No Ret Pallies

[david0925]

Probably not in 2004, no. But in 2006, sure. 1.12.1 Here's a cool guide specifically for Boomies in Vanilla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWNykuTfSU0

I have zero issues with people playing any spec in Vanilla, but have you looked at the damage meters in that video you posted? Other than on Twin Emps which melee has huge issues (and then the druid was -40%- behind the mages, with Mages at ~15% and Moonkin at 9%), you don't even seen Moonkin remotely close to the top, if ever on the damage meter at all up to his cutting off spot.

That's different from your original iteration of "Sure, their numbers might be 10-15% lower than a "pure" DPS, but that's not a whole lot."

[Gratlim]

I love these kind of topics, cant wait for Classic launch to see how dissapointed people are

Boomkins, ret paladins, ele shammies xddd, prot paladins xddd, feral druids hahah xd this is awesome

Meh, Feral is fine with pretty good dps (on par with locks and over hunter). And 3% crit for your horde of wars and rogues is pretty neat. On a side note, powershift macro is even easier on classic than the old system.

I will gladly accept outcasts in my groups and guild. Classic is about the community. Having farmed MC/BWL/AQ40 (Cthun on farm), i firmly believe thant you do not need to stack mage / rogue / war and priests to roll. 40 is a big number. And what hybrids don't bring on a DPS / HPS meter, they often bring it in utility for the rest of the raid and actually making things much smoother. It might be different for old naxx, but i have no experience there.

[anon5123]

In 5mans it literally doesn't matter, they do okay enough DPS and provide good blessings/utility; dps doesn't really matter at all in 5mans unless you're trying for 45min strat UD

it's in raids where ret is hot garbage despite all of the idiots trying to "prove the haters wrong" and other such nonsense.

[iDruid]

Troll. Post.

Also i will start a misfit guild and just do everything you dislike about misfit specs.

That sounds like a great idea! A guild composed of ret/prot pallies, ele/enh Shaman, any kind of druid, shadow priests, and weird spec hunters. They could probably handle all the content except raids and maybe progress there with a real competent group. I remember a video of 40 priests doing Onyxia. If they can do it, so can the misfit guild.

I'd bring a balance Druid to a Misfit guild. Hell Yeah! I think a guild of off specs would be a blast. Thats what Classic is supposed to be. Having fun again!
And that 40 Priest Onyxia is classic. Love that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAmXZPuS7L0

[draynay]

I still don't know why people want ret paladin to happen, its so boring.

[Laqweeta]

I have zero issues with people playing any spec in Vanilla, but have you looked at the damage meters in that video you posted? Other than on Twin Emps which melee has huge issues (and then the druid was -40%- behind the mages, with Mages at ~15% and Moonkin at 9%), you don't even seen Moonkin remotely close to the top, if ever on the damage meter at all up to his cutting off spot.

That's different from your original iteration of "Sure, their numbers might be 10-15% lower than a "pure" DPS, but that's not a whole lot."

I mean that's just one video and one player out of hundreds. Even Moonkins have issues with threat.

[david0925]

In 5mans it literally doesn't matter, they do okay enough DPS and provide good blessings/utility; dps doesn't really matter at all in 5mans unless you're trying for 45min strat UD

it's in raids where ret is hot garbage despite all of the idiots trying to "prove the haters wrong" and other such nonsense.

Right. If a mob has 1 hp, it doesn't matter if 1 spec does 1 million dps and the other one does 1 dps. Difficulty is relevant when discussing discrepancy between classes. So the context matters. A lot of the content is enough that even if your preferred class doesn't do as well it doesn't matter that much, but that's not a good argument if the point is "X class does just as well as Y" in a vacuum.

[Coldfrostzero]

Ret is fine in 5-man dungeons, because their DPS is based on short bursts. However, they are not simply gated by gear, they are gated by a complete lack of abilities to actually cast. You have judgement, consecrate, and their various seals. Most of the time, they are standing around, watching their 3.6s swing timer.

They'll still find spots in raids.

I found a guild willing to take me as a prot paladin. I don't plan on being a main tank and I'm fine with being an off tank. Wasn't even that hard to find one either. I joined a group in beta with a guy who is a GM, told him I wanted to see how prot paladin played out in raids and he said, "we'll take you as prot paladin."

Don't get me wrong, I understand that certain specs will be limited in being allowed. It's unlikely you'll find a guild of 5 prot paladins, 10 holy paladins, and 15 Ret paladins going around raiding. However, having 1-2 ret paladins or boomkins, a shadow priest, and a couple feral druids isn't going to ruin a raid.

[Thage]

That's not true at all. I have no problem being in a 5-man with a ret pally.

