[Ret] With 5.3 around the corner...

[Cronosmash]

Not that bad, nobody will ever be anyway. I can do a lot on my Ret too.

But is the same as trying to do with your nails the same as other people do with a knife. You can actually do it, maybe, sometimes. And if you do it, it's a miracle and you are exceptional and the others are just ordinary since they have a better tool.

And this is not fair, and we pay for it. And a lot. And the designers don't seem to be working to make it fair - as they say "we can't balance all specs, so we make some balanced and others "OK" for everything" meaning that they do not value us, Ret players as customers. "We give knifes for some, others we don't care to do anything so use your nails, whatever".

They'll fix right away the day a substantial number of unsubs come with the feedback quoting when they said it's OK for some specs be better than others and telling that we refuse to pay to play this game until we find someone spamming "LF Ret RBG", "LF Ret Arena", "LF Ret Whatever Raid" on Trade Chat.

They don't care becouse we keep playing anyway. So put a hand on they're pocket to see what happens.

[solvexx]

I've essentially given up and on any chance of doing RBGs with anyone but my mates until next expansion.
Hopefully they'll figure it out for next expansion.

[Cronosmash]

If you hear LF a spec, it means it brings some UTILITY for the group. On PVE there is the DPS thing and as much as I don't do PVE, I know nobody wants Ret and every graphic shows Ret on the mid/bottom and every other class have a spec or TWO better than Ret on DPS. Having at MAX 5% lower DPS than the top one is OK. Nobody just asks for some spec for being OP. If that was it, than for instance Lock were OP, the raid whould have 7 locks.

Big thing is: Ret brings NOTHING Holy does not bring. Everthing Ret does, Holy does better excepct for the bursty single target DPS. Everthing else, the whole class is balanced for Holy on PVP.

On RBGs everyone bring some UTILITY. Some REASON, something to help the team. What Ret brings? BoP? Sac?

Ret have LESS THEN HALF CCs then almost every other spec (only Shamans and DKs are as low, and there is the reason why Enhancement is not wanted too - Shaman Elemental have Thunderstorm and is not that wanted, but better than Ret and DKs are wanted ONLY for Grip/Mass Grip).

Ret relevant defensive is on FIVE mins CD. It sucks so much they give as a side kick skill for Ferals just for flavor. Holy heals 100% but Ret deals 50% damage with it. Divine shield should have 3 mins CD. Look at other specs defensives. Don't try to BS me, I know all the spells from the game I can prove Ret has the worse defensive.

What people need on RBGs are UTILITIES. This means Smoke/Solar/Ring of Frost/Ring of Peace/Thunderstorm/Grip/Mass Grip/Ursol/Typhoon/Explosive Trap/Powershot/AoE strong low CD CC like fear or stun/pets to help defend a base/Lock Portal/Mass Dispel/Spamable CC/WHATEVER.

Holy is only wanted for the FC heals and great suvivability that only works for HOLY. Even War is mostly only wanted for FC, but people rather take Arms then Ret.

Ret have no survivability, no CC, no sustained DPS, no utility, nothing exclusive. THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG HERE.

It's not about being strong or weak, OP ow rock bottom. But HAVING A ROLE TO FILL. A REASON TO TAKE.

Blizzard seems to think that BoP that stops Physical DPS and only mitigates Physical Damage and the Absolve/30% transfer effect from Hand of Sacrifice must be REALLY STRONG to compete with all those habilities that other specs have. They can't EVEN ARGUE that Divine Shield is strong since Ferals have they're own balance and they get it "outside of the basic" toolkit just for Symbiosis.

Hand of Sac can't be used on self, have 2 mins CD used twice with a talent. Basicaly dispel magica from 1 target and TRANSFER (not mitigate) 30% of the damage to the Paladin. Now is used mostly only for the Dispel, so the actual use of the spell goes wasted to remove a Freezing Trap/Poly/Fear from a healer. Give something, take something else.

Mass Dispel removes IMMUNE EFFECTS and magic from ALL ALLIES AND ENEMIES in the AREA. Have 15 secs CD.

Look at this scenario. There is something SERIOUSLY WRONG.


