1400

My 2v2 team broke 1400 last week.  I know this may not seem like a big achievement to hard core arena junkies but for a retribution paladin and shadow priest that hadn't teamed up together until cataclysm it has been an uphill battle.  Both classes offer a large amount of support abilities in exchange for dps.  With this latest patch we both got dps increases.  With that and getting more familiar with what my partner needs and when we have both been able to raise our game up a notch.

One bit of advice that I have for folks is at the start of the match as you run to your starting position is to change your aura to match who you are fighting.  Your resistance aura may not help you if that shadow priest has stacked spell pen but, I guarantee that devotion aura is going to do anything to lower the damage he does.  My recommendation would be if there is one person that does physical damage the use devotion aura.  The reason being that devotion aura always lowers physical damage where as resistance aura only lowers damage if the opponent doesn't have spell pen.  Retribution aura is pretty much useless and concentration aura is geared more towards healers (which may help out your partner sometimes but, generally not) not retribution paladins.

I just read the patch notes and all I have to say in this post is what the hell?  More later.

Progress

It's been a couple weeks since my last post and Blizzard has implemented quite a few changes to the Retribution Paladin with the latest patch.  With all the changes I decided to change up my spec a bit.  I went with a more PvP spec and added the support talents.  This has done a couple of things for me:
1. I can throw heals to my partner and they hit harder, have chance to not use Holy Power and give me a buff if I use WoG.  (Due to Divinity, Eternal Glory and Selfless Healer)
2. I can heal my self and the heals hit harder and have chance to not use Holy Power.
3. My HoJ has a shorter cool-down.  (Due to Improved Hammer of Justice)

Also I have gotten a couple upgrades to my PvP kit:
1. Pants
2. Shoulders
Upgrades in PvP always mean more damage (if your a damage dealer) and more survivability.

With our new Mastery the added damage was significant.  Against a training dummy in my PvP gear I saw a 30% increase.  This was with the same gear, the same rotation and reforging into mastery and out of crit/haste.

The Sacred Shield addition was a definite gain to our survivability.  How can you complain about a ~25K shield every 30 seconds while below 30% health?

Now lets talk about the Crusader Strike nerf.  I know what your thinking they buffed the damage output of it.  This is true.  But, the main reason CS is one of our top priority abilities is not for its damage.  It is now our only source of Holy Power.  Before the patch CS awarded holy power on cast.  Now it awards on hit.  The difference is that since the majority of PvP players ignore expertise when we face someone who has a ton of dodge we a don't land many of our CS's.  If we don't land a lot of our CS's we get less Holy Power.  No Holy Power no WoG and no TV's.  One of the blue posters on the official forums tried to say that this was a bug fix.  This is not the case.  Ghostcrawler stated specifically that CS generating HoPo on cast was by design.  For raiding retribution paladins this should not cause much issue since they are usually expertise soft capped.  The main problem is the delays we will be seeing from the slowing of holy power generation.  For other classes that have attacks that do not land the resource that was used is refunded (at least partially refunded).  Since the resource that retribution and protection paladins use is cool downs then my recomendation would be to reset the cooldown on the CS.  My personal opinion is that this was a serious nerf.

All in all I feel the patch was a net gain for retribution paladins.  Definitely could have been better without the CS nerf but we can't have everything.

Quick Update

Not much to talk about.  So far I am still getting used to the new rotation.  I do ok in PvE.  In PvP it is still ok when the enemies are not dispelling.  As soon as they realize that they can dispell most of my offensive power I am done for.  One thing I am noticing is that the alliance in my battlegroup don't PvP much.  So, I get to sit in queue for 30 to 45 minutes waiting for random bg's.

A friend of mine asked me about the ret PvE rotation such as it is.  Being that most fights in PvE haven't been lasting for more 30 seconds I have dropped off Zealotry due to lack of usefulness.  Then I evaluated the differences between my PvP and PvE specs and realized they were close enough to not warrant using both my specs for ret.  As for the rotation, CS,  filler (judge, exo if art of war, HoW if under 20%, HW), repeat until 3 HoPo or HoL procs then TV.  This is pre cata since we don't have inq yet.

Spell Rotations

Since paladins are a first come first served rotation DPS class, I have a priority of casting as I am sure most of us do. With global cooldowns at 1.5 seconds it is very important to cast the best spell you can cast as soon as you can cast it. Basically I start at the top and cast the first spell that is off c/d and meets the special requirement in parentheses. to arrive at these rotations i did a lot of reading and practicing. There are different circumstances which vary what I do but here are the basics.

Elite pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Avenging Wrath (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Trinket (tank has agro locked in and mob will be there for 10 seconds)
Judgment of Wisdom
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Consecrate

Non-elite AoE pulls (instance)-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Solo small group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Judgment of Wisdom
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Consecrate
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Solo large group pulls-
Divine Plea (mana is less that 90% and not wearing my wings)
Holy Wrath (there are undead or demons around me)
Consecrate
Divine Storm
Judgment of Wisdom
Crusader Strike
Exorcism (target is undead or demon)
Hammer of Wrath (mob is 20% or less)

Single non-elite (not prefered)-
Judgment of Wisdom
Divine Storm
Crusader Strike
they should be dead