Retribution
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The Light and How to Swing It: Basic retribution cooldowns -- when to pop your wings
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. With the Light as his strength, Durin Mundahl takes on the foes of Azeroth with all the wrath of a retribution paladin. Feel free to send your retribution questions or comments to durin@wowinsider.com. Hello, my Light-wielding brethren. Let me start off by saying that all of this information applies to patch 4.2 and the current state of retribution paladins. In future patches, this information may become outdated. Use your own Judgement when reading. Some side effects may include increases of a few thousand DPS on target dummies and an overall feeling of ecstasy. Working as intended. After my last article, I got a few emails asking basic questions about retribution paladins and how to play them. I get questions like What's my rotation?, How is your damage so high?, and Why do you keep pulling aggro? pretty frequently. When I'm not trying to convince my guild it's the tank's fault I'm pulling aggro (even though it isn't), I try to explain to people that the key to doing good damage nowadays comes mainly from cooldown management, much like a lot of other classes -- but I'm not writing about mages or warriors here.
The Light And How To Swing It: Retribution changes and new gear in 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. With the Light as his strength, Durin Mundahl takes on the foes of Azeroth with all the wrath of a retribution paladin. Feel free to send your retribution questions or comments to durin@wowinsider.com. Where do retribution paladins stand now that 4.2 is here? Let's look at the current state of the ret pally. In future patches, this information may become outdated, so use your own Judgement when reading. Side effects may include increased raid AOE damage and an overall feeling of satisfaction. Working as intended. Let's get down to business, shall we? Seal of Righteousness now can be activated by any melee ability, not just single target melee abilities. This adds Hammer of the Righteous (the physical component) and Divine Storm to the list of abilities that can activate this seal. In addition, Seal of Righteousness procs can now be critical effects. Inquiry of Faith now increases Inquisition duration by 66/133/200%, up from 50/100/150%. The Seals of Command talent now makes Seal of Righteousness hit an unlimited number of melee targets, instead of only 2 additional targets. Selfless Healer can no longer be dispelled and cannot be stolen via Spellsteal; and, in addition to its current effects, it lowers the cooldown of Word of Glory by 5/10 seconds. Glyph of Seal of Truth expertise bonus now also works when Seal of Righteousness is active. source
NGP backwards compatible with all PSP games (on PSN); smoothing and dual analog support included
The PlayStation Portable's lack of a second analog stick has always been a problem for shooters. Sony Bend's Resistance: Retribution had a clever – albeit complicated – solution for this shortcoming: let players tether a DualShock 3 controller to the handheld. So when Sony showed off the game running in emulation on an NGP last month, with full use of that right thumb stick, we assumed there was some benefit specific to Retribution. As it turns out, all PSP titles1 will be able to take advantage of that second analog stick, as well as other NGP enhancements. "All PSP titles that are currently available on the PSN can be played on the NGP," VP of product development at SCEA Scott Rohde told a crowd of game journalists. "And they'll take full advantage of the graphics smoothing capabilities of the system and the controls will be remapped to take advantage of the dual analog sticks." While I can't say much about the graphics smoothing – it definitely looked like it was being zoomed up 400% – I can say that the second analog stick worked wonderfully in Retribution. The game originally mapped the right stick to the four face buttons. It's unclear how the tech will work with other games, and the representative we spoke could only say that the technology we were using was early. In fact, the sole NGP prototype that had the emulation software belonged to SCE's Shuhei Yoshida, who was taking it with him back to Japan that night. We're hoping to learn more about how PSP games take advantage of NGP hardware at E3. Any specific questions or concerns, let us know in the comments. 1: Of course, the list of PSP games that never appeared on PlayStation Network includes several high-profile titles, like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and Lumines.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution of patch 4.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. This week, Justicar Alex Ziebart tackles patch 4.1's impact on retribution paladins. Questions? Comments? Feel free to email the author. Before we get started here, I'd like to include a disclaimer: Yes, we're about to talk about patch 4.1. However, it is still extremely early in the patch's life cycle, so anything and everything could change before the patch hits live realms. We are going to talk about the patch because I feel the few changes to retribution currently on the PTR are significant, and talking about them is a good way to gain an understanding of them. If you like (or dislike) a change but don't understand the how and the why, what good is it? With that out of the way, it's time to render judgement upon the patch 4.1 patch notes.
The Light and How to Swing It: Patch 4.0.6 for retribution
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. This week, Justicar Alex Ziebart heralds retribution's triumphant return. Questions? Comments? Feel free to email the author. Patch 4.0.6 is right around the corner. Isn't it about time we discuss what this means to the retribution paladin? You've all waited for this long enough, so let's skip the pleasantries and get right down to it. We're going to go through the paladin patch notes relevant to retribution paladins one by one. Do note that we are not covering all of the paladin patch notes, such as the mana cost changes to heals or those that impact holy and protection talents. While some of those things may technically impact retribution, we would all much rather talk about issues very specifically related to hitting things with a righteous vengeance until they die. Let's dig in.
