(BiS gearlists discussion at http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t57144-ret_bis_gear_lists/)
(Patch V3.1.3 live)

 

Contents

1Introduction 1.1Tools and FAQ's 1.2Acronyms/Shortforms 2Observations 3The Basic Rotation 4Stats 5Mechanics 5.1Skill mechanic breakdowns 5.2Special Talents 6Talent Specs 7Glyphs, Gems, Consumables, Enchants, Professions 7.1Recommended Major PvE Glyphs 7.1.1Recommended Minor Glyphs 7.2Recommended Gems 7.3Professions 7.4Enchants 7.5Consumables 8Tier Gear 8.1Tier 7 8.2Tier 8 8.3BiS gear 9Add-ons 10Macros 11Known Bugs 11.1Changelog

[top]Introduction

Welcome to 3.1, where paladins underwent sweeping changes yet again! This thread focuses on retribution discussions, primarily pve related. Retribution offers great DPS and is competitive as a dps class/spec, and it also offers the following raid buffs:

3% crit to raid
3% all damage to raid
3% haste to raid
100% JoW/JoL uptime
Replenishment to 10 raid members
Blessing of Kings / Imp Blessing of Might

When specced into our primary pve build, we can also bring a valuable raid cooldown, Divine Sacrifice.

Retribution in Wrath (like most classes and specs) is pretty easy to pick up and play, but somewhat difficult to master; hopefully this thread and its' contributing posters will make it slightly easier to understand, for both new and veteran paladins alike. This thread will mainly focus on our core mechanics, and not so much on gearing or rotations/playstyles (though these will be touched on). This thread also assumes you have basic knowledge of paladins and their talent trees.

This thread has several predecessors, which can be referenced for a lot of old data (some of which is no longer relevant or accurate!):
Arikah's 3.0 thread
Cathela's wotlk beta thread
Cromfel's 2.3 ret thread

..and much of this collection of information is thanks to the frequent posters on these boards, who are too numerous to name.

[top]Tools and FAQ's

Q: Is there a tool to calculate my DPS using a certain gear/spec setup? Or what item will be better for me?
A: Yes, Rawr, Redcape's Calculator, and Bellator's spreadsheet (updated by Exemplar) which much like this thread will improve in accuracy with time. Note that gear upgrades from all 3 tools are mostly dependent on your current gear.

Q: What seal for PvE? And for PvP?
A: Blood(Martyr) for PvE, Blood for PvP. Yes, command is pretty useless, use blood.

Q: What does weapon speed do to us? Do we want slow or fast?
A: Slow. Every .1 speed slower is equal to ~30 DPS due to SoB/JoB not being normalized; so given a choice between a 3.4 203 dps 2h and a 3.8 203 dps 2h, the 3.8 would win. Of course, weapon DPS means quite a bit to us so there is no real comparison between a 3.6 212 dps and a 3.4 226 dps weapon!

Q: What weapon enchant?
A: Scroll down to the enchant section, it explains berserking a bit more...

Q: Why does WWS say I only have (example) 20% seal crit and 30% judgement crit?! Why does it say I had 40 judgements landed when I only did 20?
A: WWS parses SoB/SoM strangely; it does not include the damage you do to yourself in your total damage done or DPS, however it does keep track of each recoil hit on yourself. Simply put the total number of SoB/JoB hits is actually half of what WWS says and the crit % of SoB/JoB is double what WWS shows.

[top]Acronyms/Shortforms

Totally stealing this from the holy paladin thread.

GCD = Global Cooldown
SoB = Seal of Blood
SoM = Seal of the Martyr
SoC = Seal of Command
HoW = Hammer of Wrath
JoW = Judgement of Wisdom
JoL = Judgement of Light
JoJ = Judgement of Justice
DS = Divine Storm
CS = Crusader Strike
AW = Avenging Wrath
Sheath = Sheath of Light
RV = Righteous Vengeance
AoW = Art of War
JotW = Judgements of the Wise
DP = Divine Plea
E4E = Eye for an Eye
exo = Exorcism
PoJ = Pursuit of Justice
BoM = Blessing of Might
BoK = Blessing of Kings
HoJ = Hammer of Justice
AP = Attack Power
STR = Strength
INT = Intellect
AGI = Agility
CRIT = Critical Strike (rating)
ArP = Armor Penetration
ppm = proc per minute
DSac = Divine Sacrifice

[top]Observations

This section clarifies some things regarding hits, crits, and expertise. Much of this section is thanks Retesting hit table assumptions . The people in that thread have solid math, and Vulajin has provided pretty solid evidence of these theories (40000+ swings!)

