2.3 is Upon Us!

It's the night before 2.3 and all through the server all the arena teams were stirring, to get all their points.

It doesn't rhyme, eat it. We find ourselves on 2.3s Eve without much to do. You've still got another week to bank arena points. If you're not at honor cap then what the hell have you been doing for the last 2 months? I farmed some gold and actually did my dailies. Besides that we can all just dream of 15% run speed and 6 second CS. However, it's easy to get caught up in what we didn't get instead of what we did. Here's a recap of everything we did end up getting in 2.3

• Cleanse range 40 yards.
• 6 second Crusader Strike.
• 30% threat reductions tacked onto Fanaticism.
  
• HoW mana cost reduced.
• Precision gets 3% spell hit
• Pursuit of Justice is now 15% run speed and 3% reduction on spells landing on your for 3 points.
• Sanctified Crusader for undispellable seals and 3% melee and spell crit.
• Vengeance increased to 30 seconds.
• Vindication reduces ALL stats.
• Weapon Expertise grants 10% stamina also.
• Resilience on Vindicator's gear.
  

So yeah, mostly ret buffs. There's some ret "nerfs" too, but hey, let's see how it all pans out before we all go jumping off the deep end. I'm going to be doing my best to run my decent 3s rating into the ground this coming week so I can give an honest report on how we're doing in there. Next week I'll let you know what it's like with 250+ resil (and no spelldmg lol). Also, I'll get some meters and WWS posted from my guilds ZA runs this coming weekend. All in all I feel this will be a strong standing for ret, both pve and pvp. Going forward it can only get better... right?

So, you can't kill a healer

Healers seem to be getting everyone's goat these days. With resilience capping out and stamina easily over 10k, healers are the new pvp tanks. Ret can have problems when dealing with them but here's some tips to help you kill a healer (most of the time).

1) Don't go all out early on. Let your seal and white swings do the work for awhile so you stack vengeance or just wear away at their mana pool. Don't worry about CCs right off the bat, let them happen if they're intent on doing it.
2) CS every time it's up. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
3) If they're spam dispelling you, use rank 1 seals. Not an issue in a week. Priests will use [i]much[/i] more mana trying to remove your seal than you will sealing up rank 1.
4) Once you have them at about 50% from just swinging and CSing it's time to blow them up. If you're reasonably sure you won't be CCd in the next 6 seconds throw your HoJ right before your next swing, trinket, judge, CS. This should get them relatively low if they haven't pvp trinketed out. If they're not dead and just really low it's time to use your next interrupt before they heal. Wait until the very end of whatever they're trying to cast and use repentance. Now you have 6 seconds. Heal, reseal, dance, and then judge command. If they're STILL not finished off then if you're lucky enough to be BE, arcane torrent and HoW. During this whole HoJ/repentance cycle it's important to be very fast on the defensive abilities. Trinket out of fears/stuns, bubble if you really have to.

Here's some class specific tips.
Druid) JoJ. JoJ. JoJ. Catch them out of form with your hammer. If they're in bear form they're not healing anyone so put pressure on someone else while they waddle around. If they're your only target then keep on them and don't burn too much mana on judgements. If they pop frenzied regen (especially if they had no rage to begin with) stop attacking them. Hell, sit down and drink if they'll let you. Chances are good they'll freak out and burn stuff they really shouldn't if you do that, like feral charge and bash.
Priest) Just let the seal and swings do the talking. Don't trinket out of the first fear unless you're positive you can get back on them and finish them off in that time. Let them spam dispel you, it costs them a GCD and plenty of mana. If they mana burn you jump around like a madman. Healers aren't always used to people getting behind them while they cast because they rarely need to cast offensively.
Shaman) Rank 1 seals because purge is cheap, but not as cheap as rank 1. Judge something on them, whatever you like, because they can't remove it from themselves. Watch for grounding totems that will eat your HoJ and repentance. Use HoJ when their earth shield is down or on another target.
Paladin) lol You should know exactly what it takes here. If they're stacking resilience to the heavens they really have no serious healing power and you can just stand there auto attacking waiting for vengeance to stack. Once you get some lucky crits drop the hammer and let them have it. If they choose to use BoP remember that you can keep them locked down for the entire duration of it with repentance and HoJ, also judgements and HoW aren't affected by BoP.

In a situation where a healer doesn't have to be your main target it's often a better strategy to just remove them with your stuns and interrupts and kill the person they're supporting.

Mana Regen or "The Stat That Never Was"

Mp5. Stack it, lack it, love it, hate it. It's a stat that's been put all over our gear for all of our specs. Holy, prot and ret have all had or have gear that is loaded with MP5.

Holy’s >t5 stuff is stuffed something fierce with spell crit which I believe was a shortsighted mistake when the illumination nerf hit. All that gear was probably designed just before the devs decided that holy was just too damn good. The fact that they keep sticking us with overstuffed crit rating on fresh gear is beyond me (ala S3 Redemption). However, there’s a lot to be said about spell crit for the holy tree but the consensus is still mp5 > crit. Here is a recent discussion about it. Mp5 = good for holy. End of story. The other specs it’s not so cut and dry.

