Not sure how Ret works? Do people laugh at you in PVP and you aren't sure why? Are you just wondering why anyone would bring a Ret Paladin? Well you've come to the right place! I hope in this long guide I answer all your questions and teach you all about being a Ret Paladin and how to play one successfully in PVP! But more importantly I hope that when people talk down about Ret Paladins because they do not understand them someone points them to this guide so they can educate themselves.

Read Section A if you want to learn why you would want to play a Ret Paladin or roll a Ret Paladin in PVP. Section B through D is for learning how to play one yourself, as well as gearing/speccing for PVP. I may add another section for PVP Videos.. Maybe some other stuff too.. But probably not. If there is anything here that you think should be added/change or is otherwise completely wrong please let me know.

- Table of Contents -

A. Why bring a Ret Paladin?

	a. Burst Damage

	b. Blessings

	c. Cleanse

	d. Other Abilities

		- Divine Shield

		- Judgment of Justice

		- Hammer of Justice/Repentance

		- Healing

		- Vindication

B. Playing a Ret Paladin

	a. Global Cooldown

	b. Killing

		- Crusader Strike

		- Judgments

		- Hammer of Justice/Repentance

	c. Supporting your allies

		- Blessings

		- Cleanse

		- Healing

	d. General Tips & Tricks

		- Consecrate

		- HoJ/Repentance Hadouken Combo

		- Divine Shield/Freedom

C. Gearing a Ret Paladin for PVP

D. Popular Ret builds

A. Why bring a Ret Paladin?
A Ret Paladin fits the description of DPS class. Now every class has some form of DPS spec, why bring a Ret Paladin over any other? Well lets be honest here. Currently Ret Paladins aren't running around with as much as say, Warriors or Warlocks, who have a larger arsenal of abilities. This does not mean Ret Paladins are weak, however. Every class has their niche. So where do Ret Paladins sit? Ret Paladins bring great burst damage and great support through Blessings, minor crowd control abilities(CC), Cleanse, as well as other abilities.

a. Burst Damage
You may wonder why a Ret Paladins burst damage is better then any other class. Well its simply because a Ret Paladins damage is unpredictable. Most every class has a tell-tale sign that lets you know you're about to get hurt. If a Frost Mage freezes you in place, for instance, you know that you're about to get hit really hard unless you do something about it. Or if you see a Hunter wind back his bow, or just in general see anyone blow one of their cooldowns it means they're about to lay into you.

As for Ret Paladins one of our main sources of damage is Seal of Command. An ability that completely ignores armor, it procs randomly off of any of our auto-attacks while we have the Seal activated. What this means is nobody knows when the Seal will hit, not even the Ret Paladin. Sure after playing Ret long enough you can watch and kinda "know" when it will or will not activate but you can never be entirely sure. That alone may not seem like much but another big thing is Ret Paladins, more then any other class, rely heavily on critical strikes. So what this means is a Ret Paladin may hit you once for 800, then on the next hit his SoC procs and he double crits you for over 4,000. A Ret Paladins damage is difficult to heal through because you may not see it coming.

A Ret Paladin can also "burst" someone faster then any other class. What I mean is basically Ret Paladins have four main sources of damage, our auto-attacks, Seal of Command, Judgment of Command, and Crusader Strike. Now our auto-attacks and Seal of Command are natural attacks which means they do not require any activation besides turning on our Seal. Our Judgment spell also is not on the global cooldown. What this means is a Ret Paladin can auto-attack, proc Seal of Command, cast Judgment, and use Crusader Strike all at the same time. Now individually these abilities can hit very hard but it may not seem like much. But having them all go off at the same time puts a LOT of hurting on an opponent. I've "1-shot" many players by having all these abilities crit and they just fall to the ground. Sure its four seperate attacks but they all happen at the same time. Making it a very deadly combination.

b. Blessings
Besides our obvious buffs like Might/Wisdom you may underestimate the usefulness of our other blessings.. Blessing of Freedom is great for a Ret Paladin. It, coupled with a Ret Paladins increased Run Speed from the talent Pursuit of Justice, allows a Ret Paladin to always stay on his target if he needs to. But it doesn't end there. If the Ret Paladin does not need it he can bless any of his allies with Freedom allowing them to chase down their opponent or escape from one. Intelligent use of Blessing of Freedom allows a Ret Paladin and his team to decimate their target by nullifying their defenses, or allows you to slow down their burst damage by forcing your opponents to stop casting their spells and give chase.

