Hail, Rolibar of Shadow Council!
Rolibar is the embodiment of Retribution PvE excellence. His achievements speak for themselves but I encourage you to check out his interview within our Featured Retadin section! In the future I’ll try and have these up quicker but it’s been a crazy couple months for me on many fronts.
- Tharvolde
January 2nd, 2010 - 8:03 am
Interesting.
January 2nd, 2010 - 2:41 pm
Always a good sign when the first post says nothing other than “Interesting.”
January 3rd, 2010 - 5:04 am
I found it interesting.
I have never experienced high-end raiding to the degree that he has, and can’t relate to the difficulty he had nor the exhiliration he felt accomplishing those achievements or boss kills he participated in.
I also feel I’m under-equipped to agree or disagree with any advice he gave or tips he provided.
I was going to comment on the fact he was a blood elf, but decided against it.
January 3rd, 2010 - 5:23 am
Advice is good, i cleared ToC hero 25 with my guild before they went horde and i can agree to his statements…
his interface on the other hand, uff, a clean interface is something else…
addons aren´t bad, though…
January 3rd, 2010 - 10:26 am
Eh, it’s not bad. I never really understood the whole point in the section in the first place. What did this guy do to deserve “Featured Retadin” status? Why aren’t we actually told that? To be rather blunt, this guy has done very little that many others haven’t done and if that’s why he’s featured then I fail to see any good reason to bother having the section at all.
Anyways, back on topic. I agree that the game has been incredibly dumbed down but there’s a “good” reason for it: marketing. There are far more casual players than hardcore players. Being “loyal” to your hardcore players who have played since release is all nice and dandy but when the large majority of your customer-base, as well as that of the general gamer community, are casual gamers then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what generates more revenue.
January 3rd, 2010 - 2:04 pm
“I also feel I’m under-equipped to agree or disagree with any advice he gave or tips he provided.”
Gear just comes. You do the best with what you have available to you. I do think setting up keybindings so your not hunting or dancing around the keyboard and building a UI that lets you see the big picture with the info you need with out getting tunnel vision to one section watching cool downs or health bars is something that everyone can use. Really just about being as aware as possible of what is going on around you and then being to react, to or better yet, anticipate it.
“I was going to comment on the fact he was a blood elf, but decided against it.”
I was human for ages … but seem to have played in the Sun Well to much. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.
January 3rd, 2010 - 2:47 pm
Good to see one of us has gotten great, to be honest.
January 4th, 2010 - 8:38 am
Well, to be quite honest Megaphone - the interview was a bit..I don’t know how to put it…lacking? The questions seem to be fine but his answers felt incomplete or just not that interesting. He had a few good points but that’s about it.
January 4th, 2010 - 5:59 pm
@anardil i think the interview was interesting just there isnt much else to say on the matter. when someone is talking about their experiences you cant really disagree with them or comment on it because you werent there
January 4th, 2010 - 7:07 pm
Perhaps people are a bit too used to how much burning hatred I include into my posts to get people riled up.
Oh yes..
The point of the section is just to spotlight Retadins around the realms and catch their opinions on what’s going on and help give a little insight on any tips for the beginners to start their trek up progression mountain. You kind of are actually told how people get there - they’re suggest to us in PMs and comments and we just picked the most “qualified” out of the bunch, and if the interview goes well we post it up. I don’t really see the point of your post, but you don’t see me trying to pull a people’s strings.
Of course Blizzard is going to make their game cater to the casuals, but people don’t really understand that that can be done while pleasing the hardcore players as well. There are a thousand and one fixes that make perfect sense that have been discussed by a plethora of communities. The “hardcore” content is nowhere near “hardcore”, the “casual” content isn’t fine where it is because people pug everything then complain that there is nothing to do.
The decline of the game has been seen from all aspects, and Blizzard’s glorious “casual” turn to the game isn’t getting them far, at all. People are quitting because things are too easy and cater to the casuals who have plenty of other things to do, people are quitting because they can do everything on Tuesday and neglect their toons until the next week. Blizzard isn’t a giant figure that is impenetrable by logic which can not be brought down to an eye to eye perspective, it’s just a group of people who like to fail consistently and are having an incredibly hard time adapting to a game who’s model has changed so much from their original path that lead them to success. (You can’t tell me that Vanilla and BC did so well because they were “new” and Wrath is declining at ridiculous rates because the game is “old” when so many radical (and bad) changes have been made to the game)
Oh and, there is a point to your post, I was just trying to pull strings. I still love you, and I love posts that get me talking about WoW politics, it makes me hot.
