Hey wait one minute, we thought you had quit your ret pally and switched to your arms warrior for the time being?
Well, yeah..I kind of did. Bruny the warrior is 69 and is sitting around patiently waiting to be ran through each of the Northrend dungeons in succession hoping to speed level to 80 in the same manner as my rogue. However, I got bored and decided to queue as a tank on my paladin to get the Sack of Sometimes Has a Pet/Mount/Flask/Gem and I ended up in End Time and won a 378 axe. Yes, the axe that my DK has been crying about never even seeing my paladin wins it as an offspec.
So hence my upgrade from a 316 weapon to a 378 weapon convinced me to finish up the 5-7th bosses of the LFR DS. (I actually put an enchant on it this time).
I did fairly "bad" on Ultraxion, I pushed just over 15k, which I GUESS is okay considering all I had that was DPS was my shoes/bracers/weapon, I had no trinkets whatsoever. Actually now that I think of it that initial group was bad, I was 10th in damage with my pure tank gear!
The group removed the lowest performers, the ones doing 10k (come on, if even I can do 15k...) and we one shotted the subsequent bosses.
Now as the loot rules go, as predetermined by the Karma Gods, the poorer your performance the higher chance you have at winning rolls. So it seems. I managed to win a ring, and also from what I reckon one of the BiS non-heroic trinkets. Gah! At least the T13 shoulders that I wasted now have "friends in higher places" now. However, I will not stop until I have replaced my entire tanking set since I think I have settled in onto the pace of the ret-ness.
This is probably the ONE class where I feel I need an addon to help me keep track of buffs. The two most important ones are:
1. Inquisition
2. Divine Purpose
I need to know exactly how long my Inquisition buff is, since it will buff my censure, which is a large part of my damage (the other holy abilities are meh) and also when to refresh it and also to prepare to refresh it.
Then there is our "free ability" procced from Divine Purpose. Keeping track of Inquisition and knowing when this puppy procs lets me know if I should use it on Inq or if I will just TV it out for massive damage (well not really yet). Luckily my fancy schmany UI came with some interesting aura/power trackers that I never ever used and turned 'em on!
I can see the T13 2P bonus, where Judgement generates a HP as a very very useful set bonus, even though Judgement does wet ribbon damage, it's something to look forward to as it generates our main resource. Now that I think of it this was probably added in as a last minute "fix" to cover up how sloppy the class is rather than a legitimate "tier bonus" if you get my drift. Perhaps in the future there is a 2nd ability that generates HP alongside CS. Oh well.
I shall report back after more testing. (See, takes only 15 minutes to test a character out in PVE...)
Truby the Ret
Showing posts with label Clunky Retribution Paladin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clunky Retribution Paladin. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
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
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
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