NEW POSTS SOON

OH MY GOD THAT FUCKING SHITTY RET GUY MIGHT BE BACK. WHAT ON EARTH WILL HE DO SINCE THE FALL OF WOW?!

Stay tuned?

A new purpose…

I’ve cancelled my WoW subscription for the time being. Might be done with the game for good, or perhaps I’ll return to it later. I am quite simply burnt out after playing the game for the 6 years it has been out. On top of that MMO’s are a massive time-sink anyway, or at the very least playing fairly competitively is.

Because of this I find myself with an abundance of free time, and while primarily I need to dedicate that time to finding a better job and some RL issues; In addition I need to start a project or something else to occupy my time. I used to spend the majority of my free time modding games so many years ago, so that might be it.

Either way I want to re-purpose this blog into a more generalized focus, on multiple games, music, etc…
I figure despite what I choose to do, I should at least make the effort to update this blog and publicize it more in the locales respective to content I post.

~ Retribution Guy

The Diesel, the Evil, and the GLORIOUSSSSSS

It’s been too long since I’ve updated again. I think I have my head screwed on straight enough right now to start posting weekly with some filler here and there where I can.

There’s a good bit of news to go around:

Firstly: With our combined Double Dragon powers, Shye and I managed to urge Voronwe into starting a blog. THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE!

((( http://thethirdret.wordpress.com/ )))

He somewhat appropriately and humorously named it “The Third Ret” attributing to the fact that he was the 3rd of “The Ret™’s” to create a ShredBlog™. YEAH EAT THOSE TRADEMARKS MMMHM.

If the fact that Voro is one of the three eternal brothers of the shred is not enough to convince you to read his blog, I’d like to point out his diesel looking banner:

I didn't edit this at all, I swear!

On top of that I present a quote:

“…you may be wondering what in god’s name I plan on writing about. To be honest, I have no fucking clue.”

Spoken like a true Ret Jedi… this is a rough equivalence to what I said to myself when I started Art of Shred. An epic saga of Retribution awaits!

In other news I’d like to discuss a few things about Ret PVP:

The other night, after waiting for roughly 4 months, not only did Tiny Abomination in a Jar drop, but in heroic form! It’s pretty damn awesome, and its extremely good in pvp too. What I want to discuss is the seldom-considered, under-appreciated power of Seal of Command in PVP. It is finally becoming viable to use Seal of Command, however the requirements for doing so are a little steep.

Lets take a look at the benefits you’d gain from being able to use Seal of Command over Seal of Righteousness. Some common Ret builds feature a spec roughly similar to this:

5/11/55 Standard Divine Sac + 3x RV Build (Variations of this of course include Seal of Command for general use)

7/11/53 No RV Build with Unyielding Faith for fear duration reduction.

5/14/52 Improved Righteous Fury Build (Variations of this of course include Seal of Command for general use)

These each take the extra 15% Seal + Judgement damage from Seals of the Pure in the holy tree, along with Glyph of Seal of Righteousness to increase the proc damage by a further 10%.

The build I’ve taken increases surviveability and utility by a pretty good margin. Here’s the variation I have, if someone happened to play with a warrior/feral they could drop Vindication and pick up 3/3 RV for some extra crit-rolling damage.

0/19/52 Seal of Command Build

The disavantages/advantages of using this build are as follows:

Loss of Seals of the Pure: -15% damage done by Seal/Judgement of Righteousness and Corruption.

Loss of Glyph of Seal of Righteousness: -10% damage done by Seal of Righteousness

Loss of Improved Blessing of Might: Kings is the better choice in arena for pretty much every class/combo. If you happen to have 2 paladins in your Arena comp it may be worth it switching a few points around to get Imp Might as well for maximum buffs.

Divine Guardian: +30 second duration on Sacred Shield and +20% Damage Absorbed. Sacred Shield is a lot more powerful than a lot of people give it credit for. With 5568 AP (1670 Spellpower), my Sacred Shield with Divine Guardian absorbs 2582 damage every 6 seconds. Without the talent it would only absorb 2107, so the talent results in an increase of 475 less damage taken per 6 seconds which can also be expressed as a decrease of 4750 damage per minute or 79 damage per second. Divine Guardian also increases the effectiveness of Divine Sacrifice by 20% shield walling your entire group for 60 seconds. This effectively mitigates around 44% of the damage your group is taking, 20% being thrown away by the reduction and 30% of the remaining damage misdirected toward you.

