Mr.WoW Gold - WoW General Guides - Retadin DPSadin Guide
Retadin DPSadin Guide
Playing a Retribution based Paladin can be a lot of fun as long as you realize you may still not be to be at the top of all the DPS charts. You will however be able to hold your own in PvE and PvP content and level at a far faster rate than other paladin specs. Realize up front though that DPS classes and players FAR outnumber healers and tanks. In addition most players view Paladins as healers or tanks, so you will most likely be expected to have a heal or tanking offspec and gearset.
Talents and Glyphs
As a DPS Paladin you will be spending the majority of your talent points in the Retribution talent tree. You need to do this gain some serious damage causing abilities including some of your main damage abilities such as Crusader Strike and Divine Storm. There are also several other abilities that add a lot to your damage causing abilities through passive boosts to some of your key spells and stats.
Probably the most important talents are your Crusaders Strike and Divine Storm, since they will form 2 of the 5 main attacks that make up your DPS rotation. For more information on that rotation skip down to the Attack Rotation section of the guide. Crusader's Strike is a single target attack with a short cooldown that will become a staple in all of your rotations, while Divine Storm hits multiple targets and factors in against groups of enemies.
Some of the other really critical talents in the Retribution tree are Judgements of the Wise, Sanctified Retribution, Swift Retribution and Heart of the Crusader. All of these talents grant you party or raid utility which is much needed since you are just a DPS player once you are in a group (Tanks and Healers being much more important in a group situation). Judgements of the Wise brings you the ability to replenish mana to up to 10 raid members, which your healers and casters will thank you for. Sanctified and Swift Retribution bring you a 3% damage and 3% haste buff that affects the whole raid as long as your retribution aura is active. Lastly, Heart of the Crusader puts a +3% crit debuff on any target you judge, once again boosting party damage output.
This is the Retribution Build I use when speccing for damage in raids - Retribution Build. It has proven itself over and over again in the level 80 instances and raids. It dips into the protection tree for some extra strength, healing and a situationaly awesome ability called Divine Sacrifice. Divine Sacrifice allows you to absorb some of the damage incoming to the group and transfer it to you.
While there are a number of decent Glyphs for a Retribution Paladin the ones I suggest are based on raid usefulness. Therefore the greater glyphs I believe you should use are:
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance - This glyph gives you almost half of the Expertise (10 points) that you need to reach the soft cap. That's a lot of expertise that you will not have to find on equipment, gems or enchants, allowing you to focus on more damage causing stats.
Glyph of Judgement - Increases damage of all Judgements by 10%. Since Judgements are one of your main damage dealing abilities, a 10% boost to it is a great boost from a glyph.
Glyph of Consecration - Increases the length and cooldown of Consecration by 2 seconds. This means that you will not have to cast Consecration as often, freeing up an addition global cooldown for a damage attack.
Stats and Gear
Gear for a Retadin is not nearly as difficult as many other classes. Up until you are level 80 you simply need to stack as much Strength as you can, with critical strike being second on your stat radar. Once you get to level 80, however, your priorities change a little. Reaching the Hit and Expertise cap are your priorities, and after that is done you start stacking Strength, Crit, and Attack Power (when strength isn't an option).
Once you reach level 80 and start looking for +hit it takes just under 33 points to earn a +1% chance to hit. This means you need 263 points of hit rating to reach your 8% hit cap. This means you will not miss your melee attacks, spells can still miss though as a significant amount more hit is required for spells. Reaching hit cap when fresh to level 80 can be difficult and requires several gems or enchants and tough gear choices. Once you start getting higher item level gear, you will generally have more than you need.
Gems and Enchants
Gems and enchants will play a critical part in how much damage you can put out against an enemy. The bonuses that you can add through enchants and gems at high levels are almost as much as you get on the item itself. Better yet they can be customized to be what you require.
Basic Attack Rotation
Ok, you have the gear, you have specced retribution, now what? How do you go about doing damage?
A Retribution Paladin uses what is called a FCFS (First Come First Serve) rotation. This can be considered a face roll rotation too, however since some abilities do cause more damage there is a decreasing level of priority that you need to work through. However, since even the lowest DPS attack is not significantly lower, it is better to use any ability rather than wait for another to be available.
The order of priority is as follows:
Hammer of Wrath - Only becomes available once the enemy is below 20% health
Crusader Strike - A decent attack that also applies a Seal of Vengeance stack
Judgement - Use Judgement to do Vengeance damage once you have a 5 stack up on the target.
Divine Storm - Against single targets it is fourth, when there are multiple targets it jumps up to #2
Consecration - This provides ok DPS against any number of targets but as soon as there are 4 or more targets this becomes the #1 priority instead of Hammer of Wrath.
Exorcism - It's ok, but due to being a spell it needs more hit to be reliable.
Holy Wrath - If you are fighting lots of undead this becomes a good option (4 or more)
As with any rotation there are numerous exceptions and situations where you need to break the standard priority. Some of them are outlined in the list itself, such as AoE situations of 4 or more enemies, while others depend of different factors. For example if you have 2 pieces of Tier 9 gear equipped the 2 set bonus significantly alters your priority making Judgement jump to the top of the list.
For any standard fight though, try to stick to the attack rotation as much as possible. Just remember the basic rule: it's better to be hitting something than nothing, so use an attack any time the global cooldown is up.
