Fixing the Ret Paladin post 4.0

[Mosg2]

I've been dinking around on the PTR and I'd like to fix the Ret Paladin DPS problem. I think that if you can get their DPS sequence down to 2-3 buttons then they'll continue to be awesome in Cata. The amount of healing you get out of Word of Glory is actually really really good--When you use it on someone else you get the extra 50% healing from Selfless Healer plus get a 12% damage bonus. With Protector of the Innocent you're also generating a lot of extra healing on yourself. So, the problems as I see them:

1. No-cooldown Exorcism that's completely proc-based is a nightmare. This is one of your hardest hitting abilities and it's completely random. The (only, heh) upside is that the Art of War proc lasts 15 seconds.

2. We need a mod that shows us how many Holy Power each other person in the party has. I think this is a must-have.

I think if we can somehow solve these two issues the DPS sequence will work. Here's the best I've come up with:

One button that Judges and Crusader Strikes--You spam this until you see (Via Jamba) that you have 4x Art of War procs. Then you spam your Exorcism key. Then you have one key that Templar's Verdicts. The DPS loss of potentially missing a few seconds of these is worth what you gain by having 4 of them hit all at once. Then you have one final key for Hammer of Wrath when the target hits 20%.

Thoughts?

[Mosg2]

Additional info found with more testing:

/stopcasting does indeed reset the swing timer, no questions. However, if you're MOVING while you try and cast Exorcism without Art of War up it doesn't reset the swing timer. I'm not sure how to incorporate this into a DPS macro--For PvP it's pretty cool since you'll always be spinning around the target. It doesn't really help for instances where you're hopefully not.

[Jafula]

Given my team has 3 paladins in it, I think I will be building something to track holy power across the team. (Obviously I'll extend it for other classes as well.)

[Mosg2]

Awesome Jafula, I was hoping you'd post something about this I'm not sure what you're looking for as a UI element, but having options would be nice I think. IE, a mini-default Holy Power UI element you could move around for each other character, or maybe just a big 3d number for each one. That's what I'd prefer at least

More on topic:

Using ISBoxer you can replicate a /clicksequence with commas for Judgement, Crusader Strike, and Hammer of Wrath. That fixes like, 60% of your rotation. That basically leaves Templar's Verdict and the torture that is Exorcism.

Basically I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing you can do for Templar's Verdict macro-wise. You *need* to only be using it at 3 Holy Power. With the system Blizz added to "save" a Holy Power that you would have generated (because you're at 3 already) for a couple seconds, I think it'll work if you just have a "Burst" button for doing your Templar's Verdict. Sure, infrequently you might be in a situation where you've got 2-3 guys at 3 HP and then the rest at 1 or 2 HP... Which sucks. You're going to lose DPS. Period. But the overall loss is going to be fairly minimal.

This puts you at two buttons--One spam button and then one that does Templar's Verdict when you hit 3 HP on each character. What sucks is that this doesn't fix the Art of War/Exorcism problem. Sigh. As I stated above I found that if you're circle-strafing the target you could just have Exorcism be the fallthrough ability and it'll cast whenever it's up... But it depends on your characters always moving.

Anyways, thoughts?

[Noids]

If moving is the way to cancel exo cast without resetting swing timer then why not use Isboxer to build in a strafe tap or a jump tap to your dps cycle?

ie. step 1 = crusader strike
step 2 = judgement
step 3 = exorcism
step 4 = jump

If you spam this macro at even 5 clicks per second (relatively minimal going by people's click macros), to activate on up and down press you will only lose 0.1s trying to cast exorcism before it cancels?

As indicated before you could either just have a TV key for all to hit at 3 holy power (once Jaf builds us an UI) or build it into a sequence which goes off once you have hit CS 3 times. Of course this does not take into account the bonus procs you will get from 40% of judgements, exorcisms and TVs but hopefully these will queue up for the next round.

The problem I am having is coming up with something to allow for the mastery procs which give you the free 3HP TV. These are going to occur much more randomly on each individual toon and probably aren't going to last long enough to have them queued up on all at the same time.

[Mosg2]

With TV I guess the only thing you're going to lose out on is the free HP you can pickup from all your other abilities. I think it's going to be a not-insignificant DPS loss.

I actually setup a key last night that moved forward and interacted with target while also doing an ability. No matter how I set it up the movement would cancel the IWT. So "fixing" exorcism that way is right out.

I totally forgot about Paladin's mastery. I really don't want to, but I've accepted that just giving up might be a totally reasonable solution. As a community we've gotten used to being able to melee box effectively and we might not be able to recognize when we have to move on.

Anyways, 4.0 goes live tomorrow. Once more people are working on it maybe they'll figure something out haha.

[boxblizzard]

just as i was switching over my melee from dk's to rets.....

im now at the crossroads...

[Mosg2]

Funny, I just got my DK's to 80 a week ago and decided I'd rather make the Rets work.

[offive]

On beta, the latest iteration of ret build seems better. WoG and the aoe heal should be pretty good, there were several version of beta in which I really didn't want to play ret. So at 85 with ilvl 333 or higher gear it seems very likely that pally teams will do ok, but some instances will be tougher than others.

The DKs seem similar to the old style. The surprise to me was my warrior as dps with the self healing it had no down time. Not going to work as a team for boxing as only one of them would get the vistory rush heal.

Still not sure which tank I will be using on my main team, guess we will all find out soon enough.

[Mosg2]

I think that relatively the Ret healing actually went up--The problem is making their f'ing DPS rotation work with only one or two buttons.

Anyone made any progress on this at all?