Improved Righteous Fury: 6% Damage Reduction while righteous fury is up. While this is dispellable keep in mind that unlike a few patches back, RF costs no mana to reapply so it serves as both dispel fodder and damage reduction.

Improved Hammer of Justice: 20 Sec CD reduction on HOJ. This is extremely important in pvp in my opinion. With 40 second HOJ’s you can force trinkets more often and put pressure out much harder by stunning a target an additional time before their CD’s/Trinkets come back up. One of the most obvious scenarios is a druid’s Barkskin. If you can force a trinket with your first HOJ, and a barkskin with your 2nd, you can get a 3rd HOJ off with Avenging Wrath up and BRING THE ETERNAL SHREDDD.

Glyph of Seal of Command: You gain 8% of your base mana back when you judge in addition to the 25% granted by Judgements of the Wise. This means a judgement restores 33% of your base mana which ends up being 1451 mana. (1099 from JOTW, 352 from Glyph of SoCoM). It takes 1274 mana to cast a holy light, and 197 mana to judge. What this effectively means is for each judgement you toss out you can cast one holy light, giving you some serious off-healing efficiency when you need it. While its not huge for arenas, it is exceptionally useful in 2v2 and has its merits here and there otherwise. You can really support heal if you need to in a battleground which I like having the option to do. I did a standard close match of EOTS earlier today and dropped 1 million damage with close to 500k healing done as well. Offhealing support is invaluable assuming people around you know what they’re doing.

Now as for practical purposes I want to discuss the damage output changes. I haven’t done any major math on the differences but its pretty obvious how the damage flow changes. NOTE that you are not always going to use Seal of Command as this spec! Seal of Righteousness will usually still put out more burst damage, but for general pressure and cleaving multiple targets SoCoM will outperform it in the long run assuming you aren’t getting peeled like crazy. Also Keep in mind SoCoM is based off weapon damage so is less effective if you need to sword & board.

Itemization:

One important focus when using Seal of Command is the need to stack crit. Once you are over around 5k AP there’s not a huge need to stack Strength/AP to the ends of the earth, because unfortunately shit classes will be shit classes with their retarded passive spell damage reduction and easy ability to stack high levels of resil (I’m looking at you vile Shadowcasting filths), and your 10k AP duel Death’s Choice judgement will still only crit for 4k. (Woo!). The advatange Seal of Command gives over Righteousness is that its seal procs hit for more damage than SoR and also have the ability to crit. To really utilize this you’re going to want around 40+% crit in pvp gear.

The way you accomplish this doesn’t matter, be as efficient as possible using what gear you have, whether you gem a few 10 crit/str gems in your red sockets or use some Agi pieces: a high crit level is needed to make Seal of Command perform. On top of that Tiny Abomination in a Jar is probably the best trinket ever for the spec as well, it gets slightly more utilized than SoR would be when the extra attack is blasting of a SoCoM proc. Some advice I can offer is to avoid pure +hit pieces, like the PVP ring/neck/cloak variations. Instead get the highest ilevel pve hit/crit offpieces you can get your hands on and use those.

Some paladins focus more/less on hit than others. 5% is a standard normal number, and is fine in most cases. However you’ll have some problems with certain class/combos:

Blood Elf: +2% chance to miss spells = 7% chance to miss exorcism.

Blood Elf Paladin: +2% chance to miss spells, +4% chance to miss spells/ranged attacks = 9% chance to miss a judgement, 11% chance to miss exorcism.

Night Elf: +2% chance to miss melee attacks = 7% chance to miss a melee attack/judgement.

Night Elf Rogue: +2% chance to miss melee attacks, +4% chance to miss spells/ranged attacks = 7% chance to miss a melee attack, 9% chance to miss exorcism, *11% chance to miss a judgement.

*Note: I am not 100% on this but I’m pretty sure that the 2% chance to miss melee attacks may stack with the 4% ranged chance and penalize judgement to an 11% miss chance, making NE rogues the worst race/class combo to fight.

Because of racials like this I personally prefer to use 7% hit. This means at least I won’t miss a crusader strike on the druid I’m HOJ bursting.

In general I want to note that I don’t feel that it’s a good idea to drop below 1000 resilience at any point as ret, so prioritize a minimum of 1000 resil over having more than 5% hit if it comes to that. Every little bit of resil over 1000 gives you just a little more leeway to survive against the wizards waiting around the corner to spellcleave the everliving fuck out of you as soon as you pop your head out.

