Any leveling ret builds?Follow

It really depends on what you're planning to do at the end. Are you looking more for PvP or PvE? I'll assume you're going for PvE, and in that case the best build imo is this.

It leaves you 5 open points that you can spend where you want. For me, I personally spent those last 5 points in Improved Blessing of Might, Seal of Command (for soloing or if it's too dangerous to use Seal of Blood/the Martyr during a particular boss fight) and Divine Purpose for utility in that I can remove stuns.

Is seal of command not being used very much anymore. My pally is 20. I use it but doesn't seem to have the same effect as when I leveled a pally during BC. ><

Also, while leveling, Judging Seal of Command does more damage than Judging Seal of Righteousness, especially since you can force a crit on SoC. SoB/SoM does more damage in groups and is by far the better choice in groups, however for PvP and Soloing, SoC is the better choice.

Vindication is an okay talent, but there are better options in the tree to spend two points in. Eye for an Eye is a PvP-only talent, so unless you're going to do Arena and Battlegrounds a lot, I wouldn't take it. I've got work soon so I can't put up my versions of the talent trees at every 10 levels, but I'll make some quick comment on yours.

- Sanctified Retribution gives you 3% extra damage when using Ret aura, pretty much the only aura you should be using, and you didn't take it? Best to take it right away.

- 2/3 Judgements of the Wise? Nono, you need to max this talent out as soon as it becomes available, it's the one thing that gives us longevity in group situations and the ability to level with no downtime while soloing (pre-71 which is when you get Divine Plea).

Other than that, not bad. There are some spots where I would've done the placement a little different early on, but in the end I would have taken those same talents so it's not a big deal, just personal preference in when you take them I suppose. At this point, after getting your 51-point Ret skill, I would advise you to go max Divine Strength in the Prot tree before doing anything else. As for whether you want to go Prot/Holy or stay Ret.... it's really up to how you want to play your toon. If you want to tank or heal instead of DPS, by all means go for it. If your guild needs a particular role filled and you don't mind, go for it! But if you want to play Ret and force yourself to go Holy just so you'll get groups but you don't like the playstyle, I wouldn't force yourself to do that.

Early on in the Ret Tree, the Gospel is if it gives you more ability to damage the enemy, take it. If it gives you more chance to crit, take it. If it gives you mana regeneration take it. If it gives you a main ability (SoC, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm) take it.

If it gives you a cute little side ability (increased mounted speed for example) it is meh. You might opt to take it, but it isn't directly increasing your ability to continuously do damage with no downtime, so it isn't the first place you should put points.

The goal as you level is to increase your ability to be a killing machine as fast as possible. I have seen properly specced level 40 Ret Paladins that have a 16% crit chance, around 450 base Attack Power, and do 75-90 base dps according to the tooltip.

I have also seen improperly specced level 40 Ret Paladins that have about a 10% crit chance, about 350 attack power, and do about 50 base dps according to the tooltip.

Try to be in the first group.

Also remember at the early levels the way things are itemized, take all the Strength you can and all the agility you can. Stamina is nice so you have a decent health pool, but it isnt top priority. Strength will make you hit things HARD and adds to your attack power. Agility adds to your crit chance and has the added bonus of adding to your armor value.

I see a lot of Ret Paladins with nothing but "of the Bear" equipment at early to mid-levels. Strength and Stam are great. I like to throw in a good mix of "Of the Tiger" equipment which has Strength and Agility rather than Strength and Stamina. I don't neglect "of the Bear" stuff by any means, but I do like to have some added agility.

The faster you kill things the less need you have for a huge health pool, but there has to be some balance. I am not saying that for my level my spec and stats are perfect, but I can say that my toon is a killing machine and works well for me.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Emerald+Dream&n=Estrangela

Hello,

I just created an account just to reply to this thread. There is a lot of stuff which can be a lot better for retribution paladins then the stuff posted here.

This is the build I'm using at the moment:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZ0xZVfrtbIucMsgzho

Basicly, these are the only talents you really need. You can use the rest of your talent points to get anything you like. I took blessing of the kings, improved ret aura and 3% haste rating for example but it's really up to you what you do with the remaining points. The build above contains everything you need.

First of all, you should allways use retribution aura. The armor aura might look good, but it sucks. The little extra armor doesn't mean anything. Retribution gives a 3% boost in damage and does damage to everyone who hits you. With improved retribution aura the damage done by your retribution aura could be around 4-5% of your total damage. A lot better than devotion aura and the Sanctified Retribution aura is a must have.

Seal of Command is the seal that you should use all the time. Seal of vengeance/corruption/matyr might be good, but for leveling seal of command is a lot better. Vengeance/corruption is useless for leveling. You can use it during instances, but when you are questing you should not use it. The mob will allready be dead before the seal starts doing some damage.

Command is a great seal, does very good damage and when you use it in combination with repetance/hammer of justice it is a 100% crit. Use it all the time when you are questing.

