Retribution Paladin Glyphs

This post is going to focus mainly on the glyphs (mainly major) that are beneficial for retribution paladins, and you will see why Blizzard really doesn't love us. :(

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Avenging Wrath

• This glyph has the potential to really boost your DPS, if used at the right time and in the right cirumcstances.
• It reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Wrath by 50% when Avenging Wrath is active. What this means it that if you save your Avenging Wrath to when a boss has 20% or less health, then pop it, you can cast Hammer of Wrath every 3 seconds.
• The thing to consider is the fact that this is a glyph that only applies at a very specific set of circumstances. You need your avenging wrath to be on cooldown and the boss has to be at 20% or less health, and for the best use of this, once the boss hits 20% or less health, and you pop your avenging wrath and start hammering away, it needs to live for 20 seconds to get the MOST use and DPS out of this combination of things.
• That set of circumstances often applies to most raid bosses. Go go HoW!

Glyph of Consecration

• Now, back in the OLD days, a lot of people I spoke to said that they never used Consecration, simply because of cooldowns and the lack of damage/mana spent. But these are the new days. We young whippersnappers are slapping down consecration on a regular basis, and what's more... we're dancing in it.
• The glyph itself is pretty simple and straightforward, this increases the duration and cooldown of your consecration by 2 seconds.
• What this means is that there will hopefully be one less time when your consecration goes off at the same time you need to hit another ability or spell. It puts it on the same timer as your divine storm, judgement* and 4 seconds longer than your crusader strike.
  *If you have four pieces of your T7 set, judgement cooldown is 9 seconds, not 10.
• Paladins don't think of ourselves as having a casting rotation as strict as say, a mage or warlock, but in actuality, we do. It is possible to screw things up so that instead of being able to use crusader strike every 6 seconds, we're actually using it every 8-10 because we hit a cooldown right before crusader strike is up. If we start our rotation wrong, and we say to ourselves 'zomg, need to keep judgement of wisdom up!' and we hit judgement before we hit crusader strike EVERY TIME... it eats into your DPS. But that's a whole other story in and of itself.

Glyph of Crusader Strike

• Crusader Strike is the bread and butter for single target DPS for us RetLoL's. We loves our Crusader Strike, yes we do!
• Now, if this glyph increased DAMAGE, I would be in hog heaven. However, a decrease in mana is still not a bad price to day, considering our ever shrinking mana pools. Having to replace your Seal of Command or Martyr with Seal of Wisdom because you're running out of mana, even chain-casting Divine Plea... makes us sad pandapaladins.

Glyph of Exorcism

• One word. Nifty.
• If this glyph doesn't change when Exorcism affects all creatures, not just undead, it will be a handy ability to have. Finally, we can pull a caster without having to find a hill to hind behind or a corner to duck around! However, it's PROBABLY more for solo-play than group-play.

Glyph of Hammer of Justice

• HoJ has its uses in PvE, but I don't know if an extra 5 yards is worth it. I can EASILY see this being useful in PvP.

Glyph of Hammer of Wrath

• Free HoW? Pair that up with Glyph of Avenging Wrath and you're one hammer swinging bad-ass.
• However, again I find this glyph very situational. Yes, you do cast your hammer of wrath frequently, but usually just once on your average fight... boss fights is a different story. And again, if you're pairing it up with Glyph of Avenging Wrath, this is definately a nice one to take. Lets you whackitywhack for free!
  

Glyph of Judgement

• This is a must have for us, imnsho. Not only do our judgements cause Heart of the Crusader, but also have the potential to put up Righteous Vengeance, two very important things.
• We should be judging whenever the cooldown is up, not just when our judgement is going to fall off the boss. The duration of Heart of the Crusader is shorter than the duration of our judgement, so please, pretty please, especially if you are the only ret paladin in your group, JUDGE. Cast your righteous vengeance on them! Be the Judge, Jury and Executioner!
• In short... increasing the damage of our judgements? Gravy.
  

Glyph of Seal of Command

• I currently HAVE this, but that will change since I've started to use Seal of the Martyr and I no longer really use Seal of Command. But it's very useful for times when you aren't using seal of the martyr (pvp?).
• No seriously, if you're thinking that Seal of Command, thus buffed with this glyph is better than Seal of the Martyr, I'm proof that it isn't. I switched mid-raid from Command to Martyr and saw my average DPS jump up from low 2k to high 2k-low3k.
• In more concrete terms, Command is a flat boost to damage, whereas Martyr seems multiplicative. What it multiplies with, dunno!
• Here's some info on Seal of the Martyr from WoWWiki. Martyr can crit (and be missed, dodged and parried) and scales on a 27% of weapon damage (or so I gather).
• Don't let the healers gainsay you from using this. (where "this" is seal of the Martyr) Yes, you do have to be careful. Yes, you need to use it responsibly. Yes, we will laugh and point if you kill yourself. But Judgement of Light will help heal a portion of your damage and that's also why we have Art of War. (Well, that and Loatheb. Be kind to your healers on Loatheb. Heal thyself.)

Minor Glyphs
We're a little screwed on the minor glyph side, with the only direct benefit coming from one glyph, all the others being pluses for pre-raid buffing or self-buffing the regular blessings as opposed to greater blessings. Boo.

Glyph of Sense Undead

• This is the only directly beneficial one to us pallies. 1% increased damage to undead when we're sensing them? Okay. I'll take that. I just need to remember to switch to Sense Undead when I walk into Naxx.
  

Glyph of Blessing of Kings

• Typically a pre-raid issue, it's useful to keep us from burning out on mana when we're buffing a full raid with Kings, or if we have to buff on the fly in a fight or some such. Why don't see get glyphs that make our spells reagentless? *pout*
  

Glyph of Lay on Hands

• Again, not a direct boost to us, but useful if we're having to save someone with a mana bar... or, in worst case scenarios, use it on yourself if you're almost out of mana, to give yourself a mana injection... though, I still prefer to save it to, I dunno, save someone?

Glyph of the Wise

• Useful if you're low on mana in combat and have to wait for yourself to passively generate enough mana to slap on Seal of Wisdom. Hopefully you've enough awareness of the fight you're in, your own mana bar, and you're using Divine Plea on a regular basis, you should have plenty of time to either eat/drink, Divine Plea, or slap on your seal of wisdom.
  

Glyph of Blessing of Might/Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom

• These are both glyphs that make your regular blessing of might or wisdom last as long as a greater, without using a reagent. Personally, I prefer kings on myself anyway.
• This does not apply to anyone else you cast said blessings on, they get the ghetto-10 minute.
• Did I already say I prefer Kings on myself?

So, pick your glyphs with care and thought. We don't have a huge selection with our minors, but then again, who does? However, our major glyphs can really boost our DPS! And that's what we're all about, the deeps.

Go out there and represent!