Current observations:
Our specials are based on a 2 roll system, our normal (autoswings) are a one roll system. This simply means that hit and expertise are even more important to us than before.
You need 8%, not the BC 9%, to be 2H melee hitcapped vs skull level mobs (bosses).
You (still) need 26 expertise (6.50%) to be expertise capped, not the 6.25% reported lately.
All melee classes seem to suffer a 4.8% crit suppression vs skull mobs; this means that your melee critrate will be on average 1.8% lower than your character sheet implies (HotC covers 3% of this, procs from librams and such not accounted for).
All spell attacks have a 3% crit suppression vs bosses. Because of HotC, we do not notice this at all; also only exorcism and holy wrath are affected by this.
The spell hit cap is still 17% - the only skills we have that are affected by this are exorcism, holy wrath, and consecrate ticks - so this is of little importance to us.

[top]The Basic Rotation

3.1 clash resolution is as follows: CS > HoW > Judgement > DS > Consecration > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

During the beta it was agreed upon that because of vastly changed mechanics, our rotations should be thrown out and thus came to be known as FCFS (First Come First Serve) - and this is still true in 3.1. Not much to explain about it, just use whatever is off cooldown, whenever you can (watch your mana bar). See below for clash resolution (when 2 skills are off cooldown, which one do you use?). Be sure to use AW and Divine Plea as much as you can, as both provide a nice boost in damage/mana. In a situation with AoE, say trash for example, Consecration and DS should be prioritized. Yes, even with the exorcism changes, it still ranks behind all of our strikes and consecrate due to a longer cooldown and higher miss rate. You can often open on bosses with an exorcism or judgement while running into melee range, and then once you are in melee range FCFS takes over.

The reasoning behind FCFS courtesy Avitus:

[top]Stats

(In order of importance!)
If you are looking for stat weightings I suggest you use one of the spreadsheets at the top, as they vary greatly depending on your current gear.

Hit See Observations
32.8 rating gives you 1% hit. At level 80, we require 263 hit rating, or 8%, to be hit capped on white swings, specials, and judgements. Note that Exorcism and Consecration are considered spells and use the spell hit table, thus we can still miss with these abilities. As of 3.1 hit cap is very important, and quite a bit easier to attain - you need to be hitcapped in order to maximize your dps, so gemming for it isn't a bad idea. Hit is as good or better than STR until you are hitcapped, and then becomes worthless after the cap, so gear appropriately. If you always raid with a draenei, you have the option of gearing for 7% hit due to their racial.

Strength
Our DPS stat to stack after the hitcap, as we have various talents that multiply it's effect. 1 STR gives you 2 AP baseline, multiplied by 1.15 from Divine Strength (Tier 1 Prot) giving us 2.3 AP per STR when specced. This number is further affected by buffs such as BoK. STR also increases the strength of our utility spells such as JoL/SS/AoW via talents. It is recommended that you gem STR after you are hitcapped.

Expertise
Introduced in late BC, this stat allows us to remove dodges from the attack table - you cannot remove parries from the table, but you only get parried from the front, so don't attack bosses from the front! 8.2 rating gives 1 expertise; you need 214 expertise rating (26 expertise, 6.5%) to reach the cap. If you are a human using a sword/mace you need 23 expertise (189 rating), and if you are a dwarf using a mace you need 21 expertise (173 rating) to reach the cap due to racials. Capping this stat is a significant dps increase vs uncapped (or none at all) as it affects our whites, strikes, and SoB. You ideally want to cap this stat alongside hit in order to maximize your dps and this is possible in 3.1 with the amount of expertise on gear. You have the option of gemming for expertise to get caught up/close to the cap, but there should be enough on BiS gear naturally that this isn't necessary.

Crit See Observations
We are quite reliant on critical strikes to do damage. You can never really have too much crit, but it is not worth gemming for it, gem for STR instead. You need 45.9 crit rating to gain 1% crit at 80. This stat gains no benefits from raid buffs, but you get more per itemization point from crit than you do AGI. This stat also increases your spell crit rating, making it flat out superior to AGI.

Agility
We need 52.08 agility to gain 1% melee crit. Like stated before, crit is flat out better, however AGI does scale with raid buffs such as BoK where crit does not. Often found on leather, mail, or sometimes weapons, but not on plate.

