Common Ret Q/A: Answers to some of those pesky questions you all have

[Badpaladin]

Original Post here.
Elitist Jerks Compendium.
Macabre's awesome beginner's guide.
Requital's BiS list, subject to change with various SIMS, Spreadsheet looks, etc.
World of Logs.
Spreadsheets and Simulationcraft.
Stat Weight reiteration.
Kisko's Trinket ratings estimation for 4.2+
Video on how to set up Clcret by Prentice.

So, you've read your EJ and you've read the post Macabre put up, but you're not satisfied? Does it feel like you're still needing some of the why to a lot of the how you've absorbed? Well, here's a good place to check, too. A little word of advice before I continue:

If you have not read Macabre's post or the EJ ret paladin thread(or both, preferably), then do not proceed here. It's far, far better for you to get a firm base on basic ret mechanics and how-to's, because you will find none of that here. This is more for commonly asked questions that are typically hard to find the answers to, or are simply unanswered altogether. I am assuming you are not stupid, know how to use WoL, know about spreadsheets and can understand basic mathematics. I am not going to hold your hand and wipe your ass, I'm here to answer genuine questions somebody may inquire not out of stupidity, but curiosity. Let's proceed, shall we?

1.)I know the stat weights, but they still don't make sense. Why isn't haste so awesome? It lowers the cooldown of CS, and CS is a massive portion of our damage. Given that CS is our only true Holy Power generator, it only follows that haste is important, right?

Well, not really. For starters, it's absolutely true that Crusader Strike is a big part of our damage, and haste's contribution to its overall damage does matter. Opposite to what some people believe, CS being our only HP generator doesn't mean a whole lot in the face of our mastery change. But before I explain the mastery thing, I'd like to nip another thing in the bud:

Getting the sweet, sweet nectar that is a 3.0s CS. Jupiter's cock, that's a fluid rotation! It's a shame you won't get it...for a long, long time. Feel free to plug in your number yourself by following this formula. Make sure Latency_In_Ms is as follows:

CS cooldown = [(4.5/1.05/1.09/[3.0 - Latency_In_Seconds])-1]*12800.

Make sure Latency_In_Seconds is as follows: 50ms -> .05, 100ms -> .1, and so on. If you plug in your numbers correctly, you'll find that it'll take a motherfucking massive amount of haste to accomplish this. If you have the gear, then good for you!

Haste is starting to come up as level with Crit on spreadsheets. Can't beat math with math if the former math is correct. Hopefully that made sense. You can, however, trump cold mathematics with its friendly neighbors, logic and reason! Crit is better than Haste on multiple targets and when you're running around. No exceptions. It's always been this way. I guess this depends on your point of view, but Blizzard doesn't make all their fights mindless zergfests. There's a good amount of running around a target swapping involved in fights. Especially when you consider that ramp-up time isn't much of an issue anymore, haste simply isn't worth it if you want to maximize your contributions to a raid.

Short and skinny of it:

Mastery > Crit > Haste in real time. Deal with it, math.

2.) CS glyph versus Exo glyph. Why is Exo better?

Well, I'd like to touch on a few things before fully answering this. Firstly, the Exorcism glyph is fixed. It used to only deal 20% of base damage, so its position relative to CS was rather close. It was still better, but only by a very small margin. It now deals 20% of total damage, so the DoT ticks quite hard now.

Secondly, about scaling. CS's glyph scales better. That's because it works as a function of weapon damage, which is our biggest DPS contribution. Exorcism uses 34% of your Attack Power, so while this will get better as your AP goes up, it will not scale as well as CS. That's okay. The inflection point where CS glyph gets better is high, and not within reach at this gear level at all. There isn't a whole lot more to say on the matter. If you want to find out exactly when this point is, hit up one of the spreadsheets and check it out.

Here's and example. If you're curious about how much CS's glyph would have contributed, look at one of your parses, first subtract the damage Exo ticks accounted for(count the ticks and tick crits, multiply by the average tick damage(and tick crit damage) and subtract this from your total damage), then add 5% more crit to your CS. Find out how many more crits that would equal, and set that value equal to number of normal CS's that would count for(remember, a CS crit is worth 2 CS hits). 3.5 more crits would be 7 more hits, for example. Subtract 3.5 from 7, as 3.5 of your hits were now crits, but set this value equal to 3(because you can't cast half a CS), multiply this resulting number by average CS hit damage and add to total damage. Now you get to add the mastery contribution! If you have 30% mastery, simply take 30% of an average CS hit, multiply by three and add this total to your total damage. You now have CS glyph's contribution to your DPS.

10 times out of 10, this value will be less than the total tick damage from the Exorcism glyph. But hey, at least you know why.

3.) I thought PvP gear was totally awesome, why are we switching back to PvE gear? And what about the PvP gloves? What about the tank 2-set, is that good as well?

