Playing a Retribution based Paladin can be a lot of fun as long as you realize you may still not be to be at the top of all the DPS charts. You will however be able to hold your own in PvE and PvP content and level at a far faster rate than other paladin specs. Realize up front though that DPS classes and players FAR outnumber healers and tanks. In addition most players view Paladins as healers or tanks, so you will most likely be expected to have a heal or tanking folding bikes offspec and gearset. Discuss your options with a group before joining so that they know what you are. If you are doing this for PvP then more power to you, explain to no one!
Talents and Glyphs
As a DPS Paladin you will be spending the majority of your talent points in the Retribution talent tree. You need to do this gain some serious damage causing abilities including some of your main damage abilities such as Crusader Strike and Divine Storm. There are also several other abilities that add a lot to your damage causing abilities through passive boosts to some of your key spells and stats.
Probably the most important talents are your Crusaders Strike and Divine Storm, since they will form. 2 of the 5 main attacks that make up your DPS rotation. For more information on that rotation skip down to the Attack Rotation section of the guide. Crusader's Strike is a single target attack with a short cooldown that will become a staple in all of your rotations, while Divine Storm hits multiple targets and factors in against groups of enemies.
Some of the other really critical talents in the Retribution tree are Judgements of the Wise, Sanctified Retribution, Swift Retribution and Heart of the Crusader. All of these talents grant you party or raid utility which is much needed since you are just a DPS player once you are in a group (Tanks and Healers being much more important in a group situation). Judgements of the Wise brings you the ability to replenish mana to up to 10 raid members, which your healers and casters will thank you for. Sanctified and Swift Retribution bring you a 3% damage and 3% haste buff that affects the whole raid as long as your retribution aura is active. Lastly, Heart of the Crusader puts a +3% crit debuff on any target you judge, once again boosting party damage output.
Stats and Gear
Gear for a Retadin is not nearly as difficult as many other classes. Up until you are level 80 you simply need to stack as much Strength as you can, with critical strike being second on your stat radar. Once you get to level 80, however,coffee mugs, your nfl jerseys priorities change a little. Reaching the Hit and Expertise cap are your priorities,jordan shoes, and after that is done you start stacking Strength, Crit,cheap dvds, and Attack Power (when strength isn't an option).
Once you reach level 80 and start looking for +hit it takes just under 33 points to earn a +1% chance to hit. This means you need 263 points of hit rating to reach your 8% hit cap. This means you will not miss your melee attacks, spells can still miss though as a significant amount more hit is required for spells. Reaching hit cap when fresh to level 80 can be difficult and requires several gems or enchants and tough gear choices. Once you start getting higher item level gear, you will generally have more than you need.
Gems and Enchants
Gems and enchants will play a critical part in how much damage you can put out against an enemy. The bonuses that you can add through enchants and gems at high levels are almost as much as you get on the item itself. Better yet they can be customized to be what you require.
Starting with the easier topic of gems, in general you should be putting a +20 strength red gem or better in every socket you have, red or not. When the socket bonus is worth following (meaning it is at least +8 strength of more) you can fill the other coloured sockets as follows. Yellow slots should be filled Strength / Hit orange gems. Blue sockets should only be filled when you need to meet meta. gem requirements as they will always result in less DPS than any other gem.
As for Meta. Gems the best you can folding bikes get is the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond because of its very simple to meet requirement. It provides agility and increased critical hit damage and gives you more damage than the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond since you will not have to use 2 blue gems.
