- Author: Pride
- Date: September 20, 2022
- Updated: November 5, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Retribution Paladins have multiple different talent builds they can use, changing what utility they bring in order to suit their raid’s needs. Below we’ll list a general talent build that is well-rounded, as well as some common variations. Furthermore, we will cover some of the talents that can be skipped if someone else in your raid is bringing the same buffs, allowing you to place your talent points elsewhere.
Talent Builds
This talent spec sacrifices a small chunk of personal damage and utility, in order to gain the incredibly powerful Divine Guardian raid cooldown. This build will typically be preferred by high-end hardcore guilds doing heroic mode raids and hard-mode versions of boss fights, as well as speedruns, as in those settings Divine Guardian will be far more important than the Retribution Paladin’s individual DPS.
This build is very similar to the standard build, essentially cutting Divine Sacrifice in favour of Aura Mastery, another great raid cooldown. Divine Sacrifice is going to be slightly better in most situations, so this build is not going to see much use. This build offers the highest amount of damage possible, so if you care about doing the most damage that you character can physically do & Aura Mastery is appealing to you, this may be the build for you.
Noteworthy Talents
The following is a list of important talents for Retribution Paladins:
- Crusader Strike: One of our main DPS spells, dealing a modest amount of damage. Must-have.
- Divine Storm: One of our main DPS spells, and one of the reasons why our cleave damage is great. Must-have.
- Seal of Command: Our seal of choice when fighting 3+ enemies, and one of the reasons why our cleave damage is great. Must-have.
- Judgements of the Wise: Our main method of regenerating mana. Without this, we’d run out of mana and be unable to DPS. Must-have.
- The Art of War: Allows us to bypass the cast time on Exorcism, making it instant cast. This is really important because spells with a cast time reset the swing timer, which cause us to lose DPS, while instant cast spells do not reset this swing timer — resulting in a substantial DPS gain thanks to this talent.
- Sanctified Wrath: Offers a host of useful benefits, but crucially reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath to 2 minutes down from 3, which is allows us to cast it a 2nd time on fights that last less than 3 minutes — a substantial buff.
- Righteous Vengeance: Improves our critical strikes, which offers a much needed boost to our crit scaling.
Optional Utility Talents
The following talents offer a raid buff that someone else might already be providing in your raid, and thus it may not be needed for you to take them, allowing you to take talent points elsewhere. For instance, the same haste buff as Swift Retribution is offered by Moonkins, and dropping it can allow you to take an extra point in Fanaticism and Pursuit of Justice in the Divine Guardian build, which you normally wouldn’t be able to take.
Glyphs
Major
For your major glyph slots, we recommend the following 3 glyphs:
For your last glyph slot, you can also use Glyph of Consecration instead of Glyph of Exorcism; the two are very similar in power, though in simulations Glyph of Exorcism usually comes out very slightly ahead. Glyph of Consecration meanwhile is slightly more convenient in AoE fights and in dungeons.
Minor
For your minor glyph slots, we recommend the following 3 glyphs:
For that last glyph slot, you could use Glyph of Blessing of Might instead of Glyph of Blessing of Kings. Neither of them are particularly impactful, so you could go with either just fine — it’s completely up to your preference.
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About the Author
If your tank holds threat properly imp BoP 2 points is a waste, for more raid mobility, you’d be amazed on how well PoJ works to get out of all the annoying ground clutters, for example Lady Deathwhisper, allowing you to stay a few more swings in and still able to get out with out taking dmg. Just saying I hardly as a ret use BoP on targets and usually it’s just a wipe preventative so reducing its timer doesn’t help all that much, but increasing mobility speed is always better especially when dealing with a lot of raid ground clutter dmg.
i was just looking at this tree an noticed PoJ wasnt taken and imp bop is exactly where i thought you could afford to take two points out of. The pros to staying on a target as melee and getting out of/into stuff 15% movement gives cannot be overstated.
whats BoP?
Changes to Seal of Vengeance applying DoTs to multiple targets via Divine Storm and Crusader Strike, plus new Glyph of Reckoning – what say ye?
I’m noticing that Glyph or Reckoning isn’t anywhere to be found in the list if Glyphs or mentioned as BIS. Is this intentional or is this info outdated since Blizz implemented Glyph of Reckoning?
Why do you pick seal of command, when that is pvp talent ?
Further more glyph that you are suggesting is for seal of vengeance… So that s 1 point kinda wasted
Seal of command is rets go to talent, it makes our AOE insane. Remember it is completely reworked in wrath
Vengence also puts a dot on target so can break CC righteosness is better for pvp.
Command is our AoE seal. It gives 3x more dps over Righteousness.
Vengeance is a single target seal, and does a lot of dps single target (great for bosses/elites).