Retribution PvP Guide 3.3.5 by Domestos
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20150511174927
INTRO
Hello everyone and welcome to my guide for PvP Retribution paladin. You may know me as Domestos-Icecrown.I know there already are a bunch of paladin wotlk pvp guides. I decided to make this guide firstly to help you learn or improve your skills with retribution paladin in PvP and also many people asked me how do I beat frost mages in duels, why I never oom and stuff like that. This patch is already 10 years old and every secret should be revealed, so I'm gonna reveal you everything I have learned in my long-lasting career as a retribution paladin.
TIPS AND TRICKS
- Paladin has it's own defensive stance and that's called shield + one handed weapon switch. Why should you switch weapons? Because you want to survive and take less damage, as simple as that. If you are still in a gearing process, first thing you want to buy at rating 1800 is Wrathful Gladiator's Gavel and Wrathful Gladiator's Barrier
- Time your cooldowns. Don't just blow your cds without a reason. As a retribution paladin, you have many defensive and offensive cds, use them with purpose.
- Never turn back to your opponent. If you are kiting, try not to turn back to your opponent, if you do, you can not block, dodge or parry incoming melee attacks.
- Do not rage. If you are angry for some reason, you experience injustice in game, you can't play because of a lag or anything that leads to rage, calm down and take a break.
- Hey Domestos, how much resilience do you have? It always depends whom I am dueling. If i am dueling a hunter, mage, warlock or shaman, Im not going below 1300 resilience with shield equipped. The explanation is simple, the more time required to catch them, the more time needed to survive.
Against a warrior, dk, feral/balance druid, priest, mirror, you don't need more than 1.1k resilience.
- Know other classes. Whenever you are fighting any class, you need to know what to expect, you need to know their spells and track their cds with Aesa addon. For example, every mage will start with Poly and spell steal spam, every mm hunter starts with scatter-freeze. I got screwed many times to these classes until i realised how to deal with them. I will explain how.
- Use Hand of Reckoning (taunt). You need this spell to get in combat or get rogues/ferals in combat at long range so they cant restealth after cyclone/sap
- Don't underestimate or humiliate your opponent. Because karma is a bi*ch sometimes.
- Keep your head high and spread positive vibes even if you lose :)
DUEL TACTICS
MAGE
Dueling a mage can be very frustrating.The only way to beat good mage is to oom him. Switch shield and mace when he has his offensive cds up, keep healing on mirror image and water elemental and ALWAYS rebuff and use Might instead of Kings, that's really important cause he loses more mana stealing your buffs than you do and second very important thing, use Seal and Glyph of Command and you will never oom. Save freedom for deep freeze and trinket for a moment when he's gonna use Evocation, also use Art of War procs on Flash on Light, if you don't get procs, try to fakecast his Counter Spell then heal up. You also need 1300-1400 resilience for this adventure.
SHAMAN
Versus elemental shaman you need to watch out for grounding totem, the best way to counter it is to get sound alert addon so you can hear every time when shaman drops it and you gonna destroy it with auto attack or with pyro rocket if you are too far. Keep rebuffing while you are walking to shaman and use sacred shield only when lava burst is in half way to be casted. First break stoneclaw totem then use judgement to avoid oom. When you can clearly predict Thunderstorm (mostly when they are stunned) try to take a position where you can hit the wall or hill etc so you dont get blowed too far.
PRIEST
Shadow priest is the hardest match for ret. Don't go easy on them, you need to kill them as fast as possible with minimum resilience, make them fear you :) forget on cleanse and forget using shield and mace, if you really need to cleanse, use Purify to avoid cleansing Vampiric Touch and taking 5-7k instant dmg. Don't judgement while shield is up, break it first so you wont oom. You can still hit them hard using Avenging Wrath while they are under Dispersion thanks to Sanctified Wrath talent.
WARLOCK
Every Lock will use Felhunter vs Ret to dispell Hoj and Repentence but you will counter it using Seal of Corruption so pet will dispell stacks of your Seal instead of Stun. You can easily survive til your final stun, just spam cleanse all the time, use AOW procs for heal, Freedom Shadow Fury, use Repentence just to interrupt since you have Seal of Corruption. You need to pay attention and be careful when lock has trinket procs especially humans cause dmg is ridicolously high, you gonna wall that shlt or bubble if you are ready to get flamed to other players, if not, tryhard with Divine Protection.