Now I won't even get to 5 mins twice usable by talent BoP since it's way past ridiculous, just for the amount of Magic Damage there is since there is more Magic DPS specs than Physical and the penality to stop all damage dealing when used on any Physical DPS not to mention the DROPING THE FLAG/ORB/LOOSING AGGRO.

Just think about 3 min Zen Meditation that does not drop the flag, redirect harmfull spells (including CCs) on 3 mins CD. On top of Diffuse Magic with a 1,5 min CD (AHEUaEUheuAHEAUheAUHEAUheAUEAHuaeHUEAHUaeHeAHUeHAUEAUHAEUHeAUHEA) reducing all spell damage by 90% reverting the damage back if possible PLUS removing ALL MAGIC EFFECTS. I'm not mentioning Fortifying Brew, I'm not mentioning Avert Harm, I'm not mentioning Dampen Harm, and do not get me to Touch of Karma.

And don't make me get to every class and spec BECOUSE I CAN, I have the time and the patience to do it and I WILL just to PROVE the point that Ret is UNDER HALF the amount of Defensives/Utilities as others. PVE people can show the DPS is lower too - know Ret area DPS is weak from RBGs but this is harder to prove. Just take the easy way: agree with me, qq on blizz foruns to make more EVIDENT how PATHETIC is Blizzard for not fixing a spec and how DISRESPECTFUL they are with us customers with this negligence.

[Reith]

Tbh if you hear LF Ret, specifically, for anything, that means Ret is OP. People look only for the OP specs. Not saying Ret is not bottom of the pack, it is. But the solution is not to go back to being OP.

It'd be fine if they nerfed Assassination Rogues, Warlocks, Fire Mages an Shadow Priests in PVE, but they absolutely refuse to. This blows my mind, seriously. 5.3 is the perfect opportunity to do it, but they choose not to. Their excuse would probably be: "we want to save sweeping nerfs for 5.4" but by then there'll be entirely different encounters with entirely different tier set bonuses and even more changes to other classes as well, so why bother doing it for 5.4 if they won't do it for 5.3?

[Booniehat]

Understand this is a mostly PVP thread but some people also brought up PVE.

As someone who raids HMs and is in a top 10 oceanic guild (or was, we slipped last week to top 20), I'd say Ret PVE is NOT fine. For a extreme comparison, compare to a festerblight UH DK, or a Lock that soulswaps dots, or booms/spriest who multi dot. Granted those are extreme cases but you'll see them easily pull 80-100% more damage than you. Even comparing to middle of pack, other classes have niches where they go from middle to OMG OP. Example may be Frost DK or Ele Shaman getting to cleave.

I've ranked on my Ret several times, so I know how to play the class and I absolutely love the mechanics/playstyle. But it's not "fine" in PVE at all. Anyone with decent raiding experience will know. Ret has no AOE or Cleave, no multidot, meh CC, and its utility is just a holy paladin's toolkit. So why not get a better DPS, and get a Holy Paladin instead? This argument or though process goes through any high level Raid Leader OR RBG Leader's head.

Ret's somewhat OK at single target, but I don't know many other specs who AREN'T about equivalent single target. And in (heroic) TOT, most fights are multi-target and ret falls behind. Our best fight is what? Heroic Ji-Kun? And we fall directly in the middle of pack. Other fights below average.

Now back to PVP-side argument:

A lot of arguments for Ret being weak in PVE apply to why Ret is also unwanted in PVP. I've gone up to 1700+ Arena rating before but even a 1300-1400 RBG won't take me "because ret". Some people say its cos RBGs only stack OP Classes. True. But I haven't seen them refuse many classes. Ret is one of those where the RBG leader may not even bother to reply you.

[Vathius]

A lot of arguments for Ret being weak in PVE apply to why Ret is also unwanted in PVP. I've gone up to 1700+ Arena rating before but even a 1300-1400 RBG won't take me "because ret". Some people say its cos RBGs only stack OP Classes. True. But I haven't seen them refuse many classes. Ret is one of those where the RBG leader may not even bother to reply you.

I get this alot. Been ignored is just plain rude Id rather hear 'im sorry your ret... no offience' than get ignored.

