Return of Heroic Old Hillsbrad

It’s not quite so bad as I once thought.

The most difficult part of this instance is probably the differences between it and it in non-heroic mode.  Namely, the patrols around the prison camp area.  These consist of one Rifleman and one stealth-detecting hound that, upon being engaged, will spawn an additional two melee mobs.  The hound can be CC’d normally, but neither the Rifleman nor the spawned guardsmen can.

To exacerbate the potential difficulty those provide, they respawn in about 10-15 minutes.

In contrast, these patrols in normal mode do not spawn additional mobs, nor do they respawn at all (excepting the possible 2-hour “you’re taking too long!” respawn timer imposed on many instances).  They are also in different places.

So, to beat this instance!

Fly in as normal.  Clear the first guard outside, and the mobs under the two towers to either side of the entrance.  Clear the mobs guarding both sides of the bridge, and make your way to the stairs that take you to the prison camp area.

There is one patrol up here.  Take it out.  CC the dog (hibernate or polymorph) if you can.  No dps until your tank picks up all three of the other mobs (or all 4 if you don’t have cc for the dog).  Once all these mobs are down, you are on a timer.

Your next objective:  clear the 3 houses.  Pull them up the stairs to where you cleared the first patrol.  We killed the warder in each house first, CCing whatever else we could, with a priority on keeping the riflement CC’d as much as possible.  Note that the warders can dispel CC.  I wouldn’t recommend using sap…sheeps and traps preferable.  (Alternatively, the mobs don’t hit very hard, a prot paladin could likely hold all of them easily.  We had a druid.)

Don’t bother with the bombs just yet.  Once all three houses are down, wait for one patrol to walk by and pull it up the stairs, using the same method as above to kill em all.  Then, descend into the pit and get the other patrol.  You are now out of the way of the first timer and on a new one, that of the patrols down in the pit.  Take care of the bombs now, and then go under the bridge and get the final two houses.  Once all of the bombs are set, the houses will be ablaze, and the patrols are now irrelevant. 

Go take care of the first boss.  When he descends into the pit with you.  Other than hitting really hard, he’s something of a pushover.  Have ranged people not stand near each other, as when he leaves the tank during fear he will likely go attack someone else and whirlwind near them, potentially destroying multiple people at once.  So yeah, spread out.  Try to have a good way to deal with fears ready.

After that the instance is much the same as normal, except that Thrall seems stupider about breaking CC.

The final boss event is tough, however.  Being dragonkin, unless you have a druid, cc on them will be rough at best, given Thrall’s anti-hunter-trap nature.  Try to have your tank stand closest to where the mobs will be spawning as their initial aggro seems based on proximity.  Kill the caster mobs first, followed then by the melee mobs one-by-one.  This is tough, because the mobs will apply a debuff which increases damage taken and healing received by 50%…an effect you’d think would even itself out but doesn’t at all given the amount of damage that can be spread around here.

Something that we’d found helps is to let Thrall tank a mob.  He’s got enough health to survive a fairly decent beating, and can hold his own against one mob just fine.

The final boss himself isn’t a big deal.  Purge/dispel/steal his buff that eats your group’s buffs and beat him down normally.

Lastly, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Icy Veins + Bloodlust is freakin’ amazing.  Thank goodness for Salvation.

The Shatner Class

I’ve kind of been ignoring my rest bonus monitor lately and just leveling my shaman. I did enough BGs at 39 to pick up some items, ran SM quite a few times for some mail upgrades, and then made the plunge.

This may be my second shaman leveled as enhancement to reach 40, but this one just seems more powerful somehow. There’ve only been minor changes to the shaman class since I deleted that last character, though, so I don’t really know how to explain it. Maybe it’s just after going through the pain of the first 39 levels again that made me appreciate Stormstrike and dual-wielding that much more.

Anyway she’s 47 now, and it’s a lot of fun. Leveling through the first 39 really reminded me of leveling a Ret paladin, especially once you get Windfury. Sometimes you just completely destroy something within one or two seconds…the rest of the time it’s just auto-attacking and waiting for the mob to die of boredom. Much like using Seal of Command.

