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.
Monday, December 15, 2008
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 In BC I was consistently up near the top of the guild charts when I was around, superseded a bit near the end as I was rarely if ever signed up and playing, and so my gear in terms of the guild progression had seriously fallen behind.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.
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
A belated return
Yes, I still exist. No, I haven't posted in a very, very long time (though I imagine my last post had my frustrations showing through pretty clearly). My apologies for not explaining my disappearance, but between a great deal of work concerns and a complete loss of interest in WoW, I'd lost virtually any interest in going near my blog.
I originally started this blog because while there were still a few among us holding strong to the Retribution Paladin style, so many didn't understand how to gear their class, or how to rotate their skills, etc. So often I would see a Ret-spec Pally wielding a 1-hander and shield, casting Seal of Light/Justice/Crusader for grinding, skipping vital talents in the tree or not using their utility to help the group. Thus, I felt it necessary to begin a blog to explain Retribution, so that those who want to try it out for grinding/5-mans/raiding/what-have-you would have the understanding and tools necessary to optimize their own playtime.
So why did I leave? A lot of it had to do with PvP-grinding exhaustion; BG grinding is just about the most painful experience WoW has to offer. Another part was that the gameplay in general was wearing thin; not much to do once you get your epic set out of PvP, and all of the PvE gear available with your progression disinterests you. A major part of it, however, was that the novelty was finally wearing off. More and more Paladins started to play as Ret, and play it well. There's fun to be had in being the underdog. Surprising the hell out of people by rolling #1 on the charts in a UBRS run, or top 5 in Zul'Gurub is a blast, and it was always nice to opening people's eyes up to the fact that nothing is ever as clearcut as the whole 'omg spec X sux' belief that often prevails among the masses.
I hope that my blog was, at the time, at least a small part of the successful transition into a moderately respected DPS-spec. Once one of my server's top end guilds started taking a Ret Pally to raids, I knew we were on our way in the long run. With all my goals in the game (pimp out the gear, experience what content I could, make Ret respectable) fulfilled, what could I do?
Well, my friends successfully pursued a goal of getting me back into the game. With that, a new expansion to explore and an entire revamping of ret to experiment with, it was finally time to come back. It's not very much fun being the 'standard' Paladin spec now; I was Ret before it was cool, dammit! Regardless, it's a lot of fun playing the spec.
So I think I'm back now. As for what there will be to talk about, who knows? I might go over some of the subtler changes that may have been overlooked, I'll discuss my experience in WotLK, and will be happy to answer any questions sent my way via e-mail/comments (p.s. - my apologies for any unanswered emails after my departure; I've cleaned out my inbox and am starting fresh, and will totally answer them now!). I'll start looking into posts; with the availability of good research options available, I'll try to cover more gameplay, mechanics kind of discussions than straight up number crunching; there's always EJ for that.
So I suppose we'll see how this goes! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to have an interesting site to visit once again.
I originally started this blog because while there were still a few among us holding strong to the Retribution Paladin style, so many didn't understand how to gear their class, or how to rotate their skills, etc. So often I would see a Ret-spec Pally wielding a 1-hander and shield, casting Seal of Light/Justice/Crusader for grinding, skipping vital talents in the tree or not using their utility to help the group. Thus, I felt it necessary to begin a blog to explain Retribution, so that those who want to try it out for grinding/5-mans/raiding/what-have-you would have the understanding and tools necessary to optimize their own playtime.
So why did I leave? A lot of it had to do with PvP-grinding exhaustion; BG grinding is just about the most painful experience WoW has to offer. Another part was that the gameplay in general was wearing thin; not much to do once you get your epic set out of PvP, and all of the PvE gear available with your progression disinterests you. A major part of it, however, was that the novelty was finally wearing off. More and more Paladins started to play as Ret, and play it well. There's fun to be had in being the underdog. Surprising the hell out of people by rolling #1 on the charts in a UBRS run, or top 5 in Zul'Gurub is a blast, and it was always nice to opening people's eyes up to the fact that nothing is ever as clearcut as the whole 'omg spec X sux' belief that often prevails among the masses.
I hope that my blog was, at the time, at least a small part of the successful transition into a moderately respected DPS-spec. Once one of my server's top end guilds started taking a Ret Pally to raids, I knew we were on our way in the long run. With all my goals in the game (pimp out the gear, experience what content I could, make Ret respectable) fulfilled, what could I do?
Well, my friends successfully pursued a goal of getting me back into the game. With that, a new expansion to explore and an entire revamping of ret to experiment with, it was finally time to come back. It's not very much fun being the 'standard' Paladin spec now; I was Ret before it was cool, dammit! Regardless, it's a lot of fun playing the spec.
So I think I'm back now. As for what there will be to talk about, who knows? I might go over some of the subtler changes that may have been overlooked, I'll discuss my experience in WotLK, and will be happy to answer any questions sent my way via e-mail/comments (p.s. - my apologies for any unanswered emails after my departure; I've cleaned out my inbox and am starting fresh, and will totally answer them now!). I'll start looking into posts; with the availability of good research options available, I'll try to cover more gameplay, mechanics kind of discussions than straight up number crunching; there's always EJ for that.
So I suppose we'll see how this goes! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to have an interesting site to visit once again.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Loot rewards
BoK has been discussing the PvP epics vs. regular epics discussion, and I thought I'd weigh in on it too...
Timesink. This game and virtually all other MMRPGs are unfortunately purely designed in this way, to waste as much time as possible to get as minimal a reward as possible. Part of the problem is the complete avoidance of the concept of character death - if you cannot lose your character in any way, shape or form, the rewards have to be slow and time-consuming, so that you cannot perfect yourself.
But they're really too slow.
People complain about being able to get PvP epics, but it isn't as though they're handed to you. I have 3 pieces from months of play from the arena, and the other 3 I earned from what can be asbolutely mind-numbing BG PUGs. I don't think there was any lack of effort on my part.
The difference is the staggering amount of time you comparatively have to spend in PvE efforts. Rep rewards, raiding time, all of these require ridiculous amounts of time put in. The only way to get everything out of the game is to sacrifice all of your other games and many other interests. At 10-15 hours a week I can never catch up to any of my goals, especially not with raiding in the schedule, and getting an epic flying mount is almost certainly never going to happen at this point.
Long story short, rewards take far too much time as it is. PvP rewards may be a bit too easy, but I believe the effort required to get PvE rewards is so severe that it makes PvP look a lot easier than it really is.
Timesink. This game and virtually all other MMRPGs are unfortunately purely designed in this way, to waste as much time as possible to get as minimal a reward as possible. Part of the problem is the complete avoidance of the concept of character death - if you cannot lose your character in any way, shape or form, the rewards have to be slow and time-consuming, so that you cannot perfect yourself.
But they're really too slow.
People complain about being able to get PvP epics, but it isn't as though they're handed to you. I have 3 pieces from months of play from the arena, and the other 3 I earned from what can be asbolutely mind-numbing BG PUGs. I don't think there was any lack of effort on my part.
The difference is the staggering amount of time you comparatively have to spend in PvE efforts. Rep rewards, raiding time, all of these require ridiculous amounts of time put in. The only way to get everything out of the game is to sacrifice all of your other games and many other interests. At 10-15 hours a week I can never catch up to any of my goals, especially not with raiding in the schedule, and getting an epic flying mount is almost certainly never going to happen at this point.
Long story short, rewards take far too much time as it is. PvP rewards may be a bit too easy, but I believe the effort required to get PvE rewards is so severe that it makes PvP look a lot easier than it really is.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Set Bonuses and Gem Bonuses
Quick and dirty second post as I'm staring at a pile of invoices I need done before I leave tonight (groan), Firelight mentioned something in the CS comments that has bugged me for awhile - since Diablo 2, actually.... Blizzard is scared as hell of item bonuses.
They love the idea, which as I recall was originally to make people want to wear the entire set of a certain type of armor, so that characters looked more awesome. This was the plan going all the way back to D2. So they created the idea of set bonuses, to reward someone who took the time and effort to collect an entire set. One problem: the bonuses suck.
