Ret and PvP - GC giving us the middle finger.

[mosu332]

ret paladin aren't good in pvp. whi there is no top 10 team in 2v2 with a ret in??? yes paladin are a very good in pvp but as holy ( one of best healer in pvp, afther shamy ).

[Freia]

ret paladin aren't good in pvp. whi there is no top 10 team in 2v2 with a ret in??? yes paladin are a very good in pvp but as holy ( one of best healer in pvp, afther shamy ).

While ret is in a weak spot atm, they don't and will never balance the game around 2v2.

[Tangra]

The Retribution spec has always been one of my favourite specs in the game, and people complaining about it never being 'changed' or 'improved' over time really need to think about where this game is heading.
Would I take a retribution paladin, even an ex-glad in t2 to my 2.2+ rbgs? Probably not, purely because retribution is not a great spec for pure pressure in rbgs. I'd maybe think about it if I didn't have a hunter or rogue for solo defending a node, as they're AMAZING at it. Trinket, mediocre self-heals, bubble, guardian of kings - these abilities make Ret one of THE best node defenders, so if you're having trouble convincing people to take you, try mentioning that.
Anyway, I love my ret pally and i'm glad it has stayed true to its nature, that is - being a support melee. There is enough class homogenisation going on in this game, I don't play a warrior or a dk, and I don't want my ret to feel like one.
Just my 2cents XD

Interesting argument, but "homogenisation" and "support" spec are very vague terms that mean very little considering how much the game has changed. I agree that they are important issues to consider, but the homogenization argument has been used to keep Ret in virtually the same spot for 3 xpacks...I mean deathknights were created after paladins and they basically ate up all of the creative ideas that could have made Ret very good. Deathgrip for example was exactly what Ret needed (and the idea, often called "chains of justice", was suggested many times on the paladin forums years before Wrath even came out), since we were being denied a gap closer due to homogenization toward warriors. The same thing is happening with windwalkers, they can have a disarm and mortal strike and no one cries homogenization, yet Ret has not gained a major utility ability in like 2 expansions, and when we ask for something we get told no because it would make us similar to someone else.

Overall, homogenization arguments are so vague and subjective that they are best addressed in general class design discussions; when this issue is brought up in PvP discussion it usually ends up being a self-serving, and very cheesy, blanket excuse to ignore the PvP problems of certain specs. In a game as mature and developed as this one, every new spell is going to remind someone of some older spell.

As far as the "support" issue goes... well what is support anyway? How do you define it? When I play my frost mage, for example, I feel way more "supportive" than I do on my paladin and that just isn't right. My mage can easily use CC and pressure to prevent way more harm to my team than a pally can heal or avert through cooldowns. Who needs Hand of Protection and Hand of Sacrifice on their long cooldowns, when I can have someone on the enemy team locked down for the entire match and thus allow everyone on my team to do their jobs much more easily. Why do I need some gimmicky 30K word of glory, when I can deep freeze and shatter one of the opponent dps, and do so much damage that he has to run and hide under his healer's skirt, and so drastically reduce the incoming damage that my team has to handle.

I understand the philosophical basis of your arguments, but when you get down to the details and realities of PvP, these arguments are really not very relevant. Pure dps provide more support than hybrids, and they have for many seasons. The tax that hybrids pay for their miserable little heals has always been too high, and is also used by Blizzard as an excuse to give hybrids very little utility. Monks are the only exception to this, and that's only because they are new and Blizzard wants them to be popular. When I play my monk I feel like I'm on my Ret but with way more potency, slightly weaker heals, but way better cc, pressure, amazing peeling, more reliable damage, more potent defenses, amazing mobility that opens up more strategy options. Ret Paladins make sense philosophically, but when you get down to details, they just don't add up and anyone who plays them seriously can see it. Ret is quite obviously an expansion or two behind on PvP utility.

[Valedus]

Pretty much exactly what Tangra said. More consistent peels are just so much better than BoP and such. Look at warriors, another plate melee. Currently, they can charge, hamstring, and shockwave and it buys their team enough time to get distance. That can happen every 20 seconds, while we have to do it every 3 minutes, and it can be purged. Honestly, PvP Ret needs a pretty heavy overhaul in utility, in my opinion. Sadly, the way the developers are acting they don't seem to notice the issues.

