Report on PTR Retribution

[Deleted]

So i've been doing a few days of PTR testing and am making a post regarding what I have seen thus far.

PvE
The new Retri rotation is allot better than the current live state. It is more predictable and you don't need to constantly be looking at it. This helps in many ways because now you can actually look at the environment more instead of watching cds all the time. The procs are actually not too bad and your damage don't really rely on luck as much as it does on live. This is good news for all pve players as dps was far too random before and hard to balance. I think now ret can pull decent dps in raids especially with fights with target switching due to the new SoT stacking faster than before, this used to be a major setback before in most cata fights as a lot of switching is needed and allot of fights don't allow 100% uptime on boss. The new mastery is very nice and works well (I've been told there's a bug on beta where it don't scale with Inquisition) once it is able to scale with inquisition.
There are still few minor issues that I believe need looking at though.
- We cannot proceed with single target rotation on trash pulls due to Holy Wrath breaking nearby cc. This is a major issue that needs to be resolved. I feel that Holy Wrath was forced into the single target rotation for ret. I think another filler is at demand.
- Something that has caught my eye is Holy Strike (old paladin ability) on the mmo champion paladin forums. This ability should be prioritised over judgement and holy wrath and doing less damage than Crusader Strike.
- Description: 'This ability consecrates your weapon and increases the damage of the next attack by % (something like that). I feel it will work well in the rotation we have so we can have less frequent use of Holy Wrath in single target fights. (or check out my HoW idea on the pvp part of this post and use that as filler instead, i also prefer the HoW idea above this one)
- The Holy Wrath mechanic is not a fun one. I feel its just a dull attack that hits close to nothing on Single target/AoE. Most people use this ability mainly for the AoE stun on big pulls (depends on type of mobs).
With that aside the rotation looks much more appealing than before when considering PvE play.

PvP
Allot of people have been complaining about ret pvp for a long time now. Some complain that it is dreadfully bad and some say its incredibly overpowered. Atm, not many can call retribution paladins even a half decent at pvp.
- The spec's mechanics dont allot it to perform well in pvp (Holy power generation/easily dispel-able/easy to control/snare-able gap closer/melee with no snare/Impossible to keep inquisition up with new mechanics etc etc). These can all be arguably fixed without changing too much to the actual spec.
- One change can change the whole table around (depending on what the change is). Personally I feel holy power plays a huge roll in us not being able to do damage to most kitting classes as it is on prt.
- One reason would be keeping Inquisition up. Keeping this buff up is a major improvement to dps as a whole and as it stands it is near impossible to generate holy power enough to use it frequently and still pull several Templar's Verdict attacks.
- The implementation of Sacred shield is good one. On live retribution is very easy to get down fast without him/her popping any cooldowns. I feel that this ability is though too powerful and scales too well. Also, it being passive makes is allot less attractive as most healers today want you say as close to 100% as possible instead of staying at 30-70%ish so that you can keep getting this buff every 30sec. I feel this should be use on short cd (30secish) and have same effect it currently has but tuned down by a decent amount so that it is not overpowered.
- I also feel that its weird how ret has arguably the worse self healing capabilities from the mdps. I think the Judgement of Light effect needs to be re-implemented into the game and things like 'selfless healer' removed. I am happy as a dps to have the job to use HoF/HoP etc on part by looking after their hp gets too much of a job and is not fun.
- Another thing holding us back is that all of the major cooldowns are all dispellable. i noticed that some on the ones dispellable on live are no longer dispellable but cooldowns are one of the ret paladins main souses of of damage and survivability. With classes like hunters, mages, priests, shamans being able to dispell allot of our cooldowns it really makes the spec extremely weak as almost 50% of classes since they can counter it without any problem.
- Retribution paladins are the only melee dps that has not got a movement slowing effect they can use on other players. I understand that this is supposed to be done on purpose but 'fight of arms' in pvp is to strong atm to not have one (with current spec mechanics anyway).
- Possible fixes could be adding a snare to Hammer of Wrath. Hammer of Wrath damage has gone down by about 50% as I can see on ptr. It is possible to make this a filler in the rotation (fixes pve issues aswell without implementing Holy Strike) as it is no longer viable finisher and the Avenging Wrath effect previously made ret hard to balance. A ranged snare could be added into the retribution rotation through this ability and would fix many issues of the class considering pvp. Though with this change a new mechanic would have to come into play considering that all dps specs do more damage when target is below 20% (this can be done in many ways as seen before with many classes).
- Atm, the spec does not feel 'retribution' enough. I think the Eye for Eye talent should be implemented deeper into the retribution tree and have some special 'retribution effect' that allows for better mobility throughout the battlefield. Possibilities of ideas could be: Refreshes the cd of HoF when you have more than 1 movement slowing effect on you. Another could be to allow Eye for Eye to stack a debuff to the target when they attack you that causes damage/snare the caster of the spell instead of causing a percentage of the damage to them aslo. it feels too much like retribution aura atm and is not fun ability.
- Also I understand that all 3 specs benefit from Pursuit of Justice but i dont think it is a holy/prot ability. This is another ability i feel should be deeper ret as it separates the spec more so you actually 'feel' like a retribution paladin instead of a prot pally with a 2h and no Avengers shield.
With some work i feel that ret can be a fun spec to pvp with and a viable choice when compared to other mdps for serious arena and rated bgs. Atm, it mainly lacks any major benefits of actually being ret instead of a warrior/dk etc or even a prot paladin.