Stormstrike and dual-wield (get them in that order, by the way, as dual-wielding without Stormstrike is almost more boring than using a two-hander) make things instantly more exciting. Of course, you run into ruts where you don’t crit or windfury doesn’t proc, but those are all part of the RNG anyway, can’t control that. And you still get Stormstrike and Shocks.

My own personal observations and tips for a soloing enhancement shaman:

* Stormstrike whenever it’s up. Open with Stormstrike. Get that +nature damage debuff on there.

Stormstrike isn’t a major source of damage by itself. It’s the damage debuff that really allows this to shine. +20% damage to Lightning Shield and Earth Shock make both abilities much more mana efficient (and, of course, painful). Checking out the damage meter after a couple hours of soloing, it looked something like:

1) Melee
2) Windfury
3) Lightning Shield
4) Earth Shock
5) Stormstrike
6) Flame Shock
7) Firebolt+
8) Frost Shock

+Proc from the Galgan’s Firehammers I was using.

* Keep Lightning Shield up. The damage may not seem like much, but with 3/3 Improved, and Stormstrike active, it’s a significant and fairly mana efficient source of damage. If only it could crit…

* Try not to use a Shock unless your Focused buff is active. A 60% mana cost reduction is very, very helpful. This may become less important once you get the mana-returning Shamanistic Rage talent, but I have yet to get there myself. Stormstrike, Lightning Shield, and auto attack should be sufficient to kill most mobs.

However, when you do crit, and Focus is active…use Earth Shock if the Stormstrike debuff is up. Otherwise, I’d wait until it is. Alternatively, if the mob is a runner, save that mana cost reduction for a Frost Shock. Also, if you crit on one of the final attacks on a mob, save the buff for the next mob, and pull with Flame Shock. Flame Shock is actually the most mana efficient shock, because it’s largely a DoT. However, if you’ve been beating on a mob for a while, the DoT component is likely not to have enough time to do a lot of its work, and that’s wasted mana, reduced from critting or not.

* Itemization for you isn’t very good, but there are some decent items available. Right at 40, various pieces of the Scarlet Chain set are useable and quite good for shaman. The legs in particular. The Gauntlets of Divinity from Mograine and the Raging Berserker’s Helm from Herod are also quite excellent. Herod’s Shoulder is all right, but is heftily weighted with stamina and not much in the dps department. Run through Uldaman for the Rockshard Pauldrons from the Ancient Stone Keeper if you can.

As well, farming honor and marks for the items available from BG vendors is a very good source of gear. The necklace, ring, and (epic!) bracers from WSG, and the boots and belt from AB are very good for their level.

Most difficult though is weaponry. I ended up using two of Galgan’s Firehammers from Uldaman (because two dropped, and they weren’t unique), but outside of that your best bet is the Auction House. There you find Heaven’s Light (I think it’s got +5 to all stats), Wurt’s Third Leg (a str/stam mace), and an axe I can’t remember the name of (that also has str/stam). The axe isn’t very good because it’s fast and a main-hand item. But they’re all usually there (at least on Skywall) if you’ve got the money for them.

* You’re not 70 yet. Don’t stress about enchants or optimizing your stats. A lot of this gear will be replaced in 10 or so levels. Unless of course you’re aiming to twink yourself (but I’ll leave that to you). I hear enhancement is a very powerful spec at 49, capable of some insane burst damage.

Granted, it was capable of it in the 30s bracket as well, but it was sporadic at best. When gearing for 40 at 39, I ended up running up to a twink flag carrier in WSG, surrounded by about 4 to 6 other alliance. A fight had pretty much just ended between that group and some other horde, but the carrier was the only healer and was aiming to move up the ramp instead of med up, at about half health. I get to her, and bam! Windfury proc, all three attacks crit, dead carrier. I picked my flag-clicking skills back up right away as I was far from alone…and returned it! I didn’t make it far after that though XD

* Unless you’re in a hurry, you might want to consider not using Shocks at all (with the exception of using Frost Shock to avoid runners bringing adds). Stuff will still die. I would also not recommend dropping totems unless you’re able to find a spot where you can do multiple pulls, dragging them all back to your totem town.

