I will now talk about DBW & Rets
This section has been fairly inactive for some time as far as discussions are concerned. So I figured I would post something to help keep it a bit lively. I may visit other subjects in the future in a similar fashion.
So I continue to see some people use Deathbringer's Will on their Retribution Paladins. I also see some people say that they do not know why it is or is not good. I've also seen people claim that Deathbringer's Will is "not for ret because of arp". This post will explain the situation and why using it and claiming it is bad because of armor penetration is not entirely correct.
"DBW is not for ret because of arp"
Armor penetration is not a bad stat for a Retribution Paladin. Many people have this misconception about the stat because they think that since a lot of a paladin's damage is holy, armor penetration has little effect for the paladin. While partially true, I would classify this mainly as a "myth". The truth of the matter is that while a fair amount of our damage is holy, a large amount of our damage is actually physical.
Assuming a single target, your #1 source of damage should be Seal of Corruption/Vengeance procs. Not the DOT damage, but melee damage procs that occur with each weapon swing. This damage scales directly with your weapon damage on your character sheet; not to be confused with the damage of your actual white hits.
The #2 source of damage should be fairly close behind, is your auto-attacks. Your auto-attacks should be roughly 18-20% of your damage, perhaps a little more. Obviously, auto-attacks scale with armor penetration.
Your next 3 strongest sources of damage should be Divine Storm, Judgment and Crusader Strike. Judgment does holy damage and is unaffected by armor penetration. However, both Divine Storm and Crusader Strike deal physical damage and scale with armor penetration just the same as your auto-attacks do. Each of these 3 abilities should be worth approximately 9-10% of your damage (perhaps higher for Divine Storm, depending on the proc rate of your tier set bonus).
Next up are your Consecration and Seal damage ticks. Which can be dismissed as they are also holy damage and do not scale with armor penetration. However, following these two abilities are Righteous Vengeance, which scales directly with Divine Storm, Judgment and Crusader Strike, it is obviously affected by armor penetration as two of those abilities are and Righteous Vengeance scales off them. Righteous Vengeance's damage value will vary based on your crit rating, but I believe I'm giving it a fair approximation at about 6% of your DPS.
And then last thing worth mentioning is Manifest Anger, which is the melee proc from the Tiny Abomination in a Jar trinket, which is worth 3-4% of your DPS.
Keep in mind that these numbers here are approximations and not exact values. I expect them to be approximately fair extrapolations, but they won't be perfect figures.
To sum up the values that we get;
Auto-attacks: 20%
Divine Storm: 10%
Crusader Strike: 9.5%
Righteous Vengeance: 6% / 0.66 = 4%
Manifest Anger: 3.5%
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Total: 47%
Approximately 47% (and due to approximations and extrapolations, this value can go as high as 50%, 55% or even higher sometimes) of our damage is purely physical or relies heavily on our physical damage to give it its value. The fact that a Ret gets about half the value from armor penetration that a Warrior would is generally why armor penetration is decidedly a stat not worth going for. However, it is necessary sometimes to obtain other things that a Ret would consider greatly valuable. As such, the stat is defined as "not something you would want to aim to get, but not a stat you want to avoid at all costs". For example, Shadowmourne has armor penetration, but it is still the single strongest weapon for a Retribution Paladin in the game.
"However, it is necessary sometimes to obtain other things that a Ret would consider greatly valuable." This leads into my next point.
Why Deathbringer's Will is an undesirable trinket.
Sharpened Twilight Scale is BIS, right? It has arp, so that means DBW is OK too, right? Actually, no. As explained above, armor penetration is a lesser-value stat. If that is the case, then why is STS considered BIS? To put it plainly: because of the strength of the proc. STS heroic gives 1472 attack power for 15 seconds with a 45 second internal cooldown. This means the trinket will have a 33% up-time in an optimal situation, thus granting the equivalent of approximately 461 attack power consistently.
Deathbringer's Will has a 30sec duration when it procs, but it also has 115sec internal cooldown. This mean that it has a duration twice as long as STS, but it has 2.5 times longer the internal cooldown, thus giving it an approximate 26% up-time in an optimal situation. This means that the 700 strength (1750 attack power with Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings factored in) you get from heroic DBW equates to roughly 350 attack power consistently. The crit and haste values are obviously worth less to a Ret than the strength proc is. This shows just how inferior DBW is to STS.
But what about comparing it to Death's Choice heroic? Just like STS, Death's Choice's proc is a 15sec duration proc with an internal cooldown of 45sec. This means, using the same equation as the previous two trinkets, Death's Choice heroic proc of 510 strength provides approximately 425 consistent attack power. As you can see, this too is higher than DBW. This isn't even factoring in the 288 static attack power stat on Death's Choice heroic VS. the static 167 armor penetration on DBW heroic. Given the explanation on armor penetration above, one should be able to extrapolate that the static stat on DBW is about the same as Death's Choice heroic if we assume that 1 ARP = 1 STR based on itemization via blizzard and that ARP affects about half our damage.
But what about comparing it to worse trinkets? Herkuml War Token, for example, provides a consistent 340 attack power, which puts the proc efficiency at 10 consistent attack power less than heroic DBW. Now just let that bit sink in. Herkuml War Token is undeniably one of the worst trinkets for a Ret from the raid, especially if you consider in the welfare factor of the fact that it comes from a vendor. It should also be noted that haste is quite a bit better stat for a Ret Paladin (especially if you're wielding Shadowmourne; haste = more procs). Herkuml War Token has 153 haste on it, whereas DBW heroic has 167 armor penetration. This means that haste only has to be 9.2% better than the armor penetration stat for Herkuml's haste to overcome DBW's armor penetration. This is more than true, haste exceeds this level, even to a point where it may make up for the loss of the 10 attack power (perhaps debateable). This means that DBW heroic is arguably the worst trinket in all of ICC for a Ret Paladin.
As I said a short while ago, just let that sink in.
