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.

[Zub]

163K hp on bear tank in blues >.< that's 6-7 times more than a similar geared bear in Wotlk.
What will it be by the time they release Exp4 .. 1M hp i guess

i can see it coming already:
- "nub don't queue for heroics when you only have 1.2M hp!" *leaves"

[Altsoba]

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 :)

That's where my hesitation resides if I'm coming back to Cata, what to level first:

Tank+4 Shaman
or
DK+4 Pala

You see any pros and cons if you had to compare them as far as your Beta experience goes?
I mean among other things, instance survivability too.

Thank you and great work on this thread mate.

A.

[Noids]

Yeah I agree, paladins are looking nice. Not even sure if you need the DK any more either. DK was mainly there for the death grip and easy snare and the 10% AP buf and 20% melee haste which is no longer possible. Long arm of the Law talent gives a 50% run speed boost after using a Judgement which means we shouldn't really have too much trouble catching kiters. There are no more of the stupid 30% dmg reduction when stunned talents which means that with 5 Hammers of Justice you can sprint to and lock any target down in melee range with ease (except maybe mages and hunters).

The other neat thing is the instant aoe HoT skill which although on 1min CD will be pretty handy from a situational point of view. The other addition to our healing/ranged dmg armory is Holy Shock. I didn't see too much mention of this stuff Shodo and as I am only really reading about it on mmo-champ, I'm interested to hear if it is actually proving useful at all in Beta?

Cheers

PS: Forgot to say, in planning my combos for Cata, I am very keen to get a heal debuffer into the team also. I feel this has always been a weak point of the pally/shammy combos and would be interested on what others think. With the bigger health pools in Cata I think the heal debuff (although reduced to 25%) will be even more powerful. I sort of like the idea of having a warrior leading my team of pally's given they have a nice set of melee buffs as well as in combat charge and the new leap skill etc and possibly shadow priest to lead my shammies.

[ghonosyph]

Holy shock is holy only, and the dk provides some healing de buffery in necrotic strike. Overall I think it would probably be stronger to run 2 dk and 3 pally but time will tell :)

[Fat Tire]

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.

Question for you.

How big of factor do you think the loss of cleanse is for this team?

Edit: For all you DK-Ret fans here is a video of DK's Dark simulacrum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bcWny7Gw2Y

[Mosg2]

Dark Simulacrum looks insane. Can you imagine x4?

[Shodokan]

Dark Simulacrum looks insane. Can you imagine x4?

Why take it x4? The uses are very limitless but it's on a 1 min cooldown. Unlike spell reflect though it does not do the damage back it does to you, it uses your coefficients.

For raiding you can go dual-wield and end up with...
Seal + 2x wind fury on weps + your normal crap.... pulls like 18k on dummy (tested by a friend of mine) rediculous.

[Mosg2]

Is Hand of Glory still off the GCD?

[Noids]

Holy shock is holy only, and the dk provides some healing de buffery in necrotic strike. Overall I think it would probably be stronger to run 2 dk and 3 pally but time will tell :)

Ahh righto, I thought I read somewhere early on they were going to be making it a base skill. Thinking back that was probably prior to the whole 31 point talent tree change that included giving a spec defining skill once you start allocating points.

I thought initially that necrotic strike looked interesting for the healing absorb aspect, but when I started applying it to estimated numbers I thought it looked fairly weak next to the mortal strike type abilities. The other thing I have tried recently is running a MM hunter as my main and sending the 4 rets in like uber pets. Quite an interesting play style and a fair bit different to what I have tried before with either pure melee or ranged teams. I like the MM hunter for the 10% AP buff, healing debuff but also chimera shot healing 15% for the hunter every 6 seconds should make them fairly hardy I would think.

Do you find the AoE HoT for the pallies useful at all or does the 1min cooldown make it fairly situational?

[Mosg2]

Hmmm. I'm trying to figure out if a DK or a Warrior would be better to lead the Rets with in Cata. With the nerf to Chains of Ice all the DK brings that the Warrior doesn't trump is Death Grip. Charge/Intercept and Improved Hamstring I think are better in the sense that they allow the Warrior to stick on a target better.

What do you all think?

Edit: Ebon Plaguebringer is a not-insignificant amount of damage that the DK would add vice the Warrior. The 4% increase to physical damage that the Warrior adds just isn't even close. In any case, discuss!

[roflstomp]

so it wasnt a waste of my time lvling my dk rets woot

[Noids]

Hmmm. I'm trying to figure out if a DK or a Warrior would be better to lead the Rets with in Cata. With the nerf to Chains of Ice all the DK brings that the Warrior doesn't trump is Death Grip. Charge/Intercept and Improved Hamstring I think are better in the sense that they allow the Warrior to stick on a target better.

What do you all think?

Edit: Ebon Plaguebringer is a not-insignificant amount of damage that the DK would add vice the Warrior. The 4% increase to physical damage that the Warrior adds just isn't even close. In any case, discuss!

You could grab rampage with the warrior I guess for 5% crit in a fury build. Not qute the utility of Arms with stuns and charge, but improved intercept, self heals and potentially higher single target burst?

Its funny but I had never really considered ebon plaguebringer for rets before given the 10% AP and 20% melee haste were buffs you could get in the same build. I think the 10% AP buff from blood would still probably trump EP for dps boost overall though.

[Mosg2]

Well in Cata Blood won't work because it's a tanking spec. So Frost gives you 20% haste for the party, Unholy gives you 8% magic damage, Arms would give you 4% physical damage and Fury would give you 5% crit.

Mmmmm. I think the MS effect is going to be worth more for PvP, BG's or Arenas, than either of the DK buffs. Thoughts?

[Fat Tire]

Well in Cata Blood won't work because it's a tanking spec. So Frost gives you 20% haste for the party, Unholy gives you 8% magic damage, Arms would give you 4% physical damage and Fury would give you 5% crit.

Mmmmm. I think the MS effect is going to be worth more for PvP, BG's or Arenas, than either of the DK buffs. Thoughts?


Heroic Leap (http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/6544/) now has a 8-40 yards range, up from 8-25 yards.


40 yard range-holy shit! warriors, come out and playyyyyyyyyy

[ghonosyph]

Lol yea I might level warriors now just to see 4 of them leaping through the air lol. Now to comment on the so called nerf to chains of ice, its not really. It works great how it is now! The aoe hot works well, and I can see it being good with firing it off two at a time per ret to give a good chunk of heal buffer, and of course I can see it working well also poppin it * 4 and popping all cooldowns to try and burst zerg someone down quick. I think I may end up going holy on my pallys for an offensive style holy shock build for bgs given how fun holy is to play now, but I'm still on the fence on that for now

[Mosg2]

I'm completely unimpressed with Heroic Leap. If you're boxing War+Rets you don't really want your Warrior 40 yards away while the Rets run to catch up, even with the 45% run speed increase once they Judge.

I'm most interested in MS and party buffs.

[Fat Tire]

I'm completely unimpressed with Heroic Leap. If you're boxing War+Rets you don't really want your Warrior 40 yards away while the Rets run to catch up, even with the 45% run speed increase once they Judge.

I'm most interested in MS and party buffs.

well go with a hunter- MS and they get blood lust now. :D With Aspect of the fox (wohoo!) and the slower pace of the game I might go back to my old 3s hunter team.

[Mosg2]

Mmmmm I guess that's something to consider. I guess you lose your snare though. Hmmm. The playstyle would be totally different though.

I'm not saying I'm anti-Warrior for this team, just that Heroic Leap is nothing special imo~.

[Fat Tire]

Mmmmm I guess that's something to consider. I guess you lose your snare though. Hmmm. The playstyle would be totally different though.

I'm not saying I'm anti-Warrior for this team, just that Heroic Leap is nothing special imo~.


I am with ya, its a 2 min cd on leap anyways, but for a solo war it will be fun.

Edit: in my own personal opinion casters/range will rule rated bgs- Unless you are the tank or druid flag carrier along with your 2-3 healers, melee are just going to be mass CC'd to keep their fc moving along unabated. In twin peaks* cata wsg its sooo much wider than the wsg of today.

Dont say shaman fc anymore GW got nerfed to 30% atm

[Mosg2]

I don't know man. If you look at the killing potential of melee vs casters in general for BG's I think the melee is just plain going to win out. Shrug.

[Fat Tire]

I don't know man. If you look at the killing potential of melee vs casters in general for BG's I think the melee is just plain going to win out. Shrug.

If only killing mattered in Bgs. I have held the mine node in AB on my druid solo for 3 mins against 5 opposing players and I didnt kill a single one. I like to think that I helped win that game. Just moonfire the clicker and run (heal) run back and moonfire/hurricane the clicker/s, rinse repeat until help arrived. Even though I died when help did finally arrive ><

I must have missed it where melee were better killers than range in bgs. The only Bg where killing matters is the fc in wsg. You can win all the Bgs conceivability without killing anyone.

If your talking about just yourself boxing, then thats cool, but that is a pretty generalized statement. I am not saying you wrong, however. (dont wanna start any dramalama) :cool:

[Shodokan]

Hmmm. I'm trying to figure out if a DK or a Warrior would be better to lead the Rets with in Cata. With the nerf to Chains of Ice all the DK brings that the Warrior doesn't trump is Death Grip. Charge/Intercept and Improved Hamstring I think are better in the sense that they allow the Warrior to stick on a target better.

What do you all think?

Edit: Ebon Plaguebringer is a not-insignificant amount of damage that the DK would add vice the Warrior. The 4% increase to physical damage that the Warrior adds just isn't even close. In any case, discuss!
Frost
1. The sheer amount of burst potential from a deathknight roatation is scary... 3x frost strikes + 3x obliterates HURTS.
2. It has anti-fear so even when your paladins are ya know...feared you can continue with some pressure.
3. Lichborne = ability to heal oneself with deathcoils
4. Howling blast no longer has a cooldown
5. Pillars of ice = not able to be thunderstormed, knocked down etc.
6. 50% snare for 10 seconds AFTER chains is over.
7. 20% increased attack speed for paladins
8. Can use desecration as a 50% snare on the ground near you.
9. 4% increased physical damage taken.
10. Hungering cold.



Unholy
1. Again... the burst of say 6 scourge strikes in a row HURTS. The main attack also puts down desecration.
2. It has anti-fear so even when your paladins are ya know...feared you can continue with some pressure.
3. Lichborne = ability to heal oneself with deathcoils
4. Desecration = AOE snare
5. Autoattacks can make you get free death coils (more damage)
6. Summon gargoyle does a pretty significant amount of damage
7. Anti-Magic Zone = lol @ boxing shaman... or any caster.
8. Unholy blight makes it so you can keep pressure on someone who you aren't attacking via pestilence + death coil.
9. Pet + pet stun + Damage if you transform it
10. 8% extra damage from your paladins since holy = magic damage
11. Autoattacks hit harder due to 30% of the overall damage being added and done as shadow. With the new rune system this is kind of important especially since your autoattacks don't generate runic power unlike with frost.
12. 15% extra str = more ap = takes longer to heal through necrotic strike + damage to autoattacks and such.



All death knights
1. Chains of ice (yes it got the nerf bat but it's still good)
2. Death grip
3. Ranged silence
4. Interupt.
5. Anti-healing strike
6. Strike to make diseases last longer.
7. its a freaking deathknight.
8. anti-magic shell (helpful)
9. Defensive cooldown (icebound fort)
10. dark simulacrum (at least as of now you can steal seals... so duel one of your paladins and give him the seal before doing arena bgs or w/e)
11. Pet sac to get life back in a tight spot
12. Runic empowerment: When you use your Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike ability, you have a 45% chance to activate a random fully depleted rune.


Arms warrior
1. Mortal strike
2. Colossal smash
3. Throwdown
4. Charge, intercept... and talented charge hits multiple targets
5. Gets 6% extra healing
6. Overpower does a lot of damage and with your bleed on them you get it every 6 seconds.
7. 4% increased physical damage taken when under a bleed effect
8. Extra damage executes etc after mortal strike.
9. AOE fear.
10. BLADESTORM

__________________________________________________ _____________________________

They are both great classes... but i feel that the frost deathknight brings the most to the table.

1. 20% haste to paladins (yes please)
2. >110% weapon damage as frost attacks (frost strike) and can string up to 3 of these together
3. reliable runic power, dont need to keep track of random procs as much unlike the autoattack proc from unholy.
4. Obliterate talented and glyphed does [(1.6 x weapon damage + 1054) (.30)] (.25) = ~ 2.8x weapon damage + ~2500
5. Hungering cold!
6. Anti-imparement and such
7. THREE snares.... chibilians, desecration AND chains of ice.

The damage of a frost strike is more than double that of a death coil... so yeah. Utility wise i think frost is better, especially now that it can get desecration if you really need it from plague strike.

Frost > Unholy > Warrior IMO. But it all depends on how you play. The DK is FAR more benificial to the group and has better survivability since you won't be intervening healers and such and you are better off pulling stuff TO you or slowing it reliably than spamming attacks to do so.

Frost

[Mosg2]

@Fat Tire:
I do understand that killing isn't everything but at the same time I think you're post comes across like you're underestimating it. Yes, smart play can be/often is better than just plain killing but smart play+being able to steamroll through people is better imo~. /shrug

@Shodokan:
I appreciate the points you make. I'm going to continue to think about this :) The MS effect is pretty huge.

[Shodokan]

@Fat Tire:
I do understand that killing isn't everything but at the same time I think you're post comes across like you're underestimating it. Yes, smart play can be/often is better than just plain killing but smart play+being able to steamroll through people is better imo~. /shrug

@Shodokan:
I appreciate the points you make. I'm going to continue to think about this :) The MS effect is pretty huge.

If mortal strike is pushing you to play a warrior, then you are concerned about out-damaging a healer when you output up to 120k in a single hit and most "special" attack doing upwards to 50 or 60k per button press.... There is no way a healer can keep up with that in cata unless there is multiple healers. So the mortal strike becomes a moot point and the utility you get otherwise becomes more worth while.

The damage from an empowered pet = awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-aaAOEMeSE

[ghonosyph]

remember, damage numbers are NOT yet tuned... blizzard's stated that several times already. The damage may seem awesome but the tuning phase of beta is still yet to come.

As for the MS debate, i think that health pools are going to be much larger than what we're thinking, mana will matter much more to healers as it is now, and being able to stress the healers by makin heals less powerful via MS = straining mana. Now we're not for sure gonna know until we get farther into beta, the numbers get tuned, and we see some of the first pvp gear. Mana matters a TON right now... it will continue to. Will our burst be able to keep up? Yes, it will in pve gear... where crit actually makes a damn. In pvp, our crit will get reduced and will be much less valuable due to the resilience reductions. As well crit rating is kinda bleh, as in we need a ton of crit, as the values got reduced due to level ranges... thats all a moot point tho, that gets fixed with gear over time.

[Shodokan]

remember, damage numbers are NOT yet tuned... blizzard's stated that several times already. The damage may seem awesome but the tuning phase of beta is still yet to come.

As for the MS debate, i think that health pools are going to be much larger than what we're thinking, mana will matter much more to healers as it is now, and being able to stress the healers by makin heals less powerful via MS = straining mana. Now we're not for sure gonna know until we get farther into beta, the numbers get tuned, and we see some of the first pvp gear. Mana matters a TON right now... it will continue to. Will our burst be able to keep up? Yes, it will in pve gear... where crit actually makes a damn. In pvp, our crit will get reduced and will be much less valuable due to the resilience reductions. As well crit rating is kinda bleh, as in we need a ton of crit, as the values got reduced due to level ranges... thats all a moot point tho, that gets fixed with gear over time.

The planned release date is november 23rd... the beta isn't THAT much longer. Yes there will be tuning, but as blizzard stated... MOST classes they are decently happy with. Yes resil will take some damage off, but it won't reduce our crit chance anymore only overall damage taken. The amount of damage being done will strain healers enough IMO. With the nerf to exorcism in this past patch it seems like it is at a decent place now... and with gear will still be hitting for upwards to 20 to 25k.

Also keep in mind that the bonus from t11 2 piece will be a requirement IMO for PVP. 10% extra damage makes it do a total of like 250% wep damage. Large increase.

[ghonosyph]

dk is almost a must at this point, given they've fixed sanctity of battle = 20 % haste = faster crusader strikes = faster to 3 holy power for big dmg. i did some dungeons as dps just a little bit ago, and i'm still not pulling higher than 5 or 6 k dps, and in the same gear my dk does about 11k... not fair TUNE BETTER BLIXZZZOIMOMGOMGOMG lol

[Noids]

I'm not convinced about writing off a blood DK build for PvP. Sure it is not going to put out sustained dps like the other two specs, but PvP is not about sustained dps, its about burst. Blood has always been good for burst and with improved death strike and DRW it s still going to be good. The only trade off is that you will have huge survivability and miss out on a couple of the spec related snares. As a bonus, if anyone actually decides to attack you, you will start to generate stacks of vengeance which will put your damage on par with any of the dps classes. Again, all theorycraft here, but would be cool if one of you guys in Beta could look into it ;)

[ghonosyph]

no, blood will only be good for tanking dmg, and most arena'ers wont be going for him anyway. Vengeance wont stack that much, and its not going to be "on par" with any dps, it will do a decent bit of sustained dmg but nothing like the new dps can do :)

[Shodokan]

New mastery...

Hand of Light: Your autoattacks have a 8% chance to grant Hand of Light, causing your next Holy Power ability to consume no Holy Power and to cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed. Each point of Mastery increases the chance by an additional 1%.

Tested boxing on the PTR...

Unless you are hitting with TV... you do like no damage.

[Sephice]

The Problem of a Retri Team you can see here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSr7h_pjxs&feature=related

The Retri part start with 1:05

Running with a 2h Hammer but a good Player can run away ^^

Or Dalaran Arena, a good kick and you have a big Problem

[Eloxy]

the problem of a retri team you can see here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wsr7h_pjxs&feature=related

running with a 2h hammer but a good player can run away ^^

or dalaran arena, a good kick and you have a big problem


wtf was that

[Toned]

43rd !

