Retribution Paladin PvP Guide

Playing a Paladin enables you to have the best of all worlds.

Depending on the Paladin build that you decide on, you can do everything from heal to tank to pure DPS.

Of course, just like other classes certain Paladin builds are better for Paladin PvP while others are more suited to PvE play.

Whether youre looking for the best Paladin PvP build or want something that enables you to both level and do Paladin PvP, here is a Paladin talent guide to get you started.

Enchants For PVP

Here’s a list of enchants arranged by the slot the enchant affects, the best enchant for each slot is listed first, and the second best enchant is listed second and so on.

• Helm- Get Revered with Knights of the Ebon blade for awesome head enchant, need to do the questline beginning with It’s All Fun and Games (Horde: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12892, Alliance: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12887), this will unlock the city Shadow Vault for you. Use stone keeper shards to purchase a PVP head enchant at Wintergrasp, you can get this whether you control WG or not.
• Shoulder- Get Honored/Exalted with Sons of Hodir for blue/epic PVE shoulder enchants, this is in storm peaks, to get dailies to get reputation you need to do the quest line that starts with They Took Our Men ( http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12843 ) at K3 and ends with dailies. Use stone keeper shards to purchase a PVP shoulder enchant at Wintergrasp, you can get this whether you control WG or not.
• Cloak- 22 Agility, 23 Haste, 16 Agility, 15 Haste
• Chest- 10 Stats, 8 Stats, 20 Resilience, 15 Resilience
• Wrist- 50 Attack Power, 38 Attack Power
• Hands- 44 Attack Power, 15 Strength, 35 Attack Power
• Legs- Icescale Leg Armor (75 Attack Power and 22 Crit)
• Boots- Greater Assault (32 Attack Power), Icewalker (+12 Hit and +12 Crit)
• Weapon- Beserking, Massacre, Greater Savagery
• Belt- Technically not an enchant, but since everyone can buy the Eternal Belt Buckle from the AH, put it on their belt, and then put any gem in it, it functions like an enchant. this buckle does not affect your socket plus, can be used regardless of current sockets on belt, only one can be used on your belt, and it contributes to your meta gem.

Professions in PVP

Listed by PVP ability:

(Black Smithing, Jewel Crafting) > (Alchemy, Inscription, Leather Working, Enchanting) > (Skinning, Tailoring, Engineering, Mining) > (Herblore)

*Engineering is placed where it is only based on the glove enchant, remember you can also get rocket boots from engineering, but that’s somewhat difficult to measure as far as usefulness in PVP.

Gearing for PVP

Sometimes you can get away with a mix of pvp and pve gear as ret, but all of the high rated ret pallies are using full pvp gear. Trinkets are a different story, for a 2s team where you play with a healer, you probably want Greatness and the Titan-forged Rune of Determination. If you cant afford Greatness you can get the 190 Attack Power Battlemaster trinket. If youre on a 2 dps 2s, or a very hard hitting 3s team, you may want to use the Platinum Disks of Battle that can be used to give you like 700 Attack Power, which is fantastic for bursting someone down.

PVP Spec

7/13/51

Spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sV0bZVGzbZVf0xbIuGdIbsu:ua0

Glyphs

Major Glyphs: Judgement, Seal of Righteousness, and Exorcism/Hand of Salvation/Crusader Strike. Use Exorcism for a little more burst and use the Hand of Salvation glyph for maybe more survivability, while Crusader Strike should be used if you run a team setup where the matches average at 5+ mins in length. You are able to also remove one point from Unyielding Faith for imp RF, as its hard to compare 2% less damage to 15% less being feared.

Minor Glyphs: Glyph of the Wise (should you for some reason get drained to 0 mana, this can happen if your judgements are being absorbed). Glyph of Blessing of Kings (if for some reason you get into a fight with a dispeller who is determined to keep you at 0 buffs, you can reduce the mana cost of kings here and just spam kings on yourself – this severely reduces your dps, and i dont recommend doing it unless you have a very good reason to). Glyph of Blessing of Might (for convenience).