Prot hates mp5. Or does it? Initially all of our new tiered prot gear was given some amount of mp5. The community bitched and moaned until it was removed. Why was it so bad for the tiered sets? Spiritual Attunement. SA is probably the single best ability we received with the advent of 2.0 and yet it seems like it was totally overlooked by Blizzard at first. Holy was getting too much of a buff from it via Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch. Prot paladins everywhere cried. They removed the ability of SA to regenerate mana if the paladin’s health was full. In general a huge nerf for the ability but prot felt it the most. Mp5 such a bad idea still? Yes. There’s never a time that the miniscule amount of mana regenerated through that stat on gear would benefit a prot paladin enough to make it worth its extremely high budget cost. Except on the Righteous gear. On Righteous I propose that it is actually better to have mp5 because often times in 5 mans the tank isn’t taking enough damage for SA to have an effect. Had they never nerfed SA then who cares? But they did and so Righteous is budgeted properly for this, although it could serve to lose some int for stam. Then you realize you’re supposed to walk into Karazhan and tank in the blues you’ve collected in instance. Righteous now sucks. Luckily the tiered gear was remedied of this paradox but it still makes the gap between blue mp5 stat'd prot gear to heavy stam epic gear a difficult one. There’s no reason that deep in the prot tree there shouldn’t be an improved SA talent to revert it back to its old function or simply increase the amount of mana gained from the base effect.

Ret hates mp5. Even more than prot. It’s just not enough bang for the buck on the gear. It simply does not have the value of pure dps stats and it cannot compensate for simply chain potting. Mp5 talent? No. In complete exposition here, ret doesn’t have mana problems. As long as you’ve specced properly there’s no reason to run into mana issues. These mana issues ret encounters are primarily in pvp and that’s the same place plenty of other low-int high-dps geared classes run into problems. Mages have a paltry amount of int on their arena gear and are able to kill/support just as long as we are. Sure, they’ve got things like mana gems and evocate, but in the end everybody can sit and drink. In an arena any larger than 2s you should be getting plenty of mana back from SA, certainly enough to compensate for the (currently) shit poor evo and 1 or 2 mana gems a mage can use. SA is a godsend for ret and anybody grouping with a healer that has at least a taco sized brain will know that you get mana back from their heals, prolonging not only your life but their own. The answer to ret’s mana problems are not in a new or piggy back talent (although I’ll welcome one with open arms if Blizz ever decides they’re feeling generous), it’s in intelligent play and cooperation between team members.

Tips for keeping your mana up in pvp as ret:

1) Use rank 1 consecration. Unless you’re sitting on a phat mana pool that leaves room for a 660 mana dot, then there’s no need to use top rank. The extra DPS simply isn’t enough to make a difference. Even with 300+ spell damage it’s just not going to make or break your fight. Use consecration for breaking stealth, preventing bandaging or anything else you need a dot effect for, just don’t use it for its sick deeps.

2) Have your partner heal you. If you’re grouping with someone who can heal, hybrid or not, let them heal you and you can heal them. It’s not necessarily mana efficient but its mana conserving. That little extra you get could be enough to get off a finishing judgement. If you’re with a dedicated healer then better still. Make sure they know how SA works and keep your blue rage up.

3) Sit and drink. I can’t count how many times people have just continued to fight a losing battle when they could have saved themselves and the others they were fighting with just by running around a corner and drinking. Arena water isn’t expensive, in fact it’s cheap. Uncap that honor you’re saving for next season and pick up a couple stacks; it’ll save your life.

4) Pot. It’s frowned upon, I know, but it’s perfectly ok to use a token purchased pot in a BG. Sure, you can’t rely on them in the arena, but it’s sure nice to have them in a clutch.

5) Use rank 1 SoC. If you don’t plan on judging it, why seal up top tank? Or, if you’re getting spam dispelled then you can burn the other person’s mana by using the lowest rank. Whatever version of dispel they may be using on you I guarantee it costs more mana than rank 1 SoC. This is a moot point come next patch, but hell, it’s always good to know now.

If ret receives an mp5 talent, so be it. If it doesn’t, I won’t be crying. I’d much rather see the ap to sd talent implemented before mp5. I can understand that Alliance paladins might have more issues with mana in a raid because of the difference in SoC and SoB costs and function, but there’s always Dark Runes, right? Maybe we’ll get both (yeah right, neither is more likely) but if we do, hurray. If not, learn2drink.

Ret Arena Viability in 2.3, Gear

Happy Halloween, or is it Hallows End? Anyway, with 2.3 fast approaching paladins of all kinds (specifically ret ones) are shitting all over themselves in anticipation. What I haven't really seen discussed at length is the future viability of ret in arena.

If you're smarter than half a stick of gum you know that ret isn't entirely non-viable. Check some of the arena teams on the Armory Links to the right and you'll see some ratings that aren't ludicrously low. Of course it's no MS warrior or SL/SL warlock. With a hefty load of skill and the right selection in gear one can progress respectably in the arena ladder. Since my short break I recently dropped out of my teams as holy and joined some close friends on a 3v3 for fun. I haven't played much but I hope to get some more practice in before 2.3. Although, 2.3 will be a new game for ret paladins in arena. No more spam dispelling seals, hunters will dominate us (even more) and we'll be able to catch up to even the quickest of targets (given enough time). If people open up to the idea of having a ret paladin on their team they might find out that its not as repulisive as they initially thought.

