Retribution Paladin DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.1

Mythic+ Dungeons, especially high ones, are arguably the peak of WoW's competitive PvE content alongside Mythic raiding.

In Mythic Dungeons, as a Retribution Paladin, you will be personally responsible for a larger part of the group's total damage output, compared to a Mythic Raiding group, where you may only be responsible for approximately 7% of it. The skill and execution of each of the individual players in the Mythic+ group is much more important.

Next to just doing damage, in Mythic+ you will be responsible for some things to make the group's run faster and easier. Interrupting, soaking mechanics, throwing some off heals, offering some blessings, and using your stun are all much more commonplace in Mythic+ than your usual Mythic raid.

In this guide, we will talk about optimizing your Paladin for Mythic+ dungeons, including the best way to configure your character, how your rotation may change, and some tips and tricks to maximize your throughput.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 2 page below.

Retribution Paladin is a decent melee DPS specializations for Mythic+ in Shadowlands. A Retribution Paladin brings very strong single-target burst damage & very strong cleave and AoE burst damage, as well as a good amount of utility through talents and the baseline kit. The main issue is the lacking mobility.

For Mythic+ Dungeons as a Retribution Paladin, your focus will be on maximizing single-target and cleave burst damage periods. The greatest strength of a Retribution Paladin is the high throughput during cooldowns, which ties into the weaker than average throughput without cooldowns.

Note that the talents recommended below are specifically for Mythic+. If you wish to see a more generalized overview of Retribution talents, you can check our full talent page below.

These are our recommended talents for Retribution Paladin in Mythic+

Level	Choices
15	✓ Zeal	✗ Righteous Verdict	? Execution Sentence
25	✗ Fires of Justice	✗ Blade of Wrath	✓ Empyrean Power
30	✓ Fist of Justice	? Repentance	✓ Blinding Light
35	✓ Unbreakable Spirit	✓ Cavalier	✗ Eye for an Eye
40	✗ Divine Purpose	✗ Holy Avenger	✓ Seraphim
45	✓ Selfless Healer	✗ Justicar's Vengeance	✓ Healing Hands
50	✓ Sanctified Wrath	✗ Crusade	✓ Final Reckoning

✔ Zeal

✘ Righteous Verdict

? Execution Sentence

Zeal should always be chosen for the highest overall throughput.

Execution Sentence can be used for higher priority target burst at the cost of overall throughput.

✘ Fires of Justice

✘ Blade of Wrath

✔ Empyrean Power

Empyrean Power should always be chosen.

✔ Fist of Justice

? Repentance

✔ Blinding Light

Here you need to choose based on your crowd-control requirements and group setup.

• Fist of Justice offers more frequent stuns.
• Repentance offers an incapacitation tool against Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Dragonkin, and Giants.
• Blinding Light offers an AoE disorient crowd-control tool, where any non-Holy damage breaks the effect. This ability is also used as AoE interrupt against crowd-controllable enemies.

✔ Unbreakable Spirit

✔ Cavalier

✘ Eye for an Eye

For more frequent defensive cooldowns, choose Unbreakable Spirit. If your group keeps running ahead of you and you struggle to keep up, choose Cavalier. For a high-level Mythic+ Dungeon, we recommend the defensive option over the mobility option.

✘ Divine Purpose

✘ Holy Avenger

✔ Seraphim

Seraphim is the recommended default choice for this tier.

✔ Selfless Healer

✘ Justicar's Vengeance

✔ Healing Hands

Pick between Selfless Healer and Healing Hands. If you do not want to spend Holy Power on Word of Glory, always pick Selfless Healer.

✔ Sanctified Wrath

✘ Crusade

✔ Final Reckoning

Sanctified Wrath is the recommended default choice for this tier, as long as your enemies are alive during the majority of your Avenging Wrath. All of the AoE damage is spread out during Avenging Wrath's duration.

Final Reckoning frontloads a lot of damage, which is more valuable than Sanctified Wrath when most trash fights are very short.

For Kyrian Paladins using the Pelagos Soulbind, Final Reckoning in combination with Seraphim is a very competitive alternative, as they can use more Holy Power spenders during the stacked burst windows of Final Reckoning and Seraphim by generating a lot of Holy Power very quickly with Divine Toll.

Both the single target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Retribution Paladin DPS rotation, refer back to the Rotation below.

Pool Holy Power towards the end of every trash pull, so that you can start spending Holy Power faster. Holy Power does not decay in combat and, once you leave combat, it takes about 20 seconds before it starts to decay.

Retribution Paladin provides support for the group through damage, healing, auras, and other additional effects listed below.

