I have been really vigilant in getting information out as soon as I can, and am trying to keep all the Patch 4.0.1 mechanics up to date. However, there are still a few questions that linger, and I will try to address them here. First, I will cover understanding Haste and why less Haste is needed with higher latency. Second, I will cover our meta gem at level 80. Third, I will discuss our FCFS priority system again.
Ret Paladin Patch 4.0.1 Haste
Alright guys, there is a ton of confusion on Haste. I will be updating my Haste page as soon as I get this post up, so you will have multiple areas to view this information. The biggest question seems to be: “How is it that I need less haste with higher latency?” Some players feel that they need more haste to actually beat their latency, and that just isn’t the case.
I have tried over and over in my head to simplify this answer, so bear with me…Haste is soft capped by inserting your latency into a math equation, resulting in a number. That number is your haste soft cap, the number you need to reach to get Crusader Strike down to a 3 second cooldown.
Retribution Paladins and Haste Click for more Ret Paladin Haste info.
1. Since Crusader Strike has a 4.5 second cooldown normally, that means we need to knock off 1.5 seconds to get to the desired 3.
2. So, we need a full 1019 haste if our latency is 0 ms.
3. If we add a delay of 100 ms latency, then the 100ms actually takes up a part of that 1.5 seconds we need to take off. So we no longer need a full 1019 haste, now we only need 751. 751 haste added with 100 ms latency equals the total 1.5 seconds we need to knock off the cooldown.
4. If we add a delay of 300 ms latency, then that takes up a much larger part of the 1.5 seconds, meaning we require a smaller amount of Haste to be soft capped. 300 ms latency added to 303 haste equals a 1.5 second dropoff on Crusader Strike’s cooldown.
I hope this makes sense. I am shortcutting a few steps, but this is the easiest way to view how latency affects the haste we need. Ultimately, if you lag a ton, you won’t need as much Haste. If you have a blazing fast connection, Haste will be more important for you. It’s a very tricky mechanic.
Ret Paladin 4.0.1 Meta Gem
I had previously stated that the [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] was our BiS Meta at the current time. I was wrong. Because of the Meta requirements, you are essentially comparing 10 strength or even 20 strength vs a rough 0.1% crit loss. Stick with [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]. Thanks to SlimJim for making me recheck my work!
If you want the quick math, 21 agility gives about 0.52% crit and 21 critical strike yields about 0.45% crit. My math may or may not be a bit off, but it’s a moot point to argue. The crit difference is so small either way that you still are way better off going with Relentless.
Retribution Paladin 4.0.1 FCFS Rotation
Another amendment to our FCFS. There is a ton of debate going on right now on whether Avenging Wrath and Zealotry should be used together or separately, and if separately, which one goes first? My personal testing slides me in the direction of separately with Avenging Wrath first. The recent change to Hammer of Wrath has launched it right behind (or possibly above) Templar’s Verdict. Here are the current FCFS rotations being debated:
- Normal – TV > HoW > CS > Ex > Judge > HW > Cons
- AV – HoW > TV > CS > Ex > Judge
- Zealotry – TV > CS
- AV + Zealotry – TV > CS or TV > HoW > CS
Under any use of Zealotry, you would not use anything past Crusader Strike, as it would be a DPS loss. It’s better to sit on the attacks mentioned and only use those for the duration of the buffs.
so my haste is like 948 w/ a latency of 50-60, im using judgement of the pure on my buid to as well as HWT and every frking forge i could afford.
now whenever my JOP procs my CS dc is like 3.2 sec
thank god i didn’t change my meta gem, and thank god I m not able to reforge more haste into my armor cuz the game wont let me.
Thank you very much for your help Khor, and I gotta admit it has being really amazing to rediscover how good this game is by working numbers and just not purely follow instructions on websites i actually discovered somethings myself and it has being very exiting.
Of course I always comeback here and God know how many times during the day I checked this website for advice/confirmation.
Thank you Khor.
Haha anytime, glad to be of help. Every day it seems I am learning something new in-game!
So say your latency jumps from 70 – 150 what would you use for the equation? Would I find out my average latency in a raid and find out how much haste I need?
@ Zavaris – That’s the tricky part…Yes, use your raid latency. To get an exact number you can do one of two things:
1. Get an average latency and find your haste cap based on that.
2. Find your lowest latency and stack haste based on that number, giving you the best chance of always being haste capped.
Tough call, each player has to decide what they want to do. It’s terribly inconsistent and I hope in some way or form this Haste soft cap junk fizzles out before Cataclysm:)
Thanks for the advices, I for one am someone with little time to figure all those things out due to work/ personal life. But you make me enjoy the little time in WoW I have. AND indeed as DemonJeank mentioned you teach us something here also. Never quit and keep your site up
Greets & thanks once again.
