FoLs doesn't make us non replaceable, neither does AM which is situational at most and only slightly better than smokebomb/AMS, AND holy and prot have it also.
Rogues have great mobility, amazing switch/cleave capacity, which we don't. Dk have the Mass-grip, Mass-snare which are amazing in every fight with adds sensible to CCs, better switching/cleave capacity and their DPS is less hurt by movement thanks to their pet, Death coil, strong diseases and such.

Even in terms of personal defensive CDs, cloak+feint+elusion+vanish are better and on shorter CDs than any of our CDs. AMS and death pact too., though IBF is shit for dps DKs.

So yeah, in terms of raw damage, Ret is fine, but raw damage is rarely the key to kill a boss aside from patchwerk-style fights, which aren't many (maybe 1-2 per tier) and even then, we only dps as much, we are far from OP, and the amazing burst that used to characterize us is now only not bad, thanks to enhanced sham, assa rogues and others I surely forget..
Besides that, DPS on your meters/logs depends on so many things to so many levels aside from how viable your class is. I would only cite raid composition, Rdps, strategy, your specific role in it... and I'm not being exhaustive.

We are a viable choice for any semi-hardcore guild, but to compete at the highest level and catch those world first, it has yet to happen a Ret is absolutely better than any other melee. And no, it is not because of our damage done.

The problem in this thread is most people seem to be too lazy to set the context in which they are telling things, and are monolithic on their point of view and act childish at first sight of debate.

As for the ptr trinkets and set bonuses, I won't even get into this because fighting like mad dogs and being as absolute as we can read here about things that are WiP is just pointless, unless you are talking conditionnal at all time, provide extensive testing and are actively participating in official sticky blue post and twitter to try and make things better.

Oh, and I love ret, it has never been so fun since our broken time in ICC and I don't care if don't play the most OP class/role combo. I just play it because it is viable in my progress context without me slowing back my guild, and because I love it.
Did I say I love ret ? Here, Ret is fun, Ret is cool.

[Reghame]

regardless of which str dps gets more our of the CDR trinket, it does not matter. you gain MUCH MORE DPS by using the other 2 viable options that using it would possibly make your raid take more of that AOE damage that you wanted to avoid in the first place. if your needed the extra CD's that badly then your healers are possibly lacking, your dps is lacking hence your healers strain longer, or the encounter is just broken. if it stays as is, the crit stacking trinket is gona be another ji-kun, except its MUCH MUCH MUCH stronger. i'm more or less interested in this rumor about gorehowl and these other weapons. if they have procs themselves then im interested to see how these things will work with our current PTR kit. then again, its looking more or less like a wait n see type of deal once more.

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And as for the whole which dps is better, at this point it doesn't matter. last time i checked all 3 str dps classes were at least relatively close on sims, all 3 brought some sort of utility for certain fights, and the ptr is changing things about all 3 of them. we don't know who is going to be the best next patch till it lands. and as far as im concerned, no one who is not in the top 5-10 guilds gives a flying shit what class you are ATM, stop standing in fire and do your rotation, priority right and no one cares.
as far as i know, this last tier cant be used as an example of how rets were bad either. we didn't get any of our buffs until AFTER a majority of top guilds already cleared the content so saying X didn't use a paladin for all of these fights don't matter cause we WERE bad, now we are alright, and getting BETTER on the ptr.

also, man everyone needs to stop taking everything so serious. its one thing to joke around but everyone needs to stop acting so hurt about everything. lets all just play a nice board game, get mad at that then take it out on some normal BGer noobs instead of on each other on the forums

[anaxie]

Largely what we have here is low and high end players having a pissing contest. If you are new to hardcore/Semi-hardcore raiding and largely inexperienced at First month / week zone clears Nelda is trying to point out. Anyhow again. We need to wait until we actually see itemization. Currently we wouldn't touch CDR trinket if the crit trinket stays broken like this because it is too powerful linked with the Stats % trinket for the crtical damage % gains. Wait and see what happens in the first major boss itemization build. Chill

A big thing to point out too is Top 1-10 world and top 10-100 World are a WHOLE different ballgame as far as raiding structure goes.
Prior to feather and 4 set... Primarily feather. I felt so fucking useless in ToT. Now I pretty much feel like a god, before those items I felt like a wet noodle. Of course 15% SoL played a pretty huge part midtier.

