Retribution Paladin DPS Guide — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

With the Midnight Pre-Patch, Retribution is getting a complete rework of the structure of its spec talent tree, as well as many changes to talents, abilities, and Hero Talents. The major changes are broken down and explained in the sections below.

Keep in mind that there are further changes once Midnight fully releases, including extra talent points as well as the new Apex talent for Retribution, Light Within.

Both Hero Talents have had some new talents added in Midnight, but they are both still very similar to how they worked previously.

Templar has had Divine Hammer added as a passive talent that triggers after Divine Hammer is cast. It has also had the talents buffing Empyrean Hammer nerfed a little, and some extra talents added mimicking some of the effects of the War Within Season 3 tier set.

Herald of the Sun has had some new talents added with fairly basic passive effects. More importantly, it has had some redesigns to old effects so that Dawnlight has much lower overall uptime, and the addition of Walk Into Light, which significantly increases the power of Hammer of Wrath. These changes put a lot more emphasis on Avenging Wrath for Herald of the Sun.

Hammer of Wrath has been removed as a separate ability. Instead, Judgment is now upgraded into Hammer of Wrath during Avenging Wrath, and it inherits all of the buffs Judgment gains from various talents and effects. Boundless Judgment no longer increases the Holy Power that Judgment provides. Crusading Strikes has been changed to reduce attack speed, but now grants Holy Power with every hit instead and can work with Skyfury. Divine Resonance no longer automatically casts Judgment periodically, but instead causes future casts to be cast twice. Overall, these changes slightly reduce the amount of Holy Power you can generate, but give you a bit more control over exactly how Holy Power is generated.

Radiant Glory has been nerfed and no longer can proc extra Avenging Wrath duration. Crusade has been redesigned to be an additional stacking Haste effect to Avenging Wrath rather than replacing the flat damage and Critical Strike increases entirely. Execution Sentence has had the effects of Final Reckoning added to it, but is now a 60-second cooldown. Retribution now has a lot less focus on 30-second cooldown intervals, but has much more power for its 1-minute cooldown windows.

If you want to prepare for the launch of Midnight, check out our guides for items that can help make your leveling process easier.