Welcome to Retribution Paladin guide, updated for Shadowlands Launch! This guide will teach you to master playing Retribution Paladin in all aspects of the game, helping you to deal optimal DPS in Mythic+ dungeons.

Throughout this guide, we will cover many different aspects to increase your Retribution Paladin expertise, including concepts like Retribution Paladin talents and strengths, Retribution Paladin stat priorities, among many other aspects of your class and specialization. Make sure to navigate to additional pages of the Retribution Paladin guide to find more in-depth information on topics such as Covenants, Mythic+ and PvP

Racials are incredibly close for Retribution. You shouldn't feel pressured to pick the race with the "best" output. The differences are small and can change depending on your gear or situation. However, if you want to pick your race purely based on their damage output, then the best Alliance races are Human, Dark Iron Dwarf, and Draenei, with the best one depending on your gear level. Lightforged Draenei is the best Alliance race in AoE situations. For Horde, all three races that can be Paladins will effectively contribute the same damage from their racial abilities. The Blood Elf racial bonus has multiple effects. The primary use for this ability is that it removes 1 beneficial effect from all enemies in range. This is great for removing abilities such as Blessing of Protection from Paladins or Soul of the Forest from Restoration Druids. It can also be used versus players using the The Crucible of Flame Major Essence to remove the stacks it creates. The other effect is that it restores resources based on what specialization you are.

Ret Paladins buff their allies with their Auras and Blessings, and can find value in their utility in both PvE and PvP situations. Provides strong burst damage in both single target and AoE situations. Retribution has many viable talent combinations making gameplay variable and customizable. Retribution's biggest weakness is its mobility. Divine Steed is decent, but outside of that there are very few mobilityoptions for Ret.

Shadowlands Changes for Retribution Paladin

• Devotion Aura - Grants a small damage reduction. Probably the most valuable aura for a raid as a whole.
• Crusader Aura - Increases mounted speed. Notably also increases the speed of Divine Steed
• Retribution Aura - Rather than being a raid-wide buff like the other auras, the Paladin using the aura gains Avenging Wrath if an ally dies within range.
• Concentration Aura - Reduces the duration of silence effects for allies.

Macros are simple, in-game tools which allow you to sequence spells together, create custom names and icons, cast different abilities depending on whether the target is friendly or hostile, define targeting conditions, and much, much more. While the amount of options can be complex, making them is easy, so in this section we'll go over how to set them up yourself.

• To open the in-game Macro interface, type "/macro" or "/m".
• Choose between the General and Character-specific macro tabs. Then click the "New" button on the macro window.
• Choose a Name and an Icon so you can easily recognize your macro, then click "Okay."
• Select your new macro and use the text editor below to tell it what to do. If copying ours below, you can simply copy/paste the text in.
• Click the "Save" button, and drag your macro icon onto your bars, which will allow it to be used just like any other spell from your spellbook.
• To close the window, click "Exit", or just press Escape.

For more information on creating macros, including full lists of conditionals, modifiers, and other command customizations you can use, check out our full Macros guide.

Macros can often help make your life a bit easier when playing in a variety of situations. Here's some examples of how they can be used with Retribution abilities.

You can use conditional macros to keep Seraphim and Holy Avenger on the same key bind without having to replace the spell whenever you swap talents.

Use Holy Avenger or Seraphim when talented:

#showtooltip
/cast [talent:5/2] Holy Avenger
/cast [talent:5/3] Seraphim

If you need to interrupt one target while focusing damage on another, you can set it as your focus target and use this macro to interrupt it without having to manually swap targets to do so.

Casts Rebuke on your focus, or on your target if you have no focus target:

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead] [] Rebuke

Using [@<player name here>], [@targetoftarget] and similar modifiers can help you use your utility more easily if they're always going to be used on a specific player or role. Target of target macros can be useful for assisting your tanks.

Places Blessing of Freedom on a set raid member:

/cast [@NAMEOFPLAYER] Blessing of Freedom

Uses Lay on Hands on your target's target:

/cast [@targettarget] Lay on Hands

Instead of having to target the location of Final Reckoning every time you cast it, you can have it automatically cast either on your character or at your cursor.

Casts Final Reckoning on top of your character:

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Final Reckoning

Casts Final Reckoning at your mouse cursor:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Final Reckoning

The same macros will work for other targeted effects like Ashen Hallow , just swap out the spell names.

Mythic+ is a special type of dungeon mode in World of Warcraft, offering players an endlessly-scaling challenge. This page is meant to help optimize your Retribution Paladin in Mythic+ content by highlighting the best Retribution Paladin gear, best Retribution Paladin talent builds, and the best rotations to help you succeed inthese challenging dungeons, as well as Retribution specific tips and tricks both for individual dungeons and the Shadowlands Season 1 Prideful Affix in Shadowlands Launch.

