Why Did I Change to Clunky Ret?

I apologize reader, I lied. In the name of Vanity, and for the sake of having more toons to transmog pretty two handed weapons, I dropped my paladin's holy spec into...yes you guessed it: Clunk, er retribution! Now I am a fast learner just like you, I read my talents carefully, picked out what wasn't-the-PVP-ones, and went and bought myself an ilvl 316 two hander and queued up to test shit out.



You see, I am from wrath, I've had my paladin since wrath and I have fond memories of shiny pretty ownage coming from the blades of ret paladins still engraved in my mind. (Though I pretty much tanked from level 20-85). These were the days when Divine Storm was still part of the single target rotation. As I finished respeccing I was really excited to use divine storm, however.... seeing my crusader strike cd go off at the same time as divine storm, I thought "Oh crap, they made it AOE, what am I supposed to push??".

Now reader, just like you I have a good grasp of most classes and how each of them feels, and most of them are designed to be fairly fluid. From what I understand, ret paladins need to keep up something called Inquisition, which increases all holy damage done for a period of time, and to keep this up at all times. Then we use our "button presses" and cooldowns as we see fit.

I feel that our abilities are really 2004 other than Templar's Verdict. What's in our "rotation"? Well from what I see we have (not in priority i'll explain why (I always tend to list things in priority)):

1. Crusader's Strike (CS)
2. Judgement
3. Art of War Exorcism
4. Holy Wrath
5. Hammer of Wrath (During Wings)
6. Templar's Verdict (TV)

Those are not in order, because I feel that other than CS and TV, all the other abilities are useless filler. Heck, I even feel that CS is a pretty useless ability until they revamped it a little bit and forced us to accept it. I mean really, Judgement? I thought we just used that to regain mana, it does crap damage! The art of war procs are always nice, since there tends to be periods of time with absolutely nothing to do. Holy wrath is funny as well, it doesn't hit hard but it's something to press during all the downtime. As a blade swinging warrior, er paladin, you'd think that other than CS we would have the knowledge of another attack? Perhaps something like Righteous Holy Blade Wrath Justice...a surge of holy power that does 230% weapon damage on a 4 second cooldown. Just something else to press. (And totally disable its use in PVP, no one cares about PVP. Well I don't, which means no one!)

Ideally I think, we want to hit TV with 3 Holy Power (HP), and it seems the only way to generate holy power is through CS. So I assume I want a lot of haste to bring the cooldown down? The totally random procs of this class are kinda nice, though really random. What is that one talent called.....Divine Purpose! It makes most of our abilities have a chance to proc a free 3 holy powered ability, which is usually TV. Though it's totally random and sometimes procs when other procs are up or doesn't proc and you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs.

But anyhow, I have no idea what I'm talking about anymore. I did mange to pull off 10-12k in my tanking gear and a 316 weapon, however it wasn't very enjoyable. Actually for those fights I had totally forgot about using Inquisition, so those numbers might have been higher. However, it didn't "feel" like I pushed out those numbers, it felt...clunky. I guess they didn't want pallies to feel like DKs, smooth, with runes and strikes that felt like strikes and felt significant, and runic power dumps. So simple.

IDEA: Ok here's a wild idea. We all know how PROTECTION pallies feel like right? The cooldowns are lined up, abilities are smooth and fluid...why not...just...copy that? Though the damage would probably have to be reduced on CS and TV. The thing with prot is, we gradually build up HP and offload it with our shield slam, ideally in ret, we'd build up HP and use TV...though in a less clunky manner?

You see, regardless of what class I play I like having to press a button every GCD, guaranteed. Remember, if you're not spamming your next button you're doing it wrong! Do the Ten Second Test, in 10 seconds or roughly 7 GCDs I tend to have press my buttons about 50 times. With Ret, it's more like...5 times. WHAT??

Luckily this is only my alt to the 6th degree, and Prot is still my go-to spec to feel fluid and effective. I do feel the pain of you guys who are Ret Mains to have to endure such...clunkity clunk.

Y'know what, I'll probably switch back to Holy (but I wasted a t13 shoulder token on my ret gear....)...and get my warrior up, arms is fun, and prot warrior tanking is also fun! I shall report back of the great fun on my warrior!

Yay for the fun!

Truby the Clunker