Was thinking about trying ret, curious about my gear.

[shoju]

So, I have been thinking about trying out ret for a raid since we have enough tanks most of the time (tiga, acalan, and sham)

I have spent 10 hours of real life time specc'd as ret (3 battlegrounds, and logged till raid later that night when I respecc'd), so I'm hoping someone can help me out.

If I respec, and gem/enchant my gear (wouldn't be a lot of gold spent, as I only need 4 gems, glyph, and shoulder chant) I would have right around 1700 AP and +25% crit. Is that enough?

What's a rotation for ret look like post 3.0? I'm guessing it would be


SoB

Judge Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Judge

Refresh Seal as needed?

Thanks for the help:)

[Mordekhuul]

That looks good. There is some discussion of rotation in the ret thread on EJ, and last I saw the folks I listen to the most there were basically saying to prioritize your highest DPS abilities and make sure you pick those whenever cooldowns come into conflict.

SoCommand is a great alternative when you don't want to take the extra damage from SoB, but honestly the damage you self-inflict is even less of an issue now thanks to the healing DS procs for you.

JoW is a good choice, by the way. JoL healing generates a metric ton of threat on fights where melee take damage, and is best left to the tank (or a healer).

[shoju]

I should really get over my hatred of EJ and try to digest the site. Everytime I leave that place, I'm more confused than when I got there :-/.

Thanks for the reply Mord. I will probably gem up the set tonite, get the ferocity glyph and the shoulder enchant and take it for a test drive.

Now to lurk on wowhead to find where I can get a ret libram....

[Mordekhuul]

I should really get over my hatred of EJ and try to digest the site. Everytime I leave that place, I'm more confused than when I got there :-/.

Thanks for the reply Mord. I will probably gem up the set tonite, get the ferocity glyph and the shoulder enchant and take it for a test drive.

Now to lurk on wowhead to find where I can get a ret libram....

Unless there is a carefully maintained first post in the class thread or someone has one mainained in their theory crafting think tank, it can be rough to get started there.

I'd just pick your class threads and read the past 2-3 pages, then keep up from there. Eventually, they'll circle to the questions you have and teach you some new things while you go =)

[shoju]

Thanks.

So I re-specc'd at lunch, and my ap was where I thought it would be, but my Crit chance was a lot lower than I thought (~3%).

Mind you, I used cheap green gems just to try it out. I figure that I will plop down some gold for gems if I decide that I actually like being ret, and will do more with the set than let it sit in the bank.

[shoju]

SO I ran around last night as ret, I have to say that it is an ABSOLUTE BLAST, and I can completely understand why they are changing divine storm. In Heroic Sethekk I was divine storming and critting for 2500 per target that crit. It was insane.

Now, If I would have remembered that I was ret, and not turned on Righteous Fury, I wouldn't have died at all (died once)

[WimpySmurf]

Now, If I would have remembered that I was ret, and not turned on Righteous Fury, I wouldn't have died at all (died once)

LOL, retnewb:)


-WimpySmurf

[shoju]

yup. I was just getting buffed when all the blessings wore off, and went through my standard routine.

As we were getting to do anzu I realized it.

[Mordekhuul]

I spec'd ret for the first time since 3.0.2 last night to speed up my Strat runs a bit and do some PVP (still ret on the armory, at the moment).

It sped up my solo Barron runs pretty significantly. I recommend doing a few, for grins, if not for profit.

In my case, Myndle being a blood elf (obviously), my Argent Dawn rep is quite low.

A Barron run, killing the bare minimum (only things I can't skip) nets 550 AD rep, 4 stacks of runecloth, about 20 gold worth of items to vendor, 5-6 corruptor's scourgestones, and 15-20 invader's scourgestones. I'm saving the scourgestones until I hit revered, and saving the runecloth for use topping off my Horde faction rep later.

It takes 17 minutes for me to get to the Barron and kill him. Add in the time it takes to go to and from Light's Hope Chapel before/after each run to sell items and mail off the runecloth, and the round trip is about 25 minutes.

I run Seal of Righteousness, for once, just because things don't live long enough to put full stacks of corruption up on them and see them do much, and SoB ends up knocking my life down just a bit too much (generally tossing an instant FoL as I move to the next group tops me, but sometimes not), and I switch to SoCommand for the Barron (not that it matters much).

[shoju]

I have done the baron as prot, but I have never tried it as ret. I will have to try that out.

I was doing almost full clears though, mainly because I had done next to nothing with the argent dawn, and I was trying to hit exalted.

I will try it as ret, and see how it works out.

I'm having a blast as ret, and if the guild maintains a good flow of tanks, I will probably stay ret for at least a little bit.

[Mordekhuul]

I have done the baron as prot, but I have never tried it as ret. I will have to try that out.

I was doing almost full clears though, mainly because I had done next to nothing with the argent dawn, and I was trying to hit exalted.

I will try it as ret, and see how it works out.

I'm having a blast as ret, and if the guild maintains a good flow of tanks, I will probably stay ret for at least a little bit.