[Reghame]

oh, i forgot to mention this earlier about the CDR trinket. If you are using the Unbreakable Spirit talent and the CDR trinket, you don't get as much benefit out of the CDR trinket on things like Divine Shield and Divine Protection. so what you get is like a 20 second CD on DP and i believe a 2.1 minute something CD on bubble. (dont feel like doing math or going on the PTR to check, sorry) that being said though, a 50%ish cd on DP + the old prot 2 or 4 piece from t15 could be very strong. i'm not sure what this could all do with prot paladins next tier since i don't like to fiddle around with numbers TOO much. would seem like a problem people were suggesting about us using our old tier cause it was better or something along that line. we shall see.

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Largely what we have here is low and high end players having a pissing contest. If you are largely in experienced at First month / week zone clears Nelda is trying to point out. Anyhow again. We need to wait until we actually see itemization. Currently we wouldn't touch CDR trinket if the crit trinket stays broken like this because it is too powerful linked with the Stats % trinket for the crtical damage % gains. Wait and see what happens in the first major boss itemization build. Chill

exactly, we just need to wait out the storm of changes is all.

[anaxie]

oh, i forgot to mention this earlier about the CDR trinket. If you are using the Unbreakable Spirit talent and the CDR trinket, you don't get as much benefit out of the CDR trinket on things like Divine Shield and Divine Protection. so what you get is like a 20 second CD on DP and i believe a 2.1 minute something CD on bubble. (dont feel like doing math or going on the PTR to check, sorry) that being said though, a 50%ish cd on DP + the old prot 2 or 4 piece from t15 could be very strong. i'm not sure what this could all do with prot paladins next tier since i don't like to fiddle around with numbers TOO much. would seem like a problem people were suggesting about us using our old tier cause it was better or something along that line. we shall see.

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exactly, we just need to wait out the storm of changes is all.

#1 this isn't a prot thread
#2 Babble babble babble
#3 this has already been said
#4 Common sense

[Neldarie]

The point charles made is a better one than you're trying to make. Literally all I've said is "we don't know all the encounters yet, we don't know how valuable the trinket is going to be yet, they could make encounters where we need the faster Devo aura cd" and you're going off on some tangent about how you think I don't know top end raiding or something. Its a pointless argument and I'm done responding to you if you're just going to make ad hominem and "i'm better than you" responses. Also for the record, I've been raiding top end or damn near since vanilla.

That's totally fine. Main difference between our arguments is the concept of "top-end".

@some posts above: Numbers Retribution currently delivers are real good. But what do you actually bring past those numbers? Did you ever ask yourself that? Both DK (mass-grip) utility and Warrior DbtS when tanks fall down make or break fights/kills (both unique and "irreplaceable" at that). Thats talking "cutting-edge" / "top-end". When the size of the hole you have to get is so narrow to make it, that if you twitch you get stuck. Numbers game is the game of the casual/not-so good guilds/players.

PS: I have absolutely nothing against casual players. I quite enjoyed raiding MoP rather casually myself. What I do have a problem with is people who never ever seen real "top-end" say top1-5 world comming here pretending they have.

[crazy8]

Throwing a few FoLs doesn't make us non replaceable, neither does AM which is situational at most and only slightly better than smokebomb/AMS, AND holy and prot have it also.
Rogues have great mobility, amazing switch/cleave capacity, which we don't. Dk have the Mass-grip, Mass-snare which are amazing in every fight with adds sensible to CCs, better switching/cleave capacity and their DPS is less hurt by movement thanks to their pet, Death coil, strong diseases and such.

Even in terms of personal defensive CDs, cloak+feint+elusion+vanish are better and on shorter CDs than any of our CDs. AMS and death pact too., though IBF is shit for dps DKs.

