Ret FAQ for 3.3

Greetings once more, interwebs. I come bearing a revised FAQ for you. Please note - I will likely discontinue updates of E4AE's version of the guide with this version, and instead maintain my guide on Maintankadin's site (found under Guides > Dual Specs > Ret PvE, or something to that effect).

It is also a possibility that I will blow up E4AE, as I might need to use my Blogger account for business-related things - if you're curious, hit me via e-mail.

Without further ado...

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I'm not kidding when I say there are people out there who still don't quite understand what the flux they're doing when it comes to retribution. So, here's a PvE ret primer in FAQ format. Feel free to submit additional commonly asked questions in the comments, I'll add them and the answers as I deem fit.
What follows is up to date as of patch 3.3. To find out what I've changed since the original posting, please refer to the change log at the end of this post.
To jump to a specific section or question, click the appropriate link below.

I. Talents and Skills

• How should I spec?


• What seal should I use?


• What Judgement should I use?


• What's my skill rotation?


• What blessings do I want?

II. Gear, Enchants, and Glyphs

• What stats should I gear for?


• What major glyphs should I use?


• What minor glyphs should I use?


• What enchants should I get?


• How should I enchant my weapon?


• How should I socket my gear?


• Should I stack spell power/intellect?


• Should I use weapon A or weapon B?

III. Miscellaneous Questions

• I'm running out of mana, what should I do?


• What consumables should I use for raiding?


• Is sword/board retribution viable?


• Are there tools out there to help me make gear choices?


• How'd you get so smart, Baelor?

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I. Talents and Skills

Q: How should I spec?
A: For PvE, anything resembling 5/5/52 is a good start. Here's some specs to choose from:
5/11/55
5/10/56
11/5/55
I personally run with 11/5/55 . Please note that my spec examples have Improved Blessing of Might - Vindication is also a valid choice to provide the group with an AP debuff. Communicate with your raid team to cover the buff/debuff that isn't currently accounted for.

Q: What seal should I use?
A: For PvE in raids, Seal of Vengeance or Seal of Corruption, depending on your faction. Use Seal of Command or Seal of Righteousness in times when the mobs you're attacking won't live long enough for the seal's DoT debuff to stack up to 5 or in AoE situations.

Q: What Judgement should I use?
A: If you're the only paladin, it's a judgment call (hardy har har). Caster-heavy groups get JoWisdom and healing-intense fights get JoLight, choose based on the group composition and encounter. When in doubt, Wisdom it out.

Q: What's my skill rotation?
A: Retribution doesn't have a set rotation like a rogue or a mage might. Retribution normal functioning is more akin to a shadow priest's skill priority system, keeping everything on cooldown as much as possible. Here's your basic priorities, with conditionals in parentheses:

Crusader Strike > (Hammer of Wrath) > Judgement > Divine Storm > Consecration > Exorcism > (Holy Wrath)

With starter equipment, Crusader Strike is your highest DPS and DPM move, as it is relatively inexpensive, has a short cooldown, and procs both your seal and Righteous Vengeance. Use it liberally. Judgement is a big source of damage and returns mana through JotW, so keep that high in your priorities as well. For AoE situations, this priority ranking changes, the above is for single target stationary DPS. For multi-target, emphasize Divine Storm and Consecration while using Seal of Righteousness or Command. For movement intense fights, drop Consecration behind Exorcism.

Please note that these aren't hard and fast rules. Pick which skills you use when intelligently and don't just blindly hit whatever's higher on this list. Your goal is to use as many of these abilities as you can in the time allowed (the boss's life span).

Once you have tier 9 gear, Judgement becomes your top priority:

Judgement > Crusader Strike > (Hammer of Wrath) > Divine Storm > Consecration > Exorcism

Critting DoT's is great, and big Judgements are awesome. That's why Judgement moves to the forefront.

With the 2 piece tier 10 bonus, however, the priority changes again:

Judgement > Divine Storm > Crusader Strike > (Hammer of Wrath) > Consecration > Exorcism

The 2pc t10 bonus periodically resets your Divine Storm cooldown, which lets you cast it more often and reduces its effective cooldown. As DS can proc Seal of Vengeance, hits harder than CS, and can proc Righteous Vengeance, it gets moved up in the rotation. Judgement remains at the front of the line because at this gear level, Judgements are enormous.

In short, use your highest damage-per-global-cooldown abilities first, which changes based on your gear level and set bonuses.

Q: What blessings do I want?
A: Might > Kings > Wisdom > Sanctuary

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II. Gear, Enchants, and Glyphs


Q: What stats should I gear for?
A: For raiding, you want to aim to stack hit to about 263 hit rating (which will yield 8% hit, the most needed for hitting a raid-level boss) and lots of strength. Past that, stack to about 214 expertise rating (which will yield 26 skill, or 6.5% dodge reduction) and then crit, haste, and armor penetration can come as they may. In list format:

1. Hit (to 8%, or ~263 rating)
2. Strength
3. Expertise (to 6.5%, or ~214 rating before racials - get to 26 expertise skill)
4. Crit
5. Agility
6. Haste
7. Armor Penetration

Please note that while haste is still ranked fairly low, it is by no means useless. Haste, crit, and agility are about equal, crit just barely edges out haste. Don't shun the haste gear. Also, the value of Armor Penetration scales upward as you stack it - the more you've got, the better it is.
Also note, if you are Alliance and always run with a Draenei, you can get away with 230 hit rating, as you will have the Heroic Presence buff aura.

Go forth and gear up.

Q: What major glyphs should I use?
A: Glyph of Judgement, Glyph of Consecration, Glyph of Seal of Vengeance, and Glyph of Exorcism are your choices. My recommendation is the following:

1. Glyph of Judgement
2. Glyph of Consecration
3. Glyph of Seal of Vengeance if you are not expertise dodge-capped (26 skill), Glyph of Exorcism if you are

If you can get any significant amount of Expertise out of the Glyph of SoV, I recommend using it.

Q: What minor glyphs should I use?
A: As long as you include Glyph of Sense Undead as one of them, it doesn't matter. I recommend using Glyph of Lay on Hands in one of your other minor slots.

Q: What enchants should I get?
A: Enchant for hit if available for the slot and you're not hit capped. Otherwise, enchant for AP. Want it broken down by armor slot? Here ya go -
Head: Arcanum of Torment
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Axe
Back: Major Agility
Chest: Powerful Stats
Wrists: Greater Assault
Hands: Precision if not hit capped, Crusher if you are
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor
Feet: Icewalker if not hit capped, Greater Assault if you are
Please note, profession-only gear enhancements are not in the scope of this FAQ. Research your particular professions benefits and adjust your gear accordingly.

Q: What about my weapon, how should I enchant that?
A: Berserking.

Q: How should I socket my gear?
A: Meta = Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. Make sure you fulfill your meta requirements. Gem to the melee hit cap if necessary (~263 hit rating for general raiding), then stack pure strength gems.

Q: Should I stack spell power/intellect/(insert caster stat here)?
A: No. Stick to the melee DPS plate. On occasion, you can branch out into the hunter mail or the rogue leather. Don't you dare put on that elemental shaman mail. I will find you and beat the sense back into you.

Q: Should I use weapon A or weapon B?
A: Whichever one has the higher DPS, unless there is a huge difference in damage range. If the DPS is the same, pick the one with the higher top damage. For example, The Jawbone has the same DPS and a higher top damage than Death's Bite, therefore pick The Jawbone if you're choosing between the two (discounting their other stats).

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III. Miscellaneous Questions


Q: I'm running out of mana, what should I do?
A: First step is make sure you're using Divine Plea on every cooldown. Second step is to ensure that your Judgements are not missing by having a good amount of +hit. Third step is use a mana potion. Fourth step is to cut back on Consecration if you're spamming it. Past that, if you're still running low on mana, you're doing something wrong. Parse your damage on an encounter with Recount (I recommend Patchwerk in Naxx and Ignis the Furnace Master in Ulduar as good test subjects), screenshot the skill split, and seek professional help.

Q: What consumables should I use for raiding?
A: Dragonfin Filet, Flask of Endless Rage. Runic Mana Potion if you are worried about mana, Potion of Speed if you are not.

Q: Is sword/board retribution viable?
A: Not if you want to keep up with the rogues. Get a two-hander and smash something with it.

Q: Are there tools out there to help me make gear choices?
A: There sure are. Rawr can help.

Q: How'd you get so smart, Baelor?
A: By frequenting forums and think-tanks like Elitist Jerks, Maintankadin, and Retpaladin.com.

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Change Log
12/29/09 - Altered rotation section to account for 3.3 changes and tier 10 set bonus.

Tools of the Trade: Protecting Your Allies

This is a reminder to all paladins. In the wake of all the fire and brimstone caused by the PTR changes, the forced specialization caused by upper-tier-heavy talent trees, and the loss of supposed hybridity and flexibility amongst several hybrid classes, I want to point to a few things that all ret paladins can do that aren't just "killing the boss faster." How can you protect your fellow raider/groupmate? What abilities can a ret paladin use that make him more than just a warrior with heals or a glorified buff bot?