[Barazanthul]

WTF Sephice

i think such videos are ment to be forgotten ..... but it fits :D

[outdrsyguy1]

there must have been a nerf, i played on my 85 paladin w/ 85 blue handout weapon and I was getting no where near any of the numbers posted in the beginning. Shaman seemed slightly better and DK seemed kinda OP. might have to spend the rest of wotlk leveling my other dk's :(. If only dk's could bubble!
Needing 3 holy power really slows down paladin burst, having to build up and then decide on dps vs heal for using it sucks. We will see how beta progresses, but I may end up a sad panda with regards to pally's.

[Shodokan]

there must have been a nerf, i played on my 85 paladin w/ 85 blue handout weapon and I was getting no where near any of the numbers posted in the beginning. Shaman seemed slightly better and DK seemed kinda OP. might have to spend the rest of wotlk leveling my other dk's :(. If only dk's could bubble!
Needing 3 holy power really slows down paladin burst, having to build up and then decide on dps vs heal for using it sucks. We will see how beta progresses, but I may end up a sad panda with regards to pally's.

Yep, there was a huge nerf. It made me sad.

[Altsoba]

And for those able to try it, how good was this boost?

Retribution

Crusader Strike (http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/35395/) now causes 120% weapon damage, up from 100%.
Selfless Healer (http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/85804/) now increases the effectiveness of Word of Glory's heal by 25/50% when used on others.
The Art of War (http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/87138/) now causes 100% additional damage, up from 30%.

[Mosg2]

Those damage buffs are nice but you're losing 25% of your healing from Selfless Healer I believe.

[Shodokan]

Those buffs/nerfs don't matter too much IMO. Ret is way too proc based to be effective since the mastery change.

[Mosg2]

I hesitate to call it threadomancy, but...

How does everyone who has a 4x Ret team feel about them post 4.0? I've played mine a fair bit and here are my comments:

1. It seems like it's pretty easy to set up a good one-button DPS system. This is a plus--The DPS loss from /stopcasting isn't too terrible.

2. Healing has become much more binary. 4x Word of Glory is worth like, 50k healing on my team without crits. You can't do it quite as often as the old Art of War but the throughput is insane.

Anyone have more experience to add?

[remanz]

Well, I played quite a bit with my rets.

The good:

The burst is up from pre 4.0. Mainly due to we are able to throw hammers with wings. But I don't think this burst offsets the resilience and HP buff. TV hits really hard. I have yet to find a good way to sync 4 (3 holy powered) TV together. At level 80, landing those 4 TV together will mean death to any class. Judgement has a longer range now. So we get some damage while being kited.

The bad:

Pretty much anything defensive and healing. We are the suicide squat now. Kinda like arm warrior. Divine storm is not worth using anymore. and Missing that "free heal from attack" is quite large. Stand there and heal or use WOG mean less damage. Art of war procs a lot less. And it rarely procs together on all 4. Again, I have no good way to sync exorcism. All my defensive stuff are gone. No sacred shield. No sacrifice. Bubble shorter duration.

Conclusion:

Hate to admit. But I only got one way to beat someone in arena. That is to global a target right off the bat. In order to do that, I have to sync my attacks. Unlike shamans + healer, I don't have the staying power to hange with a group of 5 individual players.

[Zappy]

I've noticed it's a heck of a lot harder in heroics now, part of that is my DK needs better avoidance as I see he's taking crushing blows all the time now. 50k HP and gets melted rather quickly. I only did a few instances yesterday FoS, PoS, and old kingdom. On PoS, I wiped badly on the final boss as my tank got melted in what seemed like 3 hits.

My pallies DPS has gone down from ~6k on the target dummies to ~2.5k, so I know I have a lot of work to get my macros optomized, but I think even after better macros, I don't think they'll ever push 6k dps again @ 80. What's really sad is that I ran a heroic with my 5 shammys and it was so much smoother and easier. Both teams have the same gear (1800 pvp gear).

I really need to figure out a way to put zealotry and avenging wrath in a some sort of nuking macro as you can cast crusader strike, templar's verdict, hammer of wrath in a nice sequence.

Are there any addons that can show you the holy power in raid frames?

[remanz]

Are there any addons that can show you the holy power in raid frames?


Not that I know of yet. If someone know please. Or maybe Jamba would be nice enough to add it. HP is like combo points. If a raid / party frame is capable of showing combo points, it should be able to show HP as well.

Right now, I am just guessing it. "Oh, I 've been spamming CS for a while now. Let me spam the TV key". and some pallies got 3 HP, some got 2 HP. It is not in sync. 2.5k is low though. Do you have Holy Wrath in your rotation ? It hits normal non-undead now.

edit: the opt rotation seems to be

TV (3HP) > HoW > CS > Ex > Judge > HW > Cons

[Zappy]

I screwed around with this team for a while last night. Reglyphed and respec'd slightly and a few interesting things I found:

by using:

/castsequence .......
/cast Exorcism
/cast Hammer of Wrath
/stopcasting

vs

/castsequence ......exorcism....
/cast Hammer of Wrath


My dps was about 500 higher on the lateral one. Watching jamba, I was missing a few free procs of exorcism, but one big difference I noticed is when popping wings. Hammer of Wrath would only fire if you had a free exorcism up, so between losing Hammer of Wrath and resetting the swing timer, I'm convinced th second macro is a little better. In this scenerio, the 2nd macro added ~2k dps while wings was active.

I'll have to dig up the huge castsequence I created last night, but it's something along the lines of:
/castsequence reset=combat Judgement, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Templar's Verdict, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Judgement, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Templar's Verdict, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Templar's Verdict, Exorcism, Holy Wrath

Then with each paladin, I move the divine storm further in the sequence, so that each rotation I have 3 doing Templar's Verdict, and one casting Divine Storm. After running a few heroics, I noticed that I rarely ever had to heal my paladins, and now on the boss fights, I was seeing ~6.5k DPS. By watching jamba procs, almost every time that it got to the exorcism in the cast sequence, it was a free/instant cast.

Now if I could find a good way to put Zeolotry in all of it some way.

[Multibocks]

I've noticed it's a heck of a lot harder in heroics now, part of that is my DK needs better avoidance as I see he's taking crushing blows all the time now. 50k HP and gets melted rather quickly. I only did a few instances yesterday FoS, PoS, and old kingdom. On PoS, I wiped badly on the final boss as my tank got melted in what seemed like 3 hits.

My pallies DPS has gone down from ~6k on the target dummies to ~2.5k, so I know I have a lot of work to get my macros optomized, but I think even after better macros, I don't think they'll ever push 6k dps again @ 80. What's really sad is that I ran a heroic with my 5 shammys and it was so much smoother and easier. Both teams have the same gear (1800 pvp gear).

I really need to figure out a way to put zealotry and avenging wrath in a some sort of nuking macro as you can cast crusader strike, templar's verdict, hammer of wrath in a nice sequence.

Are there any addons that can show you the holy power in raid frames?

Crushing blows? I thought those only happened if mob was more than three levels above you or you weren't crit immune. Are you spec'd for tanking?

[Zappy]

Crushing blows? I thought those only happened if mob was more than three levels above you or you weren't crit immune. Are you spec'd for tanking?

Spec'd for tanking, however it was late, so there's a chance that i was facing the mob. I know if you're not facing the mob, all bets are off.

[remanz]

I screwed around with this team for a while last night. Reglyphed and respec'd slightly and a few interesting things I found:

by using:

/castsequence .......
/cast Exorcism
/cast Hammer of Wrath
/stopcasting

vs

/castsequence ......exorcism....
/cast Hammer of Wrath


My dps was about 500 higher on the lateral one. Watching jamba, I was missing a few free procs of exorcism, but one big difference I noticed is when popping wings. Hammer of Wrath would only fire if you had a free exorcism up, so between losing Hammer of Wrath and resetting the swing timer, I'm convinced th second macro is a little better. In this scenerio, the 2nd macro added ~2k dps while wings was active.

I'll have to dig up the huge castsequence I created last night, but it's something along the lines of:
/castsequence reset=combat Judgement, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Templar's Verdict, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Judgement, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Templar's Verdict, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Templar's Verdict, Exorcism, Holy Wrath

Then with each paladin, I move the divine storm further in the sequence, so that each rotation I have 3 doing Templar's Verdict, and one casting Divine Storm. After running a few heroics, I noticed that I rarely ever had to heal my paladins, and now on the boss fights, I was seeing ~6.5k DPS. By watching jamba procs, almost every time that it got to the exorcism in the cast sequence, it was a free/instant cast.

Now if I could find a good way to put Zeolotry in all of it some way.

Good stuff Zappy. I will try to put everything into castsequence instead of just guessing the TVs.
But with Ex in it. Wouldn't it be kind of risky ? If it gets to exorcism, and you don't have art of war. It will start to cast. And if you move, you lose the cast. Now you are stuck with exorcism until you can get it out. Just a thought.

Oh and I tried the scourge lord too last night in POS. He hits super hard now. Pre 4.0, I can just eat the forceful smash after he bounces me away. Now I have to run, and kite him a little bit. Pre 4.0 was easy for us because we can rotate divine sacrifice when Rimefang marks one of my paladins. Now I have to move them individually. Combined with DK getting murdered, this fight is not that easy anymore.

Start with army of dead. and burn all wings in the beginning. With some luck on kiting, I got through with 1 paladin and dk alive at the end. Also, somehow I could not see the ice patches on the ground. Walk into it means death for sure.

[remanz]

I don't know guys. I might be throwing in the towel with dk + rets. Or at least not leveling them first for the initial PVP race. Played a bunch of bgs last night. It is kind of discouraging.

no cleanse, no kill. 1 frost mage can kite my team forever. and there is not much I can do about it. and without defensive skills, I am just sitting there and getting nuked (at least arm warrior get to spin). I am no longer face rolling. Burst doesn't mean much when I can't touch them.

[Firstcow]

I don't know guys. I might be throwing in the towel with dk + rets. Or at least not leveling them first for the initial PVP race. Played a bunch of bgs last night. It is kind of discouraging.

no cleanse, no kill. 1 frost mage can kite my team forever. and there is not much I can do about it. and without defensive skills, I am just sitting there and getting nuked (at least arm warrior get to spin). I am no longer face rolling. Burst doesn't mean much when I can't touch them.

Can you elaborate a little? Can't you deathgrip the mage after he blinks? And what about chains of ice?

[heyaz]

i don't know how you could accomplish much without cleanse anymore.. I had to spam it constantly against frost mages and a lot of other classes, not only to prevent kiting, but to recover from fearbombs and dots everywhere.

[remanz]

Can you elaborate a little? Can't you deathgrip the mage after he blinks? And what about chains of ice?

Just got back from Blizzcon.

I was laughing so hard when GC said his habit included nerfing paladins.

ANyway. The mage has so many tools to kite melees. Without cleanse, it is just a nightmare. The mage can start with the pet range nova. and simply go from there. Deathgrip is only 1 skill. He has like 3 novas. and obviously, if I am just 5 v 1 mage, I can simply exorcism him to death. But that is rarely the case in BG, combined with warlock, hunter, priest, and of cuz , the unkillable holy paladin. I am not killing anyone.

[Firstcow]

Just got back from Blizzcon.

I was laughing so hard when GC said his habit included nerfing paladins.

ANyway. The mage has so many tools to kite melees. Without cleanse, it is just a nightmare. The mage can start with the pet range nova. and simply go from there. Deathgrip is only 1 skill. He has like 3 novas. and obviously, if I am just 5 v 1 mage, I can simply exorcism him to death. But that is rarely the case in BG, combined with warlock, hunter, priest, and of cuz , the unkillable holy paladin. I am not killing anyone.

Looks like I will need to resub to take on the dk+rets challenge again :) Now if the wife wouldn't threaten to cut my balls...

[Zappy]

Here's a new idea for the DK/4 paladin teams, and this one is a little outside the box.

Unfortunately, all my gear is ret gear atm, but I'm seriously considering making 4 shockadins. Shockadins look to be back since 4.0.1, so I'm gonna respec soon and give this a go in some instances hopefully tonight. If you're confused on shockadins, some good info here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Shockadins

After taking a good look at the holy tree, I'm thinking this might be exactly what our team needs.

Here's gonna be some of the key talents that'll make this viable:

* Protector of the innocent. Whenever you cast a heal on any target, you'll be healing all 4 of your paladins as well.
* Blazing Light (20% increased damage on Holy Shock and Exorcism).
* Denounce (75% mana reduction on excorcism, but 50% chance to have exorcism instant and no mana when casting holy shock) -- This is basically your art of war proc, except it'll proc from your main abililty -- holy shock
* Enlightened Judgements - increase range by 10 yards of judgements ** and ** instantly heals you for 2915.
* Beacon of Light..... OMFG... Now this talent has some serious goodness when boxed. "The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all members of your party *or* raid. Each heal you cast on any party or raid member, heals the beacon for 50% of amount healed." At this point, we'll have 4 of our guys with a beacon on them at all times. A nice piece of this is that it's not just party - it's raid, so it'll work in bgs just fine when we are split up, so everytime you cast a heal, you'll be healing 4 of your guys at once.
* Sacred Cleansing - Another awesome one.. Everybody crying about not having cleanse... Here's your answer to that one - "Your Cleanse spell now also dispels 1 Magic effect."
* Paragon of Virtue - Reduced CD of Avenging Wrath by 60 seconds, and Hand of Sacrafice by 30 seconds.
* Aura Mastery -- with 4 paladins, you'll have 16 seconds of no silence or interrupt effects.

I think the 5 optional talents would best be spent in crusade (30% increased damage to holy shock) and Improved Judgements - This stacks with Enlightened Judgements - so we'll have 40 yard judgements, however I'm not sure that judgements will do enough damage to justify it.

[Mosg2]

I saw a post or two about this. I'm interested in seeing how it goes but I'm not interested in grinding BG's to see if it works with gear :)

Maybe I'll go take another look tonight and see how much honor my guys have.

[remanz]

Here's a new idea for the DK/4 paladin teams, and this one is a little outside the box.

Unfortunately, all my gear is ret gear atm, but I'm seriously considering making 4 shockadins. Shockadins look to be back since 4.0.1, so I'm gonna respec soon and give this a go in some instances hopefully tonight. If you're confused on shockadins, some good info here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Shockadins

After taking a good look at the holy tree, I'm thinking this might be exactly what our team needs.

Here's gonna be some of the key talents that'll make this viable:

* Protector of the innocent. Whenever you cast a heal on any target, you'll be healing all 4 of your paladins as well.
* Blazing Light (20% increased damage on Holy Shock and Exorcism).
* Denounce (75% mana reduction on excorcism, but 50% chance to have exorcism instant and no mana when casting holy shock) -- This is basically your art of war proc, except it'll proc from your main abililty -- holy shock
* Enlightened Judgements - increase range by 10 yards of judgements ** and ** instantly heals you for 2915.
* Beacon of Light..... OMFG... Now this talent has some serious goodness when boxed. "The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all members of your party *or* raid. Each heal you cast on any party or raid member, heals the beacon for 50% of amount healed." At this point, we'll have 4 of our guys with a beacon on them at all times. A nice piece of this is that it's not just party - it's raid, so it'll work in bgs just fine when we are split up, so everytime you cast a heal, you'll be healing 4 of your guys at once.
* Sacred Cleansing - Another awesome one.. Everybody crying about not having cleanse... Here's your answer to that one - "Your Cleanse spell now also dispels 1 Magic effect."
* Paragon of Virtue - Reduced CD of Avenging Wrath by 60 seconds, and Hand of Sacrafice by 30 seconds.
* Aura Mastery -- with 4 paladins, you'll have 16 seconds of no silence or interrupt effects.

I think the 5 optional talents would best be spent in crusade (30% increased damage to holy shock) and Improved Judgements - This stacks with Enlightened Judgements - so we'll have 40 yard judgements, however I'm not sure that judgements will do enough damage to justify it.

Hmmmm, Shockadin, didn't someone already try them in BGs ? Insane surivial, but lack firepower to kill. It seems a little goofy to me. I have to test the firepower to decide. But we don't need the DK anymore, don't we, if we go holy. We become a gimped shaman team with better healing.

[Ualaa]

I like it Zappy.
Have been thinking of this composition for a while, then reading of the Cataclysm changes kind of unmotivated me to try the team.

You get a team with a massive amount of healing, which makes them rather hard to kill.
I especially like getting cleanse again on the pally team.
A shock spec is also more ranged, or less vulnerable to being kited by a frost mage or whatever.
Not sure if they have enough sustained DPS or burst, with this spec but that remains to be seen.

[Zappy]

I'm still up in the air on it. My druid healer for my alliance shammys suggested that I give it a try. He's not decked out in gear by any means and showed me some recount data from a heroic where he was seeing 4-5k dps *and* keeping the tank up. Couple that with some good gear and multiply it by 4, and it may just be interesting.

There is obviously a lot of theorycrafting at this point. After watching a few videos of some decent 4.0.1 shockadins dueling - mage, warrior, shadow priest, and you'll learn the shockadin is all about burst damage -- Holy Shock and Exorcism spam, and they never seem to run out of mana.

If I recall, i never sold my quel'delars after hitting 1800, so I should be able to change them in for the spell one, and buy the healing shield (only 70 honor points). I figured I'll reforge all my ret gear to have intellect on them to give it a try, then if it seems viable at all, I may just starting grinding for the gear on them as I don't really have that much else to do until cataclysm.

One thing that should be nice is that I can't imagine heroics would be that difficult on this team with so much survivability, and if they can pull off that much dps, I'll truely be impressed.

As far as the DK, tough to say for sure - Getting necrotic strike @ 83 for the MS debuff will be nice, plus I like the idea of having my tank level with my paladins. I can't decide between frost or unholy for my DK at this point. Unholy still seems to do some insane damage.

Time will tell if this spec will be viable or not.

