Retri Paladin

The Retribution Paladin Thread (Wrath/3.0)

Contents

* 1Introduction
o 1.1FAQ's
o 1.2Acronyms/Shortforms
* 2Upcoming Patch Changes
* 3Observations
* 4The Basic Rotation
* 5Stats
* 6Mechanics
o 6.1Skill mechanic breakdowns
o 6.2Special Talents
* 7Talent Specs
* 8Glyphs, Gems, Consumables, Enchants, Professions
o 8.1Recommended Major Glyphs
+ 8.1.1Recommended Minor Glyphs
o 8.2Recommended Gems
o 8.3Professions
o 8.4Enchants
o 8.5Consumables
* 9Tier Gear
o 9.1Tier 7
o 9.2Tier 8
* 10Add-ons
* 11Macros
* 12Known Bugs
o 12.1Changelog

[top]Introduction

I like to keep things brief and to the point, however on these boards that is not always possible. Here goes...

You are here because you probably play a paladin, and are interested in / already playing the retribution spec. Retribution is a melee DPS spec (duh) that happens to use both melee and spells to deal high amounts of direct damage - we are often compared side by side to enhancement shaman and blood death knights. In addition to our now respectable DPS, retribution offers some fantastic raid buffs:
3% crit to raid
3% all damage to raid
3% haste to raid
100% JoW uptime
Replenishment to 10 raid members
Blessing of Kings / Imp Blessing of Might

Retribution in Wrath (like most classes and specs) is pretty easy to pick up and play, but somewhat difficult to master; hopefully this thread and its' contributing posters will make it slightly easier to understand, for both new and veteran paladins alike. This thread will mainly focus on our core mechanics, and not so much on gearing or rotations/playstyles (though these will be touched on). This thread also assumes you have basic knowledge of paladins and their talent trees.

Before we start though, thanks to the many many posters on these forums who provide a ton of data and testing, and special thanks to Cathela for creating and maintaining the beta thread. Also thanks to EJ and wowhead for hosting all this stuff, so that we don't have to answer hundreds of tells a day!

[top]FAQ's

Q: What item is better for me, X or Y?
A: Any gear upgrades are largely dependent on your current gear setup, thus I encourage you to use Rawr to find suitable upgrades.

Q: Is there a tool to calculate my DPS using a certain gear/spec setup?
A: Yes, Redcape's Calculator, and Bellator's spreadsheet (updated by Exemplar) which much like this thread will improve in accuracy with time.

Q: What seal for PvE? And for PvP?
A: Blood/Martyr for PvE and pvp. Command sucks.

Q: What does weapon speed do to us? Do we want slow or fast?
A: Slow. Every .1 speed slower is equal to ~30 DPS due to SoB not being normalized; so given a choice between a 3.4 203 dps 2h and a 3.8 203 dps 2h, the 3.8 would win.

Q: What weapon enchant?
A: Scroll down to the enchant section, it explains berserking a bit more...


[top]Acronyms/Shortforms

Totally stealing this from the holy paladin thread.

GCD = Global Cooldown
SoB = Seal of Blood
SoM = Seal of the Martyr
SoC = Seal of Command
JoW = Judgement of Wisdom
JoL = Judgement of Light
JoJ = Judgement of Justice
DS = Divine Storm
CS = Crusader Strike
AW = Avenging Wrath
Sheath = Sheath of Light
RV = Righteous Vengeance
AoW = Art of War
JotW = Judgements of the Wise
E4E = Eye for an Eye
PoJ = Pursuit of Justice
BoM = Blessing of Might
BoK = Blessing of Kings
HoJ = Hammer of Justice
AP = Attack Power
STR = Strength
INT = Intellect
AGI = Agility
CRIT = Critical Strike (rating)
ArP = Armor Penetration
ppm = proc per minute


[top]Upcoming Patch Changes

Ver 3.1.0

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

[top]Observations

Adding this section to clarify some things regarding hits, crits, and expertise. Also a warning, this section will probably change over time as we get more accurate data sampling.

