So what defines a "well played ret pally"Follow

Greetings Pallies.

I typically play my warrior, but I have been hearing alot about retribution paladins being buffed, and actually doing decent at PvP and end game dps.
However, people will also tag that along with "if they are good", or "90% of ret pallies are noobs, the 5% are ok, 2.5% are good, 2.5% really know what they are doing, and they are the good ones that you would want dpsing" etc...


So, having played a paladin myself up to 65, between ret and holy, I am considering picking the pally again with a ret spec.

Anytime I play ret, as I instance, I know its my job to Judge light/wisdom/justice on the mobs, spot heal, OT/protect healer, buff , and then dps. I would think that stuff is the obvious though. So Im curious to ask, what is "an awesome ret paladin" that people would want in groups? What is the "key" or the cycle to dishing out hard dps?

Plz, for the people that are stuck up on the "All paladins should be holy or prot, period!" idea, plz dont even bother posting. Ive read all about the debates and see both sides. Fact is I want to TRY a ret spec, so I only want to read about RET SPEC in my thread, not how "Ret dps sucks" (<--I will judge that for myself)

Thanks in advance

"Hi I want to spend lots time frustrating myself and refuse to listen to people that want to save me aggravation." Have at it.

first of all, tommyguns is right, Ret pallys are brought along as dps if they're brought along at all. A well geared Ret be minimally able to heal and if your group is in need of your healing then your group is in trouble. like tommy said, focus first of all on your dps and buffing and everything else is really secondary. I use healbot because my main is a healer and even on my Ret it helps me keep track of my groups health so I can cast the emergency heal. Only 2 people who's health I really watch is the healer and the tank. If the healers or tanks health drops dangerously low and I don't see a heal incoming on the healbot for them I'll toss them a heal. Other than that I leave the healing to the geared and specc'd healer.

secondly, Ret is very much a gear dependent spec. If you don't keep up on your gear or stack the right stats, you will have sub-par dps and rarely if ever get invited back to a group. there are 2 schools of thought about which stats to stack. One is to stack only melee stats since your auto attack, CS and SoC all scale with them and they're the vast majority of your DPS. The other is to stack a combination of strength, melee crit, and spell damage. This one works because SoC, JoC and for the moment CS (and several other situational spells) all scale with Spell damage also. Until patch 2.3.2 both of these work well. Adding spell damage may boost your healing slightly when necessary, but your heals will still be small and only worthwhile for emergencies. After 2.3.2 CS will no longer benefit from spell damage. Which one you got for depends on your preference. As tommyguns said, S3 gear is a good example of how to gear for the direction Blizzard seems to be taking Ret.

Once you're geared up properly, you want to use SoC as your main seal, and if you feel it's going to be worth it (i.e. bosses and minibosses) use JotC to boost your damage. Some reccomend using JotC all the time. The problem I see in that is that by doing so you give up an extra burst from JoC for a little extra damage from your SoC's and CS and any JoC's after that. I find that for most trash mobs JotC is not worth the mana and will not boost your damage enough to make up for the initial burst of JoC. For bosses the extra 3% crit and spell damage from JotC will add a considerable ammount to the groups DPS. Otherwise, use CS as often as you can, and I reccomend making a macro to put SoC back up after every judgement. Otherwise you risk missing an SoC proc. The macro is simple:

/cast judgement
/cast Seal of Command

don't "spam" this macro though or you'll end up losing mana because it will case SoC every time you hit it..

Probably more than you wanted to know. In the future I'll be trying to post a guide for Rets on here.

Oh and this is some of what I say in my guide. If tommyguns or any other Rets see any flaws in my advice pls let me know.

I was going to say something like that, but I stopped when I read his last paragraph.

That would work, and I used that for a while actually. I like mine because i can use it to case SoC when it's not up and don't need to have another slot for SoC on my bar. you just need to remember that it does that and you won't waste you mana. A better way if you want a sequence like that would be

/castsequence [reset=30] Seal of Command, Judgement

that one will cast Seal of Command first and then judgement, but if you don't cast judgement in the time the seal expires, it'll reset to Seal of Command. I still like mine cause it's a one key press macro. that one you have to hit twice. Seal of Command is much more important than the Judgement, so I prefer to make sure Seal of Commnad is always up by making it quicker to get up again.



I agree. There so much one could say about different situations you find yourself in that I admit I tend to be someone basic in my suggestions. I give the basic building blocks from where a Ret can start and let them determine when to use what spells and abilities to maximize their usefullness. To give a how to of every situation for ret isn't quick or easy. It's not like a lock that's just Fear DoT DoT DoT no matter the situation... I'll think about adding a few examples of when to do what... I don't like those in general though. People who read them too often just take those as the gospel truth and never play around with what really works or doesn't work.

Oh, and tell me again whats wrong with a basic dps rotation of SoC, autoattack and CS? Those are the building blocks of Ret DPS. Every other spell we use ranks behind those for possible sources of dps and should be added as needed.

So basicaly kazump, research the usefulness of the stats and spells related to being a pally and play around with what works best and when...

lol. i would use this as my tag if i didn't already have one by Bodh. you supply quoting gold sometimes :D



this is classic. let me supplement: as ret you need to remember that you have a slew of instant supportive abilities. so as you run toward a hunter with BoF on you, go ahead and cleanse that freeze trap off your teammate. it takes no extra time and will make a virtual hero. same thing can be applied in pve, in H Mech the physicians will sleep you or your rogue, take the half second to free your rogue instead of trying to gimp him for the top dps spot. also note that its alot easier and dps friendly for a pally to stun a spell than a mage to counterspell.

if you are using auto/SoC and spamming CS, you should have a couple seconds in each rotation to view the current status of your group and be able to predict any emergencies about to arise. i would not recommend any form of spot healing unless you know for sure things are about to go south. finish the job you were hired for before you move on to someone elses duties. you are being relied on to contain and down the mobs.



a classic IF heal-off, love it.

heh, S1 epics are sadly better than most other reasonably attainable gear though, last time i checked...

I'm curious, but where do ret pallies usually place on raid damage meters? definitely not topping mages, but maybe just below rogues? I've never ever raided with a ret pally so i'm curious to know.

Usually?

Usually Retribution Paladins place last on raid damage meters among DPS classes and might even lose out to a tank. Like DPS Warriors, there is zero forgiveness on your gear; skill can not make up lost ground if you are undergeared or incorrectly geared. However, unlike Warriors, the Paladin class as a whole is just not naturally lent to DPS.

It takes an extremely good Retribution player and the correct gear and good gear to amount to anything, and even then, if your competition is equally skilled and equally or even a little less geared, most of them should still beat you.