Pre-Mists Retribution Guide

World of Warcraft 5.0.5 rolled in to the live servers, and here is my input about the state of retribution in the new expansion.

Spec

If everything stays the way it currently is, the only real choice retribution paladins have to make when it comes to spec is on level 75, tier 5 talent. That is the only thing that directly affects your DPS. It is a hard choice indeed.

•  Holy Avenger is a 2-minute cooldown that, for 18 seconds, causes your abilities that generate Holy Power to deal 30% additional damage and healing, and to generate 3 charges of Holy Power, instead of 1.

•  Sanctified Wrath passively increases the duration of  Avenging Wrath by 50%. Additionally, while Avenging Wrath is active, it reduces the cooldown of your  Hammer of Wrath by 50%.

•  Divine Purpose gives your abilities that cost Holy Power a 25% chance to cause your next Holy Power-costing ability cost no Holy Power and be cast as if you had 3 charges of Holy Power.

ElitistJerks, Icy Veins and other theorycrafting sites state that all three talents are good, they usually indicate that   Sanctified Wrath pulls a bit ahead in DPS right now. I made my choice in favor of   Divine Purpose. It does sound like a gamble at 25% chance, however if Cataclysm showed us anything, it's that you never get your full CD time spent standing and hitting stuff (Yes Domo, I'm looking at you!).

Glyphs

When it comes to Glyphs - for Retribution paladin life gets very simple. They are all useless! Slightly less useless than others, in my opinion, are:

•  Glyph of Double Jeopardy increases the damage of your next  Judgment by 20% when used on a different second target.

•  Glyph of Templar's Verdict reduces the damage you take, for 6 seconds after using  Templar's Verdict, by 10%. Will be nice when starting raiding in blues. Saves healer mana.

•  Glyph of Mass Exorcism reduces your  Exorcism to melee range, but causes it to deal a small amount of AoE damage, in addition to its single target damage. Given this bit of extra damage affects main target too (currently it does)

Priorities

Paladins have both melee and spell attacks, therefore your equipment and weapon will make some things hit harder. For example melee attacks and abilities will benefit more from good weapon, than say  Exorcism. It will not be a rotation changing difference thou. Given the random nature of paladin rotation and procs (well, somewhat random nature I should say), here's what our priorities will look like:

1.  Inquisition should be up all the time!
2.  Exorcism now generates Holy Power
3.  Templar's Verdict if it proc'ed of you have 5 Holy Power
4.  Hammer of Wrath can't be blocked since it's a spell - very good!
5.  Crusader Strike since it is our bread and butter
6.  Judgment on cooldown, judging different targets if possible (see above)
7.  Templar's Verdict when you have 3 Holy Power

Adding to this:

• Versus 2+ targets  Templar's Verdict should be changed to  Divine Storm.
• Versus 4+ targets,  Crusader Strike for  Hammer of the Righteous.
• Versus 8+ targets,  Seal of Truth for  Seal of Righteousness.

That's a lot of buttons! Fear not, with a few simple macros your can pack everything into a nice and compact panel, that looks like this:

Stats

Simple as ever:

1. Weapon damage
2. Strength
3. Hit Rating (until 7.5% hit cap);
4. Expertise Rating (until 7.5% hit cap);
5. Haste Rating (now reduces CD)
6. Mastery Rating 
7. Critical Strike Rating

Good hunting everyone,

Hope to see you in game!