Rule of thumb.

It's been a good long while since I last posted anything, apologies for that. Being a PhD candidate as well as a full time delicious raider sort of sucks away a good chunk of my life.

In short, as a guild we moved on to the 25 man scene and promptly killed the LK in something like two nights of attempts. It may or may not have been the ugliest kill ever, but a kill is a kill and now we have more time to work on our 10 man achievements again.

Looking over the logs of our kill, I saw something that made me smile, being the classic utility player that I am: I wasn't on top of the DPS charts.

Regardless of ICC being a playground for retribution DPS from that mobs being mostly undead to the fact that Seal of Command + trash = Texa$-sized numbers, retribution paladins really shouldn't top the charts on boss fights.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is just a holdover from my days of playing retribution through the end of the Sunwell debacle (Ledge boss and on), but I really don't think paladins should ever top the charts. We are ultimately a hybrid class. We can excel at all three trees, and I really think that ICC and Wrath of the Lich King has shown that. As a class we're good at all three classes, but in terms of DPS, I really don't think we can be great.

Sure there are great players that pull some crazy numbers and all that jazz, but I don't think that's as much the result of good playing by the retribution paladin as it is a failure of performance by the rest of the DPS.

This all leads to my rule of thumb for raiding as a retribution paladin:

If a retribution paladin is topping the charts on a single target boss fight, the rest of your DPS need to stop being so bad.

I don't think a retribution paladin should ever out-DPS an arcane mage, or a fury warrior for that matter. We just don't have the tools to do so. Granted, spamming Divine Storm is a lot like spamming Arcane Blast, but the numbers just aren't as big.

That should do it, keep things nice and sweet for now. Catch you kids in the heroics.

Keep on crushin'.