Retribution Paladin Guide - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Level 30 Talents (2,0,19)

1. The first 5 points go into Benediction, and then put 5 into Conviction.
2. Pick up Seal of Command, put 3 points into Sanctified Judgement and 1 point into Pursuit of Justice.
3. Put 1 point into Sacred Arbiter then put 2 points in Improved Holy Strike.
4. Use your final 3 points to finish Pursuit of Justice and get 2 points into Crusade.

Level 60 Talents (10/8/33)

Here's a look at what we think the level 60 Retribution Paladin Talent Tree will look like. As mentioned above this guide will be updated as we go through the beta and during launch. It will include any other Endgame Retribution Paladin Talent Trees, along with all the other information you need to excel in the endgame and Raids as a Paladin.

Playable Races

Alliance - Human, Dwarf

Horde - Undead

Recommended Races

Dwarf provides 3 useful abilities and is probably the best race for leveling to 30 as Alliance. Mace Specialization gives you 1% crit when using a mace. Stoneform grants you immunities and Physical Damage Reduction and Big Game Hunter increases you damage to beasts (which you'll see a lot of while leveling up).

Undead - Well it's not like we really have a choice here! Luckily Undead has the brand new Touch of the Grave Passive which sometimes drains 5% health from enemies with your attacks. Will of the Forsaken is nice to remove Charm, Fear and Sleep and being able to Cannibalize between pulls will certainly be appreciated by whoever is healing you.

See our full racial abilities guide for every other race's bonuses.

The primary Skills you’ll use are Seal of Righteousness, Seal of the Crusader, Seal of Command, Holy Strike and Judgement.

The idea with Retribution is getting Seals up on yourself and using Judgement to get their "judge effect" on enemies. Judging Seal of the Crusader makes you do extra Holy damage with skills like Holy Strike, and when you Judge Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command. It's great to get this up early on in leveling when you're weaker and later on when you're fighting bosses or elites.

Use your Hammer of Justice often so you can take less damage. It's also very useful when you pull 2-3 enemies or need to buy yourself some time in an encounter to heal or avoid death.

Remember that Paladins have powerful Blessings and Auras. Keep up Devotion Aura or Retribution Aura at all times. When in trouble, use your powerful skills like Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield to save yourself from a death and heal up.

The best tip for leveling as a Retribution Paladin is to keep your rotation as simple as you can while still killing enemies quickly. If you can, ration your Mana, you can use it to heal yourself quickly between encounters and have a pretty fast and efficient leveling session.

Rotation Before you have Seal of Command

1. Put on Seal of the Crusader as you run up to an enemy and use Judgement on them as you do your first Auto Attack.
2. Follow this up by casting Seal of Righteousness and hitting them with a Holy Strike as you keep swinging.
3. When Judgement is ready again use it to Judge Seal of Righteousness on them for another big hit.
4. If you still have Seal of Righteousness up as you move to the next enemy, just keep it up and stick to steps 2/3 so you can save Mana. Finish off that next enemy without the Seal of the Crusader buff, then go back to the start of this rotation on the next one.
5. You can just skip the Seal of the Crusader part entirely to use less mana as well, but you'll be doing quite a bit less damage.

Rotation With Seal of Command

1. Keep up Seal of Command at all times and use Judgement on cooldown to do extra damage to enemies.
2. Use Holy Strike whenever it's available to do extra damage. Holy Strike costs very little mana and is a cheap way to do more damage.
3. For extra damage you can also use Seal of the Crusader and Judge it on enemies at the start of a fight with this rotation. You'll absolutely want to do this on bosses, elites or any other more durable enemies.

Check our WoW Forever tier list to see how Retribution Paladin stacks up against other classes.

Visit your Class Trainer often to get your new skills.

Don't over do it spamming your abilities and running out of mana for no reason. Get a feel for how much damage you really need to kill something efficiently. Nothing is worse than having to stop and drink for 10 seconds after every enemy you kill. Let your auto attacks to their thing and try to save mana for quick self heals so you can keep the ball rolling.

A Retribution Paladin wants Strength and Agility. Strength gives you 2 Attack Power per point of Strength. Agility increases Critical Hit Chance, Armor and Dodge. Always look for items with Strength/Agility on them as the priority and take Stamina when it shows up.

When in groups or dungeons the only change you'll make is that you can also drop Consecration when fighting 3+ enemies at a time. This is going to cost a bit of mana but will help you do some AOE damage and overall boost your DPS by quite a bit.

Remember to buff your allies with the proper Blessings. Blessing of Wisdom is great for casters. Blessing of Kings & Blessing of Might are great options for everyone else.

Keep an eye on people who pull threat or are in danger, use your Blessing of Protection to save an ally that's in trouble. (check out the focus target macro for this in the macro section below)

Ret Paladins can do a lot of damage pretty quickly, keep an eye on your threat and make sure you aren't pulling aggro off the tank over and over, it'll drive them crazy and put you in danger.

• Food, Water and First Aid are you best friend on this class. Make sure to train First Aid early and keep your bandages relevant to your level. You'll be taking damage constantly and use Mana regularly as a Ret Paladin, keep a stock of these things and you'll be happy you did.
• Some cheap consumes can go a long way. Check the auction house for Strength, Agility, Armor and Stamina Scrolls and Elixirs.
• Befriend a healer while questing and invite people if you see them working on the same quest as you. Having even 1 more person with you is very beneficial for questing and open world leveling.

Cancel Divine Shield

This macro will cancel your Divine shield if you push the button a 2nd time. Keep in mind this can be a bit risky, if you accidently double click the button you might be toast.

#showtooltip Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield
/cancelaura Divine Shield

Focus Target Blessing of Protection

Keeping your healer as your focus target is always smart when running dungeons. This macro will automatically target them (your focus target) if you ever need to quickly cast Blessing of Protection on them so they don't get sliced to death by an incoming enemy.

#showtooltip Blessing of Protection
/cast [@focus] Blessing of Protection