Ret gear changing with patch 2.4

So you've been saving up those honor points for gear and you probably have a few pieces of season 1 or 2 gear. Well patch 2.4 is on the testing server now, when it goes live Blizzard plans on making some tweaks to the gear.

Untill the patch goes live, there are things that can change, but at this point it looks like it's going to be another good patch for Ret Pally's!

• New Season 1 gear stats here
• New Season 2 gear stats here
• No changes to season 3 gear

Not sure what the differences are, dont' worry I've done the heavy lifting....

Season 1 = No more spell damage, instead you now have resilliance around 16 per piece average... Also, increase in strength of about 5 (10 attack power) at the expense of about 5 critical strike


Season 2 = No more spell damage. Added resiliance of about 18 average per piece.... Also increase in strength of about 15 (30 attack power) at the expens of about 7 critical strike

Finally, resilliance has been changed to also reduce the effect of mana drain = great news for us, since we're very suceptable to mana drain. With around 200 resiliance you should see around a 10% reduction in mana drain.

While I'm not thrilled with the loss of Critical Strike stats, I think it is more then made up for in Attack power and Resilliance. And of course, when you move up to season 3 those stats are the same.

There are changes in other classes that (potentially) make them weaker against the retribution pally. For full patch notes and PTR notes check mmo-champion

The golden age of RETRIBUTION is upon us!

1610

Hello folks,

It's been a while since my last post... probably because I've gotten the basics off my chest. But today I'm celebrating a little milestone, a tale of hope for all you Ret Pally's out there.

This week my 2v2 arena team broke the 1600 barrier and reached 1610 for the week! Yay for me :)


After 200+ games in 2v2 I was getting a little concerned that we'd stay in the 1500's forever. In the last three weeks though, I've been able to increase my (unbuffed) attack power from about 1450 to 1720 and add another 50 resiliance or so. I can tell the difference. Druids, Priest and Warlocks are still hard, but no longer an automatic loss. In fact 3 of my wins this week came from a priest/rouge combo... the extra AP gives me enough DPS to out damage the priest (and most other healers) as long as I play it right.

Healing specs are very mana efficent, but I've found that if I put up:
- Improved Seal of the Crusader
- Stack Seal of Vengence to the maximum 5
- Refresh with Crusader strike

And use my two stuns back-to-back at the right time, then they go down and I still have mana.... When's the right time? It's when the healer is below 40% health, and is gearing up for a big heal.

The difference I'm getting from AP has me looking forward to Arena Season 4 and the new gear it will provide... In fact, my next article will deal with the upcoming patch 2.4 changes and after thta I'll talk a little about the Season 4 rumors.

Guild vs You

At some point you may be going about your day, blissfully stomping those arena openents and wailing on others in the BG's. Life is great.... until you get that whisper

Hey we'd like you to respec to Holy we need a healer.

WHOA!.... Your guild leader is waiting for a reply and you probably want to avoid pissing off the guy right away with a well timed "FU_K YOU" so what to do? You've got two main choices:

#1) Meekly accept, sacrificing your personal happiness for the needs of the guild. After all, isn't the group need more important then your own?

#2) Screw that, you're a Ret Pally and they'd better accept it... better they get to accepting now!

Either of these choices comes with some potential consiquences. Choice #1 will leave you in the guild and you'll start running more PvE Instances with your friends. Of course you'll be the group healer and your dreams of RET will go bye-bye... and the armor you've acquired for ret will be tossed aside for healing gear.... Worst of all, you won't get much advise from my blog on Holy :)

The consiquences for choice #2 will vary depending on your guild, either they'll say fine and not bring it up again, they'll say fine and stop inviting you to as many guild functions, they'll ask you to leave (or make it uncomfortable enough that you'll leave).

Of course you'll have to decide what's most important to you. But I will give you my opinion on it.

Tell your guild you will NOT respec. Don't bend over for some guy's request! You haven't asked anyone in your guild to respec for you, and you expect the same courtisy from other people! If they need a healer so bad they should get out and recruit one.

Take a sec to think about why they're asking you in the first place.. probably to run instances. If that's for you then great. But if you've embraced PvP then you don't want to waste 5 hours in a big Kara run anyway. You probably also don't want people setting your WOW schedule for you.

If they threaten to toss you out then go ahead and type in "/gquit" and get out of there. I'll let you in on a little secret... There are plenty of guilds out there oriented to PvP. They'll gladly accept a Ret Pally and will help you run BG's get Arena Teams together and will probably be more condusive to your play style.

It's easier to say "go ahead and quit" then actualy do it, especially if you've been with the guild for a long time. Kind of like moving to a new neighborhood, you won't see your old friends any more.... But you'll make new ones, maybe even better ones that understand you and your spec.

Gems, Gems the musical fruit, the more use equip the more you toot

Alright folks,

I meant to get this article out earlier, but hey with a full time job, two blogs and a website plus a lot of hours on WOW sometimes I just run out of time :)

So, you're on your way to getting all the great weapons/armor you need and you're noticing that some of the new stuff has gem socksts. You may be wondering what colors to get, what cuts, etc.

If you've been following my advice and picking up the Gladiator's PvP armor you're going to be seeing mostly yellow and red slots. This is great for you because these colors will help with hit rating, strenght (AP) and critical strike... all of which you're going to want. You'll find a great site here which allows you to search for gems by attribute.

First of all, let's go over a couple basics.

#1) To socket a gem, open up your character screen and "SHIFT+RIGHT CLICK" on the item. This will open up the gem window and you can drag and drop the gems into the sockets

#2) While you can put new gems in your gear down the road, they destroy the old gems (similar to enchanting over an existing enchant)

#3) Mixed colors count a BOTH gems. For example if you have a Red slot, you could put an orange gem or purple gem in and it would work in the red slot.

#4) Make sure you're putting the right gems into the right slot. If you put a yellow gem into a green slot it will allow you to eqip it but you won't get any of the gems bonuses.... If you're not seeing an increase in your stats after socketing a gem, go back and make sure it's in the right socket. (You can't pull it out, but you can put a new gem it it's place... be careful)

There are so many gems out there that I won't go over most of them. But check the link earlier in the article for a filterable list of them. The Gems you choose will depend a bit on your play style and what stats you're short on. But I'll list the 3 that I think will be of most benefit.

Blue Versions

- Bold Living Ruby = +8 Strength
- Inscribed Noble Topazl = +4 Strength +4 Critical Strike
- Rigid Dawnstone = +8 Hit Rating

Green Versions
- Bold Blood Garnet = +6 Strength
- Inscribed Flame Spesserite = +3 Strength +3 Critical Strike
- Rigid Golden Dreanite = +6 Hit Rating

If you don't have the money for Blue gems yet, you can put in the green versions for a lot cheaper (we're talking 3g instead of 30g) but I would recommend getting the better versions when you have the cash. Also there are slight improved purple versions but they're from heroic drops and such... so the blue is probably the best you can reasonably expect to get.