Much of this section is thanks Retesting hit table assumptions . The people in that thread have solid math, and Vulajin has provided pretty solid evidence of these theories (40000+ swings!)
Current theories:
You now need 8%, not the BC 9%, to be 2H melee hitcapped vs skull level mobs (bosses).
You (still) need 26 expertise (6.50%) to be expertise capped, not the 6.25% reported lately.
All melee classes seem to suffer a 4.8% crit suppression vs skull mobs; this means that your melee critrate will be on average 1.8% lower than your character sheet implies (HotC covers 3% of this, procs from librams and such not accounted for).
The spell hit cap is still 17% - the only skills we have that are affected by this are exorcism, holy wrath, and the first tick of consecrate - so this is of little importance to us.


[top]The Basic Rotation

During the beta it was agreed upon that because of vastly changed mechanics, our rotations should be thrown out and thus came to be known as FCFS (First Come First Serve). Not much to explain about it, just use whatever is off cooldown, whenever you can (watch your mana bar). Your only priority (should multiple skills come off cooldown at the same time) is Judgement, as it provides both our best DPS and our main source of mana. On a target under 20%, Hammer of Wrath also comes into play, right behind Judgement in priority due to its' very high crit rate. Be sure to use AW and Divine Plea as much as you can, as both provide a nice boost in damage/mana. In a situation with AoE, say trash for example, Consecration and DS should be prioritized.

The reasoning behind FCFS courtesy Avitus:
There are two elements to our "rotation": FCFS and clash resolution

FCFS: Was chosen very simply due to the fact that due to the cooldowns our abilities have, you can't repeat any reliable short term pattern (for example: "1" "1" "1" "3", repeat) that would maximize DPS. The only patterns that repeat are several minutes long (containing several dozen of casts) and therefore not realistic to offer as a "rotation". Therefore FCFS is the only way to go.

Clash resolution: It was argued back and forth what the optimum way to resolve a clash of two abilities coming out of cooldown at the same time, the result was "highest DPS first": Judgement > CS > Consecration > DS > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

[top]Stats

(In order of importance)
Strength
Our best DPS stat, as we have various talents that multiply it's effect. 1 STR gives you 2 AP baseline, multiplied by 1.15 from Divine Strength (Tier 1 Prot) giving us 2.3 AP per STR when specced. This number is further affected by buffs such as BoK. You should be stacking as much STR as possible via gemming and so on.

Hit See Observations
32.8 rating gives you 1% hit. At level 80, we require 263 hit rating, or 8%, to be hit capped on white swings, specials, and judgements. Note that Exorcism and Consecration are considered spells and use the spell hit table, thus we can still miss with these abilities. You want to be hit capped to maximize (and stabilize) your DPS, but any hit after the cap is wasted itemization points, so gear accordingly. Please note that with current gear itemization, hit capping is very difficult and it is generally better to have a healthy balance of stats. Generally you should not gem/enchant for hit.

Expertise
Introduced in late BC, this stat allows us to remove dodges from the attack table when attacking from behind, as melee often does! You need 26 Expertise (214 rating, 6.5%) to cap this stat; much like hit, any expertise after the cap is wasted. Capping this stat is a significant dps increase vs uncapped (or none at all) as it affects our whites, strikes, and SoB. Similar to hit, capping this is extremely difficult to do without gimping your other stats given current itemization.

Crit See Observations
We are quite reliant on critical strikes to do damage. You can never really have too much crit, but it is not worth gemming for it, gem for STR instead. You need 45.9 crit rating to gain 1% crit at 80. This stat gains no benefits from raid buffs, but you get more per itemization point from crit than you do AGI. This stat also increases your spell crit rating, making it flat out superior to AGI.

Agility
We need 52.08 agility to gain 1% melee crit. Like stated before, crit is flat out better, however AGI does scale with raid buffs such as BoK where crit does not.

Attack Power
AP is somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as stats go; most of our skills scale off AP, but STR is just so much better. AP isn't really seen on plate (so you often don't have to worry about this) but you will run into it if you dip into leather and mail. Note that despite AP having a 2:1 item stat budget, it is far weaker than STR as we have no talents that boost it's effect. When comparing or considering pieces with AP, you need to look at the item as a whole (does the plate have haste and ArPen (bad), while the the leather has AP/hit/crit/agi (decent) ).

