I bestow upon you all... Ubarlight.

There isn't really a way to put Ubarlight into words. He is a paladin of awesomeness & wicked sweetness. I suggest everyone check out his WoWwiki Entry and bask in the glory of Argent Dawn's very own forum celebrity.

In Defense of Retribution Paladins

Note: This was stolen from Thrommel on the Paladin forums. I figured I would repost it here, because it seems like valuable information. Currently, I am on a quest to better understand the Retribution spec and perhaps even temporarily (permanently if I like it enough) change specs if my guild can find a healing replacement.

Retribution Paladins have, of late, come under frequent attack in these and other class forums for their supposed lack of usefulness in a raid or party setting relative to other single purpose classes or other talent tree options. This type of thinking is not only poorly conceived but illustrates a larger problem of evaluating the contribution of hybrid/support classes.

Support classes exist to not maximize their personal performance but to maximize the performance of the group they are supporting. Typical tools used to measure effectiveness such as Damage & Healing meters do not directly take this into account because the benefits the Retribution paladin provides are not attributed to the paladin but to the group members he supports. To understand this better let us take a look at how a Retribution paladin stacks up in the core categories of damage, healing, and survivability.

Damage Output

If you consider total damage output versus personal damage output then you will realize that a Retribution paladin is one of the highest DPS classes in the game. Consider:

Sanctified Crusader

This Retribution talent increases the critical strike chance of ALL ATTACKS made against a target by 3%. This additional DPS is huge, effects everyone in the raid (not just party), effects ALL types of damage (not just spell or physical), and scales with group size: Assuming a portion of each group is made up of non attacking healers on a boss fight:

5 man: 3% increased crit for FOUR PEOPLE
25 man: 3% increased crit for 20 PEOPLE
40 man: 3% increased crit for 30 PEOPLE

This damage boost comes on top of the DPS boost every paladin provides, namely Blessing of Might and Retribution Aura, both of which scale with group size:

Blessing of Might (untalented)

5 Man Instance: 3 melee attackers ave. = 47.1 DPS extra
25 man Raid: 10 melee attackers ave. = 157 DPS extra
40 man Raid: 20 Melee attackers ave = 314 DPS extra

Retribution Aura (untalented)

Assuming a 2 second mob swing speed:

1 Mob Being Tanked (Boss): 13 DPS (unmitigated)
2 Mobs Being Tanked: 26 DPS (unmitigated)
3 mobs Being Tanked: 39 DPS (unmitigated)

From a damage perspective, the question is not why bring a Retribution paladin but why bring a rogue...

Healing

With the exception of boss fights, most dedicated healers (druids, priests, holy paladins) spend the majority of their time doing nothing but waiting to heal for lack of need, fear of pulling aggro, or as a result of wishing to conserve precious mana. In short their lives can be described, to paraphrase a saying, as " Hours of boredom and seconds of screaming terror" and are providing no DPS or healing outside of these times.

A Retribution paladin is able to consistently add their damage to every fight (thus shortening the encounter) while still being able to greatly add to the group's healing. Consider:

Judgement of Light

Judgement of Light is a nearly mana free Heal over Time that scales with the number of melee attackers and is most directed at those high DPS raid members who rarely get them, namely rogues and fury warriors (who are usually told to bandage or crawl off somewhere and die). This form of healing is significant, allows your groups DPS to be sustained longer, and is not attributed to the Retribution paladin (whose strikes must keep it up) on healing meters. Assuming a 2.0 swing speed (high for most rogues/fury warriors/pets) and a 40% proc rate for the judgement, at max rank this judgement provides:


5 Man Instance: 3 melee attackers ave. = 36 HPS
25 man Raid: 10 melee attackers ave. = 120 HPS
40 man Raid: 20 Melee attackers ave = 240 HPS

If properly accounted for, I can guarantee you, that I would be near the top of any healing meter with this small spell alone. Add in my DPS, as well as the additional DPS of those melee attackers who lived just a few seconds more and you can see this is non trivial.

