I just reached the end of this long conversation, lol. Anyway, not gonna enter it, just wanna say something about Exorcism and holy damage in general.

Doesn't the retri spec passive bonus include a holy damage boost? With the talent bonus and the possible glyph bonus(I don't see any reason the current glyph to not be baked in the spell, as well as the scorch glyph being baked in scorch and other similar abilities that are glyphed for some extra damage that seems needed for them) it could have quite an increased potential than it currently does.

On a sidenote, TV and CS seem to have increased in role for our class while J seems to have stayed kinda static. Does that mean that physical damage will play a greater role in our damage? Though not that it'll affect itemisation as arpen is going away, but whatever.

I skimmed through the thread and didn't see this brought up. How viable do you think eye for an eye will be for fights that have a constant aoe pulse (see togc twins, anub, etc). Possibly enough dmg reflected to warrant a secondary build including this talent?

With the new talent system, the old Mastery bonus will be a passive ability that will be learned at level 75. But those don't appear to be implemented yet, so it's hard to say.

CS's damage has increased and TV is a lot more damage than Divine Storm. However, there are also talent bonuses to seals and judgements that increase their damage. So I think our physical damage will go up relative to our holy damage, but not significantly.


Probably 99% useless. Most of the AoE damage fights that have pulsing AoEs are trigger effects and not from the boss themselves. And that's assuming it even works on AoE abilities.

Stacking SoT with TV1
For the SoT stacking, if you don't use TV or judgement early, you miss 6.6% weapon damage for 3 attacks, a total of 19.8% weapon damage during the stacking period, plus about 1/5 of an extra DoT tick. Add into that the TV damage itself, which is 55% weapon damage (note that a full is 225%, so you're always better off doing a 3 holy power one. kinda dumb, but oh well), so you've done an extra 74.8% weapon damage.

Now, in the extra 4 seconds that Inquisition is up, Censure (SoT DoT) will tick at least once, you'll auto-attack at least once, and you'll get in at least one special. The DoT tick will be a bonus of 30%, compared to 20% (1/5) that was gained in the ramp-up. The attacks are an extra 9.9% each, or 19.8% total. The same as what was missed earlier from SoV. And depending on how auto-attacks, GCDs, and DoT ticks land, you may get double that. So the only thinking keeping the TV ahead is the damage from TV itself. Well, if you consider that you'll do your first TV3 4 seconds sooner, which is 75% weapon damage per point of holy power, you've gained 20% weapon damage over the TV1 ramp-up method in the same time frame.

If you factor in judgement being used to ramp-up, you've only lost +20% bonus damage from it, and if you use it after the first CS in place of TV1, you can use it right after Inquisition, which gets you +30% and your judgement cooldown ahead by about 3 seconds.

So the best the TV1 ramp-up could do, without getting lucky from Divine Purpose, is maybe a break even. But it will most likely be a damage loss. Also, I'd like to point out that this is another reason why Divine Purpose is a poor implementation.


Crit Scaling
The point is that even though crit-based procs will eventually cap out in their benefit from crit due to other limitations, mostly GCD availability, it's not until long after they've surpassed the scaling from AP (or spellpower for casters). If the proc is implemented to try and move the intersection between crit and AP toward higher crit values, it makes the skill worse at lower crit values.

Not to mention, crit-based procs that dramatically affect what a player can do are generally bad. Look no further than Art of War in WotLK. The ability to spam FoL in BGs due to higher crit rate (opponents usually have less resilience), combine with the Sheath of Light crit heal bonus was a major contributor to ret paladins being "BG Heroes".


Spreadsheets and Rotations
Player preference in attacks for efficient damage? That's just silly. In a mostly predictable environment, there will ALWAYS be a best way to do things. If you're doing whatever you feel like doing (player preference), then you're a bad player (or roleplaying a dumb character).

In a good system, there is no all-around best. The player then has to learn what is best in each situation. The selection of the best way to do things in a given situation is what separates good and bad players. When you talk about people dying in the fire, that's not a spreadsheet's fault. That's the players' inability to react to a changing environment. They didn't select to step out of the fire instead of DPS.

And what leads to spreadsheets and tunnel vision DPS is complex rotations. The simpler you make a rotation, the less you need a spreadsheet to min/max. And the easier it becomes to learn attack sequences so that you don't have to watch them and various cooldowns, procs, or buffs/debuffs and can instead watch what your allies or enemies are doing.

If you think about it, what made Ret paladins fun in classic and TBC was the simple attack sequences with free GCDs that allowed the player to look around and see if allies needed healed or cleansed while not adversely affecting the ret paladin's DPS. What hurt that was the secondary abilities (like healing) being ineffectual for Ret, which led to not having anything to do in that downtime, and subsequent complaints that ret paladins were boring. That in turn led to cramming our rotations full of abilities, which brings us to our current state where we have to watch our cooldowns and mash abilities to get them on GCD as soon as possible.