[Zappy]

This seems very interesting so far. Basically, I'm wearing 1800 ret gear on my paladins and I'm respec'd for shockadins. After some basic macro tweaking for a 1 button DPS spam, i am able to achieve 3.5k DPS:

http://www.garysdecks.com/WoW/Shockadin1.jpg

Now mind you... In full ret gear, buffed up, I have 118 spell power. LOL. I'm gonna have some more fun with this tonight, but I think I may have to farm a quick 219 wep for each of them, reforge them and see what I can get.

[Mosg2]

I was able to sell back my 1800 Ret weapons. I'm kind of hesitant to grind honor on these guys just for a test, but... What else am I going to do with my time between here and there?

Edit:

I bought the 1800 caster mace+shield and the WG shoulders/back. The rest of their gear is Relentless/Wrathful Ret gear. With a one-button spam I was up to about 3500dps before running out of mana, which happened pretty fast (only 10k mana).

I'm going to try some BG's and see how it feels.

[Zappy]

I'm totally up in the air on this one. After flying around to the various rep vendors, I picked up a lot of rep gear, traded my ashen verdict ring among a few other things... I haven't socketed or enchanted yet, however, my DPS actually went down to around 2500 - this is with about 1k SP and 16k mana.

The interesting part is that I ran a few heroics and found it much easier than straight rets. Rets are quicker, however keeping people healed and topped off was now easier than ever.

So the real question is if they get their SP up, what kind of dps are they capable of doing.

[BrothelMeister]

I thought we already came to the conclusion that 4-5 individual healers had better survival as a team than 1 boxer.

Multi-boxing simply offers the increased coordination to making 100% -0% possible on a kill target, and easier.

[Zappy]

It's not about 4 holy paladins running around and healing your DK to outlast the opponents. The last I remember about someone trying 4-5 healers was with a bunch of trees that could last forever, but could never kill anything.

The question is more about how much DPS a true shockadin can actually do. There's a lot of posts out there about the return of the shockadin in the 4.0.1 patch. Do a search on "4.0.1 shockadin" and you'll find tons of info. A quick youtube search gives a better idea of what kinda of damage and survivability that they have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSwsLiZUWqw&feature=player_embedded#!


All in all, the true test for the DK/Rets will be @ 85 when HP pools are way up. The problem right now is that level 80 pvp is so stupid and unbalancedis so quick. There's so many classes out there that have the capability of 1-2 shotting people right now.


Now that DeathWing is ready to start changing the world, I may just give up on attempting to make this team work, and just focus on my shammys for world pvp as everybody on the server will likely be heading to any zones that get changed soon. :)

[Mercbeast]

I'm running a DK team up right now. I'm just really interested in how difficult it is to keep your slaves on target and in melee range with IWT?

[BrothelMeister]

I'm running a DK team up right now. I'm just really interested in how difficult it is to keep your slaves on target and in melee range with IWT?

Just start the team up and try it for yourself. Spam the IWT button and the follow leader button to make slaves not run off into the distance.

[Ualaa]

I'm running a DK team up right now. I'm just really interested in how difficult it is to keep your slaves on target and in melee range with IWT?


In PvE play, it is fairly easy.
Press the button once, maybe again if the target moves a bit.
Then do your DPS stuff.
Maybe press it again, when the target moves more.
PvP is exactly the same as PvE, when the target is stationary -- ie, mashing is bad, as it causes your toons to swarm the target and sometimes run off in random directions, particularly when the target dies and you're still mashing IWT.



When the target moves, the mashing of IWT will keep your character close to it.
The circling about the target is confusing and annoying, which is to your advantage.
You will be behind the target for a portion of the time, which negates their chance to dodge, parry or block (at least Players cannot do these against targets behind them).
When swarming a target dummy, my DPS is not higher or lower, so the swarming action isn't a DPS gain/loss because of the movement.
While swarming, you're restricted to instant casts or melee moves, because your movement will break spell casting.



I'm using IS Boxer, and have two mapped keys for IWT.

I have the IWT mapped key, which has a hotkey and sends IWT to all members of my team.

I also have IWT (with an Action Target Group, as the target).
This one has no hotkey and is built into my DPS 1-4 keys.
I have all of my melee toons in this ATG.

I also have a two step mapped key (a toggle, step 1 = on, step 2 = off).
The toggle has a visual message on the active toon's screen.
A simple MELEE IWT ENABLED or MELEE IWT DISABLED.

So I can spam my 1-4 keys, as desired.
And have my melee toons IWT/Spam the target.
Or disable the Melee IWT, and still spam 1-4 but have no IWT presses.




For a DK team...
You have Death Grip.
And you have the Frost Snare.
And you have the same IWT as anyone else.

Not going to be terribly hard to keep someone fairly close, in range.

[Noids]

Has anyone in PTR looked at the rets again now that we can use DS from mana. Just wondering if the extra healing makes much difference?

[remanz]

I guess the DS free heal is better than nothing. But the game maker here is really this

http://wowtal.com/#k=ff3.a7t.paladin.

Look at retribution's "Art of Sacrifice" Talent.

"You cleanse will remove one movement impairing effect if cast on yourself"

If I am not mistaken, this would remove nova/earthbind root etc. As they count as "movement impairing effect"

[BrothelMeister]

I guess the DS free heal is better than nothing. But the game maker here is really this

http://wowtal.com/#k=ff3.a7t.paladin.

Look at retribution's "Art of Sacrifice" Talent.

"You cleanse will remove one movement impairing effect if cast on yourself"

If I am not mistaken, this would remove nova/earthbind root etc. As they count as "movement impairing effect"

ZOMG WTF ??!?!

Talk about making hand of freedom useless. This talent is VERY OP! Can't wait for cataclysm Rets, although I can;t see this talent sticking around.

[remanz]

ZOMG WTF ??!?!

Talk about making hand of freedom useless. This talent is VERY OP! Can't wait for cataclysm Rets, although I can;t see this talent sticking around.

Well, give the freedom to DK, keep cleanse yourself. This is indeed OP because it bypass other debuff (all other magic debuff, walrock dots) on you, It strips the most important snare/root directly.

[BrothelMeister]

Ok, so it's been asked, but I didn't find anyone with a response, Is there a way to track Holy power on slaves? If not then the whole you have X% chance to generate holy power is worthless since you can't know if it procced or not.

[Ualaa]

There was a thread here (dual-boxing), less then a week ago.

It was a link to a youtube video for Power Auras.
You can configure it to display something when you have full charges of Holy Power.
Assuming you make it large/obvious enough to notice on the slave window, you can track full charges of Holy Power.

Approximating the charges can work too.
You can know flat out, you will have at least 3 Holy Power, after doing "x" moves.
Quite frequently, because of procs/specials/etc, you'll have it earlier then this.

But can macro or time your big move accordingly, depending on whether you want highest DPS (use it as soon as each toon is guaranteed to have a full stack) or controlled burst (use move "x" no more then once every 15 seconds, in conjunction with whatever).




*EDIT*
Found it: http://www.dual-boxing.com/showpost.php?p=302220&postcount=12

[BrothelMeister]

I guess I'll just have to get that team fired up and play with my Power Auras, I would like to have the icons on my main screen, not on my slave windows.

[Shodokan]

Divine storm change to not require holy power is nice, also in latest beta patch it was changed to 80% weapon damage... which is nice.

[BrothelMeister]

Is anyone even using TV in heriocs or for leveling? I find getting all my toons to 3 charges to be a pain, and also a waste of potential when one toon is sitting at 3 charges. This just leaves me constantly using Word of Glory instead since it scales linearly with amount of charges used.

[Shodokan]

Is anyone even using TV in heriocs or for leveling? I find getting all my toons to 3 charges to be a pain, and also a waste of potential when one toon is sitting at 3 charges. This just leaves me constantly using Word of Glory instead since it scales linearly with amount of charges used.

If at least 3 of your dudes has max holy power it isnt a waste to use TV.

[BrothelMeister]

If at least 3 of your dudes has max holy power it isnt a waste to use TV.

Since this thread is already 9 pages, it can't possibly be a waste of time to ask:

Can you throw some numbers up for why you think that 3/4 toons with 3 Holy Power is the right goal to aim for?

[remanz]

Same reason why you want 4 lava burst to land at the same time. PVE doesn't matter.

Its spell landing together at the same time (or in a smallest window possible) that matters. If TV comes out 1 by 1 , it is healable easily.

It is worth the wait to land a 20k crit x 3 or x 4.

[Shodokan]

Same reason why you want 4 lava burst to land at the same time. PVE doesn't matter.

Its spell landing together at the same time (or in a smallest window possible) that matters. If TV comes out 1 by 1 , it is healable easily.

It is worth the wait to land a 20k crit x 3 or x 4.

Exactly... but it looks like it'll hit higher especially with inquisition.

[Noids]

Are you guys taking Divine Purpose in your ret builds?

As far as I can tell, with the difficulty we are having getting rotations set up and having TV fire off in sync, any dps increase from the procs is probably offset by its unpredicatbility anyway.

[BrothelMeister]

Are you guys taking Divine Purpose in your ret builds?

As far as I can tell, with the difficulty we are having getting rotations set up and having TV fire off in sync, any dps increase from the procs is probably offset by its unpredicatbility anyway.

From what I see, Divine Purpose would be a spell that you would not plan for, but simply rely on for extra survivability. For those instances when you need to cast a heal right away even tho your pallies aren't at max charge. This talent will just add a little bit more in.

Anyone want to share their key set-ups? Not where each key is on the keyboard, or the letter you bind it to, just how you simplify your set-up to make it more plausible.

-I keep Hammer of Wrath on a Step function in Crusader strike so that every other press fires a Hammer, that way I don't have to watch for when my target goes under 25%.
-Getting exorcism to go off correctly is a pain. Does anyone know for sure if /stopcasting still stops all melee swings, or is macro-ing it in right after the exorcism a good thing? I've just been jumping a lot when I press the exorcism key.
-Since Judgements now do horrible damage, I just have them bound in with my Deathgrip, and try to avoid using them at all except to close distance and keep up the melee haste.

[Shodokan]

From what I see, Divine Purpose would be a spell that you would not plan for, but simply rely on for extra survivability. For those instances when you need to cast a heal right away even tho your pallies aren't at max charge. This talent will just add a little bit more in.

Anyone want to share their key set-ups? Not where each key is on the keyboard, or the letter you bind it to, just how you simplify your set-up to make it more plausible.

-I keep Hammer of Wrath on a Step function in Crusader strike so that every other press fires a Hammer, that way I don't have to watch for when my target goes under 25%.
-Getting exorcism to go off correctly is a pain. Does anyone know for sure if /stopcasting still stops all melee swings, or is macro-ing it in right after the exorcism a good thing? I've just been jumping a lot when I press the exorcism key.
-Since Judgements now do horrible damage, I just have them bound in with my Deathgrip, and try to avoid using them at all except to close distance and keep up the melee haste.

judgement gives you mana... why would you not want that?

/stopcasting does not stop melee swings, try it yourself with this simple macro

/cast crusader strike
/cast exorcism
/stopcasting

adding hammer of wrath to a /cast after is good way to use it imo as well.

[Selz]

judgement gives you mana... why would you not want that?

/stopcasting does not stop melee swings, try it yourself with this simple macro

/cast crusader strike
/cast exorcism
/stopcasting

adding hammer of wrath to a /cast after is good way to use it imo as well.

Well, this happens to be the very reason I don´t play melee.. It does stop melee swings, if your not jumping around like a pinguin trying to fly you will end up casting exorsism for a short time, untill you hit the key again which will cancel it, BUT because of your latency that cancel will eventually give you a short "global cooldown" and theirfor youd lose melee swings compared to a normal rotation..

That is why when I multiboxed my paladin team I used Push/Release option which left me with no interact option
so i used a key for interact, which is in theory the exact same problem...
Push = Jump
Release = Ability

But its kinda crazy looking on 4 glowing two handers flying all over the screen constantly :)

[Shodokan]

Well, this happens to be the very reason I don´t play melee.. It does stop melee swings, if your not jumping around like a pinguin trying to fly you will end up casting exorsism for a short time, untill you hit the key again which will cancel it, BUT because of your latency that cancel will eventually give you a short "global cooldown" and theirfor youd lose melee swings compared to a normal rotation..

That is why when I multiboxed my paladin team I used Push/Release option which left me with no interact option
so i used a key for interact, which is in theory the exact same problem...
Push = Jump
Release = Ability

But its kinda crazy looking on 4 glowing two handers flying all over the screen constantly :)

maybe its your latency to the server, not missing any for me except the FIRST time i try it.

[BrothelMeister]

It's all good, I just decided to add a spacebar press into my Exorcism Key through ISBoxer, so now I don't have to spam jump every time I want to press exorcism, they (meaning the slaves only) just do it automatically. How can a bunch of glowing 2H weapons flying all over the place be a bad thing anyway? It sure will confuse the hell out of the enemy.

[Ualaa]

I cannot stand flying pets, as a hunter team, when leveling.
They're in the way, when trying to get a quest npc.

But then they're also in someone's face, when we pvp.
Not that hunters are a team I typically pvp with, but I will do grizzly hills dailies with them for a couple of weeks.

The in the face, chaos, and swarming... is a bonus for us.

[Shodokan]

Crusader strike gives 300% more healing when you kill something that yields honor or exp.

http://wowtal.com/#k=_mQCe2YT.a8t.paladin.zdFUY

[BrothelMeister]

Crusader strike gives 300% more healing when you kill something that yields honor or exp.

http://wowtal.com/#k=_mQCe2YT.a8t.paladin.zdFUY

Only Holy light has the 300% bonus, and no one will be stopping to cast that lol

[remanz]

Apparently after the change, divine storm shares cool down with Crusader Strike. So, kinda not that useful, unless it gives holy power too, which I am not too sure about

[Shodokan]

Apparently after the change, divine storm shares cool down with Crusader Strike. So, kinda not that useful, unless it gives holy power too, which I am not too sure about

40% chance, its meant for AOE, not for single target.

[remanz]

Its either a freebie skill (use when GCD is available) or a useless skill. Sharing CD with CS pretty much means this is near useless in pvp. and I thought the weapon dmg was gonna be 80% , not 60%.

So ya, it is a PVE AOE cleave on trash mobs. not so useful in other situations.

[Shodokan]

Its either a freebie skill (use when GCD is available) or a useless skill. Sharing CD with CS pretty much means this is near useless in pvp. and I thought the weapon dmg was gonna be 80% , not 60%.

So ya, it is a PVE AOE cleave on trash mobs. not so useful in other situations.

Not saying it is a saving grace for the comp, but it helps a little.

[Noids]

I thought they had changed it to 80% on Beta which I assume is still a build ahead of live.

Depends on how the 40% chance for HP gen works I guess. If it is on hit then perhaps multiple mobs will give multiple 40% chances for a proc.

[Mosg2]

The damage is still much lower than CS. I think it's pretty clear we use DS when there's 3+ mobs around us and CS when we're PvP'ing and/or on a single target.

This changes nothing about the team to me. Without Cleanse this team is just plain not mobile enough for Cata.

[Shodokan]

The damage is still much lower than CS. I think it's pretty clear we use DS when there's 3+ mobs around us and CS when we're PvP'ing and/or on a single target.

This changes nothing about the team to me. Without Cleanse this team is just plain not mobile enough for Cata.

We can still cleanse movement impairing effects with a talent... which helps mobility not hurt it.

[BrothelMeister]

This changes nothing about the team to me. Without Cleanse this team is just plain not mobile enough for Cata.

According to Palee, the only 2k+ DK+4 Ret team last season, since he knew Cata was removing cleanses ability to remove magic, he never even used it.

Since in Cata cleanse will still remove all movement impairing effects, and Hand of freedom can have 100% uptime on the DK, and judgements boost movement speed by 45%, what more mobility are you looking for?

[Mosg2]

Judgements only boost movement speed when they're 15+ yards away. The Cleanse thing is nice but it doesn't help as much as you think--All you're Cleansing really is the movement impairing stuff on yourself, which means you need to not be CC'd. In their heyday you could Cleanse the rest of the team--I think this is a big point.

I'm interested to see how the WoG healing pans out. On live it's very binary--Full or dead. 4x WoG is like 40-50k in healing with decent gear. The steady trickle healing of DS was niiiiice.

Though, I must admit that I might be looking through my "4 DK" tinted glasses.

[remanz]

This is as good as we can get with melee boxing. if This doesn't work, the melee boxing in pvp is dead. Unless somehow the 5 cats work out, I don't see anything that's better.

I am not too worried about pvp with dk + rets. I do, worried a bit about the initial heroic grind with full melee team that doesn't have a dedicated healer. That might be a pain with all the boss AOEs. I think we need at least the tank to out gear the heroic to be able to do it.

[Mosg2]

I think that Healer+4 DK's is going to outshine the Rets in every way. 8x Necrotic Strikes every 10 seconds means your target is getting zero healing. They're also getting pummeled with a Mind Freeze every 2.5 seconds.

I'm just saying.

[remanz]

Necrotic Strikes, does it stack ?

I can't imagine this thing would stack if it is indeed that good. It is almost like mortal strike stacking from the old days, 50% than - another 50% after that etc.

Even if it stacks now, I would definitely not invest on 4dk just based on those as I can't see blizzard would let it be.

as for Healer + 4 DK, we are going back to 4 + 1 vs 5 issue again. If i have a healer, I rather box shaman.

[Mosg2]

I'm running the Paladin main as a healer with the 4 DK's frost. It's insane--And more fun than the DK+Rets ever were for me.

I'm not concerned about whether or not NS stacks--It doesn't make a difference to me. With the way my DPS key works now the target will be getting at least 8x NS in 10 seconds and should never get 4x at once. It should be 1-2, a second or two, 1-2, etc.

I mean, we'll see what happens but... I love this team.

[Shodokan]

I'm running the Paladin main as a healer with the 4 DK's frost. It's insane--And more fun than the DK+Rets ever were for me.

