RET PALADIN FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

RET PALADIN PLAYSTYLE & GOALS

Welcome to our Retribution Paladin damage course for The War Within, which is custom designed to equip you with all of the essential knowledge needed to excel in PvP.

Now, in this introductory video, we're going to be exploring what to expect from the Retribution Paladin playstyle, and discuss your most important goals in the arena.

Now, if you've enjoyed previous iterations of Retribution Paladin, then you're in luck here, as The War Within has kept more or less the same playstyle, just with some slight improvements that we're going to talk about. The biggest adaptation to our playstyle comes from the diversity in our build section.

Now, we're going to be covering this more in depth throughout the course, but essentially, Retribution Paladin has two different playstyles that you can now swap between.

Picking up the Templar Tree offers a more burst-oriented playstyle, where you're going to be looking to play heavily around short windows of elevated damage, taking advantage of the hard-hitting, Hammer of Light, an ability only usable for a short window after using Wake of Ashes.

And alternatively, the new Herald of the Sun Tree provides us with monstrous amounts of sustained damage, with the tree causing our finishers after using Wake of Ashes, and also our Avenging Wrath to apply a hard-hitting damage over time effect called Dawnlight to our enemies.

Either way though, despite your build, Retribution still heavily relies on its cooldowns in order to score kills and win games, with abilities like the one we just saw, and the ability to use the skill to kill enemies.

This is a great way to get a good amount of damage, and the new interactions with Wake of Ashes being at the core of our playstyle.

Now, despite the new additions to the damage profile, Retribution, as you would come to expect, still has a massive emphasis on support and utility throughout their kit, with powerful heals and off-heals from abilities like Word of Glory, Lay on Hands, and Flash of Light paired up with the Light Celerity talent, and on top of all of the standard blessings like Freedom, Sanctuary, Sacrifice, Protection, and Spell Warding that you've come to know and love.

And honestly, that's really the whole playstyle of Red in a nutshell. Play around your cooldowns, maximize your damage, and support your team with your utility.

Next up, let's dive deeper and explore how you best do this with some easy-to-follow goals. Goal number one, play around your offensive cooldowns.

Now, as we've already covered here, the playstyle of Retribution heavily revolves around important offensive cooldowns. You can use these offensive cooldowns to score kills, namely, Avenging Wrath.

Now, this ability has always been a significant part of Retribution, and this doesn't change in The War Within. During Avenging Wrath, you become an absolute monster that everyone in the arena needs to respect.

Once it expires, well, let's just say you're not quite as much of a threat anymore. This has always been one of Retribution's biggest drawbacks.

Now, fortunately, playing around your Avenging Wrath has become a whole lot easier as you can now use it to get a lot of extra damage.

As a side from Aura of Reckoning, we now have the option to pick up Radiant Glory, which now replaces Avenging Wrath and gives us access to an eight-second wings every single time that we use it. Additionally, there's a chance to proc Avenging Wrath whenever we spend Holy Power, all thanks to the same talent.

However, just because we can access Avenging Wrath a little bit more frequently doesn't really make it any less important to play around. So, if you're a beginner, you might want to start with the Aura of Reckoning and then go ahead and play around with it.

The Aura of Reckoning is a very useful skill that can be used to get a lot of extra damage and to gain Avenging Wrath creates even more decision-making.

Now, as such, throughout this course, we're going to be really focusing heavily on not only the best times to use Avenging Wrath, but more importantly, how to best leverage your Avenging Wrath to close out games.

So, to do this, we're going to be including multiple burst sequences, which leads us nicely to goal number two, maximizing your crowd control. The experienced players among you should already know that the secret to success in Arena has and always will be the combination of damage and crowd control.

One is absolutely nothing without the other, and Retribution is no exception in this department either.

The issue, though, not only is our toolkit fairly limited, having only Hammer of Justice, Blinding Light, and sometimes Repentance at your disposal, but they're also very easy to play around, being fairly telegraphed, they're going to know when you're doing it, they all have a short range, and of course, they're all dispellable.

