Today the 49/0/22 build

Before I get into todays build I want to mention that our guild leader was nice enough to team up with me for a couple hours in 2's and later with another guild member. We ended the evening at 1626! I'm off later today to pick up my Hateful Gladiator gloves, both the Scaled for my Ret and Ornamented for holy. I may be able to pick up a deadly pendant if I can farm enough honor but at just under 48k honor I'll only be able to pick it up for 1 spec at most.

What do you guys think, should I pick up the Pendant of Dominance for Holy or Victory for Ret?

49/0/22 - OK on to today's post the tried and true 49/0/22 build. Many people swear by it in both 2's and 3's. You get a faster casting time, higher spell power and a crazy 40 yard ranged judgment AND you get to keep Divine Purpose to break out of stuns. All this for just for loosing Repentance

The Way it Works - It's like that song from the BeeGee's "AH AH AH AH SAYIN' ALIVE" Your partner will have to take on CC and DPS your job is to keep him alive long enough to do it. Use your Divine Purpose to keep your partner mobile or to break you out of that CC so you can Heal some more. In this setup you can spam Holy Light all day, with talents reducing the cast time to between 1.6 - 1.9 seconds a cast there's no reason to use Flash of light unless you find yourself low on mana or have an instant FOL up... And you will have those instants because with a 40 yard Judgment of Justice available to you, I recommend using a GCD to put it on pretty regular. Not only will it help slow down your opponent but can grant you that instead Flash of Light. If your partner is about to die - an instant Holy Shock + Flash of Light + 1.6-1.9 second Holy light will have your teamate going from 100hp to 15,000 hp in under 5 seconds. Leaving your opponents to curse you, your mother, and the entire genetic line that spawned you in frustration

Possible Variants:
Heart of the Crusader vs Improved Judgments - You could spec into Improved Judgments for the 2 second reduction, as a Ret it seems almost a given. But playing Holy remember that your partner(s) will be making use of that extra 3% crit chance on the target. As long as you judge often enough to keep it up most of the fight HOC wins out I think.

Divine Intellect vs Holy Guidance - You're going to have to go 3/5 in one of these talents. I've seen both variants when looking at top holy pallys. I chose Intellect as it affects your mana pool, crit chance AND Mana per Second. My intellect is currently sitting at 660 so the extra 2 points in Holy Guidance give me an extra 49 spell power (because the intellect would lower to 620 if I lost the 2 points in DI). vs about 40 points of intellect boost from DI.... I don't care to do the math, but the extra Intellect seems like an overall good choice. Here's an Elitist Jerks thread that does some calculations for you.

Divine Illumination vs extra Judgments of the Pure - Yep, I skipped out of Divine Illumination for an extra point in JOTP. After about 50 arena matches I found myself hardly ever going out of mana. But if you play 5's or find your matches going long you may want to remove a point in DI for this talent.

That's it for now, Monday is the 51/0/20 build.