Stat Priority

1. Strength
2. Hit Rating (Soft Cap: 960 for 8% Hit Chance / 840 for 7% Hit Chance with Heroic Presence)
3. Expertise Rating (Soft Cap: 781 Expertise Rating for 26 Expertise)
4. Mastery
5. Critical Strike Chance
6. Haste Rating
7. Agility
8. Spirit (Avoid)
9. Spell Power (Avoid)

Strength: In Cataclysm, Strength serves as the primary source of Attack Power for Retribution Paladins, directly impacting their damage output. Acquiring as much Strength as possible is essential for maximizing damage. Gear naturally provides Strength, and using Strength Gems in sockets further boosts it, particularly advantageous in the early stages of the expansion.

Hit Rating: Hit Rating is crucial for ensuring your attacks land successfully, making it vital for DPS classes, including Retribution Paladins. Cataclysm introduces a higher Hit Rating requirement compared to WotLK Classic. Retribution Paladins need an 8% hit chance for melee attacks (soft cap) and a 17% hit chance for spells against level 88 enemies (hard cap). Each player requires 120 Hit Rating for a 1% Hit Chance. The Sheath of Light effect grants an 8% Spell Hit Chance, reducing the effective Spell Hit Cap to 16%.

Expertise Rating: Expertise Rating reduces the chance of your attacks being dodged or parried, improving consistency in damage output. Retribution Paladins aim for a soft cap of 26 Expertise, requiring 781 Expertise Rating.

Mastery: Mastery enhances the effectiveness of specific abilities, offering a significant boost to Retribution Paladins’ damage potential.

Critical Strike Chance: Critical Strike Chance increases the likelihood of delivering critical strikes, providing occasional bursts of increased damage.

Haste Rating: Haste Rating reduces the global cooldown and increases attack speed, contributing to faster rotation and increased DPS.

Agility: While Agility provides some benefits, it’s not as valuable as other stats for Retribution Paladins.

Spirit: Spirit and Spell Power are irrelevant for Retribution Paladins and should be avoided.

Understanding and prioritizing these stats will help optimize your Retribution Paladin’s performance in combat.

Expertise Rating is a crucial stat for most Melee DPS classes, second only to their core stat. It reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried, making it indispensable for maximizing damage output. However, reaching the hard Expertise Cap to completely negate Parries or Dodges is challenging. Melee DPS classes should position themselves behind the boss to avoid parries, as attacks from behind cannot be parried.

Each point of expertise reduces the chance of your attacks being dodged or parried by 0.25%. You gain 1 expertise for every 30.038 Expertise Rating.

To reach the Soft Expertise Cap of 26 expertise against level 88 enemies, ensuring a lower chance of your attacks being parried or dodged, you need 26 Expertise. With 26 Expertise, a level 88 target has a 7.5% chance of parrying your attacks and a 0% chance of dodging them, reducing the overall chance for your attacks to be parried or dodged by 6.50%. Completely negating Parry Chance requires reaching the 56 Hard Expertise Cap, which may not be achievable without sacrificing other stats.

Retribution Paladins can benefit from the Glyph of Seal of Truth, granting 10 Expertise as long as the Seal of Truth is active. This significantly aids in reaching the Soft Expertise Cap in Single-Target encounters, requiring only a 300.38 Expertise Rating. Additionally, some races receive racial effects that increase Expertise based on the weapon they use. Dwarves gain 3 Expertise when using Maces, while Humans gain 3 Expertise when using Swords and Maces.

Mastery is the primary secondary stat for Retribution Paladins after reaching the Hit and Expertise Soft Caps.

Introduced in Cataclysm, Mastery offers unique bonuses tailored to each class and specialization. For Retribution Paladins, Mastery enhances their Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm abilities by increasing the bonus Holy Damage they deal. Each Mastery point boosts the bonus Holy Damage by 2.1%. This enhancement is delivered through Mastery: Hand of Light.

Because Mastery directly empowers Retribution Paladins’ key abilities, it takes precedence over other secondary stats. There isn’t a specific cap for Mastery, so Retribution Paladins should prioritize increasing their Mastery from every available gear slot.