I think the straight Barron run, skipping whatever you can, is probably the fastest route to exaltd anyway. The bosses give the most rep, so wasting time on trash isn't good, when you can just kill the Barron, including a ride to Light's Hope and back, in about 25 minutes. Give it a shot. I'm only just into Honored, so you are probably ahead of me by now =)

[shoju]

EDIT: I thought I had more rep than I do. I guess I didn't do as many quests as I thought I had.) I'm just into honored as well. I'm going to try it this weekend (would tonite, but I'm going to try and get a ret libram before we raid). If I can do 17 minute speed runs, I could get more chances at that freaking mount

(going to try and do the mount achievement the hard/cheap way)

[Mordekhuul]

Here's our WWS parse for 9/9 BT + Archimonde, for anyone interested in retribution throughput post-nerfs.

We had a couple of alt ret paladins in for a while (Bigspoon is Teeth's alt and Zarialda is Zarianna's alt), but I was spec'd ret for once and had the best gear.

I'm sure I could have done more if I raided regularly as retribution and was more experienced at managing my mana. I ended too many boss fights with half a mana pool or more, meaning I could have dumped more into consecrate as the fight went on, or into exorcism for demon bosses.

My gear is a mix of tier 6, tier 5 (no set pieces), and a few badge/heroic pieces. Whatever I could pick up as off-spec when no main specs needed it, basically.

I judged light, to maximize the healing the raid would get from it (it scales with the AP of the one that judges it, I believe), so might have gotten more mana back if someone else had judged light.

EDIT-Added the link. /facepalm

[WimpySmurf]

So one interesting thing to note is that ret DPS & damage done from the WWS reports includes the self inflicted numbers. So the reported values for SoB Retadins are generally ~5-10% higher then their actual boss DPS/DMG values.


Sorry to spoil the fun:)

-WimpySmurf

[Mordekhuul]

So one interesting thing to note is that ret DPS & damage done from the WWS reports includes the self inflicted numbers. So the reported values for SoB Retadins are generally ~5-10% higher then their actual boss DPS/DMG values.
Sorry to spoil the fun:)

-WimpySmurf

Aha! I knew you jealous warrior-types would try to throw some salt! Next time, try harder =)

WWS doesn't count damage done by the ret paladin to himself in its Damage Done or DPS summaries. For example, check my Shade of Akama breakdown.

The main chart shows Myndle doing 118,754 damage and as being 6th on the list. If you go to the breakdown screen for Myndle on that fight, I did 7,048 damage to myself with Seal of Blood. If you add up all damage done to the mobs and do NOT include the 7,048 damage done to myself, it adds up to (59851+40890+14273+1442+1442+856) = 118,754.

p.s. Kidding about the jealous part. I'm pretty confident that warriors are NOT jealous of anyone at the moment. They look like all kinds of fun, particularly prot.

[WimpySmurf]

Aha! I knew you jealous warrior-types would try to throw some salt! Next time, try harder =)

WWS doesn't count damage done by the ret paladin to himself in its Damage Done or DPS summaries. For example, check my Shade of Akama breakdown.

The main chart shows Myndle doing 118,754 damage and as being 6th on the list. If you go to the breakdown screen for Myndle on that fight, I did 7,048 damage to myself with Seal of Blood. If you add up all damage done to the mobs and do NOT include the 7,048 damage done to myself, it adds up to (59851+40890+14273+1442+1442+856) = 118,754.

p.s. Kidding about the jealous part. I'm pretty confident that warriors are NOT jealous of anyone at the moment. They look like all kinds of fun, particularly prot.

Well, the thing is I was one of those retadins on Tuesday doing my 2k DPS on Gorefiend too. But yeah, it does look like it's doing the right thing. So yeah, I was kicking some booty. Of course I don't have the same DPS competition you do.

-WimpySmurf

[shoju]

I'm really happy with the damage that I'm doing as a ret pally. Even after the nerfs, I'm having fun. I'm hoping that as I get more comfortable as ret, I can make the changes to boost my damage a little more. I was very happy with my damage in the 7/9 bt we did on tuesday.

I was able to blow all my mana on Gorefiend, and my DPS suffered for it. with about 15% to go, I was OOM from my rotation (I was using everything I could). the last 30-45 seconds was wait for mana, judge wisdom, and then Hammer. I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do, but it was worth a shot.

[Mordekhuul]

I'm really happy with the damage that I'm doing as a ret pally. Even after the nerfs, I'm having fun. I'm hoping that as I get more comfortable as ret, I can make the changes to boost my damage a little more. I was very happy with my damage in the 7/9 bt we did on tuesday.

I was able to blow all my mana on Gorefiend, and my DPS suffered for it. with about 15% to go, I was OOM from my rotation (I was using everything I could). the last 30-45 seconds was wait for mana, judge wisdom, and then Hammer. I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do, but it was worth a shot.

Torch of the Damned drop for you guys off RoS? I was really hoping for it last night. It is theorycrafted to be better than the Sunwell Plateau halberd that trash mobs drop, even, and is certainly an upgrade over my Soul Cleaver.

Alas, it'll be sometime in the expansion before I pick up a new weapon now though (last night was our last BT romp of TBC).

[shoju]

No, it didn't drop, I passed the Soul Cleaver to JB because I had gotten a killer ring from shade.