Gearing up

One of the biggest weaknesses I've seen among Ret Pallies is the distinct lack of gear optimization. As I've said before, Paladins carry multiple sets: healing, tanking and DPS (and a 4th for Spell Damage is a good idea when you need to consecrate a group of mobs). Do NOT wear your tanking gear when you're in a DPS role. So how should you itemize your gear?

Ordered by priority:
Tanking: Sta, Def, Spell Damage, Avoidance (Parry & Dodge Rating - Block Rating is pointless without Holy Shield), Int, MP5. Wear only plate.

Healing: Int, Healing, (if you have 5/5 Divine Illumination) Spell Crit Rating, MP5, Sta. Wear any armor that gives good stats.

DPS (as ret): Strenth/Attack Power, Crit Rating, Hit Rating, Sta, Int, Spell Damage. Wear as little leather and mail as you can get away with.

Hit Rating is an important point - eliminating misses is huge, and is actually something I would consider a first priority, but you hit a cap at how useful it is after a certain amount of points (Blessing of Kings has a great post on this), and once you hit that it is completely useless.


So, to steal a line from BRK, if you're DPSing in a raid and I see you wearing Timewarden's Leggings or Breastplate of Many Graces, I'm pulling your Pally license.

There are some pieces that have spell damage and defense rating, and you may think, 'You know, I kind of like gearing up with spell damage and this piece has a lot of it, so I'll use it', there's one very very important thing to keep in mind: each piece of gear has a static 'item value' of sorts. From this value a pool of stats is created, and each point spent on one stat is a point not available for another stat.

In shorter terms, every point spent on defense is, from a DPSing perspective, wasted. Every point spent on healing is wasted. Wear gear that optimizes your current role, and leave the rest in your bags/bank (you should always have at least your healing gear ready - some fights, such as Maiden of Virtue, are not Ret Pally friendly, and stepping back to be the guy who keeps Sacrifice up on the tank, heals him and cleanses everyone is often the better choice).

So if you need an upgrade on gear (and if you're running under 22% crit and 1250 AP, you do) before you hit Kara, hit up thottbot and look for items with the stats I pointed out, and check out the BoK post regarding boss hit caps. You don't have to be capped out on hit before you start running Kara, but a getting a few % points worth of hit on top of Precision (Prot talent) would be a very wise choice.

Feel free to take a look at my Armory: I rarely log without my DPS gear on.

Modano

As you can see, Str/AP, Crit and Hit are optimized, Sta, Int and Spell Damage are increased where possible. Not that I use a fair amount of PvP gear - currently, Season 2 Arena stuff and the non-set PvP epics are some of the best PvE ret gear out there. Why? No resilience.

In a classic example of what I was noting before, PvP epics have a very high item value: they get a LOT of points to spend on their attributes. However, Retribution gear is the ONLY gear without any points spent on resilience. Because of this, there are zero points wasted on attributes you won't use, and so all of the points are optimized to stats you can use (skewed slightly towards stamina, but not so badly as to make the item weak in any way). Thus spending some weekends in the battlegrounds and getting some friends together for Arena is a very wise choice, and can get you geared out nicely. Kara, after all, has only one piece of plate DPS gear. At the final boss. And while the mail/leather pieces are nice for DPSing, you'll always feel a little guilty for swiping them from rogues/hunters that need that gear too.

Long post, but the essence is this: Don't wear gear with stats you're not using at that moment, PvP is great for optimized gear, and make damn sure you work on getting to the hit rating cap.