My Ret Pally's dps is just pitiful

[Sorbbie 4]

Thank you Blainie.  Thanks for taking so much of your time to check my post and to provide feedback and good advice.  When I originally posted I thought I'd be lucky if I got one response with helpful advice, but Blainie you have responded 8 times, each with good feedback and great, thoughtful advice and I cannot thank you enough.  I love playing WOW and Icy Veins Rocks!

[Cedar 5]

Fionoria,

After reading this post, I have to say that you must be one of the most polite and courteous folks that I have come across in the forums. You are polite in your responses and take the time to respond to all who offer help. Thank you for making this a better place to be.

[Braechadin 0]

I'm not the best to give advice on rotation, gear, iLvl, stats, etc. What I can offer is mentality. Ignore HK's, damage, healing and all those other numbers because they will be entirely subjective to each fight. In pvp I care less about overall damage then I do the individual player and how they contribute. As previously mentioned, are you doing things in the bg's that help the "team" or are you hk chasing/damage fluffing? You can sit at a node for the entire fight and never lose it and you are far more productive then the ret who achieves 72 hk's. Look at your individual production in the fight and ignore all the others as you are never doing the exact same thing as the other ret/druid/etc. Are you using stuns/cc's? Are you throwing your shields at an ailing ally? Are you peeling dps off your healer? These are the types of things that will make you effective and potentially throw off the trolls.

I know that it's hard sometimes to view those comments and not take them personally. I struggle with that as well. I've been top damage, top honor, and top kills at various times and still gotten the whispers. So, take it all in stride. Assess your individual performance and justify what you did during that bg to yourself and yourself only. If you look back and remember that you weren't as effective peeling dps off your healer... fix that the next time. Be more proactive at bursting that dps down and locking them down with cc's and you'll get that healer whispering you with thanks and not negativity.

All in all you have the right idea by getting advice, because that's the true sign of a good player. Someone who views themselves as the best will never get better. Someone who offers up negativity instead of constructively trying to help you get better is someone not worth listening to. Hope you see the development you seek and good luck!

[Bastione 0]

Always use Divine Storm when defending the flag, it will increase your dps A LOT.

On 15/10/2017 at 6:31 PM, Fionoria said:

  I'm a woman

How is this relevant to your DPS problem?

[Sorbbie 4]

Thank you Cedar, that was nice of you to notice and to say so.  My husband and I started playing WOW while he was still in the Army.  The kids were grown and off into their own lives when we got into playing.  WOW helped me through 15 month deployments, trainings, tdy's, general Army life.  I love playing the game, and I am thankful to anyone who takes the time to give me advice. 

I'm a Social Worker.  I've worked as a therapist, Child Services Worker and for the Dept of Army and seen kindness make miracles happen and unkindness rip people apart.  It's not hard to be kind, it's easier than be a jerk and anyone who takes time out of their busy day to offer me help, well, the least I can do is say thank you.  You are right too Cedar, it makes the things a little better. 

 

[Sorbbie 4]

Well Braechadin thank you and you are right.  I've received a lot of great advice, what addons to use, gems, stats, ect...it really just boils down to how I play the game, if I like playing and if the people I play with like me playing with them.  I do think I fixated too much on player's comments.  Who knows what their reasoning is for providing negative comments; but there were a few players who continued to provide hurtful advice for a long while.  Anyway, I can live with that, I just want to play as well as I can. 

Thank you again Braechadin. 

[Sorbbie 4]

Ok, Bastione, thank you, I will use Divine Storm when I am running or defending the flag. 

"I am a woman," has nothing to do with my toons dps.  I was just expressing the frustration I felt at the situation.  My character looks like a woman, she has a cute, woman face, boobs, a curvy body and I get called dude, guy, man, fellow: "Your dps sucks," a lot.  If they are going to notice my dps, can't they notice that I'm a female? 

Thank you for your help Bastione. 

[Valks 2,373]

On 11/25/2017 at 1:09 AM, Fionoria said:

Thank you Blainie.  Thanks for taking so much of your time to check my post and to provide feedback and good advice.  When I originally posted I thought I'd be lucky if I got one response with helpful advice, but Blainie you have responded 8 times, each with good feedback and great, thoughtful advice and I cannot thank you enough.  I love playing WOW and Icy Veins Rocks!

