[7.0 Retribution Paladin] Guide and Discussion

[Meiffert]

Cloak is a magic equivalent to BoP, whilst not being a raid utility unless you misdirected to soak something. If that were the case why not misdirect into a BoP/DS? Much more relaxed window to play with.

Because when Hisek casts Aim and you bubble/BoP, it kills you anyway.
Meanwhile all other classes can cheat death, vanish, spectral guide or shadowmeld.
I understand that this example was a long time ago, but I still remember being very salty about it.

Since then I've noticed many examples of paladin utility being purposefully disabled in raids while all other classes could still use theirs. I honestly have no idea why that is the case. For example on Kromog, tanks get a stacking slowing debuff. On my monk, I would use transcendence or just roll, on my warrior I'd heroic leap away and charge back etc. Tried to use freedom on my paladin - nothing.

During PTR on Velhari, I said over teamspeak that freedom stops damage from the movement preventing aura. Made me a bit said that some people actually believed it for a second. They didn't know the paladin curse.

Just last night I tried freedom when I got slowed on Etraeus and it had no effect again.

Cheat death is comparable to DI, but has a longer cooldown and is only damage reduction for 3s, rather than full immunity for 8s.

Oh, had one player who usually soaks missing on Helya last week, so I was nominated to do it since DI is just like cheat death. Stood in tentacle, DI procced, DS went on cooldown and I died.

If the paladin spells actually did what the tooltips suggest, their utility would be strong, sadly it is not the case.

On a positive note, I think that paladin are in a better spot dps wise than they were since I started playing it in Cataclysm and in the end that's what matters the most in most situations.

[Deleted]

Stood in tentacle, DI procced, DS went on cooldown and I died.

.... it's like the knot in my guts I felt with Tirion all over again

THE LIGHT... WILL... AGHH..... AAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[dnicks17]

Stood in tentacle, DI procced, DS went on cooldown and I died.

You have to pre-bubble overwhelming damage like the tentacles on Helya and the Horn circle on Odyn.

[Meiffert]

You have to pre-bubble overwhelming damage like the tentacles on Helya and the Horn circle on Odyn.

Indeed, which defeats the "cheat death" part of the talent that we were talking about.

[Deleted]

Indeed, which defeats the "cheat death" part of the talent that we were talking about.

but to be fair it didn´t work for other classes cheat death either.
man were our rogues pissed that had to play guram correctly, took them ages to to understand the concept of mixed elements

[BrassTheRet]

I have a question about Blade of Justice vs Zeal. Why do people prioritize Zeal@ 2 charges over Blade of Justice? BoJ does more damage and generates more Hopo than it takes to cast 2 Zeal charges. There's another factor and that would be Blade of Wrath. That's 2 more hopo and if I make sure BoJ is on CD rather than preventing Zeal @ 2 charges then it's more hopo which equates to more Templar's Verdict or Divine Storm. I'm essentially saying BOJ>Zeal @2 charges w/BoW.

[dnicks17]

I have a question about Blade of Justice vs Zeal. Why do people prioritize Zeal@ 2 charges over Blade of Justice? BoJ does more damage and generates more Hopo than it takes to cast 2 Zeal charges. There's another factor and that would be Blade of Wrath. That's 2 more hopo and if I make sure BoJ is on CD rather than preventing Zeal @ 2 charges then it's more hopo which equates to more Templar's Verdict or Divine Storm. I'm essentially saying BOJ>Zeal @2 charges w/BoW.

People do that?

You should be prioritizing BoW unless you're going to overcap.

[wombats23]

I have a question about Blade of Justice vs Zeal. Why do people prioritize Zeal@ 2 charges over Blade of Justice? BoJ does more damage and generates more Hopo than it takes to cast 2 Zeal charges. There's another factor and that would be Blade of Wrath. That's 2 more hopo and if I make sure BoJ is on CD rather than preventing Zeal @ 2 charges then it's more hopo which equates to more Templar's Verdict or Divine Storm. I'm essentially saying BOJ>Zeal @2 charges w/BoW.

