pally class

Heres a pally thread for any questions or bs that the pallys want to post about specs, rotations, whatever.

NOTE: This post is updated up to Patch 3.1.

Okay, here's what you need to know when if you wanna roll Ret and smash with the big boys.

Here's what you NEED (in order of Priority)

Hit Rating. Currently, 8% is cap, which comes out to about 290 hit rating or so. In T7 it was noticed that you could actually be a little bit under hit cap, (around 6% and you were fine), simply because the amount of DPS gained from gemming straight Strength was greater than the DPS lost from not being hitcapped. Not the case anymore. Everyone is changing their tune and saying that you now need to be fully hitcapped for Ulduar. So gem, enchant, do what you gotta do to get the cap.

Expertise Rating. Currently, the cap is 26, which comes out to about 215 rating and decreases the chance that you will be dodged/parried by 6.5%. It is extremely important that you get as close to cap as possible. There are no buffs given by other classes that increase your Expertise rating, so it's up to you to get this stat up there. Gem for it, enchant for it, do whatever you have to do to get to the cap. If you're NOT capped, Expertise will increase your DPS EVEN MORE THEN STRENGTH.

Strength. Mmmm, strength. Why? 1 Strength gives us 2.3 Attack Power, due to Blessing of Kings. NEVER go for Attack Power over Strength, unless it really is THAT big of an upgrade.

Critical Strike Rating. There really is no CAP for Crit, but if you want a decent number to shoot for, 30% is good. Our talents increase the critical strike chance of some of our abilities, but it differs depending on the ability. Crit Strike is never a bad thing, unless going for it makes you go under Hit cap or Expertise cap.

Haste. This shit is everywhere. It got buffed in the patch so that we get 30% more benefit from it, but it's still only meh. It's on our tier, most plate dps gear, rings, trinkets, and weapons. First off, haste is not bad. But it's not great, either. Don't enchant for it, don't gem for it, it's just there. It doesn't screw up SoB, so don't worry about it.


Here's some things you should AVOID as a Retadin.

Spellpower. We get Spellpower based off our Attack Power now. We get more Attack Power from Strength. Thus, Strength = Spellpower. Strength also makes your melee attacks hit harder. Spellpower only helps your spells and nothing more. While our attacks are 60% spells, it's not worth it by any means.

Armor Penetration. Armor Pen got buffed and it still sucks for us. Only 40% of our attacks come from actual physical damage, and the rest are spells. So only 40% of your attacks are benefiting from the Armor Pen. And even with the 25% buff to it, we're only getting about 10% of it. There are better things you can get.

Intellect. The only reason I say avoid this is because MOST pieces of gear that have Int on them also have Spellpower on them, which you should avoid. (There are pieces of gear that are exempt from this, such as The Prospector's Prize from Heroic HoS). We don't really need a big mana pool anymore due to the lovely changes they made to Ret in 3.0. Divine Plea, Replenishment, Arcane Torrent, and Judgement of Wisdom will keep you from going Oom. If you're having mana problems, then stop using Consecrate.

The New Rotation, (Face Rolling Part 2)
The Ret Rotation has not changed that much in 3.1, it’s still run on a FCFS, (First Come First Serve) basis. There IS an actual rotation, however, it takes several minutes for one full rotation to go through. I still use the same philosophy: It’s it not on cooldown, you’re not doing your job.

Priority:
Some abilities get priorities over others to maximize dps. In 3.0 Judgment took priority due to all the things it procced, and it hit like a semi. It’s been nerfed and its damage has now been spread amongst out the other abilities. That combined with the set bonuses provided by T8, the priority has changed a bit:

Hammer of Wrath --> Crusader Strike --> Divine Storm --> Judgment --> Exorcism --> Consecrate --> Holy Wrath

Hammer of Wrath can only be used when the target is below 20%, but when it's up, spam it. It has a ridiculous crit chance and hits like a truck. Ranged Execute FTW.

Crusader Strike is now our hardest hitting attack, and it refreshes Righteous Vengeance. It's Holy Damage and thus ignores armor. Spam it whenever it's up.

Divine Storm is next. Use this after Crusader Strike, with a 10 second cooldown it's not extremely awesome, but it procs Righteous Vengeance, hits multiple targets, and restores a small amount of life to your fellow raiders. Whirlwind away.