This. Hell, I've got some friends looking to put together a guild, and we'll happily bring along a Ret pally with Nightfall or another helpful debuff weapon, stick him on autoattack duty, and let him have his fun. Meme specs work fine unless your guild wants to be bleeding-edge progression, people seriously overinflate how stringent class demands are until AQ40 (and even then, a few warm bodies just having fun running shit specs is perfectly doable in AQ40 and Naxx, by all accounts, again unless your guild is looking for knife's-edge progression or speedruns).

Not everyone cares about running nothing but the most super optimal comps, and yet bosses still die at the end of the day.

[jackofwind]

Every spec is viable by definition. Optimal is the word you are looking for. Ret paladins will be fine unless you run into people (like you) who can't accept that they are going to happen. I'm no fan of asmongold, but one of his buddies is playing ret and they were killing SM Cath at 30. So that's gotta say something about the spec?

Is it going to be the best spec in the game? Far from it. It really doesn't matter though because as many many many people have stated, you don't even need a full 40 people to down a raid. People 5 manned Onyxia before the AQ patch even. Not to mention, people on private servers continued the theorycrafting and came up with many ways to make Ret, Feral, and even Prot paladins far more playable. With an even bigger community involved, I'm sure new ideas could potentially spring forth.

If a DPS spec isn't remotely competitive then it isn't really viable, because it simply doesn't do the job it's intended to do. I accept that Rets will be played, they will be around, and they will be exactly as capable as I know they are - no more and no less. They scale very poorly towards 60, so using a level 30 dungeon as an example is completely meaningless. Moreover, they gear poorly and scale badly compared to other classes with gear - so again, they fall more and more behind when other classes get geared.

There have been 15 years of theorycraft already on Vanilla classes and specs and honestly I'd wager that everything is known at this point. I mean we know about a crazy raid spec that requires farming a blues from Gnomer for itsproc and then weapon swapping it for level 60 weapon. There simply aren't deep undiscovered wells of information anymore.

Lastly, yes, you don't need 40 hyper-optimized DPS specs to raid. Certainly MC and BWL up to Nef are doable fairly easily with hybrid DPS. The fact remains though that every single one of those hybrid DPS are holding the raid back - it might not matter early on, but when you're missing enrage timers in Naxx it will. Naxx has room for 2 or 3 token hybrids, assuming the raid is geared enogh to carry them.

And that's the truth of it - if you're DPSing as a hybrid and doing 66% of the DPS of the pure specs you're being carried just as much as if you were undergeared and literally being carried through the raid. that might not be an issue for some people, but it's something they should know.

[Thage]

In 5mans it literally doesn't matter, they do okay enough DPS and provide good blessings/utility; dps doesn't really matter at all in 5mans unless you're trying for 45min strat UD

it's in raids where ret is hot garbage despite all of the idiots trying to "prove the haters wrong" and other such nonsense.

Even then, Ret can be handy in a Strat UD run--Salv means rogues, mages, and fury warriors can go dicks-out harder and sooner, meaning less time spent throttling DPS to wait on the tank to safely build up shittons of aggro, meaning a faster run with more margin for error and still making the 45m timer.

[jackofwind]

Meh, Feral is fine with pretty good dps (on par with locks and over hunter). And 3% crit for your horde of wars and rogues is pretty neat. On a side note, powershift macro is even easier on classic than the old system.

I will gladly accept outcasts in my groups and guild. Classic is about the community. Having farmed MC/BWL/AQ40 (Cthun on farm), i firmly believe thant you do not need to stack mage / rogue / war and priests to roll. 40 is a big number. And what hybrids don't bring on a DPS / HPS meter, they often bring it in utility for the rest of the raid and actually making things much smoother. It might be different for old naxx, but i have no experience there.

Feral simply doesn't outscale Warlocks in AQ40+ gear.

[OriginalName]

Lastly, yes, you don't need 40 hyper-optimized DPS specs to raid. Certainly MC and BWL up to Nef are doable fairly easily with hybrid DPS. The fact remains though that every single one of those hybrid DPS are holding the raid back - it might not matter early on, but when you're missing enrage timers in Naxx it will. Naxx has room for 2 or 3 token hybrids, assuming the raid is geared enogh to carry them.

And that's the truth of it - if you're DPSing as a hybrid and doing 66% of the DPS of the pure specs you're being carried just as much as if you were undergeared and literally being carried through the raid. that might not be an issue for some people, but it's something they should know.

Are we talking progression here or established guilds running naxx with suboptimal/subpar specs? There's a huge difference, given that a fully geared naxx group is gonna slay a boss in like 1 minute after combat starts, the tanks will have to go fury in order to keep up with aggro.

[jackofwind]

Even then, Ret can be handy in a Strat UD run--Salv means rogues, mages, and fury warriors can go dicks-out harder and sooner, meaning less time spent throttling DPS to wait on the tank to safely build up shittons of aggro, meaning a faster run with more margin for error and still making the 45m timer.

I don't think many intelligent or experienced people argue that Ret is bad in 5 mans. Pretty much everything is viable in a 5 man because the bosses have low HP pools and the fights are short. Where Ret dramatically falls behind is in raid content.

