It seems positively painful. Its just whack-a-mole on a bunch of short/medium CD’s. You would be constantly staring at your actions bar and barely have any clue about what was going on around you. I can’t imagine getting to 120 like that. Ugh. If my very first character was a ret pally I probably would’ve quit the game after a couple hours.
Addons like weakauras make it tolerable, but even with those installed, the constant CD management just to do even passable DPS makes it probably my least favorite DPS class. Maybe the play style will improve with Shadowlands?
It doesn’t seem much different than other proc-centric specs. The biggest issue with ret’s rotation you see is the rotation is boring. After you play it long enough, it becomes very straight forward, even with the procs.
I was planning on maining my DK in SL, but after seeing the paladin changes, I’m leaning towards this guy.
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Lol ya ret isn’t bad at all with base ui. If you’re familiar with a class you never look at action bars.
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I don’t hate myself that much to try.
I mean if you’re constantly staring at your bars then that simply means you aren’t used to playing the class. It has nothing to do with whatever else you’re saying.
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I think there’s a visual showing boj reset. I actually don’t even remember.
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With random BoJ proc or Empyrean power procs, not to mention haste procs, the timing is going to be different on every fight after about 15-20 seconds. The only thing you can predict is the holy power spenders which is normally only about a third of your spells.
If you get a boj proc you don’t look at your bar and if you use divine purpose then you also don’t look at your bar, the game gives you a symbol in the middle of your screen telling you. If you’ve taken fires of the justice you can also easily see if you’ve used 2 or 3 hp.
No, but random procs disrupt your timing making every fight different. I honestly don’t see how I could track all of the different CD’s once a fight gets rolling without actually seeing them.
Blizzard does a pretty good job with giving us a heads up on most random procs. Which is why, for example, Boomkin dps can be run pretty easily with the default UI.
From vanilla to Bfa and still rocking the default UI 
I don’t like those fancy elvui
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Its not that bad and every spec in the game has procs of some kind to adjust for.
I use the following priority and it serves me pretty well:
Attacks Priority
- Empyrean Power (Procs)
- Blade of Justice (unless it overcaps Holy Power)
- Judgement
- Crusader Strike
Conditions
-
If I would over-cap Holy Power I use a spender.
-
If I have no Empyrean Power procs, Blade of Justice and Judgement are on CD and I have <1 Holy Power I burn Wake of Ashes.
Weakauras
The basic UI works fine but Luxthos Ret Paladin weakauras are fantastic. That and Deadly Boss Mods are all you really need IMO.
What throws me off is Memory of Lucid Dreams as I tend to use the flexibility of the GCD (0.2 sec) to pre-cast my next attack. If Holy Power gets refunded it can throw me off a bit.
Weakauras makes ret Pally a breeze. My point is I can’t imagine playing the spec without something augmenting the default UI.
Your rotation makes sense for the most part, but once you’re well into a fight, you can’t know whether or not you have a judgement/blade of justice/crusader strike available without looking at your CD’s (which by default are attached to side of the screen, far removed from the action).
#defualtcrew, gotta learn how to use those peripherals
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Gotta look at my old school bars so I know what to click, like all the cool kids do, amirite?
Default UI. I’ve never played with anything else. There are enough visuals that pop up on the middle of the screen to tell you when things have activated. Once you play long enough you kinda just passively know when your stuff is off cooldown without looking. The essence for wings throws me off because it’s always off cooldown earlier than I’m used to it being all these years.
If there are a lot of design changes at the beginning of a new expansion (like the legion redesign butchering) I raise my ability bar higher so I can refer to it with less eye movement if I need to, but then it slowly goes back down like, in a week. You just notice stuff like divine storm procs in your peripherals
i use base UI in the sense that i don’t use bartender or anything like that etc but i have plenty of weak auras and overlays etc.
i definitely won’t argue that leveling as ret feels really bad but it’s not because of the rotation at max level its because you have no rotation at lower levels. i went prot immediately leveling my zanda for one dungeon.
at max level in proper gear i don’t see a meaningful difference from any of my other toons rotations. things proc you press it. things come off cooldown you press it. your out of all those so you use a filler. (try not to waste HP) if you don’t have EP or DP specced you can get a quirky 4 second empty global gap in DPS rotation but that’s why you go EP partially. without it it does feel a bit clunky without good procs I’ll admit but as a whole it’s not bad enough for me to swap specs or characters entirely me personally.
Yes there is, it appears as a glowing light Ashbringer next to the Paladin. Divine Purpose has one too, it appears as a yellow glowing stripe above the Paladin
Ah yes I remember now.
Im so used to see it pops and use boj but never to actually see it.
Traditional keyboard-turner and Mouse-clicker. Younger paladins come and blow dust off my rotation and ask me if I’m all right, dearie.
It seems positively painful. Its just whack-a-mole on a bunch of short/medium CD’s. You would be constantly staring at your actions bar and barely have any clue about what was going on around you. I can’t imagine getting to 120 like that. Ugh. If my very first character was a ret pally I probably would’ve quit the game after a couple hours.
Addons like weakauras make it tolerable, but even with those installed, the constant CD management just to do even passable DPS makes it probably my least favorite DPS class. Maybe the play style will improve with Shadowlands?
is this a joke? our rotation is extremely simple compared to all classes except DH and maybe warrior.
playing whack-a-mole is true for most classes anyways, if anything its closer to spam the 3 buttons that generate HoPo and use them up with 1 of the 2 abilities. you have proc alerts by default from blizz UI for divine purpose so u know u can spam a HoPo spender.
the reason you aren’t doing passable dps is cause paladin dps is utter gahhhhbage, we are bursty sure, but if u go into a long fight u gonna have a bad time.
i can’t imagine playing druid as my first or last or anywhere in between either so we good on that front, different strokes for different folks.
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