Haste
Haste received some buffs in 3.1; namely for paladins we get 30% more haste from each rating point. Haste increases white damage and SoB/SoM damage by giving you a few more attacks against a boss; haste does NOT decrease the GCD on our instant strikes or instant spells. You will find plenty of it on our sets and pieces, don't enchant or gem for it. You need 32.7 baseline haste rating to gain 1% haste at 80, but adjusted with the 3.1 changes paladins require 25.2 haste rating for 1% haste.

Armor Penetration
ArP was buffed in 3.1 by 25% - but it still only affects 40% of our damage, meaning we received about a 10% increased benefit from this stat (as opposed to warriors who received a 25% increase). 12.3 rating now gives you 1% armor piercing; unlike BC, you can no longer fully ignore boss or player armor via this stat. ArPen does NOT increase damage done by seals, just white damage, CS and DS.

Attack Power
Most of our skills scale off AP, but this stat is now bottom of the melee barrel - STR is just so much better. AP isn't really seen on plate (so you often don't have to worry about this) but you will run into it if you dip into leather and mail. Note that despite AP having a 2:1 item stat budget, it is still far weaker than STR as we have no talents that boost it's effect. When comparing or considering pieces with AP vs plate, you need to look at the item stats/level as a whole.

Spellpower
Bad item stat for us. Spellpower increases some of our skills' coefficients, but at a rate much slower than STR/AP, and does nothing for our white damage and instant melee strikes - CS and DS gain nothing from spellpower. Avoid this stat (easy to do, since none of our ret gear has spellpower).

Intellect
As of 3.1, INT sucks due to JotW/SA changes. 1 INT gives you 15 mana and a negligible amount of spell crit; you need 166 INT to gain 1% spellcrit. INT will increase the mana you get from DP, and your total mana pool, nothing else. You will only find int on hunter/enh shaman gear and it is rare to find a piece of mail better than plate/leather.

Stamina, Armor
Ultimately, stam does nothing more than keep you alive in situations where there is raid damage, and in wrath there is a lot of raid damage. Most of the damage is magic (not mitigated by armor) therefor armor class does not matter to us, as we have no Armored to the Teeth talents like warriors or deathknights. You'll find all the stam you need and much much more on all wrath gear.

[top]Mechanics

(Quirky!)
Several mechanics have changed since BC, most notably the Seal and Judgement systems.

The following scale off of both AP and Spellpower (Coefficients courtesy Prinsea) -

• Seal of Command:
  45% weapon damage + 23% spell power
  
• Judgement of Command:
  24% weapon damage + 16% AP + 25% spell power
  
• Seal of Blood:
  48% weapon damage
  
• Judgement of Blood:
  26% weapon damage + 11% AP + 18% spell power
  
• Seal of Vengeance:
  2.5% AP + 1.3% spell power per tick
  
• Judgement of Vengeance:
  (14% AP + 22% spell power) * (1 + number of Vengeance stacks * 0.1)
  
• Seal of Light:
  15% AP + 15% spell power (healing proc)
  
• Judgement of Light:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
  10% AP + 10% spell power (healing proc)
  
• Seal of Wisdom:
  4% of maximum mana (mana proc)
  
• Judgement of Wisdom:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
  2% of base mana (mana proc)
  
• Judgement of Justice:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
  
• Consecration:
  4% AP + 4% spell power per tick
  (Final rank has 113 base damage per tick)
  
• Exorcism:
  15% AP + 15% spell power
  (Final rank has 1028 base damage)
  
• Hammer of Wrath:
  15% AP + 15% spell power
  (Final rank has 1139 base damage)
  
• Holy Wrath:
  7% AP + 7% spell power
  (Final rank has 1050 base damage)
  
• Sacred Shield:
  75% spellpower

Our healing spells scale strictly off of Spellpower.

In addition to seals scaling from both AP and SP, ALL seals can now be triggered from our instant melee attacks, DS and CS. I'll cover the specific seals a bit further down.

[top]Skill mechanic breakdowns

ALL Judgements should be considered as ranged physical attacks, which can miss or crit but cannot be resisted, parried, or dodged. Some game data mining reveals that judgements are actually melee attacks that have been modified to be immune to parries and dodges, yet they have a 10 yard range and cannot be used while silenced.... don't you just love paladins?


