Ret Paladin, Min Reqs for Kara

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Post by 25556

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Post by blademeld

covered in the retlol guide

Post by 25556

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Post by blademeld

3.1 Gearing for PvE

For PvE you should prioritize your stats as such:
1. Strength
2. Melee Hit (to ~5/8% depending on talents)
3. Melee Crit (At least 20% for starting PvE)
4. Stamina
5. Intellect
6. Spell Damage (150-250 is more than enough)
7. MP5 (but never at the expense of other stats)

1. Strength
This is your primary attribute, as it boost your DPS, for a Retribution paladin with Divine Strength 1 str = 2.2 AP. And since Strength scales with Blessing of Kings it should always be taken over AP where possible.

2. Melee Hit
What good is hitting hard, if you keep missing? As a two handed weapon user you need a maximum of about +8% total hit for fighting level 73 raid bosses, a little less if only doing pre-raid content. Hit rating is capped at somewhere around 8% for two handed weapons, so more than that is a waste of item points. Remember that you can get an easy 3% hit from the Precision talent.

3. Melee Crit
Melee Crit is a double edged sword. You need it to improve your DPS, but it also causes spike damage – the bane of Retribution paladins in PvE. As a general rule you should have enough crit to keep Vengeance up the majority (if not all) of the time. In almost full epic Karazhan / Gruul’s Lair gear I have a little under 27.5% crit unbuffed, and my spike damage is pretty much constant. With the change to 30 second Vengeance this is no longer such an important attribute – however melee crit still boosts your DPS considerably, and with the new threat talents you can safely stack this much higher so long as you have a competent tank.

4. Stamina
This is a little more important in 5mans than in raids, as in 5mans you may end up “off tanking” trash when DPSing. In raids you still need a fair amount to survive AoEs and other nasty stuff bosses could throw at you. 8.5-9.5k Unbuffed is plenty for starting PvE and this should grow steadily as you gear up.

5. Intellect
No mana = no Seals, Judgements or Crusader Strikes, simple as that. You should be looking at around 8-9k raid buffed (Arcane Intellect, Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings), like stamina this will steadily improve itself if you take paladin specific gear or enchant warrior gear with some intellect to keep yourself from getting mana starved.

6. Spell Damage
WTF? There is currently much debate about the usefulness of spell damage in the paladin community, and this is down to whether you are a “min/maxer” or prefer to keep some of your hybrid identity. It also comes down to Seal of Blood. Unlike Seal of Command, Seal and Judgement of Blood gains no spell damage coefficient, so many of the Blood Elf paladins chose to go for full “warrior” gear, sacrificing their spell damage and intellect for higher melee stats. It also currently appears as though Blizzard are looking to move paladins away from spell damage to more “pure” melee stats like attack power, which is evident in the new Crusader Strike (110% weapon damage instead of 100% weapon damage + 40% spell damage), however still Alliance paladins get the short end of the stick as Seal of Command is, currently, still based somewhat on spell damage and Judgement of Command is purely spell damage scaled. As it currently stands getting spell damage still boosts your Consecration, Hammer of Wrath and Exorcism spells, and for Alliance your Judgement of Command (although using Rank 1 for mana efficiency would mean the boost is negligible anyway). Watch this space regarding changes to the spell damage situation as further changes come in later patches.

7. MP5 is very hard to get on paladin DPS gear endgame nowadays, if you can get some via a Str/MP5 or Melee Crit/MP5 gem then that’s cool, but don’t sacrifice other attributes for it – that’s what Blessing of Wisdom, Sanctified Judgement and chaining Mana Potions are for.

As a general guide you should look at having around 1200 AP, 20% crit and at least some intellect for starting out at level 70. Good examples of early Retribution gear are the Red Lawbringer “Set” from 5 mans and heroics, or even the Grand Marshal’s blue PvP set and epic boots/bracers/belt (although these are very stamina heavy and lose out on other stats because of this).

A Retribution paladin should at the very least have either (The Maker, Heroic Blood Furnace), or (20 ) before going to Karazhan, the first if you are stuck around 20% crit, the second otherwise.

1200 AP
20% crit
8.5k+ hp
8k+ buffed mp
0+ spell damage
0+ mp5

Post by 25556

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Post by 42591

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Post by blademeld

with AP and crit chance you should be able to calculate DPS and swing damage on your own