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The Light and How to Swing It: Raiding and the Retadin part II

Enchants, Gems, and Glyphs
As far as gems and enchants are concerned, what we're really looking at is Strength. As much as possible, we don't enchant or gem for Hit or anything else if we can manage it. If our gear falls short of the hit cap, we compensate with enchants such as Icewalker or Precision. If we're hit capped, we pursue Attack Power in place of those enchants (there are no Wrath enchants for raw Strength) such as Greater Assault and Crusher. Going up to Ebon Blade Exalted for the Death-Inured Sabatons, you'll pick up Arcanum of Torment for your head enchant.

As always, there's just nothing good for cloaks other than Major Agility. Greater Speed is a bad idea as Blizzard has themselves admitted that Haste isn't quite where it should be for physical DPS classes, particularly melee. Similarly, there's just nothing else but Powerful Stats. This is good because Retribution scales well off Strength and even Intellect and Agility. On the other hand, it's rather pricey with four Abyss Crystals in the reagents, so the significantly cheaper Super Stats is a fine alternative.

Speaking of Abyss Crystals, you'll need ten of them for the best weapon enchant for melee, the Berserking enchant. However, Greater Savagery will do for the starting raider, and you can reserve Berserking for an item level 213 weapon such as Death's Bite from normal mode Kel'thuzad or any of the 213 weapons from the wings of heroic Naxxramas. For your bracers, you'll want Greater Assault over anything else. Striking is a much cheaper alternative but you get what you pay for.

You'll need to grind reputation with the Sons of Hodir, which starts off from an excruciatingly long but ultimately rewarding quest chain, for shoulder enchants. At Revered, you can pick up Lesser Inscription of the Axe, and at Exalted you can get the Greater Inscription of the Axe. If you're a scribe, you can save yourself the grind with the Master's Inscription of the Axe. The Inscription of Triumph from Wintergrasp requires no reputation, no profession, and only costs 30 Stone Keeper's Shards. All you lose out on is a minimal 15 critical strike rating, which isn't bad at all. Lastly, you should pick up the twink-unfriendly Icescale Leg Armor for your leg pieces.

For gems, it's easy. Stock up on Scarlet Rubies. Whatever happens, you will almost always need Bold Scarlet Ruby every time you get an item with sockets. Even if it isn't Red, if you don't need the socket bonus, you should put a +Strength gem in it. If you need the socket bonus, get a gem with +Strength and something else, such as Inscribed Monarch Topaz to fill a Yellow socket, or Sovereign Twilight Opal to fill a Blue socket (you can also use one Enchanted Tear to fill one blue slot). For your Meta, you can choose between the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond or the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, depending on what requirements you can fulfill. If you can get away with using less blue gems, though, the better. It's Strength all the way.

As far as glyphs go, there are only two must-have glyphs, and that's the Glyph of Judgement, which grants a flat out 10% increase to Judgement damage. Considering Judgements are the primary source of Retribution damage, it's not even under discussion. The other is Glyph of Consecration, which is essentially a mana saver. Consecration is essential to your DPS, no matter what Ghostcrawler says about it being an AoE spell for AoE situations. The last slot is discretionary, although Glyph of Hammer of Wrath might be the best one here because ideally, you'll have run out of mana by the time a boss is dead. On the other hand, it means the glyph is useless 65% of the fight. Glyph of Crusader Strike is a vanilla mana conservation tool, while I think Glyph of Avenging Wrath is too situational to be truly raid-worthy. The last glyph is really up to you. You can even consider using Glyph of Seal of Blood if you find yourself with mana problems.

The important thing is that if you want to raid as Retribution, don't scrimp on your gear. Enchant them, gem them, and get the proper glyphs for raiding. Take a flask and have a food buff. While other classes can get away with doing obscene DPS on subpar gear, Paladins cannot. You have to work for every point of DPS you can muster, and this means securing every buff you can get.

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