Looking for ret help/advice

[Gressirix 0]

Hey all,

 

I love the site, been reading it for as long as it's been around.  So this expansion, I have went DPS after a wow life of healing and it's not going well so far.  I guess you'd say it's gone horribly with the pally from my small sample size.  I've been lagging on gearing my pally but last night was my first night of ret in raid and I am falling ~20-30% behind where I had expected to be.

 

So, here's my info.  I'd love to get any feedback I can from you guys since you all know your stuff and are better than I am.

 

Armory:  http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Gressirix/advanced

 

Note:  I usually run with sanctified wrath but seeing as how my raid was struggling to tread water last night, I wanted to see if I could get better numbers out of holy avenger the last couple of pulls.  The timing didn't work out as I would have liked for that particular fight so that's a no go in the future.

 

Warcraft log from last night: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jZhnfR4wyLAgFXBV

 

There's no significant deviation from the rotation outlined in the guide.  My first glaring problem I see while playing is not getting out enough hammers of wrath when avenging wrath is up.

 

My initial thoughts on last night:

 

1.  With my guild still very sloppy with the mechanics and more movement than is needed, I will probably get more use out of long arm of the law than speed of light. Or possibly even PoJ.  Also I'll pony up the gold for the gift of mastery on the cloak for the 10% speed buff.

 

2.  I'm gonna drop selfless healer and switch back into sacred shield.  I spent too much time focusing on tracking the stacks for SH and wasted too many gcds on fol casts/uses.  Our healers were struggling but that's a healer problem and on the DPS who are taking tons of damage.

 

3.  I didn't have a weapon enchant which is a failure on my part that cost me a few hundred if not more dps.

 

As this is long enough I'll stop there, but here's a question about expectations.

 

Based on my ilv of 636, I get the feel that I should be coming in at around 18-20k. With 16k as an absolute lower limit if everything goes poorly regarding fight mechanics, placement, etc.  Is that about right, or should my expectations be shifted?

[Envec 1]

With a 638 ilvl and a 630 weapon I would expect you would be at the 16k level from what I have seen in HM. I wouldn't expect 18-20k till you hit 640+ ilvl or at least upgrade your weapon.

[Gressirix 0]

Thanks for the thoughts on output.  I ran some LFR today just to get an idea of what I can hit.  I actually did pretty well.  Highs of 20-21k on Brackenspore and Kargath with a low of 16.8k on Twins with the other fights falling in the 18-19k area.  In real content, I expect that to be 10-15% lower due to having to care about mechanics.

 

I made some changes to UI as well as downloaded Tell Me When and configured it so I could focus more of the actual boss instead of staring at my action bars to see what would be up next.  I found that to be helpful since on our last raid night I had multiple instances of not facing the boss after he was moved or getting out of range and not caching it until I missed a gcd here and there.

 

Also, I made that log public so people can actually see that.  Forgot to do that before posting yesterday.

[Elarion 6]

I am not "big" ret player, most of time i raid as holy. But as i know - u need a LOT of mastery at your gear.

Not shure what better 640 with bad stats or 630 with mastery-haste-crit, hope someone can tell this for me and you.

 

About your pally:

Glyph - better glyph for jujment(jeopardy), replace DS glyph.

 

Enchant - you dont have weapon and neck enchant. Before nerf bleed for weapon was best(cheap chant), not shure for now.

 

Don't use Sacred Shield, it's your gcd and dps loss. Better take selfless healer, but DONT heal everyone when you have 3 stacks, you have to deal dmg, healers shoud heal. Use flash of light ONLY when someone(or you) gonna die without flash of light from YOU. Also u have ~100 flash of light cast, what is this? U coud hit 100 CS.

 

Rotation - seems wrong, couse exo soud do less dmg than crusader strike(DS with Prock and FV buff(and 5hp) - FV(5 hp, not less) - CS - Jud - Exo - FV(3hp)) - u shoud read guide at this site again, here very good rotation explonation. But maby its couse of low Mastery, not shure, correct me if i wrong.

