3.1's Coming, Did You Bring Your Coat?

... 'cuz it's raining talent specs!

Are you prepared for dual-specs? Are you prepared for free respecs? I am. The patch is likely coming out this month, and I've got my specs ready to go. As always, these are my own creations based on my preferences.

Ret PvE - 0/17/54
The spec I've settled on for raiding grabs Divine Guardian/Divine Sacrifice and all the DPS talents in the ret tree. The notable omission is Seal of Command, but I've resolved to just Sacred Shield/Art of War-FoL myself and watch my health instead of wasting a talent point on a seal I hardly ever use.

Ret PvP - 0/20/51
The spec I've settled on for PvP is much like the one I want to use in PvE. It has Divine Guardian/Divine Sacrifice to protect my teammates and make my Sacred Shields stronger, and it still doesn't have Seal of Command. What it does have is Vindication, Divine Purpose, and Improved Hammer of Justice at the expense of 3% haste, 1 minute off my wings cooldown (and the armor bypass during wings), and Improved Blessing of Might. This spec might well fall flat on its face, but I'm willing to give it a shot, and as always, I'm open to counter arguments. It won't matter much for me, since I hardly ever PvP anyway. My 2nd spec for dual spec will likely be...

Prot PvE - 7/58/6 (or 0/53/18)
Since the fine devs at Blizzard decided to make Spiritual Attunement a talent that prot probably will want to invest in, most prot paladins can't do their dream spec of 0/53/18 and grab Crusade and fill out all the major talents in prot. So, I did the next best thing in my eyes. I grabbed Seals of the Pure and Reckoning. The other option is only go 1/2 into Spiritual Attunement and run with a 0/53/18 spec. This would assume that the perma-Divine Plea, 5% mana return from heals, raid/party-buffed mana/5 restoration, and possibly Blessing of Sanctuary are enough to keep prot paladin mana going.

What are you speccing at the dawning of the age of Dual Specquarius?

If The PTR Went Live Today...

... I'd spec this way for PvE.

Now, for the explanation part of the program.

My ret tree has a glaring omission - Seal of Command. I don't plan on using it at all, so why use the talent point when I've got somewhere else to put the point? In any situation that I risk killing myself with recoil damage, I'm going to either use Seal of Righteousness instead or ease off a bit while using Seal of the Martyr and concentrate hard on Sacred Shield'ing and Flash of Light'ing myself. Hopefully these sorts of fights are few and far between.

Seal of Command without the glyph is lackluster, and I don't plan on keeping a glyph and a talent point on me for these occasions.

Anything else I left out of the ret tree was because the talent has little to no PvE application (Vindication, Eye for an Eye, Divine Purpose) or it's a tank talent (Deflection).

As for the prot tree, I grabbed Divine Strength (of course, never leave Ironforge without it!) and a bunch of other goodies. First up, the new talent - Divinity.

Divinity increases healing to the paladin and by the paladin by 1/2/3/4/5%. It is my understanding that this applies to the paladin in question's Judgement of Light, which means it boosts the effective heal on JoLight by 5% on everyone. JoLight also got expanded to ranged attacks too, so yippie! Divinity also double-dips - if I end up Flash of Light'ing myself, it boosts the heal itself by 5% (healing done by the paladin) and then boosts it additional 5% when it heals me up (healing done to the paladin). 10% increase to my Art of War self-Flashes, woohoo!

Now that I've got 10 points in the tree, I can grab Divine Sacrifice, bring me up to 11 points in prot. The new Divine Guardian looks juicy too, though. It boosts the effectivness of Divine Sacrifice and increases the amount absorbed by Sacred Shield, which I plan on using more often now that it plays nice with Sheath of Light. So, I need to burn another 4 points in the prot tree.

Guardian's Favor grants increased mobility (longer duration Hand of Freedom) and decreased Hand of Protection cooldown. It's a solid talent. It usually won't increase personal DPS, but it can prove it's worth by helping you save a zealous clothie with a timely HoP.

The last 2 points I tossed into Toughness for lack of a better choice. More armor and decreased snare duration sounded good to me. Others would say Improved Righteous Fury would be a good choice, but I can't see myself using Righteous Fury on any fight. The only time I'd end up using it is if it were talented and I were fighting Loatheb, and even then I'd need to wait to get a spore to buff it up. Basically, I'm too wary of aggro to try it. And Stoicism/Anticipation don't appeal to me for PvE.

That brings me up to 15, and then I can toss 2 into Divine Guardian. 0/17/54, the new 0/10/61 in my personal opinion.

New Blog on the Block

Every so often I get questions about PvP. I'm one of the first to admit how much I suck at PvP. I got carried to the 1900's in Season 4. I was carried by a DK friend to 1750 in 2v2 this season. I'm by no means a skilled PvP'er, despite what anyone may say about their experiences with me. I know a lot of what needs to happen in PvP in theory, but when it comes to executing strategy and finding partners who can do so as well? I'm tucking ferrible (spelling intended). I perform at my best when you point me at a target and say "hit that guy for a while, don't worry about anything else." That doesn't make for sound PvP strategy.

However, I can recommend someone to you who knows his sh*t. Hofflerand, one of the moderators over at Retpaladin.com's forums, has started a blog of his own. And you know what? So far, so good. I skimmed the link off of Ferraro's blog, thought it might be useful to y'all. Hoff's only been blogging for a week or so and I've all ready picked up a few PvP tips and pointers. I don't plan to act on them in the near future, but it's good to know they're there. Yea, I know, I'm a paint-by-numbers PvE junkie.

You want to know how to smash stuff in PvP as ret? Go hang with the Hoff, he'll set you straight. Here's hoping he keeps on posting and streaming high quality PvP content onto the interwebs.

