Prot-Ret Question

[pierreluc102]

Is protret still better than ret in overall for arenas?

[zcks]

Sadly yes it is, it does nearly the same burst if not more in allot of situations, is much better when fighting enemies that burst, much better facing enemies that kite and is much better at fighting casters & melee classes.

Protribution is kinda op but at the same time ret is completely under powered when fighting anyone who can kite, nuke at range, spam ranged cc, offensively dispel or heal & that makes up every class but rouges, warriors, DK's who by chance tend to make up the majority of the ppl who complain about us being op.

The main problem with ret at the moment is that it can passively & heal better then any other hybrid but because of this it is confined to having only defensive magic based utility & not allowed to have any offensive utility. This should change in cataclysm since hybrid dps specs healing will not increase much at all while health pools will skyrocket.

[Myysticc]

What you're saying isn't true. Perhaps "Protribution" is better in certain comps (Resto Druid+Hunter) but that isn't to say Ret doesn't hold its own.

The downside to not being ret is you lose repentance, art of war procs and most importantly divine purpose (hand of freedom stun removal).
The upside to being "protribution" is that you gain a 3 second silence on a 30 second cooldown, hammer of justice on a 30 second cooldown and really good survivabilty against melee. Ranged classes still rip apart "protribution" paladins, there just isn't enough mitigation to make enough of a difference.

I personally play ret rogue priest, bouncing around 2.4k on cyclone eu, and if i where to spec "protribution", all that would happen is my priest or rogue will pretty much always get focused down quickly, and I love that as being ret I'm usually the main target. it's awsome to outplay others by not letting them kill you. as ret i also get consistant burst for switches whereas if i was prot i'd get a sweet amount of burst every 30 seconds with avenger's, but it's kind of sad tbh.

tl;dr, spec ret. tbh it sucks in arenas and is very unrepresented higher up, but the difference between good rets and pathetic fail rets is immense. even if you're just looking to faceroll to 1800 or w/e, i would still advise you to go ret.