And I’ve got a present for you! A magical Retpaladin video!

Feel free to comment and tell me some of your own mystical adventures! (For those of you who can’t view it for whatever reason, here is the download link! : http://www.mediafire.com/?c175jcmxtgd8rqd From the video’s description :

A simple clip about the woes of Retribution from my mage’s perspective! I’ll probably cover it in more detail in the future (Cataclysm analysis video anyone?), but I think this sums up the majority of my feelings when facing any class that can hit me from afar, not just fire mages!

I did arrange some duels with some of the more decked out Rets on my server, however, they were either 15 minute scorch fests or myself staying at 80% life using more than three abilities. To this day, I have not come across a single Ret that can even remotely bring me to the danger zone.

Nevertheless, it was still a whole lot of fun making this video, and I hope you guys had a laugh or linked it to a friend while raging! Happy Holidays!

- Megaphone

So first off, let me start with a little rant about how Arms Warriors, Mages, Feral Druids, and DKs are complete and utter bullshit. I have also rejected anyone coming into our guild based off the ratings they have earned this season (previous seasons are acceptable) because of how over powered they are.

But oh no, get this, something even more that pisses me off, is I go and do BH in my PvP gear, because, it’s a PvP raid and I don’t have time to PvE right now. I pull dps just a bit above the tanks. I’m baffled. My rotation is pretty close to perfect and my DPS is trash compared to most of the other classes. I ended up leaving the raid after we wiped. It was my friend’s raid and I wasn’t going to be a burden just for the shot at some gear. However, the lack of communication from Blizzard on the subject, in terms of who is overpowered and who isn’t and how they plan on fixing it, is increasingly frustrating right now.

Ok now that that’s out of my system, let’s move on to a more productive discussion;

In the meantime how do we get high ratings? I want to get my weapons and stuff. The answer; Word of Glory.

Right now, it isn’t very viable to go straight dps most of the time. You have the ability to when a kill is lined up, but until then, you need to be >healing<

Restrain yourself from blowing all of your Holy Power on your Templar Verdicts. I know, they can hit hard, and it’s super cool, but it’s more productive 90% of the time to use a heal on you or your teammate. The best way to do this is with my little macro;

#showtooltip Word of Glory
/cast [help][target=targettarget, help] Word of Glory

This will heal your targets target. Meaning in 2s, you can just heal your buddy this way. Make sure to make a separate “self heal” Word of Glory bind to use incase you have no target or if that target isn’t targeting the person that needs to heal. You also wont lose target while using this macro so, it avoids the clumsy target retarget human errors that happen.

Spec for all this? You guessed it, full blown Word of Glory love going on here;
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sf0bZ0bZcrGsbksdbd:czRMz0Vzc

Also, take note of the glyphs. Yes, I use the Prime Word of Glory glyph over the Judgment glyph. I would recommend everyone to try it as well, you probably won’t even notice the loss in Judgment damage!

Comps?

Ret/Rogue is pretty meh at the moment, but I still run it for fun with a friend.
Ret/Mage depends on the Mage, but can be very good just based on how OP they are
Ret/Feral a great combo
Ret/Disc Priest stay away from this one for now, probably the worst out of all the “viable comps” disc just sucks right now
Ret/Warrior Not too shabby, normally I’m completely against having your 2v2 partner be a Warrior, but again, they are pretty OP right now so, meh.
Ret/H.Pally Not terrible, but not good either. This one equates to long fights because you just don’t put out enough DPS at higher ends by yourself
Ret/Hunter I don’t recommend this one. Hunters aren’t very good right now compared to the other OP classes
Ret/DK I haven’t tried this but, I’ve beaten this comp a number of times so it hasn’t impressed me yet, use caution if going with this comp

3s teams
Basically here, just you an OP dps and a healer (other then disc priest) and you’re pretty set. I’ve seen some really good comps here using Shamans and Druids mainly. Ret/Warrior + one of those healers seems to be a very strong comp. Some have also been using S. Priest/Ret/Mage with a lot of success too.

Ret right now, is very fun, but doesn’t put out enough damage to alone be of much use. Be prepared for extreme frustration for the good part of the beginning of the season if you’re going to stick it out. I recommend lots of drinking and gummy bears.

