Retribution Paladin DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents (Legion 7.3.5)

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Last updated on Nov 27, 2017 at 22:16 by Vlad 301 comments

General Information

On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Retribution Paladins in World of Warcraft Legion 7.3.5. We detail what each of the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other pages of our Retribution Paladin guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Reviewers

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Fardion, a top Retribution Paladin. You can follow him on Twitter, and you can also reach him on the official Paladin Discord channel if you have any questions about the spec.

1. Talent Choices

Level	Choices
15	✔ Final Verdict	✘ Execution Sentence	✘ Consecration
30	✘ The Fires of Justice	✘ Zeal	✔ Greater Judgment
45	✔ Fist of Justice	? Repentance	✔ Blinding Light
60	✘ Virtue's Blade	✔ Blade of Wrath	? Divine Hammer
75	? Justicar's Vengeance	✔ Eye for an Eye	✔ Word of Glory
90	✔ Divine Intervention	✔ Cavalier	✔ Judgment of Light
100	✘ Divine Purpose	✔ Crusade	✘ Holy Wrath

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind Icon Tome of the Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind Icon Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✔ Final Verdict

✘ Execution Sentence

✘ Consecration

Final Verdict increases the damage done by Templar's Verdict by 20%, and increases the damage done by Divine Storm by 10%.
Execution Sentence is an active ability with a 20-second cooldown (reduced by Haste). It places a 7-second debuff (also reduced by Haste) on an enemy, which deals a high amount of Holy damage to them when it expires. Aside from this, the debuff does not do anything else.
Consecration is an active ability with a 12-second cooldown. It places an effect on the ground in an area beneath you for 12 seconds, causing all enemies standing in the area to take Holy damage every second.

Currently, Final Verdict Icon Final Verdict is the best choice in this tier, in all situations.

3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✘ The Fires of Justice

✘ Zeal

✔ Greater Judgment

The Fires of Justice reduces the cooldown of Crusader Strike by 1.0 seconds, and gives it a 15% chance to reduce the cost of your next damaging or healing Holy Power ability by 1.
Zeal replaces Crusader Strike. In addition to the normal mechanics of Crusader Strike (which remain unchanged), Zeal deals more damage and also stacks a 12-second buff (also called Zeal) on you each time you use it, up to a maximum of 3 stacks. The buff causes your Zeal attacks to chain to one additional nearby enemy for each Zeal stack you have.
Greater Judgment causes your Judgment to hit 2 additional nearby enemies, and to always be a critical strike when the target is above 50% health.

Against one or two targets, the best talent in this tier is Zeal Icon Zeal. Against 3 or more enemies, you should use Greater Judgment Icon Greater Judgment. Note that if you have the 2-piece Tier 21 Set Bonus, then Greater Judgment is always the best choice.

The Fires of Justice Icon The Fires of Justice has the potential of being a viable choice if you also take the Divine Hammer Icon Divine Hammer tier 4 talent.

4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✔ Fist of Justice

? Repentance

✔ Blinding Light

Fist of Justice causes each Holy Power spent to reduce the remaining cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 2.5 seconds.
Repentance is an active ability with a 15-second cooldown. It is a form of crowd-control that incapacitates the target for up to 1 minute. Damage done will break the effect. Repentance can only be used against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead.
Blinding Light is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown. It disorients all enemies within a 10-yard radius around you, and non-holy damage done to them will break the disorient effect.

The talents in this tier are situational and have no effect on your DPS. You should choose based on your preference or the requirements of the encounter, although we recommend Blinding Light Icon Blinding Light as a reasonable default pick, as its AoE stun is versatile.

5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✘ Virtue's Blade

✔ Blade of Wrath

? Divine Hammer

Virtue's Blade causes Blade of Justice critical strikes to now deal 3 times normal damage (up from 2).
Blade of Wrath passively grants your auto attacks a chance to reset the cooldown of Blade of Justice.
Divine Hammer replaces Blade of Justice. It has a 12-second cooldown, generates 2 Holy Power, and gains AoE properties. Hammers spin around you for 12 seconds, dealing Holy damage to enemies in an 8-yard radius around you immediately, and also placing a DoT on them.

Blade of Wrath Icon Blade of Wrath is currently the best choice in this for single target fights, while Divine Hammer Icon Divine Hammer is the best choice for multiple target fights, as well as for dungeon content. Note that if you have the 2-piece Tier 21 Set Bonus, then Blade of Wrath is always the best choice.

Virtue's Blade Icon Virtue's Blade currently lags behind both other talents.

6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Retribution Paladins

? Justicar's Vengeance

✔ Eye for an Eye

✔ Word of Glory

Justicar's Vengeance is an active ability that has no cooldown (but which costs 5 Holy Power). It deals Holy damage to the target, healing you for the amount of damage done. Against stunned targets, both the damage and healing amounts are doubled.
Eye for an Eye is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown. It lasts 10 seconds, during which time it reduces the Physical damage you take by 35% and causes you to instantly counterattack any enemy that strikes you with a melee attack (dealing Physical damage to them).
Word of Glory is an active ability with 2 charges and a 1-minute recharge time. It heals you and up to 5 friendly targets within 15 yards.

The choice in this tier depends on the content you are attempting.

Eye for an Eye Icon Eye for an Eye is the best choice for raiding, Word of Glory Icon Word of Glory is best for dungeons, while Justicar's Vengeance Icon Justicar's Vengeance is only recommended for solo content (such as questing).