What a ret paladin brings to a 3v3 or 5v5 (2v2 is justified in its own right) is what a holy paladin brings. Defensive dispel, BoF, BoP, JoJ and his personal bubble. If you've got 2 healers already but no defensive magic dispel a ret paladin is an awesome choice. The amount of burst a ret paladin can bring to the table is almost on the level of a rogue or warrior. In the right situations I'd go so far as to say that ret burst can't be matched against certain targets. However, taking both the roll of dps and defensive buffer is a tough one and shouldn't be taken lightly. Look at hunters in top arena teams currently, they are the best of the best and they don't need a ranged dispel or MS shot. They're job can range from keeping poisons up on a target to protecting viper sting, wound poison or drain mana to taking out totems and killing pets. It's not an easy job and that's why you don't see a ton of hunters in the top end of arena. Ret paladins would be required to do that same amount of micro management. BoP isn't a task to be taken lightly; it can easily be the deciding factor between a win and a loss. BoSac is a way to keep ourselves from being CC'd and take a bit of the healing burden off a single target if used at top rank. BoF not only for ourselves, but if we're running with a warrior, rogue or hunter that might need it. It's impossible to overstate the usefulness of JoJ in arena, especially when taking out a dr00d or other runner. We too can debuff spam with low rank judgements (at the right times) and vindication. Not only all that but we can still heal. It might be a laughable amount, but sometimes a laughable amount is all it takes to turn the tide in our favor. Through combinations of bubbling and throwing BoLs there's no end to how useful that little bit of extra healing nudge can help. Even if we go oom, there's always arena water. Dispeller, buffer, healer and burst damage extraordinaries, ret paladins shouldn't be the lolfreekill they've been made out to be.

One of the reasons that ret has gotten a reputation for being a squishy is the utter lack of resilience gear available. In case you didn't know all of the current ret gear has no resil budgeted onto it except in socket bonuses. Veteran's Scaled Bracers, Merciless Gladiator's Scaled Helm, Merciless Gladiator's Scaled Shoulders are currently the only ret paladin specific pieces that have any resil on them at all. Beyond that we can pick up the usual melee necklace, rings and trinkets but we're certainly not reaching the cap by any stretch. We can still do the mix and match S1 and S2 set bonuses but that'll change next patch. What else will change next patch is our lack of resil on individual peices. S3, aka Vengeful (fitting, hu?) Gladiator gear will have resilience on the Gladiator's Vindication (the ret set). Rejoice! There's a catch though, it's having all of its spell damage removed and our gear looks like the warrior stuff with intellect added. Is this a good thing? It's still yet to be seen whether or not we will receive an AP to SD talent or not but I'll get into that later. What's important is the addition of resilience on every piece of gear available. (Source) In that screenshot it hasn't been updated that the Vindicator's Scaled pieces from honor have also been adjusted to lose their SD in favor of str (Source, thanks Sigurd!). PvP tanks inc. This change is leading everyone to the assumption that we will be getting the fated AP to SD talent similar the shaman's Mental Quickness. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of that.

Resil is great but I don't think anyone will argue that a portion of our survivability and group support comes from our ability to heal. By removing all of the sd from S3 gear we're left with only BoL to bump our heals past base amounts, but BoL is a base ability so this is a moot argument. Even without looking at the coefficients that SoC/JoC and CS get from sd there's a gap in both damage and survivability. Sure, the extra str makes up for that dmg but what if we did get an ap to sd talent? Disregarding that S1, S2, T4, T5, and T6 gear may need to be reworked around this concept (assuming the difference in dps from str vs. sd would be enough to justify it) it's a very attractive offer. An ap or str (more likely it would be ap as to not limit gear choice, but knowing Blizzard...) to sd talent would need to be deep in the tree, hopefully linked to something we're already forced to take to avoid talent bloat. Two-Handed Weapon Specialization has been brought up as a prime candidate for the tack-on. This is due to it's location out of reach of a shockadin and completely unattractive to any reasonable prot build. Also I believe there was a lot of talk of sticking threat reduction here too, but we know where that ended up. It just makes the most sense. However any talent deep in the tree would do, like Sanctified Judgement. What would that mean in terms of gearing? S3 becomes redonk. Alliance paladins can easily take more warrior oriented plate without looking back and melee specific accessories become even more valuable. Would this break the class? No. Would it bump us to the level we need to be at in S3 gear to be completely viable in the arena. Yes. Ret paladins everywhere are twiddling their thumbs in anticipation of some fresh PTR patch notes.

Spec

Since this project is still in its infancy I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about the basics of being a paladin, and what's more basic than your spec? If you're reading this you're probably already familiar with the three trees available, Holy, Protection and Retribution. All three have their own merits but not all three are viable at any given time. Admittedly I have most of my experience in Holy and Ret but I don't lack insight into Prot entirely. Let me expound on my personal experience with each.

