60 Gemming in BFA (ret paladin centric)

[Lightfall]

WITH RECENT BETA CHANGES THIS IS INACCURATE. ALL GEMS(except pvp) INCLUDING SECONDARY STATS NOW SCALE TO 6. SEE BELOW REPLY FOR UPDATED INFORMATION


So taking a look at the actual scaling i wanted to find out what will be best in BFA. I am doing this testing with paladin.

Best single color gems for BFA at 60 (scaled)

9 Stamina (135 Health for ret, 202.5 for prot )

10 int (pvp)
10 agility (pvp)
6 strength

13 versatility (1.3% increased damage, 0.65% decreased damage taken)
13 haste (1.625% increased attack speed/decreased CD)
13 critical strike (1.53% increased chance to critically strike)


So leaving aside Stamina, and just looking at the DPS stats for Pallies.

Crit is pretty trash for paladins, there aren't really any abilities that get any extra benefit from it.

The real discussion comes down to between Strength, Haste and Versatility.

On my fully geared character I have 15 sockets to play with. Without gems, i have 328.5 Strength.

Now calculating damage purely as a function of Str/attack power, adding a strength gem at each point results in 6.3 actual strength thanks to the 5% plate armor bonus and thus:

328.5 - +1.92% dmg per gem (6.3/328.5)

370 - +1.70%

385 - +1.64%

400 - +1.575%

430 - +1.465%


From a flat damage viewpoint, without accounting for any procs, versatility will functionally never surpass Strength. Haste however theoretically is superior at around the 390 strength mark.

Haste has some problems that hurt its effectiveness for PVP:

1. Paladins are a melee class that are easily kited. It does not matter if your ability CD is 8 seconds instead of 10 seconds if you only have a 5 second window to deal damage before you are out of range again. If you are kited until your cooldowns are up anyway, it does not help as much
2. Not all cooldowns are affected by Haste. In fact, many are not. (for paladins, the list is bubbles, steed, Freedom, lay on hands, hammer of justice, wake of ashes, blessing of kings effect, and all item and trinket etc. cooldowns)

Benefits of Versatility over Strength:

-Act as multiplier of buff procs (84 AP from Sonic Booster, 105 Str/AP from Crusader)

Now this is not a small benefit, these two procs are extremely valuable and together have a very good uptime. This means you are not looking at just 350-425 str for the most part, but when a proc is up you can be north of 500 strength.

6.3/480 = +1.31%
6.3/500 = +1.26%

This means that functionally Versatility can be superior to strength whenever a proc is up after you reach that threshold of around 390-400 str. This is only damage, without accounting for the DR that is also included.

-Act as a multiplier of damage/healing procs and items

Versatility has the added benefit of affecting not just abilities but your procs from gear as well.

Notable beneficiaries in my own gear:

• Ramsteins trinket
• Mark of the hidden satyr
• Sul'thraze
• Frag belt bombs
• Cobalt frag bombs
• healing potions
• heirloom necklace

Together these items can be 5-10% of damage dealt that only scale with versatility

-Reduces Damage

Kind of duh, but most twinks are for PVP and it is a sizable advantage to also reduce damage that you take.




Conclusion

I think the best results for PVP and having a mix of damage/survivability on Ret Paladin will be the following:

Enchant Strength wherever possible, it scales better than everything else for:

• gloves (11 str, 22 stamina from kit is also an option here)
• bracers (7 str)
• chest (+9 stats)
• shoulder(+7 str and 2 crit)
• legs(+8 str and 5 crit)

Enchant Versatility for rings (+13 each) and back (+45)

Gem Strength to 385-390 (Note: See below posts for further discussion on this, There are several ways you may be able to replace strength gems with consumables)
After 390 Strength gem straight versatility.

With my gear set this way on the PTR, but without ideal rings, I was at roughly:

391 str
16.5% crit
7.5% haste
19.5% versatility

The purpose of this method is to find when to switch from strength to versatility without any loss of damage.



P.S. On the topic of rings

As dark iron rings w/ random enchant got changed to agi and nerfed to the ground and gems got nerfed so socket rings are not great, needed a replacement there.

