Bramot's Ret Guide to Shadowlands (PVP)

Classes Paladin
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Hello all, I’m a 2700 xp 3v3 ret, 2500 something xp 2v2 ret, and a 2800xp rbg ret

I am by no means the best Ret world or NA, but I figured I would answer some commonly asked Ret questions and other things for beginner/lower xp rets. (I will update this guide if anything changes, as the xpac progresses).

To start with the basics, the best pvp race for Ret Paladin is Dark Iron (human a close second) with Tauren being the best for horde (there are no horde races that are actually good, but Tauren in this current meta is the best). Our stat priority for pvp is Vers>Haste=Mastery>Crit (in Shadowlands, the crit multiplier went from 150 to 175, making it a pretty decent stat).

Kyrian is currently our best covenant, however Night Fae is competitive. In rated arena, and likely for Rated Battlegrounds, Pelagios soulbind is the best. Due to the recent nerfs I believe the Forgemaster soulbind for Kyrian will be competitive to Pelagios as well but that is simply speculation. In regards to legendaries we have a plethora of legendaries that are competitive for us. In terms of legendries for arena, Final Verdict, Sephuz’ Proclamation, Mad Paragon, Uther’s Devotion, and the prot legendary, Reign of Endless Kings are all good picks, others obviously have more value than others in given matchups. For pvp talents, in 3v3 Blessing of Sanctuary is an absolute requirement. Other talents can be used at your discretion, I personally recommend lawbringer, and Aura of Reckoning and swapping out Lawbringerfor Unbound Freedom if fighting a team with a mage. Unbound Freedom is also useful against ele shaman comps and boomkin comps. Vengance aura is good into cc heavy comps, and is more valuable in rbg over Lawbringer. In 2v2 you may swap out blessing of sanctuary at times for other talents, like Law and Order.
For Rated Battlegrounds, the best build I recommend for all maps except for flag maps are, Vengeance Aura, X- Most of the time I either use luminescence or Blessing of Sanctuary, and Aura of Reckoning. For flag maps I recommend playing defense to use Sanc on your flag carrier. If you are playing O on FC maps I like to use Unbound Freedom/Vengance Aura/Aura of Reckoning along with seraphim + final reckoning. Mad Paragon and Divine Tempest are both good legendries for rbg. I personally use Divine Tempest the most. Reign of Endless Kings and Sephuz are also both good, although to maximize damage, Divine Tempest is the best.
The only two auras I recommend using is Devotion Aura (against most comps), and Concentration Aura (against shadowpriest teams, and any other double caster).

For regular talents, Zeal is the best all around in just about ever scenario. The next row is Blade of Wrath (Or Emp Power against double melee). Fist of Justice is your go to in the next talent row, however for 2s I like to take Repentance (if ret/healer), and blinding light if playing ret/rogue/healer or ret/rogue 2s. The next row, Unbreakable Spirit should be your go to, but since it looks like the SL meta will be very fast paced, you may see games where Eye for an Eye will actually be good. The next row I recommend Divine Purpose or Seraphim. Seraphim is better if you are playing a more set up oriented comp, and Divine Purpose is better in cleaves/RBGS. At level 45, Healing Hands is the only talent option that I would use at the moment. At level 50, all 3 talents are actually viable. Sanctified Wrath is great in cleaves, Final Reckoning great in set up comps, and Crusade is good where you need good single target burst. The reason Final Reckoning over Sanctified Wrath in set up comps like Ret/Hunter is because Sanctified Wrath can break your hunter’s trap or your priest’s fear.

For the last part of the guide I will go over what I think are the best Ret comps:
In order the best comps to me are,
Ret/Warr/Disc or Rsham or Hpalla
Ret/WW/Healer.
Ret/Frost DK/Healer
Ret/Hunter/Disc
Ret/Sub/Disc or Hpalla
Ret/Caster/Healer is also always a good composition, simply whatever caster is doing well, will do well with Ret as well, at the moment if you wish to play ret/caster/healer I reccomend: Ret/Boomy/Disc or Rsham or Ret/Spriest/Rsham
Ret/Ele/Disc or Hpalla and Ret/Destro/Rsham or Hpalla are also likely good as well as Ret/Mage/Disc or Hpalla

If you have any more questions you can ask on this thread or you may add me on discord, Bramot#5261

Also, good streams to watch are twitch.tv/ vanguardstv and twitch.tv/ pika_pala

35 Likes
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You posted 3comps, but what are good 2comps for Ret?

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Ret/disc
Ret/rsham
Ret/rdruid
Ret/holy priest

Ret/rogue and ret/hunter also work as viable double dps 2s comp, as well as likely ret/mage (have not tried that comp yet)

Ret/any healer does work to like 2-2.2k but for pushing past that see mentioned specific healers.

