| |
A few questions arise over and over on these forums. The answers can be found on various pages but for people who might not have been here from the start or have the time to go through the by now rather large amount of information I'll settle with only giving the answers to the most frequently asked questions about paladins. Divided into a short Holy, Retribution and Protection section.
Note, this is a beginners FAQ mostly.
Holy FAQ
Is my gear good enough for Heroics/Kara/ZA/SSC/TK?
It's impossible to give a definate number, heroics are all a different difficulty level when it comes to healing. Kara depends on what other healer you got with you and the gear of the tank. If you happen to have a shadow priest in your group the gear requirement will also drop significantly.
But still, the easy answer.
Heroics: 1300 +heal, 80 mp5.
Kara/ZA: 1500 +heal, 90 mp5.
SSC/TK: 1700 +heal, 100 mp5.
By the time you go to MH or BT you should know what is required of you, otherwise you're not ready for either.
This site is also nice for general gear checks:
http://be.imba.hu/
Crit, mp5 or haste?
Unless you spam HL rank 11 or 10 mp5 is the best choice seen from a pure mana efficiency POV. If you have no mana issues crit rating increases your healing output and is the better choice.
If you're doing heroics first of all focus on +heal, as this will increase the efficiency of your FoL and give the overall largest boost to efficiency as you can use mainly FoL to heal with and don't have to resort to HL as often.
Haste offers the largest increase in your healing output, but unlike crit is does so at an increase in mana cost.
Which of these is best for YOU is impossible to say, so use your own judgement. If you're running out of mana then mp5 is a better choice than crit rating in general. If you're not able to push out enough healing volume go with crit or haste rating.
All the gear you have will have a hefty amount of +heal on it already so it's pretty much a stat you don't have to bother much about when it comes to item comparasons later on, to start out with however it is a key stat.
Which rank of HL should i use
9 (nine). Simple reason is that HL rank 11 is too mana inefficient to use to any large extent, it also very often gives overhealing which is just a waste. 10 could do, try it yourself and see what you prefer. 9 offers a significant increase to your healing output over FoL while still having a reasonable mana cost, it's what's been working best for me, anecdotal evidence i know but i'm a performance freak so it's not just some random number, it's what I've found to be best after a load of testing.
What assignment should i have?
Pre T6 content spot or tank healing. You got fast heals which is suitable for either. Fast spot heals are good to prevent random deaths, a constant strem of FoLs on a tank will reduce the spike damage.
T6 content and above shamans will be spamming Chain-(Brain-)heal which takes care of any spot healing, by this time you will be spamming the tanks only.
Retribution FAQ
Is my gear good enough for Heroics/Kara/ZA/SSC/TK?
It differs. As a general rule of thumb use:
Heroics: 1300 AP, 23% crit.
Kara/ZA: 1500 AP, 25% crit.
SSC/TK: 1700 AP, 27% crit, 9% total hit.
By the time you go to MH or BT you should know what is required of you, otherwise you're not ready for either.
This site is also nice for general gear checks:
http://be.imba.hu/
What rotation should i use?
There will not be an optimal rotation for paladins, there will however be optimal priorities:
#1 Never let a swing land if there is no seal active.
#2 Always use Crusader strike immediately once the cooldown is up.
#3 Judge/reseal as often as possible.
#4 If fighting a demon/undead push in as many exorsisms as possible.
#5 In the Global cooldowns you have to spare use the highest rank of consecration your mana allows.
#6 NEVER USE HAMMER OF WRATH SINCE IT'S A WASTE OF MANA.
Download a swing timer addon, like quarts, make sure to never judge near the time a swing lands. Then just keep your priorities straight, always use CS if it's off CD, judge as often as possible when it won't result in a swing being without a seal.
Crit, hit, expertise, AP/Strength, armor penetration or haste?
Or what item is better X or Y?
A mix of stats is always the best. These attributes scales as multipliers to each other so stacking either is not good. With a lot of attack power you want crit, haste or armor penetration to get the best effect of that attack power. But at the same time you can't really fine tune these attributes as there are too few items for any specific item slot. Rather compare items on an item-by-item basis. You can do that on:
http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/dps.php
There are more accurate ways to compare items, but they are also more complicated. Rawr is more accurate, and the best way to do it is by analyzing your own WWS logs. Neither of these are however suitable for the beginners this FAQ is directed to.
