Retribution DPS 4.3 PvE

[Deleted]

my bad then. Also, from what I hear parses from the PTR have ret (from the top 200) at the bottom for actual game-play. I can't personally find these parses cause I don't know where to look for PTR parses. Only the simcraft, which has us rets at 3rd for the PTR.

probably partialy due to anyone who goes to ptr and copies a char over the v v small pop of fully geared ret pallies is much smaller than the fully geared other dps so you hve 1/2 geared rets vs fully geared others just because they got chosen to go to raids more or the rets had lower loot prio as they were of-specs

guess work but i can see it having an effect.

[Veliane]

Retribution is solid DPS in it's current form, it's just very susceptible to RNG. You may top meters, or you may come in third.

That's quite optimistic but Ret in it's current form = you may come in third with good RNG or you might be last with bad RNG, provided the other classes know what they're doing.

[Requital]

Havent raided seriously in a long time (last summer thats over a year ago) and yes I do know ret has sucked pretty bad in cata wich is why I only pvped in cata (wich come 4.3 will be broken).

What little pve I have done is usually in the form of spamming HCs and being in a few alt raids in my guild, but my question here is retri gone be anything worth having in 4.3 raiding wise? or will it be as bad as it is atm? Becuase seeing as I need to find something to do now that pvp isent a option for me (this is PERSONAL OPINION here seeing as I think from 60% crit on HoW to 6% is far to harsh in 4.3). So I am just wondering if anyone here knows if its gone at least decent seeing as im not looking to top any charts just being viable enough to be brought along for the ride.

The biggest issue is nothing is changing in 4.3, There is still nothing you can do to control your own DPS if you are lucky and get a lot of DP procs more power to you keep doing what you are doing.

[Veliane]

more power to you keep doing what you are doing.

Dejavu.
So far this has happened until the passive buffs they give us turn into a burst disaster when the stars align, and they nerf the wrong things again.

[Requital]

Dejavu.
So far this has happened until the passive buffs they give us turn into a burst disaster when the stars align, and they nerf the wrong things again.

I'm going to pretend that could never happen mainly because it will just piss me off

[Pliers]

From what I remember of the sims posted with just the current changes (in T12 BiS gear), Ret was sitting pretty at the top of the chart. Granted, that was a Patchwerk fight format, so that should put us in a relatively good above-mid spot.

In practice on the PTR, it isn't looking like that spread will be accurate. We are getting significant gains, but not enough to make that large a jump. The change to judgement damage balances out the loss on HoW, leaving us with a net gain of 5% on 2h Wep Spec (for about 3.5% overall), and blessing of might, which is not changing relative to other melee.

Sims had us middle of the pack about a month into Firelands, when we were clearly at the bottom.

This is also on Patchwerk. On fights with adds, our AoE is good, but still requires melee range and seal swapping (so short periods are much harder for us, or come at a prize), while we scale very poorly in multi target fights, even relative to other melee, since all we can do is roll SoT.

View the numbers from sims with high hopes and heavy skepticism.

[Manstallion]

In practice on the PTR, it isn't looking like that spread will be accurate. We are getting significant gains, but not enough to make that large a jump. The change to judgement damage balances out the loss on HoW, leaving us with a net gain of 5% on 2h Wep Spec (for about 3.5% overall), and blessing of might, which is not changing relative to other melee.

Sims had us middle of the pack about a month into Firelands, when we were clearly at the bottom.

This is also on Patchwerk. On fights with adds, our AoE is good, but still requires melee range and seal swapping (so short periods are much harder for us, or come at a prize), while we scale very poorly in multi target fights, even relative to other melee, since all we can do is roll SoT.

View the numbers from sims with high hopes and heavy skepticism.

Is the nerf to HoW crit chance really going to offset double damage on an ability we can cast every 8 secs? I find that hard to believe.

[Veliane]

Placing the 2H Spec 5% and Might 10% more AP buffs aside.
The crit nerf to HoW weighted vs the 33% buff to judgement results in a small DPS loss with numbers of my last parse.

[Pliers]

HoW is roughly 4% of my damage, and is losing 1/3rd of its damage via the crit loss.
Judgement is roughly 4% of my damage, and is gaining 1/3rd of its damage via the censure scaling.

They may be slightly off, but are very close. The numbers you use to estimate the benefit of 5% more damage from 2h wep spec are going to be more variable than the difference between HoW and Judgement.

Might will help melee vs ranged, but I do not see us being kings, when we're only gaining ~3.5% damage outside of the melee buff.

[Reith]

Is the nerf to HoW crit chance really going to offset double damage on an ability we can cast every 8 secs? I find that hard to believe.

It's not double damage. It starts at 1, then with full 5 stack of Censure on live, it's 1.5x its base damage. 4.3 is only going to increase that to 2x damage for a gain of ~33% total damage.

[zcks]

Basically for those to lazy to read the changes I do a quick recap for you.

1: Damage has been increased a bit, on a stand still fight assuming equal gear & skill you have a better chance of being on top.

2: The "rotation" & RNG problems have not gotten any better, unless you get to 2 piece bonus in which case they only get slightly better.

In other words blizzard increased ret's DPS & did some band aid fixes as usual hoping it would get people to stick around till 5.0 when they will do another "overhaul" of the class.
We can hope they will actually do a good job with design, fine tuning & implementation at that point but if they don't we should at least have some viable alternative choices by then & hopefully that will make them make a real effort out of balancing ret instead of just throwing shit together in a half assed manner & ignoring player feedback during alpha/beta.