Thats all i have so far, thanks for reading and feel free to post ideas/opinions etc

Thanks for reading!

---------- Post added 2011-01-18 at 03:43 PM ----------

ill add this: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/7...1811152844.jpg
its screenshot of how dps is like with fill tier 11 gemmed/enchanted, hit/exp capped and reforged into mastery>crit=haste (i know that mastery dnt scale with Inq yet). DPS goes up and down from 13.8k-14.5k depending on cds used recently etc (at the time was sustained at 14.1k but censure ticks effected it when i stopped attacking) Also we get up to 19k burst with wings and guardian popped at beginning.

[notwhoyouthink]

Problem with this is I can burst 19K on live and sustain 14K over 15 mins and I have a fraction of the gear that a premade has.

[Fredzilla]

Burst dps on live means nothing considering it is 100% dependent on procs. You could get 6 AoW procs in a row followed by 4 HoL and get amazing dps, but then you can proceed to not even get a DP proc for the next 30 seconds and watch your dps drop like a rock.

[notwhoyouthink]

Burst dps on live means nothing considering it is 100% dependent on procs. You could get 6 AoW procs in a row followed by 4 HoL and get amazing dps, but then you can proceed to not even get a DP proc for the next 30 seconds and watch your dps drop like a rock.

More on that topic Magmaw Heroic this week out of the gate I burst up to Second sitting at 24K DPS then something happened, Not sure what. No wait I know exactly what it was attack of the RNG monster and next thing I noticed I had slipped down to Eighth nearly 8K lower than my initial burst now the slip seems long but it's not as much of losing DPS as every other class flying past me.

[zcks]

Well as far as sustained dps goes they did make an improvment. However this came with some new problems & brought back some other problems we were starting to see go away when we were stacking haste. Among these were

1: While stacking haste we were starting to see a consistent rotation due to sanctity of battle, sure we still had some spots where nothing could be done because everything was on CD, now that we don't stack haste anymore we get them all the time.

2: Because of the change to divine purpose our holy power generation took a giant drop, thin in turn caused 2 problems. 1 is that our ability to backup heal (possibly the main reason we were brought along) went way down & 2our survivability/self healing went down in pvp where it was already as low if not lower then other melee especially against ranged classes (even with the addition of the new sacred shield).


Number 1 could easily be solved by adding judgment to the list of things that sanctity of battle effects & slightly increasing the effect that haste adds to the talent, then by modifying the proc chance & the trigger effect on the art of war. Simply change it so any attack can trigger the effect then reduce the damage & proc chance slightly.

