LoDBlog

You’ve probably heard a lot about the hot new topic in the world of Ret Paladins – Protribution!  No, not prosti… er, nevermind.  “Protribution” is a new buzzword given to PVP Ret Paladins who trade their 2Hander for a 1H/Shield, and then spec most of their talent points into Protection, with the remainder in Retribution.  I’m sad to say that lately I’ve banked my PVP 2H and hopped on the bandwagon, and that so far I’m loving it!  Here I sort thru the myths and the facts about Protribution, as well as offer some tips of what I’ve learned so far:

Q:  Ok srsly, what the hell IS a “Protribution” spec?  Why not just call it “Prot”?
A: Protribution is another word for “Prot/Ret PVP spec”. You actually spec very similarly to a cookie-cutter Protection tanking PVE build, except that you also take all the early Prot talents that a Retribution PVP spec would take (which I assume is the reasoning behind the “Protribution” nickname, to set them apart).  I currently prefer 0/53/18, although certain talents can be tweaked around (I’ll address this later).

Q:  Isn’t this a blog about Ret Paladins?  Why are we talking about Prot specs?
A: Technically Protribution has mostly Prot talents, and uses a 1H and Shield.  But that’s basically where the similarities to tanking end.  In PVP, the playstyle is almost exactly the same as Ret, except you lose your wannabe CC (Repentance) your ability to bust out of stuns (Divine Purpose), and you gain a snare/silence on a 30 second cooldown, plus lower Hammer of Justice CD.  The DPS “rotation” plays exactly like Ret, where Shield of Righteousness (ShoR) = Crusader Strike; Hammer of the Righteous (HotR) chains = Divine Storm AOE; Judgement = Judgement (obviously); and Avengers Shield (AS) = instant Exorcism.  If you are used to playing Ret, you will pick up the Protribution playstyle in no time, as there is very little difference.

Q:  What type of gear do you wear for Protribution?
A:  Short answer:  the same exact gear you wear for Retribution, except a 1H weapon (slower weapon speed is better) and a Shield (highest block value is best).  You don’t need as much resilience as if you are Ret, so you can sprinkle in more PVE gear and still survive.  I would recommend at least 500-600 resilience, although your mileage may vary depending on your particular team comp and arena bracket of choice.  See below for the long answer.

Q:  Everyone keeps saying Protribution does more DPS than Ret – if that’s really true then why don’t you see anyone speccing like this for PVE DPS?
A:  Couple reasons.  First of all, a lot of people use the terms “DPS” and “burst damage” interchangeably, even though they’re completely different.  Protribution does arguably have better burst damage (and every 30 seconds when Avenger’s Shield is up, there is no argument, it IS better burst), but Ret still has higher sustained DPS in PVP.  The second reason is that Ret does a ton more DPS in PVE than in PVP, since so much of the PVE damage (Seal of Vengeance, Righteous Vengeance, Holy Vengeance) is not feasible in PVP.  On the other hand, a Prot/Ret DPS spec loses very little DPS going between PVE and PVP, since you ramp up SoV quickly with a 1H, plus most of your DPS is from HotR/ShoR which obviously cannot be dispelled.

Q:  I also hear everyone saying Protribution has much more survivability than Ret, way better heals, and endless mana from Divine Plea.  How can they really get all that on top of better offensive utility (snare/silence plus 30 second HoJ CD)?
A:  Let’s take those one at a time:

