Quote Originally Posted by BrothelMeister View Post
This thread has changed gears a little, but to bring it back to viability of the team compared to DK+4 Rets, Im not sold anymore. My DK+4 Rets still have pretty bad gear (3.8K AP; 300 resil) yet they are really starting to dominate targets.

The AoE from Howling Blast might be pretty nice for pressure, but the single target damage is actually not that high, especially with the increased health pools cata will bring. With Avenging Wrath, the Paladins can blow a single target (Preferably a dps) up in seconds, from 30 yards away, and the mana free healing is very effective, even with my awful gear.

In BGs, the 4 DK team might have high overall pressure, but getting an actual kill in might not be as easy with the fact that your burst is not as high as the 4 Rets. In arena, I see the 4 Rets as being even more superfluous since you will 5 toons DPSing, instead of 4, and in arena, when you blow up a target or two in mere seconds, the enemy team will usually give up. The 4 DK team would be able to put up its mortal strike effect, but could still end up escaping before you have time to apply more pressure, and it could also be dealing damage to you in that time frame.

4 DKs vs 4 Rets is really just the question of pressure vs Burst, and as discussed many a time, Burst is better for boxers ,as fast kills mean less time for the enemy to figure out what the hell is going on.
All i see here is "OMG WINGS + HAMMER = WIN!"

Burst is better for boxers as you say.... so lets do a comparison of a basic 100 attack sequence shal we?

Rets
Crusader strike - 115% base - after all is said and done it is 150% weapon damage 4.5 second cooldown (with sanctity + judgement haste + dk haste looking at about a 3.2 min cooldown)

Holy Wrath - decently large mana cost, small damage output especially against multiple opponents, 15 second cooldown

Exorcism - Only really usable when you have art of war otherwise it eats too much mana

Judgement - 8 second cooldown, the damage is laughable at best now.

Hammer of wrath - only usable while wings are up, or when target is below 25% life

Divine storm - shared cooldown with crusader strike, does 80% weapon damage (when bursting this is useless really, and limits your holy power generation unless you are lucky)

Inquisition - Increases holy damage by 30% requires holy power, lasts 30 seconds with max holy power... only applies to judgement damage, exorcism and holy wrath unless you have wings up.

Templar's verdict - Laughable damage and is not affected by inquisition (its a melee attack, not a holy attack) that does 235% weapon damage at max, and <100% for holy power less than that.


The rotation even in pvp requires 3 holy power to be used for inquisition every 30 ish seconds. 40% chance for it to give you 1 holy power back, judge exo and holy all have a 40% chance as well and hammer of wrath.

So out of 100 non templars verdict attacks you get the following (if you are not healing)

Judge (8 seconds)
Crusader strike (3.2 seconds)
Holy wrath (15 second cooldown)
Cusader strike (3.2 seconds)
Judgement (8 seconds)
Crusader strike x 2
Holy Wrath
Judgement
Crusader Strike

Assuming that rotation or similar is repeated to 100 total attacks you get approximately 70 holy power which is equal to 23x either templars verdict or inquisition.

Which puts this at a total of 123 attacks

As of 4.0.3a i am critting for about 11-13k with pvp gear on my ret paladin on training dummy with templars verdict

Deathknight
Each howling blast gives approximately 10 runic power per rune used other than frost which are 20. Meaning every set of runes used you gain 80 runic power. This does not include random procs from the spec.

Howling Blast x 2
Necrotic strike
Blood Strike (death rune)
Necrotic Strike
Blood Strike (death rune)

80 runic power dump = 2.5 frost strikes (im going to round up here to 3 to incorperate procs from spec)
3x frost strike

Howling Blast x 4
Necrotic strike x 2

100 runic power dump (going to up this to 120 because the proc is very high)

4x frost strike

So each basic burst or normal rotation includes

6 howling blasts
4 necrotic strikes
2 blood strikes
7 frost strikes

So you get this ~6.5 times to equal to the attacks (including usage of templars verdict/inquisition)

39x howling blast
26x necrotic strike
13x blood strikes
45.5 frost strikes

This means that for a deathknight in equal attacks... he gets his 100+% weapon damage over 70 times, 39x an attack that is equal to the damage of templars verdict (on a training dummy and some reforging it crits for 12k for me) and 13x attacks that are 80% weapon damage + 680 (at 85) and an extra 10% of that total damage for having frost fever on the target... so every attack is doing over 100% weapon damage.

Frost strike hits harder than crusader strike and is pure frost damage, and you can use it just as often because of the freaking cooldown on crusader strike. In 3.2 seconds you can easily get 32 runic power if you are attacking a target... hell you get 20 if you do two non frost attacks...

BtW in the amount of time the paladin throws out the stated amount of abilities (enough for 23 tv) you get 40% of 45 frost strikes as more attacks which equals even more frost strikes...

How is there even a comparison? I mean does the fact that you get to burst someone down every 2 mins with wings really make up for that?