That's why throughout this course, we're really going to be teaching you the do's and don'ts of your crowd control kit, which is so incredibly important, including teaching you the best times to use them all to make your setups even more deadly than before.

Next up, we have arguably the most spec-defining goal of them all here. Goal number three, don't neglect your utility.

If you want to just spam damage and just mindlessly stare at your opponent's nameplates, then, well, we've really got bad news for you. Retribution probably ain't the spec for you.

In fact, you might be more suited to playing a Demon Hunter. Just really don't tell anyone that plays Demon Hunter I said that.

Okay? All right.

Deal's a deal. Jokes aside here, the bottom line is that Retribution Paladin is a hybrid spec.

Granted, the concept of what a hybrid is tends to dwindle with each expansion that we go through. But by choosing Retribution Paladin, a large portion of your strength inherently comes from your utility, and most importantly, how you use that utility.

Meaning, in order to master red, you'll need to pay attention to and interact with your team frequently throughout your games. This undoubtedly adds another layer to your gameplay and makes it more complex.

It's also going to be a lot more complicated, requiring you to make snap decisions about when to support your team with important abilities like Blessing of Protection or Spell Warding to immune damage or even crowd control.

Your awareness is going to be tested as you're going to need to react quickly when your healer or DPS partners are in crowd control, maximizing the use of Blessing of Sanctuary.

And you're really going to even need to understand when it's worth sacrificing damage and instead prioritizing powerful off-healing with abilities like Word of Glory. So, if you're going to be able to use your utility in a way that sounds complex, well, don't worry.

That's why we're here. So, by the end of this course, we're going to teach you not only the best times to use your utility, but also help you understand the decision-making process that goes behind it.

Which brings us to goal number four. This goal is a little bit different and, to be honest with you, slightly more advanced of a concept, and that is to abuse your range.

Now, I really know what you're thinking. Skill capped.

Ret Paladin's a melee, not a ranged. I mean, look at it this way.

Retribution Paladin has two very glaring issues, which, spoiler, don't get that much better in the War Within. Now, those being weak survivability and, well, to really put it frankly, almost non-existent mobility.

How you overcome both of these issues is with this goal, and something that all top Retribution Paladins abuse in the capabilities of your ranged damage. Judgment, Hammer of Wrath, Blade of Justice, three generators, all capable of being used from range.

Final verdict? Combine this with the talent jurisdiction and bam, now you have a 20-yard range on your spender.

Practically every single one of your key rotational abilities can all be used from range. Understanding how this affects your gameplay, and most importantly, how you can abuse it is going to be one of the main goals we focus on throughout this course.

Sound good? Well, we've got that and so much more coming up.

Thanks for watching. We'll see you in just a second.

RET PALADIN DAMAGE PRIORITY

Welcome back! Now that you have a broader understanding of both the playstyle and the goals of a Retribution Paladin in the arena, the next step is learning how to deal damage effectively.

So for this, we're going to be starting with a clear-cut damage priority, not including any of your cooldowns, serving as the cornerstone of this course. So to be crystal clear here, this isn't a rotation, so don't think of it like that, but rather a priority list for you to follow.

Ret, at its core, is a classic builder-spender spec. We build Holy Power with our generators, and then we spend said Holy Power on our main finisher of Templars or Final Verdict.

So due to this, the number one priority is pretty straightforward, Final Verdict. Simply put, if you ever reach a point in your rotation where you're capped on Holy Power, you should always spend it on Final Verdict immediately.

Following in priority, we then have Hammer of Wrath, which should be used anytime you're at four or less Holy Power. This, above all else, is our highest priority generator, and there's a few reasons for this.

First, it deals the most damage. Makes sense, right?

Then, damage aside, the other reason is that we can only use Hammer of Wrath at certain times in our rotation. That is, number one, during Avenging Wrath or Final Verdict.

