How is ret in pvp

[pretiwhitboy]

Hello havent played my pally since jan and was just curious how are ret pallys in pvp now? in jan they kinda sucked but i know some stuff has changed.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Still have to wait and see how the WoG change in 4.2 is but since NOTHING has been done with our mobility and "kitable-ness" i suppose we're still as much worth as that piece of gum stuck under your shoe.

[deathsage]

well i play 2v2 with my guildie hes a forst dk we both got 3k ress and more the thing is if u know how to play ret it pwns

[pretiwhitboy]

well ive recently been doing bgs on a lowbe warrior and i just dont see many ret pallys and im kinda wanting to play mine again was my main for like 3 years

[t3hj0j0]

We are burst bots. That is our job. We aren't the best at it, but we can do it. We are useful because a majority of our burst is holy damage (only mitigated by res). The (many) downsides is that 1) have low survivability. Our defensive stuff is dispellable and all long CD's. Once you stop one form of incoming death, another will hit you and you can do nothing about it. 2) all our offense is dispellable. Wings? bye bye. Freedom? bye bye. 3) our time om target is terrible. We may be hard to snare/slow, but constantly cleansing them ooms us, and just because they cant slow us doesn't mean we can hit them. Without a reliable (or even good) gap closer, anyone can kite our ass all day long (I got bored and went prot on my paly... and I kited a ret to death...). 4) our utility is lackluster. Yah, our blessings and hands are cool, but they are dispellable and are typically (in the case of hands) used on ourselves in a futile attempt to save us from utter destruction.

We are rather... lackluster in pvp to say the

[Marc123]

Hate to disillusion you, Ret sucks. We picked up some AOE but it's not enough. We still do not bring any CC to PVP and damage is still mediocre. I see on the meters, mage, mage, hunter, warrior, mage, rogue, mage. I don't see any invites to RBG and would need someone to carry you in 3v3 or 2v2.

[zcks]

All ret has every really brought was

1: Burst, its not the best however because its completely reliant on cool downs which are easily dispelled by any mage, shaman, hunter or priest.

2: Off healing, this has decreased greatly since 4.1 & while 4.2 will help somewhat it will still be extremely hard to balance this because ret is a dps spec. This means ret's can probably expect to see a nerf either to off healing or somewhere else (its just sad at this point blizz keeps trying to force that role on ret when even they admit it cannot be balanced).

3: Hand spells, again these are easily dispelled so if the enemy has a mage, shaman, priest or hunter its not much use.


All in all ret is a off heal bot that has under par survivability (due to everything having a CD or being weak vs dispels), it can also throw in decent burst if your team mates can snare spam the enemy so you can catch them (only spec in game that is reliant on allies for time on target) but that burst can also be easily dispelled.

So at the end of the day their is nothing that ret really brings that is not easily countered or brought better by someone else.

[Deleted]

2) all our offense is dispellable. Wings? bye bye. Freedom? bye bye.

Even death knights have dispel resistance to their goddamn diseases, that are applied as side effects of other attacks - and if you manage to dispel them anyway, they gain fresh runes. Our CDs could use something like that too against offensive dispels. Like, if AW is dispelled, its remaining CD would be reduced by 1.5 mins etc. Or very least the dispeller should receive a good chunk of holy damage, equal to an unabsorbed HoW hit or something.

[zcks]

Even death knights have dispel resistance to their goddamn diseases, that are applied as side effects of other attacks - and if you manage to dispel them anyway, they gain fresh runes. Our CDs could use something like that too against offensive dispels. Like, if AW is dispelled, its remaining CD would be reduced by 1.5 mins etc. Or very least the dispeller should receive a good chunk of holy damage, equal to an unabsorbed HoW hit or something.

Ask any of the long time posters about me & they will tell you I have been an advocate of a backlash system for dispelling ret buffs/debuffs for a long time. As paladins (&ret) are so based around buffs it only makes sense that stripping the ret paladin of his buffs or removing all his debuffs should have a negative consequence.