Hand of Protection
You've had it forever, you just forget to use it. Zealous clothie got aggro? Tree has adds making a bee-line for her? Ele shaman just doesn't know when to stop using Chain Lightning and pulling non-primary targets off the tanks? HoP 'em. HoP 'em good. They'll get 6 seconds of "can't touch this!" physical immunity and a big ol' honking "TONE DOWN YOUR AGGRO" sign over their head, to boot.

Hand of Salvation
Here's a situation. You're watching Omen and see that warlock friend of yours climbing higher and higher on the threat meter. He just overtook the tank's threat total and in a matter of moments he'll be hitting that 130% threshhold where the boss stops beating on the plated guy with a shield and decides that robe-wearers with an affinity for immolation and desecration sounds tastier. You know that he can't Soulshatter, he did that just a short while ago. You are his salvation. Literally. A quick Hand of Salvation buys the tank a minute to crank his threat up or the warlock to throttle it back. Crisis avoided before it starts. They say preventitive medicine is the best kind - so is preventitive aggro reduction.

Hand of Sacrifice
So this boss, he tends to hit things really hard. Sometimes, he hits so hard that the tank gets really, really low. The big bad thing (BBT) this boss does happens on a timer - you know when it's coming. Sometimes the boss might even emote a few seconds before the BBT happens. You can help cushion the blow with some pre-planning. Hand of Sacrifice on the tank before the BBT happens, and 30% of the damage gets transferred to you. Usually, this will be non-fatal. If it would be fatal, you can always Divine Shield as you HoSac the tank and then the damage just fizzles.

Lay on Hands
A ret paladin in a 25-man WoW 3.0 raid has somewhere between 20k and 25k life. That means Lay on Hands is an instant, mana-free 20-25k heal on whomever you like. Oh no! Tank is low and healer just got silenced/incapacitated! BOOM, LoH. Tank saved, wipe averted. What if the healer has everything under control but is running low on mana? That tree has drank a mana potion, Innervated, AND has had Replenishment the entire fight, but still is about to go OOM. Lay on Hands can help there too! LoH the druid and she gets free mana! What a great guy you are, giving a bit of mana to a tree in need.

Hammer of Justice / Repentance
These nifty spells aren't just PvP tools. You can stun things in 5-mans, preventing them from chasing your healer if they're loose, or Repentance them and take the mob out of the fight for a full minute. In a raid, Hammer of Justice can't stun most things, but gorramit it can still interrupt spells. Yea, sure, it's a minute cooldown, but if the rogue that's assigned to kick stuff has his finger up his nose, you can still contribute. Kel'Thuzad is casting a frostbolt and the tank is really low and the healers are distracted! HAMMER TIME! Frostbolt interrupted, tank alive.

Sacred Shield
It may not be terribly powerful for a retribution paladin, but it will absorb damage, and damage absorbed is damage that doesn't need to be healed. If you're not running with a holy paladin healer, you can throw this on the tank periodically and make the healer's job that much easier. Or, if you're in a fight with a lot of periodic raid damage, you can throw this on yourself and cushion the blow, which is usually a great thing since Seal of Blood/Martyr recoil is dangerous in fights like that.
EDIT: According to Zach Yonzon of WoW Insider, Sheath of Light will affect Sacred Shield after patch 3.1. So, hooray! This ability just got uber-useful.

Art of War'ed Flash of Light
Every time you crit with a Judgement or Divine Storm, Art of War procs. Which means just about every time you crit with a special, you can throw an instant heal. Flash of Light doesn't cost a ton of mana. The Flash of Light has an excellent chance of critting, owing to a good amount of crit rating increases on ret gear, and especially if you managed to Sacred Shield the target earlier. Add in that Sheath of Light will leave a heal over time on the target if the FoL does indeed crit, and you have an instant, sizable amount of healing that you can contribute for the cost of a global cooldown.

Hand of Reckoning / Righteous Defense
When all else fails, if you're running out of tricks and there are still things chasing your healer, you can taunt stuff and let them try to kill a plate wearer instead of a cloth wearer. It may earn you an early demise, but it might buy your tanks and healers time to get their shiznit together and take control of the situation. It's a last resort, but it can give the tank a few precious seconds to come to the rescue.

There are other creative ways to use these and other abilities. This is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. Some banks have Know Your Customer (KYC) policies to prevent check fraud - well, consider this my personal message to all paladins to KYA - Know Your Abilities. If you're a paladin who is leveling currently, read the spell description of each spell as you get it, and think about how it might be useful. If you're all ready level 80, go through your spellbook and action bars and reevaluate each of your skills and their placement/position on your action bars. If an ability is unreachable because of your bindings and you can use it, re-bind. If you have an ability that is not on your action bars but you can think of a situation in which it would be useful, find space.

Always remember, you have tools at your disposal besides hit the mob, hurt the mob, and hit the mob harder. You're a paladin, gorramit! Act like one! Protect your party.

Sarth-10 3D - How It Got Done

Stoico asked in comments regarding my Twilight Zone kill:

Im curious, what tac did you use ? dont kill whelps at first drake ? And how about the adds from the other 2 ? And lastly what was your setup.

Im very curious to those questions. As we are heading back in there tomorrow night. For the 3rd time. And we are all very eager to get it down... :)

Let me break it down for you.

First, the raid composition was like this. The unholy DK was the Sarth tank, the prot warrior was the drake tank, and the prot paladin (me!) was the whelp/add tank. For healing, the disc priest took care of the DK and the holy paladin Beacon'ed the DK and kept both the prot warrior and prot paladin up. Once Twilight Torment kicked in, the boomkin and ele shaman took turns helping on raid heals.

As for tactics - our DPS was fairly high, so we were able to take Tenebron down with only one whelp spawn *without using Heroism.* I went around gathering flame adds, then parked myself in front of the portal and waited for the whelps, snagging them in my Consecrate immediately upon their arrival. Once I had a firm hold on them, I dragged my mass of baddies to Tenebron's a$$ and waited. When Tenebron died, the AoE nuked the crap out of the whelps and then turned to Shadron. Somewhere in there the hunter Misdirect'ed Tenebron to the prot warrior for additional threat and then got one of the other drakes to her with Misdirect as well.

After that, I went around picking up flame adds and killing 'em myself with some super-happy-fun-time shield slamming. The rest of the raid blew Heroism and took Shadron down, and then chipped away at Vesperon, being careful not to kill themselves. Once Vesperon was down, everyone but the DK, the two pure healers, and myself went into the portal to take out the acolytes. I HoP'ed the disc priest just to be safe (she got zerged down by random flames the last time we got that far, I was taking no chances) and stood on top of her, Consecrating and killing flames. Once the acolytes were down, cruise control to win. I started having aggro fights with the prot warrior on flame adds while everyone caught their breath and took chunks out of Sarth.

Other logistical notes - I put raid icons on myself and the holy paladin so we could find each other. Oftentimes the holy pally was the one with adds on him, so he would run them to my Consecrate.

For blessings in this group with a holy & prot, both having Kings and the holy having improved Wisdom, we did the following:
Warrior - Sanctuary and Kings
Death Knight - Sanctuary and Kings
Paladin - Sanctuary and Kings (10 minute Wisdom on holy from prot)
Priest - Kings and Wisdom
Druid - Kings and Wisdom
Shaman - Kings and Wisdom
Mage - Kings and Wisdom
Hunter - Kings and Might

I judged Light on whelps/adds to help heal myself a little. Not sure what the holy was judging. Auras were Improved Devo from me, and Fire from the holy.

Any other questions? I'll add additional stuff to this post to address anything anyone might want to know.

My Ideal (10-Man) Raid Comp

As a follow up to my previous post, here's my finely tuned, carefully crafted 10-man raid composition:

Tanks - 2
Death Knight (Frost) - Melee Haste, Attack Speed Slow Debuff, AGI/STR
Paladin (Protection) - AP (Flat), Damage Reduction (%), Healing Received (%), Attack Speed Slow Debuff

Healers - 2
Priest (Discipline) - Spell Power, Stamina, Spirit, Armor (%), Damage Reduction (%)
Shaman (Restoration) - Spell Haste, Heroism/Bloodlust, Spell Power

Ranged DPS - 3
Druid (Balance) - Armor Debuff (Minor), Spell Crit, Spell Vulnerability Debuff, Spell Hit Taken Debuff, Haste (%), Melee Hit Chance Debuff, Stats (Flat)
Hunter (Marksmanship) - AP (%), Melee Hit Chance Debuff, Healing Debuff
Mage (Frostfire) - Spell Crit Debuff, Intellect

Melee DPS - 3
Paladin (Retribution) - Damage (%), Crit Taken Debuff, Stats (%), Replenishment, Haste (%)
Rogue (Combat) - Physical Vulnerability Debuff, Armor Debuff (Major)
Warrior (Fury) - Melee Crit, Healing Debuff, AP Debuff, HP, Armor Debuff (Major), Attack Slow Debuff

I think I've covered all major buffs and debuffs. It's weird that I can leave out warlocks and still make a balanced raid. The raid has the capability for I'm pretty proud of myself right now, I stuffed an entire 25-man's worth of raid buffs into 10 people.