I'm not concerned about whether or not NS stacks--It doesn't make a difference to me. With the way my DPS key works now the target will be getting at least 8x NS in 10 seconds and should never get 4x at once. It should be 1-2, a second or two, 1-2, etc.

I mean, we'll see what happens but... I love this team.

This is a comp i plan on running as well, any tips?

[Noids]

Dual wield or 2h on the frosties?

[Mercbeast]

Dual wield or 2h on the frosties?

2h will be superior in my experience for two reasons.


Reason 1, 2h generates more rune power, which means more rune dumps which help counter act waiting around for runes.

Reason 2, using IWT to keep melees on people isn't the most efficient way, you will spend most of your time NOT on target and as such when your guys do get in range it is more logical to want to use 2h'er to generate the most possible punch every time you do come in contact.

Whether or not 2h or DW is superior in the soloist grand scheme of things is irrelevant for me as I know 2h will work better within the constraints we have.

[Mosg2]

Optimum DPS for DW is in Frost Presence, 2h'er Unholy... So 2h'er is a given so you get the 15% run speed out of Unholy Presence.

I've been *super busy*. When I get off tonight I'm going to stream my DK manifesto and post it on the forums. I'm tired of following like 3-4 threads with similar questions and ideas :)

[BrothelMeister]

2h will be superior in my experience for two reasons.


Reason 1, 2h generates more rune power, which means more rune dumps which help counter act waiting around for runes.

Reason 2, using IWT to keep melees on people isn't the most efficient way, you will spend most of your time NOT on target and as such when your guys do get in range it is more logical to want to use 2h'er to generate the most possible punch every time you do come in contact.

Whether or not 2h or DW is superior in the soloist grand scheme of things is irrelevant for me as I know 2h will work better within the constraints we have.



I agree that 2H is the way to go, but is 2H still good for Frost?

[BrothelMeister]

Seal of Truth or Seal of Righteousness ?? I thought that Seal of Truth's Dot was too weak, and since the ability doesn't do any AoE, and the Judgement is weaker, that it was not as good.

What are you guys running BGs and Dungeons with??

[Shodokan]

Optimum DPS for DW is in Frost Presence, 2h'er Unholy... So 2h'er is a given so you get the 15% run speed out of Unholy Presence.

I've been *super busy*. When I get off tonight I'm going to stream my DK manifesto and post it on the forums. I'm tired of following like 3-4 threads with similar questions and ideas :)

With the way you can setup macro system i don't think dual wield outshines 2h frost because of all the extra runic power.

I have BIS dual wield weps for my dk and 2h does about 3k more in raid using heroic bryntroll.

[remanz]

I've never actually pvp enough with unholy or frost dk.

What are their bursts like? Frontal ? or there is ramp up time (like wait for 6-10 seconds to get that 3 holy power up). I am hoping to use my main DK as unholy for the 8% sp buff and AMZ. But when I played unholy, it felt like an affliction warlock in plate, all chip damage.

What rotation do you use for bursting.

[Shodokan]

I've never actually pvp enough with unholy or frost dk.

What are their bursts like? Frontal ? or there is ramp up time (like wait for 6-10 seconds to get that 3 holy power up). I am hoping to use my main DK as unholy for the 8% sp buff and AMZ. But when I played unholy, it felt like an affliction warlock in plate, all chip damage.

What rotation do you use for bursting.

Frost DK looks something like this for me.... at 80

13k howling blast crits
12k frost strike crits
17k obliterate crits

So you can technically get off 4x howling blast + 4x frost strike +2x plague/necrotic strike. or 3x obliterate + 4x frost strike which the frost strikes alone are like up to 50k burst if you crit... and since you get rando crits from killing machines and it resets every target you can be damn sure you are going to do a shitton of burst. So that means a group of 4 dks burst on a target just with frost strikes is close to 100k.

So burst is very very high.

In cata i will probrably be specing into both slowing mechanics and weaving plague strike into things and not always necrotic.


unholy's damage mostly comes from scourge strike, diseases and your death coils, it is very much not a burst spec in my opinion.

[Mercbeast]

Optimum DPS for DW is in Frost Presence, 2h'er Unholy... So 2h'er is a given so you get the 15% run speed out of Unholy Presence.

I've been *super busy*. When I get off tonight I'm going to stream my DK manifesto and post it on the forums. I'm tired of following like 3-4 threads with similar questions and ideas :)

Heavy debate on the forums if DW or 2h is actually higher DPS in PvP for frost. The numbers are coming out so close that they are easily within standard deviation of each other. The difference is in how these numbers are achieved. 2h will generate more runic power which allows you to spam more rune dumps.

With DK's for me the issue is keeping on a target using IWT melee spam. It isn't ideal, you run up stop swing run stop swing etc. To me this means that 2h is going to be vastly superior in this application. In unholy stance of course.

[Mercbeast]

Frost DK looks something like this for me.... at 80

13k howling blast crits
12k frost strike crits
17k obliterate crits

So you can technically get off 4x howling blast + 4x frost strike +2x plague/necrotic strike. or 3x obliterate + 4x frost strike which the frost strikes alone are like up to 50k burst if you crit... and since you get rando crits from killing machines and it resets every target you can be damn sure you are going to do a shitton of burst. So that means a group of 4 dks burst on a target just with frost strikes is close to 100k.

So burst is very very high.

In cata i will probrably be specing into both slowing mechanics and weaving plague strike into things and not always necrotic.


unholy's damage mostly comes from scourge strike, diseases and your death coils, it is very much not a burst spec in my opinion.

With a boxed group of DK's it is all about howling blast. I don't think that will change with cata. Solo DK pvp will change up their priorities since HB isn't going to scale as well as it does now, however we can still achieve in excess of 100k damage with 4 or 5 DK's off of two HB rotations. HBx4 HBx4, Grip, plague/nectrotic, frost strikes to finish. That is enough bursty DPS imo to come into a fight in a BG and if the HB's doesn't wipe everyone who isn't topped up off, you start picking the healers off whom are going to be going into healing overload to catch everyone you just dropped to <20% hp back up. With the way mana and healing is supposedly going to work, that right there will win you the impetus of the fight and put your healers way out in front of the mana healing battle.

I am starting to think that the 4DK+healer friend, 5 DK or Healer lead + 4DK is going to be a solid melee group. Huge burst, crazy control, good survivability.

[remanz]

At least stacking Dks would solve the "being kited problem." I am gonna try frost pvp more. and maybe level more DKs before cata hits. It sounds promising.

If 5 owls can just stealth => star fall to 2k ratings in S8, I guess anything is possible.

[Shodokan]

With a boxed group of DK's it is all about howling blast. I don't think that will change with cata. Solo DK pvp will change up their priorities since HB isn't going to scale as well as it does now, however we can still achieve in excess of 100k damage with 4 or 5 DK's off of two HB rotations. HBx4 HBx4, Grip, plague/nectrotic, frost strikes to finish. That is enough bursty DPS imo to come into a fight in a BG and if the HB's doesn't wipe everyone who isn't topped up off, you start picking the healers off whom are going to be going into healing overload to catch everyone you just dropped to <20% hp back up. With the way mana and healing is supposedly going to work, that right there will win you the impetus of the fight and put your healers way out in front of the mana healing battle.

I am starting to think that the 4DK+healer friend, 5 DK or Healer lead + 4DK is going to be a solid melee group. Huge burst, crazy control, good survivability.

In pvp period it's all about howling blast... why use obliterate when you can get necrotic/plague + howling for equal damage and more pressure =P For the highest burst though you use oblit, not that it is superior in any way shape or form other than pure damage output.

I personally am going to be running either holy pally or resto druid/shaman + dks. Likely holy pally or resto shaman... being able to beacon yourself for 5 mins is just too strong.

[Sephice]

In pvp period it's all about howling blast... why use obliterate when you can get necrotic/plague + howling for equal damage and more pressure =P


This!

I dont use obliterat, it need many points and a glyph, for an attack to much in my eyes

i use unholy stance and can keep all runes and rune power on cooldown and i can use more often ( in cata ) the heal debuff :)

And i can but the point in Death Coil

[heyaz]

I keep looking at my DK's in the low 60s, plate helrloom stuff ready to go (from the ret team a year ago) and want to level this up, but I just have a bad feeling it'll be the same old thing again - practically kill myself getting them to 80 and gearing up, fine tuning macros, theorycrafting for hours, only to step into PVP and watching a resto druid tank my entire team for 5 minutes, or have them get controlled and tossed around like any other team. The mechanics look so fun, but I'm just afraid of overall viability against skilled players, and even more so I fear a slight change or nerf that would kill the whole team.

I know you have done your homework and know all the counters and what to do in what situation and why they will excel here and there, but we all had that with dk+rets as well. 5 arcane torrents, multiple HoJ/repentence, wings, "freedom/clease a buddy", instant heals, 4x divine sac rotations, 4 bubbles, hand of protection on dk, stacking blessings and auras, the works. And sadly that team ended up being just a gimmick - instagib a couple bad pugs, maybe do some damage in AV, or bang your head agsinst the wall for several hundred games to get an 1800 weapon that you could get in solo play in like 2 nights. Was a major disappointment. And that was before 4.0...

Even the quad shaman in WOTLK weren't exactly a powerhouse, it was the weakest pvp class/spec solo and the plethora of aoe shut them down easily, and a bubble for each class and passive heals out the wazoo made the instagib just a relic of the past. I know many of us hit 2000, 2100, or even higher, but with garbage 50-60% win rates except for those who either arranged their queues well or straight up win traded. After Kromtor we all jumped on the dk/ret bandwagon only to see the resilience buff destroy that team - I just didn't have the heart left to do another 500+ game grind to 1800 or possibly 2000 with a sub 50% win rate and enough frustration to give me heart problems.

Be that as it may, I'm still looking into it and testing out some of the new frost stuff with a couple of my DKs. I'm sure it'll be a breeze 62-80, like the other melee team was, but it's just hard to know if they'll be worth anything until I can see first hand (or second?) what happens when you engage 3+ skilled, high resilience targets. I just remember leveling up my dk/ret team, absolutely steamrolling my way from 60-80 both in pve and pvp, then entering my first BGs and arenas to see them tossed around like ragdolls, and when I was able to get control of the situation, nothing would ever die. Would hate to see that happen again so fast

[Shodokan]

I keep looking at my DK's in the low 60s, plate helrloom stuff ready to go (from the ret team a year ago) and want to level this up, but I just have a bad feeling it'll be the same old thing again - practically kill myself getting them to 80 and gearing up, fine tuning macros, theorycrafting for hours, only to step into PVP and watching a resto druid tank my entire team for 5 minutes, or have them get controlled and tossed around like any other team. The mechanics look so fun, but I'm just afraid of overall viability against skilled players, and even more so I fear a slight change or nerf that would kill the whole team.

I know you have done your homework and know all the counters and what to do in what situation and why they will excel here and there, but we all had that with dk+rets as well. 5 arcane torrents, multiple HoJ/repentence, wings, "freedom/clease a buddy", instant heals, 4x divine sac rotations, 4 bubbles, hand of protection on dk, stacking blessings and auras, the works. And sadly that team ended up being just a gimmick - instagib a couple bad pugs, maybe do some damage in AV, or bang your head agsinst the wall for several hundred games to get an 1800 weapon that you could get in solo play in like 2 nights. Was a major disappointment.

Even the quad shaman in WOTLK weren't exactly a powerhouse, it was the weakest pvp class/spec solo and the plethora of aoe shut them down easily, and a bubble for each class and passive heals out the wazoo made the instagib just a relic of the past. I know many of us hit 2000, 2100, or even higher, but with garbage 50-60% win rates except for those who either arranged their queues well or straight up win traded. After Kromtor we all jumped on the dk/ret bandwagon only to see the resilience buff destroy that team - I just didn't have the heart left to do another 500+ game grind to 1800 or possibly 2000 with a sub 50% win rate and enough frustration to give me heart problems.

Be that as it may, I'm still looking into it and testing out some of the new frost stuff with a couple of my DKs. I'm sure it'll be a breeze 62-80, like the other melee team was, but it's just hard to know if they'll be worth anything until I can see first hand (or second?) what happens when you engage 3+ skilled, high resilience targets.

No one is forcing you to play the team, but this team with a dedi-healer is much better than DK/rets ever were and the damage output is twice as much if not more even at current state compared to what they were.

[Mercbeast]

In pvp period it's all about howling blast... why use obliterate when you can get necrotic/plague + howling for equal damage and more pressure =P For the highest burst though you use oblit, not that it is superior in any way shape or form other than pure damage output.

I personally am going to be running either holy pally or resto druid/shaman + dks. Likely holy pally or resto shaman... being able to beacon yourself for 5 mins is just too strong.

Why? Hungering cold is possibly the most over powered ability stacked DK's have at their disposal, at the very least it is as effective as HB. (HB MAKES the team, and without it the team imo isn't very effective, but having HB AND Hungering Cold is just the icing on the cake, so while I wouldn't play DK's with just hungering cold, I feel like hungering cold situationally is every bit as powerful as HB can be and in those situational encounters it is even more so, however HB is the bread and butter)

Running into a group you can light up in a matter of seconds? Use HB. Running into a big fight where you are outnumbered and you need to hold on for reinforcements? Pop hungering cold and switch to a single target DPS rotation. 10s later pop hungering cold again, repeat 4x on anyone in range of you. If you prioritize the cleansers first, melee DPS on you will be doing nothing.

I forsee hungering cold being even more powerful than HB spam. A timely bubble can stop your front loaded HB dump in its tracks. Taking the entire other team fighting you out of the fight while you waltz around picking your targets 1 at a time will be insane.

If you played DAOC, this is how 8 man melee groups successfully destroyed 50 to 60 man raid groups. Aoe Mesmerize which is exactly what hungering cold is, and then have your melee's run around insta gibbing all of the other teams support/healers in one GCD.

[Mercbeast]

I keep looking at my DK's in the low 60s, plate helrloom stuff ready to go (from the ret team a year ago) and want to level this up, but I just have a bad feeling it'll be the same old thing again - practically kill myself getting them to 80 and gearing up, fine tuning macros, theorycrafting for hours, only to step into PVP and watching a resto druid tank my entire team for 5 minutes, or have them get controlled and tossed around like any other team. The mechanics look so fun, but I'm just afraid of overall viability against skilled players, and even more so I fear a slight change or nerf that would kill the whole team.

I know you have done your homework and know all the counters and what to do in what situation and why they will excel here and there, but we all had that with dk+rets as well. 5 arcane torrents, multiple HoJ/repentence, wings, "freedom/clease a buddy", instant heals, 4x divine sac rotations, 4 bubbles, hand of protection on dk, stacking blessings and auras, the works. And sadly that team ended up being just a gimmick - instagib a couple bad pugs, maybe do some damage in AV, or bang your head agsinst the wall for several hundred games to get an 1800 weapon that you could get in solo play in like 2 nights. Was a major disappointment. And that was before 4.0...

Even the quad shaman in WOTLK weren't exactly a powerhouse, it was the weakest pvp class/spec solo and the plethora of aoe shut them down easily, and a bubble for each class and passive heals out the wazoo made the instagib just a relic of the past. I know many of us hit 2000, 2100, or even higher, but with garbage 50-60% win rates except for those who either arranged their queues well or straight up win traded. After Kromtor we all jumped on the dk/ret bandwagon only to see the resilience buff destroy that team - I just didn't have the heart left to do another 500+ game grind to 1800 or possibly 2000 with a sub 50% win rate and enough frustration to give me heart problems.

Be that as it may, I'm still looking into it and testing out some of the new frost stuff with a couple of my DKs. I'm sure it'll be a breeze 62-80, like the other melee team was, but it's just hard to know if they'll be worth anything until I can see first hand (or second?) what happens when you engage 3+ skilled, high resilience targets. I just remember leveling up my dk/ret team, absolutely steamrolling my way from 60-80 both in pve and pvp, then entering my first BGs and arenas to see them tossed around like ragdolls, and when I was able to get control of the situation, nothing would ever die. Would hate to see that happen again so fast

Here is the difference between ret paladins, and DK's. We can ignore everything else and while it is significant, this one thing is what makes the team.

Howling Blast.

Ranged, RANGED, aoe dps. Everything else is superfluous.

[Mosg2]

@Heyaz:

I am totally with you on the Paladins. I probably plugged more than 100k gold into them and it was all for naught. In the end you could smoke some people in BG's and do Heroics but 2k+ in arenas was just plain out for most people.

The one defining difference between this team and that team comes down to one issue: Healing. In Wrath, healing was just plain OP. If you didn't have MS you needed *insane* burst to get people down or you needed to setup an intricate CC chain. Or both. The difference? In Cata, healing is a precious commodity. Even with a healer blowing cooldowns and going for straight throughput with heals they can't keep someone up under the pressure of 4 DPS'ers. Period.

4 DK's are better in every way to the Rets. You have more DPS by far--And a lot of it's AE. You have the most reliable snare you could have as a boxer. You have all of the defensive/offensive tools so that once you pick a person, they WILL be in melee range of you. And during that time, you're negating most of the healing that they're getting. And you're interrupting them every 2.5 seconds.

All of that is backed up by a dedicated healer.

I guess what I'll leave you with is this: I'm so positive that this team is going to be the breakout team in Cata that all my DK's need is for each of them to get exalted with the Darkmoon Faire and they'll have The Insane.

[Boylston]

Doesn't this team fall apart with a Howling Blast nerf? I mean, a minor nerf would likely be OK... but any significant change to HB and the team suffers a major hit, right?

[Mosg2]

Eh. Personally I don't think so, though it sounds like Mercbeast feels differently.

To me this team is about the conjunction of defensive/offensive abilities that let them be on a target indefinitely combined with Necrotic Strike. Howling Blast is amazing for putting out a lot of pressure on multiple people to stretch healers thin--To me though, even if they removed the AE component to it this team will be a winner. Necrotic Strike is going to be broken.