Ghostcrawler reveals upcoming class changes in Cataclysm
Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted the blog post I think most of us have been waiting for ever since Cataclysm went live. It features a summary of where the dev team sees the PvE and PvP games at this point, including some analysis of various classes and specs, and some planned changes for those specs that are underperforming and overperforming. In PvE, Ghostcrawler mentions that Blizzard is mostly happy with the tank classes and notes that while healers do have it a bit hard, this is intentional. Heroics are meant to be a challenge. As for DPS, he offered that some classes, such as arcane mages and marksman and beast mastery hunters, are too low in their damage, while others, such as shadow priests and fire and frost mages, are being watched closely before final judgment is made on their numbers. In PvP, Ghostcrawler says Blizzard is satisfied with the decreased emphasis on healing prevention and burst damage. Crowd control and dispel mechanics, especially offensive dispels, may see some PvP nerfs, and priests will specifically be getting some PvP buffs. Stats also got some mention. A lot of stats are being neglected by some classes, and the dev team wants to fix this. Mastery will be either buffed or completely revamped for many specs, such as unholy death knights and retribution paladins. Haste may be made to scale with more attacks, such as Lacerate, Slam, and Steady Shot, in order to make the stat more desirable to certain specs. Check after the break for the complete text of Ghostcrawler's post, including a list of specifically planned (but not finalized) class changes for future patches.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution in 4.0.1
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to gregg@wow.com. A couple weeks back, I covered the changes to protection for the 4.0.1 pre-Cataclysm patch that usually goes out a month(ish) or so before release. The point of those patches is so that everyone can play with the new class features and get everything figured out before the chaos that is the actual expansion release. Now it's time to do the same sort of coverage for ret pallies. If you haven't been following the changes thus far, it's going to look odd. There are new class concepts and skill/buff consolidations. First off, picking your spec now has a lot more meaning from the get-go. You receive most of the passive buffs that you'd have to spend 40 talent points getting in the past for free at level 10 that are responsible for making your chosen spec usable. As an example, you get Sheath of Light, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and Judgements of the Bold. That provides your attack power-to-spellpower conversion, your weapon damage bonus and your mana regeneration. All of this just for picking the spec. In addition, you get a new attack called Templar's Verdict that we'll get into later. First off, let's talk about the biggest change to our class in the expansion: holy power.
Dawn of War 2 standalone expansion 'Retribution' announced for early 2011
Relic and THQ have announced the second standalone expansion to the Warhammer 40k-themed RTS Dawn of War 2. The expansion will be called Retribution, and will introduce the series' first multi-race single-player campaign. The first race announced is the Orks, but players will be able to choose other races to play through the campaign as well, meaning you can finally play as something other than Space Marines in the single-player game. Multiplayer also gets extras in the form of new units, some new maps and a whole new playable race to fight with. There's no word out of Gamescom yet as to exactly which race that is, but given that we've played as Orks, Space Marines and Eldar in the series before, playing as the Tyranids is a pretty good guess (edited) already in the game. Commenters are guessing Dark Eldar. We'll find out for sure when the expansion is released -- it's scheduled for Q1 2011.
Cataclysm Beta: Holy power questions
Holy power is the big conversation topic for paladins right now (well, that and mobility in PvP -- but that's always a topic of conversation for paladins). For those of you who have been out of the loop, Blizzard announced during its last developer chat that for the betterment of the class, paladins would be receiving a new resource called holy power. This would be used in conjunction with mana for a variety of new and existing abilities. So after having played with holy power on the beta realms, we decided to ask our Twitter followers if they had any questions or concerns about this new system for us to look into. Soranomaru asks: "How fast does it accrue? How do you spend it effectively? Is it a mechanic to empower spellcasts or another ressource like mana?" Short answers: Currently, every 3 seconds for ret, 4 seconds for prot, and 6 seconds for holy due to the abilities and talents they'd be using to earn it. Usually, three points is the most efficient. It's a secondary resource, like runic power is to runes on a death knight, and there are certain abilities that use it and other abilities that have nothing to do with it. Long answers: Holy power is a secondary resource that you'll have along with your current mana bar. As retribution and protection, you'll be using Crusader Strike to build up your holy power points (HPP). If you're holy, you'll still have access to Crusader Strike, but you will also be using Holy Shock to build up that HPP. The most HPP you can build up at a time is three, so you'll be earning and spending fairly quickly. Some abilities give a flat rate based on how much holy power you put into it (Word of Glory), while others get much more efficient with the more points used (Templar's Verdict).