And number two, it's the highest priority generator in the game. So, if you're using Hammer of Wrath, you should use it immediately before using any other generator.

Following in priority, we then have Hammer of Wrath, which is our highest priority generator. So, if you're using Hammer of Wrath, you should use it anytime you're at four or less Holy Power.

This, above all else, is our highest priority generator. Which, don't worry, we're gonna cover that in a later video.

Number two, when the target is below 35%, Hammer of Wrath is essentially our execute. So, if the target is below 35%, we can use Hammer of Wrath freely.

Number three, after a Final Verdict, this is baked into the Final Verdict talent, and when used, has a fairly high chance of both resetting the cooldown of Hammer of Wrath, while also making it usable.

Then, number four, depending on your hero talent tree, either the damage over time from your Dawnlight, or the damage from your Empyrean Hammers, also have a chance to both reset and make Hammer of Wrath usable despite the target's health.

So, long story short here, you're gonna be able to use Hammer of Wrath quite frequently, and when you can, prioritize it over your other generators, anytime you have four or less Holy Power. Next up in priority, we have Judgment, which should be used anytime you're at 3 or less Holy Power.

This is because, assuming you're playing with the default talent of Boundless Judgment, it's gonna reward two Holy Power rather than one. Now, most notably, Judgment, when used onto a target, is gonna apply the Greater Judgment debuff, which causes the target to take 20% increased damage from your next finisher.

Remember this, as it's gonna come into play here in just a second. So, moving on, fourth in priority, we have our lowest priority generator of Blade of Justice.

This is gonna be used anytime you're at 4 or fewer Holy Power. Otherwise, if you select Holy Blade, the rule will change a little bit, and you instead should only ever use Blade of Justice when you're at 3 or less Holy Power.

At number five, we have Hammer of Wrath again, but this time, not when they're just low on health. It can be used ideally when Judgment and Blade of Justice are on cooldown, helping you build more Holy Power and keeping up with your pressure.

Then, next in priority, we once again have Hammer of Wrath. This is gonna be used anytime you're at 4 or fewer Holy Power.

Otherwise, if you select Holy Blade, the rule will change a little bit, and you instead should only ever use Blade of Justice. Remember that Greater Judgment debuff that we literally just mentioned?

This is where it comes into play, as at this point in priority, if the target has the Greater Judgment damage increase active on them, and you have 4 Holy Power, this is where you'll wanna use Final Verdict to consume the buff and benefit from that increase.

However, with this in mind, if you're at 4 Holy Power and don't have the Greater Judgment debuff on the target, you instead wanna prioritize Judgment.

Essentially, although this may sound confusing, to put it simply, like we said, Judgment gives 2 Holy Power and increases the damage of your Final Verdict via a debuff called Greater Judgment.

If you're met with a situation where you have 4 Holy Power , Judgment is ready, but you don't have the Greater Judgment debuff active on the target. It's gonna be far more beneficial sacrificing that 1 Holy Power in order to get the debuff active before using Final Verdict.

Anyway, moving on. Next in priority is, once again, Final Verdict.

The rule here is simple. Anytime all of your generators are on cooldown and you have the Holy Power to do so, just use Final Verdict.

Something you may notice here is that compared to most other Builder Spender specs, Rett is fairly unique as our Spender of Final Verdict appears multiple times in the priority list. This is because Rett is a very unique generator, and it's a very unique build.

The reason for this happening, as you probably may already know, is that Rett has access to 5 Holy Power, but our Spender only costs 3. Couple this with the fact that all of our ways to generate Holy Power come with a cooldown attached to them.

Thus, it creates this unique goal that Rett has, where in order to maximize your overall damage, it ends up becoming far more beneficial to focus on building Holy Power, rather than spending Holy Power. And that right there sums up the entire standard priority.

Before moving on to the next video, though, we highly recommend you practice this priority and really familiarize yourself with it. This is going to be the core of your gameplay, and the more you can make this priority second nature to you, the easier everything else is going to become.