Beno
So, according to the calculation, with latency, 3 seconds CD for CS is a dream, am I right? Sometimes, I noted that latency will come up to 400, is that meaning more than 500 haste already exceeding that soft capped? May be I am foolish. You assumption is that we only can have 1.5 speed up haste and that is limited to a table, which is affected by the latency. am I right? That 1.5sec is hard cap and what after reduction of latency is soft cap? The problem for me to understanding is the center goal of “3 seconds”. At one hand, we discuss achieve to 3 seconds and on the other side, it imply that what a dream (but never expressly say so). So, is the answer is “as far as your reach the soft cap, forget haste rate and do for other stats”? I love this website. It is really helpful. But there are still many mystery after patch 4. And the new pally need to take care dual-resource system is not kidding. In Hall of reflection, I encounter out of 8 times out of mana, although I tried to deal more with holy power. It is still unreliable atm, I can’t work around with pure holy power, since that Heroic is time intensive. AoE is obviously inefficiency on Pally. Pally is put on hard mode now.
Just wanted to say thanks for all of this! It’s been so helpful over the past few months!
Hi Khor!!!
Firstly, great site!
secondly – I have a latency of around 25ms would i not have to gem solely for haste to get a Haste rating high enough to counteract the fact that I am apparently in the room next to the servers?
and thirdly – With the current FCFS and rotations that you describe in order to maintain the DPS I would currently have to ask my group to wait for 2 minutes after every trash mob group so that my cooldowns on Zealtory and HoW could finish for me to sustain any kind of constant DPS figures throughout a HC whereas tanks and other DPS can just go around spamming high DPS hits without relying on cooldowns?? am I misunderstanding something? – as with my current gear I can achieve 4K+ on the dummies but cannot sustain anything like that running HCs as I always have to wait for the cooldowns.
Steveo
@Steveo: I’m having a similar problem! My latency is between 25ms and 30ms. It almost seems unfair that I have to waste so much of my gearing on haste just because I happen to have a good internet connection.
I can’t get my haste soft cap with my current gear. I reforged every piece of gear to pick up haste, and then swapped out some gear to pick up some more. The only thing left to do is replace all of my yellow gems with Str/Haste and then I still won’t be up there in the 900s like I’m supposed to be.
I hope that the extra stacking of haste that we have to do equals more dps than our slower brethren.
Question:What, if any, add ons are people using for the new Ret Paladin. I am using Icehud which has a nice Holy Power bar that I set up with dots instead of Blizz bar. I also use CLCRET for rotation.
My biggest problem is getting used to my new set up. Watching my bars is a pain. I felt like a fool standing in fire and dieing because I was so engrossed in watching for the next button push. Is anyone else having this problem watching buttons and bars and not paying alot of attention to surroundings.
Maybe it will just take some time or maybe I’m just lost.
P.S. I meant the cooldown on Avenging Wrath NOT HoW :-S
Two things that I wanted to add, first is that almost everything I have been reading is saying not to stack AW and Zealotry. This makes since because you really can’t fit CS, TV, and HoW together without a lot of GCD collisions and losing out on a 3HP TV or a HoW is a big dps loss. I’ve been finding that its better to start out with AW and HoW spam then using Zealotry once it wears off.
The second thing that I wanted to mention goes along with popping AW and HoW right off the bat, it sucks really bad for the tank (my gf who is also our MT got very mad at me for this lol). There is any easy fix for this though, macro AW onto HoS and use the major glyph for HoS. This works like a charm because AW is now off the GCD and you can let lose your 20k+ HoW from the beginning of the fight without getting your face melted by the boss or your tank
Im following, since start, your guide and advices and all these info make sense and work very well, THANK YOU Very Much!!
ATM on dummy i get 9.6k dps and at Saurfang (10men), yesterday, i put 13.4k dps. Since 4.0.1 in one target my dps rise up like 1.5k and i lost some dps on AoE (as soon i get reliable values i’ll say). The problem now is control aggro xD mostly in AOE but 1 target sometimes can be hard too.
Cheers for clearing up on the whole less MS= more haste needed, was thinking it worked similar to your pictures, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Personally, I’ve stacked haste to rougly match my lowest latency in a 25man raidenvironment, which is around 100ms, as I prefer having CS as close to the cap in whichever situation you’re in regarding latency.