Now Blessing of Sacrifice is a very versatile Blessing. Blessing of Sacrifice works like this. You Bless one of your allies with it and then a portion of the damage they take from each attack is now transferred to the Ret Paladin. 104 damage at level 70. Now the most obvious use is to use this ability to mitigate your opponents burst damage. If one of your opponents for instance is a Warlock you can mitigate a large portion of the Warlocks damage, his DOTs. Because each of the DOTs tick independetly you can absorb a large portion of the damage. 104 damage may not seem like much but when your ally has four DOTs on him and each tick of each DOT is getting 104 damage removed, that absorbs a lot of the damage allowing him to survive much longer.

Sure the damage isn't being removed, you will need to be healed instead of him so it isn't the perfect damage mitigator. But what it does is allow your ally to survive much longer. Perhaps your healer cannot heal through an opposing teams burst damage, but if he had a couple more seconds his mana pool can more then handle it. Blessing of Sacrifice gives you the chance to try that option.

Now the most popular, but sort-of hidden use, of Blessing of Sacrifice is using it to remove CC. When damage is transferred from an ally to you through Blessing of Sacrifice this will break any form of CC that breaks on damage. Thats HUGE. That means Sheep, Blind, Gouge, Scatter Shot, Freezing Trap, Gouge, etc. It all breaks the instant damage is transferred from your partner to you. This makes it very difficult to CC an intelligent Ret Paladin who knows how to take advantage of BoS.

Blessing of Protections uses are very clear. You BoP someone and they do not take any damage, nor can they be hit at all by any melee attacks. This is HUGE. This makes Melee absolutely useless against a target who has this. You can use this purely defensively to get a Rogue off your healer allowing him to heal or to just prevent a Warrior from killing one of your partners altogether. It also has offensive usage as well. You can use it on an ally Mage, not to save his life cause hes doing just fine, but allowing him to freely cast without any spell push-back and without the worry of kiting that pesky Warrior. Now hes free to just stand there and cast away.

c. Cleanse
This one is big, yet ironically it may have the smallest section so far. Cleanse is very simple. It removes 1 Magic, 1 Poison, and 1 Disease effect from the target it is cast on. What this means is as a Paladin you may remove a large majority of the debuffs a player can receive in PVP. The only effects it cannot remove are physical effects such as Mortal Strike, and Curses. What you need to also understand is this is a better debuff tool then what certain other classes have available to them. For instance Druids can remove Poisons, Diseases, and Curses, but not all at once. While a Druid may take seperate casts a Paladin can remove all three at the same time. A Paladin for instance can remove a Mind-Numbing poison and an Entangling Roots at the same time.

This alone is great but you must also realize that most classes that most classes that can debuff are Healers.While that Resto Druid can remove debuffs, his selection is limited compared to a Ret Paladins. When you consider that a Ret Paladin is in a DPS spot the Cleanse is that much more bigger. Now he can remove the debuffs, most importantly those pesky CC abilities, that a Druid can't. And while you may have for instance a healing Priest who can remove these debuffs, A Paladin can remove more of them and he also makes the group more versatile altogether. With two players that can remove crowd control you're team is now much more resistant to its effects making them that much stronger.

d. Other
- Divine Shield
Probably the biggest thing about Ret Paladins is Divine Shield. This ability is so incredibly versatile that I'm just going to go over the big things. First off this makes the Ret Paladin, as a DPS class, unstoppable. A Ret Paladin in his Divine Shield cannot be crowd controlled or slowed in any way. This allows him to do full damage to any opponent. There is a catch, his swing time is slowed 100%. This is huge for a Ret Paladin but is well worth it considering all the other versatility it has. You can also use it to prevent yourself from dying as well as activating it to prevent you from being silenced giving you a chance to heal your allies.