If you do end up using them, I’d recommend Strength, Agility, and Mana or Health Stream. Searing as well if something needs more damage done to it. And try to make sure you use Totemic Recall before they fade out (most have a 2-minute duration), it’ll save you quite a bit on the mana end.

* Bring plenty of water with you. Reaching level 50 might make this unnecessary if you plan on picking up Shamanistic Rage, but in my experience your mana goes down pretty quick. This might be obvious, but you’d almost think that as a melee class, you wouldn’t need mana so much. Fat chance :P

Hope this helped, or was at least an interesting read :)

/edit: Oh also, levels 38-42 are primetime to run through Dustwallow Marsh. Lots and lots of quests there now, all with minimal running about. much more entertaining than STV.

Pre Kara Healing Shoulders

Healing Gear Guide posts:
Helms
Shoulders
Legs
Gems

Healing shoulders for paladins are a difficult sort to locate before you are able to obtain an epic replacement. In Karazhan, your upgrade option are the [Pauldrons of the Justice-Seeker], or you can hope High King Maulgar will drop your tier 4 token for the [Justicar Pauldrons]. Consider the [Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards] if you see them drop (from Curator, in Karazhan) as well. Both plate items are entrenched a bit deep in progression, so you may end up having to “settle” for something a tad low.

Shoulders: Enchant –
[Inscription of Faith] or [Greater Inscription of Faith] for Aldor
[Inscription of the Oracle] or [Greater Inscription of the Oracle] for Scryers
1) [Pauldrons of Surging Mana] – While not exactly ideal due to its lack of an intrinsic bonus to healing spells, it does include intellect and a very hefty bit of mana per 5. Make up the loss to healing on a different piece of gear. Look for these in the Auction House; they’re Bind on Equip.
2) [Vestia's Pauldron's of Inner Grace] – I don’t like recommending cloth, but this is a nice item for paladins. It lacks the +spirit that makes most cloth items unfavorable. Take the armor loss if you’re wearing worse and see it drop, just don’t get hit too much ;) They can be found as one of the available loots in the Cache of the Legion, in Mechanar.
3) [Truth Bearer Shoulderguards] – Not technically a healing item, but those two red gem slots look mighty tasty…fill em with some +healing gems and suddenly they are a healing item, and not a bad one at that. They drop from the third boss in Underbog, the crazy Broken hunter guy I can’t remember the name of (Mooshgarglebar or something), and can be worn as early as level 63.
4) [Justice Bearer's Pauldrons] – Unfortunately a drop in Heroic Ramparts from Omor the Unscarred, these shoulders are the best pre-Kara healing shoulders for paladins. They are down this far on the list due to the difficulty in acquiring them, but they do look awesome, as one of the many Judgement reskins.
5) [A green item]. Find a level 68+ set of plate shoulders with one of the following suffixes: Physician, Invoker, Sorcerer. If you’re set to steamroll your way through Kara, I wouldn’t even bother with the enchant on these (unless you’ve got a lot of Holy Dust or Arcane Runes sitting around (the Scryer ones are called Arcane Runes, right?)).

Retribution Guide

I’m getting a number of hits from searches looking for a Retribution Guide, so I figure I’ll help out…by showing you where to go!

Here is my brief overview of Ret itemization. I skim over it basically, noting what is important, but not much of why. I also do not get into technique, ability rotations, or actual pieces of gear you can use.

Over at Blessing of Kings, Rohan wrote this guide in response to an email he received. The comments are good reading as well.

Also, just about every one of Retnoob’s posts that I’ve read have been informative.

Finally, wowPaladin.org is another website for all things paladin, and includes discussion about Retribution.

A summary:

1) Get hit capped.
2) Get to 25% crit.
3) Stack Strength.

You will end up vying for gear against dps warriors (plate with strength/crit), as is to be expected, as their itemization is very similar.

