Death Knight to Ret worth it?

[Revanchist]

Hello Paladins!

I come to you today with a question. I am in a slowly but surely progressing guild (10/12 ICC) where I play a Unholy (soon to be DW Frost) DK dps. My Death Knight has been my main all throughout WotLK, but now I'm starting to really get bored with 2hing DKs, and am maining tanking on him now. None the less, my guild isn't in need of tanks for our 10 mans, so I'm looking into gearing up my currently Prot Paladin to dps. Gearing him up isn't really the problem; I'm just wondering if its worth it, through utility, like different Hands and Divine Sacrifice builds, and if the dps is up to par with Death Knights (the only reason I ask this question is I know Rets tend to be a little bit lower on the single target scale, and higher? on the AoE charts).

Any advice at all about the better and worse parts of Rets would be appreciated...

Thanks,
Revanchist

[Wonderboy]

Rets tend to scale poorly in ICC with gear, once you get to heroics you won't be getting close to rogues or mages on 90% of fights. If your question is "what will do more dps?" stick with the DK, however if your asking "are they fun, cause i am bored?" then you may want to reroll.

[Revanchist]

Rets tend to scale poorly in ICC with gear, once you get to heroics you won't be getting close to rogues or mages on 90% of fights. If your question is "what will do more dps?" stick with the DK, however if your asking "are they fun, cause i am bored?" then you may want to reroll.

Thank you very much! One other thing; In a 10 man where I'm one of 2 paladins and the only Ret does my utility make up for lower dps??

[melloncollieowl]

Rets who use hands(Sacrifice/salvation comes to mind), blessings (BOP the healer), art of war heals(Not on you) ...and holding down decent DPS are Gods.

Rets who face roll 1-5 and do mediocre DPS are insects.

If you can pull off the former... Every guild needs one or two... If you are the latter...don't waste your time.

[Revanchist]

Rets who use hands(Sacrifice/salvation comes to mind), blessings (BOP the healer), art of war heals(Not on you) ...and holding down decent DPS are Gods.

Rets who face roll 1-5 and do mediocre DPS are insects.

If you can pull off the former... Every guild needs one or two... If you are the latter...don't waste your time.

Thank you very much... I think I'm going to give Ret a try while working on incorporating the Hands and such. If that doesn't work out I can always go back to my DK.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

[zcks]

Remember if you roll a ret paladin macros & addons are you best ally, they allow you to instantly use hand spells, art of war heals etc.. on friends targets without having to take time to switch targets. I suggest having an addon to watch your Cd's, one to watch you allies for debuffs you can dispel & one for watching your allies health. If done right with macros you can even make your hand spells/heals instantly work on chosen allies with just a shift-click. This is how you really tell the good ret paladins from the bad ones, the baddies rarely use any utility much less are able to do it without loosing a ton of dps.

On a side note ppl who say we ret's don't have to pay attention to anything obviously have never tried to play one at its top potential.

[belfpala]

On a side note ppl who say we ret's don't have to pay attention to anything obviously have never tried to play one at its top potential.

Huh? Sorry. I was too busy facerolling to look at the screen.

But yeah, it's easy to max your dps as a ret paladin, slightly harder to have the situational awareness and UI/macro setup to use everything you can bring to a raid. Not saying it's hard, but don't expect someone to call out if they need a HoSalv or HoP; gotta see it yourself usually, which means paying attention to the entire raid while performing FCFS perfectly.

[Yuron]

yes x)

[Lusei]

On principle, yes.

Yes.

YES!

[tricknick76]

some minor detail i'd like to add about rets is that a huge dps boost is found through trinkets. without changing skill or any other gear, i replaced Victor's Call, MIrror of Truth and Mark of Supremecy ( 3 easy to obtain ones) for Death's Choice and Whispering Fanged Skull; and this, without ANY other change, boosted dps by 1k to 1500. also, raid buffs are nice.

some OTHER detail you want to look out for, is that not every "plate, ilvl boost, upgrade!" is an upgrade. Strength is attractive (1 str = ~ 2.6 Attack Power); however, ALL plate items are divided into Strength, Crit, Hit, Haste, Armor Pen, and Expertise, and i GUARENTEE you you will find yourself WAY above the hit cap because of how much hit you find. (expertise is rare, and its usually 2 of the stats past STR, so its almost ALWAYS hit/haste or hit/crit, not often crit/haste). My rule of thumb: Strength gear with both CRIT and HASTE are great (of course, this is with the idea that i'm way over hit cap and plan on getting TaiaJ soon). Strength gear with HIT is terrible. Under 26 expertise, Strength gear with Expertise is okay. Likewise: don't be scared to dip into mail/leather. Mail and Leather, because they dont get attack power from agility like plates do from strength as much, tend to have an extra level of stat, and agility provides crit as well. rule of thumb for that: if a piece is a 5 NON-CAP STAT (i.e. 5 stats and no hit or expertise) it IS a great item, ESPECIALLY when compared to an equivalent plate item with capped stats.

An example of this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50987 - Malevolent Girdle - Plate item, 4 stats, 1 is a cap-stat (hit) and since 99% of pallies are over hit cap (either thru MoS or TAiaJ) its really only effectively 3 stas.

However,
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50995 - Vengeful Noose - Leather item, 5 stats, none of them cap (hit/exp) so all 5 stats help, and armor pen isn't terrible with 2pc t10. IMO, this is better, and RAWR usually agrees. Now, between this and the Mail one idk which is better; mail has less armor pen (which is okay) and MORE attack power (which is good), but it also has Hit, which is a waste of item budget.



And honestly, you'll have MoS for a while, probably until you replace it with TAiaJ (because replacing it with anything else the hit drops drastically).


TL'DR'S:
1) great trinktes can be found a) with 5k gold, inscriptionists. b) through 25 icc, saurfang/PP. c) through 10 icc, LDW. d) through 25 toc, valkyrs.
2)
So, when choosing pieces, consider that strength is attractive, but 5 effective stat agility gear is nothing to scoff over, especially when the strength has a stat that you exceed cap. If you wana be a real PRO, do your HW and before a raid starts see what might be an upgrade and check RAWR ahead of time before it drops and you cant decide to roll or not.