FAQ up on MMO-Champions

I've been working on a Ret DPS FAQ for quite a while now and just finalized it. It is posted on MMO-Champion.com under the Paladin forums, link is provided below.

Retribution Paladin FAQ

Now excuse me I need to go to sleep.... I know I'm tired when I spell my class as "Paladen".



~Ron

Comcast Fails yet again.

To those of you making the tough decision, of choosing between Comcast or ________ as your ISP, please, for the love of all the small adorable kittens out there, go with ________ instead.

Crapcast was out the whole day today... had to buy a new router even, as they insisted that "the complications are your own". Bullshit.

Ah well. More to come tomorrow hopefully.

~Ron

3.2 Wartools Ideas

With the welcoming out of the way, I can get down to business. Here are my ideas from 3.2, with a revamp of the Paladin trees, along with my "un-official 3.2 patch notes", should these changes take effect.

3.2 Paladin Wartool

Due to significant talent changes, all paladin talents will be reset for players.

Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.

Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.

Conviction (NEW): Learned at level 80, this is a single-target DoT that shares a cooldown with Consecration.

Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.

Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.

Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.

Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can't be dodged, parried or blocked.

Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.

Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.

Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.

Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.

Seal of Righteousness- The effect from this ability is now considered a melee attack, and has a chance equal to the paladin’s critical strike rating to crit for x1.5 damage.

Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage. In addition, the damage-over-time effect is now considered a melee attack instead of a spell attack.

Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.

Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.

Talents:

Holy:

Aura Mastery: Redesigned. The paladin now assumes a Holyform for 15 seconds. During this time, the paladin is immune to Silence and Interrupt effects, and deals an additional 5% holy damage on each attack.

Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.

Blessed Hands: Moved to tier 2 of the Protection tree.

Blessed Life: Now also increases your total stamina by 1/2/3%.

Divine Favor: Now also reduces the mana cost of your next Holy Light, Flash of Light, or Holy Shocks spell by 100% in addition to its current effect.

Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.

Hallowed Attire: New Talent. It increases the paladin’s Spell Power and Attack Power by 1/2/3 for every 720 Armor Value you have.

Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%, and allows for an additional 10/20/30/40/50% of mana regeneration to continue while casting.

Purifying Power: Moved to tier 2, and now reduces the cast time of your Exorcism spell by 16/33% instead of reducing the cast time.

Sacred Rights: New Talent. Increases the amount healed by your Flash of Light healing over time effect when Sacred Shield is active by 25/50% and your Judgement of Light spell by an additional 1/2%.

Sanctified Light: Now also reduces the mana cost of Holy Light and Holy Shock spells by 2/4/6%.

Seals of the Pure: Moved to tier 1 of the Retribution tree.

Unyielding Faith: Moved to tier 3.

Protection:

Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin’s defense rating (example: a paladin with defense equal to only 5 times his or her level will receive no healing from the talent, while a paladin who is immune to critical strikes from boss creatures through defense will receive the maximum amount).

Blessing of Sanctuary: This ability has been removed.

Divine Strength: Moved to tier 1 of the Holy tree.

Guarded by the Light: Instead of refreshing Divine Plea’s duration, this talent now increases your maximum mana by 100/200% of your total strength, in addition to its current effects.

Judgements of the Just: The melee attack speed reduction of this talent is no longer removed when another paladin uses the same Judgement ability used to apply this effect.

Sanctified Blessings: New talent. Your Blessing of Kings and Greater Blessing of Kings spells also reduces damage taken from all sources by 3%. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 2% of maximum displayed mana.

Touched by the Light: No longer increases the amount healed by your critical heals, but instead the amount healed by your Holy Light and Flash of Light spells by 2/6/10%.

Retribution:

The Art of War: Moved to tier 6. Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant. In addition, this talent now provides notification in the floating combat text when it activates.

Commanding Strike: New talent. A holy strike that deals 35% of weapon damage as Holy damage plus 357 over 12 seconds. It also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. Using this ability causes a 10 sec. cooldown on Hammer of Justice.

Crusade: Moved to tier 5.

Crusader Strike: Redesigned. Now deals 65% weapon damage and causes the Mark of the Crusader debuff, which increases all holy periodic damage dealt to the target by 2% and reducing all periodic healing done to the target by 10%. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Crusader's Call: New 2-point talent. Increases your Expertise rating by 3/6. In addition, your Mark of the Crusader effect slows the movement speed of targets affected by your Judgement of Justice spell by 7/15%.

Deflection: Moved to tier 1 of the Protection tree.

Judgements of the Wise: The base mana gained from this effect has been reduced to 20%, down from 25%.

Repentance: Now has a chance to break on damage, rather than breaking on any damaging spell or ability.

Righteous Vengeance: Now also increases all damage caused by the paladin by 2/4/6%.

Seal of Command: This ability has been removed.

Seals of the Wise: New talent. Increases your Intellect by an amount equal to 12/25% of your Strength, and every time one of your Seal spells hits an enemy, you gain an amount equal to 1/2% of your base mana.