Judgment, like I said, got nerfed. It still has a massive crit chance, it still procs Replenishment, and it still activates our seal. However, you won't be seeing any more big shiny 12k hits...for a while. Also, as a Retadin you should be using Judgment of Light unless told otherwise by your Raid Leader.

Exorcism got buffed. It now receives 15% extra damage from talents, and another 20% from a major glyph? It’s also been changed so that it can hit all targets, and it auto-crits on demons and undead. So, should we use it over our other abilities? No. The reason is because Exorcism is a spell and thus uses the spell hit table. We need 17% hit in order for it to hit all the time. Yes, Exorcism is a viable part of our rotation now, but it’s still just a filler.

Consecrate is only something you should use if you have the mana for it. It's our biggest costing spell by far, and the amount of dps it does is only another filler. As it's a spell, it can be partially resisted and thus it not a reliable source of DPS. Great for AoE pulls, for bosses it's meh.

Holy Wrath is our situational AoE stun dealy. As far as using it in an actual rotation, it's kinda hard when it's on a 1 minute cooldown. Throw it out there when all your other abilities are on cooldown. Other than that, it's situational. Use it when you've got a mass of undead that's about to rape a healer because the tank isn't paying attention. Divine Wrath the mob, BoP the healer, Divine Shield yourself, and hope to God that someone picks it up.

Seals and Auras:

Auras:
Use Ret Aura unless told otherwise by your Raid Leader. We now get the 3% haste buff no matter what aura we're in, but we're Ret Specced, so let's use Ret Aura.

Seals:
Seal of Blood is the DPS seal to use for PvE, even if you have the Seal of Command glyph. Seal of Command just flat out sucks, even for PvP. It's on a timer and can only proc six times a minute. This increases to 8 times a minute if you glyph for it. While the initial procs do more damage then the SoB procs, they are not consistent, and your DPS will fall substantially if you reset your swing timer even once. Also, haste screws up Seal of Command's proc, and haste is EVERYWHERE. You should only be using Seal of Command in PvP, or in specific fights that are healing intensive, (Loatheb, Sapphiron).

Seal of Blood procs off all your melee swings and can crit. Yes, there is a backlash and it can hurt when you crit, but being emo is a price we have to pay for our DPS. Use it, learn it, love it. Consequently, you don't take durability damage if you kill yourself with SoB

Gems, Enchants, and Glyphs, (oh my)

All you need to worry about with your gear enhancement is that you're hit capped and expertise capped. If you're not, then gem and enchant for that. There aren't as many expertise enchants as there are hit enchants, so Gem for Expertise over Hit if you're not capped for either.

If you ARE hit and expertise capped, then Gem for straight Strength and nothing else. Don't worry about Gem Color bonuses unless the bonus is more strength than you'd be getting with straight strength gems.

Gems-
Red Slots:
16 STR
16 EXPERTISE
8 STR 8 HIT
8 STR 8 CRIT
8 HIT 8 EXPERTISE

Yellow Slots
16 HIT
8 STR 8 HIT
8 STR 8 CRIT

Blue Slots
8 EXPERTISE 12 STAM
8 HIT 12 STAM
8 STR 8 STAM

Meta:
21 Agility 3% Increased Crit Strike Damage
The alternative to this gem, (21 Crit Strike 3% Increased Crit Strike Dmg) requires 2 blue gems to power, and thus does not give as much DPS. Yes, because we use spells AND melee attacks, so the meta affects both of them, but like I said: 2 Blue sockets. Also, with Raid Buffs you'll get more from the Agility meta.

Enchants:
Weapon: Attack Power OR Berserking (Berserking if you've got the mats/gold)
Head Glyph: Arcanum of Torment (Knights of the Ebon Blade)
Shoulder Enchant: Inscription of the Axe (Sons of Hodir)
Back: Agility
Chest: Stats
Bracers: Hit OR Attack Power
Gloves: Hit OR Expertise OR Attack Power
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor
Boots: Icewalker OR Attack Power
Rings: Attack Power


As for Glyphs, there aren't a lot to choose from at the moment, so the decision is pretty easy.

Glyphs-
Major:
Glyph of Exorcism
Glyph of Consecrate
Glyph of Judgment

Minor:
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Glyph of Sense Undead
Doesn't really matter.


