Patch 4.0.1 PTR

[Kildor]

Now that Patch 4.0.1 is live on the PTR's. Is there any specific rotations for rets atm?

[Toragon]

Well, there is, but its not worth investing your time to know, because we dont have Inquisition yet...

[Munk]

As best I understand it....

CS, Judge, CS Exo(if AoW Proc) TV. After the initial rotation where you've got judgement up on the target the "rotation" settles back into a priority rotation.

CS (Primary Nuke) >Exo if AoW proc is up> Judge if it wasnt> Holy Wrath if no AoW proc, and Judge is on CD, all the while minding to TV on 3 stacks of Holy Power, inserting extra TV's on HoL procs, and Popping Wings on CD after you have three stacks of HP to activate Zealotry.

for the durration of wings+zealotry you'll be spamming CS>TV excepting Hand of Light procs which basically give you a free TV.

Now im goona copy my thoughts I posted onto a different thread that sums up my thoughts on the current PTR.

Just got done playing around on the ptr for a few hours and while im by no means the expert of the NEW face of the ret pally I wanted to share some thoughts.

1) The stock UI is wholey unsuitable for playing Ret. The way its currently setup your eyes are demanding to be in 4 different places at once, top right for watching proc's top left for watching HP, middle for watching the half baked power aura's, and the left, and bottom for ability cd's. It basically makes ret completely broken for anything regarding target swaps or movement.

2) The "rotation" which felt fluid and quick in Wrath feels clunky and disjointed. I like the idea of proc based damage and rotation changes on the fly but as it stands im getting a lot of UI lag on my Holy Power which is leading to using TV at inoppurtune times. It seems like our BASE damage has just been reduced too far and are almost entirely based on those procs. I dont think this will be terribly problematic for 5 minute boss fights but in the couple heroics I ran it was impossible to do any decent dps as by the first time I got a TV the boss was dead.

3) Our aoe has been gimped. I can understand that it was perhaps TOO powerful in wrath but I was running my heroics with another similarly geared 264/277 ret and we were getting beaten by a 232 geared bm hunter. To put it in perspective his pet was doing about as much damage as we were.


I love the holy power setup, and I really do enjoy the tv/zealotry mechanics but with the stock UI and the untuned damage/proc rates in addition to our nerfed to hell crit rate were not in the best place right now.

I think in time and given everyhting functioning we will indeed be a powerful raiding spec that really highlights the good pallies from the bad but as it stands now we just take too long to get those procs we need for our daamage. One thing I can see "fixing" this would be a way to "regen" holy power out of combat so we could enter combat with 3hp. Might be op for pvp but its deffinetley necessary for pve to be competitive. They could also fix it with a 2 minute ish cd which gives you more holy power.

One thing I dont like though is that we frankly have TOO many buttons to push in combat.

Discounting any self healing abilities....

Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Truth, Hand of Salvation, Judgement, CS, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Zealotry, Avenging Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, Divine Storm, Consecrate, Templars Verdict and all of these need to be used dynamicly while looking for at least three specific "procs" being art of war, hand of light, and our holy power stacks. All of which will be made significantly easier with custom ui, but still. 13 buttons that are used in non-specific order that vastly changes damage depeding on how and when they are used.

My thought personal thought is that Zealotry should be rolled into AW and simply make AW take 1 or 2 HP to activate. I also dont quite understand that with CS affected by haste I had no place for HoW when using zealotry with AW just spam CS>TV and if i get HoL poc TV again.

SO then you come to the point of not using the two in tandem which conventional logic cautions against this as tv is hands down our hardest hitter and generall you gain the most dps from buffing your heaviest attacks.

I know this post is somewhat disjointed but I honestly am left with a lot of mixed feelings about the new ret. I like the direction and I like most of the changes. I dont like the clusterfuck and how my eyes have to play twister to meek out lackluster damage.

The big upside is that its clear to see that the skillcap will be vastly higher and I believe this means blizzard will be happy to buff our damage to a point where when played right (which wont be easy) we could be the new fury warr's of cata.

[anaxie]

Seal of Righteousness <Except it doesn't matter in combat>, Seal of Truth <Are we turning it off in combat?>, Hand of Salvation <once 2 mins if needed OooOoOO>, Judgement, CS, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Zealotry, Avenging Wrath <Same as zealortry use together>, Hammer of Wrath< yeah sub 20%>, Divine Store <Because it's amazing boss dps right?>, Consecrate <Prolly only while using plea with a Judgement ticking>, Templars Verdict < Guess you forgot to say Inquiition while you blew everything out of proportion> and all of these need to be used dynamicly while looking for at least three specific "procs" being art of war, hand of light, and our holy power stacks. All of which will be made significantly easier with custom ui, but still. 13 buttons that are used in non-specific order that vastly changes damage depeding on how and when they are used.

Might want to rethink some of your points. Should I mention movement keys too since everything seems so difficult?

Currently we use: HoS, Plea, AW, DS, CS, Con, Exo, HW, HoW, JoW/L, <Holy Wrath used very minimal amount of times>
Beta we use: HoS, Plea, AW, Zeal, Inqu, CS, TV, Exo, HW, HoW, JoW <Consecration used very minimal amount of times>

WoW it's basically the same thing! the only annoying factor is watching inquisition timer and praying for TV HoL procs.


Also something all rets might want to look into as a means of holy power before a Hsaufang type parse in cata.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=46780

take off gear and use lvl 1 weapon and max HP to your hearts content. Currently useful for getting an exploit 15% haste buff for 1 min on current tier bosses prefight, which is basically half the fight time of most high end HSaurfang kills. However in atleast a month the 15% haste exploit is null.