So yeah, in terms of raw damage, Ret is fine, but raw damage is rarely the key to kill a boss aside from patchwerk-style fights, which aren't many (maybe 1-2 per tier) and even then, we only dps as much, we are far from OP, and the amazing burst that used to characterize us is now only not bad, thanks to enhanced sham, assa rogues and others I surely forget..
Besides that, DPS on your meters/logs depends on so many things to so many levels aside from how viable your class is. I would only cite raid composition, Rdps, strategy, your specific role in it... and I'm not being exhaustive.

We are a viable choice for any semi-hardcore guild, but to compete at the highest level and catch those world first, it has yet to happen a Ret is absolutely better than any other melee. And no, it is not because of our damage done.

The problem in this thread is most people seem to be too lazy to set the context in which they are telling things, and are monolithic on their point of view and act childish at first sight of debate.

As for the ptr trinkets and set bonuses, I won't even get into this because fighting like mad dogs and being as absolute as we can read here about things that are WiP is just pointless, unless you are talking conditionnal at all time, provide extensive testing and are actively participating in official sticky blue post and twitter to try and make things better.

Oh, and I love ret, it has never been so fun since our broken time in ICC and I don't care if don't play the most OP class/role combo. I just play it because it is viable in my progress context without me slowing back my guild, and because I love it.
Did I say I love ret ? Here, Ret is fun, Ret is cool.

I was just going to post something like this, the only reason you would not bring a ret is because you are trying to get world first or perhaps server first, sorry, raiding with good competent people is more important to me and my guildies, so long as you are competent at your class you can clear all content in this game, short of perhaps some broken encounters.

Before some of the top end rets go off on this post try and remember that when you are hosting a thread like this and commenting on it you are trying to help all rets, not just the 1% who are going for world firsts.

[Vaylen]

You guys seem to forget bubbletaunt swag. $$

[Neldarie]

I was just going to post something like this, the only reason you would not bring a ret is because you are trying to get world first or perhaps server first, sorry, raiding with good competent people is more important to me and my guildies, so long as you are competent at your class you can clear all content in this game, short of perhaps some broken encounters.

Before some of the top end rets go off on this post try and remember that when you are hosting a thread like this and commenting on it you are trying to help all rets, not just the 1% who are going for world firsts.

Exactly what that guy posted that you quoted. And thats why it is also important to break thick ice of bias for those casual/semi-hardcore players who never experienced the 1%, thats if you wanna see Ret from all angles that is.

[Reghame]

#1 this isn't a prot thread
#2 Babble babble babble
#3 this has already been said
#4 Common sense

#1 i just mentioned it for prot, the entire post was not pointed toward them. its still a very interesting to take account for with talent choices and trinket choice in the future.
#2 Babble babble babble
#3 if it was already said, its not needed to say that it has been already said, its a DAMN LARGE thread, things can be missed and im trying to post useful information on what i can occasionally test.
#4 i can be a douche too, so ill just quote you and say one word. "chill"

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Exactly what that guy posted that you quoted. And thats why it is also important to break thick ice of bias for those casual/semi-hardcore players who never experienced the 1%, thats if you wanna see Ret from all angles that is.

yes, it would seem the stigma for us this expansion has been that we were trash for all encounters all the time because someone in a high end guild said they didn't use them for some reason or another. currently we are more than ok and next patch is looking like just flat out buffs. minor or not its still something to take into consideration.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

