Retribution 3.2

Stealing this from Arikah on elitest jerks, simply for ease of referance for myself and anyone else interested in retlols.

Introduction

Another major patch with major changes for ret again, 3.2 warrants a partial rewrite. This thread focuses on retribution discussions, primarily endgame pve related. Retribution offers great sustained DPS, is very competitive as a dps class/spec, and it also offers the following raid buffs:

3% crit to raid Ret / Ele shaman
3% all damage to raid Ret / BM hunter
3% haste to raid Ret / Moonkin
100% JoW/JoL uptime Ret or prot paladin
Replenishment Ret / Spriest / Destro lock / Frost mage / Surv Hunter
Blessing of Kings / Imp Blessing of Might
-AP Debuff Ret or Prot paladin / Warriors / Warlocks / Ferals

We still have the option of speccing into Divine Sacrifice, which has proven to be a valuable raid cooldown throughout Ulduar - time and testing will tell if it is worthy of speccing into for 3.2.

Retribution in Wrath (like most classes and specs) is pretty easy to pick up and play, but somewhat difficult to master; hopefully this thread and its' contributing posters will make it easier to understand, for both new and veteran paladins alike. This thread assumes you have basic knowledge of paladins and their talent trees.



Tools and faqs

Q: Is there a tool to calculate my DPS using a certain gear/spec setup? Or what item will be better for me?

A: Yes, Rawr, Redcape's Calculator, and Bellator's spreadsheet (updated by Exemplar) which much like this thread will improve in accuracy with time. Note that gear upgrades from all 3 tools are mostly dependent on your current gear.

Q: What seal for PvE? And for PvP?

A: With blood removed, Seal of Vengeance(Corruption) is now our sustained pve dps seal. For mobs that die in under 12 seconds (trash), you may want to use SoR or SoC due to the DoT ramp-up time of SoV. SoC is a pvp seal primarily and a poor choice at that; it's better to use SoV in pvp if you can stay on top of a target.

Q: What does weapon speed do to us? Do we want slow or fast?

A: We still want slow. Every .1 speed slower is equal to ~20 DPS due to Seals and Judgements not being normalized to weapon speeds.

Q: What weapon enchant?

A: Scroll down to the enchant section, it explains berserking a bit more...

Q: Should I use a fast 1h weapon to stack SoV quicker?

A: No. Switching weapons is always a dps loss.

Observations/Theories

This section clarifies some things regarding hits, crits, and expertise. Much of this section is thanks Retesting hit table assumptions .

Current observations:
Glancing blows are a part of melee combat and cannot be avoided. Glancing blows happen 24% of the time and cannot be critical hits; as retribution, only auto-attacks (whites) are subject to glancing blows.
Our specials are based on a 2 roll system, our normal (autoswings) are a one roll system. SoV dot applications are still based on the 2 roll system, so this is still valid.
You need 8%, not the BC 9%, to be 2H melee hitcapped vs skull level mobs (bosses).
You (still) need 26 expertise (6.50%) to be expertise capped, not the 6.25% reported lately.
All melee classes seem to suffer a 4.8% crit suppression vs skull mobs; this means that your melee critrate will be on average 1.8% lower than your character sheet implies (HotC covers 3% of this, procs from librams and such not accounted for).
All spell attacks have a 3% crit suppression vs bosses. Because of HotC, we do not notice this at all; also only exorcism and holy wrath are affected by this.
The spell hit cap is still 17% - the only skills we have that are affected by this are exorcism, holy wrath, and consecrate ticks - so this is of little importance to us.

The Basic Rotation..

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

After many months of facerolling, sadly not much has changed and we still use FCFS (First Come First Serve) as our "rotation". What this means is basically that it is better to hit a dps skill that is off cooldown - any skill - rather than wait a second for a certain skill to be ready. In the event that multiple skills are off cooldown, use the clash resolution above to prioritize what to use first; these are sorted by DPS, not Damage per Cast.


..and why..

HoW - This skill only comes into play when a mob is at 20%; it then becomes your top priority due to it's extremely high crit rate and fairly short CD.