Judgement of Light
JoL is now your primary judgement as retribution. This spell scales off both AP and SP, making ret's JoL the strongest of any paladin spec. You want to use this judgement on bosses with heavy raid damage (which is most of Ulduar); you also want to use this as your primary judgement if you have a protection paladin raiding with you, as he can get 90% JoW uptime and your JoL will be much stronger. JoL no longer gives the judging paladin threat (used to be based on all healing done from the debuff).

Judgement of Wisdom
JoW should be judged by a second paladin (second ret, prot, holy) - if you are the only paladin in the raid (10 mans for example) then you may want to use JoW instead of JoL. You want to ensure near 100% uptime for your mana-using dps, or they can run into mana troubles, this is why it is recommended that a second ret or prot does this. JoW's mana return effect is limited to 15 PPM for spells and physical; because paladins use both, we can see a few more procs than other classes.

Judgement of Justice
This is your judgement in pvp situations, as all the debuff does is limit movement speed to 100%. This is not considered a movement impairing effect, so freedom or druid shifting will not break it, it can only be pvp trinketed or dispelled. This effect only lasts 10 seconds in pvp, not 20 as the tooltip implies.

Seals scale off AP and Spellpower. Judging a seal no longer consumes the seal, seals have a 30 minute duration. Seals are NOT considered weapon imbues, and can no longer be dispelled. Seals now trigger off instant attacks (DS and CS).

Seal of Blood/Seal of Martyr
This is your seal to use for dps. It is capable of criticals, it also follows the melee hit table and thus is prone to dodges and misses, making hit/expertise valuable to us. It scales off your weapon damage, and it's damage is affected by 2H spec. The recoil damage received by using this seal/judgement is still under scrutiny, but for the moment you can mostly offset it by using AoW and/or SS.

Seal of Command
This was your PvP seal, until we realized it stinks. It is also capable of criticals, but unlike SoB it does not trigger on every attack. SoC has an assumed base ppm of 7, and a ppm of 8.4 with the SoC glyph. This seal has an internal cooldown of 1 second, which means you won't see double procs. SoC was subject to huge changes in 3.0:
- its' ppm is now affected by / scales with haste
- judging this seal on a stunned target is now a guaranteed critical judgement (changed from double damage)
- judging with SoC active can no longer be resisted
- judging can trigger a SoC proc, it is the only seal that behaves in this manner

Seal of Righteousness
This seal should not be used as retribution, however I included it to settle why it shouldn't be used. This seal cannot miss (unless your white swing misses), however it is incapable of criticals. There has been plenty of math recently showing that even with 5/5 Seals of the Pure, SoB is still superior in damage. When using the glyph with 5/5 SotP, SoR is still behind SoB, but on par with glyphed SoC. This seal also does NOT benefit from 2H spec, furthering the difference in dps.

These spells are used in the retribution skill rotation.

Consecration
Widely viewed as a necessary part of the retribution rotation, as our DPS is not very competitive without it. Should be used against both single and multiple targets. Consecration has some odd behavior on skull level mobs; the first tick can be fully resisted (miss) and subsequent ticks can also be partially resisted (due to mob level difference). You cannot work around the partial resists at all, but they are often small enough to not matter:
Hammer of Wrath
With the release of 3.0, this skill was buffed a substantial amount, to the point where it is used on cooldown vs targets under 20% health (due to deep ret talents that give this skill a 50% base crit chance, in addition to gear). It is now an instant ranged execute, but retains its' fixed mana cost. Using this skill does not reset your swing timer.

Exorcism
Got major attention/buffs for 3.1. This is now usable on all mob types, can crit (based on your spell crit), and has 100% crit chance vs undead and demon mobs. It uses the spell hit table so you can still miss with this even if melee hitcapped. This is now officially part of our normal skill usage/rotation and there are talents, glyphs and gear that provide up to 52% more damage from this skill.

Holy Wrath
Also uses the spell hit tables, can crit. Has no target limit so it is very useful on certain fights with many undead/demon adds. Changed from a 60s cooldown/20yd range (BC) to a 30s cooldown/10yd range, and it now stuns all targets that it hits for 2s.

Divine Plea
You will need to use this to keep your mana up in both PvE and PvP. It scales off your total mana pool, and is dispellable. DP is usually responsible for 10% of our total mana income on bosses.

And of course, our talented instant attacks:

Divine Storm
Our 51 pt talent, it is basically the same as a warrior's whirlwind ability except that DS heals for negligible amounts. Despite it seeming like an underwhelming talent it is critical to our DPS as it can and will trigger seals and RV. This skill is normalized to 3.3 weapon speed.

