Monday, December 15, 2008

Oh, btw, I'm Holy

It just occured to me that anyone might happen to click on my armory profile and find quite the odd image; a supposed voice of Retribution running around as Holy! WHAT GIVES?!

Well, sometimes one must make sacrifices in light of reality, and the reality in WoW as of WotLK is, "LF1M, need healer."

Currently, our guild is suffering from a healer shortage, one that I've little doubt has become fairly prevalent across the realms. Under these circumstances, it has become necessary that I hang up my two hander, for at least the time being. How permanent a change that becomes remains to be seen, but I certainly expect Naxx progression to be made purely as holy.

That said, I never take my eye off Retribution changes and concerns, and even given the simple factor of this blog's name have no intention of discussing any non-Ret issues, at least not outside of the context of Ret or the occasional general "how to raid" kind of post. As soon as dual specs occur, I'll certainly have my other spec be Ret immediately, and will always keep track and commentary focused on Retribution.

The time is good to be Ret, but with a brand new tank/dps class in the game and so many healers itching to try a non-healing class, healers are needed worse than ever, and I'm doing my part for now to alleviate that.

So what's our role now?

I haven't really hit upon the major changes compared to 3.0 and since, but I think (by and large) they're fairly self-evident. The rule of the day is, we can kill things very well.

We have always, in my experience, been a spec that was a diamond in the rough. If you knew what you were doing, and geared yourself properly for it, retribution was always capable of reasonable damage. In the original game I topped UBRS runs, hit top 5 in ZG runs, and regularly brought plenty of damage to any 5-man. In BC I was consistently up near the top of the guild charts when I was around, superseded a bit near the end as I was rarely if ever signed up and playing, and so my gear in terms of the guild progression had seriously fallen behind. That said, however, when I was near the top of our progression gearing, I was near the top of our DPS, each and every time.

The trick was that you needed some fairly specific circumstances to bring about the damage. Warrior was a must, feral druid nearly so. An enhancement shaman with WF totem would then, on top of that, spell the difference between top 10 in a 25 man and top 3.

We were very, very dependent on those around us for our damage; without that assistance, even excellent ret players would only hit a little above an average player on the charts. The major difference in WotLK is not what we're capable of, but that we no longer need others around to achieve that excellence. If you're in a 5-man with a shadow priest, elem. shaman and warlock, you can still pump out considerable damage, rivaling the other 3 with a little knowledge and skill.

So now that we have the damage, and no longer have to resort to precise group compositions and skills to make it happen, what do we do in groups? Aside from the obvious question of 'kill stuff', you have to consider this: we are now capable of doing enough damage to get invites based on this fact alone, but we still have other hybridy skills that can make us invaluable as we always were, when played right.

Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, Righteous Defense. You have them, so use them!

An HoS on the tank or a squishy at the right time may challenge your own survival, but it may also save their life and as a consequence save the party/raid. Hand of Protection has its still valuable implications of dropping melee aggro for the recipient (and making them immune to it regardless), and Hand of Salvation may drive down the aggro of your threat capped fellow DPSer enough that he/she can be freed up to do more damage again.

Remember that though you now can very much specialize your class for a specific role, they haven't taken our utility away. An AoW-insta Flash of Light can save the tank's life when the healer is loading a big heal on him. A hand of freedom may free up the rogue to get back on the boss and start killing him.

There's plenty of situations in which our utility is still evident. Be sure that you use them!

And as an aside, all Ret Paladins should have Kings from here on, PvE or PvP. It's not cheap, but it's still easily afforded on top of your vital skills. My next post will lay down 2 of the best options for talent specs these days.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Pally Wall!

A lot of Paladins have overlooked one of the most interesting and unheralded changes to class mechanics, and I felt this worthy of a post; it's an old skill that used to be dumped to the spellbook as soon as its replacement came along, but now is a powerful skill in it's own right...

Divine Protection and Divine Shield are no longer on the same cooldown, so that they can be cast independently of each other. No, that's not the important change, but this was done because Divine Protection has a slightly different affect now; instead of giving you shorter term immunity and an inability to attack while active, it instead reduces all damage taken by 50% and the 100% increase to your swing timer that Divine Shield has (which will soon be, for both skills, -50% damage done).

What, still not a big deal? Well, here's the reason it actually is a big deal: 1) this gives you an extra bubble in between DS cooldowns (though a less powerful one, certainly), and 2) it gives you a shield wall.

Obviously, the reason you can't bubble while tanking is that when a mob detects you as immune, it backs off and kills someone else instead. That's bad. But if you only reduce damage taken, that mob is still hitting you. This is a massive boost to Paladins of all stripes, as we all end up with mobs hitting us at some point, and many of those times we'd rather them hit us than a squishy. In those situations, or in situations with a bubble on CD, we can now make use of Divine Protection again; it's no longer simply the precursor to Divine Shield. Those 12 seconds of DP give you the mitigation of a tank and can easily mean the difference between a difficult victory and a wipe.

Of course, keep in mind the forbearance rules, as you don't want to lock yourself out for 2 minutes from casting the main bubble if its up in 10 seconds and you can survive anyways. But with this around, you may very well be able to keep Hand of Protection around solely for use on party members.

Soloing With Seal of Blood

I was involved in a bit of a discussion on the whinefest idiocy of the standard WoW forums (I don't recommend being as foolish as me and actually reading those blasted things) about Blood/Martyr vs. Command for leveling.

There was a quite strong belief on the part of many that Blood while soloing will leave you drinking every other fight, and/or dead. While there have been times I've questioned that maybe its efficiency is not as strong as I'd like, to suggest that Blood rolls up devastating consequences for the Paladin unwise enough to turn it into his everyday seal is ridiculous.

For those who don't use it regularly outside of instances (and you hardly notice its damage while inside one), most of Blood's self-inflicting damage is actually quite minor. I'm taking about 50 or so damage at the worst on most swings, which adds up to far less damage than mobs are doing to me. Judgment of Light in and of itself has been more than sufficient to cover for any damage received in that method, and as such my health is never at risk with regular swings.

The real risk of Blood is the Judgment damage, which amounts to roughly 30% of the damage caused. As I've seen a 7k crit in an instance with Blood, and can regularly crit for 4.5-5k with the skill, that can add up to quite a bit, to say the least; you should expect to lose 1,000-1,700 health whenever you judge the seal.

But! Here's where the fun comes in. An Art of War-inspired insta-Flash of Light will immediately heal all or nearly all of the damage you inflicted upon yourself, and if you just crit on your Judgment, Art of War is already up anyways.

As long as you're killing mobs that don't inflict overly large damage themselves, wherein you'll need that FoL for the damage being inflicted on you and thus extra healing will be needed (pretty rare), you should find Blood to be an excellent nearly-all-purpose seal.

But still, don't PvP with it.