Ret Pally Confusions

[Kulia 39]

So, I got my Ret to 100 last night, geared him up today and had an absolute blast playing it. BUT I have a few questions for things that I'm not quite clear on despite coming back to IV several times today trying to figure out wtf I should be doing.

Hammer of the Righteous: 3+ targets a DPS gain? Or should I use it at 2+?
Censure: With 2 targets up, should I maintain censure on the lower priority whilst putting the brunt of my DPS into the higher priority?
Divine Storm: How the heck do I use this thing?! How many targets for a Divine Storm *NOT* procced? and is it a DPS gain if I go Final Verdict > Divine Storm > Final Verdict > Divine Storm? And if it is, at how many targets do I stop doing that? 

And final question: Holy Avenger(HA), Divine Purpose(DP) or Sanctified Wrath(SW)? I know the IV guide says SW or HA as DP is underpreforming in raid scenarios due to the RNG gods. But, as we all know IV guide doesn't always update when new simcraft info comes in, so out of SW, DP and HA which is better I've been playing HA but I'm not a big fan of the ultra-spammy playstyle it gives in the opener and everytime I use it (spammy is fine, but not ultra-spammy, because that's no fun with 200 ping (oceanic player in American instances :().

Thank you to all who reply.

 

(As an afterthought, I started in MoP and boosted my paladin when I pre-ordered WoD, so I've never been much into the paladin community, where would you guys say is a good place for all my paladin needs?)

[Troels 9]

Hammer of the Righteous on 3+ targets is correct, and that's also where i think you should start using Divine storm with out the free cast proc (But not interely sure about that)

But you should never use divine storm without a final verdict buff, unless there are several targets that won't be up for long.

The same goes for single target, if you get a divine storm proc, don't use it unless you have final verdict buff or the free divine storm is about to fall off.

As for censure, you'd want to keep up 5 stacks on each target if possible, and if there's a target with higher priority, just focus dps on that target, and just attack the other target(s) before the 5 stack falls off

For level 75 talents i pref SW or DP, i normally play with SW for nice burst, and i feel like it's better than HA. DP can also be really good, especially if there are a lot of AoE involved in the encounter. But really, all the level 75 talents are close, and it comes down to preferences and boss mechanics, we have 2 ret paladins in my guild who use different talents and do about the same dps.

[Grognard 6]

If using FV, it's something like 5+ before pure DS wins; otherwise, you want to try and weave on 2+ (i.e., FV > generator > generator > generator > DS) to make you have the FV buff, and on ST only use DS with both the EDS and FV procs, and only if nothing of higher priority is available.

 

If not using FV, DS takes over at 3+ targets.

 

With L75 talents, preference usually wins out over theoreticals, but fight mechanics and gear play integral roles in talent selection, too. SW is usually the generic winner for sustained ST DPS, HA for fight where high amounts of controlled burst are required (AoE or ST), and DP is considered superior for high-demand AoE situations. With Foundry open and 4pT17 available, DP is going to become the uncontested winner at L75 simply due to the tier set's proc mechanics. They don't at all work well with HA, and makes SW real tricky to play effectively, but DP on top of EDS and the 4pT17 is gonna be a proc-heavy RNG-fest which can create stellar results, or leave things a touch lukewarm.

 

In that same vein, our L100 talent choices are effectively removed as well with 4pT17. FV will be the talent worth taking at that tier since Sera and DP don't interact well, and EmpS will require too many extra globals to be effective when we're looking at so many extra procs to manage. There may still be the odd fringe case ST fight where Sera could be used effectively (Gruul comes to mind), but it'll be a matter of whether or not the RNG favors you.

[Kulia 39]

Okay cool, thanks for the insight guys. Hopefully gonna see a slight DPS gain now with switching back to DP(preferred talent in the 75 row) and things being more clear on the FV>DS thing.
(I was weaving in FV and DS's, but sometimes I just forgot because I wanted to get the procs out of the way, but I'll slow it down a notch and make sure I do that until there's just too many targets that FV>DS will be a loss instead of a gain)

[Grognard 6]

With all the procs, you definitely want to use them, but the trick is using them at the right time. Typically I'll dump DP or EDS procs if at 5HoPo since dumping has a chance to produce more procs, and doing it that way helps prevent wasted procs. Things get a touch murky with EDS procs during Wings and/or HA, but with SW, I'll swap in EDS (if at < 4s) instead of a CS, throw a HoW, then return to pace; with HA, I'm not 100% sure since I haven't bothered with it since beginning of MoP, but my gut says ignore EDS procs during HA and just keep chaining out T/FVs.