-Slayton

About three days ago, I hit 85 and began the gear grind. First to my thoughts was an admiration for Blizzard’s work around leveling. The questing was, to me, enjoyable, streamlined and well-conceived. Personally, I chose Vashj’ir as my starting point and I’m glad I did as I found the environment, music and overarching plot to my liking. Upon arrival at 85 and my first steps into dungeons, I immediately grasped the “epic” feel Blizzard had instilled within the new instances. Halls of Origination, although a bit long, is interesting and challenging while instances such as Vortex Pinnacle are creative and fun. Before long I arrived at the plateau of 329 average item level which permitted me entrance to heroics. Sadly the queue times for DPS right now hover around 30-40 minutes but, for the time being, I’m able to happily pass the time questing, grinding reputation, amassing gold and looking for unsuspecting Alliance hoping to go about their business. The heroics have been challenging for sure and the boss encounters have a “raid” feel to them. I can recall, even at the lowest gear level, heroics being still relatively simple at level 80. This is no longer the case as encounters such as the second boss in Vortex Pinnacle can attest. I’ve found Blizzard’s job on all this commendable.

With all of that as a premise from which to start, I’d like to focus now on my experience with Retribution at 85 from both a PvE and PvP standpoint. I’ll begin with the prior and how our DPS seems reasonable but mildly lacking. As suspected, things are rather random for Retribution in PvE. The concept of a “rotation” really doesn’t apply any more and, instead, you have a simple priority system wherein you always attempt to fire off higher priority abilities before lower priority ones. I say “attempt” here because it is all too common that you are about to Judge in between Crusader Strikes when Hand of Light will suddenly proc. The end result is a net loss in DPS and not always something a human being is capable of fixing outright. Quirky also is the concept that it may be to our benefit to prioritize Art of War usage over 3HP Templar’s Verdicts. The prospect of this, I admit, seems silly as TV at 3HP is supposed to be (according to Blizzard) our most sizable nuke. However, some math over at the EJ forums has shown that prioritizing Exorcism over Templar’s Verdict can provide an increase in DPS although there is still much testing being done around our DPS. One point of strength for us in PvE, however, that I will come to again in a moment regarding PvP, is our off-healing capabilities if spec’d for it. Personally I take Selfless Healer and, although Word of Glory has been shown to reset our swing timer (seriously Blizz?), I find myself regularly throwing out Word of Glory to low comrades given the lack of pure healing power among healers found in the first round of Cataclysm content. A 35K critical Word of Glory to a friend about to die is nothing to scoff at and it leads me into my discussion of Retribution PvP at 85 and where I feel it can shine.

Thus far I’ve taken part in quite a few battlegrounds and countless duels. Overwhelmingly what I’ve found are the following points:

• - Seal of Righteousness is terrible and not even worth using.
• - Guardian of Ancient Kings is incredible – up until the point someone puts a pet on you or another target comes within range
• - Inquisition, in PvP, is not worth using beyond one Holy Power and, in my opinion and what seems to be the opinion of many others, should only be used in conjunction with Art of War for a nice boost to Exorcism
• - Frost Mages are still a hard counter to us even with the Cleanse buff. The amount of snares they dish out drive us OOM rather quickly and render us useless.
• - Our self-healing is atrocious while our off-healing, is spec’d for it, is quite good
• - Feral Druids are still OP and may force me to run something like Ret/Feral/RSham or Ret/Feral/Disc in 3s this coming season

All in all, if your intent is to be an offensive powerhouse in PvP, I’m afraid you may be disappointed. Undoubtedly there are times where our damage can be very strong but these times have little to do with planning or timing on the part of the player but instead with the random number generator. Dispels still stand to be our greatest opponent as almost everything useful we have to offer, even with the high mana cost of dispels, is immediately removed. The pressure we put out alone on a target, without considering the prospect of a luck string, isn’t very substantial and our survivability isn’t high enough to balance this out. All-in-all, I would look to a Feral Druid or Assassination Rogue for your DPS fix as, although at times Retribution can be strong in this department, the majority of the time you’re going to find yourself praying to some imaginary Retribution deity for a Hand of Light proc during the small window at which the proverbial stars align.

