Hi Fellow Paladins, Dol and MizU,

The Army We Have

Currently because of our team make up it is a challenge to control the Power Sparks in the Malygos fight.  However, I am a full believer of trying to solve a raid fight regardless of group make up, and I don't believe we always need a certain class to finish a fight.  Eraption has proven that many times because we are a melee heavy guild and we will do it for Malygos as well.

So how can we adjust to beat Malygos with our group make up?

Using Our Paladins as Crowd Control

I believe if we can control the sparks better, our damage output will improve, we can reduce Malygos faster to 50% of his health, and buy more time for the enrage phase during phases 2 and 3.

I realize that our primary problem using Paladins as crowd control is the long cooldown of the Hammer of Justice.  It limits our ability to control the Power Sparks for the consistent damage buff.

Personally, as I tank, I notice that even a 20 second reduction of the 60 second cooldown grants me greater utility with Hammer of Justice.  So I was thinking: "Can we talent all our Retribution Paladins to improve their Hammer of Justice."

Obviously, we can, but at the expense of certain Retribution talents.

Optimizing Talent Trees for Group Play

An advanced strategy for raiding guilds is to optimize talent trees as a group for raid play at the expense of solo play.

For example, when I knew that Dolores was talenting Blessing of Kings late last year for Naxxramas, I removed it from my talent tree.  If I knew I was going to be raiding in the same group with a paladin talenting for Blessing of Kings, why waste a whopping 5 points on the talent I will not use in group play?  I spent the 5 points elsewhere to optimize for group play (e.g. Seals of the Pure to increase DPS and Threat Generation).

With this in mind, I analyzed both your talent trees and mine as well as the needs of the Malygos fight.  Obviously, our talent trees are currently optimized for individual play, and we have options to optimize our talent trees as a group better for raid play.

Pros and Cons

How does it affect our non-raid play?  As a tank, I can no longer provide the Blessing of Kings in solo play or others in 5-mans, so people and myself had less survivability or DPS then I could provide.  As DPS, you will lose some DPS in solo and 5-mans.

So really I leave it to you to consider my proposal below.  It's basically to respec to optimize for team play, in particular for the Malygos fight.

What Needs Work

Currently here are the non-optimized talents of our group play:

General

- Heart of the Crusader does not stack.

- Retribution Aura is used by only 1 Paladin at a time so Improved Retribution Aura and Sanctified Retribution talents are wasted.

Malygos Specific

- Pursuit of Justice is wasted as our fights are not movement intensive.

- We will not be fighting Malygos toe-to-toe as he will be <20% health as we ride dragons, so we will not be using Hammer of Wrath on him.  Also talenting a 3 minute Avenging Wrath cooldown to 2 minutes means you will blow Avenging Wrath only 1 additional time during the 5 minute Phase 1 target, which we are trying to reduce anyway.  So, arguably, Sanctified Wrath is wasted.  If we can hit all Power Sparks due to reduced Hammer of Justice Cooldowns then the DPS boost is more significant.

The Optimization Plan

The optimization plan is to have Dolores and Mizuniverze respec in such a manner that we remove the wasted talents, and talent Hammer of Justice for a shorter cooldown.  Here are the two proposed builds:

The Benedictive Paladin

Mizuniverze's recommended build is here.

Basically this build talents Hammer of Justice, Retribution Aura and Blessing of Might at the expense individual DPS when soloing (provided by Crusade and Heart of the Crusader).  It focuses on talenting Hammer of Justice while improving the damage output of the raid instead of the self (hence it is benedictive).

Advantages in Group Play

- Hammer of Justice is talented.

- Blessing of Might, Improved Retribution Aura and Sanctified Retribution talents are not wasted on the other Paladin's talent tree.

The Crusading Paladin

Dolores' recommend build is here.

Hammer of Justice, Heart of the Crusader and Crusade are talented at the expense of group DPS (provided by Blessing of Might, Improved Retribution Aura and Sanctified Retribution).  It focuses on talenting Hammer of Justice while improving the damage output of the self instead of the group.

Advantages in Group Play

- Hammer of Justice is talented.

- Heart of the Crusader is not wasted on the other Paladin's talent tree.