Happy holidays from Retpaladin.com!

Reallywet.

- Megaphone

Hello all, I’ve made a video with a few clips compiled from the furthest reaches of our current patch. In it contains everything you need to combat all the the foulness that is going on in the game right now. Without further adieu, I present to you the greatest part about patch 3.3 for not only Retributors, but all!

PS : What do you find most entertaining about the patch?

- Megaphone

This post will contain all the changes that relate to Paladins, and a few things here and there that might interest a few of you!

- Megaphone

We here at Retpaladin.com LOVE our community members - we give out prizes, hail them in glory dedicated a part of the site to feature them, and have an active hand on the forums and front page posts to everybody knows we’re not just ghosts. To throw another bone out to the people who make this site so great, I wouldn’t mind making a front page post every time somebody in our community of smashers does something to impact the game. Small or large, any help we get to bring in people and let them loose onto our forums is something that we just have hardons for, so why not return some of the love?

One member (Rosaly!) has released two movies volumed “The Art of Smash” in the past month, and they’ve had their fair share of discussion. No shame to plug here, it’s giant picture link time!

Because when the game is failing, and there’s nothing to do, you always have a place to go to escape the mindlessness of the WoW public forums. Let’s face it - more than half of us don’t play this game for the game, it’s for the people. Link to the post on our forums : Click here!

Just another perk for being part of Ratpaoldin.com.

- Megaphone

With seasons 4 and 5 both lasting 17 weeks and season 6 lasting 18 weeks, we should assume that season 7 will be at least 17 itself.  The season began on September 1, 2009 which means 17 weeks would put us at the end of December.  This seems reasonable under the premise of a speculated April-May Cataclysm launch thus allowing a solid three to four months for Icecrown Citadel.  For those of us with a great deal of interest in the PvP aspects of WoW, this final WotLK Arena season holds twofold significance.  On one hand it’s another chance for us test ourselves in PvP combat but on the other hand it’s Blizzard’s last chance to provide a balanced and rewarding Arena experience before the proverbial deck is reshuffled and new balancing issues creep atop the already massive pile.

So the question at hand is:

What can we expect from the upcoming Arena season?

What follows is a list of educated predictions about the upcoming season along with some subjective analysis.

1) If you thought Warriors and their LOLBLADESTORM was bad this season, just wait…

I don’t think it’s any secret that Warriors scale incredibly well with gear.  In fact, this can irrefutably be argued with numbers alone.  You can easily expect even more ArP-capped Warriors Bladestorming their way to Duelist (yes, I’ll grant that Gladiator takes a slight bit more than just one hotkey) - only this time they’ll have a great deal more raw Strength behind the attacks given the drastically raised item levels.  Expect the fully realized S3/S4 Druid/Warrior in 2s and even more TSG (Holy Paladin / Arms Warrior / Unholy Death Knight) in 3s.

2) Retribution will still fall well short of being competitive at higher ratings

People other than Retribution Paladins don’t care to admit this but it’s a fact:  Retribution is great at low gear-levels and splendidly awful at high ones (I say “splendidly” awful because just how bad Retribution is at high ratings, comparatively speaking, borders upon a sick happiness of sorts).  While we can certainly look forward to another 400-500 damage on our Judgments and squeezing another 100 healing out of Divine Storm, we simply don’t scale at the rate other classes do.  Still having trouble believing Retribution is dead at high ratings?  I’m sure you’ve heard of Euneek.  Euneek is arguably the top PvP Retadin in the world.  You may remember his RRP (Ret/Rogue/Disc Priest) breaking the 3000 rating threshold in season’s past.  You may also recall his Furious Gladiator title as a result.  Well, speculate on this:  http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackrock&n=Euneek.  One month ago, he was in an RRP that reached roughly 2600 team rating.  Two weeks ago that same RRP was roughly 2450 team rating.  Now, he is without Arena teams altogether.  I’ve spoken with many such top Retadins and the overwhelming understanding is that Ret simply isn’t competitive anymore at high ratings.  Need more proof?  Fine.  RRP has long been one of the staple comps for Retribution - a comp in which is can truly shine.  So allow me one last link: http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/team/3/all/all/all/all/all/paladin/rogue/priest///.  Bear in mind that 2500, in most BGs this season, will be cutting Gladiator extremely close.  If you are still in doubt as to Retribution upper-bracket futility, then all I can do is /wave, /smile and bid you a pleasant, albeit, delusional voyage.

