Have been using a ret paladin interchangeably with a Fury warrior as trash tanking in Hyjal and Black Temple. It's been going very well, TBH.

You don't have a DPS warrior in your melee DPS group, or you switched from 2 warriors to 1 warrior/1 ret paladin?

Mine does.

As a paladin who loves holy, I still wish that ret wasnt such a joke tree. The fact that Crusader Strike a) sucks and b) involves a full commitment to the tree really kills paladins trying to be ret but also not wanting to be crap at other things.

If I didnt need the prot talents for PVP, I would thinkin about going 3x/0/x to try to get Imp Sanct Aura because that is pretty neat. Improving Might is a moot point because my guild utterly lacks in melee dps...as in, we have 2 not counting tanks.

Imp might isn't a valid reason for a ret pally, because any holy pally can get it. I wouldnt mind a new blessing deeper in the tree that would help all classes.

I was lucky enough to get a DST a while back. At one point I ran some tests on the Blasted Lands servant mobs using the ProcWatch addon, although that only tracks the number of procs, not uptime. When I only autoattacked using a 3.8 speed Stormherald (no CS, no SoC/JoC), the proc rate varied between 0.8 and 1.0 PPM for multiple ~10 minute long trials - which is consistent with the PPM I've seen reported for fast weapons.

Some other relevant notes from those tests: 1. Crusader Strike and JoC both definitely proc the DST, this is easy to test by turning slightly away from the mob so that instant attacks can hit but autoattack cannot (or in the case of JoC, turning your back to the mob works too). 2. I couldn't think of any way to tell for certain that SoC can proc the DST, since you can't get a SoC hit without a white hit - but I think it's pretty safe to assume that if JoC procs it even though it is magical damage, then SoC will as well.

As I mentioned before, I don't have any hard evidence about the DST uptime as a Ret Paladin, but I can draw the following anecdotal evidence based on recent WWS reports for boss kills:

Hydross fight - 524 seconds, 13 procs, so >25% uptime
Lurker fight - 532 seconds, 14 procs, so >26% uptime
Morogrim fight - 608 seconds, 19 procs, so >31% uptime

Those estimates of uptime are almost certainly too low since A) some "procs" (as registered by the combat log) actually longer than 10 seconds due to actually being multiple procs back to back, and B) I occasionally have to stop attacking to heal myself, wait for adds to spawn, twiddle my thumbs so I don't steal aggro, etc.

If you assumed 1.0 PPM, then with 15.8 white attacks per minute (3.8 speed weapon), plus 6 CS per minute, 7 JoC per minute and 7 SoC per minute, I believe that should add up to approximately 36% uptime. My current guess would be that this ballpark estimate is fairly accurate, based on the anecdotal evidence which necessarily underestimates the uptime. But I'd like to figure out how to track it more precisely if anyone can share some details about this FlurryWatch addon.

Anyways, long story short - DST procs a TON, I'd highly recommend it over any trinket before Black Temple (and possibly including BT?)

Havent we already learned that passive "botting" support tools are bad, very bad. Kings at end of Retri tree anyone? While it may sound like a good idea to give Retribution 1 buff that is extremely needed in raid, it only leads into 1 holy paladin speccing to Retri for the buff, and real melee paladin isnt needed. And he would be still healing from behind of raid.

Everything what they would changed should be active support and benefits trough meleeing. You dont get shadowpriest manaregen/heal if hes healing from the back of raid. You dont get moonkin auras if they arent in form.

Improved Sanctity aura and 2% increased damage was 1 step to wrong direction, aurabotting direction. But even for aurabotting, the 2% is so small that it very often gets ignored. And you dont actually really need to be in melee to judge Sanctified Crusader boosted JotC either.

Thanks for your info Tarja, I am definitely going to try to get a DST now Too bad we don't do Gruul much anymore

Are you sure DST procs on judgements?

That can be easily tested. Go to blasted lands, agro 1 of the immortal mobs. Then turn your back to him and start judging. Keep doing it for few minutes and see if it procs. This way your only damage source is judging without autoattacks.

Here is another Retribution PvE movie from Shade of Akama fight.
WWS report from the Shade killing part of this encounter. (Shade only reports seem to be the ones presented at Lossendil instead of my full report at video. My bad as I wasnt aware of this during the time of rendering the movie.)

Stage6 · tontut vs Shade of Akama

This really seems to be damn good fight overall and perfect for Retribution paladin. Ive only experienced it twice, and had fraps up the second time. But all in all Im really looking forward to it after few more "training" sessions.

Would be easy to test if I had one. That's why I'm asking instead of figuring it out on my own.

From my experiances as ret in Kara so far a JoL, renew or one of the druid hots is all it takes to counter act SoB, and i get mana from it.

Could someone upload that to google video, youtube or filefront.. I don't to install that crappy divx player/plugin again.

Yup, I just redid a quick test to make sure I wasn't crazy. I turned my back to the mob to make sure I didn't hit it with anything other than JoC, and the DST procced on the 22nd cast (spread across 3 mobs, I didn't want to fly all the way out to Blasted Lands)

See screenshot of the combat log below:

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/6452/dstjocie8.jpg

Crusader Strike being down at the retri tree doesn't hinder him at all imo.
Enhance/Resto shamans need 41 talent abilities too to be PvE acceptable at least, same with shadow priests and I bet other classes which don't come to mind.

Though a question raised within me reading through the last few pages.
While haste seemed to be indeed a great dps boost for palas, wouldn't that be a drawback on their threat, since they are allready kind of threat caped? Haste = moar dps = moar threat. No?

Shade of Akama isn't really the best fight for anything really. All you need is 20 people up stage two (if you call it a stage), and cooldowns aren't even needed.

Now, I'd actually really like to see a ret video of RoS/Teron/Bloodboil, so if anyone has please link.

From the monster xpac thread somewhere, possible changes to ret coming:

Cstrike dropped to 6sec cooldown. Mana cost apparently increased by 20% or so.
Vengeance lasts 30sec, not 15. Still stacks exactly the same.
Sanctified Crusader utility rolled into Improved Seal of the Crusader talent. Sanctified Crusader is now Sanctified Seals (unknown effect)
Vindication now affects ALL stats, including stamina intellect and spirit.

Patience, my child. Im working on it

Could anyone please tell me if the Sanctified Crusader stacks? I'm trying to convince my raid leader to allow 3 retribution paladins in 25man raids and an extra 9% crit chance from all of them would be purely awesome.

yasagani, ever seen a judgmend stack? No!

you know I'm not quite sure really. you'd think that after 2 years of playtime, but oddly enough I can't remember.