Generally you want to be hit capped, which means 7% hit for level 72 mobs (instance bosses) or 9% hit for raid bosses (kara and onwards). Hit is increadably valuable for a ret paladin as seals have double chanses to miss. The same goes for expertise later on as seals have two chances to be dodged and parried as well. This double miss/dodge/parry chance comes from both the swing being able to be missed/dodged/parried and the seal itself once the swing landed being able to miss or be dodged/parried.
Mongoose, Savagery or Executioner?
This topic has, believe it or not, been discussed a lof of times before. The end result is that for PVE:
Mongoose >= Executioner > Savagery
For PVP:
Executioner >= Savagery > Mongoose
Mongoose is the best enchant for PVE, but Executioner might pass it if you have enough armor debuffs on a boss, the boss has low base armor and/or you have sufficient passive armor penetration. Executioner becomes the better enchant for PVE once you have between 500 and 1200 passive armor penetration from gear, depending on who you ask. The difference in rather small and nothing that will make or break your DPS.
For PVP the damage boost from the increased crit chance from mongoose have it's value near halved due to resilience, and it becomes the worst enchant. But at the same time if teamed with a rogue using improved expose armor executioner can be rendered completely worthless against cloth and leather using targets. So if teamed with a rogue using improved expose armor go with Savagery, otherwise executioner will give the best results for PVP.
The safest bet when it comes to enchant is that for PVE go with mongoose or executioner, for PVP go with executioner or savagery, for overall efficiency go with executioner.
Protection FAQ
Is my gear good enough for Heroics/Kara/ZA/SSC/TK?
There is no absolute truth here. As a general rule of thumb you can use use:
Heroics: 12000 unbuffed health, 485 defense.
Kara/ZA: 12000/13000 unbuffed health, 490 defense, uncrushable, 200 spell damage.
SSC/TK: 14000 unbuffed health, 490 defense, 40% avoidance (miss+dodge+parry), uncrushable, 350 spell damage.
By the time you go to MH or BT you should know what is required of you, otherwise you're not ready for either.
This site is also nice for general gear checks:
http://be.imba.hu/
Uncrushable means that when you activate holy shield the sum of miss, block, parry and dodge should be 102.4% or above, this means boss level mobs can't land crushing blows on you. To see if you're uncrushable copy+paste this macro, activate holy shield then run it:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()
+GetParryChance()+5+(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355 + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)
Stamina, Defense, Dodge, Parry or Block?
When starting out the most important thing is to get a reasonable health pool. *@%@ does happen and when it does the last thing anyone want in their group is a tank which can all of a sudden die with no chance to do anything about it. A nice health pool is good to have here.
Once you have a decent health pool get items with defense rating (or possibly resilience early on), when doing normal and heroics you can't be crushed, but you might get critically hit. To completely remove the chance of getting a critical hit you need to reduce the mobs chance to crit you to zero, 485 defense does the trick against normal and heroic 5-man bosses, which are level 72, or a total of 5.4% reduced chance to get critically hit adding the bonus from resilience and defense.
When going for Karazhan and above you will face boss level mobs, these are always considered to be 3 levels above you, and here you want 490 defense rating to be uncrittable (or 5.6% total from resilience and defense), as well as these bosses can also land crushing blows. To remove crushing blows at low gear levels the most efficent stat to stack is block rating, followed by dodge rating.
Aim for 102.4% combined miss, dodge, block and parry when tanking Karazhan (or ZA).
Once you've reached uncrushable start adding more stamina and dodge rating to your gear. Stamina because everyone likes a tank with a nice health pool (and a good health pool is good to have), and dodge rating because it's the cheapest way to increase your avoidance.
Eventually you'll reach a point where you just shouldn't get more total avoidance, at about 55-60%, stacking too much avoidance means you'll lose out on threat from holy shield and your threat will become too low. So by then only focus on increasing your block value and stamina (this is a huge issue with paladin tanking).
[ Post edited by Nex ]
"It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye." -C'thun
|
