Retribution Paladin Enchants is current for Cataclysm, Patch 4.0, Patch 4.0.6 and Patch 4.1. The Cataclysm enchants are now updated and current for Cataclysm. There are a few kinks to work out, but everything is pretty much straight-forward.
Everyone wants the best possible enchants for their Ret Paladins, so I have the best in slot (BiS) enchant list for each gear slot. I will try to keep this list updated as frequently as possible, but luckily for us, the best enchants are usually cemented in stone, unless a very high level enchant is released in a patch as a raid drop.
Ret Paladin Enchants
- Head: Arcanum of the Wildhammer (Alliance) or Arcanum of the Dragonmaw (Horde) – +60 Strength, +30 Mastery, Revered reputation with Wildhammer or Dragonmaw
- Cloak: Greater Critical Strike – +65 Critical Strike
- Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Jagged Stone – +50 Strength, +25 Critical Strike, Exalted reputation with Therazane
- Chest: Peerless Stats – +20 Stats
- Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Major Strength – +50 Strength (Greater Assault – +50 Attack Power if Major Strength unavailable)
- Gloves: Mighty Strength – +50 Strength
- Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle – Extra belt gem socket
- Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor – +190 Attack Power, +55 Critical Strike
- Feet: Greater Assault – +32 Attack Power
- Weapon: Landslide or Avalanche *
*Landslide is the best enchant for Retribution Paladins, but if you cannot afford the mats or enchant, Avalanche is your next best bet.
Ret Paladin Profession Specific Enchants
- Leatherworking: Draconic Embossment – Strength (Wrist) – +130 strength
- Inscription: Lionsmane Inscription (Shoulder) – +130 Strength, +25 Critical Strike
- Tailoring: Swordguard Embroidery – Chance for 1000 Attack Power for 15 seconds
- Blacksmithing: Socket Bracer and Socket Glove – Adds an extra gem slot to bracers and gloves
- Enchanting: Enchant Ring: Strength – +40 Strength (+80 strength on 2 rings)
- Jewelcrafting: Bold Chimaera’s Eye – +67 Strength (3 gems max)
- Engineering: Tazik Shocker (Gloves) – 4320 to 5280 Nature damage at long range, once every 2 minutes.
Bracers and Boots, Attack Power enchants from Wrath?
Yes, because of the value of strength and its equivelant attack power in terms of DPS, both these enchants from Wrath work well for us. Bracers get a +50 strength enchant in Patch 4.0.6, so those will be better than the AP enchant, but if that particular enchant is unavailable, stick with the AP.
I see Paladins still using Beserking on level 85 weapons?
Me too. No clue why. Avalanche isn’t dirt cheap, but it won’t break the bank either…
No Hit or Expertise enchants?
It seems to be the better choice to Reforge for hit or expertise caps, and go with the enchants listed above. Strength and Attack Power (which translates to strength) are just too powerful at this current point in time. The only exception is for boot enchants, where mastery or hit must be chosen. Hit cap first, then Mastery.
Which professions are best for stat buffs?
Right now…Leatherworking, Tailoring, and Enchanting seem to provide the largest bonuses, Leatherworking by far the best. Tailoring is debatable since it is a procced buff. Will have more info when Cataclysm is released.
I’m a 3 year veteran playing World of Warcraft and during that time have sort of blithely enjoyed mainly trying out everything I possibly can including every class and both primary factions. Only quite recently have I become more focused on truly maximizing one of my toons to prepare for 10 and 25-man content, PVP and Cataclysm and whatever that brings. I’ve learned so much from your site, and am very grateful you make it available, but something that is lost on me so far is the concept of capping. I understand hit cap much better after reviewing the information you provided, what I don’t comprehend is whether other stats are or can be capped. Can one have too much strength, for example? I realize this may be naive to ask. Thank you kindly in advance!
Hey Chad! I’m glad my site is a useful tool for you! In regards to capping, there are only 2 specific stats we Retribution Paladins can cap. One is hit rating, which you mentioned. The other is expertise, and off the top of my head I know it is a 26 exp. that makes us capped. I’m not sure what the exact rating is, but that’s a great idea for another post!
In terms of strength, and other stats, you’re going to want to stack as much strength as you can get. There is no cap for any of the other stats, the sky is the limit! Strength will always be your primary stat to gem and enchant for, followed by crit.
Hope this helps, I’ll be sure to do an expertise cap post this week!
Hmmm for your cloak enchantment you use the +23 haste over the +22 Agility. Why?
Hehe because that used to be BiS enchant by a couple DPS. Been too lazy to change it 🙂
/fixed ! Thanks for the heads up!