Intellect
Due to some mechanic changes late in 3.0, intellect has once again become somewhat useful to retribution. 1 INT gives you 15 mana and a negligible amount of spell crit. It has become useful because of the way Replenishment and JoW work, which returns mana per second based on your TOTAL mana pool. In an upcoming patch (3.0., JoW will return base mana only, but Replenishment will function the same. Once again, don't bother gemming or going out of your way to find INT, but don't turn your nose at certain hunter/enh shaman mail either.

Haste
Was great (for horde) in late BC, but due to huge mechanic changes regarding our seals and instant attacks, haste went from scaling equally with STR to the "meh" it is now. Haste increases white damage and SoB/SoM damage by giving you a few more attacks against a boss; haste does NOT decrease the GCD on our instant strikes or instant spells. You will find plenty of it on our sets and pieces, but it sure isn't something you want to enchant or gem for. You need 32.7 haste rating to gain 1% haste at 80.

Armor Penetration
Bad stat for retribution - over 60% of our damage is holy, which ignores armor anyways. 15.4 rating gives you 1% armor piercing; unlike BC, you can no longer fully ignore boss or player armor via this stat. ArPen does NOT increase damage done by seals, just white damage, CS and DS. Avoid this stat.

Spellpower
Bad stat for us. Spellpower increases some of our skills' coefficients, but at a rate much slower than STR/AP, and does nothing for our white damage and instant melee strikes - CS and DS gain nothing from spellpower. Avoid this stat (easy to do, since none of our ret gear has spellpower).

Stamina, Armor
Ultimately, stam does nothing more than keep you alive in situations where there is raid damage, and in wrath there is a lot of raid damage. Most of the damage is magic (not mitigated by armor) therefor armor class does not matter to us, as we have no Armored to the Teeth talents like warriors or deathknights. You'll find all the stam you need and much much more on all wrath gear.


[top]Mechanics

(Quirky!)
Several mechanics have changed since BC, most notably the Seal and Judgement systems.

The following scale off of both AP and Spellpower (Coefficients courtesy Prinsea) -

* Seal of Command:
45% weapon damage + 23% spell power
* Judgement of Command:
24% weapon damage + 16% AP + 25% spell power
* Seal of Blood:
27% weapon damage
* Judgement of Blood:
36% weapon damage + 16% AP + 25% spell power
* Seal of Vengeance:
2.5% AP + 1.3% spell power per tick
* Judgement of Vengeance:
(14% AP + 22% spell power) * (1 + number of Vengeance stacks * 0.1)
* Seal of Light:
15% AP + 15% spell power (healing proc)
* Judgement of Light:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
10% AP + 10% spell power (healing proc)
* Seal of Wisdom:
4% of maximum mana (mana proc)
* Judgement of Wisdom:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
2% of base mana (mana proc)
* Judgement of Justice:
16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
* Consecration:
4% AP + 4% spell power per tick
(Final rank has 113 base damage per tick)
* Exorcism:
15% AP + 15% spell power
(Final rank has 1028 base damage)
* Hammer of Wrath:
15% AP + 15% spell power
(Final rank has 1139 base damage)
* Holy Wrath:
7% AP + 7% spell power
(Final rank has 1050 base damage)


Our healing spells scale strictly off of Spellpower.

In addition to seals scaling from both AP and SP, ALL seals can now be triggered from our instant melee attacks, DS and CS. I'll cover the specific seals a bit further down.

[top]Skill mechanic breakdowns

ALL Judgements should be considered as ranged physical attacks, which can miss or crit but cannot be resisted, parried, or dodged. Some game data mining reveals that judgements are actually melee attacks that have been modified to be immune to parries and dodges, yet they have a 10 yard range and cannot be used while silenced.... don't you just love paladins?