- Judgment of Justice
We have Judgment of Justice which allows us to nullify all speed increasing effects on an opponent. This is not a slow, what this means is if for instance I were to use this ability on a Rogue, if he were to Sprint it would have no effect and he would continue to run at whatever current speed he is running at. This allows you to keep many classes from running away. This also nullifies the Minor Speed Increase enchant which allows you to run that much faster then your opponents.

- Hammer of Justice/Repentance
Ret Paladins have minor forms of CC through Hammer of Justice and Repentance. They may not seem like much individually but they are coupled with the rest of the class to give us great utility. Hammer of Justice is a Stun which is the best form of CC in the game. A Stun never breaks early, roots the target in place, and does not break on damage. Using your Hammer of Justice allows full DPS on a target without him having any chance of running away, or casting any defensive or offensive abilities. It only lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown but is great otherwise. Repentance is also pretty good. Its instant cast and has a 20 yard range and keeps the player from acting for 6 seconds. Its considered an Incapacitate effect which means it only shares diminishing returns with Gouge and Chastise which is huge. If an opponent were to use his PVP trinket on Repentance you can be absolutely sure that he will be forced to eat any other CC he is hit with which is great. It also works vice versa. Because its instant and has a decent range its great to use to quickly stop an opponent from acting.

- Healing
Ret Paladins also bring healing spells to the table. Ret Paladin healing for the most part is not good. In standard Ret Paladin gear a Ret Paladins healing is very low compared to full healing classes and often cannot handle burst damage. Ret Paladins also have their heals constantly pushed back. Without the Spiritual Focus talent, which almost all Ret Paladins do not have, any attack will push a Paladins heal back making it difficult to cast heals in the heat of combat. A Ret Paladins heals are also slow compared to the healing spells of all other hybrid classes. Flash of Light simply heals such a small amount that its not worth the cast time. Last but not last Ret Paladin heals are also very mana intensive for the Ret Paladin. They simply cannot spam heals a majority of the time.

Despite all this the healing is still a great boost. Though Ret Paladins do not heal for much they can give an added boost of health, keeping an ally alive just long enough for a real healer to throw down some big heals. They may not heal for much but that extra 2500 health could be the difference between life and death for a teammate. Ret Paladin healing is weak compared to almost every DPS specced hybrid, but coupled with everything else a Ret Paladin provides and its pretty sweet.

- Vindication
The actual description of this talent says "Gives the Paladin's damaging melee attacks a chance to reduce the target's attributes by 15% for 15 sec." Anyone can read that line and realize thats huge. This first reduces an opponents Stamina reducing their maximum health. The less health someone has the less damage you need to do to burst them down. This also reduces their maximum Mana allowing them to go OOM faster. This also reduces their dodge chance, attack power, critical strike chance, and armor. And this isn't even an activated ability. It goes off simply by attacking an opponent and once its on it nearly never runs off. Sure when you do the math this may not hurt an opponent much, it will hurt some opponents more then others mostly depending on what class they are, but it costs nothing and just adds to the Ret Paladins arsenal.

