Here is the most current talent tree for ret pallies as of Patch 3.3 and Patch 3.3.2:

11/5/55

The Ret Talent Tree seems to change with each content patch, as our DPS and damage output is modified by talent and ability changes.  Retribution Paladin talents will primarily focus on the Retribution Tree, while dabbling in Protection and Holy.

It seems to vary, depending on raid encounters, how far we dip into the other trees, and as of Icecrown Citadel raiding, we are currently only dropping 5 points into protection, while the remaining are put into Holy for aura and seal buffing.

Talents

From Arikah posted at Elitist Jerks: [Source]

Several mechanics have changed since BC, most notably the Seal and Judgement systems.

The following scale off of both AP and Spellpower -

• Seal of Command:
  36% weapon damage
• Judgement of Command:
  19% weapon damage + 9% AP + 13% spell power
• Seal of Vengeance: (see below for full details)
  33% weapon damage + 2.5% AP + 1.3% spell power per tick
• Judgement of Vengeance:
  (1 + (.14 * AP) + (.22 * Spellpower)) * (1 + (0.1 * Stack Size))
• Seal of Light:
  15% AP + 15% spell power (healing proc)
• Judgement of Light:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
  2% of maximum hp (healing proc)
• Seal of Wisdom:
  4% of maximum mana (mana proc)
• Judgement of Wisdom:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
  2% of base mana (mana proc)
• Judgement of Justice:
  16% AP + 25% spell power (damage)
• Consecration:
  4% AP + 4% spell power per tick
  (Final rank has 113 base damage per tick)
• Exorcism:
  15% AP + 15% spell power
  (Final rank has 1028 base damage)
• Hammer of Wrath:
  15% AP + 15% spell power
  (Final rank has 1139 base damage)
• Holy Wrath:
  7% AP + 7% spell power
  (Final rank has 1050 base damage)
• Sacred Shield:
  75% spellpower

Our healing spells scale strictly off of Spellpower.

In addition to seals scaling from both AP and SP, ALL seals can now be triggered from our instant melee attacks, DS and CS. I’ll cover the specific seals a bit further down.

Judgements

Blizzard finally came out and “settled” what we already knew for 3.2. All Judgements are considered melee attacks that cannot be dodged, parried or blocked. They cannot be used while silenced and can still miss if you are not hitcapped. If this is confusing for you, just think of them as ranged physical attacks that are capable of triggering melee events (beserking, AoW ect). Judgements do not stack, and the last/most recent person to judge will be credited with the effects (yes, non-divinity JoL’s will overwrite divinity’d JoL’s).

Judgement of Wisdom
This is a strong choice for your judgement to use due to equalized JoL and the removal of blood recoil. You want to keep JoW up or you and your mana using dps (hunters in particular) can run into mana troubles. JoW’s mana return effect is limited to 15 PPM for spells and physical; because paladins use both, we can see a few more procs than other classes.

Judgement of Light
This was our primary judgement for 3.1, however it has been equalized among all paladin specs to return 2% max hp (it used to scale based on AP/SP). If there are 2 paladins in your raid, you want the prot or holy paladin to use this judgement, so you can keep JoW up. If there is heavy raid damage and you are the only paladin, JoL is a good choice. If you are specced into Divinity, JoL still does benefit from it.

Judgement of Justice
This is your judgement in pvp situations, as all the debuff does is limit movement speed to 100%. This is not considered a movement impairing effect, so freedom or druid shifting will not break it, it can only be pvp trinketed or dispelled. This effect only lasts 10 seconds in pvp, not 20 as the tooltip implies.

Seals

Seals scale off AP and Spellpower. Judging a seal no longer consumes the seal, seals have a 30 minute duration. Seals are NOT considered weapon imbues, and can no longer be dispelled. Seals trigger off instant attacks (CS, DS).

Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Corruption
SoV replaced blood (which has been removed from the game) as our primary dps seal. SoV is the biggest reason that STR is our best dps stat, because it is one of the few skills in the game that triple dip on a stat (once for AP, once for SP, once for AP affecting weapon damage). In case the wording on the skill is unclear, SoV has 2 parts to it – the DoT, and the proc. The proc is basically a weaker, modified Seal of Blood proc but without the recoil. The talent SotP increases the damage from the DoT and the proc (which results in a total dps increase of about 6.5%). It takes ~12 seconds in a raid buffed setting to get a 5 stack active. SoV has some odd functionality detailed below:

The seal procs will begin triggering from auto-attacks once you have a debuff stack of any size, and strikes will always trigger a seal proc (but never a DoT application). The table below shows the damage of the proc per DoT application:

When an auto-attack lands (does not dodge/parry/miss) that can proc a seal the of the following things happen independently of each other (see 2 roll system).

1) A “hidden strike” which uses melee combat mechanics occurs. If it lands it refreshes/stacks SoV DoT. Only white swings can trigger a refresh or stack. (This hidden strike mechanic can also proc things like berserking..)
2) A weapon damage based proc will occur if you used a special (CS/DS/judge) or if you have a 5 stack (from auto attacks). This attack can not be avoided.

Remember #2 happens regardless of #1 landing, it just requires the initial attack (autos, cs, etc) to land.

DoT functions and mechanics:
DoT application is melee hit/exp based. (Cannot be resisted like a spell, but can be dodged or parried)
DoT will still be applied even if your white swing is fully absorbed (in a PvP situation).
DoT is only applied via auto-attacks (whites).
DoT ticks always hit.
DoT ticks are reduced by partial resist on skull mobs, but not by players (it is holy damage).
DoT gains from CoE (and equivalents).

Seal Proc functions and mechanics:
Proc (after 5 stack/triggered from specials) can NOT be dodged or parried, it occurs as long as your initial white/strike lands.
Proc suffers from partial resists (it’s holy damage).
Proc gains from CoE (and equivalents).
Proc can crit. (like SoB did)

With the release of 3.2.2, SoV stack interaction should now be functioning correctly and the damage you get from procs/judgements is solely based on your stack count.

Seal of Righteousness
It’s still an option to use this seal, however since the critical breakpoint has been reached (ILvl 252 gear), SoC now hits harder and can cleave things. In general, SoR has been relegated to a PvP seal due to its’ harder hitting judgements. SoR procs also cannot miss or be dodged/parried (unless your initial auto misses), and judging SoR results in an additional SoR proc. It is the only seal that behaves in this manner.

Seal of Command
SoC is our cleaving/trash seal. SoC procs follow all standard melee attack rules, no longer have an ICD, and can crit. Judging on a stunned target no longer guarantees a crit, and the judgement is fairly weak to being with, you use this seal for its’ proc damage. The cleave effect on this seal is based on the middle of the target hitbox; if you are at maximum melee range it is possible for you to be missing out on SoC cleaves (if there are adds being tanked nearby, Anub25H is a very good example of this). You also need all the targets that you want cleaved in front of you, or at least stacked on top of each other; unlike DS, SoC procs will not hit adds positioned in a circle. The cleave range is about that same as protection’s HotR, 8 yards (slightly smaller than DS’ 10 yards).

Strikes and DPS skills

These spells are used in the retribution skill rotation.

Consecration
Widely viewed as a necessary part of the retribution rotation, as our DPS is not very competitive without it. Should be used against both single and multiple targets. Consecration has some odd behavior on skull level mobs; the first tick can be fully resisted (miss) and subsequent ticks can also be partially resisted (due to mob level difference). You cannot work around the partial resists at all, but they are often small enough to not matter:

Originally Posted by http://elitistjerks.com/1052225-post672.html I tested this situation while wearing a massive amount of + hit (22% spell hit or so) and things didn’t change noticeably. There simply were only 4 combat log entries most of the time, something like: Boss is afflicted by your Consecration Boss takes 20 Damage from your Consecration (60 resisted) Boss takes 30 Damage from your Consecration (50 resisted) Consecration fades from Boss Sometimes I got 4 ticks, sometimes 1, but against a +13 level mob I never got anywhere near 8. There simply weren’t entries in the log for those other ticks. I won’t claim to know the precise mechanics of this, but it does seem evident that mobs can totally resist Consecration ticks if they are high enough level in addition to the debuff application that we are all so familiar with. I don’t actually have a paladin that can test this anymore since I did it just after 3.0 launched against the level 83 dummy and my level 80 paladin has no way to fight a level 93 mob.