 

For this fight most paladins use Lights Hammer, Seal of Righteousness, Hammer of Righteousness(mobs). U didn't use this at all. About debuff(absorb heal) - buble-loh-buble it, so you wont die from dot damage or any other thing(couse healers coud easy heal you up without absorb shield). Also you have - 40% dmg red for spehere drop(at the end of fight it will hit harder and harder, couse more sphere will fall at same time and boss have damage buff) and fire-dot. Also cant read logs properly, but most paladins forgot remove bubble-buff and ~10 sec hit only for 50% dmg, u always want remove buff as fast as u can(with macros).

 

You shoud read top-dps-paladins logs at this boss, ofcouse they have better gear and greater dps, but not "total" dps intresting, u wanna to see what abilities they use at this fight, how often they use it, what talants they chouse and ofcouse u wanna check this paladin's armory and check what stats they stack.

 

Btw, u coud use 660 pvp gear, most ppl do this, couse u cant find your stats at every item from this raid - only 1 type of plate drop at this raid(one helm, one boots etc).

[Gressirix 0]

Thanks for the feedback, a lot to go through.  With the holidays, I'm at the folks place with their dial up net speed so I can't go through a lot of these suggestions without wanting to pull my hair out but I'll be back home on Sunday to go through them. I plan on looking through some logs and watching some replays of similarly geared/ilv'd players and see what they're doing in their logs.

 

Only thing I can respond to at the moment is rotation:

 

The pally rotation is easy enough with only what, 5 or so things to consider?  Just use CS (or the multi target equivalent for aoe packs, can't recall the name right now), Judgment and Exorcism on CD.  Prioritize exorcism and its procs and just go from there.  And obviously use DS  when you get the proc ideally after casting FV for the range and damage buff.

 

Here's a log of my LFR run I got in before the holidays took me out of town.  Numbers look better in these attempts but still not 100% to where I would like them to be:

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/f9dm2Xjh6JWvPtGY#type=damage-done

 

Sorry for the duplicates on some of the fights.  Forgot to delete my old sessions before logging again.  Time stamps and raid comps should make it obvious which ones are which.  I'm somewhat happy with my 19k on Ko'ragh but the rest of the fights are okayish.

[Elarion 6]

Yes, your rotation seems wrong. You shoud read guide here https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/retribution-paladin-pve-dps-rotation-cooldowns-abilities

 

Exo proc do nothing, expect instant refresh. So you shoud prioritize CS over Judgment and over Exo.

 

So your prio shoud be CS>Judg>Exo, not Exo>CS>Judg.

 

Full rotation in guide - DS(buffed with proc AND FV)>FV(5 Holy power)>ES(our 1 min cd dot)>HoW(35% or with "wings")>CS>Judg>Exo>FV(3Holy power).

 

Also u wanna always use your DS proc with FV buff, never use it without it. If u have DS proc but dont have FV buff(rarely happens), u still have lot of time to get 3 holy power, cast FV and after it cast DS with both buffs.

 

Probably exo will be better with proc when u get t17 set bonus, but we dont have it yet =)

[Gressirix 0]

Okay, seems reasonable enough.

 

I'll try getting a more optimal cast output based on a better rotation.  I guess I somehow have been operation on the incorrect assumption that based on the staggered CD times of the 3 abilities that over the course of a multi minute fight that it would be irrelevant in the long run.  Looking at the #1 pally on normal mode in HM  he has a breakdown of:

 

48/39/14 CS/J/E

 

Whereas I am:

 

35/47/24 for a fight that is about the same length.  So yeah, definitely too much exorcism on my part.

 

I'll try the changes out on Sunday when my raid group runs again and see what happens and let you guys know.  Thank you guys a ton for the help. I am growing to like this part of dps much better than healing.  With healing success being determined if no one died, the ability to have absolute numbers to compare to as well as discuss it with others is a nice change.