So, once you're ready, up next we're going to be delving into Hero Talents, discussing what's new, and how it interacts with our rotation. See you in just a second.

RET HERO TALENTS: HERALD OF THE SUN

Hey everyone and welcome to the next video in our Retribution Paladin damage course. Now, as you likely know, while talents have mostly stayed the same in The War Within, one major new feature is the introduction of Hero Talents.

The tree you choose and the talents you select have a significant impact on your overall gameplay and your rotation. In this video, we're going to be breaking down exactly what those impacts are and share some tips and tricks to help you maximize your damage, starting off with Herald of the Sun.

Herald of the Sun, as we've mentioned already, is shaping up to be the go-to hero talent tree, focusing heavily on improving both our sustained single target pressure but also massively enhancing our short range cleave, making it perfect for those melee vs melee matchups.

The main reason for this and the key mechanic within this tree is Dawnlight, a powerful damage over time effect that's applied to targets in one turn. If you're a hero who's been playing for a long time, you'll probably want to take a look at this one.

The main one being courtesy of Sun's Avatar, causing you to apply Dawnlight whenever you activate or gain Avenging Wrath or Crusade, including your Wake of Ashes and gaining a proc from Radiant Glory if talented. And you also can't forget Aura of Reckoning.

The other way to apply Dawnlight is after using Wake of Ashes, which, aside from proccing Avenging Wrath already, is going to also cause your next two Holy Power spenders to apply Dawnlight, which is a pretty good thing to do.

So one more thing to note here is that during your Avenging Wrath, you're also going to become linked to any Dawnlight debuffs you have active, which you can see by these yellow rays that are coming out of your character, dealing additional damage to enemies caught inside of the beam.

Now, in order to make the most out of Herald of the Sun, as you could probably already guess, you're going to be required to play around Dawnlight as much as possible. So when it's applied to a target, Dawnlight is going to last for a default of 8 seconds.

So if you're a hero who's been playing for a long time, you're going to have to play around Dawnlight for 8 seconds. Applying any additional Dawnlight to the same target is going to extend the debuff further.

But as we mentioned, this tree is built around AoE damage. The more targets you can get Dawnlight active onto, the more passive damage you will have.

Not only just from the dot itself, though, but you'll also gain extra damage from the added beams, as well as some extra haste from the Solar Grace talent. The main way we min-max this, assuming you're playing with Radiant Glory, is to just always try to activate Wake of Ashes when there's multiple enemies grouped up.

Now, of course, if you're able to hit multiple players with your Wake of Ashes itself, that's obviously going to be the best case scenario. Not only for just the damage that it deals, but because of the Burn to Ash talent, which is also going to increase the damage of Dawnlight by 30%.

However, if this is impossible, or in the case that you're opting to play without Radiant Glory, do bear in mind that the range on Sun's avatar is pretty large, meaning just as long as you have enemies somewhat near you, you can still apply Dawnlight to multiple targets, exactly like we see done here.

Because of how important this is, we highly suggest familiarizing yourself with the range of this, as you're going to want to adapt your position to play around this as much as possible throughout your games.

But let's move away from Dawnlight here for just a second and talk about the other key talents inside of this tree. First, we have Gleaming, rays.

This just passively increases the damage of your spenders whenever there's a Dawnlight active, so there's not much to play around here, with the only real consideration being that you'll ideally want to aim to only ever activate Avenging Wrath or Wake of Ashes when at either 2 Holy Power for Wake of Ashes or 5 for Avenging Wrath, in order to maximize the amount of Holy Power spenders during your Dawnlight uptime.

Then there's Eternal Flame. This replaces your Word of Glory with a slightly improved version, healing for more but also attaching an additional healing over time effect.

Again, there's really not much to consider here. This doesn't really affect how you would usually use Word of Glory.

However, there is one thing you will want to avoid doing is using Word of Glory immediately after Wake of Ashes unless absolutely necessary, as it's far more optimal to apply Dawnlight to your enemies rather than your allies. The one talent you need to focus on is the ability to use Dawnlight to attack your enemies.

