Another guide I wrote while my WoW acc is tempabanned. Please add something if there is anything missing. And ignore my grammar errors because I'm really tired of writing, it's my 2-nd guide the last 2 days.
Abbreviations
Judge—– Judgement of Justice/Wisdom/Light
JoL- Judgement of Light
JoW- Judgement of Wisdom
JoJ- Jugdement of Justice
PVP—- Player vs. Player (Battlegrounds, arena, and Wintergrasp mostly)
PVE—- Player vs. Environment (Dungeons, Heroics, Raids- ex: Naxxramas)
ArP—- Armor Penetration
Dps—- Damage per second
AoE—- Area of Effect spell, ex: Consecration
CD—- Cooldown, ex: Crusader Strike has a 6 second CD
GCD—- Global Cooldown, this is 1.5 seconds after most spells
Sec—- Second
DOT—- Damage Over Time
Spec—- Specialization, concerns a certain way of putting your talent points in your talent trees
Ppm—- Proc Per Minute
Trinket—- Medallion of the Horde/Alliance
CC—- Crowd Control, ex: Sheep
Extra Gear
Reputation Gear (of the ones in the list, only Sons of Hodir’s reputation can’t be gained with a tabard)
-Get Revered with Knights of the Ebon blade for awesome head enchant, need to do the questline beginning with It’s All Fun and Games(It's All Fun and Games - Quest - World of Warcraft), this will unlock the city Shadow Vault for you. You can also get very high dps epic boots at exalted and a blue weapon at revered.
-Get Honored/Exalted with Sons of Hodir for blue/epic shoulder enchants, this is in storm peaks, to get dailies to get reputation you need to do the quest line that starts with They Took Our Men(They Took Our Men! - Quest - World of Warcraft) and ends with dailies. You can also get some blue shoulders at revered.
-Argent Crusade: (in southeast Icecrown) you can get a blue cape at honored, blue weapon at revered, and a non-meta helm at revered
-Wyrmrest Accord: (center of Dragonblight) you can get epic legs at exalted and a blue weapon at revered
Miscellaneous Gear
-Get the venture co. libram for increased Divine Storm damage, it’s at the very south west part of grizzly hills, you need to have the island to use the quartermaster, takes about 10mins for you to sit there to get the island if no ally, and you get the coins for it from the dailies there, very easy to get. This is a nice starter ret libram if you just hit 80.
-Use stone keeper shards to purchase PVP head and shoulder enchants at Wintergrasp, you can get these whether you control WG or not, the PVP shoulder is actually better than the honored Sons of Hodir shoulders for PVE, but the exalted Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant is slightly better than the Wintergrasp one.
-Trinket: get the 84 resil trinket for 49k honor first; it’s very important for beating many classes in PVP combat.
-Sword of Justice is the best non-epic weapon you can get at level 80, just do heroic Halls of Stone for it, if you can get into H Halls of Lightning that weapon is better, but that last boss is also pretty difficult for under geared groups.
Enchants (in order of decreasing dps)
-Cloak: 22 Agility, 23 haste (very close to 22 agility now in 3.1), 15 haste
-Chest: 10 stats, 8 stats
-Wrist: 50 Attack Power, 38 Attack Power
-Hands: 44 Attack Power, 20 Hit, 15 Strength, Engineering enchant
-Legs: Icescale Leg Armor (75 Attack Power and 22 Crit), Nerubian Leg Armor (55 Attack Power and 15 Crit)
-Boots: Greater Assault (32 Attack Power), Icewalker (+12 Hit and +12 Crit)
-Weapon: beserking (400 Attack Power and -25% armor chance on Hit, best for pve), massacre (110 Attack Power, best for pvp), greater savagery (85 Attack Power)
-Belt: Technically not an enchant, but since everyone can buy the Eternal Belt Buckle from the AH, put it on their belt, and then put any gem in it, it functions like an enchant. this buckle does not affect your socket bonus, can be used regardless of current sockets on belt, only one can be used on your belt, and it contributes to your meta gem.
*note that many of the best enchants are way more expensive than the 2nd best enchants, use the best enchants on hateful/deadly and 25 man naxx gear.
