TBC Classic Retribution Paladin Spec, Builds, and Talents

Retribution Paladin talents focus on maximizing damage and sustaining the Mana you need to be able to use your abilities throughout an entire boss fight no matter the duration.

If you were looking for a leveling-oriented build, please refer to our Paladin leveling guide.

Retribution Paladin talents are very straightforward and only offers a few opportunities to deviate because of how powerful many of the talents available in the Retribution tree are. I do not consider any of these talent choices as optional except for possibly taking the point out of Blessing of Kings if you are certain you will be playing with another Paladin.

The Retribution section of the Paladin talent tree focuses on increasing your damage and sustaining Mana to be able to continuously use your spells and abilities.

Benediction reduces the cost of your Seals and Judgement ability. These are two of the spells you will cast the most so the Mana cost reduction is very noticeable.

Improved Seal of the Crusader turns an already powerful personal debuff on the mob into something that benefits the entire party by making critical strikes more likely against mobs effected by this debuff.

Seal of Command is a powerful tool to have not only for Seal Twisting if you decide to try that but in any situation where there is a large amount of incoming damage and Seal of Blood/Seal of the Martyr may not be practical to use.

Pursuit of Justice gives a small chance you will completely avoid some spells as well as increasing your movement speed, one of Paladin's largest weaknesses is their lack of mobility so any added movement speed is huge.

Crusade is a flat damage increase against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals which covers almost every mob you will encounter in Outland.

Sanctity Aura becomes your go-to aura because of the massive increase it does to your holy damage. If you are with a Protection Paladin this aura also drastically increases their damage and threat as a result of the increased damage.

Improved Sanctity Aura increases the damage dealt by all sources to any target effected by this aura, providing a flat damage increase to all your allies.

Vengeance increases your physical damage and holy damage by 5%, stacking up to 3 times all the way to 15% every time you crit, this synergizes extremely well with other talents we have taken that increase the crit chance of our abilities.

Sanctified Judgement causes your Judgement to return 80% of its Mana cost greatly increasing your incoming Mana during an encounter. Making Judgement nearly free is huge because it is one of your most used abilities, combined with Benediction you will barely see your Mana bar move when casting Judgement.

Repentance incapacitates your target for 6 seconds, this is a powerful crowd control effect but can only be used against Humanoids and breaks on damage.

Fanaticism increases the crit chance of judgements by 15% and reduces all threat generated by 30%.

Crusader Strike deals 110% of your weapon damage on a short cooldown and is a key part of your damage rotation but also refreshes all judgements active on the target greatly aiding other Paladins that may not be casting judgement as often.

The Protection tree offers an excellent buff in Blessing of Kings and some other strong utility on the way to get it.

Guardian's Favor reduces the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom spells.

Blessing of Kings is a powerful buff that benefits some classes and specs more than any other blessing Paladins are able to offer.

Divine Strength increases your total strength giving you a lot of attack power and making each point of strength even more valuable.