The Talent Show: Speccing Your Ret Paladin, Part III

We've talked about the Ret tree. We broke down the Prot and Holy trees. Now it's time to put it all together. What does a Ret Paladin's talent build look like? As with most things, that depends...

Raid Builds
Standard Ret - 5/8/46 +2
This is the build to use for your average Retribution raider. It incorporates just Divine Strength from the Holy tree for better strength scaling, Precision from the Prot tree to decrease the +hit from gear needed to eliminate misses, and then grabs every damage increase and mana efficiency talent from the Retribution tree. 2 points are left intentionally - they're your's to do with how you wish. If you do not have a Holy Paladin in your raid with Improved Blessing of Might, one talent swap you can make is 5/5 Imp. BoMight for the 5/5 Benediction points. Benediction is not overly useful after Sanctified Judgement is considered, since Sanctified Judgement returns most of the mana you spend on seals anyway, and Judgement is a cheap spell to begin with.

King Me! - 5/11/45
You love BoKings? Your raid doesn't have enough paladins with BoKings? Well, you can grab it without much fuss. This build does ever so slightly less damage than the Standard Ret build, but gives you the most sought after and powerful blessing available. Points are not so flexible here, since you've got 16 points tied up in the Holy and Prot trees.

PvP Builds
The Stoic Avenger - 0/20/41
This build grabs all the relavent Prot talents for PvP - Stoicism, Imp. HoJ, Imp. RF & Guardian's Favor - and still manages to grab enough points from the Ret tree to get Crusader Strike. Despite the tight spread over the Ret and Prot trees, you actually have a lot of choices to make in the Ret tree. Depending on your play-style and usual PvP buddies, you'll have to choose between Pursuit of Justice, Eye for an Eye, Crusade, Improved Sanctity Aura, and Sanctified Judgement. I can't make those calls for you, most of those are personal preference and play-style dependent. Choose wisely!

The Retnoob - 5/0/56
Often found as the spec of the misguided Retribution Paladin, it does merit discussion. This build grabs every single PvP-relavent Ret talent and then boosts your strength. It is capable of massive damage output in PvP, but lacks the utility of the Prot tree talents. If you never ever get targeted in PvP, it's worth considering. Many Paladins have marked success in 5v5 arena with this build.

The Holy Avenger - 15/0/46
This one is the paladin the Horde hate - the mighty hammer-wielder who can heal sometimes. He's a real PitA, but again lacks those utility talents of the Prot tree. It's best used in small-scale arena (2v2) or BG's. With it, you get all the relavent Holy talents - Divine Strength, Spiritual Focus (for those times you really need to get that heal off), Healing Light, and Unyielding Faith - and still manage to grab most of the Ret tree goodies. The same trade-offs from The Stoic Avenger build are present here, but you also have access to Fanaticism with this build, adding another talent to consider if you judge Command a lot.

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So, now you've got an idea of what a Ret talent build should look like. If I catch you speccing into the no-no talents after reading this, or bringing a PvP build to a raid, we're gonna have issues, capeesh?