I need help DPSing as Ret

Classes Paladin
1

Lately I’ve been baffled as to why other rets at 5-20 Item levels lower are doing more damage than me…

and why my Dps seems to remain the same… or go DOWN as my Item levels go UP.

Baffled until I started looking into it and found a lot has changed since i’ve been gone.

Granted, I am a fairly casual player but I need help! Some thing I researched that appear to matter?

‘Rotations’

‘Stat priority’

‘Simming’ - what this means, why, and how.

Useful macros and addons.

Basically I need your all’s help how to do damage as ret. I know I won’t be top damage but I also feel like I should be doing much more damage than I am.

Rather than copy pasting links (although that might help too) I’d appreciate some informative help without all the jargon.

Please!! Need help with ret and am unsure how reputable or accurate 3rd party sites are when it comes to numbers and practical application so I thought to ask here

2

I’d suggest changing your build to a more beginner friendly build. I use it and not ashamed. You can use a higher dps talent build but suck at it and be much lower dps than just trying to master a beginner build.

I’d suggest running these talents instead of what you have…

zeal, blade of wrath, fist of justice, wake of ashes, (whichever on the cavalier row), selfless healer, divine purpose

I’m a few points lower iL than you on my ret and my dps spikes above 100k in m+ with cds fairly often.

Crusade kills your dps if you don’t know how to use it properly.
Divine Judgement is not used for anything other than a swifty one shot in pvp.

Make sure you are not wasting holy power. If you are at 4 hp, don’t caste blade for example. You will waste a hp. Same goes for wake of ashes. It’s tempting to mash it at 2 hp because all of your builders are on cd. Don’t do it.

3

You need more haste, drop some of your crit pieces for haste. Change the crusade talent to inquisition if you’re single target or low mob density, use divine purpose if you’re running dungeons with a lot of mobs

4

Change your essence if you have vision or perfection, it’s better for ret

5

this is a good start you want close to 20% haste and ret will feel better if you dont have the gear take inquisition over crusade.

6

in case its a rotation issue there is an addon that literally tells you what ability to press next for your rotation although the opener is not mapped correctly unless they updated. I use a getto version of it as a dynamic weak aura.

it would be nice to get an empyrian power trait. its a single target increase as well as great for dungeons.

as far as simming goes here’s a great tool.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/quick

quick sim will tell you a dps number you should aim for in a full raid buff situation (double dps potions lust, monk and DH debuff, food, flask, etc…) you will rarely hit this number since mechanics and also latency but it gives you basically your potential dps.

if you click on top gear you will see an input window. If you have the twitch client you can download the simc mod into your wow folder and it will let you copy paste a gear string from your bags into the top gear box (type /simc into chat bar). paste into raid bots top gear and from here it will pull up all gear in your bags and you can see what the best DPS combination of gear in your current bags is when you run the sim.

if you want to farm more gear droptimizer will tell you your best upgrades say from mythic plus or from the raid so you know what to bonus roll on or what dungeon has the best chance at athe best upgrade for you.

generic advice like go for haste drop crit is very situational. there are actually good crit builds out there for ret and all secondaries are fairly close in value so simming is the answer if you want to min max gear and azerite traits. however i agree that low haste ‘feels bad’ for ret if that is a concern.

disclaimer if you try to sim too many things at once it won’t let you do that many combinations so you either have to subscribe or sim gear in chunks. I chose to pay so i didn’t have to wait in line and i can just sim sim sim all day but free is viable if you sim gear in smaller chunks instead of every possible change at once.

for stuff like inquisition and many other abilities like wings and stuff weak auras are very handy to track when they will come up in a more convenient spot close to your character model so you can plan your ability usage more. weak auras can be downloaded through the twitch client as a mod into wow. making custom auras can be tricky but you can usually find what you are looking for on wag io or whatever its called and you can import weak auras through text strings copy paste that way.

for example I build a weak aura that counts down till wings is back up and starts glowing when its available so i don’t forget to use it throughout the fight. stuff like that. I have one that tells me when to refresh inquisition too so i don’t have to constantly glance at the top of my screen at the tiny squares.

if you want a more in dept guide i highly recommend look up skeletor’s ret pally xyz guide. you can also talk to him directly and ask him a question in the palladin discord if your question is not addressed in his guide directly. (otherwise he’ll just tell you to sim it lol)

hopefully that all makes sense. feel free to ask if you have more questions.

1 Like
7

You don’t need 20% haste with inquisition.
And it depends on what you’re doing, consider inquisition has a baseline increase as it should be up 100% of the time. crusade isn’t that good anymore

2 Likes
8

oh yes I forgot to check all your gear but it is very possible if you don’t have any benthic gear equipped with the right traits lower ilvl people could easily beat you if they have all the right gear equipped in the new raid. (it only works in the raid and nazjatar, NOT in dungeons).

check icy veins ret pally guide for the best benthic gear tokens. some of them are so strong they are actually worth 50 ilvls higher than the actual number. benthic gear caps at 425 but the right boots actually perform as if they were 475 inside the raid because of the proc on it.

9

benthic is only good in 2 places in m+,pvp and mechagon its not that good.

10

Yeah but with your item level it’s going to be better in all scenarios

11

Sim urself on raidbots for ur stats.