In mortal fear of breaking the almighty item value* laws, they minimize at all costs the actual utility of having an entire set. Bonuses are by and large weak and uninspiring. They're clearly afraid of making these items too valuable, and so most of the time they make it tepid and uninteresting. This of course makes people largely ignore the set bonuses (with a few exceptions) and they end up being willing to break a set the first chance they get. With socket bonuses, the situation has remained unchanged.
Take, for example, Tier 4 Holy. One of the set bonuses? Increased healing from JoL. Aside from the kinda maybe synergy that a Ret Paladin can have with it, by keeping it up FOR the Holy Pally, there's no way they make any real use of it, and it is pretty damn weak to begin with.
Or the fact that I don't have a single item bonus from any of my armor on my Prot Pally. Why bother? 12 sta gems will easily beat the +4 block value I'll get from utilising the far weaker red and yellow gems. +4 block value being one of the better possibilities on some of these sockets.
I'd like to see people utilizing real armor sets, and I'd like to see more sets in general. But to really push people to start wearing them, you have to give people a reason.
Anyways, the limited number of armor pieces in this game is kinda disappointing. I'd really like to have a lot of options, but it eventually gets to the point where I know what upgrade I need next and where I can get it, period.
* For the less experienced among us, each item is given a certain 'item level', which gives it a total amount of stat points it can have. In fact, I should probably make another whole post on this. Add it to the officially unofficial Retnoob planned updates.
They love the idea, which as I recall was originally to make people want to wear the entire set of a certain type of armor, so that characters looked more awesome. This was the plan going all the way back to D2. So they created the idea of set bonuses, to reward someone who took the time and effort to collect an entire set. One problem: the bonuses suck.
In mortal fear of breaking the almighty item value* laws, they minimize at all costs the actual utility of having an entire set. Bonuses are by and large weak and uninspiring. They're clearly afraid of making these items too valuable, and so most of the time they make it tepid and uninteresting. This of course makes people largely ignore the set bonuses (with a few exceptions) and they end up being willing to break a set the first chance they get. With socket bonuses, the situation has remained unchanged.
Take, for example, Tier 4 Holy. One of the set bonuses? Increased healing from JoL. Aside from the kinda maybe synergy that a Ret Paladin can have with it, by keeping it up FOR the Holy Pally, there's no way they make any real use of it, and it is pretty damn weak to begin with.
Or the fact that I don't have a single item bonus from any of my armor on my Prot Pally. Why bother? 12 sta gems will easily beat the +4 block value I'll get from utilising the far weaker red and yellow gems. +4 block value being one of the better possibilities on some of these sockets.
I'd like to see people utilizing real armor sets, and I'd like to see more sets in general. But to really push people to start wearing them, you have to give people a reason.
Anyways, the limited number of armor pieces in this game is kinda disappointing. I'd really like to have a lot of options, but it eventually gets to the point where I know what upgrade I need next and where I can get it, period.
* For the less experienced among us, each item is given a certain 'item level', which gives it a total amount of stat points it can have. In fact, I should probably make another whole post on this. Add it to the officially unofficial Retnoob planned updates.
WoW Web Stats
Dammit, now I'm on BRK's main page for links. Gee thanks BRK - way to make me feel like I need to update! I've got work too y'know. Grrr. Well, since someone is indirectly guilting me into an update, I'd like to lay down the posts I have planned coming up. That way, I'm forcing myself to actually get around to them.
1) Install WWS and use it to post some hard Ret numbers.
2) Post an e-mail requesting gear/playstyle advice
3) Post an e-mail from a heavy pvper requesting arena advice.
On a side note, I had an opportunity to put my prot pally to rest for a night and bring Modano back in for some good old fashioned fun. Unfortunately, very little of our DPS ends up being standard melee and so our enh. shaman drops down Wrath of Air instead of WF (damn hunters/druids/tanks!), and we rarely have warriors. Thus my numbers are never where they should be.
Ret Paladins are at their finest in 25-mans. Melee DPS is more dependent than anyone on buffs, and Ret Pallies/Arms Warriors may be the most dependent of them all, and not having a traditional 'melee' group that you would see in a 25-man (or 40-man back in the day) means not rolling with the buffs you're accustomed to. 10-mans play havoc with raid groups, since you can't really specialize your groups - you'll have a tank in the caster group, or a caster in the melee group, and nothing is really optimized in terms of organizing the buffs.
My numbers are anywhere from 600-1k+, depending on what buffs we're rolling with, what consumables I use, and the standard modifiers (dying, healing teammates, running around like an idiot to avoid AEs, etc).
So last night I had an enhancement shaman (no WF most of the time), feral druid, and MM hunter for my buffs. I know I should be posting a WWS for this, but hey, it's now in my brand new, official 'to do' list. My numbers for the run were 650-750 in our short-lived ZA attempt, and 580 against Nightbane, which of course isn't the best test of anything.
What could I have used? Well, against Nightbane, consumables - I was being a slacker and avoiding them there. I could have also used a living enhancement shaman. Nightbane turned to Icialis (the shaman) the second he landed and wasted him before our prot pally could pick NB up. Ouch. And after the first flight, Nightbane lands, turns to Icialis again and kaPOW, instant death. Again. I don't know if he was wearing evil shadow dragon pheremones, but Nightbane clearly was not his fan last night.
Also, me not dying in the first phase wouldn't have hurt. Nightbane decided to have a Paladin dessert to go with his 4-course shaman.
So I would say at the moment, with above average buffs and using consumables, 700 DPS is a comfortable amount for myself at the moment. I can add Rank 1 Consecrates for another 40-50, though I'm usually a little light on the mana to do that comfortably.
If I'm rolling with very weak buffs (Mark, BoM and Salv), staying at 600 by itself will be a challenge.
And if I'm rolling buffed to hell and back...watch out.
P.S. The link, of course, is much appreciated BRK, and I love ya for it. But it did in fact guilt me into this post. :P
1) Install WWS and use it to post some hard Ret numbers.
2) Post an e-mail requesting gear/playstyle advice
3) Post an e-mail from a heavy pvper requesting arena advice.
On a side note, I had an opportunity to put my prot pally to rest for a night and bring Modano back in for some good old fashioned fun. Unfortunately, very little of our DPS ends up being standard melee and so our enh. shaman drops down Wrath of Air instead of WF (damn hunters/druids/tanks!), and we rarely have warriors. Thus my numbers are never where they should be.
Ret Paladins are at their finest in 25-mans. Melee DPS is more dependent than anyone on buffs, and Ret Pallies/Arms Warriors may be the most dependent of them all, and not having a traditional 'melee' group that you would see in a 25-man (or 40-man back in the day) means not rolling with the buffs you're accustomed to. 10-mans play havoc with raid groups, since you can't really specialize your groups - you'll have a tank in the caster group, or a caster in the melee group, and nothing is really optimized in terms of organizing the buffs.
My numbers are anywhere from 600-1k+, depending on what buffs we're rolling with, what consumables I use, and the standard modifiers (dying, healing teammates, running around like an idiot to avoid AEs, etc).
So last night I had an enhancement shaman (no WF most of the time), feral druid, and MM hunter for my buffs. I know I should be posting a WWS for this, but hey, it's now in my brand new, official 'to do' list. My numbers for the run were 650-750 in our short-lived ZA attempt, and 580 against Nightbane, which of course isn't the best test of anything.
What could I have used? Well, against Nightbane, consumables - I was being a slacker and avoiding them there. I could have also used a living enhancement shaman. Nightbane turned to Icialis (the shaman) the second he landed and wasted him before our prot pally could pick NB up. Ouch. And after the first flight, Nightbane lands, turns to Icialis again and kaPOW, instant death. Again. I don't know if he was wearing evil shadow dragon pheremones, but Nightbane clearly was not his fan last night.
Also, me not dying in the first phase wouldn't have hurt. Nightbane decided to have a Paladin dessert to go with his 4-course shaman.
So I would say at the moment, with above average buffs and using consumables, 700 DPS is a comfortable amount for myself at the moment. I can add Rank 1 Consecrates for another 40-50, though I'm usually a little light on the mana to do that comfortably.