Even with what's presented so far in Cataclsym, it's still a problem. Blizzard wants to add choice in abilities, but the only choice is single target or AoE. There's no choice at all within the single-target category, other than trying to squeeze Judgement and Exorcism into GCDs. They would be better off just getting rid of Exorcism from Ret paladins completely and adding a new finisher (maybe repurposing Divine Storm) that is good against single and multiple targets, but with a secondary effect so that you may actually want to use it in place of TV against a single target occasionally.

If and when we get a final set of mechanics I will go through this in more detail since I still think it is an interesting question. However since I am unwilling to spend the time grinding through the maths (I have enough of it to do for my actual job), for now I'll accept your conclusion until I'm willing to actually put the time into calculating it accurately.



Your second example is a bit spurious given that what made Ret paladins "BG Heroes" in Wrath had nothing to do with FoL and everything to do with being able to chain abilities back to back and then do so ten seconds later to vastly undergeared people. Also the fact they trod on rogues. The real balance problems with Ret paladins in this expansion have mainly come from our Seals and Judgements. You don't often see Rets healing outside of bubble these days, which is disappointing because our healing can be easily as strong as an elemental shaman or a shadow priest's.

I'm not sure I agree with you in regards to the critical strike scaling ever being a completely dominant term unless the effect is completely unavailible in the first place - this is not at all true with Holy Power. In the case of Art of War it takes no more than an average amount of crit to reach the point where P(Exorcism) exceeds 1 in a given 15 seconds. Even if it was, would it particularly matter? Afterall, it's not as if you get critical strike rating for free from your gear. You get it at a reduced cost on properly balanced gear but itemization diminishing returns reduce it unless it is specifically itemized not to be as was the case with Armour Penatration.

Furthermore, primary statistical scaling is still in place on all of the other abilities. Ultimately crit has a hard cap denoted by probability. To double the damage of a basic melee swing you only need your base attack power plus the attack power equivilent of your weapon damage (AP/14*wpd speed). For a Shadowmourne that's 6.2kAP so plus base around 6.8k? This is before AP hits diminishing returns, really. I can hit 6.8kAP in my PvP gear and I do around 4.3k DPS flat out, maybe 5k+ in AE.

So really the question is, what is wrong with critical strike rating being a dominant scaling term on one or two abilities when we are already approaching the limit of standard critical strike scaling, a near impossibility in most gear, using standard PvP gear?



It sounds like we're sort of in agreement but attacking the problem from different angles. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a best way. I'm saying that the best way shouldn't be immediately obvious, and that stating a specific rotation down to GCD spacing should be made as difficult as possible. You're stated that players naturally look to spreadsheets to figure out what to do next. I'm saying throw in enough random effects attached to powerful abilities that the spreadsheets require multiple modeling situations. Therefore a spreadsheet can spit out a supposed "ideal" model but under certain situations that model will be inaccurate, leaving some choice to the player.



It made ret paladins fun in PvP at least. In classic they were dull as dishwater in PvE. In TBC I did some tossing heals around and saving arses but my main problem was making sure I didn't overthreat the tank for half the expansion, and then for the rest of it, making sure I didn't overthreat the tank despite my threat reduction. That was kind of what I miss in WoTLK - the challenge of staying alive.



I'm pleased we agree about Exorcism and I'm thinking along the same lines as you with regards to finishers. Arguably their intention is that they see Inquisition and Vow of Glory as replacement effects but like you I'm not really convinced they are sufficient. Exorcism could do with being repurposed as a Holy nuke, maybe call it Condemnation or something.

However I don't really know what to suggest. Under normal circumstances I WOULD have suggested a long term DoT effect, but Seal of Truth has that covered. A Holy damage attack might have worked, but it's stepping on the toes of Judgement and frankly I think seeing as we don't really have variable boss armour anymore it would end up going the way of Scourge Strike vs Obliterate. How many more abilities can Retribution stand anyway? Just for single targets we have:

Seals
Judgement
Crusader Strike
Templar's Verdict
Exorcism
Hammer of Wrath
Holy Wrath

Divine Storm might seem the obvious candidate but what exactly is to be done with it?

I agreed with a lot of your post, but this made me do a double-take. This is INCREDIBLY wrong in my opinion. In full wrathful gear, even with a shadowmourne, heroic DC, and pretty much the best PvP gear imaginable, my FoL's hit for under 3k non-crit. Holy lights are around 8k. Considering my self-buffed HP pool is something like 34k, that's a pathetic use of a GCD if I have anything damaging to push. I only do it during bubble because I typically have nothing better to do since abilities do half damage.

Our spell damage conversion isn't that strong. No matter what we will EASILY have 1k less spellpower than well geared PvP caster.

The Cata changes for ret basically nullify our ability to heal outside of emergencies, which doesn't change much. High HPS heals are just as punishing to our mana pool (as in crippling if we have to cast more than one), and Word of Glory is pathetic (healing for under 6k at level 82 with 3 charges).

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626290470&sid=1&pageNo=14
"Ret paladins should feel like Arms warriors who trade off some of their mobility for healing and defenses, and do more Holy damage instead of bleed damage."

