Ret Paladin DPS Benchmarking

[Maxim]

I was hoping I could come here and talk shop with Slayton; I don't need info to justify Retribution Paladins in a raid.

I am a Retribution Paladin and I am currently raiding Sunwell - we've gotten Kalec down and are within spitting distance of dropping Brutallus. What I was hoping to do was open a dialogue to perhaps help push my own DPS over the top to help the raid drop him tomorrow night.

I keep hearing DPS numbers from people about what kind of damage they're pushing, or at least what they're claiming to do, but I never seem to be able to match that in the final WWS. What I'd like to know is what kind of sustained DPS you're getting according to WWS (if you run it), otherwise, what numbers you're looking at with the appropriate mod you're running. I think our gear is *fairly* comparable; you've got some choice pieces which I've not yet been fortunate enough to see drop (DST & ToD).

Maxim's Armory Page

I'm usually rotating Haste Pots & Mana Pots with my potion cooldowns, as well as swapping Librams between the Libram of Avengement and the Libram of Divine Judgment. For consumables, I am using Roast Clefthoof for food, Demonslaying & Major Mageblood Elixirs to max out AP versus Brutallus & longevity of my mana pool. My group makeup varies slightly, but is always a combination of at least one Enhancement Shaman, Fury or MS Warrior, Rogue(s) and myself. Occasionally we have a Feral Druid with us, but more often than not we get the 2nd Enhancement Shaman.

EDIT: What I'm doing for my DPS Rotation is after judging crusader & resealing, I am popping wings & 'Zerker's Call, popping a haste pot, CS -> Exorcism -> Consecrate -> CS -> Judge -> Consecrate etc. The one big thing is when I drop below 50% mana, I stop consecrating as it's not very mana efficient. As far as I can tell, with the 9 sec Judgment I've got damn near 100% SoC uptime, but, I may have missed a few blips here or there where it's not up.

[Krejzol]

Dont use Demonslaying elixir ! Brutallus have too high lvl ... it didnt work ...

[Qum]

[item]9224[/item]

Level of the mob has nothing to do with anything. Please know what the fuck your talking about if your going to post. Thanks!

[Slayton]

Well, I haven't had very many attempts with me in the melee group, right now we have a full melee group, so I just sit in the tank group with windfury. With that said I do ~1300-1500 dps on average (900-1000 without windfury if they are using agi for tanks). You should be able to pull 1600dps in the melee group imo.

As for potions, yes that is the correct choice to make on the boss, however, there is no reason for you to need to chug mana potions. Using a mana potion instead of a haste potion is a huge chunk of lost dps if you can help it.

I don't switch Librams or see a very big gain in dps doing so, I would advise against taking off Libram of Divine Judgment.

Your DPS rotation needs to be feeled out. CS - Judge - CS - CS - Judge - CS - Judge - CS - CS.

Throw your Exorcisms/Consecrations down on your auto attacks when your CS is on cd.

Use your Wings at beginning, right as you have 3 stacks of vengeance, 99% of the time if you pull agro then your tank needs to step it up.

9 sec judgement allows for a forceful more consistent SoComm uptime. So keep that if your having trouble juggling your Auto attacks with your judgments.

One thing I notice when looking at your armory is that your gems are off for maximizing dps. Your chest gems need to be all 10 str, your belt is perfect for meeting meta, your boots need to be +10 str in both sockets, your bracers need +10 str, and again +10 str in the shoulders.

For Crit to be worth more for you then STR you need to reach 5k+ in AP, you wont do that with enough consistency to justify gemming anything other then strength for non-meta gem sockets.

Mongoose is also twice as much dps compared to savagery.

Take all 3 points into precision, the spell hit may not seem like a lot, but thats exorcism resists that are a big mana sink, not to mention first ticks of consecration. Id take points out of benediction if your in T6, you don't need it, as long as wisdom is on the boss, which, it should be.

Sorry for the delayed response, I haven't had a working monitor, but I hope this helps.

-Slayton

[Maxim]

No, thank you for for the advice Slayton, I appreciate it very much.

