6.0 PvE Ret Paladin Theorycraft & Discussion

[Lumineus]

when did you think it was ever not like this?

Well since you asked, of the 5.4 classes Ret would have utterly dominated on Beastlord, Operator, and Blast Furnace, and probably made a good, if not especially remarkable, showing on Kromog too. It's not just the class changes or ability balancing, we got screwed by the item squish reverting the MoP weapon changes as well, being one of the few melee specs which relies primarily on weapon damage rather than attack power scaling (Arms, Combat, and Frost DK are in this boat as well, but they have better options).

[RagnorZ]

Well, I've said where I think we're strong on lots of the fights before. Well, by that I mean 'were strong' as we are considerably weaker in the same situations now (comparatively speaking). But when did you think it was ever not like this?

Yep we are relatively worse than 5.4 for example. In 5.4 we weren't god tier like locks but we weren't dog tier like now, ret in 6.x is like dk in 5.4 in a bad place.

[MarshallX]

Anyone getting assigned to the Sorka boat (the one with AOE cc). Any tips on maximizing boss uptime if you get fixated and have to do a lap to bring the mobs to the cc?

[Deleted]

Go through logs and find the so called "strong" fights for us dps wise. ..

The logs are no good for this exercise for a couple of reasons:

1) As I've been saying a lot recently, we have scaled very poorly. Yes that's a feature of some of our mechanics, but you can't point to logs at such a small window and say we're weak as a result.

2) Selecting the very top percentiles is skewing results against us. Top guilds, the ones who are now doing those fights for ranks and fun, didn't use Rets. Yes, that's also an indicator that we were right to be critical of our utility in T17 again. However, it does mean that you are effectively comparing the players at the top end of things with players in the next tier down.

However, I'm sure I've done this before but:

1) Darmac - absolutely beasted the damage on the boss and his mounts.
2) Thogar - good at whatever I wanted to be tbh. Top damage on priority targets as well as being able to contribute in AoE when I wanted.
3) Maidens - beyond the potential use of the hands, we were shit here. This fight can die in a fire.
4) Oregorger - middling DPS for most of the top rets.
5) Gruul - Almost topped damage but for a berserk chomping. Solsacra did similar in his kill if we want to compare at the top end of the spec.
6) Blast Furnace - great at AoEing down stuff in phase 2 and bursting the Elementalists.
7) Hans and Franz - bit of luck for this one when they jump around like idiots, but melee in general will have the same issue.
8) Flamebender - again, was very strong in the early tier and still ok now if the dogs are kited properly.
9) Kromog - Strong on this. Very much depends on placement. Personally I'm always at the edge and still manage to do high damage on hands whilst holding back. Worse on pillars due to movement.
10) Blackhand can also die in a fire. Oh wait, he did The only actual fight where you'd find a ret genuinely near the bottom of damage.

[Deleted]

The logs are no good for this exercise for a couple of reasons:

1) As I've been saying a lot recently, we have scaled very poorly. Yes that's a feature of some of our mechanics, but you can't point to logs at such a small window and say we're weak as a result.

2) Selecting the very top percentiles is skewing results against us. Top guilds, the ones who are now doing those fights for ranks and fun, didn't use Rets. Yes, that's also an indicator that we were right to be critical of our utility in T17 again. However, it does mean that you are effectively comparing the players at the top end of things with players in the next tier down.

However, I'm sure I've done this before but:

1) Darmac - absolutely beasted the damage on the boss and his mounts.
2) Thogar - good at whatever I wanted to be tbh. Top damage on priority targets as well as being able to contribute in AoE when I wanted.
3) Maidens - beyond the potential use of the hands, we were shit here. This fight can die in a fire.
4) Oregorger - middling DPS for most of the top rets.
5) Gruul - Almost topped damage but for a berserk chomping. Solsacra did similar in his kill if we want to compare at the top end of the spec.
6) Blast Furnace - great at AoEing down stuff in phase 2 and bursting the Elementalists.
7) Hans and Franz - bit of luck for this one when they jump around like idiots, but melee in general will have the same issue.
8) Flamebender - again, was very strong in the early tier and still ok now if the dogs are kited properly.
9) Kromog - Strong on this. Very much depends on placement. Personally I'm always at the edge and still manage to do high damage on hands whilst holding back. Worse on pillars due to movement.
10) Blackhand can also die in a fire. Oh wait, he did The only actual fight where you'd find a ret genuinely near the bottom of damage.