The first part of number 2 could turn out to be a good thing because it means they could either boost our offensive potential further or buff our backup healing potential a bit, the second part however may need to be addressed in a way that does not effect our group healing utility if we want to see more offensive potential.

This means they could either A: revert Divine Purpose back to a slightly modified version of what it is on live, something like
Divine purpose Your Judgment, Exorcism & Hammer of Wrath have a 50 (100% at rank 2) chance to create a charge of holy power when used, In addition your divine Storm & Holy Wrath have a 25% chance to create a charge of holy power per target they strike (This would be the choice for if they wanted us to retain our backup healing potential instead of gaining more offensive potential)

Or they could Increase our personal survivability/self healing potential without increasing our group/backup healing potential whcih would leave room to give us more offensive potential.
They have already tried to do this with the addition of the new sacred shield, however in its new form it's little more then an oh shit ability in a spec/class that has so many it's defined around them. What I propose is they change the talent so that it is a slightly modified version of the old sacred shield & an additional perk added onto seals of command. Something like

Sacred Shield Absorbs damage = to X% of your (spell power or attack power depends on which is easier to balance) & while below 30% health healing received by the target is increased by X% (sacred shield can only be cast on self & is immune to dispels, lasts 10 seconds with a 10 second cool down).

Seals of Command Your seal of righteousness, seal of truth & seal of justice now also deal 7% weapon damage with each weapon swing, in addition your seal of the righteous will now strike an additional nearby target & your seal of insight will heal you for an additional X% of your maximum health with each special attack you do.

This would give us consistent increased survivability & a tactical choice between more damage or increased survivability in pvp instead of another oh shit ability as well something to push every so often that keeps us alive that also fills the times when we have nothing else to do because of cool downs.

[Cryoh]

Or they could just quit making us want haste and drop CS to a 3 second cooldown. Problem solved.

[zcks]

Or they could just quit making us want haste and drop CS to a 3 second cooldown. Problem solved.

That may help the rotation, but it would do very little to solve the problem of our self survivability & weather or not they want us to bring tons of group backup healing.

[Cryoh]

That may help the rotation, but it would do very little to solve the problem of our self survivability & weather or not they want us to bring tons of group backup healing.

Ah, this is still true. I've no idea why they got rid of our ability to perform a instant Flash Heal with our Art of War procs, since it would still work beautifully. I mean, a quickie 15k heal instead of a 15-20k Exorcism to the face would be a great trade off.

[zcks]

Ah, this is still true. I've no idea why they got rid of our ability to perform a instant Flash Heal with our Art of War procs, since it would still work beautifully. I mean, a quickie 15k heal instead of a 15-20k Exorcism to the face would be a great trade off.

Ya it would be great, but it would increase our group healing/backup healing potential even more which is something I think they are trying to reduce. Plus the art of war proc is hardly reliable now.

[Hexme]

Or they could just quit making us want haste and drop CS to a 3 second cooldown. Problem solved.

Problem is it takes a good 4,000 ish haste to reach 3 sec CD on CS, so reforging/gemming it is a complete waste at this tier of content. Haste was a good stat for a short period in wotlk but when cata came out values of stats just went all over the place, specially for ret paladins.

[Adhal-Blackrock]

Problem with this is I can burst 19K on live and sustain 14K over 15 mins and I have a fraction of the gear that a premade has.

people need to stop thinking 14k, or let alone even 19k is good, its not. Other classes are doing 25-30k sustained dps, 19k "burst" is garbage. Lets hope this is fixed with the changes in PTR and that inq not working with the new mastery is indeed a bug.

[Fredzilla]

people need to stop thinking 14k, or let alone even 19k is good, its not. Other classes are doing 25-30k sustained dps, 19k "burst" is garbage. Lets hope this is fixed with the changes in PTR and that inq not working with the new mastery is indeed a bug.

I'm pretty sure people only get to 30k with some sort of gimmick. The highest dps on argaloth 25 is 27k, 23k in 10. Mind you those are the best parses, and it's only downhill from there. The majority of players will not see those numbers on a non-gimmick fight.