If I'm rolling with very weak buffs (Mark, BoM and Salv), staying at 600 by itself will be a challenge.
And if I'm rolling buffed to hell and back...watch out.
P.S. The link, of course, is much appreciated BRK, and I love ya for it. But it did in fact guilt me into this post. :P
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
The New Crusader Strike
So Blizzard is finally starting to move forward with the plan to reduce our itemization requirements, which leaves Retribution in a tiny bit of a bind.
What am I talking about? The 110% damage buff and simultaneous nerf (no 40% dmg coefficient) of Crusader Strike.
They discussed back at BlizzCon removing spell damage as a stat for Retribution, and this is certainly a start, but at the same time, a lot of our gear still has a lot of spell damage. While it doesn't scale nearly as well as AP, it had its use, and removing it from Crusader Strike stings our damage a little - one of our major skills now has a rather poor synergy with a lot of our gear stats and one of our raid staples, Judgment of the Crusader.
I can't decide whether or not this is a buff or a nerf. It's the start to something that needs to be done, but at the same time a fair amount of our skills and gear are oriented in some way towards spell damage, and removing that coefficient just took away the 450 spell damage or so we end up having with JotC up on a target.
As a class, we have seen more rapid and fundamental changes than perhaps anyone. We used warrior only gear back when SoC and Consecration were our only damage abilities, JoC being a useless debuff. Then we used gear with spell damage when they added JoC and revamped our coefficients. Then we started to revert to melee gear, but still keeping around a fair amount of int and spell damage. Now it looks like we're going full steam back to melee gear, but at the moment we're still loaded out on spell damage gear.
At the moment, the CS change is probably neutral, just a start towards something that's been needed for awhile now, but any further changes to our skills to reduce spell damage dependency cannot occur without a serious revamp of a lot of our gear.
What am I talking about? The 110% damage buff and simultaneous nerf (no 40% dmg coefficient) of Crusader Strike.
They discussed back at BlizzCon removing spell damage as a stat for Retribution, and this is certainly a start, but at the same time, a lot of our gear still has a lot of spell damage. While it doesn't scale nearly as well as AP, it had its use, and removing it from Crusader Strike stings our damage a little - one of our major skills now has a rather poor synergy with a lot of our gear stats and one of our raid staples, Judgment of the Crusader.
I can't decide whether or not this is a buff or a nerf. It's the start to something that needs to be done, but at the same time a fair amount of our skills and gear are oriented in some way towards spell damage, and removing that coefficient just took away the 450 spell damage or so we end up having with JotC up on a target.
As a class, we have seen more rapid and fundamental changes than perhaps anyone. We used warrior only gear back when SoC and Consecration were our only damage abilities, JoC being a useless debuff. Then we used gear with spell damage when they added JoC and revamped our coefficients. Then we started to revert to melee gear, but still keeping around a fair amount of int and spell damage. Now it looks like we're going full steam back to melee gear, but at the moment we're still loaded out on spell damage gear.
At the moment, the CS change is probably neutral, just a start towards something that's been needed for awhile now, but any further changes to our skills to reduce spell damage dependency cannot occur without a serious revamp of a lot of our gear.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Fallout
One of the more curious side effects of the 2.3 patch is we're now seeing a lot of Paladins who originally rolled their character with the idea of being a true front line fighter now re-speccing from Holy to Ret. I've seen a few stories on the forums, heard a few say that they're going to re-spec on my server, and even gotten a couple of e-mails with questions from former Holy Pallies who are now trying to make Ret work for them. And the switch is, of course, always from Holy to Ret.
What interests me most about this is the transition pains of a game that has now come to rely on having those healers available. While druids and priests have really started to outshine us in healing these days, we're still tops at keeping up single targets, and best healer or not, so many of the healers for many guilds are Holy Paladins, and there are clearly Paladins who want to live their original vision for the class, the Uther Lightbringer ass-kicking.
I'm curious as to how many healers are eventually going to be lost for many guilds who rely on those healers. I assume most will stay Holy, for the sake of progression and filling your guild's niche, but there's going to be some lean times for a lot of guilds, and I don't think a lot of guilds have been saying to themselves, "Man, we have so many healers!"
I suppose ultimately we'll see how it pans out. Perhaps this is all overblown in my mind, but the number of Paladins I've heard say they're re-speccing has surprised me. If it does play out in this fashion, I'll probably have a comment or two on the short-sightedness of this game's design that shows up at times. Really, making a healer out of a class every Warcraft player would've assumed to be a melee character? When you do get around to patching it up to making that melee playstyle not just viable, but vividly and clearly viable to the majority of the players, you end up taking out a huge chunk of the healers that you designed your game around. Tsk.
What interests me most about this is the transition pains of a game that has now come to rely on having those healers available. While druids and priests have really started to outshine us in healing these days, we're still tops at keeping up single targets, and best healer or not, so many of the healers for many guilds are Holy Paladins, and there are clearly Paladins who want to live their original vision for the class, the Uther Lightbringer ass-kicking.
I'm curious as to how many healers are eventually going to be lost for many guilds who rely on those healers. I assume most will stay Holy, for the sake of progression and filling your guild's niche, but there's going to be some lean times for a lot of guilds, and I don't think a lot of guilds have been saying to themselves, "Man, we have so many healers!"
I suppose ultimately we'll see how it pans out. Perhaps this is all overblown in my mind, but the number of Paladins I've heard say they're re-speccing has surprised me. If it does play out in this fashion, I'll probably have a comment or two on the short-sightedness of this game's design that shows up at times. Really, making a healer out of a class every Warcraft player would've assumed to be a melee character? When you do get around to patching it up to making that melee playstyle not just viable, but vividly and clearly viable to the majority of the players, you end up taking out a huge chunk of the healers that you designed your game around. Tsk.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
New header
As my good friend and guildmate created an awesome forum signature for me, I thought I might update my header. I still need to do some width adjustment on it, as you can see, but I figured I'd put it up for now. Let me know what you think! If its too cheesy, I'll do something else with it, but I thought it was a pretty cool touch.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
It's all about the buffs.
Let me regale you with a short story of my last two raid events - Zul'Aman Monday night, and Gruul's Lair on a learning run with another guild on Friday.
In Gruul's Lair, I was in a group where the only notable buff was Leader of the Pack. We ran with only 2 Paladins, me and a Holy Pally, so my only 2 buffs were Salv and Wisdom.
I ran about 500-550 DPS for the total run, tops. A lot of running was a factor, as Gruul's involves getting chased off your boss fights, but it was still weak and I was frustrated at my performance.
Last night, I helped out on our last attempt of the cat boss. I was in a group with a feral druid, an Enhancement shammy (though no WF - agi was used for the druid), a fury warrior and a rogue. This time I had Kings, Might, Salv, Battle Shout, totems, Unleashed Rage, and LotP.
870 DPS.
I even used pots and and weightstones in Gruul's that I didn't touch for the ZA attempt. If I'd used my consumables, and gotten Improved WF outta the shammy, 1k DPS would have been no sweat.
So remember, it's ALL about the buffs. Running in a group with little buffing to help your damage will leave you languishing at the bottom. Running in a group with a absolute pile of buffs will have you rocking the charts from beginning to end.
In Gruul's Lair, I was in a group where the only notable buff was Leader of the Pack. We ran with only 2 Paladins, me and a Holy Pally, so my only 2 buffs were Salv and Wisdom.
I ran about 500-550 DPS for the total run, tops. A lot of running was a factor, as Gruul's involves getting chased off your boss fights, but it was still weak and I was frustrated at my performance.
Last night, I helped out on our last attempt of the cat boss. I was in a group with a feral druid, an Enhancement shammy (though no WF - agi was used for the druid), a fury warrior and a rogue. This time I had Kings, Might, Salv, Battle Shout, totems, Unleashed Rage, and LotP.
870 DPS.
I even used pots and and weightstones in Gruul's that I didn't touch for the ZA attempt. If I'd used my consumables, and gotten Improved WF outta the shammy, 1k DPS would have been no sweat.
