PvE Ret Paladins in 4.3

[minneapolis]

Changes in 4.3:

- Hammer of Wrath loses 54% crit

- Judgement with Seal of Truth active gains a 33% buff

- 5% damage increase across the board

- T13 2P Judgement generates Holy Power

- T13 4P 12% damage buff while Zealotry is active

We are getting buffed. Just by looking at a few logs the HoW nerf is about a 2-3% overall nerf. This will also cause it to drop in the priority list behind Exo and J if you have T13 2P. The T13 2P is insane, I think it is our best Tier bonus of the expansion. It will increase our HP generation by roughly 50%. This is roughly a 5%-10% increase depending on your mastery and once again I'm only looking at a few logs and basing my numbers on them. Including the T13 2P we are getting a 7%-15% damage increase. What are your thoughts on this?

P.S. Just by looking at it I like the T12 4P more than the T13 4P. Anyone get a chance to test it out? Any feedback?

[terrahero]

My thoughts are disgust.

First T13. An important effect such as Holy Power from Judgement is a tierset bonus, not available to non-raiders and pure pvpers. And with the 4p set bonus, aswell as the buff to CS and TV (through 2h weapon spec) they are making cooldown dependancy even WORST. While they nerfed HoW to actually make it less, and obviously failing.

And with TV taking part of the compensation for dps, indirectly Divine Purpose is going to play yet an even bigger part for Rets dps. Increasing your reliance on procs further.

And in pvp Ret is getting nerfed. lolwut. Because the burst from wings and HoW is needed to stand a chance of finishing someone off and the compensation in substained dps means nothing because you spend most time being kited around anyway.

They adressed no actual issues, infact they managed to make the core problems even worst. Once again showing that Blizzard doesnt think their actions through at all, and that they really have no clue about paladin class design.

[minneapolis]

I am solely concerned with high end PvE content. I don't see how CD dependency is increased and I actually see no problem if it is. I love doing a steady 24k DPS with a 32k burst. The only time this is a problem is if you can't pummel something for a good portion of your CD uptime which was only present on Beth in the last tier. I also don't understand how Divine Purpose is going to play a bigger role in Ret DPS. Divine Purpose procs will increase with T13 2P because of the increase in HP generation which results in more TV which results in less GCD being wasted which means more procs.

[Pasture]

They adressed no actual issues.

Actually, they addressed the issue of poor PvE dps. Early 4.3 sims show ret doing vey well.

[minneapolis]

Actually, they addressed the issue of poor PvE dps. Early 4.3 sims show ret doing vey well.

Good to hear.

[terrahero]

I am solely concerned with high end PvE content. I don't see how CD dependency is increased and I actually see no problem if it is. I love doing a steady 24k DPS with a 32k burst. The only time this is a problem is if you can't pummel something for a good portion of your CD uptime which was only present on Beth in the last tier. I also don't understand how Divine Purpose is going to play a bigger role in Ret DPS. Divine Purpose procs will increase with T13 2P because of the increase in HP generation which results in more TV which results in less GCD being wasted which means more procs.

2h weapon spec increases damage done of Crusaderstrike and of Templar's Verdict aswell to compensate in dps. So an increased amount of your dps will come from TV. And Divine Purpose directly affects how many TV you can do. Hence Divine Purpose will play a bigger part in your dps, even if ever so slightly its going in the wrong way when procs should actually be to have less impact.

As for more DP procs, this is false. Judgement will still not take priority over Templers Verdict with 3hp or DP, nor will it beat Crusaderstrike. Judgement might likely end up beating Exorcism in priority, but as far as proccing DP goes it doesnt matter if you use Exorcism or Judgement. Both have a 15% chance to proc Divine Purpose. You'd only see more divine purpose procs if you now prioritize Judgement over an ability that does not proc Divine purpose. And that is simply not the case.

Actually, they addressed the issue of poor PvE dps. Early 4.3 sims show ret doing vey well.

First, ill believe it when i see it. And second, making a class do competive dps compared to other classes is just about the easiest thing you can do. Its also never been a priority except for super hardcore raids. And is not the kind of "fixing" we really need. I could make a mage spec that only uses autoattacks with Wands, and has a 10% when it deals damage with wands to proc an instant Arcane Blast wich deals 1000% damage. Will it be competitive? Hell itll be downright overpowered, but is it fun? Is this a proper class? I wouldnt say so.
But yes, you could ignore all the things that didnt get fixed or made worst and say "well, atleast my dps went up". Its a nice consolation prize, i agree, but i see it as little more then this.

[Darkcrowpnoy]

PvE = buffed
PvP = MOAR NERF

[Butosai]

being a pve ret first, i have to say this is a huge buff, and has the potential to finally put us on par with warriors.
however after the raid content is on farm like it is now my focus switches to pvp. im really interested to see what happens. most likely rets are going to use t13 2 peice in arena. holy power gen through that will increase greatly in arena, coupled with the new damage increases. i use heroic sulf and in pvp my tv and cs damage are the bulk of my cooldown damage. I think with the t13 2 peice and weapon upgrades you will find that rets may not be in any better spot in arena as they were before, but probably not a worse spot.

