Armor ignore now worthwhile PvE/PvP stat (Ret).

[Offhand]

So after the whining about the change from holy to physical damage for DS had the whole community crying foul, I noticed that a good portion of rets damage was now coming from the physical school instead.

This lead me to start thinking you could use armor ignore not only to minimize this change but increase overall dps as well.

Trying to find a recount of my test numbers from the other night, I'm at work so it's a no go.

But my basic line of thinking is:
Melee/CS/DS makes up over 50% of ret dps.

Judgements and SoB/SoC procs our the only holy damage abilities used with any frequency. Consecration cannot be kept up all the time.

So yeah, let's get some numbers and see how this ends up.

[zarondd]

Ignore armor was applicable since 2.4, when judgements were left unworked, bad dps/dpm, so the largest portion of damage came from physical anyways. The ratio was pretty close to 70/30 IIRC for most cases.

I'd like to see ret at 50/50 phys/holy with lower raw damage then physical classes and higher then magical classes.

[Offhand]

I believe shamans put up similiar numbers as well. Whereas judgements are our main dps nuke with the high crit taken into account. Maelstrom weaponed chain lightnings or LB's are the best ability to hit once off CD (or 5 charges, you get the idea).

[Swolltitan]

Don't most ret paladins end up using 2 handers, and stack melee stats (Strength for example)? It would lead me to believe this is the reasoning why ret has become more of a physical damage than holy. Going down other trees, to create a shockadin spec would be more appropriate for holy damage.

I don't see the need to adjust ret more towards holy damage as it seems ret is to be considered a Melee DPS, like your rogues or fury/arms warriors... other than to avoid the armor increase in the level 80 bosses. Then that would just start more qq threads of how op ret is...

[Jerazznor]

So after the whining about the change from holy to physical damage for DS had the whole community crying foul, I noticed that a good portion of rets damage was now coming from the physical school instead.

This lead me to start thinking you could use armor ignore not only to minimize this change but increase overall dps as well.

Trying to find a recount of my test numbers from the other night, I'm at work so it's a no go.

But my basic line of thinking is:
Melee/CS/DS makes up over 50% of ret dps.

Judgements and SoB/SoC procs our the only holy damage abilities used with any frequency. Consecration cannot be kept up all the time.

So yeah, let's get some numbers and see how this ends up.

I am thinking about this as well. A very large portion of our DPS is going to come from physical damage, and especially in pvp, armor is a problem. With the stealth nerf to sanctified wrath idk if it will be very viable, but we shall see.

P.S. I am sitting on 5% armor ignore, low I know because I had none pre 3.0, and executioner. Its pretty awesome to see a noticeable difference in damage when executioner procs though. Have fun stomping clothies with it if you so choose.

[Offhand]

OK, I just attempted to PuG ZA and get some real numbers. Unfortunately, even in this nerfed state you will find people too stupid to run it.

Updates to come on tuesday.

[Mysmere]

i'd suggest ignoring armor pen and just grabbing executioner

[Montoya]

This is kind of old, since we already knew pre 3.0 that Armour Penetration was the way to go once you hit T5/6 content for PvE. PvP, I don't think it would be enough to make a difference to increase out burst damage back to acceptable levels.

[Swampmoose]

Here are now my wws have been looking.

Melee ~ 23-25%
Judgment of blood ~23-25%
Seal of Blood ~20%
CS ~10%
DS ~5-7%
Consecration ~5-7%
Exorcism (if applicable) ~5%
Hammer of Wrath ~5%

**Some variation from fight to fight depending on mechanics.

[Swampmoose]

This is kind of old, since we already knew pre 3.0 that Armour Penetration was the way to go once you hit T5/6 content for PvE. PvP, I don't think it would be enough to make a difference to increase out burst damage back to acceptable levels.

Haste was better for SoB until you got an incredible amount of Armor Pen. Alliance suffered and had to go with armor pen.

[tempamy1]

our mana regen got nerf and so I think it is good to stack more armor pen since we can't always Consecration/Exorcism now

Quote from: Montoya :
Haste was better for SoB until you got an incredible amount of Armor Pen. Alliance suffered and had to go with armor pen.

Let's talk about 3.03 or 3.02, alliance got their version of SoB now and SoC benefit from haste now too, don't live in the past

[Swampmoose]

our mana regen got nerf and so I think it is good to stack more armor pen since we can't always Consecration/Exorcism now

Quote from: Montoya :
Haste was better for SoB until you got an incredible amount of Armor Pen. Alliance suffered and had to go with armor pen.

