Wrath: Mana Resources for Retribution, Boiled Down.

As you may have heard, every ability in Wrath is now a percent of Base Mana, and downranking to conserve mana is no longer possible.

The new Replenishment mechanic regens mana at a rate of 1% of total mana every 2 seconds. JoW is roughly the same rate of mana regen. Other Mana regen mechanics scale with Spirit and Intellect, or are fixed as in Mp5. None of these stats are on Melee gear.

The result for Retribution is a resource pool which is fixed and does not scale, and a resource regen rate which is also fixed, does not scale, and is low in relation to the mana cost of abilities.

Imagine Fury Warriors who gained Rage at a fixed rate of 2 rage per second, or Rogues whose abilities had half the cost they do now but regained Energy at 2 per second. How effective would their DPS output be in a raid?

Because that's a Ret Paladin in Wrath after just over 111 Seconds.

Retribution needs an active source of Mana Regen which scales with gear. It's as simple as that really.