So far in MoP ret has been 100% garbage or sub par on every fight except 3 or 4? By sub par I mean our single target can be matched or outdone by other class/specs which also brings "more" to the raid through cleave, grips, multidots and so on. Does that mean rets should be benched if you're outside the top 10 race? No, top 3~5 are usually hours or a day after eachother on kills. From there on you generally see couple days between them, the thing about isn't that they're so bad that you can't or shouldn't have one (or more) in your raid. It's just that so far in MoP what ret has been "strong" in is single target which basically every other spec in the game could match us on. Now thanks to the 15% buff to SoL that shouldn't be happening anymore and our overal "viability" as far as progress goes has gone up a lot, now looking into top 3~5 25man ranks... do I think there's room for a ret there as of the current PTR build? Yes. Do I think ret will be so strong guilds will use a couple rets? No. But that hasn't got anything to do with how "strong" ret is in dps or anything. Other melee are still better "built" for the fights as far as I've seen in SoO, DKs with disease spreading, rogues with smokebomb and warriors with RC since a lot of the raid wide hits next tier looks to be physical. Warriors are also generally really strong every endtier in expansions because stats get out of controll for them, bring a ret isn't going to drag down top 5 progress guilds next tier I think. I do however think that the 1 prot paladin and 2 holy paladins that those guilds usually have access to will cover whatever devo auras they need and thus (regardless of the cd reducing trinket or not) making ret paladins devos (or devos in general) less "needed" so you can't really bring a ret for the devo.

And it's not about talking as we got 1% experience or not, it's about looking into what kind of mechanics that the future raid brings and what sort of fights are coming. Doesn't take a fucking brain surgeon to see that rets are going to be horrible for an encounter and strong for another. Besides the thing that seperates the top 1% and the say top 100 guilds isn't skill (at least not the biggest difference) but time, dedication and how persistant + consistant you can play. For me I'd love to progress raid for 16hrs a day for 3-4 weeks, that sounds like something I could get on with if I had the time and freedom to take that long every day to play without being disturbed by pets, work, family and so on.

And no I don't consider myself one of the best rets in the world, or in eu for that matter. I've been in the game a fucking long time and followed the progression race for 5-6 years (didn't care the first 2 years as I was a "kid") that doesn't mean I or others for that matter can't understand the things that matters in a race to world first guild.

[Skulldancer]

So far in MoP ret has been 100% garbage or sub par on every fight except 3 or 4? By sub par I mean our single target can be matched or outdone by other class/specs which also brings "more" to the raid through cleave, grips, multidots and so on. Does that mean rets should be benched if you're outside the top 10 race? No, top 3~5 are usually hours or a day after eachother on kills. From there on you generally see couple days between them, the thing about isn't that they're so bad that you can't or shouldn't have one (or more) in your raid. It's just that so far in MoP what ret has been "strong" in is single target which basically every other spec in the game could match us on. Now thanks to the 15% buff to SoL that shouldn't be happening anymore and our overal "viability" as far as progress goes has gone up a lot, now looking into top 3~5 25man ranks... do I think there's room for a ret there as of the current PTR build? Yes. Do I think ret will be so strong guilds will use a couple rets? No. But that hasn't got anything to do with how "strong" ret is in dps or anything. Other melee are still better "built" for the fights as far as I've seen in SoO, DKs with disease spreading, rogues with smokebomb and warriors with RC since a lot of the raid wide hits next tier looks to be physical. Warriors are also generally really strong every endtier in expansions because stats get out of controll for them, bring a ret isn't going to drag down top 5 progress guilds next tier I think. I do however think that the 1 prot paladin and 2 holy paladins that those guilds usually have access to will cover whatever devo auras they need and thus (regardless of the cd reducing trinket or not) making ret paladins devos (or devos in general) less "needed" so you can't really bring a ret for the devo.

And it's not about talking as we got 1% experience or not, it's about looking into what kind of mechanics that the future raid brings and what sort of fights are coming. Doesn't take a fucking brain surgeon to see that rets are going to be horrible for an encounter and strong for another. Besides the thing that seperates the top 1% and the say top 100 guilds isn't skill (at least not the biggest difference) but time, dedication and how persistant + consistant you can play. For me I'd love to progress raid for 16hrs a day for 3-4 weeks, that sounds like something I could get on with if I had the time and freedom to take that long every day to play without being disturbed by pets, work, family and so on.

And no I don't consider myself one of the best rets in the world, or in eu for that matter. I've been in the game a fucking long time and followed the progression race for 5-6 years (didn't care the first 2 years as I was a "kid") that doesn't mean I or others for that matter can't understand the things that matters in a race to world first guild.

Are You ok?

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Are You ok?

I'm fine baby, how are you?

