81(or maby 83) Ret paladin, be or not to bee.

[Xsifilad]

I got 80 ret paladin and its kinda meh, or bleh, not sure but one of those two.

Survivability is good, you got your buble and lay on hands and word of glory can heal you to full from 1% half of the times.

But dmg is BAD, its just bad, even when you pop wings, they can be stolen and purged and whatever.



As for 81 you get some critical upgrades like JC trinket 2h sword from Stonecore and few other ones (it seems you cant get upgrades for all the slots).

Most important thing is you get this ability called Inquisition, that could potentially fix the DMG problem.

So those are the pros

Cons: you can forget about healing(which i am not interested in anyways), and id guess you have to put away pvp gear as well.



As for 83 i don't even know what to think. New 83 ability is a healing spell, so no help her. Gear wise i was thinking to use one of the 83 warrior chardevs posted on this forum in some other topic, so we end up with like 80khp and LOW secondary stats, but very impressive top end wep dmg.



Trow in comments, suggestions, criticism.

 

[Falkor]

id prolly wait till 4.3 cuz iirc ret is being buffed, and melee in general is getting buffed b/c blessing of might will do 20% melee ap too



but if you dont care and wanna go anyways id say go all out and do 83. holy radiance is a clutch spell, id love to have it at 80 for all kinds of situations

and inquisition and good gear w/ the 83 warrior set i made up, should be roughly the same

but you could try 81 on the way and see if you would want the aoe heal or not, or even the increased dmg from the 83 wep



ive seen some pretty efficient 84 hpals too. i wouldnt really like it what with the crippled 2ndary stats and inc resil, but you do have a ton of mana and hp (hp nice for stronger mastery shields too, but eh). prot would make a monster FC too. so yea

 

[Xsifilad]

I am under impression that ret is getting a pvp nerf. Yes the 2h wep specc dmg is buffed by 5% but hammer of wrath crit talent is down to 6% from 60%.



Also Templars (350%+) verdict and CS are both scale from wep dmg, so secondary stats are kinda less important in my opinion and at 81 you get a wep with almost 400 more top end dmg, and at 83 you get even more wep dmg, so if anything pala ability DMG should grow as level grows and more powerfull weps get unloked.



But yeh i will most likely wait for the patch 4.3 befor i do anything rash.

 

[Twiztid7652]

i dont understand why you think your damage with ret is bad, with my ret pally i can hit up to 55k crits. and i average about 7.8k dps in PVE somaybe its not the toon..

 

[Xsifilad]

I have never seen anything close to the 55k crit with any kind of buff on. In pve my DPS is about the same.



I have a perspective of an 80 frost DK player, on the DK you can just spam Howling blast 4 times and they all can crit for 15 to 20k no problem and then you have frost strikes you can dish out. On a paladin you have to wait for stuff to get of CD half of the time, no burst and existing abilities do bad dmg. and i got around 30 mastery 25% crit and almost 4k top end wep dmg.

 

[Twiztid7652]

never anything close to 55k?? really? im talking about adding hand of light damage to your templar's verdict if you werent tracking that. hmm mind if you link your toon??

 

[Xsifilad]

Moggron on hellfire, not BiS just waiting for plate shoulders to pop on AH and boots from Hyjal chain also slowly working towards head&shoulders enchant. Alchemy trinket can go up someones b@tt for all i care, its a question of who got nuff time and/or gold to level up sh@t. (call me stupid but i preffer to play with 4 decent different twinks then play with only one but in BiS)



Big question for me is if Porcelain Crab mastery proc better then use of my current trinket.

 

[Twiztid7652]

i mean hes not bad, but the alch trink is like a must. for the str and for the mast. and i use the battle standard as well not the crab.

 

[Falkor]

alch trinket is where its at....its not too hard to finance if you dont have a main on your server. doing all of hyjal and vash on one, or more toons, makes a bunch of gold just off quests and vendor trash.



edit:

with might and wild and pve gear i have 5.22% haste (w/o judgements of the pure up), 28.7% crit, and 35.51 mastery (74.6% extra damage via hand of light). with just a few mins on the dummy my highest templars verdict was a 26k crit, and my highest hand of light proc was just shy of 27k. so 55k+ is possible with full buffs and what not, for sure.

i use the crab and alch trinket combo

 

[Taitaih]

Moggron on hellfire, not BiS just waiting for plate shoulders to pop on AH and boots from Hyjal chain also slowly working towards head&shoulders enchant. Alchemy trinket can go up someones b@tt for all i care, its a question of who got nuff time and/or gold to level up sh@t. (call me stupid but i preffer to play with 4 decent different twinks then play with only one but in BiS)



Big question for me is if Porcelain Crab mastery proc better then use of my current trinket.

I have 3 BiS twinks with Alch (or will be BiS after Honor Gear), and a 4th on the way. It's not that difficult to level it up.



Porcelain Crab proc is pretty imba.

 

[Xsifilad]

I don't want to start the discussion about whether Alch. trinket is worth the time, because everyone's time got different values.



Ret paladin is defiantly not a bad class and is down right dangerous with wings popped, but it falls short of my expectations. Its not nearly as OP as rogue or mage and dose not have sustained dmg of a frost DK. And i prefer classes with constant dmg rather then classes that have to wait for CDs to kill something.