Think you can come up with a better 10-man raid composition that covers all the super-happy-fun time buffage? I'm interested to see what other possibilities there are.

EDIT: I originally had a resto druid and ele shaman instead of resto shaman and combat rogue. I think this covers the buffs better, but now I'm slightly overloaded on melee and a little inflexible when it comes to bringing in a 3rd healer. Hmmm... I'm open to suggestions.
EDIT2: To appease the mighty Myze of LotP, I have crafted a second option that utilizes a feral druid. It doubles up 3 classes, but it covers all the buffs just the same -

Tanks - 2
Druid (Feral) - Armor Debuff (Minor), Melee Crit, AP Debuff, Attack Speed Slow Debuff, Bleed Debuff, Stats (Flat)
Paladin (Protection) - AP (Flat), Damage Reduction (%), Healing Received (%), Attack Speed Slow Debuff

Healers - 2
Priest (Discipline) - Spell Power, Stamina, Spirit, Armor (%), Damage Reduction (%)
Shaman (Restoration) - Spell Haste, Heroism/Bloodlust, Spell Power

Ranged DPS - 3
Druid (Balance) - Spell Crit, Spell Vulnerability Debuff, Spell Hit Taken Debuff, Haste (%), Melee Hit Chance Debuff, Stats (Flat), Armor Debuff (Minor)
Mage (Frostfire) - Spell Crit Debuff, Intellect
Warlock (using an Imp) - HP, Cast Speed Slow, AP Debuff/Spell Vulnerability/Armor Debuff (Minor)

Melee DPS - 3
Paladin (Retribution) - Damage (%), Crit Taken Debuff, Stats (%), Replenishment, Haste (%)
Rogue (Combat) - Physical Vulnerability Debuff, Armor Debuff (Major)
Shaman (Enhancement) - Melee Haste, AP (%), AGI/STR, Heroism/Bloodlust

EDIT3: MMO-Champ RaidComp Creator. My efforts are in vain. Here's attempt #3: 2 Healer 10-man Raid Comp. It does force the shaman to choose between Windfury and Wrath of Air though... the raid is not getting both melee haste and spell haste.

My Ideal Raid Composition - Patch 3.X

Disclaimer: The following is not a knock on any class or spec. It is merely the crazy musing of a bored office worker.

So yesterday's post in rebuttal to BRK got me back on raid composition. The sharing of buffs amongst classes in 3.0.2 has made the job of the raid organizer/planner simpler, yet more complex. No longer does the raid leader require 4-5 shamans for Heroism/Bloodlust, or a minimum of 3 of X class for Y buff. With buff sharing, multiple classes bring the same buff.

But now you face the grim fact that some classes can cover a buff and bring other utility/damage to the table.

Because I was bored, I worked up my ideal raid composition, covering as many buffs as I could in as few raid slots as possible. My shared buffage was taken from MMO Champ's report from Patch 3.0.2 found here. As I said, this is what I would create if I had carte blanche with skilled/geared players and invites. I think you'll find that all buffs/debuffs are covered with 1 spot to spare. The buffs each player is providing are next to them, and any additional buffs that they could cover are in italics. It's not exhaustive, since there's a ton of overlap, but I tried -

Tanks - 3
Death Knight (Frost) - Melee Haste, AGI/STR, Attack Slow Debuff
Paladin (Protection) - Damage Reduction, Healing Received, Stats (%), Attack Slow Debuff
Warrior (Protection) - Armor Debuff (Major), Attack Slow Debuff

Healers - 6
Druid (Restoration) - Stats (Flat), Healing Received
Druid (Restoration)
Paladin (Holy)
Priest (Discipline) - Spell Power, Stamina, Spirit, Armor Increase (%)
Priest (Holy)
Shaman (Restoration) - Spell Haste, Heroism/Bloodlust
Shaman (Restoration)

Ranged DPS - 9
Druid (Balance) - Armor Debuff (Minor), Spell Crit, Spell Vulnerability, Spell Hit Taken Debuff, Haste (%), Melee Hit Chance Debuff, Stats (Flat)
Hunter (Beast Mastery) - Damage (%), Melee Hit Debuff
Hunter (Marksmanship) - AP (%), Melee Hit Debuff, Healing Debuff
Mage (Arcane) - Cast Slow, Intellect
Mage (Frostfire) - Spell Crit Debuff, Intellect
Priest (Shadow) - Spell Hit Debuff, Replenishment
Warlock (Affliction) - Spell Vulnerability, AP Debuff, HP
Warlock (Destruction) - AP Debuff
______ (Open spot for Mage, Hunter, or Warlock)

Melee DPS - 7
Death Knight (Blood)
Death Knight (Unholy) - Spell Vulnerability, AGI/STR
Paladin (Retribution) - Haste (%), Damage (%), Crit Taken Debuff, Stats (%), Replenishment
Rogue (Combat) - Physical Vulnerability Debuff
Rogue (Mutilate) - Armor Debuff (Major) Crit Debuff, Healing Debuff, Cast Slow
Shaman (Enhancement) - AP (%), AGI/STR, Melee Haste
Warrior (Fury) - Bleed Debuff, Melee Crit, AP (Flat), Healing Debuff, HP, AP Debuff

2 sources of Replenishment, all major buffs covered, all major debuffs covered, 3 paladins so that everyone gets what they need/want, no less than 2 and no more than 3 of every class. Arms warrior removed, see note below. There's even a cat druid and 2 warriors a warrior that can tote tank gear with them him in case a fourth tank is needed for any encounter. 2 dedicated tank healers (disc priest and holy paladin), 2 brain healers... this raid has it all.

Okay, I've got that out of my system now. The raid leader in me has been appeased.

EDIT: Removed the arms warrior since an anonymous tipster told me Blood Frenzy is doubled by combat rogues! Also shuffled some things - brought in a moonkin, subbed out the feral, and shifted a shaman from elemental to enhancement.

Don't Read WoW Insider's Ret Guide

As much as I appreciate what Zach Yonzon is trying to do, it's riddled with mistakes.

First off, yes, hit and expertise are good stats, but the hit cap and expertise cap are completely unnecessary. Stocking up on strength at the expense of either of these stats is fine. Never gem for hit. Bold red, Inscribed orange, and Sovereign purple, nothing else (aside from your meta) is acceptable.

Second, when speaking about expertise rating, keep your terms uniform! The following:

You'll need 214 Hit Rating to be Expertise capped, so every little bit helps.

... is confusing! I know Zach meant "214 expertise rating," but anyone reading this that isn't, well, me or someone like me, might not know that he just mixed his terms. Hit rating is not expertise rating.

Third, I just got done explaining why Glyph of Seal of Blood is terrible, especially when you have the option of Glyph of Spiritual Attunement. Neither of them should be considered, but if you do, Glyph of Seal of Blood should not be chosen. Ever.

Fourth, you don't open with Judgement because of Heart of the Crusader. You open with Judgement because it's your biggest, juiciest, highest damage and highest DPS attack. And you keep it as your top priority because of that AND it returns mana.

Lastly, it is irresponsible to macro Avenging Wrath to Judgement. Avenging Wrath should be used early in the fight and as often as possible, but if it comes off cooldown just before Sapphiron takes to the air, or just before Malygos starts his Vortex, or just before Sartharion sends a position-unfriendly Flame Wall at you, or before Heigan teleports away to make you dance, you just wasted your cooldown.

There are some good things said in the article, but these glaring errors make me nervous that people will actually read and take some of these wrong pieces of information to heart.

EDIT: And another thing! When talking about specs, Zach says:

As far as the two discretionary points are concerned, it's a toss-up between Pursuit of Justice and Divine Purpose. Pursuit of Justice is extremely useful for mobility fights while Divine Purpose is useful to break stuns on bosses with stun abilities.

Let me make this crystal clear. Vindication should not be considered mandatory in a PvE raiding build. It does not affect bosses and is iffy on the trash. If you want to make a PvE build skeleton, it's 0/10/57 +4, with your 4 points having a choice of going into Improved Blessing of Might (which is not necessary if you coordinate your talent builds with other paladins in your raid), Divine Purpose, and Improved Retribution Aura. Pursuit of Justice should be the mandatory one - getting to your target quicker means you can start attacking quicker, and if you start earlier you get more swings in. More swings = more damage. Vindication is even less important to a raiding paladin than Divine Purpose, which has limited application in raids to begin with.

Boss Spotlight: Sapphiron

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In today's crosshairs: Sapphiron.

Sapphiron is frost wyrm guarding access to Kel'Thuzad's seat of power in Naxxramas. A blue dragon of considerable power in life, Sapphiron was killed and resurrected by Arthas to serve the Lich King. Sapphiron has all the usual abilities of a dragon with some powerful frost magic to boot.

