Warcrafter’s Guide to the Paladin — Retribution Specialization
This guide is not necessarily designed as a traditional “BiS list” or scaled against “Absolute optimisation”. Be that as it may, the gear, talent, and glyph suggestions are built on a fairly long time of playing paladins (since the original vanilla release), in addition to a bit of active testing, adapting to YggdrasilWoW, and a bit of simulator testing from a few off-the-shelf simulator programs. This guide is primarily catered towards PvE play, but contains a few tidbits for PvP too, from my experience, achievement hunting lol.
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Race Selection
Human
- Every Man for Himself — Good for PvP, limited PvE use as Ret.
- Sword & Mace Expertise — Not especially impactful for Ret DPS, but not worthless either.
- Diplomacy — Useful if you’re an achievement hunter.
Dwarf
- Nothing particularly standout for Ret. Stoneform has some PvP use.
Draenei
- Heroic Presence — +1% hit, directly reducing your hit cap requirement. Genuinely useful for Ret.
- Gift of the Naaru — Minor bonus, a small self-heal never hurts.
Blood Elf
- The only Horde option.
- Arcane Torrent — Returns some mana, useful for sustaining DPS over longer fights.
- Arcane Resistance — Minor benefit in PvP and some PvE situations.
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Stats
Strength
Your core and primary stat. Gem this practically everywhere.
Agility
Retribution Paladins gain more crit per point of Agility than literally any other class in the game. This does not mean Agility beats out Strength — the idea is to balance the two so that you have high crit with enough raw damage behind it. Balancing these two is the key to optimised Retribution DPS.
Intellect & Stamina
These do the standard set of things but are not stats worth explicitly pursuing.
Crit Rating
Always want high numbers in your gear pieces. Not something you’d explicitly gem, but definitely something you want lots of.
Hit Rating
You need at least 8%. Simple logic: if your hits don’t land, your effective damage is zero.
Expertise
The soft cap is usually 26/26. If your positioning is perfect, you can realistically get away with about 24, or even 18 by some arguments. Remember that a glyphed Seal of Vengeance (or Corruption if Horde) gives a lot of expertise.
Haste
Reduces your swing times and the number of Seal of Vengeance/Corruption ticks. Worthwhile having, but NOT something you’ll gem, enchant, or explicitly pursue.
Armour Penetration
There are fervent anti-ArP activists for paladins, but it’s worth noting that Divine Storm, Auto Attack, and Crusader Strike are all sources of pure physical damage. Most holy damage sources like Seal of Command and Seal of Vengeance are actually dependent on weapon damage, which is itself physical. So while I will not explicitly pursue ArP, you should absolutely not actively avoid it either — especially on leather pieces with Agility. ArP isn’t core but isn’t totally useless.
Stat Priority
Expertise + Hit (at cap) > Strength > Agility > Crit > Haste > Armour Penetration
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Gems
- Meta: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
- Blue socket: Nightmare Tear (placed in the most suitable blue socket to also benefit from socket bonuses)
- Red sockets: 20 Strength Cardinal Rubies, spammed everywhere
- Yellow sockets: Inscribed Ametrine (once hit and expertise capped) or Etched Ametrine (if not yet capped)
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Enchants
| Slot | Enchant | Where? |
|---|
| Head | Arcanum of Torment | Knights of the Ebon Blade Exalted |
| Shoulder | Greater Inscription of the Axe | Sons of Hodir Exalted |
| Chest | Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats | Enchanter |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Major Agility | Enchanter |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault | Enchanter |
| Gloves | Enchant Gloves - Crusher | Enchanter |
| Pants | Icescale Leg Armor | Leatherworker |
| Boots | Enchant Boots - Greater Assault | Enchanter |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon - Berserking | Enchanter |
Some of these can be replaced — boots with Icewalker, for instance — and various Engineering, LW, or Inscription enchants can go into their respective slots.
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Glyphs
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Judgement — Absolutely needed. It’s one of your biggest raw single hits.
- Glyph of Consecration — Allows easier uptime on Consecration while using less mana and GCD.
