random ret musingsFollow

i was going to post this in another thread but it got rather long so i figured i would just start a new discussion just to **** off all the forum *****. ^.-

im really excited about all the changes i see comming for ret, but the biggest buff to Ret's raid viability i think is the raid wide aura, and the buffs to Ret Aura.

sure they took our 10% holy damage buff, but the math has been done enough to know that it only added about 2-3% to our total/overall DPS. as holy damage is roughly 25% of our total damage (as low as 20%) and +10% of 25% is 2.5% to total DPS. our 3% haste to ret aura not only makes up for that for our personal DPS, but it adds another 3% of something actually usefull to our entire raid. Prot pallies wont miss the +10% now that they have a stam to SD conversion talent.

overall, its a wonderfull change, even if we just break even on personal DPS. +5% to the raid instead of only plus 2% to the group.


the next big buff is that our Angel Wings is our new bread and butter. no forberance, reduced CD to equall that of most trinkets, and half the damage you do will by pass mitigation. looks like ill have to change that Exicutioner enchant on my weapon, but over all, HUGE buff in both PvE and PvP. even if they reduced the total damage increase from 30%-20%.


another thing i noticed. having alot of Mana will actually nerf Ret DPS . . our main DPS ability/abilities, now take a percent of our total mana. However, the talant that returns mana is based off our damage. so the less mana we have, the more effective healing pots will be, and other MP5 effects. a lower the better for PvE i think. most of our mana will come i think from Judging.


and the last thing im really excited about is that Devine Str in the Prot tree is huge, and far more usefull then if it was in the Ret tree. it lets us get deeper into the prot tree for nice PvP buffs for free. and the fact that its now 15% instead of 10% is just that much more AP.


and on the PvP side, having yet another intant attack is simply overpowered. this will make many people very angry i think, as i can/have already one shot people with crusader strike + auto swing + SoComm Proc combo (all with only one button press, and very intant). now after that you can simply stun > storm > CS > judge to make any 1vs1 a complete tragady for the other guy.


and the question of the day. do the effects of Heart of the Crusader stack with other pallies? cause i'd imagine that alot of Prot pallies will be going for that talent, and maybe some holy builds. just with the tank alone + ret pally thats +6% to raid crit, but now that SotC is gone, that leaves only JoW, JoL, JoJ to apply the +3% crit, for 9% total if it does, maybe more if it works with vengance. with the ret pally refreshing with CS.

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 3:12pm by RuenBahamut

there are official posts that say the major stat change that happened in BC will not happen again in WotLK, they said they feel they perfected the distrobution of Stam and the lvl of increase will remain constant.

so basicly. the jump that happened in the 60-62 range will not happen. 70-72 should look about the same as 66-68, etc.

Edit:
you are right however, i am looking at this from a lvl 70 perspective, however, im confident that the scale of thing will not change too much from where they are at right now. as of right now in pvp, when i triple crit i do about 6.5k in my very first swing. it happens often enough. even if the stam scales up faster then the DPS, im still guessing i could at least pull a 50% hit off someones HP and that is pretty unreasonable in all reality. stunning and cleaning up with more instant attacks is going to be a very overpowered thing. we dont have to build up to it with fury. its just, "heeeeeyyy, your name is red . . . um . . " then mash instant attacks for a quick death . .

hell, ive done it already. killed people so quick that it felt like an accedent, that i feel sorry for them, and its not due to any skill of mine. just the way Ret works in PvP. and thats without avenging wrath.

Raid buffed with AW running ive triple crit 11.6k total, but at least with the new talents i can bubble out of that kind of agro soon. ^^

Edited, Jul 18th 2008 3:58pm by RuenBahamut

I can speak for a lot of prot pallies here. Ret becomes..... usless. Currently, there reaches a point where ret aura makes so little threat that it just isn't worth it. Devo aura generally grants 1-2% less physical damage, Devo really is the true prot pally aura. Also, notice the talent much deeper in ret, it too buffs Ret aura. It grants 3% haste, which.... is way too hight for any prot pally.

The % of mana thing is actually insanely good. Its going to scale even better with a small amount of int. Most of the spells cost a rather small % of base mana.

Pve wise, our role is now very defined, put out max damage while having some nice, decent raid wide buffs from judgement effects and auras. But pvp wise, i'm afraid blizz has left us back where we are now. The change to AW is very nice, helps out the burst even more. but what ret pallies need is another interrupt, stun, or ms type effect. we got none of those, so although ret will be tearing up 0 resil clothies with renewed vigour, against high resil players, the lack of a new interrupt is going to hurt. UNLESS inscription lets us put a stun into crusader strike. that would be sooo awesome.

One thing's for sure, the changes are massive, and i'm not surprised if i see a comparative dps increase of at least 35%, with all the mechanics changes. merging hit crit and haste ratings for spell and melee together means loads more judgement crits and even more damage, so i'm really looking forward to wotlk.

@iceraven:

Our current stuns and interrupts have been buffed massively though. I don't think we need another interrupt when with talents and pvp set bonus you can throw a hammer of justice every 20 seconds. And the duration of repentence in pvp has been buffed from 6 - 10 seconds.

Are you certain of the HoJ every 20 seconds? i'm pretty sure the arena gear in wotlk won't carry the same set bonus. i stand to be corrected of course, but a 6 second stun every 20 seconds would be really fantastic.