Retribution in the Arena

[Requital]

So as season 2 comes to a close and Season 3 starts I start to question how valid I can be in season 3 vs season 2. I ran Retribution all of season 2 on multiple teams. Pros and Cons and how to get around in them in S3.

1. The biggest change for us is Resilience and the ability to stack it.
Pros - Better survivability
Cons - Possible Burst DPS issues

2. Blizzard reworking our combat system in such a fashion that we are an unfinished product right now.
Pros - Possible better damage based on AP instead of Spell Damage.
Cons - My weak healing turned to horrible healing

There are a lot of nay sayers out there and most either know nothing about Paladins or are so hooked on being a cookie cutter build that they are blind to anything else. I'm not going to say I'm one of the best Paladins or anything like that. I have learned the class and I knows the ins and outs of the class but S3 worries me as my biggest asset was the ability to survive, toss emergency heals and so forth. With our combat system being dismantled and reconstructed at the worst possible time I feel the best Talent build will be a 0/20/41 for survivability and purge resistance.

How many Retribution Paladins are still in debate as to what build they should go with and how they are going to socket their gear?

[Baconn]

Well I'm still going to socket Str / Str+Crit / Str+Stam gems. We need to put out as much damage as we can if we're ret. The resilience on gear alone should be enough survivability if you are using full pvp gear.

As for the change to our gear's +damage/healing to strength, it's great for our damage, but now we have little to no offhealing capability. You will have to be in absolute dire straights to heal in pvp.

I'm hoping for some kind of talent that increases our healing by an amount equal to our strength in the ret tree, combined with something like Crusade or Divine Purpose.

[Requital]

Same thing I'm hoping for if we stop to heal in the arena now it better be worth a 32 point win because as soon as we throw on a shield and 1hr to get off the best heal we can 2 heals later were going to be looking for a way to get some mana back.

[Baconn]

I mostly heal to stop us from getting 32 point losses.

[Wonder]

Or they could just give you a talent that does healing for you while you're busy doing what you specced to do, i.e., Leader of the Pack and Vampiric Embrace.

Could be some kind of talent that tacks on a passive JoL + JoW on any target that you hit with a Crusader Strike, lasting 6 or 10 secs. Something like that.

Or they could give Crusader Strike an AOE-buff Judgement-like effect based on the active Seal and/or the active Judgement.

Like having SoC active and JotC = AOE damage equal to SoC proc damage divided by targets (SoC proc damage = 1k, 2 available targets = 500 each), buffed by JotC.

SoL active and JotC = AOE healing to each member of your group equal to SoL's healing, buffed tremendously by JotC.

SoV active and JoW = AOE over-time deliverance of whatever the effect is, in this case party-wide mana restoration.

Would add a lot of raid utility and PvP spontaneity, I'd imagine.

[Requital]

I mostly heal to stop us from getting 32 point losses.

Fair enough but I leave that to the Holy Paladin and I more then pay for my arena spot with my ability to play and my utility. I'm not saying I will ever be top 100 5v5 Paladin but I don't want to play the way somene else wants me to play.