Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

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Wilcox
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Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#1 » Post by Wilcox » 27 May 2016 04:00

I decided to share some of my knowledge on the forums just for fun, no actual intentions with this guide. Like in the rest of my guides, I do not guarantee/promise that this is the highest quality information available and that I, along with this guide, am open to improvements. I'm also certainly not some sort of undefeatable duel-god. Enjoy the read.


Talent Build 1 (recommended for battlegrounds)
Talent Build 2 (recommended for arena/duels)

Glyphs; Judgement(%100), Seal of Righteousness(%100). You can choose between Salvation and Turn Evil afterwards. Salvation is just an extra def cooldown which comes in handy for duels and battlegrounds, on the other hand Turn Evil is more of an arena-oriented glyph, in my opinion. Both are useful.

minor glyphs are for fags


Just a couple of things that are useful to watch for during duels;
  • Keep sacred shield up. It's what makes retribution paladins so durable.
  • Make good use of your Art of War talent. Don't waste mana, but don't waste procs either.
  • Try to land your heals on the proc of your sacred shield (the one that increases flash of light crit chance by %50). This will significiantly increase your effectiveness in 1 on 1 fights.
  • If you're expecting a stealth attack(feral druid, rogue etc about to attack you), put on sacred shield & wait with a 1hander + shield.
  • If you're fighting a class that can dispel, make sure to keep your Righteous Fury up at all times. You can spam this ability endlessly, it has no mana cost & it's an instant cast. It makes the removal of your buffs much harder- impossible even, at times. Some people will just give up and hit your face.
  • Stunning at the start of a duel is not a bad idea, if you have at least 1 point in the Improved Hammer of Justice. It may trick your opponent into using their trinket, allowing you to do whatever you want in the next stun. They won't be able to trinket that one.
  • Dispel, dumb fuck, cleanse is like fucking amazing. Use it whenever necessary to avoid taking further negative effects.
  • If things go real bad, you can always switch to a 1h+shield with spellpower and heal yourself up way faster.
  • Enemy pets have no resilience. Think of ghouls, gargoyles, hunter pets, shaman puppies etc. This means you have at least %10-15 higher crit chance when attacking pets, and therefore means that your chances of getting Art of War are much more likely. Whenever you can't hit something else, at least melee a pet. It's a good habit.
  • Keep in mind that you move %15 faster due to Pursuit of Justice talent.
  • Keep Hand of Reckoning(yes, the taunt) among the pvp abilities you use. It's handy for keeping rogues / druids in combat so they can't stealth away so easily.
  • Hansrutger wrote:Never use judgement when your opponents next attack will be absorbed (vs dks, mages, priests, paladins, shammy with totem), unless necessary.
Let's go slowly with classes.


Fighting arms warriors; warriors are the next meaning of cancer on TrueWoW. When I compare their damage to what I've seen in many other servers, they seem to hit much harder here. I think the win conditions here are;
a) utilizing your defensives well during their attacks
b) burst-healing yourself when mortal strike is off you
c) denying them a charge by not getting too close and not getting too far
d) bursting them in a long stun that they cannot trinket out of
e) simply outlasting them by being a faggot, using a 1h+shield for the entire duel AKA going full Justicelight mode (this is what I always do! c: )

Three important notes.

1) Hide your Hand of Freedom for two things. Either to avoid a slow to prevent a charge/intercept, or to get out of intercept.
2) Defensives during bladestorm.
3) Repentance during Enraged Regeneration. This will make them unable to use Berserker's Rage, and therefore prevent them from deleting your incapacitation.

Protection, on the other hand, well. Pretty easy fight. JoL once again, use HoF to get out of one of those long stuns (shockwave or cranium bash) and simply hit them until they die.

Retribution paladins; In close gear, the one that gets more Art of War procs will always win. Not really a skill matchup if you ask me. Both of them will keep doing the same, hit him and heal yourself. Just a couple of things to watch out,

1) Don't use your stun foolishly. It is ALWAYS avoidable by Hand of Freedom. HoF cd is shorter than HoJ cd. Hide your trinket for their repentance instead.

