T20 Retribution Compared to Other Melee Classes

[Goldenboy1]

Everything is subject to change, this is an "as is" comparison. Disclaimer, I do not have extensive knowledge on classes and specs other than Retribution Paladin. This thread is for discussion on a dps focused thread opposed to a mixed "T20" thread.

Frost Death Knight:
Item - Death Knight T20 Frost 2P Bonus (New) Empower Rune Weapon increases your damage dealt by 20% for 10 sec.
Item - Death Knight T20 Frost 4P Bonus (New) Reduce the cooldown of Empower Rune Weapon by 1 second for every 60 Runic Power spent.

Unholy Death Knight:
Item - Death Knight T20 Unholy 2P Bonus (New) Death Coil causes one of your Army of the Dead ghouls to explode, dealing [ 150% of AP ] damage to up to 0 nearby enemies.
Item - Death Knight T20 Unholy 4P Bonus (New) Each rune you spend reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 3.0 seconds.

Havoc Demon Hunter:
Item - Demon Hunter T20 Havoc 2P Bonus (New) Blade Dance refunds 40 Fury when it hits an enemy.
Item - Demon Hunter T20 Havoc 4P Bonus (New) Blade Dance's critical Strike chance is increased by 50%.

Feral Druid:
Item - Druid T20 Feral 2P Bonus (New) Gain 2 Energy each time Rip deals damage.
Item - Druid T20 Feral 4P Bonus (New) Rip deals 15% increased damage and lasts 8 sec longer.

Survival Hunter:
Item - Hunter T20 Survival 2P Bonus (New) Lacerate deals 15% increased damage and Flanking Strike increases the duration of your Lacerate by 6 sec.
Item - Hunter T20 Survival 4P Bonus (New) Mongoose Bite consumes 3.0 seconds of your Lacerate on your target, instantly dealing 3.0 seconds worth of remaining damage.

Windwalker Monk:
Item - Monk T20 Windwalker 2P Bonus (New) Rising Sun Kick applies Rising Fist to the target for 8 sec, increasing the critical strike chance of your Fists of Fury against the target by 25%.
Item - Monk T20 Windwalker 4P Bonus (New) Fists of Fury increases the critical strike chance of your next Rising Sun Kick by 50%.

Retribution Paladin:
Item - Paladin T20 Retribution 2P Bonus (New) Blade of Justice generates 1 additional Holy Power.
Item - Paladin T20 Retribution 4P Bonus (New) Judgment also increases the damage of Blade of Justice.

Assassination Rogue:
Item - Rogue T20 Assassination 2P Bonus (New) Garrote's cooldown is reduced by 6.0 sec.
Item - Rogue T20 Assassination 4P Bonus (New) Garrote generates 1 additional combo point and deals 20% increased damage.

Outlaw Rogue:
Item - Rogue T20 Outlaw 2P Bonus (New) Free Pistol Shots increase your critical strike chance by 10% for 8 seconds.
Item - Rogue T20 Outlaw 4P Bonus (New) Adrenaline Rush persists for 15 sec longer at half power.

Subtlety Rogue:
Item - Rogue T20 Subtlety 2P Bonus (New) Symbols of Death costs 30 less Energy.
Item - Rogue T20 Subtlety 4P Bonus (New) Symbols of Death causes your next 3 Shadowstrikes to critically strike.

Enhancement Shaman:
Item - Shaman T20 Enhancement 2P Bonus (New) Crash Lightning increases your critical strike chance by 5% for 16 sec.
Item - Shaman T20 Enhancement 4P Bonus (New) Stormstrike critical strikes increase the damage of your next Crash Lightning by 30%, stacking up to 10 times.

Arms Warrior:
Item - Warrior T20 Arms 2P Bonus (New) Colossus Smash reduces the cooldown of Ravager by 1.2 sec.
Item - Warrior T20 Arms 4P Bonus (New) While Ravager is active, you automatically cast a total of 4 Mortal Strikes at random nearby enemies.

