The Light and How to Swing It: Ret gear, part 1
by Chris Jahosky 
Dec 11th 2007 at 6:15PM
With that in mind, I'm creating a list of suggested gear for up and coming or newly 70 Retribution paladins, and where said gear can be obtained. I'm staying away from gear obtained by PvP because you really don't need a list for that, and raid / heroic gear is out because this list is for those of you who are just starting out. Individual pieces will be first categorized by slot, and then by the method obtained (crafted, quest, instance, etc), but I'm leaving it up to you to decide what you should get.
Head
Crafted
Furious Gizmatic Goggles - For all you engineers out there, make sure to pick these up. They've got hit rating, crit rating, lots of strength, and a meta gem slot.
Ragesteel Helm - What it lacks in stam it makes up for in tremendous crit rating. If you're going for the set, keep in mind you have to be a blacksmith to get the set bonus.
Quests
Overlord's Helmet of Second Sight - One of the rewards for a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley, this helm is well worth it. Hit rating, crit rating, strength, and 3 gem slots -- this helm has it all.
Ash-Covered Helm - Also from a quest in Shadowmoon Valley, this is a solid choice with some nice strength and crit bonuses.
Helm of Lupine Ferocity - You can pick this one up from an easy quest in Terokkar Forest, and will serve you well as you level.
Circle's Stalwart Helmet - An early quest reward from Zangarmarsh, and likely to be the first helm you'll get that has gem slots.
Neck
BoE Drop
Necklace of Trophies - It's more likely you'll find this on the AH than as a drop, but it's a solid choice, aside from the fact that it's lacking stamina.
Rep Grind
Haramad's Bargain - It does require you to be exalted with the Consortium, but this necklace gives you a good amount of strength and agility.
Quest
Natasha's Choker - Though it's a reward from a long chain in Blade's Edge, this necklace is worth the trouble. As a Paladin, you should be able to solo the entire chain (there's really only one difficult part anyway).
Shoulders
Crafted
Ragesteel Shoulders - A bit lacking in the stamina department, but lots of strength, hit, crit, and the flexibility of gems more than make up for it.
Quests
Jade Warrior Pauldrons - You can obtain these very early on, as it'll only take one Ramparts run to complete the quest objectives. A good solid choice, but there's better shoulders later on.
Warchief's Mantle - These do lack hit and crit rating, but that can partially be made up for with the gem slots. They do have a nice amount of strength and stamina, as well as a bonus to your parry rating (and hey, taking less damage is nice when leveling).
Sylvanaar Champion's Shoulders - Another quest reward from Blade's Edge. These shoulders were actually nerfed a few patches ago, but they're still pretty good.
Back
Instance Drop
Cloak of the Inciter - Drops off Blackheart the Inciter, the second boss of Shadow Labyrinth, and has bonuses to all your desired stats. This is my favorite choice.
Capacitus' Cloak of Calibration - Randomly found in the Cache of the Legion in Mechanar, this cloak will enhance your strength, agility and stamina.
BoE Drop
Shroud of Frenzy - You'll likely find this at your local Auction House already, and is quite decent for a level 62 item. Lacks stam, but has good strength and crit rating.
Crafted
Vengeance Wrap - Takes a good amount of mats, and you'll have to find someone with a Primal Nether to craft it for you, but this is a great choice.
Quest
Nomad's Woven Cloak - From a quest chain in Nagrand, this is a nice cloak, enhancing all of your desired stats. However, there are better choices later on.
Warmaul Defender's Cloak - Also from Nagrand, this cloak provides bonuses to strength, stamina, and crit.
Chest
Instance Drop
Durotan's Battle Harness - An excellent drop from Captain Skarloc in the Old Hillsbrad instance, this chest comes with strength, stamina, crit, and 3 gem slots.
BoE Drop
Chestguard of Exile - Expect to pay a lot for this one in your Auction House, but if you can afford it, it's one of the best chests around.
Crafted
Ragesteel Breastplate - As with the rest of the Ragesteel pieces, it's lacking in stamina but provides a large amount of strength and crit rating.
Quest
Battlemaster's Breastplate - Available early on in Hellfire Peninsula, you'll likely use this for awhile. Don't skip it!