I guess the reason I always gemmed for Str & Crit is that I always approached it like a staircase in terms of needing AP & Crit, and I always tried to get both equally... it makes sense what you're saying about needing roughly 5k-ish AP Raid buffed and whatnot to start equally gaining Crit & AP, but intuitively I get balance warning bells going off in my head. I mean, how far below 30% crit is really safe to drop to in regemming gear? I am a jewlcrafter so I can stick the +24 AP gem (Currently bugged and giving +32 AP) in my wrists for a little boost... but, again.... if I regem the Shoulders, Boots, and Wristguards, I'm losing 32 crit rating, or about 1.44%

Also, never really thought about minimizing the number of gem slots to eat up the Two Blue/Two Yellow requirement of the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond.... you said I do have it gemmed properly, but would it make more sense to replace the +5 crit/+5 str with a +crit/+sta gem so I could put another +10 str gem in the helm socket as opposed to a crit/sta gem there? I would eventually have to regem the helmet when I picked up a T6 belt though.

EDIT: With my old gear setup, in the melee group & 4 Paladins in the raid (So I managed to get Salv, Kings, Might & Wisdom), I was looking at between 1568 & 1464 on our Consumables Attempts, so I'm hoping to pick that up considerably and hit that 1600-1700 DPS level consistently with regemming/re-enchanting.

Just replaced the gems in the shoulders, and have two more spinels cut and waiting to be socketed, just wanted to run something by you quickly... In your opinion, despite the Set bonus on the Dreadboots being Strength, it is *not* worth keeping the crit gems, even if I'm below 30% crit rating now? Again, this goes back to the whole desire of mine to balance stats to some level.

[Dezzi]

Better yet, re-roll horde and get Seal of Blood.

I find it ironic that Belfs make stronger paladins than Humans do. Imo, Blizzad seriously needs to give SoB to everyone. But that's just me.

[Maxim]

Something else I'm reading while paging back through the EJ Ret DPS Thread.... there are some suggestions that the Lionheart Executioner (Which I still have sitting in my bank atm) is a stronger weapon to use than Soul Cleaver?

Middle of Page 24, Cromfel starts to get into it without taking into account all the different variables in the equation - and granted, this is way beyond my skill in theorycrafting at this juncture.... but on some level it makes sense - Soul Cleaver, yes you're getting 315 static Armor Pen, and you're getting ([65*2]*1.1) = 143 AP, and a top end damage of 579. On the Lionheart Executioner you're getting [2*(52+50)]*1.10 = 224 AP because of the nearly 50% uptime of the proc. I paged through about another 25 pages of the thread, but, not much luck. I mean, this intuitively doesn't make any sense, comparing a T5 weapon and a T6 weapon, but, I suppose because of the Proc and the Expertise difference between the two weapons, the mathcrafting works? As I said, I'm not a huge mathcrafter, so help from someone who can break down the mathcraft and give it to me in bite size chunks would be much appreciated regarding this.

[Res]

I was browsing the forums as I try to get a feel for the guild when I came across this thread.

I don't particularly feel like responding to the OP, but I didn't believe that posting an entirely new topic would be appropriate as a first post in the forum, either.

So, all bullshit aside, could you post the math that you used to find that 5k AP would be necessary to make 10 crit rating (or even 10 agility depending on what socket/socket bonus we're talking about) an inferior gem choice to 10 strength when meta requirements are not an issue?

I don't have a ton of my own math and I don't want to come off as a total douche, but I'm doing well over 1100 in tank group with agi for Brutallus, and found myself capping at just under 1600 in a semi-optimal melee group (There was 1 rogue still, DAMN!). I hit 43% crit in that tank group and sit about 38-39% in a melee group (no feral). My base AP is 1850 before Darkmoon Card: Crusade and I'm using an S3 chest over the mail archimonde chest (which I prefer I'm still unsure), among other things (like a World Breaker, I am largely holy in raids after all, which I won't go into... in this topic).

Also, I'm enjoying executioner in both pve and pvp right now, as executioner seems to be up more often than not. Have you tried it in pve and how would you compare it to mongoose?

EDIT: Forgot to add my gem choices tend to favor crit > ap. Currently holy for Felmyst (as I am usually, to make that clear :p) but the obligatory armory link for the curious: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/chara ... f&n=Wiskey

Guild broke down and realized they needed me Ret for our somewhat unfortunate raiding situation is the reason I bring this up, as I'm currently experimenting to get the best dps I can out of my relatively welfare epics.

Also, you don't seem to like armor pen, for any fight, Slayton. Is this a true observation, would you say, or am I off-base?

[Slayton]

Something else I'm reading while paging back through the EJ Ret DPS Thread.... there are some suggestions that the Lionheart Executioner (Which I still have sitting in my bank atm) is a stronger weapon to use than Soul Cleaver?

