The biggest issue with Enhance is that it has the same lack of itemization problems Ret does, except unlike Ret, Blizzard didn’t suddenly actually release a set of gear with well itemized stats in AQ40 for you to look forward to. Enhancement gear is always going to be some weird frankensteined-together set of hunter gear and feral druid/rogue gear that fails to help the fact that Stormstrike wrecks your mana pool immediately.
Wait so the “adds up to 140” (the baseline Judgment of the Crusader) doesn’t just add a flat amount any source of Holy Damage? So if you’re using Seal of Righteousness to just auto attack away with the extra Holy damage on-hit, you’re saying it doesn’t add 140 to those hits, but rather a much much smaller amount based upon the scaling of Seal of Righteousness?
I can’t check any formulas because WoWHead just says “Script Effect” and a lot of other posts are just treating it as a flat, non-scaling addition to any Holy damage source, meaning speed is more important than anything else.
Retribution Aura would be awesome if Judgment of the Crusader added to its damage in any way, shape or form, but I haven’t noticed that happening while I’ve been playing.
On a related note, I believe I’ve read somewhere that Judgment of the Crusader isn’t worth the debuff slot in Raids. Would Retribution gain any significant amount of damage if they were allowed to use it? Or is it being used in the parses under examination?
Other related note (apologies, just trying to understand the spec as I’m levelling): Are there any fights where Retribution Aura would contribute significant damage? Would that show up in the parse of the Paladin providing the aura? (I’m not much of a parse reader, myself. 
)
Last related note: Would the Vindication debuff ever have a significant application in a fight?
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I’d be hesitant to test using Retribution Aura over a direct source of damage, since some things won’t proc off DoT tics or passive effects. I don’t have a Paladin leveled at all or I’d go poke around with Seal of Righteousness using fast and slow weapons, with and without the debuff from Crusader up.
Oh it definitely has the debuff limitation stigma because outside of Smite Priests and Paladins, no one deals direct Holy damage. Right now would be the time to test it because we don’t actually have 16 relevant debuff slots (for DPS we really only have 8-9, depending on a few oddball weapon picks). However, even if say Smite Priest was semi-competitive if propped up by a Paladin with both Sanctity Aura and the Crusader debuff, the relevant comparison is looking at the combined DPS of those two with the combined DPS of literally anyone else in a pair. I have a feeling that Smite Priests just won’t rise to the level of a Warlock, and the Ret isn’t going to help the comparison at all against a 2nd Warlock.
Significant? Not really. The bosses don’t really swing all that fast and Retribution Aura doesn’t proc if you Parry/Dodge, and the shorter the fight the less opportunity for procs.
However, the Aura will show up as the Tank’s damage, not the Paladin, because the buff is technically attached to the Tank when the proc goes off. This works exactly like Thorns where a really high SP stacked Balance Druid can put a powerful Thorns buff on the Tank, and the Tank will get all the credit in the logs.
Alas, no. Boss Strength/Agility isn’t all that high and doesn’t fluctuate all that much. The Devs likely just tune the boss’ innate “weapon” damage and toss on a certain amount of Attack Power as well. The reduction from Vindication is actually weaker than either of the Demoralizing debuffs (Shout/Roar). On the other hand, Vindication is fantastic for PvP.
Also the debuff is a debuff slot for defensive purposes, so it takes a low priority.
I was mainly wondering if there were fights where you could expect regular AoE melee swings, though conventional wisdom would suggest that one try to minimize the number of targets hit.
The question about whether Judgment of the Crusader is up on the parses was mainly to find out if Ret sucks as badly as has been presented, or if they look weaker because they’re not being permitted to use one of their tools.
It’s probably a combination of both.
Warlock could easily be the best caster in the game given the chance to use their DoTs, until Fire becomes viable, anyway.
That said, even given all of the tools and debuffs available, their DPS is still mediocre. It just wouldn’t be the worst.
There’s something to be said for going from abominable to mediocre.
True. But that’s a lot to sacrifice just to make one spec not terrible.
As long as debuff slots are limited, yes.
Edit: Assuming “mediocre” is acceptable in return for some utility with auras, etc.
Already have 
Hey, hi, howdy friend.
I’m a numbers man myself, so I like that you’ve run the numbers.
I’m in an Arms leveling spec, and intend to respec to such for max lvl PvP, however, I am under no delusion that Arms performs optimally for raids.
Would you think that upon hitting max level, any warrior should go full Prot, or jump straight to Fury for dungeon/raid DPS?
Thanks,
(your secret admirer)
Ummm, yeah wrath was bigger, but TBC had huge changes for ret.
Crusader Strike. An actual attack. An extra button to hit on a short cooldown. Glossing over this is insane.
Seal of Blood (and vengence to a lesser extent) was a huge dps buff.
3% raidwide crit buff ONLY deep into ret so holy paladins couldnt bring it too.
If you don’t want to be tanking full-time, there’s no point going Prot. You can tank reasonably well (arguably better) as Fury.
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You can tank any 5 man content in the game as arms spec with a 2 hander in battle stance. IMO, prot spec warriors are almost as over rated as Ret DPS
how can you over rate the worst dps spec in the game.
TLDR:
Only mages, rogues, wars, priests and bears (if you’re kinky) are allowed in raids. The rest of us plebs will have to move to the Isle of Misfit Specs and hope that the occasional purple falls out of Santa’s sleigh while he delivers loot to the good boys and girls of WoW.
Nope.
Terrible reading comprehension, bud.
Nope.
Terrible reading comprehension of a post that was tongue in cheek.
I’m not sure what possibly would have conveyed that your message tongue in cheek.
Perhaps the part where I said everyone else would have to move to the Isle of Misfit specs? A reference to the Xmas movie Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?