Statistics from thousands of players are much more meaningful than your own experience with your raid/guild. You are talking about the play style and how it feels for you, but not about the balance to other classes. Get facts and stop dreaming.

[Ferbian]

So I'm facing a bit of a dilemma. Currently I'm maining as a Prot Paladin, absolutely loving it, having a blast and really enjoying tanking. I've just gotten told however by my guilds raid leader that one of our top dps warriors who occasionally tanks for us if I'm not there / 3 tanks on gruul / takes over if I have a derpy day as a tank, basically he wants to be one of the two main tanks of the guild now, and the raid leader is willing to let him do so because he's been in the guild longer than I have, effectively pushing me towards playing Ret Paladin.

Now, what I'd like to ask about is given my full enjoyment of playing Prot Paladin, where as playing my Ret spec feels a little less rewarding (I'm not great, I'll admit that), being meh on the meters, my playstyle isn't fully optimal by the least, so I'm probably falling more easily behind on AoE fights than I should admit to doing. All stuff that can obviously be improved on if I take the time to learn to play ret properly in a raiding environment. However right now I don't exactly have the mindset and motivation to want to extensively go into it knowing I'd much rather tank.

So my question is, is there anything I can do to actually enjoy myself playing ret as my main spec? Any kind of things that I might not be aware of that could be a redeeming factor to keep me in this guild and not simply look for another one where I can be allowed to tank?

[threads]

Too much ramp up time build hp FV build hp DS is a long time without T17 set bonuses... did you play in 5.4? AoE was SoR at 2 or 3+ then exo, hotr, other generators, ds... and it was fairly competitive with other dps because those abilities weren't dog tier nerfed to the ground.

No I didn't raid much at all in MoP. Tbh I do think the ramp up time is terrible but I feel like it's more that our aoe is tied to HP yet does not hit like a finisher should unless you have empDS procs.

*if you're gonna quote this just remove the entire thing and put "Bear rant" or something to avoid thread flooding*

There is so much padding going on in brf that I don't feel like looking at overall damage parses on wcl really shows much. It's pretty obvious ret dps swings a LOT depending on rng this tier. The only fights I felt my damage was useless/inconsistent/too low was oregorger, iron maidens, blackhand. The rest I did pretty well on the first kills.

[Deleted]

Statistics from thousands of players are much more meaningful than your own experience with your raid/guild. You are talking about the play style and how it feels for you, but not about the balance to other classes. Get facts and stop dreaming.

I am. I am refering to logs of the top 10% as requested. Care to pick a Ret Paladin for me to go through?

Edit: When you've done that, tell me which class you think is strongest please. I may as well kill two birds with one stone.

[Deleted]

I am. I am refering to logs of the top 10% as requested. Care to pick a Ret Paladin for me to go through?

Edit: When you've done that, tell me which class you think is strongest please. I may as well kill two birds with one stone.

That's why you see ret's on the middle of the pack on oregorger for example...where I can see 16-18 specs above us ( top players = max or 99% ). Maybe you compared the top ret's with mediocre players from other classes. A few days ago I compared the average dps from rank 10-20 for every active raid-dps spec. Whether singletarget or aoe, we where one of the worst classes. Overall we are still worse than feral druids, which have a really bad aoe. And this with an >50% aoe-based raid...

[Deleted]

That's why you see ret's on the middle of the pack on oregorger for example...where I can see 16-18 specs above us ( top players = max or 99% ). Maybe you compared the top ret's with mediocre players from other classes. A few days ago I compared the average dps from rank 10-20 for every active raid-dps spec. Whether singletarget or aoe, we where one of the worst classes. Overall we are still worse than feral druids, which have a really bad aoe. And this with an >50% aoe-based raid...