Spec:
Here's my spec. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Nazjatar&cn=Klamnei&gn=We+Raid+Naked

The Spec:
The ret tree has been dumbed down. I don’t buy into the fancy-shmancy words Blizzard has been using like “slimming”. Quite simply, they stripped the tree. You can grab every single dps increasing talent in the tree and have almost 20 points to spare. So, where do the points go? Into Protection. However, as consolation, a few abilities that formery didn’t work well for ret now actually do. Let’s take a look at the changes.

New Talent: Divinity: We’re emo, and damn proud of it. This makes it easier to for the healers to keep us up while we’re cutting ourselves.

Art of War: Finally, it doesn’t reset our swing timer. If you have the mana and all your abilities are on cooldown, go ahead and toss yourself a heal.

Sacred Shield: Also doesn’t reset our swing timer anymore. Here’s the deal: SS doesn’t proc off SoB, but it DOES proc off AoE damage. This makes it work quite well with…

Divine Sacrifice: Great, we’re even more emo. As if doing damage to ourselves wasn’t enough, we want to take the damage done to our party members, too. In Ulduar we’re gonna roll with about 30k health. Specced into Divine Sacrifice, (and improved) we can take about 48k damage onto ourselves. Make sure you let the healers know when you use it or you’re gonna be nomming the floor.

Elitist Jerks is justifying it as another “oh shit” button for the tank, and because there isn’t anything else to put our points into right now anyway.

The big things are that you avoid the obvious PvP talents. Vindication is a waste because bosses are immune to it. Eye for an Eye is completely pointless because NPC spells can’t crit. Also, you shouldn’t be pulling aggro as a DPS anyway, which is why Deflection and Divine Purpose are also a waste. I don’t understand why people get Pursuit of Justice. You rarely get disarmed in PvE and the movment speed increase is…good for running back when you wipe?

Can you heal as Ret?
Yeah, you can. It's tricky and rather annoying because you have to stand in melee range to Judge your seal, but it's doable. Use Seal of Wisdom, Judge Wisdom on the boss, use Divine Plea and Arcane Torrent and you'll be an effective offhealer without even needing to put on healing gear. Your Art of War Proc's are a nice bonus for instant FoL's, and we Crit quite a bit, which proc's Sheath of Light.

T8 set bonus:
They finally gave us our kilt back, but they also stuck us with a down syndrome helmet.

So, is it any good? Yes. Both 2 piece and 4 piece are good to have. This is stolen from EJ, who stole it from someone else:

Lets assume a 40% base crit rate in raids for these abilities...the new bonus will put them at 50%.
Lets assume average non-crit CS = 2.5k, DS = 2.2k (perhaps a bit low).

CS:
old expected dmg = .6*2.5k + (2*.4*2.5k) = 1.5 + 2 = 3.5k
new expected dmg = .5*2.5k + (2*.5*2.5k) = 3.75k
Or a ~7.1% gain

DS:
old expected dmg = .6*2.2k + (2*.4*2.2k) = 1.32 + 1.76 = 3.08k
new expected dmg = .5*2.2k + (2*.5*2.2k) = 3.3k
Also a ~7.1% gain

So, a 7.1% gain for 9% and 4.55% of our dps is a total of (9.639% + 4.873 - 13.55 = .96% gain for our new 4pc. Lets not forget, however, that a good chuck of seal procs come from CS/DS, lets say for the sake of arguement that 40% of them do. Now we get another 13*.4 = 5.2 --> 5.569 or another .369% dps.

Tier 8 2pc: 10% damage to exorcism and hammer of wrath
Since exo/HoW combined make up ~10% of our damage, we can say that this 2pc also grants a 1% total damage increase.

Tier 8 4pc: 10% crit to CS and DS
10% crit to our strikes means that we also get a little more RV damage, as well as a bit more damage from the strikes themselves; this bonus is worth ~2% dps. This crit bonus only applies to the strikes, not the seals that they trigger. When more people wear this, this number will become more accurately tested.

T8 is theorized at a 3% dps boost, and much like T7 this number scales with your dps.

Nuff said, but I don't care what anyone says...I'm not showing that damn helmet.


This is pretty much everything I can think of, in regards to Retribution specifically. If you have any questions or have anything else to add, feel free to contact me in game.