So remember, it's ALL about the buffs. Running in a group with little buffing to help your damage will leave you languishing at the bottom. Running in a group with a absolute pile of buffs will have you rocking the charts from beginning to end.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Macros! Rotations!
Okay, really only one of each. In the previous post, someone mentioned the macro they used for Judgments. I've personally never really used a macro outside of old-school Decursive and targetting macros for various mobs in raid situations, so I confess to a bit of ignorance in the matter. So I tried it on our 4-man Heroic UB run the other night...
I like it.
The basic trick is:
/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of Command
Type that in for your macro and set it to your judgment button, and, with some caution, you'll never fail to have Seal of Command up for every proc - you can even cast it right before a swing with no worries.
The caution? Make bloody sure you don't hit the button while you're in GCD, or if you do, you have to click Seal of Command yourself. I'm still getting the feel of it, but I certainly see the potential it offers.
Using this macro and therefore lightening my button presses, I've found I'm generally able to fall into a steady rotation, which is more or less CS, Judge, CS, Rank 1 Consecrate, CS, Judge, Repeat. The 6-second CS adds a lot more activity, but I'm not feeling squeezed, and have still found time for Consecrate without getting screwed too much by the GCD. Things are looking up for our class!
I like it.
The basic trick is:
/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of Command
Type that in for your macro and set it to your judgment button, and, with some caution, you'll never fail to have Seal of Command up for every proc - you can even cast it right before a swing with no worries.
The caution? Make bloody sure you don't hit the button while you're in GCD, or if you do, you have to click Seal of Command yourself. I'm still getting the feel of it, but I certainly see the potential it offers.
Using this macro and therefore lightening my button presses, I've found I'm generally able to fall into a steady rotation, which is more or less CS, Judge, CS, Rank 1 Consecrate, CS, Judge, Repeat. The 6-second CS adds a lot more activity, but I'm not feeling squeezed, and have still found time for Consecrate without getting screwed too much by the GCD. Things are looking up for our class!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Six Second Crusader Strike and You
So with the long-awaited CD reduction on Crusader Strike, a problem I first faced in ZG back in pre-BC 2.0 is this - how do you deal with adding such a frequent swing to your rotation?
Very carefully.
First task: Get a swing timer. A good one, anything on Curse with a decent rating should do. You must make sure never to let SoC not be up during a swing, and you'll be spamming a lot more attacks so be careful about this.
Second: Plan it out. I don't necessarily advocate finding "The Exact Rotation", where you know exactly what to do every second. I like a little ambiguity in my combat style, but the fundamentals of it are good to keep in mind. Falling into a steady pace isn't a bad idea at all, and at least understanding what you need to do to maximize your DPS is a good idea.
For example, timing can become a serious constraint: Hitting your Judgment at the wrong time means you have to recast SoC right when your CS is up from cooldown, wasting a couple of seconds. Not a big deal, of course, but do that enough times and it can really start to impact your ability to maximize your damage. Or perhaps you CS right after a judgment, and don't have enough time to recast SoC before your next swing. These are the problems that get in the way, and why you should have at least priorities on what gets precedence over other skills.
So what do you need to do? That is, what are the actions you must absolutely take?
Crusader Strike on the Cooldown, every time.
Have Seal of Command (or Blood for the BEs) up for every melee swing.
This is, of course, leaving out Judgments. These are still important, and the skills on older and newer librams available to us gives us the challenge of timing them right. For example, Libram of Avengement that jacks your crit rating up for 5 seconds. You want this for at least one SoC swing and one Crusader Strike, so your best bet is to get a melee swing in, Judge/Recast SoC (1.5 seconds GCD) and follow it up with a Crusader Strike that's just off cooldown. Nothing ever gets timed THAT well, of course, but that's the idea.
Judgments are a tertiary part of our damage, behind auto attack and Crusader Strike, but they have potential, especially with Avengement and the upcoming libram from Heroic Badges, and mean that you want to use a Judgment just before your other swings. Thus, it's ok to sit on the Judgment cooldown, since if you save it for when CS is nearly ready it can add a good chance for that CS to really count.
There are people who have worked out the Super Mega Perfect Combat Rotation for Retribution Paladins, and I'll probably quote some of their work if I can get a good solid quote sometime, but for now just keep in mind that Judgments should never be used if they'll in any way affect your Crusader Strike or swing timer. And, again, get a swing timer mod. Seriously.
Very carefully.
First task: Get a swing timer. A good one, anything on Curse with a decent rating should do. You must make sure never to let SoC not be up during a swing, and you'll be spamming a lot more attacks so be careful about this.
Second: Plan it out. I don't necessarily advocate finding "The Exact Rotation", where you know exactly what to do every second. I like a little ambiguity in my combat style, but the fundamentals of it are good to keep in mind. Falling into a steady pace isn't a bad idea at all, and at least understanding what you need to do to maximize your DPS is a good idea.
For example, timing can become a serious constraint: Hitting your Judgment at the wrong time means you have to recast SoC right when your CS is up from cooldown, wasting a couple of seconds. Not a big deal, of course, but do that enough times and it can really start to impact your ability to maximize your damage. Or perhaps you CS right after a judgment, and don't have enough time to recast SoC before your next swing. These are the problems that get in the way, and why you should have at least priorities on what gets precedence over other skills.
So what do you need to do? That is, what are the actions you must absolutely take?
Crusader Strike on the Cooldown, every time.
Have Seal of Command (or Blood for the BEs) up for every melee swing.
This is, of course, leaving out Judgments. These are still important, and the skills on older and newer librams available to us gives us the challenge of timing them right. For example, Libram of Avengement that jacks your crit rating up for 5 seconds. You want this for at least one SoC swing and one Crusader Strike, so your best bet is to get a melee swing in, Judge/Recast SoC (1.5 seconds GCD) and follow it up with a Crusader Strike that's just off cooldown. Nothing ever gets timed THAT well, of course, but that's the idea.
Judgments are a tertiary part of our damage, behind auto attack and Crusader Strike, but they have potential, especially with Avengement and the upcoming libram from Heroic Badges, and mean that you want to use a Judgment just before your other swings. Thus, it's ok to sit on the Judgment cooldown, since if you save it for when CS is nearly ready it can add a good chance for that CS to really count.
There are people who have worked out the Super Mega Perfect Combat Rotation for Retribution Paladins, and I'll probably quote some of their work if I can get a good solid quote sometime, but for now just keep in mind that Judgments should never be used if they'll in any way affect your Crusader Strike or swing timer. And, again, get a swing timer mod. Seriously.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Wow that was a long post
Figured I would boil my last post down some. Essentially, I broke down our problems that prevent hybridization: the constant attention that must be paid to our combat system these days, especially with 6 sec Crusader Strike coming up, the hit-it-and-forget it buffing system we now have, and the relative unimportance of our auras were my basic notes I touched.
My suggestion to fix our class to make us melee-oriented hybrids is to break down our combat system, make it simpler and reduce the time and global cooldowns we deal with in maximizing our damage. That, alongside offering instant cast, short duration buffs we can offer every 15 seconds to a group and making our auras oriented to different groups (an AP buff, one, a healing one, mana regen, etc) will allow us to get into the group we prefer, whether it be the buffed to hell-and-back melee group, or the shadow priest group for regen.
We can't do anything while we're banging our head on GCDs, and heals are limited due to the fact that auto attack is so important. If we want to see some offhealing thrown in, a new healing spell with an instant cast and a low mana cost (and a 5-sec CD to make sure that all it is is an offheal) we could see some real hybridization going on.
Long story short, I'd like to see variety in the class, and I don't want it to be just melee, or healing style, or tanking. In my opinion, our variety should be in how we support our group, and giving us the time and the tools to do it would be what makes the class interesting.
Of course, that might suck for soloing, so my suggestion is have self-buff only skills that would share the CD with our group buffs. Boost our personal skills when we don't have anyone else around and all that.