[Skulldancer]

I'm fine baby, how are you?

Just seems like you're beating a dead horse thats all

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Just seems like you're beating a dead horse thats all

I wouldn't hurt a horse, not that I could anyways.

[Reghame]

So far in MoP ret has been 100% garbage or sub par on every fight except 3 or 4? By sub par I mean our single target can be matched or outdone by other class/specs which also brings "more" to the raid through cleave, grips, multidots and so on. Does that mean rets should be benched if you're outside the top 10 race? No, top 3~5 are usually hours or a day after eachother on kills. From there on you generally see couple days between them, the thing about isn't that they're so bad that you can't or shouldn't have one (or more) in your raid. It's just that so far in MoP what ret has been "strong" in is single target which basically every other spec in the game could match us on. Now thanks to the 15% buff to SoL that shouldn't be happening anymore and our overal "viability" as far as progress goes has gone up a lot, now looking into top 3~5 25man ranks... do I think there's room for a ret there as of the current PTR build? Yes. Do I think ret will be so strong guilds will use a couple rets? No. But that hasn't got anything to do with how "strong" ret is in dps or anything. Other melee are still better "built" for the fights as far as I've seen in SoO, DKs with disease spreading, rogues with smokebomb and warriors with RC since a lot of the raid wide hits next tier looks to be physical. Warriors are also generally really strong every endtier in expansions because stats get out of controll for them, bring a ret isn't going to drag down top 5 progress guilds next tier I think. I do however think that the 1 prot paladin and 2 holy paladins that those guilds usually have access to will cover whatever devo auras they need and thus (regardless of the cd reducing trinket or not) making ret paladins devos (or devos in general) less "needed" so you can't really bring a ret for the devo.

And it's not about talking as we got 1% experience or not, it's about looking into what kind of mechanics that the future raid brings and what sort of fights are coming. Doesn't take a fucking brain surgeon to see that rets are going to be horrible for an encounter and strong for another. Besides the thing that seperates the top 1% and the say top 100 guilds isn't skill (at least not the biggest difference) but time, dedication and how persistant + consistant you can play. For me I'd love to progress raid for 16hrs a day for 3-4 weeks, that sounds like something I could get on with if I had the time and freedom to take that long every day to play without being disturbed by pets, work, family and so on.

And no I don't consider myself one of the best rets in the world, or in eu for that matter. I've been in the game a fucking long time and followed the progression race for 5-6 years (didn't care the first 2 years as I was a "kid") that doesn't mean I or others for that matter can't understand the things that matters in a race to world first guild.

EDIT: BTW, my post is very long too and very eye exploding, i tried to space it out a bit though so have fun if you want to read it all.

i think my eyes just exploded from the giant wall o text yea got there friend.....
ANYWAYS what i could take from that is we should be balanced around all aspects of the game from low end raiding, to top end. This will almost never be the case. such balance is so hard to achieve, and that's ONLY for pve. your forgetting that unless they have different spell abilities for both PVE AND PVP such balance i think can NEVER can be achieved unless your rotation i just press 1 every second till the boss/ player is dead. which is a terrible way to kill yourself if you ask me.

honestly, i would rather be balanced more at the lower end of things because a VAST MAJORITY of the player base cant get the maximum out of their class. i believe a majority of us in this very thread could STILL be a lot better than we are even if we have a few top 10 ranks here and there.
And in case anyone forgets, let us remember that unless your name is a warlock, you get pretty quickly nerfed if you become very viable or even OP in every field, blizzard usually likes to have classes AND SPECS to have their strengths and weaknesses.(hint, the warlock thing is me just be super jelly of them this expansion, they just seem so good to me :P)

the only issue i have with blizzard as far as balancing the dps specs is that they like to have the classes fill specific rolls, but then don't openly admit or say they want X class to be super strong in Y case, but ok to sub-par to Z case.