Judgement of Wisdom
JoW is your primary nuke. It simultaneously does a large amount of unmitigated damage, puts Judgement of Wisdom on your target, and returns mana to you and your raid via JotW and Replenishment. This currently returns 2% of an attackers' BASE mana. Because this was changed from 1% total mana, you want to ensure near 100% uptime for your mana-using dps, or they can run into mana troubles.

Judgement of Light
Same thing as JoW, but applies Judgement of Light to your target. This spell scales off both AP and SP. You might want to use this judgement on bosses with heavy raid damage (ala Sapphiron); you may also want to use this judgement if you have a protection paladin raiding with you, as he can get 90% JoW uptime and your JoL will be much stronger. JoL no longer gives the judging paladin threat (used to be based on all healing done from the debuff).

Judgement of Justice
This is your judgement of choice in pvp situations, as all the debuff does is limit movement speed to 100%. This is not considered a movement impairing effect, so freedom or druid shifting will not break it, it can only be pvp trinketed or dispelled.

Seals scale off AP and Spellpower. Judging a seal no longer consumes the seal, seals have a 30 minute duration. Seals are NOT considered weapon imbues, and can no longer be dispelled. Seals now trigger off instant attacks (DS and CS).

Seal of Blood/Seal of Martyr
This is your seal to use in PvE. It is capable of criticals, it also follows the melee hit table and thus is prone to dodges and parries, making expertise very valuable to us. It scales off your weapon damage. The recoil damage received by using this seal is negligible, however the recoil from judging this seal is nothing to sneeze at. The recoil damage from judging is also necessary to our sustainability (mana from Spiritual Attunement).

Seal of Command
This is your PvP seal. It is also capable of criticals, but unlike SoB it does not trigger on every attack. SoC has an assumed base ppm of 7, and a ppm of 8.4 with the SoC glyph. This seal has an internal cooldown of 1 second, which means you won't see double procs. SoC was subject to huge changes:
- its' ppm is now affected by / scales with haste
- judging this seal on a stunned target is now a guaranteed critical judgement (changed from double damage)
- judging with SoC active can no longer be resisted
- judging can trigger a SoC proc, it is the only seal that behaves in this manner

Seal of Righteousness
This seal should not be used as retribution, however I included it to settle why it shouldn't be used. This seal cannot miss (unless your white swing misses), however it is incapable of criticals. There has been plenty of math recently showing that even with 5/5 Seals of the Pure, SoB is still superior in damage.

These spells are used in the retribution skill rotation.

Consecration
Widely viewed as a necessary part of the retribution rotation, as our DPS is not very competitive without it. It is highly recommended that you use the consecration glyph. Should be used against both single and multiple targets. Consecration has some odd behavior on skull level mobs; the first tick can be fully resisted (miss) and subsequent ticks can also be partially resisted (due to mob level difference). You cannot work around the partial resists at all, but they are often small enough to not matter:
Originally Posted by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
I tested this situation while wearing a massive amount of + hit (22% spell hit or so) and things didn't change noticeably. There simply were only 4 combat log entries most of the time, something like:

Boss is afflicted by your Consecration
Boss takes 20 Damage from your Consecration (60 resisted)
Boss takes 30 Damage from your Consecration (50 resisted)
Consecration fades from Boss

Sometimes I got 4 ticks, sometimes 1, but against a +13 level mob I never got anywhere near 8. There simply weren't entries in the log for those other ticks. I won't claim to know the precise mechanics of this, but it does seem evident that mobs can totally resist Consecration ticks if they are high enough level in addition to the debuff application that we are all so familiar with. I don't actually have a paladin that can test this anymore since I did it just after 3.0 launched against the level 83 dummy and my level 80 paladin has no way to fight a level 93 mob.
Hammer of Wrath
With the release of 3.0, this skill was buffed a substantial amount, to the point where it is used on cooldown vs targets under 20% health (due to deep ret talents that give this skill a 50% base crit chance, in addition to gear). It is now an instant ranged execute, but retains its' fixed mana cost. Using this skill does not reset your swing timer anymore.

Exorcism
Decent damage to a single target, can crit (based on your spell crit). It uses the spell hit table so it will miss a fair amount. Only works on demons and undead.