If you're not sure what that is, you can use it to attack your enemies, but it's not a bad thing to do.

This talent causes any damage over time effects, such as your Dawnlight and Expurgation damage, along with your Eternal Flame healing over time to grant you a proc that not only makes Hammer of Wrath usable, but also increases its damage by 200%.

These hit incredibly hard and are something that you should never, ever, ever risk wasting. In fact, although this makes Hammer of Wrath usable, it's still a pretty good talent.

The only way to min-max this, if you happen to have a way to gain wings coming up shortly, is to hold onto these procs slightly until you can combine them during your Avenging Wrath window for even more burst damage.

Now that we know how this tree works, including some additional ways to min-max it, all that's left to do is walk through an example of how to best put everything we've discussed into practice. To start, Mystic first applies his Judgment to the target.

We covered the importance of this in our second video, but if you haven't already done so, you can watch it here. From here, he then works on building up Holy Power.

Remember, we ideally want to be able to go straight into a Holy Power finisher the second we pop our Wake of Ashes and activate Dawnlight to maximize the damage from Gleaming Rays, and as Wake of Ashes rewards 3, this is the perfect amount.

Now, as a side note to add here, notice how throughout this, knowing that he's about to activate Avenging Wrath shortly, Mystic has purposefully held onto his Blessing of Anshi proc. This was the min-max we just covered.

Now, at this point, we're ready to burst.

Once the enemies are stacked up and there's CC on the healer, Mystic uses his Hammer of Justice onto the Retribution Paladin, straight into a Wake of Ashes, making sure to position himself to hit both melee, activating wings, applying Dawnlight, and granting him 5 Holy Power in the process.

Thanks to the Divine Purpose proc, this allows Mystic to go straight into two back-to-back procs. Mystic's procs are now available to him, and he's ready to go.

Now, let's talk about the rest of the process. First, let's talk about the rest of the process.

First, let's talk about the rest of the process. First, let's talk about the rest of the final verdicts, making use of Final Reckoning and Gleaming Rays.

He then consumes his Hammer of Wrath proc before it expires, allowing him to do yet another final verdict, followed up with a Divine Toll into yet another final verdict, securing the win with over 650,000 sustained DPS.

Now, don't worry if you couldn't follow along here, this was just a showcase of what this tree is capable of. We're going to be breaking down this exact burst rotation, later in the course, as well as an in-depth analysis of the key abilities like Divine Toll and Final Reckoning that we haven't really covered yet.

Up next though, we're going to take a look at the alternative hero talent tree, Templar. See ya in just a moment.

RET HERO TALENTS: TEMPLAR

So, with Herald of the Sun fresh in your mind, it's time to explore the alternative hero talent tree, Templar. Can it compare with the high AoE damage and sustained pressure that Herald offers?

Well, let's find out together. Templar stands out as the more burst-oriented spec of the two.

Instead of relying on the passive damage from Dawnlight, this tree is built around Light's Guidance. Similar to Herald of the Sun, this passive is centered around Wake of Ashes, transforming the ability into Hammer of Light, which you have 12 seconds to use.

Hammer of Light is a powerful 5-cost spender capable of dealing massive damage to the target and up to 4 nearby targets, also applying judgment to any target hit and increasing your haste by 15% for 6 seconds. Another core mechanic of this tree is Empyrean Hammers, which spawn after the Herald of the Sun is destroyed.

These hammers have a chance to reset the cooldown of Hammer of Wrath, allowing it to be used regardless of the target's health for added finishing power.

Lastly, while Hammer of Light is usable only once after Wake of Ashes, during its cooldown, these same hammers grant you stacks of Light's Deliverance, enabling you to cast Hammer of Light once you reach 60 stacks. Primarily, what this tree offers is a lot of power, but it's also a different type of playstyle.

While Herald provides great overall damage through their dot pressure, Templar delivers reliable instant burst damage every 30 seconds when paired up with Radiant Glory.

