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.

Happy Patch Day!

So it's been a month. Yeah.

Last Poll: Death Knights. Yay or Nay?
Yay! (44%)
Nay! (22%)
Meh, don't care. (33%)

I wasn't terribly fond of DK's either, and I'm still not enthused about them, but I will say they have undeniably the coolest starting area in the history of EVER.

**Edit**
There will be a new poll up when I can get it to work. For some reason, Blogger won't let me change my layout right now. Very weird.

**Edit^2**
So Blogspot ate some of my blog and I had no idea. Fixed.

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So as a side note, I was at Blizzcon this past weekend. If you saw the crazy girl with the "I <3 Eyonix" sign, well, that was me. I'll have a more detailed update on Blizzcon probably tomorrow. But for today, I'd like to talk about the new patch.

So while I'm relatively upset that I was not specced Retribution for raiding for patch day (and, indeed, have been Protection for a few weeks now due to our regular Prot Pally being MIA), it was nice that tanking was actually fun again. Especially when I'm running around pulling threat off the T6 warrior. There's something incredibly satisfying about that. I'm a lot more excited, however, to get a chance to raid as Retribution with all the new changes. I greatly wish I could do so tomorrow, but with our guild looking at Illidan and me being one of the few with tank gear AND FR gear... well, I'm not really going to get the chance.

A guildmate has already leveled his Inscription up to about 300 (or at least close to that before I logged off), and my own level 15 Rogue alt already has 90-some Inscription herself. I'm liking the flow of the new profession. Even as you level up through it, old herbs and low level things are still useful to you. I think that's kinda cool.

After our raid this evening, a group of us decided to pay good old Onyxia a visit, so those of us who never raided pre-TBC could get the achievement. It was fun tanking her - I'd personally never seen the encounter (since I never hit 60 before TBC), so it was really cool. The 20g reward just for killing her was nice too.

Too bad the Pally T2 didn't drop. I would've liked to say I had some of it. =P Though I'm sure we'll go and kill her for loot weekly now... It takes all of ten minutes. Tomorrow, we plan on getting the Leeeeeeeroooooy! Achievement. Should be fun. =D

Admittedly, I was very apprehensive about how we'd operate tonight with the new patch. Everyone was scrambling at raid time to put together their talents, figure out their new rotations, and generally organize themselves. I thought the Holy Paladins would trip up on their healing since they operate so differently now. I found myself giving advice on how to use Beacon of Light, simply due to the fact I've been more informed of the patch notes and changes than my guildies have been (I never realized how much more dedicated a fan I am to this game than the typical player is). It was kind of nice being a go-to person for information tonight; possibly because it's all too often that I'm just "that girl who plays" and not really considered an informed or important figure. Not being an officer in the new guild has a lot to do with that, though I suppose if our usual pally tank keeps being MIA, I may find myself upgraded sooner rather than later.

While I'm sad we didn't down Council legitimately (I.E. before the 30% nerf and the ridiculous DPS people are putting out now), it was rather awe-inspiring to just plow through BT while barely batting an eye. It took us 49 seconds to down Shade of Akama - I only had two adds on me in the center by the time they moved in on him. I think we only got three people killed on Gorefiend, simply from them getting the debuff (and the last guy's timer was nowhere near up by the time Gorefiend hit the ground).

This patch and the upcoming expansion are amazing leaps and bounds for the game, especially for Paladins. If you've lost interest in your class, Patch 3.0 brings a ton of new stuff to the table that makes you excited about the game again. And really, as a devoted fan, I could hardly ask for more.

Unnannounced Hiatus

Hello everyone.

Sorry to have been MIA for so long, but my blog has had to sit on the bottom of the pile lately. I have only three weeks until I graduate, a convention this weekend, and an impending move in April that I still need to plan for. While I have a few articles written out in my notebooks, it has been difficult to find the time to transcribe them.

In addition, these posts will no longer be cross-posted from Gathering Gamers. As I've had to take this hiatus, it didn't make much sense for me to keep taking up their time working for them. However, I do still encourage everyone to check out their site. It's a nifty little gaming community, and it would be really cool to see it grow into something much grander.

In the news of what I've been doing in WoW, I have respecced and started raiding as well as PvPing as Retribution. This is mostly due to the demands of raiding and having little place for multiple tanks, so I volunteered to step down and play another role for a while. However, I haven't given up on tanking and it's still my knowledge forte (if I do say so myself), as well as what makes me really love the game. I hope to respec back relatively soon. =)

Just as a taste, here's a few of the topic titles I have coming up:

Alliance vs. Horde - The upcoming struggle
RP Servers - Are they dead?
PvP Servers - To gank or not to gank?
90% of all statistics are made up - "Welfare Epics"

I hope that gives everyone something to look forward to!