So, can we call Legion a bust for anyone who played Ret, and what's in it for 8.0?

[Reith]

I was pretty caught off guard by some of the changes when I picked up Legion a few weeks ago. Seals being the biggest shocker. They have always undergone many changes, from Seal of Fury, to Seal of Blood, to Seal of Truth, but to see them disappear entirely was unexpected. I haven't played long enough yet to tell if I like or dislike the spec yet relative to previous expansions, but I definitely don't like the removal of such iconic parts of the class. Consecration as well.

It's OK to play, but it's fairly mindless where gameplay is concerned. Before, there seemed to always be something more I could do to improve my play. Now, there's not really much to work with. They've relegated most of the few gameplay decision we have left to before you enter an encounter, before you're even *really* playing the game.

[FostTheGiant]

I will say I found that ret was incredibly hard to play all expansion, even just changing to grind out mythics if we have another healer. The rotation is incredibly bland and not fun. I really hope they fix that issue and make them the crusaders of light they are meant to be.

[Eurytos]

I was pretty caught off guard by some of the changes when I picked up Legion a few weeks ago. Seals being the biggest shocker. They have always undergone many changes, from Seal of Fury, to Seal of Blood, to Seal of Truth, but to see them disappear entirely was unexpected. I haven't played long enough yet to tell if I like or dislike the spec yet relative to previous expansions, but I definitely don't like the removal of such iconic parts of the class. Consecration as well.

Holy shit, havent seen this name in a looooong time. I learned pretty much everything I know about ret from Prentice, Requital, and Swampmoose on these forums, hah.

I can imagine picking up ret for the first time in a long time is quite the shock.
Holy Power was almost certainly the biggest change to ret in its history, but if you saw that change, the loss of HoW, Exorcism, Consecration, Seals, Auras, GoAK, and Hand/Blessing utility, the new judgement facing requirement(breaking all my macros), the total change of raid blessings, the colossus smash effect of judgement, and the introduction of Crusade...could be quite the shock.

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PvP should be balanced completely different than PvE. They're slowly starting to head that way with Honor talents, but they just need to go straight into making it completely different.

Otherwise, yes, there's nothing wrong with being a burst based class. It's when they decided to make the burst too high and the regular output too low, that's an issue. It doesn't change though that Ret is most likely to always be a burst based class.

I agree with this totally. I enjoy that there is a class that Burst is its main way of doing dmg, provided the lows aren't too low, and the middle is fair. I like that it is Ret that is that class. I also agree pvp and pve has to be almost entirely separate. I quite enjoyed lining up my trinkets and Wings, and GoAK for insane dmg for 20-30 seconds with heroism. And outside of cooldowns, while my dmg was a low number, I still found my rotation to be enjoyable with all those holy power generators and TV felt strong still.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Holy shit, havent seen this name in a looooong time. I learned pretty much everything I know about ret from Prentice, Requital, and Swampmoose on these forums, hah.

What about me?
Do you really want to hurt me baby?
Tell me now, what about me?~

[Shinrael]

*shrugs*

I like the playstyle of ret tbh. True it sucks that without wings it's a bit boring to play and it doesn't feel good, but it's supposed to feel like that, cuz man do I feel like a bad ass when I pop wings and I'm spamming my buttons to try and keep up with the GCD and doing big dick deeps. Climbing from .6th to 1st or 2nd on meters cuz of wings is fun af.

If there's anything I'd like to see go it's the reliance of keeping our blessings on people for that 4% strength buff. That's a bit annoying.

I've tried several times this expac to reroll to a better dps. If I can be consistently 2nd or 3rd in my guild, imagine what I could do with a real weapon! But none of them grab me like the ret play style and the Coolies.

This.
/10char

[Angeredsoul]

Ret is currently rubbish both numbers wise and mechanically. WoD was significantly more engaging for me.

