Retribution Paladin: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight Alpha guide for Retribution Paladin. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about Retribution Paladin in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including changes, apex talents, and some predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight Alpha. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Retribution Paladin, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up-to-date with how the spec is evolving on Alpha, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

• New Talent: Brought to Light – Killing an enemy that yields experience or honor causes you to explode with holy energy, healing up to 5 nearby allies and yourself, split evenly among them.
• New Talent: Fear No Evil – Fear duration on you reduced by 20%. This effect is increased to 60% during Avenging Wrath.
• Holy Ritual has been redesigned – No longer functions with Blessing of Freedom, no longer triggers when a blessing fades, but healing increased by 2000%.
• Vengeful Wrath has been redesigned – Hammer of Wrath deals up to 25/50% additional damage based on its target’s health. Lower health targets receive more damage.
• Hammer of Wrath now overrides Judgment during Avenging Wrath.
• Blessing of Dusk has been redesigned – Damage taken reduced by up to 10%, increasing as your health decreases.
• Blessing of Dawn has been redesigned – While you are above 85% health, 5% of all damage taken by allies within 20 yards is redirected to you, up to a maximum of 5% of your health every 5 seconds.
• Shield of Vengeance has been updated – Divine Protection reduces damage taken by an additional 10% and casts Shield of Vengeance. Shield of Vengeance remains the same. Moved from the Retribution talent tree.
• All Holy Power spending ability healing and damage has been increased by 20%.
• A Just Reward and Obduracy are now 2-point talents.
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Judgment of Light
  • Of Dusk and Dawn
  • Seal of the Crusader

• New Talent: Walk Into Light – You have a 100% chance to gain Blessing of An'she and generate 2 Holy Power after casting Avenging Wrath.
• New Talent: Endless Gleam – Dawnlight’s duration is increased by 0.5 seconds when it heals an ally with full health. Dawnlight’s duration is increased 0.3 seconds whenever struck by Divine Storm or Final Verdict.
• New Talent: Born in Sunlight – Dawnlight’s critical strike chance is increased by 15% during Avenging Wrath.
• Blessing of An'she may now accumulate 2 charges and now increases the damage or healing of your next Judgment by 50% (was 200%).

• New Talent: Seal of the Templar - Final Verdict damage increased by 15%.
• New Talent: Divine Hammer – Divine Toll summons Divine Hammers that spin around you for 8 seconds. Now a passive ability (was a Retribution talent).
• New Talent: Light's Judicator – Empyrean Hammer deals 20% increased critical strike damage and its critical strikes have a 50% chance to grant an additional stack of Light's Deliverance.
• New Talent: Divine Exaction – Divine Toll casts 2 additional times on your target at 150% effectiveness.
• Endless Wrath has been updated – Empyrean Hammer has a 10% increased chance to critically strike.
• Wrathful Descent now deals 50% of the damage to nearby enemies when Empyrean Hammer critically strikes (was 100%).
• Sanctification now increases the damage of Empyrean Hammer by 5% per stack (was 10%).