3) Protribution or “ProtRet” will continue to outperform Retribution in all brackets but won’t be quite as strong as it was this season

Being used to the recurring punishment dealt from the reddened hands of Father Blizzard, we have grown quite resourceful in our day.  It seems the Retribution Paladin, to thrive, must always stay ahead of the proverbial curve and invent ourselves out of trouble.  Such was the birth of Protribution this season.  It’s a spec that features greater burst potential and better overall pressure than standard Retribution but provides us the survivability of a tank.  What’s more is that ProtRet is absolutely destroying Retribution across all brackets this season as a result.  Who would have thought that a damage-dealing archetype without a healing debuff or true interrupt would thrive once given excellent burst alongside a 3 second silence?  You can bet on this spec continuing its dominance over Retribution during Season 8 but I’d wager it won’t be “quite” as strong as it is today.  This is due to several factors.  One such factor is that the element of “surprise” will be gone.  Protribution will be mostly understood and planned for on the part of many teams.  As it stands today, the spec is still fairly new and many teams aren’t quite sure how to deal with it.  A second factor is, quite simply, that we do not scale as well as other classes with gear and the amount of pressure we apply will drop a bit as a result.

4) Prepare yourselves for the return of the S3 Rogue

During Season 3, it was commonplace to witness Rogues walking around with no more than 100 to 200 resilience (the cap was somewhere around 450 at level 70) and rocking out with 4pc Slayer’s Armor.  The formula was simple:  stack Agility as high as you can, pop Evasion back to back at the start of a fight and blow things up.  Partner this with Cloak of Ski….Shadows and they were near unkillable for 24 seconds during which time they would putting out the damage of a small raid.  I believe we’re going to see the return of such Rogues next season only this time the gearing will be slightly reversed:  Rogues will be wearing 4pc PvP gear, to get the newly-improved PvP set bonuses, but will throw PvE gear in every other slot.  They will hit like trucks,  they will be unkillable for a 24-second time slot of their choosing and “good” ones will be able to carry their teams to fairly high ratings.  Although the classic 2s comp of Shadow Priest / Rogue has made a moderate comeback this season, I think you can expect the comp to return in full force during Season 8.

But Tharvolde!  I don’t want to go Protribution!  If all this comes true, what future do I have as Retribution in Arena?

My strongest recommendation to you would be to find yourself one of the Rogues mentioned in point 4) above.  Have him blow all his CDs up front and you do the same.  Faceroll like champs and enjoy yourselves.  If Ret/Rogue isn’t your style, then I believe one of the “utility” Retribution specs previously mentioned by Hoff on our own RetPaladin.com forums such as this one might work well with a good Arms Warrior, Frost Mage or Survival Hunter.  You would essentially be playing the role of support/moderate damage-dealing.  If neither of the above two recommendations fit your needs then I would highly recommend working on sub-second response times for Hand of Freedom and Hand of Protection while getting yourself a thimble to cover the tip of whatever finger would normally hit your Cleanse hotkey or macro with.  You have a very hard, uphill battle ahead of you and you’re definitely going to get frustrated.  If 1800 is your goal, you’ll be fine - keep working hard and you’ll eventually get it with the right strategies.  If 2000 is your goal, ensure you’re in one of the top comps for a Retribution Paladin (such as Survival/Ret/Resto Shaman) and be ready to play near flawlessly.  Keep at it and you may very well find yourself in the 2000+ bracket.  If 2200 is your goal, get yourself in one of the top comps for Retribution, get the sub-second response time on cleanse and Freedom going, gear yourself out as far as you can without having a Tier-2 weapon, purchase a subscription from www.smoothping.com, perfect your strategies against TSG, Spell Cleave varieties and Beast Cleave and then execute them flawlessly every single time.  Manage all of this and you’ll probably see the 2200s.

However, if Gladiator is your goal and standard Retribution absolutely must be your spec,  I’d recommend a good defense team for the aftermath of your murderous rampage…