- Glyph of Seal of Vengeance (or Corruption for Horde) — Gives +10 expertise, helping greatly to reach the expertise cap.
- Glyph of Seal of Exorcism — Use this instead if you are already capped on expertise.
Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of Sense Undead — Amplifies your damage against undead by 1%, which covers essentially all of ICC and a large portion of WotLK endgame content.
- Glyph of Lay on Hands
- Glyph of Might
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Talents
This is a general-purpose setup that includes most of the core functions. Some people like to dip into Divine Sacrifice from the Protection tree, but I have never seen much use for it as Retribution.
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Gear
This gear setup is merely a general roadmap — there are always many different paths that can vary based on personal preferences and playstyle. Obviously there are certain absolute BiS lists out there, but this guide is designed more around a basic understanding of the Paladin rather than a min-maxed ultra-efficient setup.
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Professions
- Jewelcrafting — Three 34 Strength gems. Always a juicy thing to have.
- Blacksmithing — Two extra sockets, coincidentally yielding 40 extra Strength. Hard to ignore.
- Engineering — Excellent option for Retribution with the mini-Heroism in your gloves.
- Leatherworking & Enchanting — Ring enchants and the large wrist AP enchant are solid boosts.
- Tailoring — A rather overlooked but really nice DPS cloak enchant. Often slept on; worth considering if proc-and-pop is a playstyle you enjoy.
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Consumables
Food
Fish Feast is more beneficial for Paladins than for most other classes, but Dragonfin Fillet will still beat it out — Strength is just superior.
Flasks/Elixirs
- Flask of Endless Rage — Primary option.
- Elixir of Strength + Elixir of Empowerment — A viable alternative. Most mobs and bosses appear to have some degree of magic resistance on the charts, so the Empowerment actually does something. There’s also not much else to put in the Guardian Elixir slot otherwise.
Potions
Insane Strength Potion or Potion of Speed, depending on your playstyle and whether you have Heroism available.
Scrolls
Keep Scrolls of Strength on yourself. Remember to remove the spirit buff from priests before using it.
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Rotations, Spells & Abilities
Seals
- Seal of Vengeance (or Seal of Corruption if Horde) — Your go-to for single target DPS, almost always without exception.
- Seal of Command — Use when dealing with more than 5 targets, or for seal weaving during cleave phases in fights like Halion 25 Heroic or LK 25 Heroic.
- Seal of Righteousness — Provides an absurd Judgement nuke. Worth including in your seal-swapping system, but only if you have your GCD perfectly in control.
Judgements
- Judgement of Wisdom — Your default.
- Judgement of Light — Only if no Holy Paladin is present, or if no other Paladin is using it.
- Judgement of Justice — Mostly a PvP thing. Doesn’t do much in PvE.
Rotation
Retribution Paladin has no strict rotation. The general idea is to use whatever is not on cooldown, while maintaining as much Consecration uptime as possible. Judgement is your highest single-hitting spell — use it on CD without fail. Divine Storm cooldowns can reset, so it can be spammed. Use Hammer of Wrath during execute phases.
Seal Weaving
Switching seals mid-fight to generate and maintain 5 stacks of Vengeance/Corruption on the boss, while switching to Righteous for Judgements or Command for AoE where needed. Only worth doing if you can maintain 100% uptime of those 5 stacks.
Exorcism
Only use it when Art of War procs. Otherwise don’t bother — consider a macro that only uses it on Insta-Cast.
Holy Wrath
Throw it in whenever it’s available, but save it for large packs of trash or specifically during LK Valkyr phases.
Utility
A paladin is first and foremost a support class. Get into the habit of using your Hands — Freedom, Salvation, Protection, and so on where and when needed.
Sacred Shield & Divine Plea
Keep a Sacred Shield on yourself to stay alive, and use Divine Plea on cooldown to keep your mana in check.
Engineering Gloves
Add the use macro for engineering gloves into your Avenging Wrath or intertwine it with Crusader Strike or Judgement.
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Guide by @Zeleot on YggdrasilWoW. Retribution section compiled with input from @Darkdracul — reach out to him for Retribution-specific tips.