Holy Wrath
Also uses the spell hit tables, can crit. Has no target limit so it is VERY useful on certain fights with many undead/demon adds. Changed from a 60s cooldown/20yd range (BC) to a 30s cooldown/10yd range, and it now stuns all targets that it hits for 2s.

Divine Plea
You will need to use this to keep your mana up in both PvE and PvP. It scales off your total mana pool.

And of course, our talented instant attacks:

Divine Storm
Our 51 pt talent, it is basically the same as a warrior's whirlwind ability except that DS heals for negligible amounts. Despite it seeming like an underwhelming talent it is critical to our DPS as it can and will trigger seals. This skill is normalized to 3.3 weapon speed.

Crusader Strike
Our still very bland 41 pt talent, yet still crucial to our DPS as it also triggers seals. CS no longer refreshes your or any other paladins' judgements. This skill is also normalized (to 3.3).


[top]Special Talents

and their ..."specialness"
This is just to cover some talents that have odd quirks or interesting functionality.

Art of War
There has been much debate since the beta a few months ago, but it appears that using instant heals from AoW does reset your swing timer as of 3.0.2. Avoid using this in raiding situations

Righteous Vengeance
Once again stealing from the warriors! The RV dot does indeed "roll" like the warrior version, meaning critical judgements and DS's in succession will refresh the dot duration, not overwrite it. The RV dot is a magic effect and thus dispellable, can be partially resisted by bosses, but is not mitigated by armor.
How RV rolls courtesy Redcape:
It adds the new critical damage onto any remaining damage in the dot and then resets the duration with the new damage total. There is absolutely no need to maintain the stack in any fashion, the stack falling off does not cause you to lose dps.
Sheath of Light
One of our most exciting talents for wrath. This talent helps to increase our damage because of the way we double-dip in AP and SP, gives retribution paladins heals actually worth casting/using, and makes STR that much more important.

[top]Talent Specs

Your basic PvE talent spec will look like THIS. You have some wiggle room with the remaining 5 talent points; I personally do not take Imp Might because I buff Kings.

A PvP talent spec looks more along the lines of THIS. RV isn't taken because it is dispellable and generally doesn't provide much burst damage, which is our specialty. What you do with the leftover 2 points is up to you (perhaps one point in RV as a cover debuff/anti-stealth dot), and again this is only a guide.


[top]Glyphs, Gems, Consumables, Enchants, Professions

I won't mention horrible glyphs, because they are horrible! Some glyphs such as the SA glyph are of debatable use, and there are (slightly) better uses for the slots, so they are also left out.

[top]Recommended Major Glyphs

[Glyph of Judgement]
This is your primary glyph as retribution. If you can't see why 10% more damage to our best nuke is good, you should get your head checked out. Used in both PvE and PvP.

[Glyph of Consecration]
This is a PvE glyph, it saves a ton of mana and some GCD clashes over the course of a fight (worth 108mp5). You should use this as your second major.

[Glyph of Avenging Wrath]
A somewhat interesting PvE glyph. Effectively gives you 50% more Hammer of Wrath damage, but it is pretty conditional - it requires you being able to use Hammer of Wrath (so it is only really useful on bosses), that you have AW ready to use, and that you have enough mana to dump on HoW.

[Glyph of Hammer of Wrath]
Similar to the AW glyph above, it is situational and interesting. Instead of doubling HoW casts, this glyph make Hammer of Wrath cost no mana. Currently, it isn't worth using both HoW glyphs together, as judgement and consecrate glyphs are integral to ret pve. Could be useful if you have mana problems on bosses below 20%...

[Glyph of Crusader Strike]
This is only mildly useful in PvP, it is more of a PvE glyph. Not particularly useful or interesting..

[Glyph of Divinity]
When used in combination with [Glyph of Lay on Hands], using Lay on Hands on anyone will grant both of you 2340 mana, or will give you 4680 mana if you use it on yourself. Situational pve glyph, but realistically LoH should be available to you every other boss encounter, so it is definitely an option.

[Glyph of Seal of Command]
PvP glyph. Increases the ppm of SoC from 7 to 8.4.