Chestplate of A'dal - Part of a long quest chain in Netherstorm, but definitely worth it, as this carries nice bonuses to strength, hit, crit, and stamina.
Blackened Chestplate - From a quest chain in Blade's Edge comes this solid chest. You'll need help for at least part of the chain though, so bring some friends.
Wrist
Crafted
Black Felsteel Bracers - You'll need to find someone with a Primal Nether to craft it for you, but gathering the other mats for these bracers should be quite easy. And that's good news, since these are an excellent choice.
Quest
Sentinel Armbands - Available as a reward from a very easy quest early on in Blade's Edge, these bracers buff your strength and crit.
Demolisher's Bracers - One of the better green items around, these bracers from Netherstorm buff your strength, stamina, crit and hit.
That does it for the first half of the Retribution list -- two weeks from now I'll cover the rest, but this should get you started! Next time I'll also talk about weapon selection, which is arguably the single most important piece of gear to a Ret Paladin, so stay tuned!
Filed under: Paladin, Guides, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Draddog Dec 11th 2007 6:40PM
Good stuff. How about gear for lower level Ret Paladins? Especially since it seems (to me) that Ret is the way to level a Paladin?
Dipstick Dec 11th 2007 6:59PM
#1 - whilst levelling you just have to pick up warrior gear instead. +hit, +crit and +str is all you need, just as long as you remember to use Rank 1 SoC and lay off spamming judgements. The only mana you should be using is from using Crusader Strike.
Otherwise, I think probably the best way to get pretty decent gear is to farm honour for the S1 set. It's true that it also has 'useless' spell damage and healing, and is light on +hit, but the I-level is pretty good and it allows for some nice gem combinations.
Aldazor Dec 11th 2007 7:12PM
Great list so far. Looking forward to the next one.
Turall Dec 11th 2007 8:12PM
Having a full set of blue/purple ret gear in the bank, I can see where this is gonna go:
Ragesteel Gloves
Girdle of Gallantry
Vanquisher's Legplates
Ironstriders of Urgency
Thunder/Deep Thunder/Stormherald w/Savagery or Mongoose (PvP)
Lionheart Blade/Champion/Executioner, same enchants (PVE)
Libram of Fervor/Zeal/Avengement
jaxson_bateman Dec 11th 2007 9:12PM
In the cloaks, I noticed you didn't include "Netherfury Cape" - drops from Warp Splinter in Bot (either normal or heroic) and provides 19 str (~42 AP talented), 19 stam and 21 crit rating (~1% crit). It's one of the best blue ret capes you can get. The neck Warp Splinter drops ("Jagged Bark Pendant"; 26 agi, 15 stam and 30 AP) is also decent, and given that there's about 6 other ret-able items in the whole instance (albeit, about 3 of them are mail/leather) it's not a bad place to start farming.
All that said, really, unless you spec holy/prot the best way to get ret gear is via BGs/arena. The gear is well itemised, and you don't have to deal with the inevitable "we'd rather take X class over ret dps" in a heroic instance that you'd find. Don't get me wrong, I love ret and think that ret dps is great now, but even I would prefer someone that could CC or provide a more substantial buff to a heroic group than a ret pally can.
Ichigo Dec 11th 2007 10:04PM
The Adamantite Battlegear is much more accessible than what you have listed here and is able to be equipped before level 70.
Adamantite Bracers http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23506 are almost comparable to the Black Felsteel Bracers in strength, surpass it in stamina and can be socketed with a blue/purple gem for a socket bonus of +4 Attack Power.
Adamantite Breastplace http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23507 may lack the overall strength of the Ragesteel Breastplace but comes with a healthy amount of stamina (something severely lacking with Ragesteel) and 2 blue and 1 red sockets for a socket bonus of +8 Attack Power
You also completely omitted any mention of Ret gloves. Try Adamantite Plate Gloves http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23508 for the set bonus.
Best part is all of this gear is BoE, no profession prerequisite needed to obtain the set bonus, can either be made fairly inexpensively by anyone who has a miner character and/or a friend that is a blacksmith. Pieces of this set are also occasionally found at the AH as well.
Edit: 3 URL limit is weaksauce...