This is probably one of the most common questions. Before 4.0.6, PvP gear was the shit. Overbudgeted with Strength and didn't have any of that crappy mastery on it. However, the times are 'a changin'. Mastery is now good, and along with that crit got a boost too. Our secondary stats are not utter shit anymore, and missing out on them in favor of resilience is a DPS loss now. Although the set bonuses are still amazing, they're simply not enough to compare to the secondary stat loss with the changes in 4.0.6. PvP gear is great for pre-raiding, but should not be taken over serious PvE upgrades anymore. Congratulations, you don't look like a total moron running around in PvP gear while dragon-slaying anymore!

The PvP gloves are somewhat of a special case. They are worth quite a bit of DPS on their own, and the 5% CS damage also affects mastery. To see what's best, you need to look at, you guessed it, helmets! Because 4pc is essential(more later), and Mastery is what you want the most of, it is the helmet and glove slots that are put into question. There is a method you could use to test Requital's BiS list yourself, if you so please:

Item in question:

a = STR(include gems)
b = First secondary stat
c = 0.4(second secondary stat)
d = [second secondary stat - c]


[a * 2.27] + [b * stat weight for this stat] + [c*mastery stat weight] + [d* stat weight for this stat].

Take the totals of various gear setups(making sure to account for the contribution of 5% CS damage for those with PvP gloves) and choose the highest, as this will give you exactly how much DPS they're worth. Requital has already done this for his BiS list, but if you wish to see for yourself use the above method. The bottom line is, PVP gloves aren't BiS anymore.

Lastly, The tank 2-set seems attractive. 10% higher CS damage is pretty damn awesome, one cannot deny that. Tank pieces also have a lot of STR on them, so they're not bad at all. However, they're simply not worth the secondary stat loss, as with PvP gear. You can add up DPS values as mentioned earlier, but you'll arrive at the same conclusion. Then you add the kicker that the Ret 4pc effectively adds one TV per cast, barring no DP procs or unsavory raid mechanics, it's simply not worth dropping our PvE pieces.

Finally, blizzard seems to have gotten the gear problem fixed for us. Lift your coffee mugs high and rejoice!

4.) So what's the deal with air phases? I should spam Exo, right?

Wrong.

Spamming this spell will Oom you very quickly without Judging on cooldown. Furthermore, and most importantly, you want to maximize the uptime of your Exorcism DoT. Begin your next cast when you have less than 1 second remaining on the DoT, and cast Judgment as a filler(on cooldown) in between these casts. This may seem a little weird at first, but your net Exoricsm use won't differ a whole lot due to mana, but you won't be overwriting your DoT on the boss, so the net gain will be higher.

5.) Why should I use Clcret or Clcinfo?

There are a lot of reasons to use a rotation addon such as the two listed. For beginners, they clean your UI up a lot. Although Clcinfo is a lot better in terms of what you can actually do, both allow you to track all procs and important buffs relevant to raiding. Keeping all the required things you need to know to maximize DPS in one location is very, very useful. If you don't do this, you'd need:

- cooldown tracker
- spell timer
- your bars up in the middle of your screen
- power auras

That's a minimum of four addons you really don't need(okay, three if you don't count bar addons). The end result is a big clusterfuck up ugly mess in the middle of your screen that inevitably results in you dying in a fire somewhere down the road. Consolidation of information is a key strength in the CLC mods that no other combination of mods can offer you.

Another great reason is, well, they increase your DPS. It may seem like a cop out to you, but the simple fact is a machine will always be more accurate with predicting what's best than you. It's one less thing you need to keep track of when focusing on a difficult boss, and that's a good thing. You want to keep your mind on raiding as much as possible, and I would always suggest following a rotation addon as a means of accomplishing this goal. This isn't to say you'll do terrible DPS without one, as there are a few ret paladins out there that do not use the addon and rank high just the same. However, it's not recommended that you disallow yourself the use of such a valuable tool. In the end, if you're plain terrible a rotation addon will not make you a ret god, but it will give you more net performance if you're good...and you know how to use it.

6.) Hold on a hot second, if haste is so bad then why is Crushing Weight so good?

Uptime. In Cataclysm, most trinkets have a 17% uptime, compared to the 33% norm that was in WotLK. However, Crushing Weight is showing closer to 30% uptime in our tests, meaning the proc is up almost twice as often as other trinkets. Although a haste proc may not seem awesome, you can't forget that although haste isn't an amazing stat for us, it is still a DPS increase. Add the fact that it's up almost twice as often as other trinkets, and the trinket pulls ahead. It's still a wonky trinket, mainly because such haste gains can lead to erratic CS times and often clash, but it is a considerable DPS gain nonetheless.

Yes, you're going to want your eyes set on Crushing Weight.

7.) Okay, what's the deal with Censure spreading?

A marvelous change to Seal of Truth was added such that Judgment, Exo and HoW can now proc the seal, decreasing ramp-up time considerably. This potentially adds some depth to our DPS now, as we now can keep a full stack of Censure ticking on a boss during air phases and so forth. Fantastic change.

Now about Censure spreading, this is something you should play with on fights you already have on farm. It requires a mouseover Judgement macro and considerable attention to detail. This is another time where Clcret/Clcinfo comes in handy, as you can track Censure on multiple targets. The idea is to just Judegment(and Judgement only) to spread Censure on multiple targets. This also adds the bonus of having a speed buff up more often, but the cost is increased attention. I do not recommend this if you are still unsure of fight mechanics, are learning a fight, or are still somewhat new to retribution raiding. However, if you are comfortable with your abilities, give it a go. You should see a DPS increase, provided you don't kill yourself in the process.

