"The balance in Tomb is pretty good right now"

[Deleted]

I couldn't but grin about this comment.
I don't really understand how they claim to trust sources like simcraft and logs as much as their internal sources.
A fast view of the logs at the moment speaks the truth : 82 ret paladin parses on mythic kj fights last 2 weeks when more than 150 guilds have killed it...
The same spec that has one of the largest number of parses on first bosses + a notorious history of cheesing and soaking mechanics with their damage reduction and bubbles is underperforming in an instance with a gazillion of soaking going around and climaxing to the last bosses.
But what do we know . Maybe rets are normies these days.

I hope they cut the bs and fix the balance problems.

PS: my "/yell wheelchair coming through" macro when moving around to deal with mechanics is the most popular thing i bring in a raid.

Actually Tomb is fairly balanced. Soaking/immunities are the problem.

PvE, take a fight like Fallen Avatar. You need 12 ranged to soak the beams, 2 tanks, then 4 (typically melee) soaking the Sargeras pools. That leaves 2 free spots.

We have 2-3 Death Knights and 1-2 Rogues soaking the pools. That leaves 2 spots that you can give to melee. Rets don't have the cooldown on bubble to do it (and for damn good reason), so they are left fighting for those last few spots. Same story on many other fights.

The issue with Ret is that it's so stupidly powerful in PvP still, that the changes that would turn them into Rogues would push them into being what Death Knights were at the start of Wrath. It would break the game.

Remove the soaking mechanics from Tomb, and you have no problem.

So yes, in the context of damage and general utility, Rets are PERFECTLY fine. Please see the bigger picture. Of course, you'd know this if you were raiding at the level you seem to be discussing (Mythic endgame).

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Blizzard should have live tweaking based on the spec and the fight. Like, for Shadow Priests they could dampen their output in council or strong add fights to do less but empower them to do more during single target fights.

I'm joking.

[Deleted]

Actually Tomb is fairly balanced. Soaking/immunities are the problem.

PvE, take a fight like Fallen Avatar. You need 12 ranged to soak the beams, 2 tanks, then 4 (typically melee) soaking the Sargeras pools. That leaves 2 free spots.

We have 2-3 Death Knights and 1-2 Rogues soaking the pools. That leaves 2 spots that you can give to melee. Rets don't have the cooldown on bubble to do it (and for damn good reason), so they are left fighting for those last few spots. Same story on many other fights.

The issue with Ret is that it's so stupidly powerful in PvP still, that the changes that would turn them into Rogues would push them into being what Death Knights were at the start of Wrath. It would break the game.

Remove the soaking mechanics from Tomb, and you have no problem.

So yes, in the context of damage and general utility, Rets are PERFECTLY fine. Please see the bigger picture. Of course, you'd know this if you were raiding at the level you seem to be discussing (Mythic endgame).

In other words mythic Tomb encounters are designed in a way that certain specs (ret among them) struggle to be viable and that's called pretty good balance.
Anyways from experience mythic encounters climaxing to last bosses revolve around positioning, fast movement, various counterspellin coordination (interrupts,dispells etc), soaking/mitigation of incomin damage, on demand burst being among the most popular and first to come in mind. Dunno in how many of these rets can claim solid contribution in mythic Tomb.
But especially in ToS I cannot even imagine how Ion can go out in a calm face and say that he is happy with balance. What are we going to expect from next tier since Tomb is a balanced tier ?

[Deleted]

Actually Tomb is fairly balanced. Soaking/immunities are the problem.

PvE, take a fight like Fallen Avatar. You need 12 ranged to soak the beams, 2 tanks, then 4 (typically melee) soaking the Sargeras pools. That leaves 2 free spots.

We have 2-3 Death Knights and 1-2 Rogues soaking the pools. That leaves 2 spots that you can give to melee. Rets don't have the cooldown on bubble to do it (and for damn good reason), so they are left fighting for those last few spots. Same story on many other fights.

The issue with Ret is that it's so stupidly powerful in PvP still, that the changes that would turn them into Rogues would push them into being what Death Knights were at the start of Wrath. It would break the game.

Remove the soaking mechanics from Tomb, and you have no problem.

So yes, in the context of damage and general utility, Rets are PERFECTLY fine. Please see the bigger picture. Of course, you'd know this if you were raiding at the level you seem to be discussing (Mythic endgame).

^^premium: the most contradicting nonsense ever to be read on paladin forum.

balancing is fine, problem is mechanix. thats the reason to bench rets. cuz mechanix. hm... isnt that sort of a balacing issue too, hm? esp. when ret soaking talent got nerfed to the ground (Divine Intervention), which was fine for 2 xpacs? since bzzd wont prune soaking (raid mechanix), the only way to go is to buff soaking skill, hm? not a balancing issue... maybe think b4 post.

ret reign surpeme in PvP? pls, gimme access 2 this alternate dimension. again, maybe chk ladders b4 post?

rets r perfectly fine? ever faced a frost mage? maybe play ret b4 post?


rlly hope for that utility re-pruning promise Hazzikostas made, EMANCIPATE FTW!

[Morally Grey Storm]

Stupidly powerful pvp Rets.
[laughs in snare and spellsteal]
Anyone else feels like a little giggle when I say the name... Biggus Gapclosus?

[Radaney]

So you believe the game should be balanced around one mythic fight?

Blizzard have already shown their aware of the utility imbalance, like what rogues have over every melee spec in the same livestream you are citing.