2) When they use wings, use JoJ on them & start running away to waste their burst. Feel free to stall them further with stun and repentance. This may seem like a cowardly way of fighting, but what matters is the winner, right?

3) Pay extra attention to your sacred shield procs, you are much more likely to catch them during these fights due to lack of consistent damage from paladins.

4) Pay attention to THEIR sacred shield. People tend to forget what status their sacred shields are in, and if you catch them without a shield, well.. Abuse them like you were born to do it.

Blood death knight; If you have like 40 minutes, fight him. Cleanse Mark of Blood. If you don't have time, either don't fight, or forfeit. It's better to preserve your sanity. Neither of you will die for a loooooooooong ass time.

Frost; just hit his face. They suck ass. You can trinket Piercing Cold (their AoE freeze) if you wish, you don't really need to use your trinket for anything else. If they use Lichborne, you can even cast Turn Evil, Holy Wrath; and gain extra %1 damage from Sense Undead if you have the glyph for it.

Unholy; these duels are harder compared to other specs, however still in your favor. First thing they ALWAYS do is, they wanna chain you as soon as the duel starts. As a smart man, you want to be running away for a few seconds while bashing your cleanse button to waste their frost runes. After dispelling two chains, turn back and fight him. The trick to beating unholy death knights (in my opinion) is slaying their pet before they burst you down. So, fight leads on, they will do the following:

Chain.
Run away.
Gargoyle.
Death grip.
Strangulate.

As soon as you hear the gargoyle screech, use your -%50 defensive cooldown and start hitting his gargoyle. You can use Holy Wrath to stun the gargoyle and deny two attacks for him. Once the gargoyle is down, make sure that your health is in a safe state. After that, just bash the DK's face down. Pretty easy fight from there. Remember that pets have no resilience, and watch out for AMS/AMZ.

-----------------------------------

Rogues; I think we are some sort of ultimate counter to rogues. When the duel is beginning, equip 1h/shield and wait for them to attack you. Make sure to refresh your sacred shield if it's at like 20 seconds remaining. The trick here is, DO NOT use HoF for cheap shot. Hide it for kidney shot. And use it after you make sure that kidney shot was used. Some rogues like to test your defenses by using cheap shot and then stealthing again. Don't fall for this. To ensure a win, you may even fight this entire duel with 1h/shield. The rogues will just freak out at the sight of a shield. Use JoJ constantly so that they may not sprint away. If they cloak / vanish, you may still unstealth them with divine storm. Rogues can NOT heal in any way, so use this to your advantage & outlast them.

Balance druids; Run up to those fat motherfuckers and smack their shits down. Use HoF on Nature's Grasp. Stun them during starfall to minimize their damage. Pretty easy fight.

Ferals; these duels tend to last long. Like the rogues, wait for the duel to begin with 1h/shield. Use JoJ on them as they passively move %30 faster from talents. Use HoF on Maim, the 5 sec stun. Keep hitting them until they decide to get out of cat form. Note that you can't use repentance while they are in cat form, but when they get out of it to heal themselves, you can do this because they are considered humanoids by that time. When you repent them, heal yourself up and go full retard on them. Duel ends, after that.

------------------------------------

Hunters; another form of extreme cancer that dwells TrueWoW. But they are actually pretty easy to beat. There are 3 key points to beating a hunter;

1) Kill his pet.
2) Hit his pet until you reach him so you can still proc Art of War and not die in 5 seconds.
3) Don't run in a straight line when you get close. Strafe sideways instead. They will put down all their traps. You HAVE TO avoid those traps if you want to win the duel. Get trapped and you're as good as a dead man.

Enhancement shamans; they are pretty weak against you, but they can spam purge on you. In return, you can spam Righteous Fury whenever you got nothing else to do. They will burst you down with puppies. It's like a 40 second term cancer that you have to endure. Switch to 1h/shield and heal yourself like crazy. Remember that each second they use purge on you, is a second that they cannot deal damage to you. After the dogs are gone, hit his fucking face and kill him.

Extremely important, watch out for GROUNDING and EARTHBIND totems. Melee those down if you have to, don't let your stun/repentance get absorbed by grounding totem and don't get slowed the shit out of your brains by earthbind totem.