Crusader Strike
Our still bland 41 pt talent, yet still crucial to our DPS as it also triggers seals and RV. CS no longer refreshes your or any other paladins' judgements. This skill is also normalized (to 3.3).

[top]Special Talents

and their ..."specialness"
This is just to cover some talents that have odd quirks or interesting functionality.

Art of War
As of 3.1 this (finally) no longer resets your swing timer. You can use this on yourself or others if you have spare mana/gcds.

Righteous Vengeance
Once again stealing from the warriors! The RV dot does indeed "roll" like the warrior version, meaning critical judgements and DS's in succession will refresh the dot duration, not overwrite it. The RV dot is a magic effect and thus dispellable, can be partially resisted by bosses, but is not mitigated by armor.
How RV rolls courtesy Redcape:
Sheath of Light
One of our most exciting talents for wrath. This talent helps to increase our damage because of the way we double-dip in AP and SP, gives retribution paladins heals actually worth casting/using, and makes STR that much more important. Sacred Shield finally also scales from spellpower granted by this talent. The healing portion of this talent acts the same way as RV; getting a crit heal while still having a sheath hot active "rolls" (see above).

Sacred Shield
Since this spell now works properly as retribution you can expect to be using it a lot, it is fairly potent when combined with Divine Guardian. Using this does not reset the swing timer. SoB/JoB recoil damage cannot trigger this shield, but if the shield is triggered by any other means (random raid aoe) it will absorb recoil. Sacred Shield also has a 6s ICD even when talented, so it is capable of refreshing itself every 6 seconds, even if the 'old' shield has not been fully used up.

Divinity
At first glance this isn't a retribution talent, however it is taken in pve builds. It has an odd double dipping interaction with your own heals (JoL, DS heals) which causes it to multiply twice, like so: (original heal number) * 1.05 *1.05.

Divine Sacrifice
We take this in our pve build simply for lack of better things to do with our talent points. It might save your tanks in a pinch (think +3 breaths) but you might need a dedicated healer on you during it's duration, or you risk dying. Divine guardian increases the damage redirected to you from 30% to 40%.

[top]Talent Specs

The core PvE DPS talents are: 0/5/54.

The preferred PvE spec for Ulduar is: 0/17/54.

So why not 12/5/54 or other variants? For one, Aura Mastery does NOT double talented aura abilities (such as ret aura's haste or prot's 6% healing), it only doubles the base aura effect (the damage of baseline ret aura). And while the extra INT from Divine Intellect is technically a DPS increase (0.2 dps...), the utility prot offers far outweighs any other options for pve.

A PvP talent spec looks more like: 0/19/52.

[top]Glyphs, Gems, Consumables, Enchants, Professions

I won't mention horrible glyphs, because they are horrible! Some glyphs are of debatable use, and there are (slightly) better uses for the slots, so they are also left out.

[top]Recommended Major PvE Glyphs

[Glyph of Judgement]
This is your primary glyph as retribution. Even with the changes to judgements, 10% more damage on one of our primary attacks is still mandatory.

[Glyph of Exorcism]
Widely viewed as mandatory for maximizing your dps. This glyph is worth roughly 50 dps.

[Glyph of Consecration]
This is a PvE glyph, it saves a ton of mana and some GCD clashes over the course of a fight (worth 108mp5). You should choose between this and the SoB glyph as your third pve major.

[Glyph of Holy Wrath]
This replaces any mana lost from SA. You will need to choose between this and the consecrate glyph as your third major pve glyph; this returns a lot more mana (50-150% more!) than the consecrate glyph but does not offer gcd clash reduction. This can also used as a pvp major, as the mana returned from it will easily allow you to AoW yourself back up. Note that even if the recoil is absorbed from SS or other means, you are still granted the mana return from this glyph.

[Glyph of Avenging Wrath]
A somewhat interesting PvE glyph. Effectively gives you 50% more Hammer of Wrath damage, but it is pretty conditional - it requires you being able to use Hammer of Wrath (so it is only really useful on bosses), that you have AW ready to use, and that you have enough mana to dump on HoW. Also worth ~50 dps depending on how long the boss is under 20%, conditions met, bloodlusted or not ect. There are better uses for the third major spot and thus I do not recommend it, but this is still classified as a dps boosting glyph.