I also like the interview - it’s like a weapon I can use to win internet arguments!
January 4th, 2010 - 9:40 pm
I think a large part of it has to do with ALL PvE achievements, and not just Wrath PvE achievements.
Sure, you could grab a ret paladin from Premonition or Juggernaut, but that’s not the point. Rolibar’s been extremely successful in PvE from vanilla until now as a retribution paladin. I don’t think you’re going to find somebody who’s been keeping pace like that for 4 years straight.
As for the interview, I will agree and say it didn’t seem as…exciting….but then again, a PvE-oriented interview will be less exciting due to there being less intricacy in the questions. In Gankadin’s interview, there were specific questions about team compositions, and how to play as ret against certain comps. There’s just more technical stuff you can talk about than saying “I hit 5-7 buttons, BoP, Salv, and Freedom people as needed while facerolling a boss” - which is really all ret does in PvE.
And catering to the casuals in a business venture. Because WoW has damn near 15 million subscriptions rolling, they’re going to appeal to the widest group, aka, the people who suck at PvE and PvP.
January 4th, 2010 - 10:40 pm
“I also like the interview - it’s like a weapon I can use to win internet arguments!”
Then I win at the interwebs!
This is the part I like best:
“To be rather blunt, this guy has done very little that many others haven’t done”
Lets see …. 500 days played as Ret. Slew of server firsts including A Tribute to Insanity (25 player). Raids in a guild that is ranked top 100(ish depending on which ranking site is actually right). And … has over 120,000 lifetime HK while being PVE focused.
I’m not sure “many” others have done that. Feeding my already over bloated ego I don’t think was the point however.
It was just fun to chat about the state of Ret in PVE and progression raiding and was pleased to be able to do it. Given the space/time I can go on and on for hours on what macros, strats, rotations, etc. etc. I think work best fight by fight by fight and the second WoW balance comes up …..
January 5th, 2010 - 6:15 am
I appreciate the advice, Rolibar. I’m one of those Rets that specced into the tree for Consecration back in the day. I’m also a clicker/turner who is terribad at PvP.
BUT, I’ve stuck with the spec for a long time (but only at about 120 days played) and am always looking for ways to improve and get out from under the shadow of “lolret”.
I’ll redouble my efforts and push it to 210%.
January 6th, 2010 - 2:29 pm
Haha, holy crap, never thought I’d see a name I know up there! Nice!
January 6th, 2010 - 11:19 pm
Sorry Doucard, deleted your post on accident!
January 7th, 2010 - 6:58 pm
Very experienced and respectable Ret. Only thing I’d like to say, your gearing choices confuse me. @@ 4pc t9 is really a downgrade from some non-tier pieces that drop from ToC/ToGC. Also being several points over expertise cap…
January 8th, 2010 - 2:53 am
Hey, dudes, I’ve started raiding recently and I was wondering what kind of DPS I should be getting if I get the level 232 ToC gear, the gear you can get with triumph tokens.
January 10th, 2010 - 4:58 pm
To start off, if you’re going to adopt the mantle of an interviewer, try to at least pretend to not have a point of view that you’re looking to see vindicated with agreement from the person you’re interviewing.
“Has Blizzard really started catering to the casual play style?” Really? If you’ve got an axe to grind, that’s cool, but at least pretend like you don’t have an opinion before hand. “What do you think of the state of WoW in regards to Hardcore versus Casual play style?”
Secondly, the whole interview reeks of elite snobbery and whining about how easy the new content is in regards to old Hard Modes. Welcome to WoW where what was hard yesterday is soloable today by a well geared casual.
“Throwing away hard-earned Karazhan gear for easy-mode Gruuls gear is frustrating. It seems the “epicness” of raiding is somewhat gone. Raiding is much easier nowadays.”
If anything, you can console yourself by staring at your “First” achievements, homie.
All in all, the whole interview was a nice vaseline-soaked handjob for the pally in question. Is he good? Oh hell yeah, he’s good. Did I get anything useful out of it? No. A resounding No.