That moblity-healing tradeoff is far from where it should be - WoG is pathetic as Zurm said, and we can't afford casting a quick FoL with the new mana cost as long as absorbed Judgments keep giving no mana.

I would like to make a point or two

1. The Shadowmourne contributes to this. I'm not quite so gifted - I'm in partial Furious glad wielding a Wrathful 1800 sword. I'd guess I have around 600 less damage but I wouldn't know without having a look at your armoury. That's pretty damn significant, and you're well within your rights to say you'd rather be DPSing than healing for what might be relatively pitiful heals. However Wrath has unfairly biased Rets away from healing themselves in PvP - a skill a lot of us honed very well in vanilla.

Sitting there personally casting Holy Lights on yourself is suicide in most 1v1 situations, but you have to remember that we are completely disadvantaged against casters and hybrid healers. They can hard cast through us. They can't against most classes. Similarly, they don't have to close distance for the most part. We do. This has lead to a lot of FoL spam on ourselves which, well timed with Sacred Shield procs, has its uses. Not necessarily on yourself either. A few 4k FoLs in a battleground can really effect the passage of play, just as they can in arena. It just requires a bit of Sacred Shield swapping.

So while that 8k Holy Light won't effect the passage of 1v1 play, 12-13k HL crits often make the difference in organised group PvP. That role for Ret paladins won't diminish at all. As you quite rightly said - emergency healing. Divine Light and Selfless Healer will only help that. We can't sit there and try and keep a DPS up by spamming heals like a shadow priest or ele shammy can, but in Cataclysm they won't be able to do that against us either. We catch them doing that, and they get Rebuked into a HoJ into a hard switch.

2. Word of Glory sounds about right for level 82. Bear in mind though that Healing Light is actually pretty strong when combined with Selfless Healer from deep Ret, and will increase a base Word of Glory from 4.32k to 8438 unbuffed. So presumably if your Word of Glory is hitting for just under 6k (and you've got Conviction, making its base around 5500), properly modified and cast on someone else it will heal for 10.7k.

So what a Ret paladin could theoretically do is drop FoL (I'm guessing about 7k with your AP, right, so boosted to 8.5k by talents?) followed by 3pt Word of Glory. Without crit, that's nearly 20k healing. With crits, FoL is boosted 12.7k (with Sacred Shield, +50% crit?), Word of Glory reaches 16k. Add on Sheathe of Light, and what you actually get is 28k crit healing basically instant healing plus an additional 16.8k HoT. That's before you get into stuff like Divine Light. Even at 100k health that's a pretty significant amount of healing. Which, you should remind yourself, healers are not going to be able to heal that quickly either. Blizzard want two or three BIG heals to top someone off. So 20k healing non crit is actually not that bad. They're going to tune damage in the same way, so don't worry if you're critting for 14k at the moment and wondering how the hell you're going to stay up against this.

Now are you going to get those back to back crits? I dunno, but a Ret pally can put out a shitload of healing with the new talents if they want to. 6k on its own doesn't sound a lot, but 44.8k healing for 27% base mana is nothing to laugh at. Now it's less effective on yourself, but we've already discussed that we don't really want to heal ourselves with FoL if we can avoid it. It's arguable that just being in combat will help you keep your health up. PvP health looks like it's shooting for the 100k mark, which means each and every melee attack you make will heal for 1k.

I've also given the need for another finisher some thought and I've considered that Exorcism (renamed Punishment or Condemnation) might provide the answer. It's a single target Holy damage attack with a different character to any other damage ability. It's ranged, and it could be made to scale for Holy very well with judicious use of talents and a higher spell power coefficient. A simple damage scaling like Templar's Verdict would do fine. Similarly it would also provide Protection with burst threat that it could throw down on.

You could adjust Retribution's damage structure by repurposing the Art of War mechanic as a means of activating Hammer of Wrath in a manner similar to Execute, which would throw that annoying little spanner into it.

You can't really call a Vanilla Paladin a retadin, consider the spec they used and sources of damage. All their gear was spellpower.



No, not really. A healer can easily outperform that, and you're out 2.5 seconds of dps time, a ton of mana, and more than likely even farther away from whatever you should be hitting.

The day of the true hybrid that does everything is over, gone, vanished. YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT THIS, Blizzard doesn't like jack-of-all-trades. Our CLASS is a hybrid, but the individual specs no longer are, and they are pushing retribution further away from hybrids towards DPS. You can disagree with the opinion that this is the way to go, but you can't dispute the facts. Retribution healing is just a bad idea. In beta, it only takes a handful of FoL's to cripple our mana, and meanwhile you're losing all those holy power stacks you could have generated. Holy Light, the only heal that WON'T destroy our mana, takes longer to cast than our big heal (3 seconds base, instead of 2.5 that it is on live). With an over 50k hp pool at 83, and probably looking at something like 75k at 85, an 8k FoL (yes, I scaled it up from what I currently see at 83 on beta) or even 10k WoG will be a gigantic waste of mana/resources.