[top]Recommended Minor Glyphs

[Glyph of Sense Undead]
1% damage to undead, in an expansion filled with undead mobs. PvE glyph, even if there are no undead in ulduar...

[Glyph of Lay on Hands]
Self explanatory, taken for lack of decent minor glyphs.

The other four minor glyphs are your choice for the last minor slot. They aren't particularly useful in pve or pvp situations, but they can save you a reagent here and there.

[top]Recommended Gems

Sometimes you will have to ignore socket bonuses because they are terrible! This is more a guide for when you want to meet such requirements. Also note that as of 3.1 epic cuts are still unavailable.

Metas:

[Relentless Earthsiege Diamond]
This is the preferred meta, simply because of fairly easy gem requirements. You do lose between .5 and 1 DPS between this and the following gem, but you gain more DPS by not using 2 blue gems.

[Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]
If you are a jewelcrafter, use this gem and put prismatic gems in your blue slots. If you are not a JC, use the one above.

Prismatic: (JC only)
[Bold Dragon's Eye] If over hitcap
[Rigid Dragon's Eye] If under hitcap by a large amount

Red slots:
Yum STR.
[Bold Cardinal Ruby]
[Bold Scarlet Ruby]
[Perfect Bold Bloodstone]

Yellow slots:
Hit gems can now be used if under the hit cap to achieve hit cap.
[Etched Ametrine]
[Rigid King's Amber]
[Rigid Autumn's Glow]
[Etched Monarch Topaz]

Blue slots:
[Enchanted Tear] < You may only use one of these, but one is all you need to meet the meta req!
If you can't find one of those, you can also use-
[Sovereign Dreadstone]
[Sovereign Twilight Opal]

[top]Professions

The quick and dirty of it is, if you are min-maxing every point you can get, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting is the strongest combo for ret (both pve and pvp). Tailoring and the gathering professions are the weakest.

Profession perks courtesy of frmorrison:

[top]Enchants

As abyss crystals eventually fall in price you'll want to use the better versions; for now I will also include the cheaper alternatives. Bolded enchants are what you should be using at endgame levels (the good/expensive stuff).

Head: [Arcanum of Torment]
Shoulders: [Greater Inscription of the Axe] / [Lesser Inscription of the Axe]
Chest: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats / Enchant Chest - Super Stats
Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed / Enchant Cloak - Major Agility
Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault / Enchant Bracers - Striking /
Hands: Enchant Gloves - Crusher / Enchant Gloves - Precision (if hit is a problem)
Legs: [Icescale Leg Armor]
Feet: Enchant Boots - Icewalker (unless you are way over hitcap, use this) / Enchant Boots - Greater Assault
Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Berserking / Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre / Enchant 2H Weapon - Greater Savagery

How berserking works: Berserking is a ppm based proc, similar to mongoose (1.2 ppm) - in a raid environment it has a ~35% uptime. It can only trigger off attacks flagged as melee attacks and melee specials (Judgements, CS, DS, white swings). Napkin math shows that in a scenario with a 35% uptime, the enchant is worth ~135AP on average, and up to/more than ~250AP if RNG favors you - in both normal and lucky cases, it is clearly the superior pve weapon enchant. The armor reduction debuff has also been reduced to 5% (from 25%) making this enchant superior for pvp as well.

[top]Consumables

Flasks and elixirs:
[Mixture of Endless Rage]
[Elixir of Mighty Strength]
[Elixir of Mighty Thoughts] / [Elixir of Mighty Mageblood]

Food:
More interesting choices this time around - you have traditional STR food, in addition to some new foods that actually support our double-dipping into AP/SP. Dragonfin and Fish Feast are roughly equivalent, but the dragonfin is usually cheaper:
[Dragonfin Filet]
[Fish Feast]
[Dalaran Clam Chowder]
[Great Feast]

Potions: (it might be wise to carry a stack of each)
[Runic Mana Potion] If you have mana issues
[Potion of Speed] If you don't

[top]Tier Gear

[top]Tier 7

This sub-section is now outdated due to major changes in 3.1 Please refer to the 3.0 thread if you were looking for what it did.

[top]Tier 8

Looking cooler than T7, but is it any better? Yes, it is.

Some math stolen shamelessly from zurm:
Tier 8 2pc: 10% damage to exorcism and hammer of wrath
Since exo/HoW combined make up ~10% of our damage, we can say that this 2pc also grants a 1% total damage increase.

