Cataclysm: The Ret Paladin- AKA Multi-Box Burst PVP Machines.

[Shodokan]

Introduction
I've been on the beta/alpha since the beginning and I've been closely watching the retribution changes. Over the course of the beta there have been quite a few things that have made me HATE myself for rolling paladins but that has changed. Ret is NOT what it use to be... it is NOT faceroll... OR IS IT?! Retribution has become the single highest damage dealing class on beta at the moment(with the exorcism being effected by master) BUT that is changing to only effect templar's verdict (from what I've read). A main problem for us as boxers was not the lack of healing (even shaman take the time to cast a heal during combat on those whom they need it, chain heal doesn't always work too well) it was the lack of "buttons" to push for damage to make up for the healing lost from art of war.

I start school tomorrow and I can't seem to sleep so i figured i would take the time to ease the tension that has come up.

I'm going to go through a rundown of all of the changes and exactly what it means for us as multi-boxers whom want to do nothing more than PWN noobs. The damage is so high that I am highly considering dropping my DK for another paladin... who knows.

Rundown of changes
1. Exorcism has no cooldown (big one)
2. Holy wrath can hit ANY target... 15 second cooldown. Pure holy damage. No longer affected by attack power (glyphed it has no cooldown at the moment!)
3. Rebuke (talented interupt)
4. Hammer of wrath usable when using wings
5. Judgement of the wise: no longer instant 20% base mana BUT gives 50% over 10 seconds (this is important) talented does another 1% per 5 seconds for 15 seconds for a total of ~53% over 10 seconds
5. Templar's Verdict (up to 225% weapon damage attack effected by attack power)
6. DoT seal increased damage by quite a bit (30% talented)
7. Divine storm no longer a free cast. (costs holy power to make it do good damage)
8. 40% chance to generate holy power from; Judgement, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Inquisition, Divine Storm & Templar's Verdict.
9. Power word glory: instant cast, no mana cost heal that is based on your spellpower/attack power but also scales based on holy power (requires at least one)
10. Seal of command now works for ALL seals, and makes all weapon attacks worth 107%
11. Selfless healer... (the answer to our prayers) this allows for anyone we heal with our power word glory to get an additional 100% bonus healing(calculated before crit)
12. The Art Of War: ALL melee attacks (including crusader strike and divine storm) can proc an instant cast 60% reduced mana cost and 60% increased damage EXORCISM
13. Inquisition (increased holy damage done by 30% for... 30 seconds talented)
14. Guardian of the ancient kings... 2 minuet cooldown but a pet comes and attacks with you for 30 seconds. The pet CANNOT be killed. Hits like a gimp at the moment though >_>
15. At the moment seal of truth hits like a fucking TRUCK... like for real. upwards to 5k per tick.
16. Zealotry... Our.. 15 seconds of "you die."
17: Radiance: healing stream that is effected by spell power... can crit, lasts 10 seconds... on 4 paladins it heals for somewhere like 40k over 10 seconds.

What do the changes mean exactly?
We are even more unstopable now than we were before. Even fully decked out in gear a tank with 120k life will die in a single shot. Ret is really OP right now. Obviously there will be some nerfs but lets be serious... they've taken a lot of time and effort into balancing ret and they feel they've done a good job. Honestly they have minus the one hiccup of all things effected by holy damage getting huge buffs.

People were like "omg healing is gone!" well... NOPE. With the ease we get holy power (everything we use either giving 100% or 40% chance to give us holy power... even moves that COST holy power) it is very efficient to heal as well as DPS. It also heals OTHERS for 100% extra onto what it normally does. So this means with 3 stacks of holy power it starts out baseline at over 10,000 non crit ON OTHERS. With two stacks it's about 7k and thats non crit... meaning we can effectively heal for approximately 1/3 of one person's health every 3-5 seconds. That is a bit ridiculous. Yes it involves luck of getting some extra holy power to spare. But even at 1 stack It does about 3.5k non crit... so about 15kish non crit and 30k crit... thats not OP? 1/3 of your life if you crit? Which we have about a 30% chance to crit with it anyway.

The rate and ease at which holy power is generated combined with the amount of damage some things do is absolutely rediculous... as it stands now here are some of the numbers (after the patching of 200% extra damage from ret aura)...all below this are the highest crits i've seen on my own toon.

