Retribution Paladin DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.1

You need to manage two resources when playing Retribution, Holy Power and time. Most of your damage comes by generating and spending Holy Power, and increasing the efficiency of this loop will increase your damage in turn. To optimize Holy Power generation, you need to consider both the cooldowns of generators and periodic effects that provide it, like Crusading Strikes.

Minimizing wasting Holy Power should be kept in mind at all times. You do not want to continue to generate Holy Power when you already have 5 just to put an ability on cooldown, and you need to consider whether you will gain Holy Power within a GCD before you use a generator to reach 5. With current design, waste is unavoidable, especially with effects like Walk Into Light, so try to minimize avoidable waste while being aware that some kinds of waste are inevitable.

Currently Retribution is willing to spend Holy Power at a higher priority than it has historically, due to high rate of passive Holy Power generation. Other than keeping abilities like Wake of Ashes on cooldown as fast as possible and spending an Art of War proc at 2 stacks, you can simply spend Holy Power as soon as possible.

The Apex Talent for Retribution, Light Within, increases the power of Art of War procs. You will want to use Blade of Justice as soon as possible with two stacks of Art of War, even at 4 Holy Power, but should spend first at 5.

Avenging Wrath increases damage and Critical Strike chance of all abilities, so it should be used before other cooldowns. It also converts Judgment into Hammer of Wrath, upgrading its effects. With Crusade, it provides a stacking Haste buff, but stacking this doesn't need to be prioritized over all other abilities as it used to be, since the damage and Crit bonuses remain flat.

Execution Sentence deals initial AoE damage, then after 10s deals damage to the primary target based on damage done to all initial targets hit. On AoE, you should continue using AoE abilities as normal for its duration. You should use this before other cooldowns that deal significant damage like Wake of Ashes.

There are two types of on-use trinkets that you will use, trinkets that just deal damage and trinkets that provide a stat bonus. For trinkets that provide a stat bonus, usage is straightforward; you should use them with Avenging Wrath unless the encounter will end before Avenging Wrath will come off cooldown if their cooldowns do not naturally line up. You can use multiple on-use stat trinkets by simply using them with alternating cooldown sets.

For on-use damage trinkets, usage can depend on the trinket. Avenging Wrath does not buff trinket damage, but it does increase the critical strike chance of the damage. For instant on-use damage from trinkets you will want to make sure you use it inside Avenging Wrath.