This makes it excellent for shuffle or 3v3 matches, especially when paired with a partner who focuses on crowd control or who focuses on setup, such as rogues, mages, or really even hunters.

Before we dive deeper into executing this sequence, it's honestly crucial to consider the survivability and mobility aspects of this tree, as it's a very important element in the game. The talents we want to highlight here are Unrelenting Charger and Sacrosanct Crusade.

The latter talent causes your Wake of Ashes to provide a 15% maximum health absorb every time it's used. With Wake of Ashes on a 30 second cooldown, this effect really adds up throughout a game, even allowing you to use Wake of Ashes as a pseudo-defensive in rare cases.

Now not only that, but you can immediately follow it up with Hammer of Light to heal for an additional 15% of your health, converting any of your health into health. This synergizes incredibly well with the rest of the Retribution Paladin kit.

Since we're often going to be the primary target in most of our games, this talent allows us to use our offensive cooldowns to apply even more counter pressure. Then there's Unrelenting Charger.

So you've probably already seen the Rett wheelchair memes. We've seen them too.

And, um, well, it's really not a joke. Our mobility is absolutely terrible.

So having a talent that improves your mobility, and that serves our only real mobility spell, is pretty dang welcome. It not only makes catching those mobile specs just a little bit easier, but it also provides a better way to escape danger if we really need to.

Anyway though, enough of that. We know you didn't come here for all that kind of stuff.

Now let's get back to the good stuff. Damage.

Compared to Herald of the Light, Templar is considerably easier to play. Just press Wake of Ashes, hit him with a big Hammer of Light, and it's lights out.

Pun intended. And I'm sorry.

However, there are still ways to min-max this, and a few steps you should take before popping it. Let's begin with those prior setups.

First, since Hammer of Light functions as a holy power-spender, always ensure you have Greater Judgment active on the target before using it. Second, if Final Reckoning is ready, always combine it with your Hammer of Light to benefit from the damage amplification.

Then, in order to min-max the damage even further, as Hammer of Light is essentially a one-button-press big nuke, we're going to want to try and make that as impactful as possible.

Due to playing around a 30-second timer here, the best way to do this is to just always try and combine it with your Hammer of Justice, which should be around that cooldown if you're utilizing Judgment off cooldown.

You'll then want to use that Hammer of Justice either for lockdown on the kill target, or if your teammate is able to secure CC on that. Or honestly, just on the healer themselves, if you have no way to prevent your Hammer of Justice being dispelled, or no CC on the healer.

The other aspect of min-maxing this is target selection. Again, to reiterate, this loadout provides us with substantial kill pressure every 30 seconds.

Don't be afraid to swap targets. If somebody wastes their trinket or maybe even missed positions here, take advantage of that.

You have to. Finally, as the expansion progresses and you begin to face more skilled players or players, realistically, as players start using weak auras, Hammer of Light is going to become very telegraphed.

This means that if you don't combine it with a stun, your opponents are likely just going to preemptively use their defensives right after you cast Wake of Ashes. Now, while it is ideal to cast Wake of Ashes straight into Hammer of Light, remember that Hammer of Light is still usable for 12 seconds afterward.

Though ideally, you're going to combine it with Wings, making it more like 8 seconds, assuming you have Radiant Glory. The point is, if a player pre-uses a defensive here, don't waste your Hammer of Light into it unless you believe you can still secure a kill.

Instead, hold onto your damage until that defensive is over or consider switching targets. Now, one thing we want to touch on more is Empyrean Hammers.

Overall, these add a decent amount of passive damage spawning whenever you use Hammer of Light and for 8 seconds after from Shake the Heavens, which we can then extend even further whenever we use Hammer of Light. And further, whenever we use a generator, thanks to the higher Calling talent.