Professions
“BS: 101 AP (extra 2×20 str sockets)
JC: 86 AP (3×27 str gems vs 3×20 str gems + no need for blue gem for meta, so extra 10 str)
LW: 76 AP (Bracer enchant)
Enchanting: 64 AP (2x ring enchants)
Inscription: 64 AP (Shoulder enchant + no need to do Sons dailies for a month)
Alchemy: 64 AP (Using 180 AP Flask + 2 more hours on flasks)
Skinning: 32 Crit Rating
Herbalism: Lifeblood (heals you for 2k over 5secs, ok for pvp)
Tailoring has melee proc on the cloak at the expense of 22 agility
Since 20 str gems are not available yet, JC benefit is slightly stronger now (27 str vs 16 str).”
- From http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t37843-r...d_wrath_3_0_a/
Stats
Elitist Jerks (from Redcape's Ret DPS Calculator (New edition out 04/05/09 v2.5) - Elitist Jerks) - edited some for 3.1
.1 Weapon Speed 4,000-5,000
Weapon DPS 537
Hit Rating ~180 (hit cap 263 for pve boss, 165 for pvp)
Strength 171
Expertise rating 82
Crit rating 78
Agility 74
AP 68
Haste rating ~60-70
Armor Penetration, ~60-70
SP 23
*Libram of Resurgence (more spell power to consecrate) is bad, dont use it. Relentless Edge (from Uld 10) should also be noted as a very fast weapon, and is only better than the naxx 10 weaps (except Deaths Bite), you should really pass on it and let a hunter grab it.
Gemming and Gearing
So, (Hit Rating) > (Strength) > (Expertise, Crit Rating, Agility, Attack Power) > (Haste, Armor Penetration)
Meta gem- use the 21 crt rating and 3% crt dmg met, called the chaotic skyflare diamond, for both pve and pvp.
Gemming for pve- If below hit capped, gem rigid (hit) to reach hit capped (263), use etched (str and hit) to fill a slot that will give you a bonus that’s better than using a pure hit gem. if you’re above hit cap, gem pure bold (str), use inscribed (str and crt) to get a socket bonus that’s better than just using a pure str gem. use soveriegn (str and stm) for your meta requirements or for a good socket bonus.
Gemming for pvp- gem str, in pvp many times you are measured by your burst damage, so gemming str is preferable over gemming hit. the same rules apply as above for gemming for your meta slot and achieving socket bonuses, except for pvp i would choose inscribed over etched gems.
Weapons, slow weapons with high dps=win. This is why the 222 dps and 3.4 speed Betrayer of Humanity is only a little better than the 203 dps and 3.6 speed The Jawbone.
***Simply, use Rawr (Codeplex.com/rawr), to pick your gear, or maxdps.com if you don’t want to use Rawr, they do the same thing; I find maxdps.com to be easier to use but Rawr to be more accurate.
Haste
Decreases Global Cooldown after every spell
Divine Storm and Crusader Strike are not spells
Therefore only helps Consecration, Exorcism, etc.
Makes you attack faster, increasing melee damage, however shouldn’t decrease your damage with instants like Divine Storm and Crusader Strike. you attack faster, yet Hit the same seal damage, and same melee damage, so your seal and melee damage will go up, however this shouldn’t work with Seal of Command as that has a ppm(proc per min) set to 7ppm, or 8.4ppm if glyphed. this will help your Seal of Blood damage. This stat was greatly improved for ret pallies in 3.1, and makes the tier gear look a lot better gear-wise.
Expertise
Affects judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike chance to be parried/dodged so a real good stat for ret pallies. 26 expertise is the cap so that NPC’s cant dodge your atks. NPC’s can only parry you if you atk them from the front. however, NPC’s can dodge you no matter where you are standing. enemy player’s can only parry you if you are standing in front of them, however enemy player’s CANNOT dodge you if you are atking from behind them, also they cannot dodge if stunned. this means that as long as you are behind an enemy player, you dont need expertise at all. so, when a rogue uses evasion, stun him and make sure you’re hitting him from behind, you can still kill him.
Prioritization
PVE
Note that this section can get quite complicated as the “best” rotation changes depending on your mana, the number of monster you’re hitting, and whether you have the 10 sec consecration glyph or not. Generally, in a rotation when you see X>Y, this means that when X and Y are both off cooldown you want to use X, rather than Y. However, in all cases, if Y comes off cooldown before X, then you should use Y. Divine Plea should be used when you have the time to wait out the 1.5 sec GCD without another move coming off CD in that time. As for exoricism, i use it when it doesnt interfere with Judge, cons, Divine Storm, and Crusader Strike.