Fury Warrior:
Item - Warrior T20 Fury 2P Bonus (New) Raging Blow has an 10% chance to generate 40 additional Rage.
Item - Warrior T20 Fury 4P Bonus (New) Enrage generates 6 Rage and heals you for 3% of your maximum health over its duration.



Brief Conclusions:
Frost DK: Stronger burst and sustained dps through a steroid on Empowered Rune Weapon and a cooldown reduction mechanic via spending runic power.

Unholy DK: Fairly strong increase to single target and aoe damage and the cooldown of Army of Ghouls is being reduced. There is some rng involved in this set with which ghoul explodes however, overall it seems pretty standard and is a breath of fresh air from all of the rng in their kit.

Havoc DH: With First Blood Blade Dance is used in single target and with generate 20 fury with 2 set. 4 set increases the critical strike chance of Blade Dance by 50%. Overall, more fury generation, more single target and aoe damage. Another good showing of Havoc tier bonuses.

Feral Druid: The 2 set bonus becomes extremely strong in aoe situations where multiple targets have Rip on them. However, in single target the 2 set bonus is okay, more energy but nothing game changing. The 4set bonus makes Rip deal even more damage and last longer. This is very good for them in single target as they will do more damage over time and will give more energy over the extended duration.

Survival Hunter: I have never played this class and have no comment.

Windwalker Monk: The 2 set and 4 set focus purely on single target damage with respect to critical strike. Considering Windwalker is strong in aoe situations, this tier set is very powerful as a stimulus for single target damage. If the bonus also applies to your Spirits then aoe will also receive a fair increase in total damage.

Retribution Paladin: Our 2 set is somewhat mediocre, the one more Holy Power bonuses can be useful however, now using Blade of Justice/Divine Hammers over caps your holy power at 3. I am unsure of how this will impact total damage as it can be useful and it can be bad. Our 4 set is potentially a game changer in terms of talent selection, boosts our single target and cleave damage; overall pretty good.

Rogues: I do not play rogue and do not know how strong these bonuses are.

Enhancement Shaman: I do not play shaman and do not know how strong these bonuses are.

Arms Warrior: The 2 set is helpful in sustained aoe situations as it works to decrease the cooldown of Ravager/Bladestorm. The 4 set is amazing in single target and aoe. It provides 4 free mortal strikes which is an impressive amount of single target damage when focused on one target and just a small little give me in aoe.

Fury Warrior: Raging Blow now has a chance to provide a hunk of rage which is pretty helpful in single target and aoe situations. The 4 set is worthless, if it isnt 6 rage a second that is. If the set does provide 6 rage a second when enraged then its shaping up to be a pretty decent bonus.


Overall the Retribution set is the red headed step child of the melee classes. The set provides a minimal damage increase and may actually decrease our throughput in certain situations. How do you guys feel about the Retribution set in comparison to the others and what would you do differently?


EDIT: Overall the Retribution set seems fairly strong. Our 2 set is underwhelming as you might have even more downtime to avoid over filling our Holy Power. At the same time, if using Blade of Wrath there can be lucky procs leading to a combo string of Blade and Templars Verdicts. Our 4 set is potentially a game changer, depending on the new encounters we might see Greater Judgement become king when used with Divine Hammers. Overall our single target and cleave damage is being adequately boosted however, there are no benefits in aoe as of yet.

[xezar]

I dunno, in theory you could get more bursty with the pieces as you can automatically use TV after 1 BoJ now, and if you get a string of procs from the talent then that's a nice BoJ > TV > BoJ > TV > BoJ > TV spam during wings or your judgment window without having to use wimpy noodle strike somewhere. Agree the 4P seems underwhelming at face value without knowing how much, maybe if they'd just allow judgment to increase the power of any attacks that'd be nicer.

I don't play rogue much, but the Mut 2p for it seems more underwhelming than ret pally unless you need to garrote multiple targets, and the 4p is eh. Outlaw 2p is kinda boring, but 15 seconds more of AR it almost sounds like on the 4p makes it nice. Sub I don't touch. They're about as lame as ret pally tier bonuses to me.

[killwithpwr]

What Intel is there to indicate the 4 set will not affect Divine Hammer?

[Goldenboy1]

What Intel is there to indicate the 4 set will not affect Divine Hammer?

It has yet to be confirmed. The intel is in respect to the recent 20% increase to Blade of Justice excluding Divine Hammer. Its possible they may ignore Divine Hammers bonus due to this precedent. It is too early to tell so I assumed it was a possibility.

[Shelly]

Paladin set, especially with 4 piece, seems extremely strong to me. Mostly it's going to raise the value of mastery - provided that I'm reading it right and mastery will cover blade of justice now. It also keeps Liandrin's ring high up there for legendaries.

Unholy set just seems underwhelming. I'm going to presume the explode a ghoul thing applies not only to regular Army but to Apocalypse army. What it really does is add a layer of depth to the spec that's frankly not needed. Basically you'll want to army, then pool runic to try and get off 8 death coils in the time while army is up, but before you start firing them you'll want to have a timer saying how much longer they'll be up.

I'm working under the assumption that it'll actually kill the ghouls btw. If it doesn't and just makes them jizz puss all over everything around them then it's pretty nice.

[Monzsterr]

It has yet to be confirmed. The intel is in respect to the recent 20% increase to Blade of Justice excluding Divine Hammer. Its possible they may ignore Divine Hammers bonus due to this precedent. It is too early to tell so I assumed it was a possibility.

But remember that his change came shortly after the 100% increase in damage from divine hammer in 7.1.5 in an attempt to keep BoW and DH somewhat balanced.

Only time will tell but I think it's most likely and keeping with how bonuses usually work that DH will be effected, though strange things with talents being ignored has happened before. Execution sentence not being effected by HP spender artifact talents for example.

[Aribethe]

But remember that his change came shortly after the 100% increase in damage from divine hammer in 7.1.5 in an attempt to keep BoW and DH somewhat balanced.

Only time will tell but I think it's most likely and keeping with how bonuses usually work that DH will be effected, though strange things with talents being ignored has happened before. Execution sentence not being effected by HP spender artifact talents for example.

Its flagged to effect Divine Hammer for the 4PC from what I'm seeing on wowhead and wowdb. wowhead will show it in the tooltip. wowdb you go to the spell and check the modified by tab and it will list which spells modify the effect. It will not have Divine Hammer if its not affected.

[Morally Grey Storm]

What Intel is there to indicate the 4 set will not affect Divine Hammer?

Precedence over Divine Hammer and LaO talent comes to mind.

[Wrecktangle]

Paladin set, especially with 4 piece, seems extremely strong to me. Mostly it's going to raise the value of mastery - provided that I'm reading it right and mastery will cover blade of justice now. It also keeps Liandrin's ring high up there for legendaries.

Can you explain in more detail how you think the 4pc seems, and I quote, extremely strong? Sure it'll make Mastery stronger, but by how much and how did you come to that determination? What constitutes a 4pc being considered extremely strong? What metric are you using to validate your claim? I.e. 4pc = 10% dps buff therefore extremely strong, etc.

Can you also explain how you arrived at the conclusion that Liadrin's Ring is high up there for legendaries, let alone how this change improves/maintains its standing?

[Lunavale]

Problem with the 4pc is that even if it does effect Divine Hammer, because the damage increase is limited to targets with judgment it isn't all that great in an AoE situation where a significant number of the mobs you're fighting don't have the judge debuff. Especially if you don't have Greater Judgment.

[Temna]

I can maybe see mastery and crit with Virtue's Blade maybe being a thing...which would be interesting to say the least. Still early days on the ptr and we also can't wholely rule out ability changes later on.

First glance, looks alright.

[dnicks17]

With their attempted rework of Crusade, we saw that the developers really want to shift power to mastery.

The 4pc seems like a decent step in doing that, but I don't think it will be enough and instead just make it kind of awkward.

