News: Updates to the guide are on hold until after the next content patch (probably the 3.0 pre-Wrath update). If you notice any problems, please feel free to add a comment, or contact me in game or on the World of Raids forums (username: mrgummage).

0. Foreword & 'Thank You's.

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Don't laugh.

I thought that since I'm doing my best to promote Retribution paladins during this difficult time in our existence, now our DPS is improved somewhat we must strive to get ourselves recognized by the rest of the community.

I thought I’d help anyone planning to level a Retribution paladin by spending an hour or so (to be fair this "hour or so" has now become more like... a part time job) writing a guide on how to gear and play a Retribution paladin for PvE (raids and five mans) and PvP (solo and group), the guide will be fairly long and split into sections. For veteran Retribution paladins this guide may seem like several pages of obvious facts and common sense, but I’d just like to give the chance for some of the less experienced player to improve their play style – the more Retribution paladins who get out there proving we are not useless, the better it will be for us all :-)

Before I begin I would like to say a big thank you to MoshJosh from SaneMedia (http://www.sanemedia.net) for hosting this guide for me, advert free,to WoWHead (http://www.wowhead.com) for their Powered By technology for item and spell links and the developers of Rawr! for allowing me to use their stats graphs. <3

Finally as I add new sections to the guide the chapter numbering and "anchor links" may go out of sync (Example: #2_2 might link to Chapter 3, part 2) this is for backward compatibility with people who don't update their hyperlinks when I add new chapters.

0.1 Note about factions

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Being an Alliance paladin I have never had the privilege of using Seal of Blood for my melee DPS, therefore this guide will always refer to "Seal of Command" as the DPS seal. Horde Retribution paladins can (and should) substitute Seal of Blood into the text, since it is clearly a far superior PvE DPS seal, it gives more overall damage, procs more often (more Vengeance) and the self harm component allows more mana regeneration via Spiritual Attunement.

Situationally Seal of Command is better - raise your hands Blood Elves who killed themselves on Prince ;-) - and Seal of Command is still considered overall better for PvP.

In Wrath of the Lich King it appears that Alliance paladins will at last get Seal of Blood (I mean Seal of the Martyr) which will even out the playing field DPS wise, and with the change to Windfury Totem (now a flat 20% haste buff) and the addition of a attack power to spell damage talent to Retribution the difference between the two Seals may change dramatically, with Seal of Command not benefitting from Windfury any more, but gaining a "double boost" from Attack Power. This all remains to be seen.

Hottage – Level 70 Retnoob – EU Executus