[Lucetia]

It's not even half as bad as all the whiners make you believe it is, while some classes are quite far ahead it's hardly "sick and disgusting", get the right tools(Feather, 522 - 541 weapon and 4set T15) and Ret is a lot better than what you make it sound like.

You do know the odds of having all the "right tools" are slim and we shouldn't be balanced around having all that?

I've been running ToT LFR since it first launched and have not yet seen 1 502 weapon, feather and only 2 tier pieces. Here recently I finally got to raid with the guild (due to my ilvl being too low because of bad RNG) and got 1 522 Tier piece, but still no feather or weapon.

[Jaelian]

Having played Retri back in Wrath when things were great, into Cataclysm where it was meh.. going into Mists now where things are bad - I switched at the change from WotLK to Cata due to the changes into holy and raided as such as Retribution just didn't seem remotely viable inside a 10 man raiding environment at all (although my team didn't have a ret paladin I did read the official forums for the constructive arguments).

Now after switching to 25 man in a new guild who actually wanted a retri paladin (utility maybe?) I'm finding it hard to break past the top 15 on most fights - I've perfected my rotation and gear isn't so far behind most people but still no matter what I do or change - ret just doesn't seem to cut it anymore, and I do see myself out of progression occasionally due to this which really is frustrating.

I don't know what caused Blizz to break Ret between Wrath and now - but I wish they would fix it, I would love to see ret competitive again in both PVE and PVP.

[Booniehat]

Now after switching to 25 man in a new guild who actually wanted a retri paladin (utility maybe?) I'm finding it hard to break past the top 15 on most fights - I've perfected my rotation and gear isn't so far behind most people but still no matter what I do or change - ret just doesn't seem to cut it anymore, and I do see myself out of progression occasionally due to this which really is frustrating.

Understand the frustration. On one hand, I hate being a negative nelly. Ret isn't "unviable" - that's hyperbole. You can bring him for utility (though why you'd do that instead of a prot or holy pally is not wise). In some fights, Ret holds its own - but you will also never see Ret at the top of Raidbots. The best we'll do is middle of pack, but usually below that. Middle of pack on all fights is actually ok - but then we should never drop below. You will know frustration when your raid team is skilled enough to pull certain "tricks"/"exploits" like soulswap dots, festerblight, multi-dot, and you will fall right to the bottom.

I just disapprove when LFR heroes and people who have like 4/12 Normal experience come in and say ret is fine cos they're top 1-3 DPS in their raid. See the official wow forums where on of their prominent forum posters has only LFR experience >.>. I don't support useless whinging but pretending class issues don't exist doesn't help either.

(these comments not targeted at anyone specifically. Just that I hate exaggeration either way regarding the state of Ret.)

Hopefully the 15% buff to SOL should bring us back to middle of pack. Thats good enough.

[mmmmmmmBacon]

Understand this is a mostly PVP thread but some people also brought up PVE.
Ret has no AOE or Cleave,

Just to nitpick here, but is this ignoring mass exorcism? The few times I do raid and there's a fight that's loaded with adds, using this glyph generally makes my damage skyrocket, especially since the 2 piece bonus is applied to every target hit by the mass exorcism, making HotR/DS/HoL hit harder as well. You also have Light's Hammer on fights where adds/healing is a higher priority than single target, which also benefits from Mass Exorcism debuffing everything with the 2 piece bonus.

[solvexx]

Just to nitpick here, but is this ignoring mass exorcism? The few times I do raid and there's a fight that's loaded with adds, using this glyph generally makes my damage skyrocket, especially since the 2 piece bonus is applied to every target hit by the mass exorcism, making HotR/DS/HoL hit harder as well. You also have Light's Hammer on fights where adds/healing is a higher priority than single target, which also benefits from Mass Exorcism debuffing everything with the 2 piece bonus.

That's very minor compared to most other specs.

[Valedus]

Just to nitpick here, but is this ignoring mass exorcism? The few times I do raid and there's a fight that's loaded with adds, using this glyph generally makes my damage skyrocket, especially since the 2 piece bonus is applied to every target hit by the mass exorcism, making HotR/DS/HoL hit harder as well. You also have Light's Hammer on fights where adds/healing is a higher priority than single target, which also benefits from Mass Exorcism debuffing everything with the 2 piece bonus.

