Updated Ret Guide

SURPRISE POST!

This is actually for a friend of mine. He wrote this, I didn't, but I'm posting my corrected version of it as he asked me to edit it for him. I didn't get a chance to read over it faster, and for that I apologize. Raiding Ulduar comes first, sorry buddy. =P

The normal Retribution raiding spec is 0/5/54. Note that this does not spend all your talent points. The reason is because we have more than we really need to get all our mandatory DPS talents since they unbloated our tree a bit. The rest can either be spent on PvP talents or Utility talents. I highly suggest Utility talents as if you actually know how to use your utility, you'll be a much more valuable Ret paladin in your raid. I'll note which ones are useful below.

I also added in the Glyphs I use to that spec. Consecration frees up your GCDs so they don't conflict as much (and technically saves mana, not that you need it), Exorcism does craploads of damage now, and Judgement is your primary ability. Sense Undead is great for Naxx and there's no reason to not have it.

Talents

Holy

T1:

Seals of the Pure: Useless. You use none of these seals. You should be using Blood/Martyr, never anything else.

Protection

T1:

Divinity: Good utility for your healing, including instant cast Flash of Light and Divine Storm. Nice to be healed for a bit extra too, since you'll take quite a bit from SoM/SoB procs.

Divine Strength: Strength is your version of the Holy Paladin's Intellect. Obviously, stack this!

T2:

Stoicism: This is a PvP talent. You won't be stunned and your spells won't be dispelled.

Guardian's Favor: Good for utility. Hand of Freedom won't come up as much, but you'll make quick friends with an overzealous healer or ranged DPS if you know when to Hand of Protection.

Anticipation: Prot talent. Skip it.

T3:

Divine Sacrifice: Awesome utility if you plan ahead with healers or a prot paladin. Takes some planning though. Wonderful for large AE damage fights since you can pop your bubble with it and take damage away from everyone without dying. If you do it a second time, make sure you get a damage reducing buff from a healer AND pop Divine Protection with it if you want to live.

Improved Righteous Fury: Prot talent. Skip it.

Toughness: Prot talent. I'd suggest taking Divinity over this, it's more useful.

T4:

Improved Divine Sacrifice: Just the improved form of Divine Sacrifice. Also lets your Sacred Shield do more, and you should be throwing it up on the offtanks or even the tank. Sacred Shields STACK, so it's pretty darn useful.

Retribution

T1:

Deflection: Tank talent. Skip it.

Benediction: Reduces the cost of all your attacks by 10%. Part of the reason we don't have mana issues. Take it.

T2:

Improved Judgments: More Judgments meanings more damage. Mandatory.

Heart of the Crusader: 3% chance to crit on the enemy? Yum yum.

Improved Blessing of Might: Your primary buff. Take it. Incidentally, Might > Kings.

T3:

Vindication: PvP talent, primarily, but some trash isn't immune to it. Can speed up clears. Not *totally* useless, but not very helpful either.

Conviction: 5% crit for everything? Take it.

Seal of Command: Useless for everything, including PvP. /sigh Skip it.

Pursuit of Justice: You run faster, get in position faster, get back to the mob faster. Take it.

T4:

Eye for an Eye: PvP talent, but can be fun in AoE damage fights. I've KO'd stuff from being crit by random spells. Just the same, unless you're going PvP in your spare time, skip it.

Sanctity of Battle: More crit chance and more damage? Take it.

Crusade: 3% damage on all mobs and 3% more on a lot of others? Take it.

T5:

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: Since your entire life will be wielding two handed weapons, you should take this. Trust me on this.

Sanctified Retribution: 3% extra damage. Since 3.1, it no longer matters what aura you have up for the % damage bonus, but it may as well be Ret aura.

T6:

Vengeance: You should be critting a lot, and so that refreshes Vengeance's stack. 9% more damage nearly constantly is wonderful.

Divine Purpose: PvP talent. Skip it.

T7:

The Art of War: Ah, Sun Tzu reference. More damage and a free Flash of Light? Take it!

Repentance: Finally, Paladin CC. It leads to a great talent, so take it.

Judgments of the Wise: Your best regen talent. Everyone will adore you for it, especially your healers. Take it.

T8:

Fanaticism: Lots more crits for your Judgments and less threat. Take it, and love it.

Sanctified Wrath: Decreased the cooldown of Avenging Wrath, a spell you should use every time it's up (or with trinket/bloodlust, as appropriate for the fight), as well as the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath, something you should use whenever you can, by a hell of a lot. Take it.

T9:

Swift Retribution: Haste. 3%. Take it. :p

Crusader Strike: One of your three main attacks, alongside Judgments and Divine Storm. Take it, it's an instant smack.

Sheath of Light: Entirely the reason Ret Paladins don't need Spell Power on their gear anymore. Take it, love it.

T10:

Righteous Vengeance: Your only DoT, really. Take it, it'll improve your DPs nicely.

T11:

Divine Storm: Ah, your third and last damaging spell that I know of right now. Love this to pieces, as it does nice AoE damage.

Gemming

The meta gem you want to use is going to be a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. To match the colors if you haven't already, use two Sovereign Shadow Crystals. Unless you can find two Sovereign Twilight Opals, which should be floating around soon enough. Unless of course they already are. And if you're a Jewelcrafter, just use three Bold Dragon Eyes.

