A warning to Raiding Ret Paladins.

[Voidseeker]

For not caring you seem to have a lot to say. =) I am working late, and have lots of time, so yes will respond to your points. Although just reading your reply I should ignore you as you are one of the people that I mentioned that do not read up or have any knowledge of Ret in Wrath of the Lich King. The first clue is that you mention spell crit. All combat modifiers have been joined to their match: Spell Crit and Melee Crit are just Crit. +healing and +damage are now just Spellpower. The same goes for Hit. Etc.

The claim that Ret Paladins do not have "crit" is just absolutely asinine. If you have no crit as Ret in PVE Wrath your guild SHOULD drop you. And yes, in fact I HAVE tried "back up" healing in Wrath, and NO mana is not an issue. If fact mana is the least of Ret's issues regardless of what they are doing as long as they judge every 8 seconds. But as you are stuck in TBC thinking "back up healing" to you seems to mean stand in the back and heal. This is not "back up healing in Wrath". Ret has to be in on the mob, beating on it, and judging every 8 seconds. During that time heals can be tossed to "back up heal". A HoT was added allowing the crit heal to continue healing while you hit the mob again and judged again and then have a chance to heal again (if needed).



- SoV and SoB are being put in so the Horde can have Vengeance and the Alliance can have Blood. It was a mistake not do so so in the first place. That is the main reason. That and Blizzard Devs play the game as horde and it is a huge buff for their Paladins. Martyr is not such a huge buff for Alliance.

DS and JoL do not heal for the damage taken. DS healing is not impressive as it stands right now. Mostly that is because it is bugged and doing physical damage. Once we are able to see the total damage of DS and how or if the healing is divided AFTER tuning we can see if the healing will go up or down. Judgement of Light has a 4 second cool down, just as Judgement of Wisdom does, cutting down the procs from attacks.


- I did not "fail to account for auto attacks". Auto attacks do not activate the Global Cool Down. The timing was listed for abilities that WOULD activate the GCD. I am sorry you missed that point. If you go back a few pages you will actually see the math behind SoV and SoB. Sov wins right now with the numbers we have all damage taken into account solo. When we get raid numbers (what buff stack, what ones don't) and are able to see level 80 gear drops we can rerun the numbers. And just to make sure you do not miss it - auto attack damage IS included there.


- More than just auto attack will proc your seals in Wrath. SoV is stacked with both DS and CS. The reason you would "screw up" the timer is more than obvious in my post above: to do more than just smack a mob. And your TBC healing does "sod all" so your incorrect assumption things will be the same in WotLK is understandable as you enjoy being ignorant of changes. May I suggest you read up on the new talents? Ret healing is still below Holy, but it is far and away better than TBC Ret. And while you are reading up please check out Judgments of the Wise. I will repeat: if you judge the mob every 8 seconds mana is not an issue.


- And you seem to miss the point of the warning: WRATH CHANGES RETS JOBS. Judgments no longer refresh. Crusader Strike is just a damage attack now. Buffs will not stack, but at the same time many are going to over lap. The list goes on. The only things that carry over from TBC for Ret is damage (solo and aura) & Judgements. But those are just damage. So what is new that allows you to keep your role? What has been changed to make bringing a #5 on the DPS charts over a class that will fight for #1 & more than make up for the loss of your aura? Mana Regen and Rets increased ability to heal.

Mana regen is built into the DPS cycle via Judgments. Every Retribution Paladin will be doing it. It is your ability to make use of the NEW part of your role and add healing. Ret Paladins in TBC CANNOT effectively heal as they do not have the means to do so, therefore Raid Leaders did not look for them to do so. Wrath changes this and Ret is more than able to toss heals as much as they want, lowering their DPS some to do so.

With the changes it begs the question why would a raid leader bring a Ret Paladin that will get #7 on the DPS charts that sucks down heals, when he could bring one that is #8 but also pumps out heals? If that Raid Leader is only looking for DPS and has no need for heals he/she would be silly for not bringing a higher DPS class.


Any Paladin that uses SoB out of habit, without the gear to actually make it produce more damage over SoV they are not playing the class to the maximum of its abilities. And they will be repaced by those that are.