All are under the effects of inquisition.
Templar's verdict(3 holy power): 24,700
Templar's verdict(2 holy power): 12,000
Exorcism: 24,000 (will go down after the change to mastery)
Judgement: 12,000
Crusader Strike: 13,000
Holy wrath: 11,000 (will go down after the change to mastery)
2 holy power divine storm: 10,000
3 holy power divine storm: 15,000
DoT from seal: 5,000 (though using this is prob not going to happen)
Seal hit: 4,000
White (lvl 83 blue wep): 8,800

Now if you think about things here... Assuming we have 4 paladins...this is what you are looking at
DoT that hits EVERY second for 500-5,000 per (depending on stacks)... you COULD technically tick away 20,000 life on someone who has 5 stacks... but that's not likely to happen and we'll end up using another seal light righteousness or something.

Assuming exorcism gets nerfed in say... half? That's still a 1.5 second cast that does 25% of your opponent's life from afar NON CRIT.

4x Full templar's verdict WILL kill anyone... PERIOD if they crit... and if they don't it's still more than half their life.

So you could technically have something like this happen...

Far exorcism > Judgement> crusader strike> holy wrath> templar's verdict (two-3 white hits in there somewhere)

Crit damage = ~10,000(assuming here)> 12,000> 13,000 > 11,000 > 20,000

Multiplied by 4 = ~40,000 > 46,000 > 52,000 > 44,000 > 80,000 and 2-3 swings for upwards to 10k (assuming 80 starter BS wep) So technically you would have killed one, and templar'd the second and likely killed them too.

Even if you divide those numbers in half (not critting etc, bad luck w/e) its still about 1/2 their life in a global cooldown. + autoattacks and such...the damage is INSANE.



Seeing as it is 5am I should really attempt to sleep... i'll update this more when i get on tomorrow.

All you need to know is... dk+rets = OP as hell.

[Selz]

Happy to see your not gone m8

[Mokoi]

I can see using the heals to heal eachother round-robin style and then the heal aura being a LOT of heals for a 5 DpS group which demolishes anything in melee range. And a silence? good-bye clothies.

[ghonosyph]

Well there are some things I see that are going to change quite a bit, but number one by the end of the first tier people will be rocking close to 175k hps in pvp gear, exorcism is bound to get changed again, lower dmg and you can't really spam it on a target running away.

I really wish they'd change it to castable while mobile lol that would solve some pvp issues, curently its possible for people to run out of range in the time it takes to cast it.

Not sure where you're getting your templars verdict number from but the biggest i've seen mine crit with a 333 ilvl mace was 16 k and my exorcisms were hitting for 12 k with inquisiution up. 25 k crits on exo. But expect that number to fall much lower soon.

That and most of your numbers with inquisition up are too inflated, perhaps you are assuming that all of them were crit values? I know they need to add holy dmg to both crusader strike and templars verdict as well as divine storm if we're really wanting to use it, other wise it ends up just as a dps filler buff that only affects our filler attacks like holy wrath and exo, judge and dot ticks. I hope they change it because unless you,re spamming exo its kinda not worth the 3 hp it takes to put up. It needs to affect all our dps to be worth the holy power spent imo.

Also need to keep in mind that pally rotationa are going thru a lot, and that ALL of these numbers you're crunching are going to change when they do the final number tuning, right now as bliz has stated several dozen times they're main goal right now is to get the mechanics right, worry about numbers later .

You're right tho, pallys are lookin good . Let's just hope we get some defensive help soon because currently we're like a glass cannon in plate lol

[Shodokan]

Well there are some things I see that are going to change quite a bit, but number one by the end of the first tier people will be rocking close to 175k hps in pvp gear, exorcism is bound to get changed again, lower dmg and you can't really spam it on a target running away.

I really wish they'd change it to castable while mobile lol that would solve some pvp issues, curently its possible for people to run out of range in the time it takes to cast it.

Not sure where you're getting your templars verdict number from but the biggest i've seen mine crit with a 333 ilvl mace was 16 k and my exorcisms were hitting for 12 k with inquisiution up. 25 k crits on exo. But expect that number to fall much lower soon.