Cataclysm Beta: New talent trees for paladins
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge -- and soon, an entire flight of black dragons. Last night, Blizzard released the new talent tree system onto the beta realms for people to take a gander at and test out. Each class is at various stages of done-ness, with some needing pruning, others needing tuning and still others just need another iteration or two before truly being ready. Paladins fall into that last category, along with three other classes. Here are a couple of excerpts from the beta patch notes, with bold added for emphasis: Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - Build 12479 While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations. ... Paladins * We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches. source Things like more healing abilities for holy, Holy Shield moving from a maintained ability to a tanking cooldown, and three new planned but unimplemented attack abilities for retribution are all in the pipeline, as well as a shakeup of the talents we've already been provided. So, without further ado, I present a first draft of the paladin talent trees. [ Holy ] [ Protection ] [ Retribution ] The Light and How to Swing It tries to help Paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming Paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. With Cataclysm soon heating things up, will you be ready?
The Light and How to Swing It: Ret tips from the healer
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. At least, he usually does. But Gregg's a little pre-occupied this week. Therefore, Matt Low will be stepping in temporarily to handle some retribution goodness! No one expected me to write this column. And I mean no one. What does a healing priest know about dealing damage? When I was approached to fill in for Gregg this week, the first word that came to my mind was "Seriously?" But that's all in the past now. You poor guys are stuck with me this week! Anyway, yes, I do happen to have a paladin which I use to smash stuff with. Contrary to popular belief, I don't play a healer 24 hours, 7 days a week. I have to try to relax and de-stress myself after a long raid of hard healing. What better way to do that then swing a Justicebringer around? Now, I've been a healer for a long time so when I made the choice to go straight into retribution, I approached the class (and role) with a certain mentality. You see, there are a few things that annoy me when I was healing on my priest whenever there were ret paladins in the raid. I was determined to not be that ret pally.
The Queue: We love fasty, too
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. The above video is brought to you by our very own Mat McCurley. You might know him better as "that guy that writes about addons I guess" if you don't pay much attention to author names. There's a backstory to the video, but I think leaving it out makes it far more hilarious. Enjoy! clundgren asked... "Why is there a continued perception of ret paladins as overpowered? Raid data shows them to be a lower tier DPS class on ICC bosses, and they are not particularly feared in arena. What gives? Did patch 3.0.2 leave that much of a lasting impression?"
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution 101
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. This week, we're looking at retribution paladins. Retribution. This is what every paladin begins as. No shield to hide behind. Just a big two-handed weapon slung on your back and grim determination as your guide. And, sadly, the spec that took the longest to become completely viable. It's been a hard road for the retribution paladin. In classic era, you only used retribution to level up and then you were expected to heal or play blessing-bot for raids. In the days of Burning Crusade, retribution was a little better and could be okay if you stacked your raid the right way. However, they'd rather you be the adds tank or heal. Then Wrath hit and retribution came into its own... or should I say 'pwn' (bad joke, but absolutely true if you remember early Wrath). After some balancing, retuning, and all of those other euphamisms for 'nerf,' we're a still a fairly decent force along with the rest of the pack. Let's take a deeper look into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the ret pally.
New Dead to Rights: Retribution dev diary heads to Abbey Road
So what if the latest Dead to Rights: Retribution dev diary is unbelievably light on actual gameplay? It makes up for that in droves with a smattering of pretty images of the Abbey Road recording studio where the game's soundtrack is being recorded. For all the effort being put into the music, we would hope a bit more attention would be focused on the bits of game footage strewn throughout the clip. Unfortunately, we are instead given the less than thrilling exchange between the game's main character and a police officer around the three minute mark. Last we heard, Dead to Rights: Retribution was scheduled for a "Q4 2009" release by Namco, so considering that time has come and gone, your guess is as good as any as to when the game will see the light of day. For now, well, we've got this dev diary. %Gallery-45220%
Ashen Verdict strength ring in minor content patch
Bornakk popped onto the forums late Thursday to confirm that Blizzard is planning to add a +strength version to the Ashen Verdict rings in an upcoming mini-patch. The appearance of the four current rings with patch 3.3 caused a minor furor on the forums, with plate DPS being left out in the cold. While there are +strength DPS rings available elsewhere in Icecrown Citadel, there's no replacement for a reputation ring's valuable proc. One of the interesting things about the +strength ring's initial absence wasn't its absence per se, but the reason for omitting it. Apparently the Ashen Verdict choices were a reproduction of older reputation-linked quest items (e.g. Violet Eye and Scale of the Sands rings) that allowed only four choices, and Blizzard wasn't able to get past the programming issues to add a fifth option before 3.3 went live. Well, that's going to get fixed in the upcoming mini-patch, which will also see a few other class-related changes. The date of the patch is still anyone's guess, but we'll keep an eye out for you.
