PvE Retribution Paladin Best Professions – WoW Classic

Nevermore Nevermore • Updated June 7, 2025

A review of the best professions for Retribution Paladins in WoW Classic along with any other useful profession. Retribution Paladins use the same professions as other melee DPS specializations, heavily favoring professions that boost their overall damage output over gold-generation professions.

Best Professions

  • Engineering is known as one of the best professions in WoW Classic for any specialization, allowing players to create a variety of bombs, gadgets, and special gear pieces that greatly boost performance. Retribution Paladins can use the bombs to boost their overall Damage Output by a considerable amount. The profession is especially strong when considering the few offensive tools they have in their kit.
  • Blacksmithing is a profession that allows players to create Plate gear, among other useful tools such as Keys and Enchanting Rods. The profession is strong for gearing Retribution Paladins, yet it falls off when players start to acquire the proper Dungeon/Raid items.
  • Mining is extremely useful, especially when paired with Engineering or Blacksmithing, as it allows players to gather ore and special gems that can be used to funnel both professions. While on its own is considered just another gold generation tool, the profession is vital for maintaining both Engineering and Blacksmithing, especially when considering how expensive Engineering consumables can be.

Useful Professions

  • Alchemy is one of the best professions for gold generation and overall resources during any PvE encounter. When paired with Herbalism or a large reserve of gold, Alchemy will supply you with a nearly endless amount of flasks, elixirs, and potions. While Retribution Paladins make better use of professions that grant Gear or Damage-increasing consumables, Alchemy can be very profitable for generating large amounts of gold and buying BoEs with it.
  • Herbalism is an extremely good gold generation tool for any player as it allows them to gather herbs from across the world which can either be sold or used with Alchemy. The profession is very straightforward and has been widely regarded as the best gathering profession throughout WoW Classic.

Sub-Par Professions

  • Skinning is considered a sub-par profession and should be avoided altogether. The profession allows you to gather Hides and Leather pieces from creatures across Azeroth, providing a far less potent gold-generation tool than Herbalism or Mining.
  • Enchanting is yet another useful profession if you plan on picking Tailoring, as it allows you to easily generate materials that can either be sold or used to provide enchanting services. The profession is, however, quite bad if you don’t pair it with Tailoring or if you don’t proactively farm mobs for items to disenchant, as it pales in comparison to other gold generation tools if you simply plan to AH the materials.
  • Tailoring is useless for Retribution Paladins since they can’t any real use of the gear generated by the profession. The profession is only useful for generating large amounts of Green Items for disenchanting since it mainly requires easily farmable Cloth to generate them. However, it falls off when compared to the gold generated by Alchemy/Herbalism, even if paired with Enchanting.
  • Leatherworking finds itself in a similar situation to Tailoring, generating only a few items that can actually be used by Retribution Paladins. The profession is considered sub-par and should be avoided on the long run.
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PvE Retribution Paladin Best Professions

Pride Pride • Updated June 7, 2025

Professions are a crucial part of your World of Warcraft character, potentially offering a large boost to your damage, healing or survivability, while also allowing you to generate some gold.

This section will cover some of your best options for professions as a Retribution Paladin.

Best Professions

Like with most other classes & specs in the game, Engineering will be your strongest profession. For the second profession slot, we recommend Jewelcrafting, though Blacksmithing is extremely close to it in performance.

Engineering is the king of professions for PvE content, offering a vast, vast array of different benefits.

The main benefit of Engineering lies in the Hyperspeed Accelerators gloves enchant, which gives +340 haste rating for 12 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown. This translates into a ~10% attack speed increase with a 20% uptime, which is already amazing on its own — but it becomes even bigger when you use the Accelerators when your various trinkets proc.

Additionally, as an Engineer you have access to the Nitro Boosts boots enchant, passively giving +24 crit rating and coming with an-use effect which massively increases your speed for 5 seconds, allowing you to move out of dangerous AoE effects or catch up to your target quickly. As Retribution Paladins don’t have any movement-related abilities, such as Charge or Sprint, this speed boost will be invaluable for us.