The consecration glyph will change the cooldown of consecration from 8 to 10 seconds, increasing it’s total damage by 25% because it does the same damage per second, while costing the same amount of mana, however this does not mean that this glyph fits best with all rotations.
If you are going to run out of mana before a fight ends, wait to use consecration in your rotation until you know that your mana pool will last until the end of the fight, with judgement of the wise, benediction, and either SoB/M glyph or consecration glyph mana really should not be a problem though
“>” does not mean “and then”, it means “greater than, or prioritized over” in which you use the move to the left of this sign before any moves to the right of this sign when 2 or more moves are off of CD at the same time
Best Rotation/ Prioritization when attacking stationary target - 8 sec consecration
Judge>Consecration>Divine Storm>Crusader Strike>Exorcism
Glyphs for this priority: 1. judge 2. exorcism 3. SoB/M
Best Rotation/Prioritization when attacking mobile target - 10 sec consecration
Crusader Strike>Judge>Divine Storm>Exorcism>Consecration
Glyphs: 1. judge 2. exorcism 3. consecration
Differences in the priorities/rotations
The difference in your dps when using a mobile rotation on a stationary boss or vice versa is roughly 4%, its not that big of a deal. Also, notice that the rotation for a stationary target is less dependant on hit, because consecration can only be missed on the first tick (the other 7 ticks have a 100% hit chance) and is used more often in the stationary target rotation. these are the 2 factors that affect the dps of these rotations, so therefore ret dps is very variable, and you should not expect to always be doing the same as another ret pally on the same fight, but if you have the same gear you should be within 4% of the other ret pally. also, this makes end-game competition with other dps quite annoying, i.e. if another ret with the same gear as you uses a stationary rotation on patchwerk, he will prbly out dps you if you’re using the mobile rotation (however things like latency, and who is more experienced with a rotation does also affect rotation.
Choosing your rotation
There are 2 main factors that decide which rotation/priority you should use. First of all, if you have already been using one of the rotations i mentioned for a while, then i would stick to it, as being comfortable with a rotation allows you to pay more attention to the other factors in a boss fight, and the difference in the rotations is not worth you switching rotations for no reason. second, if you’re below hit cap the stationary rotation is more forgiving, while the mobile rotation is more dependant on hit. Examine where you fall in this situation, and if you happen to land on the fence (say you’re below hit cap but you’re use to the mobile rotation), then in my opinion you should stick to the mobile rotation, and just aim to get you’re hit rating higher.
AOE damage
Just prioritize consecration and DS early, and holy wrath if that are undead, not much to it.
Are you specced/glyphed right and doing your rotation right?
DONT skip this parrt: Before you start comparing dps, complete these steps, make sure you are attacking the lvl 80 dummy, so that unlucky misses have less of a factor (you may or may not be hit capped), make sure your DS and cons are ONLY hitting the one dummy you are attacking, and DO NOT use wings, judge light and use DP at a good time to keep mana and health up. also, make sure you have an aura selected and you are NOT BUFFED WITH MIGHT. secondly, to find your “actual attack power”, look at your attack power and subtract the atk power bonuses of any of your trinkets (so if you have 3k atk pwr, and a 100 atk pwr trinket, your actual atk pwr is 2900″, next, if you have beserker, add 135 to your atk pwr.
-if you have 2500-3100 attack power your dps should be around ~2k on a lvl 80 dummy.
-for any attack power after 3100, add that amount of attack power to your “unbuffed” dps.
-so if you have 3500 attack power unbuffed, your dps should be around 2.4k.
This is only so that you can check your rotation/priority, these figures do not reflect a ret pallies dps in a raid environment.
