Tilo

Hello my fellow guildies! Lately i have been asked how i play my toon and what i do when i play, but as i much i try to answer completely there are a few things i can't explain in pink text (in part of breviety in part of lack of language), so i think that would be apropiate to make a guide of what i do so my fellow ret pallies can take advantage of my experience and even maybe help other classes in their way of pwn.

The Basics.

Lets start with the most elemental thing: the hardware.

I have been able to sucesfully play in semi harsh conditions, i.e. my non gaming laptop in the lobby of a hotel with no table or whatsoever; crappy slow computers with awful mice (like where i work); and in my lovely PC with my razer mouse, comfy keyboard and responsive system. And in all of them i can achieve more or less my normal dps output. So i suggest be the more comfortable with your setup and adapt it to your needs; if the keyboard is dusty, full of bits of food, and the mouse has more dust coagulated than a rock then possibly your dps will be crappy. A clean responsive hardware will increase your level of comfort and will help you to crank a few more damage points.

This leads me to the next step: comfort with your keybinds.

Keybinds and hand positioning.

Sadly i will need to state something here that can be harsh: using the mouse to use abilities will not help you in the long run. Don't get me wrong; i know many good players that are clickers and do an awesome job at their role, but later in this guide when i start discussing the FCFS you'll notice that using the mouse only will be decremental in your dps output. I heartly believe that doesn't matter how old the dog is can learn new tricks.

Ok to the keybinds; as i have stated a few times i'm left handed, i use the mouse with my left hand, eat with my left hand, i even kick the ball with my left foot, so yeah i'm pretty sure that i'm lefty :) and this can be an incovenient to the keybinds assignment since i have my abilities binded to the left side of the keyboard; when i do damage i completely leave my hand from the mouse and move almost exclusively with the numeric keyboard (so yeah i'm not a clicker but a keyboard turner, i had to have something bad :) ) , but worry do not, in the extremely good blog www.ferarro.blogspot.com you'll find a great guide to keybinding for righties.

I'm going to show how i have disposed my keybinds to make this guide more instructional, and maybe even my right handed fellows can take one or two ideas for your setup.


Attachment 1485

The idea behind my setup is that i want the less hand movement, if the hand has to move too much distance and very often you'll end tired and that is not bueno! Also i have disposed the keys this way so my fingers can reach comfortably my main abilities with the support abilities far away to avoid hit them accidentally. Also this way i improve my muscular memory so i can be more precise when i play.

But there is something i want to say firmly, please do not play in an uncomfortable way, try to find the best setup where you can rest your hand and where it has the less stressful movement, our hands is the best tool in the world! take care of them.

I have mentioned two important subjects that i want to discuss a bit more: muscular memory and hand care.

Guitar Hero and Modern Warfare in my WoW? Unpossible!

WoW is an awesome game, it has story, action, complexity and all surrounded by ease of use. But it has a defect (or perhaps a virtue): it's kinda slow.

Since you make a toon and level it up all the way to Icecrown there is always present a streamlining of events, in order to make your first attack you need to target the mob, hit the auto attack button and let the toon do his/her thing, maybe hit an ability and then wait for the ability to cooldown or wait to regenerate mana. So yeah it is slow.

In higher levels it gets better but still is not that much compared to other games, and given all the time you spent doing slow things you end doing things slowly, maybe not consciously but worse! unconsciously.

So lets do like Mr. Miyagi did: wash and clean cars, or better yet, improve your muscular memory and reflexes.

Sounds like a bad infomercial but GH has helped me to improve my muscular memory and in part my reflexes, so it makes it a good choice to "practice" for WoW. The reflexes part i practice it with a good dose of fps or like alu does with super smash bros. That will depend of your own tastes.

All that extra exercise to our hands can be tiring, so i recomend to practice a few stretches and warming exercises to not end injured or hurt, get a pair of tennis wrists and use them when in raid, this way you'll mantain your wrist protected from tension against the table and more rect, do your warming exercises before raid and enjoy the extra flexibility in your fingers. To mantain a good hand health get some vitamin B pills and take one a day/couple days (which is also good as antioxidant). There are very good warming exercises in youtube, specially those for drummers.

Ok we are phisically comfortable with our setup, with good hand/wrist health, reflexes improved and muscular memory. Lets tackle the first obstacle: the rotation.

First Come First Serve: Like Mc'Donalds but with pwn!

Paladins do not have a rotation, make that clear, our abilities become active in a non streamlined fashion but more like bubbles, ok maybe not like bubbles but we can't name this methodology a rotation.

The theory behind our methodology (AMG! fancy words) starts with this very basic premise: choose the most damaging ability first.

That's it, more simple than that is impossible, so lets do a basic table of priorities based on that premise:

1. Hammer of Wrath (HoW): Great damage, almost a sure critical hit, our best ability hands down, but sadly only usable when enemies are below 20%, nonetheless it is the first choice given its high damage output.

2. Judgement (Judge): i'll start with judgements first. Depending of the seal of our choice the effect that the judgement apply will vary. All of the seals do more or less damage so the seal choice will be a situational one, be always aware of this.

3. Crusader Strike (CS): This ability has passed many changes over this expansion and the last iteration is kinday wimpy compared to the one of 3.0.2, but still has more priority than the rest of abilities and it's our exception to the premise. CS does similar damage to Divine Storm, or even less than Divine Storm and Exorcism but why has more priority than the others? Wait a bit and i'll tell you why.

4. Divine Storm (DS): moderate damage and with AoE component, and with a moderate CD it makes it fairly effective.

5. Consecration (Cons): Mana hog but good damage over time, in many cases of AoE it appliance will be situational, again be aware of this.

6. Exorcism (Exo). Good damage against undead but slow CD, also since is tied to the Art of War in order to be instant compromises its reliability, that's why is low in priority.

7. Holy Wrath (HW). Moderate damage but only effective against undead and slow CD.

That's the basic priority list against single target. In trash it can be used effectively but with one condition: only if the main target has a good amount of HP, if not then DS and Cons can have a bigger priority, but only in the case of low mob HP.

So now we can play with the basic priority list. Many of you will be saying right now "shouldn't CS be up of Judge in the list?" And yes my friends you are correct, and here is the first and only exception to the basic premise "choose the most damaging ability first available"

Remember the slow part of WoW? Well this is the primal example, if we have streamlined everything even the use of abilities we'll end doing that precisely, since we as humans tend to be repetitive and monotonous (which is good in most of the cases), but that tendency does not work well while playing as Ret Pally.

So lets say that we play streamlined and we use the basic priority list, so if i have almost available CS and Judge at the same time i will use Judge first 'cause i have it before CS in my list? Wrong! Why? because i have not analized that CS has a 4 second CD and Judge a 6 second CD, so in the same lapse of time CS will hit 0.5 more times than Judge and will give me more dps output and the cheers and applause of the party... ok that part is questionable but the dps part is completely true.

At the end we will have a priority table more or less similar than the basic but my intention with this part is be aware of CD's and your own damage output ability wise, do not end streamlining the use of abilities since that will lower your dps and always remember the premise and mostly the last part: "available". In some cases probably is best to wait for an ability to be active (like HoW) but if you wait too much expecting to rotate you'll end wasting precious dps time.

Here are the FCFS tables for the different gear options:

2-4p T9: Judge > HoW > CS > DS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath
2p T9 and 2p T10: Judge > DS > HoW > CS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath
4p T10: Judge > DS > CS > HoW > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath
For everything else there is Mastercard!: HoW > CS > Judge > DS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath