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
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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.
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