Even before you reach the Hit/Expertise caps (but matched the meta colors) just gem for strength using lots of Bold Scarlet Rubies. Strength is amazing for you, stack it.

Stats

I think Ret Paladins are the only DPS spec that has a stat over Hit and Expertise prior to the caps.

Strength gives a hell of a lot of AP and spell power and damage for you. Just stack that, and get Hit and Expertise from gear and random enchants. Don't ever gem for anything else.

Hit and Expertise are big, since you won't be meeting the cap at all times. Look for Expertise over Hit, since you'll be munching on Hit food.

Crit's your next big one. Get it on gear if you find it.

The rest of the stats, AP (comes from Strength), Haste, Stamina, and Agility are just on gear.

Gear

Strength > Expertise > Hit > Crit > AP > Haste

For T7 and T7.5, get the 4 piece set bonus. 1 second off your Judgement, your hardest hitting attack, is freaking huge. Unless you have a whole bunch of >213 gear to replace it, it's hard to beat.

For T8 and T8.5, aim for the 4 set bonus. More critical strikes from your big hitters is wonderful.

Rotation

From Elitist Jerks, because they explain it way better than I ever could:

3.1 clash resolution is as follows: CS > HoW > Judgement > DS > Consecration > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

During the beta it was agreed upon that because of vastly changed mechanics, our rotations should be thrown out and thus came to be known as FCFS (First Come First Serve) - and this is still true in 3.1. Not much to explain about it, just use whatever is off cooldown, whenever you can (watch your mana bar). See below for clash resolution (when 2 skills are off cooldown, which one do you use?). Be sure to use AW and Divine Plea as much as you can, as both provide a nice boost in damage/mana. In a situation with AoE, say trash for example, Consecration and DS should be prioritized. Yes, even with the exorcism changes, it still ranks behind all of our strikes and consecrate due to a longer cooldown and higher miss rate. You can often open on bosses with an exorcism or judgement while running into melee range, and then once you are in melee range FCFS takes over.

Quick two bits: Use Seal of the Martyr at all times, and Judgement of Light. Your Judgement of Light > other pally's JoL, and it does not generate extra threat (like it used to). Only use Judgement of Wisdom if there are no other paladins in the group.

Casual versus Hardcore

So I'm thinking Mondays for posting. Do Mondays sound good to everyone? I would pick Tuesdays, but Tuesdays I work during the day and raid at night. I'm not sure what would be a much higher traffic than Tuesday mornings (due to maintenance), so Monday evenings should make sense. I'll change the poll to reflect this question once the current poll ends. =)

(Of course, now I'm sure you're asking why this is being posted Tuesday morning - I started writing yesterday, but was abruptly called into work. Nobody's here yet, so I'm gonna try to sneak this out before the boss gets here.)

So, the topic today is casuals versus hardcore - basically, was it a good idea for Blizzard to have "dumbed down" content a bit to make it more accessible?

My short answer is yes. While I consider myself a hardcore, with a regular raiding schedule and a 100% raid attendance (barring personal disasters), I couldn't be happier that they recycled Naxx or made the content pretty easy to jump back into after a 10 level grind.

I will say I was disappointed with the nerfing of all the level 70 raid instances in some ways. Part of me wanted to run my head repeatedly into the Illidari Council until we got it, part of me wanted to tear my hair out when we finally got into Sunwell and couldn't get past Mu'ru, the guild breaker. It would have made me a better player had I been able to succeed past those things without the nerf. It took content that was challenging and fun and made it completely trivial. Granted, I'm also the kind of person who was against the attunements for instances being taken out - I've personally never downed Vashj or Kael because my previous guild was filled with people who did not know how to follow direction, and we skipped both those fights and immediately moved onto Hyjal and Black Temple... where we started skipping Archimonde.

It felt so very wrong to move onto the next tier of content without having completed the previous tier. That's the only part of progression that's been taken out that I really disagree with. You shouldn't move on to T8 content until you've finished T7 content. I really don't understand what's wrong with that idea. In my opinion, it's kind of like saying you should finish a 101 class before you move on to the 102 class.

I don't mind the idea of having some things be a little more accessible. Naxx is a fun raid and I'm glad a lot of people get to see it. I was one of the many that never got to see the 40-man iteration (truthfully, I never saw any of the level 60 raids at 60 - Eseten remains the only character I have ever managed to get to max level). So I'm glad that they took something they had put so much effort and work into and allowed it to be seen by a much larger population.

I can still stand out above the casuals with hard modes (whoot, go go Twilight Vanquisher - now onto Of the Nightfall!) and I think that's pretty cool. I think that's a good direction to take the game in - let the casuals have their fun to a certain extent, and let the hardcores still have something to work toward.

I will admit, however, that there is still that overall disappointment. I haven't seen anything in a while that could be considered "progression." It's been many, many months since I could say that. Working towards achievements is alright... but it's still the same boss with (in every case but 2/3 drake Sarth) the same rewards. All I get is a few achievement points that sit there and don't really do anything. I suppose they give me bragging rights, which is not all that different from saying "HAH, I've downed every boss in every instance, EAT THAT."

I guess I'm still a little torn on the situation. I suppose my argument is more that it makes sense why Blizzard did what they did. Is it really taking away from my fun, though? Does it hurt me directly that others are allowed to experience the same things? It would be a bit selfish to say yes to that.

But then, we're all a little selfish sometimes.