Ret Raid Situation

[Tyze]

Ret has been a pain in the ass since the whole holy power combo thing was implemented.

Please stop with these incompetent comments, people might read it and believe it.

[Deleted]

Please stop with these incompetent comments, people might read it and believe it.

Anyone believing anything that's written on a forum without an awful lot backing up deserves everything they get.

[Xs]

Looking at a possible 3 Ret line-up in WoD, its not ideal but they're tried and tested players who I'm more than happy to have in the raid doing respectable DPS along with their personal cooldowns and raid utility. Would I like some rogues? Yeah sure, but with how good Druids have been looking we would end up with Leather issues having them anyway, and its not as-if we haven't tried.

[Fredzilla]

Never did I say that I am a limp.
But what I say is that given equal skill, choice for a spot will be based on class 10 out of ten times.
Sure as sure it's about player and not the class.
Like virtually or nearly all tiers which punished melee to begin with.

Since you don't raid, I'll fill you in on a secret why many of us say it won't matter if you aren't in a bleeding edge guild.

Given equal skill in all areas, sure your raid would probably be better off picking another spec over us right now. Thing is 99% of the time outside of like the top 50 guilds, you will not run into a raid where all of the other dps are just as skilled as you (unless you're bad). If you're legitimately good at ret and aren't raiding top 50 kind of stuff, you'll have no problems because of you or your spec.

[Kbitka]

You don't know how to play a ret, do you? Our utility is decent just like our DPS is decent.We aren't and never will be top, it would be ridicilous if we were anyway, imagine if rets were the top healers, you bring two of them, top DPS, you bring two of them, and one tank, now you have 1/4 of your raid consisting of 1 out of 11 classes.It isn't a case where we wouldn't be brought in raids because of low DPS or lack of surivability/utility, it's a sweet spot IMO.

I do know how to play a ret and its utility WAS decent. As some other poster said, there are classes that can fill a ret's spot MUCH MUCH better.
If i was raid leading if i had an equal skilled roster i would let the ret out ride the bench. Especially now w/t the devo its really not needed. A holadin and a protadin are more than enough paladins in the raid.

Not matter how much you guys argue, the truth is that your raid leader is much better off bringing other melees

[Morally Grey Storm]

Since you don't raid, I'll fill you in on a secret why many of us say it won't matter if you aren't in a bleeding edge guild.

Given equal skill in all areas, sure your raid would probably be better off picking another spec over us right now. Thing is 99% of the time outside of like the top 50 guilds, you will not run into a raid where all of the other dps are just as skilled as you (unless you're bad). If you're legitimately good at ret and aren't raiding top 50 kind of stuff, you'll have no problems because of you or your spec.

I do not raid for the last 10 months, due to me being in the army now but that doesn't matter.

1 question I would like you to answer: would you pick ret for progression if given an alternative?

[Fredzilla]

I do not raid for the last 10 months, due to me being in the army now but that doesn't matter.

1 question I would like you to answer: would you pick ret for progression if given an alternative?

I would pick the better player

[Monzsterr]

So we all have a view limited by our own experience. In my guild there are 3 rets (including myself when I'm not taking) that have raided on and off over the last two years. One of them is a hopeless fellow who will never achieve more than 2/3rd his toon's potential. 10% downtime on fights where the rest of us are at 2.5%, dies a lot, is always asking questions about the class priorities and such but never can seem to master it. He's a nice fellow but not a good ret.
Myself and the other fellow are both very driven to excel in our class, push hard to get gear, and we're always near the top damage in our raid group. So my experience says that rets are really good when played by skilled and driven players. In early heroic progression I was consistently in the top 2 dps (fighting with , even though I never got a heroic weapon. And now after 6.0 I'm back up topping the meters. But this is only my guild group and not the whole world of warcraft. What I know is that I've never ran with a group who dropped my because I wasn't keeping up. I've never been kicked from a pug. I've rarely been refused a spot because I was a paladin, usually because I was melee or because they had too many plate classes already. So I (again, from my own limited experience) have no concern at all that Ret paladins will not find raiding spots.
Pushing for server first mythic? I have no Idea. I don't live in that world, and neither do many others.
Also, the best way to ensure your spot on a raid team is to start your own, or be a founding member of one.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I would pick the better player

Lies, you'd pick the better player and ask them to play a better class/spec- my guild is "pushing" me to play another class/spec not because ret is particulary "bad" but I could do the same job on a better class- incidently that's why you only see a few class/spec combinations at the highest level of raiding.
p.s no I'm not planning to change, I'd rather accept the bench than play a ranged class- I absolutely hate playing ranged.

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Also, the best way to ensure your spot on a raid team is to start your own, or be a founding member of one.

