Ret PVE Patch 4.01

[Ocin]

I'd love to see some lvl 80 4.0 only ret pve talent builds and rotation thoughts here since we still have a ways to go before we need to think about lvl 85 concerns. EJ hasn't really posted anything definitive yet unless I missed it because it's buried in a long thread.

[Rhivath]

I am just experimenting with guild in Naxx, we are dropping bosses in ~30-45sec for some (we killed Patchwerk in 37 seconds) so not a lot of testing but so far it looks like CS/Judgement spam and pop cooldowns to make your TV hit incredibly hard, still trying to figure things out. Our Balance druid managed to pull 22k dps on the Widow with 75% of it being Insect Swarm with the glyph, when my 17k in ICC is now 9k in Naxx

[Mannstein]

EJ hasn't really posted anything definitive yet unless I missed it because it's buried in a long thread.

Same here, tried several time to understand the post there, but the long posts, several diferent inputs and the two discussions inside the thread (Retri @ lvl85 and Retri @ lvl80) makes everything "slightly" confusing.

I will get hit and expertise capped and stack haste till 1020 if possible. Getting the (CS+filler)*3 + TV looks so far as the best bet... Any one has different ideas?

[sherck]

This morning on the training dummy for single target, I was keeping Consecrate up while doing Crusader strike on CD, Judgement on CD, Templar's Verdict at 3x HoPow, and Exorcism only on Art of War Proc.

I ended up doing 2k less DPS (from 4.5k down to 2.5k) than I had on Monday night when I specifically went to the dummies to see.

Now, my gear is not all that great but I was hitting the rotation pretty well so I think I was playing pretty efficiency. I was not using any time of damage boosting CDs (Trinkets, Avenging Wrath or that Holy Power damage boost <Inquisition?>) so that is part of it but I wanted to do an "apples to apples" comparision on just damage output.

I will be interested to hear what other people are observing.

Honestly, if Ret DPS is this bad, I will probably just take my 2nd spec back to a "combat" Holy spec to do low level stuff and mining. Survivability will be great and if I am going to have low DPS anyway...

Cheers,

Cheers,

[Punkss2]

EJ does have a very small (by small i mean a quick paragraph) on ret. I cant direct link to it at work, but if i remeber, it was under the paladin class, the under the guide for all specs. Only the ret one was updated for 4.0.1.

Gives a spec, what glyphs for now, and a priortiy listing,
Going from memory: TV*3 stack of HP> CS > Exo > Judge > Holy Wrath > Consecrate

Edit: Was pulling 4k DPS on the heroic dummy in Org. Everyone was using it so it had a lot of debufs and i was able to throw hammer in there on every CD. Not as much DPS as stated, but seems a bit more fun to play IMO.

[Shoju]

it isn't just you Sherck. I went to the dummies to get my DPS spec and glyphs done, and I was only hitting about 3650 when I was clocking in at ~5300 pre-patch. Something isn't right, and I don't know what it is. I actually opened my spell book and went spell to spell making sure that I hadn't missed something.

[sherck]

Going from memory: TV*3 stack of HP> CS > Exo > Judge > Holy Wrath > Consecrate

I was not hitting CS on my rotation because:

1. It was single target and I actually listened to Blizzard when they said they wanted a different rotation on single to multi-target.
2. I did not have a huge number of "open" CDs to use it from my single-target "rotation".
3. Mana was an issue and I think that CS would not have made that any better.

But, if it is that high on the priority list, then I probably need to work it into the rotation.

Cheers,

[Shoju]

Are you sure you meant CS sherck? That is the most predictable HP generator...

[Teranoid]

If you are losing 1500 dps you are doing something seriously wrong.

There's really not that much to worry about other than watching for 3 HoPo for TV and AoW procs for Exorcism. I was getting right around 5500-5800 DPS peaking around 6300 when I use AW+Zealotry on the target dummy just with self buffs in a mix of ICC 10 normal and heroic gear and following a 3 HoPo TV > CS > Exo (only during AoW procs) > J > HW rotation (I didn't even use consecrate just for the sake of testing).

As they have stated keep in mind the fact that haste plays a huge role in our dps now through Sanctity of Battle lowering the cooldown of Crusader Strike. Screwing up a TV with less than 3 HoPo WILL gimp your dps significantly as will not following the priority. This isn't faceroll ret anymore where you just push whatever is lit up or stare at an addon to tell you what to push when.

