Paladins as DPS

From WoWWiki

Contents 1 Paladin DPS Abilities 2 Paladin DPS Rotation 3 Weapon Selection 4 Melee Stats 5 Base Stats 6 Spell Damage Controversy

Paladin DPS Abilities

• Sanctity Aura: Increases all holy damage done by 10%. The main Retribution DPS Aura and should be used as much as possible. The Improved Sanctity Aura talent also increases all damage caused by allies affected Sanctity Aura by 1/2%.
• Judgement of the Crusader: Increases holy damage taken by the judged target. With 3 points in Improved Seal of the Crusader this judgement will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks and spells made against the target by 3%.
• Seal of Command: Gives your melee attacks a chance to deal a large amount of holy damage. The main damage seal for most Retribution paladins. Judgement of Command is also the main damage nuke for Retribution Paladins.
• Seal of Blood: A horde specific DPS seal that causes your attacks to extra holy damage proportional to your weapon damage, but also causes minor backlash damage. In a raid situation Seal of Blood is generally more effective than Seal of Command.
• Crusader Strike: An instant melee attack that refreshes all Judgements on the target. This attack refreshes the Judgement of any Paladin, so it allows one Retribution Paladin to keep up multiple judgements at once.
• Consecration: Deals Holy damage to all enemies in a small area over 8 seconds. In most situations of limited use due to mana constraints, this spell does add a large amount of damage per second as well as providing an Area of Effect attack for the Paladin.
• Exorcism: A large damage nuke against demon and undead targets on a long cooldown.
• Hammer of Wrath: A ranged finishing move for a heavy mana investment. Resets your swing timer.

Paladin DPS Rotation

• 1. Improved Sanctity Aura
• 2. Judgement of the Crusader
• 3. Seal of Command/Seal of Blood
• 4. Crusader Strike
• 5. Consecration (If mana allows)
• 6. Exorcism (If target is Demon or Undead)
• 7. Continue using Crusader Strike and Judgement of Command/Judgement of Blood

Weapon Selection

• A slow 2-handed weapon is usually a Paladin's primary weapon. This will increase the chance for Seal of Command to proc on each swing and cause the procs to deal more damage.
• Due to the nature of Seal of Command and Crusader Strike, a slower weapon with a high top end damage will nearly always be superior to a faster weapon with a lower damage range.
• A 1-handed weapon can be used to push back an opponent's cast in PvP situations but will lower your DPS significantly.

Melee Stats

• Your melee hit rating base should be 142, or 95 (9%) with precision (which requires 8 points in to protection) against level 73 (boss) and higher enemies. You will deal more damage by being able to hit the boss 99% of the time versus hitting him 90% of the time. For equal leveled players in PvP only 79 total hit rating (5%) is required to be hit capped.
• Attack Power (typically from Strength) is your primary DPS stat.
• Your melee critical strike chance needs to be at least 25% to maintain Vengeance stacks nearly all the time. After that point critical strike rating is not as much of an increase to personal DPS as straight Attack Power.

Base Stats

• Strength: 5 points in Divine Strength in holy gives 2.2 AP per 1 point of strength, making this your most important DPS stat.
• Melee Crit: Critical strike rating increases the chances of applying and keeping Vengeance stacks (increasing all damage, obviously, by 15%). Pure critical rating will be easier with itemization, since 22 critical strike rating provides 1% critical chance in comparison to 25 agility. Melee critical strike chance is not as much of a pure damage increase as Attack Power. Many high end raiding Retribution Paladins will will only have enough critical strike chance to become "capped" (enough to maintain 3 stacks of Vengeance through an entire boss fight) and then simply stack additional Attack Power.
• Intellect: Though not a primary stat, Intellect increases the Paladin's mana pool, allowing for more longevity and the ability to use high cost spells such as Consecration and Exorcism.*
• Spell Damage: The contribution of spell damage to Paladin DPS is smaller than Attack Power, but does scale reasonably well with some Retribution abilities, particulary Seal of Command, Judgement of Command, and Exorcism. Horde Paladins (ie Blood Elves) have little to no use for Spell Damage, since Seal of Blood scales purely with melee stats and does more continual dps than Seal of Command. It is better to avoid this stat in most cases, but it isn't detrimental to have some.

Spell Damage Controversy

The usefulness of Spell Damage for Retribution Paladins has long been debated. While most Retribution attacks and abilities do scale with spell damage, typically they see more of an increase with additional Attack Power instead of Spell Damage. Before patch 2.3 most Retribution Paladin gear had both Strength (Attack Power) and Spell Damage on it, which can result in "watered down" stats, since both are relatively expensive stats in the item budget.

A major change in itemization occured in Patch 2.3 when the Arena Season 3 sets were released. The Retribution set no longer has any spell damage, with all the stat points reinvested in Strength. In patch 2.3.2 Crusader Strike was changed to cause 110% of weapon damage from it and no longer gains any bonus from spell damage[[1]], further lowering the value of the stat.

Among the changes in Patch 2.4 was a complete overhaul of the existing Retribution itemization. Nearly every piece of Retribution armor had its Spell Damage removed and replaced with Strength and (to a much lesser extent) Critical Strike rating.

Talent tree previews for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion show new talents aimed at providing Retribution paladins spell power via talents which translate a portion of attack power into spell power (in addition to AP, not replacing it).