B. Playing a Ret Paladin
Now you know whats so good about being a Ret Paladin and you want to know how to put all these abilities to perfect use, or maybe you're just looking for a couple tips. Either way I'm here to help you out. In general you must understand that as a Ret Paladin you need to watch your allies and know when to assist them with your stuns/blessings/etc. All good players of all classes should be watching as much as of the battle as they humanly can but it is even more important as a Ret Paladin that you do so. While you are laying into your opponents you must know when and where you stop fighting to assist your partners.

a. Global Cooldown
So now you may be thinking "Global Cooldowns? Why does this have its own section?!" Well I figure once you are have become experienced in Ret PVP you will quickly notice that the global cooldown is one of your worst enemies. You're trying to do so many different things too fast and you're always fighting with the GCD. What you have to do is watch the fight and try to plan everything a couple steps ahead. Probably the first thing you will notice is when you use JoC you want to quickly refresh your Seal, but you can't cause you use Crusader Strike at the same time. But lucky you Judgment and Crusader Strike have different timers so this problem will not happen *too* frequently. You're gonna want to make sure you use Crusader Strike first, always. You want to use your Judgment when you are not in the GCD and can immediately refresh your Seal cause you never want to miss a proc.

But besides that, spamming Cleanse and other abilities you're gonna have trouble prioritizing. Theres not much advice I can give you here. You just have to figure out which is more important. Do you need to Crusader Strike this guy in front of you or BoP that Mage? Should you Divine Shield right now or can you afford to Cruasder Strike first? You need to finish this guy off before he gets healed, but you don't want to die yourself, so what you gonna do? You gotta quickly decide these things as the battle rages. Poor timing can put you in the GCD and lock you out from pulling off a game-winning move. A noob may think the GCD is not much of a problem but every second counts in PVP. Mastering the GCD is one of the biggest steps to mastering your class.

b. Killing
You may think "Killing" is a funny title but its the basis of PVP. You're out there to try to kill your opponents. So I'm gonna try to help you maximize your DPS and make sure you know some little things that can really up your game. I don't want to go to in-depth about specific classes and just gonna give an overview.

-Crusader Strike
Always use Crusader Strike before Judging! Unless you are for instance chasing an opponent and cannot immediately Crusader Strike it is always better to use CS first. Why is this? Well whenever you use your JoC your Seal of Command must be refreshed. So now Judgment does not use the GCD so you can immediately refresh your Seal upon using Judgment. The problem arises when you Crusader Strike and Judge at the same time. Crusader Strike activates the cooldown so now you have to wait a moment before you can refresh your Seal. When your Seal is down you may auto-attack and miss out on a proc. This is almost always not worth the Judgment. SoC procs will nearly always do more damage then a JoC meaning that risking a SoC proc is almost never worth it.

But, that is a general guideline though. There are times when its better to just Judge and risk missing a proc. If you need to burst someone down quickly then you need to hit them with everything before they can get healed. In addition, if you watch your auto-attack well you can time it so there is no way that you can miss a proc. With the standard 3.6 speed PVP weapon you can get an auto-attack then use your CS/Judgment as well as refresh your Seal before your next melee attack. This are all simple things you must keep in mind to maximize your damage.

- Judgments
The biggest judgments to use are JoC(Command), JotC(Crusader), and JoJ(Justice). So now where and when should you use each Judgment? Well for the most part you should be using JoC. A lot of the time its simply not worth it to judge something else since you won't be getting much benefit. As for Justice you will probably find yourself using it a lot. On Druids it should be used 100% of the time and it helps a ton against pretty much every other class, it allows you to stay on them at all times. Even if they don't have some sort of speed enhancing ability like Sprint, most good PVPers have Minor Speed Increase enchant. JoJ will negate that enchant giving you a 15% Run Speed advantage over them. Do not forget though, JoJ makes your target IMMUNE to Fear. This could hurt your team big time so you must be careful with it.

As for JotC, I honestly find myself rarely using it. For many classes its simply not worth it. Paladin/Priests/Warlocks can dispel it, Druids/Rogues need Justice, Mages can remove it with Iceblock. This leaves Hunters, Warriors, and Shamans. Its good to use it on those classes but if an opponent dies too fast then the added damage from JotC may not be worth it and it may have turned out better if you just judged Command. Besides those classes I judge Crusader a good deal in Arenas. The added 3% Critical Strike chance as well as the added Holy damage for yourself are great. It increasing your damage, and everyone else who attacks that target. The reason I use it a lot in Arenas is cause its more focused group PVP. I know that I will get a great benefit if I use it in an Arena as opposed to a BG or World PVP.