I i have been playing for about 1 year now and still havent mastered my pally,My main concern is not dealing enough damage. I would like to get really high rateings for arenas but cant seam to do so.So my question is what are the best enchants/gems/glyphs i can use to get me where i need to be. and what about resiliance???
Hey Corrina, these enchants are focused on PvE, so some of this may not be optimal for PvP. I don’t have anything yet on PvP like this yet. Hopefully I can come up with something soon.
Hey, thanks! I’ve kinda been wingin it since I first started up a ret set,(I’m almost always a tank) but I’m glad you made this site for all of us pallies! (My dps improved significantly!) ^_^
Glad to hear this site is helping Steve! Let me know if there is anything else you’d like to see here!
Hey,
i was wondering if as ret is the expertise rating worth worrying about?
Hey Kelly, I personally feel it is. It’s not worth gemming for, but the Seal of Vengeance Glyph gives expertise, and mixing and matching gear with expertise can help optimize your DPS.
I can tell you that many Paladins will carry about 12-18 expertise rating in favor of other gear, so it is not uncommon at all for Ret Paladins to short themselves expertise.
Only thing i would change on your enchants is gloves one should be 15 str since with kings it overright 44 ap.
+23 Haste to Cloak is better single target dps by a few dps rather than the agility. I believe we are talking what is best for Bosses so the +23 Haste is better than +22 Agility.
Hey great site. I have been using 2h enchant Massacre for a while because i haven’t been convinced that Berserking procs enough to make it worth its hefty reagent/price tag. My question is how much better is Berserking than Massacre for say icc 25 if the raid has any constellation.
bt-dubs that’s supposed to be correlation not constellation. Stupid firefox auto-correct >_<.
Beserking blows massacre out of the water 🙂 If you are using a 232 weapon and above, beserking for sure. If you are raiding in any way or form, beserkling on your weapon regardless of item level. That’s my recommendation 🙂
I know that leatherworking embossing isn’t an enchant but fur lining – attack power is far better than Greater assault.
inscription has a +120AP +15CSR shoulder enchant, pretty sweet. requires 400 inscription
What is the proc rate on Berserker? Is the occasional 400 ap bonus better than the 110 ap bonus you always get from Massacre?
The uptime for berzerking (atleast for me) is 65-75% used to be 90ish% befoure a nurf some time back still yeah its mutch mutch better than massacre its not “occasional” its very frequent:)
Roughly a 25% uptime would make it as good as massacre and it has a waaaaaay higher uptime than that trust me:)
Hey, thanks. this really helped 🙂 Was stumped on where to go. My dmg has gone up quite alot! 🙂 thank you! :DD
Hey Khor,
On my weapon I got the enchantment Black Magic, which has a chance on hit to increase my haste rating. Now that it’s 4.0.1, and ret’s need haste for crusader strike, should I keep it or replace it with Berserking?
Before the patch I’ve had people telling me to change my enchant just if I wanted to raid, but none of those people were paladins, so I was wondering what you thought.
Cheers, mate.
@ Vrayel You need to change your enchant. Black Magic has never been very good for rets. The fact that it is a haste proc means that it could cap your haste, but you need to be haste capped 100% of the time, so if you ARE haste capped and you get this proc, it is nowhere near the dps increase that the other listed enchants are.
Don’t rely on a proc for your dps.
@ Khor I am very much with you about icewalker vs greater assault. Hit was never really an issue before the patch for raiders, and now it is even less of an issue in my mind since you need 23 hit rating less to be capped. Most people short on hit were only short by about 5-25 hit rating anyways, so they would throw in an enchant and an inscribed ametrine, or maybe 2 inscribed ametrines. With the patch, they can replace those gems/enchants and be capped. Also, with crit giving you less, the 12crit rating does give you slightly less dps than it did. The extra AP from greater assault is, however, still just as lovely.
Also, it might be worth adding that before Engineers had to choose between their tinkers and enchants, but now each engineering tinker with an on-use effect (ie nitro boosts or hyper speed accelerators) lost their passive stat bonuses and can stack with “real” enchants.
Since they are taking out attack Power is Arcanum of Torment still the best enchant for the head?
Hi Ret. Family I need help! I’m trying to gear my Pally and get my dps up but it seems my attempts are futile as I am always at the bottom of recount when i do heroics. Please Retadins, Khor … Take a look at my Pally and tell me what i need to do! Any advice would be helpful thank you.
Armory
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thrall&cn=Naijay
@ David – it lookds like you do not have many enchants on your gear
you need enchants on your Head (glyph from Ebon Blade), Shoulder (Hodir shoulder glyph), Chest – +10 to stat, Bracers – +50 atack power), Gloves – +44 attck power, Belt (eternal belt buckle for extra gem), legs – +75 AP nd +22 CS – Icescale leg armor, Boots – +12 hit +12 crit, and if you are starting JCing then you can put slots on your rings for extra Gems. Khor did have the enchant link but it have been replaced with Cata Enchants. you get your gear enchanted you will see increase in your DPS. Hope that helps you.