CS - CS hits like a limp noodle now but it still procs SoV, making it close to judgement in terms of dps. It is ahead of judgement because of the very short cd, and delaying a CS by even a second reduces your DPS by a large amount.

Judgement - JoV hits harder than Blood used to in 3.1, but still not quite hard enough to pull ahead of CS.

DS - Nothing changed about DS from 3.1 so it sits exactly where it did then.

Consecration - Consecration moves near the top of the pile only against multiple (4+) adds.

Exorcism - It hits hard, but because of it's somewhat long cooldown (15s) and reliance on spellhit, it isn't great dps. Do not use this on a pull because it will not be instant cast, and will delay entering melee combat.

Holy Wrath - Only effective against multiple (6+) demons/undead, you are better off using your free GCD casting DP or a SS on someone. This is as close to a mana dump skill as we have.

..and how to complicate it

Chicken spent some time figuring out exactly what buttons we will be pushing at what time period, so if you really want to micro then compare your usage to "ideal". This does not take bloodlust into account (for quicker consecrate/exorcism/DP GCDs), and assumes that you are using the correct glyphs. If you choose to use DP earlier (at 12 or 20.5), or use things like SS, Salv ect, you simply delay the entire sequence by 0.5 seconds. Obviously, YMMV as nobody plays with 0 latency/0 errors - it's best to stick with FCFS and be an adaptable hybrid.
Time Skill Used
0 Crusader Strike
1.5 Judgement
3 Divine Storm
4.5 Crusader Strike
6 Consecration
7.5 Exorcism
9 Crusader Strike
10.5 Judgement
12 Free Time
13 Crusader Strike
14.5 Divine Storm
16 Consecration
17.5 Crusader Strike
19 Judgement
20.5 Free Time
21.5 Crusader Strike
23 Exorcism
24.5 Divine Storm
26 Crusader Strike
27.5 Judgement
29 Consecration
30.5 Crusader Strike
32 Divine Plea
34.5 Repeat from start

Stats

(In order of importance!)
If you are looking for stat weightings I suggest you use one of the spreadsheets at the top, as they vary greatly depending on your current gear.

Hit
32.8 rating gives you 1% hit. At level 80, we require 263 hit rating, or 8%, to be hit capped on white swings, specials, and judgements. Note that Exorcism and Consecration are considered spells and use the spell hit table, thus we can still miss with these abilities. You need to be hitcapped in order to get your maximum dps. Hitcapping is extremely easy with gear alone and shouldn't be gemmed or enchanted for.

Strength
Our DPS stat to stack after the hitcap, as we have various talents that multiply it's effect. 1 STR gives you 2 AP baseline, multiplied by 1.15 from Divine Strength (Tier 1 Prot) giving us 2.3 AP per STR when specced. This number is further affected by buffs such as BoK. STR also increases the strength of our utility spells such as SS via talents, and the new SoV triple dips on STR. It is recommended that you gem all STR after you are hitcapped.

Expertise
Introduced in late BC, this stat allows us to remove dodges from the attack table - you cannot remove parries from the table, but you only get parried from the front, so don't attack bosses from the front! 8.2 rating gives 1 expertise; you need 214 expertise rating (26 expertise, 6.5%) to reach the cap. If you are a human using a sword/mace you need 23 expertise (189 rating), and if you are a dwarf using a mace you need 21 expertise (173 rating) to reach the cap due to racials. Capping this stat is a significant dps increase vs uncapped (or none at all) as it affects our whites and strikes. You ideally want to cap this stat alongside hit in order to maximize your dps and this is possible in 3.1/3.2 with the amount of expertise on gear. Do not gem for expertise, let it come naturally with gear or glyphs (see glyph section).

Crit
We are quite reliant on critical strikes to do damage. You can never really have too much crit, but it is not worth gemming for it, gem for STR instead. You need 45.9 crit rating to gain 1% crit at 80. This stat gains no benefits from raid buffs, but you get more per itemization point from crit than you do AGI. This stat also increases your spell crit rating, making it flat out superior to AGI.

