Retribution Paladin PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Season 1

The opener refers to your team's opening CC chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer or your kill target uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. There is no reason to hold onto your cooldowns at the start of the match; apply your team's CC chain and burst to gain momentum.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game with Templar rotation as an example.

1. Crowd Control the Enemy Healer with Hammer of Justice
2. Press Judgment applying Greater Judgment.
3. Press Blade of Justice applying Holy Flames.
4. Press Wake of Ashes
5. Press Hammer of Light
6. Press Divine Toll
7. Press Final Verdict
8. Press Hammer of Wrath or Blade of Justice if Art of War has activated.
9. Continue with Sustained Damage priority.

This list serves as your sustained damage rotation priority.

1. Press Judgment applying Greater Judgment.
2. Press Blade of Justice applying Holy Flames.
3. Prioritize spending Holy Power on Final Verdict before a holy power generator would push you over your five Holy Power limit.
4. Your generator priority: Art of War empowered Blade of Justice > Judgment or Hammer of Wrath > Blade of Justice > Templar Strikes.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control, and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage.

1. Crowd Control the Enemy Healer with Hammer of Justice
2. Press Judgment applying Greater Judgment.
3. Press Blade of Justice applying Holy Flames.
4. Press Wake of Ashes
5. Press Hammer of Light
6. Press Divine Toll
7. Press Final Verdict
8. Press Hammer of Wrath or Blade of Justice if Art of War has activated.
9. Continue with Sustained Damage priority.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control, and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage.

1. Cast Judgment applying Greater Judgment
2. Cast Avenging Wrath generating 2 Holy Power from Walk Into Light
3. Cast Final Verdict generating a stack of Crusade.
5. Cast Wake of Ashes applying Burn to Ash
6. Cast Final Verdict applying Dawnlight
7. Cast Divine Toll which will also cast Blade of Justice from Walk Into Light
8. Cast Final Verdict applying Dawnlight again.
9. Cast Hammer of Wrath which will generate 4 Holy Power from Divine Resonance and Walk Into Light's Blade of Justice
10. Continue with Sustained Damage priority.

Divine Protection is your main defensive cooldown. It provides you with a small damage reduction, shield, and increases your healing received.

Divine Shield is Retribution's strongest defensive - providing full damage and crowd control immunity. In rare circumstances it can be used offensively to secure kills and can be used during Forbearance with Light's Revocation talented.

It is important to master trading this ability only when absolutely necessary because Retribution will quickly die without it to fall back on.

Blessing of Protection is a great tool to save yourself and your teammates from physical damage and remove crowd control such as Kidney Shot. It will also remove Touch of Karma from Windwalker Monk.

Blessing of Protection also has a spell protection variant in the form of a PvP talent called Blessing of Spellwarding. When used this talent will place the other on a shared cooldown so if taking Blessing of Spellwarding it is advised to drop Blessing of Protection as a talent.

Lay on Hands is a great defensive for you and your team, especially when in conjunction with Empyreal Ward providing a strong heal that ignores both Mortal Wounds and heal dampening effects.

Word of Glory is your instant cast healing spell. The lower HP you are the more healing it will do to yourself with Healing Hands talented.

Blessing of Sacrifice should be used as an additional teammate defensive cooldown. It will provide your teammates with a 20% damage reduction effect while redirecting the damage taken to you. Keep in mind this effect is nerfed to 20% from 30% in PvP combat. It is best to use this effect at a higher percentage HP.

Blessing of Sanctuary is Retribution Paladin's strongest utility spell. It will remove a fear/stun/horror/silence effect from the targeted player. Use this to get your healer out of crowd control as often as you can.

It is also worth noting that you can pre-emptively use this spell to prevent 60% of a crowd control on yourself if you anticipate receiving a fear/stun/horror/silence effect.

Blessing of Freedom allows you to remove slow and root effects from both yourself and a teammate. When running Unbound Freedom always make sure to freedom someone other than yourself. You can use freedom to break root effects that may contain your healer in Solar Beam silences.

Blessing of Freedom is also effective as a defensive, allowing you to kite away from enemy offensive cooldowns.