[Swampmoose]

Holy shit, havent seen this name in a looooong time. I learned pretty much everything I know about ret from Prentice, Requital, and Swampmoose on these forums, hah.

I can imagine picking up ret for the first time in a long time is quite the shock.
Holy Power was almost certainly the biggest change to ret in its history, but if you saw that change, the loss of HoW, Exorcism, Consecration, Seals, Auras, GoAK, and Hand/Blessing utility, the new judgement facing requirement(breaking all my macros), the total change of raid blessings, the colossus smash effect of judgement, and the introduction of Crusade...could be quite the shock.

/wave

Time for you to be the teacher! It's been a few weeks now and I'm still in that state of shock. Can't even begin to count the number of times I've tried judging things not facing them.

[Vanderhuge]

The one thing that I still find odd today is that none of us really had an issue with Seals, but they were removed due to being "boring, passive buffs" according to Blizzard.

Yet we're still stuck throwing out two Greater Blessings ("boring, passive buffs") in order to have a 4% Strength boost or PVP buffs.

[Reith]

The one thing that I still find odd today is that none of us really had an issue with Seals, but they were removed due to being "boring, passive buffs" according to Blizzard.

Yet we're still stuck throwing out two Greater Blessings ("boring, passive buffs") in order to have a 4% Strength boost or PVP buffs.

Except they were actually not passive at all. Switching Seals situationally was an interactive gameplay feature. You actually made decisions with Seals while in an encounter to get optimal DPS beyond "hit this button that does damage." Of course not every encounter you were switching them, but many of them you could to get better DPS/better burst DPS where it needed to be directed.

[Schattenlied]

I've been playing Ret since Vanilla and this is the least fun version of the spec ever, IMHO. I wouldn't complain about a complete gutting and revision or a return to MoP Ret at this point.

Agreed

I'd prefer WoD to MoP Ret though (no inquisition was a nice change in WoD from MoP), it was honestly quite fun... Just needed to be less squishy in PvP and it would have been perfect...

I don't understand why blizzard feels the need to reinvent the wheel when they have something already working well, like WoD Ret... It just needed tweaks to be amazing, Legion Ret can't be fixed with simple tweaks, it needs a massive, ground up overhaul at this point...

[W1shm4ster]

What annoys me is, that our damage is so dependent on having judgement on the target and we've no way of resetting our judgement CD, while arms warrior can, but has around the same thing like us, he needs his debuff on the enemy, otherwise there will be no damage.

Plus our just overall low DPS, i have like pretty good gear, but a worse geared or same geared warrior/rogue/mage/hunter/shadow and so on WILL do more damage than me, no matter how good i play my priorities, but this also comes from our really dumb passive, where we get a damage boost if someone dies, Blizzard doesn't seem to realize, that you can't count on people dying all the time, if you've people in good raids that die all the time, you won't have those people in your raid for long and at a good progress night where you kill the boss, you may get people to die at the end of an encounter, where you probably also won't have your wings up.

Also that all our damage is just in wings plus that our 3. level 100 talent is a joke.

[Megas Elekmatos]

Personally I've been complaining about Ashbringer for years. Felt like a carrot on a stick we would never get. Then legion happened. As far as I'm concerned; we can stay dead last for the remainder of this expansion as a trade off. Could also be worse. We could be DK's with no Frostmourne...

[Deleted]

Am still pondering on how u boyz find wod ret that good . Deprived of sets and leggo ring and class relic . Lets be honest and admit that almost everyone had a really hard time (some almost impossible without having a group of friends helping out) in timed instances (one of the least desired speccs in there), one of the hardest times to find spot in guilds progressing in the last boss of every tier. Not to talk about rated pvp. Y lets go back to wod ret it been a charm

[guardian116]

What we need to do is get a list of all the real ret players who are going to blizzcon and bombard the crap out of the devs with ret questions? Force them to give us answers. Anytime at blizzcon when ret has asked question they basically tell us no more ret questions or completely ignore the question. Last time i was at blizz con one kid asked a question regarding ret paladins the devs and the the other players laughed him out and refused to answer his question said no more ret questions and moved on. Its time to get what we deserve and to do that we need all Ret players to band together and respectfully bombard them with questions and force them to give us answers even. Its finally time for the Ret paladin to shine after 12 years of being a red headed step child trash tier spec.

