Think I'm done with arena as ret

[mypally]

I'm going to state right off the bat that I am not trying to QQ here, just explain where my http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weA feeling when I do arena comes from. I guess I will also state that I am quite enjoying ret in pve and tend to have a good time in bg's.

It starts not because I feel ret is terrible, but because I feel that, given what it has, it seems like a good class. If we were terrible (like BC terrible) I could fight through it, and be proud in what I achieve. But no, we have some very handy pvp spells, like our hand abilities and emancipation. We have the mana pool to toss out 2 casted heals, or we can sacrifice 3 holy power that would be used for a TV and instead heal for a comparible amount. We get a stun, a slow, and a choice of speed boosts. We have a nice bit of stupid amounts of burst when we pop wings + kings; and we also have the downside of having not so great damage outside of that (I'm looking at you TV).

All in all, it looks like a class that should be doing alright, and while I would not be shocked to see that ret representation is alright (cant find any stats to support nor refute this), I believe that ret just doesnt feel right. I think this comes down to 2 things.

First, I call the "but class x has it, why cant I" reasons. Now, I am not talking about interesting, different abilities that other classes have, I am talking about very similar ones that are just treated differently. I have several examples for this:
- We have bubble and bop (well, i guess its been hop for a while now actually), and the designers have decided that these immunities are powerful enough that a) they can only be used once per min and b) 2 classes need to be able to counter them. Yet a mage only needs a 30 second lockout, and a hunter needs no lockout at all (with no counter either)
- We can choose to pick up a shield/barrier/whatever in sacred shield. It provides a ~11k shield every ~6 seconds for ~30 seconds. This ability also waits 6 seconds before you get your first 11k barrier. Thats ~60k in shields spread out over 30 seconds. Mages on the other hand get to pick up ice barrier, which blocks ~70k every 25 seconds and is instantly put up.
- Our stun is considered powerful enough that lowering it from a 60 sec to a 30 sec cd is a talent. Warriors on the other hand get an aoe stun that deals damage on a 20 second cooldown as a talent.
- when non monks go into their tanking form/stance/presence (not including monks cause I have no idea how they work), they gain definitive tank advantages like reduced damage taken, increased armor, or increased stamina. They also get a hold of 1 or 2 of the tank cooldowns. These tank options are always available. Paladins also have a tank spec, however, the only thing we have access to is a 40% magic reduction (or 20/20) cooldown.

I can go on for a while. The issue isnt that these other abilities make ours useless, as that is clearly not the case. It is that for some reason, old logic is being brought in to our abilities. I can give the reasoning into why alot of the reasons ret is as it is, but the problem is that those reasons often date back to BC and Wotlk, and dont really apply anymore. Anyway, on to my next issue: I dont feel like a paladin.

Paladins are warriors of the light, blah blah blah. We used to have this neat thing called judgement of light, it let us heal for small amounts, but was taken out (for good reasons) because the self healing made a paladin mandatory in a raid. What I miss about it was that o so small amount of self healing I got from it. It took no extra effort on my part to get the healing, it was small but it was nice. This was of course back in the day that noone besides warlocks had any real amount of self heals. Nowadays, everyone and their dog have self heals, and it really feels like ret is not really close to some of these classes, both in the passive health regen (we are at 0) and the active (I'd put us at 50k every 5 seconds or so if you are pretty on top of it).

Lastly, the small bugs that Im sure they will get around to fixing, but are still really annoying. The 2 that come immediately to mind are that burden wont apply at times (seems to be when you face away from your target, have fun kiting that warrior that just popped every cooldown), and that, despite the fact that Im not glyphed for it, when I want to cast WoG on myself while I have an enemy targeted, I must be in LoS and within 40 yards to do so.

So anyway, like I said I still find pve and bg's quite enjoyable, where these little aspects arent put under a microscope. But when it comes to arena, while I can still compete a good amount of the time, I just find these too frustrating to continue doing any arena past my cap points for the week. So, let the people who only read the title begin to flame me. For the rest of you, any thoughts?

[Gandrake]

i think i'm done with arena

i'm just going to stop you right there and say that there is nothing wrong with that

pvp is broken at the beginning of every expansion.