In the future, you might consider putting people in there with something useful for the rest of us who are trying to maintain our spots in our raids. Seriously, wtf was this interview about, other than him polishing his ego?
January 11th, 2010 - 10:38 pm
Somebody’s mad about a video game, alert the police!
But seriously, your comment serves no purpose. The interview is about PvE accomplishments and how to better oneself in that aspect - which was addressed. “Catering to the casuals” is a turn the game has made regarding PvE - I don’t see how that shouldn’t be part of the interview, especially considering Rolibar has been ret from Vanilla until present day.
And finally, who do you expect to be interviewed? I dare you to find somebody who’s played as ret as long and successful as he has. The interview is about PvE ret play, and who better to interview than somebody who’s seen it all?
You’ve just got an axe to grind with Megaphone, Rolibar, or retpaladin.com and I fail to see why you’re even posting. Please, feel free to beat off over how awesome your level of self-righteousness is. You’ll accomplish a ton more.
January 12th, 2010 - 2:13 am
Wow, alot of emotions going on on this site.(haven’t been checking up lately, taking a possibly permanent break from wow)
@Infernalist
What exactly is that you wanted to hear?
“‘Has Blizzard really started catering to the casual play style?’ Really? If you’ve got an axe to grind, that’s cool, but at least pretend like you don’t have an opinion before hand”
Whats wrong with asking for someone else’s opinion?
“In the future, you might consider putting people in there with something useful for the rest of us who are trying to maintain our spots in our raids.”
We have countless of forum posts and websites(elitistjerks.com being the best when it comes to general topics imo) with theorycraft, strats, rotation and utility discussions out there about PvE Retribution Paladins that the whole topic is getting pretty redundant and from this point on is beating the dead horse. If you’re a serious raider barely coming onto the website, how ’bout taking a look at the PvE section of the forums? Theres plenty of info there, and if not, it’ll at least point you in the right direction, or…god forbid…you can ask. Any other information needed to be “better” is really knowing the boss fights, which i doubt retpaladin.com will do for you.
“Seriously, wtf was this interview about, other than him polishing his ego?”
How ’bout asking a seasoned veteran how his journey through the years of wow has been for him? And how he feels about change and the such?
@Psy
“Eh, it’s not bad. I never really understood the whole point in the section in the first place. What did this guy do to deserve ‘Featured Retadin’ status?”
To answer your question, you nominate yourself or another retpally that you are familiar with that you feel is deserving of some recognition for his accomplishments as being a Retribution Paladin. The time frame of the nominations are specified by Megaphone and Tharvolde. Once those are in, I’m sure they take time to evaluate the nominees based on what the field of nominations were based on (PvE/PvP. Note: Each time a featured paladin is chosen it will alternate between pve and pvp…i think)
And you wanna know the point of the whole section is? How ’bout letting the rest of us know that ret paladin is actually viable? I’ve been ret since I started playing the game (last 2 months of Vanilla wow…yea, i know it aint much)…I was ret back in the day when it was lolret and people would even boot me from groups upon discovering i was ret. And I know times have changed since then, but its nice to know that there are plenty of other retribution paladins out there making sh*t happen. And who knows, just armory them up and maybe follow example on what new rets should do with their gear. Its just to show that their are good examples out there. Thats why I feel that ‘Featured Ret Paladin’ is a good segment of the website.
(btw…i think the community would appreciate a hall of fame of those that have been featured)
January 12th, 2010 - 6:07 am
@Infernalist
I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the interview. I assure you countless others did based on PMs received on our own forums and in-game. I might recommend in the future that, instead of flaming ones attempt at content to instead offer constructive criticism on what you would like to see improved. Also, I don’t believe I received a nomination from you for a Featured Retadin you’d like to hear from - which somewhat negates your assessment.
The primary objective of an interviewer, Infernalist, is to ask interesting questions. I could have confined the entirety of the interview to his raiding techniques but it would have lead to a very boring and uneventful interview. The questions I asked of Rolibar were not taken from a script I wrote beforehand but rather were off the top of my head during the course of the interview based directly off of what I’m hearing from him. When I asked him if Blizzard was catering to the casual playstyle too much it was undoubtedly because he had already alluded to it and was heading down that path.