[Typhron]

2) The "rotation" which felt fluid and quick in Wrath feels clunky and disjointed. I like the idea of proc based damage and rotation changes on the fly but as it stands im getting a lot of UI lag on my Holy Power which is leading to using TV at inoppurtune times. It seems like our BASE damage has just been reduced too far and are almost entirely based on those procs. I dont think this will be terribly problematic for 5 minute boss fights but in the couple heroics I ran it was impossible to do any decent dps as by the first time I got a TV the boss was dead.

Too true. Everything feels slower.

Is the new Mastery working, also? Mastery rating doesn't seem to be affecting it at all.

[Munk]

You really didnt read my post at all did you ana?

You can try to discredit me if you like but nothing you said actually means anything. We have the same number of attacks which need to be accessed on a per fight basis which means the addition of inquisition, TV, and GoaK are three additional spots on a bloated ui we still have to fill. No not every button gets pressed for every fight but you cant just pretend you dont need divine storm on your action bars because its only useful on multitarget. The same can be said for our seals (which frankly isnt different than it is now other than the introduction of more bloat on our bars).

If you honestly thing AW and Zealotry should be macro'd together I think youre a fool. We have no idea how level 85 raiding will turn out and in many cases with many classes poping cd's seperatley for higher sustained damage often surpasses popping everything at once. This has traditionally not been the case for ret but with all the changes at current we have no idea if that will remain or not.

---------- Post added 2010-09-12 at 07:49 PM ----------

Too true. Everything feels slower.

Is the new Mastery working, also? Mastery rating doesn't seem to be affecting it at all.

Yes the new mastery is working on the PTR, including the "power aura's" affect. Its basically a crescent facing the left, displayed above the AoW proc. When you get a decent string of Hand of Light procs our damage feels on par with where it is now if not less controllable. When you get shafted on the RNG you feel like an amputee waiting for that next 3 stack TV.

[Typhron]

Yes the new mastery is working on the PTR, including the "power aura's" affect. Its basically a crescent facing the left, displayed above the AoW proc. When you get a decent string of Hand of Light procs our damage feels on par with where it is now if not less controllable. When you get shafted on the RNG you feel like an amputee waiting for that next 3 stack TV.

The proc rate seems unchanged. That was my complaint. >.>

[Munk]

Typh,

No clue whether or not the actual proc rate was the stated 8% from white swings. In the 2 or so hours I spent hitting the dummy Id say my REAL proc rate was closer to 5% but if im being honest even with having no mastery on my gear I still did get a few "back to back" hand of light procs as will always be the case with RNG based things.

I think one we roll in around 20-30% mastery which i presum will end up being around the end of the second raiding tier you will feel as though youre getting proc's all the time at which point our class would FEEL better, and you'll probably see a notable jump in damage too. HoL just seems to me to be another way to have zealotry without having it which like all good things in a pally toolbox will either end up getting taken away or nerfed to hell.

Hopefully the new ret will make the average ret's damage sink so low that they dont mind letting the better rets destroy the meters much like a Fury Warr or Fire Mage do now.

[Typhron]

Typh,

No clue whether or not the actual proc rate was the stated 8% from white swings. In the 2 or so hours I spent hitting the dummy Id say my REAL proc rate was closer to 5% but if im being honest even with having no mastery on my gear I still did get a few "back to back" hand of light procs as will always be the case with RNG based things.

I think one we roll in around 20-30% mastery which i presum will end up being around the end of the second raiding tier you will feel as though youre getting proc's all the time at which point our class would FEEL better, and you'll probably see a notable jump in damage too. HoL just seems to me to be another way to have zealotry without having it which like all good things in a pally toolbox will either end up getting taken away or nerfed to hell.

Hopefully the new ret will make the average ret's damage sink so low that they dont mind letting the better rets destroy the meters much like a Fury Warr or Fire Mage do now.

Hopefully.

Then again, we've always needed something a bit more concrete than hope. I'm /PRETTY/ sure I won't be the only one faffing about on the PTR for the next week or two, so they'll be plenty of time to get the kinks sorted out. For all classes.

It's definitely the start of something or the end of something.

Addendum: The proc rate can be found in the new-fangled stats tab, between Melee and Ranged.

[Munk]

Thanks for the heads up.

[GodTier]

Typh,

No clue whether or not the actual proc rate was the stated 8% from white swings. In the 2 or so hours I spent hitting the dummy Id say my REAL proc rate was closer to 5% but if im being honest even with having no mastery on my gear I still did get a few "back to back" hand of light procs as will always be the case with RNG based things.

I think one we roll in around 20-30% mastery which i presum will end up being around the end of the second raiding tier you will feel as though youre getting proc's all the time at which point our class would FEEL better, and you'll probably see a notable jump in damage too. HoL just seems to me to be another way to have zealotry without having it which like all good things in a pally toolbox will either end up getting taken away or nerfed to hell.

Hopefully the new ret will make the average ret's damage sink so low that they dont mind letting the better rets destroy the meters much like a Fury Warr or Fire Mage do now.

Without the proc being that high I'm not sure how ret can be competitive DPS wise even in a level 85 environment. With them taking away the last mastery and giving us this one if we can't end up getting extra damage reliably then it basically shouldn't exist. 15% or so is nice, but we all know that even sometime the 40% melee-swing cooldown-reduction of divine storm can sometime not occur for two rotations of getting back to DS. The thing I think will make all the difference is mastery... but as you stated with it being so RNG based if we don't have a 20-30% to make us actually viable then we are looking like crap.

[Killmour]

I'm doing like 6k to the dummy, seems like the numbers need to be tweaked back up since the mastery change just happened.