Green BoE rings in 8.0 are now random enchant to 8 Str 13 Stam and 11-12 of two mixed secondary stats. Most common is +6 and +6. I have not seen any skewed more than +7 +4 in my limited testing.

Dungeon rings are now 13 Stam + 28 of (usually) two mixed secondary stats

Really the trade off comes down to 8 strength vs 16 secondary. 8 str is 1.33 gems and 16 secondary is 1.23 gems, so the Str is worth more in terms of replacing gems.

I think that the best option will be to use two green rings with vers/haste, skewed towards vers if possible, in order to lessen the amount of strength gems you need to hit the ~390 amount.

Double green haste/vers
16 str, 12 haste, 12 versatility
-vs-
1 Green, 1 dung ring (gnomer ring w/ 28 vers)
8 str, 6 haste, 34 versatility
-vs -
2 dung (gnomer ring w/ 28 vers, brd ring 19 vers 9 haste)
9 haste, 47 vers​

Anyway, thanks for reading, please check my math

 

[Gixxer66]

Interesting post, was a good read. Something that you haven't mentioned is Weapon swapping for double Crusader proc's, certainly worthwhile doing on lower level twinks.

I was hitting 340 Str on a 19 Ret Pala with double Crusader procs, screenies in the 10 - 19 section. That was without BiS rings / Neck or any enchants on wrists / gloves / boots

 

[Veechard]

So taking a look at the actual scaling i wanted to find out what will be best in BFA. I am doing this testing with paladin.

Best single color gems for BFA at 60 (scaled)

9 Stamina (135 Health for ret, 202.5 for prot )

10 int (pvp)
10 agility (pvp)
6 strength

13 versatility (1.3% increased damage, 0.65% decreased damage taken)
13 haste (1.625% increased attack speed/decreased CD)
13 critical strike (1.53% increased chance to critically strike)


So leaving aside Stamina, and just looking at the DPS stats for Pallies.

Crit is pretty trash for paladins, there aren't really any abilities that get any extra benefit from it.

The real discussion comes down to between Strength, Haste and Versatility.

On my fully geared character I have 15 sockets to play with. Without gems, i have 328.5 Strength.

Now calculating damage purely as a function of Str/attack power, adding a strength gem at each point results in 6.3 actual strength thanks to the 5% plate armor bonus and thus:

328.5 - +1.92% dmg per gem (6.3/328.5)

370 - +1.70%

385 - +1.64%

400 - +1.575%

430 - +1.465%


From a flat damage viewpoint, without accounting for any procs, versatility will functionally never surpass Strength. Haste however theoretically is superior at around the 390 strength mark.

Haste has some problems that hurt its effectiveness for PVP:

1. Paladins are a melee class that are easily kited. It does not matter if your ability CD is 8 seconds instead of 10 seconds if you only have a 5 second window to deal damage before you are out of range again. If you are kited until your cooldowns are up anyway, it does not help as much
2. Not all cooldowns are affected by Haste. In fact, many are not. (for paladins, the list is bubbles, steed, Freedom, lay on hands, hammer of justice, wake of ashes, blessing of kings affect, and all item and trinket etc. cooldowns)

Benefits of Versatility over Strength:

-Act as multiplier of buff procs (84 AP from Sonic Booster, 105 Str/AP from Crusader)

Now this is not a small benefit, these two procs are extremely valuable and together have a very good uptime. This means you are not looking at just 350-425 str for the most part, but when a proc is up you can be north of 500 strength.

6.3/480 = +1.31%
6.3/500 = +1.26%

This means that functionally Versatility can be superior to strength whenever a proc is up after you reach that threshold of around 390-400 str. This is only damage, without accounting for the DR that is also included.

-Act as a multiplier of damage/healing procs and items

Versatility has the added benefit of affecting not just abilities but your procs from gear as well.

Notable beneficiaries in my own gear:

• Ramsteins trinket
• Mark of the hidden satyr
• Sul'thraze
• Frag belt bombs
• Cobalt frag bombs
• healing potions
• heirloom necklace

Together these items can be 5-10% of damage dealt that only scale with versatility

-Reduces Damage

Kind of duh, but most twinks are for PVP and it is a sizable advantage to also reduce damage that you take.