Crypt King Dec 11th 2007 10:07PM
So.. nothing with any form of Intellect. Great stacking all that stuff to get big crit numbers on white damage because you won't have the mana to do anything else, let alone throw a heal on yourself to keep you up.
Also forget the Exorcist Helm from Spirit Shards.
jaxson_bateman Dec 11th 2007 10:57PM
@6 - this looks like part 1 in a series of ret gear. I'd imagine gloves will be coming in a week or two. I haven't compared the two in quite a while, but from what I remember the Ragesteel set is vastly superior than the Adamantite set in terms of AP, crit and hit - and last time I checked, stam doesn't improve dps. ^^
@7 - with ret, to maximise dps you basically have to gear like a warr. Sure, int is nice where you can get it, but in terms of dps it doesn't scale nearly as well str/AP and agi/crit. If you're an ally and running out of mana, the solution is to downrank SoCom to a more manageable level, as even though a lot of your damage is coming from JoCom, the vast majority is coming from the SoCom procs.
If you're a BE pally you should be using SoB wherever possible (in PvE), and due to the recoil damage and subsequent healing you should rarely reach critical levels of mana depletion. If you ever were to, you can downrank aswell as, again, much more damage is coming from SoB than JoB. And obviously, if you've geared correctly spamming Consecration will drain your mana, so it should be used very liberally. Exorcism provides good damage per mana, but should be used at your disgression.
jaxson_bateman Dec 11th 2007 11:03PM
#8 Edit: Blast, forgot that until Wrath there is only one rank of SoB, so it's a little hard to downrank. =D That said, with the recoil damage (and subsequent healing) + ret talents there still shouldn't be any mana issues on the Horde side of things.
diaboloney Dec 11th 2007 10:12PM
I find that MaxDPS has a decent list of ret gear ranked by your stats.
http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/dps.php
Ichigo Dec 11th 2007 10:22PM
So does Kaliban's Loot list http://www.wow-loot.com/paladin.htm
Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and change the spec to Ret.
FriendlySoviet Dec 12th 2007 12:42AM
According to MaxDPS, the DPS of the Ret Paladin is significantly lower than every other class with equal gear.
LOL Ret.
tripp Dec 11th 2007 10:26PM
LOLRet
Duncan Dec 12th 2007 8:18AM
Well why not just roll a warrior then? Yes this gear gives you max DPS but that's it. Not enough mana here to heal your non combat pet. These kinds of builds are what adds fuel to the Retnoob comments. scale down on the warrior gear pick up more spell damage. so you can heal when needed use your judgments wisely. be a team player. That's what the Paladin class is ALL about IMHO. We are a support class. and YES I've been a pally since open Beta.
Marwynn Dec 12th 2007 12:46PM
That doesn't make any sense. Put on Spell Damage?
To hell with that. Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druids both have talents that help out their hybrid roles directly as they gear themselves up in a focused manner.
Blizzard intends for Paladins to wear Warrior DPS Plate, they've stated so themselves. The problem is they haven't done much, lately, to resolve the issues that brings.
Being a team player is what Retribution is all about. The problem is that you need a stepping stone, and there isn't much gear outside of PvP that'll give you that leg up.
Also, don't stack SD and consider yourself a team player because your FoL/HL heals for slightly more. Kill the threat, save your team. Knowing when to heal is different, and dilluting your stat pool will just leave you at a mediocre state.
Consider grabbing a Sword and Board specifically for healing purposes. That would do a crapload more for when you have to heal, in both PvP and PvE, than weakening your primary Retribution stats.
After all, we are being moved away from Spell Damage according to Blizzard. Soon we may see a buffed SoC with its Judgement or even the Seal's coefficient based on AP.
Secondly, Retribution will be getting a slight buff in terms of mana at least for 2.3.2; Sanctified Judgements will return 80% of the Seal's cost and not 50% as it does now. It'll help.
This is not about "being warrs", this is about reducing our stat dependencies and allowing Retribution Paladins to focus their gear and still be competitive. Right now we require every stat except for Spirit. From Strength to Intelligence, from Resilience to Hit Rating, not to mention the primary melee stuff too. And Spell Damage on top of it.
