Diamonds are Forever: Paladin Gemming Part II

Welcome to Part II of my guide to Paladin Gemming. Here we’ll cover Prismatic, Dragon’s Eye (Jewelcrafter only), and Meta Gems. Again, I have marked each with what spec it works best with. In this case, I also marked some for their PvP uses, mostly including those with Resilience or Stun/Silence/Fear reduction effects.

First up, we’ll talk about the Prismatic gems. These provide increases to all stats in a single gem, most often used as filler gems, as they match every color, and can be used to fill the requirements of one red, one yellow, AND one blue gem for Meta gems.

Prismatic
	Enchanted Pearl	+4 Stats
	Enchanted Tear	+6 Stats
	Nightmare Tear	+10 Stats

It’s obvious what is provided by each, and the only difference is the amount of stat increase, and cost. Obviously Nightmare Tears are far more expensive then the lesser Enchanted gems.

Diamonds are Forever: Paladin Gemming

Good afternoon folks…

Big 'ol Gem

Got a new topic on my mind, this time dealing with Gems. Not just any gems, but gems good for Holy and Retribution paladins. I would go into Protection paladins, but I think that has been covered fairly thoroughly.

A good while back, I had created a sheet with all the different gem types, and their uses. Some of that has changed due to the +healing +spell damage combination, but not that much. So, here’s my little guide to gems and what I’ve chosen for my own gemming needs on both my Holy and Retribution sets.

The Basics

Below I have put together a set of tables including the different colors of gems, as well as the attributes in which they modify. Each gem will match the same color slot, in the cases of gem bonuses; HOWEVER, you can put whatever color gem, in whatever color slot you want, there is no limitations, only the loss of the extra gemming bonus.

Bullseye – Hit and Expertise

Well, my Retribution experiment has continued over the weekend. I think that the progress has come along well… so far.

First off, I’m a poor pally, I hardly ever have any gold on hand, so I usually never spend it on rediculously priced items on the AH. In addition, this is my off spec, so money would go to Holy gear anyway.

So, these changes are using onhand items only, plus a little bit of gemming/enchants off of the AH. The changes nearly brought me where I should be, and from what little testing I’ve been able to do, I believe that the gear is getting to where it should be.

Here are some of the changes:

• Gloves: I’ve swapped out the old Valorous Redemption Gauntlets with the current T9 Tank gloves I already had.  They already had more strength, also as I had already enchanted and gemmed them to increase my Expertise & Hit, they worked well with my current set (though the +parry/+defense wasn’t much help, never can hurt).  I’m currently about 5 emblems away from grabbing the actual Ret gloves, so these are only temporary.
• Chest: Updated the enchant to +10 to All stats over the +6 that I had.
• Legs: Changed the ToC5 legs out for the ‘ol standby of Staggering Legplates from Utgarde Keep (Heroic). I’ve had them for a while, and thought that they’d be of use, so I held onto them.  Lucky I did, because they brought my +Hit above where I needed it to be, allowing me to do a bit of reorganization elsewhere.
• Weapon: Swapped out the Tyrannical Beheader for the Mourning Malice 2H sword. Increased my expertise rating by 73, bringing it up to about 17 expertise. Didn’t have the cash on hand to get a better enchant, so I just threw some Greater Savagery on it, still +85 Attack Power, so not a bad enchant for the time being.
• Relic: Pulled out the old Libram of Discord out of the bank, trying to save up Frost Emblems for my T10 helmet for my Holy set, but once I’ve got that, I’ll probably grab the Frost Emblem Libram.
• Trinkets: Hit my bank, and found a Meterorite Whetstone that I had, as well as the good ‘ol Mirror of Truth. Not sure what to upgrade to, though the Banner of Victory looks like a good Mirror of Truth replacement, we’ll see how that goes.
• Glyphs: Picked up Glyph of Consecration and Glyph of Seal of Vengeance to replace Glyph of Exorcism and Glyph of Crusader Strike. I didn’t seem to have any trouble with mana, so the Crusader Strike glyph was an easy change. Glyph of Exorcism, I felt, would be of good use, but after reading some of my comments from my last Ret post, Glyph of Consecration did make sense.

These changes increased my dps by nearly 1k, a wicked change. Current Melee stats are:

Damage: 1580-1906
Speed: 3.33
Power: 3413
Hit Rating: 336
Crit Chance: 27.67%
Expertise: 17

Now, with the change in Glyphs, when I’m pounding on bosses I can be sure to switch to Seal of Vengeance, and up my Expertise by 10… bringing it to 27 (I believe that’s what it did, was to busy to actually check, haha). This brings me 1 Expertise over where I need to be, maxing my Expertise to where it needs to be.