BoJ has a CD of 7 GCDs while zeal has a CD of 3 GCDs. Casting BoJ over zeal means you're missing out on 1/3 of a zeal cast, or 1/3 of a holy power. Casting zeal over BoJ means you're missing out on 1/7 of a BoJ cast, or 2/7 of a holy power. At the end of the day, the bulk of your damage will be coming from TV, which is a result of maximizing your holy power gain, and since 1/3 > 2/7, that's why you're supposed to cast zeal over BoJ. Note that I'm talking about BoJ, not BoW.

With BoW, you'd need simcraft to accurately model what is better between zeal at 2 charges and BoW. I personally prefer BoW over 2x Zeal during high periods of haste (bloodlust and crusade) since haste affects RPPM procs and on the opener since RPPM procs have a higher proc chance on the pull (at least I think they still do, I haven't really looked anything up about RPPM since MoP.) (Note I'm not saying that this is the right way to play, it's just my preference and I very well might be wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if BoW > 2x Zeal in general.)

[Deleted]

I realize that. (Posting this while AFKing H Elisande trash )

I just don't see enough AoE beyond Skorp for Horn to make an appreciable difference.

There are so many scenarios where your wings lines up with incoming adds. Pretty much every boss in NH excluding the pure ST ones like Trilliax, Star Augar (well almost only ST) etc. A high titanforge HoV is just fantastic, and will be even better in progress as always.

[Feenuxik]

Another changes to Ret

Crusade now increases damage and Haste by 3% per stack (down from 3.5%).
Blade of Justice damage increased by 20%, unchanged in PvP.

The original value of Convergence for Ret was wildly out of line with other trinkets, largely due to its interaction with Crusade. After investigation, however, we believe that the change we made may have overshot the mark. We’ll be making some additional adjustments to Convergence of Fate, to make sure that it’s still a good trinket for Ret.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Another changes to Ret

Crusade now increases damage and Haste by 3% per stack (down from 3.5%).
Blade of Justice damage increased by 20%, unchanged in PvP.

The original value of Convergence for Ret was wildly out of line with other trinkets, largely due to its interaction with Crusade. After investigation, however, we believe that the change we made may have overshot the mark. We’ll be making some additional adjustments to Convergence of Fate, to make sure that it’s still a good trinket for Ret.

Good news, I was so looking forward to getting Crusade nerfed.
Not like our entire dps viability depends upon it.
Bzzd balancing 101: do random shit and hf.

[Vanderhuge]

Real shame there isn't an underused talent in that final tier alongside Crusade that could've been buffed to make it more appealing, especially with this nerf going in.

[Deleted]

So will, the CoF buff come together with the crusadenerf? From what's on the frontpage that does not seem to be the case.
From what i heard NH is almost always with some adds, so the buff to BoJ might be useless if it doesn't affect DH.

Don't get me wrong I'm happy they nerfed Crusade, but I'm also worried that they won't make up for it properly.

[dnicks17]

Oh, Blizzard.

I knew I shouldn't have wanted them to try to shift damage from Crusade to outside Crusade because something like this was going to happen.

Design a raid where you basically have to use DH the whole time and then think that a 20% BoJ buff will change that and somehow make up for the nerf haha.

[OrcsRLame]

So, looking at logs, it looks like before this BoW was somewhat competitive with DH on some fights. I think the best thing we can do as a community right now is to compile a list of fights where we should take BoW vs DH.

Off the top of my head, I think it will be something like this.

Skorpyron: DH
Anomaly: BoW
Trilliax: BoW
Spellblade: DH
Krosus: BoW
Tichondrius: ? Not sure on this one. There's just enough cleave that I could see DH being worth it.
Botanist: DH
Star Augur: BoW
Elisande: BoW
Gul'dan: ? Haven't done Gul'dan yet, so not sure how important cleave is on this fight.