On my Alliance paladin I always strove to be an outstanding healer. That is after I leveled as Ret. I understood the importance of MP5, spell crit, and the utter bullshit that was spirit on our gear. It amazed me, however, that Judgement could masquerade as a PvE set when it was clearly superior PvP gear. But I digress. Once I leveled my BE paladin (again as ret) I hit the upper 60s and went holy. Honestly with the gear provided by quests in the upper 60s I can say that holy and ret level at a similar rate: slow. I wish I had been savvy to the prot AoE grinding that has come into fashion but at the time it was just a spark. At 70 my friends were still running instances to gear up and were short a tank. I gladly filled this roll by going prot. For a good period of time I did normal instances and some heroics as prot. The threat generated was unmatched by both prot warriors and feral druids at the time and I relished it. Eventually we had run the usual instances into the ground and enough 70s were popping up to begin raids. I eagerly specced holy and was quickly swept up into Karazhan runs. Ah, holy. It's a love hate relationship. My intentions as holy were to be the top healer in every group or raid I was in. There's no shame in admitting that I was one of those BE pallys that stacked spell critical strike like it wasn't going to be nerfed. Eventually Illumination got the nerf bat that it (rightfully?) deserved and I almost quit the game from it. Luckily WoW is like some kind of crack and there's no way to quit. After some moping and leveling of alts I got back into raiding as holy and gathered gear for both ret and prot. Most recently my IRL schedule has prevented me from raiding and I went back to my old love, ret, for some good ol' pvp fun. Some might call me bandwagon due to the 2.3 changes but oh well, I call it "incentive." If you're interested in what builds are the most popular throughout the world check out this awesome blog here. With that cleared up let me get into a discussion of the merits of each build and what I've learned from personal experience, ages of forum crawling and some good old fashioned theorycrafting.

Holy
Certainly the "strongest" of our 3 builds. Desired by pvpers and pvers alike. A build based around one of the most mana efficient spells in the game (Flash of Light) and one of the most inefficient (Holy Light). The actual talents in the tree primarily focus on spell critical strikes. Spell crit used to be the overwhelmingly best choice for stacking a stat when speccing holy. Since 2.1 it's not a horrible choice for a stat, but - at least in the early raiding game - it's not the best. Some will argue it's a stronger choice than mana per 5, but in the end a good balance is key. Here's some common holy builds (look at all the variation!):

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxuMxzhektxMphMc
Most common PvE/PvP build. Arguably the only build that is equally viable for both arena and raiding these days for any class. Points in Aura Mastery and Blessed Life are mix and matchable anywhere you'd like. I often place both of those in Imp Wisdom cause I'm cool like that. Honestly I don't know if I can justify the 9mp5 for 2 talent points, but hell, how often does Blessed Life proc with 1 point and how often are people outside the radius of your aura when it's needed? It's also worth noting that the 1 point in (the most lackluster 41 point talent in the game) Divine Illumination could potentially be dropped into Blessing of Sanctuary. BoSanc would be a much more appealing talent if it reduced damage from each tick of a DoT... but it doesn't. Picking up BoSanc might be a good idea if your raid needs a little added boost to your tanks, otherwise it has relatively little use in pvp from my understanding of its current mechanics.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVEhMxz0xsxZVf0tr0z
The Shockadin. This particular build is very solo-centric and should only be used by those looking to go all out spell DPS. I'm not a fan of this kind of build because it feels a lot like a "3 minute paladin pvp video" set up. It has its merits and utilizes almost every beneficial spelldmg enhancing talent the paladin has available. Conviction and Seal of Command are only there for judging on stunned targets. For a more group support oriented build take points out of Blessed Life and drop them in Light's Grace, in addition swap points from Improved Seal of Righteousness into Sanctified Light.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVxudgzGeotxMuZx
The Buffbot. Everything a paladin has to offer in way of improved buffs except Blessing of Sanctuary. By sacrificing any kind of self preserving talent you can become a full time raid healer and buffer. It's often touted that 5 points for 44 AP in Improved Blessing of Might is a waste, but in all honestly anything beyond BoK in prot is a waste for raiding. There's 1 junk point in Unyielding Faith that you can re-appropriate to taste, I've only left it there so you can see it.