[Tangra]

Pretty much exactly what Tangra said. More consistent peels are just so much better than BoP and such. Look at warriors, another plate melee. Currently, they can charge, hamstring, and shockwave and it buys their team enough time to get distance. That can happen every 20 seconds, while we have to do it every 3 minutes, and it can be purged. Honestly, PvP Ret needs a pretty heavy overhaul in utility, in my opinion. Sadly, the way the developers are acting they don't seem to notice the issues.

Our long cooldowns are incredibly over-rated. Hand of Protection gives you good protection against some physical dps specs for 10 sec, but when you think about it, an aoe fear gives you total protection against multiple targets of any spec for up to 8 seconds. Yet, most AoE fears have a drastically shorter cooldown than Hand of Protection. Both spells have their pluses and minuses, but when you compare all of these, HoP and Hand of Sacrifice really need to have much shorter cooldowns. In addition to this, when Ret is balanced the devs need to keep in mind that these abilities are mostly meant for others, and so they become fairly irrelevant unless Ret has good personal defenses and thus is not a tempting focus target. Ret has been stuck in the catch 22 of having HoS, HoP, and Selfless Healer, yet also often being the best tagret to train for quite a while now. As I have mentioned many times before, Selfless Healer is the worst thing that happened to Ret PvP, we already have HoS, HoP, and some offheals, that last thing we needed was to be balanced around our massive heals for others only.

[Valedus]

Our long cooldowns are incredibly over-rated. Hand of Protection gives you good protection against some physical dps specs for 10 sec, but when you think about it, an aoe fear gives you total protection against multiple targets of any spec for up to 8 seconds. Yet, most AoE fears have a drastically shorter cooldown than Hand of Protection. Both spells have their pluses and minuses, but when you compare all of these, HoP and Hand of Sacrifice really need to have much shorter cooldowns. In addition to this, when Ret is balanced the devs need to keep in mind that these abilities are mostly meant for others, and so they become fairly irrelevant unless Ret has good personal defenses and thus is not a tempting focus target. Ret has been stuck in the catch 22 of having HoS, HoP, and Selfless Healer, yet also often being the best tagret to train for quite a while now. As I have mentioned many times before, Selfless Healer is the worst thing that happened to Ret PvP, we already have HoS, HoP, and some offheals, that last thing we needed was to be balanced around our massive heals for others only.

I agree 400% with Selfless Healer being the worst thing to happen to Ret PvP. They claimed they didn't want us to be effective offhealers... then put Selfless Healer in. And yes, any logical thought points to the 4-5 abilities that make Ret an insanely good focus target. When I'm on my feral, seeing a Ret on the other team is almost a free win, even though we are just doing arena for points and messing around for the rest of the season.

[nyc81991]

It looks like they are going to give us 25% pvp power healing in 5.2 so I'm kind of happy about that. However I still feel like Ret will need more changes to be truely viable.

[Valedus]

It looks like they are going to give us 25% pvp power healing in 5.2 so I'm kind of happy about that. However I still feel like Ret will need more changes to be truely viable.

Where did you hear this?

[Riptide]

Where did you hear this?

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...04770599235586

and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...975?page=7#133

[Valedus]

Well, hey, that's welcome news, but honestly would have rather seen buffs in other areas. Won't complain though, especially with the 5.2 Eternal Flame buff too. Might seriously help.

[Bonkura]

I'm hoping GC goes through with the idea of trying to make Ret damage more sustained. Outside of CD's (which you get locked out during) it seems most Rets are running around like some support healers (which cant even heal lolol) because tunneling a target just doesn't do that much. Reducing the CD on wings to 2 min (while obviously nerfing it) and making Divine Purpose benefit a lot from a PvP set bonus could be some options to fix this.

[Frozen Death Knight]

At least they admitted that healing is too low for all the hybrids (includin Ret) and are planning on giving half of the healing bonus that healers get from PvP Power.