Engineering - Not For The Min/Max'ers

Everyone says that the Engineering profession is weak, needs buffing, yadda yadda yadda. Consider this:

• The Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket is instant cast, one minute cooldown, and can be fired at (30 yard?) range to deal ~1150 fire damage. Great for firing at an opponent as you engage at the beginning of an arena match, or to harass a kiting opponent.
• The Nitro-Boosts for boots is a five two second duration run speed increaser with a five minute cooldown. Who needs Intercept or Death Grip? Click your heels together and you'll be 30 yards from here in a blink!
• The Sonic Booster is a stamina trinket with an AP-boosting proc. Great for entry-level arena!
• Saronite Bombs are grenades that can cause siege damage. If those pesky clothies keep hopping in the drivers seat of siege tanks, grab your bombs and blow up the walls of Wintergrasp Keep yourself!
• Charged Titanium Specs give you stealth detection and a nice amount of stamina/strength, which are three things that a PvP'ing ret paladin loves.

Engineering may not be the best profession for min/max'ing your gear in PvE, but it sure is handy in PvP! Sure, you won't be using most of this stuff in a raid, or even a 5-man, but for battlegrounds, arena, and Wintergrasp, I'd argue that Engineering is, in the nomenclature of the medium, "teh secks." Clutch rocket-boots usage can turn an arena match. Seeing/unstealthing a stealthed rogue before he saps you can really mess up an opponent's game plan. Or, my favorite, launching a pyro-rocket at a mage who just rooted you and blinked away with a little more than 20% HP, lighting up your Hammer of Wrath button for a quick finishing blow.

Don't write the tinkers off! We've got some cards up our sleeves that, when leveraged properly, might be qualititatively better than two extra gem sockets or some ring enchants.

Bottom line is this: the community is right, Engineering isn't strong from a min/max standpoint. However, it does bring to the table a few tricks, tools, and toys that cannot be found anywhere else. They are unique, situationally useful, and can grant the engineer the element of surprise (whoa, how'd that ret paladin end up 30 yards away? Or hit me with fire damage? WTF?) or quickly turn the tide of battle (how the f!@$ did he just see me in stealth?). You'd rather have those two extra gem sockets than two extra cooldowns? Fine, enjoy your extra points of strength - next arena season, we'll be back to matches where the team that runs out of cooldowns first loses, and I'm going to have a few extra.

E4AE concedes the point that Engineering stinks for PvE, but based upon the above, contends that Engineering is a great choice of profession for PvP providing the user knows how to employ his techie tools properly.

EDIT: As of 1/20/09, the Nitro-Boosts are a 2 second duration. The above post has been edited.
EDIT2: Lady Jess correctly informed me that the Noise Machine is the SP trinket, and the Sonic Booster is the AP trinket. I edited the above accordingly.

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.

Season 5 Arena Impressions

Last reset I teamed up with a death knight buddy and played some 2v2 matches in the arena. He was specced unholy/blood (I think he was 20/0/51 or 21/0/50), and I was specced 0/20/51 ret/prot. We were both full or nearly full PvE DPS gear, and after 40-50 games we settled around the high 1600's, mostly due to me being a noob. Here are some of my post-game reflections:

• Death knights are ridiculous. I've said it before and I'll say it again, they have a veritable metric ton of tools at their disposal to either mete out immense quantities of pain, keep themselves alive, or just be a gorram annoyance.
• I need some resilience, bad. Even with my plate armor and nearly 20k HP, I was taken from full health to half by a rogue in the blink of an eye - literally. I was having to Divine Shield within the first 20 seconds of every match.
• The Divine Shield change that will cut damage by 50% while under Divine Shield is going to hurt me pretty bad. I spend half or more of my life span in an arena match under the effects of the bubble.
• Burst by all classes is ri-god-damn-diculous. It doesn't matter if you're a mage or a warlock, in bear form or tree form, or frost presence or beserker stance, anyone can kill you, and fast.
• My macros aren't set well for PvP use. I need a self-cleanse button to mash, and a self-cast Flash of Light button to mash, and some sort of large flashing angry notification whenever I get an Art of War proc so I know to mash the FoL button. Right now I have a mouseover macro for Cleanse and a Clique setting for shift + left click to cast Flash of Light. It's making my movement herky-jerky when I try to pursue someone and cleanse/heal on the run.
• How the hell did paladins go from dregs of the arena to present on every gorram team? Seriously, I'm tired of having to kill people twice. Stupid bubble.
• Yes, I am aware of the irony of the previous bullet.
• Decent holy paladins really throw a monkey wrench in the works against DK/ret. Cleanse, Sacred Shield, and Holy Shock spam while running around makes a DK go craaaaaaaazy.
• I can't tell if I enjoy the arena. I love winning matches, but cannot stand losing them, and have no desire to improve my play to the point where I don't lose. And it's great that it's not scripted like most PvE encounters, but it's frustrating that it's not scripted like most PvE encounters. Ya know? I think you get what I'm sayin'.
• When are dual specs coming? I blew 100g just speccing for 2v2, because I messed up the spec the first time. And will glyphs swap with dual-spec swaps? I know I heard that they'd try to change action bars over, but I can't remember if glyphs would change too.
• Didn't I swear not to arena after constant disappointment and failure (not reaching 2k) last season? I really should stick to PvE.

Monday Mumblings of a Manic Marauder

The Giants have a way of giving me a heart attack, reviving me, sending me into shock, destroying my shreds of hope, and then renewing my faith in the football gods, all in the course of a single game. I need to sleep more.

Blizzard's use of phasing in Icecrown is awesome. I helped the Argent Crusade move through The Breach and retake Crusader's Pinnacle yesterday. I love being able to see change effected in the world around my character.

The Sons of Hodir can take a gorram long walk off a short pier. I don't care if I've said it before, I hate rep grinding.

I just learned that the Spiked Titansteel Helm is getting neutered. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Divine Storm should not be prioritized over Crusader Strike, even if you use the Venture Co. libram. Seriously people, you're talking about an extra second of ~2% crit per cycle in exchange for fewer overall instant strikes. Crusader Strike is higher DPS, higher DPM - use it over Divine Storm. I don't care if holy whirlwind is sexy.

I hate the t3/t7 graphics. Give me my Lightbringer back.