[Morally Grey Storm]

I tried to care, and I missed
I tried again, and I missed
I missed both times

[Deleted]

Feels so shit compared to every other melee I've tried. Glad I'm Prot main.

[Kobor]

Ditched my pally for the first time since start of ICC.. cba anymore... moved to my warrior (which I only used for pvp before) and holy fucking christ of hell what a difference! The dps and all but what really sold me in pve was the movement, I can jump away, soak and come back to KJ before my Rend made 3 ticks ffs... The same with my ret would probably have wasted a good 15sec of dps... WHY should I play something that is outran by a turtle? For me, movement and flow is prio in what I play and that's why my ret is dead and buried... sleep tight old buddy!

Very same feeling I have with my Havoc DH alt, which is easily out dps my main any time, no matter what type the fight is, so pity.....

[Eurytos]

Except they were actually not passive at all. Switching Seals situationally was an interactive gameplay feature. You actually made decisions with Seals while in an encounter to get optimal DPS beyond "hit this button that does damage." Of course not every encounter you were switching them, but many of them you could to get better DPS/better burst DPS where it needed to be directed.

I really thought that the talent in WoD that encouraged a form of seal swapping was the ideal way to handle seals. It was a decent talent for a time iirc, and those who enjoyed it had access. If you didnt like seal swapping rotational playstyle, then you didnt take the talent. Very easy. But even if you didnt take that talent, you still had the option of an aoe seal or a single target seal, for aoe heavy situations, a quick swap was awesome, and then a quick swap back. Not the true seal swapping rotation of old, but still useful and interactive. I mean, isn't Zeal a shittier form of Seal of Righteousness now?

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Am still pondering on how u boyz find wod ret that good . Deprived of sets and leggo ring and class relic . Lets be honest and admit that almost everyone had a really hard time (some almost impossible without having a group of friends helping out) in timed instances (one of the least desired speccs in there), one of the hardest times to find spot in guilds progressing in the last boss of every tier. Not to talk about rated pvp. Y lets go back to wod ret it been a charm

this is more a balance issue than a playstyle issue. I think the thrust of the problem that many of us have is the entire playstyle has changed in a not good way.

Sure, balance the numbers, they should always be doing that.

[Deleted]

Playstyle was bad and tbf there were no options once u got tier set players got used in 2-3 cookie cutter builds for the raids mostly depending on fight. Viability was trivial and even the so called decent mobility was laughable in mobile heavy fights only having a couple more ranged attacks a weak dot and extra range of finishers to make up...
Having the option to do something is not an excuse since these options were underperformin talents that were rarely picked.
I do hope people have higher expectations from the specc next exp else we gonna get anal-ized

[Eurytos]

Playstyle was bad and tbf there were no options once u got tier set players got used in 2-3 cookie cutter builds for the raids mostly depending on fight. Viability was trivial and even the so called decent mobility was laughable in mobile heavy fights only having a couple more ranged attacks a weak dot and extra range of finishers to make up...
Having the option to do something is not an excuse since these options were underperformin talents that were rarely picked.
I do hope people have higher expectations from the specc next exp else we gonna get anal-ized

yeah, i guess i only focused on the latter part of your critique, I myself prefer the MoP and Cata ret, though I know many were very fond of wrath ret, I simply don't see us going back to that, holy power is here to stay. tho wrath was incredibly fun time to be ret. maybe a couple talents from WoD were good, but mainly cata/mop ret is where id like to see the spec return. I've talked at length about this in several threads...mainly its HoW and judgement changes that i consider most important, in conjunction with seals/dots/hp generation