Retri weapon enchantsFollow

PvE: Mongoose.
PvP: Savagery, Executioner, or a Weapon Chain to taste.

That would make sense logically, since a fair amount of damage done by Ret paladins is holy damage.

Ret is always going to be bursty.

When raiding (and most of the rest of the time besides) you're better off augmenting your strengths further than trying to shore up your weaknesses. The Ret tree is so crit-reliant and benefits so much from haste that I would honestly be amazed if anything else ended up turning out more DPS than Mongoose over an extended period spent DPS-ing in raids.

Yeah, but if you're Ret then you're choosing to be awful anyways. Why not go the extra mile to make sure you're really awful?

So in the long run Savagery will optimize my DPS more significantly then Mongoose, wouldn't that make Mongoose better for pvp since Arena's and stuff dont last very long?

,Zignaestos

No. In the long run, Mongoose is going to provide more DPS, which is why it's better suited to PvE, especially raids where you'll be standing there beating on things for a fairly significant amount of time on trash and boss encounters typically last 5-10 minutes, sometimes more. Your crits there also count for quite a lot.

In PvP, it's true that fights are spikey and bursty for the most part, but once you start getting arena gear and getting higher up in the ratings to the point that everyone else does too then they start lasting noticeably longer. If the other team has a healer matches can last forever. Again, you might be tempted to go for Mongoose, but resilliance really kills crit-based assaults and most opponents will keep you controlled/immobilized/stunned for as long as possible. It's better to have steady, reliable things there that you know you can count on, such as the AP from Savagery or the reduced disarm duration so Rogues and Warriors don't laugh at you.


You know, as much as this is harped on by everyone... I am honestly not that impressed with Rets vs. Druids. Yes, Ret Paladins can apply JoJ to Druid and SoC bypasses armor. Whoopty-damn-do. Resto Druids can still heal through their damage until kingdom come, armor bypass or not, they don't really need to run away from them. You still could not persuade me to put a Ret Pally on my arena team unless it was a really good IRL or in-guild friend.

Edited, Feb 26th 2008 5:43pm by Gaudion

Resto Druids are good, but they aren't gods. The problem is they have very good non-interruptible heals, high armor and escape abilities (plus loads of CC). Ret Paladin can ignore (most of) the CC, prevent the escape and ignore a large part of their armor. Their healing isn't actually all that superb in terms of making up ground, and forcing them behind in the healing game will open them up to interrupts as they try to catch up and get curbstomped.

Ret works okay in double-DPS teams in 2v2 because it does help tremendously against Druids, but it really niches in well in 3v3 against... well, Druids. The problem is that RMP has a decent potential to rip you a new *******, although it's by no means assured, and that it's tremendously hard to gear up a Retadin to actually be competitive in PvP.

I got to thinking about this, and I don't mean to hijack the thread, but it seemed to fit: what about the plate DPS badge gear? Some (all?) of it has armor penetration on it, so would it be better to avoid using those pieces of gear if at all possible?

lol, i've done worse math... but fortunately not often.

you are absolutely right. the haste is blah for a ret. doesn't really affect us much. but the lack of 100% uptime does though... do you happen to know the aprx proc rate so i can fix my horendous math?

Hi.

i would say Mongoose and Savagery are about equal for pve. it would depend on what you're fighting and how quickly. Savagery is all-the-time and great til you get probably 2000+ AP. Mongoose, being proc sensistive, may leave you 'glowy' with nothing to hit while downing trash...similar to Vengeance procs during single pulls. this is the main reason why mongoose sucks in pvp for a Ret. however, when you get chain procs of Mongoose on a boss, that +haste really kicks in.

i personally like Savagery on my Ret because it is NOT a proc in a spec that is already very procy. at over 30% crit im always looking for more base punching power to beef up those crits as well as add more substantial non crits.

lol, when people ask me in game why i rolled a ret instead of a rogue or hunter, i just tell them i wanted to try a class that would suck bad no matter how hard i try... then i proceed to out dps 90% of the dps'ers i find while continueing to blame any wipes, bad pulls, deaths on the retardin no matter if it was my fault or not... helps with keeing tension down... a lot less finger pointing and more getting back to killing that way. ;) only problem is if i run with a pally tank friend of mine and we get into debates about if its the retardin or the tanks fault... he won't give up the blame easily. oh well.