Retribution Paladin DPS Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

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

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

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, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

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, and other additional effects listed below.

• 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.
• 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 Freedom removes and prevents movement-impairing effects for 8 seconds.
• Word of Glory heals a friendly target and the 2 most injured group members within 30 yards of you for a great amount.
• Lay on Hands heals a friendly target for an amount equal to your maximum Health.

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+ and are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.

Level	Choices
15	✓ Zeal	✗ Righteous Verdict	✗ Execution Sentence
30	? Fires of Justice	? Blade of Wrath	✓ Hammer of Wrath
45	✓ Fist of Justice	? Repentance	✓ Blinding Light
60	✗ Divine Judgment	? Consecration	✓ Wake of Ashes
75	✓ Unbreakable Spirit	? Cavalier	? Eye for an Eye
90	✗ Selfless Healer	✗ Justicar's Vengeance	✓ Word of Glory
100	✓ Divine Purpose	✓ Crusade	? Inquisition

We recommend to use Crusade while the Vision of Perfection Essence is used.

• 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.
• Use Eye for an Eye as an additional defensive cooldown during Skittish weeks.

Awakened replaces Beguiling as the seasonal affix for Season 4 of Battle for Azeroth. In it, obelisks exist within dungeons which will pull players into a Corrupted alternate reality inhabited by lieutenants of N'Zoth who must be defeated before the final boss, lest they ambush you in turn. Upon defeating a lieutenant, a portal is created which allows players to move back and forth between realities, avoiding enemies and creating skips that previously required special class abilities.

Unfortunately, Retribution Paladins do not have much interaction with the mechanic, though they should be aware of potential skips and how that may impact the dungeon progress route in order to effectively time cooldowns.

You can find a general Essence guide with all of their descriptions and power explanations on our Essence Guide. Additional information on how to use the Essences as a Retribution Paladin can be found on our Essences page.

Vision of Perfection is our mandatory major essence. The short Crusade procs allows us to benefit from Light's Decree and Avenger's Might more often. If we proc inside of our Crusade burst window, it will extend the duration. If it procs outside, we are able to deal massive damage while Crusade in on cooldown, or while we are holding it for a bigger pull.

• Breath of the Dying ( Reaping Flames) — Rank 3, mandatory
• Memory of Lucid Dreams ( Memory of Lucid Dreams) — Any Rank, mandatory
• Conflict and Strife ( Conflict) — Rank 3
• Essence of the Focusing Iris ( Focused Energy) — Rank 3

Right after the first Light's Decree trait, you want to have a single Empyrean Power trait for M+. The first Empyrean Power trait gives you the most additional free cleave damage, while also providing viable single-target damage. Finally add more Light's Decree traits and Avenger's Might traits to further increase our already strong burst potential.

If you stack Masterful and Honed Mind corruptions, it is possible to ignore the single Empyrean Power trait and opt for more burst potential. For this you require 3x Light's Decree and 3x Avenger's Might traits. With this build your tank will have a harder time to keep aggro, so make sure to communicate with him beforehand.

1. Personal Absorb-o-Tron
2. Impassive Visage
3. Bulwark of the Masses
4. Auto-Self-Cauterizer
5. Resounding Protection
6. Gemhide

• Masterful increases the Mastery gained from all sources and synergizes extremely well with Strive for Perfection, in combination with the Avenger's Might and Light's Decree Azerite traits.
• Honed Mind is a Mastery buff that lasts 10 seconds. With a couple of Masterful traits, this buff becomes the strongest choice to fill your corruption cap. How many of these you want depends on how many Masterful traits you already have and needs to be simulated for an exact answer for each character.
• Ineffable Truth is a proc that increases your overall Holy Power generation, which will increase the amount of Divine Storms you can cast, and therefore it increases the amount of Light's Decree damage you can do. It works similarly to Empyrean Power for us. You should never have more than one Corruption of this type.
• Twilight Devastation is a AoE damage proc based on your maximum Health. It will hit 5 enemies for full damage, 5 additional ones for 50% of the damage, and then it will disappear. This is a good corruption alternative if you cannot get the Mastery corruptions, but it is still not as good as them due to its random nature.

The top chart is more generally useful. Corruption is a resource that we want to minimize wherever we can, and the top chart provides you an idea of which Corruption affixes provide the most DPS for the Corruption they add to your gear. The bottom chart is more of a showcase of the DPS potential of the Corruptions.

We do not recommend making choices based off of the overall charts. We recommend using the "DPS per Corruption Point" charts instead.