[Ualaa]

Howling Blast, and its ability to hit multiple targets for strong damage, is what makes this team for me. Unfortunately, I cannot see this ability remaining as it is (I hope I'm wrong).

At the moment, the team has a ranged spell cleave, and one that hits hard at that.
With Blood Tap, this is three attacks per DK as the opener.
And thereafter, additional Howling Blast AoE attacks as Frost Runes refresh or as targets are Cleansed of Frost Fever.

Clumped enemies will die fast, making this a killer group for all BG's... and fairly strong in arena, as you'll likely be able to hit at least two targets most of the time.



If Howling Blast were changed to single target damage, it would be very devastating for the team. There are a lot of other benefits, so I don't think it would break the team.

The pressure wouldn't be that much more than, or much different from other 4x DPS teams. In battlegrounds, equal or larger sized groups would be much more challenging.

The damage would be focused on one toon and not half the team. That alone will let any opposition with a Paladin present bubble the initial burst target, making them immune to damage.

The DK's switch to a new target, applying Necrotic Strikes which equates to fairly strong pressure. Most of the cooldowns, which were used initially to prevent CC's as the team closes, expire fairly quickly... which leaves strong DPS and anti-healing on whatever target the team attacks, but vulnerability to a lot of CC effects. The Pally can cleanse some of these, and anything like a Root is pretty useless because of Death Grip.

But suddenly, this looks like an interesting composition but not an overwhelming powerhouse.






Assuming greatly reduced healing in Cataclysm, where it is a precious commodity, and healers cannot in completely heal anyone in a GCD...

Do the DK/4x Rets look any better? The resilience increase killed their burst. Will the changes to healing make them stronger or weaker in relation to Pally/4x DK (or other compositions)?

Ret's can cleanse themselves and round-robin Freedom on the DK, which is mobility for a while. The 4x DK's probably have better ability to stay near the kill target thanks to Death Grips.

[Mosg2]

I think people are vastly underestimating the power of Necrotic Strike.

[Shodokan]

I think people are vastly overestimating the power of howling blast. Yes it is good, on a single character the spell is NOT BROKEN OR OVER POWERED at level 85! Only when we combine multiples of the class will it become that. Blizzard is not going to nerf an ability because a few multi-boxers are raping people with an otherwise balanced ability. If that were the case chain lightning, lava burst and a bunch of other moves would have been nerfed to the ground as well.

[Boylston]

How hard is howling blast hitting at L85 in the starter pvp blue gear scene? Normal/Crit?

I think if I rolled a team, I would probably play BGs as just 4xDKs. Would grab a friend to be my pocket healer on the larger BGs.

I struggle with 10v10-- one of the nice parts about 4xShamans is that we get some healing ability, 4xDPS, and don't take up an extra slot on the team by running a full 5. I'd rather quadbox in BGs for precisely that reason. I think this team might have issues without a healer in tow (or leading, as the case may be...).

[Mercbeast]

I think people are vastly overestimating the power of howling blast. Yes it is good, on a single character the spell is NOT BROKEN OR OVER POWERED at level 85! Only when we combine multiples of the class will it become that. Blizzard is not going to nerf an ability because a few multi-boxers are raping people with an otherwise balanced ability. If that were the case chain lightning, lava burst and a bunch of other moves would have been nerfed to the ground as well.

Ya, I agree with this. HB right now at 80 is insane for a single DK. At 85 it isn't at all. I really can't see HB nerfed JUST because of a small cadre of multi-boxed DK's. It is the cumulative power of HB that makes the team and for me it isn't even the AoE aspect. It is just the ranged component of it.

[Mercbeast]

How hard is howling blast hitting at L85 in the starter pvp blue gear scene? Normal/Crit?

I think if I rolled a team, I would probably play BGs as just 4xDKs. Would grab a friend to be my pocket healer on the larger BGs.

I struggle with 10v10-- one of the nice parts about 4xShamans is that we get some healing ability, 4xDPS, and don't take up an extra slot on the team by running a full 5. I'd rather quadbox in BGs for precisely that reason. I think this team might have issues without a healer in tow (or leading, as the case may be...).

I ran 4 DK's only at 78-79. I did fine and once you demonstrate the power usually a healer or two will make it a point to follow you around.

[Ualaa]

For me the AoE component is huge.

At 80th, the damage is a lot of pressure to heal several targets at once.

Even if the damage is minimal at 85th, 12x HB's is going to be some pressure...

But more importantly:
The AoE nature means several targets are Diseased (thanks to the glyph) and Snared (as long as Frost Fevered, thanks to a talent).
And it is very likely someone will cleanse Frost Fever, which is another Howling Blast.

So the opposition has several dotted/snared targets, who either live with it or instantly give you an extra HB.

[heyaz]

Ya, I agree with this. HB right now at 80 is insane for a single DK. At 85 it isn't at all. I really can't see HB nerfed JUST because of a small cadre of multi-boxed DK's. It is the cumulative power of HB that makes the team and for me it isn't even the AoE aspect. It is just the ranged component of it.

That brings up the question, is anyone running this comp in beta or is all the speculation about this being a good comp based on multiplying an insane ability at 80 x4? If it's more in balance for a single DK at 85 then it seems that it'd be less devastating for the whole comp as well.

[Svpernova09]

That brings up the question, is anyone running this comp in beta or is all the speculation about this being a good comp based on multiplying an insane ability at 80 x4? If it's more in balance for a single DK at 85 then it seems that it'd be less devastating for the whole comp as well.

Having done some PvP @ 85 w/ the first blue PvP set premades:

Burst isn't going to win matches @ 85. Unless they really change some mechanics across the board. Most PvP matches are a lot longer and require multiple CDs to line up to kill someone. It's going to be a focused assault with fast swaps to force healers to get behind and panic and use their fast, mana expensive heals to save someone. While stacked HBs may throw a lot of pressure on a single person, keep in mind inflated health values @ 85. In the blue PvP set I was running ~122k HP as a priest (self buffed)

http://www.cataclysmfiredept.com/images/beta/WoWScrnShot_110410_124844.jpg

[Fat Tire]

Having done some PvP @ 85 w/ the first blue PvP set premades:

Burst isn't going to win matches @ 85. Unless they really change some mechanics across the board. Most PvP matches are a lot longer and require multiple CDs to line up to kill someone. It's going to be a focused assault with fast swaps to force healers to get behind and panic and use their fast, mana expensive heals to save someone. While stacked HBs may throw a lot of pressure on a single person, keep in mind inflated health values @ 85. In the blue PvP set I was running ~122k HP as a priest (self buffed)




Yup.

Anyone relying on burst to get kills in cata is theroycrafting too much. CC and mana are what is going to get kills. Given that most CC is 40 yards, anyone has done arena on beta can tell you that is pillar to pillar in nagarand. That is how large the CC field is now, not to mention 4k resilience in S9.

Also, people who are relying on burst kills in these new rated BGS are in for a world of hurt. They are not pugs even though they are pugs you can expect healers galore on every team and pve tank spec classes(200k+) in both wsg/AB and even eots games, maybe not at the start of cata but I am willing to bet a month or two and we will see /2. Need pve tank for wsg, pst. Cant wait to see a 4dk/healer team try to take down a tank with 2-3 healers, it just isnt going to happen. Unless you have CC on his healers, but they can all dispel now, doh. Hell 1 frost mage can control a nicely packed group of melee by themselves, if not just keep them in combat while they waddle along trying to catch up. Not to mention the 22k ice lances mage are going live with.
Imo if I see a 4-5 boxer on the other team, its a free win.

[BrothelMeister]

One thing you are forgetting about how healing is a precious commodity is that DK+Rets have 5 DPS, and 4 Healers! If any single soon in the party dies, you still have decent healing, whereas if the healer dies in Healer+ 4 DK, you're screwed.

The other comments about CC make me laugh, since DK+ 4 Rets also ahve interrupts, now you have 5 instead of 4. The rets aslo bring a sleep effect for the focus target, and a stun for the kill target. The snare that the 4 DK team brings is only better than DK+ Rets in that it is AoE, yet chains of Ice is still the best single target CC, and its no better for Frost than Blood.

The MS effect from Necrotic strike will have to be nerfed, otherwise normal multiple DK teams will be over-powered, again.

Definitely waiting until January before leveling more a DK heavy team.

[remanz]

HP vs damage ratio

It is definitely going to be tougher to burst at level 85. Lava burst will have a short period that it will be too good. Reason ? at level 85, when we all have just shitty gears, we got like 15% crit while lava burst is 100% crit. With 120k hp, still able to burst it down with lava burst. But others can't burst down with just 15% crit.

Gotta nerf healing regen, or pvp gonna be healer fest again.

[Shodokan]

Yup.

Anyone relying on burst to get kills in cata is theroycrafting too much. CC and mana are what is going to get kills. Given that most CC is 40 yards, anyone has done arena on beta can tell you that is pillar to pillar in nagarand. That is how large the CC field is now, not to mention 4k resilience in S9.

Also, people who are relying on burst kills in these new rated BGS are in for a world of hurt. They are not pugs even though they are pugs you can expect healers galore on every team and pve tank spec classes(200k+) in both wsg/AB and even eots games, maybe not at the start of cata but I am willing to bet a month or two and we will see /2. Need pve tank for wsg, pst. Cant wait to see a 4dk/healer team try to take down a tank with 2-3 healers, it just isnt going to happen. Unless you have CC on his healers, but they can all dispel now, doh. Hell 1 frost mage can control a nicely packed group of melee by themselves, if not just keep them in combat while they waddle along trying to catch up. Not to mention the 22k ice lances mage are going live with.
Imo if I see a 4-5 boxer on the other team, its a free win.

I currently do about 35k damage PER ABILITY USED on my 4x dk + holy paladin (@ 80)... and shaman lightning bolt hits for like 10k per non crit.... what problem are we going to have taking down 2 healers and a tank? Honestly the only healer with more than 85k life to start are paladins, so we will be able to kill them in 2 globals because of NS (as a dk team) or a single lavaburst (as a shaman team)... will the tank kill one of our characters in 2 globals? fuck no, and we have a healer for it anyway. Not to mention BE silence for anti-heals for 3 seconds that's enough time to throw out 3 howling blasts which apply pressure to the entire group, and likely kill someone... hell right now my howling blasts non crit are around 8k... which means i'm throwing out 32k damage in a single button press. Also if it is 3v5 and it's 2 healers + X vs me... i'm going to help kill with exorcism, the 1 character can't global anyone, or even kill someone in 5 attacks... you can kill one of them and then heal your damn toon they attack.

I'm not saying boxers are going to rape everything, and i'm not saying we don't have problems. But we certainly are not sitting ducks like you describe. I PvP'd during beta too, and the health pool to damage ratio isn't changing for boxers, it's getting better for us even in comparison to what it was at the middle of WOTLK when we were strongest.

It really depends on your teammates and your skill level/reaction time. Right now i'm talking to lafu(wrathful glad, and one of the top dks in the world) and a few of the pvpers in excessive gaming as well as in Skill-Capped about making groups, for the most part they think it will work very well... but then again what do top rated pvpers know about pvp?

If a mage can get away from 4 deathgrips + slowed movement speed, then he deserves to kill you.

[Svpernova09]

...Honestly the only healer with more than 85k life to start are paladins...

People won't be under geared for long. And this is a pretty low assumption about a fresh 85.

[Mosg2]

@Brothelmeister:
I appreciate your point that the DK+Rets has 4 healers and 5 dps... But I think you need to modify your statement to: "This team has 4 shitty healers and 4.5 good dps."

In their heyday DK+Rets was amazing for what it did--Which was not dominate arenas like Shaman do. They're great at destroying people in BG's. They do awesome in instances. Those things are all great. Do you know what they don't do well?

1. Any DPS once your DK is dead or properly CC'd. Once you lose that Deathgrip and that Chains of Ice it's ridiculously easy to force 4 Rets to have to use every GCD to cleanse themselves to stay mobile.

2. Any sort of ranged DPS. Sure, you can pop wings and Hammer of Wrath... Every few minutes.

3. Survive well to sustained DPS. You no longer have chain DS/DS to lower incoming damage.

4. Heal well. WoG from a Ret is just plain not good enough. There's no way for you to synchronize their DPS rotations so that they always have the same amount of Holy Power. That means that when you hit your WoG-->Paladin_01 key you really have no f'ing clue how much healing you're going to get. Do you know what happens after you hit that key? Most of your Paladins are now back to zero HP and just lost a TV.

Look, I've played DK+Rets since the day Kromtor posted on the forums that this was a team. I remember because my wife was throwing this stupid party at my house for her friends and I was drunk so I didn't have to talk to anyone. I remember sitting down at the keyboard and experiencing the (drunken) wonder of IWT spam with melee classes. It changed boxing for me--I have always gravitated towards melee classes and I dislike casters in general. I felt like a solid golden beam of love from Lord Jesus the Christ himself had parted the heavens and was pointed right at me while I spammed IWT on some dinky level 3 Paladins as they spun around their target. It was amazing. Transcendental.

What I haven't done since then is attach that sense of awe and amazingness to DK+Rets--I attached it to melee boxing. My point is this:

DK+Rets spend waaaay too much time worrying about being in range of their targets. Even though they can Cleanse themselves of movement effects and Freedom themselves... You still only have one DG and one person that can Snare. That means if the other side can control your DK, you have basically no closing tools. You will be kited endlessly. Forever. And while that's happening, you can't heal because you have no HP.

I've played both teams. All of my personal experience shows that DK+Rets is trash compared to 4 DK's. Just plain trash. I'm sorry to say it because of how much time and gold I've invested into my Rets, but it's the truth.

[BrothelMeister]

I'm not sure what this shitty healing is that you refer to. At 80, if you spec into Selfless healer, and protector of the Innocent, even (2/3), that becomes atleast 3.5k healing per holy power, PLUS a 2500-3500 heal on each paladin every time you use it. Since I like glyph of Long word, over-healing is really a non issue since half of the incoming healing is delayed over the next 6 seconds.

3-4 Ret pallies should definitely be able to out heal 1 Holy Pally, especially factoring in the difficulty of CCing 4 toons instead of 1.

If you utilize power Auras it's very easy to know when your paladins are sitting at 3 holy power by having a large translucent icon appear on their screen, one that's large enough to notice from yours. That said, It is entirely possible based upon changing the color and/or size of the icon to know EXACTLY how many holy power that each of them have but this comes down to how well your screen set-up is, and how much you actually care.

As far as ranged damage goes, get another power auras icon, this one can actually be on your main screen, and each of the slaves, for when Art of War procs. If you need to hit a Ranged taerget, you can gauge based upon how many icons are lit up how many 5K (or 10K Crit) Exorcisms will hit the target. Judgments aren't much but a 2k times 4 instant ranged hit that gives you a speed buff is still a pretty good ranged DPS ability.

As far as targets getting away from you, last I checked, Rets had a hella lot of CC. 4 Repentances can halt someone until you catch up, and 4 HoJs can keep them from running away in the first place.

[Ualaa]

Kind of funny.
This is the Ret thread, but we're discussing the 4 DK + Healer in both this thread and the DK Manifesto thread.

[Boylston]

Kind of funny.
This is the Ret thread, but we're discussing the 4 DK + Healer in both this thread and the DK Manifesto thread.

All this energy would be better spent In This Awesome Thread! (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=33257)

[Mosg2]

If all you're doing is using your HP for WoG sure, 4x Rets will outheal a single Holy Pally... But that also means you're doing absolutely terrible DPS.

/shrug

I'm not trying to come off condescending--I'm just saying I've played both teams a lot and the healing from 4x Rets is just too binary for me.

[Noids]

Not sure that binary is such a bad thing if you are referring to going from 50% to 100% health in one cast :P

It seems that the 4 ret team sort of works as a mediocre survival sort of squd for 100 seconds then 20 seconds worth of kick ass time every 2 minutes. Considering the sort of sporadic fighting that ossurs in BGs again, this probably isn't a horrible thing. If the team can stay alive in between having cooldowns to use then they can still be a force to reckon with considering BGs is quite often about surviving most rather than killing most.

Saying all of that, I think the durability of having a dedicated healer in a 5 box team can't be understated. They have more effective heals and cleanses so will generally be a better rounded team IMO.

[remanz]

If all you're doing is using your HP for WoG sure, 4x Rets will outheal a single Holy Pally... But that also means you're doing absolutely terrible DPS.

/shrug

I'm not trying to come off condescending--I'm just saying I've played both teams a lot and the healing from 4x Rets is just too binary for me.

For now yes, the HP pool too small. Not to mention you can glyph it . Heals 50% less up front, then another 50% become hots.

when your HP becomes 120k and WG heals for 15k non-crit, it will be a lot more useful.

[Mosg2]

I have two meanings for the binary comment:

1. You're either at 0 or full right now if you're getting healed with WoG. Yes, this will change with Cata but then number 2 is a bigger problem.

2. Swapping to heal people who are either both getting focused or if your whole team is getting AE'd is *hard* with WoG. It's not impossible, it's just hard.

I'm sure people will be successful with the Rets--I just think it's going to take more work and will have an ultimately lower cap on your max performance.

[Zappy]

If all you're doing is using your HP for WoG sure, 4x Rets will outheal a single Holy Pally... But that also means you're doing absolutely terrible DPS.


If you check out my video of Azol'Nerub, around 3:00, I pull the spider boss the hard way and was forced to heal a ton. You can hear all the WoG heals going off constantly to keep the team healed. While you lose some burst DPS by losing some TVs, I wouldn't say the dps is terrible, as all the other attacks are still doing solid damage. If burst is no longer the game in cat, it may be a lot easier to keep these guys topped off as you'll never lose mana when using WoG to heal.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=33131

[BrothelMeister]

Lol, yes when 4 Rets use their Holy power for healing, they trade damage output to do it.

But that's the awesome part! You have crazy, non-CC-able healing when you need it, and 5 good DPSers when you don't need the healing.

A Healer +4 DK team has 1 very CC-able healer (except for 8 seconds every 5 minutes, providing no one dispels bubble) and 4 DPS. Regardless of what's needed, you will never have more healing or more Damage output. This is simply less versatility.

The reason Healer + 4 Shamans kicks ass is because you have 5 healing capable classes for when the healer gets CCed. Getting 2K with the Shamans involved a lot of healing in between targets to ensure my healer didn't collapse. Even if Shaman and DK's can do equivalent damage, the DK's do not bring any utility to the table that will keep their healer alive.

[Shodokan]

Lol, yes when 4 Rets use their Holy power for healing, they trade damage output to do it.

But that's the awesome part! You have crazy, non-CC-able healing when you need it, and 5 good DPSers when you don't need the healing.

A Healer +4 DK team has 1 very CC-able healer (except for 8 seconds every 5 minutes, providing no one dispels bubble) and 4 DPS. Regardless of what's needed, you will never have more healing or more Damage output. This is simply less versatility.

The reason Healer + 4 Shamans kicks ass is because you have 5 healing capable classes for when the healer gets CCed. Getting 2K with the Shamans involved a lot of healing in between targets to ensure my healer didn't collapse. Even if Shaman and DK's can do equivalent damage, the DK's do not bring any utility to the table that will keep their healer alive.

Healing as a whole is less effective in cata without burning through a shitton of mana.

Also to the person saying WoG will hit for 15k non crit @ 85 is living in dream land. But that remains to be seen.

[Boylston]

The reason Healer + 4 Shamans kicks ass is because you have 5 healing capable classes for when the healer gets CCed. Getting 2K with the Shamans involved a lot of healing in between targets to ensure my healer didn't collapse. Even if Shaman and DK's can do equivalent damage, the DK's do not bring any utility to the table that will keep their healer alive.

I think you have a decent point here, but the idea is that you pick a very durable healer (mosg2's reasoning behind the pally) and your 4 other characters help keep the healer alive by killing off 2 or more enemy players fast.

I played arena with 4xShamans plus a healer friend for a long time, and agree with your sentiment about the power of hybrids being able to help the healer. However, one of the reasons Pally+4xShaman was such an awesome combo for a long time was that the Pally could bubble and/or heal themselves through a lot of focus fire while the Shamans ravaged the other side. Same principle here. In contrast, Priest+4xShamana in arena did require much more shaman healing assistance (even if they had other advantages).

The DKs will have the ability to do sustained pressure and apply anti-healing. If they focus your healer, you're going to need to make them pay for that choice by killing 2-3 of their group. You can also use DG and ranged snaring to allow your pally a chance to get free of the pain. (Come to think of it, that may work even better...)

DKs will have some new tricks as well using multi-DGs. You can park 3 at the arena entry area on some maps, and drive a lone DK out in the middle of the map to double-pull someone WAAY out of position of even receiving heals.

I can see that 4xDK+Healer arena matches might turn into battles of attrition quite easily. I still think there's a good chance to win. If they focus on blowing up your healer, and you can take down 2-3 of their DPS quickly, you'll still win. Hell, I'd leave the healer to the end if Necrotic Strike works well enough. Take out their big DPS first and win the battle of attrition with your continually regenerating resource system...

I think Druid has a strong potential for a healer partner with this team, if played by another player. Great CC abilities combined with Stealth could really help.

Ok, time to stop before I get too excited again... Good luck with this team, gang!

[remanz]

Healing as a whole is less effective in cata without burning through a shitton of mana.

Also to the person saying WoG will hit for 15k non crit @ 85 is living in dream land. But that remains to be seen.

Oh I just made that number up. But you get the idea. It won't be as much as over heal now.

As for 15k , I was being conservative. What do your WOGs heal you for at level 80? Mine heals for 20k cirt, 10k non crit.

15k is a conservative estimation. 3 HP obviously.

[Shodokan]

Oh I just made that number up. But you get the idea. It won't be as much as over heal now.

As for 15k , I was being conservative. What do your WOGs heal you for at level 80? Mine heals for 20k cirt, 10k non crit.

15k is a conservative estimation. 3 HP obviously.

15k Might be about where it stands, as it is now i do 10kish on myself (just checked, haven't actually been on one of my rets yet) and i just crit healed another rando player near me for 24.5k So that's is quite a bit of healing.

I've been toying around on my ret paladin, and you can estimate crusader strike to be about a 14,000 crit.

The only negative thing i really see about the dk/rets is their requirement of keeping inquisition up at all times in order to make judgement damage worth a damn, same with holy wrath. Theres quite a gap in when damage can be done though, theres a few seconds per basic rotation where its just autoattacks. That and that without taking the 9% haste judgement you are stuck with basically 4.5 second crusader strikes.

The wings + HoW do a lot of damage as well.

The one thing that helps with this setup as opposed to a single healer is that with WoG getting 60% extra chance to crit (bringing it up to what... 90%?) But thats a tradeoff for 20% extra damage to exorcism... which as it stands crits for like 15k.

I dunno, i think its retarded a DK's obliterate does more damage than any attack a ret paladin has.

[remanz]

Well Dks are not without their own problems. Since we are in the rets thread, I can lay out some of the bad things about Dks.

1st and foremost, I just don't see playing healer yourself + 4DKs can work. Without a lead => follow, your paladin get CCed, your DK will get into this "stickie targetting mode" IWT will be screwed up. DK will run around like a mad man. You know what I am talking about. "blind on paladin, bam!, DK lost control" need to cleartarget and resync.

2nd , frost DK dies fast. I went from blood => frost. Gain about 1-2k DPS, but lost 12k HP and all my self heal abilities. They are like arm warrior. The defensive CD is just not that effective as far as I used it. They need heals.

[Shodokan]

Well Dks are not without their own problems. Since we are in the rets thread, I can lay out some of the bad things about Dks.

1st and foremost, I just don't see playing healer yourself + 4DKs can work. Without a lead => follow, your paladin get CCed, your DK will get into this "stickie targetting mode" IWT will be screwed up. DK will run around like a mad man. You know what I am talking about. "blind on paladin, bam!, DK lost control" need to cleartarget and resync.

2nd , frost DK dies fast. I went from blood => frost. Gain about 1-2k DPS, but lost 12k HP and all my self heal abilities. They are like arm warrior. The defensive CD is just not that effective as far as I used it. They need heals.

Um... frost dks die no faster than any other melee class, including paladins (if playing a single one). Sticky targeting is easy to deal with though, just bind a key (for me to my naga) to a macro that /cleartarget /assist focus

Also back to the dks... my buddy did SOTA by himself and got 62-0... yeah.

[BrothelMeister]

Healing as a whole is less effective in cata without burning through a shitton of mana.

Also to the person saying WoG will hit for 15k non crit @ 85 is living in dream land. But that remains to be seen.

WoG doesn't use mana, and mana itself is a joke to Ret paladins isn't it?

[remanz]

Um... frost dks die no faster than any other melee class, including paladins (if playing a single one). Sticky targeting is easy to deal with though, just bind a key (for me to my naga) to a macro that /cleartarget /assist focus

Also back to the dks... my buddy did SOTA by himself and got 62-0... yeah.

i understand how to fix the issue with sticky targetting. The problem is after you "/cleartarget". You need to follow to re-group you guys together after they run off. Say I fight you on the ramp in blade edge arena. I simply jump off the ramp. and your IWT won't get to me because it can't make turns. You need a main to lead them there.

and SOTA 62-0, can't say much about that. Is he alliance with all elite teammates, just farming noob hordes ? You can't death grip seige. And the warlock,mage, and hunter on the seige can just kite/nuke melee all day long in SOTA.

[Mercbeast]

i understand how to fix the issue with sticky targetting. The problem is after you "/cleartarget". You need to follow to re-group you guys together after they run off. Say I fight you on the ramp in blade edge arena. I simply jump off the ramp. and your IWT won't get to me because it can't make turns. You need a main to lead them there.

and SOTA 62-0, can't say much about that. Is he alliance with all elite teammates, just farming noob hordes ? You can't death grip seige. And the warlock,mage, and hunter on the seige can just kite/nuke melee all day long in SOTA.

But Grip solves this very real problem so long as you don't completely escape LOS.

I don't think melee's will be ideal for arena anyways. Too much pillar and LOS humping. DK might be better than other groups due to grip but I think it is still far from ideal.

It is a BG group imo and that is where it will be strongest.

[Shodokan]

i understand how to fix the issue with sticky targetting. The problem is after you "/cleartarget". You need to follow to re-group you guys together after they run off. Say I fight you on the ramp in blade edge arena. I simply jump off the ramp. and your IWT won't get to me because it can't make turns. You need a main to lead them there.

and SOTA 62-0, can't say much about that. Is he alliance with all elite teammates, just farming noob hordes ? You can't death grip seige. And the warlock,mage, and hunter on the seige can just kite/nuke melee all day long in SOTA.

Hes horde on a BG where alliance rule the sea.

[remanz]

I hit 85 during the weekend.

ALl i have to say about retribution paladin is


it DOES shitty Damage , and does mega healing. Compare to enhance shaman, frost dk, and fury warrior, retribution does shittttttty damage. There is no burst. The burst only kicks in when I have 2nd round of 3 HP. (first 3 HP burned on inquisition). and Inquisition is a management nightmare currently for me. I am either having difficulties keeping it up, or wasting TV doing inqusition. Its just not working out as far as offense goes.

My lead frost DK does mega burst, especially when there is more than one target. Without perfect inqusition, holy power management, my paladins do about half DPS as my frost DK HB/OB spam.

On the flip side, rets heal a lot. If you let me hit you, I can keep my team up.

[Mosg2]

Haha, to play off of Remanz' post about the Rets at 85 I'll post my thoughts on the DK's so far:

I hit 85 on Thursday and I've done a total of 6 BG's since then. Me entire team died once and one of my DK's (carrying a flag) died another time. That's it.

I'm a complete wrecking ball. The damage that they do coupled with the defensive cooldowns that they have is insane. It's *even better* than how I thought it would turn out in my Manifesto.

[Mercbeast]

Haha, to play off of Remanz' post about the Rets at 85 I'll post my thoughts on the DK's so far:

I hit 85 on Thursday and I've done a total of 6 BG's since then. Me entire team died once and one of my DK's (carrying a flag) died another time. That's it.

I'm a complete wrecking ball. The damage that they do coupled with the defensive cooldowns that they have is insane. It's *even better* than how I thought it would turn out in my Manifesto.

I couldn't start leveling until friday really, and I just hit 85 with mine. I am in marathon mining mode atm to get myself into the PvP gear before thursday.

Anyways more to the point, actually I will post my question in the manifesto thread ;p

I will concur with Mosg2 however, I got jumped by a full group of 84/85's with my team 4dk+1pali while questing in Uldum. They jumped me via dropping on top of me, and blew up one DK pretty quickly before I could really react. Then they got curb stomped. I just turret healed with the pali as they ran people down and tore them apart. When they focused on the pali, I popped a shield and gripped the offender to my blender.

[BrothelMeister]

Idk, I'm 84 with the DK+4 Rets atm, and I have to say I'm quite impressed by it's burst. The sustained damage in instances is still VERY VERY low, sometimes my DK tank beats the rets for damage, but the healing output of the rets is VERY VERY good. As long as I have a target to hit, my team will be very hard to down.

As far as inquisition management goes, just have a pop-up on the main screen for when each pally does not (or does) have it up. I usually just try to get inquisition right before wings (on boss fights) or right before firing off multiple exorcisms, but if you need healing, save the holy power for that.

In pvp, nothing gets away from deathgrip into wings+hammer into stun into snare into stun into crusader strike + auto attack. At 83, absolutely wrecked AV with the team.

[remanz]

Haha, to play off of Remanz' post about the Rets at 85 I'll post my thoughts on the DK's so far:

I hit 85 on Thursday and I've done a total of 6 BG's since then. Me entire team died once and one of my DK's (carrying a flag) died another time. That's it.

I'm a complete wrecking ball. The damage that they do coupled with the defensive cooldowns that they have is insane. It's *even better* than how I thought it would turn out in my Manifesto.

HB just hits way too far for that much damage. I don't why, but my HB hits for like 5-6k single target and crits for 11-12k sometimes, and my rets 3HP TV, hits the same! it hits for 7k none-crit , and 13-14k crit. How can this be, a frost rune no CD AOE skill that hits for a mile range has the same single target damage as a 3 holy power melee swing.

When I open on a mob with frost DK + rets, my DK dps jumps up to like 7-8k instantly. And that's with just 1 mob . with 2 it will be like 10k. My rets have to open wings to get 5k. Its just not right.

[Zappy]

Are you able to work Zealotry in your rotation? For playing solo, this is a great ability, but for lack of any way to find a useful method for boxing it, I dumped that talent. In addition, you only need one point in acts of sacrifice to remove snares. The last point I dumped was rebuke as my DK can provide the interrupts, however if you must have that, I would drop one point from Protector of the Innocent. With that, you can now put three points into Judgements of the Pure. The 9% haste buff will give you a steady DPS boost. Now all I need to do is find a way to work Inquisition into my rotation. With the lowered crit chance (I'm still 84), I'm usually around 4-5k DPS on most boss fights. Yes, it's a lot lower than other classes, but I believe as we get more gear, they'll likely scale much like they did in wotlk.

[remanz]

Yes. I am missing about 10-15% damage overall due to taking all the healing talents. Missed 9% haste from Judgement and 20% exorcism. I guess need to play with talent more to see how much healing is needed and how much damage can i sacrifice. Right now I sacrificed too much perhaps.

We need that 30% WOG cost no HB talent at least I think. As for Zealotry , I thought it was off GCD and it doesn't consume HP anymore. So just use it whenever I have 3 HP.

[Mercbeast]

HB just hits way too far for that much damage. I don't why, but my HB hits for like 5-6k single target and crits for 11-12k sometimes, and my rets 3HP TV, hits the same! it hits for 7k none-crit , and 13-14k crit. How can this be, a frost rune no CD AOE skill that hits for a mile range has the same single target damage as a 3 holy power melee swing.

When I open on a mob with frost DK + rets, my DK dps jumps up to like 7-8k instantly. And that's with just 1 mob . with 2 it will be like 10k. My rets have to open wings to get 5k. Its just not right.

It really isn't HB. It's frost strike that kills people. HB does some damage, but you don't seem to kill anything with just HB, it's when you get them in melee range and you start pumping out frost strike that they drop.

[remanz]

I changed my spec. and rework my rotation a bit. Rets DPS went up for about 1k on dummy, level 80 dummy. Damage against level 85+ is still low due to low expertise and hit.

3HP TV counts for 20-25% of retribution's overall damage. Using 3 HP to heal basically - 20% on your potential damage, then x 0.7 on that (due to 30% not to consume HP on healing). The net deduction on damage by using 3 HP to heal is about 14%. That is if I use every single 3 HP to heal.

When I don't heal with 3 HP, I get about 8k DPS with average item level 320. -14% is about 6.8k dps. Factor in the running around, not able to face boss, TV with just 2 , or even 1 HP, 5.8k dps is like the best I can do in a real fight, currently.

[BrothelMeister]

I changed my spec. and rework my rotation a bit. Rets DPS went up for about 1k on dummy, level 80 dummy. Damage against level 85+ is still low due to low expertise and hit.

3HP TV counts for 20-25% of retribution's overall damage. Using 3 HP to heal basically - 20% on your potential damage, then x 0.7 on that (due to 30% not to consume HP on healing). The net deduction on damage by using 3 HP to heal is about 14%. That is if I use every single 3 HP to heal.

When I don't heal with 3 HP, I get about 8k DPS with average item level 320. -14% is about 6.8k dps. Factor in the running around, not able to face boss, TV with just 2 , or even 1 HP, 5.8k dps is like the best I can do in a real fight, currently.

You should be speccing into selfless healer, which increases healing by 50% !! and also buffs your damage back up by 12%. It's certainly not better from a dps side, but since were not just dps but healers too, its necessary.

[Jeppis]

been doing some pvp 2 days now with my dk and 4x ret paladins and so far i haven't seen burst or high damage or anything nice :P they do ok in bg's if you get healer to heal you but i'm still not happy with this setup :P but nevertheless i'm gonna continue with these until i get better gear and get some skillzzzzz HMMM going to try 3x prot, dk + holy pala later when i get some holy gear for one of my toons

[Mercbeast]

been doing some pvp 2 days now with my dk and 4x ret paladins and so far i haven't seen burst or high damage or anything nice :P they do ok in bg's if you get healer to heal you but i'm still not happy with this setup :P but nevertheless i'm gonna continue with these until i get better gear and get some skillzzzzz HMMM going to try 3x prot, dk + holy pala later when i get some holy gear for one of my toons

I'd honestly just roll all prot. WoG will see you through healing and the DK gives you some control with grip.

[BrothelMeister]

Well, took my undergeared DK+ Ret team into the arena for the first time last night (which was 2 nights after they got 85). Their iLvl was 329-330 since I just got access to herioics an hour before.

Went 10-10, with most of my losses to the same 2 teams, which is why I finally went to bed. All of my toons are at about 100k hp, and 300 resil. The healing the team has is insane, and it is definitely a burst race, who can kill who first. The teams that won usually killed a pally (or two at the same time) first, where as the teams that lost were usually focused on my DK, only a couple of which successfully killed him.

Most of my wins were from wrecking a dps in the first few seconds, gimping the opponents damage and CC. I am only using two heal buttons atm, none of which can target a specific pally to heal, which is definitely my biggest weakness atm. My 2 healing buttons are 1 button for all 4 Pallies heal my DK, and one for each pally to heal the next pally (so they benefit from 'protector of the innocent' and 'selfless healer').

This team has amazing healing, and pretty damn good burst. Guardian of the Ancient Kings (GotAK) is only really a strength buff, but popping it right away gives it more time to charge to 20 stacks, which is a very helpful + 20% strength. I might later on save wings for when I get all 20 stacks, but for right now I just pop wings + GotAK and start wrecking.

