Playstyle & Rotation
The base of Retribution gameplay is Holy Power management. You can have from 0 to 5 Holy Power. There are 2 types of abilities on the table: generators of Holy Power and spenders of it. Main goal is to cast as many spenders during the fight as you can and don't waste your Holy Power.
Generators are: Crusader Strike and all its variations, Blade of Justice, Judgment, Hammer of Wrath, Wake of Ashes and Divine Toll.
Before moving to spenders I’d like to focus on Judgment a little more. Judgment isn’t a simple HP generator - it also applies a debuff on target that empowers next HP spender by 20%. In The War Within this debuff can overlap, which means there is no way of wasting this debuff anymore.
Spenders are: Templar’s Verdict, Divine Storm, Justicar's Vengeance, Hammer of Light, Divine Hammer and Word of Glory.
General idea is to cast Spenders only if you have no Generators to use or you’ve already reached 5 Holy Power.
Spenders usage:
- You have from 3 to 5 Holy Power and all your Generators are on CD;
- You have 3+ Holy Power and some of your generators are ready to be used, however you are at the last second of strong bursts such as Avenging Wrath, Crusade, Final Reckoning or Execution Sentence.
General Rotation
Single Target
- Divine Hammer if your Execution Sentence and Avenging Wrath / Wake of Ashes are not on CD
- Avenging Wrath / Crusade (without Radiant Glory)
- Execution Sentence or Final Reckoning
- Hammer of Light with 5 Holy Power
- Divine Toll 3 Holy power or less on Single Target, 1 HP at 2 targets, 0 HP at 3+ targets
- Free proc of Hammer of Light
- Templar’s Verdict / Final Verdict at 5 Holy Power
- Wake of Ashes at 2 or less Holy Power
- Judgment if you are at 3 or less Holy Power
- Blade of Justice if your Expurgation is about to fall of or it expired and you are at 4 Holy Power
- Templar Slash if it is going to expire and you are not at 5 Holy Power
- Hammer of Wrath if both charges are not on CD (with Vanguard's Momentum)
- Blade of Justice if both charges are not on CD
- Crusader Strike / Templar Strike / Templar Slash if both charges are not on CD
- Templar’s Verdict / Final Verdict at 3-4 Holy Power if all generators are on CD or you are the last second of any of your burst ability
It may look complicated, however it is a very simple class. I am describing it in full detail to provide you with the most accurate information. I suggest practicing on a dummy to get the feeling and after some time you will be able to follow it without second thought.
Multi Target
There are a few things that change on multi-target for Retribution:
- First of all, our multi-target priority starts working at 2+ targets. If you have Final Verdict, Jurisdiction and Tempest of the Lightbringer, Divine Storm can still be used from 2 targets if the targets are equal. If there is prio target, it’s better to still use Final Verdict. If there are 3+ targets it is only Divine Storm.
- Blade of Justice is the highest dps generator on big pulls due to Expurgation and Blade of Vengeance.
- Judgment is still high prio due to debuff, Holy Power generation and Sanctification ramp up.
- Hammer of Wrath is the lowest prio cause it hits only one target. Should be used only if you don't have enough holy power for Divine Storm and all other Holy Power generators are on CD.
Season 2 Tier Set Notes
There is no reason to think a lot about the first set bonus. Consider your Winning Streak! as a passive damage amp. However the second part of the tier is a completely different matter. Whenever your Winning Streak! get consumed, you will get a All In! buff. This thing you want to track and try to never waste it.
Ideally you want this proc while you are inside your Crusade, however there is no way to guarantee the proc by your actions. On the other hand you never want this proc right before going into your burst window, which you usually start with Execution Sentence. And avoiding this proc you can handle by not using any Holy Power spenders (Hammer of Light also counts).
In simple terms, never spend holy power right before using Execution Sentence. Yes, you will waste a lot of Holy Power constantly, but you are flooded with it anyway, and getting the full 4 seconds of All In! from your tier set inside Crusade is totally worth it.
Your finishers also should follow different logic. Now you want to use them as fast as possible during the burst window, trying to fish the tier proc for free finishers. On the other hand you should also be careful with your Holy Power spender right before going into the Execution Sentence sequence.
Opener
An opener is usually a sequence of actions you do at the very beginning of the fight. They reflect the General Rotation rules but here they are more structured and showing you a good example. Learning this order will help you a lot with learning the spec.
Single Target Opener
- Blade of Justice
- Divine Toll
- Divine Hammer
- Execution Sentence or Final Reckoning
- Wake of Ashes
- Without lust on pull you may lack 1 Holy power to cast Hammer of Light. Fill this gap with Hammer of Wrath
- Hammer of Light
- Judgment
- Proceed with normal rotation and spend you Holy Power on Templar’s Verdict
Multi Target Opener:
Opener with Radiant Glory
Same sequence as for single target, just replace Templar’s Verdict with Divine Storm.
Cooldown Usage
Wings
Your wings can come from Avenging Wrath / Crusade or Wake of Ashes with Radiant Glory.
Avenging Wrath is a 1 min cooldown and Crusade is a 2 min. Radiant Glory allows you to activate your wings with Wake of Ashes. Basically you want to use them from the start and almost never hold it. Holding any of your bursts may cause you to lose one during the fight, however there are some cases where you want to hold and it will be worth it:
- Encounters with waves of adds
- Encounters with damage amplifiers
Abilities like Final Reckoning, Execution Sentence, Divine Toll and Divine Hammer should always be used together. If your Avenging Wrath / Crusade is ready - they all should be lined up.