Agility
We need 52.08 agility to gain 1% melee crit. Like stated before, crit is flat out better, however AGI does scale with raid buffs such as BoK where crit does not. Often found on leather, mail, or sometimes weapons, but not on plate.

Haste
Haste received some buffs in 3.1; namely for paladins we get 30% more haste from each rating point. Haste increases white damage and SoV damage by giving you a few more attacks against a boss; haste does NOT decrease the GCD on our strikes/judgements, but slightly decreases spell GCD (cons, exo). You will find plenty of it on our sets and pieces, don't enchant or gem for it. You need 32.7 baseline haste rating to gain 1% haste at 80, but adjusted with the 3.1 changes paladins require 25.2 haste rating for 1% haste. Despite all these buffs for haste, it still isn't a great stat for ret and should not be stacked or specifically aimed for.

Armor Penetration
ArP was buffed in 3.1 by 25% - but it still only affects 40% of our damage, meaning we received about a 10% increased benefit from this stat (as opposed to warriors who received a 25% increase), making it one of our least desired stats. 12.3 rating now gives you 1% armor piercing; unlike BC, you can no longer fully ignore boss or player armor via this stat. ArPen does NOT increase damage done by seals or judgements, just white damage, CS and DS.

Attack Power
Most of our skills scale off AP, but this stat is bottom of the melee barrel - STR is just so much better. AP isn't really seen on plate (so you often don't have to worry about this) but you will run into it if you dip into leather and mail. Note that despite AP having a 2:1 item stat budget, it is still far weaker than STR as we have no talents that boost it's effect. When comparing or considering pieces with AP vs plate, you need to look at the item stats/level as a whole.

Spellpower
Bad item stat for us. Spellpower increases some of our skills' coefficients, but at a rate much slower than STR/AP, and does nothing for our white damage and instant melee strikes - CS and DS gain nothing from spellpower. Avoid this stat (easy to do, since none of our ret gear has spellpower).

Intellect
As of 3.1, INT sucks due to JotW/SA changes. 1 INT gives you 15 mana and a negligible amount of spell crit; you need 166 INT to gain 1% spellcrit. INT will increase the mana you get from DP, and your total mana pool, nothing else. You will only find int on hunter/enh shaman gear and it is rare to find a piece of mail better than plate/leather. INT is not a ret stat.

Stamina, Armor
Ultimately, stam does nothing more than keep you alive in situations where there is raid damage, and in wrath there is a lot of raid damage. Most of the damage is magic (not mitigated by armor) therefor armor class does not matter to us, as we have no Armored to the Teeth talents like warriors or deathknights. You'll find all the stam you need and much much more on all wrath gear.

Mechanics

(Quirky!)
Several mechanics have changed since BC, most notably the Seal and Judgement systems.

The following scale off of both AP and Spellpower -
Seal of Command:
36% weapon damage

Judgement of Command:
19% weapon damage + 9% AP + 13% spell power

Seal of Vengeance: (see below for full details)
33% weapon damage + 2.5% AP + 1.3% spell power per tick

Judgement of Vengeance:
(1 + (.14 * AP) + (.22 * Spellpower)) * (1 + (0.1 * Stack Size))

Seal of Light:
15% AP + 15% spell power (healing proc)

Judgement of Light:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
2% of maximum hp (healing proc)

Seal of Wisdom:
4% of maximum mana (mana proc)

Judgement of Wisdom:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
2% of base mana (mana proc)

Judgement of Justice:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)

Consecration:
4% AP + 4% spell power per tick
(Final rank has 113 base damage per tick)

Exorcism:
15% AP + 15% spell power
(Final rank has 1028 base damage)

Hammer of Wrath:
15% AP + 15% spell power
(Final rank has 1139 base damage)

Holy Wrath:
7% AP + 7% spell power
(Final rank has 1050 base damage)

Sacred Shield:
75% spellpower

Our healing spells scale strictly off of Spellpower.

In addition to seals scaling from both AP and SP, ALL seals can now be triggered from our instant melee attacks, DS and CS. I'll cover the specific seals a bit further down.