Death Knight/Ret Paladin 2v2 is overpowered. Hell, Death Knight/anything is overpowered. Did you know that death knights can negate just about any sort of attack? Here's a list of why I'm envious:

1. They can heal themselves with Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, Blood Aura, or by sacrificing their ghoul. Or probably other ways too.
2. They have high armor and as much dodge/parry as a rogue, negating a lot of physical damage.
3. They have anti-magic shell and anti-magic shield, which can drastically reduce magic damage.
4. They have Icebound Fortitude, which is Divine Protection on crack with no shared-ability lockout.
5. They can silence enemies from a distance with Strangulate.
6. They can Death Grip enemies to close the distance between a caster/ranged and themselves.
7. They have pets to use for constant pushback on casters.
8. They have ways of dispelling HoT's.
9. They have multiple DoT's that not a lot of people can get rid of.
10. They do a fair amount of damage.
11. Their gargoyles can rip things to shreds.
12. They can raise fallen allies as ghouls for a short period.

Seriously, they're ridiculous. I watched my partner 1v2 several very good 2v2 arena teams after I got nuked to holy hell (go go 0 resilience and 17k HP).

I'm almost to the point where I can make the fun engineering stuff. I'm having trouble resisting the urge to just buy tons of metal off the AH and power my engy skill higher.

I need to PUG some 25-man stuff and get Emblems of Valor. There are some pieces of armor available from the vendor that I just plain want.

Maybe if I just don't wear shoulder armor I'd be happier.

Good grief, the new arenas are silly. Flame walls? Moving platforms? Sewage water that blocks LoS? No mounts in the sewer meaning I have to run 20 yards without speed boosts or cover and get plinked and plunked by arrows, shadow magic, and hot hot heat as I close the distance? Puh-lease.

For the last time, people, the Ashbringer is not going to be equippable. Tirion Fordring has it, and unless they kill him off (dear lord, NOOOOOO!!!), I can't see any possible scenario in which he'd fork it over to some random raider. Frostmourne, maybe... but probably not.

I want some Ulduar armor graphic previews.

Is the Judgement bug fixed yet?

Seriously, is it fixed yet? I'm tired of hearing the whining.

Speaking of whining, boo-hoo there are ads on the official forums. Get over it, Blizzard is a commercial entity.

I'm hungry, screw this I'm going to get me some lunch. I wonder what's in the company cafeteria today...

Wintergrasp is Concentrated Awesome

I haven't participated in a full one yet, but there are several things I like about it:

1. It encourages intra-realm PvP.

It's always a thrill to see a name you know in a battleground, but as Megan noted, Wintergrasp takes this to a whole new (old) level. One of my guildmates mentioned that so far on Tuesdays, a lot of the top raiding guilds on each faction rally their troops and head to Wintergrasp to seize control. When this happens, real rivalries develop. It's putting the world back in world PvP.

2. It means something.

If your faction controls Wintergrasp, it has a noticeable affect on the world. Your faction gets Stone Keeper Shards in instances, people gain more experience from kills, and you have the option to raid the Vault of Archavon. The first two are Northrend-wide effects. As far as previous "world PvP" iterations, they were local zone buffs. As for the Archavon-accessibility, the dude is a single boss encounter that drops t7 quality epics. Take that in - run Naxx for a few hours and get t7... pop into Archavon for 15 minutes and get t7... I'll take it!

3. It's not yo mama's PvP.

Destructable walls! Siege engines and gunners! And, lo and behold, occasionally organized strategy. In WSG, EotS, and AB, you couldn't really change the world around you at all. It was all "kill them other fools who be tryin' to do da bad ting!", but for the most part, it was just flag-tag. AV had a different slant with capturable strategic objectives, but at the heart of it, it was flag-tag with a PvE tank-and-spank boss encounter at the end. Wintergrasp though is an entirely different matter. Change is good.

4. Strategery beats superior numbers.

Yes I meant to spell it strategery. No I don't care if the real word is strategy. It isn't perfectly balanced yet, but because of the tenacity buff, one side can't (always) simply zerg with more people to win. There are tactical points on the map that really matter if you're holding, and there are choke-points, and foot soldiers protecting valuable siege engines... glorious!

The one thing I dislike? The end is just a frenzied zerg in the courtyard. I was literally standing there, Consecrating and Divine Storm'ing in a sea of names, hoping I killed things.

I'd definitely go back, though. Once I accomplish a few of my PvE goals, I'll be keeping an eye on the Wintergrasp timer and participating in a full one to get the "real" experience.

The Talents Make the Man

And if that's true, then when dual-spec options become active, I'm going to be one confused calamity of talent choices.

The results of my informal poll last week on how to use my "off-spec":
47% of voters felt I should spec PvE Prot
31% of voters felt I should spec PvE Holy
18% of voters felt I should spec PvP Ret
2% of voters felt I should use my 2nd spec in a different fashion all-together.

For the curious and the judgmental, here are my intended off-spec choices in talent-tree format:
PvE Prot
PvE Holy
PvP Ret

This is all in addition to my level 80 ret spec, which will either be 0/10/61 or 0/6/65, depending on whether I'm feeling giving or greedy.

I'm not level 80 yet, though, and dual-specs aren't live, so all of this is purely thought exercise.

Dual-Spec Indecision

The votes have been tallied from the last poll - 60% of you think that ret is a-ok how it is, and another 25% think that ret is underpowered. Interesting. On to the next topic!

Free talent swaps between two preordained talent specs are not yet available. That doesn't stop me from wondering what I'd be better off doing for my off-spec.

So far in Northrend I'm having a jolly good time going up to things and going Crusader Strike, Judgement, DIVINE STORM!, dead mob. I'm fairly unstoppable. The new Repentance is awesome, Art of War and Sheath of Light are amazing, and I can't wait to get some more talents so that I can grab Divine Purpose and be pretty much unstunnable too. Prot paladin AoE my eye, Divine Storm with wings works pretty well too!

But every time I end up instancing (Utgarde and Nexus, so far), guild or PuG, the group needs a tank. So I sigh inwardly, hearth to a bank, slap on my tanking gear, and then trudge back out to the instance zone. In several instances runs, I haven't once DPS'ed a run. DPS is a dime a dozen.

On the flip side, there's not a ton of healers available for runs either. For one Nexus run, the group had to wrench a priest's arm to heal it instead of questing.

