Let's face it. Retribution blows.

Blows things up, that is. Out of all the trees -- and I mean all including the other classes -- no tree got more love than Retribution in the Echoes of Doom patch. For many of us, it's been a long time coming. No other class spec has been the butt of more jokes and the target of such derision as Retribution. Not anymore. Not in Patch 3.0.2 and the days leading up to Wrath of the Lich King. Retribution deals so much pain that we've sent the rest of player base running to Ghostcrawler crying for a nerf. And we're getting nerfed. To the ground.

Don't panic. The changes are really, mostly aimed at PvP Paladins -- okay, that's me -- but will largely leave Paladin PvE damage output the same. That's excellent news. Because I've grown accustomed to the idea that quite a lot of you guys prefer PvE to PvP, we'll take a look at a PvE Retribution build that will make you the darling of your Heroic runs and more than welcome in raids. Let's bring on the pain after the jump.

It's pretty exciting, isn't it? Patch 3.0 is coming, well, "soon™" according to Blizzard. Considering that our favorite class hasn't gotten a second pass, it might be a bit premature to talk about Paladin changes when the pre-Wrath patch finally hits. That said, it looks like more than a few new talents will make it at least into the PTRs more or less intact. Hopefully and changes we'll see during our second pass will be tweaks to numbers and some mechanics refinements but hopefully no major changes.

Assuming that most of the changes push through, we should expect a completely different Paladin in the coming months. Even without taking the new talents into account, there are baseline changes that should make gameplay technically different. The most significant change, of course, is in the way Judgements work. This is the one change that will take some getting used to. First of all, there are now three Judgements and they activate the GCD. This means no more macros for Seals and Judgements, which is actually fine because of two things: first, Judgements no longer consume Seals; second, Seals now last for a micromanagement-light two minutes.

I saved the best for last. Best if only because Retribution is the tree I've enjoyed the most while on my Paladin, and because a quick perusal of the new talents show that Blizzard seems to be taking the right steps for the tree. Few class specs have had more stigma than Retribution, mainly because the class traditionally performed better in other trees and also because the Retadin, who could only muster average DPS, provided little by way of raid utility. It doesn't help that Kalgan openly ridicules the class, either, whether or not in jest.

Patch 2.3 saw a bunch of awesome changes for Retribution, dealing with threat management as well as some solid PvP-oriented talents. Despite that, few raids brought Retadins along, especially on progression. It's an old stigma that has carried over and has proven hard to shake. The other trees received fantastic upgrades -- you can read my overview of the Holy tree here, and my thoughts on the Protection tree here. You can read the entirety of the patch notes in my first post of this series, and my analysis on the changes to baseline abilities and existing talents in the follow-up.