WOD alpha: A turning point since TBC?

Paladin - Retribution

First of all I see three different ways to play this team, either strong burst damage (Type I), strong healing (Type II) or a mix of both (Type III)

I tried to gather some information from kromtors thread (wotlk) too but the game has changed too much :/ since ret can't dispel fear anymore I'm not sure if dk will be a better addition to that team than a shaman.

I'd use long arm of the law, fist of justice, clemency and selfless healer for all three types, using cleanse on cooldown vs certain classes is also important


Type I: uses holy avenger, execution sentence, final verdict and depending on overall surviveability/burst damage in the game (and I suppose burst will be pretty high at the beginning just as in every xpac) I'd play this with a resto shaman for double tremor/windwalk support, primal elementalist+storm elemental for 100% increased run speed and shocks. If the enemys team has no warlock then he should go for totemic projection and support with capacitor/root totem instead of going for double tremor.

Pros:

• High burst damage (Final verdict does 280% weapon damage as holy (increased by mastery), I remember holinka saying 180% wd in wod equals 380% wd in mop, so you can guess how hard that one hits), even if it doesnt oneshot it looks like a massive burst ability without cooldown, which makes it very strong combined with holy avenger up, crusader strike -> final verdict -> judgement -> final verdict -> exorcism -> final verdict, combine it with execution sentence

Cons:

• Obviously less healing, though it shouldn't be that big of a problem if you play that style with a healer, however this only works well if the ret heal is in a good spot since shamans usually have a hard time keeping 4 dps alive, but you'll need the tremor in 5s environment

Type II: uses divine purpose, holy prism, empowered seals

Pros:

• With seal of insight you're never going to die again, with bigger health pools 3% hp every 2 sec is very strong plus you can switch seals without losing the effect
• Works well for a 5 dps team with enh shaman since you'll need the tremor I'd say enh>dk in 5s, also pe+storm ele for 100% run speed, double tremor/windwalk or perhaps frost shock root instead of windwalk
• Can also be played with dk but then you have to drain locks 24/7 and kill them before you run out of fear breakers

Cons:

• Probably no oneshot since Templers verdict doesn't ignore armor
• longer games due to the lack of burst make fear more of a problem since we can't avoid it forever

Type III: (my personal favorite) uses divine purpose(situational holy avenger), holy prism and final verdict

Pros:

• Works well for 4 and 5 dps combos
• High burst damage and oneshots possible
• Burst healing with holy prism

Cons:

• build up time for burst

I'd play that with dk enh shaman, rogue or healer

with dk: drain lock 24/7, once he drops low finish him with wings+final verdict/HoW, otherwise switch targets whenever deathgrip is availible for force cooldowns and once someone is getting low pop wings
with enh: same as above but tremor keeps you longer in the game vs certain teams with lock/priest
with rogue: use holy avenger and go in with aoe stealth, snipe someone (most likely something that can't block) with all cooldowns in smokebomb right at the beginning, then zerg anything that could spam cc
with healer: well ... no need to further explain this

i think a Deathkight would would better as then they all keep up on mounts and saves driving from the shammy that be 20% less run speed

ok you got me there, that is annoying but I'd play the enh shamans as the main anyway

however the mount speed is probably the last thing I worry about ^^ I faced such a problem once too, and I see it only as a problem with flying mounts and blizzard took care of that in wod :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

ok you got me there, that is annoying but I'd play the enh shamans as the main anyway

however the mount speed is probably the last thing I worry about ^^ I faced such a problem once too, and I see it only as a problem with flying mounts and blizzard took care of that in wod :p

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ya but shammys are to much fun and caster are always going to be better in big scale pvp i find melee gets killed to much its a lot harder so the wpvp island i think it be better to be caster standing at the back. killing your targets

sure for large scale pvp you'd rather want a dk to grip targets into the ret team instead of charging into 20 people, most likely going to play dk 4 ret in wpvp and enh 4 ret for arena, but first of all I'll try out 4 ele/4 enh with heal ofc :)

Thanks.

I am wondering how the removal of BF and doubling of health will affect the ret pally heals.

well tbh I don't know, doubling health and removing base resilience doesn't really change much, bigger numbers bigger health pools or smaller number smaller health pools ... you get the point

removing BF is actually good for hybrids so I think overall those changes are good for us

anyway I took a closer look at dks today, after all I think four dk (frost or unholy) + heal probably works better than I thought, I've never fully read what necrotic plague does, but actually that brings up a new playstyle for us, we can use death grips/gorefiends grasp to pull them together and spread 4x necrotic plague on the entire team and then every 10-20 seconds another gorefiends grasp to extend the plague, since it does stack up it gets very important to keep the debuff up for maximum damage, sure it won't stack up infinitely but I suppose when you keep that stuff up on 5 targets for long enough then they're in huge trouble.
The disease dispel immunity glyph should work with necro plague too and wether you play frost or unholy you can use ERW+double obliterate or quad gargoyle to nuke an injured target to death. It would also allow us to use pillar of frost glyph since we don't need much movement anyway as long as dots keep rolling and using chilblains +arena chains of ice macro to support the healer.

With the removal of necrotic strike I am not liking dks anymore. Their mobility has always sucked anyways.

I actually like melee hybrids alot more now

Tbh losing NS isn't a big deal, when you stack dk's in wod you'd rather want to spread necrotic plague and spam deathstrike and keep yourself alive until everything dies from the plague, I'm gonna try out the quad dk heal for sure but I don't know if its going to be quad frost or unholy, frost is nice because you can spread necroplague with a howling blast rotation [arena1-5] and use deathgrip/aoe grip defensively. On the other hand Unholy can pop quad gargoyle for extra pressure. I also like the new deathcoil glyph so the healing will be pretty good as it heals for 127% of ap.

And btw, I saw level 90 shamans on beta with 15 charges of ls, so it will be 20 charges on ls with the perk, thats going to be pretty massive burst.

Right now overall performance in 5v5 will be Ele>dk>enh>ret, (obviously because ret is harder to play with all the macros you need to make it work well and counter cc abilities aren't that strong)

/off topic: finally more upload available in my region, I'll be able to stream soon (yes arenas too)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kruschpakx4

Tbh losing NS isn't a big deal, when you stack dk's in wod you'd rather want to spread necrotic plague and spam deathstrike and keep yourself alive until everything dies from the plague, I'm gonna try out the quad dk heal for sure but I don't know if its going to be quad frost or unholy, frost is nice because you can spread necroplague with a howling blast rotation [arena1-5] and use deathgrip/aoe grip defensively. On the other hand Unholy can pop quad gargoyle for extra pressure. I also like the new deathcoil glyph so the healing will be pretty good as it heals for 127% of ap.

And btw, I saw level 90 shamans on beta with 15 charges of ls, so it will be 20 charges on ls with the perk, thats going to be pretty massive burst.

Right now overall performance in 5v5 will be Ele>dk>enh>ret, (obviously because ret is harder to play with all the macros you need to make it work well and counter cc abilities aren't that strong)

/off topic: finally more upload available in my region, I'll be able to stream soon (yes arenas too)

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nice i can not wait for you to stream.

My 1st group will be the shammys to gear and level. as the gear changes am not really that upset changeing from ele to ehn to much it just goes down to what am going to be a lot of the time. i think am going to change my shammys to dwafts as well from pandas.