January 12th, 2010 - 9:40 am
Wow some of you kids are angry. Anyways first post on the site and i gotta say i love it all. I greatly appreciate this interview, especially because the site seems a little pvp oriented you guys do your best and throw in a great pve retadin. and btw 500 days played is ridiculous. i started right before BC came out (sadly missing out on some great raids) But i just cracked 100 days played and its been a long trip. Ret from the start. Keep up the good work, im glad this isnt infernalists site
January 12th, 2010 - 9:51 am
Also, completely forgot to ask, what are your guys thoughts on the t10, 2 set? for pvp and pve.
January 12th, 2010 - 10:36 am
2P T10 is great - if you’re fighting a stationary target that doesn’t move for 15 seconds at a time. Virtually worthless on fights like Putricide or in a battleground where people press their Q and E keys or if you ever get CCd.
It’s alright if the stars align roughly and you get a good shot of steady dps, but along with Seal of Vengeance being terrible on multiple targets, this just contributes to the problem. Though you do get to spin more!
Certainly not worthless though! At times it can be quite ridiculous. Just pray for the mighty RNG gods to bless you. (Yes, you should be getting it ASAP for PvE)
January 12th, 2010 - 11:29 am
For PVE the 2 piece T10 is silly good on trash. Add SoC + Axe from first boss in IIC and the multi target dps numbers are off the charts.
We run 2 Ret most raids. We both have the axe, both run SoC on trash and SoV/C on bosses. I’m still in 4 T9 and he’s in 2 and 2. His single target numbers are higher, but not a ton. His multi target numbers are light years ahead of mine. All the theory crafting in the world never would have led me to think it was as much better as this combo seems to be and his rotation seems to have become DS, something else, DS, something else, DS, something else. The 2 piece is that good.
For other odd bits that come to mind:
For gear choices I like rawr. Of all the spread sheets, online this or that I’ve seen it seems to come the closest to the actual numbers I see on raids. Having said that I often go against it based more on gut feeling. It’s a tool and a guide, not the be all end all. I do like that it helps to look at the whole package however. Its not about if gear bit A is better then bit B, its how everything works together.
However, I do go against the norm in certain places. I like haste much better then arp. With all the target switching on boss fights getting 5 stacks up before something is dead can be a total pain. You need a lot of haste to make a real difference, but every little bit counts. The add is going to die fast anyways, but getting those 5 stacks back up on the boss before the next one spawns is the goal.
I also tend to stack exp well past the dodge cap. I won’t do it at the expense of something else, but will favor gear that has it. Reason is simple, with shit running around everywhere I don’t always get a chance to swing from the back. When you are forced to stand on the tank and swing from the front, trying to avoid parries is not a bad thing.
January 12th, 2010 - 11:55 am
^see thats why they didnt need to ask more questions in the interview. we can ask ourselves =O what a concept! ( i like haste too)
January 12th, 2010 - 1:03 pm
You do know the 2 T10 is bugged at last report and proccing of SoComm (all hits not just the main hit) and there is debate if Divine Storm itself is proccing it. So that could be why he is so far ahead.
January 12th, 2010 - 2:28 pm
@Doucard
Divine Storm itself cannot proc it. The issue is when your GCD and melee swing align, because when it procs off that melee hit while casting, it negates the cast and resets the cooldown. This should be fixed, but eh.
The command bug still hasn’t been addressed despite an onslaught of forum QQ, so I wonder if it’s working as intended?
January 12th, 2010 - 5:50 pm
Bugged or working as intended the 2 bit is nuts right now on trash. Toss in Bryntroll procing all over the place and I’m betting Blizz will step in and make a change.
I think they intended for the set bonus to be good, I don’t think they intended for Ret to blow all other dps out of the water on trash by just spamming DS non stop.
But its trash, Boss fights so far in ICC have target switching but not seen any AOE packs as part of them yet.
… and who is doing all this QQ? People worried that they’re being out dps’d on AOE trash packs? People standing in tight groups getting owned during PVP?
January 13th, 2010 - 12:11 pm
I actually enjoyed the interview, but probably for different reasons than most. From an Alliance perspective (and most everything I’m typing is my perception and opinion), the gamers are typically younger in age, so my experience with READING intelligent opinions is limited (opinions differ from spreadsheets, calculators, math, facts, etc). However it’s refreshing and semi-rare to read an opinion on Retribution Paladin, including personal commentary which is actually articulate.
