Retribution Is Back With A Holy Vengeance
Perhaps no other class waxes and wanes more in overall DPS than the paladin. A lot of it has to do with PvP. Paladins get a PvP buff, then in a week there is one in almost every arena team pwning face. That’s no kind of balance so they get a nerf, then they are worthless in PvE.
We’re not sure why Blizz has such a hard time keeping PvP and PvE separate for pallies, but at least for now, the Ret paladin can do more than just respectable damage in raids. The following build and numbers bear that out. Since all we’ve done on Paladins for quite a while has been about tanking, we thought it was high time to do a DPS build for them.
Remember that the following comes from the Simulationcraft Engine. If you have any problems with the use of gear or glyphs, you can download the engine yourself and tinker with the simulated toon and rerun the numbers for yourself. Be sure to save your output and post it below if you can beat the preset numbers.
Also, once you’re done retrofitting your toon with any new spec changes and glyphs, run the engine yourself to get a fresh set of Pawn scales – you can read how, and why you should do this, in the article: Making Gear Choices For Your Character.
Gear
Gear Suggestion Character For Ret Paladin Early Patch 3.3
Talent Build
Retribution Paladin Build For Patch 3.3
Glyphs
Major
Minor
- Anything you like
Priorities
- Flask = Endless Rage
- Food = Dragonfin Filet
- Seal = Vengeance
- Hammer Of Justice
- Divine Plea
- Arcane Torrent – (Assuming You’re A Blood Elf)
- Avenging Wrath
- Judgement – (Your choice here depending on raid makeup and mana issues)
- Crusader Strike
- Divine Storm
- Consecration
- Hammer of Wrath
- Exorcism
- Potion of Speed
Damage Sources
Ret experts should help out the neophytes by giving tips on how to use the priorities above, and there will probably be some discussion about how gear choices might have changed a bit now that three wings of ICC are open and it is at least fairly likely you could have gotten one to three pieces of t10 or t10 equivalent gear by now.
If you had your Paladin DPS spec on the sidelines for whatever reason, it might just be time to dust that bad boy off and give him (or her) a whirl. One thing is certain, a decently geared Ret paladin can pump out some seriously dominating DPS in patch 3.3.