Tier 8 4pc: 10% crit to CS and DS
10% crit to our strikes means that we also get a little more RV damage, as well as a bit more damage from the strikes themselves; this bonus is worth ~2% dps. This crit bonus only applies to the strikes, not the seals that they trigger. When more people wear this, this number will become more accurately tested.

T8 is theorized at a 3% dps boost, and much like T7 this number scales with your dps.

[top]BiS gear

THIS SECTION IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
If you want a thorough analysis of each set (varies on your race, hardmodes or not, leather or not), then please check out http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t57144-ret_bis_gear_lists/.

The following items appear in almost every single BiS setup, so you can safely pick these up without worry of replacing them.

Helm: [Conqueror's Aegis Helm]	Thorim 25
Shoulder: [Conqueror's Aegis Shoulderplates]	Yogg 25
Back: [Drape of the Faceless General]	Vezax 10 Hard
Wrist: Armbands of Bedlam	Mimiron 25 Hard
Hands:[Conqueror's Aegis Gauntlets]	Mimiron 25
Legs:[Conqueror's Aegis Legplates]	Freya 25
Ring 2: [Sif's Promise]	Thorim 25
Trinket 1: [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]	Darkmoon faire (nobles deck)
Libram: [Furious Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude]	Arena

[top]Add-ons

Pre-facing this by saying these add-ons are entirely optional. Listed in no particular order:

• OmniCC -
  OmniCC is an addon that adds text to items/spells/abilities that are on cooldown to indicate when they'll be ready for use.
  It's pretty useful to know when your abilities are ready, especially now that we use FCFS. Very helpful for newer paladins, still helpful for experienced ones.
  
• Omen -
  Omen is a threat meter.
  Pulling aggro often means death, don't do it.
  
• Grid -
  Grid is a modular, lightweight and screen-estate saving grid of party/raid unit frames
  Paladins are a hybrid class; even if you are a dps role, you should have some small raid frames to help res the dead, or to toss salv on the lock in group 4, ect.
  
• Itemrack -
  This is a mod to make swapping equipment easier through popout slot menus, equip slot buttons, gear sets and automated swaps.
  Hybrid class means lots of gear sets! Swap entire sets at the click of a butan. This is also a very, very stable mod that often doesn't even need updating when major patches hit.
  
• Quartz -
  Quartz is a modular approach to a casting bar addon.
  This one is more pvp related these days - it comes with a swing timer bar (which we used to watch in sunwell, not so much now) and you can set it up to see your own and enemy spell casts.

[top]Macros

You can get by just fine without them, but these are helpful in many situations.

Cleanse on mouseover
Auto-attack / CS if possible
Start autoattack with DS
Hammer of Wrath on mouseover
Salv on mouseover (yes I like mouseover macros okay?)
You can modify the Salv macro to other things like HoP, HoSac, HoF ect.

[top]Known Bugs

Please help stomp out these annoying bugs for good by providing data samples where needed!

3.1.3 -
N/A

3.1 -
N/A

Older bugs can be found in the 3.0 ret thread (link in intro section)

[top]Changelog

06/02/09 - patch v3.1.3
05/19/09 - patch v3.1.2
04/29/09 - BiS gearlists
04/21/09 - patch v3.1.1
04/20/09 - various corrections/updates
04/14/09 - patch v3.1
03/17/09 - major format updates, 3.1 prep

Thanks for the post, I was just scouring some details on the latest spec in the old thread. The three specs you listed have broken links, and I assume HoW was a typo from JoW in the rotation section. We'll be ready to hit the ground running, thanks!

Professions still list +20 str gems as 'not being available in 3.1' and needs to be updated

That's because they still aren't, [Bold Stormjewel] will be non-JC, available from a fishing quest and as you can see, you can only socket one of them.

Seeing a gear list is a good idea once all 800 items are known.

This is from the hit section, hit affects all ticks of Consecrate (you linked the post that proves it), but the combat log just displays the tics that hit (except the first tic).

So you could use Cons and with 20% miss (just made up with glyph'ed cons) you would have 8 tics hitting and the combat log wouldn't show the last two tics.

According to Exemplar and other various sources we should be gemming/enchanting for hit until we reach 8% since the 2-roll system for specials put such a heavy emphasis on hit (even over Str). Your rankings show Str ahead of Hit, but it should be switched around.