HUNTER
While dueling a hunter, you need to be very focused and be one step ahead of him. First thing he's gonna do is to freeze you and dispell one by one buff (ofcourse you aren't gonna trinket that), you want to start with shield and mace and you gonna pop Freedom half second before freezing trap breaks cause you are gonna get silenced right after freeze expires. Keep Serpent Sting and Hunter's Mark cleansed all the time, if you hit the snake trap, instantly pop Consecration. Pop Wings on second stun and finish him off (most likely they use their trinket on first stun). You can restore mana using Judgement on his pet and Devine plea when hunter has Viper Sting also always use Frost Aura to increase your chance to resist Freezing Traps.
FERAL DRUID
Feral is high burst class. Just force him to pop berserk, use Divine Protection, spam Judgement of Justice and cleanse then kite him. When Berserk expires, you can start making serious pressure with saved trinket for Cyclone, when i say serious pressure i mean.... WING HIM DOWN BABY! :)
UNHOLY DEATH KNIGHT
DK without cds is useful as much as a corpse (no offense). You want to kill his Ghoul every time and survive Gargoyle, It's easy with shield and mace equipped and bunch of defensive cds. Make sure he used Icebound, Antimagic Shell and trinket already, Stun > Wings = GG.
WARRIOR
Follow his stances. If he starts with Berserker Stance, prepare your freedom for his Intercept cause it's 2 second stun and Charge stuns for 1 sec. Kite his Retaliation to the death, don't you dare to touch him while knives are spinning and always spam jump when he is about to charge, while stunned in the air, you are still moving when falling down so jump vs warrior is very important, Use Repentence when he pops Enraged Regeneration cause he has to cancel his heal to remove Rep, while he is busy with that, you can heal once or twice.
ROGUE
This is your easiest match up. Shield + Mace, put sacred on and wait for their open, use Freedom on Kidney Shot and kite with Judgement of Justice, cleanse poisons and heal up. Very easy and simple. If you are fighting full PvE geared Combat Rogue, try to predict when they gonna pop Killing Spree then use Divine Protection and do the same thing you do vs Sub/Assassin Rogue.
PALADIN (MIRROR)
In mirror match up everything can happen if both players are experienced, but you can give your best to win. Start with Shield + Mace and use Seal of Corruption for fast stack, wait 5 stacks and trinket proc, switch back to 2h pop Hoj in combination with Arcane Torrent (too bad if you are human :D ...jk) Wings and nuke him down. If he does that before you, pop Divine Protection and Hand of Protection, use only Judgement and Crusader strike to not oom, spam heal and don't turn your back to him.
GEAR
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLUk3MEWAAUz5tG.jpg
Best in slot Gear
Head: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Helm
Shoulders: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Shoulders
Chest: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Chestpiece
Gloves: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets
Legs: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Legguards
Neck: Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard Heroic
Cloack: Winding Sheet Heroic
Wrists: Wrathful Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph
Waist: Wrathful Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph
Feets: Apocalypse's Advance Heroic
Ring 1: Skeleton Lord's Circle Heroic
Ring 2: Ashen Band of Endless Might
Trinket 1: Death's Choice Heroic
Trinket 2: Medallion of the Horde (or Death's Verdict Normal version if you are playing human)
2h Weapon: Shadowmourne (Obviously) or Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand Heroic
1h Weapon: Wrathful Gladiator's Salvation
Shield: Wrathful Gladiator's Barrier
Relic: Wrathful Gladiator's Libram of Justice for heal or Libram of Three Truths for damage (Depends of your playstyle)
ENCHANTS & GEMS
Head – Arcanum of Torment or Arcanum of Triumph
Shoulder – Greater Inscription of the Axe or Inscription of Triumph
Cloak – Enchant Cloak - Major Agility
Chest – Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats
Bracers – Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault
Gloves – Enchant Gloves - Crusher
Waist – Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs – Icescale Leg Armor
Boots – Enchant Boots - Greater Assault or Enchant Boots - Icewalker
2H Weapon – Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Berserking
1H Weapon – Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spell Power
Shield – Scroll of Enchant Shield - Resilience
When talking about gems, first thing you want to do is to reach hit cap (5%) which is about 165 hit rating. When you reach hit cap you are going to stack Bold Cardinal Ruby (Strength) and Mystic King's Amber (Resilience). Str on red sockets, Resilience on yellow (Try to get minimum 1000 Resilience). As Meta gem, take Relentless Earthsiege Diamond for more crit. You only need one blue gem and that is Nightmare Tear which increases all stats +10.
TALENTS AND GLYPHS
In PvP there are many different tree builds depending on what kind of PvP you are playing, Arena, Battlegrounds or Duels.
