Exavier of Executus wrote this guide to explain to Retribution paladins how to deliver proper DPS in raids. Retribution paladins are much maligned these days due to issues such as aggro management and mediocre DPS, but with proper gear and damage delivery, the paladin can prove to be a valuable member in raid.

HOW TO: A guide on Retribution gearing and effective DPS.

18) Talent Build

This is the most PvE-oriented Retribution build you can have.

Divine Strength: This makes every Strength point you have worth 2.2 AP, rather than just 2.0. It’s a small upgrade looking at it that way, but geared correctly you should end up with something around 400 Strength (before the talent, and that’s low-end), meaning this talent is increasing your base AP by (400 / 10)*(2) = 80 AP.
Why not Divine Intellect?: You’ll end up with enough Intellect, you don’t need any more. Also, consider how much Intellect this would actually increase you by, when geared for Ret. This scales directly with your gear.
Redoubt: You can get either this or Devotion Aura. The point is to go up and get Precision.
Precision: This talent is worth the 8 points you’re spending for it. 3% hit chance is about 46-48 Hit
Benediction: Some people think, “well, I’ve already got Sanctified Judgement, what good is this doing me?” Let me show you in terms of Mana/5, spamming max-rank Seal of Command every 8 seconds (as you should be). We’ll see how much it is over a five-minute period.

Without Benediction
(300) / 8 = 37.5 Judgements cast. Seal of Command costs 280 mana.
(280)*(37.5) = 10,500 mana for all those casts. Divide by 2 for your Sanctified Judgement bonus, = 5250 mana.
Now for Judgement mana. This will vary per Paladin (5% base mana), but let’s use mine.
(37.5)*(143) = ~5363, add the Seal cost for the total mana cost, = 5250+5363 = 10,613 mana.
With Benediction
Seal of Command costs 238 mana with it. (238)*(37.5) = 8925 mana. Divide by 2 for S.J., = ~4463 mana.
Judgement costs 124 mana with it. (124)*(37.5) = 4650, + 4463 = 9,113 mana.
(No Benediction) - (Benediction) = 10,613 - 9,113 = 1500 mana saved over 5 minutes.
(1500) / (300 / 5) = 25 mana per five seconds.

Improved Judgement: This is crucial damage over time because you should always be spamming your appropriate damage Judgement.
Improved Seal of the Crusader: A small buff, but not a bad one. This adds (190*1.15) - 190 = ~29 spell damage. It should also be noted that this is multiplicative with the 15% bonus from the tier 4.
Why not Vindication?: Doesn’t work on bosses, doesn’t have much effect on those it works on.

The other talent choices are pretty easy to make, just refer to the spec listed.

Gear Setup
In general, your gear should prioritize in the following manner:

Strength/AP -> Crit Rating/Agility -> Hit Rating -> Everything Else

Why? Some have said that spell damage is the way to go for Retribution, but this is inaccurate. It is impossible to gear up properly in this manner because pieces that are built for spell damage typically have no strength or crit, just spell crit. Because Seal of Command and Seal of Blood are both based off of melee crit, for both the Seal and Judgement, and because melee stats affect every attack you have aside from Judgement (whereas spell damage affects everything but white damage, the latter of which is much more frequent), it’s clear that melee stats are the winner–math shouldn’t be necessary here, but it’s out there somewhere.

The importance of hit chance, though, cannot be stressed enough, and it’s arguably just as important as attacking behind your target. Every attack that you have, Judgement aside, has physical evasion mechanics. As such, you want to attack behind your target because they will be unable to block (which, when they do, means you can’t crit on that attack), and they will be unable to parry. This leaves only dodges and misses remaining. Dodge you can do nothing about, but miss you can. A single miss can cause a significant loss in DPS because of your slow weapon speed, so be sure to get sufficient hit chance.

Seals, Blessings, Judgements, and You

Seals

The Horde have it nice here because Seal of Blood is superior for DPS. This isn’t to say, though, that Command would be bad for DPS, but it does leave the Alliance Retributers at a disadvantage. I’ll spare some more math, and just say it’s about 20% less damage than Blood overall. This previous calculation also takes into account the proper playstyle: pressing your Judgement and Crusader Strike buttons whenever they are up. Your Blessing and Judgement priority will need adjusting to this style of DPS, and that will be determined by the length of the fight.

You should also have a macro that automatically re-casts your Seal once you Judge it, so that you don’t lose a single swing where you could’ve had another SoComm/Blood attack. This is the macro:
/cast Judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Command

Blessings

Your priority should be as follows:

Salvation -> Might/Wisdom -> Kings -> Light

Salvation is always first because, of course, you’re producing a lot of threat. In a raid, Salvation should never, ever be off you.

Might and Wisdom share a priority slot because this is determined by the fight length. In a case where you only have two Paladins present, yourself and another, you’ll want to see how long a fight is before picking what your second Blessing is. A good rule of thumb here is, if the fight is significantly longer than five minutes, go with Wisdom. If it’s at or slightly longer than five minutes, go with Might.

Kings comes third here because the single crit typically provided by Kings is not worth the loss in attack power in comparison to Might. Might wins out for DPS in the end.

Light is listed because you should have it if you can get it. It helps when you have to step back and bring yourself back up.

Judgements

This is a priority that you’ll learn as you raid with Retribution, but the priority between Crusader/Light/Wisdom changes frequently. Usually it’s between Crusader/Wisdom. Much like between Blessing of Might/Wisdom, this is determined by the fight’s length. In a long fight where you either don’t have another Paladin or you may not be able to keep up another Paladin’s Judgement all the time (Gruul is a good example, due to Shatter), Judgement ofWisdom is the superior option. With Judgement ofWisdom up, you may also be able to spam some Consecration every now and again, because the mana gain provided by this and Blessing of Wisdom combined should be positive even while you’re spamming Crusader Strike/Judgement.