My suggestion to fix our class to make us melee-oriented hybrids is to break down our combat system, make it simpler and reduce the time and global cooldowns we deal with in maximizing our damage. That, alongside offering instant cast, short duration buffs we can offer every 15 seconds to a group and making our auras oriented to different groups (an AP buff, one, a healing one, mana regen, etc) will allow us to get into the group we prefer, whether it be the buffed to hell-and-back melee group, or the shadow priest group for regen.
We can't do anything while we're banging our head on GCDs, and heals are limited due to the fact that auto attack is so important. If we want to see some offhealing thrown in, a new healing spell with an instant cast and a low mana cost (and a 5-sec CD to make sure that all it is is an offheal) we could see some real hybridization going on.
Long story short, I'd like to see variety in the class, and I don't want it to be just melee, or healing style, or tanking. In my opinion, our variety should be in how we support our group, and giving us the time and the tools to do it would be what makes the class interesting.
Of course, that might suck for soloing, so my suggestion is have self-buff only skills that would share the CD with our group buffs. Boost our personal skills when we don't have anyone else around and all that.
Beta Pallies
This discussion of hybridization of the class got me thinking about the past, one which I was a part of for a good while. It's an interesting path that Blizzard has taken with the class.
Ignoring the whole "the original team left and the remaining one bastardized the class" as it's part conspiracy theory, part bitter resentment and a whole hell of a lot of impossible to prove, let's discuss what we were, and what that gave for us.
First off, I'm ignoring the Forsaken-as-undead thing. It was great and fun, but class/race balance being the obsession that it is, was hard to continue to work with for Blizzard. It's gone for a reason, and let's accept that. I want to discuss our skills, and what they provided.
Second off, I'm going from memory and a quick visit of a few beta-era impressions to remind me of some basic things. I played a Paladin to roughly 42, and stopped roughly a few weeks after we first got our lvl 40 free mount (the quest, I might add, has not changed since they first implemented it. Not even a single letter). This is not a thorough guide, but rather an opportunity to expound on the strengths of an alternative combat system.
Paladins in Beta had a completely different combat system. Our blessings did not exist, and most of them were present in the use of auras, with only Devo, Ret and the Resist Auras left over from that original time. For example, Aura of Might, which increased the entire party's attack power for a decent amount. Auras for healing (out of combat only) and mana regen (maybe OOC only, don't remember) were also available, and the Paladin switched Auras frequently, as each benefited a specific group.
Second, Seals were not part of our combat system, but our buffing system. Seals still lasted 30 seconds, but provided a buff to the class we cast them on - we had a buff to massively increase attack power against undead, a buff to increase threat caused by the targeted player, a buff to reduce threat in the same way. These buffs were quick instant casts (one seal per player per Pally) that provided a nice benefit to the target. I believe, however, BoP existed in its current form, though don't quote me on that.
Our combat system was basic, and kind of boring, but it was nice and decently interactive (less so compared to our modern system, thanks to the advent of a useful JoC and the new CS). You had Crusader Strike, and Holy Strike. Crusader Strike did only a little damage, but every application increased Holy damage done to the target by a certain amount and stacked to 5 times. I believe at 42 it was 30 per appication, up to 150 total. Fully spammable, its only weakness was poor mana efficiency, as it generally did less damage than it cost to cast. Thus on trash mobs you'd usually only use 2 or 3, and then follow up with your real weapon, Holy Strike.
Holy Strike was on a 10 sec cooldown, and did instant Holy damage of your weapon damage, plus a set amount, plus however much Crusader Strike debuffed them for. It gave a Pally flexibility. You had the choice of leading off with this, which did a solid amount of damage without any CSs up, or waiting til you stacked a few Crusader Strikes first. It wasn't a lot, but it at least gave you something to think about, and since a huge chunk of your damage came from Holy Strike and Crusader Strike (you had no skills that added damage per swing whatsoever, so auto attack was auto attack), you were left free to think about other things, and quick in-fight decisions were easily available. Drop the threat seal on your tank to give him some early aggro (or on yourself - you regularly tanked), drop the threat redux on the crazy mage. Switch auras to help the rogue out, switch again to get the mage some mana regen.
We were a melee class. We'd throw out heals in support here and there, but I never heard of any Paladin who tried to heal an instance. It was probably do-able, but who would want to take a class like this out of the thick of things? That's where we shined.
This is what made us a hybrid. We could tank pretty well, and would do it, but our tanking buff was just as easily thrown on a warrior. Our goal was to be upfront, buffing people, dropping the strikes and throwing out the occasional heal. Our combat system used primarily instant strikes, which meant between them if we threw out a couple of heals we'd only lose the occasional auto attack, not miss out on the SoC proc that would drop a big hit on the mob.
We have an actual combat system now, what with Crusader Strike, Judgement/Seal, Consecrate, etc. It's not nearly as interactive as a Rogue or Warrior's but it requires enough interaction that we can't ignore it, and using GCDs in the middle of the fight will hurt your damage when you're trying to maximize it.
I believe two things come out of Beta that we need to reconsider - the combat system and the auras. All of this is probably too complex, but I think if it were at least considered on some level the era of the hybrid could return.
Regarding the combat system, if we could reduce the attention paid to our melee swings without reducing our damage, we can use some of our spare time to be hybrid-y. Waiting 8 seconds between your Holy Strikes? Throw a quick heal before your next Crusader Strike. Toss out a few seals to give the tank some breathing room.
People seem to want to be able to heal while fighting - you see the occasional request to make Vengeance improve healing, for SA to improve healing, etc. But we cannot divert attention away from our combat system without weakening our ability to fight, and thus to improve our hybrid abilities, I'd like to see a more simplified combat system, and an increase to the interactivity of buffing. Dropping blessings for a system not unlike the beta seal system would make for some interesting options, assuming you prevent micromanaging each Pally that way (I'm thinking 15 sec cooldown between casting a Seal, and/or 1 minute active seals that buff a group rather than a player).
Second, the reason some Paladins find it hard to get into the melee group in a raid and score the buffs that make our damage hurt (Windfury Totem, Leader of the Pack, Battle Shout, Trueshot Aura, etc) is that what we offer we can offer from any group. The 2% increased damage is a start, but no one will drop you in the group just for that. Our old aura system, where the only way that rogue gets his 200 AP bonus is if you're in his group, would've ensured it. These days Holy Prot and Ret are viable in raids, and it's hardly unheard of to have at least one of each in a run. Devo will be available to the tank, Holy can provide a mana regen aura and Ret could thus offer an AP boost to everyone. Making Auras more valuable would help us dictate our position in the raid, especially if we can spec to improve them based on our talent tree.
I believe the advent of the Blessing system is what first chased us away from our original position. The combat system didn't help, but Blessings turned us into buffbots. While things are better now, with the advent of first 15 and now 30 minute greater blessings, it's still a turn away from the old, on-the-fly buffing system, and means our buffing is purely passive. Kings wore off, so recast. Salv wore off, so recast. Blah.
To condense my long post, I believe the following fundamental shift will create an interactive supporting class whose job is to be on the front lines, while improving the skills of everyone around them, the way a great leader should. And what, other than a great leader, should a Paladin be?
The change: simplified combat system retaining the equivalent damage currently available. Reduce reliance on auto attack and allow the Paladin to fill his time working on other tasks.
Eliminate Blessings and implement a new short-term buff system that allows a Paladin to toss out new buffs to a different group every 15-20 seconds, with some variety (increased mana regen, healing regen, increase threat, reduced threat, etc).
Improve Auras to the point that they dictate which group the Paladin should be in.
I believe if they could took a good hard look at Paladins and implement something along these lines, we can be a good old fashioned melee-focused hybrid with real group utility.
Ignoring the whole "the original team left and the remaining one bastardized the class" as it's part conspiracy theory, part bitter resentment and a whole hell of a lot of impossible to prove, let's discuss what we were, and what that gave for us.
First off, I'm ignoring the Forsaken-as-undead thing. It was great and fun, but class/race balance being the obsession that it is, was hard to continue to work with for Blizzard. It's gone for a reason, and let's accept that. I want to discuss our skills, and what they provided.