Arena/Battleground Build
This talent tree can be used in bgs and arenas in combination with the next glyphs :
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Judgement
Glyph of Righteousness
Glyph of Turn Evil
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Blessing of Might
Glyph of Sense Undead
Glyph of Blessing of Kings
https://i.imgur.com/Hun9Igg.jpg
Anti-Mage-Hunter-Shaman Build
This build goes together with high resilience setup and it's made to survive, save your mana and to oom your opponent, also works with the next glyphs :
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Command
Glyph of Salvation
Glyph of Judgement
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Blessing of Might
Glyph of Sense Undead
Glyph of Blessing of the Wise
https://i.imgur.com/v2hv2tW.jpg
PROFESSIONS
https://memegenerator.net/img/instan...profession.jpg
- Engineering: Nitro Boots, Parachute, Cobalt Frag Bomb and Rocket Gloves - There are so many fun stuff for PvP in this profession :)
- Tailoring: Swordguard embroidery - A cloak enchant which has a chance to grant you 400 attack power for 15 seconds.You lose the 22 agi back enchant, but it's worth it.
Frostweave Net - Captures a target up to 35 yards away in a net for 3 sec, which can be very useful in duels, bgs, wpvp.
- Cooking: Cooking will grant you valuable food buffs and can be very useful for duels and bgs. Definitly worth profession if you got time to spare to level this up.
ARENA COMBOS
2v2
Marksmanship Hunter
Definetly a really strong comb. The burst is stunning, the kiting abilities are op, loads of instant ccs and you as a ret can nearly outheal an enemy hpala when facing war/pala. You are basically strong against everything. In most cases use your cc early and line it up for a long cc chain which forces a lot of cds from your enemy. Usually you will cc the classes who can dispel (Priests, Paladins) if you are not facing dispelers, nuke the squishy ones and cc the tough ones. Do not let your hunter's pet die. Use your AOW procs and Cleanse when you need to rather than just doing damage.
Discipline Priest
Double dispel is the thing they can't deal with. It's the best anti-cc combo in game. When playing with disco, it's very important to peel for him because priest is very squishy class. Focus heal and cleanse him when needed. His job is to smash dispel button, spam mana burn when he has apportunity and follow the cc order. your job is to support him and do some sexy damage.
Subtlety Rogue
Another great cc combo. Good control but bad survivability. Good thing is, you both have high burst plus heals on target are 50% reduced because of rogues poisons. Tactic is simple. Keep a cc chain on X target and burst Y target. If you like fast games, then sub rogue is a big deal.
Enhancment Shaman
Who the hell needs cc here with so much burst, interrupts and purges, but if you are really cc lover, you can Hex > Rep > Hoj. You wont see this combo very often in arenas since Enha is really underplayed class on Icecrown.
Mage
This absolutely one of the best double dps combos in game next to Unh dk/sp. Mage in combination with ret can be godlike and untouchable. The only problem here is that it takes a lot of practice with your team mate to master it. CC is sick, damage is op, survivability is insane if played properly and its extremly fun combo.
3v3
In this case you have a team of 3, it's more difficult to follow the location of your team mates. You really need to be focused on cc order and use your cds smart as a team. I recommend playing on Blackrock to get some practice.
- Scooby Doo Cleave: Ret - Rogue Rdruid/RSham
- PHP: Ret - MM Hunter - Disco Priest
- Cupid Cleave: Ret - Hunter - Healer (Non-Priest)
- Freedom Cleave: Ret - Dk - Hpal
5v5
How it feels to que 5s...
https://i.imgur.com/MQae5Ty.jpg
So don't even try it
ADDONS
- Aesa - Awsome addon for tracking your targets cooldowns and your focus.
- SoundAlerter - Addon that alerts the player of enemy casted spells via voice alert.
- SnowfallkeyPress - When you are pressing buttons in the game, the spell goes off when the button is released not when it's pressed. This makes spells activate faster.
- LoseControl - This helpful addon can be optimized to display big icons on your unitframe, your partners, your enemies or your focus when they are struck by any kind of CC. I.e...If your partner got blinded, it will show an icon of blind picture near his frame, showing a clock-like timer on the icon to how long it will take until the CC is over.
Retribution PvP Guide 3.3.5 by Domestos
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rope4
- Hey Domestos, how much resilience do you have? It always depends whom I am dueling. If i am dueling a hunter, mage or shaman, Im not going below 1300 resilience with shield equipped. The explanation is simple, the more time required to catch them, the more time needed to survive.
Against a warrior, dk, feral/balance druid, priest, mirror, you don't need more than 1k resilience.
This is very situational and personal preference. It's always better to be above 1k resilience even as a human. Closer to 1100 as non-human.