When compared to frost DK(another one of my twinks with no alchemy trinket) the paladin got better tools to combat the two OP classes mentioned above, but not as good at pressuring healers. Yes you might be able to squish out 55k global on a dummy but a fully pvp clad shaman or paladin i think not, and what are you gona do when your offensive CDs run out? I feel like hitting a tank with gumballs when all CDs run out.



Also i find paladin more susceptible to kiting because of the lack of stopping utility and ranged attacks. Yes paladin can free himself from snares but still needs to get in close to deal dmg, while DK can snare and then punish enemies from distance with howling blast even while snared, the second in my experience will always deal more main target dmg then the first.



So IMHO those are the reasons why i am delving into higher level paladins setups.

 

[ClayReedWhite]

i dont understand why you think your damage with ret is bad, with my ret pally i can hit up to 55k crits. and i average about 7.8k dps in PVE somaybe its not the toon..

Yes same here as my paladin i am almost unstoppable as ret i can run into 2-3 geared people and wipe them out alone but i woulod say paladin is all about strats, gear, and most of all timing/rotation

 

[Falkor]

its not like it takes a lot of time to sit at the AH and buy herbs to lvl alch tho. and you should have already gotten the gold b/c for some BiS gear (imo) you should have finished the whole zone of vash, and done the majority of hyjal which = $$. but if you spent it, or dont wanna buy the herbs, or w/e thats your choice. but it is an amazing trinket



i dont find paladins too susceptible to kiting. especially if you come from a warrior background......THATS being susceptible



rogues? i poop on rogues as ret. mages you can beat if wings are up (and preferably bubble for spell steal protection), but mages are just gay anyways



the thing i dont really like tho, is its not about offensive CDs (which is pretty much just wings and zealotry), its about relying on procs. if you get a few art of war procs, or free 3 holy power procs (for healing or 3pt TV) in a fight, its pretty much guaranteed to go your way. but if you dont get any procs its just boring and also not in your favor. also crits are pretty crucial.



81 or 83 sounds like it could be pretttty fun though



edit: also, you guys need to pick up the dps! 7-8k seems pretty low

 

[Twiztid7652]

lmao maybe my rotation is off but ya i only get around 7-8k dps overall of course. thats still not bad tho considering i was in ToT with an 85 hunter who was averaging 4k lmao

 

[Xsifilad]

I have to say i agree with everything Falkor said (even the trinket part, i convinced myself today at work to get it for my DK lol).



Paladin is not the most susceptible class to kiting. I played 49 warrior for entire BC and whatever time there was to play it in Wrath, and it was kiting hell most of the time(excluding juggernaut addition), and then i played with a 49 paladin(with Freedom and old 40 something mana cleanse) and every BG was like driving a tanker threw cardboard-box factory.



I also agree that its not even about offensive CDs, its about luck with procs. I as well feel like i can never get that 3rd holy power or art of war when i need it so badly. And luck with crits is crucial as well. On a DK you always have enough resource to keep doing dmg and killing machine procs come twice as often as art of war if not 3 times as often giving you those crits.



So her is how i look at it with my perspective and points of view.

Paladin strong on defense but lucks dmg when it matters, so i play with only 2 pvp pieces(and old 20 res pvp trink) and i still feel comfy with the amount of incoming DMG.

By going up to 81 or 83 you can let paladins defensive nature and increased HP pool to compensate for the lack of resilience gear, and with extra levels you unlock Inquisition and higher level gear that by my predictions should secure you the desirable dmg. And this way you end up in better position then at 80.



And worst case scenario is, your dmg stays the same or even goes down while you loose the benefits of pvp gear and are unable to mitigate incoming dmg.

In this case ill go FC Prot specc or scrap entire thing altogether and call it a day, and then maybe it can be an 85 twink someday or something.

 

[Falkor]

lmao maybe my rotation is off but ya i only get around 7-8k dps overall of course. thats still not bad tho considering i was in ToT with an 85 hunter who was averaging 4k lmao

yea ToT is tricky tho. so many short lived trash battles and shoooort boss fights. i was talkin bout dummy dps, and i was getting 11-12k in my pve gear with just might and mark. as far as rotation, like many classes nowadays, its all about priorities....quick look on EJ or the like should help out there, but its not too complicated. dps doesnt really matter anyways tho, just for epeen. and when you realize no matter how well you play the class you'll still lose on the meters to a mage spamming one button....well, you just learn to shrug it off and have fun lol

 

[Falkor]

definitly not

oh and 20% melee from might vs 10% too, weeee

 

[Splosion]

Paladins

• Seal of Truth, when Judged, now benefits from a multiplier of 20% per stack of Censure, up from 10%.
  

Retribution

• Sanctified Retribution now increases the critical hit chance of Hammer of Wrath by 2/4/6%, down from 20/40/60%.
  
• Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (passive) now increases damage by 25%, up from 20%.
  

4.3 pala = nerf

Lol, the 5% extra damage more than makes up for the loss of HoW crit, 80s have a crapload of crit anyway, since the PvP gear is loaded with it. Judgement damage is gonna be awesome too, my 2s partner will love it.