The only issue with this way of balance is that at both top and bottom parts of PVE or PVP cases, the part that is lacking can not be TOO weak, or else would never be used in that situation despite skill or not, and that at the strong point cannot be too strong, otherwise content would need to be balanced in a way that what we know as class stacking becomes a norm as it become for a while.

i'm not a senior designer for any games nor have even worked in the field to begin with so this is all just personal speculation as to how i BELIEVE a game like this should work, so take my word with a grain of salt if you will.

as for what i do know, is that at the very beginning of T15, our single target was lacking and we were one of the lowest if not THE lowest viable(viable meaning im not counting classes that have another stronger spec ala warriors with arms and fury) dps spec in the raid. as we progressed, we started to scale up a little and beat some of these specs. i believe it was half way through ToT that we got a 10% dps increase through the 15% SoL buff we gained, which threw our single target up quite a bit more.

During all this though, our burst AOE was fairly nice. as we progressed it got better, then we got buffed it got better, and now we have more buffs on the way and other things that make our AOE even stronger. Assuming that other classes dont somehow ALL gain the same single target dps spike we took going into and OUT of t15, we can ASSUME we are at least closer to middle of the pack if not a little higher. our AOE on the other hand, was somewhat strong, then it got stronger, and now i believe it might just be the STRONGEST out of ALL OF THE DPS SPECS in the game with a full set of the T16 gear we will attain.

Because of this, i do not WANT to be super strong in single target, it has a HIGH and i mean REALLY HIGH risk of making us get nerfed and have NOTHING in return. we can be balanced if what we have now is not changed. we can preform a niche roll without being completely tossed out of our other roll unless your in one of those top 10 or w/e guilds who has such a large roster to replace and class stack for every fight. As long as we stay as is, im happy, you may not like the niche your preforming and that's ok. i still think its better to be in for most of the fights and left out on some because X is really tight and we need a lot of y right now. because the other option is just not raiding at all.

Again, im not a super duper expert. i just look at whats in front of me like WoLs, sims, epeen bot, w/e is available, and see what i can do or see what will be done so i can brace myself for it. and this is what im doing now, i see us being somewhat strong overall, but not in too much risk. i would rather make myself an enemy from my fellow spec mates, just so we can all be relatively happy in the long run rather than miserable all the time.

[UnderworldSoup]

In an effort to get back on the topic rather than a debate that was dealt with a few pages back..

I've been looking at quite a few of the higher parsing rets on Ra-den in 10s. Some are using PToR while others are using the Spark. While I understand that the talisman will overtake the Spark [generally] at any haste values above 15k, is there still a use for the trinket on Ra-den in particular even above that point? Or is it being used to try and make up a loss of haste on other gear?

I'm really curious about this since I'm at 40.32% (17,134) haste as is with the Spark equip. Most of them, even with the Spark on, have between 37 and 38 like it's detrimental to their DPS to be higher, even though the cap is about 50%.

Trying to do an analysis on why my damage is a bit lower than some of the others in my raid group currently.

Edit: Another question but this one is more towards melee in general on the Ra-den encounter: if you guys soak the unstable vita using two stack points external to the boss' location, when do you run out? 4 seconds remaining? Or do you run out much earlier to be safe?

[Deleted]

I think it's because of RNG. If you have a trinket proc every 11 seconds, you will have a spark proc after 99 seconds (1 on pull + 9 procs after 99 seconds), while you won't ever have more than 1 stacks of PToR. in this case, spark is worth 9430/5 1886 STR, while primordius is worth 1795 STR. and that's with 91% uptime. most of the time, it does not even have 60% uptime, like Revvo mentioned earlier.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

My guild just ignorered P2 mechanics 100% just healed through the raid damage (which doesn't change by ignoring balls afaik) and just relied on our dpsers to outdps the hp gain from the red balls (which wasn't hard)

I like PToR more than spark because you're a lot more likely to have one or more stacks of the trinket when needed. Adds on lei Shen? 1-3 stacks most of the time. Balls on Ra Den? 1-3 stacks, spark (for me anyways) seems to proc when you don't want it, before transition on lei shen etcetera.
PToR gives a higher dps throughout the fights in my experience while spark if timed with cds well can give higher cd burst, unless you're lucky and get 5stscks on cds, which happens!