PvP Retribution Paladin Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

PvP Retribution Paladin

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Entry-Level & Best In Slot (BiS)

Glyphs, Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

When it comes to player-versus-player combat in World of Warcraft, we cannot zero in on a specific rotation for either single targets or AoE encounters since unlike most cases of PvE combat, PvP is ever changing and does not follow a specific pattern. 

Player versus Player requires a bit of a different mindset compared to PvE content. It requires fast thinking, fast reactions and the ability to adapt to each situation. Due to the fact that the encounters are not scripted like in PvE scenarios, you can expect anything from your enemy but this does not mean they can’t also be predictable to a certain degree, depending on their current situation and yours.

We have listed two different talent builds which change your gameplay quite a bit in the talent section, so we will start with the first build.

First Build

In the first build you will want to always have Sacred Shield up, which offers you a 500 damage shield that procs when you are hit by an enemy and keeps itself up every time you are hit by an enemy. The awesome part of this shield is that it increases the amount healed by Flash of Light. This synergises extremely well because of The Art of War, a talent that that has a possibility to proc each time you land a critical strike from your melee attacks and abilities.

Considering this, we can effectively spam Flash of Light on ourselves each time we have a proc of The Art of War, making the Retribution Paladin an extremely resilient opponent.

With the first build we will also want to keep up Righteous Fury due to the 6% damage reduction and use Divine Sacrifice with the added talents to further reduce the damage received while also reducing the damage your group will incur in case of an arena or battleground.

It is worth mentioning that you can create a macro in order to remove the effect of Divine Sacrifice and only keep the effect of Divine Guardian.

Such a macro would look like this: 

#showtooltip
/cast Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice

In order to make it work, you simply have to tap the macro twice and voila, damage reduction for 6 seconds without any threat to your own health pool.

Whenever you are stunned you can use Hand of Freedom to remove said stun due to our talents, but be careful because it does not work on incapacitating effects, so be sure not to waste it.

The Retribution Paladin mainly uses a two-handed weapon, but in order to be more efficient and gain an incredible amount of survivability you will want to use a shield and a spell power weapon in order to benefit from the holy damage of your seal and increase the healing capacity of Flash of Light. After a certain amount of time and after your target uses most of its offensive cooldowns, you will want to switch back to a two-handed weapon.

The rotation itself is pretty self explanatory. You will want to slow your target as much as possible with Judgement of Justice while having Seal of Vengeance up in the beginning. Remember to keep your Sacred Shield up. When your target has five stacks of Blood Corruption from your seal you can switch to Seal of Righteousness to get the most out of the debuff placed by the previous seal.

Depending on the situation you will want to either burst down your target or survive its initial damage in order to burst it down a bit later. You can achieve this by either starting with a hard stun from Hammer of Justice followed up with Avenging Wrath and your abilities or by slowly burning your target down with a one-handed weapon and a shield while spamming Flash of Light and Judgement on the target. In the latter situation you can use Divine Protection paired up with Divine Sacrifice in order to mitigate the opponent’s burst entirely.

Second Build

The second build works similar to the first one but it has more offensive capabilities while sacrificing the defensive capabilities of Righteous Fury and Divine Sacrifice. You will want to use the same tactics that are presented in the first build, benefiting from increased damage from your Seals of the Pure talent but lacking in defensive talents with the only added defensive benefit of having more points spent into Divinity. The second build aims more to burst down targets fast while paying the price of reduced survivability.

Both builds are very viable, offering a versatile choice when it comes to the Retribution Paladin in PvP scenarios and it depends more on the player’s gameplay style regarding which suits them better.

Arena Team Setups

When it comes to teams for the Arena you will want to try the following combinations:

2 vs 2 team:

• Discipline Priest/Resto Shaman
• Unholy Death Knight
• Arms Warrior
• Marksmanship Hunter

3 vs 3 team:

• Hunter/Paladin/Priest
• Death Knight/Paladin/Priest
• Death Knight/Paladin/Resto Druid
• Warlock/Priest/Paladin
• Arms Warrior/Paladin/Priest
• Boomkin/Paladin/Resto Shaman
• Rogue/Paladin/Priest