RET theorycrafting

[Blackshae]

I downloaded CLCRET, a mod that helps with rotation and already got a bit of improvement, hit 5k on one boss, and 4.9 on the dummy. I know my gear needs a total re-gemming, just cringing on how much that will cost, good thing I have ALOT of stone keeper shards to turn in for honor, not to mention doing WG for quests.

[Irenke]

Regemming, new meta, new glyphs, and so on. There's a single minor glyph you could get that would increase your damage against undead by 1%.

There is no Retribution paladin rotation. It's more a matter of a prioritization, called FCFS: First Come, First Serve. Basically, if you have a choice there are specific abilities to snag before others (but it also depends on your gear, since set bonuses come into play). However, theorycrafters have proven that relying on a rotation or for a specific ability to light up when others are up actually decreases your damage. Instead, you should be hitting whatever other abilities are lit up.

So, to put it into perspective, you could create a macro that has all eight of your abilities in it, then bind it to every key on your keyboard, and then bash your head into said keyboard.

[Blackshae]

Ah, basically the face rolling method :D.

Yeah, after using this mod, its asking me to use abilities at times I don't think I should, its mostly vs Bosses and the way it works is it puts them all together so there is very little downtime if you follow it correctly, if you skip a power and go on to the next one, the current power its asking for will remain the same, but the follow up will change because the original follow up you just used. It will also reset itself when the shortest time power is available. For instance Ret powers, it opens with Crusader strike, then Judgement of Wis (I always used light but looking at it, Wis keeps me with more mana, since I tend to run out at times if I keep powers perpetually on cooldown), Divine storm, Crusader strike, Consecration, Exorcism. Nice thing about it, it knows when Art of War is available, however, if you are in the first half of the rotation its asking you for, it doesn't want you to use Exorcism till later. I don't like that, I want to hit it when it pops up.

While it didn't do much for me in the end, I did manage to hit 5k on a training raid dummy and also vs a boss, but I think it is really not worth it. Only nice thing about it, showed me how quickly some powers recover more than others, which is why I'd start with Crusader strike first. Crusader, Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader works nicely and followed by any other attack available.

Honestly, I have not looked at my glyphs or any others since I hit lvl 80.

[Tanzy(ODH)]

[Irenke]

Tanzy(ODH) wrote:

Quote: So, to put it into perspective, you could create a macro that has all eight of your abilities in it, then bind it to every key on your keyboard, and then bash your head into said keyboard. OOOOOoooooo can I play this way!???!!!!

Seriously. It's how Retribution paladins play. Seven abilities and you hit whatever lights up first. And if multiple things light up at the same time, then you use the FCFS system.

Quote:

Honestly, I have not looked at my glyphs or any others since I hit lvl 80.

C'mon. C'mon. If you knew that your performance was an issue, why wouldn't you check out to see what you could do to improve? I mean, it would have been more effective than blaming it on the weapon.

Want to improve your performance, Shae?

1. Get Hit capped: You need 263 Hit Rating (8%) to be soft-capped. Going over naturally via gear isn't bad since some of your attack (Consecration and Exorcism, for example) are spells, but you shouldn't stack gems or enchants past that point.
   
2. Get Expertise capped: 214 expertise rating (26 expertise, 6.5%) to be capped. Do not gem for this; instead, snag what you can with gear and glyph. Get the Glyph of Seal of Vengence; it's 10 Expertise (not Expertise Rating) and will put you just under cap.
   
3. Change your meta: Get Relentess Earthsiege Diamond. Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is actually higher DPS (by perhaps 1 DPS), but the two blue gems requirement sucks and actually with do more damage than good.
   
4. Regem: Once you stack the Hit Rating gems you need to be capped, focus entirely on Strength. That's it -- just Strength. The only gems you will be using (other than a single prismatic to hit your Meta requirement) is Bold Cardinal Ruby. Do not try to meet you socket bonuses; you'll actually be hurting yourself. Nightmare Tear is the only non-Strength (other than Hit Rating gems) gem you will use.
   