Critical Strike Chance is a valuable stat for Retribution Paladins, enhancing the likelihood of landing critical strikes with all attacks and abilities. While Mastery takes precedence, Critical Strike Chance ranks second in importance.

With Cataclysm’s stat upscale, acquiring Critical Strike Rating requires more effort to increase your Critical Strike Chance. You gain a 1% increased chance to crit for every 179 Critical Strike Rating obtained.

Critical Strike Chance holds an edge over Haste Rating because it not only boosts our critical strike chance but also affects our Mastery: Hand of Light passive effect. This empowers our Holy Damage significantly, making Critical Strike Chance a priority secondary stat.

Haste Rating is the third secondary stat that Retribution Paladins should focus on after reaching their Hit and Expertise Soft Caps. It accelerates the speed of your attacks, reduces the Global Cooldown of abilities, and shortens specific cast times. While not as critical as Critical Strike Chance or Mastery, Haste Rating offers several advantages for Retribution Paladins.

Firstly, it speeds up the triggering of passive effects like The Art of War, which can activate with each auto-attack. Secondly, Haste Rating decreases the Global Cooldown of abilities and is directly tied to the cooldown reduction of Crusader Strike and Divine Storm through the Sanctity of Battle talent. However, achieving significant cooldown reductions, such as 2-3 seconds, with Haste Rating alone is challenging. As a result, its impact may not be as pronounced as Critical Strike Chance or Mastery.

To fully capitalize on the Sanctity of Battle effect, you may need to utilize Haste Rating potions and abilities like Time Warp, Heroism, or Bloodlust.

Agility has lost its significance for Retribution Paladins due to changes in core stats in Cataclysm. While it was popular in WotLK Classic, its importance has diminished. In Cataclysm, Agility barely increases Critical Strike Chance, with substantial amounts providing only a minimal bonus. Additionally, Agility does not contribute to Attack Power, making it inferior to Strength.

If you come across an item with excellent secondary stats but Agility as the core stat, you may use it temporarily until you find a Strength-based replacement. However, prioritizing Strength over Agility is essential for optimizing your character’s performance as a Retribution Paladin in Cataclysm.

Absolutely, Spirit is utterly worthless for Retribution Paladins and should be disregarded completely. While it may offer minimal mana regeneration benefits through talents like Judgements of the Pure, these bonuses are inconsequential compared to other sources of mana regeneration like Replenishment or Judgements of the Bold. Therefore, it’s best to avoid Spirit entirely and focus on stats that significantly enhance your damage output and overall performance.

Absolutely, Spell Power is completely irrelevant for Retribution Paladins in Cataclysm. The changes made to Spell Power in this expansion have made it even more apparent that it should be avoided at all costs. While technically a portion of a Retribution Paladin’s damage is Holy Damage, Spell Power can only be obtained from specific sources like Trinkets and Weapons. Moreover, the Sheath of Light effect automatically provides any Spell Power required for our abilities, rendering the stat entirely useless for us. Instead, focusing on acquiring Strength, which directly impacts Attack Power and enhances the Sheath of Light effect, is the optimal choice. Therefore, Retribution Paladins should never prioritize acquiring items or enchantments that offer Spell Power.

Reforging in Cataclysm offers Retribution Paladins a means to customize their gear’s secondary stats to optimize their performance. Mastery, being the most crucial stat after Strength and meeting Hit and Expertise caps, should be prioritized in reforging. When reforging a piece of gear, prioritize adjusting the secondary stats based on their importance.

For example, if a piece of gear has both Haste Rating and Expertise Rating as secondary stats, prioritize reforging Haste Rating over Expertise Rating. However, if your current Expertise Rating exceeds the 26 Expertise Soft Cap, you may opt to reforge Expertise Rating instead.

Similarly, adjust the rest of your secondary stats based on the priority list. If a gear piece already has Mastery and Haste Rating, consider reforging some Haste Rating for more Critical Strike Chance to further optimize your stats.

Reforging allows Retribution Paladins to fine-tune their gear to maximize their effectiveness in combat, ensuring they have the ideal balance of stats for their playstyle and role.