Of Armor Pen and Holy Wrath
Ok, so two things to address today on the Ret front.
First off, Holy Wrath has been… Nerfed – sort of. It has diminishing returns on its stuns on undead and demon targets. How does that affect us? Not much. It was pretty much used very situationally, primarily on the adds of the Anub’arak encounter. It just means that we can’t set up rotations with the other paladins in the group to keep them perma-cc’d. Those of you who used that strat – sorry, its back to the drawing board for you.
Secondly, Armor Pen. Armor pen is one of those stats that blizz was reffering to at blizzcon when they wanted to simplify stats. Armor pen is overly complex, and it is dificult to know if an item containing lots of ArPen is an upgrade. I had to pull out a spreadsheet several times. No, seriously. This stat sucked. If you have below 200 ArPen, then ArPen was a junk stat. But over 200 or so, and it suddenly became a stat that was marginally better. Not great, but better so that it was not dead last in your stat rankings.
Now it is junk. So, let me give you the quick and dirty on how you choose an item upgrade if it has ArPen on it it:
Ignore the ArPen.
No seriously. Ignore it. Act as if it isn’t there. Put your finger over the screen. Keep a post it near your screen so you can cover that stat up when looking at the item. White-out that stat (ok, that is a bit overboard, but you get my point). This stat falls well behind every other stat that you must keep track of as a ret. Just ignore it. If you get it, great. If not, then no big loss. It’s strength, crit, agil, and hit that you need to be looking at. If those four stats don’t make the item an upgrade, chances are 35 or 40 ArPen isn’t going to push it over the edge.
And whatever you do – DON’T GEM ARMOR PEN. Not that I thought you were before, but I had to say it. You should be gemming strength. Or hit, if you need it, but mostly strength. We don’t want a failpally on our hands here, and ArPen gems will scream, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING WITH THIS TOON.”
Wall of caps crits you for 5 billion. Failpally dies.
Light's Fury 