[ThePants999]

Our 4 set is mediocre unless the damage bonus is impressive, also if it does not apply to Divine Hammers then this is worthless and will only be a slight damage increase.

I don't understand how anyone could even suspect that Blizzard might do this. They're not going to design a tier bonus that's completely negated if you pick a particular talent. I appreciate that some people lack faith in their design abilities, but they're not THAT stupid.

[Goldenboy1]

I don't understand how anyone could even suspect that Blizzard might do this. They're not going to design a tier bonus that's completely negated if you pick a particular talent. I appreciate that some people lack faith in their design abilities, but they're not THAT stupid.

Im just trying to include many possibilities. Precedent shows they have no issue buffing base spells or altering interactions with base spells and not a talent replacement.

[Deleted]

check wowhead it includes divine hammer. The wording of the 4p bonus indicates that it will enhance the dmg just the mastery does for TV. I think that covers the different points that were brought up and remained unclear.

As for my option on the bonus I would put them on the same level as our t19. Nice but not making us the 1. pick for tokens. Why? Simply due to the fact that it is still limited in potency by our debuff up-time. We only have a limited set of gcds to benefit from the additional dmg. Also it strongly works against Liadrins, BoW and fires of justice. All interfere directly with how reliably we can build HP (fires reduce the cost by 1 I know but for the sake of this argument it is simply additional free HP) which will eventually cause conflicts and over-capping of HP. You may know this issue from the current content as well...
And this is not even taking into consideration the whole "should I blade for HP outside of judge window" issue or lvl 100 talent choice. Imagine taking DP with these bonuses...

[Morally Grey Storm]

I don't understand how anyone could even suspect that Blizzard might do this. They're not going to design a tier bonus that's completely negated if you pick a particular talent. I appreciate that some people lack faith in their design abilities, but they're not THAT stupid.

Yet again, I point you to LaO pvp Talent incident regarding it's interaction with Divine Hammer.

Speaking of not THAT wise, what about Hammer of Why Did You Pick This Shit?
or "We Want Ret to Counter Mages Aura" ?

Is there a chance of posiblity of them even cosidering looking at these talents requiring fix after removal of GBOM?

[ThePants999]

Im just trying to include many possibilities. Precedent shows they have no issue buffing base spells or altering interactions with base spells and not a talent replacement.

Sure. And when that happens, either it's a mistake and gets fixed, or it's deliberate because they want to alter the relative strengths of the talents, which is reasonable.

If the tier bonus doesn't interact with Divine Hammer and it's a mistake, they'll fix it. So we're only discussing the possibility that they're consciously deciding that the tier bonus should provide zero benefit if you select a particular talent - which they obviously won't do.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Sure. And when that happens, either it's a mistake and gets fixed, or it's deliberate because they want to alter the relative strengths of the talents, which is reasonable.

If the tier bonus doesn't interact with Divine Hammer and it's a mistake, they'll fix it. So we're only discussing the possibility that they're consciously deciding that the tier bonus should provide zero benefit if you select a particular talent - which they obviously won't do.

Once again, what about Hammer of Why Did You Pick That Shit and We Want Ret to Counter Mages Aura?
Is there any indication towards them fixing it?

[ThePants999]

Storm, since I'm the only person who's posted since your last post, I assume you've just replied to me. I have you on ignore, so I have no idea what you've said. No plans to change that, I'm afraid.

[OrcsRLame]

I can maybe see mastery and crit with Virtue's Blade maybe being a thing...which would be interesting to say the least. Still early days on the ptr and we also can't wholely rule out ability changes later on.

First glance, looks alright.

The big problem with our mastery is how it does nothing on 3+ target cleave. Even if mastery became our best stat for single target, I would still avoid it like the plague unless ToS is all single target and 2 target cleave. Mastery is actually not that far behind the other stats for me single target. Right now for me it's vers ~14.5, crit ~14.4, mastery ~12.2, haste ~12.1.