Some of that testing that I was able to do was both a little bit of beating on a test dummy, but I didn’t feel that it was really proper data. So, I planned on hitting a few heroics to see how the new spec and gear worked out. The first group I hit was Heroic Old Kingdom. Of course these were a little bit inflated due to the fact that nearly everything was Undead, so I was able to throw some Holy Wrath out and get some extra points of DPS out, but id did feel more powerful. Nice quick run (skipped two bosses, but oh well).

Next up, I hit Heroic Gundrak. Far fewer undead, so I felt that it would be a much better view of my real dps scores. Started it up, and some issues occurred, waiting on some of the DPS who didn’t enter the right door, etc. So once we got going, it was time to bring the pain. I don’t believe in damage meters, but did help me determine how well my rotations were doing. I stayed at the top of the charts, even with a Mage and Hunter in the party.  We were all gearing up, but it was still an accomplishment. I hit about 4k dps on Gal’darah, even with a few knockbacks happening.  The group tore into him pretty good, and it was a really quick fight, so I wasn’t able to truly get the feel of my rotation, but it was helpful in getting into some groove.

So, I have a feeling that I’m going to enjoy this spec as much as I did tanking.  it’s going to be interesting having to wait for dungeons, but we’ll see how it goes.  If I’m fortunate enough to hit a raid or two, I’ll give an update on the differences between the gear makeup of the other dps, and this poor fledgling Ret pally.

Later today, keep an eye out for the new Raid changes just released this morning.  Some interesting information.

The ayes have it

Though there were few votes (8 in total), I have decided to follow the advice, and have a little bit of fun.  Last night, while my wife was giving my son a bath, I hopped online and respec’d my Protection offspec to Retribution.  Sadly, as often happens when decisions are made, Trade chat is suddenly filled with “LFM Tank & Heals for ICC10″ and “LFM Tanks for VoA25″ *sigh* C’est la vie.  As I said during my last post, I plan to stick to this new spec for a while.

So, without further ado, here is Khraden decked out in his scary spiky helmet.

The Spiky Ret Khraden.

I’m not totally sure about the spec that I put together, but was in a bit of a hurry, and wanted to go ahead and put together a basic spec, and fix it up later. I did try out some rotations on the training dummy in IF, and was able to attain about 2.8k dps, and that was without really optimizing my gear, including forgetting to swap out my libram, forgetting my ret trinkets, and not reglyphing yet.  So I hope to get a bit higher when I get a chance to really work on it.

Protip: Hit Exodar to use the Training Dummy, it’s so much less crowded.

Anyway, here’s the rotation that I was using, and please, don’t laugh, I’m just a beginner

Divine Plea (to get the mana regen started)
Exorcism
Judgement of Light (likely to use it more than wiz, cause we often have a pally healer)
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Concecration (optional dependant on mana reserves)

Rince, repeat as cooldowns arise.

I decided to use Judgement of Light before Crusader Strike, simply because it places Heart of the Crusader on the target, allowing more chances for Crusader Strike, and the Divine Storm attacks to crit. It is most likely that I will swap Divine Storm and Crusader Strike for groups of mobs, so that I get more damage out at the opening of battle.

I had forgotten how cooldown dependant the Retribution Paladin was.  I would slap all my attacks out, and then wait, while all my damage dealin abilities would be on cooldown, scanning my bars for something else to use. It almost felt like I should have been throwing pebbles at the target while I waited. I’m sure that will clear up the more I try it out though.

As for glyphs, I ended up picking a few out, just from looking at the AH, but will likely be swapping Glyph of Crusader Strike out with Glyph of Seal of Vengeance, simply because I don’t appear to be having trouble with mana yet, with Divine Plea and Judgements of the Wise keeping the trickle of mana coming in. In additoin to that I have Glyph of Exorcism and Glyph of Judgement in the other two spots. It is suggested that Glyph of Concecration should be used, but I don’t totally see the benefit of 2 extra ticks of Concecration. I kept the minors that I already had, as there isn’t much to choose from, and they already included Glyph of Sense Undead.

I’m currently just below hit cap, but with the change of one piece of gear can increase my hit to surpass the hit cap, but drop my AP and Strength a bit.  Not sure if it’s worth it, but will likely try it out to see how it goes. I am also far below expertise cap, though I have another weapon that may increase that value, but again, in turn drop my strength/AP.

Unbuffed stats.

Needless to say, I’ve got a good bit to go to optimize this build and the gear with it.  With the availability of gear with the inception of Emblems of Triumph, I’m sure it won’t be too long before I get these straightened out. (Note that I still haven’t even equiped my ret trinkets yet.. *sigh*)

We’ll see how this little experiment goes.  If anybody has any suggestions, please throw them my way, I’d love to hear about them.