Quote:Retribution aura is (unfortunately) not good. It does not benefit from Judgement of Crusader. And the damage it deals does not scale. The higher you get it will fade away more and more.
I did some testing with my level 38 untwinked Paladin.
Against Drywhisker Kobolds using Judgment of Justice and Seal of Command with limited JoC nuking and mixing Frost Resist aura and Retribution aura my damage break down was:
Melee 74.9%
Seal of Command 13.8%
Damage shield 6.4%
Judgment of Command 3.2%
Testing on Highland Fleshstalkers with Judgment of the Crusader and Seal of Command (with some very limited nuking as SotC, JotC and SoC and the occasional self heal was very mana intensive for me killing fast with a small mana pool)
Melee 62.8%
Seal of Command 20.9%
Damage shield 8.9%
Judgment of Command 4.0%
In the first case replacing Improved Retribution aura with Sanctity Aura would add 10% of (13.8 + 3.2) for a total of +1.7% but would cost me 6.4%
In the second case against pure melee mobs Sanctity Aura would have added 2.49% at a cost of 8.9%
For a level 38 untwinked Paladin putting out approx 62-75 dps Improved Retribution Aura is miles out in front at this stage
My weapon is Grim Reaper a level 35 blue I got from the AH so it's not awful. Even if my Blood Elf's Crusader-enchanted epic puts my autoattack damage to double this Paladin's output Retribution is still better for both pure melee groups and mixed caster and melee groups according to these results (only the SoC damage not the JoC would increase with better gear. I don't think the amount of nuking per mob would go up as you would be moving to new mobs quicker)
I can see that Sanctity aura scales with gear whereas Retribution aura doesnt (unless your gear is so good you can pull 8 mobs at a time!) but I think Retribution starts a long way in front
I'm thinking that generally the faster you level the worse your gear is at any given moment. It's people who do things like run SM 50 times for the Scarlet chest who are well-geared for their level
The only value of Sanctity to a fast levelling Paladin it seems to me is on casters and the resistance auras provide a viable alternative, downtime reduction and less chance of losing dps to things like Frost Nova matching what amounts to about a 2% dps increase from using Sanctity aura
However you don't have a resistance aura for every type of damage (you don't get Nature or Arcane or Holy) so there will be situations where Sanctity is worth using while soloing and of course if I dps in an instance it's better
Edit: after thought
I wanted to add some comments about Judgement of the Crusader. At level 38 JotC adds up to 80 which for a SoC proc means +16. SoC procs once or twice per normal mob kill. Spending mana on SotC and JotC reduces nuking and my JoC does 194 to 209 to a stunned mob. My conclusion is that it's more effective to use mana for Hammer of Justice, Judgment, SoC which costs a total of 187 mana for 194-209 damage than apply JotC at the start of each fight which is 122 mana for 16-32 damage. Using Judgment of Command without stun is 46 mana for 97-105 damage so every time SoC would wear off anyway it's very worthwhile to finish it with a Judgment
So to summarise for the attack power based Retribution Paladin my belief is that the best attack strategy is:
- Improved Retribution Aura
- keep SoC up all the time (unless you specifically need some other effect such as Judgment of Justice to control runners)
- judge and re-apply SoC whenever it's about to run out
- use Hammer of Justice before you Judge whenever it's off cooldown and you have over 40% mana