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Good write up, should help out a lot of people.

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Not even gonna mention ret/ret? I am so offended.

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Haha I haven’t played that comp to any serious ratings. Although you guys did certainly make it work

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Re: human as best race. Is this because you can equip dual trinkets or do you use the racial in addition to CC break trinket?

Also, how far ahead would you rate it vs dwarf (debuff wipe) and goat (nuke I guess)?

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Being able to use relent and still having an out for stuns is huge, or in some cases you can have two offense trinkets and get away with it, something that is unique to human.

Human > Dark Iron > Dwarf > light forged
Dark iron and normal dwarf are still pretty good. However there aren’t things like claw or maledict anymore which is what those two races very good. Also the Kyrian potion can remove effects as well.

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How do you use Ashen Hallow to best utilize it’s effect in arena/BGs?

I swapped to it yesterday and must be using it like an absolute mong, rarely felt like I could find opportunities to make use of it in instanced pvp or in wpvp.

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Absolute ground control and anti-stealth for 30 seconds with damage and healing, and use of execute with 100% damage increase. If you’re fighting on a flag it can turn a large fight fast.

Yesterday it stopped two sub rogues from really supporting the EFC while the efc was stunned and slowed in the middle. It’s very situation based and capped by CD, but it came in handy getting a flag cap for my team.

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Yeah the 4 min cd makes using it really rough imo. It’s all about positioning it really but I would imagine you use it with your wings as an extra damage modifier. It’s the most awkward covenant ability to me, even more awkward than necrolord (even though it’s so much better than necrolord)

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Can you explain to me why Zeal in the first row of talents and not the other two? What makes zeal better?

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Sure, so Righteous Verdict is still templated nerfed 33% from BfA, so Zeal will be a flat dps increase over Rightous verdict. Plus zeal is constant damage and not just tied to templars verdict (divine storm is a great ability in SL rn with its damage output).
Execution sentence got a heavy damage nerf and is no longer able to crit. With full uptime during the ES window it will do about the damage of a templars verdict, which for a min cd is really lackluster.

I can see situations where Rightous verdict will be good (heavy burst windows that you will be able to maintain perfect uptime on the buff, like ret/rogue 2s). But I don’t see ES being used sadly.

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I tried Zeal and I’m really not liking it. It feels very lackluster and it’s always on the bottom of my damage meter. After considering down time off targets, I find I have more zeal stacks than I can spend. I suppose there’s more to it than just the small amount of holy damage, since the faster autos should at least lead to more procs from Art of War. Mathematically it’s probably the most damage, but I think I’m personally gonna switch back to ES despite the nerfs. It might be the wrong play, but it feels the most impactful during my AW window.

Thanks for the guide. It’s surprisingly difficult to find valuable Ret PvP information.

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Happy to help. For casual play ES should still be ok, but I agree yes, Zeal is very boring. Do keep in mind your damage meters will show zeal separate from your auto attack swings (simply add the zeal damage to your auto attack damage for the correct value).

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I hit a 24k ES in a skirm today against someone who some how survived a 4DT proc. So if you have good uptime and proc a 4 judge DT it can still hit REALLY hard. I bet it makes a come back when the meta slows down a bit.

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Maybe? But at the same time my templars are hitting 8-10k and then with Rightous Verdict 14k. When pikachu was testing it he was hitting like 17k ES (on beta with more gear we have now)

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Yeah, ive definitely moved away from playing ES. It feels super niche right now. Zeal and RV are boring but likely better.

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I still use FV in BG’s and it works out great for me in and is fun to use but I think I will swap to SW once I start doing arena games.

On a side note, is the damage from SW wasted if we make use of the extra range with Final Verdict?

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FR is still def good. Been using it in 3s skirms into some matchups.

I believe so yes. In the cases of we really utilize the range of final verdict, FR and Crusade are better. (Likely should pick FR)