If anyone has any links they’d like to add, please let me know in the comments!

Update…

So I had a really slow day at work today, and pulled up a spreadsheet to do some calculations. It would seem my recommended stats for Holy paladins is a bit off. However, I found that there are no universals. Sometimes you need to heal for longer periods of time, sometimes you need bigger burst heals to keep people alive through large amounts of damage. Overall of course I recommend balance, but with weight in certain areas. I will update my guide when I get time.

Consumables

Potions, food buffs, enchanting oils, and elixirs…

…oh my?

I’m going to start off by saying that the consumable I most advocate is the potion. And as a healer, one particularly of the mana variety. Your staple is the Super mana potion, which restores 1800 to 3000 mana when you drink it, and sets off the potion cooldown timer of 2 minutes.

However, these are fairly expensive. Probably about 3-5 gold apiece. So, an easy pair of alternatives are the Unstable Mana Potion and the old-world equivalent, the Major Mana Potion. I don’t remember how much mana they restore right now, suffice it to say it is a little less. However, on my server they are 1-2 gold apiece, a much better deal for not so big a loss in mana gained.

However, I have recently learned of these “Fel Mana Potions”…they restore a whole bunch of mana over a duration, but reduce your healing and spell damage by a small amount over that time. Let me go find those numbers real quick.

*jeopardy music*

And back! They restore 3200 mana over 24 seconds, but also reduce your spell damage by 25 and your healing by 50 for 15 minutes.

I don’t know what to think of those. 50 +healing isn’t that much, but for 15 minutes? That’s a lot of healing out the window for something that restores mana over time. I haven’t actually gotten to try one of these yet, but I hear they’re great for hunters! (Spell damage and healing reduction? They don’t care!)

I’ll stick with my regular mana potions for now.

As for other consumables!

I like food buffs. They’re pretty cheap, but kind of rare. I get the idea no one is leveling cooking. As a healer, I’m fond of the Fish Sticks…they increase healing done by 44 and spirit by 20.

As for enchanting oils, your mainstay as a healer are the oils of the mana variety. They increase your healing done and also come with an mp5 boost. Very nice.

Elixirs are the biggest (and generally most expensive) buffs. They come in two kinds: battle and guardian. You can only have one of each type on at once. Again, as a healer, my favorite is the “Elixir of Healing Power,” a one-hour duration drink that increases healing done by 60. After that, I like the “Adept’s Elixir,” one which increases spell damage by 24 and spell critical rating by the same amount. Better for paladins than other healers of course.

There’s another “kind” of elixir I suppose, which is the Flask. The most expensive consumable type there is, these are two-hour duration buffs which persist through death, and you can only have one on at once. There’s the Flask of Distilled Wisdom which increases your maximum mana by some 2000 or so. Then there’s the Flasks up in Blade’s Edge Mountains which only work in that zone and Gruul’s Lair. There’s many varieties of these, based around the item suffixes you see on greens and some blues. There’s Beast, Bandit, Sorcerer, and undoubtedly others. I don’t generally head up there on my paladin to obtain these flasks, but the sorcerer one increases intellect, spell damage, and stamina I believe. It’s a nice one.

In my opinion, consumable buffs are ideal for when you’re about to down new content. If you’ve almost got the boss, get some consumables for that little extra kick. Then ween yourself from them as time goes on. This is true for any class or role.

As you gear up, consumables become less and less important. I used to have to drink 3-4 mana potions and use my cooldowns 2 or 3 times on the Curator fight…now I don’t use any potions. We’ve gotten better as a group and my gear has gotten to the point where that stuff isn’t necessary.

Also, on the subject of mana potions, if you watch your mana, drink your first potion as soon as possible. If we’re talking Super Mana Potions, once you loose 2-3k mana down one of those. This will bring you back to close to full mana, and start your potion cooldown timer earlier, allowing you to drink another sooner than later. Then once your cooldown timer is up, drink another. If you wait til you’re already out of mana before you drink your first, you drink your one potion and then your cooldown timer isn’t ready for when you need another.