Second off, I'm going from memory and a quick visit of a few beta-era impressions to remind me of some basic things. I played a Paladin to roughly 42, and stopped roughly a few weeks after we first got our lvl 40 free mount (the quest, I might add, has not changed since they first implemented it. Not even a single letter). This is not a thorough guide, but rather an opportunity to expound on the strengths of an alternative combat system.
Paladins in Beta had a completely different combat system. Our blessings did not exist, and most of them were present in the use of auras, with only Devo, Ret and the Resist Auras left over from that original time. For example, Aura of Might, which increased the entire party's attack power for a decent amount. Auras for healing (out of combat only) and mana regen (maybe OOC only, don't remember) were also available, and the Paladin switched Auras frequently, as each benefited a specific group.
Second, Seals were not part of our combat system, but our buffing system. Seals still lasted 30 seconds, but provided a buff to the class we cast them on - we had a buff to massively increase attack power against undead, a buff to increase threat caused by the targeted player, a buff to reduce threat in the same way. These buffs were quick instant casts (one seal per player per Pally) that provided a nice benefit to the target. I believe, however, BoP existed in its current form, though don't quote me on that.
Our combat system was basic, and kind of boring, but it was nice and decently interactive (less so compared to our modern system, thanks to the advent of a useful JoC and the new CS). You had Crusader Strike, and Holy Strike. Crusader Strike did only a little damage, but every application increased Holy damage done to the target by a certain amount and stacked to 5 times. I believe at 42 it was 30 per appication, up to 150 total. Fully spammable, its only weakness was poor mana efficiency, as it generally did less damage than it cost to cast. Thus on trash mobs you'd usually only use 2 or 3, and then follow up with your real weapon, Holy Strike.
Holy Strike was on a 10 sec cooldown, and did instant Holy damage of your weapon damage, plus a set amount, plus however much Crusader Strike debuffed them for. It gave a Pally flexibility. You had the choice of leading off with this, which did a solid amount of damage without any CSs up, or waiting til you stacked a few Crusader Strikes first. It wasn't a lot, but it at least gave you something to think about, and since a huge chunk of your damage came from Holy Strike and Crusader Strike (you had no skills that added damage per swing whatsoever, so auto attack was auto attack), you were left free to think about other things, and quick in-fight decisions were easily available. Drop the threat seal on your tank to give him some early aggro (or on yourself - you regularly tanked), drop the threat redux on the crazy mage. Switch auras to help the rogue out, switch again to get the mage some mana regen.
We were a melee class. We'd throw out heals in support here and there, but I never heard of any Paladin who tried to heal an instance. It was probably do-able, but who would want to take a class like this out of the thick of things? That's where we shined.
This is what made us a hybrid. We could tank pretty well, and would do it, but our tanking buff was just as easily thrown on a warrior. Our goal was to be upfront, buffing people, dropping the strikes and throwing out the occasional heal. Our combat system used primarily instant strikes, which meant between them if we threw out a couple of heals we'd only lose the occasional auto attack, not miss out on the SoC proc that would drop a big hit on the mob.
We have an actual combat system now, what with Crusader Strike, Judgement/Seal, Consecrate, etc. It's not nearly as interactive as a Rogue or Warrior's but it requires enough interaction that we can't ignore it, and using GCDs in the middle of the fight will hurt your damage when you're trying to maximize it.
I believe two things come out of Beta that we need to reconsider - the combat system and the auras. All of this is probably too complex, but I think if it were at least considered on some level the era of the hybrid could return.
Regarding the combat system, if we could reduce the attention paid to our melee swings without reducing our damage, we can use some of our spare time to be hybrid-y. Waiting 8 seconds between your Holy Strikes? Throw a quick heal before your next Crusader Strike. Toss out a few seals to give the tank some breathing room.
People seem to want to be able to heal while fighting - you see the occasional request to make Vengeance improve healing, for SA to improve healing, etc. But we cannot divert attention away from our combat system without weakening our ability to fight, and thus to improve our hybrid abilities, I'd like to see a more simplified combat system, and an increase to the interactivity of buffing. Dropping blessings for a system not unlike the beta seal system would make for some interesting options, assuming you prevent micromanaging each Pally that way (I'm thinking 15 sec cooldown between casting a Seal, and/or 1 minute active seals that buff a group rather than a player).
Second, the reason some Paladins find it hard to get into the melee group in a raid and score the buffs that make our damage hurt (Windfury Totem, Leader of the Pack, Battle Shout, Trueshot Aura, etc) is that what we offer we can offer from any group. The 2% increased damage is a start, but no one will drop you in the group just for that. Our old aura system, where the only way that rogue gets his 200 AP bonus is if you're in his group, would've ensured it. These days Holy Prot and Ret are viable in raids, and it's hardly unheard of to have at least one of each in a run. Devo will be available to the tank, Holy can provide a mana regen aura and Ret could thus offer an AP boost to everyone. Making Auras more valuable would help us dictate our position in the raid, especially if we can spec to improve them based on our talent tree.
I believe the advent of the Blessing system is what first chased us away from our original position. The combat system didn't help, but Blessings turned us into buffbots. While things are better now, with the advent of first 15 and now 30 minute greater blessings, it's still a turn away from the old, on-the-fly buffing system, and means our buffing is purely passive. Kings wore off, so recast. Salv wore off, so recast. Blah.
To condense my long post, I believe the following fundamental shift will create an interactive supporting class whose job is to be on the front lines, while improving the skills of everyone around them, the way a great leader should. And what, other than a great leader, should a Paladin be?
The change: simplified combat system retaining the equivalent damage currently available. Reduce reliance on auto attack and allow the Paladin to fill his time working on other tasks.
Eliminate Blessings and implement a new short-term buff system that allows a Paladin to toss out new buffs to a different group every 15-20 seconds, with some variety (increased mana regen, healing regen, increase threat, reduced threat, etc).
Improve Auras to the point that they dictate which group the Paladin should be in.
I believe if they could took a good hard look at Paladins and implement something along these lines, we can be a good old fashioned melee-focused hybrid with real group utility.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A Little Inspiration for Aspiring Retnoobs
I critiqued the armory of a Ret Pally who requested help from BoK in this post, and lo and behold he not only finds his way here, but has his own Retribution blog!
Though there were indeed a few concerns about the gear overall, he's done an excellent job gearing himself out, and what's more, he's out there raiding and doing progression content in 25-mans as we speak.
It's important to remember as we hear crap from closed-minded guild masters, or get shot down by people pugging a 5-man, that Retribution is not only a solid, viable damage spec but that there are people out there doing it every day and making great progress in the end-game content. Paladins are breaking down walls - there was a post on Elitist Jerks from a Prot Pally who was the tank for his guild's first ever Illidan kill! Not only was he tanking progression content, he was doing so successfully for the biggest progression content there is. That's a hell of a statement for a class that's "supposed to heal."
So whenever you get frustrated with the people around you, take a look at the ret Pallies who are out there every day and doing the end-game stuff successfully. There are examples everywhere, and there are only going to be more.
Though there were indeed a few concerns about the gear overall, he's done an excellent job gearing himself out, and what's more, he's out there raiding and doing progression content in 25-mans as we speak.
It's important to remember as we hear crap from closed-minded guild masters, or get shot down by people pugging a 5-man, that Retribution is not only a solid, viable damage spec but that there are people out there doing it every day and making great progress in the end-game content. Paladins are breaking down walls - there was a post on Elitist Jerks from a Prot Pally who was the tank for his guild's first ever Illidan kill! Not only was he tanking progression content, he was doing so successfully for the biggest progression content there is. That's a hell of a statement for a class that's "supposed to heal."
So whenever you get frustrated with the people around you, take a look at the ret Pallies who are out there every day and doing the end-game stuff successfully. There are examples everywhere, and there are only going to be more.
How to join a PUG
Don't.
