[7.0 Retribution Paladin] Guide and Discussion

[Vuagnon]

Told a dozen times already: Nothing has been done to fix the specc since August. The first plain damage buff came with a huge 4 set piece bonus nerf. Our good position that came with endless farming of vault++ and same bosses over and over for crusade prolonging relics was over when dps classes got their tier and ilcl rendered crusade centered gear irrelevant and on top of that the same problems remain.
Bad design all over

It feels we fell behind other specs very quickly and that makes me very sad.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm in the same boat.

According to logs, we're very close to the worst spec in mythic NH.

Feelsbadman.

So maybe I wasn't dreaming at all? I had that feeling when I dropped from being 2-3rd to 6-7th in raid dps overall.

[Snowfunk]

I know this is over a year in the future, but I really am going to miss Divine Tempest if it isn't baked into the spec. I have already gotten used to throwing divine storms at mobs to pull them and using it to build crusade when stuck out of range of mobs for a few seconds.

Yea, Divine Tempest is probably my favorite Paladin thing this expansion. I remember when I got it, it made Ret SO MUCH more enjoyable. I was really struggling with performance at the start of this expansion, but this Trait probably saved me from rerolling.

[Deleted]

I'm in the same boat.

According to logs, we're very close to the worst spec in mythic NH.

Feelsbadman.

Skorpyron: 7th place, 80k behind 1st
Anomaly: 12th place, 48k behind 1st
Trilliax: 11th place, 59k behind 1st
Spellblade: 18th place, 141k behind 1st (each spec has only 37 or less parses, not all specs are ranked)
Tichondrius: 12th place, 251k behind 1st (only 13 specs are represented at all, each having only 5 or less parses)
Botanist: 11th place, 285k behind 1st (only 15 specs are represented at all, each having only 9 or less parses)
Krosus: 16th place, 158k behind 1st (each spec has only 42 or less parses, not all specs are ranked)
Star Augur: no data
Elisande: no data
Gul'dan: no data

With only this much data at hand, the stuff that I flush down the toilet is worth more than the overall rankings for mythic NH.
(For the record, there are 26 dps specs.)

If Retribution was really doing poorly it would be sitting on the bench with half the available specs, and not be present for every boss that has enough data for rankings.

[Vanson]

We fell behind the classes very quickly because Blizzard seems to do no internal testing and just throws numbers out and then pushes them to live and rolls with it. The bases of their nerfs come from the first week of heroic/normal which is absolutely the dumbest thing they could of possibly done, nobody had tier/trinkets and what not and everybody was just dying left and right cause logs to be really skewed by our retribution passive. So they throw out nerfs and lord behold we are one of the bottom 3 performing classes in mythic. Imagine if we didn't have the retribution passive how even more terrible we would look at this time and state.

Blizzard never hits the nail on the head with buffs or nerfs, it's always too much either way. CoF gets nerfed by 70 percent for ret, while we have fury/arms warriors doing 11-12 mil average casts with one trinket. While on the flip side for ret you get about 4.5-5.5mil depending on crits, and you get way less frequent uses because it's only worth using during wings which is a 2 minute CD as apposed to battle shouts 1 minute CD (less as arms with anger management). It will get to the point where blizzard won't nerf it as well because guilds will depend on warriors to do that type of damage, just like why Arcane went un-nerfed all of HFC.

I can't imagine CoF in it's original state being as strong as DoS is for warriors in it's current state, and if it was I'd imagine the % increase was similar but one goes un-nerfed.

[Deleted]

we are one of the bottom 3 performing classes in mythic

I shall stress this again: If a spec is used by bleeding edge progression guilds, it is not underperforming. If it was underperforming, it wouldn't be present in the sub-10 parses of mythic fights.
Retribution is present for all bosses. That means it is "underperforming" less than 8-19 other specs.

To showcase how "useful" the overall mythic NH rankings are:

UH DKs have a higher overall ranking than Ret in mythic NH.
Nevermind that they have 0 parses for Botanist and Tichondrius, place below Ret on Skorpyron, Anomaly and Trilliax, and are dead-fucking-last on Krosus.
The only fight where UH outperforms Ret is on Spellblade, by 6 ranks.

So, Not Taken x2 + Lower x4 + Higher x1 = UH DK is better than Ret.

[vivel]

so about that nerf we got last week lmfao. here is blizz once more fucking up ret pally again. Can't even wait for more stats to come out before changing things instead nerf and nerf because we top the charts for 1 week lol now look at us at the bottem of the charts. lol gg blizzard you guys did it again.

[Deleted]

Skorpyron: 7th place, 80k behind 1st
Anomaly: 12th place, 48k behind 1st
Trilliax: 11th place, 59k behind 1st
Spellblade: 18th place, 141k behind 1st (each spec has only 37 or less parses, not all specs are ranked)
Tichondrius: 12th place, 251k behind 1st (only 13 specs are represented at all, each having only 5 or less parses)
Botanist: 11th place, 285k behind 1st (only 15 specs are represented at all, each having only 9 or less parses)
Krosus: 16th place, 158k behind 1st (each spec has only 42 or less parses, not all specs are ranked)
Star Augur: no data
Elisande: no data
Gul'dan: no data

With only this much data at hand, the stuff that I flush down the toilet is worth more than the overall rankings for mythic NH.
(For the record, there are 26 dps specs.)

If Retribution was really doing poorly it would be sitting on the bench with half the available specs, and not be present for every boss that has enough data for rankings.

That probably has something to do with blessings of wisdom. Once early progression is done, i'm pretty sure you will see a drop in representation.