[mcstu]

The claim that Ret Paladins do not have "crit" is just absolutely asinine.

the word you are looking for is insane.

[Voidseeker]

No, actually I am fully aware of the word. Let me educate you some more:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asinine

Main Entry: as·i·nine
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin asininus, from asinus ass
Date: 15th century

1 : extremely or utterly foolish <an asinine excuse>
2 : of, relating to, or resembling an ass


But thank you for illustrating the definition ahead of time by not bothering to do any research. That would appear to be your M.O.

[mcstu]

lol i know what asinine means, i thought insane was a more appropriate description of you.

[Samiel]

Your vision of the future is right in line with mine. Ret will never stop and heal full out, they and the others in the raid lose the benefit of Judgements of the Wise if that happens.

But let's take a look at the cycle of GCD with TBC mindset:

00.0 - Fight start - assuming SoB is already up before pull as it is 2 min.
01.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
03.0 - CS
04.5 - DS
06.0 - EVERYTHING ON CD, wasted.
07.5 - wow, still on CD, wasted.
09.0 - CS. Woot, I can use this one.
10.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
12.0 - Wasted
13.5 - DS
15.0 - Wasted

At some point in there the Paladin will be able to use one of the wasted GCDs for activating AV, Con, and if they do not nerf the macro maybe gearswap+ShoR. But there are going to be a lot of wasted GCDs no matter how you look at it as any ability that would reset the swing timer, or cause a delay with them will be avoided. Also the Paladin will be getting heals that could be better used on other players for damage that he/she does not need to take.


Now let's look at WotLK
00.0 - Fight start - assuming SoV is already up before pull as it is 2 min.
01.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
03.0 - CS
04.5 - DS (by this point there should be 4 or 5 stacks on the mob, depending on weapon speed)
06.0 - HL (*)
07.5 - {still casting}
09.0 - CS.
10.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
12.0 - FoL (*)
13.5 - DS
15.0 - Consecrate (*)


The (*) are for an open GCD that could be used for anything that is optional - Heals, Hands, buffs, etc. As is shown, the WotLK Ret can make better used of his/her cycle of GCD by using SoV as the DPS will be about the same with the DoT going on the mob, the Judgements will hit harder - giving a higher JotW mana return than SoB - and the Paladin can use the open GCD for anything - even those abilities that reset the swing timer as the auto attack is not the main source of DPS, but instead an addition to it.

{edit: took out a repeat line that should not be there}

Voidseeker, you DO realize of course, in your brilliance, that the second you start casting HL, your swing timer resets until after you're done casting, OMG! you just missing a swing! you just cut 2.5 seconds of DPS time out, in fact, in that 15 second dream of yours, you've missed out on two entire swings, meaning you've just cut your total damage by (if WotL is anyting to go by) 6-10K damage, EVERY 15 seconds.

that's a whopping 120.000-200.000 less damage over a 5 minute period.

[Samiel]

Infact! you know what! Now lets do a *real* DPS cycle!


00.0 - Fight start - assuming SoV is already up before pull as it is 2 min.
01.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
03.0 - CS
04.5 - DS
05.04 - This is where your 5th Stack of Vengeance will hit, assuming 2.52 attack speed.
06.0 - Consecrate.
07.5 - SoB (no need for SoV now)
09.0 - CS. Woot, I can use this one.
10.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
12.0 - Wasted (here is your chance in that cycle to do things like, Hands, Wings, DS, and Exorcise/Wrath/Hammer)
13.5 - DS
15.0 - Consecrate

See what I did there? Instead of WASTING time doing something other than DPS, I filled all those slots with DPS and thus, upped my DPS WITHOUT nerfing the utility I am brought for (Mana regen, healing, Blessings, Hands.) And without screwing my DPS by playing with my Swing Timer.

EDIT : There's only one problem with the cycle, and that is cycling vengeance back in, but somehow, I think that can be arranged, every 15 or so seconds. It certainly is something we as Ret will have to learn, if Vengeance stays in it's current form.

