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Subject is coded to hide from those who would otherwise persecute me.

I've been retting around, and I have really really been enjoying it. Much more than I used to, and I think I might actually hang up my shield for it.

I've been doing a lot of PvP lately, and been surprised at my survivability and damage output. I can do all of my dailies a lot faster as ret, and I like big numbers.

Anyway, Most of you know that I change my mind like every 2 months anyway, but I think I'm going to stick with Retribution for now, and possibly until WotLK.

To that end, I have a couple of questions/suggestion requests for PvP (not interested in PvE at the moment as Ret).

My crit is starting to get pretty high now (30.60% unbuffed) and I'm wondering if I should cut it off soon. I've been gemming for crit rating so far, but I wonder if I should start putting in resil instead. From my own thinking and figuring, a resil-capped person has ~12.5% crit reduction, so if I can get to 32.5 then I have a 20% effective crit rate against them. Which isn't too bad, and I should be able to keep up Vengeance with that.

I modified my UI, and I will be tweaking it up to try and optimize my retlawling around. Heres an image of it. The buttons on the top under the target are my spells that I can use against them (Arcane Torrent, Hammer of Justice, Repentance, Hammer of Wrath, and Mana Tap respectively.

The button to the left of the target set's my target as my focus and moves them down below to the right where I have my helpful spells under them(Cleanse, Flash of Light, Holy Light, Blessing of Freedom, and Blessing of Protection respectively, and I plan to add Blessing of Sacrifice in there as well). All of those are macrod to go to my focus, so I can just click the cleanse button under their frame(will probably bind those to shift 1-5 in the future) and it will cleanse my focus without losing my target.

To the right of my focus is my focus' target, and I have a button under them now (not in the image) for repentance, in case I need to interrupt them from hurting my focus at a crucial time without losing my target.

Since I have an infinite amount of buttons to play with and frames for almost any kind of target you can think of, can anyone else think of any suggestions to add to this?

Anyway I've been rambling, if I think of anything else I would like help on (no gear suggestions please, I know what gear I want to get, just have to wait/grind to get it) or if you can think of anything to add, it would be much appreciated.

your problems are HP and resilience. AP is looking good. shoot for 10-11k HP, 300+res and then work on crit.

Then again, you might be in different gear atm.

Nah that's pretty much my PvP gear (I swap out the skyguard cross for the abacus in arena, since I only do 2v2 and 3v3, so I probably won't see it proc and be useful. I figure the HP and resilience will come when I get more of the Vindicators/Arena gear, right? So in order to get it now I would have to gem out of crit and nerf my damage, which I am hesitant to do. Or should I do that, and then as my res/hp gets higher I can swap back in the crit gems?

I usually do 2v2 with a Rogue buddy of mine (my 3v3 team is usually me and either him and a priest who is badly geared for arena, or me and a shaman/priest, both of which are badly geared for arenas. So I don't take the 3v3 too seriously, as we almost never win (we were 3-7 this last week @1300s). 2v2 is the one I try to take seriously with my friend, and I don't 5v5. Anyway, this is what usually happens:

Rogue tries to sap one target and immediately start CS and attacking the other one. I run in and judge Command and pull it up again (the CS making it do double damage) and start attacking. Once sap breaks, I usually end up getting CC'd while my partner starts getting worked on (if we haven't killed his partner by then). I try to get a heal out when the CC breaks and start helping the rogue (bubble+heal him up if he starts going down fast and I'm still cc'd). If we lose I'm almost always the last one alive, with some rare occasions where I'm FFd and killed first. I think this will change as we rise up higher (in the high 1300s now, this week we were 7-3, and we've been getting better gear and working on better strategies so we've been climbing more.)

keep in mind for anything i say that i'm more PVE focused so i may be wrong about anything PVP...

as far as resil, i agree w/ KT that you want to get to 300 res as quick as possible. probably before worrying about any additional crit.

also keep in mind that the amount that crit will boost your damage is based on the amount of damage you'll do w/ your weapon damage and AP. personally i'd work on your AP before your crit at this point to maximize your damage. i wouldn't get AP at the expense of your crit (you're right that you need at very lease 20% crit to keep vengeance up so 30% is good agains heavy res opponenets), but if you can get additional AP w/o losing your crit % then i'd definitely go for that. at about 2500-3000 AP (rough guestimate... weapon type and other factors can change that....) crit will be worth about as much as AP.

you are set up better than me though for PVP. even w/ the new reputation PVP peices i'm only at about 8k HP which doesn't give me very long to kill anyone before i die... fortunately i hit big w/ 1700 unbuffed AP, but i really wish i had more HP when i'm in BG's or arena.

this would be a good time for Dathur or Tommyguns to step in by the way... i think they're both more experienced PVP rets than me.

last thing then i'm done.. as far as talents you look pretty good overall. a couple things i'd suggest though.... I'd get rid of Sanctified Judgements for divine Purpose. In PVP the fights are often too fast for mana regen to make a big difference. The 12% reduced damage from crits will be a much bigger advantage. i'd also see if you can find 5 more points somewhere to get Guardian's Favor and Improved Righteous Fury. Possibly you can get this from Fanaticism. You won't need the threat reduction and the extra crit to your judgements is nice, but not as good as 6% reduction to all damage. you might wait for a second opinion from tommyguns or dathur or even KT though.

anyway, have fun and good luck.



first

You'd be surprised, a lot of the arena fights, especially with healers who manage to weasle out of death can drain my mana pretty fast. When I first started doing this a couple of weeks ago I had +0 int which put me at 3800 mana, which I would go OOM rediculously fast which reduces me to an auto-attacking hoping something crits so I don't get laughed at *******. @~5100 now I do a bit better, but I really need to have those mana returns from judgement, as I do judge frequently (I try to do it between swings). I also will stop and heal if I need to, and that eats up my mana, so... I think I'll hang on to that one.

I already know I'm going to respec to a more arena build, I'm going to wait until I get the 4-piece bonus though, then I'll go down prot to Imp. HoJ, to get a 35 second cooldown on it. Probably have to sacrifice Divine Strength for it, which will lower my AP. As well as Fanaticism. Stuns are just too helpful though for me to pass it up.

Edited, Apr 14th 2008 12:33pm by CapJack

Mana will be an issue for you i think, so i agree that you should keep talents that return mana. As for the rest of your build and respeccing.... i dunno about that. Your build looks a lot like mine and it took a lot of sacrificing for me to even get the 8 points in prot (wtb Crusade >_<). Tossing more in for imp HoJ wouldnt be worth it imo.

I havent done any PvP outside of BGs with my pally as ret though.

Dude... first healy now this?...

I've died a little inside..

You're making my bracers and gloves cry =P

Twoooooooo is the loneliest number since the nuuuuuumber 1~!!!!!!!!!

So how many more weeks of 1300 before you get another pity epic?

roflmao.

Keep reading, I made a post about that.

I've gotten really bored of playing my Paladin and after fooling around with alts a bunch I think I might grind some honor and get full ret S2 when S4 rolls around. I want to see big numbers and the front lines!