Yeah, that's all well an good but it doesn't compare to seed spreading corruption, surv hunters, enhance spreading flame shock, DK's spreading diseases + howling blast insane damage, etc.

They need to remove Seal of Righteousness and make Divine Storm spread your stacks of Censure from your current target to all targets it hits, and make Hammer of the Righteous have no target requirement.

PVP:

This won't help. It will help slightly with damage, but the problem wasn't damage output - it was the way damage was done. Ret can SMASH someone in a couple globals during CD's IF NOT CC'd. They need to lower HA's burst potential (get rid of 30%, add like 10s to duration?) and up consistent dps considerably. Something like another 10% holy damage on Inq. The problem is other melee in pvp do more consistent dps and similar burst (DK's of both specs, FERAL, even WW, and even warriors who are also almost non-existent in the top range). Ret needs something like Div Prot to be 30% ALL damage.
I would still love to see Selfless Healer taken out and make a talent that does different things for each spec. Or a buff to Seal of Insight for Ret, give us some sort of defensive stance-like mechanic. Like have it make our TV also heal for 7% of our HP or something.

Offtopic: Even Holy is pretty shitty right now. Holy was being held up pretty heavily by KFC, I think. Funny also because they said they would buff Holy (was hoping for it to be a class-wide DP buff or something, something like 30% all damage and usable while stunned, but I guess not. And before anyone calls that OP - DPS shammies have it, and the ability to self-purge magic effects off of them when they do it. But guess they really don't care that the paladin class is reeeeeaaaallly shitty at PvP. I have a million times more experience playing my paladin than any of my other toons, and it really doesn't do well right now and its impossible to find groups. IDK how it takes this long to buff classes that need it, even with nerfs coming to other over-the-top ones.

[Booniehat]

Just to nitpick here, but is this ignoring mass exorcism? The few times I do raid and there's a fight that's loaded with adds, using this glyph generally makes my damage skyrocket, especially since the 2 piece bonus is applied to every target hit by the mass exorcism, making HotR/DS/HoL hit harder as well. You also have Light's Hammer on fights where adds/healing is a higher priority than single target, which also benefits from Mass Exorcism debuffing everything with the 2 piece bonus.

Not ignoring Mass Exo. Several people after have posted pretty good insights on why our AOE is urgh.

Not to mention

1. Loss of 1 of our 2 ranged attacks to get a melee ranged inferior "howling blast"
2. Light's hammer is only good for stationary cleave. This works for bats on tortos, and eggs on Ji Kun some what, BUT not really for horridon for later doors as tanks need to keep kiting and you usually get limited use out of LH. Usually a bit of luck involved in getting multiple targets for Light's Hammer for full duration. It's not *terrible*, but you do lose quite a bit.

I'd be ok if we were slightly lousier in certain niches like cleaving/AOE IF, IF, IF, our Ret-Specific utility compensated for the loss in DPS. For example, if Ret's Light's Hammer were to give a 15% defensive shield or prevent CCs for x Seconds. Raid leaders would be like. Ok - good idea to bring a Ret for Heroic Megaera so he can shield us during rampage or Bring a Ret to directly counter solar-grip in RBGs. Stuff like that.

How many fights have I seen raid leaders say, "ok need a mage/lock to soak this/ gateway this/ cheese this". Heroic Lei Shen comes to mind - 2x Warlock is almost compulsary. When will we see a Heroic Guild say "LF for a Ret!!!"?

I say this because I recently went to Guild hunting - go through guild recruitments yourself... I don't think I've ever seen a LF for Ret. The only other specs I've not seen is... Enhance shaman, Feral druids, I think.

[Sett]

Still two-minute champions in 5.3.

[DrMcNinja]

I get this alot. Been ignored is just plain rude Id rather hear 'im sorry your ret... no offience' than get ignored.

And to be frank, when I do RBGs with my friends at roughly 1.6k-1.8k casually, I have no problem adding something to the group. Sac dispells, Hand of Prots, insane off-healing and on-demand burst and a 6-sec stun. Hell I've even been flag carrier during a season or 2.