[Nonetheless]

By reading all the posts here a question has risen. Is it really worth to just wait for MoP, just to see how ret will behave with the new talent system, or it is better to change main, or even unsub and find something else to do?
I grew tired of waiting for the developers to "repair" the flawed ret mechanics since they were implemented and all i got was some band aid fixes (actually the mastery thingy and the censure buff). And the "notorious" 4.3 patch is still on PTR.
meh...

[Veliane]

Is it really worth to just wait for MoP, just to see how ret will behave with the new talent system, or it is better to change main, or even unsub and find something else to do?
I grew tired of waiting for the developers to "repair" the flawed ret mechanics since they were implemented and all i got was some band aid fixes (actually the mastery thingy and the censure buff). And the "notorious" 4.3 patch is still on PTR.
meh...

First off, don't go asking what to do, do what you feel like doing.
We don't know how Ret will be in MoP, see in your financial situation/conformity if playing is worth it, reroll if you want, don't ask here.
Free will, you got it.

That aside, Ret isn't terrible, we got good things and there's no need to see the glass half empty.. if they could only fix the randomness of our damage and give us some dispell protection in HoF we'd better than some make it out to be.

[Malthanis]

Without knowing what the baseline Retribution abilities are from level 1 to 90, it's difficult to make a judgement call on what we'll have to work with for MoP. Even the talents could change drastically (both the Paladin ones specifically, or even the whole system).

That aside, Ret isn't terrible, we got good things and there's no need to see the glass half empty.. if they could only fix the randomness of our damage and give us some dispell protection in HoF we'd better than some make it out to be.

This is really what it comes down to. We're not terrible by any means, but we could use a bit more work.

[Rasstapp]

For progression raiding i wouldn't recommend ret, even in 4.2. Don't get me wrong i like playing my ret pally but they are heavily reliant on RNG, more so then say a Frost DK, and have about 2mins between damage bursts (basically the phase where you pop Righteous Fury and Zealotry+Inquisition). During the burst phase they can do some relatively good damage but out side of that RNG can be brutal, due to long cool-downs on Crusaders Strike. They also require a fairly good gear to make help make up for the 2mins between Burst phases.

In 4.3 i don't see them performing much differently as I haven't seen much on changes affecting ret. If you are planing on raiding I would play it by ear and see if ret is doing well, otherwise I would recommend only bring a ret paladin later in progression.

I realize that you probably meant Avenging Wrath, but this sounds like a really bad idea.

[Pliers]

Judgement and AoW Exorcisms will be giving Holy Power in MoP, according to current plans. I'm mentioning it because the discussion started heading that way, but this is a thread about 4.3 dps, so we should probably stay on topic.

[zcks]

Judgement and AoW Exorcisms will be giving Holy Power in MoP, according to current plans. I'm mentioning it because the discussion started heading that way, but this is a thread about 4.3 dps, so we should probably stay on topic.

True, but am I alone in hoping that they change what causes AOW to proc ?

Unless they vastly upgrade how much melee up time ret is capable of in pvp by giving it an instant gap closer this will mean kiting will remain a huge issue for ret & not just for damage output but for survivability & utility as well due to reduced holy power generation.

At this point I really wish they would change the Art of War so that any special attack has a chance to trigger it Or so that damage caused by censure or other seal damage has a chance to trigger it. This would lessen the effects of kiting in pvp without the need to drastically increase ret's melee up time meaning it could keep some of it's uniqueness without being f#cked over because of it.

[tavistra]

They also require a fairly good gear to make help make up for the 2mins between Burst phases.

What do you mean by this? I'm not sure you can say that getting "fairly good gear" would smooth out the dps between burst phases. As your stats from gear increase, woudln't it just mean that your average dps goes up? I don't think it would materially change the gap between the highs and lows...

[Manstallion]

True, but am I alone in hoping that they change what causes AOW to proc ?

Unless they vastly upgrade how much melee up time ret is capable of in pvp by giving it an instant gap closer this will mean kiting will remain a huge issue for ret & not just for damage output but for survivability & utility as well due to reduced holy power generation.

At this point I really wish they would change the Art of War so that any special attack has a chance to trigger it Or so that damage caused by censure or other seal damage has a chance to trigger it. This would lessen the effects of kiting in pvp without the need to drastically increase ret's melee up time meaning it could keep some of it's uniqueness without being f#cked over because of it.

They should make anything that can apply Censure also be able to proc Art of War. With Judgement generating HP baseline in 5.0 though, that's at least one reliable way to generate HP at range.

---------- Post added 2011-11-03 at 01:08 PM ----------

What do you mean by this? I'm not sure you can say that getting "fairly good gear" would smooth out the dps between burst phases. As your stats from gear increase, woudln't it just mean that your average dps goes up? I don't think it would materially change the gap between the highs and lows...

Wouldn't better gear just make the burst phases that much higher? I dont think it makes any sense either.

[Judge Malthred]

Retribution is solid DPS in it's current form, it's just very susceptible to RNG. You may top meters, or you may come in third. Either way, it's still a solid melee DPS when it comes to PVE. 4.3 will actually make them stronger I think, with buffs to their sustained damage in the form of a stronger Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, harder-hitting Censure, and a buff to Blessing of Might (which affects all melee but still a buff).

They are fun to play, and their mechanics are interesting, but just be prepared for a lot of "randomness". Sometimes you will have procs upon procs and feel like you are hitting like a small truck, and other times you will be standing around waiting for Crusader Strike to come off cooldown. We definitely do enough damage to be competitive though.

I think players of equal skill and gear will do more dps on a toon other than a ret pally. My main is ret pally and I am usually near the top of the meter, but on alt night when I bring my rogue in with no enchants and (at first less) but now equal gear (3 ilvl average below main) and do MORE dps... makes me sad/frustrated.