Judgements

Blizzard finally came out and "settled" what we already knew for 3.2. All Judgements are considered melee attacks that cannot be dodged, parried or blocked. They cannot be used while silenced and can still miss if you are not hitcapped. If this is confusing for you, just think of them as ranged physical attacks that are capable of triggering melee events (beserking, AoW ect). Judgements do not stack, and the last/most recent person to judge will be credited with the effects (yes, non-divinity JoL's will overwrite divinity'd JoL's).

Judgement of Wisdom
This is a strong choice for your judgement to use due to equalized JoL and the removal of blood recoil. You want to keep JoW up or you and your mana using dps (hunters in particular) can run into mana troubles. JoW's mana return effect is limited to 15 PPM for spells and physical; because paladins use both, we can see a few more procs than other classes.

Judgement of Light
This was our primary judgement for 3.1, however it has been equalized among all paladin specs to return 2% max hp (it used to scale based on AP/SP). If there are 2 paladins in your raid, you want the prot or holy paladin to use this judgement, so you can keep JoW up. If there is heavy raid damage and you are the only paladin, JoL is a good choice. If you are specced into Divinity, JoL still does benefit from it.

Judgement of Justice
This is your judgement in pvp situations, as all the debuff does is limit movement speed to 100%. This is not considered a movement impairing effect, so freedom or druid shifting will not break it, it can only be pvp trinketed or dispelled. This effect only lasts 10 seconds in pvp, not 20 as the tooltip implies.

Seals

Seals scale off AP and Spellpower. Judging a seal no longer consumes the seal, seals have a 30 minute duration. Seals are NOT considered weapon imbues, and can no longer be dispelled. Seals trigger off instant attacks (CS, DS).

Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Corruption
SoV replaces blood (which has been removed from the game) as our primary dps seal. SoV is the biggest reason that STR is our best dps stat, because it is one of the few skills in the game that triple dip on a stat (once for AP, once for SP, once for AP affecting weapon damage). In case the wording on the skill is unclear, SoV has 2 parts to it - the DoT, and the proc. The proc is basically a weaker, modified Seal of Blood proc but without the recoil. The talent SotP increases the damage from the DoT and the proc (which results in a total dps increase of about 6.5%). It takes ~12 seconds in a raid buffed setting to get a 5 stack active. SoV has some odd functionality detailed below:

The seal procs will begin triggering from auto-attacks once you have 5 DoT stacks, however strikes will always trigger a seal proc (but not a DoT application). The table below shows the damage of the proc per DoT application:
Stack Number | % of Weapon Damage | % with SotP
1 6.6% 7.6%
2 13.2% 15.2%
3 19.8% 22.8%
4 26.4% 30.4%
5 33% 38%

When an auto-attack lands (does not dodge/parry/miss) that can proc a seal the of the following things happen independently of each other (see 2 roll system).

1) A "hidden strike" which uses melee combat mechanics occurs. If it lands it refreshes/stacks SoV DoT. Only white swings can trigger a refresh or stack.

2) A weapon damage based proc will occur if you used a special (CS/DS/judge) or if you have a 5 stack (from auto attacks). This attack can not be avoided.

Remember #2 happens regardless of #1 landing, it just requires the initial attack (autos, cs, etc) to land.

DoT functions and mechanics:
DoT application is melee hit/exp based. (Cannot be resisted like a spell, but can be dodged or parried)
DoT will still be applied even if your white swing is fully absorbed (in a PvP situation).
DoT is only applied via auto-attacks (whites).
DoT ticks always hit.
DoT ticks are reduced by partial resist on skull mobs, but not by players (it is holy damage).
DoT gains from CoE (and equivalents).

Seal Proc functions and mechanics:
Proc (after 5 stack/triggered from specials) can NOT be dodged or parried, it occurs as long as your initial white/strike lands.
Proc suffers from partial resists (it's holy damage).
Proc gains from CoE (and equivalents).
Proc can crit. (like SoB did)

One last note, which is it's odd interaction with other paladins' SoV stacks. If you do not have a DoT of your own on a target, but another ret or protection paladin does, your SoV proc's damage is based on their DoT stack (this will usually only occur with DS since it can hit non-targeted enemies). However, if you have even one DoT application on a target, your proc damage will then be based on your DoT stack. This simply means that protection paladins play very nicely with retribution paladins, as Hammer of the Righteous applies DoT stacks quickly to multiple targets, and then DS will hit up to 4 targets with fully charged SoV procs.

