What am I doing wrong?

[Cacophonous]

Considering you're 0 expertise and below hit cap, regem is helpful advice. Better enchantments and completely enchanted are good advice as well despite not being what you want to hear. You have 2 items unenchanted that shouldn't be and at least 2 that aren't ideally enchanted for what you're trying to do.

Regemming all of my gear to blues will give me 31.05 strength = 62.1 AP and 6 Hit rating

Fixing my enchants to optimum will provide , 193 AP and 37 crit rating, 17 agility

Total: 255.5 AP, 37 crit rating, 17 agility, 6 hit


Does this = 1000-1200 DPS?

If so, I will gladly shut up.

Thank you all for your help so far, with a few exceptions.

[grymgroeth]

You're still ignoring expertise and it's more than a minor factor in your dps woes. Stop getting dodged/parried and the rest of the changes add up very quickly to 1000-1200 dps with a good rotation (such as they are for ret). Oh, don't forget to fix either your glyphs or spec for SoC.

*edit*
What are you considering optimal gems and enchants because your numbers don't match what I was looking at.

[Cacophonous]

I wasn't really looking at optimal gems, just blues. I honestly don't have the gold to blow on the epic stuff for the kind of gear I'm in.

Enchants would be the step up from all of my AP ones, the Exalted SoH shoulder, Stats to chest, agility to cloak.

I didn't realize expertise factored that prominently into DPS. Interesting.

[Prentice]

You may not want to acknowledge it but disregarding your enchants/gems is a significant contributing factor to your low DPS. With what you are currently utilizing, you are giving up the following stats.

AP: 25+(Weapon), 9(gloves), 75(legs), 12(wrists), 40(shoulders)
Strength: 10(chest), and another 21 strength lost from your gems
Crit: 22(legs) and 15(shoulders)

Grand total of lost stats equals:
AP: 220(not even assuming kings)
Crit: 37 (.8%)

Your talent build/glyphs further explain why you are gimped.

Suggestions:
-Get rid of Salvation, Seal of Command, and Turn Evil glyphs
-Pick up Judgement, Consecrate, and Exorcism glyphs
-Pick up Righteous Vengeance(3/3)
-Pick up Swift Retribution(3/3
-Pick up Improved Blessing of Might(2/2)
-Don't complain about gimped DPS when you are doing PvE with a PvP build. There is a difference.

Regarding Expertise and Hit. You are essentially allowing yourself the chance to "miss" on your attacks 8% of the time, considering your combined miss and dodge chances. Hit cap yourself and work on expertise. On fights like Archavon, you will see that your lack of expertise is even worse than on a standard boss as you will undoubtedly be attacking him from the front for a fair amount of the fight. In that case, your lack of expertise increases your chance to "miss" by more than double. He has a 6.25% chance to dodge you and when attacking from the front, he has a much higher chance to parry your attacks(probably closer to 10%). If you are attacking from the front, you can expect to see you 1.4% miss chance, 6.25% chance to be dodged, and your ~10% chance to be parried really add up. 18% chance to not land an attack is painfully high.

[Maereax]

Um... You have SoCommand glyph but aren't specced for it. Swap that for Judgements and it'll help some.

[San]

Ok since the patch, being hit capped is the most important thing for a ret paladin to achieve. This is because our seal now does the most damage. So when your missing hits it's hurting your dps a lot. The cap is now 8%. Once you hit 8% you can start to gem for pure strength while using w/e gems you need for your meta to work. Also I would argue that expertise is as important as strength now. I wouldn't gem for it but pick up pieces that have expertise.

Having the right spec and glyphs for pve is also very important. If you don't want to switch your spec around and glyphs because you pvp more then don't expect to do as much dps as the other rets you may encounter that have those things.

Lastly professions do wonders. I see you have mining and engineering. I don't know what buffs engineering gives but jc and bs is by far the best for ret paladins if your looking for max dps. Extra slots from bs and the very nice strength gems from jc.

All of these plus enchants on your gear that's missing them will make a big difference. Hope this helps you.

[Cacophonous]

That was very useful, thank you.

I didn't realize hit had taken priority over strength since the patch.

[San]

lol sorry I noticed your response about your gold issues now after I posted. Anyway, when you have the gold and gear to want to invest in what I mentioned will help a lot in dps

[FireBorne]

1 Ditch the pvp gear(all of it)

2 Get hit capped asap

3 get some expertise(ukduar you will be attacking bosses from the front sometimes i e Kologarn)

4 You do need to get socket bonuses you only need 2 blue gems tops for meta bonus

5 run naxx25 more there are some good expertise items there

6 DONT GEM GREEN GEMS, perfect cuts are an acceptable ph until you get the cut that you need

[San]

Guess I will throw this out there too. Since your a miner, I don't know how the going rate for ore on your server but I notice that a lot of jc do not farm there ore on my server, I don't know why. Gems generally go for a good amount, if you farm ore you could probably sell it on the ah or to jc you know and make decent gold at that if you put in time to farm.

I personally hate farming but it gets me gold. get like 15 stacks or so and put it on the ah, hopefully you will make like 250-300g. And people like to powerlevel professions so sometimes getting some of the older ore can get you some gold too.

[shurock]

Regemming all of my gear to blues will give me 31.05 strength = 62.1 AP and 6 Hit rating

Fixing my enchants to optimum will provide , 193 AP and 37 crit rating, 17 agility

Total: 255.5 AP, 37 crit rating, 17 agility, 6 hit

Does this = 1000-1200 DPS?

If so, I will gladly shut up.

Thank you all for your help so far, with a few exceptions.