That's what we're here for :) Good luck with the battlegrounds!

[Exploit 1]

Hey Fionoria,

I'm a ret pally here and I generally do really well in BGs. I find ret to be really powerful as far as topping the charts in damage, killing blows, and overall utility.

General Ret BG Experience

What is being said, having experience in BGs/PVP is its own learning curve. Like mentioned in the many posts above me, situation is everything. Sometimes its not best to be damaging as much as possible as it is cycling blessing of freedom, blessing of protection, LoH, and stunning over and over on/for your healers. The class/spec is very expansive, so there is a lot of responsibility, not just damage. As said, its more than just understanding the class, but understanding the situations, then more so, what can you do in each. There is no easy way to put it, but a good DPS player will take pressure off their healers while pressuring the opposing team's.

Forbearance

Monitoring forbearance is crucial for me. If I LoH I have to be mindful that I have 20 seconds before I can BoP or bubble myself, with that being said, forbearance is a debuff on a specific player. So if I LoH a teammate and bubble myself, there is no limitation here. If you can chain these properly... of course, when appropriate - you can stay out on the battlefield for a long time. Don't bubble when you are facing 5 dps, its a waste unless you are using that time to distract them from the objectives. Save it for a more crucial time where your victory changes contributes to the win.

Damage

The meat of it. Yes helping your teammates with utility, and  having a well coordinated group does help, but without strong damage, you are essentially a pseudo support/healer. You don't want to be that fly that hits the opposing team, you want to be the truck that's causing a lot of pressure (I'll get into pressure later). The simple truth of it is... your stats are based on your item level in BGs. I run my top item level gear despite the trinket stats, etc. At 954, I can put a lot of pressure on other players, turn around fights (with the help of forbearance abilities of course). If you want more damage, then you need a higher item level. To give you an example, when I switch to PvE, I drop about 10 item levels because that is my sweet spot for PvE, where item level does not determine your DPS.

I see that you are running 921 item level - in my opinion that is a bit under par, which is probably why you are getting the experience you are describing. I think 930 is about average, however with the new legendary caps I am seeing more and more 940s and 950s, I couldn't tell you what is a good milestone for you other than 954 feeling really fluid, then working backwards from there.

In every expansion, I make sure that I am properly scaling my gear outside of BGs before I step into them. You can see my armory here if you are curious:

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/proudmoore/exploit

Rotation is of course another side of it, I can see that you are researching and understanding that portion, so I won't go into it, but I will note that your finishers benefit from having the judgement debuff on the target. That is our mastery ability working here. Generally more finishers = more damage. When you pop Crusade (I run it over Divine Purpose), Your damage really kicks in towards the end. And its very important to stick to your target as much as possible, your cooldowns can help you here, freedom is very important offensively, but more important defensively if it means getting your healer out of the rugs. Sometimes I see a warrior beside me pop all his CDs only to be slowed - I want to help him more than myself here, as I know he will do more burst then me if it comes to one of us reaching the target. As you can see, it gets tricky with scenarios, you may have just used freedom on the worst warrior in the world. General PvP experience will help with this, as well as developing awareness for the battlefield (dont focus so much on your character and her target).

Pressure

This is something that is mostly spoken about in arena, but when you are out there with a portion of your team vs a portion of theirs, the scenario can be treated very much like an arena match.

Pressure is essentially what is it, how discouraged the other team feels about the outcome of the battle. It's not just about doing a lot of damage, they would not feel pressured if you are doing insanely high DPS on a target if they have 2 others healing him, its about making the other team nervous. It's a mental thing.

For a macro (not WoW macro, but bigger picture) situation, sometimes you have the well coordinated team with strong potential of winning, but since they lost that first battle at Lumber Mill, the team gives up because the moral is down/they feel pressured. Other times you might have a rogue that keeps ninja capping their nodes and its frustrating their team always having to go back to recap, thus making them worry all the time about that one node.