Don’t lose heart, Alliance pallies, ’cause you do eventually catch up. Because spell damage affects you ever-so-slightly more, you end up coming close (possibly surpassing in T5+) to the damage dealt by SoB. Sadly, you do not get the mana efficiency, but that often won’t matter if you’re doing well to begin with. Here’s how that looks:

Seal of Command vs. Seal of Blood Revised

I reviewed my math from before, and plugged some of this stuff in, including stuff I had left out before (namely, that SoC gets 29% from purely Holy damage, and the 15% bonus crit on Judgements).

907-1095 damage (this is with Might on), speed 3.6, crit chance 27%
580 bonus spell damage

Seal of Command damage range: 635-767 + ((.2*271=54) + (.29*309=90) = 779-911. Avg: 845.
Seal of Blood damage range: 318-383. Avg: 351.

Judgement of Command range: (228 to 252) + (0.43(580) = 250) = 478-502. Avg: 490
Judgement of Blood range: (331 to 362) + (0.43(580)) = 581-612. Avg: 597

White damage over 5 minutes: (Avg)*(total seconds / weapon speed) = (1001)*(300 / 3.6) = 83,417
Critical white damage: (total damage)*(critical chance / 100) = (83,417k)*(0.27) = 22,523
Total white damage: 22,523 + 83,417 = 105,940

Crusader Strike damage: (300 / 10)*(Avg + (0.4*580)) = 30*(1001 + 232) = 36,990
Critical CS damage: (36,990)*(0.27) = 9,987
Total CS damage: 9,987 + 36,990 = 46,977

Seal of Command damage: (Avg)*(ppm) = (845)*(7*5) = 29,575
Critical SoC damage: (29,575)*(0.27) = 7,985
Total SoC damage: 7,985 + 29,575 = 37,560

Seal of Blood damage: (Avg)*(total seconds / weapon speed) = (351)*(300 / 3.6) = 29,250
Critical SoB damage: (29250)*(0.27) = 7,898
Total SoB damage: 7,898 + 29,250 = 37,148

Judgement of Command damage: (Avg)*(300 / 8)*(1.1) = (490)*(37.5)*(1.1) = 20,213
Critical JoC damage: (20,213)*(0.42) = 8,489
Total JoC damage: 8,489 + 20,213 = 28,702

Judgement of Blood damage: (597)*(37.5) = 22,388
Critical JoB damage: (22,388)*(0.42) = 9,403
Total JoB damage: 9,403+ 22,388 = 31,791

Lets add em up:

Total SoC + JoC damage = 105,940 + 46,977 + 37,560 + 28,702 = 219,179
Total SoB + JoB damage = 105,940 + 46,977 + 37,148 + 31,791 = 221,856

We can see now that, with enough spell damage (and the T4 bonus), SoC is neck and neck with SoB. However, it still doesn’t come with the reduced mana cost, Spiritual Attunement mana, or ease of keeping Vengeance up, so SoB is still the winner for raids, but SoC is eventually about the same damage output. Also keep in mind that the above numbers are before any talent bonuses are applied (Vengeance, Crusade, 2h Weapon Spec., Sanctity Aura and Improved Sanctity Aura). However, it also doesn’t include armor mitigation and physical evasion/resists/glancing blows.

Spell Damage, Attack Power, and You
This is a topic that’s hotly debated around the forums, and I think one or two posts have really gone in-depth to do the math. I’ve done my own version of the SP vs. AP math recently, to show why, exactly, you should take that Scaled piece over the Plate piece. Here’s how it breaks down:

1 AP = 0.28 weapon damage (/3.6 = 0.078 DPS)
= 0.28 Crusader Strike damage (/10sec cooldown = .028)
= .098 SoB damage (/3.6 = 0.0273)
total: 0.078 + 0.028 + 0.0273 = 0.1333
… multiplied by crit chance: 0.1333 x 1.27 = 0.169291 DPS per 1 AP

1 SP = .4 Crusader Strike damage (/10sec cooldown = .04)
… x crit chance = .04 x 1.27 = 0.0508
= .43 JoBlood/Command damage (/8sec cooldown = .05375)
… x crit chance = .05375 x 1.27 = 0.0682625
= 0 Seal of Blood damage
= .2 Seal of Command damage (/~6.7 procs a minute with 3.6 weapon speed = ~0.03)
= 1 Consecration damage (/8sec = .125) (this may be like .05 lower depending on your rank–either way, it’s practically 1 for 1)

total (SOB): 0.0508 + 0.0537 + 0.125 = 0.2295 DPS per 1 SP
total (SOC): 0.2295 + 0.03 = 0.2595 DPS per 1 SP

SOB Ratios: DPS per SP / DPS per AP = 0.2295 / 0.169291 = ~1.36
… … SP is equivalent to about 1.36 AP.
SOC Ratios: DPS per SP / DPS per AP = 0.2595 / 0.169291 = ~1.53
… … SP is equivalent to about 1.53 AP.

So, in sum, when you get the choice between pure melee stats or mostly melee stats and some spell damage/intellect, the spell damage is almost always going to be superior in increasing your damage. This does NOT mean that you gear for spell damage, though. This is for those occasions where you have a choice, namely on pieces like Scaled versus Plate PvP pieces, melee DPS gear versus tier pieces, and maybe Libram and trinket choices as well (though I’d really only recommend Libram of Zeal and Darkmoon Card: Crusade to meet this end).