Adventure in Retribution leveling & gear replacement.

[Dianora]

Due to be being a packrat, I didn't made concerted effort of collecting retribution gears. Well, WotLK is upon us, and the only retribution gear I have is [item=31959]Merciless Gladiator's Bonegrinder[/item]. For those of you that didn't have much retribution gear, you can pick up Crusader's Scaled Battlegear for under 100g. From my experiment this weekend, they should last you until level 74. I have to briefly specced out of Retribution to finish Emerald Dragon shrine end boss (I solo'ed it last time as Protection, and didn't survive my encountered as Retribution).

This past weekend, I decided to level another toon starting at 70 and this time, I level using retribution. I'm also using my previous experience to mapped out my eventual leveling plan. Knowing what I know, I did enough quest in Howling Fjord to get to level 71 and heads straight for Dragonblight and started my Wrath Gate quest line right away. Having quest not bugged help quit a bit, and I was able to get the Wrath Gate event at level 72.

The big selling point of leveling as Retribution is zero down time. You don't run out of mana. So as long as you don't try to pick up 20 mobs (like any sensible protection paladin would), you don't run out of health. And you kill things in about 6-8 seconds.

When I can get enough people to do Amphitheater of Anguish event at level 75, my S2 2 hander will also get replaced.

[Chunes]

i ret in a mishmash of KZ/SSC gear and it's more than enough to kill most mobs in 3gcds or less.

S2 will serve people nicely as well from what i can extrapolate from teh stats.

[Arees]

What I am curious about is us people that hate PvP and have no ret gear. I have a blue 2h axe, I got the rep PvP gear, and I have a couple of random dps pieces I got because no one wanted them from ZA. I'm still lacking about half ret gear though... no dps rings, trinkets, belt, and one or two others I think. I'm wanting to go ret to level faster, and to have a fun little break from tanking before I go full time tank for my guild again come January (most people will probably hit 80 during the Christmas break and we'll start raiding after the holidays). Would it still be faster to level ret using northrend quest rewards, or level prot with T5/badge items? I'm thinking I'll go ret until 8 anyway, just so I can try out the new changes...

[Selinaria]

For those that do not have a semi-respectable retribution set already (like myself when I started beta) just level protection either a) until quest rewards fill in the blanks for you or b) just go prot all the way. The quest items are fairly strong overall so it will not take long to make a halfway respectable retribution set for choice A.

Protection overall is probably slower but it is no longer horribly slow.

As Dianora put it, the best thing about ret is zero downtime. Heal with instant FoLs between pulls and just go to town on mobs/quests. It really is a damn strong spec right now.

[Zumor]

Selinaria is right, quest as a prot, its still fast with all the new damageoutput we get with 3.0, gather stuff with quests, and after some time you have 3/4 retri equip, if you want to try ret that bad you can respecc and try it, even with a few pieces missing you still can kill things fast.

my druid, full healgear T4-T5, I used moonkinspecc to quest, and around lvl70 50% to 71 I had a near fullpiece of green set for feral in my bags, and after a patch where the talentspoints reset I tryed feral and it worked well.

same goes for other classes and speccs, you get a good basic equipment to level via quests for all speccs exept mostly tanks.

[Elsie]

You could just level as ret in prot gear. All the prot gear has a good amount of strength on it anyway. You don't need hit rating for leveling so you're essentially trading crit for mitigation.

[Arees]

You could just level as ret in prot gear. All the prot gear has a good amount of strength on it anyway. You don't need hit rating for leveling so you're essentially trading crit for mitigation.

I'm thinking I may do this. I could still tank [normal] instances in my tank gear, and do more dps when solo for faster leveling speed. I have almost no bag space, so dps gear will probably replace my healing gear in my bag. Plus, once dual specs are available, my second spec will be ret anyway, so it'll be nice to go ahead and build up a decent dps set while leveling...

[guillex]

You could just level as ret in prot gear. All the prot gear has a good amount of strength on it anyway. You don't need hit rating for leveling so you're essentially trading crit for mitigation.

I'm thinking I may do this. I could still tank [normal] instances in my tank gear, and do more dps when solo for faster leveling speed. I have almost no bag space, so dps gear will probably replace my healing gear in my bag. Plus, once dual specs are available, my second spec will be ret anyway, so it'll be nice to go ahead and build up a decent dps set while leveling...

I got on beta with a mix of prot/ret gear ... It went very well. DS makes up for a lot of lost dps that'd be seen in live if you were to attempt it.

[Selinaria]

There was a brief little bit that I had to wear prot gear on beta to actually function as ret (damn you bug with + hit and + crit actually reducing hit and crit chance), and it honestly went fine.

Given the fact that you still obtain a very healthy amount of AP in prot gear now, it really isn't a half bad way to go about it if you really feel the urge to go ret with non-existent ret gear.