• Activate Devotion Aura to reduce all damage taken by your group by 3%. If you have multiple Paladins, use Retribution Aura to get Avenging Wrath if an ally dies.
• Activate Concentration Aura to reduce all silence and interrupt effects, as well as all fear effects (requires Pure Concentration finesse conduit).
• With a 5-second duration, Wake of Ashes is a very potent AoE stun, but it only works against Demon and Undead enemies.
• Hammer of Justice is a single target stun with a very long 6-second duration. Use it often to stun casting mobs that you cannot interrupt with Rebuke. The talent Fist of Justice allows you to use it more frequently.
• Repentance can be used to incapacitate a single Humanoid, Demon, Undead, Dragonkin, or Giant type enemy within 30 yards until you attack it. Cast it if you want to move around or delay dealing with a particularly dangerous mob. Incapacitating the leader of a patrolling group will also stop the entire group from moving. Keep in mind that you pull aggro and enter combat if you move too close to the incapacitated target.
• Blinding Light can be used to disorient enemies within 10 yards. This can be used either to take enemies out of combat for a short duration, or to AoE interrupt crowd-controllable, casting enemies.
• Turn Evil fears an Undead, Aberration, or Demon target within 20 yards for up to 40 sec.
• Cleanse Toxins can be used to remove all Poison and Disease effects from a group member.
• Blessing of Protection removes bleeds and other Physical damage effects. Additionally, it grants your target immunity to Physical damage and harmful effects for 10 seconds. It is often used on group members who pulled aggro from the tank via damage or healing.
• Blessing of Sacrifice reduces damage taken by a party member by 30%, but you suffer 100% of damage prevented. It lasts 12 seconds, or until transferred damage would cause you to fall below 20% health. Communicate with your tank and healer to plan when to use this.
• Blessing of Freedom removes and prevents movement-impairing effects for 8 seconds.
• Lay on Hands heals a friendly target for an amount equal to your maximum Health.

• The new seasonal affix Tormented will spawn four additional enemies, which when defeated drop fixed Anima Power choices depending on your role.
• Use Hammer of Justice and Hand of Hindrance to crowd control the Spiteful Shade adds during Spiteful weeks.
• Use Flash of Light and Word of Glory generously during Grievous weeks. Use Blessing of Protection and Lay on Hands to remove the debuff from a group member with many stacks.
• Use Judgment and Blade of Justice to target Explosive Orbs on range.
• Communicate with the tank to use Hand of Reckoning or Blessing of Protection to help him reset his Necrotic stacks if necessary.

• Executioner Varruth: Volcanic Plumage
• Soggodon the Breaker: The Stone Ward
• Oros Coldheart: Handbook of Uncivil Etiquette
• Incinerator Arkolath: Champion's Brand

While the recommendations here apply to Mythic+, feel free to check out our Covenant page for the full details on everything this system has to offer.

You have multiple Covenant choices:

For Kyrian Paladins, there are two very good options for Mythic+ Soulbinds. Pelagos is what we always used, it works great in combination with our 1-minute talents, and we delay our 45-second cooldowns to use them together with the 1-minute ones. After obtaining the final trait Effusive Anima Accelerator, Forgelite Prime Mikanikos becomes a very strong option that allows less waiting between small burst phases by no longer having to delay them to each 1-minute mark. Compared to Pelagos, each small burst phase is less impactful and the big burst is slightly delayed to every third burst instead of second.

Covenant	Soulbind	Recommended Tree
Kyrian	Forgelite Prime Mikanikos	Mikanikos Mythic+ tree
Kyrian	Pelagos	Pelagos Mythic+ tree
Night Fae	Korayn	Korayn Mythic+ tree
Venthyr	Nadjia the Mistblade	Nadjia Mythic+ tree
Necrolord	Bonesmith Heirmir	Heirmir Mythic+ tree

Additional information on how to use each of the Covenant Abilities can be found on the rotation page linked below.

1. Ringing Clarity (Kyrian)
2. Expurgation
3. Virtuous Command
4. Truth's Wake

1. Condensed Anima Sphere
2. Shielding Words
3. Golden Path

1. Light's Barding (improved mobility)
2. Echoing Blessings (improved utility)
3. Pure Concentration

1. Divine Resonance (Kyrian)
2. Tempest of the Lightbringer
3. The Mad Paragon

Note that as a Kyrian Paladin, if you want to to prioritize cleave damage for Fortified weeks, you can switch from Divine Resonance to Tempest of the Lightbringer.

If you would like more information about Legendaries available to Retribution Paladin, you can visit our dedicated page by clicking the link button.

When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots. Raidbots offers you the ability to simulate trinkets for Mythic+ with the DungeonSlice Fight Style option.

You also can find good trinkets to use for Mythic+ on the Gear page linked below.