In a micro (smaller picture) situation, this can be accomplished with a simple fake out of using Divine Steed to walk over to their druid then running back to your initial target. The purpose of that is he may pre-HoT himself thus wasting mana and losing track of his original target. Things like this are more like an art form, its different for every person, sometimes you have to hit them a few times to get them to follow suit, others it may just pressure them seeing you ride your shiny (yet scary) paladin horse over to them to start playing defensive.

I don't mean to be so specific, but rather give you an idea of what pressure looks like in BGs, its not just about sticking to one target and blasting them up (dont get me wrong that the simplest and properly strongest example of pressure), its about making the other team feel the pressure from yours.

Hard swaps are important too, when you see healers all healing one target, it may be beneficial to switch over to another. The most effective hard-swaps are with cool downs (crusade). This can catch their healers off guard, and when you see their health going back up, you can switch back over with a stun (for example) to re-engage the initial target. If you see a target blow a defensive cooldown on themselves, swap off (unless you are certain you can make the kill). If there are a couple targets to choose from to pressure, its generally better to do 100% of your damage on one of them, rather than trying to do 50% on another. Keeping track of enemy defensive cooldowns are important, and this is where addons can help. The idea behind tracking cooldowns, is you can see when a target has no bubble, no trinket, no pain suppression, etc. which make them more successful candidate for pressuring.

I didn't want to write a separate section about Momentum, but in between the lines it is tied into pressure. When you get the ball rolling on the other team, its important to keep it up. If you see your teammate using a stun, chain it with yours after theirs is done. If you interrupted the target healer (or dps), wait 3-4 seconds , then follow up with a stun. Momentum is important, as you could be doing a lot of pressure and then they stun you for 5 seconds and boom, we have to start this fight all over again since they topped themselves off. For us, trinketing can be an important option when we have momentum, as it keeps the pressure up.

---

Hopefully that helps. I could go on forever about all kinds of scenarios where these concepts apply. In my experience, it was never about studying your class in depth to be successful, its about understanding the concepts of what makes a successful PvPer. I can hop on my DK and replicate the same degree of performance, given I did my homework on rotation and having a decent item level.

[Sorbbie 4]

Wow, Thank you Exploit.  You post has a wealth of information.  
 
I like your description of the Ret Pally's bg experience.  While describing Forbearance, Damage Rotation, and Pressure you were able to describe the meat of what a Retribution Paladin does with the finesse of a good writer.  I have read your post countless times and I'm always finding more to put use each time. 

 

When I first wrote in to Icy Veins my Mastery was really high, like 49% and Haste was somewhere in the teens. I was told that my Critical Strike should be the highest, then Haste, then Mastery, Versatility. I've turned my stats around by working to get armor that had little or no Mastery and also used gems, and enhancements to raise haste and versatility, which was a players advice. I'm now at Mastery 28%, Haste 27%, Crit 30%, and Versatility12%. I have some higher gear but don't use it as it drives Mastery up.  I will work on getting my gear up to 950 like you suggested.

 

Exploit, thank you very much for taking time to write so much for me to use.  I know other players will get immense use out of your post too.  I can't begin to tell you how valuable your post is to me except to say that I've printed it and I read it daily.  You wrote and I quote, "You don't want to be that fly that hits the opposing team, you want to be the truck that's causing a lot of pressure..." That is truly my favorite line out of any advice or anything I have read in the past 12-13 years on WOW or any Website pertaining to WOW. Thank you. I think about that a lot when I am playing.  

 

Sincerely, Talie

 

 

 

[Sagira 0]

I think your mental game is up to par, you just need to focus on getting your item level up. When your item level is as low as it is, there will always be jerkwad no-lifers with full 970+ equipment who think they're better than you and will let you know it. I'm willing to bet the next time someone speaks up like that, if you inspect them you'll see more than a few items over 970. You can safely ignore those people, they simply don't remember what it was like at ilvl 920-930.

I know DPS is only tenuously linked to success in PvP, but just to give you an idea, the best performance on heroic Garothi Worldbreaker for a ret paladin at your item level is around 1.2 million DPS. For someone at 955, it's over 2 million. I don't think the disparity is that large in PvP, but it's definitely still there.

