Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Art of War

I've had a chance to mess around at a base level with the new Art of War talent. I have concluded that it is made of win and I absolutely love it. Consider the following:

  • Ret paladins crit a lot.
  • Mana is a non-issue with Judgements of the Wise.
  • With enormous amounts of strength, ret paladins have a great amount of attack power.
  • Sheath of Light converts attack power into spell power.
  • Spell power is used to boost healing.
  • Crit rating applies to both melee and spell casts.
  • Sheath of Light places a HoT on the target after a crit heal.
  • Art of War makes Flash of Light instant after a critical attack.
Now. Take all that in. What does it all mean? Ret paladins don't run out of mana on their own, so they have mana to spare on the odd Flash of Light. The melee ability crits the ret paladin lands will activate Art of War, which means they can just roll off a Flash of Light easily, resetting the swing timer but healing for an appreciable amount due to the Sheath of Light spell power conversion. And if that FoL crits, as it can and will, it leaves a beautiful heal over time behind.

The Sheath of Light - Art of War - Judgements of the Wise holy trinity has completely changed the landscape of solo work and small-scale PvP for ret paladins. I cannot say enough great things about them. Plus, with a scaling Judgement of Light and heals from Divine Storm in addition to frequent and relatively low-mana impact Flash of Lights, and less dependance on Judgement of Wisdom being present, there is the potential for an AMAZING amount of self-healing.

I wonder if I can manage to solo some at-level instance bosses with my current gear.

1 comment:

Cor said...

My saying over the last week, which has quickly become my mantra:

I was ret before ret was cool.

Don't forget that with Benediction we get 10% off instant cast spells, which includes those instant cast FoL so we're even more mana efficient with those spells. Use Seal of the Martyr which causes more damage but hurts us, mitigated by those invariable instant cast FoL...pure awesomeness.