T16 4pc ~ Does it make divine purpose viable?

[Gandrelan 0]

I normally strictly tank on my paladin but i've picked up a ret spec since entering 25 man raiding since we have an overabundance of tanks.  I dont quite yet have the 4 set bonus of the new tier gear but i was wondering if and when i do would divine purpose outdistance sanctified wrath in overall damage done?

[Oreoxd 165]

AoE fights, such as Immerseus (heroic, though even on normal DP is a better talent choice) Galakras, and Spoils, most other fights you'll stick with SW.

[soamazzing 1]

here is the issue with Dpurpose and its interaction with tier 16 4p. If you stack a ton of haste like I do, the procs that come from each make haste less and less valuable (not useless, just less valuable). If you really want to use Dpurpose as a single target/non cleave fight talent choice I would recommend backing out of some haste and instead putting it into mastery or crit (a balance of both is fine also). That way when the procs do come they are hitting much harder and you are not just sitting there with all of your HP generators on CD due to how much haste you are likely running. 

[Fouton 266]

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but wouldn't that happen either way? Your CDs scale with your GCD, so wasting CDs will happen either way.

[soamazzing 1]

I am not referring to reducing the GCD, my concern is when you get chain procs from 4p and DP your other abilities (holy power builders) are not being utilized, when this happens it swings the value of haste down (not where haste is useless but certainly where its not as attractive as the other secondary stats). Example, you pull a boss, hero gets burned, haste is already much less valuable during heroisms duration than the other secondary stats you have to choose from due to being well over 50% haste with lust/hero. At 50% you are GCD capped so having a ton of haste from gems/reforging is already a DPS loss for that duration. Depending on the length of the fight, heroism could make up a substantial percentage of your overall boss fight, example would be very short fights like iron juggs, malkorak ect. Sub 5 minute pulls is where haste suffers already due to a large percentage of DPS uptime being under the effects of heroism/lust. 

 

So to get back on track, if you pull a boss, get heroism on pull and begin to get chain DP/4p Procs it would be substantially better to reach higher mastery and crit levels than it would be to stack haste to the highest point possible. Once heroism goes down, you will want to play with your gear until you have enough haste to minimize downtime between abilities but not so much that you end up with a bunch of holy power builders off CD when you get those nice RNG chain procs that happen with DP and 4p. 

 

There is a lot of thought that goes into the choices you make on a fight to fight basis and this is just another piece of that. 

 

I have done a fair amount of testing in flex prior to taking these theories into my main raid and in the end I find myself beating classes that are in general superior to the theoretical output for rets. 

[Fouton 266]

I agree that in heroism time haste doesn't have as much value, though I don't think there are many other situations where that comes up. It's kinda like why I don't try to get any haste procs on my Prot gear, its too inconsistent and past that 50% its just wasted.

[Belloc 6]

Personally, ret hasn't felt as good all expansion as it does with 4pc and Divine Purpose. Granted, I'm mainspec prot and only really go ret for soloing, but I definitely think that DP is the way to go when you get 4pc. YMMV.

[Astherion 4]

Personally, ret hasn't felt as good all expansion as it does with 4pc and Divine Purpose. 

I cannot agree more for aoe fights. We finally got to HC Spoils and the combination of Divine Purpose and 4pc is a miracle. With the Divine Storm Glyph you feel like back on Cata, just constant divine storms.

[Daltek 4]

I cannot agree more for aoe fights. We finally got to HC Spoils and the combination of Divine Purpose and 4pc is a miracle. With the Divine Storm Glyph you feel like back on Cata, just constant divine storms.

Those Divine Storm chains are absolutely glorious and they seem to come at the most opportune time. While Ret could still use some help single target with our Yo-Yo dps design currently, I feel like our cleave is the best it's ever been. I don't care for the design of the mass exorcism glyph, but I feel like I'm being forced to run it, and I'd rather just exorcism while running to a target after judgment than wait until I get to it to hit 2/3 targets.