@Khor – do you still have the page with WotLK enchants?
hello there,
i just found your website and been a great help, just 2 questions do u have a working rotation yet for the pally and also wat new glyphs can help. thank you for your great website by the way.
Hey was wondering why you would take agility or haste on your cloak? i have been using the haste one since i can remember,lol,more haste=more dps,just wondering why.
May want to give more love to Engineering what with the ability to make Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades with two cogwheel sockets.
Lucky me! i saw the landslide enchant in trade today, and as the maelstrom crystals were 1.5k ea on my server, with shards>300g ea and the rest>50g ea, i decided it might be worthwhile to buy it for 7.8k! turns out that person even did it with their own mats, and luckily, they are the only person on server with it. I think i might save it for a while, or even resell higher and get another cheap one off him, all i know is that im not going to enchant my wep till its 359
Great site, very helpfull. But I have a question in regards to professions. Im a maxed JC and BS and I was wondering how LW (130ST) bonus is greater than 67×3 ST gems and 3 extra 40 ST gems (321ST total)…am I missing something? Keep up the great work awesome site : )
edit* LW and JC doesnt look to bad of a combo…..
I would say that +32 attack power is not the best feet enchant in 4.06…
50 mastery to feet would be a better DPS boost with the buff to mastery.
@ Box – I’ll look into it! 16 strength vs 50 Mastery…I’ll get back to ya on that one!
Here is the breakdown using Redcape’s numbers from EJ.
Strength 232
Mastery 99
32 AP –> 232 x 16 = 3712 DPS
50 Mast –> 99 x 50 = 4950 DPS
Mastery wins!
Engineers have a ‘new’ glove enchant which grants 480 to agi/str/intell dependant on class. I think its 480 btw not sure on number and servers down atm, but it will b better than the nature shock thingy. Also on barcers i have gone for mastery enchant rather than assault as strength enchant is way to pricey for me lol. Same for feet aswell. My reasonin behind it tho was i didnt want old wotlk enchants on my new shiny cata gear lol. Also will your BiS list change now stat prio has changed?
I agree with shandri… the Synapse Springs now increase the highest of intellect, strength, or agility, meaning me (being a dual ret/holy) can put the tinker on both my gloves and benefit in both specs. I have not tested this to the point of figuring out the stat increase, and even then, I used the mana gulper on my holy gloves for mana recovery (Mythical Mana Potions are retardedly expensive).
Also, shandri, me being a devout engineer since my humble vanilla beginnings, they are called TINKERS. Engineers don’t sprinkle magic fairy dust to make their gear do wonderful things.
whats about hurricane enchant? is it bad?
I would like to propose a change to enchants. I believe the 50 mastery to boots to be superior than 32 attack power. using a base estimate of roughly 180mastery =1 point of mastery = 2.1% additional dmg on our 2 highest attacks. Where 1% dmg = 50 dps, and 1dps =12 attack power. These are just rough estimates. but if u enchant 32 attack power, you are getting roughly 2.8 dps more
I am pretty consistant with my top 3 attacks, TV @ 18%, CS @ 15% and hand of light at 15%. now taking only TV+CS=33% of my dmg, so with 50 mastery rating =2.1%/3=0.71% more dmg on those attacks. 33% of 71 % to calculate overall dmg and relate it to the 1%dmg =50dps, u come out with .23% more dmg from 50 mastery rating, and if 1%dmg=50 dps that is roughly 10 dps…giving u 7 dps more than the 32 AP enchant. Those are just rough figures, I think if you sat down and did them properly u would come out with a similar difference.
Hurricane is about 30dps above avalanche -Elitistjerks.
I have no freaken idea how avalanche is any good , it only casts about 537 nature dmg . means +3% to dps .
I believe that’s crap comparing to berserking which increase AP about 400 , not only increasing your melee dmg but your abilities dmg as well . and since haste is our worst stat – regardless of landslide – I think berserking is still the best enchant for a ret paladin . if any one can convience me about another enchant , pls , us maths .
looking forward to hear your opinions guys . ty
the only other enchants that really need to be revised towards pvp is the head and the shoulders which can be found at the honor vendors in orgrimar
Hey thanks for making this site, it is a huge help for me in getting better with my pally. I was wondering what good numbers are for someone with an item level of 349. I did Throne of the Four Winds last night and put up 9.2k but I was last out of dps. I follow the rotation and use procs and everything else but I feel like I’m really low.
this site is amazing thank u so much