Let's talk about 3.03 or 3.02, alliance got their version of SoB now and SoC benefit from haste now too, don't live in the past

Quote from me in another thread about the mana regen nerf that has already been on live for a week-

"Oh and my rotation for the week has included, Judgment, CS, DS, consecration, Exorcism, AW at every CD, Holy Wrath (even on single targets a good bit if everything else is on cd), and I have not had a problem whatsoever with mana."

And it will only improve divine plea. I think I'll be sticking with haste.

[Offhand]

Haste was better for SoB until you got an incredible amount of Armor Pen. Alliance suffered and had to go with armor pen.

Let's talk about 3.03 or 3.02, alliance got their version of SoB now and SoC benefit from haste now too, don't live in the past

Well I'm talking post 3.0 here where both SoB and SoC scale with haste. SoB is still a better PvE dps seal so any discussion should focus around that for PvE. This also gives you mana through spiritual attunement, making something like consecrate possibly spammable.

I wasn't even thinking about AP versus haste, I was originally thinking that the value of armor pen alone should be regarded as higher in value then previously. Not that I don't realize that there is a limited stat budget for every item you pick up.

I have a full 2.43% armor ignore on live (go go PvP offset). 2k AP and 31% crit. Picking up some s4 pants tomorrow making that 3 piece s4. Yet again, I can't pull a whole set of armor ignore gear out of my ass with only 50 badges and arena points that can't be spent elsewhere.

I was kinda hoping someone who main-spec'd ret now could give me an idea on this. Because you can you can take a nerf and whine or theorycraft around it. The mood here has been mostly civil and I can only applaud that in the paladin forums. ;D

[Kaladarofsenjin]

This is the first time I have ever even posted on an mmochampion forum(browse a lot but usually just ignore the dumb posts)seemed like a good thread to start in since someone has a general interest. Since this patch I decided to experiment some with the SoComm glyph(20% Greater chance to proc SoComm dmg) and an armor ignore build (2650ish AP 33.5 to crit and 21.48% armorpen,BoM as only buff). Ran a ZA just to crunch out some numbers, the raid comp wasn't set up very well as far as melee buffs went. 1 Feral, 1 markshunter, 2warriors, 1ret, 2mages, warlock,restosham(no wf totems entire run),and a holypriest. Sitting at around 1.7 to 1.8k dps on trash and somewhere in the low to mid 2k area for bosses(Was kinda zoned out while in the zone, more trying to figure out how ret is working post-patch). But basically what I noticed with armor pen,trying to answer your question ultimately but its a long-winded way of getting there. I think that armorpen now/and before was a very viable stat to balance in with you gear, given the right balance between str/crit/haste/hit/armorpen it can all work together extremely well to boost your overall dmg output. A really good program for ret number crunching is "Rawr" just google it. SoB is still going to be the ideal seal for PvE after all the seal changes most likely, but I believe armorpen will indeed be reguarded even higher now then it was before since DS is now physical dmg.

p.s. feel free to armory Kaladar of Sen'jin to check out the set-up I have atm. Or toss me any serious ret e-mails. I enjoy number research on new tricks.

p.s.s. the ret nerfs aren't that bad and I am glad they are happening, being a ret paladin in sunwell and on 1900 arena teams pre-patch it really made me(and other good retpaladins that strived hard to earn a raid slot) sad that our class became seemingly a faceroll class. Lets bring the skill back to the ret!

Also sorry for the WALL OF TEXT CRITTING FOR OVER 9000!!! Hope I helped answer your question.

[Offhand]

Thanks for your input.

Badges now going to Agelista's revenge so I can run a few more tests.