[Itisamuh]

In case you never noticed, I think WoW has been giving PvP in general the middle finger for many years, getting more in its face each expansion.

If you want to take a PvP game seriously, you should not look to WoW, or any MMO for that matter. They will never be balanced or competitive.

[Frozen Death Knight]

In case you never noticed, I think WoW has been giving PvP in general the middle finger for many years, getting more in its face each expansion.

If you want to take a PvP game seriously, you should not look to WoW, or any MMO for that matter. They will never be balanced or competitive.

It should, however, be fun, which I can not say has been the case from time to time during the course of this game. Besides, just because PvP can not be perfectly balanced does not mean that Blizzard should not try.

[Saffa]

Another question related to ret PvP, and again Ghostcrawler with the same reply: 'We think they are how they should be'

I don't know what kind of information he pulls out of his ass, but as far as I know most ret paladins I've spoken (including myself) aren't pleased with the current state of PvP, yet GC is trying to keep his ground with the same answer he has given us for the past couple of months.

As they have to allow for millions of people playing many classes for various reasons they can never ever be sure that things are perfect, and anyone who thinks that anything in WoW can be perfect rather needs to find another game to play, like solitaire that has fixed rules and always works How many ret pallys are there in game and how many have you talked to? I would imagine the % is actually very small and not a good representation of the class or views about it. I know 2 and they are happy with things, so I could say 100% of ret pallys are happy lol

[Gandrake]

Back in my day

we complained about not having an interrupt

or a slow

and we wanted to punch Ghostcrawler in the face when he said JoJ was our gap closer.

[Bonkura]

In case you never noticed, I think WoW has been giving PvP in general the middle finger for many years, getting more in its face each expansion.

If you want to take a PvP game seriously, you should not look to WoW, or any MMO for that matter. They will never be balanced or competitive.

WoW arena could be great. It has a great game engine, mechanics and its arena concept has a lot of potential too. If you can't see why people hold on to the idea of arena one day becoming somewhat balanced and really good I feel sorry for you.

[Harakhte]

While I agree that rets are not in a perfect place in the current state of the game, I think many of you fall to the hype a bit too much.

Certainly, we can be cc'd during our burst but be prepared for that - have bubble and trinket available before blowing. Once you go through their instant cc, they are just trying to stay alive - the burst we provide in that short window is incredible. In RBGs, beyond that point we make a good nuisance, which is important. I typically either TC on my ret in RBGs, or I am glued to a healer/warlock. My goal is to mess them up, they cannot get rid of me, and I probably won't kill them, but they are inevitably trying to get away or get me peeled. This distraction allows my burst teammates to burn someone down, or relieves pressure on heals.

If I am TCing, I remain valuable b/c I'm rarely focused due to what I am, so my CDs will often go unnoticed and I can reliably offer support to whoever is being focused (sacrifice on CD, always, BoPs on need, selfless healer crits when heals are being chain cc'd).

Also, for node-based maps, we make godly defenders. I can survive even a full out zerg if my CDs are all up in time for my team to come and take over defense.

I truly believe our sustained will become better as time goes on as Blizz nerfs healing and many of the top burst classes atm (as GC has said is his intent). I do not believe his "ret is fine" comment is a middle finger, but a declaration of intent to reduce the burst other classes have.

[Deleted]

i used to be ret for RBG's, but i was forced to change to prot due to how bad ret (and me at a guess as i haven't DPS'd as a paladin since wrath so prob a mix), prot is fine for some maps but quite bad for arena and mines, unless i'm missing alot altogether as i only started properly doing pvp this expac.

i am hoping that they either change the burst of other classes or boost our self-healing (as when i was ret i used CD's to become useful and got chain stunned and killed)
i may not know much about ret pvp but it seems pretty hard to get started as i was pretty much useless till i was getting CP gear

[nyc81991]

Well, hey, that's welcome news, but honestly would have rather seen buffs in other areas. Won't complain though, especially with the 5.2 Eternal Flame buff too. Might seriously help.

Yeah between the buff to pvp power healing and the 100% more self healing on Eternal Flame we might actually want to take that talent. I can see it ticking for 8 - 10k in current gear which is pretty nice for keeping us alive.