Ret the new two handed fury - and some other notesFollow

LOL. I had to post once it dawned on me. If it was posted elsewhere please forgive this post. At any rate, now thats out of the way, I have been testing out some of the new talents at 70 on the PTR. Specifically ret, had to see what all the fuss was about. Tell you what, I mostly tank in BC when I get the chance, so my ret gear is pretty crap some AH greens mixed in with an oathkeeper and still a good amount of tank gear. (Luckily alot is str and stam for tanking - warrior gear). Well I noticed that they were adding alot of warrior mechanics and even druid mechanics, ie swipe and shield bash, to the pally and it seems like they really did that with ret.

Crusader strike - still the same, but weapon damage (changed in a patch sometime ago) is alot like bloodthirst (I have a warrior leveling as fury)

Divine storm - hmmm, feels ALOT like whirlwind

Hammer of Wrath - was pretty craptastic before, but now it reminds me so much of execute - instant and with talents it pretty much finishes off the enemy

two minute seals? erm sounds like shout

New mana system - feels like rage/energy except its always full - kind of like the fury and combat talents

Of course, its not exact copies, thank Goodness, but the amount of damage I have seen fury warriors put out, and alot of QQing about ret pallies out there from other classes, I think this is a good change. Aside from the terrible terrible lag, constant crashes, and such....I may actually level my old main and first toon that always held a special place in my heart and still does(replaced by my mage when he hit 70 as my raiding toon).

Couple of side notes on the PTR - the talents for Spellpower kick ***, im healing with FoL for almost 1500 at times, taletns also boost crit on the spells too, which include holy! With art of war, may be a glitch, but my FoLs are becoming instant, helly my holy light is criting for almost 4000 (around 3700, 3800 or so).

LOVE the ret aura, with all its melee AND spell haste goodness, knocks down the Fol and even Holy light quite a bit

Also, aoe as a ret is tons of fun, in fact for a challenge and the added bonus to consecrate, the whirlwind, erm I mean divine storm, judgments returning mana (replenishment returns .5% mana each time you judge regardless of which judge you use) imagine combining this with seal of wis or seal of light? Worked great when I soloed tuskar that elite elek (remember my craptastic gear now lol) as powerful as vengeance, crusader strike and divine storm seems to be, getting healed from ret aura and other talents, healed from divine storm, hell I don't really need the seal of light/wisdom combo.

As for numbers, all those people QQing, well, again, im not in some arena gear, or even good gear, and my numbers are about what I would expect from an equally geared fury warrior.

I gotta say though, one reason I enjoyed fury was that it was fun, ret not so much, but then again I do enjoy tanking, so I was fine with that, I have other toons I can dps with, but if this is any indication, 80 here we come! Fun stuff.

Disclaimer - please ignore the spelling, late and tired

as for those wondering about spec, I didn't really see too much to grab in prot or even holy, as the talents at the bottom of ret were all just too damn good - for 70 that is as I can see that its going to be tough for the last bits of points as I can see going into prot for 5 in strength and POSSIBLY 5 in anticipation - for a 10/61 build, or even 5 in seal of the pure, I don't see intellect as mana is a non issue. The only ones in ret I did NOT take were mostly the pvp ones, vindication, eye for an eye, and divine purpose. I supposed I could have taken parry, but that was one I did not.

Now that I think about it with mana not being an issue, benediction may not even be needed, and parry taken instead, gotta take 5 somewhere lol. Ten percent may not be that much and the mana cost, at least on my instant casts spells are about 138 for judgments (been judging once for the effect and some damage they die too quick with crusader strike and divine storm then a hammerStruck Text - each of which takes about 240-350 mana with the maxed talent)

Anyway, went on a little more than I meant too, for that I apologize, I am curious how myc damage I can do as prot since they boosted that, but without our shield slam yet, - only able to test 70 lvl - as well as the holy for snitz and giggles, I do have some a craptastic holy gear too lol.