Why are we talking about this boss?
Dragons are a run-of-the-mill encounter in MMO's, even World of Warcraft. The WoW versions of dragons do some or all of the following: a frontal cleave, a tail sweep, a breath ability, and may or may not take flight at some point in the encounter. Sapphiron is no different - he cleaves, he slaps people with his tail, and he will fly around frequently.

So what's different?

In addition to all his dragon-y abilities, our winged guest will also encase people in blocks of ice, blast the entire room with frosty instant-death, deal periodic frost damage to everyone in the room for the entire fight, and summon very powerful blizzards to wreak havoc with your positioning.

Right! So, what are you waiting for? Go poke him with the pointy end.

What to do when facing Sapphiron
First, determine your healers' competency. If they are questionable or relatively weak, you may want to switch to Seal of Command for this fight to make sure you don't kill yourself with kickback. Using your Judgement of Light instead of Judgement of Wisdom may also help out the melee's health, giving the healers a helping hand. Lastly, if it comes to it, make use of your Art of War procs to top yourself and others off. The periodic frost damage combined and the summoned blizzards are a pain to deal with. If your raid's healers are top-notch, continue on cutting yourself for extra damage with Seal of the Martyr / Seal of Blood and judging whatever you like.

Second, always be mindful of your surroundings and position. Sapphiron's cleave is far-reaching - if you are anywhere near his frontal cone, you will get cleaved and you will get one-shot. Likewise, if you're anywhere near his rear cone you will get tail-slapped and you will end up way out of range of the boss and your healers for a bit. Stay between his front and hind legs at all times.

The blizzards cause additional problems for positioning. They wander around the room and deal considerable damage coupled with a movement slowing effect. If a blizzard approaches your position, run through Sapphiron to his other flank. If you do so, you can continue DPS'ing uninterrupted. Watch your health while you're on the other side, you may be momentarily out of healing range. When the blizzard passes your original location, swap back and resume normal functioning. Don't stand in the blizzard, it's generally considered a Bad Thing. It's not quite the Super Bowl of not standing in things, as Gragnarth dubbed Illidari Council (thanks WoW Insider for reminding me of that wonderful forum post), but you definitely need to keep an eye on what's going on around you.

When Sapphiron takes to the air, move out of melee range. Anyone standing near his take-off point will be knocked back after a few seconds. When repositioning, do not stand too near to any of your fellow raiders. The wyrm will shoot two frostbolts at random raid members that will encase them in ice blocks for several seconds, and anyone standing near the targets will take additional frost damage. Once your friends are thoroughly frozen, position yourself behind the ice block, using the raider-cube to shield yourself from Sapphiron's line of sight. Sapphiron will "deep breath" and insta-kill anyone in the room that's not hiding behind or encased in ice. Again, watch your health, and if necessary, throw some heals around. When he's done trying to annihilate you from the air, he'll land in the middle of the room and resume thrashing your tank. Stay away from the head and tail and get back in there.

Rinse, and repeat.

A note on cooldowns - Sapphiron is on the ground for 45 seconds at a time, and less than that in the air. You will likely be able to use your Avenging Wrath every other ground phase. If you, like me, are an engineer and have Hyperspeed Accelerators on your gloves, you can use them every ground phase and still stack them with your wings.

Until next time, this has been another edition of E4AE Boss Spotlight, with your host, Josh!

Optimizing Your Wings - Squeezing The Most Out Of Avenging Wrath

A comment by Fedaykin98 on my post Wednesday sparked some thought. Here's what he said:

When exactly do you pop [Avenging Wrath]? Ideally, one would pop it when your cooldowns are all coming up, but I haven't really been doing that.

If I pop it at the beginning, I'll likely pull threat off of some of the non-pally tanks out there. If I pop it on Judgment's first CD, I won't get the most bang for my buck because some things won't be off cooldown for a bit. If I wait until a later, more optimal CD to pop it, I reduce the chances of using it multiple times on one boss.

I guess the thing to do is to use it on the 2nd Judgment CD (meaning, after using Judgment twice, popping AW right as Judgment is becoming available) on short boss fights to maximize it's effectiveness, and as early as is safe on longer fights. Or do you try to make it overlap Hammer of Wrath?

Meter chasing Retadins want to know! =)

I generally use my wings as soon as threat is solid and Vengeance is stacked, which, broadly speaking, is sometime around the 10-15 second mark. It's all feel with me.

Now, Fedaykin is a tank, so he's speaking from the perspective of a protection paladin. However, asking about when in relation to his rotation he should pop his wings got me thinking. Is there an optimal rotation while inside of Avenging Wrath? Is there one combination of buttons that can get the most cooldowns crunched inside of 20 seconds? I mathed it out, here's what I came up with. All of the following assume the boss is above 20% health, the paladin has Glyph of Consecration equipped, zero latency, and starts with everything off or nearly off cooldown. First, let's consider cycles with 4 pieces of tier 7 equipped:

CS > Judge > DS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Crusader Strike
1.5 Judgement
3.0 Divine Storm
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Crusader Strike
7.5 Exorcism
9.0 Judgement
10.5 Holy Wrath
12.0 Crusader Strike
13.5 Divine Storm
15.0 Consecration
16.5 Judgement
18.0 Crusader Strike
3 Judgements, 4 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

Judge > DS > CS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Judgement
1.5 Divine Storm
3.0 Crusader Strike
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Exorcism
7.5 Judgement
9.0 Crusader Strike
10.5 Holy Wrath
12.0 Divine Storm
14.0 Crusader Strike
15.5 Judgement
17.0 Consecration
20.0 Crusader Strike
3 Judgements, 4 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

Judge > CS > DS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Judgement
1.5 Crusader Strike
3.0 Divine Storm
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Exorcism
7.5 Crusader Strike
9.0 Judgement
10.5 Holy Wrath
13.5 Crusader Strike
15.0 Divine Storm
16.5 Judgement
18.0 Consecration
19.5 Crusader Strike
3 Judgements, 4 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

No matter how you slice it, you're going to pack 13 cooldowns into 20 seconds with zero latency. I didn't consider leading with Divine Storm, as it leads to a lot of cooldown clash. However, it seems the rotation with the most wiggle room for latency is CS > Judge > DS with 4-piece T7 equiped and while under the effects of Avenging Wrath.

Now, let's consider rotations without 4 pieces of tier 7:

CS > Judge > DS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Crusader Strike
1.5 Judgement
3.0 Divine Storm
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Crusader Strike
7.5 Exorcism
9.5 Judgement
11.0 Holy Wrath
12.5 Crusader Strike
14.0 Divine Storm
15.5 Consecration
17.5 Judgement
19.0 Crusader Strike
3 Judgements, 4 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

Judge > DS > CS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Judgement
1.5 Divine Storm
3.0 Crusader Strike
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Exorcism
7.5 Holy Wrath
9.0 Crusader Strike
10.5 Judgement
12.0 Divine Storm
14.5 Consecration
16.0 Crusader Strike
18.5 Judgement
3 Judgements, 3 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

Judge > CS > DS
0.0 Avenging Wrath
0.0 Judgement
1.5 Crusader Strike
3.0 Divine Storm
4.5 Consecration
6.0 Exorcism
7.5 Crusader Strike
9.0 Judgement
10.5 Holy Wrath
13.5 Crusader Strike
15.0 Divine Storm
16.5 Consecration
18.0 Judgement
19.5 Crusader Strike
3 Judgements, 4 Crusader Strikes, 2 Divine Storms, 2 Consecrations, 1 Exorcism, 1 Holy Wrath

Without 4 pieces of tier 7, as long as you start with Crusader Strike before Divine Storm in your cycle, you'll get the same 13 cooldowns in 20 seconds. However, again, you get a tiny bit more wiggle if you go with CS > Judge > DS.

The bottom line in all this is that there isn't one wings rotation that really sticks out as the best of the best. If you time it when either your Judgement or Crusader Strike are coming off cooldown just as or just before you hit your wings, and the other will not be far behind, you're good to go.

Boss Spotlight: Thaddius

That's right, folks, Boss Spotlight is back on the air!

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In today's crosshairs: Thaddius.


Thaddius is a flesh giant, and the last boss of the Construct Quarter in Naxxramas. Sewn together of women and children and powered by tesla coils, Thaddius is a fearsome foe. However, you must topple him to gain access to the upper level of the citadel, where Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad lie in wait. When you enter Thaddius's chamber, he is on the far side of the room and un-attackable. You must engage and kill two mobs, Feugen and Stalagg, before you can take some swings at the big undead man on campus. The boss's abilities are limited - regular melee on the tank, Chain Lightning, and a Polarity Shift that will debuff everyone in the raid, much like Mechano-Lord Capacitus in Mechanar from The Burning Crusade.

Why are we talking about this boss?
At first, Thaddius doesn't seem very dangerous. His melee isn't especially strong, his Chain Lightning hits for about a quarter of a DPS's health bar, and the Polarity Shift debuff doesn't seem like it should pose a threat.

Your enemies here are time, latency, and other people.