Do not forget your other Judgments as well. Judgment of Wisdom, and Light, are very very situational. Well honestly, Seal/Judgment of Light is pretty damn useless pretty much all the time in PVP. I don't even have it on any of my toolbars, I only pull it out once in awhile in PVE. But Seal/Judgment of Wisdom can help a great deal. It helps mostly against Shamans/Druids. Neither of those two can remove the Judgment but a fight with one of those two classes can drag on. Judgment of Wisdom will help keep your Mana up. The Judgment also has other uses but keep in mind it can and will be removed if an enemy notices it and if its removed too quickly you may have lost more mana by judging it and wasting your time.

- Hammer of Justice/Repentance
This is key. Probably the biggest difference between a good Ret Paladin and a bad one is intelligent use of Hammer of Justice and Repentance. Personally I open most fights with a Hammer of Justice. I know many long time Paladins are reading this thinking "lolnoob" but times have changed. I have the 4-piece Gladiator bonus and the talent for Improved Hammer of Justice giving my Hammer of Justice a 35 second cooldown instead of the normal 1-minute cooldown. Nowadays everyone who is not a complete noob runs around with his PVP trinket at all times in PVP. This means your Hammer is going to get trinketed whenever you use it. So I use it early so they waste their trinket early. Then when the fight drags on, and I really need my HoJ, I know I can stun my opponent without worry that he will instantly break it.

Now you shouldn't just run up to your opponent and stun him. Thats kinda pointless. Lets say its a Warlock for instance. I just run up to him and start kicking his ass. Usually they just throw their DoTs on me then they begin casting Fear. I do not Stun until they try to cast. I just let them DoT me, throwing around some Cleanses if the GCD allows, and wait for them to cast their Fear. Now that I stunned them just as they were casting it kinda screws them. Most Warlocks never see it coming and always hesitate on the trinket. It also ruins their strategy. Considering I just let the Warlock DoT me the Warlock already had it figured he was going to own me, but now that he sees I intelligently used my Stun on him hes worried. I of course immediately judge Command on him and continue beating on him and at this point I've done way more damage then him as well as threw him off his game. As soon as he trinkets hes gonna try to Fear again but I will immediately trinket making it useless. Its the beginning to a winning battle. Its only an example though!

Repentance is much more situational. Its impossible to shorten the cooldown on Repentance like you can your HoJ. Repentance also breaks on any damage making it more difficult to use properly. The most intelligent use of Repentance it to use it to either defend one of your allies or to stop an enemy healer. Either use it to Repentance a Mage, so he can't blow your Warrior friend up, or use it on an enemy Druid, so he can't heal the Hunter you are killing. Repentance is instant cast and has a decent range so it is very, very useful. Your opponents almost never see it coming. First off you have to be quick about it. You have to quickly Repentance a target then switch back to DPSing your main target otherwise you may waste time. Second you have to watch the battlefield well. Since Repentance breaks on damage you must make sure that your allies will not accidentally break it. This means you either warn them beforehand or at least make sure they are not already attacking the opponent or make sure he has no DoTs.