Some general advice:

2v2 Double DPS: Run as much resil as you want, find a good spot for how much damage you want to do vs your surviveability. It’s easier to use less resil and more pve gear if you have a partner capable of heavy CC, but keep in mind some classes like a warrior or rogue will tear you in half if they’re on you for long without high resilience.

2v2 Ret + Healer: In this case I play Ret + Resto Shaman, so not sure if this really applies to other healers. This is one of the most nerfed comps out there compared to its former viability in S5/S6. It’s extremely difficult to play a comp like this unless you’re rocking some bursty weapons like Shadowmourne or Bryntroll, TAJ/Death’s Choice and engineering for Pyro Rocket. Certain teams will pretty much run all over you (Warrior + Holy Paladin). You probably want right around 1000 resil for a good balance between surviveability and damage. There are a lot of comps where you will need to stand on your own and keep pressure up so your healer can get a few ticks of mana drinking.

3v3: I recommend anywhere from 1000-1200 resil. Rule #1 for Ret 3v3 is to LOS like crazy against Wizard Cleaves, especially if Bloodlust is up. Shadow Priests in particular will fucking ruin you in a matter of seconds.

5v5: Honestly as long as you’re over 1000 resil in 5v5 you’re pretty much as good as it gets. Line of sight, paying attention, and Korean swaps of burst damage are the most important factors in 5v5. Standing in the open against almost any team will result in you getting carved up like butter. You can switch your gear depending on the teams you are coming up against in queue. If there are Wizardcleaves around I generally get focused and stack more resil. If I’m not getting pressured (Most other comps that aren’t caster heavy don’t hit me) then I drop below 1000 for some extra burst potential.

I’m going to wrap this up here, this is only touching a little of Paladin pvp mechanics and I tried to keep this focused mostly on the Seal of Command build and how to itemize for it. I’m going to drop a shot of my current gear since you never know what you might catch me in on the armory. :-OOO

To be honest I will very likely end up updating this screenshot and post, I put this variation of my set together pretty quickly today and I’m pretty sure I can squeeze a lot more point for point out of it with some item changes.

These are my stats completely unbuffed (except Aura):

I have Wrathful on in all areas but the following slots:
Neck: Wodin’s Lucky Necklace (If I had Deathwhisper’s neck or a good Strength neck I’d use that over this, Agility gear is a pretty hefty stamina loss over Strength gear a lot of the time)
Cloak: Cloak of the Triumphant Combatant
Legs: Relentless Gladiator’s Scaled Legguards
Ring 1: Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance (Agi Ring)
Ring 2: Wrathful Gladiator’s Band of Triumph (Crit Ring)
Trinket 2: Tiny Abomination in a Jar (277)
Weapon: Shadowmourne
I’m not gemming for crit at the moment, I simply match sockets (Blue = 10 Str/15 Stam, Red = 20 Str, Yellow = 10 Str/10 Crit). This may change as I experiment more.

That’s it for today folks!

~ The Ret

Updates!

:-O :-O :-O Yey!

Today I’d like to bring up the fact that, in addition to the eternal shred I unleash upon the infidel filth plaguing the lands of Azeroth, my raiding guild THE LEAGUE has two other “The Ret™s.”

Master Voronwe is our quiet medatative brother of shred. His unnatural level of silence causes the ventrilo server to quiver in fear of his judgement. Though deep inside he holds back levels of anger equal to my own.

Shye on the other hand is as outwardly angry as I am, invoking his righteous judgement upon evil shits in the form of verbal abuse. You may have seen us around before, we’re kind of a big deal:

GLORIOUSSSSS

Shye also keeps a blog dedicated to the pursuit of justice (WOW THATS A RET TALENT, ORIGINALITY LOL).

In all seriousness, Shye’s blog is pretty awesome. You’ll find everything from Ret comments to epic levels of berating awful: RP, Furries, and other stupid shit.

VISIT IT HENCEFORTH: http://wiseplusbrave.wordpress.com/

Also as proper tribute to a fellow Paladin, I feel the urge to display a pic of Shye in all his glory:

Lol, I luv u buddy

As far as Art of Shred goes, I’ve added the “Wall of Deebus” I detailed a couple posts back. This will be a growing collection of random screenshots intended to be humorous in nature (Or malicious… I mean uh, what?)

You can access the Wall of Deebus page from the sidebar or just click the link below:

http://theartofshred.wordpress.com/the-wall-of-deebus/

~ Reeman

SHADOWMOURNE

Thursday night, I received the final 2 Shadowfrost Shards I needed to complete Shadowmourne!