Finally, just like in previous expansions, Engineers can use powerful explosives such as Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges.

No surprises there, Jewelcrafting is an extremely potent profession for most classes / specs and that includes Retribution Paladins. Not only do you gain access to powerful, Jewelcrafter-unique gems, but you also get to sell gems to others, giving you a modest income through this profession.

The main benefit of Jewelcrafting is the Jewelcrafter-unique gems, Dragon’s Eye, which are more powerful than regular gems, but are limited to 3 equipped at a time. The main ones you’ll be crafting as a Retribution Paladin are Bold Dragon’s Eye, resulting in a +42 strength boost compared to using regular epic gems.

Useful Professions

The following professions are considered viable, but offer a lesser benefit compared to the best professions, so they’re not recommended. If you’re not focused on making your character 100% optimal, you can use any of these professions just fine.

Blacksmiths can add 2 extra gem sockets to their gear — 1 on wrists, and 1 on hands. Socketing 2x Bold Cardinal Ruby into them translates into a +40 strength bonus, which barely loses out to Jewelcrafting.

Moreover, Blacksmithing allows you to craft some neat gear for yourself, which is specially useful early on in the expansion or when your character is freshly dinged level 80. However, the crafted gear is generally not as powerful as it was in previous expansions.

As a Tailor, you gain access to the Swordguard Embroidery cloak enchant, a proc which gives you +400 attack power for 15 seconds with a 45 second internal cooldown. This translates into a possible +133 attack power bonus on average if it procs exactly every 45 seconds, or a +100 attack power bonus on average if it procs every 60 seconds, which is absolutely massive.

However, there is a significant opportunity cost attached to this bonus, as it prohibits you from using the standard cloak enchant, Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed, making it slightly weaker in practice. Procs are extremely powerful as they can be stacked together with cooldowns, so this bonus shouldn’t be written off at all because of this — it’s just not as powerful as Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing, with their large passive strength bonuses.

Tailoring is pretty weak on the gold generation side, unfortunately, so the cloak enchant is all you really get here.

As a Scribe, you gain access to the Master’s Inscription of the Axe shoulder enchant, which provides a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant available to everyone, Greater Inscription of the Axe. This bonus ties Enchanting and Leatherworking, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.

Scribes also get to make Glyphs & scrolls, providing a nice source of income, but many will argue that the real benefit in Inscription comes in not having to grind The Sons of Hodir reputation for the shoulder enchants!

As an Enchanter you gain access to the Enchant Ring – Assault enchant, which you can apply to both of your rings for a modest +80 attack power bonus. This bonus ties Inscription and Leatherworking, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.

You also get to enchant your own equipment without needing to tip another enchanter, which results in a neat amount of gold saved, on top of the gold you can generate by enchanting others.

As a Leatherworker you gain access to the Fur Lining – Attack Power bracer enchant, which proves a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant available to everyone, Enchant Bracers – Greater Assault. This bonus ties Inscription and Enchanting, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.

There are sadly no other useful benefits gained from Leatherworking, and you generally don’t get to make much or a profit with it either.

As an Alchemist, you gain access to the Mixology passive effect, which increases the effectiveness of flasks and elixirs you consume, but only if you can craft them yourself. This results in a +64 attack power increase when using Flask of Endless Rage, our preferred flask. This is sadly a smaller boost than what other professions can offer, but not by much.

On the flipside, Alchemy is one of the best professions for gold generation, as potions, flasks and elixirs are always relevant and in high demand. This makes it a great profession for your alts to have.

Skinners gain access to the Master of Anatomy passive, which offers a +40 crit rating boost. This is weaker than all of the other professions mentioned in this list, but at least it’s something.

Skinning is generally not that good at gold generation either, so it’s overall not a great profession.

