That’s what was killing me–it shouldn’t have been as hard as it was. We all knew the strategy, everyone said that they understood that they had to switch targets, not AOE the Detonating Lashers when they were all at 5% HP, etc… But then they’d screw it up, anyway. :smack: Oh well, we got it sorted eventually.
I’m going to be another person responding with, “Nothing: you bought the wrong helm.” Ret Paladins do **not **use caster stats like Int, SP, and MP5. They use melee stats like Strength, AP, and Crit. The Brilliant Titansteel items are intended for **Holy **Pallies.
Yeah, I was worried about that. Unfortunately, there were no Spiked Titansteel Helms available on the AH at the time I made my purchase. The rest of my armor, aside from shoulders, is the Savage Saronite set (here’s my Armory page). When I was buying those pieces I was torn between the Savage set and the Ornate Saronite set. The Savage gear looks more like it’s meant for a tank (+STR, +STA, +resilience), but also lots of +crit rating, while the Ornate set seems aimed at healers (+STA, +INT, +crit, +resilience, +spell power). But those are the only two “* Saronite” sets I’ve seen on the AH consistently. I bought the Brilliant Titansteel Helm to somewhat compensate for all the mana I lost when I got into the Savage Saronite set (same reason I replaced the Savage shoulders with Ornate shoulders). Is there a crafted Saronite set aimed at DPSers? I was smart enough to stick the Savage helm and shoulders in my bank rather than vendoring them, so I can still don the full Savage set if I need to.
I should mention that my fighting style tends toward using spells as much as melee attacks, but this is almost entirely “world” combat. I don’t raid with this toon, or do much grouping at all, so I’m having to cover all the bases myself most of the time. At the moment I have less than 6000 mana, and a single Healing Touch cast on myself devours more than 1000 mana all by itself. Consecrate also sucks the mana down quickly, which is why I tend to save it for situations where I get adds. But I can easily take down a lvl 80 non-elite mob and can deal with groups of 2-3 lvl 80 mobs if I have to.
Resilience = PvP. PvP gear will also have lots of Stamina. The Resil + Str is Ret PvP gear; Resil + Int is Holy PvP gear. Resilience is an almost totally worthless stat outside of PvP.
As a Ret Paladin, your melee stats will feed back into your Mana pool, IIRC. And the faster you kill things, the less damage you’ll take. I’m sure someone who plays a Ret Pally as their main can give you more suggestions–unfortunately, my highest Pally is like 12, and I don’t have access at work to the resources where I’d normally pull from for classes/specs I’m not familiar with.
ETA: Old gear is often better than wrong gear. If you can’t find Spiked Titansteel gear on the AH, wait until it shows up or just buy the mats and have a BS do the combine. (It will probably work out cheaper that way, anyhow.) Holy gear is not going to be itemized in a way that will do much of anything but handicap you.
Yeah, while mana is certainly necessary for Retribution, Retribution gets Judgments of the Wise, which not only gives Replenishment but also gives 25% mana back directly to you. As long as you’re using judgments consistently, you should never want for mana unless you blow everything at once.
Mister Rik, if there was no Spiked helm on the ah you should have waited until there was, now you’ve wasted* your money.
The Saronite sets(anything with resilience on it in fact) are intended for pvp and are generally considered junk for pve.
As far as mana is concerned, a couple of thousand isn’t going do make much difference, Holy Light and Consecration spamming will suck you dry unless you use full caster gear, in which case your damage will suck.
As long as you hold back on the consecration and judge every time you can, Judgements of the Wise should cover most of your mana needs, especially now that they’ve buffed it to 25%.
On preview: Gah! Must. Type. Faster.
*Wasted in the sense that it’s junk for retribution, there is nothing wrong with having a healing set just in case.
Dang, then I’m going to need to do some research into figuring out what gear is best for PvE. This “PvP” gear seems to completely dominate the AH, at least at high levels.