@Lykaon: Can understand your frustration about having to stack up so much haste, but on the other hand, your low latency gives you such an edge over me for example. Guess the small amount of latency can be somewhat “translated” into reactiontime. I’d love to have so little latency in raids :<
On another note, I've been getting problems with my agro lately. It's gotten me killed a fair few times on trash, though those were mainly my own fault, but they were situations where I wouldn't have pulled agro before the patch. The biggest problem however, was yesterday on Dreamwalker & Sindragosa, both 25man. We ended up doing Dreamwalker on normal, due to a bug that ment she reset as she hit 90'ish percent, but I pulled agro of our tanks, and ended up tanking Archmages, Zombies & Abominations more often than not.
I also pulled Sindragosa off the tank, and almost killed the entire raid with Frostbreath, and was usually right behind the tank, having to hold back, postphoning the use of AW/Zealotry. Has anyone experienced similar issues, or is this more of a tank related problem?
Single target rotation boss battle (zeal and AW used separetly):
I think that for a single target rotation, like against a boss you should use ZEAL first and then AW because you have seal of truth up and you have to wait until it stacks 5 times anyways , which is 19 % weapon dmg as holy dmg w/every attack. While you are stacking seal of truth you can activate ZEAL DPSing the boss with CS+TV combo. When Zeal goes down cast AW (+20% dmg), at this time you should have already 5 stacks of seal of truth.
First off what a great and informative site! Second off this whole haste thing stinks. With my gear now I can reach the cap. But I do have my other stats where they should be.
Just wanted to clarify the rotation order. What do you usually cast 1st? CS or Judgment? This is to build holy power, of course, for TV.
Also, would it be wise to do fewer TVs, but at 3 holy power rather than a TV as soon as one holy power (or 2, with AOW Exo) pops up?
yeah i know
Out of AW and ZEAL I cast Zeal for the reason I stated above , I dint mean that Zeal is te firt thing you cast in your rotation lol
So you cast first judgment if your are mid range or CS if you r close
I really don’t like this new set up.. in the practice dummy’s I can do like almost 6k.
I get into someplace like The Voilet Hold and my dps is like 3k..
I find that the rotation relies alot on things being up and availiable..
like Ex, TV, and Zel. so I have to Cs, and Judge to get things going..
I don’t know how your fitting How in there cause before I get to it the mob is dead.
I’m still doing alot of damage, but my dps is horrible.
We’ll see how things go, but as of yet I really like the Frost DK alot better than Ret now…
@ Aszmo – In 5-mans, yes, using HoW is hard because everyone else is annihilating mobs before we can use it. It should work on boss fights, and works great in tandem with AW aws top priorty.
First, I have to say i am very pleased with this site and it’s content
Really nice articles about Retri Pala. I have played retri when WotLK came out and at lvl80 rolled Holy. Now, after 4.0.1 made retri spec and got some gear, so it’s time for pwn 
One thing I don’t understand is, how come a normal rotation can be
TV > HoW > CS > Ex > Judge > HW > Cons
I need HP for TV and HW or less then 20%hp mob to cast it. I am reading the rotation from left to right, maybe I should read it from right to left?
We don’t have a rotation, its a FCFS, so I guess the wording confused you. FCFS stands for First Come First Serve. When two or more moves are off CD, use this clash system to decipher which attack to use. This is saying that whenever you CAN use TV or HoW you should use them above CS, EX, judge, hw, consec in that listed order.
@ Dabar – What Captoats said ^^^
FCFS isn’t a rotation per say, it’s a prioritized decision system. Always click the best attack available first.
Hi Khor,
Thank you so much for the website and your consistent and vigilant efforts.
I used to enjoy WOW but after this new patch, I am just beyond frustrated. My dps is way down (went from 10k on Saur to 8k), and overall the new mechanics make no sense.
Your site is so informational and I am trying, but I am approaching my limit with the new changes. No real reason for it all.
Might be a dumb question, but when I am combat, I see yellow script like figures that flash in the center of the screen. What do I do next?
My rotation icons keep lighting up, spinning around, etc, very confused at that as well. What do you think?
thanks, you rule as always!
RR
Hey guys, found this site simply by doing some searching. I currently have my ret pally gemmed with all strength. Have reforged all excessive stats into mastery. I only have 484 haste and was thinking it may be more useful for me to re gem into haste instead of strength. By the calculations on this site, I am far below cap, i.e., a good minimum amount. Some feedback would be wonderful. Ikaku @ Suramar
Well, after my initial disappointment with the 4.0.1 changes and complete desire not to touch the class I previously loved,
sorry for those words) to the latest fashion. Ah, by the way, I use relentless earthsiege, and all my stones are +20 str, except for 2 stones for meta.
I respecced, regliffed and restouned (
Haste 751 with ~68-86 lag in ICC, mastery 28, hit 270. Put on all my older plate stuff, although I had a very balanced leather-plate complect earlier, reinstalled the CLCret helper addon, changed my LK Polearm to Shadow Edge and after all was able to easily put 13.6k DPS on heroic Rotface (25man) and 13.2 on Festergut (same 25man H).
