[Guide] Ret PvE - The House of Utility

RET PALADIN PVE : "THE HOUSE OF UTILITY"

http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.c...lstormwind.jpg

Ok so this is a guide to show you my way of making myself as effective as possible in matters of > UTILILTY < , since you are an utility spec even being a great dpser. This will set you appart from anyone that outgears you, simply because dead people dont dps.

So...how you "build utility"? The answer to that is: tools. Utility can be achieved with both raid awareness ( meaning WTF is going on around you, other than your epeen meter ) and efficient ways of making stuff happening without lossing your dps output ( at least not in a significant game breaking way ).

Firstly and foremost, the spec.

Talents for Utitlity Ret Paladin
- Divine Sacrifice build
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#sVZAMzZVfbtbIuhdIfsu
- Aura Mastery build:
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#sVVzZVZVfbtbIuhdIfsu
+ Glyphs:
- Glyph of Judgement
- Glyph of Consecration
- Glyph of Seal of Vengeance
- Glyph of Sense Undead

Aura Mastery --- Divine Sacrifice
Why is this build for utility? And when is it better than picking Aura Mastery?
Aura mastery is not a game saver specially since in 25 man raids its almost impossible to not get a holy paladin in the raid, that will have that spell already, or several. And the spell resistance refrains to 3 forms of magic out of 7 possible, from which nature magic is not included (Rotface, Festergut, PP), and it lasts 6 seconds instead of 10 in the case of Divine Sacrifice.
Divine Sacrifice will reduce damage taken by all members by 30%. What makes it A LOT better right now than Aura Mastery is the fact that its OP bugged. It doesnt break on 20% of your health. Yes sure it will kill you, but if you use Divine Shield with this it absorbs damage from Raid for the entire 10 seconds default of the spell.
IMPORTANT: do NOT use Divine Sacrifice without Divine Shield unless you are willing to sacrifice yourself, cause you will die without it. (This currently happens because the Spell doesnt remove itself once it goes past the limit of the paladin's life to trasnfer damage to, so you end up dying).
Either way with both spells working as it should, Aura mastery is superior if you know your fights are covered with your auras. This meaning for example: You know you have the kind of aura needed to repel the enemy magic or damage. Being frost , fire and shadow. ICC is 90% frost and shadow damage, so this is fine. But the plagueworks are nature damage based. Remember this. Shaman totems should cover you up though, plus those fights are very position related so its not about the damage they do, its about the damage they do if you dont move.

TOOLS:

Addons:
- Grid (Raid Awareness in a cute lil box handed to you by the black jesus) http://www.wowace.com/media/files/45...Grid-r1318.zip

- MoveAnything! (Cause.....it moves anything) http://www.curseforge.com/media/file...veAnything.zip

- Deadly Boss Mods (....................................seriously gota tell you why? It tells you everything about the encounters right off the bat. Get this even if you dont wana play WoW) http://www.curseforge.com/media/file...WotLK-Mods.zip

- CLCRet (Nasty little visual help for our First Come First Serve rotation. Get it. Helps putting your eyes somewhere more important than your action bar) http://www.curseforge.com/media/file...1.3.03.025.zip

- Power Auras (You can make a lil "FREAKING ART OF WAR IS UP" messsage in your screen when art of war procs, similar to Cataclysm implementations on visual procs from talents and spells in general) http://www.curseforge.com/media/file...0.0M_33500.zip

- Pally Power (You know those lil things you got there called Blessings? And how you hate doing it over and over and over again? Aight...get this addon) http://www.curseforge.com/media/file...er-v3.2.20.zip

- Skada ( epeen for your op damagez. You also need this as an additional form of way awareness since you can check other people's performance aswell. You can get Recount if you dont like this one) http://www.wowace.com/media/files/42...ada-1.2-27.zip

- Omen (you dont want to pull from the tank do you? neither do I. This should never happen, but some people other than you can do it, and guess what, you have Hand of Salvation http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=1038 ) http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/omen...t-meter/404746


Macros:
This is how you do stuff fast and efficiently, without dropping your dps.
There are windows of time, of seconds actually, that you have 1 or 2 free GCDs where you only do melee hits. Those are good times, other than the freaking required times, to use your Art of War to heal the tank for example, if you see the healer OOM or healer died and boss is almost dead. To do that you simply do something like this:
/cast [@targettarget,help] Flash of Light
This will cast Flash of Light on your target's target (the boss's target, which is the tank). You dont even need to change targets, you just press that button.


Ok so following this up we have the mixture of both aspects here, addons and macros. This is where Grid and macro conditions play their game.
Grid addon will display , among other important stuff, who has aggro, what health people have, and if they are within X range (default is 40 yards).
So with Grid next to your "viewport" where you can hover your mouse into in a fast and easy way, you can do stuff like this:
/cast [@mouseover,help,exists] Hand of Protection
Useful in PPutricide encounter when people aggro the orange ooze. Same logic applies with a Cleanse macro. Like this:
/cast [@mouseover,help,exists] Cleanse
This macro pressed when your mouse hovers a raid member in your Grid addon, will cast Cleanse on them (this addon also shows dispellable debuffs in the raid).


Taunting:
Yes...taunts. You have taunts. Two of them.
Why taunt? When to taunt?
The aim here is for you to think outside the box, for you to realise there are alternatives sometimes for situations that seem to go downhill into a wipe. But some of this situations can be avoided. And its very advisable to think this way, to be bold and to try out stuff that your guild doesnt expect you to do as "a dps'er".
Two possible favorable situations for taunting:
1) You are Plate wearer, and a caster or mail user aggroes a distant add that the tank cant reach or didnt realise it appeared. This will increase the survavility of the overall raid, since the mob wont hit a clothy or a lower armor wearer, and you will pull the mob from the caster aproximate reach, into the melee zone, which also happens to be the tank zone. This will give the tank a better visual to reach that add and take it from you.
2) Heals are dead/oom, boss is at X% health and tank is in a tight situation.
This situation would be advisable only if played in this terms: X health would be the health achievable by the current speed of the dps, in a way that you know for sure it can be killed by the time it reaches you or significantly reduced by the time you die and it goes back to the tank. In these situations it's also smart to step away from melee reach and run into 40 yards distance to taunt and then grind him your way, away from you in some kind of circular movement, or open angle so the time the boss has to reach you with melee is the longest possible. It could be arguable that using tank weapons to do this is good or not, but in my opinion it isnt in the case of a raid boss. You wont survive, and you will stop dpsing (with your ranged spells) or do lower ranged dps overall, given the fact that you will die either way most likely. So imo its best to give out the best dps you can before you die if you expect to die here by using this tactic.

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Aight , hope this was of help for someone. If you want additional information to be displayed here, or doubts, feel free to post them in the thread.
Cheers.

Additional Resources:
- How to properly "Ret Pve" : http://forum.warmane.com/showthread....ion-PvE-3-3-5a
- All you need known about addons: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread....ns-for-Warmane