Protection
The opinions of prot are all over the place. Whether you're a lover or a hater there's certainly value in having a protection paladin in specific situations. End game raiding values prot for it's unmatched ability to tank multiple mobs; 5 man instances have the same appreciation for it. Between Heroic Botanica and Hyjal Summit there's a glaring gap though. The largest issue with prot, and any raiding prot paladin will tell you this, is their low stamina. Prot paladins have to place the most points overall into one tree to be effective tanks, more so than both druids and warriors. This leaves little room for flexibility (as if there was any to begin with) and is also where we run into talent bloat. I'm not going to start ranting about how efficient feral talents are, but if you make a tanking focused build for both a paladin and a druid you'll start to wonder where the "hybrid" part of paladin went. Understand that as prot there is only one thing you can do: tank. There really isn't a prot pvp build, you can't really be both an effective healer and tank as prot and generally you're going to have a difficult time soloing (or at least a very long time soloing). On the bright side there is high demand for tanks in 5 man groups (at least on Bleeding Hollow) and gearing yourself won't be nearly as difficult come 2.3, not to mention you'll have more stamina in 2.3... Oh hell, let's just get to the builds and talk about those.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVrtIx0dgTqzVbx
The current "It" build for prot. Whether your 5 manning or raiding this is essentially what you'll be looking at. With this build you're a threat powerhouse on multiple mobs. There are variations with points from One-Handed Weapon Specialization and Precision in different spots, but the other talents are what people will gravitate towards. When making a prot build it's important to always ask about a talent, "How does this keep my ass alive?" and then evaluate what you're sacrificing to get it.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVMtIx0dgMqtVbx0o
The "2.3" build. In 2.3 the big change is that Weapon Expertise will include 10% more stamina. That's huge. Without going to check I think that'd the single biggest bang for your buck stamina talent any tank has (lol warlocks). Also the value of both Precision and Pursuit of Justice is being increased for the desperate prot paladin. Precision will include an equal amount of spell hit (which is the mechanic Seal and Judgement of Righteousness work on) and Pursuit will have 1/2/3% not to be hit by spells. The biggest problem here is the sacrifice of already tried and true talents for these new additions. The new Weapon Expertise will be indispensable, but can points be removed from things like Reckoning and Anticipation (if crushing immune) to pick up the shiny new talents? Personally I don't have enough endgame raiding experience to know, but I'm sure those that are lucky enough to be on the front lines will be able to tell us soon.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVMtIMhzgMqZVft0Mbz
I almost didn't include this build. After consideration I decided that it's a good idea for people to wrap their heads around alternative builds because we often get set into certain specs and talents and don't want to look elsewhere for utility. I call this the "porcupine" build, and I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with it. The idea is to make it so unattractive to hit you that people just completely avoid you. I'm not entirely sure what situations this would be good in, but I imagine it might have a use somewhere, including in AoE griding (which I have relatively little experience in). Primarily you wouldn't want to start any fights because your offensive and healing abilities are close to that of a regular prot build, where you'd excel is in annoying the shit out of rogues, warriors and whoever else decided to engage you in melee. I rethought Sanctity Aura but then ended up leaving it because the point really can't find a home anywhere else; and it'd give you a (dull) edge on casters who wouldn't see as much pain as melee attackers.

Retribution
My first love. Undoubtedly I'm not the only person to drool over the old videos of Cromfel, Akcope and the like. A spec that saw no love until Crusader Strike was introduced and suddenly everyone was running from the pvp beasts. It's never been a particularly weak spec, but there are talents within that don't fully shine without the aid of CS. The talents themselves are confused about what they want to be, pve, pvp and somewhere inbetween. This is the only tree that I'm going to go through and do a talent-by-talent analysis of.

Improved Blessing of Might: 5 points for 44 attack power. It doesn't scale. It's always 44 AP. Picked by the occasional raiding ret paladin and often picked up by buffbots. In my opinion it can cause more trouble than it's worth in a raid or group because if one paladin has imp might (god forbid in less than 5 points) and another one doesn't, or has less than 5 points in it, he can't buff over the other paladin. Not a huge issue, but can lead to the horribly obnoxious, "HUNTARS NEED MIGHT!" comments over vent. What it comes down to: is 5 points worth 44 AP to you?

Benediction: The more popular brother to imp might. In all actuality 15% reduced cost on judgements and seals isn't huge. Subtracting peas from peanuts essentially. However, in a raid environment, when a ret paladin stacks strength and crit they need all the mana they can get and this talent starts to look a lot better. Personally, I always take it when I'm speccing ret, pve or pvp.

Improved Judgement: Untalented Judgement has a 10 second cooldown. This takes it down to 8 seconds. Although it's been said that judgement spamming isn't the most efficient way to DPS, this isn't entirely true. Checking out the DPS cycles here will give you an idea of how complex it can get and make an argument for 1 point in this talent for a raid DPS build. However, the general consensus is that it's best to take 2 points in it because 1) where else are you going to put it? and 2) it leaves a lot more wiggle room for raid DPS. If you're primarily pvping drop 2 points in it and forget about it.

Improved Seal of the Crusader: It's a moot point to discuss this talent right now because in 2.3 it'll be changed to the current effect of Sanctified Crusader and the effect of Improved Seal of the Crusader will be added into its base effect. Seal of the Crusader has very few uses as it stands, the judgement is where its value can be identified. Currently (and until further blue post notice) all of our abilities scale with spell damage, JotC helps those abilities. Plain and simple. People are torn about whether or not to judge it in pvp, personally I do. You'll be judging it undoubtedly if you're raiding with Sanctified Crusader and picking this up benefits you as it stands. If you choose to go the survivability route you can always put those 3 points into...

Deflection: Each point increases your chance to parry by 1/2/3/4/5%. It doesn't get more basic than that. Parry is especially valuable because 1) it's avoiding an entire attack, unlike block 2) it's hard as hell to get parry rating on gear and 3) when you parry an attack it resets your swing timer and you get your next attack instantly. Let me pause for a moment and evaluate this statistic from the view of a paladin. More attacks as prot = more threat from SoR. More attacks as ret = more burst damage from SoC (although still affected by 7PPM rule to be discussed later) and a nasty white hit. More attacks as holy = what the hell are you doing attacking as holy anyway? It's a good talent for survivability, if you don't plan on getting melee attacked at all, don't take it.