[rayden54]

They need to analyze Simcraft and public logs because that is what the players see. Their internal data could be 100% balanced, but that doesn't mean the community wouldn't cry about imbalance when the data WE have access to shows disparity.

That or release official sims so we can actually see their internal data. That way we'd at least see where they're coming from.

[Morally Grey Storm]

The community perception of balance ends up mattering more than the internal data.

Orly.

[Deleted]

So you believe the game should be balanced around one mythic fight?

Blizzard have already shown their aware of the utility imbalance, like what rogues have over every melee spec in the same livestream you are citing.

Not the game. Talking about current tier and Tomb specifically. Take a look at older tiers of the same expansion (and despite the so-called attempts to fix the spec) u will see how the number of public parses of rets doing cutting edge has dropped dramatically. Dunno if situation is going to change in the remaining resets but as it is it doesn't look promising. There is a huge imbalance and that's something that u can attribute to the class mainly since there are only so much mechanics the devs can come up with to make an encounter challenging and rets among other specs do not bring anything particularly usefull (that being numbers or utility or w/e a fight needs).
If we bring up other high end aspects of the game (high m+, rated pvp, esports) and have someone with zero knowledge of the game try to work around it most probably the answer will be that there are like 10 specs in game the rest being some paradoxes. and that's imbalance as well but i wouldn't like to discuss this further.
The only reason the spec is still playable is due to the various sources of relevant gear available outside current mythic tier making it easy for the officers to swap players around and have the appropriate classes ready for progress while keeping the rest of the raiders happy. A big shoutout ofc to every dedicated ret that through sheer hard work and dedication has made it to their guild's first tomb clear but this doesnt change the fact that in the last 175 public parses of tomb clears one can find 400+ rogues, 400+ mages, 300+ hunters and only 81 rets. Now unless i do a major mistake when i am reading the log statistics this is not what i would call "the balance in tomb is pretty good".

[Vanderhuge]

Two points:

1) Really need to see how Antorus plays out with new bonuses before totally giving up.
2) Warlocks are mushrooms.

[rasako]

Ok ret is 4th-5th dps specc in first 2 bosses then declining becomin 13-14 specc in later encounters (in number of parses). And that's 2+ months after raid release. Reckon people are bored playing this specc in later bosses ?

as someone who loves my paladin alt, paladins have NEVER been a difficult class to play, so it's likely. I honestly can't name an easier class. I like that they added some more buttons for me to press other than flash of light to holy but it's still pretty simplistic even after my 12 years of playing.

[GreenJesus]

Another problem for ret is that holy is really strong right now. Would the raid rather have a ret paladin or a holy paladin?

[Sett]

Stroggylos please never change your avatar. It's one of the best on this site.

[Morally Grey Storm]

as someone who loves my paladin alt, paladins have NEVER been a difficult class to play, so it's likely. I honestly can't name an easier class.

It's Demon Hunter.
Try Again Bragg.

[gushDH]

Do people actually think that blizzard is like "yea fuck those guys" and laughs?

They most likely know better than you, if they wanted to buff you they just would, they have the means now to buff total dps by a percentage with just changing a number. They look at the correct stats, we don't.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Do people actually think that blizzard is like "yea fuck those guys" and laughs?

They might aswell go all moustache-witching, or outright cackling.

[Jester Joe]

^^premium: the most contradicting nonsense ever to be read on paladin forum.

balancing is fine, problem is mechanix. thats the reason to bench rets. cuz mechanix. hm... isnt that sort of a balacing issue too, hm? esp. when ret soaking talent got nerfed to the ground (Divine Intervention), which was fine for 2 xpacs? since bzzd wont prune soaking (raid mechanix), the only way to go is to buff soaking skill, hm? not a balancing issue... maybe think b4 post.

What are you even talking about...?

Divine intervention being fine for 2 expansions...? It didn't even exist in it's current form until Legion, and it wasn't until WoD/Legion that we had such a short debuff from Forbearance.

[Morally Grey Storm]

What are you even talking about...?

Divine intervention being fine for 2 expansions...? It didn't even exist in it's current form until Legion, and it wasn't until WoD/Legion that we had such a short debuff from Forbearance.

He might be thinking DI was as-is in tbc and wotlk, thus being delusional.
Otoh, I do remember DI being casually used on heroic Deathbringer, at the very least.

[Eurytos]

I feel fine as ret on heroic Tomb. Certain bosses are better for us than others. In my regular raid group, i'm constantly near the top on fights where I feel like I should be near the top. And on fights where I feel less useful, I'm lower. Really, the only fights where I feel I'm at a disadvantage is Mistress and Sisters. I move and the boss moves a whole lot on those fights. I don't even mind KJ so much, mostly I'm only doing the moving when I need to soak, but the boss is still, so i can get back quickly. Maybe thats just me and how my raid does those fights, and maybe thats just heroic mechanics.

But I certainly don't feel like a drag on the group. Actually, thats not entirely true, I feel like a drag on the group when I'm not able to help someone with a utility that I used to have that I dont now, like Hand of Sac. My complaints about ret are all about our current playstyle, not about dmg.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Basically, yes.
Having zero raid utility as a paladin feels somewhat a little bit fething off and not right.
Ofcourse, Retribution is an offensive spec, thus less support -oriented.
Which then begs the question: where are my offensive tools? Being able to hit stuff with a pointy stick does not cut as such.