Aside from the passive damage though here and chance to reset Hammer of Wrath, the key thing here is that each time you spawn one of these from using a finisher while Wake of Ashes is on cooldown, you get a stack of Light's Deliverance, which enables you to use Hammer of Light an additional time once you reach 60 stacks, assuming Wake of Ashes is unavailable.

Now, as a whole, these take a decently long time to stack up, but we highly suggest grabbing yourself a weak aura to be able to track these stacks. That way, we can aim to play around them as much as possible.

The basic level of this is that you're going to ideally want to combine this Hammer of Light with either your proc wings from Radiant Glory or Aura of Reckoning, setting it up in the same way. So that's making sure you have Judgment active and 5 Holy Power.

However, if you can, a far more advanced way to play around this is to set up the ultimate one-shot. And in order to do this, you're going to want to be able to play around this for a while, and then you're going to want to be at exactly 58 stacks.

Then, go into your standard burst sequence, making sure you have Judgment active and at least 2 Holy Power. Then use Final Reckoning into Wake of Ashes, followed up with back-to-back Hammer of Lights.

This right here is enough damage to solo even the tankiest of targets, and if you can make it happen, it's definitely something worth playing around.

TEMPLAR BURST SEQUENCE: RADIANT GLORY + CRUSADE

In our previous video we covered how to burst when using Radiant Glory in conjunction with the Herald of the Sun Tree. For this video we're going to be keeping Radiant Glory but swapping our hero talents to Templar.

As with Herald, we begin by casting Judgment to generate 2 Holy Power. Follow this up with Final Reckoning and then use Wake of Ashes to activate Crusade.

With 5 Holy Power, you can immediately cast Hammer of Light, which will instantly put you at 6 stacks of Crusade. Next, use Divine Toll, followed by a Final Verdict to climb to 9 stacks.

To finish out your burst, you're going to cast Hammer of Wrath, followed by another Final Verdict to get the final stack. From this point, transition back into your standard Sustained Damage priority while keeping Divine Resonance in mind.

This sequence can feel slightly awkward compared to Herald of the Sun as it leaves you briefly at 9 stacks rather than reaching the full 10. However, this sequence does offer a bit more burst from the Hammer of Light.

HERALD BURST SEQUENCE: RADIANT GLORY + CRUSADE

This is the video that you have been waiting for, as in this next section of our Retribution Paladin course, we're going to be breaking down the exact sequence you want to be following in order to set up the highest burst damage possible.

So to do this, we're going to be providing you with two different sequences depending on your hero talent tree. To begin, cast Judgment to generate 2 Holy Power.

Follow up immediately with Final Reckoning, as this will amplify your damage during our burst window. Next, use Wake of Ashes to activate Crusade.

At this point, you should have 5 Holy Power and a Divine Purpose proc ready to use. Spend your Holy Power and use your proc by casting Final Verdict twice.

This will quickly bring you to 7 stacks of Crusade. Afterward, cast Hammer of Wrath to bring us back to 3 Holy Power and cast Final Verdict once more.

This will put you at 10 stacks of Crusade. Once you've reached full stacks, use Divine Toll to refill your Holy Power.

From here, you then just fall back into your standard sustain priority while remembering to play around Divine Resonance.

RET PALADIN OPENER

Let's move past the theory and get to the practical. In this next part of our Retribution Paladin damage course, we're going to be guiding you through the best strategies for how to approach openers.

So here we see the Rett begin moving toward the enemy team but stops just short of the Tomb. Patience is really key to setting up a strong go as a Rett Paladin.

If you just charge in, the enemy is going to spread out which makes it harder to land your damage and set up a go. Now as the enemy team stacks on top of that Tomb, the Rett starts by using Wake of Ashes to begin stacking up Crusade.

Then they land a Hammer of Justice on the Healer which will give their Hunter the opportunity to set up a trap. You never want to use Hammer of Justice on the DPS unless the Healer is already crowd controlled.

If you do, the Healer's first instinct is going to be to dispel that stun which effectively wastes your stun. With the Healer locked in a stun, the Rett sets up their burst with 4-3-4.