[Machismo]

I still don't know why people want ret paladin to happen, its so boring.

I leveled as ret in vanilla, and it is mind-numbingly boring. You are the same at level 10 as you are at level 60.

Honestly, leveling at prot or holy is probably faster.

[anon5123]

That sounds like a great idea! A guild composed of ret/prot pallies, ele/enh Shaman, any kind of druid, shadow priests, and weird spec hunters. They could probably handle all the content except raids and maybe progress there with a real competent group. I remember a video of 40 priests doing Onyxia. If they can do it, so can the misfit guild.

Have fun wiping endlessly on Magmadar with no hunter to tranq shot

[jackofwind]

Are we talking progression here or established guilds running naxx with suboptimal/subpar specs? There's a huge difference, given that a fully geared naxx group is gonna slay a boss in like 1 minute after combat starts.

We're presumably talking progression, because if content is on farm then it's pretty much by definition no longer a challenge. Faster fights are great for some hybrids (Spriest) but worse for others.

[david0925]

If a DPS spec isn't remotely competitive then it isn't really viable, because it simply doesn't do the job it's intended to do. I accept that Rets will be played, they will be around, and they will be exactly as capable as I know they are - no more and no less. They scale very poorly towards 60, so using a level 30 dungeon as an example is completely meaningless. Moreover, they gear poorly and scale badly compared to other classes with gear - so again, they fall more and more behind when other classes get geared.

There have been 15 years of theorycraft already on Vanilla classes and specs and honestly I'd wager that everything is known at this point. I mean we know about a crazy raid spec that requires farming a blues from Gnomer for itsproc and then weapon swapping it for level 60 weapon. There simply aren't deep undiscovered wells of information anymore.

Lastly, yes, you don't need 40 hyper-optimized DPS specs to raid. Certainly MC and BWL up to Nef are doable fairly easily with hybrid DPS. The fact remains though that every single one of those hybrid DPS are holding the raid back - it might not matter early on, but when you're missing enrage timers in Naxx it will. Naxx has room for 2 or 3 token hybrids, assuming the raid is geared enogh to carry them.

And that's the truth of it - if you're DPSing as a hybrid and doing 66% of the DPS of the pure specs you're being carried just as much as if you were undergeared and literally being carried through the raid. that might not be an issue for some people, but it's something they should know.

Yes, this is the issue. I'll say again that I couldn't care less what anyone plays with, but if we are purely debating about "viability", then running with a class that, when ignoring skill factor, performs at a 20%+ penalty at another class, you are holding the raid back. Now, you may not be holding the raid back as much as that Rogue that can only play at 30% of his maximum potential, but you are still holding the raid back playing a class that can only act as 80% of a Rogue even if you play said class at 100% competency.

Again, this is strictly from numbers, if content is easy enough or your raid doesn't really care, it's fine.

[Machismo]

They'll still find spots in raids.

I found a guild willing to take me as a prot paladin. I don't plan on being a main tank and I'm fine with being an off tank. Wasn't even that hard to find one either. I joined a group in beta with a guy who is a GM, told him I wanted to see how prot paladin played out in raids and he said, "we'll take you as prot paladin."

Don't get me wrong, I understand that certain specs will be limited in being allowed. It's unlikely you'll find a guild of 5 prot paladins, 10 holy paladins, and 15 Ret paladins going around raiding. However, having 1-2 ret paladins or boomkins, a shadow priest, and a couple feral druids isn't going to ruin a raid.

They will find spots in raids, but they won't do very well. If the guild is serious, then the ret pally would be the first thing they'd drop (or have him heal). Of all the hybrid class specs, ret is probably the weakest. I actually like feral and boomkin, and it's fun seeing the random elemental shaman.

- - - Updated - - -

This. Hell, I've got some friends looking to put together a guild, and we'll happily bring along a Ret pally with Nightfall or another helpful debuff weapon, stick him on autoattack duty, and let him have his fun. Meme specs work fine unless your guild wants to be bleeding-edge progression, people seriously overinflate how stringent class demands are until AQ40 (and even then, a few warm bodies just having fun running shit specs is perfectly doable in AQ40 and Naxx, by all accounts, again unless your guild is looking for knife's-edge progression or speedruns).

Not everyone cares about running nothing but the most super optimal comps, and yet bosses still die at the end of the day.

Yeah, most guilds will be fine puttering around MC and BWL. In the end, it's about paying attention, doing what is needed, and showing up.

[OriginalName]

We're presumably talking progression, because if content is on farm then it's pretty much by definition no longer a challenge. Faster fights are great for some hybrids (Spriest) but worse for others.

I agree that the subpar specs are a drain on the raid for progression, but once you've got it on farm after the first clear, if raid willing then there shouldn't be an issue in introducing bad specs if the guild is better for it in a social way. I'm not going to bar my members from having ret alts, they will however understand that those characters can not be their mains.