Seal of Righteousness
We haven't used this seal since we were leveling up, and it sickens me to say that it is now an option to use. This seal cannot crit, but also cannot miss or be dodged/parried (unless your white swing or special misses). While this seal doesn't benefit from 2H spec or weapon damage increases, it does benefit from SotP, which is in all our primary pve talent builds. With 5/5 SotP, SoR averages about 100 dps higher than SoC until you are in Ilvl 250+ gear. Judging SoR triggers an SoR proc.

Seal of Command
This is a weak option for a pvp seal. SoC has been retooled again; it is no longer ppm based, rather it triggers on every attack (like blood used to) and has no ICD. Judging is no longer a guaranteed crit vs stunned targets. SoC procs are still capable of criticals and follow all the standard melee attack rules. SoC pulls ahead of SoR only when fighting 3+ mobs that only live for 12s each. Judging SoC also triggers an SoC proc.

Strikes and DPS skills

These spells are used in the retribution skill rotation.

Consecration
Widely viewed as a necessary part of the retribution rotation, as our DPS is not very competitive without it. Should be used against both single and multiple targets. Consecration has some odd behavior on skull level mobs; the first tick can be fully resisted (miss) and subsequent ticks can also be partially resisted (due to mob level difference). You cannot work around the partial resists at all, but they are often small enough to not matter:

Hammer of Wrath
With the release of 3.0, this skill was buffed a substantial amount, to the point where it is used on cooldown vs targets under 20% health (due to deep ret talents that give this skill a 50% base crit chance, in addition to gear). It is now an instant ranged execute, but retains its' fixed mana cost. Using this skill does not reset your swing timer.

Exorcism
Chnaged again in 3.2. This is now usable on all mob types, can crit (based on your spell crit), and has 100% crit chance vs undead and demon mobs. It uses the spell hit table so you can still miss with this even if melee hitcapped. It has a base cast time of 1.5s which means you will never ever use this without an AoW proc available - when used with AoW it becomes instant and does not reset the swing timer. Note that because it is not a base instant cast it does not benefit from Benediction.

Holy Wrath
Also uses the spell hit tables, can crit. Has no target limit so it is very useful on certain fights with many undead/demon adds. Changed from a 60s cooldown/20yd range (BC) to a 30s cooldown/10yd range, and it now stuns all targets that it hits for 2s.

Divine Plea
You will need to use this to keep your mana up in both PvE and PvP. It scales off your total mana pool, and is dispellable. DP is usually responsible for 10% of our total mana income on bosses.

And of course, our talented instant attacks:

Divine Storm
Our 51 pt talent, it is basically the same as a warrior's whirlwind ability except that DS heals for negligible amounts. Despite it seeming like an underwhelming talent it is critical to our DPS as it can and will trigger seals and RV. This skill is normalized to 3.3 weapon speed.

Crusader Strike
Our still bland 41 pt talent, yet still crucial to our DPS as it also triggers seals and RV. CS no longer refreshes your or any other paladins' judgements. This skill is also normalized (to 3.3).

Special Talents

and their ..."specialness"
This is just to cover some talents that have odd quirks or interesting functionality.

Art of War
AoW seems like it becomes more important in pve, but realistically nothing has changed. Exorcism still has a 15 second cooldown, and the chances that you will not see a crit on the pull (7.5 seconds in) while raid buffed are 1.6%, while the chances you won't see a crit in 15 seconds is 0.2% - therefore there is no reason to stack crit or worry about not being able to use it every 15s. AoW has been changed to proc on all melee crits, which means whites, strikes and judgements, but not seal procs.

Righteous Vengeance
Once again stealing from the warriors! The RV dot does indeed "roll" like the warrior version, meaning critical judgements and DS's in succession will refresh the dot duration, not overwrite it. The RV dot is a magic effect and thus dispellable, can be partially resisted by bosses, but is not mitigated by armor.
How RV rolls:


It adds the new critical damage onto any remaining damage in the dot and then resets the duration with the new damage total. There is absolutely no need to maintain the stack in any fashion, the stack falling off does not cause you to lose dps.