Best way to ensure a spot in the main raid team is to provide something that can't be valued on the same grounds as class balance, for me that means stepping up to doing the boring or "raid wipe" mechanics and calling out timings and such if RL wants me to do so. My raid has 8 or 9 melee on roster for WoD, ideealy we'd drop that to 6-7 to avoid setup issues for the more melee unfriendly bosses- like I said earlier; a lot of class/specs can fill a potential "ret spot" and the class might be a better choice.

[Ciric-Wildhammer]

Lies, you'd pick the better player and ask them to play a better class/spec- my guild is "pushing" me to play another class/spec not because ret is particulary "bad" but I could do the same job on a better class- incidently that's why you only see a few class/spec combinations at the highest level of raiding.
p.s no I'm not planning to change, I'd rather accept the bench than play a ranged class- I absolutely hate playing ranged.

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Best way to ensure a spot in the main raid team is to provide something that can't be valued on the same grounds as class balance, for me that means stepping up to doing the boring or "raid wipe" mechanics and calling out timings and such if RL wants me to do so. My raid has 8 or 9 melee on roster for WoD, ideealy we'd drop that to 6-7 to avoid setup issues for the more melee unfriendly bosses- like I said earlier; a lot of class/specs can fill a potential "ret spot" and the class might be a better choice.

But those warlock deeps(dps) tho.

[Flarpy]

Huntingon Bear, you must run with some real elitist jerks. I know plenty of good, top end guilds, and I have joined one myself, and they are fine with players playing what they are best with. There has been no pressure to play another class for anyone. I was looking at several top 50 guilds when I was going to join a new guild, and all made it clear that they wouldn't pressure me to not play ret. Pressuring someone to play a class, that at any time can change in its optimal damage, seems silly unless you are competing for a world first or something.

Additionally, I think paladins provide some of the best utility in game. People keep saying that other classes can provide much, much better raid utility, and I call baloni. I think other classes provide different, great utility, but things like all of our hands, are really unique. Strong offhealing mixed with our DPS (Loh, Selfhealess healer, Light's Hammer) makes us strong, and forbearance now being 30 seconds is great. I feel paladins actually have some of the most raid utilities in the game, and the people I play with love finding a way to use my CDs.

Now with ret looking to be one of the top DPS in T17, I don't know why people wouldn't be happy to take one. I would argue that they are more than competitive, they are actually really good. Many of the guilds that were top 50 US that wanted to recruit me wanted me as a second ret pally because of how strong they appear to be now.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

top 50 US, what's that for the entire western scene?
Ret isn't one of the top DPS in T17, we're okay++ for ST but 2-3 target cleave and AoE is terrible. Couple that with the simple fact that other classes that can fill our role have tools that might (most likely) be more used than Sac + Protection.

I'm not saying that ret isn't viable, I'm saying that we're far from being as good as other specs that can easily take our raid spots- that's the concern.

[Morally Grey Storm]

That concern is a result of the wow community being terrible, not retribution itself.

How so?
If class X is stronger in dps and provides an always useful, raid wide cd while not being hindered by rngods, than it is fething logical to pick it over class Y.

[Flarpy]

Ok, which classes are significantly stronger than ret? Other abilities might or might not be more used than Sac, protection, etc, but those abilities are unique and still very helpful to a raid. For example, a smoke bomb might be more used (if so, then those rets are using the abilities wrong, but for the sake of argument, lets say that is the case), but that doesn't mean just stack rogues for smoke bombs. Different utility and different buffs will help out more than just stacking a lot of the same buff.

If you don't think ret pallies are good, then don't play them. I see that they are strong right now, and there are no shortage of good guilds (at least that I personally know) that happen to agree. I don't get these complaints. Play with a good guild that will take ret (lots of them exist), or play another spec that you think is far superior.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Ok, which classes are significantly stronger than ret? Other abilities might or might not be more used than Sac, protection, etc, but those abilities are unique and still very helpful to a raid. For example, a smoke bomb might be more used (if so, then those rets are using the abilities wrong, but for the sake of argument, lets say that is the case), but that doesn't mean just stack rogues for smoke bombs. Different utility and different buffs will help out more than just stacking a lot of the same buff.

If you don't think ret pallies are good, then don't play them. I see that they are strong right now, and there are no shortage of good guilds (at least that I personally know) that happen to agree. I don't get these complaints. Play with a good guild that will take ret (lots of them exist), or play another spec that you think is far superior.

Would you be as kind as to allow me to decide which class and spec to play please thank you?

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Main rivals for raid spots for ret is going to be Rogues, DKs and Warriors if you look at melee- however both hunters and mages can fill the same role.

[Vathius]

Ret seems great atm. But I still think we need a raid CD of sorts to make our raid presence known

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Ret seems great atm. But I still think we need a raid CD of sorts to make our raid presence known

Exactly, even if we do competitive dps (which we only do for ST and those times when RNG happens for AoE) there's other classes that at least do the same throughput as us but brings better raid tools. (better or different)