One of the best ways to intelligently make use of Repentace is to remember it shares no diminishing returns with all the major forms of CC. It only shares diminishing with Gouge and Chastitse, which aren't big at all. So to get the best use out of Repentance its best to coordinate with your teammates, especially in an Arena. Let me give you an example. My 3v3 is me/Warrior/Resto Druid. Now a Resto Druids CC(Cyclone), like most main forms of CC, does not have a long cooldown if it has a cooldown at all. But Repentance does. So now to maximize our CC we have the Druid open with Cyclone on an opponent. He Cyclones and of course the opponent immediately trinkets. He Cyclones two more times before they go immune and then I Repentance. Now first off we made the opponent use his PVP trinket early in the fight, which is great. Then because he used his trinket on the Cyclone he was forced to eat the Repentance. Then, depending on the timing, by the time the Repentance runs out the Druid can Cyclone again without the opponent being able to break it. Coordination can greatly improve your success in PVP.

c. Supporting your allies
This is probably the biggest part of playing a Ret Paladin well. If you try to get groups in Battleground groups or Arena teams for strictly your killing potential you may get looked over. The reason you bring a Ret Paladin is not only for his damage contribution, but the support he brings to the team as well. I've already discussed HoJ/Repentance so let me go through the rest of our abilities.

- Blessings
Might for Melee, Wisdom for casters. If you have Kings, I usually stick with Might for the melee since its a much better damage buff and the added Health isn't really huge. As for casters though, I usually give them Kings unless they ask for Wisdom or I see them having mana problems. Wisdom isn't "that" big for mana regen but the extra health from Kings could keep them alive.

But those Blessings aren't really what this section is about. Its about Freedom, Protection, and Sacrifice. Now for the most part you will probably just use Freedom on yourself so that you can continue DPS, but don't forget it can be cast on your allies as well! When I do Arenas a lot of the time I give Freedom to my partners so they can kite the DPS. This is especially useful against Frost Mages. If they are unable to snare your allies then it mitigates a great deal of their damage. Blessing of Protection is more obvious, use it whenever you want a quick and easy way to get some melee off an ally. Its almost always best to use it on a caster teammate, but it doesn't hurt to use it against a Melee as well. Though your Warrior teammate can't attack while hes in the BoP, its better having him stay alive to DPS then to have him die too early.

So you BoP an allied Priest when hes about to die so that he can become immune and heal himself. This is the obvious usage. What you also need to remember is that BoP removes all "physical" debuffs. This means debuffs like Sap, Mortal Strike, and Blind. Though my Druid friend may not the immunity to the damage, I often BoP him to quickly remove his Blind so that he can continue healing. You must also realize that removing Mortal Strike is *huge.* Though the Warrior himself may not be doing the majority of the damage to an ally, removing the Mortal Strike allows him to receive much more efficient healing, possibly keeping him alive. So even in a 5v5 situation where its, for instance, one Warrior and 3 caster DPS, you perhaps should BoP only to remove the MS. It could be a life saver.

Finally, Blessing of Sacrifice. Using Blessing of Sacrifice well in PVP is very difficult. Once you bless someone with it you cannot use Sacrifice on anyone else for thirty seconds. So be sure that when you BoS someone its the target you want. Now as for making the most use out of it, people underestimate the Blessing but its actually a great burst damage mitigator. Its by far most effective against Warlocks, but it also helps greatly against Rogues, Shadow Priests, as well as a handful of other classes/specs. Basically if an opponent does a lot of small damaging attacks then it helps greatly. But if they mostly do big painful attacks, such as Warriors or Frost Mages, then it barely helps at all. Keep in mind though that Sacrifice merely transfers the damage from an ally to you, it does not remove it. If your healer is better at doing big heals on one target then Sacrifice may actually hurt your team, since now your healer will have to heal two targets. But if your ally is getting burst down it may be better to split heals on two targets if they are both alive then trying to focus on one ally and having him die.

Besides that though the greatest use of Sacrifice is to use it to break out of CC. Throw it on someone who you is sure will be taking some damage and you can escape from any CC that breaks on damage. Sheep, Sap, Blind, Frost Trap, etc. This is huge in the sense that if you are immune to these forms of CC, not only can you kick more ass, but you can continue supporting your team. When you consider that you can remove all kinds of CC with BoP/BoF/Cleanse, and the fact that you almost can't be CCed yourself, it makes you and your team an unstoppable force. Whenever you see a Mage going for the Sheep, or worried that Hunter might trap you, throw down a Sacrifice!