If you're comfortable doing LFR, there's 925 gear up for grabs there. If you know people who do normal and are willing to bring you with, and you're willing to do it, you can get 940 gear from there pretty easily. I understand if that's out of your comfort zone, though.

Otherwise, continue getting tokens from Argus world quests and rolling on items to get warforged/titanforged upgrades. You can also do some mythic+ dungeons, the higher level you can manage with your friends, the better the loot you get. And, you'll get some upgrades from winning battlegrounds over time. The trick is to just keep moving.

Totally unrelated, I'm a big fan of your transmog, I might try and steal it for my warrior :)

[Sorbbie 4]

Hello Sagira, thank you for posting.  You are right, I'm hitting between 800,000 and 1,200,000 with Judgement, Templar's Verdict, and a few of the heavy hitters, and about 300,000 to 500,000 with Crusader Strike.  Unfortunately I'm far from consistent.  Sometimes those numbers are way down.

You are very right about DPS only being linked to success in PVP.  If the players would fall in bg's like the NPC's do in quests when I hit them I' d never had a problem.  I will work on getting my ilvl up and getting 925 gear sounds good right now.   I can go up in Dungeon level as my gear goes up. 

Thanks for the compliment on my transmog, that was really nice of you.  Feel free to copy it, I just went through all of the gear and picked what I liked.  If you need names of any of the pieces, let me know, I'd be to get them for you.  Thank you for your very good advice and taking your time to write the post.  It helped me and it will help other players who need help with their DPS. 

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/8/2018 at 5:06 PM, Sagira said:

I think your mental game is up to par, you just need to focus on getting your item level up. When your item level is as low as it is, there will always be jerkwad no-lifers with full 970+ equipment who think they're better than you and will let you know it. I'm willing to bet the next time someone speaks up like that, if you inspect them you'll see more than a few items over 970. You can safely ignore those people, they simply don't remember what it was like at ilvl 920-930.

As someone that is 970+, I feel attacked :(

On 1/8/2018 at 9:32 PM, Fionoria said:

Hello Sagira, thank you for posting.  You are right, I'm hitting between 800,000 and 1,200,000 with Judgement, Templar's Verdict, and a few of the heavy hitters, and about 300,000 to 500,000 with Crusader Strike.  Unfortunately I'm far from consistent.  Sometimes those numbers are way down.

You are very right about DPS only being linked to success in PVP.  If the players would fall in bg's like the NPC's do in quests when I hit them I' d never had a problem.  I will work on getting my ilvl up and getting 925 gear sounds good right now.   I can go up in Dungeon level as my gear goes up. 

It's always worth remembering that there are people that PvP to rank on damage ladders. Plenty of Rets don't even touch TV in BGs, because they can use their Holy Power on Divine Storm instead. While it does nothing to kill the priority target, it adds more damage to the leaderboard than TV ever could. 

[Sorbbie 4]

Hi Blainie, It's always nice to get a post from you.  Thank you for writing.  I don't believe Sagira meant to insult every player who is at item level 970.  Not to speak for him but I believe what he was saying was there will always be players who come and go from WOW who get the toon up to 970 and look down on those of us who haven't gotten ours to that point yet.  He wasn't talking about those of us who have played for many years like himself, you, me, and have many alt toons that we have leveled.   When a player is having problems we help others when they need help not make fun of them or tell them they don't know what they are doing on the community text for all to read.  That's what I believe he meant.  All he was telling me was to hang in there until I get my item level up to bring my dps up and it is working.  I'm up to 930 and my dps is getting better.  I still have times when I totally suck, but I noticed other players seem to have those times too.  Thank you for your help and support Blainie.  

[Valks 2,373]

9 hours ago, Fionoria said:

 I still have times when I totally suck, but I noticed other players seem to have those times too.  Thank you for your help and support Blainie.  

Everyone has the good and bad times! There are days when I just don't touch arena because I know I'm not playing at a level that can actually compete with others - I just end up deranking rather than winning any games.