[top]Recommended Minor Glyphs

[Glyph of Sense Undead]
1% damage to undead, in an expansion filled with undead mobs. PvE glyph.

[Glyph of Lay on Hands]
This ups the mana returned by Lay on Hands from 1950 to 2340. PvE glyph, taken for lack of better glyphs.

Honestly, the other four minor glyphs are your choice for the last minor slot. They aren't particularly useful in pve or pvp situations, but they can save you a reagent here and there.

[top]Recommended Gems

Sometimes you will have to ignore socket bonuses because they are terrible! This is more a guide for when you want to meet such requirements. Also note that as of 3.0.8 epic cuts are unavailable.

Metas:

[Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]
This is the preferred meta, simply because of fairly easy gem requirements. You do lose between .5 and 1 DPS between this and the following gem, but you gain more DPS by not using 2 blue gems.

[Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]
If you are a jewelcrafter, use this gem and put prismatic gems in your blue slots. If you are not a JC, use the one above.


Red slots:
Yum STR. If you do not wish to meet socket bonuses or requirements, you will be using these wherever you can.
[Bold Cardinal Ruby]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Perfect Bold Bloodstone]

Yellow slots:
[Etched Ametrine]
[Inscribed Ametrine]
[Etched Monarch Topaz]
[Inscribed Monarch Topaz]

Blue slots:
[Enchanted Tear] < You may only use one of these, but one is all you need to meet the meta req!
If you can't find one of those, you can also use-
[Sovereign Dreadstone]
[Sovereign Twilight Opal]


[top]Professions

The quick and dirty of it is, if you are min-maxing every point you can get, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the strongest combo for ret (both pve and pvp). Tailoring and the gathering professions are the weakest.

Courtesy of frmorrison:
BS: 101 AP (extra 2x20 str sockets)
JC: 86 AP (3x27 str gems vs 3x20 str gems + no need for blue gem for meta, so extra 10 str)
LW: 76 AP (Bracer enchant)
Enchanting: 64 AP (2x ring enchants)
Inscription: 64 AP (Shoulder enchant + no need to do Sons dailies for a month)
Alchemy: 64 AP (Using 180 AP Flask + 2 more hours on flasks)
Skinning: 25 Crit Rating (buffed very slightly in 3.0.8, still sucks)
Herbalism: Ability to use Fire Seeds as a consumable (removed in 3.0.
Tailoring has melee proc on the cloak at the expense of 22 agility

Since 20 str gems are not available yet, JC benefit is slightly stronger now (27 str vs 16 str).
[top]Enchants

As abyss crystals eventually fall in price you'll want to use the better versions; for now I will also include the cheaper alternatives. Bolded enchants are what you should be using at endgame levels (the good/expensive stuff).

Head: [Arcanum of Torment]
Shoulders: [Greater Inscription of the Axe] / [Lesser Inscription of the Axe]
Chest: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats / Enchant Chest - Super Stats
Cloak: [Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Major Agility]
Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault / Enchant Bracers - Striking /
Hands: Enchant Gloves - Crusher / Enchant Gloves - Precision (if hit is a problem) / Enchant Gloves - Strength (BC enchant)
Legs: [Icescale Leg Armor]
Feet: Enchant Boots - Icewalker (unless you are way over hitcap, use this) / Enchant Boots - Greater Assault
Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Berserking / Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre / Enchant 2H Weapon - Greater Savagery

How berserking works: Berserking is a ppm based proc, similar to mongoose (1.2 ppm) - in a raid environment it has a ~35% uptime. It can only trigger off attacks flagged as melee attacks and melee specials (Judgements, CS, DS, white swings). Napkin math shows that in a scenario with a 35% uptime, the enchant is worth ~135AP on average, and up to/more than ~250AP if RNG favors you - in both normal and lucky cases, it is clearly the superior pve weapon enchant. The armor reduction debuff has also been reduced to 5% (from 25%) making this enchant superior for pvp as well.