[mypally]

See, I know the damage is out of control, and some class cooldowns are not tuned right, but I feel its a more fundamental problem. As is, I can kinda join in with the whole crazy burst thing, maybe not as well as others, but for 30 seconds I can compete. Its other issues that make me think the future is not bright.

[Fhi]

The problem with your post, and is common amongst everyone who compares classes, is that you cannot simply compare talents in a vacuum. You can't say "Oh, X can do this, why is our similar spells so lousy?" I'll pick on barrier vs shield since that one is narrow enough that I can get my point across. Yes, mages' barriers are more powerful, no doubt. What you didn't take into account, however:

1) Our shield can be placed on someone else.
2) Mages' are very limited in their self heals, they have to glyph and pick a particular level 90 talent. That's the only self heals I am aware of that mages have. We can heal ourselves and others.

Barrier is their 'compensation' for survivability in terms of self heals. And that is my point. Talents/abilities, even ones that are similar, cannot be compared in a vacuum. Many, many abilities interact with each other to give each class its strength and weaknesses. Does that mean that I think pallies are alright? Not at all, we need some more work. But comparing X talent to Y ability is not a useful method.

[mypally]

I understand what you are saying corylyn, but I feel that the reasoning behind some of the limitations is outdated, while others is misguided. Look at the reasoning behind bubble still applying forebarance. I can understand why HoP would apply it, you dont want to chain HoP an individual. The forebarance on bubble is really just a relic of when bubble was much more powerful then it was in its current form. If their fear was that 2 immunities in a min is too powerful for the paladin, then why not make all immunities apply a debuff like bloodlust?

In the misguided catagory, the lack of the usual tank defenses. For some reason every other tank class can get the majority of the tank benefits by switching stances/presence/form. Why Paladins dont get this, i have no clue. all these tanks have a melee dps spec that synergyzes decently with the tank, and some have caster rolls that they have now made to somewhat synergyze. I guess they did it for the sake of ret being a snowflake, but thats not very comforting when getting focused hard by a bm hunter and a warrior.

the "in a vacuum" is a fair analysis of what I have said, however it is that way because I did not go in depth on the topics for the sake of brevity. And as a side not to your point on the mages lack of self healing, I really don't understand why everyone needs self heals. This game was a lot better, imo, when the term self heals was applicable only to affliction warlocks. But that is another matter

[DemaioJ]

There are ways of dealing with almost every issue ret has in pvp. It's not always pretty but you have options. The issue lies with other classes being able to achieve better results with less effort because lets face it, playing a hunter or warrior right now just doesn't have the same kind of skill requirement that ret does.
There are classes that are actually in a legitimately awful spot in pvp, that do no damage and have no real survival skills, but ret isn't one of them.

[Deleted]

Ret is fine in pvp. Not overpowered or underpowered but right there in the middle or perhaps in the upper tier I'd say. Great support through double Hands, off-heals, moderate damage and awesome burst with cooldowns. 1v1 we are one of the strongest classes, only classes I fear are frost mages, warriors and hunters which all are commonly known to be more or less overpowered. We can single-handedly out-heal big burst on ourselves with Holy Avenger or a few lucky DP procs.

The biggest flaw in your argument is comparing us to warriors. They are overpowered right now. Ret is in a good place, it's other classes that need some nerfs and they are coming in 5.1.

[Tangra]

In some ways Ret is a bit better than before, at least now our offhealing is worth something, as opposed to the pathetic excuse for keeping us limited in various other ways it has been for years. But overall, I am a bit disappointed in the fact that once again Paladins, and Ret in particular, got nothing nasty or creative for yet another expansion. Our new ability is a generic AoE CC that breaks on damage, is on a long cooldown, and has limited range...making it very difficult to actually use in a decent CC chain. We have some very useful talents, but we are still in many ways a very stiff and predictable class with no interesting mechanics such as smokebomb for example.

[DemaioJ]

I don't think I'd ever really call retribution a predictable class. There are ways to play that are smarter and stronger and should be defaulted to in most situations, but if you're outright predictable you need to mix it up a bit.