[Admuntour]

I'm not really sure how good armor pen is right now but I'd like to have the discussion continued, so here is my two cents.
I haven't raided much recently with WoTLK on the horizon, but I do have a WWS from like 2 weeks ago on my last SWP run.
Note that I came home late and only managed to do Twins, M'uru and Kil'Jaedan.
When I looked on the overall damage done and abilities used I find that the damage I've done is:
24% swing
24% judgment of blood
20% seal of blood
10% CS
8% DS
5% consecrate
5% hammer of wrath
4% others

Now CS is physical, DS is also physical, with my swing damage it all adds up to 42%, thats bellow half my damage, armor pen affects that little.
The logical conclusion I'd draw is that haste would be a better stat since it makes you get more white hits and thus more sob procs.
However wouldn't it be be better to stack both AP and Haste in equal a relative equal ratio to each other?
The numbers I have posted above could change if I had a bit more armor pen, right now I have only 3% and 9% haste.
Thus if you have a strength, crit, armor pen and haste, the strength dictates how hard you hit, it increases your weapon damage this raising your damage from seals, it gives you AP that is converted into SP and makes your judgments hit harder, crit dictates how often these will do double damage and is a flat out damage increase, haste dictates how often you hit with both white hits and seals and benefits those only, armor pen now increases your white hits, CS and DS further by allowing you to benefit more from strength since more of your damage manages to get trough armor.
So all of these stats seem to have a 4 way synergy.

So wouldn't it be better to have an equal ratio of haste and armor pen?

[Proudfoot]

Here are now my wws have been looking.

Melee ~ 23-25%
Judgment of blood ~23-25%
Seal of Blood ~20%
CS ~10%
DS ~5-7%
Consecration ~5-7%
Exorcism (if applicable) ~5%
Hammer of Wrath ~5%

**Some variation from fight to fight depending on mechanics.

Yes, these numbers are about right. I'm surprised our activated abilities aren't higher DPS but meh.

[Proudfoot]

I'm not really sure how good armor pen is right now but I'd like to have the discussion continued, so here is my two cents.
I haven't raided much recently with WoTLK on the horizon, but I do have a WWS from like 2 weeks ago on my last SWP run.
Note that I came home late and only managed to do Twins, M'uru and Kil'Jaedan.
When I looked on the overall damage done and abilities used I find that the damage I've done is:
24% swing
24% judgment of blood
20% seal of blood
10% CS
8% DS
5% consecrate
5% hammer of wrath
4% others

Now CS is physical, DS is also physical, with my swing damage it all adds up to 42%, thats bellow half my damage, armor pen affects that little.
The logical conclusion I'd draw is that haste would be a better stat since it makes you get more white hits and thus more sob procs.
However wouldn't it be be better to stack both AP and Haste in equal a relative equal ratio to each other?
The numbers I have posted above could change if I had a bit more armor pen, right now I have only 3% and 9% haste.
Thus if you have a strength, crit, armor pen and haste, the strength dictates how hard you hit, it increases your weapon damage this raising your damage from seals, it gives you AP that is converted into SP and makes your judgments hit harder, crit dictates how often these will do double damage and is a flat out damage increase, haste dictates how often you hit with both white hits and seals and benefits those only, armor pen now increases your white hits, CS and DS further by allowing you to benefit more from strength since more of your damage manages to get trough armor.
So all of these stats seem to have a 4 way synergy.

So wouldn't it be better to have an equal ratio of haste and armor pen?

Isn't Seal and Judgement of Blood based on how much melee damage you deal? Wouldn't increasing white damage through armor pen increase that damage as well?

[zarondd]

Here are now my wws have been looking.

Melee ~ 23-25%
Judgment of blood ~23-25%
Seal of Blood ~20%
CS ~10%
DS ~5-7%
Consecration ~5-7%
Exorcism (if applicable) ~5%
Hammer of Wrath ~5%

**Some variation from fight to fight depending on mechanics.

Haste affects ~44% DPS
Apen affects ~40% DPS

Arp@70 = 15.83 for 1%
Haste = 15.77 for 1%

Now if only the new itemization cost for ArP and Haste would turn up

[Offhand]

Yes, these numbers are about right. I'm surprised our activated abilities aren't higher DPS but meh.

Melee swings are *supposed* to be 40% of melee dps. Guess that isn't the case however. Numbers confirmed for me as well, JoB came in 1% higher than white hits, which I found rather surprising.

Isn't Seal and Judgement of Blood based on how much melee damage you deal? Wouldn't increasing white damage through armor pen increase that damage as well?

SoB is percent base of a white hit dealt as holy damage. Therefore, it's 35% (or whatever it is now) of what your white hit would be on an armorless target. Increasing AP or crit would increase the damage of a SoB proc, whereas increasing haste would increase the number of SoB procs (more white hits). Hope I cleared that up.



Interesting to see that haste is coming out ahead again. But at least the values are such that someone just stacking any and all melee stats wouldn't be a completely terrible player.