Using the resilience set (1300+ resil + one-hand and shield) should be used against rogues, warriors, hunters, feral - at start and switch only when you want to damage them, if they pop any of the offensive cds switch back. Warrior is kind of required to be fought in high resilience unless you just HoJ and Wings him and hope that you do more damage than he does... Which would be just...
Normal resilience set and one-hand and shield is useful against DK as starting setup and Enchancement Shaman (you just sit in 1h+shield the whole duel and they can't really do much against you).
Against elemental high resilience is a big no, it's ok to start with one-hand and shield so you can spam cleanse but the same moment you get closer to him you need to go to 2h, and as to never using high resilience set there is because then elemental is just going to healbot your damage and slowly kill you because you can't keep the pressure on him. Best elemental shaman is the one that gets so much pressure he has to cast heals instead of casting spells at you because you're slapping tons of damage on top of his head.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rope4
MAGE
Dueling a mage can be very frustrating.The only way to beat good mage is to oom him. Switch shield and mace when he has his offensive cds up, keep healing on mirror image and water elemental and ALWAYS rebuff and use Might instead of Kings, that's really important cause he loses more mana stealing your buffs than you do and second very important thing, use Seal and Glyph of Command and you will never oom . Save freedom for deep freeze and trinket for a moment when he's gonna use Evocation, also use Art of War procs on Flash on Light, if you don't get procs, try to fakecast his Counter Spell then heal up. You also need 1300-1400 resilience for this adventure.
This just sounds like too much duel hero - making spec with SoC and glyph for it just to use it in a duel with mages is a bit far fetched. Then again even on high resilience if you're fighting a frost mage without any kind of LoS you can just /forfeit because you have really no possible way of reaching him if he knows what he's doing and you're not using nitro or free action potion.
Better option in LoS areas is to get a few crafted level 80 items with frost resistance. They help a lot more, altho even then you need to get really lucky.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rope4
Best in slot (BIS) Gear
Head: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Helm
Shoulders: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Shoulders
Chest: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Chestpiece
Gloves: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Gauntlets
Legs: Wrathful Gladiator's Scaled Legguards
Neck: Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard Heroic
Cloack: Winding Sheet Heroic
Wrists: Wrathful Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph
Waist: Wrathful Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph
Feets: Apocalypse's Advance Heroic
Ring 1: Skeleton Lord's Circle Heroic
Ring 2: Ashen Band of Endless Might
Trinket 1: Death's Choice Heroic
Trinket 2: Medallion of the Horde (or Death's Verdict Normal version if you are playing human)
2h Weapon: Shadowmourne (Obviously)
1h Weapon: Wrathful Gladiator's Salvation
Shield: Wrathful Gladiator's Barrier
Relic: Wrathful Gladiator's Libram of Justice for heal or Libram of Three Truths for damage (Depends of your playstyle)
Having only a Shadowmourne as a two hand weapon is bad, especially if you're going to play arenas. Having a Wrathful Claymore is a great deal of help, also it might be useful more than Shadowmourne in certain encounters (Excluding arena, on higher MMR Claymore > Smourne).
Second trinket for Human paladins doesn't have to be Death's Verdict normal, Whispered Fangered Skull heroic is a lot better trinket than DVn, because it gives one of the very important stats to a Retribution Paladin, crit. Then there's a debate about using a certain agility items as ret (ring, cloak) which also should've been mentioned. Which leads me to next thing.
I think that you should've named your guide a "Retribution Duel Guide 3.3.5 by Domestos" because this might be a bit misleading.
There was literally zero mention of any stats the Paladin can go for, no talents shown in the post (or few talent setups people can go for as Retribution), no glyphs listed, no helpful addons mention, not a single useful macro for a Retribution paladin, this is a very bare bone and unnecessary guide which doesn't even try to 'compete' with other guides, especially Lyneas.
You barely mentioned any useful info and just wrote down things that most people realize after a few weeks of DUELING. And on top of that you didn't even bother with arena stats or tactics, or at least tried to mention good comps that go with Retribution.
And for the end, you didn't even write fully duel tactics - how to start duels against certain classes - such as one-hand and shield against feral, or DK in start to cleanse his diseases, using Repentance on Shadow Priest, moving to him while using trash buffs (Hand of Salvation, Divine plea) just to HoJ + Wings him (and silence if Blood Elf) and raining down hell on his head. But no, you just wrote general information which as I said above anyone would figure out after a few days/weeks of dueling.
All in all, very unnecessary guide and filled with barely any useful information. If there was rate system for guides I wouldn't give it more than 2 out of 10.