Beeing 150k behind in single target is just not acceptable.

[Deleted]

That probably has something to do with blessings of wisdom. Once early progression is done, i'm pretty sure you will see a drop in representation.

Beeing 150k behind in single target is just not acceptable.

The 4th-7th bosses have huge spreads in damage rankings (due to very small sample sizes).
That 150k difference on Krosus in part comes from DoS Fury warriors (7 out of the 10) having a ~50k lead on the 2nd-3rd ranking specs, for example.

Of the 31 Ret pallies, only 16 had Cape OR belt (other classes probably do not benefit as heavily from combining legendaries as Ret does, but I can't tell for sure), 17 had FCM. We have Sephuz/Aegisjalmur/Sephuz/Aggramar's/KJ trinket logs in that 31 too, and Rets with 9k+ mastery stat from gear.
We also have a couple JV/WoG/ES etc. parses that did ~60k lower than the average of Rets, and 100k lower than the top parsing ones.

I would definitely wait until every competing spec has about a hundred logs before looking at the rankings.

[Ryuji]

Wonder if Memento of Angerboda at 865 is better than a 875 Chains of the Valorous(crit). Sims apparently don't cover Memento's procrate.

[Redblade]

With only this much data at hand, the stuff that I flush down the toilet is worth more than the overall rankings for mythic NH.
(For the record, there are 26 dps specs.)

Now remove the alternative specs from those 26 that belong to classes with an already viable dps spec and do the same comparison again. In other words compare classes instead of specs, sure it sucks that the guy who loves playing frost mage can't be competitive but at least he has options. Now please tell us again how great it is to be 11th to 18th...

[Teroo]

Now remove the alternative specs from those 26 that belong to classes with an already viable dps spec and do the same comparison again. In other words compare classes instead of specs, sure it sucks that the guy who loves playing frost mage can't be competitive but at least he has options. Now please tell us again how great it is to be 11th to 18th...

We were taken into world 1st, 2nd and 3rd Star Argur (massive dps check) world 2nd Elisande and Exorsus probably have their ret on Gul'dan progression. Bad specs are not taken into world first race.

Taking mythic logs seriously, where only 1 spec (fire mage) have over 2000 parses is laughable. We need way more data to see how ret is doing on mythic, but I think that we're more than fine

[dnicks17]

The feel when the healer with your wisdom gets a rank 1 parse.

#utility

[Redblade]

We were taken into world 1st, 2nd and 3rd Star Argur (massive dps check) world 2nd Elisande and Exorsus probably have their ret on Gul'dan progression. Bad specs are not taken into world first race.

Taking mythic logs seriously, where only 1 spec (fire mage) have over 2000 parses is laughable. We need way more data to see how ret is doing on mythic, but I think that we're more than fine

I think you misunderstood me now. I'm not saying the sky is falling or anything, I still have my raid spot, but we are under performing right now due to Blizzards inability to run basic internal sims. The legendary nerfs were fine and made sense, so did the ES nerf, even the CoF nerf made sense but were too heavy-handed. What didn't make sense was the latest round of crusade nerfs as the BoW buff doesn't make up for it, especially as in most fight you use DH anyway (for me DH sims like 2k lower on ST so if there's even a hint of adds DH wins out).

I just disagree with he's way of comparing. Saying "out of 26 specs we're fine" is to make an dishonest argument as what matters is that each class has a viable dps spec and not three.

[oraz4000]

Facepalm there was no need to touch Crusade at all, thanks Blizzard guess its ok for DH to burst over 2mill tho.

[Deleted]

Wonder if Memento of Angerboda at 865 is better than a 875 Chains of the Valorous(crit). Sims apparently don't cover Memento's procrate.

i would go with the stat stick.

[Vuagnon]

It always begins like this. People keep saying we need more parses until the bitter truth emerges and they too have to accept it in the end.

[Teroo]

I think you misunderstood me now. I'm not saying the sky is falling or anything, I still have my raid spot, but we are under performing right now due to Blizzards inability to run basic internal sims. The legendary nerfs were fine and made sense, so did the ES nerf, even the CoF nerf made sense but were too heavy-handed. What didn't make sense was the latest round of crusade nerfs as the BoW buff doesn't make up for it, especially as in most fight you use DH anyway (for me DH sims like 2k lower on ST so if there's even a hint of adds DH wins out).

I just disagree with he's way of comparing. Saying "out of 26 specs we're fine" is to make an dishonest argument as what matters is that each class has a viable dps spec and not three.

No we're not underperforming. Underperforming specs are not taken into mythic race. We are among the best dps specs in the game right now and probably in the best place we have ever been. I know you guys won't be pleased until we will be #1 be huge margin just like shadow priests in EN, but that will never happen

I agree that crusade nerf was not needed, but it was so small that it is barely noticeable and it didn't change the fact that we are in really good spot right now.

[oraz4000]

Barely noticeable!! is a fair stretch.

[dnicks17]

No we're not underperforming. Underperforming specs are not taken into mythic race. We are among the best dps specs in the game right now and probably in the best place we have ever been. I know you guys won't be pleased until we will be #1 be huge margin just like shadow priests in EN, but that will never happen

I agree that crusade nerf was not needed, but it was so small that it is barely noticeable and it didn't change the fact that we are in really good spot right now.

Rets without cloak and/or belt are absolutely underperforming in M NH.

It really seems like Blizzard tuned the Crusade nerf around those legendaries(and CoF to a lesser extent) because it's very noticeable if you don't have them.

[urw]

all classes to get 80+ parses need two dps legendarys. It's no new discovery. That's why there is so much bull flying around the lege rng.