8.) Zealotry and Avenging Wrath are together now? I thought that was a DPS loss.

Not anymore. The mastery change, increases to strike damage and CS being our only natural HP generator has made Zealotry a worthwhile cooldown now. It's also easy to get your four Hammer of Wraths in during this provided you don't get an insane amount of Divine Purpose procs. If that were the case, you would still want to delay the use of Hammer of Wrath due to how hard TV hits now. You'll always want to combine the two now.

Feel free to post any questions not covered. I'll answer them as best I can, and if that answer suits you well I'll put it here in the orignial post. I welcome any and all criticism, no matter how harsh. But if I'm dead wrong on something, do your best to detail exactly why or your post will simply be ignored. If answers to new questions are posted here, I'll repost them in the OP and cite credit.

Cheers.

[Phantoms]

Thank you for giving the paladin forums some much needed Ret sticky attention. I was getting the feeling that with the patch people were second guessing how they were exactly supposed to handle the spec.

One question I have, while it may not be groundbreaking, would be how you handle AoE situations. I would assume you don't even bother switching seals, and I almost feel lost when I use DS, since it's been neutered to all hell to give no holy power aside from randomly proccing Hand of Light. Any thoughts?

(Once again, great post.)

[Badpaladin]

Divine Storm gets so ridiculously low use that it almost shouldn't even be taken as a talent, in my opinion....but the one or two uses it does get makes it worth that point, I guess. As for switching seals, I don't really think seal swapping would do anything.

[Deathcycle]

So is regular crushing weight better then darkcard hurricane?

[Badpaladin]

So is regular crushing weight better then darkcard hurricane?

No, it's worse. Not by a large margin, but worse nonetheless.

[Sykes]

I was about to say this is a great post, but then I realised you're a badpaladin.

<3

[Cobreti]

Nice post. Now i really wanted to know what are the 2 BiS trinkets for us? I think the options are: DMC:H, Crushing Weight, Heart of Rage, License to Slay.

[BDF]

CS cooldown = [(4.5/1.05/1.09/[3.0 - Latency_In_Ms])-1]*12800.

Make sure Latency_In_Ms is as follows: 50ms -> .05, 100ms -> .1, and so on.

Wouldn't the variable 'Latency_In_Ms' just be in units of seconds if you make the change you noted in the line after the equation? and if that is the case why call it 'Latency_In_Ms'?

[Badpaladin]

Nice post. Now i really wanted to know what are the 2 BiS trinkets for us? I think the options are: DMC:H, Crushing Weight, Heart of Rage, License to Slay.

H:HoR and H:CW. Requital's BiS list is at the top, it has the top three trinkets available. If those aren't available for you though, I'd stick with HoR normal and LtS. DMC;H isn't that amazing anymore.

@Kangodo: Yes, that's the correct general order. However, if you're at 2HP you want to use CS over a DP proc because although it will do the same damage for the next three attacks, it will mean that CS will be back up again after your second TV, meaning you spend less time waiting.

@BDF - Poor variable name choosing.

[Ryme]

Could we add in the general trinket weightings in? They were posted somewhere on EJ and I recall seeing them around here, as quick references are always nice.

[Badpaladin]

Could we add in the general trinket weightings in? They were posted somewhere on EJ and I recall seeing them around here, as quick references are always nice.

Added to the list of links at the top!

[Cloudstriker]

I just have a quick question on trinkets, what would be better to use with LtS, normal CW or Volatile alchemist stone?

[Badpaladin]

I just have a quick question on trinkets, what would be better to use with LtS, normal CW or Volatile alchemist stone?

LtS is the best out of those three.

[Cloudstriker]

Yeah I know, I specifically asked what was better to use "with" LtS, normal CW or VaS?

[Badpaladin]

Yeah I know, I specifically asked what was better to use "with" LtS, normal CW or VaS?

Boy, I herped and I derped my way through that previous answer! Normal CW.

[Sykes]

Badpally you watch spartacus? sorry if thats a random question, the Jupiters cock reference made me chuckle

[Badpaladin]

Badpally you watch spartacus? sorry if thats a random question, the Jupiters cock reference made me chuckle

You betcha.

[Warjack Prime]

I'm struggling to figure out how Zealotry fits into our rotation in Dungeons. I had only used it on proc because it didn't use up HP but it never comes up in my clcret rotation.

It seems to me that whenever it's a free proc why not hit it? It doesn't use HP and we can CS, HoW a ton.

[Badpaladin]

Combine it with Avenging Wrath and your gloves if you're an engineer, and use it on cooldown in dungeons. Just make sure it's up for the boss fight. You should be able to use it every couple of mob packs if you're in a PuG.

[Serathiel]

Awesome guide thx! I was just wondering about something. I accept haste is our worst stat, but obviously our set has TONS of it, in fact the only piece that doesnt have any are the legs. Is the four-piece bonus really worth it, or should I only go for two piece and then for best stat items. thx again!