[Admuntour]

Voidseeker, what you say is total and utter nonsense, no one and I mean NO ONE, will ever bring a DPS class to a raid to trow and heal here and there even if they can.
In 25 mans you need specialization, I've raided up to M'uru as retribution, and one thing I've learned is that, you have the dedicated tanks, dedicated DPS and dedicated healers for any given boss fight, of course you can have the odd Warrior/Druid/Paladin that changes gear and and OT at trash and changes back for the boss, but you will never, ever, ever see a specialized class doing something outside their specialization mid boss fight.
In light of that, you don't see shaman DPS stop DPS to heal himself, you don't see druids going out of cat form and healing themselfs, and you don't see priests going out of shadowform to heal.

Classes that specialize in something should stick to their specialization and do nothing else, otherwise they gimp themselfs and will do poor healing and poor DPS compared to any other pure class.

Your concern for DPS Paladins is appreciated, but unfounded, a combination of judgment of light+ divine storm will cut down on most of the self damage you take, the rest will be healed trough by healers without a problem and it will give back more mana thus more DPS, its a win win thing.
To demonstrate it I'll provide some calculations of my own.

In a raid fully buffed I can reach 3.2k AP, with trinkets and and ring proc and unleashed rage I could probably reach 4k, with Sheath of light I'll get 960 to 1.2k SP, I'll work with the 3.2k AP and 960 SP figures since the trinkets won't have a 100% up time, I also have an average weapon damage of around 1200.
Now I could put judgment of light on the boss at the start of a fight and it will heal me for 18% of my AP + 18% of my SP, that means 748 healing that can proc every 4 seconds, judgment has a 8 sec CD, I'll be using SoB much like I do now, from the formula it will do 36% of AP + 58% of Spell Power + 45% of MW, that comes around to 2248, 33% of that I get as damage myself, but wait look, that means only 741 damage.
So in WoTLK with the stats I have now in a raid I would need a single JoL proc to heal up the damage from judgment of blood non crit, remember JoB has 8 min CD, JoL can proc 2 times during that period, its almost enough to cover even a crit.
Now if I trow in divine storm, I can see that it will do 1200 holy damage and 20% of the damage it does heals me, assuming I am hitting only one target (a boss most of the time), it will heal me for 240 non crit, if it crits it does 3000 damage, and will heal for 600, since it can be used every 10 seconds that adds up to at total of 6k healing per minute.
Divine storm+ JoL will heal trough any damage that my seal of blood and judgment of blood could do in a raid, your entire argument is void.

[Jubosh]

sadly seal of blood is the 3rd highest dps seal vengeance is actually better, irony at it's best eh, and the element of mana regen from blood is irrelevant on beta ret has no mana issues to speak of atm, and yes i do have a beta account so i'm not just spitting half assed guessing around, I have not bought water or food as ret since i started the beta and have gone oom only once, with seal/judge of light and wisdom, ret can contu to go forever and put out decently high self/party healing with them and DS, it's actually quite nice

[Samiel]

I'd like a gear check on Jubosh, coupled with Raid Buff experience and 80th end-game raiding experience.

It's already been established that SoV is better than SoB in solo and 5-man scenarios, but it will not be for end-game 25-man raiding, with worthwhile gear.

[Voidseeker]

Voidseeker, you DO realize of course, in your brilliance, that the second you start casting HL, your swing timer resets until after you're done casting, OMG! you just missing a swing! you just cut 2.5 seconds of DPS time out, in fact, in that 15 second dream of yours, you've missed out on two entire swings, meaning you've just cut your total damage by (if WotL is anyting to go by) 6-10K damage, EVERY 15 seconds.

that's a whopping 120.000-200.000 less damage over a 5 minute period.

Sarcastic and dense. I am not brilliant, nor claim to be. But 99% of the time to do read things thoroughly. I am well aware of what happens to the swing timer, and in fact mention it in what you quoted. In your "gotcha" bliss did you fail to see the (*) in the example?

The (*) after that ability, as stated in my text that you quoted, is an OPEN GCD. I chose to put a HL in that one, but it could have just as easily been something else. Although thank you for quoting it as I screwed up the DS at the end. Oddly enough you did too.

It was an EXAMPLE of what could be done at the start of a fight, not the blue print for a permanent rotation. There IS NO permanent rotation. There is a priorty list of abilities and then doing what needs to be done per the situation. One of those things WILL be tossing heals, sooner or later, in raids.