• Execution Sentence has been redesigned – Unleash a heavenly blast around the target, dealing Holy damage to all enemies nearby, and call down a hammer that slowly falls from the sky upon the target. After 10 seconds, target suffers 10% of the Holy damage you dealt to all targets affected by the initial blast during that time. Now a 1 minute cooldown.
• Divine Resonance has been updated – Divine Toll causes your next 3 Judgments to cast again at 100% effectiveness.
• Templar Strikes has been updated – Crusader Strike loses a charge but now strikes twice. Templar Strike slashes an enemy for Radiant damage and gets followed up by Templar Slash that deals Radiant damage. Templar Slash always critically strikes.
• Boundless Judgment no longer causes Judgment to generate an additional Holy Power.
• Divine Wrath is now a 2-point talent that increases the duration of Avenging Wrath by 2 seconds/4 seconds. Moved to the 3rd gate in the talent tree.
• Radiant Glory no longer has a chance to activate Avenging Wrath for 4 seconds on Holy Power spent and now functions with Divine Wrath.
• Blades of Light is now a 2-point talent that causes Crusader Strike, Judgment, and Blade of Justice to deal 10/20% increased damage.
• Judge, Jury and Executioner is now a capstone talent after Execution Sentence that causes your next 2 Holy Power abilities to refund their Holy Power cost after casting Execution Sentence in addition to passively causing Holy Power spending abilities to deal 5% increased damage.
• Empyrean Legacy now causes Avenging Wrath to empower your next single target Holy Power ability to cast Divine Storm with 25% increased effectiveness. Now a 3rd gate talent after Divine Wrath.
• Crusade now a passive talent that causes Avenging Wrath to grant 2% Haste, increasing by 2% per Holy Power spent during Avenging Wrath, up to 20%. Now a capstone talent after Empyrean Legacy.
• Holy Flames no longer increases Divine Storm damage, no longer causes Divine Storm to spread Expurgation, and is no longer in a choice node against Blade of Vengeance.
• Art of War now causes auto attacks to have a 15% chance to reset Blade of Justice cooldown (was 20%), critical strikes increase the chance by 15% (was 10%).
• Rush of Light causes critical strikes from Holy Power generating abilities to grant 5% Haste for 10 seconds.
• Final Verdict secondary effect has been updated – Now has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Judgment.
• Templar’s Verdict damage increased by 25%.
• Divine Storm damage increased by 25%.
• Blade of Justice damage reduced by 50%.
• The following talents have been removed:
  • Aegis of Protection
  • Crusading Strikes
  • Divine Arbiter
  • Divine Auxiliary
  • Divine Hammer (moved to the Templar hero talent tree)
  • Executioner’s Will
  • Final Reckoning
  • Guided Prayer (moved to the class talent tree)
  • Inquisitor’s Ire
  • Justicar’s Vengeance
  • Light’s Celerity
  • Searing Light
  • Shield of Vengeance (moved to the class talent tree)
  • Vanguard’s Momentum

Midnight has brought sweeping changes to many specs, especially reducing the complexity of them so that they can still be played without combat addons like Weakauras. However, for Retribution this has not resulted in the same level of simplification. The main effect that needed a Weakaura to track it was Crusading Strikes, which automatically generated Holy Power every second auto-attack. Removing this reintroduces Templar Strikes to the rotation, which is likely to require more skill to use properly - players can no longer rely on passive generation talents and instead will need to properly prioritize generators to maintain the Holy Power economy.

Overall, Retribution will have a much more "traditional" playstyle in Midnight, with your main generators being Judgment, Blade of Justice, and Templar Strikes, and cooldown windows seem likely to shift back to 1-minute cooldowns with the nerfs to Radiant Glory. The changes to the Retribution tree have removed many underwhelming talents and removed a lot of the single-target/AoE dichotomy from the bottom of the tree. However, the removal of these talents means that the total number of nodes in the tree itself is very low, so any builds you use will always look extremely similar and overlap with the vast majority of talents.

• Art of War or Righteous Cause increases the damage of your next Blade of Justice by 150%. Avenging Wrath grants you Art of War or Righteous Cause.
• Avenging Wrath further increases the damage of Final Verdict and Divine Storm by 10%/20%.
• Art of War or Righteous Cause further empowers Blade of Justice to unleash a wave of Holy energy, dealing Holy damage to its primary target and Holy damage to all other enemies in its path.

These talents focus around Art of War or Righteous Cause, adding significant value to the damage of Blade of Justice when they proc.

• 2-set bonus - Expurgation deals 20% increased damage.
• 4-set bonus - Final Verdict applies Expurgation at 50% effectiveness, and Divine Storm applies Expurgation at 25% effectiveness.

These set bonuses are datamined very early, so it is possible that they are not final. They focus around buffing the damage of Expurgation and providing more applications. Expurgation is a debuff that we usually have close to permanent uptime on, but reapplications from spenders will still provide value, since whenever a new debuff is applied all damage from existing Expurgation debuffs is added to it rather than it simply being overwritten.