Improved Sanctity Aura

Improved Sanctity Aura boosts healing to effected targets by 6%. This coupled with Healing Light in Holy turns a Retribution paladin into a respectable healer, especially with some spell damage gear. In fact it is the equivalent of 205 spell damage gear considering the spell coefficient on a max rank Holy Light. More importantly it boosts the healing power of your main healer (priest/druid) who may be grouped with you to support a main tank. This talent not only scales with the number of healers but spell damage gear as well.

Survivability

Group

Paladin resistance auras, while not game breaking, are a significant source of mitigation in those encounters where it is critical (e.g. Ragnaros). From posted sources, 60 Resist was overall the equivalent of about 15% mitigation to spell damage. Since this means the rogues and warriors in my melee group last on average 15% longer during these fights you can see the DPS boost that this provides.

Personal

While DPS classes do it faster, few can maintain it longer than a paladin. A Retribution paladin, while not as hearty as his Holy and Protection bretheren is a warrior that needs no maintenance. High resists and plate ensure he is in the fight longer than any other melee combatant and he can allways self heal or bubble if need be to keep fighting long after his fellows have fallen. And all with no baby sitting from the healers who can focus their mana on the main tank.

The question is not why bring a paladin but why bring a non tanking warrior or rogue...


The purpose of the post was not to claim that the paladin or even the Retribution spec are "The Best" but merely to point out that the arguments typically being made are specious, myopic, and rest on well chosen examples that do not take into account all the things that a hybrid class is doing for the rest of the groups it is supporting.

/end rant

Paladin TPS in 2.1

I normally don't make pointless links to forum threads and such, but I found this nugget of amusingness on the paladin forums.
Office Space: Paladin Edition

Anybody else have any good Paladinified Office Space quotes they can come up with?

The Tseric Salute

"When you can understand how a group of belligerent and angry posters can drive away people from this game with an uncrafted and improvisational campaign of misery and spin-doctoring, then perhaps, you can understand the decisions I make. Until you face mobs of psychology, you will not see my side.

Until you see some bright-eyed player coming onto the forums wanting to know what they should spec as this class, and see them shat on and driven away by petty and selfish people who are simply leveraging for game buffs, you will not understand.

You will not understand until you have to see it daily, for years...

Until you understand that many people will trod over you to get where they're going, or to get what they want.

Until you understand that so many people will agree, completely, 100% with a loud, vulgar and assertive individual, not because he is right, but because he is making a stand against "the Man"; to take no critical thought in what they say, but simply to hop on board.

Until you actually try to acknowledge those who do not speak on the forums, for whatever reason they have, you will not understand.

If you think an archaic business formula like "the customer is always right" works, you fail to understand customers, not a customer. It is a collective. No one person, even myself, is truly above the whole.

I simply have the unfortunate quality of being easily singled out. "

A follow up post to all the flames and posts that proceeded his proclamation:

"Can't help it.
Posting impassionately, they say you don't care.
Posting nothing, they say you ignore.
Posting with passion, you incite trolls.
Posting fluff, you say nonsense.
Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale.
There is no win.
There is only slow degradation.
Take note. It is the first and only time you'll see someone in my position make that position.
You can be me when I'm gone."

I just want to say that I completely side with Tseric on this. The forum is a cesspool of trash and scum at times. But, there are often brilliant and helpful posts in all of those NERF THIS, OVERPOWERED THAT, discussions we just have to find them.

I can only hope that Blizzard thinks of this and perhaps starts to enforce the forum rules a bit more and eliminate trolls and idiots.

I can only hope that the World of Warcraft community can grow from this whole fiasco, and fight towards a better cleaner forums.

Bah... who the hell am I kidding... it's always going to be the same, but at least somebody from Blizzard had the guts to say something about it and hopefully get the ball rolling.

Joanadark

These two posts by Joanadark are extremely informative and thought provoking. I'd suggest that any paladins out there, or those interested in the class, give them a good read.

The Path We Follow...

The Light Works in Mysterious Ways

PS. I know she's a warrior, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have informative things to say!