Paladins and 1.9

[Kevin]

My 31 ret/20 holy build in 1.8 holds about 135 DPS in Tyr's hand with 0 down time (If I'm low on mana I just mana up on the next mob and do less damage). The 32 retribution/19 holy build holds about 145 DPS but has much more down time as I lost several of my healing and mana regen tricks (no free crit heals, 6 mana per 5 from no more imp blessing of wisdom) I was not able to mana-up on a mob as effectively as I used to be able to mainly because I couldn't get a free crit heal when I wanted. A 31 Holy/20 retribution held about 110 DPS with 0 downtime. I'm still planning on doing some 3 tree builds and a heavy prot build as well.

Hmm I ran some more tests my numbers were wrong. I was up in Tyr's Hand only killing the stuff by the gates, didn't go inside. Finding a time on live realms to do this was not simple and I plan to try to get some more data for that at odd hours again. These tests were before repenetance and blessing of kings were moved around.

1.8 Ret/Holy - 125 DPS - Never had to stop could play get my mana back at the cost of lower DPS more.
1.9 Ret/Holy - 110 DPS - Had to bandage or drink (one or the other) every 3 to 4 fights as the mana pool was not sustainable.
1.9 Holy/Ret - 110 DPS - Had to bandage or drink (one or the other) every 7 to 8 fights. I could have played the mana regen game more but my DPS would likely have dropped another 5-10 points and then the threat or respawns gets too great at 100 or below. Running Sanctity aura over retribution aura was a loss of 1 to 2 DPS on melee mobs and I broke even on the casters since they would not die before the mana pool was out. Best DPS on them was to run sanctity than switch to retribution when they started swinging.
1.9 Prot/Ret - 100 DPS - Had to banadage or drink every 2 to 3 fights. My one hander is poor compared to my two handers though. The controlled damage from contstantly judging seal of command was nice (repent and HoJ stuns to trigger the extra damage) and the damage that can be returned to foes with Holy Shield/Blessing of Sanc/Retribution aura was pretty fun too.

Judging light is pretty much required on the test realms as I have to judge seals more to keep the damage up and I need mana to do that. On the current realms I only needed to judge light if I wanted to slow the mana leak down.

Now, let's be more fair here. I still haven't learned the builds all that well, but even going with basically the same build (as best I can) that I've had for pretty much 60 levels on live realms I lose DPS in fights though I can control burst a bit better. I can not sustain DPS or combat as well. I meant to time how long it took me to kill the same 15 mobs but I didn't. It was always slower on test though.

I have lower survivability on test. But I still did more damage with a one or two hander on live realms just waiting around for SoC to proc. My crits that were 600-750 fell to 420 to 500 or so. Making up 180 to 250 damage is another normal swing or two (at 2.4 to 3.4 seconds a swing), or a judgement of righteousness or command (on a stunned mob) which you can only do once every 8 seconds. Seal of command without the vengeance and crit backing that I had with the holy/ret build was not made up for by the use of holy shock. All the test builds took more mana.

Again if I knew the tricks better I could probably up the DPS more and even cut downtime more. I was testing fights with SoC or Seal or Righteousness. Lots of judging or little judging. The DPS goes up with more judging and so does the down time. Vindication is nice but not having enough in holy to stop the interrupts on heals hurts I lost judgements a few times on builds without this because the stutter on the heal and a miss and some poor timing on my part when I started the heal. If you give up that much self healing ability you should gain more tanking or DPS than you do. A prot/ret build should be able to tank because their self healing is much worse than any build with points in holy. They just don't get that.

I will need a friend to test how well I hold aggro better but I'm trusting the reports that this got worse.

For me, and I'm still searching out builds, I got worse at soloing and worse at raid healing no matter what I have tried right now. I get better at raid buffing though.