The Rett's first instinct is to dispel the stun which effectively wastes your final reckoning. It's usually best to wait until the Healer is crowd controlled before using final reckoning.

This can force a Panic Trinket or at the very least make the enemy team use their cooldowns to stay alive. The Rett continues to do damage during their burst but you're going to notice that the Rett uses Searing Glare to peel for their team.

While Rett brings strong damage, it does have amazing utility and can help save their team. The great thing about Searing Glare is that it's both offensive and it's defensive.

Not only does it shut down the enemy's damage, but it also prevents them from peeling your go by stopping them from using any crowd control abilities. So as the fight moves off the tomb, you're going to notice that the Rett isn't standing right on top of the enemy and that's to avoid getting cleaved.

Retts don't always need to be in melee range so unless it's necessary, they can hang back and take full advantage of their range. After all, your auto attacks aren't going to make or break the opener.

So at this point, Wings has ended, so the Rett shifts focus to their sustain priority to keep up pressure until their next WAKe of Ashes is ready.

RET PALADIN WIN CONDITION

All right, so far in this course, we've outlined our goals in Arena, we've provided you with a straightforward damage priority, and even covered how you should be approaching your openers.

Now, it's finally the time to bring it all together and demonstrate precisely how you should use all of this knowledge to win you games.

Now, much like we covered in the opener video, the key to winning games on Retribution Paladin is going to be, for the most part, playing around two things, your Hammer of Justice and your Avenging Wrath.

Now, depending on if you're playing Crusade or Radiant Glory, you're going to find yourself working towards these win conditions a little bit differently. With Radiant Glory and Herald build, you're less tied to doing strong scripted goes, especially in solo shuffle, due to the higher dampening levels.

Now, this is because, like we saw in our previous video, you're able to do such high sustained DPS that you can often brute force kills, just a good understanding of your sustained rotation, while also making sure to make this damage even more impactful by swapping on defensives, trying to reduce healing output, and just overall maximizing your damage.

Now, because of this, crowd control or even cross crowd control onto enemy DPS isn't as important, and instead, you mostly just want to crowd control healers so they keep falling behind, inevitably leading you to the win condition of just overwhelming your opponent.

However, if you're using the Templar build, you're going to typically only find kills with the Wake of Ashes and Hammer of Light combo, as the spike from this damage sequence is very meaningful when compared to the rest of your DPS in this build.

In this case, getting cross EC is ideal, or at the very least, trying to have the healer or your target crowd controlled prior to committing to your burst. Overall though, you're going to want to be much more mindful of when you commit to this sequence, ideally along with your DPS.

Now, if you're using the Templar build, you're going to want to have the target primed, which, simply put, means having them around 80% or lower if possible before committing to your crowd control and burst sequence. Now, with Crusade, regardless of your hero talents, the key is to maintain momentum during that window.

Take advantage of this period by making smart swaps while dealing significant damage from the ramped up Crusade. Focus on maximizing your uptime and damage as much as possible.

If you're using the Templar build, you're going to want to be careful to not get too much damage from the enemy's DPS. It may even be worth using your PvP trinket and even bubble offensively if you see an opportunity to secure a kill during this time.

But, since you're going to be dealing high sustained damage for an extended period, most kills are going to come from wearing down the enemy's defensive cooldowns with the first or second use of Crusade, then using the next Crusade to finish the game when they have no defensives left.

Now, as a whole though, Retribution Paladins don't really have the toolkit to reliably set up cross crowd control on their own, so you can't really do much about it. So, if you're using the Templar build, you're going to want to be careful to not get too much damage from the enemy's DPS.

If you're using the Templar build, you're going to want to be careful to not get too much damage from the enemy's defensive cooldowns with the first or second use of Crusade. So, killing through defenses is typically not an option.

This is why it's essential to track defensive cooldowns with Omnibar as a Retribution Paladin, as knowing who's the most vulnerable target and when defensives are used will help you decide and focus on the right kill target.