Arena

• Hit your targets in the back so they can’t dodge/parry, and 5% Hit/164 Hit Rating is the cap for pvp, so you don’t miss, but they’re many high rated ret pallies who arent hit capped. However, they are close, like within 1% should be good. Dont get your hit from gems, use your gear, its a much better stat trade-off.
• Judge Judgement of Justice, most players have some kind of speed increase, minor speed, etc., this will help you keep up with them, sometimes do light if youren’t worried about keeping your target close to you.
• Sacred Shield is good and you want to do your best to keep it on you (or maybe someone on your team who is often targeted by the other team) often, and instant Flash of Light (when Art of War is up) once you need it (be at least half health, otherwise use Exorcism), however casting both spells will use a GCD and so you dont want to use them when you have Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judge presented to use or you are gimping your damage.
• -Make sure you have 2 points in Divine Purpose and youre using Hand of Freedom to remove stuns on yourself, this can be done even if youre stunned. I would only use this for long stuns like a high combo point Kidney Shot or a Hammer of Justice, otherwise your Hand of Freedom is better off on someone who needs it more. You are able to also Hand of Freedom a teammate who is stunned and it will remove it.
• -Coordinate with your teammates, make sure everyone is on vent. Dont just say “ok you heal us and we’ll kill this guy” (dont tunnel vision, try to be creative, arena is more of a puzzle rather than who can press buttons faster). The most effective team switches targets at the right time and uses CC and other support moves. In arena you’re no longer “dps”, and the same goes for your partners, you’re job is to defeat the other team, not just hit them as hard as you can, i.e. if you’re running with a rogue against a healer and dps team, you guys sap the healer then start killin the other team’s dps. Say the healer uses his PVP trinket and heals the dps to full, here tell your rogue to vanish and then you bubble and run farther from the fight. Then, get your rogue to sap the healer again, then u guys dps the dps, maybe throw blind/rep on the healer after sap. Knowing your arena partners moves is important so you can call out once you need them to use their moves. I run with a disc priest, whenever i get someone low i ask him to fear the heals, and that really helps to kill who im on. The best thing i can say is dont tunnel vision.
• -The best way to get better at PVP is to duel. Go to a place where it seems a lot of 80s are dueling and duel anyone and everyone. This will help you learn about certain classes/specs spells and how you can best counteract them. If the guy you’re dueling uses something you havent seen before, ask him about it. Dont expect to win all your duels against healers, ret pallies have a pretty hard time killing healers now, ignore what others may say about us being OP, the fact is we just dont have the silences or the -50% healing debuff to kill a healer with any consistency.
• Use fire resistance aura if the other team has a hunter, frost resist if they have a mage (the mage may possibly be arcane though), and shadow resist if they have a shadow priest or warlock. Having fire resist is a nice plus also if you already have shadow resist against a warlock. If you can’t use these resist auras, see if you’re healer needs conentration aura (most healer should want it), and if your healer doesn’t need concentration aura for whatever reason you can use devotion aura against a melee heavy group, or retribution aura against a team with a rogue (he can do some descent dps to himself once you have it up).
• Use your support moves on yourself and your teammates. Use macros that are set to easy to press key bindings to use your support moves, use these macros in 2s and in 3s, however in 5s you probably wont have enough key bindings and you will need to use Clique or Healbot to apply your support moves. Use Hand of Sacrifice on someone who’s at like half health, maybe throw him a heal or two. Use Hand of Freedom on someone if you see they have the Hamstring/Crippling Poison icon on them. Cleanse someone if they have the Fear icon (considering there arent alrdy too many DoTs on him), Freedom someone if you see the Kidney Shot icon on them (this will remove it and is really worth your time if you catch it early), use Divine Sacrifice if one of your teammates is getting low on health, same for HoP. if you’re out of support spells dont forget you can always heal.
• Remember you’re a hybrid, and many ppl will complain that you’re OP, but as you do more arena you will realize that choosing the right moments to act as a hybrid (i.e. healing) is a large portion of what determines your skill. Remember that as long as youre healing you arent dpsing, so if you’re on a full dps team you really do not want to heal during “burst” time, but you do want to heal during “reset” time.
• Dont split your dps, if there’s more than one dps on your team, the dps should be focusing one target (in most cases), and if there needs to be a switch it should be called out, switching targets really helps to catch the other team off-guard, so having one person in vent calling switches and everyone listening is a powerful tool in arena.
• If you and another melee dps are duking it out, and you have a healer, save your Freedom to be used defensively, keep Judgement of Justice on the other melee dps, and once your health starts to get low just use Freedom and start strafing away (with him at 100% speed and you at 115% you should be able to kite him), this will give your healer a break and he should be able to heal you back up, then you can run back in, or switch targets if you think you should.
• Don’t forget about consecration. I know it takes a lot of mana, but if you can keep consecration in your rotation and keep your enemy in your consecrate, you gain a damage increase of about 10-20%, and if 2 enemies are in your consecrate that’s a 20-40% increase. I recommend only trying to use consecrate if you have some way of making sure your enemy doesn’t move and youre using judge of wisdom, Crusader Strike glyph, and using Divine Plea whenever you have 3 secs before your next damage ability comes off cooldown. In your 2s games, if your partner is a melee dps, you and him just focus down the other team’s melee, your target will have to target either you or your partner, and you both are right by him.
• Consecration continued: In 2s, if your partner is a healer, have your healer stop moving when a melee dps is on him, this may sound weird, but if the melee dps is descent your healer wont ever be able to get away anyways, then you can focus down the other teams melee dps. Even if this melee is a DK or a war with a shield up, remember that you have a 10-20% dps increase, very few teams can survive that high of a constant increase in damage from a ret paladin. In 3s, drop a consecrate whenever your target is stunned, or once you’re killing a healer that is just spamming heals and not moving. In 5s, you shouldn’t use consecrate if you have a mage/rogue on your team, because you may break their blind/sap/sheep, but if you dont have those classes on your team you can consecrate when the other team is somewhat grouped up, this will either do a large amount of damage to the other team, or convince them to move, both of which help your team.