25k on Lanathel 25H being bitten first (funny thing, it’s one of the 1st times I saw a retribution paladin being bitten first – thanks to the 4.0.1). The key was to pop AW and smash her with hammers immediately after pull, so I was first on aggro meter after tanks.
Still “whopping” 9.2 on Putricide, but the battle is very hectic with long runs around, explosions etc., so maybe it’s still ok.
Overall I’m quite happy with the result and I guess with this tendency, it will be much enjoyable class to play in Cata. New rotation with a lot to watch for, new abilites, more straightforward buffs and stats…all that’s good.
And thanks Khor for your information. Of late I found myself looking at your site for info on retripals, instead of reading walls of text on elitist, who often tend to overburden themselves with theoretical info.
@Khor
Thanks for all the info without it and trying what everyone on here is saying I would still be sulking.
1st ICC Run since patch 20k DPS on Deathbringer. Now I need to learn how to keep Aggro down. I macroed AW and HoS with GoHoS but doesn’t do much for non-AW TV and Exo. Any help with this. I
let tank get Aggro at start but usually during a switch I get Aggro. Only died once from it but looks like it may become a problem.
Thanks Again
Thanks very much for the haste explanation!! Really helped my understanding.
I play from overseas so I normaly have over 1000 ms latency, what my haste should be?
Thank you in advance,
@ Nick, theoretically you need -701 haste rating. Of course, that is not right.
Well I actually have like 400-500 ms Latency as I play from Australia and am constantly sharing my internet connection.
The author is completely wrong about the relationship between latency and Haste rating, especially when instant queuing is now an official feature.
The game was not designed around Latency. Just because you live overseas should not change stat values/ratings for a class.
With queueing, I should be able to use the standard CS>Filler>CS with 1000 Haste rating without losing DPS because I ‘stacked too much haste for my latency’.
There are too many misconceptions surrounding this matter already. It almost looks like people think latency reduces the cooldown of Crusader Strike in place of Haste and therefore have an advantage if they have high ping. This is a completely stupid idea that started spreading around and I’m glad to have found the source.
READ THIS FOR CLARIFICATION:
The message the author is trying to convey is that latency limits the number of GCDs you can execute within a certain time frame. At the moment melee GCDs are 1.5 and these include TV, CS and Judgement. Spell GCDs including Holy Wrath and Exorcism SCALE with Haste to a minimum of 1 second GCD unlike Melee GCDs. Supposedly, latency adds to the end of the previous GCD and the beginning of the next GCD as latency is the amount of time a command takes to reach the server and back. Therefore 100 ms latency will equate to .1 second delay in reaching the server and back, which is multiplied by 2 as the first delay is from the server telling your client that the cooldown for CS has ended. You then execute the next command which takes .1 second to reach the server and your CS is executed in-game.
However the above is assuming that there are no mechanics implemented in-game to counter this, which in the author’s mind disadvantages classes with higher latency and therefore must remove haste as it is conjecturally ‘useless’, and move it into another stat. This also in no way ‘disadvantages’ people with better ping and better location, as they are actually getting more benefit from Haste as it scales in rating better than crit and mastery until it’s maxed.
Unfortunately, the author had overlooked the fact that Blizzard had in fact implemented an early version of the Spell Queuing feature which more or less reduced the disadvantage people got from higher pings. The spell queue works on the client instead of having to communicate with the server. It’s like ‘buffering time’. Obviously the first command the high ping player sends to the server suffers from lag, but commands thereafter do not have to wait for the cooldown of the previous spell to end before ‘buffering’ the command. This is evident when you press say CS then Judgement about halfway through the GCD (seems to be the mininum trigger point), the Judgement icon is highlighted. About 1 second later, Judgement is used but the GCD (not Judgement cooldown) is already halfway done. At this point you can press CS again and it will activate in less than a second. At the moment this feature only works with GCD, but will work with actual cooldown skills in Cataclysm and will also have improved features such as a slider bar to increase/decrease trigger point for people with varying levels of latency.
IN SHORT
Latency no longer plays a role in a GCD based rotation. Even with 1000 ping I will still be using 1 CS 1 Judgement and another CS in 3 seconds.
THUS THIS ARTICLE IS DISPROVEN AND SHOULD BE DISREGARDED
STACK HASTE RATING UNTIL CAPPED AND PROCEED WITH STAT PRIORITIES REGARDLESS
I’m glad to put this out there, and I’m sure Khor will understand the need for public knowledge regarding this matter. Writing this has helped myself to better understand the issue, and for that I thank you, Khor.