Sub-Par Professions

The following professions do not offer any DPS-increasing benefits and are thus not considered viable for Retribution Paladin in PvE.

Herbalists gain the Lifeblood active skill, which heals you for 3600 over 5 seconds, with a 3 minute cooldown. This can occasionally come in handy, particularly while leveling, farming or questing, but will generally never be enough to save you in a dungeon or raid.

On the flipside, Herbalism is one of the strongest professions for gold generation, as herbs are used in Alchemy and Inscription, and thus always in demand. This makes it a good profession to have on an alt, particularly a Druid, Rogue or Hunter.

Miners gain access to the Toughness passive, which offers a +60 stamina boost. This is alright for tanks, but generally won’t cut it for a Retribution Paladin.

Mining is okay for gold generation, but as with Herbalism, it’s best saved for a Druid, Rogue or Hunter alt.

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PvE Retribution Paladin Best Professions

Judgement Judgement • Updated June 2, 2025

Professions are an important part of the TBC endgame. Most classes and specs have one or more BiS items that are crafted via professions, so most people will have them as a high priority.

It’s still unclear what the final version of the changes on Leatherworking Drums will be in TBC Classic, but the initial changes Blizzard has released means that LW will still be important or even mandatory for hardcore guilds. Hopefully we will see more changes on this until TBC Classic goes live.

So, what professions should you choose?

Profession #1 Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing should always be your Primary profession in TBC Classic if you play Retribution Paladin. The reason for this is that you are able to craft weapons that will be BiS until drops from Hyjal/BT in Phase 3.

The weapons you are able to craft, by choosing either Sword, Mace or Axe weapon specialization are:

You can upgrade your weapon to rank 2 right from the start in Phase 1 by farming and doing Heroic dungeons, but you’ll have to wait until Phase 2 until you can upgrade to rank 3.

The Sword and Mace are similar in power, but for PvE the sword is the better choice, many paladins choose the mace however, since the stun proc Stormherald is very good for PvP and it’s not that much worse in PvE.

Profession #2 LW /Engineering /Jewelcrafting /Enchanting

When it comes to your second choice you have a lot more freedom, but if you want to maximize your potential damage in PvE you should choose either Leatherworking, Engineering, Jewelcrafting or Enchanting, since they are the ones that will grant you bonuses that you can’t get without them.

Here’s a breakdown on what you will get for choosing either profession:

With drums causing a debuff preventing more uses in the same group the requirements for LW is no longer mandatory, even for hardcore raiders.

LW is still good and you “need” one player with LW per group to be optimal, talk to your raid leader and ask if you are needed as LW or not.

In addition to drums you can also craft a few BOP items that are good, but not good enough for you to pick LW just because of them.

Here’s a list some of the more noteworthy items you have access to as an Leatherworker:

Engineering will provide many different kinds of tools and gadgets that are helpful in all kinds of situations. If you are continuing your character from Original Classic you probably already have Engineering leveled up which saves you the trouble of changing as well.

Here’s a list some of the more noteworthy items you have access to as an engineer:

Jewelcrafting provides a solid moneymaker by prospecting ore and making/selling gems as well as a small bonus to your character’s power with a special BoP gem that has higher stats.

You can also craft a decent trinket with AP, but it’s worse then many other drops you can get so it’s not worth prioritizing. If you don’t choose JC initially it might be worth swapping over to before phase 5 after you have replaced your Blacksmithing weapon, because you will be able to craft BiS Neck and 2nd BiS Ring.

Here’s a list some of the more noteworthy items you have access to as an Jewelcrafter:

Enchanting is a big gold saver since you are able to easily disenchanting all your greens and blues instead of vendoring them which usually turns into a profit rather then buying enchanting mats from the AH.

If you are lucky and get a hold of a rare enchanting recipe you could potentially earn a lot of gold from it, Formula: Enchant Weapon – Mongoose is one example that comes to mind and are always in high demand.

Here’s a list of the more noteworthy things you have access to as an Enchanter:

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