Retribution Paladin DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Welcome to our Gear Page for Retribution Paladin. This guide contains all the information you need to know about how to gear a Retribution Paladin, including crafted gear, embellishments, and trinkets.

The Midnight Pre-Patch included a stat squish, which has changed the value of some stats a small amount. Overall, the gearing strategy is still very similar to before.

For more specific information about how stats work for Retribution, you can visit our Stats guide:

With the sheer number of possible gear combinations, a generic stat priority or BiS list is not going to tell the entire story of how to gear your character. Instead, you should use Raidbots to get a better idea of how changing different items will affect your character. Especially for Retribution, you will frequently find the values of different stats fluctuate a lot as you upgrade your gear, so using a more objective metric to help you make gearing decisions is invaluable.

If you are not experienced with using Raidbots, see the guide below for more information on how to use it:

3.

BiS Gear for Retribution Paladin

Pre-Patch Overall BiS List Pre-Patch Manaforge Omega BiS List Pre-Patch Mythic+ BiS List

4.

Pre-Patch Overall BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from any source for Midnight Pre-Patch.

Some items listed might only available from the Great Vault. While these are theoretical BiS, other similar items that are more easily obtained can be substituted instead. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Photon Sabre Prime	Forgeweaver Araz in Manaforge Omega
Helm	Lightmane of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	Salhadaar's Folly	Nexus-King Salhadaar in Manaforge Omega
Shoulder	Chargers of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Campaign Questline
Chest	Cuirass of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Everforged Vambraces	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Protectors of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Belt	Everforged Greatbelt	Blacksmithing
Legs	Cuisses of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Boots	Interloper's Plated Sabatons	The Soul Hunters in Manaforge Omega
Ring #1	Logic Gate: Omega	Forgeweaver Araz in Manaforge Omega
Ring #2	Logic Gate: Alpha	Plexus Sentinel in Manaforge Omega
Trinket #1	Screams of a Forgotten Sky	Dimensius in Manaforge Omega
Trinket #2	Astral Antenna	Loom'ithar in Manaforge Omega

4.

Manaforge Omega BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from Manaforge Omega for Midnight Pre-Patch.

While the items listed are theoretical BiS, other similar items can be substituted instead for most slots. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Photon Sabre Prime	Forgeweaver Araz in Manaforge Omega
Helm	Lightmane of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	Salhadaar's Folly	Nexus-King Salhadaar in Manaforge Omega
Shoulder	Chargers of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Campaign Questline
Chest	Cuirass of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Discarded Nutrient Shackles	Loom'ithar in Manaforge Omega
Gloves	Protectors of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Belt	Fresh Ethereal Fetters	Soulbinder Naazindhri in Manaforge Omega
Legs	Cuisses of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Boots	Interloper's Plated Sabatons	The Soul Hunters in Manaforge Omega
Ring #1	Logic Gate: Omega	Forgeweaver Araz in Manaforge Omega
Ring #2	Logic Gate: Alpha	Plexus Sentinel in Manaforge Omega
Trinket #1	Screams of a Forgotten Sky	Dimensius in Manaforge Omega
Trinket #2	Astral Antenna	Loom'ithar in Manaforge Omega

4.

Pre-Patch Mythic+ BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from Mythic+ for Midnight Pre-Patch.

While the items listed are theoretical BiS, other similar items can be substituted instead for most slots. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Fatebound Crusader	Eco-Dome Al'dani
Helm	Lightmane of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	Ornately Engraved Amplifier	Tazavesh, the Veiled Market
Shoulder	Chargers of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Reshii Wraps	Campaign Questline
Chest	Cuirass of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Vambraces of Verification	Tazavesh, the Veiled Market
Gloves	Protectors of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Belt	Improvisational Cinch	Tazavesh, the Veiled Market
Legs	Cuisses of the Lucent Battalion	Matrix Catalyst
Boots	Implacable Weatherproof Treads	Tazavesh, the Veiled Market
Ring #1	Devout Zealot's Ring	The Dawnbreaker
Ring #1	Signet of the False Accuser	Halls of Atonement
Trinket #1	Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker	Operation: Floodgate
Trinket #2	Ara-Kara Sacbrood	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

You may find it useful to pick up some on-use damage trinkets such as Perfidious Projector for leveling. Most enemies will die within a few globals regardless of your trinkets, so these can make it easier to kill quest mobs with higher health faster, while not slowing you down very much when killing regular enemies. Otherwise, Retribution will not need any specific items to help with healing or sustain, since you have access to decent baseline healing options.

A new cloak with extra bonus effects, Reshii Wraps, was added to the game with The War Within Season 3. This has extremely strong extra effects, and will always be worth using. You can also acquire some items like Interloper's Plated Sabatons that empower its effect.

