LoDBlog

Unfortunately, Icecrown Citadel is already released before I was able to put together a post for tips for Ret Paladins in Trial of the Grand Crusader, but ToGC won’t be immediately obsolete due to the gating system in ICC.  So better late than never!  One of the most important tricks for improving your DPS in ToGC as a Ret Paladin is keeping your Seal of Vengeance DOT stack alive through as many target switches as possible.  Also, in addition to maximizing DPS, there are also several opportunities for a Ret Paladin to contribute meaningful raid utility in other ways.  Here’s my breakdown for each fight:

Northrend Beasts

Gormok – Your strategy for maintaining your SoV stack will depend greatly on how your raid handles Snobolds.  For LoD, we ask any Ranged/Healers with a snobold to run into melee.  What I recommend is attacking Snobolds for a few GCDs (Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Consecrate, Exorcism), and then turning to refresh your SoV stack on Gormok whenever Judgement is off cooldown (Judgement will hit Gormok much harder than the Snobold since he has 5 stacks).  Also note that no matter who you are targeting, DS and Consecrate will hit Gormok but not hit the Snobolds, so you can use these abilities while targeting either one.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale – My first piece of advice is to stand at maximum melee range on Acidmaw and watch his cast bar very closely, and then immediately strafe away when he starts casting Paralytic Toxin on any melee DPS.  With quick reaction time you can actually “dodge” the AOE splash, which obviously results in a huge DPS increase if you don’t have to waste time running across the room to clear your debuff.

You can greatly increase your DPS on this phase by keeping your SoV stack up after a worm burrows – however, this is very dangerous due to the aggro reset.  I recommend either playing it safe and backing away entirely until your tank establishes aggro (remember, even the ticking DOT can steal aggro if your tank is too slow), or if you really trust your tank then can autoattack immediately without using any instant attacks, just to make sure you refresh the DOT stack.

Icehowl – Maximizing DPS on this phase is all about having that 5 stack SoV DoT alive for the double damage period after he gets stunned.  I recommend watching the timer for Massive Crash, and cheating towards the center of the arena right before Icehowl jumps into the center, so that you can get one last autoattack in and ensure a 15 second duration on SoV.  Then when he’s charging, you can actually run into his path and autoattack him again, as long as you are far away from the wall when he hits it.

One other powerful raid utility a Ret Paladin can bring on Icehowl is that if you spec for Divine Purpose, casting Hand of Freedom on the target of Icehowl’s Arctic Breath will actually cause Icehowl to stop casting the spell completely (since Arctic Breath is a stun and HoF removes it).  This will save a lot of extra raid damage, and increase raid DPS by a decent amount.

Jaraxxus

The most important thing on Jaraxxus is killing the Nether Portals and Infernal Volcanoes immediately, regardless of how much it hurts your DPS.  One important thing to note for Portals/Volcanoes is that Hand of Reckoning works on them, and can help you do extra DPS off the GCD.  Once the Portal/Volcano is dead, you should immediately switch back to Jaraxxus to try to refresh SoV – if your raid DPS is high enough on the Portal, your SoV stack should still be up on Jaraxxus when you get back.  Whether you should stick on Jaraxxus or help on the Mistress/Infernals will depend on your raid composition/strategy.  What I find works well for me is to help DPS the Mistress except when she jumps in the air to piledrive someone, and to completely ignore Infernals due to their nasty hellfire.

Faction Champions

The most important thing you can do on Faction Champs as a Ret Paladin is spamming that Cleanse button, and I mean SPAM it, son!  My “DPS rotation” will usually look something like:  Crusader Strike, Judgement, Cleanse times 5, repeat.  Consecrate is worthless on this fight due to the AOE damage reduction, and the importance of CC.  The same is true of Divine Storm but to a lesser degree since it *can* be safely used occasionally if you are very careful.

Another important thing you can do as a melee DPS is to immediately kill any Tremor Totems before they screw up the CC chains.  And of course you’ll want to keep an eye out for clothies about to get lit up, and use Blessing of Protection accordingly.  On normal modes, you can do considerable extra damage with Hand of Reckoning (which potentially doubles as a weak form of CC), although on Heroic modes this only works on the Cat and Felhunter pets.

Twin Valkyrs

Ret Paladins do incredibly well on this fight since Righteous Vengeance “double dips” on the percentage modifier from Light/Dark Essence.  LoD tanks the bosses separate from each other, with DPS split so that half are on each boss (i.e. Ensidia strat).  Also, we ignore the Touch of Light/Dark debuffs, and rely on healers to just heal thru it.  Here are my tips for using that strategy, which may or may not be relevant if your raid uses a strategy with bosses tanked on top of each other:

• The first method for improving DPS on this fight is to try to time your Avenging Wrath with the Empowered Darkness.  I generally use AW near the start of the fight as soon as I get 5 stacks on SoV, then save my second and third AW to use during an Empowered Darkness.
• On the topic of Avenging Wrath, note that although it may seem like the raid would be better served by Ret Paladins using AW during the damage shields, this is NOT true since half your damage will pierce thru the shield if you use wings.
• I always try to catch as many stray Orbs of my color, even if it means losing a little DPS time on the boss.  Ret Paladins can probably do this better than any other melee class since three of our main attacks have no facing requirements.  However, remember that the goal is only to catch orbs that would’ve passed by your group – if you run out of the melee clump to catch orbs that would’ve hit the group anyways, then you’re lowering the raid DPS significantly.
• Unfortunately, using the split boss strategy, your SoV stack will always fall off when you need to switch to break the opposite boss’s shield.  However, this should be the only time you ever lose your SoV stack.  Whenever the opposite color Vortex occurs, I recommend always switching colors rather than bubbling the damage, since absorbing the Vortex builds your Dark Essence stack.

Anub’arak

There are many details to my job on this fight as a Ret Paladin.  Note that like Twin Valkyrs, some of these details may or may not be relevant depending on how your raid tanks the adds (LoD uses one tank for all 4 adds), and deals with burrow phases.

The Pull: Open with autoattack on Anub’arak immediately to get SoV stack built up.  Save first Divine Storm CD for when the Frost Orb is deathgripped next to Anub.  If this isn’t enough to kill the Frost Orb, switch targets and kill it with Hand of Reckoning.

Hand of Freedom: I find it very helpful to use a macro such as “/cast [target=TANKNAME] Hand of Freedom” to cast HoF on the add tank as he comes back to the frost patch, so that he can position the adds easily without worrying about being slowed to a crawl.  Of course, any Paladin can do it, but when you get to phase 3, it is probably easier for a Ret Paladin to spare the GCD than for a healer.  Note that using this macro, you won’t lose your DPS target on Anub.  (**important edit:  We found that due to the mob pathing bug introduced in the 3.3 patch, it can be advantageous for the tank to get slowed by the patch – discuss it with your add tank to see which method they prefer!)

Interrupting Shadowstrike: If you use the 1 offtank strategy, this will be by far your most important duty.  Every 30 seconds, Anub’arak will signal all Burrowers near him to cast Shadowstrike.  This is  normally a long cast time, but with 4 adds on top of each other they will cast almost instantly.  The trick here is that any add which is stunned at the moment Anub signals for the Shadowstrike, will NOT cast after becoming unstunned.  So the responsibility of the Ret Paladin in your raid should be to wait until there is about 1.5 seconds left on the Deadly Boss Mod timer for Shadowstrike, and then Holy Wrath to stun them all.  Misses should not be a problem since the adds are lower level (assuming you are melee hit capped for Anub like you should be).  One issue that can be a problem is to make sure no one stuns any of the adds to put it on diminishing returns.  This goes for obvious candidates like Warrior intercepts or Rogue stunlocks, but also less obvious culprits like Felguard intercepts or Spirit Wolves bashing

Choice of Seal: The best role for a Ret Paladin on this fight is doing maximum single target DPS on Anub’arak with SoV, while adding moderate AOE damage on adds with Divine Storm and Consecrate.  The only way it would make sense to use Seal of Command on Phase 1 is if your raid is just REALLY having trouble getting the adds down in time, and there is absolutely no one else available from any of the classes that are better suited to AOE DPS.  I recommend switching to Seal of Command for killing scarabs during burrow phases though, for obvious reasons.

Phase Transitions: In our strategy, we pull Anub’arak away from the frost patch before he submerges, so that we don’t accidentally break the frost patch which has adds tanked on it.  If your raid uses this strategy, keep in mind that it’s fine to follow Anub and add more single target DPS before the first burrow, since the second set of adds will never cast Shadowstrike.  However, make sure you don’t follow Anub before the second burrow phase, because a Shadowstrike will go off just before he submerges.

BoP Rotations: During burrow phases, our strategy is to deathgrip down two patches for each burrow phase, with 4 Paladins in a BoP rotation to buy time before each one is broken.  Whenever it is your turn in the rotation (which for me, is 4^th), make sure to get the kiter targeted quickly, and be within 20 yards of them to BoP just before the spikes hit them.  If your raid does have 4 Paladins, I would recommend letting Ret Paladins go 2^nd or 4^th in the rotation, so that they can help DPS adds right after Anub’arak burrows (and definitely not 3^rd in the rotation, since you need to be ready to interrupt the Shadowstrike right before he burrows).

Phase 3: First of all, make sure you switch to Judgement of Light if you normally do Wisdom earlier in the fight like I do.  Also make sure you have Mighty Frost Protection Potions and Healthstones on hand to use when you get Penetrating Cold (Frost Pot for the 1^st one, Healthrock for the 2^nd).  Other than that, Phase 3 is just an extended Phase 1 where you need to HoF each time adds come out, and Holy Wrath every Shadowstrike.  Just make sure that you never get behind on your Holy Wrath casts, because the Shadowstrikes come exactly every 30 seconds.