[PointerToAddress]

So, looking at logs, it looks like before this BoW was somewhat competitive with DH on some fights. I think the best thing we can do as a community right now is to compile a list of fights where we should take BoW vs DH.

Off the top of my head, I think it will be something like this.

Skorpyron: DH
Anomaly: BoW
Trilliax: BoW
Spellblade: DH
Krosus: BoW
Tichondrius: ? Not sure on this one. There's just enough cleave that I could see DH being worth it.
Botanist: DH
Star Augur: BoW
Elisande: BoW
Gul'dan: ? Haven't done Gul'dan yet, so not sure how important cleave is on this fight.

I think after the buff to BoJ that is looking accurate. For Gul'dan aside from first phase there isnt much cleave, at least on Normal the adds die quite fast, so BoW will be better. On Heroic, again, the heavy cleave is on phase 1 since the eyes should die quick on phase 2, only that this time phase 1 lasts more since the adds have more HP.

[Taeldorian]

Interesting.

Not a giant nerf to crusade so they should be able to make up for it. Shouldn't be too complicated. Not

I'm alright with them wanting to move damage out of our 2m CD and in to our normal rotation. That would be nice as long as they can do it right.

Also seems that they realize they overnerfed CoF and plan on fixing that, also pretty good.

This could be extremely good news if they do the crusade nerfs/buffs right. I'm not entirely sure if the 20% buff to BoJ is going to be what we need but on paper it seems good so we'll see.

[Michael000]

What people aren't realizing is that any nerf to crusade is also a nerf to the belt which was another factor "inflating" our numbers at the 90th+ percentile. If you think just buffing BoW 20% is enough you're dead wrong and parses will show that soon enough. What they needed to do was buff all our hopo generators.

Long story short before the CoF nerf all our character progression this tier was tied to that trinket. Our underwhelming 2p/4p combo was offset by how well the trinket synergized w/ crusade and the draught of souls. Come Tue our ceiling this tier if the 2p/4p sims are correct (~6% gain) and my napkin math on the crusade nerf (~2% nerf) will be basically be ~4% (not including primary/secondary from higher ilvl gear) in contrast to EN/ToV gear. Will we be good, will we be bad? Who knows will depend on how much other classes get out of their trinkets and tier. If I had to guess though we'll be going from the top 1/4 of dps classes to somewhere in the middle most likely the lower middle.

As a side note, really glad that it's not overly time consuming to upgrade legendaries as I had upgraded my belt before my cloak. Cloak should come back to being on top again w/ the crusade nerf.

[Snowfunk]

So, looking at logs, it looks like before this BoW was somewhat competitive with DH on some fights. I think the best thing we can do as a community right now is to compile a list of fights where we should take BoW vs DH.

Off the top of my head, I think it will be something like this.

Skorpyron: DH
Anomaly: BoW
Trilliax: BoW
Spellblade: DH
Krosus: BoW
Tichondrius: ? Not sure on this one. There's just enough cleave that I could see DH being worth it.
Botanist: DH
Star Augur: BoW
Elisande: BoW
Gul'dan: ? Haven't done Gul'dan yet, so not sure how important cleave is on this fight.

I think after the buff to BoJ that is looking accurate. For Gul'dan aside from first phase there isnt much cleave, at least on Normal the adds die quite fast, so BoW will be better. On Heroic, again, the heavy cleave is on phase 1 since the eyes should die quick on phase 2, only that this time phase 1 lasts more since the adds have more HP.

Excellent initiative. Very useful!

[Morally Grey Storm]

Oh, Blizzard.

I knew I shouldn't have wanted them to try to shift damage from Crusade to outside Crusade because something like this was going to happen.

Design a raid where you basically have to use DH the whole time and then think that a 20% BoJ buff will change that and somehow make up for the nerf haha.

They will not make up for the nerf.
What makes you think they will?
Common sense?
Oh you silly you.

We've just received yet another nerf to our overall performance yet people seem to cheer hooray "they've nerfed Crusade!".
BoJ buff has nothing to do with making up for it.
Nor does theoretical potential CoF buff.