I also enjoyed it because I relate to alot of what was written. Not because I pretend that I’m an elite player, but because I do think the spec requires a little bit more dedication to really add value to PvE, than most people think. Beyond the ‘facerolling’ and bad press we get from overall poor players, I think it’s fairly intelligent for us to expect never to ‘always’ top the DPS charts, but work hard in making sure we’re maximizing what we have. I’ve rolled other classes and have had other alts but there is just something about leveraging my abilities as Ret that really makes this spec/class the most fun for me personally. Not only are we competitive on the meters, but we bring CC, heals and significant buffs to the raid, which I think is of tremendous value. Inversely a poorly played ret simply wastes the ability to contribute everything I just previous stated. In fact, when RL issues are minimial and I’m able to dedicate time to the game, I often find myself searching around for any nugget of information that helps me improve as a PvE player with regards to making a contribution to a raid. That doesn’t even necessarily have to be high DPS, but ancillary benefits that the spec can bring overall.
Now, with my own personal (and probably useless) commentary out of the way…I do have a couple of thoughts on some of the posts here. I see the ol’ SoC and SoV references again that pop up so often. My contention is, why not leverage both? That’s probably obvious to some players, but I’ve had in-game discussions with other ret players who haven’t really thought to use both. Personally…I have a macro where I switch between SoC on trash and SoV on boss fights (sometimes even in the middle of a boss fight if I have multiple adds such as scarabs that I’m DPSing down). I also switch Librams at the same time via the macro. I use the libram with the CS bonus for SoC and of course use the newer libram for SoV dmg on boss fights. It seems to work well and I often out DPS equally geared ret players simply by using that method. Of course some people don’t care about trash…and that’s fine, but for me personally it’s about what contribution I can make overall.
@Rolibar: Your comment about haste vs. ArP made it seem like you were a bit apologetic that you prefer haste over ArP. I’m under the impression that there isn’t even a comparison in terms of what benefits a ret pally…and it seems evidence on the higher end gear (haste and expertise everywhere) that haste is as important as ever. Is ArP even remotely relevant to us? Also, what are your thoughts on Meta gems for Ret. I’ve scoured top pallies on various realms and have seen a mix between the two meta gems that we mostly use, depending on whether or not the player is a JC. Using Rawr and profiling the difference between the meta requirements (2 blues vs. red/yellow/blue), using the Nightmare Tear and then stacking most +20 STR doesn’t seem to really matter much beyond an overall increase of 80-100dps either way. I was wondering if you had thoughts on that. I’d personally rather have the Crit rating rather than claw my way to a crit % by way of Agility, but it seems all the top pallies use the agility meta.
January 14th, 2010 - 9:28 am
Arp I don’t really think is bad for us. My comment was just that when it comes to Arp vs. Haste I at times will go against what the tools say is the “better” arp piece and use the haste one. Most spread sheets etc. will be based on a tank and spank type fight and thus don’t show how haste might help getting stacks up after a target switch.
For ToC, its all SoV with the exception of maybe Champs. For ICC I run SoC for trash, SoV for bosses. I don’t swap librams around however just going with the frost badge CS/Str one.
The meta seems to be a wash and really depends on what other gear you have. With the higher ilevel gear the +str socket bonuses are higher and thus I find my self moving from all red to reds and str/crit oranges to snag some of them. The agi will scale better with buffs, but the second blue is always an issue. So really depends on what are the best gems for every other slot and if giving up a slot for the second blue works out that the agi scales up higher then the +crit once fully buffed. Most gear combos I end up with however the different from one to the other almost always seems to be a wash and thus tend to favor the single blue version just because it makes it easier to swap bits around.
January 15th, 2010 - 3:42 am
Erh well for all the haste over arp debate… there isnt really anything to debate lol.. Haste provides more dps than arp on single targets in general cause of seals and procs….
So its no wonder you want haste over arp.
January 15th, 2010 - 3:51 am
Weapon Speed 42619
Weapon DPS 632
Hit rating 240
Strength 212
Exp rating 153
Crit rating 117
Agility 113
Haste 103+10=113
Armor Pen 88
AP 84
SP 27