Learn more about these systems in the Prideful Affix and Mythic+ Guides.

What is Mythic+?

Mythic+ is a special type of dungeon mode in Shadowlands, offering players an endlessly-scaling challenge. High-end PvE players will want to clear a Mythic 14 dungeon every week to receive the best possible loot from the Great Vault, awarding ilvl 226 gear and some Anima. Individual runs reward the group with one piece of loot, based on the difficulty ran, up to item level 210.

How to find Groups as a Retribution Paladin

Retribution isn’t usually one of the top “meta” specializations, so you may find it slightly more difficult to find groups than some other melee specs due to its community perception. However, you can absolutely perform well in Mythic+ as Retribution at a high level if you put the time and effort into it.

One of the best ways to prove your value to your group is through active use of your utility tools. If you’re trying to dispel abilities that the healer can’t, stunning and interrupting casts whenever you can, and using your many blessings and healing abilities to help keep the group alive, then people are likely to notice and want to play with you again. Other than that, be aware of enemy’s threat levels and give the tank a few seconds at the start of a pull before you use Avenging Wrath, or be ready to Blessing of Protection yourself to drop threat otherwise. A dead Paladin doesn’t do any damage, and tanks will be less likely to want to run dungeons with you if you frequently die due to pulling threat.

Our Retribution Paladin guides are always updated with the latest information from in-game experience, simulations, and logs; make sure to check our changelog to this page, by clicking on View Changelog at the top of the page. If you are interested in more in-depth Retribution Paladin guides for Shadowlands Launch, make sure to browse the Navigation Bar below, and our list of Related Guides just beneath the Table of Contents.

Shadowlands Retribution Paladin is a more complete and wholesome version of Retribution than what we've had for the past few expansions. We can build this specialization to be a top contender in Battleground team fights, 1v1's, World PvP, and Arena.

It's a great expansion to be a Ret Pally! They are easy to pickup and play as always but also feature an enormous skill ceiling with certain builds.

Your role in Arena as Retribution will be to deal burst damage and making the most of your Hammer of Justice by coordinating with your team to help land more CC or set up a swap, and to counter-play your opponents with your utility and off-healing.

Retribution is viable all the way up to Rank 1 ratings right now and has a place in the meta as long as it's a fast meta. The class requires a high amount of awareness to succeed at the highest end but it is very easy to start out with and to deal damage.

Retribution Paladin changes in Shadowlands

• Execution Sentence Initial damage is nerfed by 31%
• Divine Purpose Damage increase is nerfed by 35%
• Righteous Verdict Damage increase is nerfed by 33%
• Healing Hands Healing increase is nerfed by 30%
• Final Reckoning Damage increase is nerfed by 20%
• Ringing Clarity Procs are nerfed to a maximum of 2
• Divine Toll Damage is nerfed by 25%

What Aura should I use?

If you're the only Paladin in your group or raid, you should always use Devotion Aura as your aura. If somebody else already has it covered, either Crusader Aura can help your Divine Steed speed, or Retribution Aura can provide a damage increase if an ally dies.

How do I do more Damage?

There's a lot of things that could potentially affect your damage when playing Retribution. The Rotation Guide will cover the optimal way to play, but here's some common mistakes you could be making:

• Wasting Holy Power by using abilities that generate it while you already have 5 Holy Power.
• Not using your Holy Power builders on cooldown, losing potential Holy Power over an encounter.
• Similarly, prioritizing spending Holy Power instead of generating it. You should almost always focus on the optimal way to generate Holy Power and spend during downtime between their cooldowns.
• Holding cooldowns like Avenging Wrath or Wake of Ashes for too long, losing potential casts.
• Poor positioning or wasting Divine Steed, resulting in low uptime on the boss.

Why isn't this Stat good? or, Why don't we use Stat Weights?

Retribution has a very complicated relationship with secondary stats. Although common wisdom is often espoused that "Haste is the best", "You should stack Mastery", in reality there's almost never a situation where you want to stack only one stat. This is reinforced with the new diminishing returns for secondary stats in Shadowlands, where the more rating you get of one stat the less value each additional point provides. In the end you're going to want a healthy mix of secondaries, which may end up biased slightly towards one stat over another, but will never end up only being something like "Haste/Crit".

What Covenant do I Pick?

The Covenant Guide covers all of the pros and cons for each Covenant. However, if you're really unsure about what the best option to pick is, just choose one you enjoy playing with. None of them do much more damage than the other options, and at the end of the day you'll enjoy the game more playing with a Covenant that you like over another one that's a small damage increase.