One reason I was looking at Spell Power is that my normal attack sequence is Exorcism followed immediately by a Judgment of Light (with Seal of the Martyr on myself). That combo frequently knocks a good 50% off an enemy’s HPs right off the bat (more if the enemy is undead or a demon), so I was thinking more spell power would be even better.
I just talked to my spouse, who’s played a ret paladin forever now. He says you shouldn’t be itemizing for spellpower at all–it costs a lot (in terms of your gear’s itemization) and gives very little back (plus you get 30% of your AP in spellpower from your talents, which should be plenty). For PvE, he says the focus should be on Hit capped (or close–though he says if you’re not raiding but want to do heroics, you can get away with about 5% hit, and if you’re not even doing heroics, you can manage with less than that), Strength (scales better than AP, but you end up with some AP pieces anyhow), Crit… then worry about Expertise and other stuff.
I PVP’d for the first time in a while this past weekend. Man did I get beaten like a red-haired step child. I will need to endure countless beating I suppose to get enough honor points to purchase the right gear.
There aren’t that many good craftable plate pve pieces at high level, I suspect the reason you see a lot of the Saronite stuff is because people use them level their blacksmithing, and despite the resilience it’s still pretty decent at level 78.
I can at least help you with the shoulder slot, Spaulders of the Giant Lords are arguably the best pre raid plate dps shoulders there is, so start grinding Sons of Hodir rep(which you need for shoulder enchants anyway).
Thing is, all offensive skills the paladin have, scale more or less equally with Attack Power and Spell Power, but all things being equal you will get twice as much Attack Power from gear and the Sheath of Light talent will increase your Spell Power by 30% of your AP, increasing the scaling from AP even more!
AFAIK, this damage for Ret pallies comes from Attack Power (AP), not Spell Power (SP). Nowadays, Blizz **want **you stacking melee stats, not caster ones. (Compare to the dark, dark days, fortunately before my time, when even Warriors needed Spell Hit to get our Taunts to land.)
There is a lot of good Ret Pally in the first post or two here.
The main stat priorities are given as: Hit (until capped) > Strength = Expertise (until capped) > Crit > Agility > Haste > Armor Penetration > Attack Power > Spell Power > Intellect
This matches pretty well with my general experience with melee DPS classes in general.
Regarding PvP, I liked it enough on my holy priest that I convinced my WoW enabler friend to try PvP on a new lock, so we’ll see how he likes it. I don’t think he’ll have much of a problem given what locks can bring to PvP (the lucky bastard).
I really like the Wyrmrest Accord quests (I keep typing ‘dragonshrine’ as ‘dragonshire’ when looking things up, for some strange reason). However, I’m going to have to find a group to take down Dregmar Runebrand, who reminded me of one of my personal peeves: That giant mobs like Dregmar are too farkin big to trip my traps. :mad:
As we cross certain “areas”, am I getting money, or having it deducted?. (I crossed SWC, and heard it, and then crossed over another section and heard it again!)
I just made a Gryphon trip from Sentinel Hill to Southshore (7 + minutes) and heard that “money” sound twice, but as I don’t have my currency displayed unless I click on it when I go to my “head”, I can’t tell, and I’m so filthy rich from that damn illegal gold purchase, that I can’t tell from that either!
You have to go through all the connecting flight points between your departure and your destination, and you pay the fare between points every time. F’rinstance, if you go from Stormwind to Booty Bay, you’ll pass over the Sentinel Hill and the Rebel Camp, and you’ll pay the fare from Stormwind to Sentinel Hill, then from Sentinel Hill to the Rebel Camp, then from the Rebel Camp to Booty Bay.
That reminds me. I’ve been wondering if my special shots sound different from each other as a hunter, and it’s a question that I forget to ask when I’m ingame. For example, does Steady Shot sound different from autoshot/arcane shot/Kill Shot, or is it all the same sound? How would you describe it?
You used to have to actually stop at each flight point and get another flight to the next flight point. Now you can just take one long flight, but you still have to pay for each flight point.
Yeah, I always figured that it was simulating the old long-distance-high-speed-travel-on-horseback practice of trading your horse for a fresh one at each town/station along the way.