So I've been rethinking my initial impression for dual-speccing. At first I was like "sweet! PvE main, PvP off, bing bang boom!" But now... if I want to PuG instances and do 5-mans, I might have to focus on building my tanking and/or healing set. Which one should I focus on, though? After I shore up my ret set, should I turn to my protection set, or my holy set?

What's everyone's feel out there for group needs? Do groups consistently lack a tank, or is finding a healer more of a problem? I always want to smash stuff first, but I'm ambivalent as to healing or tanking, since I haven't tried out the new holy talents like Bacon Beacon of Light and Judgements of the Pure. Nor have I had a chance to play around with Holy Shield Slam Shield of Righteousness.

Off-spec PvP ret, PvE prot, or PvE holy?

Talents at 80 - Suiting Your Needs

The talent trees seem to be shaping up and filling out. Now that beta has closed, I feel like I can safely theorycraft up some talent specs at 80. I didn't want to make this post when there was a possibility that a crucial talent could go *poof* after I made a big deal about putting it into a build. Well, I'm not going to bore you with build-up, let's get straight to it!

PvE Builds

0/10/61 - Maximum damage, raid synergy

This build grabs Blessing of Kings and Divine Strength from the protection tree, and then proceeds to grab every damage-enhancing talent from the retribution tree. An all-around good build, since everyone loves BoKings, and (aside from Improved BoMight, since you'll be buffing BoKings!) there isn't a damage-buffing talent left untouched. Vindication is optional, that can be shifted into another talent if you prefer.

0/6/65 - Maximum damage, non-Kings

A bit more selfish, this is for the retribution paladin who says "screw Kings, I want some of the other goodies!" Divine Purpose gives you the ability to get out of stuns free, which is handy for a lot of situations. Improved BoMight provides more raw damage than BoKings. There's a free floater-point as well for your discretion. A point in Guardian's Favor (making the build 0/6/65), or a point in Eye for an Eye, or even throwing the point into Deflection wouldn't be out of the question.

5/5/61 - Maximum damage, Spiritual Focus

Want to be able to heal without pesky interruptions? Spiritual Focus on the first tier of the holy tree now makes that possible without sacrificing any damage options. You lose out on all the utilitarian options in retribution (Vindication, Divine Purpose, etc.), but by the same token, some people love to retain the ability to heal effectively.

PvP Builds

0/20/51 - Simply Stunning

Stoicism. Divine Purpose. Improved Hammer of Justice. These are the voyagers of the Simply Stunning spec. They are continuing mission, to explore strange, new arenas. To seek out new kills and new ways to piss off rogues. To boldly ret where no ret has ret'ed before! Okay, I'm not a Trekkie, so if that was horrifying to you and you consider it a butchering of a classic, my apologies. But, this build, as the title I gave it states, is focused on stunning and negating stuns. Divine Purpose and Stoicism, combined with the new human racial (or a PvP trinket... haha, non-human suckers!) make a paladin such as this extremely hard to keep stunned. It sacrifices a bit of damage to make it happen, but it still has the punch where it counts. Plus, it grabs the shiny new Improved Hammer of Justice talent. Doesn't look different? Read the fine print: decreases cooldown by 10/20/30 seconds. You can haz 30 second HoJ cooldowns? Yes, we can!

0/20/51 - The Guardian

It's not terribly different from the stun-centered spec above, but it has one key addition - Divine Guardian. Now when you bubble, you give your entire party a mini-shield wall! Decent for group PvP situations. It's not something I would spec, but I can see the appeal.

0/10/61 or 0/6/65 - KILL DEATH MAIM

You may recognize this talent spread from the PvE section. Well, yea, it is. Going for maximum damage is an acceptable method of PvP'ing. You lose a lot of the goodies that prove very useful in PvP (shorter stun cooldowns, damage reduction, utlity talents), but you also can kill a bit quicker, making some of those abilities a moot point anyway.

11/5/55 - Combat Healer

This one is a bit unorthodox. With Sheath of Light, retribution has the ability to pump out some decently sized heals. On some arena teams, there might be the need to call on that ability more than usual. Healing Light pumps up healing appreciably. This spec does not have access to absolute damage or most of the prot goodies. However, it gets some pretty powerful healing ability. Again, this is not something I recommend, since I usually try to bring the pain as swiftly as possible to preclude any need to heal lots, but some people might see the value in a build like this.

---------------------

My parting words to you on the topic: if you take a look at these builds, there are certain talents that are always included. If you decide to strike out on your own and craft up a wacky, unique spec, make sure to include the backbone of retribution - Divine Strength, Conviction, Vengeance, Judgements of the Wise, Repentance, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm. It is that solid foundation upon which true retribution specs are built. If any of those are omitted, I'd venture to say that you might be better off investing heavily in another tree.

EDIT 12/2 - altered Simply Stunning spec from 0/18/53 to 0/20/51.

Wings, Bubbles, and Forbearance

Using terms like "wings" and "bubbles" to describe class abilities doesn't conjure an image of an armored knight wielding a heavy mace. I hate paladin terminology. But I digress.

I wrote a rapid response to the Avenging Wrath hotfix on Sunday. I feel the need to further rant about this, with nods to Tim and Rohan.

As Tim the insane equine noted in his recent Forbearance rant, Forbearance is a red-hot flashing neon light that screams "gank me" to opposing players in the arena and battlegrounds. A paladin with Forbearance is a paladin who just burned a 5 minute cooldown and now cannot break an assist train, or just used an ability that could be spell-stolen, purged, or dispelled. Forbearance remains even if the ability that caused it is terminated early. Now, Forbearance is not the only debuff of this nature - mages have the Hypothermia debuff that lasts for 30 seconds (45 seconds? Whatever, it's shorter than even pre-3.0 Forbearance) which precludes them from using Ice Block again after initial usage. The Hypothermia debuff applies only to Ice Block, and only affects mages invested in frost (since Cold Snap right after Ice Block is the only way to make Ice Block available during Hypothermia). Forbearance, on the other hand, precludes paladins from using signature cooldowns - Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Hand of Protection, Avenging Wrath - and forces them to be spaced out 2 minutes apart.