Overhealing and Pre-emptive Healing and Jumping Around

Just some tips and introduction to topics potentially never seen before.

The most basic definition of overhealing is to have a heal a player for more than their current health defecit (the amount of health they are missing from their health total). If Tank A has 9000 health currently out of a maximum of 10000, and you cast a heal on him for 1100, you have just done 100 in overhealing, assuming no other factors. That 100 healing goes nowhere, and is in effect a waste of your mana.

Ideally you want to prevent this. You want every point of your heal to count, to get as close to maximum healing efficiency as possible, especially during long encounters. What you do is pay attention to your heals and note how much they heal for. This is easier as a paladin as we don’t have any fancy heal-over-time spells. If your heal averages for 1000, wait for the person that needs healing to lose 1000 and heal him.

So basically, work towards healing someone for the amount they need in healing, right?

Well unfortunately it’s more complicated than that. This complication is most noticeable when you have more than one healer assigned to the same person. If Tank B has 13000 health out of 17000 total, and your big heal averages for 3000, it’s probably a good idea to use it. However, if that person has another healer healing him, and his heals average for 3500, he’s probably going to heal the tank too. If your heals land at around the same time, one of you has a mostly-wasted heal.

However, the idea here is the reason you have two healers assigned to that one person. If Tank B wasn’t taking all that much damage, one healer could take care of it…the other healer could watch the rest of the raid. However, in many cases, your tank will get whacked for upwards of 5 or 6 thousand damage, sometimes more than once in quick succession.

So in the above example, both of you healers get on casting that big heal! The tank may take another 4k hit or two shortly after, and both of your heals will get used. However, if only one of you heals him, seeing that he only has 4k health missing…if the tank does get hit more, he’s going to be healed for 3.5k health out of 12k missing…not much of a trade-off for the mana you didn’t spend because now both of you healers need to start playing catch-up.

This practice of healing is called pre-emptive healing. You expect the tank to take damage so you try to have your heal hit just after that damage. In this way, you don’t have the tank take a 5k hit and then receive a 3k heal 3 seconds later…that 3 seconds gets reduced to 1 or 2.

This can result in overhealing, however…due to the nature of the combat system in WoW, it is entirely possible the tank will simply avoid all of a couple incoming hits. Completely. No damage beyond what he’s already taken. This occurs through the mob’s miss chance, and your tank’s avoidance rating. Parries and dodges will result in no damage for that one hit, and operate on a percentage chance. Given the nature of chance, your tank might dodge and parry twelve hits in a row. Unlikely but possible. Do you want to be spending all that mana healing the tank when he’s not taking any damage? No.

Well how do you compensate? If you don’t have heals going at the tank, he’s going to die, but if he’s not taking damage, you’re going oom for nothing.

Practice pre-emptive healing alongside stopping yourself from healing when the tank hasn’t taken any damage. I don’t really have a name for the second practice…I just jump or move or use a macro to stop myself from casting.

So if you don’t see any damage on the tank when you’re at about 0.7s left on your spell, stop! Start casting again. I say 0.7 seconds because the cutoff, because of lag and other factors, is around 0.5s. If you jump at 0.3s left, your heal will probably still go off, and you will still lose the mana.

Jumping, mind you, is probably not the best choice. You spend a bit of time while in the air not being able to cast, whether you stop yourself from casting or not. It is wisest to use a macro that does the following:

/stopcasting

And that’s it. You can start casting again immediately after, and even macro in a spell after it for no time lost whatsoever (via /cast Spell Name, eg Holy Light]). I myself jump because I have grown into the habit I developed before I really knew about what you could do with macros.

There are exceptions to everything above, as always. Our first downing of Maulgar had me at something like 28-32% overhealing…a relatively hideous number. However, I haven’t yet gotten into a rhythm for that fight yet, and the number will go down with practice. Maulgar will smack our tank of 18k hit points down to nothing if we’re not paying attention. Moreover, we had three healers on Maulgar’s tank, even more at the end of the fight (when the other tanks were freed up from dead Council). Overhealing was pretty much inevitable.