Thaddius has a 6-minute hard enrage, which isn't hard to beat if everyone stays alive and executes correctly. However, if the Polarity Shift isn't handled correctly, many will perish in shocking fashion as electrical charges fry the offending parties. Allow me to explain how Polarity Shift works, for those who are unaware:
Not long after activating, Thaddius will stop attacking and channel his Polarity Shift ability. When the cast is complete, everyone in the raid will either have a positive or negative charge debuff. About 4 seconds after the debuff is acquired, anyone with a positive charge standing next to a negatively-charged person will deal damage to that oppositely-charged person, and vice versa. A negatively-charged person standing in the middle of a pack of postively-charged people will experience near instant-death once the charges are set after 4 seconds.

Paraphrasing the immortal Dr. Egon Spengler, crossing the charges is bad.

Conversely, anyone standing near a like-charged person will gain a stackable buff that increases damage done. The same-charge buff-stacking is necessary to do enough damage to burn through Thaddius's large health pool.

What to do when facing Thaddius
First and foremost, don't miss the jump. If you don't make it onto Thaddius's platform immediately after killing the tesla twins, you will cause major problems re-entering the fight after the Polarity Shift. Move to the edge of the platform, onto the lip, and take a running jump. If you're especially worried about it and you're an engineer, use either a pair of Nitro-boosted boots to long-jump the gap or a cape with a Flexweave Underlay to safely float to the lower platform. The jump isn't especially difficult, however, and these are just extreme measures for the under-confident.

Once the Polarity Shift happens, make sure you know a) what your charge is, b) which direction is your safe zone, and c) which direction traffic is flowing. As soon as you recognize your charge, move to your safe zone in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion around Thaddius, depending on what your raid designates as proper etiquette. Make wide turns. After re-positioning, stand at maximum melee range. If you and another melee'er with opposite charges stand close in to Thaddius, you'll fry each other. Don't worry about Thaddius parrying your attacks - it's lost DPS, but it's unavoidable for this fight. The good news is Thaddius doesn't parry-haste his melee, so there's no consequence to your tank.

Once you and your 9-24 friends master the time-lost art of not electrocuting each other, it's a simple tank and spank. Pop your cooldowns early and often, keep your rotation flowing (he's undead, remember to throw Exorcism and Holy Wrath in when you can!), and collect your loots.

Until next time, this has been another edition of E4AE Boss Spotlight, with your host, Josh!

A Ret Primer For Strand of the Anicents

As always, Megan is always a step ahead of me. I wanna post about Wintergrasp, she throws a post up and pre-empts me. I wanna post about Strand of the Ancients, she's been there, done that. Well, you're hearing the ret P.O.V. on this BG anyway. Tough noogies.

Strand of the Ancients, henceforth referred to as SotA, is the newest battleground added in Wrath. The premise is basically a mini-Wintergrasp - there is a relic located behind several walls on top of a hill, and one faction must employ siege weaponry and explosives to blast their way off a beach, up the hill, and into the keep where the relic is located. The other faction must slow the attackers' advance up the hill by any means necessary - anti-personell guns, snares at choke-points, knockback effects, whatever. The Alliance starts as the attackers, and then the Horde gets a turn. Whoever captures the relic faster is declared the winner. 10 people per faction may participate.

As a ret paladin, there are several key things you should focus on in this BG. I'm going to assume you know the layout and basic strategy, and delve into a few specifics. First, when attacking:

1. Get a siege vehicle. Melee can't do anything to the walls without Seaforium Charges or Saronite Bombs, and the key is to get up the hill as quickly as possible. The ranged classes can at least contribute by taking out the gunners on the walls - as melee, you want to get in the siege tank and lob fiery death at the wall and/or ram it 'til it crumbles.
2. If you are cockblocked out of a tank, grab a Seaforium Charge and protect the siege. Is there a rogue trailing behind the siege, stabbity-stabbing away until it breaks? Show him the business end of your mace. Ensuring the siege tanks get to the walls in one piece is the best thing you can do for your team.
3. Are you at the wall? Do you have your Seaforium? Good! Drop it and protect it, every little bit helps the wall crumble faster.
4. As soon as one of the initial walls go down, mount up and bolt for the graveyard flag. Taking the graveyard will a) ensure a closer spawn point to the action, and b) allow for siege vehicles to be built closer to the front line.

On defense:

1. Get on the guns. Lead your targets a little and blast things to holy hell before they get to the wall. Concentrate fire on the tanks, if they can't get the tanks to the wall there's a good chance the walls will not fall.
2. If you can't get a gun, flail away at anything that comes into gun-range of the wall, siege tanks are the priority.
3. Defend the graveyard flag as soon as the wall is breached. You can do this by standing on the flag and introducing your mace to the face of anyone who approaches, or by falling back to the second wall and manning a gun turret, exploding anyone who dares come near your precious flag.

And at all times, remember - the key is the relic, not the other players. You can rack up 100 kills, but if they manage to slip a siege tank past the yellow gate in under 4 minutes and bring down the keep wall, you're screwby-doobied. Stay on target!

All in all, I like SotA. I queue up anytime I need my frenzied siege fix and Wintergrasp won't be happening for a while. Plus, it isn't a total lag-fest like the zerg at the end of a Wintergrasp is!

Good luck, and Light be with you.

The Ret Commandments, Version 3.0

Unlike the Bible, I do update my commandments with the times. Here's a link to my original list.

1. Thou shalt not die.
2. Thou shalt not do anything that causes raidmates to die.
3. Thou shalt maximize thine time on target.
4. Thou shalt Crusader Strike every cooldown.
5. Thou shalt Judge every cooldown, so long as it does not interfere with Crusader Strike.
6. Thou shalt Divine Storm every cooldown, so long as it does not interfere with Judgement or Crusader Strike.
7. Thou shalt ensure 100% seal up-time.
8. Thou shalt use Divine Plea as often as possible.
9. Thou shalt use Consecration, Exorcism, and Holy Wrath as often as mana allows.
10. Thou shalt use thine Avenging Wrath early and often.

Engrave these upon a stone tablet and place them by your monitor. These are your rules to live by in raids.
EDIT: Swapped Crusader Strike and Judgement in rules 4 & 5 to reflect the Patch 3.1 changes

Repentance and Instance Groups

A new-found ability of ret paladins in 3.0 is a little something the community likes to call crowd control. Repentance, the 31-point ret talent, got a bit more than a spit shine when the devs were polishing the talent trees for Wrath's release.

Previously, Repentance was only usable against humanoid enemies, and was a fairly short 4-second incapacitate with a minute-long cooldown. With all those restrictions, I saw it as a PvP tool to interrupt casts at range and slow someone down in order to close the distance. Unless you were in a humanoid-rich instance environment, it wasn't even a valid ability in PvE. Bosses are immune to it as well, of course.

Now, however, Repentance has an expanded eligible target list and more uses. It still has a 1-minute cooldown, but against PvE enemies, it lasts for a full minute duration (unless broken by damage), and can be used against demons, dragonkin, giants, humanoids, and undead. Go over that list and think about it - what do you encounter besides those? Beasts, yes... but not much else. It's instant cast, can be used at range (20 yards), can be used in combat (unlike a rogue's Sap ability), and can be chained against a target, since the cooldown matches the duration.

So when your instance group is having trouble with massive pulls, thin the ranks out a bit - pick something the tank is targeting specifically, repent it, and have the mob of enemies moved away from the repented target so it avoids being hit with splash damage. If you keep an eye on the repented target, either via focus targeting or just splitting your attention, it shouldn't bother anybody.

Want a way to do it all with one button? Well, I can offer a combo of buttons - here's the mage "Polymorph" macro, adapted for use with Repentance:

#showtooltip [target=focus,harm] [] Repentance
/clearfocus [modifier:shift][target=focus,dead][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Repentance

To use, here's what you do - target something, hit the macro. It'll repent it and put it on focus. Any subsequent presses will attempt to repent the focused target (but it won't be eligible for another minute, since that's the length of Repentance's cooldown). If you want to repent something else while your original target is alive, target the new baddie, hold shift and slam the macro. Voila! The new baddie is repent'ed and now considered your focus. Easy, no?

And now you know why everyone loves running instances with mages. Well, aside from the food and drink conjuring...

One Small Step for Forums, One Giant Leap for WoW-kind

As reported by Deathknight.info, Nethaera appeared on the official forums yesterday to inform the community that as of November 6, the official class forum subsections will disappear. In their place will be subsections for Tanking, Healing, and Damage Dealing.

Now, at face value this seems like a great idea. In the past, having holy, prot, and ret paladins in the same place has caused chafing and arguments - namely holy paladins saying "lolret," ret paladins saying "ewww healing," and prot paladins saying "somebody love me!" Putting them into the same forum with their role-counterparts will encourage collaboration in bettering each other at their own roles and halt the bickering amongst intra-class hybrid players. This will effectively put an end to the "Paladin Civil War."

However, I think this will trade one snark for another. Now, prot paladins will wander into the damage-dealing forum for advice on off-spec retribution and be told "go back to the tanking forum, noob" or something of that sort. Not very productive.