- Cleanse
Never forget to Cleanse your teammates! You can remove so many kinds of CC its ridiculous. Your Rogue gets sheeped? Cleanse! Your Mage has Mind-numbing poison? Cleanse! Your Priest has Sheep and Mind-Numbing Poison? Cleanse!! Keep in mind Cleanse removes 1 Magic, Poison, and Disease effect at the *same time.* This means an ally may be stacked with Magical debuffs but only have one Poison on him. So the Magic debuff that gets removed is random but it will remove that Poison for sure. You may be intimidated by the amount of debuffs an ally has and may think its too difficult to cleanse the debuff you want so you will not try, but if you keep in mind that the debuffs may fall under different classifications it isn't so daunting. A Hunters Scorpid Pet may stack Poisons on you, making the Viper Sting hard to remove. But you can still remove that Frost Nova with ease. Staying on top of Cleanses is easily the best way to tell the difference between a bad Ret Paladin and a good one.

- Healing
Healing. Healing is very mana inefficient. Your heals usually will sap a huge amount of your mana, and do not heal for enough to warrant the casting time and mana cost. But Healing is still one of our many tools and could be the difference between a victory and a loss. Most Ret Paladin specs do not include Spiritual Focus, so first thing you have to remember when attempting to Heal is that -any- damage will push back your heals. This means that if you are under attack by anything you should never ever try to heal. It will simply take too long for it to be worth it. If neccessary you should Divine Shield or HoJ/Repentance your opponents to allow you the chance to heal.

Trying to keep an ally up under focus fire is almost impossible for a Ret Paladin. Even if you do keep him up your mana is so low afterward that you contemplate if it was worth it. This makes it very situational when you should heal your allies. But these situations do arise. If your healer is crowd controlled keeping your teammate alive for that extra 2 seconds may be just enough to allow him to get some real heals. Also if your opponents are beginning to burst your partner and you are unable to assist him with any of your other abilities a heal may be enough to prevent their burst and throw them off their game. Ret Paladins have changed greatly from release to now. You may not heal as much as you used to, or would like to, but you still must know when and where to heal to master your class.

d. General Tips
- Consecrate
Rank 1 Consecrate is great. Its instant cast allowing you to pull people out of stealth. I like to use it in doorways so that if any Rogue/Druid were to enter I would know about it. I also like to throw it down when I'm running up the tunnel in WSG. If anyone were to chase me through the tunnel I would see them take damage in my combat log so I will know I'm being followed. Max rank Consecrate? Pretty much sucks. It takes a huge amount of mana and does crappy damage. I almost never use it, in fact I don't even have it keybinded. If you use it and your opponent walks out of the AOE it becomes even more useless. But if you need a tiny bit of extra damage it can win a fight for you.

- HoJ/Repentance Hadouken combo
HoJ and Repentance share two different diminishing returns. One thing you will realize is HoJ is vastly superior to Repentance. So what I like to do is Repentance someone so that they trinket that, then hit them with a HoJ which they can't trinket. Its pretty useful but if your opponent doesn't trinket the Repentance you pretty much just wasted it. An even better trick though, is to use them both in tandem to decimate an opponent.

What I mean is this. You HoJ an opponent. You judge Command, hit him with a Crusader Strike and 1-2 auto-attacks. Then, right before HoJ runs out(you don't wanna get Deathcoiled or something), you Repentance your opponent. Then you stand there and wait for your Judgment/CS to refresh. Once they are both refreshed, or before the Repentance runs out, you immediately Judge/CS your opponent again. When you consider that there is another auto-attack and possibly a Command proc thrown in there, thats a ton of damage before your opponent could even move! Its amazing that I never see people do this. Its even more hilarious when I do it to other Ret Paladins but they never do it to me in return. Its a great technique to use to give you an edge on your opponents.