Hammer of Wrath
With the release of 3.0, this skill was buffed a substantial amount, to the point where it is used on cooldown vs targets under 20% health (due to deep ret talents that give this skill a 50% base crit chance, in addition to gear). It is now an instant ranged execute, but retains its’ fixed mana cost. Using this skill does not reset your swing timer.

Exorcism
Chnaged again in 3.2. This is now usable on all mob types, can crit (based on your spell crit), and has 100% crit chance vs undead and demon mobs. It uses the spell hit table so you can still miss with this even if melee hitcapped. It has a base cast time of 1.5s which means you will never ever use this without an AoW proc available – when used with AoW it becomes instant and does not reset the swing timer. Note that because it is not a base instant cast it does not benefit from Benediction.

Holy Wrath
Also uses the spell hit tables, can crit. Has no target limit so it is very useful on certain fights with many undead/demon adds. Changed from a 60s cooldown/20yd range (BC) to a 30s cooldown/10yd range, and it now stuns all targets that it hits for 3s, and shares stun DR with HoJ.

Divine Plea
You will need to use this to keep your mana up in both PvE and PvP. It scales off your total mana pool, and is dispellable. DP is usually responsible for 10% of our total mana income on bosses.

And of course, our talented instant attacks:

Divine Storm
Our 51 pt talent, it is basically the same as a warrior’s whirlwind ability except that DS heals for negligible amounts. Despite it seeming like an underwhelming talent it is critical to our DPS as it can and will trigger seals and RV. This skill is normalized to 3.3 weapon speed.

Crusader Strike
Our still bland 41 pt talent, yet still crucial to our DPS as it also triggers seals and RV. CS no longer refreshes your or any other paladins’ judgements. This skill is also normalized (to 3.3).

Special Talents

and their …”specialness”
This is just to cover some talents that have odd quirks or interesting functionality.

Art of War
AoW seems like it becomes more important in pve, but realistically nothing has changed. Exorcism still has a 15 second cooldown, and the chances that you will not see a crit on the pull (7.5 seconds in) while raid buffed are 1.6%, while the chances you won’t see a crit in 15 seconds is 0.2% – therefore there is no reason to stack crit or worry about not being able to use it every 15s. AoW has been changed to proc on all melee crits, which means whites, strikes and judgements, but not seal procs.

Righteous Vengeance
Once again stealing from the warriors! The RV dot does indeed “roll” like the warrior version, meaning critical judgements and DS’s in succession will refresh the dot duration, not overwrite it. The RV dot is a magic effect and thus dispellable, can be partially resisted by bosses, but is not mitigated by armor. With 2pc T9 equipped, RV crits for 200% damage, just like any of our other melee abilities.
How RV rolls courtesy Redcape:

It adds the new critical damage onto any remaining damage in the dot and then resets the duration with the new damage total. There is absolutely no need to maintain the stack in any fashion, the stack falling off does not cause you to lose dps.

Sheath of Light
One of our most exciting talents for wrath. This talent helps to increase our damage because of the way we double-dip in AP and SP, gives retribution paladins heals actually worth casting/using, and makes STR that much more important. Sacred Shield finally also scales from spellpower granted by this talent. The healing portion of this talent acts the same way as RV; getting a crit heal while still having a sheath hot active “rolls” (see above).

Sacred Shield
We used to use this a lot in pve, but now this is more of a pvp ret utility. Using this does not reset the swing timer. Sacred Shield also has a 6s ICD even when talented, so it is capable of refreshing itself every 6 seconds, even if the ‘old’ shield has not been fully used up.

Divinity
This has an odd double dipping interaction with your own heals (JoL, DS heals) which causes it to multiply twice, like so: (original heal number) * 1.05 *1.05. It is taken in pve builds only when you are trying to get to DSac. If you pick up this talent, you may want to use JoL and have other paladins use JoW.