Beta: Retribution Nerf – First Impressions

After I kept reading about the giant nerfbat of doom yesterday, I decided to go home and test my Paladin on the beta to see how bad it was.  Before the nerf, I was pulling anywhere from 1100-1300 dps on sustained fights, while staying at or near full mana.  On the beta yesterday I was averaging about 900 dps on a test dummy.

Some things I noticed:

3 Skill Rotation –  I found that the only mana efficient, and therefore raid viable rotation was Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, and Judgement of Wisdom; I used each ability as often as possible.  As for seals, the most damage came from Matytr, but all seals were within 50 dps of each other.  Suprisingly, Command was a little less strong than Righteousness.  With the 3 skill rotation, using Wisdom as my judgement, I had no issue with mana.

Consecration – When I threw consecration into the mix on a single target, I ran out of mana in just under a minute.  If you conserve mana and don’t use every ability when it becomes available, it is possible to keep from going out of mana, but this is something I would reserve for multiple mobs, as your dps would drop below that of the 3 skill rotation.  Consecration does not return a high amount of damage for the amount of mana it uses, so it’s probably best to leave it out of a rotation on a single target.

It’s Not Very Fun – Prior to this nerf, our damage was more crit based, and large numbers filled the screen.  There was a long pause between the huge numbers, but they were fun to look at.  That damage has been “replaced” by a 40% talentable DoT, so now it supposedly smooths out our damage.  The only issue is that with all the other nerfs, we’re doing less damage than before, and the 3 button spam is not even fun.  At least with the 3 button spam on my Rogue I have to time things and manage an energy bar and the occasional other button to press; with my paladin, it’s just boring.  I feel like a Warrior who’s 51 point talent is like a weaker version of a base Warrior talent, without all of the other toys warriors have to play with.

I plan on running a regular Ramparts again to test the dps data, and compare it to my last Beta DPS post.  Look for that report by Thursday.

– Sam