Elemental; it's pretty much chase me-hit me sort of fight. Watch out for totems like above, use cleanse whenever necessary, righteous fury etc. When their thunderstorm is on cooldown, catch up to them & stun them and burst them down. They are pretty vulnerable to that. Shamans are fragile, imo. Otherwise, heal yourself. You can use HoF to get out of earthbind root, and hide trinket for hex. Note that this fight still favors shamans due to low cooldown disables and purge.


------------------

A good mage, priest and warlock will always beat you, regardless how fucking good you are.

Shadow priest; I can tell you only a number of things, you're very unlikely to beat this class. They have a powerful absorb, instant heals and leech, a rather long silence, low cooldown fear and fear combined with disarm, they dispel 2 buffs at once and you have a chance of fucking yourself in the ass by cleansing vampiric touch. Their damaging spells don't really require them to cast, they can just run and spam devouring plague/dispel on you for insane damage by rolling their faces on the keyboard.

What you can do, though - you can try dispelling devouring plague along with shadow word death since those are the first two spells that they cast. You can use wings on them when they use dispersion (wings causes their %90 damage reduction go down to %45 because %50 of your damage during avenging wrath bypasses damage reduction effects). This may catch them off guard, because they may grow cocky after using dispersion and thinking that they are safe for 6 seconds. Trinket a fear that you think might be vital otherwise. There isn't much you can do other than that. A good shadow priest will always beat you.

Mage; it's literally the same as above. Their kit is simply against your existance. Hide hand of freedom for deep freeze/fire mage fire blast stun talent. If you have any beneficial buffs(such as BoW, BoK, sacred shield) and you're in heavy CC with no chance of answering, remove them immediately because the mages can spellsteal them. This will cause a lot more trouble, because now he has %10 extra stats and the most insane shield spell of the game thanks to your stupidity. You can try divine storm in the middle of mirror images to get some nice AoW procs. And as written in the beginning, melee something on the way if you cannot reach the mage. Any sort of healing will help you. Don't expect to win.

Warlocks; compared to other cloth wearing cunts, warlocks are more likely to be beaten, but the fight favors them nonetheless due to their kit and insane demonic portal/pet cycle. I recommend using glyph of turn evil for this fight, or killing the pet while CC'ing the warlock immediately if you can.

Hide HoF for shadowfury. If you see immolate being casted at you, SPAM THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR CLEANSE to prevent conflagrate. This will prevent them from carrying out their combo and greatly harm their process of doing anything productive at all. Trinket a fear only if you think it's a vital one and you would be fucked in the ass if you don't dodge it. The key to beating warlocks is denying them their pet and more importantly, avoiding fear by any means necessary. This indeed means, avoid fear with repentance or even bubble if you have to. Being a blood elf helps a lot.

Note that if you cast repentance/hoj on a warlock while his felhunter is active, he can use the felhunter to dispel himself. You don't want that. If you attack the pet and the warlock starts casting health funnel, switch to the warlock instead. Health funnel reduces the pets damage taken by %30 so it's simply a waste of damage. It's also nice because when they are casting health funnel, they aren't casting anything else, and they gotta be like keezx the arena god to react to your sudden switches. You can switch back to the pet right after if that's what you like. Oh and, cleanse shadowflame. This is also very important. If they cast conflagrate on you and catch you from range, you might aswell bubble-hearth, because they can implode you with 3 spells.


That's it for this guide, thank you for reading. Once again, I don't claim that this is the best information available and it's definitely open for discussion/tips/all that kind of bullshit. Have fun in duels.
Last edited by Wilcox on 17 Mar 2017 12:03, edited 4 times in total.

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Hansrutger
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#2 » Post by Hansrutger » 27 May 2016 05:44

Never use judgement when your opponents next attack will be absorbed (vs dks, mages, priests, paladins, shammy with totem), unless necessary.