Macros/cast Redemption
/raid Resurrecting %t/cast Crusader Strike
/startattack
*** Also use for your judges, Divine Storm, stun, Consecration and whatnot. Most spells only start your attack if you are in range and have the mana. This macro bypasses that and starts your attack on a target regardless if the spell casts or not, this is useful for 25 man raids, when you can’t really tell what’s happening too well. Also, if you’re running towards a target, it’s best you start your attack on him before you reach him, because you will start your swing timer a little earlier, this macro helps a lot with that./cast Consecration
/use trinket
/cast Arcane Torrent
*** only for pve, this will keep your mana up by using Arcane Torrent often, and when I tested it the macro casted Consecration, then casted Arcane Torrent, so the extra mana is given if used at full mana, also, if you’re using Consecration correctly, chances are you do not expect the fight to be over soon or for the boss to be moved, so this is an optimum time to trinket.
/cast [target=focus] lay on hands
**use this macro after you use “/focus” on the main tank in your raid***
/cast [target="name of your arena partner”] Holy Light
*** You can use this for other spells, however it is NOT as efficient as using the add on Clique, but it is a possible option you can use.
Random Tips
- As far as healing goes you shouldnt wory about healing at all in 10 mans or 25 mans, except maybe the occasional save-the-raid LOH on the MT, in heroics you’re the back-up healer if the healer dies or is unable to heal for some reason, so keep an eye on the tanks health and if its low chances are the healer is having problems, use GRID + Clique, Healbot, or a macro to heal the tank without switching targets.
-Do heroics/naxx/other raids for epics, then use your badges to fill in what didn’t drop.
-Move all your in battle attacks with CD’s to the same part of your action bars, just move your key bindings, but keep the same key for each move, this will help you see which has lower CD left, especially with the add on Omni CC.
-Use Seal of Blood for PVE, see Seal of Blood vs. Seal of Command in the pvp section for what to use in pvp.
-Don’t aim for spell power or intellect, the extra dps they give is negligible.
Specs and Major Glyphs
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–PVE spec– (use Seal of Blood) — Put the 3 unspent points into improved devotion aura if you wont be raiding with a prot pally, OR put the 3 points in improved ret aura if you wont be raiding with a balance druid
Wowhead
SEE PRIORITIZATION SECTION FOR GLYPHS/ROTATION, GO, GO NOW!
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–PVP specs–
Arena with healer
Wowhead
Glyphs: 1. Judge 2. Turn Evil/Hammer of Justice 3. Hand of Salvation
Arena without healer
Wowhead
Glyphs: 1. Judge 2. Turn Evil/Hammer of Justice 3. Hand of Salvation
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Supporting the Raid
This is where the benefit of being a hybrid comes to your raid. first of all, have you considered a tanking or healing dual spec? this can really help your guild in progression, but make sure to let them know ret is your main spec and just take the off spec gear that no one wants and start building up some dual spec gear.
Support spells: blessings, divine sacrifice, sacred shield, hand of protection, lay on hands, hand of sacrifice, heals, cleanse
blessings- you and all the other pallies in your raid should have Pally Power, this addon is fantastic at managing raid buffs
divine sacrifice - use this spell when you think the raid is about to take a lot of aoe damage, if melee is stuck in the rain of fire on faerlina, melee is stuck in blizzard on saphiron, etc., after you use it divine shield afterwards to negate a lot of the damage
sacred shield and lay on hands- i would cast this on a tank to help out, but its just as useful if you cast it on yourself or any other raid member, using it when you have no other damage spells is the best time for it, i suggest making the macro “/cast [target=focus] sacred shield” and doing /focus on the main tank, this will also go well with the “/cast [target=focus] lay on hands” which i suggest also using on the main tank, because if he dies most likely everyone dies
hand of protection- having an addon to alert you to who has aggro is very helpful, i know that GRID does this, and so you hand HoP any heals or dps who need it easy with Clique
hand of sacrifice- i wouldnt use this on a tank unless you are bubbled, so id use it on the tank right after your divine sacrifice + divine shield combo
heals- sometimes you are unable to dps (like when you are hiding behind ice blocks for saphiron), that is the only time you should be healing
cleanse- cleanse doesnt reset your swing timer if you use an addon or a macro “/cast [target=focus] cleanse”, so you can use it without much worry if you have no damage spells to use, if its a fight like maexena where the poison is very important to dispel, i would prioritize your cleanse on the main tank over your damage moves, for raid bosses just ask yourself “would cleansing or dpsing help the raid more right now”, 99% of the time your answer should be dpsing, but knowing the boss tactics and learning what you can do to give the raid a better shot at the boss is what makes the difference when playing a ret pally, assuming you can do descent dps.
