Monday, May 11, 2009

Ret and Sacred Shield

I'll be the first one to admit that my experience with a paladin has been primarily limited to Holy and Protection builds. I played with Ret a bit when dual specs came out, or when I was running Sheathadin (I've even raided as ret once or twice) - but it's certainly not my bread and butter build.

One thing I really enjoyed was being able to pop SS on myself, and then get crit FoLs off on myself when Art of War procd. It may be that it was due to my healing background, but I didn't see any issue with spending 1 GCD to hit myself with a quick heal while in a party or raid. Granted, my DPS may have suffered occasionally, but it took a touch of strain off the healers and a dead Ret pally's DPS is zero.

Am I Alone?

My question though is, why do I never see Ret pallies casting Sacred Shield on themselves? Looking at the spell, it absorbs a base 500 damage (plus .75 of your spellpower) after you've been struck to actually proc the shield. In patch 3.1 they changed it to benifit from Sheath of Light spellpower, so a Ret paladin with 1000 spellpower will have a shield to absorb 1250 points. Granted, that's not going to help you if Ignis suddenly decides that you're much tastier than the tank, but it will help in the slag pot (or Mimiron phase 2/4).

Is the Ret DPS cycle so tight, or mana such an issue, that using this ability once every 30 seconds is a game breaker? I understand that we all have our roles in the fight; tank, DPS, heal - but come on. Using SS is the equivalent of a preventative Health Pot and Healthstone, without using your potion cooldown. Add in an Art of War instant FoL, which should crit with SS up, and now you've got a Sheath of Light HOT as well.

If I'm wrong, certainly hope someone will let me know, but this seems pretty basic to me. There are certainly enough moments in the fights where you're moving and have a free GCD to refresh the shield.

2 comments:

  1. Actually, I would make sure that the tanks have two SS each before you put any on the ret pallies. Each paladin can only cast one SS, but one player can have many on him. They don't stack their absorption but the two buffs have separate internal cooldowns of 6 seconds each. This will lead to scenarios like the following:

    Big Boss hits Tank for 8000 (2000 absorbed)
    Holy Pally's Sacred Shield fades from Tank.
    Tank gains Ret Pally's Sacred Shield.

    Basically each SS will absorb 1-2k every 6-8 seconds. The nice thing is that its smart, and will only be absorbed by hits that actually get through, meaning once you have enough up it's like a 10% damage reduction. And it works against magical damage too.

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  2. Tried this tonight and it seems they took it away in 3.1. Not a bad idea though. Would have made a few fights a lot easier.

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