Building Your Wish List

I’ve posted before on gearing yourself up, and I have a number of other posts just for paladins on the subject of gear. Like other multi-role hybrid classes, paladins are in an interesting situation in that they gear up for different roles, and the gear offered to them will often fit one of these roles. More specific classes, like mages and rogues, just pick what gear is better, with exceptions.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean finding loot is easy for anybody. Persistence and prayer will get you the items you need, but you have to know where they come from first. And this can require a little research.

It is my opinion that mages, warlocks, and shadow priests have it easy on this matter. With the exception that priests can’t use swords and the other two can’t use maces, gear for these classes is easy to pick up because, with exceptions of course, they all use the same stuff. Rogues and feral druids, as well as hunters, and also prot warriors also have it decently easy. There also seems to be a good number of elemental shaman drops out there for whatever reason.

If you are one of the other classes/specs, however, it becomes more difficult for you. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Holy Paladin gear in pre-heroic instances falls to two drops. Eight instances, about 3 or 4 bosses each…two drops. Same goes for Ret Paladins, Resto Shaman, and to a lesser extent Arms/Fury warriors. I don’t know for sure myself, but I believe Resto and Balance Druids also have similar issues.

There is armor downranking to consider…I’ve seen plenty of healing paladins, shaman, and druids alike parading their Hallowed Raiment and lots of Balance Druids in cloth as well. But this is of course not necessarily ideal…the armor probably wasn’t designed with you in mind…but you wear it because you’re waiting for something better.

And so, to the point of the post. To best outfit yourself for what you plan to do with your character, some research is needed. You’ll probably need to wear greens in the meantime, but it’s better than gear for some other spec for sure.

How best to do this? The first step I recommend is downloading a mod called AtlasLoot. It can be found at curse-gaming.com in their WoW section (where they also have a ton of other mods for your perusal). In it you can see information on just about every item in the game you can work towards via an instance, and even pvp or crafting. Mostly though, it is a great instance for drops in instances and also has extensive reputation rewards listings.

This is a preliminary step. Admittedly, what it mainly helps with is knowing what you’re going to see before enterring an instance, since it only operates in game. If you’re more serious about upgrading your character, continue reading.

A spreadsheet or some other method of recording helps if you plan on remembering this stuff. If you can carry it around in your noggin, that’s great, but I for one can’t. :) Format a list based on gear slot, possbily factoring in columns for item name, drop location, relevant stats, etc. Alternatively, instead of a spreadsheet, you could use a nifty program called WowEquip to outfit a template of gear you find.

Next, start scouring an item database. Allakhazam and Thottbot have excellent listings and come complete with advanced search capabilities so you can narrow what you’re searching. For example, if you’re a holy paladin, you’re probably most interested in plate gear with +healing. Go into Thottbot’s armor search, and filter it down to level 65-70 plate items, of rare quality, with “Spell healing” on them. You will then have generated for you a list of gear matching your parameters. You can narrow it down from there to show only helms or gloves to make categorization easier.

Last, start recording. Either record into your spreadsheet, or load items into their WowEquip slots. The useful thing about using WowEquip here is that it will show you the totals and calculations of all the stats on your wish list gear, compiling your +healing, calculating your crit chance, or even showing you spell dps in some cases. You can even put gems in gem slots and allow stat-affecting talents to show! And if you don’t see a piece of gear in the WowEquip item list, you can import it from allakhazam or thottbot from the item url on those sites. However, using WowEquip, you won’t be able to make note of drop location, which you may or may not need.

Keep going until you have all your upgrade-needy slots covered, and you’re set to log back on to WoW and hit up your guildies/the lfg channel for some instance runs!

Also, if you’re beyond the realm of 5-mans or heroics, it can help you decide between farming arena points or just waiting for a drop. If you can determine your guild’s progression vs. your team’s point accumulation, you can figure out whether waiting for that epic drop or pvping for those Veteran’s Boots is a better expenditure of your time.

Paladin Itemization: Retribution

/edit: More recent post.