By doing what you're saying you are comparing the top of one class with the mediocre of another. You have to bear in mind that Rets are not well represented in the top parsing guilds but some other classes have multiple representatives. That means that comparing the top x percentile logs means you are comparing most classes in guilds who are killing the bosses purely for gems/WF now so are deliberately going for ranks against Rets who cleared it much more recently.

you are also only comparing overall output, which means you judge someone who bursts down a priority add whilst others AoE lesser priority adds more harshly. And who is it often doing that job? Rets (and others). It's a bit like saying John Terry (one of the very best defenders in the Premier LEague this year) is rubbish because he didn't score many goals. WoW raiding is a team game and sometimes the tasks of individual members isn't the sexiest.

There are so many variables that determine the output you are even capable of that the only comparison you can make is within the raid group. Now, as I asked before, can you give me the name of an agreed upon top Ret who did poorly on their guild's first kills? I certainly didn't see any while I was log surfing when getting ready for those encounters myself.

Bottom line is that, yes, we are not well designed as a package. That much is obvious because we are the only DPS class completely excluded from the top ten guilds. However, we have to be very clear about the reason for that. It's too obvious to say 'well we're a DPS class so it must be our DPS that is poor'. This statement is simply not backed up at all by looking through the logs of Retribution Paladins who have gone through BRF.

[Xs]

BEAR RANT

if you were a raid leader and you had a ret on roster that you know can't pull the same numbers as a warlock or a warrior- why would you gear the paladin?

Only real reason to bring a slightly under-performing Ret right now is for Maidens/Kromog BoPs, assuming you only run 1 Holydin and maybe 1 Prot, having a 3rd on Maidens can help to avoid the bad RNG if things not targeting classes that can remove them already, and having one more set of eyes that does reasonably good spike DPS on Kromog, but thats really it. We can be reasonably good if the raid is timed well on BF, but nothing that other classes can't bring.

[Reghame]

Well, I've said where I think we're strong on lots of the fights before. Well, by that I mean 'were strong' as we are considerably weaker in the same situations now (comparatively speaking). But when did you think it was ever not like this?

only fights we are somewhat "strong" on are fights with AOE thats highly irrelevant. beastlord? your doing good damage to pack beasts and thats about it, boss is killing your raid because your killing targets intentionally that dont matter but your dps is not last anymore! (not#1 either)

Blast furnace same deal, if your not hard focusing every target on that fight your making it last longer intentionally and it can kill your entire raid.

our niche right now this tier is padded AOE on targets that are ignored. This does not make us actually good when you take in to account for how much damage you used on those targets when it did not matter. its like saying a glad warrior is a good dps spec for blackhand if all he is doing is killing the siege tanks. its just stupid.


BTW who keeps saying that wings will give 50% uptime? you drugs? first, not even close unless you sacrifice meaningful damage and get decent RNG and even then its not even close. Second, having bad RNG will make that 2 set useless every time. something we all hate already. Third, your throwing off your CDs like this and we might actually make this set become a trap.

Lastly the set is totally worthless if you have to save wings for anything at any point in any fight. (which we do sometimes this next tier) sure it gives us our burst back via 4 set, but that 2 set is totally a freaking trap and i dont understand why people cant see it.

- - - Updated - - -

BTW stop comparing what you do in your raid vs everyone else. if logs/sims/the vocal majority say there is something wrong with the spec's damage there is a VERY DAMN HIGH CHANCE that there is, no questions about it.

- - - Updated - - -

EDIT: yes i can do more damage than 90% of my raid, but im also one of the few who can actually play my damned spec because i dotn switch every 6 months to a new one, read up on changes, do some testing every ptr, ETC ETC. just because (like some of us here) put in time and effort to play to the best they can does not mean everyone in your guild is.

[Deleted]

I really really hope that Solsacra wasn't serious in the final boss interview regarding that we could be possibly using 1h weapons for faster Art of War procs.
I mean, i have an 1h weapon for tanking purposes, but using that for dpsing would be quite weird ...