Middle of Page 24, Cromfel starts to get into it without taking into account all the different variables in the equation - and granted, this is way beyond my skill in theorycrafting at this juncture.... but on some level it makes sense - Soul Cleaver, yes you're getting 315 static Armor Pen, and you're getting ([65*2]*1.1) = 143 AP, and a top end damage of 579. On the Lionheart Executioner you're getting [2*(52+50)]*1.10 = 224 AP because of the nearly 50% uptime of the proc. I paged through about another 25 pages of the thread, but, not much luck. I mean, this intuitively doesn't make any sense, comparing a T5 weapon and a T6 weapon, but, I suppose because of the Proc and the Expertise difference between the two weapons, the mathcrafting works? As I said, I'm not a huge mathcrafter, so help from someone who can break down the mathcraft and give it to me in bite size chunks would be much appreciated regarding this.

I don't know that much about the Lionheart, but expertise is one of the best stats if not the best for a retadin. 5 expertise + proc (that does make it a bit better then stormherald) could pull it over. Imo, play with both, see which one you feel is better as well. I did that for my enchants, even after mathing them out. Made me feel a lot more comfortable with the choice that I made in the end.

Which brings us to my next answer;

I was browsing the forums as I try to get a feel for the guild when I came across this thread.

I don't particularly feel like responding to the OP, but I didn't believe that posting an entirely new topic would be appropriate as a first post in the forum, either.

So, all bullshit aside, could you post the math that you used to find that 5k AP would be necessary to make 10 crit rating (or even 10 agility depending on what socket/socket bonus we're talking about) an inferior gem choice to 10 strength when meta requirements are not an issue?

I don't have a ton of my own math and I don't want to come off as a total douche, but I'm doing well over 1100 in tank group with agi for Brutallus, and found myself capping at just under 1600 in a semi-optimal melee group (There was 1 rogue still, DAMN!). I hit 43% crit in that tank group and sit about 38-39% in a melee group (no feral). My base AP is 1850 before Darkmoon Card: Crusade and I'm using an S3 chest over the mail archimonde chest (which I prefer I'm still unsure), among other things (like a World Breaker, I am largely holy in raids after all, which I won't go into... in this topic).

Also, I'm enjoying executioner in both pve and pvp right now, as executioner seems to be up more often than not. Have you tried it in pve and how would you compare it to mongoose?

EDIT: Forgot to add my gem choices tend to favor crit > ap. Currently holy for Felmyst (as I am usually, to make that clear :p) but the obligatory armory link for the curious: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/chara ... f&n=Wiskey

Guild broke down and realized they needed me Ret for our somewhat unfortunate raiding situation is the reason I bring this up, as I'm currently experimenting to get the best dps I can out of my relatively welfare epics.

Also, you don't seem to like armor pen, for any fight, Slayton. Is this a true observation, would you say, or am I off-base?

Well Sigurd stated 5k AP. I think it is a bit less, I'm bad at math and all this stuff, but here is what I have;

10 str = 24.2AP = ~1.73dps.


1% crit is 1.03% damage increase for a retadin. (something like that because of meta I'm guessing) Now, 14 AP = 1 dps.

2+2*.1=2.2 (This is with Divine Strength)
2.2 (With Divine Strength) + 2*.1=2.42 (With Kings) = 1 STR

So, 10 str = 24.2AP/14 = 1.73(rounded)dps for your white damage

22 critical strike rating provides 1% critical chance meaning 10 crit rating = .45% crit or so.

So in theory .40% of your dps on your character chart would need to be ~1.73dps for 10 crit rating gems to > 10 str gems.

Mine is 280dps in 1800 AP gear. 432-433dps on your character sheet would indicate that your white damage. With 2400AP it is 332dps meaning another ~4k AP would be the point here Crit > Str/AP. You would need that static, and base. So your dps is close to what it would be with STR gems, but not optimal.

Also, armor penetration;

It only affects 70% of our damage, sure that seems ok. However, this means that in order to have an enough effect on our damage to out weigh other stats (cause it scales like crit) you need Cataclysm Edge and Divine Retribution Legs. No other combination works or you are gimping yourself in other areas. Because of this, and the fact that some bosses don't have armor, some have higher and such, I would just stick with stacking haste.