Here is a different one:
00.0 - Fight start - assuming SoV is already up before pull as it is 2 min.
01.5 - DS
03.0 - CS
04.5 - AW
06.0 - Judgement of {your assignment} (full 5 stacks at this point)
07.5 - SoB
09.0 - Consecrate
10.5 - CS
12.0 - DS
13.5 - (*)
15.0 - Judgement of {your assignment}
16.5 - CS

Solid DPS allowing 5 seconds for the tank get get aggro (which should be enough with the tanking changes). It is another EXAMPLE showing that Paladins can go full DPS if needed, as I have already stated. But, again, there will be times that healing will be needed and take up GCD/swing.

And as for lost damage, SoV is ticking away during that rotation the only damage being "lost" is white. But it is not being lost without reason. A Ret Paladin would not toss a HL every rotation, every fight, all the time. That should be more than clear. But the fact of the matter is they CAN and there will be fights that they SHOULD and not doing so is not playing the class correctly.

No matter what rotation you come up with for "maximum" DPS, there are pure DPS classes that will crush a Paladins, and be a better choice if the fight only requires "maximum" DPS (the traditional tank and spank).

Infact! you know what! Now lets do a *real* DPS cycle!


00.0 - Fight start - assuming SoV is already up before pull as it is 2 min.
01.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
03.0 - CS
04.5 - DS
05.04 - This is where your 5th Stack of Vengeance will hit, assuming 2.52 attack speed.
06.0 - Consecrate.
07.5 - SoB (no need for SoV now)
09.0 - CS. Woot, I can use this one.
10.5 - Judgement of {your assignment}
12.0 - Wasted (here is your chance in that cycle to do things like, Hands, Wings, DS, and Exorcise/Wrath/Hammer)
13.5 - DS
15.0 - Consecrate

See what I did there? Instead of WASTING time doing something other than DPS, I filled all those slots with DPS and thus, upped my DPS WITHOUT nerfing the utility I am brought for (Mana regen, healing, Blessings, Hands.) And without screwing my DPS by playing with my Swing Timer.

EDIT : There's only one problem with the cycle, and that is cycling vengeance back in, but somehow, I think that can be arranged, every 15 or so seconds. It certainly is something we as Ret will have to learn, if Vengeance stays in it's current form.

lol @ wasting time. Your bias is so obvious. A Paladin casting a heal when needed is never wasting. Ret DPS will never be higher than the top pure DPS classes/specs on live servers. It is now in the Beta because no damage tuning has been done.

But I am curious about your idea of utility. You call healing "wasting" a GCD, yet list healing as part of the utility you were brought for. Which is it?

And SoV will have to be brought back in every 13.5 seconds at most, the stack only stays up for 15 seconds. It used to be 18, but has been reduced to 15. Would not want to miss the swing or ability and have to put the stack back on.

[Voidseeker]

Voidseeker, what you say is total and utter nonsense, no one and I mean NO ONE, will ever bring a DPS class to a raid to trow and heal here and there even if they can.

I completely agree.

Now let me ask you a question: In WotLK why bring a Ret Paladin to a raid at all? What is unique to a Ret Paladin vs other DPS classes that would make them a required spot in the raid?

[Admuntour]

You bring a ret paladin to a raid because they provide solid DPS while buffing their raid passively, they give 3% crit, 2% damage, 3% haste, mana regen while DPSing and healing while DPSing.

A paladin in a 25 man raid should never cast a heal at all at a boss if they are DPS, with only couple of exceptions.
Naj'entus is one of them and the only reason I cast a heal there is because I have nothing else to do, and even then I precast so that my heal hits after the bubble is burst so I lose no DPS time.
Again, if any class is brought to a raid to DPS then they just stick to DPSing like glue, its the healers job to heal trough anything and that is that.

If SoB ends up not being the top DPS seal then I'll switch to whatever is better, after all its my job in raids to output as much DPS as possible, and before you talk about utility, you should note that the paladin DPS has been designed to provide utility while DPSing, not to gimp themselfs by casting heals in a boss fight.

[Kenark]

nothing unique. just dps as good as other dps classes and a buff/aura and synergies just like some of them...

hmm...seems it hasn't come trough to some people that blizz at least tries to make 28 raiding speccs (wont work but *bow* to the efforts)

[uTn]

If brought to a raid for dps as ret you should do just that and nothing else. Ofc ret's are brought for buffs and auras we all know that but that particular tree is dps and nothing else.