[top]Consumables

Flasks and elixirs:
[Mixture of Endless Rage] / [Flask of Relentless Assault]
[Elixir of Mighty Strength]
[Elixir of Mighty Thoughts] / [Elixir of Mighty Mageblood]

Food:
More interesting choices this time around - you have traditional STR food, in addition to some new foods that actually support our double-dipping into AP/SP. Dragonfin and Fish Feast are roughly equivalent, but the dragonfin is usually cheaper:
[Dragonfin Filet]
[Fish Feast]
[Dalaran Clam Chowder]
[Great Feast]

Potions:
With the removal of chain-chugging and limit to once per fight, our only real option is:
[Runic Mana Potion]

[top]Tier Gear

[top]Tier 7

So is looking like voltron really worth it? Let's take a quick look.

Maths, skip if you don't care how these conclusions were formed
WITH 4pc bonus, raid buffed -
Fight lasts 4 minutes (240 seconds):
- 34 judgements (as opposed to 30 without 4pc)
- 2638 extra mana from JotW
(2638 / 240) x 5 = 55, so 55 mp5
- 7800 average judgement damage
70% assumed critrate
4600 - 9200 damage range on judgements
- 31200 more damage from judgements
Tier 7 2pc: 10% damage to DS
This only boosts the damage done by DS itself, not the seal it triggers, making it a 110% weapon strike with the bonus. Since DS accounts for ~10% of a paladin's average damage, we can say that 2pc T7 grants you a 1% damage increase.

Tier 7 4pc: -1s cooldown on judgements
Since judgements now account for ~25% of our total damage (and the majority of our mana income), we can say that 4pc T7 grants you a 3% damage incease, in addition to 55mp5.

After about 2 months of raid testing and comparisons, it appears that it is in your best interest to use 4pc - despite the fact that it uses several weaker pieces than offset items would offer, the ~4% increased dps and 55mp5 (which allows heavy usage of consecrate without mana issues) are worth it. Note that as you do more dps, the 4% damage gain scales with you; so a paladin doing an average of 3000 dps would see a ~120 dps boost, but a paladin in topend gear doing 5000 dps would see a 200 dps boost.

[top]Tier 8

TBA

[top]Add-ons

Pre-facing this by saying these add-ons are entirely optional. Listed in no particular order:

* OmniCC -
OmniCC is an addon that adds text to items/spells/abilities that are on cooldown to indicate when they'll be ready for use.
It's pretty useful to know when your abilities are ready, especially now that we use FCFS. Very helpful for newer paladins, still helpful for experienced ones.
* Omen -
Omen is a threat meter.
Pulling aggro often means death, don't do it. It's not a huge concern these days but you should probably have it regardless.
* Grid -
Grid is a modular, lightweight and screen-estate saving grid of party/raid unit frames
Paladins are a hybrid class; even if you are a dps role, you should have some small raid frames to help res the dead, or to toss salv on the lock in group 4, ect.
* Itemrack -
This is a mod to make swapping equipment easier through popout slot menus, equip slot buttons, gear sets and automated swaps.
Hybrid class means lots of gear sets! Swap entire sets at the click of a butan. This is also a very, very stable mod that often doesn't even need updating when major patches hit.
* Quartz -
Quartz is a modular approach to a casting bar addon.
This one is more pvp related these days - it comes with a swing timer bar (which we used to watch in sunwell, not so much now) and you can set it up to see your own and enemy spell casts.


[top]Macros

You can get by just fine without them, but these are helpful in many situations.

Cleanse on mouseover
#showtooltip Cleanse
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Cleanse; [help] Cleanse; [target=targettarget, help] Cleanse
Auto-attack / CS if possible
#showtooltip Crusader Strike
/startattack
/cast Crusader Strike
Start autoattack with DS
#showtooltip Divine Storm
/startattack
/cast Divine Storm
Hammer of Wrath on mouseover
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=targettarget,harm][] Hammer of Wrath
Salv on mouseover (yes I like mouseover macros okay?)
#showtooltip Hand of Salvation
/cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Hand of Salvation; [help] Hand of Salvation
You can modify the Salv macro to other things like HoP, HoSac, HoF ect.