Heres a talent calculator for what I have on my 70 now

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=052320512033310322135231351000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

I am now thinking looking at some of the talents that a couple may not be needed, and steering away a little from teh old school thinking. In all honesty with crusader strike and divine storm doing alot of damage, the inherent talents adding much more white AND yellow damage as well as a ton of critical strike damages a 2 second CD on imp judgements may not be needed. I will have to get recount set up on my PTR but I am not feeling much of a difference with SoC and SoV, hell even seal of light, eachtime I judge they all do about the same damage, and again, it is not like the old ret, SoC judge, crusader striek SoC judge, CS and so on.....definitelly will have to check that out, so there are a few points that might be put into str and anticipation with the remaining 10 pts and three in seal of the pure in holy, pursuit is nice and a luxury so there is one point to fill out seal of the pure and even keep one in pursuit - it is down to 2 pts and increases mount speed as well. Myabe something like this

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=500320500033310322135231351050000000000000000000000000050050000000000000000000

Honestly, anticipation may not even need to be filled - 4 points and still keep SoC or a point in pursuit

How hard does Divine Storm seem to hit compared to Crusader Strike?

actually, divine storm would hit for less on a single mob with 0 armor. DS will do a little more on your normal mobs. CS does physical damage which is mitigated by armor. DS deals holy damage which isn't. CS does 110% weapon damage to just one mob. DS deals 100% normalized weapon damage to several mobs. if you're aoe'ing DS will do more overall damage either way.

it does full damage to each. and each hit can crit... in aoe situations this will be awesome dps and on a 10sec CD. also it will proc your seal on each hit.... so that along with it being holy damage means its awesome for DPS, especially on 2 or more mobs.

Oh, and while the new hammer of wrath is certainly awesome, i always liked hammer in PvP for is Schadenfreude value. Pound someone down, they start running, and JUST about when they think they're safe---WHAM dead :)

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."



If someone has a post they want to share with the community, by all means they should be allowed to say it. They shouldn't have to pull punches, or think twice because of some imaginary game status line that means "Yes, you can post here" or "No, you can't" simply because he hasn't seen some content, or hasn't played some content. By that argument, no one but the athletes themselves would be able to talk about Sports. This extends to almost all fields of learning. Just because you haven't experienced something first hand does not mean that you can't have an opinion on it. True, experience adds to a deeper understanding of things having experienced it first hand, however it is not the only way to understand.

There are more than enough people on these boards who play Retribution who can look over his post and understand where he's coming from. If his post was outlandish, rediculous, or just downright wrong (which he wasn't), he would have been corrected by several people on here.


@THE OP
I'm glad you are having a blast with the expansion so far. I'm really looking forward to playing it, especially with reviews like this one and some other videos I've seen on Youtube. Paladins are finally getting some decent damage output, great utility, and incredible survivability. Also I have a feeling that FoL may have been instant or near instant because of your spell haste.

repentance by itself gives us viable CC since it lasts a minute now. speccing into imp HoJ just means we have potentially 2 ways to CC mobs instead of one. we actually might well be among the best CC in the game come the xpac, at least in PVE. pvp repentance is limited to 10 seconds, so imp HoJ will make a bigger difference.

and at ice, the OP had valid points and said nothing to make his lack of experience blatantly obious. he admitted his gear wasn't ther, but went on to make intelligent comparisons and evaluations, despite his lack of experience on live. if he'd have been wrong we'd have corrected him. i commented on DS vs CS only so he'd know why DS seemed to be better (which it is in most situations). if you must be negative towards people at least model yourself after bodhi who attacks arguements inteligently using counter arguements relevant to the point. i rarely agreed with him, but i knew that he had some good WoW knowledge and mostly knew what he was talking about. (i'm referring to the Great Ret Bashing of 07 as Ruen puts it lol...

speaking of him, he's calmed down a lot. i was gone for a couple months and now in the last several months since i've been posting again i haven't really seen him flame anyone at all. just been posting mostly positive, helpful posts. kinda worries me ;)

um, and CapJack, i think the tooltip for Art of War is wrong. i'm prett sure its intended to be instant cast after a crit from judgement, CS and DS. .75/1 seconds would be very odd increments for Bliz to use. they tend to make each talent point an even amount as best they can. i'm pretty sure it's supposed to read .75/1.5 seconds. this is incredibly useful for ret pallies.

Edited, Sep 16th 2008 1:56pm by toolofjesus

So we do like mages do and hit Repent after the pull, the only major disadvantage I see for Repent being a good CC is the long cooldown. If it gets resisted, then that means... no more cc for another minute from the Ret Paly, except for a 6 second HoJ every so often.

At the risk of derailing this one, the major disadvantage as I see it is the 20yd range. It's a lot trickier to get in position for that, particularly with patrols. Long cooldowns certainly suck (ask Hunters) but I'd be a very great deal more worried about pulling the mobs early with the limited range, and it cuts down your post-pull window.