Glyphs
Major Glyphs are in the Spec section
Minor Glyphs
PVP
-Seal of Wisdom
+ anything
PVE
-Sense Undead
-Lay on Hands
+anything
Add-ons
Curse Client
The client used by curse.com will make it a lot quicker to download all the following add ons.
Curse Client - The Most Advanced WoW Updater to help manage your WoW Addons - Curse
Omni CC
Will give you the CD on your spells as numbers, highly useful
Healbot
If you get this you shouldn’t need GRID or Clique, however I don’t use it and I can’t tell you how to set it up. I just use GRID and Clique because I don’t want to take the time to learn a whole new add on, not sure which is better, and I doubt there’s many people who have used both.
Omen
Useful to make sure you don’t pull threat during the first 10 secs or so when the tank picks up a mob
Gladius
This will replace the blizzard arena frames (you have to turn off the blizzard ones) with pretty much the same thing but with more info. The icons next to the enemy’s names will light up with powerful moves like fear, sheep, divine shield, etc. to indicate which enemy is affected with what. you can also watch the yellow bar to see what spell the enemy is casting. the trinket icon indicates that the enemy still has his trinket to use, if the icon is not there that means that he has used his trinket.
Deadly Boss Mods
Useful for warnings during boss fights
MSBT (MiksScrollingBattleText)
This mod will move the damage you do and the damage you take to display near your character on opposite sides, take the time to configure this right and you can make it do a type of Raid Warning only to you that will say when you can Art of War, Hammer of Wrath, Divine Plea. This can be hard to configure so maybe only use it if you’re good with add ons. You will need a lot of time to configure this right, for me I think it was worth the time, possible to do without though.
GRID (Use with Clique, GRID and Clique are not just for healers, ret pallies should use them also)
Grid - Addons - Curse
You can set squares to appear on the corners of the boxes that are assigned to your raid/party members for who has aggro and if they have magic/poison/disease on them. if you learn to see the aggro spots on grid, whatever corner you set it to show up, you can just click on the person, if you know it’s heals/caster to Hand of Protection if you set it to a specific click binding, in short you save some1 in a 25 man who probably didn’t even know they were about to be attacked by a monster. Because your GRID noticed that a monster had targeted a raid member, and showed it as a red box in the corner of said caster/healer’s health bar, and then using clique to quickly apply Hand of Protection, you earned some brownie points from said member of your raid.
Configuring GRID:
Right click GRID icon in minimap, go under Frame, check the following: border- your target, healing bar- unit health, center text- unit name, center icon- none, top left corner- aggro, top right corner- magic, bottom left- disease, bottom right- poison.
Under Frame Alpha, check the following: death warning, > 10, 30, 40, 100 yards, offline warning.
Under Layout, select Clamped to screen and frame lock after you have moved GRID where you want it, you can also go under Raid Layout to change the # of people in your raid. Use the macro “/grid standby” to make it appear and disappear. And now you’re done!
Clique
use this with GRID and your party interface, don’t set anything to Right-click, as you won’t be able to right-click people in your party to without casting that spell. This means that you can simply, let’s say, SHIFT-left click to flash of light some1 in your party by performing this click on their portrait in the party user interface or on the grid interface for raid members.
Use Clique for:
—Flash of light (be VERY careful about using this in PVE, as even instant flash of light will reset your swing timer)
—Holy Light (this is your high healing per sec spell, so if you have a lot of mana use this to possibly save some1 in PVP, but then get right back to attacking, holy light is much more preferable to flash of light in PVP because if you had done flash of light you would to have sat there spamming, and I would have taken you a while to get back to attacking)
—Hand of Freedom (use mainly for PVP)
—Hand of Protection (use in PVP and PVE, pve to save healers)
—Righteous Defense (if your prot, to pull off healers)
—Hand of Sacrifice (use in PVP, when you see one of your party members being targeted)
—Cleanse (PVP and PVE)
Configuring Clique:
Press P, click the last tab, click custom, select Cast Spell, type the name of the spell in the appropriate area, and then set the click binding you want (try middle mouse, ALT-left click, ALT-right click, ALT-middle mouse, and you can replace ALT with CTRL or SHIFT depending on your keyboard)