[Deleted]

By doing what you're saying you are comparing the top of one class with the mediocre of another. You have to bear in mind that Rets are not well represented in the top parsing guilds but some other classes have multiple representatives. That means that comparing the top x percentile logs means you are comparing most classes in guilds who are killing the bosses purely for gems/WF now so are deliberately going for ranks against Rets who cleared it much more recently.

you are also only comparing overall output, which means you judge someone who bursts down a priority add whilst others AoE lesser priority adds more harshly. And who is it often doing that job? Rets (and others). It's a bit like saying John Terry (one of the very best defenders in the Premier LEague this year) is rubbish because he didn't score many goals. WoW raiding is a team game and sometimes the tasks of individual members isn't the sexiest.

There are so many variables that determine the output you are even capable of that the only comparison you can make is within the raid group. Now, as I asked before, can you give me the name of an agreed upon top Ret who did poorly on their guild's first kills? I certainly didn't see any while I was log surfing when getting ready for those encounters myself.

Bottom line is that, yes, we are not well designed as a package. That much is obvious because we are the only DPS class completely excluded from the top ten guilds. However, we have to be very clear about the reason for that. It's too obvious to say 'well we're a DPS class so it must be our DPS that is poor'. This statement is simply not backed up at all by looking through the logs of Retribution Paladins who have gone through BRF.

It's our dps, cause our utility is not that good to ignore the lack of damage. It's just simple that it will be easier to adjust our dps than adding more utilities. Im sure there won't be significant changes for our class...maybe in the next expansion. But currently it's nothing new that we are one of the weakest or maybe the weakest dps class. And not a single skill or class utility can justify this.

[Lumineus]

BTW who keeps saying that wings will give 50% uptime? you drugs?

It's doable. Even the base cooldown of Exorcism gives you wings every 90s, with zero AoW procs. You'll just have to stack a bunch of haste. Granted, whether you want it more often than that depends a lot on whether you think you're going to be able to hit the minute mark, since being able to hit every other ring use and every .92 ppm trinket proc is worth a LOT, but there isn't a real middle ground between that threshold and the basic reduction you get from a zero haste build.

[threads]

our niche right now this tier is padded AOE on targets that are ignored. This does not make us actually good when you take in to account for how much damage you used on those targets when it did not matter. its like saying a glad warrior is a good dps spec for blackhand if all he is doing is killing the siege tanks. its just stupid.

I wouldn't call that our niche. No DP or empDS procs = no pad.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I really really hope that Solsacra wasn't serious in the final boss interview regarding that we could be possibly using 1h weapons for faster Art of War procs.
I mean, i have an 1h weapon for tanking purposes, but using that for dpsing would be quite weird ...

It's very, very unlikely that it ends up being a thing judging by the encounters- but in theory (at least) it is a gain to do so if you need to burst something every 1min which you could with using 1hander between CDs.

[Xenocidic]

Anyone seen maegor in a while? Used some weak auras he/she shared and haven't been able to find them again through search feature.


could have been xenocidic's wa not 100%

Hey Rahk, this is my current version of my string. http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=0n25Kx1d

Actually on this fight, I did not feel at ease seen that it is one of first one time that I down it.

But thank you for these advice(councils).

I thought more of fights as Blast furnace or of iron maiden.

And for my string , it is good ?

Hey Akro, I took a look at your recent Maidens kill here https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...true&source=78
Again, you can see that you only used 6 Execution Sentences across the 9 minutes you were alive. You stayed in Righteousness again when you would definitely not have 100% uptime on all 3 ladies. That one isn't that big but it can still be the difference of overall damage done across the entire fight. Comparing you to the other ret paladin in your kill, it just looks like you aren't doing your best at weaving FV/DS. You had close to 20 less casts of divine storm then he did across the same time period.

Unfortunately I honestly can't speak to your CLCret string as I stopped using it when WoD launched. if you have the Weak Auras addon, you can import the string I linked and see if that helps you more. It essentially shows you what buffs you have active (Empowered DS, FV, Divine Purpose, 2pc/4pc and you should know the priority of abilities to use by now. Maybe if you aren't so rigidly following CLCret you will have better results in your dps. Good luck, and feel free to link logs again in another week or two if you'd like me to take another look.

[rahkarn]

oh MY GOSH ty xenocidic those are the best no you are the best

[Akato]

I made a little video about how I feel about Blizzard's proposed changes to ret: http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/co...c8f886e55.html