I've seen a lot of reference in various threads to the importance of kiting as a ret in WOTLK. My main is a hunter, so the kiting playstyle appeals to me, and I thought I'd ask for comments on the best way to kite as a ret in WOTLK. The following are just my (probably uninformed) impressions as someone who doesn't play my ret all that much. But hopefully they can get the discussion started.
It seems to me that the basic logic of kiting as ret only applies against classes that rely more than we do on pure melee abilities. Our crusader strike requires melee range, but divine storm has an 8 yard range and judgement has a 10 yard range.
I suppose that means that rogues, warriors and ferals are the only ones that it makes sense to kite, as a routine matter. DKs (especially unholy) and enhance shamans have a good bit of ranged abilities, so I don't think it makes much sense to kite them. And of course rets have the same ablities we do, so it makes no sense I can see to try to kite another ret, even assuming you could using Judgement of Justice.
I'll consider warriors, rogues and ferals in turn.
WARRIORS:
When to kite: Definitely when you have freedom up. Piercing howl (which the vast majority of arms warriors take) has a 10 yard range, and we can't dispel it, so I assume we couldn't kite warriors outside of freedom. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try to keep kiting outside of freedom and then see if the warrior uses piercing howl. Or maybe kite during freedom then HoJ and go melee (without being too predictable so as to invite spell reflects) after it passes. In his video I link below, Swifty talks about using a weird spec to beat rets that doesn't include piercing howl. If the warrior does that, then I suppose you could kite outside of freedom as long as you don't have hamstring on you.
Seal to Use: I would normally have thought to just use regular seal of righteousness, but I notice in this duel in a Swifty video the ret seems to be using seal of vengeance/corruption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoEQrIfRLeE&t=90s
Using seal of vengeance/corruption has a certain logic if you're kiting, since the dot keeps ticking even when you're out of range. However, I've seen reference to vengeace/corruption getting nerfed and requiring melee range to activate:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ion-discussion
Maybe that changes the logic of using vengeance/corruption against warriors, I tend to think so. So I plan to stick with righteousness against warriors, barring a good reason for doing otherwise. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Judgement to use: I assume Judgement of Light is best against warriors, since they don't have a sprint or baseline speed increase I'm aware of. Does JoJ negate the speed increase you get from boot enchants/meta gems? If so, then that could at least provide an argument for using it against warriors. Still, JoL seems best to me.
ROGUES:
When to kite: When you have freedom up, and when you have dispelled or otherwise don't have crippling poison on you.
Seal to use: Definitely vengeance/corruption, since it has the benefit of making re-stealths harder in addition to ticking outside of melee range.
Judgement to use: Justice, to negate sprint.
FERALS:
When to kite: When you have freedom up, and when you have dispelled or otherwise don't have infected wounds on you.
Seal to use: Vengeance/corruption- see above.
Judgement to use: Justice, to negate dash and feral baseline speed increase.
Anyway, there's probably a lot wrong in the above guesses, but that's why I'm asking. :)