I'd compare ret healing to badaging, just do it when needed- never EVER as part of some dps-rotation, that's just crazy. ???

[Admuntour]

You should also realize that by the very fact Blizz is trying to make as many specs as possible raid viable that bringing a certain spec or not stops becoming mandatory and start becoming a bonus.
For example, would you bring a hunter to the raid? It isn't mandatory, a mage and a rogue could still DPS fine and the mage provides some mana regen with the water elemental or the mana regen could be provided by a shadow priest, but you still bring a hunter because he does good DPS and the mana regen+ expose weakness is a great bonus.
Why bring a ret paladin? His mana regen can be covered by a lot of other classes indeed, the healing can be covered by DK, a lot of other classes can do equal DPS, however none the less its still a nice bonus to have a ret paladin because he brings 3% crit, 2% damage, 3% haste, mana regen and healing all in one while DPSing.

Competition will be more fierce now since more classes will be viable and add nice utility while also doing good damage, it will come down to skill for whoever gets a raid spot and it a way that is how it should be, you should bring people because of skill not because of the bonuses.

[Deleted]

making this simple? okay.

Make everyone have the same fun while doing things.

Assuming ret paladins have nothing different than, let's say, shadow priests, gives you the freedome to let everyone choose what makes them have more fun.

That's how i see it.

little 3% raid buff, 6% haste, 3% crit, mana batterying are "minor flavours" (pass me the generalization)

And when you bring a DPS to a raid you make him DPS, making it heal it's just stupid.

(Considering that when you do a cast time you reset the swing timer. HL would make your swings at 2.5+3.8 seconds each, good game :>)

[Palinchron]

Thank you for adding that just when the discussion started to head into a informational direction. Can't believe you actually made an account for that, go troll somewhere else, now.

Thank you for proving how ignorant you are. I can go on listing way more quotes prove who really is trolling here too lets see who has more flaming posts? Oh you do... That's what I thought... What is even funnier is you called someone a 14 year old and yet you are doing a shitload of flaming in this thread. You are proof of how immature players don't provide much if any feedback to Beta. Anyways keep being a flaming scrub, I won't respond to anymore nonsense in this thread...

[Rawberry]

Thank you for proving how ignorant you are. I can go on listing way more quotes prove who really is trolling here too lets see who has more flaming posts? Oh you do... That's what I thought... What is even funnier is you called someone a 14 year old and yet you are doing a shitload of flaming in this thread. You are proof of how immature players don't provide much if any feedback to Beta. Anyways keep being a flaming scrub, I don't care anymore so keep on being ignorant...

Not another one... :-X

[Tigercat]

Why would I, as a raid leader, bring a subpar dps and subpar healer when I could just bring a strong dps and let the large number of aoe/group heals already being cast take care of the healing the retadin would have done?

[Samiel]

But I am curious about your idea of utility. You call healing "wasting" a GCD, yet list healing as part of the utility you were brought for. Which is it?

And SoV will have to be brought back in every 13.5 seconds at most, the stack only stays up for 15 seconds. It used to be 18, but has been reduced to 15. Would not want to miss the swing or ability and have to put the stack back on.

If you're expertise and hit capped, you wont miss, but I'd still see that bringing it in every 10 seconds after the initial cycle (where the last aaplication is added 5-8 seconds into the cycle, meaning no worries again until 15-18 seconds in) In case of that 0.01 fluke chance.

We are brought for DPS, our utility (Blessings, Retribution Aura, hands.), our ability to keep up another seal (light or wisdom) and DS (healing) We are not brought to waste DPS casting healing spells, but like the Shadow Priest, we will be brought for the healing we can give as a healing *battery* (DS, JoL) and the mana we can return to boot.

And, Yes, casting a healing spell is *wasting* a GCD, but I don't know if you know this, but we have *other* ways to give health to people? Yeah, you know, offer Healing, alternatively? You know, without wasting a GCD on a HL or FoL. (Hell, LoH is all the utility we need, 20 Min instant that doesn't screw with swing timers.)