Need help with arena (ret)

[Hirako]

Hi, i started playing arena lately and i have a few questions:

I play with a destro warlock and our play style is try to force the DPS to trinket out of fear / rep and burst them down during hammer time :P while CCing his healer with rep if possible or seduction/fear

my questions are:

1- About my sepc... should i spec into Swift Retribution for my friend's casts or skip it
2- For burst should i use SoCom or SoR?
3- 99.9% of times the other team focuses on my partner, so do i really need any resil?
4- Noble or Platinum Disks of Battle to macro it with wings for burst? (i have both)

My Armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...nedar&n=Hirako

My partner's armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...Zenedar&n=Drej

any help is appreciated thanks

[Bunter]

hmmmm well... im not the most zomgpro ret evar, but i do know a bit about ret and ret pvp. i really havent done arena this season (after the changes), so im not sure this spec would work out. however, this is what i came up with...

PvP Ret Spec

basically, you are sacrificing Seals of the Pure, Swift Ret and Righteous Vengeance so that you can go deeper into the prot tree. few reasons for this...

pvp isnt just about who can do more dps, its actually about who can survive til the match ends (after the other team is dead :P). Seals of the Pure is an awesome talent, especially for pve, but i think its a good idea to sacrifice it at least for 2v2s (probably a lot more useful in 3s and 5s when used with SoCom). Swift Ret, well... 3% haste is nice but not game-changing. I'm not saying haste is a bad thing for pvp (its actually a good thing for most classes), but there are better talents to choose from if what you want to do is 2v2s. Righteous Vengeance is a dot, and you want burst in arena for the most part. Also, RV will break your Repentance if it happens to be on the target when you Repent (RV can be on that target from a crit DS even tho you weren't directly targeting him/her; i.e: healer getting hit by crit DS and then you trying to Repent = wasted CD). Also, i think Blizz wanted to make it so that RV doesnt break Repent, but I'm not sure if the change was already implemented. anyways, that's why you get rid of those... :-*

you are gaining Stoicism, Imp RF, 2/5 Toughness, Divine Sacrifice, Divine Guardian, and Imp HoJ.

The more important thing about Stoicism is it'll reduce stun durations, which comes in handy when facing rogues, for example. On top of that, it makes it harder for shammies and priests to dispel your buffs. Imp RF will reduce damage from all sources by 6%. This is great for when doing 2s with another dps, even if the other dps gets focused most of the time. Toughness increases your armor just a tad, which means you take less damage from physical damage (melee classes/hunters), AND it reduces the duration of movement slowing effects (not to be confused with movement impairing effects). Divine Sacrifice absorbs 30% of damage done to your allies (aka the warlock) and transfers it to you. Since you're running dual dps, make sure you always bubble before using it, otherwise it's pretty much the same thing... except you just changed what target they were doing some of the damage to. Bubble, then DS to reduce damage done to your partner. Divine Guardian improves your Divine Sac, and your Sacred Shield. The last one is why you would want it... ALWAYS keep up sacred shield... be it on you, or your partner (altho i think your partner will need it a lot more than you will). And finally, you get Imp HoJ. 20 seconds off your hammer CD means more CC. CC wins matches... a well-timed stun is worth its weight in gold (i will assume HoJ weighs about 10000 pounds).

wow... wall of text kind of... i know... "TL;DR"...

as for your other questions:

2. SoR outshines SoCom on single-target dps. Not sure about two targets... but if it's three targets or more, SoCom > SoR. Pretty sure you want to use SoR for 2s.

3. You should always wear some resilience. Just don't gem and enchant for it. You should gem and enchant for DPS (Str), and just take the resilience that comes with PvP gear. Sometimes it's a smart idea to switch out 2 (or even 4) pieces of PvP gear so you can get a tier bonus. Other than that, you don't wanna go into arena in full pve gear unless you have massive kiting skills... which im pretty sure you dont (nor do i... im a freaking paladin!).

4. As for trinkets, you have 3 choices: Nobles, Discs, and DMCeath. Since you have Nobles and Discs, chances are you don't want Death. Nobles is not exactly reliable since its a proc, but it would provide the most dps thruout a long fight. Since you're doing 2s with no healer, i'll assume discs will work better for you (discs/wings macro).

Can't believe i made such a long post... But owell, hope this helps.


P.S: If you're a ret reading this message, and you've reached the 2k+ brackets (preferably this season), feel free to correct me on any mistakes i may have done. Must've made one or two somewhere...

Edit: Edited to remove scrollbars from the sides and top/bottom, to make the post easier to read.

[Sphincter]

When it comes to single target burst I'd have to say go SoR. The judgments are crazy, especially when paired with your wings, trinket, and zerking. SoComm is more suited for a cleave comp imo.

Also, resilience is really important for the higher ratings. The lock may get targeted a majority of the time, but its inevitable that going to be attacked as well. Without resilience you'll have a hell of a time surviving burst. Lets assume your enemy has a 25% chance to crit, with enough resilience your cutting that chance down to less then 20%. As well as reducing all incoming damage by a similar percentage.