Awesome post Dameon, although not sure if I agree with the Glyph choices. Judgement of course, but not taking the consecration glyph would really mess up my rotation. Was doing some numbers the other day and my consecrate overall contributing damage for a 2 minute session on a dummy was about 19% of my total value. It fits into my rotation right after I judge for the most part....and the glyph makes it save a little mana by lasting longer.

My rotation (although its more "First come first serve") is :

Judge, Consecrate, DS, CS, Judge.

Was never a fan of the Seal of Blood glyph, just seems like a really lame one. Now if it was somthing like [Increases Seal of Blood proc damage by _?_%] then it would rock.

And Sense Undead minor, especially for Naxx, is worth while.

Good right up, now only if I could work on my 0 expertise rating.... >.<

Also, on a side not, I've become more interested in Prot lately so heres my main Prot reference site if anyone is interested. A lot of really awesome info here:

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com

Heres an excerpt about Prot "Caps" to achieve for Main Tanking:

As you hit level 80, you need to start thinking about gear and caps once again. As a Paladin tank there are a couple of caps you need to think about.

Uncrittable Cap

The first and most important cap you want to reach in your gear is being uncrittable, which comes from Defense. At level 70, you needed 490 defense to be uncrittable. At level 80 the bar is raised and you need 540 Defense which equals out to about 689 Defense Rating. To quote Neo, "Whoah". It's a metric ton of defense needed. It is something you will need to actively work towards in your gear, but it is completely attainable with crafted items and rep rewards.

Block Cap

After you are Uncrittable, you should start working towards the The Block Cap. This may be a new concept for Paladin tanks, but it really isn't. The Block Cap is what used to be known as Uncrushable, i.e. a combined Miss, Parry, Dodge, and Block of 102.5%. Once you reach that point, any additional Block Rating falls off the table. You are 'capped' on the amount of Block you can have. It should be noted that since Holy Shield was changed to have its duration be longer than it's cooldown, it is now safe to assume 100% uptime on Holy Shield when calculating your Block Cap, however, don't make the mistake a certain Paladin I know (who shall remain nameless) made and continue to count Holy Shield at 35% unless you plan on continuing to wear the Libram of Repentance. Holy Shield is only 30%.

Being at the Block Cap is very helpful because it means that every unavoided attack from the Boss will be a Block. Paladins are the only class now that can stay Block Capped 100% of the time. Each Block takes off damage equal to your Block Value. If the Boss hits for 9000, and you have 900 Block Value (not unreasonable), you effectively shave off 10% of the damage each and every hit. That can add up to a huge amount of damage reduction over the course of the fight.

It also provides Paladins with the most predictable damage intake, and makes Paladins the easiest tank to heal.

So you can't be Crit, and every incoming attack is a Block at the worse case, what's next?

Hit Cap

Paladins are much more like Warriors now meaning we want Hit on our tanking gear. We have many more attacks (Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous (?), Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield) that can miss, plus our white damage has gone up which also adds to our threat (though it does not receive the Righteous Fury modifier). A miss also means our Seal didn't proc. That's not a good.

Hit is what is checked to see if your Taunt resists. Since we have no backup spell should Righteous Defense resist, it's critical that it does not Resist/Miss. There is a Glyph which should eliminate most RD resists, and I suggest you take it.

At level 70, to be Hit Capped so you wouldn't miss, you needed 141 Hit Rating, further reduced to 95 by the talent Precision. Well Precision went bye bye. At level 80, you need 295 Hit Rating to be Hit Capped.

You can't miss, but the boss can still Dodge and Parry you.

Enter Expertise.

Expertise Cap

Expertise is what stops the Boss from Dodging and Parrying. You can get 6 expertise from talents and 10 from a glyph (skill not rating mind you). 24 Expertise is considered a soft cap, so you won’t need that much from gear.

Humans and Dwarves can get another 3 to 5 points depending on the weapon they are using. Since it looks like all high end weapons are Swords and Axes (no maces), it looks like Dwarves will not be getting much use out of their Racial.

You need 3.94 Expertise Rating at level 70 to get 1 Expertise skill. That rises to 8.2 at level 80. So at the worst case, to make up the difference a Paladin would need 8 Expertise Skill or about 65 Expertise Rating. Humans with Maces or Swords can lower that to 41 and Dwarves with a Mace (in the Billiard Room, lol) can lower that to 24.6.

(We won't discuss that rare Orc Paladin and his Axe bonus)