• Survivability = Fact! I think it goes without saying that this is true.  Against Magical attacks, you have 6% reduced damage from Improved Righteous Fury (note: Ret does too), 3% from Glyph of Divine Plea, 3% from Blessing of Sanctuary (if not dispelled), and 6% from Guarded from the Light – that’s ~17% reduced damage before you consider Resilience (note: not 18%, they are multiplicative not additive).  Against Physical attacks, your damage reduction from armor jumps from about 48% to about 64% (remember though, this is before Armor Penetration!), plus you can now block about 2k damage off attacks made from the front, in addition to Imp RF, DP and Sanct reductions mentioned above.  Plus you obviously gain more HP from all the +stamina talents, although this is lessened somewhat by wearing more PVE gear.
• Healing = Myth! This is by far the biggest misconception about Protribution.  Any time someone mentions how Protribution has awesome heals, immediately discount their opinion as that of an ignorant forum troll.  Prot/Holy has ridiculously good healing, but Prot/Ret has almost no healing whatsoever.  You are wearing Retribution gear, so you have very little mana.  Also, you rely on keeping up Divine Plea at all times or else you will run out of mana extremely quickly, so any heal that you cast is a choice between leaving DP up for a self-MS effect, or canceling DP and ensuring that you will shortly be OOM.  Situations where it is worth healing as Protribution are very, very rare, for the most part you just leave the heals to the real healers and act like a Warrior wannabe.
• Endless Mana = Depends. In theory, this might be true since you can refresh Divine Plea on any melee hit.  But in practice, this is by far the biggest weakness of Protribution.  If the other team is able to CC you well enough to make DP fall off, you will lose a ton of DPS time due to lack of mana (especially if they’re able to combine that CC with mana burns to speed up the process).  However, this does take a lot of work on the part of your opponents (unless you do the work for them and go around healing like a dummy).

Q:  Ok enough about the basics, you’ve sold me on the idea – where do I start!?
A:  Let’s start out with the talents, since they’re the easiest.  Like I said above, I currently prefer 0/53/18, although my mind could be swayed in certain talents in the following cases:

• Is 2 points in Vindication worth it? Very hard to say really, it’s just personal preference.  The other option is 2% crit.  I’m on the fence, I could go either way depending on which direction the wind blows.
• 3 points in Crusade vs. Seals of the Pure? This is no question, 6% to all damage easily beats 15% to Seal and Judgement damage only.  Just wanted to point that out in case you thought about putting any points in Holy.  Not worth it.
• Why 2 points in Toughness? These are just floater points required to reach Tier 5 of the tree.  You can put these 2 points wherever you want really.
• Why 4 points in Reckoning? Confession:  at this point I exclusively do 5v5, although we’ve been working on getting a 3v3 comp together with me as Protribution.  There’s a lot more random AOE hits flying around in 5v5 that will still proc Reckoning than you would see in 3v3 or 2v2.  I’m still not really sure if it’s worth it since the big hitting moves are AS, HotR, ShoR (all unrelated to autoattacks), but the other options for these talents points aren’t all that great either.
• Can I take 1 point out of Redoubt? When I checked the armory links of 2500+ ranked Protribution Paladins, they often took 1 point out of Redoubt (either for SA, or for an extra 19^th point in Ret), but I don’t really understand the logic.  Block Value is awesome for boosting Shield of the Righteous crits, but I have to admit I haven’t done the math on whether 10% BV would beat 1% crit (what you’d get by spending 1 more in the Ret tree).  If anyone cares to do this math, I’d be interested.

Q:  How about glyphs?
A:  Your options include:

• Avenger’s Shield
• Divine Plea
• Hammer of the Righteous
• Hammer of Justice
• Judgement
• Salvation
• Seal of Vengeance
• Shield of Righteousness
  

Avenger’s Shield is really the only “Must Have”.  It hurts to lose the snare/silence on 2 extra targets, but the additional burst capability is borderline overpowered.  From there you can pick any two from the rest of the list.  I recommend the HotR glyph for 5v5, but obviously not for smaller brackets.  The Hammer of Justice glyph can be anywhere from extremely useful to pointless, depending on your team’s playstyle and how often you need to throw a stun on someone out of melee range.  I personally use Divine Plea as my third glyph since a constant 3% damage reduction is very powerful, but there is a great argument for using Salvation instead if you find you are rarely attacked except after popping Avenging Wrath.  Judgement and SoV glyphs are decent DPS boosts (with J > SoV), but neither will contribute a whole lot, since Judgement is your weakest attack, and expertise is weak for PVP in general.   Finally, some Paladins swear by the mana reduction glyph for Shield of Righteousness (which makes ShoR cost almost zero mana), but in my experience I’ve never had enough mana issues that I would even consider using it at this point.

