first of all, to those who say you go OOM fast without JoW, I disagree. a few things on that:
the mana return from JoW has an 8 second internal cooldown. based on weapon speeds and global cooldowns you won't actually see it exactly at 8 seconds.
the mana returned is 2% of base mana which is less than 4000 which means you get 80 mana returned at best.
80 mana every 8 seconds (absolute best case scenario) is hardly game breaking.
your judgements have had the mana return increased to 25% of your base mana. this is actually a substantial amount. if you seriously are having mana issues use Glyph of Seal of Blood. that's what its there for. I have not had a fight in recent memory where I didn't have enough mana regen to continue through the entire fight and I have never needed the SoB glyph. I use every damage dealing ability I can as soon as they come off cooldown. i'm not conserving mana or even worrying abut it much other than to pop DP on cooldown. only time I even don't use consecrate is fights where it would be wasted (grobbulus, hodir, etc) due to constant kiting the boss. if mana is hard for you to manage warriors, rogues, feral (cat)druids and DK's may be better for you... just saying... oh, and that's despite the fact that I never judge wisdom. my JoL is too beneficial in the highly aoe damage intensive fights in ulduar and even many fights in Naxx where dps take damage. l2managemana or reroll but don't cry about your own inability to use the tools blizz gives us please.
Archfiend Goggy wrote:
After we had the 'discussion' on recoil in the past I did a lot of looking over WWS and rarely do you see ret DPS ranking top. Check any of the top 100 speed runs and see for yourself. I'm not saying there aren't any before anyone calls me on that one, but to say we're near the top, most of the time, IMHO is wrong.
Yes recoil has been nerfed recently, yet I still feel it when judging. I won't go as far as I have in the past and say why do RL's even consider taking a ret paladin, but is it safe to say that blessings and auras are the only reason? It was said before and I still think it is valid now "why would you take a class that damages itself to do mid-table DPS when there are others out there that do not?"
this really is the issue at hand. unless you're a lore nerd (i'm a math nerd, some like lore, to each their own lol) you don't really care how you do damage as long as its competitive and people want to bring you to raids and maybe it should be interactive enough to be fun. my seals and judgements hitting me back doesn't directly affect my dps or the fun factor as long as it isn't so noticeable as to cause me to be left behind while my guild raids. I will admit in advance as a Guild Leader who's mains are a Ret Pally and a Holy/Prot Pally i'm a little biased and perhaps out of the loop on what raid leaders are looking for. my guild is not the top guild - we've only cleared as far as Hodir so far. however, I have never had a complaint from healers about how hard I am to keep up. i've actually heard healers complain often about how OP it is that I can compete with them in effective healing done without casting a single heal. additionally, even though i'm neither the most geared (8th best geared dps in my guild atm) nor the most skilled, I regularly top damage meters. not every fight, but beating me in dps is worthy of gloating on vent in my guild. the ones that sometimes manage this depending on the fight are 2 of our locks, our Spriest and a rogue. some of our hunters are also right there with me. our mages seem to be feeling the effects of nerfs although I haven't looked into what those are. do I think I'm proof that ret is the best dps spec in the game? hardly. I do think that ret pallies in general in normal raiding guilds are performing well. is there a reason to bring Ret Pallies other than aura's and blessings you ask? yes, and that is our dps. so, the real crux of the issue being raid viability, if you need help doing better dps, or managing mana better, or whatever the case may be, lets address those issues. I am not the best Ret here. i'm merely the most Verbose. ask for some help in those areas and i'm sure someone can help. heck, if you haven't got the help you need here i'd even be willing to help people over vent. I enjoy my class and want to see it succeed that much :)
Archfiend Goggy wrote:
Is ret aura worth the ret palas presence? From what I've heard from our guild prot tank is he keeps ret aura up for threat generation.
ret aura is a thing of the past. if there's no prot pally, I use Devo aura usually. if there is a prot pally, I let him use that and I use ret aura, concentration aura, or the resistance auras depending on the type of fight. ret aura itself is almost worthless now that the 3% damage and haste buffs are active no matter what aura we have on. but, yes, the haste and damage buffs are very much worth bringing a ret. so is replenishment and JoL and DS heals, and blessings, and dps.
side note, decided to look your toon up. I noticed you're in a small guild with mostly less geared people. i'm assuming that you are pugging since none of them have any of your raid achievements. you seem to have cleared 25 naxx several times since you have many ilvl 213 items and 93 EoV. you clearly have been in both 10 and 25 man ulduar. i'm just wondering, are you really having a hard time getting in raids? it seems you're doing very well for yourself despite being in a more casual guild. you logged in your fishing pole, but your gear looks to be nearly on par with mine, so i'd guess you're doing at minimum 3.5k dps on average, right? is that not enough to be desireable? I was going to try to give you some gear tips, but you seem to be doing pretty well in that area. just keep in mind the people that you hear about doing 4-5k dps are fully BiS geared (or were till ulduar came out). at 3.5k dps (which is an rough average for your gear level - if you're higher great, if you're much lower we can work on that) you should be very competitive with 95% of the people you run into unless your server is a super hardcore raiding server. those other 5% are the people that out-gear you or are more skilled.
anyway, if the real issue behind the recoil is raid viability, like I think it is, I hope i've answered it a little. if I didn't answer that let me know. if the real issue to you is recoil regardless of raid viability, then I can redo my math for the current nerfed recoil and increased damage (and therefore heals) of Divine Storm.
hope this helped, and if not, let me know what I didn't answer clearly enough (or at all).