Can you grab the gear that'll make that worthwhile? By removing Spell Damage on the gear, and supporting it through Talents, Paladins can be competitive without severely outgearing the instance they're in.
"Warrior Plate" is only the first step. Once we get more Retribution Changes (ie, AP->SD or an overhaul of several Seals and Judgements) we'd be set.
It may also interest those to note, and those who haven't bothered to learn, that Blood Elves have an easier time of it by stacking said "Warrior Plate". With Seal of Blood guaranteeing damage on every hit, based wholly off AP, and damaging the BE Pally this allows them to be healed with a HoT and have their mana replenished.
Along with the 100 MP5 or so granted by Judgement of Wisdom.
Anghel Dec 12th 2007 11:41AM
Agree with #14 - Don't know why pallys would want to be warrs. Just roll a warr if you want that. Pally is a hybrid, a "holy warr". the way I see it, that means we use melee as well as holy dmg. A balanced combination of both will help pallys maximize their potential, be it dpsing, or throwing a heal to an ally if needed.
Duncan Dec 12th 2007 1:46PM
"Also, don't stack SD and consider yourself a team player because your FoL/HL heals for slightly more. Kill the threat, save your team."
you want to kill the threat as fast as you can then play a warrior. I have a DPS warrior and a Prot pally. I've been Ret before. the DPS output isnt even close to the warriors.
know when to heal? You cant heal anything with this armor on. Stacking spell damage make you much more flexable in a group. alowing you heal more with the board and one hander. or tank when things go wrong. Not saying I'm going to do as much DPS as you would with armor your wearing. of course not.
You can fill a DPS slot with Just about any class.
For me. I would rather have that number 5 memeber of my group be able step up and help in all things. This is why I rolled a paladin in the first place.
Chris Jahosky Dec 12th 2007 2:53PM
You're describing a hybrid style of play for a Paladin, not a Retribution style. If you're looking to deal a little damage and off heal, Retribution is the wrong tree to spec into.
And after all, this is a gear list for pure Retribution Paladins, so it skips spell damage and hybrid gear.
Marwynn Dec 12th 2007 3:43PM
"you want to kill the threat as fast as you can then play a warrior. I have a DPS warrior and a Prot pally. I've been Ret before. the DPS output isnt even close to the warriors."
It wouldn't be if you consider stacking Spell Damage to be viable.
"know when to heal? You cant heal anything with this armor on. Stacking spell damage make you much more flexable in a group. alowing you heal more with the board and one hander. or tank when things go wrong. Not saying I'm going to do as much DPS as you would with armor your wearing. of course not."
And it's not doable nor is it viable to heal as Ret. Knowing when to Heal is essential, yes sometimes that silly 840 mana 2.5k heal can swing the tide of a small battle. No
If you're talking about PvE here, I'm talking mainly about PvP. PvE-wise, you're still dilluting yourself, but a Holy/Prot set up would probably be closer to what you want than a Ret playstyle.
Stacking Spell Damage is silly. It is. As Retribution.
Get a 1H healing mace, get a decent healing shield, get a healing Libram; save some money for some +Heal enchants, and you're set.
No, you won't have the longevity of a true healer, but it's a lot more logical to have a separate weapon set up than a dilluted armour set. And yes, you'll have less Mana too if you focused on mostly "DPS Plate". That's them breaks.
You rolled Retribution to hit things so do that well.
"You can fill a DPS slot with Just about any class."
Including Ret Paladins.
"For me. I would rather have that number 5 memeber of my group be able step up and help in all things. This is why I rolled a paladin in the first place."
Great. So did I. I wouldn't mind, however, being able to specialize and be good at it.
If I wanted a hybrid playstyle I wouldn't consider myself "Ret" or "Holy", I'd consider myself a Hybrid. 21(23) in Ret at least for Sanctity Aura and go into Holy for the rest. A Shockadin in other words.
This is totally different from Retribution. Your problems with the spec have nothing to do with the hybrid playstyle necessary to help things along as a Paladin.
KG Dec 12th 2007 1:57PM
I am a Holy Paladin, I have a Two-Handed DPS set I keep with me when I need to gather Mats and do some daily quests. I have some good burst Spell Damage in my set. I have been tempted to go Ret but I still like Raiding.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Kiragunn