Delaying Avenging Wrath / Crusade also means that you are going to delay the rest of your CDs.
You always want to have at least 3 Holy Power before going into Final Reckoning to maximize the number of spenders during the Final Reckoning.
Divine Hammer
This ability was a stranger since introduction in Dragonflight. However in this season it has good synergy with our tier set. If you ever played a frost Death Knight with Breath of Sindragosa this ability has the same vibe. The only difference is that Divine Hammer has an actual duration timer and breath remains while you have runic power.
So why do we play Divine Hammer?
Divine Hammer ticks make our Empyrean Hammer to proc, since the game considers each tick as a holy power spender. This allows us to generate stacks of Light's Deliverance faster, so we can use Hammer of Light more often. And the more Hammer of Light we use, the more uptime on Shake the Heavens we have. And the last point is that even Light's Deliverance provides a free use of Hammer of Light (wont consume any holy power) Divine Hammer still considers it as a 5 holy power spender, so the duration of it will be increased by 2.5 seconds.
How to use Divine Hammer?
As it was said before, we want to pair it up with our Crusade (which comes from Wake of Ashes with Radiant Glory). But, with lust on pull, good amount of haste, nice tier set procs and managing your holy power correctly you will find yourself in a situation when your used on pull Divine Hammer still remains. Here comes the logical question: should you use your Divine Hammer again or not. And the answer depends on several things:
- First of all, check the current duration of Divine Hammer. If it is something less than 2 seconds - yes, you should refresh your Divine Hammer. Otherwise there is a high chance that you wont be able to refresh its duration, because you have to waste some gcds to activate Execution Sentence and Wake of Ashes;
- If there are 4+ seconds on your Divine Hammer you can try to maintain it without refreshing;
Another logical question after this is: if I didn't use Divine Hammer to refresh it, when do I use it next time?
- You should hold it to your next Wake of Ashes window. If you drop your Divine Hammer earlier and you will try to refresh it instantly there is high chance you lose it right before your next Wake of Ashes is ready.
- You should also understand that your next usage of Divine Hammer won't be paired with Divine Toll, which means it will be more difficult to maintain your Divine Hammer to the next Wake of Ashes.
- On the other hand, you might think to hold your Divine Hammer up to the next line up of Wake of Ashes and Divine Toll, but this can cause a big gap on Divine Hammer uptime.
Conclusion
- The most safe way is to keep using Divine Hammer each 1 minute of the fight, so it stay lined up with Divine Toll;
- If you are going to hold the second use of it you should be sure you will be able to maintain it for at least 1 min and 45 seconds to make it worth it. After this you hold Divine Hammer until the 2nd minute of the fight to line it up with the rest of your CDs.
Exception
On some encounters there is a chance that you have to disconnect from enemies for some time. Losing melee uptime will affect your Holy Power generation pace, which will cause problems to maintain Divine Hammer and even usage of your main CDs. Good example is Mug’zee, when you get an ice debuff so you have to go behind the wall and can't hit anything for about 10 seconds when your CDs are ready. This will cause desynchronization of your CDs. You kinda forced to use Wake of Ashes and Execution Sentence ASAP when you get back to the boss, however your Divine Toll and Divine Hammer have to be hold until next Wake of Ashes is ready.
Defensives
Retribution paladin has a lot of defensive abilities that can be applied to friendly targets. But let's start with personals:
- Divine Shield: This is a total immunity for 8 seconds. It is on GCD, so be careful. This spell causes a Forbearance debuff that won’t allow you to get Blessing of Protection, Spellwarding (from Protection Paladins) or Lay on Hands.
- Shield of Vengeance: This is a talent from your spec tree that you won’t be able to skip due to its positioning. This defensive CD can also bring you some dps increase. This is basically an absorb that explodes on the exact amount of damage you’ve absorbed. This ability is also on a GCD.
- Divine Protection: A simple damage reduction cooldown for 8 sec. It allows you to decrease incoming damage by 30% for 8 seconds. Now it is a baseline spell. This one is not affected by a GCD so it will become your main emergency button.
Defensive CD’s can be applied to you allies:
- Lay on Hands is a talent from the general tree. Simply heal the target for an amount equal to your maximum health. Causes Forbearance. Can be casted on yourself;
- Blessing of Protection is a talent from the general tree. Makes your target invulnerable to all physical damage for 10 seconds and also removes all physical debuffs from the target. You also should know that while your target is under Blessing of Protection it is also removed from the agro table. Still can use taunt under this effect, however when the effect of it fades the enemy is going to ignore this target. Causes Forbearance. Can be casted on yourself;
- Blessing of Sacrifice is a talent from the general tree. This is a damage reduction ability that can be used only on your allies but not on yourself. You are reducing the damage taken by chosen ally by 30%, however you are going to get all this prevented damage. It is a good idea to pair Blessing of Sacrifice with Shield of Vengeance to not die of Blessing of Sacrifice damage or just to proc faster the explosion of it. If you are going to save an ally from a very powerful ability it can be worth to pair it up even with Divine Shield.
- Blessing of Freedom isn’t a pure defensive cooldown. However it removes slows and roots effects. Some of them can be combined with damage effects. Your Unbound Freedom talent from a Class Tree also adds a 30% movement speed increase. And if you are applying Blessing of Freedom to your ally you are also going to get a Blessing of Freedom on yourself.