It's difficult to write a guide like this because your role as a ret changes significantly depending on the people you are playing with.This is especially difficult when you are recommending players to sacred shield a tank, for example, who might have their own (prot pala) or a (hpala). Often times, it just depends on the constitution and level of your raid. For some fights, it's not even worth the gcd. Some raid leaders will ask you to specifically put it on someone, other times its your judgement call specific to whatever the raid composition or context is. This goes the same for pretty much every utility spell including lay on hands, salvation, sacrifice, aura mastery, and even offensive spells like holy wrath. I'm just expressing this because in a hc setting, doing something like casting sacred shield on the tank, or holy wrathing randomly, salving randomly can get you in trouble, gkicked or raid kicked.
So you have to ask
What is the end goal to this guide? To create a play by play or basically a general raid guide with some ret paladin notes? At what level/for what context? Pug/Progression/Farm? Maybe, if you wanted, you could break each boss down into Pugging, Progression, Farming and cover a bit of ground that way.
Are we doing just the basics, the intermediate or the advanced? The higher your expectation, the more complicated it gets.
What ultimately separates the best rets on the server from a good ret is situational awareness, listening well, and making good judgement calls. Is throwing out the flash of light with art of war going to save a life? Sometimes, heck yes. Other times if you just focused on your rotation, you just do damage and the healing is totally unnecessary, it would be better to do a little bit more dps to get the boss down faster/save lives) You don't want to encourage a pug to just cast flash of light every time art of war procs.
And even this point has disagreement among the top rets and top players.
As a general ICC guide, that's what your pdf is but as an advanced guide for ret not really.
Some of the things that immediately stood out to me are the following though every boss can have more detail. For example:
Situational Awareness -
You could add extra details such as (warrior/boomkin have no threat clear. On a boss like Lady Deathwhisper, phase 2, tanks will no longer be able to taunt. In this situation, you should be more alert of the threat meter (Omen) and consider the use of salvation on X class or X on meter etc.General Paladin Techniques -
You don't mention seals pretty much at all. For example on PP, most of the time you will benefit greatly from Seal of Righteousness and the glyph for it as you are switching targets constantly or getting stunned to the point that you lose 5 stacks of vengeance/corruption every time. Other bosses also benefit from seal swapping or even dancing.LK Fight
- No mention of Aura Mastery during Remorseless Winter (again this looks different depending on your level of raiding)
- Holy Wrath not emphasized enough on Valks
- Depending on raid comp or if you are doing Bane, you may be responsible for soaking vile spirits with divine protection (may still kill you) or bubble. In addition, you can add a lot of detail here, explaining that Arthas will start casting Frostmourne Hungers, the tank will move or the MT/OT will taunt as the rest of the raid moves to the opposite end of the platform. You will then need to stand in the way and physically run/block into the spirits as they come.
- Depending on raid comp, you may or may not have to soak ghouls, hence the use of Seal of Command and Sacred Shield on yourself. Other times, a raid leader may explicitly tell you not to use this spell.
- Depending on raid comp, you may have to dispel plague
etc etcPaladins are one of the most versatile classes in the game. Because of this, you may have to wear many hats at once, other times just the hat of dps. I've done hundreds of ICC raids and really none of them are quite the same. Sometimes a great ret and a good ret look the same, but when you have to wear many hats, that's when you really find out.
Anyway, good luck!