There is no worse example of humanity than the idiots you will run into in a PUG. 70% of them in fact, are going to have at least one annoying useless person, and as if to add the whip cream on top of the stupid-flavored ice cream, that person will be the one who objects to your very presence. "omg palidins can't dps u noob l2p." This shining example of failing English class will be a response you see more than once. Paladins are only expected to heal any 5-man you join, for reasons of mass stupidity. You can get into a few groups that'll accept you, but I would just as soon avoid the whole hassle.
Ah, but you need gear!
OK, fine.
First keep in mind you have chosen to gimp your group finding by being Retribution. Sacrilegious as it may sound, speccing Holy or Prot while doing 5-mans for gear isn't a terrible idea at all, as you guarantee a group will have at least 1 of the 2 hard-to-find roles, healer or tank.
Failing that, there are three options that will make it easier to PUG. One, wait 'til the "LF1M for XXX" messages pop up. You're living a little dangerously here, as the last class is usually the one they NEED, aka tank, healer or CC, but if they filled all their roles, at this point they'll take nearly anyone, and may be willing to give you a shot.
Two, start the group yourself. This is important because if you gather up people in the list of people looking for that dungeon you're setting the rules yourself, and thus give yourself a chance to get in, since it is your group. This will take awhile since you now have to search for a healer and a tank for the run, but at least you have a shot at putting this together now. It's not a bad idea to casually mention that you'll be DPSing in the run to the first couple of people you invite. If they leave because of it, they're jerks you wouldn't want to run with anyways. Get them out of the way.
Three, bring at least one or two friends. By having people in the run who know you and are friends with you, the "omg noob" idiot who joins will be slightly more reluctant to start crap with you, as doing so means he pisses off 3 people instead. Honestly, run as many groups with friends/guildies as you can get a hold of. It'll save you a lot of heartache in the long run.
Just always keep in mind, idiots are going to be idiots, and you'll have to deal with them. The Commonly Accepted Belief ® is that Ret Specced Paladins are useless, and 90% of your brethren have done nothing to challenge that belief. If they act like they don't trust you in the group, that's fine. They have a pre-conceived notion about you, but as long as they allow you a shot at proving them wrong, you can and will prove them quite wrong indeed.
And every doubter you correct in the capabilities of being Retribution-specced is one more person who's suddenly more willing to give that second Ret Pally a chance in a later run. Every nonbeliever you convert is a believer who helps out a fellow Ret Pally down the road. It may drive you up a freakin' wall, but in the long wrong, it's worth it to push against these boundaries, as every little thing helps us become more accepted in the general WoW culture.
There is no worse example of humanity than the idiots you will run into in a PUG. 70% of them in fact, are going to have at least one annoying useless person, and as if to add the whip cream on top of the stupid-flavored ice cream, that person will be the one who objects to your very presence. "omg palidins can't dps u noob l2p." This shining example of failing English class will be a response you see more than once. Paladins are only expected to heal any 5-man you join, for reasons of mass stupidity. You can get into a few groups that'll accept you, but I would just as soon avoid the whole hassle.
Ah, but you need gear!
OK, fine.
First keep in mind you have chosen to gimp your group finding by being Retribution. Sacrilegious as it may sound, speccing Holy or Prot while doing 5-mans for gear isn't a terrible idea at all, as you guarantee a group will have at least 1 of the 2 hard-to-find roles, healer or tank.
Failing that, there are three options that will make it easier to PUG. One, wait 'til the "LF1M for XXX" messages pop up. You're living a little dangerously here, as the last class is usually the one they NEED, aka tank, healer or CC, but if they filled all their roles, at this point they'll take nearly anyone, and may be willing to give you a shot.
Two, start the group yourself. This is important because if you gather up people in the list of people looking for that dungeon you're setting the rules yourself, and thus give yourself a chance to get in, since it is your group. This will take awhile since you now have to search for a healer and a tank for the run, but at least you have a shot at putting this together now. It's not a bad idea to casually mention that you'll be DPSing in the run to the first couple of people you invite. If they leave because of it, they're jerks you wouldn't want to run with anyways. Get them out of the way.
Three, bring at least one or two friends. By having people in the run who know you and are friends with you, the "omg noob" idiot who joins will be slightly more reluctant to start crap with you, as doing so means he pisses off 3 people instead. Honestly, run as many groups with friends/guildies as you can get a hold of. It'll save you a lot of heartache in the long run.
Just always keep in mind, idiots are going to be idiots, and you'll have to deal with them. The Commonly Accepted Belief ® is that Ret Specced Paladins are useless, and 90% of your brethren have done nothing to challenge that belief. If they act like they don't trust you in the group, that's fine. They have a pre-conceived notion about you, but as long as they allow you a shot at proving them wrong, you can and will prove them quite wrong indeed.
And every doubter you correct in the capabilities of being Retribution-specced is one more person who's suddenly more willing to give that second Ret Pally a chance in a later run. Every nonbeliever you convert is a believer who helps out a fellow Ret Pally down the road. It may drive you up a freakin' wall, but in the long wrong, it's worth it to push against these boundaries, as every little thing helps us become more accepted in the general WoW culture.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Pally Wars, Part 2
I'd like to follow up on my comments in Pally Wars, Part 1. I'll probably also have a Part 3, where I (gasp!) actually get around to discussing the Wars part of that title.
In part 1, I came down harshly on the concept of being a hybrid right after expounding on that in my original posts on this blog. It's a touch unfair. My point really is that the game forces us into a specialization on some level. I'm not a great healer in Ret Spec, and gear swapping only does so much these days. Thus, I never offer to mainheal in Kara, say, when I would not have thought twice about doing it in the days of ZG. It's still important to do what you can - say, toss a heal to someone about to die, BoP someone who pulled aggro, keep your blessings up, etc. You do what you can, but hybridization is a hard thing to pull off in raids with the way the game is designed. You need a DPS class to DPS, or you fall behind on my bosses. You HAVE to heal at all times as a healer class or someone will die. There's just so little slack offered most of the time, especially on progression content for your guild, and so hybrid-specs aren't worth the effort, by and large.
For example, we're considered by most to be a tank/healer hybrid. Obviously I disagree, but let's say that's what you want to play, and you want to raid too. Raiding requires at a bare minimum Holy Shield to become uncrushable, which means you spend 31 points in Protection, and have 30 points to spend in Holy. With only 30 points in Holy, you can never come close to Light's Grace to knock that half second off of your Holy Lights, and without a 2 sec Holy Light you will watch a lot more people die. Sure, you're a hybrid and you can fulfill both roles on that level, but I wouldn't trust you to Main Heal without Light's Grace, and I would rather you not Main tank without the 6% (soon to be 16%) stamina buff you get further down the tree. And without the beauty of Ardent Defender, you're going to be pretty easy to wipe out fast for most bosses.
Thus, the most you can do comfortably is offheal, and offtank, and you could never fulfill both.
I would love to see a fundamental change to the combat system in this game, but honestly, I'm sure that it will never happen. The most we can really hope for is to get the opportunity to specialize in the role of our choice. Now, and even more so with 2.3, we have that option, so I'm happy, and I'd hope most Paladins are happy as well.
In part 1, I came down harshly on the concept of being a hybrid right after expounding on that in my original posts on this blog. It's a touch unfair. My point really is that the game forces us into a specialization on some level. I'm not a great healer in Ret Spec, and gear swapping only does so much these days. Thus, I never offer to mainheal in Kara, say, when I would not have thought twice about doing it in the days of ZG. It's still important to do what you can - say, toss a heal to someone about to die, BoP someone who pulled aggro, keep your blessings up, etc. You do what you can, but hybridization is a hard thing to pull off in raids with the way the game is designed. You need a DPS class to DPS, or you fall behind on my bosses. You HAVE to heal at all times as a healer class or someone will die. There's just so little slack offered most of the time, especially on progression content for your guild, and so hybrid-specs aren't worth the effort, by and large.