Interestingly enough, itemization for a retribution paladin can go down at least two different paths, possbily three. I’m not sure of the third one because I honestly don’t much know how viable Seal of Vengeance is.

Anyway…retribution. “Requital according to merits or deserts, esp. for evil.” Inflicting harm based on some previous harm to you or those in your charge. Sounds like paladin tanking doesn’t it? A little bit? Nay, this is taking the fight to your enemy. You are going to land that giant hammer on your enemies’ faces so they cannot do it to you.

Before the gear discussion, as mentioned above, there are two things we need to consider. First is your faction. As a paladin, you get a unique seal based on your chosen faction (horde or alliance). If you are a Draenei, Dwarf, or Human, your unique seal is Seal of Vengeance. If you are a Blood Elf, it is Seal of Blood. They operate on different mechanics and are amplified by different stats.

But, I don’t know very much about Vengeance. Suffice it to say I perceive up to three different “paths” for Ret paladins:

1) The “Middle Road”: A mix of attack power and magic damage
2) Seal of Blood optimization: Strong focus on attack power over magic damage
3) Seal of Vengeance optimization: Strong focus on magic damage over attack power

There is also PvP play to consider. A shift in emphasis is necessary when you jump into a BG or arena. I will add these considerations to each listing.

Again, aside from what Coriel has written about it, I know not of its viability, or even much of its basics. It procs a stacking DoT debuff on your target while active, and when judged deals damage based on the number of stacks. I think emphasis on this ability would lend itself to more spell damage-based gear. Think of yourself as a caster…focus on intelligence, spell damage, spell hit/crit…heck now that I think about it, this may not be a good retribution spell. Might supplement a holy build…but I don’t have a good way to experiment.

On to what I know, then.

Ret (general): Attack Power, Crit Rating, Intellect, Spell Damage, Stamina
Ret (general, PvP): Crit Rating, Stamina (and/or resilience), Attack Power, Spell Damage, Intellect
Ret (Seal of Blood): Attack Power, Crit Rating, Intellect, Stamina, Spell Damage

Since the stats are the same just in different orders, I won’t get into too much detail on emphasis for different seals. Generally, for Ret in general you use Seal of Righteousness or Command. Almost always Command in pvp for burst potential. If you’re gearing for Seal of Blood, well, you’re probably using it too. :)

• Attack Power: Of great use to any Ret paladin is attack power. You can increase this through Strength as well as any item that has a increases your attack power by X listing. This increases your damage per hit, and since you’re about damage, you’re about hitting hard.
• Crit Rating: Especially in PvP, your ability to crit is your sustenance. Without getting any critical hits, our damage is typically very poor. As well in pvp, burst damage is where it’s at, you’ve got to smash those face before they melt yours. Of note is the talent Vengeance, which increases your damage dealt by a percentage when you crit, and stacks. It makes that nifty “sound of righteousness” when it happens and makes your hands glow too.
• Spell Damage: This is variably useful. Given that most of your damage is still almost all white, unless you’re using Seal of Righteousness pretty heavily you will want attack power and crit chance for more reliable damage increases. This will increase the damage dealt by your seal procs and judgements, as well as your Crusader Strike ability if you have it. However, the coefficients on many of these are quite low (except for righteousness).
• Intellect: As with any other mana-using class, your damage potential is greatly reduced when you have no mana. Increasing your intellect will increase your damage-dealing endurance, allowing you to put more out for greater periods of time. This will also increase your spell crit chance, enhancing the damage output of your judgements.
• Stamina: Hit points never hurt anyone, especially considering the situations in which you’ll be employing this spec. A raiding ret paladin is still a rarity, and so this build is typically for soloing and pvp. These scenarios place a greater emphasis on stamina, especially for a melee class like yourself. In pvp especially, you will want hit points, and you will come to love the pvp-unique stat known as resilience for reducing the burst potential of your opponents.

More on Seal of Righteousness: This is the paladin’s first seal, and deals holy damage based on weapon speed. The seal’s damage is increased greatly by spell damage and talents.