7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✔ Divine Intervention

✔ Cavalier

✔ Judgment of Light

Divine Intervention reduces the cooldown of Divine Shield by 20%. Moreover, any attacks that would normally kill you will instead bring you to 20% of your maximum health and trigger Divine Shield. This latter effect cannot occur if Divine Shield is on cooldown, or if you have the Forbearance debuff.
Cavalier causes your Divine Steed to have 2 charges.
Judgment of Light causes Judgment to apply a debuff with 40 charges to the target, called Judgment of Light. When the target is attacked, the attacker is healed and one charge is consumed.

While the talents in this tier do not directly improve your DPS performance, they can provide you with great benefits.

The main choice is between Cavalier Icon Cavalier and Divine Intervention Icon Divine Intervention, depending on your needs. The movement speed boost from Cavalier can be useful in most encounters, while Divine Intervention allows you to survive mistakes that otherwise would kill you, which can make it hugely beneficial. Overall we recommend Divine Intervention as a default choice, but it is up to you to decide.

That said, Judgment of Light Icon Judgment of Light can also be viable in a raid environment, if you feel the added healing it provides could be useful.

8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Retribution Paladins

✘ Divine Purpose

✔ Crusade

✘ Holy Wrath

Divine Purpose causes your Holy Power-spending abilities to have a 20% chance to make your next ability that costs Holy Power free of cost.
Crusade replaces Avenging Wrath. It increases your damage and haste by 3% for 20 seconds, and each Holy Power spent during Crusade increases your damage and haste by an additional 3%, up to a maximum of 15 stacks (so a 45% increase to both damage and haste).
Holy Wrath is an active ability with a 3-minute cooldown. It damages up to 4 enemies in a 10-yard radius around you, dealing Holy damage equal to 200% of your missing health. Against enemy players (which you should never encounter during PvE), it always deals damage as though you were missing 50% health.

For raiding and Mythic+ dungeons, the best choice in this tier is Crusade Icon Crusade.

Holy Wrath Icon Holy Wrath is a solid alternative, but the problem with it is that you need to be very low on health when you use it for it to deal high damage. In practice, this means that you will have to purposefully get low on health, which can prove extremely dangerous and often fatal during progression raiding. Choosing Divine Intervention Icon Divine Intervention (from the previous tier) can help reduce this risk, but we do not recommend Holy Wrath in general.

Divine Purpose Icon Divine Purpose should only be taken for solo content or world questing.

⋘Spell Summary

Artifact Traits and Relics⋙

9. ChangeLog

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries

27 Nov. 2017: Updated tier 1, 2, and 4 talent discussions slightly.
12 Sep. 2017: Updated tier 1 talent discussion.
07 Sep. 2017: Updated the discussion for The Fires of Justice talent to no longer state that it is never worth taking.
05 Sep. 2017: Added mention of Final Verdict being best against 2 targets if using the Whispers of the Nathrezim cloak and removed an outdated mention of Blinding Light dealing damage.
31 Aug. 2017: Updated tier 1 and 2 talent discussions.
28 Aug. 2017: Updated tier 1 talent choices to reflect that Execution Sentence is best against a single target.
22 Jun. 2017: Made a few updates to account for the fact that the Tier 20 2 and 4-piece Set Bonuses were reversed.
12 Jun. 2017: Updated talent cheatsheet slightly to better reflect the recommendations and made a small tweak to tier 1 talent discussion.
27 Mar. 2017: Changed the evaluation of Judgment of Light following its buff in Patch 7.2.
31 Jan. 2017: Added a mention that Final Verdict is only slightly behind Execution Sentence on pure single target and that simming your character is recommended.
24 Jan. 2017: Updated Crusade description to account for hotfix.
11 Jan. 2017: Added talent tree cheatsheet.
10 Jan. 2017: Further updated some evaluations.
10 Jan. 2017: Updated talent descriptions for Patch 7.1.5 and made some tweaks to talent evaluations.
20 Nov. 2016: Fixed a typo.
31 Oct. 2016: Improved the Blade of Wrath section.
28 Oct. 2016: Reworked the tier 4 talent discussion.
25 Oct. 2016: Updated Blade of Wrath and Holy Wrath descriptions to account for Patch 7.1 changes.
22 Oct. 2016: Updated the Virtue's Blade discussion slightly.
16 Oct. 2016: Updated tier 7 talent discussion.
12 Oct. 2016: Updated tier 4 talent (Virtue's Blade) evaluation.
29 Sep. 2016: Updated tier 1 and 5 talent discussions (to reflect that Consecration and Justicar's Vengeance are no longer worth taking for raiding).
15 Sep. 2016: Updated tier 1 talent descriptions to revisit the value of Execution Sentence.
29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
04 Aug. 2016: Added Cavalier talent in place of Divine Steed.
30 Jul. 2016: Added a mention that Crusade is the best tier 7 choice for encounters that last less than 1 minute.
21 Jul. 2016: Added a mention that Consecration is worth taking against Shadow-Lord Iskar and Mannoroth.
20 Jul. 2016: Made Blinding Light the best tier 3 talent.
19 Jul. 2016: Updated various talent discussions, most notably placing Blade of Wrath, Justicar's Vengeance, and Divine Purpose as the best talent choices in their respective tiers.
18 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.