Paladins have a variety of tools at their disposal, but those four abilities are non-specialized abilities that all paladins plan their encounters around. Divine Shield, when combined with the new protection talent that diverts damage to the paladin while under Divine Shield, now disallows usage of Avenging Wrath for 2 whole minutes. Which means, if something comes up one minute after a paladin bubbles in a heroic measure to save the party, wings are not available to up healing in crunch time. That's like telling a discipline priest "Here, you can use Penance, but for 2 minutes after that, you can't Power Infusion yourself. Hope nothing smacks your tank very hard!"

That's just for holy in PvE. For retribution in PvE, it means that retribution's damage will need to suffer greatly if there is any situation in which a Divine Shield would be useful. With Sanctified Wrath, the cooldown on wings drops to 2 minutes. Forbearance is a 2 minute duration debuff. Doing some simple math (hmm... carry the 11, multiply by the denominator... square the derivative...) that means if a retribution plans to use Avenging Wrath each time it's up, he will never be able to use Divine Shield, since Forbearance will not drop until wings are cooled down. And if the ret paladin does bubble, he can't use wings for a good long while. I don't know how the dev team is testing retribution DPS, but I'm willing to bet that each time damage is modeled, it's with Avenging Wrath used on cooldown, every cooldown. Forbearance tacked back onto Avenging Wrath and lengthened to 2 minutes has eliminated Divine Shield as a tool for retribution paladins in most PvE encounters. Not to pick on frost mages, but I don't see them having to decide between Icy Veins or Ice Block, or for mages in general, Arcane Power/Presence of Mind/Combustion vs Ice Block. Or, hell, rogues don't have to decide between Adrenaline Rush or Evasion/Cloak of Shadows. The point I'm trying to make here is that other classes can stack their cooldowns, or use them one right after another, and their cooldowns are performing the very similar function (mage Ice Block = Divine Shield, mage Arcane Power = Avenging Wrath).

And what of PvP? Well, pre-3.0, a ret paladin could only activate his wings if he was absolutely, positively assured a kill within their duration, however long they went without being purged. The wings and resulting Forbearance was a gigantic "kill me!" sign to opponents. It signaled to everyone in sight range that this paladin can't protect himself for the next minute - everyone turn and burn 'em! With that, wings were used very, very sparingly, and Divine Shield was reserved for only crucial moments, since the 5 minute cooldown and resulting Forbearance debuff meant it needed to be handled with care. The removal of Forbearance from Avenging Wrath was celebrated and hailed as an excellent and overdue move. The re-addition and lengthening of the debuff injects an even worse bubble/wings trade-off than before. Basically, wings can be used in a 1-minute window, 2-3 minutes after Divine Shield was activated, otherwise it can only be used, again, if a kill is assured or there is stellar CC applied to the opposition. Divine Shield is the only way to avoid damage for a paladin currently, other classes have tools at their disposal to mitigate or avoid damage, even if they have healing abilities.

Rohan dabbled in this topic from an overarching standpoint over the weekend as well, and you can find his thoughts here. The entire affair calls into question the desired end-state of paladins. Everything that's given to paladins for retribution facilitates burst - seals proccing from specials, on-command damage increase, multiple talents that do nothing but increase raw damage output (either via increased haste, crit, or just flat increase), and abilities with long-ish cooldowns and big damage attached. The retribution paladin is geared to burst something down - there's no other function for it. Yet, the feedback is consistently given that they're "too bursty." To lessen the burst, there would need to be a fundamental overhaul of the retribution system.

Changing the seal & judgement system to its current state was necessary, but did not address this issue. The problem can be encapsulated by looking at Seal of Casino (whoops, sorry - Seal of Command). Long considered "the" ret seal, this talented ability either does a good deal of unmitigated holy damage when an auto-attack connects, or does nothing at all. That's the state of the retribution paladin in general: big damage, or totally ineffectual. The talents point to that, the abilities point to that, and the cooldown alignment points to that. Messing with Forbearance, bubble, and wings does not cut to the core of the issue - seals proccing from specials, the very nature of Seal of Command, and the ability of a ret paladin to unload big damage from Crusader Strike, Judgement, and Divine Storm (with auto-attacks & Command procs thrown in), all within about 5 seconds. That's less than the duration of Hammer of Justice, which is likely one of the issues that needs addressing. But then again, how many Mutilates/finishers can an assassination rogue fit into a 5-point Improved Kidney Shot? Food for thought.

My final thought to sum this all up: Forbearance has always been, in my opinion a poorly implemented solution to the problem of paladins chaining immunity abilities (Divine Shield - Blessing of Protection), as I felt 1 minute was too long. When Avenging Wrath was introduced in Burning Crusade, I thought that having it activate Forbearance was very limiting for retribution paladins, as it forced the paladin to make a very dangerous and deadly choice that no one else besides warriors (with Death Wish/Berserker stance) needs to make - go for the kill right now and open yourself up to certain death, or play it close to the vest and keep the defensive options available. The current length of Forbearance (2 minutes, up from 1) coupled with the applicability of Avenging Wrath to all paladin specs and the preclusion of immunity abilities for a veritable eternity during and after the use of either immunity or wings, makes this hotfix a fundamental change in how paladins use their cooldowns. I agree, stacking wings and bubble was unfair to everyone except priests (who could dispel bubble and then fear us away). However, Forbearance is not the answer.

I think Forbearance, if kept in the game at all, needs to be shorter than even it was in the pre-3.0 world if Avenging Wrath is to keep the debuff attachment. No class with an immunity/defensive spell needs to lock themselves out of using damage cooldown(s) (or vice versa) for such a long time after usage. I honestly wish I could sit in on a dev team discussion about paladin mechanics, because this major retooling (I originally wrote "tinkering," but this is far more than that) after Blizzard stating that they were happy with the current state for paladins a few weeks ago signals that either a) the internal testing of retribution in both PvE and PvP is falling short of the necessary rigor, or b) there are opposing factions within the dev team at Blizzard as to how to interpret the test data, and the "paladins are way overpowered" faction won out this round.

I know I said last week that I'm not going to bash down Blizzard's door with pitchforks and lit torches at the head of an angry mob, but this hotfix to Forbearance made me twitch with an urge to commit arson. I'm still restrained for now, but... well, let's say that I won't be terribly happy with the dev team or the balance team if Forbearance keeps it's current state indefinitely.

