Paladin playstyle ?

[cassius]

hey,

sometime ago I was playing rogue, warrior. Now I came back to WoW and want to try Paladin as I like melee the most and I want to play new class (dont like DK's).
So I would like to ask what is retri paladins playstyle ? Is it fun, dynamic etc ? Do you feel you can kill things ?
thanks

[Egoospartan]

123123123123123123123 with an occasional 4,

In all serious, Rets are very simple for the most part, you have two instant strikes (At higher levels) judgements, and a stun. You can directly heal yourself and have a 12 second immunity, Its not a bad class, they are very good. But I personally dont find them interesting.

Rogues are more fun imo, but they are harder/take longer to level.

[jantimirlol]

I don't know if u already have an 80 Paladin or are just starting one.

For the first: I only use the retribution spec for questing purposes ( never used it in an instance). I don't have fancy epics with the spec but I feel I do a good amount of dmg during questing(It doesn't mean that much but still).

For the second: The starting levels up to 50 are not much fun, u can only melee and cast a judgement once in a while

The lack of decent mana Regeneration gives u a considerable amount of downtime(this changes once u get Judgement of the Wise at its maxed rank ).

Once u get to 50 it is more fun, CS makes everything much easier.
At 60 u get Divine storm and then its just running into groups of mobs and DS everything.

I don't have High end Ret experience, but my own experience of it when questing was very good.

[Ershiin]

Ret DPS rotation atm is called FCFS (First Come First Serve) due to how we currently have no procs to worry about, nor do we have any conditions to meet.
Doing DPS as a Ret Paladin is little more than just keeping an eye on when your DPS moves arent on CD then hitting them as fast as possible. The varied CDs of the moves also makes it impossible to even form a Rotation within those CDs, due to no matter what, you're inevitably gonna end up with 2 or more moves comming off CD at the same time.
And this is pretty much where the only challenge in doing Ret dmg comes in.. Priotising.. However you should quickly learn that since there is only 5 different abilities that does dps.. 6 if the target is at low health.

What makes Ret fun is actually not the doing dmg part.. That part is just FCFS. It is how you react to other situations.
The good Ret only truly shines in situations where doing dmg isnt the key part of winning.. Due to the amazing support and defensive abilities of the class.. If there are certain points during a fight where the healers are stressed, a Ret can successfully help aleviate alot of stress from said healers with rather decent offhealing, while still not loosing too much dps to just make him a bad offhealer who does no dmg.
They also have the benefit of a powerful dispell in the form of Cleanse, and can even remove stuns with HoF.
Or maybe HoP an unfortunate healer who got aggro from a newly spawned add..

In short, Ret arent fun if you just want to focus on dmg.. They probably have one of the most boring ways of doing DPS since the days of Shadowbolt spam.
Ret is fun for what it can do besides doing dmg.. And even WHILE doing dmg.

Put even shorter; If your raids biggest problem is reaching enrage timers, then Ret probably isnt the best nor most fun thing in the world.. If your raids biggest problem is some sort of tricky mechanic, then Ret can easily turn out to be the saving grace both for your raid and you.

... That was actually longer wasnt it? >.<