Edit: Nevermind.. apparently still learning the changes to a class for 1 day is too much to ask of the playerbase.

1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them.

[Passionario]

I was not hitting CS on my rotation because:

1. It was single target and I actually listened to Blizzard when they said they wanted a different rotation on single to multi-target.
2. I did not have a huge number of "open" CDs to use it from my single-target "rotation".
3. Mana was an issue and I think that CS would not have made that any better.

But, if it is that high on the priority list, then I probably need to work it into the rotation.

CS = Crusader Strike. Not ConSecration.

[sherck]

Are you sure you meant CS sherck? That is the most predictable HP generator...

Yeah, sorry. Meant DS.

Cheers,

[Shoju]

If you are losing 1500 dps you are doing something seriously wrong.

There's really not that much to worry about other than watching for 3 HoPo for TV and AoW procs for Exorcism. I was getting right around 5500-5800 DPS peaking around 6300 when I use AW+Zealotry on the target dummy just with self buffs in a mix of ICC 10 normal and heroic gear and following a 3 HoPo TV > CS > Exo (only during AoW procs) > J > HW rotation (I didn't even use consecrate just for the sake of testing).

As they have stated keep in mind the fact that haste plays a huge role in our dps now through Sanctity of Battle lowering the cooldown of Crusader Strike. Screwing up a TV with less than 3 HoPo WILL gimp your dps significantly as will not following the priority. This isn't faceroll ret anymore where you just push whatever is lit up or stare at an addon to tell you what to push when.

Edit: Nevermind.. apparently still learning the changes to a class for 1 day is too much to ask of the playerbase.

1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them.

I have to disagree with you Tereanoid. I think you are in the minority of players who think that DPS is fine right now for Ret, or in general for many classes. There are far more knowledgable rets out there saying that there are problems. The same with warriors, and others. You might be able to say that if they were just talking about Ret and cat, but Arms warriors and Fury warriors have lost a considerable amount of DPS as well.

The major culprit? Blizzard didn't balance DPS numbers for Level 80. They balanced numbers at 85, when Fury warriors are able to get Deeps wounds, Ret Paladins have Inquisition, and Arms has its new attacks.

While on a whole this is a fundamentally "ok" way to do things, it fails the public who have to deal with these changes for the next two months.

Two months to blizzard is not a very long time. This is the 'garbage time' for them before cataclysm comes out. The same holds true for the most progressed players in the game, who don't have progression content or goals left for this expansion.

Two months to the majority of the playerbase who will be playing with these changes in a "progression" oriented atmosphere for the next 2 months is an eternity, and they feel that they shouldn't be forced to deal with these changes leaving them gimped.

I was Ret main spec for the majority of Wrath. I didn't switch to Prot Main Spec until ICC. I spent a considerable amount of time at 85 on the beta with the ret changes as ret, and they are fine..... at 85. At 80, and for the next two months, things are not fine for the majority of players. Not having Inquisition is a Very large and real problem when your DPS is balanced around having it.

[Rhivath]

One thing we all have to remember is we are missing a huge part of our dps rotation - 30% holy damage. Mastery also plays a big part in our dps rotation because it means a free 3-HoPo TV tossed between the rotations, or a free rebuff of our holy damage, and not being able to cap that is pretty bad (almost all my gear has haste now, so ive not lowered any stats to gain mastery yet)

That is the powerhouse behind basically everything we cast/use/attack with and right now it's like we are fighting in Naxx but the guild is in ICC (30% buff for them). I noticed that my dps in raids (we did a test run in Naxx/ToC on Tuesday for everyone to mess around) was peaking around 10k on Pathwerk, which was still higher than all the other melee, but about 3k behind the casters. Hell one of our warriors with Shadowmourne barely broke 7k :/

Basically most melee are kind of hosed atm, Blizzard knows, and will adjust us a bit (as well as threat, I think, because it's way out of whack - fully dedicated 100% accurate tanks cannot hold threat off casters (mage, druid, shaman) in any situation, at least not for our guild and we run 1 of each tank (I am the pally, usually Ret).

[tankadin]

Thought I'd throw this out here since we're discussing the DPS "Situation"

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

[Mannstein]

Did they allready applied the "correction"?
Since for my guild ICC is bugged (no portal for Saurfang), we went yesterday to RS and on the first two minibosses the 8 best dps were ranged... (the other two ranged DC'd) :S

The only diference i noticed is the HoW that is criting for 20k.