Executioner does 2 less dps then Mongoose. Not that big of a deal, if you really want to use the same weapon for pvp and pve and don't care about optimization as much then go ahead and use executioner. (or if you have an armor pen setup)

http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/modules.p ... wforum&f=6

Is a good place to look for your theory crafting on retribution, as well as the 120+page thread on EJ.

Hope that helps a bit. And sorry for the long delay on response, taking the time to math this out and write it isn't something I like to do unless I'm bored

[Res]

Hey, I'm surprised you even responded to the dead thread. Kudos.

Okay, so I follow all of that.

I'm assuming if you include Unleashed Rage that strength becomes even more valuable.

The armor pen I only brought up because of my neck. With my only other options being the exalted SSO neck (used it our first night on brutallus and was pretty disappointed in the aldor proc) and vindicator's, I use Serrated Blades and thus have started picking up more armor pen here and there. Using Dory's Embrace over the LW cloak or the ZA cloak and an S3 ring over a (duhm duhm duhm) netherspite ring. Gamebreaking!

Also wondering if you've used maxdps.com. It doesn't seem like they value certain pieces properly. Like the many sets of ret gear changed in the 2.4 patch, for example. And do you generally agree with the itemization spreadsheet from the EJ thread?

Oh, and what I really meant to ask at the beginning!

There's all this talk about DST. I've estimated that I would use it over my Darkmoon Card: Crusade on fights against non demons/undead, but now I'm not sure. I'm also up in the air about Berserker's Call, as I thought it didn't really have a place in PvE when I have the Darkmoon Card and Shard of Contempt.

Do you switch out trinks on fights or pretty much stick with the same two?

And I have been to that link before when I was searching for WWS's of pallies in T6 and read (about half) of the EJ thread. I can't help but think (and in many cases I'm fully aware) a large portion of those people didn't have a clue, though.

[Slayton]

Hey, I'm surprised you even responded to the dead thread. Kudos.

Okay, so I follow all of that.

I'm assuming if you include Unleashed Rage that strength becomes even more valuable.

The armor pen I only brought up because of my neck. With my only other options being the exalted SSO neck (used it our first night on brutallus and was pretty disappointed in the aldor proc) and vindicator's, I use Serrated Blades and thus have started picking up more armor pen here and there. Using Dory's Embrace over the LW cloak or the ZA cloak and an S3 ring over a (duhm duhm duhm) netherspite ring. Gamebreaking!

Also wondering if you've used maxdps.com. It doesn't seem like they value certain pieces properly. Like the many sets of ret gear changed in the 2.4 patch, for example. And do you generally agree with the itemization spreadsheet from the EJ thread?

Oh, and what I really meant to ask at the beginning!

There's all this talk about DST. I've estimated that I would use it over my Darkmoon Card: Crusade on fights against non demons/undead, but now I'm not sure. I'm also up in the air about Berserker's Call, as I thought it didn't really have a place in PvE when I have the Darkmoon Card and Shard of Contempt.

Do you switch out trinks on fights or pretty much stick with the same two?

And I have been to that link before when I was searching for WWS's of pallies in T6 and read (about half) of the EJ thread. I can't help but think (and in many cases I'm fully aware) a large portion of those people didn't have a clue, though.

Maxdps.com has many errors, in fact, quite a few, enough to tilt the dps charts calculations its doing and tell you the wrong item

DM:C and Shard are the best trinkets, hand down. On certain fights like Supremus and such a DST or Beserkers call would be better. I switch out trinkets, I use a DST if we are doing those kinds of fights where DM:C isn't as good.

The best spreed sheet I've seen so far is the one posted in the EJ thread. It is accurate and solely focused on retribution. Shame though they don't have my polearm in there. I really want to see the effect losing -1.25% dodge compared to the polearm is, but I don't trust anything else 100%. So I will wait and see I guess.

[Maxim]

Once again, thanks for the advice Slayton.

My own tests indicate that Lionheart *crushed* Soul Cleaver in terms of total DPS output, on Brutallus, Gorefiend, and Akama.

Don't have the WWS links handy anymore, but looking at one week on Brutallus w/ a similar group comp/group buffs, Lionheart did a substantial amount more DPS. Best Shots with Soul Cleaver on a Brut long attempt were in the range of 1500-ish, LE was closer to 1700 across the board on full buff/full consumable attempts.

Will be testing the difference in Vengeful Gladiator's vs Lionheart under similar conditions, as well as swapping DM: C in for Berserker's Call.

Hopefully soon can test with a ToD & DST.