Swift Retribution: Moved to tier 7. In addition, this talent will now also reduce the cooldown on your Exorcism and Repentance spells by 11/22/33%

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: Removed.

Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

Glyphs:

Paladins

Glyph of Righteous Defense: Now also increases the chance for Hand of Reckoning to hit.

Glyph of Seal of Command: This item has been removed.

Glyph of Seal of Blood: Changed to Glyph of Holy Wrath, which reduces its cooldown by 15 seconds.

Glyph of Repentance: Causes your Repentance spell to also remove all of your Damage over Time effects from the target.

Going into detail on the new spell, Conviction.

Conviction:
10% of base mana Melee Range
Instant cast 8 sec cooldown
Condemns the target, dealing [25 * (113 + 0.04 * SPH + 0.04 * AP)] Holy damage over 20 seconds. This damage is dealt slowly at first, and builds up as the spell reaches its full duration. Shares a cooldown with Consecration, and only 1 target can be convicted at a time.


Basically, a slightly stronger Single-target Consecration that functions similarly to Curse of Agony. After the 20 seconds, the total damage done by Conviction will total for 5% more than that of Consecration after 20 seconds for 32% less base mana. The melee range component is to prevent it from being abused by Holy paladins. Glyph of Consecration would have to be modified to increase Conviction's cooldown as well.

~Ron

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Brian Jeslis a.k.a. Ronark, or just plain Ron. I play a Retribution Paladin on the Doomhammer-US realm.

About Myself:
As I said, I'm Brian from Illinois in the US. After much dancing between different MMOs like EQ2, DAoC, Guild Wars, and CoH, I finally came across WoW in April of the year 2006. I started playing with some friends on Dommhammer on this Paladin, and never deleted him. Of course, this was way before TBC was even a thought, and Paladins were pretty much pigeon-holed late game, but I'll get to that later.

About Ronark:
I began the game not knowing anything about the class- All I knew was that I wanted to be a dwarf, due to the amount of lore usually associated with them, hence why I chose Mining as a profession, and later, Jewelcrafting (when TBC hit, my other main profession, Blacksmithing, was still stuck at about 120). The name "Ronark" actually was born from looking through the Guild Wars game guide looking for interesting character names: I'm the type of person that despises seeing names such as "Xxpayztoplayzxx" as a character name, and wanted something my own.

Playing a Holy Paladin, I (as everyone else did) leveled very slowly, and barely managed to hit 59 when TBC was released- I did not to get experience an End-game content until later when the Achievement system was added, and people were forming up old BWL and MC raids.

Most of my TBC career was as a Holy paladin with the guild Shadow Wolves- the raid team was consisted of multiple guilds in Vanilla, and only one othe during TBC, the Azure Knights. After a lot of wipes, attempts, and cleared content, I found spamming Flash of Light was beginning to get too OCD. I was able, through Healing raids, to aquire enough Melee plate gear to build a decent Ret set, and was able to Offspec during nights when we inducted new members into our Raid team (doing runs like Gruul's).

Eventually I was able to see some BT action as Ret, and was quite proud of the DPS I was able to do doing these and 5-man MgT and heroic MgT runs, staying at least some-what competitive. I'll tell you one thing, though: convincing your Raid leader to let you raid as an Alliance Ret paladin was fucking hard- As if the bad reputation wasn't enough, I lacked Seal of Blood to DPS effectively. But I was able to get passed that barrier, and have ever since the early days of running BT I have remained Ret.

Ever since the anticipated 3.0 patch the Paladin class, and mainly the Ret spec, was "adjusted to fit the casual player"- I say this because I was still able to play viably with the tools given in 2.2, although it required an EXTREME knowledge of the class in order to pull off. Anyways, I was still brought to Raids, and was still able to preform well- sometimes out DPSing many PuG runs due to my previous experience as "lolret". However, somewhere along the line, my Raid team started to lose interest, and eventually, people. I was them recruit by the guild Torment after running 10-man Ulduar with them for a few weeks, which leads us to where I am today.

About the Game:
My main focus on the game is PvE encounters and content. I have preformed all roles in PvE, from FoL spamming, to having Holy Shield up 100% of the time so as not to be crushed. I do do the occasional PvP, but mainly it has been due to acquiring Achievement Points: I STRIVE for earning Achievement points- The Badge System in City of Villians is what kept me entertained for a long time, and once WoW adopted their own system, I found that I always had something to focus on when not Raiding- Thus, I have sat through many Reputation grinds; I have leveled the dreaded Fishing secondary profession to 400 (before it was nerfed); I have also gotten the chance to see content I wasn't able to experience before.

Present Day:
With patch 3.2 on the way, I can not help but wonder what changes are in store for the Ret Paladin. The changes made to Seal of Vengeance are the start of hopefully something great, but until that alone will not be enough to keep the FotM players away. The skill cap needs to be raised significantly- Until then I'll continue to do what I do best, DPS.


~Ron