Vindication: As it stands on live as of today it's got only 1 use, debuff spam. Having an extra debuff on your target is great for preventing them from dispelling your judgements or just to occupy 1.5 seconds of their time. Plus to use it as a debuff you only need 1 point in it. 5/10/15% strength and agility reduction truly only effects 2 classes, warriors and rogues. These are two classes you should already have a relatively easy time killing as ret. It currently does not affect most pve targets and I'd go so far as to say it doesn't affect a single raid boss in current endgame (please correct me if I'm wrong). In 2.3 it's being changed, though, and will include a reduction of ALL stats. That means on a target with 10k health as soon as you proc Vindication they'll be at 8500hp. Sounds very handy indeed especially against those pesky disc priests stacking stam and the ever present warlocks. Reducing spirit and int is just gravy. I plan to take this in my 2.3 ret build.

Conviction: 1/2/3/4/5% to crit with melee weapons. Not much else to say besides that, if you're going deep ret you need it. If your disarmed you lose the 5 to crit. Seal of Command and Seal of Blood both use melee crit mechanics and this talent benefits them both.

Seal of Command: Volumes have been written about this single talent and there's not much I can add to it. Seal of Command is the bread and butter of retribution DPS in pvp and Alliance paladins in pve. Seal of Blood slightly beats out SoC's DPS in a raid environment in raid gear for a Blood Elf paladin, but that's a discussion for a different time. When using this seal in pvp it's best to judge it when the target is stunned or incapacitated for the bonus damage benefit, but is in no way necessary. Remember any stun or incapacitate works, this include but is not limited to: Hammer of Justice, Repentance, Mace Stun Effect (both the warrior proc and weapon procs), Kidney Shot/Cheap Shot, Sap, Bash, Engineering grenade effects, the list goes on. In 2.3 the dwarf and draenei priest racial, Chastise, should be able to proc the bonus damage effect also. SoC is also limited to a hard 7 procs per minute. I wish I could site my source on this but I've lost the info to the forum monsters. Haste effects on SoC will not increase its ppm at least next patch. I can't confirm if that's how it currently functions but I know going forward it will be a hard 7 ppm. Because of this SoC favors a slow weapon, the slower the better. It also gets a benefit from spell damage along with the judgement, the coefficients are:
Seal of Command - 20.0%
Judgement of Command - 42.85% (Source)

Pursuit of Justice: Currently 4/8% run speed and mount speed increase that does not stack with anything, including our own Crusader Aura. 2.3 5/10/15% run and mount speed increase and 1/2/3% not to get hit by spells. It has no bearing on pve other than getting back to the boss you wiped on faster. Indispensable next patch, currently just a way to not need Boar's Speed enchanted on your boots as 8% run speed is the same as a run speed enchant. I take it because I'm not a fan of the alternative...

Eye for an Eye: Once a great talent for pvp, now it's a bit outdated for its purpose. Because pve mobs are incapable of criting spells this ability's only place is in pvp. In the current state of resilience stacking - and even more so come next patch when the ret pvp reward gear receives resilience - this talent is over taxed. Look at it like this: before resilience a mage crit you with a frostbolt for 2000 damage, you returned the favor with 600 holy damage of your own. Not bad! Now, with resilience, you need to take take the full equation into account. Due to the talent being "30% of the damage taken" it's a double edged sword. With 100 resilience you reduce the damage of that frostbolt by 5.08% bringing the total down to 1898 and returning only 569 holy damage. Not only that but with that same 100 resilience you reduced that chance for that mage to even land a crit frostbolt on you by 2.54%. This will only be amplified with our new gear. Not only that but there can be lag on the E4E effect which can break vital CC like a Repentance. That's my highly biased view. If the returned damage is enough for you to see value in this talent by all means pick it up! The smite effect it returns is pretty cool too.

Improved Retribution Aura: In the past I read many posts about the value of this talent and aura versus using Sanctity Aura for pure damage output. If anyone still believes that I'd love to see the figures. Bad talent for pve and pvp. If you're really interested in the numbers it turns 26 holy damage into 39, remember this ability doesn't scale in any way.

Crusade: 1/2/3% extra damage to Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals. I think this leaves out Beasts, Giants, Dragonkin and the ever elusive "unspecified" Silithid. I saw the figures not too long ago that 1% extra damage was equivalent 1 DPS and by proxy 14 AP? I could be pulling that figure out of my ass but it sounds like it could be right. It's a filler talent and certainly a better choice for pve than Vindication. It should also be noted that this talent (similar to Rogue's Murder) DOES work in pvp. I was under the impression recently that these sorts of talents to not affect pvp targets, I was wrong. Apparently it's only hunter's Humanoid Slaying that is affected by this rule, and perhaps only the crit bonus damage. I'm not sure, I'm not a hunter.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: If you're using a two-hander (and you should be if you're ret) and you want to be doing more damage with it then you should take... this talent. Good guess. It should be noted that this technically only increases your white swing damage, but by proxy that will increase both SoC and SoB damage. Your judgements are unaffected by this talent unlike One-Handed Weapon Specialization in prot. I've seen some paladins place 2 points here and 2 in Crusade for a balanced build and to free up points elsewhere.