Sheath of Light
One of our most exciting talents for wrath. This talent helps to increase our damage because of the way we double-dip in AP and SP, gives retribution paladins heals actually worth casting/using, and makes STR that much more important. Sacred Shield finally also scales from spellpower granted by this talent. The healing portion of this talent acts the same way as RV; getting a crit heal while still having a sheath hot active "rolls" (see above). This effect stacks with the SS hot, meaning using a FoL on yourself (with SS active) and getting a crit results in a 130% strength HoT.

Sacred Shield
Since this spell now works properly as retribution you can expect to be using it a lot, it is fairly potent when combined with Divine Guardian. Using this does not reset the swing timer. Sacred Shield also has a 6s ICD even when talented, so it is capable of refreshing itself every 6 seconds, even if the 'old' shield has not been fully used up. With 3.2, having SS active on a target and using FoL results in a hot; it does not require that the shield be triggered, only the SS buff. Note that any paladin can get the hot from any other paladin's SS (example: a holy paladin uses FoL on the tank, and the tank has used SS on himself, resulting in a hot).

Divinity
This has an odd double dipping interaction with your own heals (JoL, DS heals) which causes it to multiply twice, like so: (original heal number) * 1.05 *1.05. It is taken in pve builds only when you are trying to get to DSac. If you pick up this talent, you may want to use JoL and have other paladins use JoW.

Divine Sacrifice
A powerful raid cooldown, when used in combination with the bubble you effectively give your entire raid 30% damage reduction for 10s (as damage "immune'd" by the bubble does not count towards the break limit**). Divine guardian increases the damage redirected to you from 30% to 40%.

**After many months of testing, logging and data combing, it appears that the damage "immune'd" by the bubble actually does count towards the 150% limit. However, DSac very often absorbs much much more while under the bubble. This is because of latency; often times we use DSac while the raid is taking enormous amounts of damage (for example, a Freya3 ground tremor) and the game simply cannot sync the damage taken with the limit in the 1 second window that it occurs in. In other words, to get the maximum possible benefit out of DSac, you need to use it at the last possible second before the raid takes damage, to ensure that the limit threshold is not eaten by you absorbing your tank's steady damage, but rather the entire raid's in that split second moment of pain.

Talent Options

There are several talents that provide (de)buffs that can already be covered by other specs, or are highly situational, so let's look at situations and numbers below. Many of these can be juggled or dropped to gain other talents if they are already covered, giving us some freedom in our talent choices. Tailor your spec by using the core spec provided above, and finding out what you already have covered in your raid.

Divine Sacrifice -
Was absolutely required for 3.1 raiding, time will tell for 3.2. It is high enough in the protection tree that we can reach this by sacrificing one point from one of the talents below. Typically only ret and holy paladins will have this, so keep that in mind.

Heart of the Crusader -
This is a critical debuff to have in your raids, however it is early enough in the tree that both protection and holy paladins can reach this. This is also covered by an elemental shaman and does not stack.

Vindication -
Turned into an actual debuff in 3.2, our "demo shout" requires no thought or resources to apply, thus saving your druid/warrior/warlock friends a GCD and some rage/mana. It's situational because this is a mandatory talent for protection paladins, so if you raid with one then you don't need this (ps go make friends with a prot paladin). Demo shout is superior for AoE situations like Anub's adds, because vindication only procs on attacks (such as DS) and not from consecration - Vindication is superior for single targets because it is applied on your first melee attack and is basically a passive debuff.

Swift Retribution -
Another required buff for your raid, but if you have a moonkin in your roster who is always present, he can provide this buff (does not stack).

Divinity -
Due to JoL no longer scaling this talent has diminished value. It is still increases JoL healing, but only from 2.0% to 2.1% of max hp (2.2% on yourself only).

Glyphs, Gems, Consumables, Enchants, Professions

I won't mention horrible glyphs, because they are horrible! Some glyphs are of debatable use, and there are (slightly) better uses for the slots, so they are also left out.