Ok, so you gain about 250 from gems and enchants, and would gain about 100-150 from your Glyphs. In addition to the 50-100 dps gain from your talents (RV and Swift Ret). So you have 400-500 to gain there, then maximize your rotation and cooldowns for a couple hundred more. Depending on buffs, 1000-1200 dps increase is easily obtainable. Endless Rage FTW.

[Prentice]

Edited my post being a bit more thorough. I understand the gold thing. There are a number of simple, cheap fixes that I listed and some other things to work for. Doing the Sons of Hodir dailies will get you the gold you need and the rep required for the best shoulder enchant in game.

[Anononon]

From my personal experience, it goes as follows:

Under Hit cap (Meaning even 1 point under) = nothing above 2k DPS on anything your level, period

Under Expertise soft cap (3.00% / 12 expertise) = nothing above 2450'ish sustained on anything your level.

You can give up some of your attack power to increase these 2 stats and watch your dps increase by quite a bit. These are rough estimates(Meaning its not impossible to beat my examples) but these are pretty close examples. Hit cap is BY FAR top priority, when your capped you'll feel/see the difference. Pinky promise.

The other replies are dead on regarding your talent/glyph set up

[shurock]

Also, Engineering and Mining don't contribute much to dps, whereas Blacksmithing and JS give you extra sockets and better gems for dps increase. Just a thought.

For gold, there are so many ways to get gold in a short amount of time. Farm for 15 minutes every couple of days and sell the mats on AH. Do some dailies every day (the Argent Tournament ones are quick) and you can pull in hundreds of gold per day without too much grinding.

[Prentice]

This may seem a bit off but it could help out as well. With all of the moving required in some fights, it can be a little tough to recognize which ability to use first when several are off CD. Prior to downloading the new interface below that has Classtimers embedded in it, I would quickly glance at my attacks and hit the first one I saw that was ready, not the highest priority attack. It may seem a little silly but it does help. The UI was posted by an MMO-Champion forum member and I think it looks sharp. It was built for several different classes/specs and ret pally was one of them(actually the main one).

The three large icons tell you which attack to use next and how long until your next attack is ready by counting down the seconds in the middle of the icon. It does help.

Jasje_UI
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13114-Jasje_UI1680x1050.html

The Classtimer settings prioritizes Judgment but you can change that. It incorporates CS, DS, Judgement, Consecrate, Avenging Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, and Exocism. The whole package was very nicely built. It was packaged for 1680x1050 but I had no problem using it at 1920x1200. Fits like a glove.

[grymgroeth]

I personally have mine on the bars by priority so hitting the first one I see off cooldown isn't bad for me. Same for my tank rotation, though it's so solid I usually watch movies during raids and don't bust on new bosses.

[kumahoshi]

First of all, you'll probably want your spec to be something more like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZErz...uhdIfsu:0aomc0.
That is pretty much the recognized standard ret paladin pve spec right now, with some variations for prot fillers.
Righteous Vengeance is a manditory pve talent that must be taken if you want your dps to be anything but a joke. Divine Purpose and Vindication, as well as improved HoJ are pvp talents, and serve no purpose in pve. Frankly your spec is not optimal for pvp either. Fixing your talent choices would be a good start.

As for enchants and regemming, however little, they do scale and add up, ignoring this will pretty much keep your dps below 3k even with a respec. As for glyphing, people have already mentioned. Glyph of concecration will improve your concecration uptime as well as lessen cooldown clashes. Glyph of exorcism and judgement are also manditory as they buff two of your main nukes, providing a significant dps increase. As for hit, I suggest you go run heroic nexus for the trinket off the last boss, 55 hit i believe it is, with a 670 atk power on use. Or better yet, try to get your hands on pyrite infuser off the first boss in 10 man ulduar(which is a pretty easily puggable boss btw).

My main is also a ret paladin, and when I was at your gear level (I was using the Heroic HoL axe, not your mace) with maybe 3-4 pieces of blues, I was pushing out 3k in 25man groups. With proper enchants, proper glyphing, and a proper spec, I see no reason why you shouldn't be above 2.5k in any raid.

[kumahoshi]

Also, Engineering and Mining don't contribute much to dps, whereas Blacksmithing and JS give you extra sockets and better gems for dps increase. Just a thought.

For gold, there are so many ways to get gold in a short amount of time. Farm for 15 minutes every couple of days and sell the mats on AH. Do some dailies every day (the Argent Tournament ones are quick) and you can pull in hundreds of gold per day without too much grinding.

Also, to your comment about Engineering not being good for dps, hand-mounted pyro rockets are now by far the best glove enchants in the game right now, and using it on cooldown provides a ~45dps increase, which is just as good if not better than other professions out there. In my experience, since hand mounted-pyro rockets stacks with damage modifiers such as wings, and even buffs on fights like hodir(I've seen my pyro rockets crit for 12k on hodir), in practice it can actually exceed the theoretical ~45dps. Due to the short 45 second cooldown, it often is off cooldown when you pop wings etc. JC is still probably the best profession for min/maxing though, however seeing as the OP could not even afford to buy proper enchants, I highly doubt he'd be willing to throw down a few thousand gold to level up JC. You are right however about mining not providing any dps benefit whatsoever.

To the OP, putting hand-mounted pyro rockets on your gloves, and perhaps macroing it to one of your main attacks to ensure it's used on cooldown(I'm an engineer as well, I personally have it macroed to my all my attacks actually), will up your dps as well. Take advantage of what professions you have instead of enchanting an inferior 38 AP to gloves. The engineering enchant is cheaper as well.