WoW Rookie: Leveling a paladin tank
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Want to level your paladin as a tank? You got it! Before the Dungeon Finder tool was launched in December, finding level-appropriate instance groups was well nigh impossible. Occasional knots of newborn death knights might putter about in a favorite Burning Crusade instance to scoop up some gear. The rest of the pre-Northrend instances remained ghost towns, populated only by speed-running level 80s who were farming or running low-level buddies through some quick levels. But the Dungeon Finder has re-invigorated the instances of Azeroth, Outland and beyond. What does that mean for leveling players? If you love to play in groups and instances or if you're looking ahead to raiding and want to lay down your skill base now, you can.
Mass Effect 2 receiving prequel novel in July
The Mass Effect universe will gain a third novel when Retribution releases this July. Penned by Drew Karpyshyn, who also wrote the other two Mass Effect books and is the lead writer on the game, the novel features The Illusive Man attempting to outfit an ex-operative of his black-ops group, Cerberus, with Reaper technology. For those interested in having pictures with their words, Dark Horse's Redemption comic book series is currently available. [Via Big Download]
Patch 3.3 PTR: Ghostcrawler explains Paladin changes
You know how it goes. Blizzard nerfs Paladins, Paladins shake their heads in disbelief, then break out the pitchforks and scream bloody murder for a bit, beg Blizzard not to push through with the changes, and eventually run home and cry into My Little Pony sheets and staining pink underwear. Sure enough, when the recent PTR patch notes hinted at nerfs to the Paladin class, the pitchfork-wielding and bloody murder-screaming ensued. We're now about to enter the stage of bargaining. It's still on the PTR, after all. For those wondering what the bed-wetting ruckus is all about, Sacred Shield was nerfed to proc only once every 30 seconds (essentially proccing only once every cast of the spell unless augmented with talents), Aura Mastery was nerfed to 6 seconds down from 10, and Lay on Hands is being primed to be uncastable on one's self. Ghostcrawler said that he didn't "want to promise (they) won't change the spell for 3.3," but that players also shouldn't "worry too much on the Lay on Hands change at this point" since it didn't make it to the latest PTR build. He explains in the forums that Paladins are no longer just a support class (as they were for quite a long time), but that all the abilities over time have contributed to making the class feel like a "one-man army" that is able to play offensively, defensively, and essentially take on more challenges without having to change stances, forms, or even specs. In a rather snippy response to a troll crying (with My Little Pony blanket in hand) in the forums, Ghostcrawler simply said, "Dear OP, Bye. Hugs, GC."
Patch 3.3 PTR: Undocumented Paladin changes
Late last night while we were all in bed Blizzard left a patch on the PTR. For those of you who haven't read the patch notes yet, both documented and not, Blizzard is still trying to ease the level up experience for newer characters. This includes changing where certain skills and abilities are gained as well as changing what gear characters start with. For paladins, they've reduced the cost of the lower skill ranks of several skills. All of this seems to be preparation for Cataclysm when they expect people to level some of the new class/race combinations as well as the playable Worgen and Goblin races.HOLYHoly Shock/Holy Light/Blessing of Wisdom/Consecration/Exorcism/Greater Blessing of Wisdom/Holy Wrath/Flash of Light/Blessing of Wisdom: Mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.While this is something that won't be noticed by those of you raiding Ulduar and the Argent Tournament, it should help out those trying to do Wailing Caverns or Scarlet Monastary as mana can sometimes be an issue at lower levels. As Holy Shock, Holy Light, and Flash of Light are all included, this should make it easier on those of you trying to level as an instance healer.More after the break.
Class Q&A: Paladin
Once again, it's time for a Class Q&A with Ghostcrawler! Today Paladins get their chance to shine (previously: Shaman, Mage, Death Knight, Warlock). As with the other Q&As, this one starts with a bit on what the idea is behind paladins, with a glance at their history and at their present. In the beginning: paladins were a "defensive buffing class...buffs were pretty much the entire reason you'd want to group with a paladin." End-game classic WoW: paladins were healers only. BC: paladins could tank, but were still mostly OTs. Wrath: "finally embraced all three specs." Paladins still have several unique facets: bubbles, strong dispels, plate armor as a healer, and the Seal and Judgment system. Itemization: so far in Wrath, MP5 wasn't particularly valuable, and they claim it wasn't inteded to be. They still think MP5 is undervalued right now, though, hence the buffs coming to it in patch 3.2. They also think Int/Crit based mana regen is a bit out of control, and furthermore than in patch 3.2, some Holy pallies might look into taking Haste.