Conclusion

I think the best results for PVP and having a mix of damage/survivability on Ret Paladin will be the following:

Enchant Strength wherever possible, it scales better than everything else for:

• gloves (11 str, 22 stamina from kit is also an option here)
• bracers (7 str)
• chest (+9 stats)
• shoulder(+7 str and 2 crit)
• legs(+8 str and 5 crit)

Enchant Versatility for rings (+13 each) and back (+45)

Gem Strength to 385-390
After 390 Strength gem straight versatility.

With my gear set this way on the PTR, but without ideal rings, I was at roughly:

391 str
16.5% crit
7.5% haste
19.5% versatility






P.S. On the topic of rings

As dark iron rings w/ random enchant got changed to agi and nerfed to the ground and gems got nerfed so socket rings are not great, needed a replacement there.

Green BoE rings in 8.0 are now random enchant to 8 Str 13 Stam and 11-12 of two mixed secondary stats. Most common is +6 and +6. I have not seen any skewed more than +7 +4 in my limited testing.

Dungeon rings are now 13 Stam + 28 of (usually) two mixed secondary stats

Really the trade off comes down to 8 strength vs 16 secondary. 8 str is 1.33 gems and 16 secondary is 1.23 gems, so the Str is worth more in terms of replacing gems.

I think that the best option will be to use two green rings with vers/haste, skewed towards vers if possible, in order to lessen the amount of strength gems you need to hit the ~390 amount.

Double green haste/vers
16 str, 12 haste, 12 versatility
-vs-
1 Green, 1 dung ring (gnomer ring w/ 28 vers)
8 str, 6 haste, 34 versatility
-vs -
2 dung (gnomer ring w/ 28 vers, brd ring 19 vers 9 haste)
9 haste, 47 vers​

Anyway, thanks for reading, please check my math

I would like for you to test and see if vers effects the procs in Naglering and the trinket from last boss in LBRS If you can.
[doublepost=1530790223,1530790054][/doublepost]

Interesting post, was a good read. Something that you haven't mentioned is Weapon swapping for double Crusader proc's, certainly worthwhile doing on lower level twinks.

I was hitting 340 Str on a 19 Ret Pala with double Crusader procs, screenies in the 10 - 19 section. That was without BiS rings / Neck or any enchants on wrists / gloves / boots

This + Untamed Blade + Noise Machine mentioned, I’m thinking you might not need to gem any strength gems and with a lot of procing items that are effected by vers, pure vers gems might be best.

 

[Lightfall]

Interesting post, was a good read. Something that you haven't mentioned is Weapon swapping for double Crusader proc's, certainly worthwhile doing on lower level twinks.

I was hitting 340 Str on a 19 Ret Pala with double Crusader procs, screenies in the 10 - 19 section. That was without BiS rings / Neck or any enchants on wrists / gloves / boots

This + Untamed Blade + Noise Machine mentioned, I’m thinking you might not need to gem any strength gems and with a lot of procing items that are effected by vers, pure vers gems might be best.

Yes, there are also consumables that can provide a higher baseline, making more vers even better, i went through to do a list for what is best in Beta:

• Insane Strength Potion (increases str by 73 and decreases dodge by 46 for 15 sec)
• Elixir of Major Strength (+21 Strength) - BATTLE ELIXIR
• Fel Strength elixir (28 AP, -6 stam) - BATTLE ELIXIR
• Elixir of Brute Force (+15 Str/+15 Stam) - BATTLE ELIXIR
• Elixir of Fortitude(123+ Max Health) - GUARDIAN ELIXIR (the only decent one)
• Flask of the Titans (372+ Max Health) - BOTH ELIXIR
• Haste Potion (245 Haste for 15 seconds)

For Food there is Roasted Clefthoof that gives +7 Strength and +7 Versatility (or multiple options for +7 Stam +7 Vers). I also am going to try out Stormchops just for shiggles once i get the recipe.