Rets aren't useless in RBGs, people just don't see the potential because the general idea is 'Rets suck in PvP'. But Blizzard also has to find a way to move RBGs away from 'WHOEVER KILLS THE TEAM FIRST WINS' and make it a bit more support/non-burst friendly

And I still think we need a bit more passive defense aswell as Stunbreaking Hand of Freedom back to at least have a way to counter chain Crowd control by ourselves (Something most melee classes already can) while we don't have a trinket available.

Holinka did mention the actual major spell changes, nerfs and buffs would come out in 5.4. So I'll hold my horses.

[Deleted]

Divine Protection is now usable while stunned, for ret and holy. https://twitter.com/holinka/status/336614478772858881

Inc mage tears.

[ipoststuff]

-Devotion Aura now clears all silence effects when used.
-Divine Protection is now usable while stunned.
-Sword of Light now increases damage with two-handed melee weapons by 30%, up from 15%.

Give me Hand of Salvation dispell and im happy.

[Deleted]

The real problem is that we lost our biggest weapon in raid and pvp. Our burst sucks compared to other classes. I admit i do really little pvp but on the PVE side i can say that i feel like BL cooldown dump we are rock bottom....rogues locks mages spike to 500k, i havent even seen the 300k mark...

The 15% SoL buff wont make up for our complete uselessness in multi target fights, it wont make up for our lack of util. Like most of you said as far as raid cooldowns or raid utility we don't bring nothing that a holy or prot doesnt bring....mostly in raids i dont get even called to use AM cuz the 2 holy and 1 prot have it covered.


Starx <Immersion> - Frostmane-EU

[Vathius]

Give me Hand of Salvation dispell and im happy.

ooooo I like this..

Then TV off the GCD and we're sweet.

[Deleted]

As a guild master, raid leader and main tank of a raiding team I thought I'd share a little non-ret perspective.

First off, from a PVE point of view, you'll want to note that there are a hell of a lot of 10 man guilds compared with 25 man guilds out there. I did read some statistics a few months back (can not find the source!) that suggested there were something like 28,000 10 man "progressive" raiding guilds out there, and 2000 25 man guilds. The guild I lead is itself a 10 man raiding guild. However, what I look for when I'm recruiting, isn't always how high classes are on the damage meters - I do pick out a number of the infamous top DPS classes (lock, rogue, mage) but everything after that is utility and raid buffs. Here comes part of your problem as ret: you're currently underpowered (UP! YEAH!) when compared to other DPS specs, but at the same time, you'll find it hard to find a 10 man raid team who doesn't want a protection paladin and holy paladin in the team. Your bits of utility then become less important since the prot and holy are bringing a all the hands we need, two dev auras and what not. Then there's trying to balance the number of people after each piece of tier gear - in a team where a prot pala, disc priest, holy priest and warlock are highly favored, with some guilds then also opting for a second warlock or a shadow priest, you're quickly approaching half of your raid team on the same tier token, which, from experience so far, appears to drop less often than the other two (purely based on experience in my own raids - anybody else having the same experience?). You then want to look at the gear that you want. You end up (as a guild master) in this situation where you can either bring the ret pala, who would be rolling on pretty much the same gear as the prot pala, and who also brings very little extra to the raid, or find yourself a fury warrior who brings all the banners and needs slightly different stats on his/her plate.

The result is that your problem is not only that ret is currently weak, but also because prot is OP and needs the same gear. If I thought that my prot warrior was better for my raid than my prot pala is, my first point of call would be to immediately switch to my warrior, and find a ret as, having a ret + holy I'd still have the utility that I had before, and little need to alter our guild strats, which are often based around BoP solo tanking.

As a guild master and raid leader, and as a paladin tank, I think ret needs buffing and prot needs nerfing, as that would make it feel less mandatory to take a prot pala to 10 mans. I absolutely adore playing my ret offspec, and would love to allow our fury warrior to try his prot offspec sometime so that I can raid offspec for a bit. Alas, the way the two specs are at the moment, I do believe it would seriously hurt my raids to do so.

I have not played PVP since back in vanilla, and that was as a derp pom pyro fire mage, so I really can not comment on PVP.