5. Check your build: The core raiding build post-3.3 is 5/5/55. The recommended build is 11/5/55, but those six points can be used at your discretion.
   
6. Check your major glyphs: Glyph of Judgement is mandatory. Glyph of Consecration is both mana efficient and may help settle conflicts in the FCFS system. Glyph of Seal of Vengence, point for point, is the biggest upgrade you can get after the first two glyphs and is only a benefit if you are not Expertise capped [214 expertise rating (26 expertise, 6.5%)]. Glyph of Exorcism is considered a DPS loss if you use this glyph prior to being Expertise capped. Taking this even to get five Expertise is a bigger upgrade.
   
7. Check your minor glyphs: There is one mandatory minor glyph in this expansion: Glyph of Sense Undead. In an expansion where almost every mob you encounter is undead, I cannot think of a single reason not to pick this up. A 1% passive increase to undead while Sense Undead is active is a pure DPS upgrade with almost no effort. Especially since the only other minor glyph worth getting is Glyph of Lay on Hands.

Retribution paladin DPS focuses on a clash system known as FCFS: First Come, First Serve. Abilities are prioritized based off of their Damage Per Second (DPS), but not their Damage Per Cast (DPC). The basic core prioritization is:

HoW > CS > Judgement > DS > Consecration > Exorcism > Holy Wrath.

However, theorycrafters have long since established that any downtime in DPS is a loss, regardless of waiting for whichever ability should be next on the clash system. So, rather than waiting for the appropriate ability, you instead hit whatever lights up first. What this means is basically that it is better to hit a DPS ability that is off cooldown -- any ability -- rather than wait a second for a certain ability to be ready.

It is literally a faceroll.

With two pieces of Tier 9, your clash system is:

Judgement > HoW > CS > DS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath.

Once your acquire most of the newer gear available in Icecrown Citadel, it is theorized that the new optimal prioritization will be:

Judgement > DS > CS > HoW > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath.

With so many Protection paladins in the raid (and Judgement of Light being equalized), it is considered best for you to use Judgement of Wisdom. Given your complaints of mana problems, this could help.

The primary Seal you should use is Seal of Vengence. This is part of the reason why Strength is so powerful to Retribution paladins: it is actually used three times, once to determine your Attack Power, another to determine Spell Power, and finally another for your Attack Power affecting weapon damage.

You are encouraged to Seal of Command (which, oddly enough, your build lacks) for large groups of mobs. This Seal will act like a warrior's Cleave. This is optimal when the mobs are stacked up, in front of you, and when you're attacking the mob in the middle.

[Blackshae]

Well I got number 1 down pretty well... 11% hit? Bit overkill, I've been drowning in Hit rating since UD10, will look into the rest of this tho. Waiting to regem till I get more gear worth regemming, like pants, shoulders and helm.

[Inune]

Cynra wrote:

So, to put it into perspective, you could create a macro that has all eight of your abilities in it, then bind it to every key on your keyboard, and then bash your head into said keyboard.

I would just like to say: I have attempted this and failed. I spent several hours on my pally trying to come up with a macro that reduced the entirety of playing a ret paladin to a single button.

Sadly, I could not pull it off. You can't make a series of /cast, obviously. /castrandom won't work because if it attempts to use a spell that's on CD, it will continue to attempt that spell until it goes through, rather than using another one the next time you hit the macro. The best I could come up with was an appropriate /castsequence with a certain reset timer on it, but it fell apart if the fight lasted for longer than ~70-80 seconds and/or you got unlucky with Art of War procs. I figured it wasn't worth the effort to map out CD timers far enough to discover a recurrence relationship, so I eventually gave up and now play my ret spec by rolling my face across a series of keys instead of smashing my face into a single key - like god intended.


To contribute something slightly more meaningful: This site knows everything about everything. Every time I change specs, make a new class, a new patch comes out, etc. I spend a good hour or so just reading through all the information people with far more time and statistical savvy than me have compiled there.