For instance if eye for an eye were to be moved a little lower into the ret tree it could be modified as such.

Eye for an Eye: In addition to its other effects dispelling the paladins buffs or debuffs will cause the caster of said dispel to suffer holy damage equal to X% of the paladins attack power or Y% of the paladins spell power (whichever is higher). This damage bypasses all absorb & damage reduction effects (including resilience like how chaos bolt works)

This would mean its completely possible to dispel the tools a ret paladin brings but it comes at the price of a small (around 7-10k for an epiced out paladin) chunk of health.

[Ramian]

Right now our clucky mechanic is whats letting us rets down in pvp. We rely far too much on Avenging Wrath now than pre cata to generate any sort of big dmg output.
Also the CD on WoG has affected our survivability. Overall we are not bad but we arent that good either.

[pretiwhitboy]

So basically not a good choice to be Ret in 2s

[SuperomegaOP]

its basically the same in wrath... except both burst damage and healing/surv are worse and we have a chunky-as-hell combo system and RNG all day

basic and easy to learn rotation>chunky and easy to learn rotation

[Divinelolz]

Ret is feeling alot better with the ten second CD on wog I'm not having any trouble shitting on equal geared players anyone who tells you Ret is awful doesn't have a good grasp on how to play the spec

[Deleted]

Ret is feeling alot better with the ten second CD on wog I'm not having any trouble shitting on equal geared players anyone who tells you Ret is awful doesn't have a good grasp on how to play the spec

or maybe you're not playing agains't skilled people. N'uff said

[Reith]

Concerning arenas: if you have a partner to slow people down for you, you can do good. If you don't, you're (usually) up @#^@ creek without a paddle against certain setups (i.e.: anything with a DK spec'd into Desecration).

Concerning normal battlegrounds: this week is going to be stupid for assessing the usefulness of retribution in normal battlegrounds because a lot of the higher-tiered PVPers (probably not the top-of-the-top, but the ones up there underneath 'em) will be doing battlegrounds to kill time, due to the fact that you cannot queue for arenas. Until the season actually starts, we can't make a real determination how good it is just for normal battlegrounds.

Concerning rated battlegrounds: I think we will do decently. There's potential as an emergency off-healer. You'll usually have someone to slow down people, so that's good for your up-time too.

I've also noticed the usefulness of the range increase on Repentance. Pretty decent. Good crits with Word of Glory on another player. Overall, though, we're probably not quite there compared to the other melee yet. I personally wouldn't switch mains because of that disparity, however. I love being a paladin and Blizzard knows that there are many people like me, so they're confident that it's not going to lower the playing population of paladins significantly by any means.

[beingmused]

I've also noticed the usefulness of the range increase on Repentance. Pretty decent. Good crits with Word of Glory on another player.

Good lord yes - so many times I would have to run off of a target to get in Repent range of a healer during a critical CC chain...that, plus the longer Inq uptime and WoG being up more or less every time I want it...I'm quite excited for those quality of life improvements.

[terrahero]

Imagine, everyone you fight is in full SWAT gear. With thermal-imaging goggles, heartbeat sensors, caltrops, flashbang grenades, semi-automatic rifles, some special trained dogs and a full automatic shotgun aswell as a fucking jetpack. You on the other hand have a wet towel and a rock.

Thats what its always been like to pvp as Ret, since vanilla. You lack tools, and what you do have is pretty blunt.

[Daladier]

I found Ret to be in a decent spot in 4.1 except the way we are kited. However, I quit right before 4.2 came out, because I ran out of money, but looking at the nerfs they implemented to other classes such as mages and DKs. Though slight they may be, a nerf is great to see for them. I feel like ret paladins would be perfectly fine in 2v2 for patch 4.2. Just have to know how to play a ret paladin is all. Even in PvE they are fine.