If you don't want to know why we choose the glyphs, then the TLDR is: Judgement, Cons, SoV for majors, Sense Undead for minors.


Recommended Major PvE Glyphs

[Glyph of Judgement]
This is your primary glyph as retribution. 10% more damage on one of our primary attacks is mandatory.

[Glyph of Consecration]
This is a PvE glyph, it saves a ton of mana and some GCD clashes over the course of a fight (worth 108mp5). With our GCD as locked as it is this is also a mandatory pve glyph.

[Glyph of Seal of Vengeance]
We now have the option of glyphing for 10 expertise! This glyph grants exactly what it says, 10 expertise (82 rating, 2.5%) when using our primary dps seal. This is a decent option if you are under the expertise cap or if you want to use other stronger items in place of expertise items. It's worth noting that if you benefit from even half of the expertise (example, glyph puts you at 31 expertise) it is more dps than the exo glyph. The main benefit of this glyph is a lot of freedom in gear choices, as you can drop weaker expertise pieces.

[Glyph of Exorcism]
An option if you are naturally expertise capped, or perhaps for pvp. This glyph is worth ~50 dps, and as noted above you can gain more from using freed itemization on non-expertise gear.

[Glyph of Seal of Command]
PvP glyph? Explains itself.

Recommended Minor Glyphs

[Glyph of Sense Undead]
1% damage to undead, in an expansion filled with undead mobs. PvE glyph, even if there are no undead in ulduar...

[Glyph of Lay on Hands]
Self explanatory, taken for lack of decent minor glyphs.

The other four minor glyphs are your choice for the last minor slot. They aren't particularly useful in pve or pvp situations, but they can save you a reagent here and there.


Recommended Gems

Sometimes you will have to ignore socket bonuses because they are terrible! This is more a guide for when you want to meet such requirements. We finally have epic gems available, and so rare cuts have been removed from the lists. Due to JC changes (removal of the prismatic portion of the dragon's eyes) all paladins are equalized in gemming options.

Metas:

[Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]
This is the preferred meta, simply because of fairly easy gem requirements. You do lose between .5 and 1 DPS between this and the CSD but you gain more DPS by not using 2 blue gems. Do not use [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] because 2 blue gems suck.

Prismatic:
You will be using one (and only one) of these to fulfill your meta requirement. Use it in a blue slot, preferably one with a good socket bonus (like str).

[Nightmare Tear]

Red slots:
You will be gemming pure STR in everything.
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]

Yellow slots:
Hit gems should not be necessary as hit gear is plentiful - but if you REALLY want those socket bonuses...
[Etched Flawless Ametrine]

Blue slots:
If you can't find a prismatic gem for your meta you can use one of these. Using more than one blue gem results in a DPS loss.
[Sovereign Dreadstone]


Professions

The quick and dirty of it is, if you are min-maxing every point you can get, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the strongest combo for ret pve (because STR is far superior to AP). Tailoring and the gathering professions are the weakest.

Profession perks:


JC: 42 Strength (34 str vs. 20 str)
BS: 40 Strength (extra 2 sockets)
Alchemy: 80 AP (Using 180 AP Flask + 1 more hour on flasks)*
LW: 80 AP (Bracer enchant)
Enchanting: 80 AP (2x Ring enchants)
Inscription: 80 AP (Shoulder enchant + no need to do Sons dailies)
Engineering: Glove enchant (Use effect worth ~57 haste) at the expense of 44 AP, or rockets worth ~55 dps
Tailoring: Embroidery on cloak (proc worth ~90 AP) at the expense of 22 agility
Skinning: 40 Crit Rating
Herbalism: None

*A special note on alchemy's new flask ([Flask of the North]): because this flask does not stack with other flasks and does not benefit from mixology, you will be using Endless Rage flasks like the rest of us for pve. However for pvp, you will get 40 STR from drinking the flask, making it on par with Blacksmithing.


Enchants

Bolded enchants are what you should be using at endgame levels (the good/expensive stuff).