- Divine Shield/Freedom
Now this is something I use often in 3v3 arenas with my Warrior partner. Now Warriors love Freedom as much as Ret Paladins, but Warriors have Intercept while I don't. So I often use Freedom on myself instead of him. But now if we BOTH had Freedom we would become unstoppable killing machines right? So a little trick I do is I Freedom my Warrior and then Divine Shield myself. Now we are both unsnarable, and even better I'm also immune to all CC. Doing this we are now both free to destroy some unsuspecting DPS!

C. Gearing a Ret Paladin for PVP
Unsure if you should go for Strength or Critical Strike? Maybe you aren't sure how Spelldamage fits into the equation? Should you Gem for some extra Resilience? I hope to answer your questions here!

-INCOMPLETE-

reserved

If there is anything here that you think should be added/change or is otherwise completely wrong please let me know. Or just let me know what you think ;D

---

Q u o t e:
I think you spent too much time to explain something that either the dumb Retribution Paladins will never read or the experienced Retribution Paladins already know.

---

Why you gotta hurt my feelings like that =(. This actually took me a couple weeks to write. I would just add something whenever I was up really late at night and had nothing to do. Even if nobody reads it I won't mind too much cause its not like I had anything better to do.

I agree that there's a lot of justification on why to allow a ret paladin into your team which will turn people off to what could be a very informative guide. Perhaps a rewrite and consolidation of the core ideas that amount to "here's a guide on how to effectively PvP a retribution paladin". I noticed that you don't identify the weak points and ways to overcome them. Lets face it; retribution is pretty weak in PvP still compared to other options and part of playing it well is knowing how to compensate. I'm still impressed with the effort and information you put into this though.

---

Q u o t e:
I think you spent too much time to explain something that either the dumb Retribution Paladins will never read or the experienced Retribution Paladins already know.

---

Don't be so negative. Its a very nice guide, you might want to add a link to Cromfel in there some where.
I like the examples lol.

Good stuff. I think a section about which classes make good ret teammates would be helpful.

Nice guide op =)

---

Q u o t e:
I agree that there's a lot of justification on why to allow a ret paladin into your team which will turn people off to what could be a very informative guide. Perhaps a rewrite and consolidation of the core ideas that amount to "here's a guide on how to effectively PvP a retribution paladin". I noticed that you don't identify the weak points and ways to overcome them. Lets face it; retribution is pretty weak in PvP still compared to other options and part of playing it well is knowing how to compensate. I'm still impressed with the effort and information you put into this though.

---

I'm not sure I agree on the too much justification part. There is a huge stigma against Ret Paladins and I want to remove that. What a Ret Paladin brings to a fight may not be as obvious as what a Warrior for instance brings. This is because a lot of what a Ret Paladin does is little things that you may not notice. Its also because many Ret Paladins are just bad and don't play the class to the full potential. Either way I agree it may be a tad long, but I think this information needs to be out there somewhere or people may never even give Ret Paladins a chance.

In case you don't read the EU forums:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1829223777&sid=1

---

Q u o t e:
I'm not sure I agree on the too much justification part. There is a huge stigma against Ret Paladins and I want to remove that. What a Ret Paladin brings to a fight may not be as obvious as what a Warrior for instance brings. This is because a lot of what a Ret Paladin does is little things that you may not notice. Its also because many Ret Paladins are just bad and don't play the class to the full potential. Either way I agree it may be a tad long, but I think this information needs to be out there somewhere or people may never even give Ret Paladins a chance.

---

You just can't compare a ret paladin to a MS warrior, we're gimped in every possible way compared to them. Yes, there is an overabundance of terrible retadins, but that doesn't mean that the class isn't severely hampered by its lack of... well nearly everything.

---

Q u o t e:
In case you don't read the EU forums:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1829223777&sid=1

---

I like how everybody in the european thread is nice and there's no annoying trolls.