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!

Art of War

I've had a chance to mess around at a base level with the new Art of War talent. I have concluded that it is made of win and I absolutely love it. Consider the following:

• Ret paladins crit a lot.
• Mana is a non-issue with Judgements of the Wise.
• With enormous amounts of strength, ret paladins have a great amount of attack power.
• Sheath of Light converts attack power into spell power.
• Spell power is used to boost healing.
• Crit rating applies to both melee and spell casts.
• Sheath of Light places a HoT on the target after a crit heal.
• Art of War makes Flash of Light instant after a critical attack.

Now. Take all that in. What does it all mean? Ret paladins don't run out of mana on their own, so they have mana to spare on the odd Flash of Light. The melee ability crits the ret paladin lands will activate Art of War, which means they can just roll off a Flash of Light easily, resetting the swing timer but healing for an appreciable amount due to the Sheath of Light spell power conversion. And if that FoL crits, as it can and will, it leaves a beautiful heal over time behind.

The Sheath of Light - Art of War - Judgements of the Wise holy trinity has completely changed the landscape of solo work and small-scale PvP for ret paladins. I cannot say enough great things about them. Plus, with a scaling Judgement of Light and heals from Divine Storm in addition to frequent and relatively low-mana impact Flash of Lights, and less dependance on Judgement of Wisdom being present, there is the potential for an AMAZING amount of self-healing.

I wonder if I can manage to solo some at-level instance bosses with my current gear.

Revisiting Hybrid Theory

Today I verbally eviscerated another paladin from my realm very methodically on the official forums in a discussion about WotLK retribution specs (scroll down to post #39, end of the page, for my comprehensive response to the discussion).

If you do click through, be forewarned that page 1 is terribly formatted because post #14 by poster "Johalonos" contains no spaces. Scroll down and ignore that poster before continuing if you value your sanity.

The discussion migrated toward out of the box thinking when speccing ret for PvE, and retaining the ability to heal. That discussion brought to mind previous posts by Rohan of Blessing of Kings.

To date, Blizzard has been moving hybrids toward specialized roles, handcuffing their abilities to be fluid hybrids (that is, switch between roles mid-stream in an encounter). It dawned on me in the course of the aforementioned evisceration that we've reversed direction, in a good way. Talents like Sheath of Light and Art of War, coupled with unified physical/spell crit rating, are allowing traditionally modal hybrids to act a little bit more like fluid hybrids. Now, stacking my strength/AP will increase my spell power, so that the heals I throw won't be utterly puny. And Art of War allows for quick Flash of Light casts, so that I'm not just at base healing ability.

What do you think? Are these talents a sign that Blizzard is attempting to move hybrids back toward a fluid model, rather than strictly defining them in modal roles?

PvP Ret - Dressing for success

Gather 'round the fire everyone, Uncle Josh has something on his mind and he wants to share it with all of you.

Lots of people regard retribution as the "strongest" paladin spec for PvP. That's great, I'm happy for them. However, there are several different flavors of retribution in PvP, so just saying "PvP Ret" when asked what your spec is tells me abso-freaking-lutely nothing. Do you have Divine Strength? Improved Hammer of Justice? Eye for an Eye? Sanctified Judgement? Stoicism? You can't have 'em all, and there are distinct differences in play-style that come along with the choices you make regarding PvP talent selection.

If we think of arena PvP like a party, and your spec and gear as the outfit you wear to the party, I can put this into perspective for you.
(And before you ask, no, I know nothing about picking out clothing, I'm a hetero guy, this is not my strong suit.)

((Wow, that was a bad pun.))

Determine your mood

When choosing your talents for PvP, you first must decide whether you're conservative or daring. Do you want to press real real hard and cause someone to panic? Or do you want to protect yourself better and exert a modicum of control over the situation? If you go for the FEAR PANIC DESTROOOOYYY route, you generally give up most of your "defensive" talents, like Improved Hammer of Justice, Stoicism, and possibly Improved Righteous Fury, in favor of grabbing Divine Strength. The boost to AP you get from 10% more strength lends itself to playing hard and fast, living on the edge, and depending on your heavy blows forcing the other team to play defensive and stay on the defensive. Ladies, this would be the fashion equivalent of wearing that low-cut top and impossibly short skirt.

On the other hand, if you choose the DON'T HURT ME! route, you need to sacrifice your wonderful strength scaling in favor of the deep-ish protection talents, but you gain stun resistance, dispel resistance, and shorter cooldown hammers. With those at your disposal, you can be more disruptive through increased control over your own character (you don't get stunned, dispelled, or dead-ed as quick!) and your enemies (2x as many Hammer of Justices means you can bash d'em gud). This is your long skirt, leaves tons to the imagination look.

Dress how you feel

Ok, now that you've decided whether you're a psycho-crazy berserking maniac (daring dresser) or a pick-your-spots control freak (conservative party-goer), you can refine your ret tree to match. If you went with the prot talents, you have 41 talents to use in the ret tree, and no more - you need to use them carefully. If you went with Divine Strength, you can be a little looser with your ret tree, and can spend anywhere from 41 to 56 points in the tree.

There are several talents that are must-have for PvP - Improved Judgement, Conviction, Seal of Command, Vindication, Sanctity Aura, Two-hand Spec, Vengeance, Repentance, at least 2/3 Sanctified Seals, and Crusader Strike. That doesn't add up to 41 talent points. You've still got to choose between talents like Eye for an Eye, Improved Sanctity Aura, Sanctified Judgement, Fanaticism, Crusade, and others. However, all the "other" talents carry tendencies that should be considered in light of your philosophy.

For example - Eye for an Eye is a reactionary/defensive talent. For the zerg tactics that go along with the berserker route of Divine Strength builds, it would not fit. You're looking to kill someone before Eye for an Eye really has time to be a factor - it's added extra damage to punish people when they crit you, but if you're zerging them you're trying to prevent them from casting and putting them on their face before they have time to set up that crit combo.