Head: [Arcanum of Torment]
Shoulders: [Greater Inscription of the Axe] / [Lesser Inscription of the Axe]
Chest: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats / Enchant Chest - Super Stats
Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed / Enchant Cloak - Major Agility
Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault / Enchant Bracers - Striking /
Hands: Enchant Gloves - Crusher / Enchant Gloves - Precision (if hit is a problem)
Legs: [Icescale Leg Armor]
Feet: Enchant Boots - Icewalker (unless you are way over hitcap, use this) / Enchant Boots - Greater Assault
Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Berserking / Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre / Enchant 2H Weapon - Greater Savagery

How berserking works: Berserking is a ppm based proc, similar to mongoose (1.2 ppm) - in a raid environment it has a ~35% uptime. It can only trigger off attacks flagged as melee attacks and melee specials (Judgements, CS, DS, white swings). Napkin math shows that in a scenario with a 35% uptime, the enchant is worth ~135AP on average, and up to/more than ~250AP if RNG favors you - in both normal and lucky cases, it is clearly the superior weapon enchant.

Consumables

Flasks and elixirs:

Just flask, they last the same time amount as an elixir and last through death.
[Flask of Endless Rage]

Food:

More interesting choices this time around - you have traditional STR food, in addition to some new foods that actually support our double-dipping into AP/SP. Dragonfin and Fish Feast are roughly equivalent:
[Dragonfin Filet]
[Fish Feast]

Potions: (it might be wise to carry a stack of each)

[Runic Mana Potion] If you have mana issues
[Potion of Speed] If you don't


Tier 9

T9 is of course better than all previous gear, because of a great 2pc and a huge itemlevel jump (from 226 to 258?!). Time will tell if the 4pc is better or worse than offset gear, but equipping 2pc T9 is a must.



Maths:
RV damage average: 7% of our total dps
Average critrate in a raid: 45%
(45*7)% = 3.15

2pc: Allowing RV ticks to crit results in a ~3% dps boost, which is by far the best 2pc we have had so far. As is the case with most wrath sets, this scales with your gear (as more STR increases the dot strength, and more crit means it will crit more often). Expect to see this used everywhere, in both pve and pvp.

4pc: 5% more crit to our judgements is paltry and probably our worst set bonus in wotlk. It works out to a ~0.5% dps increase.

Macros

You can get by just fine without them, but these are helpful in many situations.

Cleanse on mouseover

#showtooltip Cleanse
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Cleanse; [help] Cleanse; [target=targettarget, help] Cleanse


Auto-attack / CS if possible

#showtooltip Crusader Strike
/startattack
/cast Crusader Strike

Start autoattack with DS

#showtooltip Divine Storm
/startattack
/cast Divine Storm

Hammer of Wrath on mouseover

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=targettarget,harm][] Hammer of Wrath

Salv on mouseover (yes I like mouseover macros okay?)

#showtooltip Hand of Salvation
/cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Hand of Salvation; [help] Hand of Salvation

You can modify the Salv macro to other things like HoP, HoSac, HoF ect.

Basically SoC only for AoE packs that are gonna die fast, SoR as an inbetweener, and SoV on longer single target stuff

Soc on thrash if there is +3 and they die within 12 secs otherwise SoR beats it.

HoR is also turning out to be a massive dps boost on certain fights i hit XTs heart last night for 8k with it
8k crit from something off the gcd is nice anyway you look at it

Finding SoR to be incredbly effective, even without the glyph, was doing yoggy 1light last night using only SoR in p1 adds, p2 for the illusion tentacles + brain, and the damage was very nice. its always fun to oneshot a tentacle with an 8k judgement too

I been using SoR and my damage has gone up alot, I glyph for it.

yeah atm its a waste of a talent point to even take command, its only good for lvling it seems

Soon as we start getting pro weapons like the ones that drop in heroic CC and the gear to match (which wobbles wont see for a very long time) or one of the PvP weaps (also he wont see, ever probs) then SoR is about my best bet, I tried it out in BGs and Instances.

SoR for Trash then go SoV for bosses i even glyphed for it as on certain fights its better i.e. yoggy p1+2, Freya p1 and such