Also for Vers (doesn't seem worth it compared to str values you can get):

• Elixir of Major Mageblood (24 Versatility) - BATTLE ELIXIR

So the Best set up for consumables would probably be Roasted Clefthoof food, Brute Force/Major Str+Fortitude and using potions of insane Str/healing(or utility ones ofc like swiftness or free action or elemental protection, whatever).

Taking these into account you can definitely cut down further on strength Gemming.

I would like for you to test and see if vers effects the procs in Naglering and the trinket from last boss in LBRS If you can.

I confirmed on live just to be sure but they do, everything should. You can even see the tooltip increase as you get more versatility.

 

[ShinyHero]

Imo from what I’ve seen haste and strength stack balance works best for pallies but we will see what BFA has to offer

 

[Lightfall]

Changes from beta... stat neck, ring and back enchants all got nerfed. Now max you can get for rings/neck/back are 4+ secondary. Doesn't change too much, but now the Hidden Satyr enchant is unquestionably best on neck and for back you can choose between 3 secondary and 2% speed or 4 primary. That 4 str can further reduce gemming.

 

[Gixxer66]

Changes from beta... stat neck, ring and back enchants all got nerfed. Now max you can get for rings/neck/back are 4+ secondary. Doesn't change too much, but now the Hidden Satyr enchant is unquestionably best on neck and for back you can choose between 3 secondary and 2% speed or 4 primary. That 4 str can further reduce gemming.

TBC Haste / Crit / Versa gems have all had a second nerf too. Don't take it as gospel that the WoD cloak enchants are still BiS, on a 19 the Cata Crit one is superior, if anyone wants to take a look at what scales best - I'll recopy my enchanter over ( now I bought every recipe I could ! ) and I'll link enchanting.

 

[Lightfall]

TBC Haste / Crit / Versa gems have all had a second nerf too. Don't take it as gospel that the WoD cloak enchants are still BiS, on a 19 the Cata Crit one is superior, if anyone wants to take a look at what scales best - I'll recopy my enchanter over ( now I bought every recipe I could ! ) and I'll link enchanting.

True i missed the bigger news that all secondary gems are now +6 which pretty much changes everything


The cata back is 8 crit now, other options 5 haste or 8 stam



Just checked and Northrend gems (and pandaria for that matter, not that they can be used) also scale to +6. This also affected Stam, all values were capped at 6.

PVP gems are still untouched and remain 10 int, 10 agi and 10 critical strike

Initial thoughts - versatility on gear is much more valuable now and gemming is back to mostly/all strength

 

[Lightfall]

For Ret Pallies in BFA (as of this post)

Best Professions:
Engineering (trinkets + bombs + tinkers)
Leatherworking (Apply your own leg armor + drums )

Honorable mentions:
Alchemy (7str/7stam/7vers trinket + "alchemist's flask" reusable flask that gives +20 str)
Tailoring (Nets)


Best Enchants:

Neck: Satyr
Shoulder: Tiger Fang Inscription (if BOA) or Heavy Knothide Armor kit
Back: 8 crit -or- 4 Str -or- 8 stam -or- 3 vers/2%speed
Chest: +9 Stats (Glorious i think)
Wrist: +8 strength
Hands: +11 Strength or +22 stam (armor kit)
Belt: Whatever engineering tinker you like best
Pants: Leg Armor (LW specific one for 9 str 5 crit so you can apply it to socket pants)
Feet: Stam + Movement speed
Rings: Versatility


Best Gemming:

So i think new better recommendation is full strength for gemming. (it is now 6 str which is ~1.5% +dmg or 6 vers which is 0.6% +dmg/0.3% -dmg)

so from gemming It ends up around 420 strength on my pally (yours could be higher since you will have some strength from leg enchant while i have the old ZG ench for the stam)

(Estimating average of 510-520 strength/AP due to procs)

Best Rings to use:
I think Gnomer ring and other dung ring (BRD i think?) which give 13 stam/28 vers and 13 stam 9 haste/19 vers respectively (naglering is also an option to replace the BRD one, though keep in mind you are sacrificing 1% less damage taken and more than 2% increased damage dealt to do so)