Also, the damage-dealing forum is going to be overloaded. Tanking is simple logistics-wise: 4 tank classes, ~3 tanks per raid, that's 12% of the raid that are tanks. Healing: ~8 healers per raid, 4 healing classes, 32% of the raid. The rest of the raid, which is over 60%, is damage dealers. Plus, every class has a damage-dealer option. That forum sub-section is going to be flooded. I'm thinking that Blizz should split the damage-dealing forum into either ranged/melee, or physical/magic. A rogue has no cares about what a mage does for damage-dealing - they work on different resource systems, different schools of damage, and attack from immensely different vantage points.

Also, as BBB noted, hybrids are also losing a place to talk about their class-specific nuances, like shapeshifting macros for druids or seal-related debates for paladins. None of the warriors in the tanking forum are going to care about the prot paladins babbling about Seal of Righteousness versus Seal of Vengeance for threat generation.

So yea, good idea, but poor implementation, and lacking a little bit of foresight.

EDIT: Fixed some typos and phrasing.

How to Kill Zombies Without a Chainsaw in 10 Easy Steps

Step 1: Activate Divine Shield
Step 2: Wade into a mob of zombies
Step 3: Activate Avenging Wrath and use trinkets
Step 4: Consecrate
Step 5: Holy Wrath
Step 6: Divine Storm
Step 7: Raise hell until the bubble runs out
Step 8: Run the f!$% away, using Judgement and Exorcism at range and dropping new Consecrates behind you
Step 9: Hammer of Justice anything that gets close to you
Step 10: Spam Cleanse on yourself as you run and wait for cooldowns to come back up

If you get other paladins to follow this procedure in tandem with you, you'll have some piles of zombie corpses. Defend your home! For the Light!

Boss Spotlight: Felmyst

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In quite possibly the last installment for a while: Felmyst.

Felmyst is the third boss of Sunwell Plateau, accessible after Brutallus is killed. Felmyst is the remains of Madrigosa, a blue dragon that attempted to subdue Brutallus before she was summarily slaughtered. The blood of the pit lord seeped into the soil and corrupted what was left of the noble dragon, warping her into a fel dragon and granting her new and dangerous abilities.

Why are we talking about this boss?
Unlike the preceeding boss, Brutallus, Felmyst requires a lot of movement and
situational awareness. Felmyst will frequently alternate between "ground" and "air" phases, much like Nightbane from Karazhan. Also like Nightbane, the air phase is characterized by a horde of skeletons raining from the heavens to slaughter all of the living. That, plus all the raid damage being thrown around, means you need to be light on your feet and keep your wits about you. One false move, an inopportune lag spike, or any hesitation in your movement can spell fatality for you and yours.

What to do when facing Felmyst
The fight is almost squarely on the healers (notably the priests), but there are still a few things you, as a ret paladin, about which you need to be aware.

Felmyst is about awareness. First, ground phase awareness. Ol' Mystie will periodically cast Gas Cloud, which is a debuff that drains health and mana from everyone in range and can only be dispelled via immunities or Mass Dispel. You need to stay aware of your HP - if you drop low, gulp a health potion or healthstone. The amount of raid damage in this fight will keep your mana topped via Spiritual Attunement gains from heals, so don't save the potion cooldown for a mana potion. Keep yourself alive, the healers are going to be stretched.

The second ability during ground phase that you need to be aware of is Encapsulate. Felmyst will turn and target a random person in the raid other than the main tank and cast this ability on that raider, lifting them in the air and dealing damage to that person and everyone within 20 yards. You need to carefully watch your surroundings, and at the first sign of Felmyst casting Encapsulate, run like your life depends on it. Because it does. Before Arcane resistance is figured in, Encapsulate can deal about 10.5k damage in 3 seconds. I don't know about you, but I run about 10.6k HP raid buffed, and there's frequent damage from Felmyst's Noxious Fumes aura constantly eating away at that total. If you hesitate, you die. Keep an eye on your distance from others, and know your exit strategy should someone near you get hit with Encapsulate.

After a set period of time, Felmyst will take to the air. The first part of the air phase involves dodging Felmyst's green trail of doom. She uses a targeted breath attack that is easily out-run, but can catch people by surprise. The breath leaves a green trail that spawns skeletons, and if anyone crosses the trail more skeletons spawn. It needs to be said: don't stand in the green stuff. Move away from it. And if the breath attack targets you, kite it. Don't just stand there, you'll die.

After she does the green spew thing twice, she'll decide to carpet bomb entire sections of the area with green gas. Anyone caught in the gas will get irreversibly mind controlled and thus must die. Again, don't stand in the bad things. Keep an eye on Felmyst, she always bombs either the northern half or southern half of the map, and will tip which way she's going seconds before her attack. Run the other way, as fast as your greaves allow.

As you can see, many things can threaten your health in this fight. Give priority to your life-saving abilities. Watch for clothies in danger of becoming skeleton snacks, and BoP them. Lay on Hands a tank in trouble. Divine Shield to save yourself, and only use Avenging Wrath if you are assured safety (Divine Shield on cooldown, Encapsulate just happened, still 20s or more left on the ground phase). Also, since there is so many "move or die" situations in this fight, Pursuit of Justice can be your best friend. At the very least, you absolutely need Cat's Swiftness or Boar's Speed on your boots if you've invested your talents elsewhere.

Besides all that... ummm... pew pew and such?

Special note: Several of the tips in this guide are obsolete because of changes brought in the Echoes of Doom patch, specifically saving Avenging Wrath. My original thoughts on the fight are preserved here for posterity, since this is how I learned it. For your own purposes, you may use Avenging Wrath at any point in the ground phase when you think you'll be able to stand still for the entire duration and pound away at Felmyst's backside.

Boss Spotlight: Kalecgos

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In today's crosshairs: Kalecgos.


Kalecgos is a blue dragon, of the same family as Azuregos in Azshara and Sapphiron, currently under the control of the Scourge in Naxxramas. The Blue Dragonflight governs the domain of magic, and because of this, any time you have to go toe-to-toe with a blue dragon in battle, you're in for a fight wrought with magical mayhem. Kalecgos was sent to Quel'Thalas to investigate the situation surrounding the Sunwell, but when he arrived there, a series of events transpired that ended in the dreadlord Sathrovarr the Corruptor possessing the mighty blue dragon. Since Kalecgos is actually an ally in the efforts against the Burning Legion, the fight does not end with his death - the raid must break Sathrovarr's hold over Kalec. This is done by reducing both Sathrovarr's and dragon Kalecgos's hit points down to 1%.

Why are we talking about this boss?
Kalecgos is a two-phase fight, but not in the sense that you're most likely used to. The normal sort of two-phase fight sees a boss use one set of abilities and then switch to another, like High King Maulgar when he puts away his mace, or Illidan as he swaps between his human and demon phases. Kalecgos has two entirely separate targets that need to be killed, and raiders can only have access to one at a time. Here's what happens -

Kalec starts in the middle of circular plaza, and hostile. Once aggro'd, after a few seconds he will put up a magic barrier that prevents raiders from leaving the plaza. He throws around a bunch of "Wild Magic" debuffs, most of which do not concern you. There's one that ups your threat production - that's one you need to be careful with. The abilities that concern us here are his Arcane Buffet and Spectral Blast. Arcane Buffet will deal arcane-based damage and stack a DoT that deals arcane damage as well as increase arcane damage taken. It can be pretty dangerous when stacked past 8 or so. Spectral Blast, on the other hand, is an instant ability that Kalec will cast periodically that teleports the target into the "Spectral Realm," leave a portal behind that allows others to enter the realm, and deals a fair amount of arcane damage to anyone standing about 10 yards from the original target. The Spectral Realm is where you will find Sathrovarr, locked in combat with a half-elf form of Kalecgos. Those who enter the Spectral Realm will only stay there for 60 seconds, and cannot re-enter the realm for 60 seconds after exiting.

The rub in this fight is harsh, however. If Sathrovarr kills the Spectral Realm Kalec, the fight resets. If Kalecgos or Sathrovarr hit 10% health, they both enrage and start absolutely thrashing their targets. If dragon Kalecgos hits 1% health while Sathrovarr is still active, he gets banished and stops spawning portals via Spectral Blast (making it impossible for additional raiders to get to Sathrovarr). Needless to say, great care must be taken with this fight.

What to do when facing Kalecgos
The keys to defeating this boss are: a) good Spectral Realm portal rotations (having the right people enter the portal when they're supposed to); b) evenly-split damage on both Kalecgos and Sathrovarr; c) tight healing. You, as a retribution paladin, can't do much about (c), but you can most certainly contribute to (a) and (b).

Depending on how your raid splits up their groups, you will be assigned to a certain "portal group." It is imperative that you know who else is in your portal group, and proceed directly to the portal when it spawns on one of your group's members. Spam-click the portal when you get in range - you must enter the portal when your group is up, otherwise you can potentially throw the entire raid off.