Although the above may not seem exciting (not that it’s intended to be), there is one aspect of Retribution at 85 that does excite me and, I know from reading his posts about his own playstyle, excites players like Hofflerand. This playstyle, that I’ve already alluded to, is that of a support role with reasonable damage output. First, however, I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear and ensure the point is driven home: the days of healing a target from 1% to 100% instantly are gone. Blizzard truly has achieved, at least for the time being, their goal of people playing in a “wounded state” for prolonged periods of time. Returning someone to full health when they are still taking damage is a challenging process that requires proper use of healing mechanics and good cooldown usage. The point I’m trying to make here is that the aforementioned 35K critical Word of Glory to a wounded partner really is substantial. Further, Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, Hand of Freedom, Repentance, Hammer of Justice, Rebuke and Turn Evil all prove to be quality tools at a Retribution Paladin’s disposal with which to boost the performance of his or her team. I feel strongly that Retribution can and will find great success in the coming Arena/BG seasons in a support/DPS role. I think teams that previously may have run dispel cleave (HPal/Disc/Arms) or other two-healer comps in 3s (as an example), may find it quite attractive to substitute a Retribution Paladin for the second healer to bring respectable damage to the table while also providing good support and respectable off-healing capabilities. Clearly the one area of problem for Retribution, even when fulfilling this role, is our own survivability. Teams that realize sitting on the Retribution Paladin is beneficial may pose problems and will require craftiness on part of the Retadin to ensure he or she survives.

All in all, there are still areas that Retribution needs improvement. I still hold, as I’ve mentioned in posts before, that the core system of Retribution is fine but rather some tweaks are necessary to “complete” us. Removing some of our RNG in favor of more control could go a long way. For now, however, I look forward to a fun Arena/BG season and relative success for Retribution therein.

With Cataclysm being released in just two days, another patch has been released for Retpaladin.com! Cheers!

- Megaphone

With release day around the corner for Cataclysm, there are some pointers I’d like you all to have so that everything can be as smooth or understandable as possible.

Servers are going to crash on release day. It happens every time, with every game that’s decently big. Of course Blizzard will try to prevent this but, in the end it usually still happens. They will come back up as quickly as possible, posting on the forums doesn’t help. What does, is having something else entertain you while it’s down. Plan accordingly.

DONT YOU DARE BE A CAREBEAR!!!! PVP! Mixing some pvp into leveling will stop you from stressing so hard on the direct and fastest route to 85. It’s NOT worth being the first one to 85. Unless your entire guild is going to be 85 with you, hitting 85 right away doesn’t help you as much as you think. It’s an easy way to burn yourself out. Take some time to enjoy the new zones and explore a bit. Sure, don’t get off for days exploring some area, but have some fun with it. That is my drawn out excuse to make you kill people, hopefully it worked.

A lot of mods will have problems. Other then making sure you have the most up-to-date version of the mod there isn’t much you can do here. Most of the major add-on devs have Cataclysm ready add-ons but some don’t, and stuff breaks! Be prepared to play on a raw UI if you want to push to 85 quick.

5 mans! Do them, don’t skip them for quicker quest xp. Why? Better gear = faster leveling. Also, better gear means you can jump into bigger stuff faster. People who skip the dungeon gear and rely on quest gear alone end up with some real gaps in their gear. Mix it up, and this is another way to get your mind off things. People can argue this one, if you are super cool and able to just grind 80-85 without blinking, do it. If you are like me and wish you could auto-follow your friend so you could go get the door while he kills mobs and you leach XP, then you might want to take my suggestion.

Goblin or Worgen? I don’t care, just as long as it isn’t a male Blood Elf.

Your computer might have performance problems. DON’T UPGRADE BASED ON RELEASE DAY! Seriously, every time someone does this, another child is being taught racism and discrimination by the ironic separation of his Honey and Chocolate Teddy Grahams in his bowl. Your FPS will suffer, this might have nothing to do with your computer. Most of the time, connection has little to do with graphic errors, however, stuttering, jumpy sprites and such, CAN be caused by server side issues. Best bet is to add to the overwhelming number of posts in the tech support forums on the World of Warcraft site (located here) and await a response. Hopefully you can still play, and if not, you can always pick up Pokemon again. What was once cool, now outdated, can be cool again, I mean just look at all the high school girls with their 80s outfits. That’s cool right?

(I think my favorite part  is the Star of David and the cross together like that. Seriously 80s chick?)

Should you take days off work for this? I mean, if you want the break anyhow, do it. But will it be worth it? Just take a look back at Black Ops release day that happened recently. I feel bad for the poor souls who told their bosses that their 3rd Uncle died for the 2nd time just to have the servers crash on them with an unplayable amount of graphic stuttering when the servers finally came back up. Same engine and everything, don’t get me wrong, Black Ops plays great now, however, I’m glad I had to work that day so that the game could have most of the problems fixed by the time I got home. Day 2 usually includes a noticeably positive difference in terms of game-play experience. Server loads are known and bugs are starting to be analysed and fixed.

What, if anything, should you take away from this post?

Oh, and do yourself a favor, pre-order and download it if you can. Don’t end up  in line at Gamestop at 2am and get into an uncomfortable talk about warlocks with the super nerd from out of town.

-Slayton