[Krad666]

[Krad666]

Your also missing three important ehchants Shae.

+10 stats to chest.

Arcanum of torrent for your headpiece, which you buy from the Knights of the ebon blade quarter master

and lastly.

Greater inscription of the axe shoulder enchant, which you buy from the sons of Hodir quarter master. If you need the rep farm triumph emblems and buy the hodir commendation badges. Each one is worth 500 rep!

[Blackshae]

I know about chest, I haven't gotten around to it, and theres a reason why helm and shoulders do not have enchants. They are being replaced. I just bought the 45 triumph shoulders and now working on the 75 helm. No point in enchanting them if I will be scrapping them tomorrow. None of my alts have Hodir rep, so PVP enchant will do till I get around to doing Hodir rep, not looking forward to that at all.

[krilari]

Blackshae wrote:

None of my alts have Hodir rep, so PVP enchant will do till I get around to doing Hodir rep, not looking forward to that at all.

1. do hodir dailies
2. do heroics
3. turn tri badges into hodir rep
4. get enchants...please

[Irenke]

Krad666 wrote:

Because of that set bonus, gemming an Inscribed Ameritine in a yellow socket that yields +4 or so strength as it's bonus is actually good. This is more of a dps increase rather than just throwing in a +20 strength. Instead of getting +20 str your getting +16/18 str and +10 crit. Which is win!! Of course this only applies if you have that set bonus, if not then nothings changed.

This is absolutely true. However, when in my list of eight very simple things to do I didn't want to get that big into theorycrafting. I offered to help someone find ways of improvement in as simple a form as possible. As it stands, a Strength is going to generate more overall DPS than the current Stamina gems that are in the gear without getting too in-depth.

Mind you, I managed to compile that list of information from a single hour's search on Retribution paladins in 3.3. One hour and there were so many places to improve. If every single person took even one hour a week to learn more about his class and spec (blogs, forums, Elitist Jerks, talking to someone, researching on World of Logs or WoW Heroes), can you imagine how much improvement we might get?

[Blackshae]

krilari wrote:

Blackshae wrote: None of my alts have Hodir rep, so PVP enchant will do till I get around to doing Hodir rep, not looking forward to that at all. 1. do hodir dailies 2. do heroics 3. turn tri badges into hodir rep 4. get enchants...please

<sigh> what do you think I am doing Kril? I can't do 2 things at once here. Either get badges for the new gear, or the rep...

[Krad666]

Cynra wrote:

Krad666 wrote: Because of that set bonus, gemming an Inscribed Ameritine in a yellow socket that yields +4 or so strength as it's bonus is actually good. This is more of a dps increase rather than just throwing in a +20 strength. Instead of getting +20 str your getting +16/18 str and +10 crit. Which is win!! Of course this only applies if you have that set bonus, if not then nothings changed. This is absolutely true. However, when in my list of eight very simple things to do I didn't want to get that big into theorycrafting. I offered to help someone find ways of improvement in as simple a form as possible. As it stands, a Strength is going to generate more overall DPS than the current Stamina gems that are in the gear without getting too in-depth. Mind you, I managed to compile that list of information from a single hour's search on Retribution paladins in 3.3. One hour and there were so many places to improve. If every single person took even one hour a week to learn more about his class and spec (blogs, forums, Elitist Jerks, talking to someone, researching on World of Logs or WoW Heroes), can you imagine how much improvement we might get?

I see what your saying. I just wanted to throw that out there, since i saw that Shae was sporting the two pieces of T9.

With T10 right around the corner i suppose T9 will be soon replaced though.

BUT

Come now Irenke. We NEED to stuff as much theorycrafting into shae as possible. So his head will overflow with rich gooey knowledge and numbers, and the world will be a peace. Wars will end, even Arthas will bow his head in respect.. Yum yum!

[Blackshae]

Sorry my heads already full of other stuff, statistics and numbers were never my thing. I just like to hit things with heavy sharp objects.