Improved Sanctity Aura, on the other hand, is 2% extra damage to everyone in your group, yourself included. So, when you're trying to squeeze every ounce of damage out of your team in a short period to achieve a zerg kill, Imp. Sanctity Aura might provide that extra "oomph." See where I'm going with this?

Accessorize

Now that you've got your talents all hammered out (get it? Hammer? 'Cuz we're paladi... ah forget it), you need to match your shoes to your outfit. If you're looking to achieve a zerg kill, then your gear should reflect this - mix in PvE gear. If you have access to it, armor penetration gear in addition to pure raid gear (with high strength values) will help you in your quest to pummel an opponent before they can blink.

Wearing an extremely small amount of PvP gear with a conservative approach would be counter-productive. With a 0/20/41 control build, you might have to weather a spike or two before you get your opportunity to go for a kill. You'll want to wear a good amount of PvP-oriented gear with high(er) stamina and resilience. Mixing in a piece or two of PvE gear doesn't hurt though! Even though you have to weather a few blows before you deliver your knock-out punch, when that opportunity presents itself, you want to have some strength behind it. So, an exceptional piece of armor pen gear or a belt of sheer awesome are worth using instead of the stock PvP gear. Think of it as adding some slink to your outerwear - just don't overdo it.

--------------------------------

So, are you a flashy dresser or do you take a more conservative approach? Zerg 'em down or pick your spot? Chaos or control?

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...

Arena Woes

Okay, so, I'm not anti-social. I try to participate on my realm's forums, I mingle in the PvP scene some by doing 2v2 and 3v3 with random pick-up partners as well as guildmates, and I'm generally a nice guy. But, despite all that, I fail at arena.
This season, I haven't seen any of my teams rise much past 1620 rating, despite my best efforts. I've played some SL-SL Warlock/Ret Paladin 2v2, some BM Hunter/Ret Paladin 2v2, and some ShS Rogue/Ret Paladin 2v2, and hell, even a bit of Resto Shaman/MS Warrior/Ret Paladin 3v3.

"But Josh," you might ask, "why are you not succeeding in arena? You've got great gear, know what you're doing, and are handsome and suave to boot! What's wrong?"

At this point, I can't tell if it's me or my choice in partners. The 2v2's have been mostly pick-ups that were searching for teams at the same time I was. None of my guildmates that make favorable 2v2 make-ups play PvP enough to make it worth my while. And my PvP rep on the server is either low-profile or secretly terrible, because no one approaches me for teams, and when I approach high-profile PvP'ers I get turned away. Every time I've stepped into the arena with a team that I assembled this season, it has fallen on its face, no matter the combo. Is it because my partners are generally unskilled? Is it because I'm really a PvP noob and don't realize it? I don't know! I haven't played with anyone generally accepted as "good" consistently enough to gauge where the disconnect is.

I've been applying steps 2 and 3 of Meg's guide to arena mingle since before she mentioned them. I have a topic going on my realm forums advertising myself for 5v5 teams that I bump periodically. I have a guildmate who is willing to play a rogue or warrior with me in 3v3 if I find a healer, but have been unsuccessful in convincing any semi-talented PvP druids or shaman (shamans? shamen? seamus?) to give the team a shot - it'd be a rogue or warrior in full season 3, shoulders and all, and myself with a season 3 weapon and everything but shoulders for PvP gear.

But, despite my best efforts, I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in cobbling together a stable, working team for any bracket. My best success has been in a 2v2 team that should never, ever win games - double ret paladin. It's pretty sad at this point.

It's like I'm back in high school and I'm not in the cool kids' clique. I'm fun to hang out with, I know what I'm doing, give me a shot!

What more can I do to find a stable, successful arena team?

Patch 2.4.3 and You

Patch day! What's important and applies to you as a Retribution Paladin?

• Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance. This means that if you enjoy PvP'ing with a 0/20/41 spec that includes 2/2 Stoicism and 3/3 Sanctified Seals, you might want to consider dropping to 2/3 Sanctified Seals. Why? 2/2 Stoicism + 2/3 Sanctified Seals grants 96% dispel resistance for your seals, which means they will still be eligible dispel targets but will have extremely high resist rates. The alternative would be to have your seals be ignored by dispel effects and have Purge start hacking away at your Blessing of Freedom, which only has 30% resistance.
• Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress. The implications of this change applies to libram swapping, if you swap gear for heals. You must swap gear in and wait for the GCD to complete before starting the heal to gain the effects of the gear. Until today, it was possible to swap a healing mace/shield/libram on at the last second before a heal completed and gain the effects.
• When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target. Now when you do an instance, you won't need to worry about the tank complaining when you Hammer of Justice something while he's building a threat lead! Or not really, since if the tank is rage-based, he'll still need to get hit to generate rage to build threat, so keep laying off the early stuns.
• Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue's health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
  &
  Sinister Calling now increases damage to Backstab and Hemorrhage by 1/2/3/4/5% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%.). Rogues will now be semi-spikable in PvP, and will do less damage as they will need to wear more resilience and had their Hemo hamstrung. If you manage to catch 'em with their pants down (read: without Evasion active), you might, just might, spike their leathery behinds down with some well-timed random crits 'n procs. Rejoice!
• Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed.
  &
  Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire. Minor change for us, but this means that in raids, we should see Curse of Recklessness on bosses more often with less warlocks in the raid. Before, depending on raid make-up, Shadows and Elements might have been the preferred curses before Recklessness. Now, there's a one-size-fits-all curse for all the casters. For those not in the know, Curse of Recklessness reduces the armor of the target, which in a raid environment gets stacked with other armor-reducing debuffs. If you didn't all ready, start including it in your armor penetration theorycraft.
• Rocket Boots Xtreme and Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite can no longer be used in the arena. These no longer have a failure chance. I didn't use them, but this makes me sad. I all ready couldn't use my Poultryizer for an interrupt/temporary silence, and now I can't use my boots to go ZOOM across Nagrand Arena and away from that crazy frost-slinging mage who's trying to throw ice lances up my plated butt. Engineering just became that much less useful for PvP retribution paladins.
• Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag. No more raid AIDS! You can do arena/battlegrounds before a raid and not have to remember to drop your PvP flag! This, of course, only applies to PvE realms, but I play on one so this is important.
• Pendant of the Violet Eye: This item will again work correctly with Holy Light and Flash of Light. This is not retribution specific, but this is great news for our holy brothers and sisters. The [Pendant of the Violet Eye] is great for holy paladins, and that it works correctly is definitely a plus, as it's one of the best mana regen trinkets out there.
• Righteous Defense will now properly check for range when a mob is selected. Go ahead, taunt away. They're fixing stuff with Righteous Defense every day.