Righteous vengeance is a useless talent to have. It does 40% additional damage, but it doesn't have time to tick because you will kill every mob in a few seconds so it will not do any good damage. When I checked my damage meter, exorcism did more damage than righteous vengeance, and I had only used it in a couple of mobs. Hammer of wrath does a lot more DPS too. It's a sh*t talent and you shouldn't waste 5 points on such a little dps increase.

And about the gear. You really should take of the bear gear all the time. Agility looks nice because it gives crit, but you have enough crit as a paladin. Your judgement will crit about 60% of the time, your hammer of wrath will crit just as much, and you have various talents which give enough crit to play with (5% from conviction, 3% from heart of the crusader, 3% from sanctified seals). Go for strengt and stamina all the time. You will get a lot of attack power bonus with strengt, agility gives no attack power at all. And your attackpower will also raise more if you divine strenght from the protection tree. STR and STA all the way. Makes it a lot easier to take large groups.

And vindication is a really good talent to use. It may not look very special, but it procs alot (ALOT) which debuffs your target for 20%. That means they do less damage and have less health so you wont be hit that hard and the mobs will die faster.



Edited, Jan 25th 2009 5:29pm by RichardvdD

Then why dont you use improved blessing of might and vindication?

Improved BoM is great. Having the BoM glyph extends your (Improved) BoM to 30 minutes. Ret Pallies should be using this on themselves constantly.

Vindication is meh. Great stuff while leveling and it does proc fairly often, but is isn't NEEDED when soloing as you still kill everything within a few seconds anyway. In dungeons/raids vindication is useless because bosses are immune.

As far as your stats go, it has been well established that while you are leveling STR > Agil > Stam, so a mix of Tiger and Bear is more beneficial than straight Bear. You say you get plenty of crit from talents, but that isn't totally true. You do get a LOT of crit from talents, but you also get a lot of crit from Agil.

Compare your crit rating with all Bear equipment on VS. some Bear and some Tiger. You will notice a big difference.

Sure, Stam is nice, but you should be killing things fast enough that a TON of stam is not needed. By taking all Bear, you are getting a lot of Strength (which means a lot of attack power) and a lot of stamina which equals... health pool. I would rather have a somewhat smaller health pool and a higher crit chance, so I balance Tiger and Bear. Also, Agil gives you a decent armor boost in addition to higher crit chance. Once you get to the mid to upper 50s the BEST Ret Pally gear for that level (of the Beast) has all 3, Str, Agil, and Stam.

If stacking nothing but Bear equipment works for you, that is fine, but the established order of stats for maximum DPS is STR > Agil > Stam while you are leveling. If you want more surviveability and less DPS, then straight Bear equipment is probably more for you. I would rather kill stuff quicker as a means of staying alive... dead mobs can't hurt you at all.

Once you get to end-game and are doing level 80 dungeons, heroics, raids, etc. people will be evaluating you on your DPS. Check out the Retribution Sticky to see what stats are important at that point, but I think even the people who are far more expert at Retribution (Capjack, Toolofjesus, and others) would agree that if you totally ignore Agility while leveling you are missing something.

You're insane. Pursuit of justice is the single most effective leveling talent in the ret tree until judgements of the wise. 2 talent points and you've got 15% less distance to travel on the way to lv 62. There's a reason why all the DKs are leveling as Unholy.

(Everything else jeromesimina said is great advice)

Seals, judgements, and consecration all scale with spell power roughly as well as with attack power, so for those abilities, you can count Sheath of Light almost as well as +30% AP.

It also allows you to heal yourself for more, and *far* more on a crit, so you can keep on fighting longer.

And I wouldn't count Divine Purpose as a bad talent for leveling. There's been times I've wished I could break stuns without bubbling.

Ebany, vindication is fine for mobs but does not work for bosses so for solo its fine but spec out for instance/raid. Sheath of light is definitely a benefit as consecrate is scaled from ap and sp, i believe divine storm and hammer of wrath do as well.

If you have 2 Ret Paladins(or two of any sort of Paladin) in group, Ret Aura does NOT stack. The "better" Ret Aura wins out. If you both have the exact same points in talents that modify Ret Aura, it still will not stack. The other Ret should have been using Devo, Conc, or an appropriate resist Aura if any sort of resistance was needed.

You cannot stack the same Aura or Buff in an instance or raid. My main is a Prot Paladin, and if there are 2 other Paladins in a raid or instance with me, I have Devo Aura up, one of the other Paladins has Ret Aura up, and the third one has Conc up or a needed resist Aura.

For say "killing 4% faster" to be better than "getting from AtoB 15%" you'd have to be spending at least ~79% of your time in battle*, this isn't even close to true so PoJ is by far on of the best ways to decrease the time it takes you to level. Once you get lv80 and want to respec it might be worth dropping, but given the other options to put points into I certainly wouldn't.


*y=time spent
x= time spent fighting
(100-x)= "%"time spent moving/not fighting
y=x*.96+(100-x)
y=x+(100-x)*.85
x*.96+(100-x)=x+(100-x)*.85
.15(100-x)=.04x
15=.19x
x=~79

Edited, Feb 10th 2009 2:28pm by shintasama