[nyc81991]

Ret needs a snare / slow and then we should be almost where we need to be.

[Vuagnon]

By going with 2 pve pieces in pvp, you will nerf yourself because of the heavy resillience loss.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Overall for pve it's a buff, and considering this is the last pve tier of this expansion and blizzard finally adds another way for ret to get holy power at a predictable rate is what i've been waiting for since cataclysm beta. Put aside the tier 13 set bonuses and we're still going to be as shit as ever apart from a mediocre buff to our physical and judgement damage, The judgement buff is good but judgement itself has too much cooldown for it to be a huge dps boost. the 5% 2handed wep buff makes us scale better than all the other melee dps with weapons so that "should" give us priority on weps (if guilds do that anymore) aswell as the 10% melee attack power buff will increase that even more. No real way to see how we're going to be with full T13 heroic gear since it still depends on what trinkets and offset pieces that will be available, loads of haste and crit offset + trinkets and we're going to fall behind with out endgame scaling and if there's good offset pieces then we'll do "ok" compared to melee. I still however don't think any melee except lolLegendary rogues will be able to get up in the numbers that casters are pulling... afterall, this is "World of Warcraft: Casterclysm"


For me personally to se retris being worth bringing to raids in Dragon soul we need more than just burst dps, yeah sure we're good now for p3 ragnaros heroic because of our cds but we're terrible in all the other phases. Any fight with lots of adds, target switching and multi-boss encounters are (again) going to favor heavy ranged setup. My guild is starting alt runs soon and I'm just going to go moonkin so that i can atleast raid on one of my characters. Not being negative or anything but looking at some other set bonuses and changes there's lots of room for our tier bonuses to be improved or even our abilities.

What i'd like most of all is our RNG to go away or let us have one ability without CD so we allways have a filler to use.

[Reith]

For me personally to se retris being worth bringing to raids in Dragon soul we need more than just burst dps, yeah sure we're good now for p3 ragnaros heroic because of our cds but we're terrible in all the other phases. Any fight with lots of adds, target switching and multi-boss encounters are (again) going to favor heavy ranged setup.

Ragnaros is actually a pretty decently melee-friendly fight, and I haven't even been past 55% of his health taken down.

[Deleted]

Ragnaros is actually a pretty decently melee-friendly fight, and I haven't even been past 55% of his health taken down.

i assume your on 10 where as in 25 moving for seeds is chaos for melle combined with "engulf -> no melle does dps for 10 secs or risks death/damg"

or how easily ranged can switch sons targets melle cannot unles they are already dangerously close to hammer.

[Neldarie]

On Ragnaros heroic ret is only >terrible< in phase2, doing encounter differently to blindly following Paragon videos makes even phase2 slightly less taxing...

Also blaming engulfings for melee dps loss is just idiocy. If anyone who loses dps on that its ranged.

Phase 1-3-4 are all rather friendly and Phase 4 specificly (surely its mildly ranged-oriented) is as good as the player behind the screen is.

[Bane-Thunder-God]

By going with 2 pve pieces in pvp, you will nerf yourself because of the heavy resillience loss.

you only lose ~200-300 Resi or less. And if you gem some Resi you will be fine. I will be certainly using 2P T13 then full pvp gear for RBG/Arena. The Resi loss is very small compared to the gain of generating so much more holy power in less than half the time as before.

[Deleted]

Just did a SFK-run on 4.3 as a premade ret and outdpsed a mage and a lock at final boss:

Me:36545dps
Mage:32776dps
Lock:31625dps

I know that doesnt say much but yeah, I'll continue on and post more results of mine as I go.

[Ryann]

yeah sure we're good now for p3 ragnaros heroic because of our cds but we're terrible in all the other phases.

lolwut? only time we're subpar on that fight is p4 when tanks have to pull rag for roots and every melee is out of range for up to 10 seconds.

[Adhal-Blackrock]

lolwut? only time we're subpar on that fight is p4 when tanks have to pull rag for roots and every melee is out of range for up to 10 seconds.

Actually it really doesn't hurt to step out of the frost patch for those 10 second. Even 3 healing, the melee in my guild never take enough damage to matter as long as we stay under 12 or so stacks.

---------- Post added 2011-10-12 at 01:42 AM ----------

My guild is starting alt runs soon and I'm just going to go moonkin so that i can atleast raid on one of my characters.

Sorry but ret isn't that bad, unless you have multiple rets in your guild or are in a top 5 guild we can get in raids. Sure, its more of a struggle but if you do your job correctly most raid leaders will bring you over the guy that stands in engulfing flames.

[toddiuszho]

Ret does not need a snare. Judgement is your distance closer and you can cast it quite often. The tradeoff is your buddies can't pile up on the victim like a snare can. That's called non-homogenized gameplay across all the classes.

[rulk]

Still think the 2pc should be ret spec baseline, but overall I like the state of Ret for 4.3 PVE a lot.