With a frost DK main, seal of justice is not needed, so I'm trying to decide between seal of righteousness and seal of insight. Mana has been an issue in a few matches, but only on 1 pally, which is why I tried seal of insight, but righteousness yields nearly twice the damage. The cleave effect of seal of righteous will make Hungering cold fall off immediately unfortunately, so I'm thinking seal of insight + glyph of seal of insight (in place of templar's verdict)

Since I'm not using seal of Truth, as I don't think the DoT is very good for arena anyway; and Inquisition does not necessarily need 100% uptime, I dropped my points in [Inquiry of Faith] down to (1/3), yielding:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#schZbbZcbGsdksddk

I'll post more after I do some more games/ get better gear, but this comp looks awesome so far.

[Jeppis]

You control dk as main or one of paladins ? did some arena last night and didn't have chance to get melee range before nice amount of cc then boom boom dk down more cc and palas down :P oh well lost those few games VS 2k rated team over and over again :D probably not best opponent for first timer in arena :P

[BrothelMeister]

You control dk as main or one of paladins ? did some arena last night and didn't have chance to get melee range before nice amount of cc then boom boom dk down more cc and palas down :P oh well lost those few games VS 2k rated team over and over again :D probably not best opponent for first timer in arena :P

Why do you think youre facing 2k teams? For the first time (Last night) on my melee team, my match making rating started at 1500 just like everyone else. The teams I faced were not good to any stretch of the imagination, but I wouldn't expect teams to have they're CC rotations down perfect yet, even at the higher brackets yet.

I'm running DK as main. As far as dying too soon, don;t forget to pop Divine Radiance when you start taking damage, it does diminish if your team is spread out, so try to stay fairly tight packed when you use it. For me its a 1k per pally per second for 10 seconds, so it makes a huge difference. Don't forget about Divine Protection either (the 20% damage reduction one that does not cause Forbearance), I pop that with wings and Guardian.

I think I might set-up another button to have each pally cast Hand of Sacrifice on the next pally, that way it functions like soul link, with each paladin taking less single target damage.

[BrothelMeister]

If I have 4 Prot Paladins, and all 4 cast Divine Guardian, does the Buff stack? This would cause each paladin to have 3 stacks, since the caster doesn't get one, which would have a damage mitigation of 59%.

Thinking of how many Damage mitigation CDs Prot paladins have, even with their reduced healing, the damage they deal might still make them more viable than Ret paladins.

If you popped everything with short delays, stacking a few of the CDs, with no delay after completion, you could have damage reductions from 50-60% lasting nearly 50 sec, plus another 8 sec of invulnerability from Divine Shield. Since this is the duration of most fights anyway, I think it might be worthwhile to try.

[remanz]

If I have 4 Prot Paladins, and all 4 cast Divine Guardian, does the Buff stack? This would cause each paladin to have 3 stacks, since the caster doesn't get one, which would have a damage mitigation of 59%.

Thinking of how many Damage mitigation CDs Prot paladins have, even with their reduced healing, the damage they deal might still make them more viable than Ret paladins.

If you popped everything with short delays, stacking a few of the CDs, with no delay after completion, you could have damage reductions from 50-60% lasting nearly 50 sec, plus another 8 sec of invulnerability from Divine Shield. Since this is the duration of most fights anyway, I think it might be worthwhile to try.

Divine guardian doesn't stack. Nothing that benefits group stacks in the game actually. If run 4 prod , have to use one at a time. I think prod is worth a try, might work. after all it is the same gear , only swap 1h + shield.

[Jeppis]

ok i could be wrong with that rating thing but there's really nobody else doing arena others than that team and me :D i've lost 1 game vs random team, few games vs multiboxer :P gg and rest 10+ vs that team :D enemy got rogue, disc priest, hunter, warrior and ench shaman :P after rogue does aoe stun thing or what ever i blow trinket+ cd's with pallys and my dk does 3000-13000 damage before dies :P and my paladins can't even get that one single holy power before my main dies P so yeah i really think i'm getting wayyyy to good team vs me :P

[remanz]

Huh.
Rogue doesn't have AOE stun. Warrior charge will AOE stun you. Rogue has smoke bomb that split the inside from the outside.

1 holy power~. that's 1 crusader strike. can't get 1 HP means you didn't hit anyone at all. You need to play more games. Long road ahead. Practice like this.

use all your CDs before you die. consider that is a win already.

Use your hungering cold. Use your death grip. Use your strangulate. Use your repenance. Use your hammer of justice. More importantly use avenging wrath. use divine shield.

that's about it. unload all these. and if still no good, just lose. But DIE without using those means you need more practice.

[Jeppis]

/facepalm yeah warrior :cool: well yeah i need lot of practice last time i've done some pvp was back in tbc before blizz killed all fun with wotlk huntard changes. Did some with quad moonkins but those games were just for so i can get some gems

[BrothelMeister]

My opening CD blowing is:

/cast Avenging Wrath
/cast Guardian of the Ancient Kings
/cast Trinket
/cast Divine Protection
/cast [@Nextpaladin] Hand of Sacrifice

With Divine Protection glyphed, thats a 58% damage reduction for 10+ seconds. When thats over, pop Holy Radiance. If you get feared, pop trinket, if you get feared again, bubble

While bubbled, heal any toons under 50%, from Word of glory only, and once thats set, just use crusader strike and judgements. Once bubble falls off, either use the holy power for heals if needed, or cast TV on the kill target (as long as 3-4 pallies have 3 HP)

This should give you at least 30 sec before someone dies unless the team is persistently focusing a paladin.

[remanz]

My opening CD blowing is:

/cast Avenging Wrath
/cast Guardian of the Ancient Kings
/cast Trinket
/cast Divine Protection
/cast [@Nextpaladin] Hand of Sacrifice

With Divine Protection glyphed, thats a 58% damage reduction for 10+ seconds. When thats over, pop Holy Radiance. If you get feared, pop trinket, if you get feared again, bubble

While bubbled, heal any toons under 50%, from Word of glory only, and once thats set, just use crusader strike and judgements. Once bubble falls off, either use the holy power for heals if needed, or cast TV on the kill target (as long as 3-4 pallies have 3 HP)

This should give you at least 30 sec before someone dies unless the team is persistently focusing a paladin.

Those are good tips. This is our game. When we pop all the CDs we have, DK + rets are not easy to beat. I was worried about rets damage a bit.

After 1st week in arena, I think they are just fine in the damage department. The defense is there. The healing is there. Avenging Wrath is the offense.

My thoughts for rets for the 1st week (vs various other classes):
1. frost mage is still a problem. The novas and frozens delay my attacks too much. I can't kill people with JUST throwing hammers. But this is not new, at least now we have more range attacks.
2. Warlock is not as threatening as before. Somehow, I didn't meet a lot of destro locks. And they die fast. Demo lock is a bit tougher. If you could stun => strangulate him, kill him before he turns into demon.
3. Hunter/DK/Rogue are low on the kill list. Rogue's smoke bomb is worth mentioning. It is OP. It becomes a problem for me as it creates an area where they can nuke me within it and I can't target people that are inside.
4. Feral druid is broken. It hits like a truck, bleed damage is insane. 1 crit tick for 10k. and When I focus fire him, he turns into bear and uses tanking defensive CDs. More importantly, when I hit him, he builds up vengeance (stacking AP). One mangle hits me for 40k (damnnn).
5. Warrior, well warrior does formidable damage in melee. But then again, if you are in melee with us, you die.
6. Priest/Druid/Shaman, those are easier targets as usual. Attack those when you can.
7. The counter to paladin is obviously.... another paladin. Holy paladin / Protection paladin, those are tough. They BOP one. and bubble themselves.

[Kromtor]

40k mangle in bear form or cat form?
makes me wish i took my feral team seriously

[remanz]

40k mangle in bear after vengeance. Obviously needs heal to build it up.
Feral is too obvious, won't surprise me if they get hotfixed.

[BrothelMeister]

done more arena with the DK + 4 rets; tried blood, frost and now trying unholy.

Blood is redundant since the DK is never the target with good teams anyway. I don;t really care for frost so much, the snare is just not good enough. Really enjoying Unholy! Desecration rocks, nothign gets away. Losing the 10% melee haste kinda blows, but having targets that passively cant escape is better.

[remanz]

How is unholy's damage. Did the 8% spell damage debuff make any difference to the team ? I tried unholy before. But the damage is a bit low. Plus Unholy uses unholy rune for Scourge Strike. So I can't use necrotic Strike.

AMZ is also nice.

[BrothelMeister]

Unoly rocks, you get more death runes from festering strike, so u actually have more free usage of necrotic strike if you want it, altho with just 1 DK i don't, so far I prefer the massive aoe snare.

[Kromtor]

i've been playing my ret team a little for the hell of it, they're so damn durable even without good resil gear yet

my dk dies first all the time for me despite using death strike, being blood spec, doing all the things a good tank should do. the abominations might buff i still think is the best of all 3 trees for the rets, however, the 8% unholy comes close.
still not making any good use of dark simul, but it has potential i'm sure of it. self cleansing is a must for the snare removal.

[genghiskhan]

so nobody plays 2s or 3s? Just 5s?

[Kromtor]

2's and 3's are even more about CC than 5's in my experience. They're just not very fun compared to the huge damage output that is possible in 5's.

I just went up against what I thought was another multiboxer at first - apparently multiboxers aren't the only ones who have discovered the incredible stacking that is necrotic strike. The 4 DK + 1 holy pally (most of the DK's were unholy) just destroyed me wish ease.

[Zappy]

the abominations might buff i still think is the best of all 3 trees for the rets, however, the 8% unholy comes close.

Unless your DK needs the extra 2% str buff, blessing of might provides the same buff.

[Ualaa]

so nobody plays 2s or 3s? Just 5s?

I'd love to be proved wrong...

But so far, 2's and 3's has been a consistently very horrible set of bracket sizes for boxers.
While, we do at least okay in 5's and some players/compositions can dominate.

[genghiskhan]

Thanks. Ill start out in 5s then. Id love to be a groundbreaker and by no means do i want to be a cookie cutter boxer, but i have alot to learn, especially in arena, before i feel comfortable trying to venture into "new" territory. I want to have 3 or 4 frost dks. Tho i know what i want and what i end up using could be vastly different. Im going to read all of this thread (ive only skimmed it) and all of the dk manifesto (havent read it) and see what i come up with. I love the idea of a dk/pally team. DG your enemy into your blender and ret/prot heal thru incoming damage, it cant get any better :)

[Kromtor]

Unless your DK needs the extra 2% str buff, blessing of might provides the same buff.
errr sorry about that. been doing the 4 dk 1 pally group too much in which case the abominations might actually is important so your pally is free to use kings. previous poster was correct, blood is somewhat redundant in this comp.

[genghiskhan]

This thread makes my head hurt. Lol. Any update on 4x Shockadins? Cuz from reading this thread and dk manifesto 4x ret or prot pally seems like a joke compared to 4x frost dk.

[Kromtor]

They are kind of a joke now - but people have been saying lawlret for ages, why stop now? I haven't actually had a chance to test out 4 shockadins but the name wouldn't really fit anymore - it'd be 4 Exodins. Exorcism spam with all your healing haste effects does serious damage as holy, then you've got your holy shocks left over to heal and your WoG's from those. I'd say viable but I just don't know how well it scales at 85

[BrothelMeister]

i've been playing my ret team a little for the hell of it, they're so damn durable even without good resil gear yet

my dk dies first all the time for me despite using death strike, being blood spec, doing all the things a good tank should do. the abominations might buff i still think is the best of all 3 trees for the rets, however, the 8% unholy comes close.
still not making any good use of dark simul, but it has potential i'm sure of it. self cleansing is a must for the snare removal.

Yes, they are very durable, and I'm still under 1800 resilience. 3k is entirely achievable.

They are also going to be making changes to Divine Purpose and Mastery. The Hand of light from mastery will now be associated with Divine purpose, and mastery will instead increase damage from special attacks as additional Holy damage, which cannot be resisted.

Since Ghostcrawler admitted that Ret paladins need a dps increase, I imagine it will only get easier to blow people up post patch.

[remanz]

well. the Tol Barad 1800 madness inflated the entire pvp blue set. Everyone running around with 3000 resilience now.
Combined with double healers popularity in 5s, things are getting tougher.

Holy paladin + any other healer, things are unkillable.

[Shodokan]

Crusader strike = 135% base damage + 35% damage talented + 20% holy damage (base mastery) + (.2 * .3) inquisition = ~ 225% weapon damage

Templars verdict = 235% + 35% damage talented + 15% (glyphed) + 20% holy damage (base mastery) + (.2 * .3) inquisition= ~ 445% weapon damage

That is quite a bit of damage.

[Jeppis]

yeah idd nice amount of damage :) but controlling 4x inquisition + 4x full holy power for templars verdict is pretty b****s**t :P it's pretty easy but feels like druids eclipse thing before cata changes...

[Kromtor]

what are the feral druid heals actually hitting for at 85? i can't imagine they compare to word of glory - though nothing really compares to rip either which is also a pain in the butt to use to full efficiency on 5 chars

[Shodokan]

what are the feral druid heals actually hitting for at 85? i can't imagine they compare to word of glory - though nothing really compares to rip either which is also a pain in the butt to use to full efficiency on 5 chars

Heals can be good, but no they don't compare to WoG as far as potency, but they also have NO rampup time.

[Multibocks]

what are the feral druid heals actually hitting for at 85? i can't imagine they compare to word of glory - though nothing really compares to rip either which is also a pain in the butt to use to full efficiency on 5 chars

All my characters run from feral druids. I hate those guys, so much damage and healing.

[Kromtor]

no rampup time? im talking about the instant casts feral get - they definitely take rampup time to use the combo points that give you a chance to get them. otherwise you're stuck casting actual heals or HoT's - though I must admit rejuv x4 would be pretty badass. im just curious how weak the feral healing is compared to a real healer. they get some spell power but not nearly as much as a resto.

[Ualaa]

no rampup time? im talking about the instant casts feral get - they definitely take rampup time to use the combo points that give you a chance to get them. otherwise you're stuck casting actual heals or HoT's - though I must admit rejuv x4 would be pretty badass. im just curious how weak the feral healing is compared to a real healer. they get some spell power but not nearly as much as a resto.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showpost.php?p=311371&postcount=14

In the blue crafted/AH set, nothing reforged.

Rejuvenation (NE)... 1824/tick
Rejuvenation (Cat)... 2189/tick
Lifebloom (NE)......... 318/tick & 3630 Final
Lifebloom (Cat)........ 382/tick & 4188 Final
Regrowth (NE)........ 4600 Initial & 478/tick
Regrowth (Cat)....... 4600 Initial & 574/tick
Healing Touch (NE) 10,500 healed.

In Cat Form, all my druids are part of the ATG that receives repeater region click heals; so no initial hit of Regrowth/Healing Touch while in Cat Form.

The Healing Touch/Regrowth are instant cast once every 10 seconds, but only ever get the instant cast towards the end of battles where several druids are dead and there's only one or two left; when five are up, (in BG's) nothing lasts beyond the 2nd Mangle. Using: Mangle, Rake, Mangle, Mangle, Rip (97% chance for Regrowth/HealingTouch to be instant after each Rip, in that rotation).

No talents/glyphs for healing, aside from +AGI to healing and +20% healing received while in Kitty.

[Kromtor]

that's no WoG spam but it's decent healing. i definitely wouldnt write the group off... in fact i kinda wanna level my feral team. i've got a war + 4 enhancement team taht just hit 85 but with the crap quest gear im not exactly having an easy time having any arena victories. 0 so far.

[remanz]

I have 1 enhance in my group. I took him for the bloodlust. Single target wise, it doesn't do more than the 1 frost DK i had. But still plenty more than my ret pallies.

[BrothelMeister]

I have 1 enhance in my group. I took him for the bloodlust. Single target wise, it doesn't do more than the 1 frost DK i had. But still plenty more than my ret pallies.

Well ret paladin dps is going up, purge is getting nerfed, and bloodlust is going away. Time to break that ret pally back out.

[remanz]

That.

I have to agree. Damn you blizzard! Unlike mage, shaman is near worthless without bloodlust.

[remanz]

Crusader strike = 135% base damage + 35% damage talented + 20% holy damage (base mastery) + (.2 * .3) inquisition = ~ 225% weapon damage

Templars verdict = 235% + 35% damage talented + 15% (glyphed) + 20% holy damage (base mastery) + (.2 * .3) inquisition= ~ 445% weapon damage

That is quite a bit of damage.


Wait, why is inquisition modifier in there ? I thought those 2 are physical. Even if it can be applied, it should be only to that 20% holy damage * 0.2, not the entire damage %

[remanz]

I played ret extensivly through PVP (BG, arena), and also in 10man PVE raid.

1. If you took heal talent, and you spend holy power to heal. You will do half dps as what you can be. So 12k dps becomes 6k if you heal.

2. You need/have to manage inquisition to do onpar damage. exorcism (this might be 2nd biggest damaging spell for ret), hammer of wrath, judgement, holy wrath, seal damage are all holy. If you don't manage inquisition, Retribution paladin damage will be low (-20 , 30%). In PVE, Inquisition needs to be on all the time. In PVP, inqusition needs to be on before exorcism and hammer of wrath.

3. Rets are no longer the frontal burst class as we know. They need about 5-7 seconds ramp up time to get the first 3 holy power. Then use Zealotry to burst.

4. Using Templar's Verdict with less than 3 Holy power. Your dps will suffer quite a bit. So with hand of light proc and different paladins get 3 holy power at different times, it is best for you to wait then use TV all together.

5. As for PVP, retribution does not counter frost mage. Removing root/snare is only half of the answer. The other half is to have a 10k per tick bleed on the mage, and Rets don't have that. Rets are kited the moment you touch the mage, if you keep cleansing, you will never have enough damage on the mage.