More on Seal of Blood: The idea behind this seal is that you gear yourself like a warrior. It is a Seal that deals a % of weapon damage on each hit, and the judgement has a poor spell damage coefficient. You get less out of spell damage and more out of attack power, and thus you pump up that and pretty much ignore spell damage. This, to me, seems kind of off given the mana-using, magical nature of the blood elves, but that’s what Blizzard gave us.

Paladin Itemization: Protection (updated 6/02/08)

EDIT:  As we play, we learn.  Stuff is changed around a bit.

A protection spec paladin is in a completely different boat than a holy spec paladin for gear. While classes like rogues, hunters, and mages can (in general) interchange gear between their three specs, paladins, being a hybrid class, begin to lose potency when doing this. It is not uncommon for hybrid classes (shaman, druids, priests, and warriors included) to carry around multiple complete sets of gear. I myself have two 18-slots full in addition to what I’m already wearing! I carry a set for healing, another for tanking, and another for soloing. (Strangely enough, that soloing set does not get used often.)

Suffice it to say, though, that trying to tank in healing or dps gear will be a daunting task (especially for the people trying to heal you!). In order to tank, you need hit points, avoidance, and threat generation…stats not found in any degree of abundance on other kinds of gear. (A caveat, while paladin tanking gear can make decent soloing gear, especially if spec’d for it, it does not go both ways (ie, wearing other-spec soloing gear as tanking gear).)

So, you try to find a set of gear you can use for tanking. What gear would this be? Well, you can easily base your decisions for that on the stats the items you see available have. [/edit: The following information is based on play at 70...numbers like "490 defense" and "thousands of hit points less than warriors" for instance] Paladin tanks look for the following on their items:

Prot (tanking): Stamina, Defense Rating, Spell Damage, Intellect, Avoidance Ratings

• Stamina: If you compare the hit points you have to the hit points of your warrior/druid tank brethren, odds are you come up significantly short. You probably have thousands less. This makes you a bit less durable than your other-classed counterparts. The only way to make up for this (outside of 16% more stamina from talents) is gear (and to a lesser extent, buffs), so for your tanking gear try to find that which has an appreciation for stamina. A hefty appreciation, if you will. Tanking for Kara and Heroics will require at least 10000 hit points without buffs.
• Avoidance Ratings: Dodge, Parry, and Block Rating all fall under this category. Block Rating is probably the best of the three (due to the way a paladin can return damage to attackers through Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary), but the more avoidance you have, the less likely you are hit, and the less likely you die from an unlucky string of big hits on you. You can get more defense to increase these numbers all at once, but you lose effectiveness in doing so since at 490 you already cannot be crit, decreasing that value more is not possible. I won’t set a number, but any gear with +dodge, +parry, or +block rating is of use to you. See here for more info on avoidance and becoming uncrushable.
• Defense Rating: This is actually more important than stamina until you reach 490 defense. At 490, you have effectively reached the most you should ever need. However, 490 defense is not difficult to attain in the least. You should easily have this with an all-blue set of tank gear. 490, again, is the number you’re after (5 points in the Anticipation talent will help this!), and while more doesn’t hurt, it loses effectiveness the more you put in.
• Spell Damage: Spell damage is what allows you to increase your threat levels on the mobs you are tanking. With Righteous Defense on, your holy damage will have its threat increased by 50-90% (depending on talents). Having the mobs’ attention being the entire point of tanking, if you cannot hold aggro you aren’t tanking very well, and might want to consider getting yourself some more spell damage on your gear. This is what separates paladins the most from warriors and druids; a paladin wearing warrior tanking plate will have a harder time holding aggro because of the lack of spell damage. A safe number to have here is about 200 +spell damage before stepping into Karazhan.
• Intellect: Intellect will increase your mana, which is in effect an inverse rage bar of sorts. Since you start with full mana, you can frontload your aggro, and with Spiritual Attunement you regen mana when healed. Intellect is the least important stat, taking a distant back seat to those above, but a paladin with no mana can’t reliably tank anything.

More information on tanking and the magic 490 defense number here.