Sanctity Aura: Love it or hate it, it is what it is. It increases damage from all of our main abilities: SoC, SoR, JoC, JoR, SoB/V, JoB/V, CS and even E4E gets a bonus from it. In general I think it's a good policy to take this talent for whatever type of ret build you go. Learn to embrace it; love its little icon always sitting complacently at the top right of your screen, smiling a bright sunshine of holy damage down on you. If you're raiding as ret you'll need to take this talent and pick up...

Improved Sanctity Aura: This talent saw a complete overhaul not too long ago when it went from 7% additional healing to affected party members to its current 2% damage. The idea behind the change was that it would get ret paladins into the melee dps group where they need to be. The healing bonus was arguably better but both of them are a bit lack luster when it comes down to it. 2% additional damage adds up in a raid setting and is one of the primary reasons for taking a ret paladin along. In pvp its benefit is marginal but personally I like it. The little things can add up and placing the points elsewhere is kind of a "meh" maneuver. In pvp its personal preference.

Vengeance: Never was there a more bread and butter talent. 15% additional holy and physical (the only kinds of damage we do) when stacked is huge. There's no substitute for this talent. Although it's been through a lot of changes I think Blizzard has finally ended up with a happy balance between pvp burst and pve damage output. In 2.3 when they change the duration from 15 seconds to 30 seconds a lot of paladins will be regearing for less crit and more strength/ap. Currently it takes somewhere at or above 25% crit to keep Vengeance up all the time in a raid setting. Crit is NOT the biggest bang for your buck in item budget when it comes to pure dps, ap is. However, if Vengeance falls off then you have a bigger dps drop than ap can make up for. The best policy currently is over 28% crit and as much ap as you can muster beyond that. After 2.3 and 30 second Vengeance lower than 25% crit will be the norm with tons more ap in to replace it. Get your Bold Living Rubies ready.

Sanctified Judgement: When popping points into this talent it should be noted that the chance to return mana is all that changes, not the amount of mana returned. Hence 33/66/100% chance to return 50% of the cost of the judged seal. Because Benediction reduces the base cost of seals and judgements the synergy here is a little less than ideal. That being said it's still an excellent talent for a spec that is generally lacking in mana. Countless paladins that run with ret builds complain about mana and this talent can help that a little. If you're raiding you'll take it, if you're pvping it's up to you. It should be noted that while leveling that judging with this talent is actually more mana efficient than letting your seal wear off and resealing; you'll actually get some mana back from judging. Unfortunately this effect levels off and eventually becomes less efficient than it was during the grind.

Sanctified Crusader: Soon to be Sanctified Seals and worth every point. Currently it's the second reason to bring a ret paladin to a raid. It causes your JotC to also increase anyone attacking that target's crit chance by 3% for 3 points. Not fantastic, but not at all bad either. 3 to crit is a lot when you're talking about 16 odd people who would all like to crit the same mob. In pvp it has its place, especially if you're a JotC user like me. Because we depend so heavily on Vengeance it's important we find every way we can around resilience to keep on criting. In 2.3 when this talent becomes Sanctified Seals it will be absolutely amazing for pvp preventing our seals from being dispelled entirely. That coupled with 3% more to crit with all spells and attacks makes this talent really shine. The "old" effect from Sanctified Crusader is being sent to the "old" location of Improved Seal of the Crusader and the "old" effect of Imp SotC is being incorporated into its base effect. Yay for conservation!

Repentance: Incapacitate for 6 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown. Sound like anything else you know of? Hammer of Justice (my friend would be choking me for saying this right now). Although incapacitates break on damage there's still a 6 second window for you to do whatever you'd like in pvp. Heal, run away, wait for CS and judgement cooldowns, whatever you want. Just remember to JoC before it breaks to get the bonus damage. In the pve environment this is only really used for leveling and soloing, almost every raid mob you encounter (and certainly all the bosses) are immune to this ability. Also remember: humanoids only.

Divine Purpose: The ret paladin's "resilience talent". It's 10% reduction of the critical strike damage from melee and ranged (read: hunters and deadly throw) attacks. It is what it is, 4/7/10% reduction on those specific kinds of damage. If you primarily pvp it's definitely a good talent to have due to ret's "special" lack of resilience at this point. Going forward when it will be readily available for us to stack resilience this talent will force melee and ranged crit damage reduction to be capped at 256 resil (Source). So, it has limited viability there, but for the time being it's not bad. If it affected spells, then we'd be in business. Good news, however, to those that enjoy E4E this talent doesn't affect that at all. Lucky you.