That and most of your numbers with inquisition up are too inflated, perhaps you are assuming that all of them were crit values? I know they need to add holy dmg to both crusader strike and templars verdict as well as divine storm if we're really wanting to use it, other wise it ends up just as a dps filler buff that only affects our filler attacks like holy wrath and exo, judge and dot ticks. I hope they change it because unless you,re spamming exo its kinda not worth the 3 hp it takes to put up. It needs to affect all our dps to be worth the holy power spent imo.

Also need to keep in mind that pally rotationa are going thru a lot, and that ALL of these numbers you're crunching are going to change when they do the final number tuning, right now as bliz has stated several dozen times they're main goal right now is to get the mechanics right, worry about numbers later .

You're right tho, pallys are lookin good . Let's just hope we get some defensive help soon because currently we're like a glass cannon in plate lol

I did state i was working with all crit numbers. I was working off the numbers for the new sword from tol'barad. Those are all numbers i've seen myself, I'm not saying you aren't right about things being toned down...but at the moment they do stupid high damage. As a single boxer... those numbers are pretty good in my opinion for the work a ret paladin will need to do. But that's just me. (minus the ~30k exorcism hits)

[Fat Tire]

Well there are some things I see that are going to change quite a bit, but number one by the end of the first tier people will be rocking close to 175k hps in pvp gear, exorcism is bound to get changed again, lower dmg and you can't really spam it on a target running away.

I really wish they'd change it to castable while mobile lol that would solve some pvp issues, curently its possible for people to run out of range in the time it takes to cast it.

Not sure where you're getting your templars verdict number from but the biggest i've seen mine crit with a 333 ilvl mace was 16 k and my exorcisms were hitting for 12 k with inquisiution up. 25 k crits on exo. But expect that number to fall much lower soon.

That and most of your numbers with inquisition up are too inflated, perhaps you are assuming that all of them were crit values? I know they need to add holy dmg to both crusader strike and templars verdict as well as divine storm if we're really wanting to use it, other wise it ends up just as a dps filler buff that only affects our filler attacks like holy wrath and exo, judge and dot ticks. I hope they change it because unless you,re spamming exo its kinda not worth the 3 hp it takes to put up. It needs to affect all our dps to be worth the holy power spent imo.

Also need to keep in mind that pally rotationa are going thru a lot, and that ALL of these numbers you're crunching are going to change when they do the final number tuning, right now as bliz has stated several dozen times they're main goal right now is to get the mechanics right, worry about numbers later .

You're right tho, pallys are lookin good . Let's just hope we get some defensive help soon because currently we're like a glass cannon in plate lol

I saw a druid in bear form a few days back that was sitting at 163k health and just had blues at 85. I could see tanks at 200k ++ once the pvp tiers start coming out.

Although lava bursts were hitting for 33-38kish so that was pretty cool, I could see them hitting for 45k once I get better gear.

Edit; I wanted to add that I think the mechanics of the game are for sure going back to a BC style. For pvp this really benefited the muti-boxer since focus fire was so important. Since back then it was really only 4 ele that could burst/blow anyone up. Most 5s back then were drain comps and with mana in cata I could see drain comps coming back in force.
I am wondering if ellay will make a come back to his shamans once cata comes esp with the introduction of rated bgs.

Edit: sorry to shit on your thread shodokan. I cant comment on dk ret since melee boxing wasnt around in BC. I always enjoying theorycrafting though. I could see ret being the s5 version of DKs though. ymmv

[ghonosyph]

Lol I love that sig fattire

Yea unfortunately horde don't have tol barad vendors yet so I'm still using the mace from hoo

[ZooljinX]

Lol I love that sig fattire

Dont fuck with benny the cop :P

This sounds really neat, i really like my paladins in Wotlk hope they will be good to box in Cata, hope holy power wont be to hard to use good..

[Shodokan]

I think that both powerhouse teams are going to be awesome... i also highly think that for BGS that spriest and warlock are going to be a blast... but yeah.

I'm looking forward to paladins and shaman both

[heyaz]

Sweeet. this team could be a real player in battlegrounds, even more so than it is now. It's the only group I've played that I can say for certain I carried BGs with, did well even in WSG, and held my own (at least similar to what a pug would have done) against partial premades or just good groups... and now it's getting stronger. Can't say the same for the shaman, they can be pretty fail in smaller BGs and against any partial or full premade they are shut down so easily and made fools of.