Ret at 90

[Roose]

Hello there. I am finally leveling a paladin. Never quite made it too far because I always get bored of the class around 40ish. This time I will try to make it all the way to 90.

My question is this: do the gaps in the ret rotation get filled in later on? I hate empty globals and waiting for CDs. Is this something haste fixes? I do not really see any other filler besides exorcism.

I also like the idea of being a battle healer, so is that something that ret will keep, or is it really all up to Blizz?

[Sunnydee]

haste solves gap in 2 ways, shorter cd on CS/J and makes exo procc more often due to more melee swings,

regarding BH i dont really know. dont think ive even seen a ret with it

[Colmadero]

haste will almost eliminate all the gaps in the rotation.

BH is not optimal for Ret as our main seal is justice and rolling with Insight would be a MAJOR DPS loss.

[Bling]

Rotation gets much better later on.

As for Battle Healer, its actually just as OP on a ret as it is on a Prot paladin in small groups. Once Prot gets some raid level vengeance though it gets insane, unfortunately because of that ret is getting nerfed in 5.4 too. Right now with about a 520 ilvl insight is healing me for 15-20K an attack and doing 20K+ hps to my group. I can easily do the healing for a heroic scenario as a ret pally through battle healer pretty much. Although I prefer to top the meters in LFR, I can generally switch to insight with battle healer and usually get top 5-6 in healing thanks to battle healer. Looks like 5.4 is going to completely kill battle healer for ret though.

[Roose]

Thanks for input.

As for "battle healer", it was intended as an actual battle healer, not the talent. I want to pvp as ret so I can smash faces and toss out heals. BG fun.

[Aqua]

Thanks for input.
I want to pvp as ret so I can smash faces and toss out heals. BG fun.

You're not going to be doing this nearly as much as some of us would like. Or I'd probably PvP more often.

Honestly the only class that really gets to heal semi effectively on the go in their dps spec is shadow priest. We CAN pull out all the stops on talents and glyphs and be a 'battle healer' but we'll also do subpar damage and end up failing at both jobs. I'd like if this was something viable to do but... it really doesn't feel like it.


But the ideal behind it is still a good one, you do get some free heals to use on yourself when you're in trouble, but you're not going to be the plated demigod battle-medic of the field that you'd probably like. Few people are going to hug you for a handful of spray healing from you while you use seal of insight :|

And like others said. Haste. Haste is your best friend, sometimes even a bit more than strength, though he is your pal too. But haste will fix everything.

[Vathius]

Every now and then I find myself 'waiting' for Cds but its no more than a 2 - 3 seconds max

[Salted Beef]

Battle Healer comes at the price of a significant amount of DPS, and it doesn't provide much HPS at all. That said, I use the glyph along with Selfless Healer quite extensively when I'm spamming scenarios and dungeons, and sometimes in LFR during the final phases of Iron Qon and Lei Shen.

It's entirely useless in PvP and actual raids.

[Deleted]

You're not going to be doing this nearly as much as some of us would like. Or I'd probably PvP more often.

Honestly the only class that really gets to heal semi effectively on the go in their dps spec is shadow priest. We CAN pull out all the stops on talents and glyphs and be a 'battle healer' but we'll also do subpar damage and end up failing at both jobs. I'd like if this was something viable to do but... it really doesn't feel like it.


But the ideal behind it is still a good one, you do get some free heals to use on yourself when you're in trouble, but you're not going to be the plated demigod battle-medic of the field that you'd probably like. Few people are going to hug you for a handful of spray healing from you while you use seal of insight :|

And like others said. Haste. Haste is your best friend, sometimes even a bit more than strength, though he is your pal too. But haste will fix everything.

I do not agree with this. Selfless Healer is an extremely powerful talent that does exactly what the OP wants. With 3 stacks and the Supplication buff, I've seen Flash of Lights heal around 250k. Every stack increases its effectiveness, and reduces mana cost and cast time, so if you can manage to keep using Judgement, you can continue to heal your teammates. I don't think any other class comes close to Rets when it comes to offhealing (except maybe Ferals with Heart of the Wild). Ret is a support class. With all the Hand spells we have, we can make life on our teammates a lot easier, and I think that's what the OP meant.

[Aqua]

I do not agree with this. Selfless Healer is an extremely powerful talent that does exactly what the OP wants. With 3 stacks and the Supplication buff, I've seen Flash of Lights heal around 250k. Every stack increases its effectiveness, and reduces mana cost and cast time, so if you can manage to keep using Judgement, you can continue to heal your teammates. I don't think any other class comes close to Rets when it comes to offhealing (except maybe Ferals with Heart of the Wild). Ret is a support class. With all the Hand spells we have, we can make life on our teammates a lot easier, and I think that's what the OP meant.

Selfless healer is a different animal from Battle Healer. (again your accompanying team mates have to be as long lasting as you to get that selfless healer big heals) And I still hold that in most situations a priest can do more consistently to help their friends on a larger scale. In arenas (Again the op referred to battlegrounds on the 2nd response, a rather more unpredictable beast) yes okay, you can do far better controlled healing since coordination is high, but I don't think you're going to be able to juggle it well without a hell of a lot of practice and a fixed team, while doing enough burst to actually win the game. And you'll need alot more gearing to reach that point. I've needed alot more gear to reach that point and I'm still not doing enough vs a few team combos to adequately support both my accompanying dps and healer to win the game when shit goes south.

If you do like the idea of lasting longer rather than actually pushing a win in 3vs3... (in 5v5 though you're a must and are awesome, though most just take holy) I don't recommend it for 3's though. Battlegrounds I guess if you're going to be that irritating little maggot who won't die, sure. It's going to take a fair bit of practice though, only really inexperienced players are going to die unless you concentrate damage and switching seals and popping appropriate cooldowns on more geared folks.

If you're into that though I don't see why you don't just run around in prot spec, giggling to yourself all the while while 2 mages and a hunter try fruitlessly to gun you down. (May have indulged in this once or twice)

[Valedus]

Don't bother with battle healer at 90. Use Justice or Truth (depending on preference/talents/teammates). If you are wanting to be able to heal yourself, just glyph for WoG (9% extra damage will help negate the loss of the holy power for damage a little bit) and selfless healer. In BG's you should feel fine with survivability now.

[Aleksej89]

Retribution at lvl90 PvE - in Patch 5.4 (PTR) - is one of the most fun and entertaining classes i have ever played (and i got all classes at max lvl).
I recommend trying out Retribution in lvl90 PvE once 5.4 comes.

The gaps get filled when you get decent amounts of haste - all holy power generators lower in cooldown the more haste you got (as well as haste effects).

However the "gaps" should be used to cast beneficial spells, like the various Hands or the Sacred Shield/Selfless Healer.
Try to cast useful utility spells between those gaps (try to stick to instant spells since they wont screw up your melee swing timer).