How To Improve As Retribution Paladin — Dragonflight 10.2
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Retribution Paladin in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Managing your Resources
No matter which build you are using, knowing when and how to use your abilities to properly utilize your resources is key to improving your damage.
Managing Holy Power
Holy Power is converted to damage through your spenders, Final Verdict and
Divine Storm. These both do significantly more damage
than your average abilities, so optimizing Holy Power generation in order to maximize the number of spenders you can cast is crucial. This means tracking your
Holy Power, including any effects that grant it periodically, like
Crusading Strikes and
Divine Resonance, as well as knowing how to
prioritize your generators. Wasting Holy Power unnecessarily is effectively wasting high-value spenders.
Managing your GCDs
Although your spenders are usually the best single GCDs to use, you will often want to delay using them in order to generate an extra Holy Power first. The upside here is that it puts your generators on cooldown earlier, which increases your future Holy Power generation, while you still are able to spend the Holy Power you had prior to the next GCD anyway. This results in less rotational downtime and more spender casts over the course of a fight.
Cooldown Usage
In general, cooldown usage is straightforward - you should use your cooldowns on cooldown unless your target is just about to die or become immune to damage.
Retribution's cooldowns are short enough that it is almost never worth holding them. The exception to this is Wake of Ashes if there will be additional targets
spawning shortly, since its damage is massively increased with extra targets.
Retribution's cooldowns are theoretically synced, with either 1-minute cooldowns like Avenging Wrath and
Divine Toll or 30-second cooldowns
like
Wake of Ashes and
Execution Sentence that you can use every 2nd 1-minute set. However,
Seal of Order reduces the cooldowns of
Divine Toll,
Wake of Ashes, and even
Execution Sentence and
Final Reckoning due to the existence of
Divine Auxiliary
causing them to be counted as "Holy Power generating abilities". As a result, you will need to wait a few seconds for
Avenging Wrath to come off cooldown
each minute in order to keep your other cooldowns properly synced.
Not Knowing How to Sim Yourself
It is very difficult to properly optimize a Retribution Paladin without using Raidbots to sim your own character, as there are simply too many variables involved to intuitively figure out what gear to wear and so on without simming it first. Generally speaking, a simulation will be the strongest tool for helping you decide on the gear you end up wearing for any given situation.
On top of this, simming is now very easy, with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn and the Raidbots website. Below, you can find a guide on how to sim your own character using the website.
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Paladin Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bolas, a long time Retribution Paladin enthusiast, theorycrafter, and sometimes high-end raider. You can find him in the Paladin Discord as bolas.ret.
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