Best Consumables to use:

Elixir of Major Strength (21 strength) battle elixir
Scroll of Stamina V (10 Stamina) guardian elixir
Roasted Clefthoof - 7 str 7 vers
Superior Mana Oil - 20 Versatility

So additional 28 strength (*1.05), 27 versatity and 10 stam from long term consumables, and for maxing damage insane str potion or haste potion for short term buff of 73 strength or 245 haste. (also drums for ~28 haste)

 

[Gixxer66]

(naglering is also an option to replace the BRD one, though keep in mind you are sacrificing 1% less damage taken and more than 2% increased damage dealt to do so)

How much testing have you done with Naglering? I consistently see it sat around 7% of my total damage on a 59 Prot Pala ( 7.3.5 ), I just checked through all my screenshots - but only have 1 that shows the rings damage, and that was 8.2% of 857K. The proc can and will crit. The screenshot shows a max crit of 3.3K, with an average proc of 1649

 

[Lightfall]

How much testing have you done with Naglering? I consistently see it sat around 7% of my total damage on a 59 Prot Pala ( 7.3.5 ), I just checked through all my screenshots - but only have 1 that shows the rings damage, and that was 8.2% of 857K. The proc can and will crit. The screenshot shows a max crit of 3.3K, with an average proc of 1649

I have done no Pvp testing in 8.0 with it and skada breaks so testing it with new values in 8.0 i haven't been able to do, it is a mystery. It has received a damage nerf in 8.0 like all other straight damage procs, it does ~350 damage depending on vers. This could still be quite good since healthpools shrunk at roughly the same proportion.

On live in PVE i use it all the time and both ret and prot i can only get 2-4% dmg out of it.

 

[Opek2]

16% of ur dmg is scaled procs.. gross

 

[Lightfall]

16% of ur dmg is scaled procs.. gross

yh most of the problem is that ramstein's is broken.

 

[busgaga]

PvP gems as you call Them, they are not meant to be 10 stated IF u thought Blizzard made em for us, they are bugged also THE crit gem from that vendor, it gives 10 crit instead of 16 as THE crafted ones.

This bugg Will be fixed soon. All gems Will be 6.
[doublepost=1531730276,1531730170][/doublepost]Dragons eye gems are also 6...
[doublepost=1531730542][/doublepost]Also for neck, ring enchants u can use breath instead of gift. They scale better
[doublepost=1531730668][/doublepost]Tho Blizzard is not prioing twinking so THE gem change could take å while, prolly seeing fotms healers, Hunt, Rogue, ww untill this is fixed.

Kinda Boring

 

[Lightfall]

PvP gems as you call Them, they are not meant to be 10 stated IF u thought Blizzard made em for us, they are bugged also THE crit gem from that vendor, it gives 10 crit instead of 16 as THE crafted ones.

This bugg Will be fixed soon. All gems Will be 6.
[doublepost=1531730276,1531730170][/doublepost]Dragons eye gems are also 6...
[doublepost=1531730542][/doublepost]Also for neck, ring enchants u can use breath instead of gift. They scale better
[doublepost=1531730668][/doublepost]Tho Blizzard is not prioing twinking so THE gem change could take å while, prolly seeing fotms healers, Hunt, Rogue, ww untill this is fixed.

Kinda Boring

I'm not expecting a nerf to the pvp gems any time soon, they have already existed superior to regular main stat gem scaling for a while (Now it will just be worse, 10v6 instead of 10v8). I haven't tested many classes at 60 in 8.0 so i am just hoping that Agi/Int classes don't outscale Str classes too too much with gems.

This information is all related to BFA and in 8.0 there is no longer any significant benefit for any of the breath/gift etc. enchants, they all only give 3-4 of the stat. There are some exceptions from previous expacs that were noted above.

 

[busgaga]

I told you gems would be nerfed to 6 as to be fair with all the other 6 stated gems.

WHO had right ?

 

[Lightfall]

yeah they jumped on that quicker than i would have expected, but somehow missed the multistat pvp gems