Retribution Paladin needing lots of advice

[trazik]

I am rather new to WoW. I have been playing for 3 months, 2 months of which I spent leveling to 80. I frequently find people grumbling about my DPS output and am conscious that I need to be more effective. I never had the chance to do any of the end-game WotLK content (only heroic dungeons) and so I have tried to get myself suitably geared for Cataclysm end-game content (difficulty of heroics notwithstanding).

One of my biggest problems is the WoW-speak-jargon. Where can I go to learn the basic translations of things like "procs" and "rotations" and the various "caps" (hit, expertise, mastery, haste, dodge, parry, etc) and "reforging"? People talk about these things a lot, but frankly I find them unwilling to explain what these things are and how I can address my characters' shortcomings.

I have dual specialization. I primarily play a DPS role, but I switch to tanking for harder PvE content like Tol Barad and Bloodgulch (Twilight Highlands) daily quests.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...razik/advanced (http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/trazik/advanced)

Go easy on me please, I have a lot to learn. :o

I have invested in Bloodied Pyrium plate gear to boost iLevels above 329 for Cataclysm heroics. Nothing has been gemmed or enchanted because I consider this gear set to be temporary. Of course, the difficulty of Cataclysm heroics leves my gear set in limbo.

Someone in another thread expressed surprise that I have PvP gear. Do I? It is news to me. How do I find out if items are PvP or PvE?

I have checked out maxdps.com and entered my data. It seems my talent tree is good. I need to tweak my glyphs a bit.

Here is the link to that page (problem is, once my session expires, my data gets lost, as far as I can see anyways). If you see Level 80 in the chart, then you know that the data is not correct:

http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/retrib...eID=d640346a19 (http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/retribution.php?saveID=d640346a19)

It seems to suggest my DPS should be some crazy number like 11.5k, but when I tested on a combat dummy I got 4000 - 4400. In a recent, yet sadly unsuccessful, Grim Batol (normal) dungeon, I found myself doing about 5500 DPS.

Other resources I use a lot:


Wowhead
Recount addon

Advice appreciated.

Trazik

[trazik]

I just learned that most or all of my Bloodied Pyrium plate items are PvP, rather than PvE gear. Maybe I goofed by having it all crafted :o

I guess I need to reforge the lot of it, assuming it is possible. I presume I should reforge Resilience into either Hit rating or Expertise (depending upon what is already on the item)?

Or maybe I should try my hand at PvP (battlegrounds)? Is my gear set good enough to start?


EDIT: I just discovered that Resilience cannot be reforged. Now I feel I have totally ruined my character. :mad: What realistically can I do to fix this? Nobody will take me on dungeon runs, even normals. Having looked through Blacksmithing, I cannot see any decent DPS plate gear.

[Ryoku]

Here are 2 links you might want to check out:
The retribution topic on elitist jerks: link (http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t110342-retribution_concordance_4_0_3a/)
Be warned if you decide to register on that site (which you don't need to do to be able to read) do follow the forum rules over there they are quite strict on it (as can be seen by the sheer number of threads in the banhammer part)

Another interesting site for retribution paladins: ling (http://retributionpaladins.com/) : they even tell you were you might find some nice gear

[Mr.Winkle]

I just learned that most or all of my Bloodied Pyrium plate items are PvP, rather than PvE gear. Maybe I goofed by having it all crafted :o

I guess I need to reforge the lot of it, assuming it is possible. I presume I should reforge Resilience into either Hit rating or Expertise (depending upon what is already on the item)?

Or maybe I should try my hand at PvP (battlegrounds)? Is my gear set good enough to start?


EDIT: I just discovered that Resilience cannot be reforged. Now I feel I have totally ruined my character. :mad: What realistically can I do to fix this? Nobody will take me on dungeon runs, even normals. Having looked through Blacksmithing, I cannot see any decent DPS plate gear.

Whilst your gear is far from ideal for normal dungeons its certianly more than passable, and if you can pull 4k dps in a normal dungeon then that's enough to kill everything in there.

As you've learnt to your dismay resilience is a PvP stat, in that it reduces the chance that another player can land a critical strike on you (critical strikes do 1.5x regular damage if you were unaware). And yes it can't be reforged.

Here's the stat priority for ret Paladins taken from the elitist jerks thread linked above:

Strength (Str) = 1
Attack Power (AP) = 0.45
Hit = 0.42
Expertise (Exp) = 0.27
Crit = 0.20
Haste = 0.16
Mastery = 0.09

As you can see Strength is weighted far higher than any other stat, so as a starter for ten anyhting without strength on it isn't for you. Slightly confusingly attack power (AP) is basically the same as strength, except that 1 strength = 2 AP. The only reason its rated as 0.45 is that a number of buffs in the game, like kings, buff strength but not AP, so strength is better.

Your next two stats are hit and expertise. When you swing your weapon at an ememy that is a higher level than you (raid bosses are level 88), you have a chance to miss, you need hit, specifically 8% or 960 hit to ensure you don't miss. Hit is clearly an important DPS stat since missing with an attack = 0 dps. Expertise perfroms a similar function, however expertise makes sure that when your weapon/ability does connect the boss he doesn't dodge it, the expertise soft cap is 26 (as an aside, you should always be attacking the mob/boos from behind so that he can never parry your attacks).

You can mouse over your character sheet in game to get a better feel for where you are, but looking at your amrory profile you currently need another 5.5% hit and 10 expertise.

Once you have the required hit and expertise you would then favour crit > haste >mastery with crit being twice as good as mastery.

I hope that helps explains things a little, if i was in your current position i would do the following.

Check my bags to see if i have any ilvl333 items from quests or normal dungeons where strength is the primary stat and hit/expertise/crit/haste/mastery are the secondary stats and swap those items for any you currently have equipped with resilience.

Then recheck your hit and mastery levels. If you're below 8% hit or 26 expertise then reforge any mastery > haste > crit into hit andm expertise(in that order) to reach those levels. If you're already at those levels then reforge any mastery and haste to crit.

If you have some gold available you could also buy some red strength gems for any gem slot, the common quality gems are very cheap on the AH now (at least on my server). You can also find some enchanting scrolls very cheap on the AH that may help you reach your hit and expertise caps.

Sorry for the wall of text, hope that helps.

[trazik]

That was extremely helpful. Thank you for taking the time to post it.

[trazik]

Update: With the advice I have received, both in this thread and privately, I have maxxed my hit rating via reforging. It is now 960 (7.99%) so I should be hitting without fail, even on bosses. I have also gemmed the gear that I have.

I will go through and do the same for my tank spec (secondary).

Many thanks again.

As an aside, a World of Warcraft 101 page somewhere would really help a lot of people.