But in order to generate that holy power to begin with, you need holy power. Exorcism is on proc, judgements are once every six (or eight?) seconds, hammer of wrath is on a six second cooldown- when you can use it. So sure, over 100 hits its a buff, but what I think the issue is (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that the time it takes to hit the boss 100 times goes up. It takes longer to hit the boss 100 times, because you're generating holy power once...every...four...seconds...

Never mind the fact that you STILL have to keep inquisition up, which is where most of your holy power will end up going, every 30 seconds. The first 12 seconds dpsing a boss, unless zealotry is used, will generate exactly 3 holy power to use for an inquisition, which will, if you're lucky, proc something else. Otherwise, you're stuck waiting another 12 seconds to charge up another item, probably a templar's verdict. By the time that thats done, you already need to consider charging up for another inquisition, ESPECIALLY if you haven't gotten any procs from HoW/Exo/Judgement.

Honestly this almost makes me consider a dagger for fast exorcism procs- and more holy power.

Your math is correct, which is why I felt in a previous post that this would be a slight increase to ret dps, along with the mastery changes.

The problems I see is that you are wholly dependent on luck for those procs - you can easily go 30 seconds or more without a divine purpose proc, then have like 3 in a row. In a long fight on one boss, the RNG should even out. This leads to 2 issues:

1. If you don't get lucky, you're single target dps on adds can really take a nosedive - and there is not a darned thing you can do about it.

2. PvP - Ret pvp is really bad as it is, and assuming Crusader Strike is the only thing that can proc Divine Purpose, this basically completely eliminates ret as useful for damage dealing, except for those 20 seconds every 2 minutes you get to use avenging wrath.

Btw, with ret pvp, I don't want to make it out to be like it's completely worthless as it stands right now. A great ret paladin can maximize himself to do some decent damage, use his stuns and CC, toss out some heals. Problem is that equally skilled and geared warriors and death knights will completely own face on a ret paladin, and their rotations have very little RNG, as well as more consistent gap closers and snares. In other words, a good ret pally can hold his own right now, but is at a decided disadvantage when trying to deal damage. The changes as listed are going to put them at an even worse disadvantage.

Really seems like this is some kind of payback for those 3 minutes ret pallies were OP way back in 3.03 or whenever that was.

"Honestly this almost makes me consider a dagger for fast exorcism procs- and more holy power."

Sorry, just noticed this, but paladins cannot wield daggers. Maybe a 1 handed sword or axe perhaps?

@ Nirva: Your math is not correct, because you neglect the loss of hand of light procs from the current mastery. It is a *nerf*, not a buff, of about 15-20% overall holy power availability. When you test on the PTR, the effect is immediately apparent.

@Nirva:

To further your own example, lets say that over those 100 special attacks, you also had 100 crusader strikes and 100 auto-attacks (those numbers aren't exact, and you would probably have more like 125 auto-attacks, but for argument's sake).

In the current system, you would expect 100 holy power from crusader strikes, 40 from the current divine purpose, and 30 from mastery, assuming a 10% proc rate, for a total of 170 holy power generated.

In the system on the PTR, you would get 100 holy power from crusader strike, and 45 from the newly designed divine purpose, for a total of 145 holy power generated.

In fact, the difference is even greater, since auto-attacks happen more frequently than the special attacks that generate divine purpose, but you get the idea. It's a definite nerf.

That's not to say that the buffs we are getting don't balance and even outweigh the nerfs in terms of overall dps. They do. But it absolutely does make our rotation even more feast or famine than it is currently, as the article correctly asserts.