Of course it's instant, which one might argue counteracts this disadvantage.

I also concur with the Ret DPS evaluations, they are not OP at all in terms of raid damage, they are simply competetive. Having played around on the PTR I think what is making people so angry is the burst damage potential, it now exceeds that of Shamans and Death Knights on the beta. Being able to time an autoswing (maybe SoC proc), Divine Storm, Crusader Strike and then Judge all in 3sec is overwhelming some classes more accustomed to more slow-n-steady Ret DPS, Rogues being a good example. Also since we (I'm saying 'we' because I play my Paladin as a main these days... not being presumptious) now have three viable instant-attack mechanisms (hugely nice Judge crits, DS, CS, and HoW if you get lucky) we can DPS almost as well from inside the Bubble... 12 seconds chasing people around with CS/DS/Judge rotations is actually more DPS than a Retadin does right now on Live with the same gear un-bubbled. A Retadin now plays in a strangely similar way to Enhance Shamans back in the Arcanite Reaper days.

Unless the opponent has serious resilience to cut down the newly expanded crit damage, a crit off any one of those abilities knocks the average non-Arena geared player down to 30-40% health on one rotation. I have, for the first time since vanilla WoW and the Windfury nerf, insta-killed a Mage with a melee class.

It felt goood.

However, Arena gear mitigates this considerably, as well it should, so I don't see Arena filling up with Rets two-shotting the entire opposing team like the o-boards would have you believe.

Lets not forget the crazy synergy we will be getting with the new Sacred Shield spell as well. I'll put up the description here:



So at 80, (it's a lvl 80 spell) you can throw this up on yourself, and if you crit you can throw up an (allegedly) instant FoL with a pretty damn good chance of critting for 30 seconds. With our current mana regen ability, this is what I believe will just add to our already immense survivability as Ret. Hell, you might even be able to tank 5-mans at 80 as Ret by helping the healer out while dishing out the damage. Especially with Divine Storm being holy damage. That is a TON of threat you can throw out with RF up. Working in a rotation where you heal yourself after every crit or two crits depending on the need might just work out. With a healer on you, you will be able to keep your mana up even better as well AND provide CC for the group.

Thanks to you who defended the post, much appreciated, you guys know exactly what its intent was. The intent of the post was merely an observation that dawned on me when I was playing on the PTR last night, and since there was a response while I was still typing, I felt the urge to do a little extra work for that poster.

AN observation of how that are changing the class to give it a warrior type playstyle. Fury can put out some mean DPS and alot of QQers are complaining that Ret is now pretty much doing the same, and it should be. The numbers passes are not complete, but from what Ive seen, the numbers are true across the board on all of my toons on the PTR - Mage, Rogue, Pally and Lock.

That was all. And to throw in some observations. It actually ended up going on and on and on, as more thoughts popped into my head, which they tend to do sometimes lol.

Like I said, my pally got shelved for my mage, so I have seen the content, been there done that, just not on my pally as much (although he has tanked some) and again, the ret gear was some crap stuff I picked up to do a bit of farming prior to all this beta stuff. :D

Like CAP said, something about looking forward to having fun with it, well, thats the point! Its a blast, and I can even see prot, and even, gasp, holy being the same....

Side note - I PVE, dont really give a crap for PvP, so arena gear, while its great gear no doubt, Ill stick with the PvE gear and PvP for a wep if needed lol

EDIT another side note - think I mentioned it, but either its a bug or the tooltip is wrong, but FoL WAS instant cast everytime it was up haste only had it down to about 1.46 cast time or so I believe. Also someone eluded to the mana cost of DS, with the new mana regen, its not really an issue.

Edited, Sep 16th 2008 4:09pm by spicyoctopusroll

EDIT2 - hell I even posted a screenshot of my gear just to show the crap gear I was using, so there was no confusion.

Edited, Sep 16th 2008 4:18pm by spicyoctopusroll

Edited, Sep 16th 2008 4:30pm by spicyoctopusroll

Consecrate, Imp. Ret Aura doing a pretty good amount of damage by itself, the fact that RF is now 90% for everyone. Could definitely hold hate with that. Sacred Shield plus your own heals can help mitigate/deal with the damage.

The ramifications of what I am saying have dire consequences I think.