The Last Great Obstacle: Itemization

Retribution Paladins in WoW have, much to my great surprise, come a long long way. Several months ago, I would never have dreamed that the tree would get so much positive retooling - particularly in the realm of DPS/PvP. There was even talk from Blizzard of reducing Ret's last remaining hope - burst damage. I cancelled my subscription (complete with frustrated letter to Blizzard), took many months off, and played around with several different games. I came back out of boredom (and after hearing about the Death Knight), vendored almost all my healing gear, and set out to spec and play how I wanted to play - the rest of the WoW community be damned.

All I can guess now is that I wasn't the only one. Warhammer Online began putting out a tantalizing alternative, and I'd venture to say a great many other Paladin players followed suit and deprived Blizzard of more funds than even they expected. Now here we are, months later, with Retribution on the verge of becoming endgame-viable. We've conquered many foes thus far - from an ill-conceived notion that Ret was nothing more than a leveling/grinding spec, to the most recent triumph which resulted in the addition of passive threat reduction. One great demon, however, still remains - our itemization.

We know that Blizzard is (or at least was) aware of the, "itemization pitfalls" associated with Retribution. Much of this is their own doing, having designed a tree that incorporates dual-scaling abilities (SoC/JoC/CS scale with both weapon damage and spell damage, the latter poorly). Before, I would have said that this was an intentional attempt to hamstring Retribution and keep it at a sub-par DPS level. The apparent delay in addressing this gives me reason to believe that this may still be the case to a certain degree. My evidence - the Season 3 Retribution set: Vengeful Gladiator's Scaled Armor. Yes, we finally got a healthy amount of resilience like every other class/spec. Unfortunately, we also retained a large amount of spell damage and actually LOST strength. We were even granted a certain amount of armor penetration - something completely unnecessary for a class that deals a mix of physical and magic damage (the latter already ignoring armor).

What, then, is to be done? Some have suggested we receive a talent, just like Shaman Mental Quickness, which grants spell damaged based on a percentage of attack power. Others, including the author of the now infamous rumored additional changes, have advocated a complete detachment from spell damage altogether as Retribution, and a reworking of SoC/JoC/CS to scale exclusively with melee stats. Whether the solution is an AP->SP talent, or a reworking of our Ret abilities, something certainly needs to be done.

I'm aware that the Paladin is a hybrid, and that we need a bit more than a "pure" class like the Warrior. Intellect alone should be sufficient in this regard. Ret gear should thus look like this, IMO:

Stats needed in descending order of importance:

Uncommon Quality Items
*Strength
*Stamina
*Intellect
*Crit in some cases (though rare for uncommon)

Rare Quality Items
*Strength
*Stamina
*Intellect
*Crit rating (much more prevalent on rare items)

Epic Quality Items (PvE)
*Strength
*Stamina
*Intellect
*Crit rating (more prevalent than rare)
*Hit rating (moderate amount)
*MP/5

Epic Quality Items (PvP)
*Strength
*Stamina (somewhat more than PvE)
*Intellect
*Crit rating (plentiful)
*Resilience
*Hit rating (small amount)

Things Retribution gear should not have at all, with either a melee->spell damage conversion talent or a retooling of certain abilities:

*Spell Damage
*Armor Penetration

With this issue dealt with, barring any horrible re-nerfs or excessive "adjustments," I would actually consider Retribution to be "done" (for the most part, nothing ever ends up perfect).