The Whitehawk

There’s no point in beating around the bush. Divine Shield is getting nerfed.

With Wotlk most of our DPS stopped depending on our melee combat swings and seal damage, and more on skill damage. With that said, and given that roughly 70% of our damage comes from our spells and special strikes, it just didn’t make sense to give us full invulnerability and full damage during it’s duration.

Although I’ve used Divine Shield in the past as an offensive spell, it’s very clear that Blizzard doesn’t want it to be an offensive spell anymore. So what can my fellow Retri palas do about it? And I’m talking about the ones that cast the bubble instantly and faceroll on the keyboard after.

1. Don’t let your enemy gain too much distance – Switch to Seal Of Justice, continue running after your enemy and judging Light or Wisdom, depending on what stat you need at the time. If you let your enemy recover too much when you used the Divine Shield you might as well have let him kill you to start with
2. Depending on what type of enemy you’re fighting, it is usually after the DS that you should blow your cooldowns, but not your trinket. Your bubble should be your first or second trinket, depending on what spell landed on you (remember to keep your Hand of Freedom hotkey very handy)
3. Save your trinket and stuns for when you find an opportunity to burst the enemy down. Don’t waste it out of desperation. If you don’t find a proper opportunity to use it, don’t. What’s the use of trinketing out of something to survive some spell or skill if you have no stun to immobilize your target

Rule of thumb is, if there’s a way for you to avoid taking damage do it. And in most cases, if you’re blowing your cooldowns before your target is, you are on your way to a defeat, even if you take him down.

Retribution paladins really shine in burst damage and short combats, but if your fight starts lasting more than a couple of minutes and you blew all your cooldowns before your adversary did you’re already in a bad situation. Exceptions to this rule are, of course, when you have more than one opponent and have to try to quickly burn one down.

And don’t get two upset if you’re taken down in less than 10 seconds. RNG is a big part of this game, and some fights are simply not meant to be won. Then again, the same goes both ways. What distinguishes a good player from a mediocre is what you can do to counter the odds when the RNG is against you.

If you lost a combat by a small margin and your enemy chose to run away than to reduel you then I wouldn’t consider it a complete loss. Just make sure you take note of his nickname and let him have second chance at proving what he’s worth when the odds are equal to both.

As some of you may know, the thing that keeps me the most occupied after work is the popular roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Given that my Ragnarok Online posts always proved to be a little popular, I’ve decided to start talking more about the game I play, and namely giving suggestions and a personal opinion about what is going on in the game and in my guild.

I am not a theorycrafter, nor do I understand the full mechanics of the gameplay. All that I understand is what specs affect me for the best, and which affect me the least. When I see players with my class, choosing the silliest gear combinations they can, just because it’s accessible to them, I feel really sad.

So all my posts go out to those out there that chose to play my class, and every now and then I’ll even give some insight about other classes, from what I learn from my guildies or friends.

First of all, to all Retris out there, even the newcomer Holy Paladins who got tired of spamming two buttons and re-specced. This is (more or less) the proper order that you should choose when picking Retribution gear:

STR/AP > HIT (only until you’re capped at 9%) > CRIT/AGI > ARMOR PENETRATION >  HASTE

Yes, Haste is one of the stats that scales our DPS the least. Most of our DPS depends on our Physical Weapon Swings and our Judgements, and everything else is below that. The best thing to boost our DPS is to have a very slow weapon, and gear that stacks on STR, HIT and CRIT. Those are the ideal stats for us.

If you happen to get the Sword of Justice from heroic Halls of Stone, whatever you do, do *NOT* trade it for the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver from Halls of Lightning. Yes it’s epic, but you’ll see much better DPS and results with that ugly green fork I have than with these three glued-together axes. Get it only if you don’t have the Sword.

Not all epic rewards are necessarily better than their Blue counterparts. A good example of that is the Wyrmrest Accord exalted plate pants reward which lack hit and crit. They are probably awesome for a DK that relies on diseases or so, but for Retribution paladins, it’s once again a case of “take them if you don’t have better”, even my crappy Legplates of the Oculus Guardian, and I’m in a dire need of geting rid of them for something like Staggering Legplates or a random  DPS plate pants from Naxx…

But that’s enough gear comparison for now. On the next chapter I’ll give my opinion about the Divine Shield nerf which a lot of people (who aren’t paladins) are happy about.