Watch your Arcane Buffet stacks. If Kalecgos takes his time in Spectral Blast'ing someone in your group, don't hesitate to use Divine Shield to clear your debuff stack. I usually do so somewhere around 8-10 stacks. Related to this, do not stand close to others. Kalecgos will randomly select his Spectral Blast target from among the raid members who are not either in the Spectral Realm or suffering from Spectral Exhaustion (the debuff that leaving the Spectral Realm causes). At the start of the fight, that means everyone (excluding the main tank) is a potential target. Spectral Blast can cause 5k base damage to anyone standing too close - Arcane Buffet amplifies it, so you can easily get "wtfpwned" by a Spectral Blast with too many debuffs on you. Watch your range relative to others, and find a spot where you can DPS Kalecgos without being in range of a Spectral Blast on someone. Most often this means only 2 melee per side on Kalecgos - one by his front paw, and the other at max range by his hind leg.

Take it easy on Kalecgos's dragon form - neither he nor Sathrovarr have a ton of health, but Sathrovarr usually needs to die first. Use Crusader Strike and Judgement on the dragon, and maybe throw some Consecration in, but save your cooldowns for Sathrovarr.

Once you're in the Spectral Realm, get behind Sathrovarr and unleash hell. Pop trinkets, use your wings, cast Exorcism and max rank Consecration. You only have 60 seconds of alone time with the dreadlord, so make it count. Your raid will likely have shamans using Heroism when their group is in the Spectral Realm, so it's a great time to stack the cooldowns anyway. Make sure to get a Judgement of the Crusader up on Sathrovarr too - it ups your damage and everyone else's crit %, and that's never a bad thing.

When you are teleported back to the "real world" where the dragon is located, assume your original positioning, rinse and repeat. Don't be afraid of your healthstones/health potions, there's a lot of raid damage and if you temper your mana consumption vs. the dragon, Spiritual Attunement should keep you going throughout the fight without having to use mana potions. Everything else is basically in the healers' hands and a test of awareness of the raid.

So, to recap:

• Use your cooldowns on the demon, Sathrovarr


• Don't stand too close to other people in the dragon phase


• Bubble off Arcane Buffet if it stacks too high


• Know who's in your portal group, and hoof it to the portal pronto when it spawns on someone in your group

An Exercise In Anti-stun-locking

And now for something completely different.

You know how I'm always so down-trodden when I speak of my arena experiences? Well, for just one night, I experienced some high points. I didn't quite achieve my goal (Vengeful Shoulders, /swoon), but I did get a funky looking helm and some laughs, and I learned a bit of arena strategy in the process.

I logged in on Thursday just to check my mail and the auction house and got a whisper almost immediately from one of my rogue guildmates. This particular rogue is an avid PvP'er on several characters, and has a pretty good nose for the do's and don'ts in the arena. He usually whispers me when I log in to share an achievement he made with one of his PvP characters (going undefeated earlier in the week, peaking at ~2000 with a partner in 2v2, his plans to partner up with X person who's awesome, etc), but tonight he was just bored.

He asked me what I was up to, and I responded that I didn't have a set plan. My choices for the evening were to a) coerce a partner or several partners to join one of my arena charters and play some games with me, b) put together a PUG Gruul's Lair run so I had a shot at a [Dragonspine Trophy], c) go play Titan Quest with a few college friends, or d) give my poor wrist a night off from computer usage and go watch TV or somethin'. He musta' been really bored, because he hinted that he might play some 2v2 games with me on one of his characters, since he'd need to get points this week anyway. This is quite a juxtaposition, as oftentimes he is the one I end up whining to that I can't find quality arena partners, I suck, and I can't break 1650. Usually somewhere in our conversations I hint that he should carry me to good ratings on any one of his many PvP alts.

Originally he was going to test his mage skills out with me and try frost mage/ret paladin, a very strong comp, but ultimately he decided he felt like playing his rogue. "Joy!" I thought to myself, as his rogue is his main, and he happens to be pretty darned good at it. After dicking around for about 10-15 matches and not gaining much ground rating-wise, we started getting into a groove. My partner started imparting little pieces of advice as we went along, and I immediately incorporated them into my game. We pushed into the mid-1600's before a match went sour because I couldn't 1v1 a shadowstep rogue after the enemy priest and my partner both died.

At that point, my rogue-ish companion dragged me outside of Ironforge and showed me what's what when dueling a rogue mano a mano. Want some tips for taking down a rogue 1v1? Here's what I've got for ya:

1. If the enemy rogue starts to disengage, and you can't stop him with Repentance/Hammer of Justice, don't chase him. Let him go - go hide behind a pillar and drink/bandage.
2. If you just got Cheap Shot and you anticipate a Kidney Shot to follow, Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection out of the Cheap Shot. You'll likely throw the rogue off when he can't land his Kidney Shot, and then he'll be vulnerable and possibly a bit surprised.
3. If the rogue pops Evasion and tries to go toe-to-toe with you, Repentance him. Wait out the 4 seconds of Repentance and let his Evasion duration tick down. You're not going to hit him when he's got 95% dodge.
4. Stun the rogue with Hammer of Justice as much as humanly possible. Keep hammer on cooldown - he can't dodge while he's stunned.
5. Deny the rogue his opener. Use rank 1 Consecration randomly to chance popping him out of stealth. Things go a lot smoother if you don't get Garroted, Sapped, or Cheap Shot.
6. If you want to be a real pisser and make the rogue scream obscenities, use Seal of Justice intermittently while attacking him. You'll lose a bit of damage, but the random stun procs will drop their dodge down for a second so you can land a Crusader Strike, and the rogue will have flashbacks to the last time a mace warrior random stun proc'ed him to death.
7. Use Retribution Aura. Yea, Sanctity boosts your outgoing damage, but Ret Aura punishes the rogue for hitting you, and he probably will be doing that quite a bit while keeping you from hitting him.
8. Keep Judgement of Justice on the rogue. If he tries to sprint away, it will prevent him from doing so, and if you need to get away for a moment's respite, you can Blessing of Freedom yourself and (in conjunction with a run speed enchant or Pursuit of Justice) outrun the rogue for about 20 seconds.

I'm sure there's more, but that's what I can remember right now of my wealth of knowledge on introducing rogues to the blunt end of my mace.

After dueling my partner a few times and picking up a few of the nuggets above that I didn't know, we went back into the arena. And what'dya know, we faced a frost mage/subtlety rogue combo! My partner and I tore the mage to shreds, but the enemy rogue managed to kill my partner. Time to test my mettle! I put Justice on him, activated Ret Aura, stunned him, and went to work. He blinded me and re-stealthed, so I went behind a pillar and sat down to drink. He re-opened on me with a Garrote, and I started pounding him again, so he decided to Vanish and lick his wounds. I grabbed a Shadowsight buff and started flying around the arena, looking for him. I saw him just in time for him to Sap me. He opened with a Cheap Shot, so I Blessing of Protection'ed myself out of it, and then dropped a rank 1 Consecrate to keep him in combat an extra second or two while I clicked off the BoP. He tried to Evasion, so I Repentance'd him and dropped a small heal on myself while I waited it out. Then I Hammer of Justice'd him in the face, popped my [Berserker's Call] and finished him off. Woo! 17 points! A dumb dog can learn new tricks!

At some point in the night we hit 1650something so I took a trip to Stormwind and picked up a [Guardian's Band of Triumph]. Shiny! We kept playing, losing to a few holy paladin/SL-SL warlock teams. After teetering between 1680something and 1698 or so a few times, I finally broke 1700. Hello, hotness! 4/5 Brutal! [Brutal Gladiator's Scaled Helm]

Now, so that this doesn't turn into a gush-fest about how I'm so happy and maybe I won't quit arenas and yadda yadda yadda, here's some tips on pairing up with a shadowstep rogue in 2v2.

• Stay put in the starting area on Blade's Edge or Lordaeron while the rogue scouts ahead and finds what you're up against. On Nagrand, hide behind one of the near pillars while the rogue takes a look around. Keeping the other team guessing until you come charging out and one of their guys gets Sapped is key.
• If you or the rogue get Cheap Shot by an enemy rogue, bubble the affected target out of it immediately. It'll stop the incoming Kidney Shot and mess up the enemy strategy.
• If you are up against a druid team, kill the druid first, either by finding him Prowling and opening up on him, or by drawing him out by beating his partner down a bit. The rogue should Cheap Shot - Kidney Shot the druid, in which the druid will most likely trinket the Kidney, shift to cheetah and start running. If you're doing it right, you'll be on top of the druid when this happens and you can Hammer of Justice him, (re-)apply Judgement of Justice, pop a trinket and/or your Avenging Wrath, and zerg him down. Many a-druid have been blown up this way. If he goes bear, keep working his health down and try to stun him when he shifts into caster form to heal, and then clobber him.
• Use your Blessing of Freedom on the rogue if he's getting snared. Shadowstep has a 30 second cooldown, and it's important for the rogue to be on the target building combo points, throwing stuns and kicks, and being a general nuisance for as much of the match as possible. 95% of the time, you're not going to solo that healer, no matter how awesome you think you are.
• Repentance is your friend. If you and your partner are concentrating on killing the DPS of a DPS/healer team, put the healer on focus and Repent him when you get the DPS'er low and he starts a heal with a cast time. He'll either eat the full duration, giving you 4 seconds of alone time with the DPS'er, or trinket it and open himself up to a Blind from your rogue. Yea, they share the same "incapacitate" diminishing returns, but it still works so very well.
• In contrast, if you're going after the healer of a DPS/healer team, use Repentance to stall the DPS and keep him off your rogue. Preventing damage before it happens is awesome.
• When facing a priest, trinket his first Psychic Scream and Cleanse the fear off your rogue. It'll save your partner's trinket for more important things.
• If a target has any possibility of kiting around the arena, put Judgement of Justice on it. The only targets I neglect to put it on are ret paladins and ms warriors, everyone else tastes sweet Justice.