You can customize the extra secondary stat on the cloak. For Retribution, the best default option is to use Reshii Wraps with Mastery, but other stats can also be fine to use too.

For more information on how to acquire and upgrade it, see the guide below:

During Turbo Boost, you can earn Puzzling Cartel Chips that will let you buy trinkets and other cantrip items. For Retribution, the best items to buy are:

• Astral Antenna - This is the strongest passive trinket for both Mythic+ and Raid. The movement requirements to pick orbs up is rarely an issue.
• Araz's Ritual Forge - The strongest on-use trinket for Mythic+ and a solid option for Raid as well.
• Screams of a Forgotten Sky - Not a strong choice for Mythic+, but excellent on many of the longer Raid encounters where single-target damage is important.
• Interloper's Plated Sabatons - A strong cantrip item that increases the power of your Reshii Wraps proc.
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - A decent general option for a trinket if you are able to complete higher level Mythic+ but do not raid Mythic.

These suggestions assume you are buying Myth track versions, e.g. you have killed the bosses at least once on Mythic or have completed all Mythic+ dungeons at +12 to unlock them. If you are planning to buy Hero track items, these may not be the best early purchases; you should use sims to compare your options to check.

Retribution has several decent options for trinkets from both Mythic+ and Manaforge Omega:

• Astral Antenna - Passive Crit proc effect. This will require you to run into the orbs it spawns to gain its effect, but it is stronger than other passive trinkets.
• Screams of a Forgotten Sky - Passive damage proc that does increasing damage for subsequent procs. This is strong on single-target and is also decent on AoE when enemies are dying at different rates, but is less powerful on sustained AoE.
• Araz's Ritual Forge - On-use trinket that provides a large amount of Strength. It can be used with your regular cooldowns as it lines up with all of them.
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker - Passive Crit proc effect. The internal cooldown lets it line up perfectly with cooldowns.
• Ara-Kara Sacbrood - Passive effect that applies a small DoT and increases your Strength.

• Eradicating Arcanocore - Passive damage proc effect. It occurs slightly more often when you are only fighting one target.
• Signet of the Priory - On-use trinket that provides a secondary stat buff. This can also just be used along with regular cooldowns.

With Midnight Pre-Patch, all set bonuses for DPS and Tanks have been replaced with flat damage increases, 6% for the 2-Set and 10% for the 4-Set. As a result, none of them will have any impact on your gameplay or rotation, but you will still want to keep them equipped for now as the flat increase is still substantial.

In general, you should focus your early crafts on getting embellished gear. For more information on those, see the section below.

Once you have your two embellished items, jewellery is a good choice to craft since you can customize its secondary stats as required, and rings and neck with good stat distributions can be difficult to acquire. Finally, fill out any low-item level non-tier slots such as bracers or belt, and then you have the option of crafting additional embellished items for different content types.

When crafting gear, you will want to use a missive to set the item's secondary stats. Although you should sim your options to check what the best one for your gear setup would be, a good default to use is Algari Missive of the Peerless.

For Retribution, you have a few combinations that perform very similarly:

• 2x Dawnthread Lining
• 2x Elemental Focusing Lens
• Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension & Writhing Armor Banding

Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension along with Writhing Armor Banding is a strong combination, but does require you to use a crafted weapon - this can be a bonus as weapons are by far the most important slot to get at high item level, but they do require 2 Sparks rather than 1 to craft, which will force you to use a non-Spark crafted item for your second embellishment while you wait for your next spark. If you do not get a high item level weapon early and can craft at 720 then this combination is a good choice. Dawnthread Lining is very close to the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension combination, performing slightly ahead or behind depending on the uptime you can maintain and your other weapon options. Elemental Focusing Lens is the next best armor embellishment after Dawnthread Lining if you cannot maintain high uptime on its buff, or if you use jewellery slots for embellishments.

In Pre-Patch, embellishments are much less important since the embellishment effects do not scale with item level. Crafted weapons especially should be seen as an early way to get a high item level weapon easily, but not an item that will be permanently used in the long term - you will eventually want to swap to armor embellishments.

Because crafted gear has a slightly lower item level cap than Myth track items, you will eventually want to use armor embellishments on slots that have relatively less Strength. Bracers and belt are good choices for slots to craft on later, but keep in mind that these are eventual best slots - for your first craft or two, bracers are the worst slot to use since you want to get a high item level piece for an impactful slot.

Gear can be upgraded using Crests and Valorstones. Upgrading gear for a given slot will also reduce the cost of future upgrades, which reduces the opportunity cost of upgrading early on. In general, you should aim to upgrade the slots with the highest impact first - for Retribution, this is:

1. Weapon
2. Trinkets
3. Helm, Chest, Legs, and Jewellery
4. Shoulders, Belt, Gloves, and Boots
5. Bracers