1400

My 2v2 team broke 1400 last week.  I know this may not seem like a big achievement to hard core arena junkies but for a retribution paladin and shadow priest that hadn't teamed up together until cataclysm it has been an uphill battle.  Both classes offer a large amount of support abilities in exchange for dps.  With this latest patch we both got dps increases.  With that and getting more familiar with what my partner needs and when we have both been able to raise our game up a notch.

One bit of advice that I have for folks is at the start of the match as you run to your starting position is to change your aura to match who you are fighting.  Your resistance aura may not help you if that shadow priest has stacked spell pen but, I guarantee that devotion aura is going to do anything to lower the damage he does.  My recommendation would be if there is one person that does physical damage the use devotion aura.  The reason being that devotion aura always lowers physical damage where as resistance aura only lowers damage if the opponent doesn't have spell pen.  Retribution aura is pretty much useless and concentration aura is geared more towards healers (which may help out your partner sometimes but, generally not) not retribution paladins.

I just read the patch notes and all I have to say in this post is what the hell?  More later.

Progress

It's been a couple weeks since my last post and Blizzard has implemented quite a few changes to the Retribution Paladin with the latest patch.  With all the changes I decided to change up my spec a bit.  I went with a more PvP spec and added the support talents.  This has done a couple of things for me:
1. I can throw heals to my partner and they hit harder, have chance to not use Holy Power and give me a buff if I use WoG.  (Due to Divinity, Eternal Glory and Selfless Healer)
2. I can heal my self and the heals hit harder and have chance to not use Holy Power.
3. My HoJ has a shorter cool-down.  (Due to Improved Hammer of Justice)

Also I have gotten a couple upgrades to my PvP kit:
1. Pants
2. Shoulders
Upgrades in PvP always mean more damage (if your a damage dealer) and more survivability.

With our new Mastery the added damage was significant.  Against a training dummy in my PvP gear I saw a 30% increase.  This was with the same gear, the same rotation and reforging into mastery and out of crit/haste.

The Sacred Shield addition was a definite gain to our survivability.  How can you complain about a ~25K shield every 30 seconds while below 30% health?

Now lets talk about the Crusader Strike nerf.  I know what your thinking they buffed the damage output of it.  This is true.  But, the main reason CS is one of our top priority abilities is not for its damage.  It is now our only source of Holy Power.  Before the patch CS awarded holy power on cast.  Now it awards on hit.  The difference is that since the majority of PvP players ignore expertise when we face someone who has a ton of dodge we a don't land many of our CS's.  If we don't land a lot of our CS's we get less Holy Power.  No Holy Power no WoG and no TV's.  One of the blue posters on the official forums tried to say that this was a bug fix.  This is not the case.  Ghostcrawler stated specifically that CS generating HoPo on cast was by design.  For raiding retribution paladins this should not cause much issue since they are usually expertise soft capped.  The main problem is the delays we will be seeing from the slowing of holy power generation.  For other classes that have attacks that do not land the resource that was used is refunded (at least partially refunded).  Since the resource that retribution and protection paladins use is cool downs then my recomendation would be to reset the cooldown on the CS.  My personal opinion is that this was a serious nerf.

All in all I feel the patch was a net gain for retribution paladins.  Definitely could have been better without the CS nerf but we can't have everything.

Arenas and a new trinket

We finally got our 2's arenas done.  Did not go great but, I got my new chest piece after the first win.  Enchanted and gemmed it for a very nice upgrade.  Also got a new honor trinket to replace the last green in my PvP set.

We are only up to 1350 or so, and already I am noticing problems with some classes just ignoring me and I am not able to change their minds.  If a warrior is on my priest there is really nothing I can do about it except HoP the priest which the good warriors pop.  If I use HoS he lasts a few extra seconds but, dies any way.  What I am noticing is that the comp we fight has more influence on the outcome then how well we execute the fight.  Either that or we need more practice on the comps we are having difficulty with.

Not much in the way of PvE lately.  Mostly still just working on closing out all the zones to get max rep before dungeon running with tabards.

I did get my therazine rep up to honored so, I can at least get the lower shoulder enchant.  Not finished with their starter quests yet so, may be able to get to revered and get the PvE rings soon.

This weekend is SotA battleground holiday.  Looks like randoms since I am not that fond of that one.

I made a spread sheet to help me calculate what I can reforge.  This helped me get my PvP hit to exactly 5% or 600.  This helps to free up more points to put into crit and haste.  I have looked a bunch of places to figure out whether expertise is needed in PvP and it is fairly even between the yea and nay votes.  So I wont worry about it for now.

Enough rambling for now.  Some day I will actually post some usefull information instead of a journal of my activities.

Long Break

Apologies for the long break in posts.  Things have been up and down for me on the paladin.  I have pretty much given up on retribution in dungeons and raids.  Mainly due to my guild not raiding.  Also due to not having the required patience to wait in 45 minute ques.

I got on a 2's and a 3's team as retribution.  I am liking the damage I can put out if I can sit on a target for long enough to ramp up my damage.  Unfortunately these occurrences are few and far between.  My self heals are awfur and my ability to take hits sucks.  Oh yeah my mobility is a lot better but, unfortunately to maintain that I spam cleanse every gcd.  For those at home this means my main damage source during these times is auto attack.  I have found that I do fairly well versus healers due to rebuking every cooldown.  Unfortunately this means the healers partner is pounding on my partner which doesn't work out well after HoP wears off.  The best times are when they focus on me for a few seconds which allows my partner to lay the hurt on them until they peel.  Unfortunately I don't have the DPS to return the favor when they focus on him.  Sometimes HoP works to peel but most times they wait it out.

As for PvE, I have finished off the first 2 zones and the last one.  Currently working on deepholm while in que for bg's.  I have not successfully completed a single heroic instance yet.  I dont feel comfortable tanking one yet and don't want to sit in que for 45 minutes.  We will see how it goes when I have gotten all the rep gear and the regular dungeon drops.