For example, we're considered by most to be a tank/healer hybrid. Obviously I disagree, but let's say that's what you want to play, and you want to raid too. Raiding requires at a bare minimum Holy Shield to become uncrushable, which means you spend 31 points in Protection, and have 30 points to spend in Holy. With only 30 points in Holy, you can never come close to Light's Grace to knock that half second off of your Holy Lights, and without a 2 sec Holy Light you will watch a lot more people die. Sure, you're a hybrid and you can fulfill both roles on that level, but I wouldn't trust you to Main Heal without Light's Grace, and I would rather you not Main tank without the 6% (soon to be 16%) stamina buff you get further down the tree. And without the beauty of Ardent Defender, you're going to be pretty easy to wipe out fast for most bosses.
Thus, the most you can do comfortably is offheal, and offtank, and you could never fulfill both.
I would love to see a fundamental change to the combat system in this game, but honestly, I'm sure that it will never happen. The most we can really hope for is to get the opportunity to specialize in the role of our choice. Now, and even more so with 2.3, we have that option, so I'm happy, and I'd hope most Paladins are happy as well.
A Retnoob's Answer
Time to discuss another Blessing of Kings post, this one from a Ret Pally on the EU servers who's having trouble with his gear, as well as with general acceptance of his spec from other players. The link to the person in question: Firelight
Rule 1: Most players are stupid and/or closed-minded.
Be ready to deal with this. Retribution is a solid raid spec, between being able to keep up 3 judgments in 2.3, or being the only Paladin able to put up Sanctified Crusader in 2.2. We offer a lot, and we offer solid damage to boot, especially with the soon-to-come threat reduction. 2.3 really needs to come out already, but I digress...
Most players don't understand that. You're already in a guild that accepts you, and that's great, though I understand feeling like most people think you're crazy or useless, because they don't understand. If the officers understand and want you in, then you're fine. If they're problems too, you may consider moving on. Look around to see who's making the kind of progress you're looking for, hit up an officer for that guild and tell them that you want to join, what you're going to do for them, and why that will be beneficial for them. A few talking points to consider:
Tell them you'd like to come in as a trial member for one raid, to prove your point. You won't roll on any gear, you'll just be along for the ride, and if they don't think your DPS is sufficient, you won't bother them again. With some luck you should have no trouble getting a few guilds to try you out in this manner. Request the melee group as strongly as you can - it makes a world of difference getting Battle Shout, Trueshot, WF, Leader of the Pack, etc. If you get the melee group, you will likely be just behind the rogues if it's a solid group (after 2.3 anyways, when we get some threat-cap breathing room).
This gets your foot in the door and an opportunity for you to show your stuff. And as for your stuff...
I like your gear, but for that attack power. After you hit the hit cap (9% including precision, as you recall), your next goal is 25% crit, and your goal after that is to pump AP as much as you can, turn your hits into something worth remembering you by. 1480 isn't going to cut it, not at that level of gearing. Cut back those gems and push in some Strength ones instead, str/crit if you like. With the upcoming 3% crit increase, your crit is not just a little too high, but now WAY too high, and you can sacrifice a lot of your gems to push your AP instead.
Your neckpiece also, as I'm sure you realize, needs an upgrade. Find one with a nice strength boost if you can, otherwise get one that prioritizes AP/str over agi/crit.
Bloodlust Brooch would be rockin' for a trinket to replace your Skyguard trinket, which really only has its use in very few fights aside from its heavy crit. But again, crit isn't your problem, AP is, and you could drop it.
Also remember that 10str > 22 AP, thanks to Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings. Itemize more Strength if you can, as it will stretch much farther for your item level budget.
Drop Mongoose for Savagery, though I admit that's a bit of a personal choice. I prefer pumping AP every chance I can get, and rather dislike the idea of Mongoose. Anything that reduces my chance to proc SoC every swing (and anything that involves haste rating does exactly that) drives me up a wall. I'd rather have a solid 70 AP boost to improve every swing than an increase to my attack speed, as that only increases auto attack damage and reduces the likelihood SoC will fire. While it's made up for in the long run, in the short run SoC droughts are maddening.
I believe with your current gear, a few changes to your gems and an addition of Savagery, you'll lose ~2% crit and the chance for a Mongoose proc, but be able to push close to 1700 AP unbuffed, and with that your swings will count for much more. A new weapon wouldn't hurt either. The Hammer is nice, but I'd take Gorehowl over it any day.
Remember kids, once crit is at 25%, making those crits count is what matters. And you make them count by pumping that Attack Power!
Rule 1: Most players are stupid and/or closed-minded.
Be ready to deal with this. Retribution is a solid raid spec, between being able to keep up 3 judgments in 2.3, or being the only Paladin able to put up Sanctified Crusader in 2.2. We offer a lot, and we offer solid damage to boot, especially with the soon-to-come threat reduction. 2.3 really needs to come out already, but I digress...
Most players don't understand that. You're already in a guild that accepts you, and that's great, though I understand feeling like most people think you're crazy or useless, because they don't understand. If the officers understand and want you in, then you're fine. If they're problems too, you may consider moving on. Look around to see who's making the kind of progress you're looking for, hit up an officer for that guild and tell them that you want to join, what you're going to do for them, and why that will be beneficial for them. A few talking points to consider:
- I offer 3% increased crits to all members of the raid. Feral/balance druids can offer only 5% to one party, limited to one type of crit (spell vs. melee). Mention that by offering 3% increased damage to, say, 10 players (assuming there are that many mages/shamans/warrior/druids/rogues/destro locks/hunters doing DPS, there are probably more), you're doing 30% of their average DPS just by being there. Even blindfolded you can match 70% of the average DPS of those characters, making you clearly on an even footing with them.
- If I'm given Windfury, my damage will be easily comparable to anyone in the raid (save rogues, who beat everyone), I can bring 2% more damage to any group, and 10% increased damage (and therefore threat) to any Prot Pally.
- By bringing in me as DPS, you have an entire extra set of blessings to work with, without sacrificing a DPS player
Tell them you'd like to come in as a trial member for one raid, to prove your point. You won't roll on any gear, you'll just be along for the ride, and if they don't think your DPS is sufficient, you won't bother them again. With some luck you should have no trouble getting a few guilds to try you out in this manner. Request the melee group as strongly as you can - it makes a world of difference getting Battle Shout, Trueshot, WF, Leader of the Pack, etc. If you get the melee group, you will likely be just behind the rogues if it's a solid group (after 2.3 anyways, when we get some threat-cap breathing room).
This gets your foot in the door and an opportunity for you to show your stuff. And as for your stuff...
I like your gear, but for that attack power. After you hit the hit cap (9% including precision, as you recall), your next goal is 25% crit, and your goal after that is to pump AP as much as you can, turn your hits into something worth remembering you by. 1480 isn't going to cut it, not at that level of gearing. Cut back those gems and push in some Strength ones instead, str/crit if you like. With the upcoming 3% crit increase, your crit is not just a little too high, but now WAY too high, and you can sacrifice a lot of your gems to push your AP instead.
Your neckpiece also, as I'm sure you realize, needs an upgrade. Find one with a nice strength boost if you can, otherwise get one that prioritizes AP/str over agi/crit.
Bloodlust Brooch would be rockin' for a trinket to replace your Skyguard trinket, which really only has its use in very few fights aside from its heavy crit. But again, crit isn't your problem, AP is, and you could drop it.
Also remember that 10str > 22 AP, thanks to Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings. Itemize more Strength if you can, as it will stretch much farther for your item level budget.
Drop Mongoose for Savagery, though I admit that's a bit of a personal choice. I prefer pumping AP every chance I can get, and rather dislike the idea of Mongoose. Anything that reduces my chance to proc SoC every swing (and anything that involves haste rating does exactly that) drives me up a wall. I'd rather have a solid 70 AP boost to improve every swing than an increase to my attack speed, as that only increases auto attack damage and reduces the likelihood SoC will fire. While it's made up for in the long run, in the short run SoC droughts are maddening.
I believe with your current gear, a few changes to your gems and an addition of Savagery, you'll lose ~2% crit and the chance for a Mongoose proc, but be able to push close to 1700 AP unbuffed, and with that your swings will count for much more. A new weapon wouldn't hurt either. The Hammer is nice, but I'd take Gorehowl over it any day.
Remember kids, once crit is at 25%, making those crits count is what matters. And you make them count by pumping that Attack Power!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)