Thinking about leveling Ret again

[ThyLilGent]

So, I loved my Ret pally and it was my main since TBC when Horde could have paladins. However, when MoP dropped I felt disconnected from my pally and I dunno why. I looked up his rotation and priorities to know what I was doing, but my paladin still felt clunky to play, as to before. My question is, do paladins still have clunky rotations at 90, or does the gear and haste rating through the passive really help?

By clunky, I mean awkward spell timers left with downtime.

[Fhi]

It feels clunky until you have enough haste to have something to press often. I find Divine Purpose helps a lot with the clunkiness at low haste levels - it may not be optimal, but if you're that low in haste, chances are it doesn't matter yet.

[Andhar]

It feels clunky until you have enough haste to have something to press often. I find Divine Purpose helps a lot with the clunkiness at low haste levels - it may not be optimal, but if you're that low in haste, chances are it doesn't matter yet.

Hit the nail on the head.

I highly recommend Divine Purpose if you want a more fluid play style. It's perfect for filling the gaps between GCDs. A trick most people do when speced divine purpose is to hold on to the proc till you're fillers are all on CD or you're at 5 holy power. Just be sure to have a timer so you don't waste the proc.

For example:
Exo(1 HP), Crusader strike(2 HP), Judge(3 HP), Inquisition (back to 0 HP, procs divine purpose), crusader strike(1 HP), judgment(2 HP), Use Divine purpose proc, crusader strike (3 HP), etc. Feels very fluid and nice.

[Tesan]

Most melee classes feel clunky like that until they reach level 10 or so, when they start gaining more abilities to use in their rotation, ret does get better, as they said above.

[buddhaprime]

it boils down to haste, it will feel really awkward for a while, but then it smooths out a little. But it will never feel as smooth or as fun as it did in TBC or wrath, but that is just a personal opinion

[Faenlyn]

My ret was my very first character in Vanilla, was long retired and I have tried to go back to him in MoP also but I was also turned off by how clunky the rotation is. Not just in terms of empty GCDs which some of the replies here indicate improves with haste. But also with how unsatisfying the rotation is. As Exo, CS, and Judge come off their staggered CD as different times it doesn't seem to really matter which one you hit. It seems to become a first come first serve kind of rotation. Push whatever button lights up which is extremely unsatisfying. Would anyone notice any substantial difference if all three were combined into one semi ranged attack called Judgment of Crusader Exorcism? It would feel about the same to me except I would only need to keep track of one CD not 3 random ones to build HP.

And then when you build up some HP, hit Inquisition and reset back to 0 to muddle again through a semi random mix of Exo, Cs and Judge before finally being able to hit the payload with TV. Except all that damage really needs to be lined up with at least 2 different DPS cooldowns. It's enough to drive me crazy.

I'm always staring at my action bar and my HP counter while playing my Paladin unlike feeling like I'm playing the game when I play my DK

[Deleted]

I play Ret Paladin in PVP and i find it very fun to play with. Still, Ret Palas in PVP are not that popular, but u have to know howto play. I meet to many ppl who talks about pala sucks in Arena, not enough strong.. its nerfed. I would say that Pala is more Support than Warrrior, u need to know howto help you teammates and still be able to take out your opponents.

I also played PVE before i switched to PVP and there i really enjoyd popping my burst out and scored top on recount, its really fun. Rotation, yes it can feels clunky but i enjoy it.

[Deleted]

Ret got a LOT less clunky in MoP at 90 than before that expansion. They made holy power flow much more freely and using CLC-ret I find I seldom am waiting for the next ability to come off cooldown. (I'm a tank main spec so far from the world's best Ret.) I would not let it deter you - there certainly was a time when they first introduced holy power that I felt Ret was insufferably clunky and frustrating to play. Now it's quite enjoyable. (Not as smooth as the tankadin "rotation", but fine.)

Right now, my main criticism of Ret is that it so bursty - you demolish things when you blow cooldowns, but you don't hit nearly as hard as a warrior or DK otherwise. It doesn't matter too much for PVE but I suffer for it in PVP against competent players (who CC you when you blow CDs).

[pld]

I play Ret Paladin in PVP and i find it very fun to play with. Still, Ret Palas in PVP are not that popular, but u have to know howto play. I meet to many ppl who talks about pala sucks in Arena, not enough strong.. its nerfed. I would say that Pala is more Support than Warrrior, u need to know howto help you teammates and still be able to take out your opponents.

I also played PVE before i switched to PVP and there i really enjoyd popping my burst out and scored top on recount, its really fun. Rotation, yes it can feels clunky but i enjoy it.

This is my first season playing ret in PvP and in the right comp, it's actually really good at certain brackets. I pvp with a warrior and a rshammy and it's insane how much burst we have. Ret is pretty bursty but I can still put on significant pressure w/o my cool downs. BoP/BoSac/Devo Aura are insanely good defensive cooldowns as well. Although...ret seem fairly weak at higher brackets because we don't have the toolkit as other melee dps (mostly lacking in peels).

In PvE, it can definitely feel clunky at times, but as stated, with enough haste...it's not too bad. I always performed middle-of-the-pack whenever I went ret in raids (although it was always my OS), but my sustained damage felt really weak. It seemed like longer the fight...the lower on meters I went. I could pull 120k dps for about 30 seconds but saw it slowly creep down to around 65-75k once my cooldowns ended.