Suggested Setups

2s partner- Disc Priest, Mutilate Rogue, Restoration Shaman, Unholy Death Knight, Restoration Druid.

3v3 setups- Retribution Pally, Melee/Hunter, and a healer. The other melee really shouldn’t be another Ret Pally though.

Your Seal in PVP

You should be running with Seals of the Pure (5 points in 1st tier of holy) and the Seal of Righteousness glyph. Then you should use Seal of Righteousness. However, it is possible to use Seal of Vengenace (or Corruption if your Horde) if you know you will be on your current target for at least a minute without being interupted by fears, etc. (this is near impossible, making Seal of Righteousness better in 99% of situations in PVP).

Addons for PVP & PVE

Curse Client- The client used by curse.com will make it a lot quicker to download all the following add ons.
Omni CC- Will give you the CD on your spells as numbers, highly useful.
GRID and Clique OR Healbot- Either you can use GRID and Clique combined or just Healbot by itself, both setups involve creating click bindings for spells and arranging unit frames to see the health/mana/other details about the members in your raid.
Omen- Useful to make sure you don’t pull threat during the first 10 secs or so when the tank picks up a mob.
Gladius (PVP)- Use to replace the blizzard arena frames (you have to turn off the Blizzard ones) with pretty much the same thing but with more info. The icons next to the enemy’s names will light up with powerful moves like Fear, Sheep, Divine Shield, etc. to indicate which enemy is affected with what. You are able to also watch the yellow bar to see what spell the enemy is casting. The trinket icon indicates that the enemy still has his trinket to use, if the icon is not there that means that he has used his trinket.
Deadly Boss Mod- Will provide you with extremely useful alerts throughout a boss fight.
Configuring GRID- Right click GRID icon in minimap, go under Frame, check the following: border- your target, healing bar- unit health, center text- unit name, center icon- none, top left corner- aggro, top right corner- magic, bottom left- disease, bottom right- poison. Under Frame Alpha, check the following: death warning, > 10, 30, 40, 100 yards, offline warning. Under Layout, select Clamped to screen and frame lock after you have moved GRID where you want it, you can also go under Raid Layout to change the # of people in your raid. Use the macro “/grid standby” to make it appear and disappear. And now you’re done!
Configuring Clique- Press P, click the last tab, click custom, select Cast Spell, type the name of the spell in the appropriate area, and then set the click binding you want (try middle mouse, ALT-left click, ALT-right click, ALT-middle mouse, and you can replace ALT with CTRL or SHIFT depending on your keyboard).
TellMeWhen- Configure this for The Art of War and Sacred Shield (the buff, i dont think you can set it for the proc). Id move it near your health on the screen so you can quickly check to see if you even need the heal. In pvp you want to always have Sacred Shield up (unless someone keeps dispelling it off you, if so just leave it off 500 mana is a lot to keep wasting on it).
CLCRET (a.k.a. Retribution FCFS helper)- This is very good for learning the priority concept. If you stick with this addon you can pull very high dps and pay less attention to your rotation and more to the raid environment. Plug in your priority for a single dps target and follow the suggestions from the addon for a single target fight.

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