Q:  You said to use basically the same gear as Ret – can you be more specific?
A:  In general, your goal should be to stack as much Strength, Stamina, and Crit as possible, while remaining over the 5% hit cap, and keeping at least 500+ resilience.  Some tips for particular gearslots:

• Tier armor slots: I would recommend using at least 4-5 PVP pieces, and getting the majority of your resilience from these.   One other option is to use the 2 pieces of Tier 9 tanking gear with block value (helmet and leggings) – you will lose a lot of crit but the 2 piece bonus rocks.  However, for that to be worthwhile, you would need to enchant/gem your tanking gear with strength gems and crit/AP enchants, which may or may not be an option for you.
• Belt, Boots, Bracers: You cannot go wrong with Relentless gear in these slots, especially bracers since any high ILVL plate gear will have useless armor penetration.  I would probably only recommend using PVE boots or belt if you have a higher ILVL PVE piece (for example a heroic Bloodbath Belt or Greaves of 7^th Legion).
• Neck, cape, rings, trinkets: Prot gets insane scaling with Strength due to Touched by the Light, so these slots are where you really need to stack your best PVE gear, since the PVP pieces have Attack Power instead of Strength.  Examples of ideally itemized pieces for each slot would probably be Executioner’s Malice (neck), Strength of Nerub (cloak), Bloodshed Band (ring), Death’s Verdict (trinket).  Notice how most of these items have hit rating!  You’ll probably end up getting most of your 5% hit from these slots.
• Main hand: the most important thing you’re looking for in a 1H weapon is the highest DPS possible.  If the ILVLs (and therefore weapon DPS) are equal, then slower is better – but a fast tanking weapon with Strength is surprisingly almost as good since HotR is normalized (assuming you still enchant it with Berserking)
• Shield: I highly recommend any of the ToC shields, since they all have extra block value, which is the main thing you’re looking for in a Shield (plus high Strength, as always)
• Libram: Libram of Valiance, no question.

Q: Ok last question, is it worth my time to get all this gear together, or will Protribution just end up getting nerfed?
A:  I’m sure Protribution will end up taking some sort of nerfs, since anything with this much QQ on the WoW forums will inevitably get hit just to quiet the masses.  The question is what will they nerf.  My prediction is that Blizzard will be wary of nerfing anything that affects Prot’s ability to main tank in Icecrown Citadel, so Protribution will be relatively safe for some time.  I figure they’ll nerf the Avenger’s Shield glyph first since this is not actually used for tanking, and it fits the mold of “very overpowered but balanced by a long cooldown” abilities which Blizzard has been going after lately.  I would also not be surprised to see nerfs to the scaling of Hammer of the Righteous (it currently scales with Attack Power as if the 1H weapon speed was 4.0!).  HotR is perfectly fine at the AP levels that a tank would expect to see, but ends up hitting ridiculously hard (while ignoring armor) when you are in full DPS gear.  Shield of Righteousness also hits very hard while ignoring armor, but I wouldn’t really expect to see any nerfs here since it stops scaling well once you reach 2400 Block Value (and the damage caps out completely at 2760 BV).

On the flip side, will Retribution ever get buffed to make it more attractive than Protribution?  My prediction is that I seriously doubt we’ll see Ret buffed with any offensive utility whatsoever until Cataclysm (and they sure as hell aren’t going to buff the PVP damage back to where it was, for obvious reasons).  Blizzard tends to take a longer view of things, and I just don’t see them adding something as major as a snare, interrupt or Mortal Strike debuff in the middle of an expansion.  Expect to see them continue nerfing the baseline defensive utility of Paladins in small doses until the expansion, when they can sit back and redesign Retribution to strike a better balance between burst damage, defensive utility, and offensive utility.  Until then, I say strap on your shield, hop on the bandwagon and have some fun with Protribution, the new Ret, while it lasts!