Retribution cannot go toe to toe against any melee. The burst is just not that high. It has some burst in the middle of the fight. But not as high as warrior/dk/feral, and rogue's defensive CD just too much to handle.


All in all, Retribution is no longer a faceroll class. Can't just mash 1 button and expect people to drop dead (sounds more like dks' drop right now). You have to manage your skill CD + rotations to achieve normal damage.

Retribution is currently the bottom melee for damage in pvp, middle for damage in pve. With the upcoming buff, Rets will come back, as the hand of light proc nonesense is gone. It should beat warrior in PVE damage. and It should not be too far behind in pvp as CS and TV damage increased.

[BrothelMeister]

I never use inquisition, I save the holy power for healing, except when I pop zealotry and have a lot of excess points., then I use TV as well

[remanz]

well the question is, is your 3k reslience target dropping in arena ? If I pop wings without inquisition, he is not dropping.

Obviously talking about normal players that knows how to use defensive CDs.

[remanz]

Not confirmed whether as a bug or as a nerf yet.

but Hammer of wrath is hitting 50% less on PTR than on live now. Probably related to the CS, TV mastery buff for + 20% holy damage.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1869247970?page=1#2

So TV, CS + 20% , and HOW - 50%. This is not good for PVP boxing as Hammer of Wrath is the major burst for Retribution PVP.

The net change for PVE damage on PTR is probably still higher than on live now. So Retribution gets more constant higher damage output.

a nerf to burst.

[Mosg2]

Remanz, how do you feel about having toons that can Cleanse/Freedom themselves? It seems to me playing my DK's that the most important part of a melee boxed team is time on target--Even if they have no burst as long as you're running a 4 dps setup it's all about having your guys on target. On live now I get decent time up on target with 4x Death Grip and the group snare via Howling Blast but a good team will just Freedom/Lifegrip/HoP/whatever my target and force me to swap--Losing DPS in the meantime and giving them more time to CC me.

I think once this PTR gets pushed to live it's going to be no contest--DK's with Death's Advance will have the best mobility of any melee class. My Rets still call to me though--The buffs to Rets on the PTR seem real nice and make them easier to box... And Cleanse/Freedomx4 is something I miss dearly.

[Noids]

The other thing that has made frosty so good to play is the simple dps rotation. I haven't played around on PTR yet but is it as easy to get an efficient dps cycle with unholy?

Also the advantage of HB was not only perma snare to keep us on target but the aoe pressure it put on teams. I guess we are trading this pressure for improved single target dps with unholy and the super pets are always a nice source of extra pressure?

Edit: Been following this thread and the DK one, meant to post this there, sorry.

[Koralon]

BrothelMeister I faced off against your team on wednesday (day after i hit 85) with my 4shaman1Hpal we did like 6 matches? I think you won 4 I won 2, I have to say I was quite impressed with the burst that the paladins did, I basically looked at my health frames right after you reached me and 1 of my shamans were dead, the only reason I beat you in my greens and few blues from questing was when I split your team up on unfriendly melee maps ie hit you off ledges, due to my burst not being that great yet. It would be fun to see how the 2 teams go head to head with one another after I get some gear though, maybe the pally burst won't be so high. How long does it usually take to kill people with high resil with your team?

Ps: I have to admit that 4 rets with wings and guardians all charging you is quite scary lol :)

[remanz]

Remanz, how do you feel about having toons that can Cleanse/Freedom themselves? It seems to me playing my DK's that the most important part of a melee boxed team is time on target--Even if they have no burst as long as you're running a 4 dps setup it's all about having your guys on target. On live now I get decent time up on target with 4x Death Grip and the group snare via Howling Blast but a good team will just Freedom/Lifegrip/HoP/whatever my target and force me to swap--Losing DPS in the meantime and giving them more time to CC me.

I think once this PTR gets pushed to live it's going to be no contest--DK's with Death's Advance will have the best mobility of any melee class. My Rets still call to me though--The buffs to Rets on the PTR seem real nice and make them easier to box... And Cleanse/Freedomx4 is something I miss dearly.

I've had a long discussion and debate with my friend who plays a frost mage main in pvp. Cleanse/Freedom gives Retribution a chance to hang with frost mages. It is one of the best tools for a melee class. However, just cleanse + freedom is NOT enough. Simply because the moment you touch the mage, you will be snared and the mage will gain a step on you. From that point one, it is the same old kitting game. Retribution will keep cleansing himself and not doing much damage to the frost mage. So Rets don't counter frost mage like feral druids did. Otherwise, they would've nerfed the cleanse from Rets, not the powershift for feral.

The key here is that Retribution has no snare, no charge, more importantly, no 9k dots on the mage. With the limited amount of time that Rets can get into melee with the frost mage. I am just not doing enough damage. This is where the DK comes in. The DK offers control and snare. It makes the team possible.

So to sum it up for the cleanse/freedom. It is good to have as it takes care of snare/root. The other half of the problem is CC. AOE + Instant CC will render half to full of my teams useless. Some good teams, they create this 1v1v1v1v1 situation in 5s. Where they don't focus fire to start, they individually start with the CC game. Just as you miss the cleanse/freedom, I miss anti magic shell that can be used preemptively. Immue to CC.

[BrothelMeister]

BrothelMeister I faced off against your team on wednesday (day after i hit 85) with my 4shaman1Hpal we did like 6 matches? I think you won 4 I won 2, I have to say I was quite impressed with the burst that the paladins did, I basically looked at my health frames right after you reached me and 1 of my shamans were dead, the only reason I beat you in my greens and few blues from questing was when I split your team up on unfriendly melee maps ie hit you off ledges, due to my burst not being that great yet. It would be fun to see how the 2 teams go head to head with one another after I get some gear though, maybe the pally burst won't be so high. How long does it usually take to kill people with high resil with your team?

Ps: I have to admit that 4 rets with wings and guardians all charging you is quite scary lol :)


There you are, I couldn't find you on the forums, but I recognized the Barcodes. Anyone with as low of resilience, and HP as your team is usually a free win, but 4 Ele + HPally really has a huge leg up on a 5 melee team. People with high resil have been trouble so far, but that's because I'm still behind in gear somewhat (I didn't exploit the Tol Barad week of 1800 Honor)

If you notice I usually beat you when your Grounding totems weren't up, or your healer was out of position. Your team has a lot of CC, and you weren't using close to enough of it. Groudnings with earth bind + Spirit walker would have been the shit to stop me, yet I never saw it all meshed together. Hex would have been good while I was charging in, if you had had your groundings up.

Keep working at it :)

[BrothelMeister]

I've had a long discussion and debate with my friend who plays a frost mage main in pvp. Cleanse/Freedom gives Retribution a chance to hang with frost mages. It is one of the best tools for a melee class. However, just cleanse + freedom is NOT enough. Simply because the moment you touch the mage, you will be snared and the mage will gain a step on you. From that point one, it is the same old kitting game. Retribution will keep cleansing himself and not doing much damage to the frost mage. So Rets don't counter frost mage like feral druids did. Otherwise, they would've nerfed the cleanse from Rets, not the powershift for feral.

The key here is that Retribution has no snare, no charge, more importantly, no 9k dots on the mage. With the limited amount of time that Rets can get into melee with the frost mage. I am just not doing enough damage. This is where the DK comes in. The DK offers control and snare. It makes the team possible.

So to sum it up for the cleanse/freedom. It is good to have as it takes care of snare/root. The other half of the problem is CC. AOE + Instant CC will render half to full of my teams useless. Some good teams, they create this 1v1v1v1v1 situation in 5s. Where they don't focus fire to start, they individually start with the CC game. Just as you miss the cleanse/freedom, I miss anti magic shell that can be used preemptively. Immue to CC.

All this post says is that clearly, a good frost mage is not a kill target. If your first target is the frost, and he effectively gets away after you open up, pick a different target (Arms Warrior)

This team has superb mobility so long as you are matching their snares with snares of your own from the DK. We all know this is chains, desecration, and chill-blains. (I prefer chains and Desecration as an Unholy DK, but will likely go with Necrotic strike's Desecration, and chains for the root effect as a Frost DK post patch)

[Mosg2]

I don't think it's that easy Brothel. I've never been a doomsayer on these forums but as they currently work one single Mage will make a melee cleave team lose. If you don't have Mass Dispel or Shattering Throw to get rid of a Mage's iceblock you will have an incredibly difficult time winning. You have two options:

A) Attack them and then swap targets when they Iceblock and then back to them. You're unlikely to kill anyone in the first 30 seconds of a match if you do this--Which means you're probably going to lose with a blitz-like 4 DPS cleave setup.

B) Don't attack them and let them turret cast while they root, snare and Ring of Frost your team, in which case you're going to lose.

I believe that http://www.wowhead.com/item=62471 is a guaranteed necessary item for all melee teams in arenas now.

[remanz]

All this post says is that clearly, a good frost mage is not a kill target. If your first target is the frost, and he effectively gets away after you open up, pick a different target (Arms Warrior)

This team has superb mobility so long as you are matching their snares with snares of your own from the DK. We all know this is chains, desecration, and chill-blains. (I prefer chains and Desecration as an Unholy DK, but will likely go with Necrotic strike's Desecration, and chains for the root effect as a Frost DK post patch)

I used to think frost mage is a terrible first target. Playing higher teams more, I now changed my mind on the mages. I target them first. Force them into iceblock is a top priority. Mage is just doing too much if you leave them alone. It is simply a "let others beat me rather than the mage" strategy.

I faced this team twice. and they just eat me alive. Killed my DK in like 3 seconds while render my entire team useless.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/nerzhul/5v5/jawking/

[Mosg2]

Yeah, my strat now is to focus their Mage and force an Iceblock and then swap back as soon as it wears off. A Mage left alone is just going to turret cast you to death. If they didn't have Iceblock I think it'd be a different world for us--You lose so much momentum when you have to swap targets and then back. This is, to me, almost a good enough reason to run with a Shaman healer. You get the offensive Purge so you can rip off Iceblock and get the Mage kill asap plus they're pretty durable.

[remanz]

Yeah, my strat now is to focus their Mage and force an Iceblock and then swap back as soon as it wears off. A Mage left alone is just going to turret cast you to death. If they didn't have Iceblock I think it'd be a different world for us--You lose so much momentum when you have to swap targets and then back. This is, to me, almost a good enough reason to run with a Shaman healer. You get the offensive Purge so you can rip off Iceblock and get the Mage kill asap plus they're pretty durable.


err, purge can't dispel iceblock. It is the same as divine shield. Only warrior shatter throw and priest mass dispel can strip it. Restore shaman needs to run to stay alive, probably not the best solo healer in 5s.

[Mosg2]

Gah, I thought it was Purge/Dispellable. Le sigh. Was probably thinking about Hand of Protection.

Whelp, at least I can spend time leveling that 4x Mage team now haha.

[remanz]

Well this team,

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/blackrock/5v5/love%20rainy/

I was like "oh no~" when I faced them.

[remanz]

Regarding Hammer of Wrath hitting 50% less on PTR vs on Live.

This is actually a bug. A very non-excessive, non-stealthy bug. There was small coding change in the latest PTR build that caused Hammer of Wrath, a ranged ability, to use ranged attack power instead of melee attack power. The change itself was completely unintended and has since been corrected.

That said, we're still watching paladin damage (both sustained and burst), and if we feel that further adjustments need to be made, Hammer of Wrath may actually be a good candidate.

I hope the mastery change will bring the rets back. We desperately need that damage. 1800+ teams in arena are getting tougher. 4k Resilience shaman is just unkillable, not to mention the dps with individual / group CC just keeps peeling me off. I tried to go with more healing, more defense, ended up losing more. Going back to suicide style.

[Kromtor]

i thought resto shaman were invincible by design

[remanz]

well have to kill 1 healer to start. Otherwise, have to lucky and CC at least 1 of them. With both of them free, my target is not going down. The other healer is none other than a paladin.

have to see actually, if i waste more time on the restore shaman, might as well just attack paladin until he bubbles, and kill him after.

[Kromtor]

right now all healer pairs are seeming invincible to my pally team. i cant believe they are buffing the shit out of power word shield. it rapes teams without purges enough already.

[remanz]

The more resilience they got, the worse it becomes for us. Resilience just scales faster than damage from those PVP gears. Not to mention the 4 piece bonus are going to be nerfed by half.

Things are not looking good later into the season. 5s just have too few teams. and Most of them have figured out some basic good strategy vs melee zerg. maybe we shall be looking at other brackets

[Mosg2]

I've been thinking that War/DK/HPally as a TSG team would work great in 3's.

[Shodokan]

I've been thinking that War/DK/HPally as a TSG team would work great in 3's.

Theres too much to look out for as a warrior... maybe after the nerf to charge and shit since that 3's team is actually pretty tunnel vision. You're still going to hate mage teams =P

[Fat Tire]

Theres too much to look out for as a warrior... maybe after the nerf to charge and shit since that 3's team is actually pretty tunnel vision. You're still going to hate mage teams =P

Depends on the comp its facing. I usually tunnel mages the whole game except for a few comps. MLD I start on mage and switch druid. If its RMP I tunnel the mage the whole game unless their rogue is good at peels. If its Mage/melee/healer I will tunnel the mage the entire game. If its mage/shaman/x I will start mage till block then tunnel the shaman until kill. Best tip I could give melee cleave is shaman are easy kills.

Only team that counters tsg / melee cleave is RLS. You should never win against rls (Rogue/Lock/RSham)

With the change(patch) to mobility for warriors there is no reason to switch out of battle stance the entire game now. sucks

[Shodokan]

Depends on the comp its facing. I usually tunnel mages the whole game except for a few comps. MLD I start on mage and switch druid. If its RMP I tunnel the mage the whole game unless their rogue is good at peels. If its Mage/melee/healer I will tunnel the mage the entire game. If its mage/shaman/x I will start mage till block then tunnel the shaman until kill. Best tip I could give melee cleave is shaman are easy kills.

Only team that counters tsg / melee cleave is RLS. You should never win against rls (Rogue/Lock/RSham)

With the change(patch) to mobility for warriors there is no reason to switch out of battle stance the entire game now. sucks

Do you think that running TSG by yourself is honestly doable? Especially running the healer yourself? After the nerfs to arms? There are tons of means to actually slow your opponent etc. Getting off pummles/mind freezes successfully and not being juked is probably easier for a boxer than two players.

I think it would require just as many macros if not more to be successful than playing a single toon such as a DK... focus required for gnaws. The charge change might actually help a boxer.

To be super successful you will need things like lichborne self heal, death striking for hp... among other things.

[Mosg2]

With the changes that are on PTR you're going to be Fury as a Warrior. There's multiple clips on Youtube of Fury Warriors doing ~100k in less than 3 seconds against 3k resilience. What do you need to "control" with a team whose sole strategy is "Tunnel one person". Fury DPS on PTR is stupidly simple to setup with a priority system a la how we run the DK's right now. Unholy DK's become insane with Death's Advance and Frost actually would work great too with the root on Chains of Ice. The comp never does split-dps and you have virtually no CC to manage that isn't ridiculously simple--If you can run 4x DK's with a healer you could run TSG imo~.

Plus, with the way Arena works right now you could just make one single 3's team and cycle everyone through it for points. Sure, you'll only get 6 people to Gladiator with a single team, but... Worst case scenario you have two Holy Pallies on your main account as healers and then one set of 4 DK's and one set of 4 Warriors on the alt accounts. Bam.

[Shodokan]

With the changes that are on PTR you're going to be Fury as a Warrior. There's multiple clips on Youtube of Fury Warriors doing ~100k in less than 3 seconds against 3k resilience. What do you need to "control" with a team whose sole strategy is "Tunnel one person". Fury DPS on PTR is stupidly simple to setup with a priority system a la how we run the DK's right now. Unholy DK's become insane with Death's Advance and Frost actually would work great too with the root on Chains of Ice. The comp never does split-dps and you have virtually no CC to manage that isn't ridiculously simple--If you can run 4x DK's with a healer you could run TSG imo~.

Plus, with the way Arena works right now you could just make one single 3's team and cycle everyone through it for points. Sure, you'll only get 6 people to Gladiator with a single team, but... Worst case scenario you have two Holy Pallies on your main account as healers and then one set of 4 DK's and one set of 4 Warriors on the alt accounts. Bam.

I REALLY REALLY don't think that it will be possible to get glad like that, but i might try it for fun. I know fury has redic damage... i just didnt know how much.

Edit: tried a fury warrior on PTR... seriously what the fuck is this shit... recklessness + colossal smash on a fury warrior is RETARDED. 90k damage in 3 seconds is stupid.

[Ualaa]

Test Realm, is not live.
90% of the stuff there is under consideration, but will not go live.

[Fat Tire]

Do you think that running TSG by yourself is honestly doable? Especially running the healer yourself? After the nerfs to arms? There are tons of means to actually slow your opponent etc. Getting off pummles/mind freezes successfully and not being juked is probably easier for a boxer than two players.

I think it would require just as many macros if not more to be successful than playing a single toon such as a DK... focus required for gnaws. The charge change might actually help a boxer.

To be super successful you will need things like lichborne self heal, death striking for hp... among other things.


Youre correct. It is insanely difficult and thats why I dont run the healer in 3s. I also dont run a warrior- I use either DK/Ehn/Ret.

I tired 3s solo and I found very frustrating with me playing the healer also it was just too easy for the opposing team to lock me down playing the healer. Positioning is too important for the healer. I think it can be done but it would take a ton of practice.

The most important things about melee cleave is getting interrupts on to the healer or onto my target so he cant do any dmg or very little. The biggest benefit to melee cleave/tsg is that I dont have to worry about CC except for instants. I use the naga for target arena 1/2/3 for interrupts/ non facing CC and with the pressure I put out I dont worry about getting juked.

Why I mentioned warrior as being a possible for a boxer is because they dont have to have as many macros or any now for stance changes and can sit in battle, they have decent self heal and with a dispel they have good melee uptime. It makes them easier, I guess, but you are correct in your post.