Ret Pally Gearing

The first post I made about playing Ret is here, about ability use. This one is going to be about gearing and stat priority. Gear isn't very complex for a Ret Paladin, but it's the kind of thing you need to know a little about to do right. The short version is get to 8% hit (7 if you can count on a Draenei), gem Strength, prioritize Expertise (up to anywhere from 16 to 23) and Crit for secondary stats.

Hit is the single best DPS increasing stat available to you until the melee cap, pure and simple. Beyond the melee cap, it is mostly useless, and no longer with gearing for. You need 263 rating to be hit-capped against raid bosses. Getting this from gear is much nicer than having to gem for it (when you get hit from gear, it replaces a secondary stat, like Crit or Haste, but when you gem for it, it replaces Strength, which is your second-best stat).

Strength is the next best stat, and since it has no cap, it is the one you will likely gem the most. It's better than AP because of Divine Strength (15% Strength) and Blessing of Kings/Sanctuary (each of which give a non-stacking 10% Strength). It also gives SP through talents.

Expertise prevents dodges and parries, and for us the dodge is the important part, since you should be standing behind mobs. It takes 26 Expertise (NOT Expertise Rating) to push dodges off the table for a raid boss. Expertise is very good, but since the gems are red, you are unlikely to use them. We also get 10 Expertise from the Seal of Vengeance glyph whenever SoV is active.

Crit is very good, especially with the 2 piece Tier 9 bonus. Crits (as with most classes) trigger certain talents and such. There is a cap, but if you are in danger of reaching it as a Ret, you are doing something wrong. Agility is also provides us with Crit, but at a lower conversion rate (though better than everyone else's) and it does not affect spells.

Haste, AP, and ArPen are all hanging around basically at the bottom. You will end up with some of these, and they aren't reasons to reject gear, but you shouldn't generally be seeking them out. Note that many procs are only available in an AP form, not Strength, so you'll be mostly out of luck there.

Spellpower and Intellect provide a small DPS increase, but much less than any physical DPS stats. Don't be that guy.

Dodge, Parry, Block Value, Block Rating, and Defense Rating are all tank stats. No. Just no.

Despite Strength being so good, there are several pieces of leather gear that are better than their plate counterparts for us. This is thanks to way Blizzard's itemization works and our nice Agility conversion. It's annoying, but that's the way it is. This problem will be going away in Cataclysm, but until then, we're stuck with it.

For gemming, you will be using Bold Cardinal Rubies (+20 Strength) in all red slots, all but one blue slot. The blue slot that will give you the best bonus should be filled with a Nightmare Tear (+10 All Stats). Yellow sockets that will give you a bonus of at least 4 strength (per yellow socket) should be filled with either Etched Ametrine (+10 Strength, +10 Hit) or Inscribed Ametrine (+10 Strength, +10 Crit). Your meta gem will be the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (+21 Agility, +3% Crit Damage). There is a +21 Crit version, but it requires 2 blue gems, and is therefore a DPS loss.