Retribution Paladin DPS Gear and Best in Slot — The War Within (11.0.5)

Welcome to our Gear Page for Retribution Paladin. This guide contains all the information you need to know about how to gear a Retribution Paladin, including crafted gear, embellishments, and trinkets.

For more specific information about how stats work for Retribution, you can visit our Stats guide:

With the sheer number of possible gear combinations, a generic stat priority or BiS list is not going to tell the entire story of how to gear your character. Instead, you should use Raidbots to get a better idea of how changing different items will affect your character. Especially for Retribution, you will frequently find the values of different stats fluctuate a lot as you upgrade your gear, so using a more objective metric to help you make gearing decisions is invaluable.

If you are not experienced with using Raidbots, see the guide below for more information on how to use it:

3.

BiS Gear for Retribution Paladin

Season 1 Overall BiS List Season 1 Nerub-ar Palace BiS List Season 1 Mythic+ BiS List

4.

Season 1 Overall BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from any source for Season 1 of The War Within.

Some items listed are only available from the Great Vault. While these are theoretical BiS, other similar items that are more easily obtained can be substituted instead. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Everforged Greataxe	Blacksmithing
Helm	Entombed Seraph's Casque	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	Sureki Zealot's Insignia	Sikran in Nerub-ar Palace
Shoulder	Entombed Seraph's Plumes	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Royal Emblem of Nerub-ar	Ulgrax the Devourer in Nerub-ar Palace
Chest	Entombed Seraph's Breastplate	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Everforged Vambraces	Blacksmithing
Gloves	Entombed Seraph's Castigation	Matrix Catalyst
Belt	Girdle of Somber Ploys	The Dawnbreaker
Legs	Legplates of Broken Trust	The Stonevault
Boots	Boots of the Black Bulwark	The Bloodbound Horror in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #1	Seal of the Poisoned Pact	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #2	Writhing Ringworm	Broodtwister Ovi'nax in Nerub-ar Palace
Trinket #1	Mark of Khardros	Grim Batol
Trinket #2	Ara-Kara Sacbrood	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

4.

Nerub-ar Palace BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from Nerub-ar Palace for Season 1 of The War Within.

While the items listed are theoretical BiS, other similar items can be substituted instead for most slots. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Anub'arash's Colossal Mandible	Silken Court in Nerub-ar Palace
Helm	Entombed Seraph's Casque	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	Sureki Zealot's Insignia	Sikran in Nerub-ar Palace
Shoulder	Entombed Seraph's Plumes	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Royal Emblem of Nerub-ar	Ulgrax the Devourer in Nerub-ar Palace
Chest	Entombed Seraph's Breastplate	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Devoted Offering's Irons	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace
Gloves	Black Blood Injectors	Broodtwister Ovi'nax in Nerub-ar Palace
Belt	Nether Bounty's Greatbelt	Nexus-Princess Ky'veza in Nerub-ar Palace
Legs	Entombed Seraph's Greaves	Matrix Catalyst
Boots	Boots of the Black Bulwark	The Bloodbound Horror in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #1	Seal of the Poisoned Pact	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace
Ring #2	Writhing Ringworm	Broodtwister Ovi'nax in Nerub-ar Palace
Trinket #1	Skyterror's Corrosive Organ	Rasha'nan in Nerub-ar Palace
Trinket #2	Mad Queen's Mandate	Queen Ansurek in Nerub-ar Palace

4.

Season 1 Mythic+ BiS List for Retribution Paladin

This list contains the BiS items from Mythic+ for Season 1 of The War Within.

While the items listed are theoretical BiS, other similar items can be substituted instead for most slots. You should not be dropping significant amounts of item level for items on this list in most cases.

Slot	Item	Source/Note
Weapon	Wild Hammer	Grim Batol
Helm	Entombed Seraph's Casque	Matrix Catalyst
Neck	'Emergency Stop' Keychain	The Stonevault
Shoulder	Entombed Seraph's Plumes	Matrix Catalyst
Cloak	Anvilhide Cape	The Stonevault
Chest	Entombed Seraph's Breastplate	Matrix Catalyst
Bracers	Bracers of Umbral Mending	Grim Batol
Gloves	Entombed Seraph's Castigation	Matrix Catalyst
Belt	Girdle of Somber Ploys	The Dawnbreaker
Legs	Legplates of Broken Trust	The Stonevault
Boots	Ballast Sinkers	Siege of Boralus
Ring #1	Umbriss Band	Grim Batol
Ring #2	Band of the Roving Scalawag	Siege of Boralus
Trinket #1	Mark of Khardros	Grim Batol
Trinket #2	Ara-Kara Sacbrood	Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

The Tier Set bonuses for The War Within Season 1 for Retribution Paladin are:

• Paladin Retribution Season 1 2pc — Blade of Justice damage increased by 15% and Wake of Ashes damage increased by 10%.
• Paladin Retribution Season 1 4pc — Wake of Ashes increases your damage done by 8% for 8 seconds.

These bonuses increase the damage of Wake of Ashes and Blade of Justice and also provide a decent damage increase during your cooldown windows. They are not insanely strong bonuses, but you should still aim to get them as soon as possible.

In general, you should focus your early crafts on getting embellished gear. For more information on those, see the section below.

Once you have your two embellished items, jewellery is a good choice to craft since you can customize its secondary stats as required, and all crafted rings come with a socket. Finally, fill out any low-item level non-tier slots such as bracers, cloak, belt, and feet, and then you have the option of crafting additional embellished items for different content types.

When crafting gear, you will want to use a missive to set the item's secondary stats. Although you should sim your options to check what the best one for your gear setup would be, a good default to use is Algari Missive of the Peerless.

Embellishments are still being actively tuned at the moment - it is in your best interest to wait until Season 1 has started to use your Sparks just in case things change.

For Retribution, you have a few combinations that perform very similarly:

1. Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension & Writhing Armor Banding
2. 2x Dawnthread Lining
3. 2x Elemental Focusing Lens

Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension along with Writhing Armor Banding is a strong combination, but does require you to use a crafted weapon - this can be a bonus as weapons are by far the most important slot to get at high item level, but they do require 2 Sparks rather than 1 to craft, which will force you to use a non-Spark crafted item for your second embellishment while you wait for your next spark. If you do not get a high item level weapon early and can craft at 636 then this combination is a good choice. Dawnthread Lining is very close to the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension combination, performing slightly ahead or behind depending on the uptime you can maintain. Elemental Focusing Lens is the next best armor embellishment after Dawnthread Lining if you cannot maintain high uptime on its buff.

Because crafted gear has a slightly lower item level cap than Myth track items, you will want to use armor embellishments in slots that have relatively less Strength. Bracers and cloak are good choices for slots to craft on.

Gear can be upgraded using Crests and Valorstones. Upgrading gear for a given slot will also reduce the cost of future upgrades, which reduces the opportunity cost of upgrading early on. In general, you should aim to upgrade the slots with the highest impact first - for Retribution, this is:

1. Weapon
2. Trinkets
3. Helm, Chest, and Legs
4. Shoulders, Belt, Gloves, Boots, and Jewellery
5. Cloak and Bracers