All I can really say about it is…

“MY DICKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK OHHHHHH”

LOOK AT THAT SHIT. GLORIOUS!

I would have made this post last night, however I decided that beer + destroying BG’s was a suitable celebratory event for at long last obtaining an at level legendary. The proc is a nice bonus of burst damage, and with all that extra strength on it, even when I don’t crit I’m dishing out heavy damage to a target. BG’s are pretty lol most of the time but goddamn I have been plowing through shit like a wrecking ball with this weapon.

I’d like to thank my guild, The League, for putting up with me bitching every time a Heroic boss kill didn’t drop a shard, and also for having me in for every single fight for the past… like, 3 months or however long its been. Without their efforts of raiding shreddage, this would not be possible. Thank you all. I am honored to wield this weapon as a symbol of our progression and effort.

I’d also like to thank RNG for being mega-diesel and invoking my destiny by rolling a 100 when we decided who would get the first axe.

ONCE EVERY HUNDRED-THOUSAND YEARS OR SO, WHEN THE SUN DOTH SHINE AND THE MOON DOTH GLOW

I will boldly carve a path of shred through the ages with such a verital weapon of might. Raidos grant me eternal glory!

~ Reeman

Holy Shock

Lets talk about…

Suck wisdom you demon fuck!

Proving once again that it is way too early to really count on anything being set in stone, among the Twitter Developer chat posted on the 16^th, Holy Shock and Art of War were mentioned:

Q: Now that paladin’s Holy Shock is baseline is there any plans to change the Art of War talent?
A: We like Art of War, so we don’t expect it will go away. We understand the concern that Holy Shock might compete with Art of War a little bit in terms of role (an instant damage spell) and that’s something we’re going to have to address.

Compete in terms of role for damage? What? Realllllly? Unless something mad changes Exorcism will still blast harder. Not only that, lets consider the aspect I’d be FAR MORE CONCERNED ABOUT… ret having an instant 4-5k heal on a 6 (or 5 glyphed) second cooldown on top of using Art of War procs for Flash of Light. Sounds overpowered right? Even with Holy Shock’s fairly heavy mana cost (741 mana), in a “I need to kite or die” scenario you’d still have enough mana to judge every CD and pop holy shock every time it was up on top of using AoW procs when you could. If they increase the mana cost of Flash of Light as significantly as I imagine they may, perhaps this won’t be quite as effective as it may sound though.

As much as I like my class to be ridiculously diesel, having two good instant heals as a DPS seems like it might be a bit over the top. Right now Art of War is one of the best abilities in the game as far as keeping yourself alive (when RNG doesn’t screw you over). Assuming our other weaknesses are covered a bit more in Cataclysm, such as getting an interrupt and maybe better forms of damage reduction CD’s than just “Divine oh shit it just got Mass Dispelled:” then Art of War should be more then adequate in most situations. However Art of War itself could do with a change.

For example, on an equal skill level playing field, lets say two Rets duel. If one Paladin doesn’t crit as much as the other, or has a dry span for a bit, then they get RNG’ed and probably lose. It does, at least in the case of 1v1 make that much of a difference. In a group scenario not so much, but it is still common to have streams of really bad luck against extremely high resilience targets. Often times this will seriously douche you over.

My suggestion is to have AoW have a stacking mechanic behind it. It stacks up to 5 times. When you crit, the stack immediately hits 5. When you don’t, an ability hitting or white swing puts up 1 stack of AoW. The stack would be useless until you got it to 5, in which case then you could instant FoL/Exorcism. What this would do is increase the number of AoW procs in shitty situations where you don’t get any crits for a while. This would make it just a little bit more dependable, and thus improve the quality of my PvP life by an additional 11.346%.

Just my two cents right now on this issue,

~ Ree

OMG

This just in from MMO-Champion’s list of blue talk from the #BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16.

Q. What information/ideas can you share on PvP utility in the Retribution tree? Mandatory gap closer/interrupt question. Not having a cleanse will hurt. :\
A. Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt.

!?$?!$?!$?!?$!?$!!

:–))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

FINALLY. The quality of my life just improved by 13.41% from this announcement. I hope this isn’t them joking around and is indeed up and coming.

EDIT: Also, figure I’ll just shoot this out here in case some form of giant flying homomongus demon filth IRL prevent me from finishing some changes and a new post for a few days. I’m going to update the Sidebar with better details and a new description page, and some links to other blogs and resources and such shortly. Also expect a retarded screenshot gallery of stupid shit I’ve done over the course of the game. Stay tuned for more :-O