Fanaticism: Oh boy 15% to crit! With judgements... For 5 points. At 40 points. Nobody is saying that this talent is horrible and dirty and needs to be exiled from the tree (or maybe they are?). However, it's definitely a lack luster 40 pointer, especially compared to everyone elses (lol@currentweaponexpertise). The idea behind it is certainly to boost both pve and pvp DPS, but its benefits there are marginal. To keep Vengeance up just that bit longer for your next swing it can be a life saver, but how often it's really the talent or your retarded high crit chance is hard to say. There is a saving grace though! 2.3 brings the hollowed threat reduction right here, to this very talent! Not 6, not 12, not 18, not 24, but 30% threat reduction! It's a dream come true to any ret paladin who's quickly realized why Avenging Wrath is a cooldown best saved for pvp. It's unfortunate that the base functionality of the talent couldn't be improved though, crit damage is already spiky and with 30 second Vengeance the ability of Fanaticism to keep it up is secondary. 15% to crit with judgements, 30% threat reduction, take it for one, take it for both, or don't take it all.

And finally...
Crusader Strike: Your Crusader Strike crits poor little mage that has no resilience for ∞.
You crit poor little mage for ∞.
Your Seal of Command crits poor little mage for ∞.
Poor little mage dies.
If you've experienced this then you know why we spec ret. In strictly nerdy terms: it makes you feel like the holy warrior Blizzard convinced us we are. The tree is built around this ability and rightfully so. Use it every time it's up, pvp, pve, on Gamon. This is where our reliance on spell damage really comes into stark relief with our abilities. 40% of our holy damage is applied to the normalized weapon damage attack. Nothing fancy if you're stacking warrior gear, but it's still fun. This is the last reason come patch 2.3 to bring a ret paladin, the ability to refresh ALL judgements on a target. That means all your holy buddies can throw up a Judgement of Wisdom, Judgement of Light, and hell, let's get crazy with a Judgement of Justice too. As long as your CS hits the mob that all of these judgements are on you'll refresh all of them without your buddies having to interrupt their heals and come whack the mob. This is why being hit capped for a ret paladin is just as important as AP and crit and also why we need too many damn stats, but that too is a discussion for another time.

Although it's not a ret talent per say, it's always important to state the worth of Divine Strength over in holy. 5 points for 10% strength = very yes, no matter what kind of action you're after. There's hardly any other talent like it in the game. And so easily accessible in the tree!

Because this post has gotten ridiculously long I'll wrap it up quick with a few of the most popular ret builds.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxxuZZVbutMMdiIst
A fairly balanced pvp/pve build. Not your top raid dpser here, but what ret paladin is? This would shine for a casual player. Debuff spamming, parry, and damage reduction for pvp, some deeps talents and healing support for pve. Adjust to taste.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxZxGzZVf0tbcuiIot
Your general ret raiding build. Nothing wasted on pvp talents and precision and kings to make the raid happy.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZxGkhMhZVbttr0uqhsz
Someone with no intentions of grouping would run with this build for pvp. It utilizes a heavy amount of burst, especially coupled with the 4 piece pvp set bonus. Some people don't like Fanaticism and I tried to illustrated that in this build while showing fairly heavy survival talents. With hunter's being even more difficult for ret paladins next patch things like Guardian's Favor, Stoicism and Improved Righteous Fury become even more attractive.

My spec can always be seen at the permalink to the right under "Armory Links". I'll add other relevant players and arena teams as time goes on.

That covers it for specs. I hope this was a fairly all encompassing en devour with an emphasis on the underloved retribution spec. Coming soon will be an updated guide to retribution gearing at all levels of the game!

A "Short" Introduction

World of Warcraft. Paladins. They don't always get along. I decided to start this blog as a repository for paladin information and experience. No doubt I'm not the only person who's made a blog about the paladin class in WoW, but hopefully here you will find insight and little bits of vital information that are otherwise not covered anywhere else.

I'd like to begin with a history of my experience with the paladin class in WoW: why I chose it, how long I've played it and how much I've enjoyed/lamented it. Initially I was a die hard shaman. I played a tauren shaman to 60 and enjoyed it for a good time afterwards. After raiding and PvPing extensively on that character I started alts and dabbled in twinking. Eventually, after fighting against them for for too long, I decided I'd stop complaining about how good paladins were and just start playing one. This was all long before 2.0. However, I did not start my paladin before the fated 1.7 patch. Helbrecht on Frostmane was born. I leveled him - with a small group of friends I made - to 60 and raided on him once. That's when 2.0 came out and information from the expansion beta was plentiful. I shelved Helbrecht in favor of my shaman and dual wielding. Just before the expansion dropped the decision was made that (the for good of my Horde friends and my love of the class) I would roll a paladin. TBC is released and I rush home to begin frantic leveling of Venris, the Blood Elf paladin on Bleeding Hollow. After furious nights of leveling and despite a near derailment by real life issues I was the first BE to hit 70 on my server. Shortly after I joined a raiding guild and started the Karazhan grind. My guild progressed quickly and the experience of standing alone as a paladin was a unique one. Since that time I have participated in numerous arena teams, entered Black Temple and Hyjal Summit and generally lived and breathed the paladin class in World of Warcraft.

What follows is a recount of my personal experience, information I've gathered over time, and some insight and de-mysticism of questions regarding paladins. Occasionally I'll stray off topic or have a guest post but I'll do my best to present it all through an objective lens... OK, a little bias towards paladins. Enjoy.