Just one question. Why is Divine Sacrifice + Divine Guardian a better choice for a retribution DPS spec than Improved Devotion Aura? Is a 40% damage reduction on a 2minute cooldown, that absorbs maybe 35.000 damage, so much more needed for Ulduar than 6% more healing on raidmembers?

Couple of reasons:

1) Resto Druids in treeform already bring the 6% raid healing, meaning complete overlap (and thus waste of points) at worst or situational usefulness at best.
2) Picking up 3/3 Improved Devo would require 18 points in Prot, so you would have to drop 1 extra point in ret (either from PoJ or Imp. BoM).
3) The extra 20% scaling to Sacred Shield is incredible in addition to the doubling of the duration (thus requiring less mana and GCD's to maintain), especially in the high-AoE situations in Ulduar.

Several encounters in Ulduar involve huge amounts of burst on the tank or even the entire raid which need to be mitigated via CDs. Fusion punch, Plasma blast, and even possible Frozen blows are some examples. In these situations, being able to give the tank a second shield wall is invaluable. Examples of raid damage mitigation being useful are Vezax's animus, XT's tantrum (well, it's actually not that bad ...), Stormcaller's Tendrils (if you're killing him last), Kologarn rubble spawn coinciding with a gripped tank (although this would only happen if you were killing left arm for achieve or something). Mitigating raid damage is less useful, but without a doubt being able to shield wall the MT is of vast importance on a few encounters.

As somebody else mentioned hit and possibly even expertise are now much more important for capping. During testing theorycrafters found out that many of our specials are actually on a 2 roll system.

Here is a quote from Exemplar made yesterday at 8:15pm.

"Actually, per my spreadsheet, hit cap is more advantageous than Str even on live. You'll have to take my word for it since I haven't released a new live version - I won't until 3.1 and then release that version updated further. Since Rawr is already updated for 3.1 I don't think they could easily go back and test this. The 2 roll system advanced hit's utility by just that margin more than Str.

Increased seal damage makes it a clear leader in 3.1, gem and enchant for hit cap. If you're Alliance you can even go the route of casters and form a set of gear with a Draenei and one without (casters do this for with Misery/Imp FF and when without).

So, yes, feel free to go ahead and enchant Precision on gloves and/or gem for hit. Even on live. Yes, this coming from Your friendly "Gem only Str, stop asking" Exemplar. I've changed my ways.

Edit: To be even more explicit I would do the following if not hit capped.
1. If over 16 hit rating away, enchant Precision.
2. If still more than 16 below hit cap, gem Yellows (16 hit) until all yellow sockets are full (socket bonuses!).
3. Still below hit cap, change head enchant from Arcanum of Torment to Glyph of Ferocity.
4. Still below? Hit gems in blue sockets.
5. Still below?!??! Hit in red sockets and cry.

If you get to ~10 or less hit rating to reach cap, use an Orange (8 Hit/8 Str) gem instead of a Yellow. 11+ it's worthwhile to overshoot slightly, since it still affects spells."

Here are the values I could find for a 2 roll system - posted by Endoscient 04/03/09 at 6:39pm on the Ret 3.0 Thread.

Stat 2 Roll
Hit 2.23
Strength 1.64
Expertise 1.62
Critical Strike 0.90
Agility 0.85
Haste 0.77
Armor Penetration 0.71
Attack Power 0.65
Spell Power 0.19
Intellect 0.01

Some minor corrections:

Every tick of Consecration can miss, it just doesn't show on the combat log.

Consecration, back in Vanilla WoW, used to operate quite differently: When a target walked into the AOE, a Consecration debuff would be applied to the mob, which would then tick on it like any other DOT.

The "resist" message we sometimes see is this old and now invisible debuff being resisted by the mob, except this resist doesn't actually mean anything. The actual damage comes from something else. It's actually possible to get 9 combat log messages from Consec: 1 from the resisted invisible debuff, and 9 damage ticks (it's been a while since I last tested, but I believe the invisible debuff only leaves a combat log message if you get a resist).

If the actual ticks of damage DO get a resist, they simply won't show. If a level 20 Paladin tries Consecrating the level 83 target dummy, you're just going to see a "resist" combat log message from the invisible debuff, then an 8 second gap of nothing.

This probably doesn't affect the value of spell hit much, but I just wanted to clear that up anyway.

It's slightly misleading to say that JOW is dealing a large amount of unmitigated damage, when that damage is actually from Judgement of Blood, which is tied to having Seal of Blood activated whenever you cast any of the three Judgement spells.