This of course is not the complete list of patch notes - these are only selected notes that I feel impact retribution paladins or would be interesting to retribution paladins in some way. Go to WoW's main page for the complete list.

Retr-Arena

By the request of Tom at Blessing of Might, today I'll be sharing with you my personal impressions on playing a Retribution Paladin in arena PvP during season 3. Before proceeding, please note that I regard myself as a raider, not a PvP'er, and that I have no accurate knowledge of how good (or bad) I am at PvP, despite having played an unhealthy amount of 2v2 and 3v3 games over the past arena season with an assortment of combos and partners.

All though I rarely log out in my PvP gear nowadays, I possess 4/5 Vengeful gear for Retribution, gemmed up with epic gems and enchanted to the max. I am only missing the shoulders from the set, and use a season 3 mace enchanted with Executioner in conjunction with my PvP armor for arena/battlegrounds, in addition to having all the honor-based trimmings (belt, boots, bracers, rings, necklace, trinkets). In short, I'm was a 2000-rated team short of having absolute full season 3 gear. The highest I have reached in each bracket is in the high 1700's in 2v2 (Ret/ShS Rogue combo), 1970ish in 3v3 (Ret/MS/Resto Druid), and 1860something in 5v5 (Ret/MS/Enh Shaman/Resto Druid/Disc Priest).

Playing arena for me is alternately frustrating and a raucous good time. It depends on who I'm playing with. There's a fine line to be walked between having a good time while not investing too much in each match, and playing strategically/analytically with good timing and fluid interaction with my partner. Take each match too lightly, and the losses mount as you get outmaneuvered. Invest too much in each match, and it becomes frustrating when a Repentance gets broken or a string of events gets the better of you and you lose a match. I tend to get way too invested in every match, so I've eased off the arena throttle recently.

2v2
This bracket makes it very, very hard for a Ret Paladin to succeed. Not having very much crowd control or a healing debuff precludes Ret Paladins from pairing with a healer at high levels, so that forces us into a double DPS combo. The most common partners are ShS Rogues, SL/SL Warlocks, and Frost Mages, because all of those classes provide a large amount of battlefield control while the Ret Paladin brings defensive buffs and big burst damage. In the case of the ShS Rogue and the Frost Mage, both partners can go effectively immune to damage for a time, which is very valuable for a heal-light team. More often than not, any combo in 2v2 with a Ret Paladin will require a perfectly executed CC chain (for example, Sap - Blind - Repentance - Hammer of Justice - Blind) on one opponent while the other is being focused, and then the fight is "reset" as the Paladin shields/heals and the partner uses a "get away from me" cooldown (Ice Block, Vanish, etc.). It's a lot easier to get a 2v2 team online at the same time to play games, but I feel like I'm at a distinct disadvantage whenever I go into the 2v2 arena.

3v3
When I was playing arena seriously, my preferred bracket was 3v3. The two combo's I tried with the most success were Ret/MS Warrior/Resto Druid, and the same combo replacing the Druid with a Resto Shaman. I managed to get each combo into the 1900 range, but never could quite crack the 2000 barrier before strings of bad losses caused my teammates to start pointing fingers and eventually the teams broke up. With a Shaman healer, the basic strategy was simple - zerg the squishie. With Windfury totem, Mortal Strike debuff, and two 2H-wielders beating on a target, possibly both with Heroism, not many could stay alive for very long. The team had a noticeable lack of crowd control, however, and depended on the Warrior's hamstrings and a tenuous Blessing of Protection to protect the healer. Very easy for things to go south. On the other hand, the Resto Druid healer was a bit more self-sufficient and provided some crowd control, but the damage output of the team was a lot lower without Windfury/Heroism. In both cases, an excellent healer is hard to find, as playing both of those healer classes at a high level is tough.

5v5
This bracket feels like a total cluster-f*ck to me. There are so many buffs/debuffs flying around, and 10 people usually stacked into tight spaces, that I get a bit overwhelmed and tend to try and tunnel vision on a target to compensate, which is never the right thing to do. I was able to zerg a team to 1860 or so going 27-2 over two play sessions on a tri-melee rush team, but I think that was luck combined with some bad opponents and out-of-their-mind play from my teammates over those two days. We were never able to replicate that success, and having no CC would have hurt us later. I've never been on a 5v5 where I wasn't leading the team and calling the targets - I might find it more enjoyable if I weren't the leader.

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Since I have a day job, raid 3 nights a week, desire at least 5 hours of sleep a night, and attempt to maintain some semblance of a social life, arena is generally relegated to a sideshow with me, reserved for random weekend afternoons when I'm bored and don't feel like being productive. Because of that, my feelings on arena might be totally skewed, but I tend to see myself as a bit of a gimp in the arena. I bring defensive abilities (BoP, Cleanse, BoF, HoJ) to my team in addition to high raw damage output, but there are glaring weaknesses to the Ret Paladin in the arena - easily drained of his mana, no CC, no healing debuff, weak heals, and once Divine Shield gets blown he's a sitting duck 12 seconds later, if not sooner. I could launch into a huge QQ post here, but I'm going to bite my tongue, since I complain about Ret's shortcomings too much.

I hope this sates you, Tom. I know I didn't relate any specific 2v2 experiences like you requested, but then again that's my least memorable bracket, and I'm not a PvP'er.

For anyone seeking more in-depth discussion about Ret Paladin arena, head over to Arena Junkies, Cromfel's forum or Retpaladin.com, as there are many more avid PvP'ers that frequent those forum communities. Megan over at Out of Mana is also a much better arena resource than I amongst the bloggers, even though I do not think she has played her Paladin as Retribution.