Good guide!
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keez
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#3 » Post by keez » 27 May 2016 11:59

"You should be able to defeat elementals"
nice meme bro


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Wilcox
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#5 » Post by Wilcox » 27 May 2016 14:11

keez wrote:"You should be able to defeat elementals"
nice meme bro
should i add "unless you're facing keez" :^)

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Errorista
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#6 » Post by Errorista » 27 May 2016 14:27

Dueling Rets is quite tricky as elemental, sometimes you Purge HoF in first try then its easy kite but sometimes it doesnt work at all (3x Purge and HoF is still up) and you are in trouble.

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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#7 » Post by keez » 27 May 2016 14:29

Wilcox wrote:
keez wrote:"You should be able to defeat elementals"
nice meme bro
should i add "unless you're facing keez" :^)
No, generally speaking retri doesnt have much chance to beat ele (same goes for warlocks, mages, priests).
Just thought you should mention that there are really hard counters to retri, thats all :P

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Wilcox
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#8 » Post by Wilcox » 27 May 2016 15:31

i think elementals and warlocks are beatable still, mages and priests no though, work in progress, yo, give me some time

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Wilcox
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#9 » Post by Wilcox » 17 Mar 2017 12:02

Guide is now complete. Added the last 3 classes and talent builds. Open for business.

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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#10 » Post by Joh0239 » 17 Mar 2017 15:09

Thanks for the Tips! Can really come in handy!
Mandatory Character List:
Zortax - Fury/Prot
Zortix - Boomkin/Restoration
Zortex - MM
Thepower - Enha/Restoration
Zortux - Prot/Ret
Discbelf - Shadow/Disc
Deathen - Frost/Blood
Oombacca - Restoration/Feral(bear)
Kelbert - Demonology
Froxy - Arcane/Fire

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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#11 » Post by Eronox » 17 Mar 2017 17:16

Haha I must say, I truly enyoyed the writing of this guide. ^_^

Good job, Willy!
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But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
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Re: Dueling as a Retribution Paladin, tips & tricks

#12 » Post by chickenbutt » 12 Aug 2018 15:08

Ya should have included to make sure to notice stoneclaw totem absorb / skeleton key absorb in the enhancement shaman part. A good enha shaman knows the only way to beat a good ret is to kite them to oblivion, only going in to stormstrike and lava lash when their judgment is down and your stoneclaw absorb is up, clean them of all buffs, make them waste mana sacred shielding, cleansing, healing and buffing themselves. If a ret stops still in their tracks to spam flash of light, this is exactly what you want them to do. Just spam purge and aim to oom them.

You will have to always right click totems under your portrait.(preferably using the spell to remove magma totem since you get about 300 mana back) Right click away stoneclaw, earthbind and grounding if you see the ret going for them since they don't return much mana to yourself, and you don't want the ret to use judgment on them to get mana, as you want to pigeon-hole him into only being able to cast judgment on you and only when you have stoneclaw absorb or key up. Pray to god avenging wrath gets purged instantly otherwise he gains mana anyway through sanctified wrath. As well as divine plea so he doesn't get any mana.

At the end, if both players are equally skilled, the enha shaman will win. It will just take forever. Once the ret gets down to around below 300 mana (around the mana for judgment with benediction), blow wolves, keep cleaning with purge and wail on him now that he can't defend himself. When his mana regen in combat gains him the mana for judgment, right click to remove your wolves and remove all your totems and start kiting, use stoneclaw totem for the absorb bubble and go back to kiting and prodding.

One exception to this whole strategy is if the ret has bauble of true blood, he will never oom, and you will lose, unless you also have bauble in which case have fun dueling for hours. LOL.

The worst thing you can do as enha vs ret is sit there in their face and auto attack when stormstrike and lava lash are on cooldown. You need to use your ranged abilities and kiting potential to make sure the paladin can't stack vengeance 3x with his super fast auto attacks (1h shield) and insanely high crit chance (thx to wrathfuls and pve crit gear). These vengeance stacks is the bane of your existance, since it's insanely hard to purge off while other buffs are up (eg. righteous glory which can be spammed). If vengeance is ever stacked to 3 in a duel vs ret, you've already lost, because you can't catch up and purge away his other buffs when that is up taking up potential purges. Not to mention resists :D
:=) My Mini Enhancement Shaman PvE Guide

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