First of all, I’m not claiming that I’m a great ret, because I can’t even do some of the stuff I’m about to mention reliably. The misconception is that raiding ret is only about dodging fire while doing dps. That is the absolute minimum any raider should be capable of. Nowadays people use DPS as a indicator of whether you “know your class” or not. Being able to DPS as ret is as simple as doing addition subtraction. In comparision, if I can’t even do these, obviously I don’t know math. However, if I only know how to do addition and subtraction, I can’t claim that I know math either.

Ret pally is a pally first, then a ret. Paladin is the class with perhaps most raid utilities. A single paladin spell can turn the tide on entire raid encounters in some situations. First of all, lets talk about talent spec.

No, not the DPS skeleton talents 5/5/51, I’m talking about the other 10 points where most guides would just tell you to “spend them wherever you like”. These 10 points provides some of the most important utilities ret pally bring to raid. You should be able to answer these questions anytime anywhere:

Can you get Aura Mastery?
Can you get Divine Sacrifice? What about imp dsac?
What other talents would you pick along the way?
Can you fit vindication and imp blessing of might in your build? So your tank / dps has some extra talent points to spend.
Will you still be able to get pursuit of justice if you get a combination of the above talents?

After getting your talent spec set, now we should focus on using these utilities spells.

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Cleanse: Do you have mouseover cleanse? so you can dispel without losing target to save healers’ GCD and avooid potential wipes.

Art of War: Any decent ret knows to use art of war proc to instant cast exorcism. Do you cast flash of light with it? When? When you get pcold on Anub hard phase 3, do you flash yourself right away to give healer a buffer or do you just tunnel vision the boss and hopefully everything will work out? When you get decimated by stinky, do you sit there and pray healer AoE would hit you or flash yourself and keep going?

Holy Wrath: ICC being an undead instance, this AoE 3sec stun is perhaps one off the most powerful tool in here. I don’t need to go into details about this spell on the Anub hard fight, there’s plenty of guides on it. But do you have to rely on guides to tell you when to cast a spell? When you go up the blood wing of ICC and one of the tacticians just sapped your tank, what do you do? “Fuck it, i’ll just keep aoeing. healer will heal him up.” or “Let me holy wrath all the mobs so tank wouldn’t take any damage.” ?

Lay on Hand: Most ret would keep this to themselves in case of emergency. Only to find out a min later when he needs to bubble, he can’t. Lay on hand is a great tank saver, and can also be used to grant some mana to healers.

Repentance / Turn Evil: controlling 2 targets at once, perhaps the best CC class in ICC.

Aura Mastery: What effects are affected by this? When should you use this?

Divine Sacrifice: What does the basic spell do? What does the improved version do? When do you use this? Do you always Dsac with bubble? or can you Dsac with Divine Protection so you don’t lose any DPS? Or even if bubble is down, can you Dsac with Hand of Protection? These are the questions you should know before starting an boss fight.

Divine Intervention: What does this spell do now? On saurfang in ICC, could you possibly soulstone the pally and have him DI the first person getting mark? Stuff like this should come across every pally’s mind and be tested.

Divine Shield: Which spells penetrate DS? Do you bubble taunt when tank goes down to buy the raid a couple more sec dps time? Not necessary? Ask yourself that question again next time you wipe at 1% on a boss.

Hand of Reckoning: Where can you use this spell to DPS? (If you tell me nowhere, you aren’t even trying.)

Hand of Freedom: do you just use this on yourself or others as well? Do you use this on the kiter on Rotface as he’s running across the slime pool? Do you use it on the tank on Dreamwalker who’s desperately trying to get to the new mob while snared? There are way too many uses for this spell on others.

Hand of Sacrifice: Similar to Divine Sac, but when do you use this? on who? Will you be able to survive the damage? (since you most likely coupled bubble with dsac) Is it worth it to even sacrifice yourself to keep that person alive? (hence the name)

Hand of Salvation: How exactly does this spell reduce threat? What does the glyph for this do?

Hand of Protection: What debuff does this spell remove, what doesn’t it remove? Applications like Anub hard phase 2 can be found in some others fights in ICC.

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If you can use these spells effectively in a raid, you are on your way to become a great ret raider. Otherwise, might as well replace you with a rogue, who would do more damage anyway.