Ok so i know haste is a blah thing to have as a ret pally these days but it does help with the white dmg. So do i just stick with what the gear gives me or should i add some at all? And is there cap i should aim for?

I have been trying to find this on any of the pally threads and I have missed it. I'm not 100% sure this is the place to ask this question, so if not, I'll mosey directly over the to prot pally thread.

My guild has just started working on Sarth 1D (Yeah, we're slow) 10-man. We're having a lot of trouble with add pick ups for tenebron...I can't seem to get the whelps under control, and neither can other tanks. If someone could point me to a place with some advice on this specifically, or dispense some advice on their own, that would be excellent. Thank you.

(NB: Yes, my armory currently shows me as ret, but I am normally prot, so no, there is not some crazy ret pally trying to tank adds)

While you're running around grabbing fire eles, make sure you pass by the portal every 8 seconds and cast a consecrate next to it, so that it sits between the portal and your highest agro healers. The whelps will spawn, fly through it, and then agro onto you (ideally). Once you see them spawn get in there and start putting agro on them quickly, and then get ready for some AoE once Tenebron dies.

In one of the first pages of the sart3D topic is a DBM plugin which shows an extremely accurate timer for the whelps spawn.

The only irritating thing is when you have the fire wall that goes directly over the portal (50/50 chance). Your best bet is to put consecration right before it. In my case though, I always end up with no consecration at all when the wave goes over it, requiring some challenging "run around and after the wave" tactics.

The whelps spawn in the same spot by the portal every time, make sure Consecration is there. If not, there are 8 whelps - Righteous Defense, Avenger's Shield, Hand of Reckoning will grab 6 in 1.5 seconds if you can't Consecrate them. Don't forget - the actual portal is in the safe zone for one wave, and besides the safe zone (usually the one where sarth is tanked) for the other. Use the close safe zone if you have to dodge a fire wall.

You're completely right. I guess I should have been more specific.

I was recently criticized by another holy paladin for not filling all of my sockets with intellect gems. While I realize that intellect gives a number of beneficial stats, such as spellpower, mana, and spell crit, I maintained that simply stacking intellect would not grant optimized levels of any of these stats except for mana, and that a balance of gems is called for. Thoughts?

I dunno if it's an option for you, but if you have a Prot warrior around, have him take care of the Blazes and whelps while you handle Sart or Tenebron. Instant threat from shockwave and thunderclap are far superior in this situation than the slow ticking consecration.

If it has to be you on the adds, make sure to put down a consecration AND have your healers stand in it and hope they're still alive by the time consecration got enough threat.

What is optimised? Optimised for what? Extra mana is useless on a 1.5 minute fight but awesome on a 7 minute fight. Crit's value depends on how many healing spells you're casting compared to non-healing spells (cleanse, SS, beacon, judgement). Spellpower will be mostly overheal if you're single target HL spam healing, but fantastic if your GoHL heal is contributing to a significant portion of your healing.

Let me say it again, you cannot say that X is better than Y. Balancing stats is stupid if one of those stats provides a hugely superior benefit to the others, and in most (but not all) cases this in intellect. If you want the simple answer, you're wrong and intellect in all your gem slots is the best option. Swap entire gear pieces to tweak haste/crit/mp5/whatever levels.

I'm sorry but you're either failing to understand how gearing as a healer works, or just forgetting that we don't have the necessary context / backstory to figure out exactly what you mean by "optimised". I mean, what exactly are you looking for? Do you want something like "get 30% unbuffed crit then 200 unbuffed mp5 then 22,000 unbuffed mana then 2100 unbuffed SP do it in this order and you will have the perfect paladin"? I'm having a very difficult time here understanding just exactly what it is you're looking for?

I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out where the edge in your posts is coming from. The poster directly above you had little trouble figuring out what I was asking, and had a few things to say that are contrary to what you've just said. Thanks for your input, regardless.

Everything he said is information easily found on these forums, which is why I assumed that it wasn't the answer that you were looking for. Read the holy paladin thread for more detailed explanations.

Hello, I'm lf a Quick and Dirty guide to getting level 80 gear like in the Protection Thread, but then for Retribution. Anyone has one? Then feel free to send it to me. Thanks in advance!