Now all's I gotta do is find a sucker partner or two and push a team up toward 2k...

Boss Spotlight: Illidari Council

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In today's crosshairs: the Illidari Council.

The Illidari Council is the 8th boss of Black Temple, and is the final stepping stone on a raid's path to Illidan and legendary loots. This group of 4 Blood Elves are comprised of Gathios the Shatterer (ret paladin), High Nethermancer Zerevor (tri-spec mage), Lady Malande (holy/disc priest), and Veras Darkshadow (rogue of supreme annoyance). Each have their own set of abilities, and they share a collective health pool. Once you kill one of them, they all die.

Why are we talking about this boss?
The Council fight has been referred to by many as the "Super Bowl of not standing in things." You know how there are fights every now and again where random stuff spawns on the ground or overhead and you need to not stand in it? Supremus's volcanoes, Al'ar's flame patches, Gruul's cave-ins, Rage Winterchill's Death & Decay ability... these ringing any bells?

Well, if you love that fight mechanic, you're in for a treat. In the Illidari Council fight, there are no less than 3 separate AoE abilities for you to dip, duck, dive and dodge! The mage's Flamestrike and Blizzard, and the paladin's Consecration are all very dangerous and can kill anyone who is not constantly aware of his or her surroundings. You don't need to know everything about this fight to do your duties as a ret paladin, but if nothing else, you need to know when the AoE's are happening, and what they look like.

What to do when facing Illidari Council
The job of a ret paladin in this fight is simple on paper: kill the paladin, Gathios. Each of the other mobs in this fight are melee-unfriendly - the mage has an Arcane Explosion that he casts when people get too close, the priest has a reflective shield that will toss damage back at the attackers, and the rogue vanishes periodically, making him hard to continuously target. The paladin, in comparison, has a "wimpy" Consecration ability that he uses every so often. So, the DPS'ers are punished the least when attacking him, despite his considerably higher armor. Of course, it's not quite so basic as "smash the pally."

The pull will most likely start with either you or one of your fellow paladin's casting a Blessing of Protection on one of the raid's mages, who will then get the attention of the Council and begin mage-tanking the mage mob. From there, tanks will grab the other three Elves. You will make a bee-line to Gathios, stick Judgement of the Crusader on him, and beg other paladins to apply JoL and JoW. As soon as an aggro lead is established, feel free to pop your cooldowns/trinkets and really lay into Gathios - it's a long fight (8-15 minutes, depending on your guild's DPS and coordination), so you'll be able to use your wings 2-4 times if you start early. *Special note: if you're paying attention to Gathios's buffs, wait until his Devotion Aura fades to pop cooldowns when you can - it ups his armor considerably, so you'll see better results if you hit 'im hard while his armor is lower.

Gathios is definitely not tank-and-spank, however. His Consecration ticks hard, for over 2k per second. It has the same coloration, animation, and range as your Consecration - as such, do not use Consecration on this fight. If you let loose with your own Consecration ability, you are going to freak out your tank and the other melee and they'll think it's Gathios's. Don't be that guy. Make sure when you see Gathios use his Consecration to disengage and move out of it's range, and then re-engage when the tank has moved out of the Consecration.

In addition to not standing in Consecration, you must watch your feet and your head for mage abilities. High Nethermancer Zerevor will use his Blizzard and Flamestrike abilities with reckless abandon, and can target anywhere in the room with them. Their animations are just like a player character's ability animations, so they will be recognizable. If you see shards of ice falling on your head, or the ground underneath you turn a lovely shade of red, haul ass away from the area. Step out of range of the affected ground patch, maneuver around the danger, and then re-engage Gathios when the tank is in a safer area.

There are other random damage abilities flung around by the boss mobs - the rogue uses Envenom and the priest has a holy spell + DoT (Divine Wrath) that hurt like all get-out. If you ever find yourself low on HP, whether it be from one of these or because you were a dumb-dumb and didn't move quickly enough out of an AoE, use your health pots or healthstones. With Consecration and Exorcism not in your ability cycle, and with the random damage (and subsequent Spiritual Attunement return from heals) you will take during the fight, I'd be surprised if you ever saw your mana pool fall lower than 85%. Your mana potions are useless here, don't be afraid to gulp down a red one.

Lastly, be ever-mindful of your positioning. Since the tank will be moving Gathios around fairly frequently, always make sure that when you re-engage him, you are attacking from the back. He can hit fairly hard, and a lot of the healers will be split up and assigned to different people, so extra damage from a parry-hasted attack is wholly unnecessary and possibly fatal to the tank.

Boss Spotlight: Leotheras the Blind

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" Stepping into the box today: Leotheras the Blind.

Leotheras the Blind is one of the middle bosses of Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC), the 25-man raid instance in Coilfang Reservoir, located in Zangarmarsh. He is being held captive by the naga there because he went batshit crazy insane when he was training to become a demon hunter under the command of Illidan.

Leo is essentially a demon hunter, akin to Illidan Stormrage in his current state. He dual-wields glaives and can turn into a large, fire-slinging demon every so often. However, that is where the similarities with Illidan end.

In his human form, he whirlwinds, which will put a nasty bleed DoT on anyone who gets caught in it, and resets his threat after each whirlwind. Whirlwind has a 12 second duration and a 15 second cooldown. This phase last for 45 seconds.

He also transforms into said crazy demon thing, which is a phase that lasts 60 seconds. His aggro resets (again), and he starts throwing Chaos Blast around, which does fire damage to his target and anyone around his target. Chaos Blast also leaves a debuff which increases fire damage taken. This phase is normally tanked by someone in fire resist gear. Leo also will summon "Inner Demons" during this phase, which will be linked to single raid members. Each raider that gets targeted by Leo's Insidious Whisper and has a demon spawn on them must kill their demon as quickly as possible, as they are the only ones who can target/kill said demon. If a raider does not succeed in killing his or her demon before Leo transforms back into his human form, the player is mind controlled for the remainder of the fight.

At 15% health, his human and demon form separate, and the raid must deal with both at once. The demon will be at full health, so the DPS must be focused on the human. The human will continue to whirlwind on cooldown, and the demon will continue to Chaos Blast, but the Inner Demons will no longer spawn.

Why are we talking about this boss?
Because of the nature of Leo's whirlwind ability, you will constantly need to run into and out of melee range, long enough so that the Judgements will fade and possibly so long that your Vengeance will run out. These are both terrible facts of the fight. As such, you will feel very handicapped and a bit gimpy in this one. In addition, the constant threat resets after whirlwind and phase changes make managing one's threat a painstaking task at times.

What to do when facing Leotheras the Blind
For his human form, you will likely have to tell your fellow paladins to concentrate on their own tasks and forego their judgements. Otherwise, they'd end up re-judging after every whirlwind. For simplicity's sake, and for maximum raid benefit, judge wisdom and keep that up. Be sure to keep an eye on the whirlwind cooldown and haul ass away from Leotheras before he starts his blade dance of death.

If you, or anyone around you, gets smacked with the bleed DoT from whirlwind, you can use Blessing of Protection to remove it. Divine Shield also removes it. The DoT ticks hard, don't let that wound fester. Get rid of it.

Take it easy during the human phase. Since aggro will reset after each whirlwind, the tank will have to re-establish a lead each time while moving Leo back to the center of the room. It's touchy, give him time. You likely won't do a whole lot of damage during the human phase.

When he transitions into demon phase, lay off to let the fire resist tank grab him. Once aggro is established, dump your cooldowns into him and go nuts. Usually guilds will use a warlock in fire resist gear to tank the demon phase, since he won't melee anyone. Warlocks can build crazy aggro, even in resist gear, so once a lead is established, you can feel free to blast that bastage's behind. If you get an Inner Demon, never fear! Hammer of Justice, Judgement of Command, Exorcism, Crusader Strike, and an auto-attack should take care of it right quick. A paladin should never fear the Inner Demons - they're especially vulnerable to holy and susceptible to stuns.

If at all possible, save your Divine Shield to the end of the fight. When the split at 15% happens, you'll thank the Light you did. You can use your Divine Shield to stay in melee range when he whirlwinds and continue to DPS - getting him down from 15% as quickly as possible is imperative, as the healers will have to be concentrating on two tanks instead of one, and the fire resist tank will eventually get too many debuffs and get one-shot by the Chaos Blast.