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The Light and How to Swing It: Ret gear in the Throne of Thunder

Dan Desmond
Updated ·6 min read
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The Light and How to Swing It Ret gear in the Throne of Thunder

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

As Notorious B.I.G. would say, "mo patches, mo gear." Well, I imagine he would have said that if he could have played World of Warcraft.

There's just something about pouring through datamined loot and finding out where it all drops that excites me. In fact, I don't get into the whole "new patch hype" until I look at the gear, and then I'm suddenly hit with the realization that we're getting new bosses, new content, and new items.

Despite how much fun I had in putting this article together, gear lists have proven to be very dry. They have their uses, particularly as bookmark fodder for a quick reference of what drops where, so instead of trying to fluff this post up, I'm going to just lay it all out at once. Before I do that, however, I need to mention a few things.

There are some discrepancies between Wowhead's data and that from the PTR itself. You might notice weird or incorrect tooltips or entries that don't correspond to data on the site or on the test realm. In all cases, I defaulted to the test realm as the final authority on the matter.



Some drops aren't on the loot tables for any bosses in Throne of Thunder, but Ghostcrawler has stated that at least some of these may drop from trash in normal and heroic and have a chance at dropping out of bags in LFR.

The Light and How to Swing It Ret gear in the Throne of Thunder

Newer trinkets are moving away from internal cooldowns (ICDs) and toward the RealPPM system. I'm not going to go over this in any detail as it's rather math-heavy and a tad irrelevant to non-theorycrafters, but you can find the nitty-gritty of these trinkets here and a well-written explanation by Hamlet here.

Aside from the gear listed below, most of which is also available in Raid Finder and Heroic versions, there are a few additional pieces of lower ilevel – The Brassiest Knuckle which appears to be a Brawler's Guild reward, and Refurbished Seal of Jin which comes from being exalted with the Kirin Tor Offensive (Alliance) or Sunreaver Onslaught (Horde) and currently costs 937 VP.

When looking at which pieces to grab, keep in mind that while our typical stat priority favors haste over either mastery or crit, we are collectively reaching a saturation point with haste such that crit and mastery are gaining ground. As such, always remember that your stat values may fluctuate as you gear up. Keep this in mind when making gearing decisions.

Helm

Neck

Shoulders

Cloak

Chest

Wrist

Gloves

Waist

Legs

Feet

Rings

Trinkets

Weapons

As you can see, there's a ton of new gear in patch 5.2. Personally, I'm very much looking forward to a larger raid again (twelve bosses in total!), and of course the new two-handed weapons that inevitably follow. Any pieces you're specifically looking forward to?*

*If your answer is anything other than, "HOLY BUCKETS, A STRENGTH POLEARM?!" then you're simply wrong.

The Light and How to Swing It teaches you the ins and outs of retribution paladins, from Ret 101 and how to gem, enchant and reforge your retadin, to essential ret pally addons.