Ret getting nerfed hard again in alpha while not addressing gameplay issues.

[Recovery]

There are definitely worse specs! I literally just said that Ret isn't bad. I was just contesting the idea that it has amazing utility - I don't think has been true for a long time (measured against the utility brought by other melee, which is the only useful metric).

To be honest, I don't think ret really needs much - i think the utility of leather classes just needs to be nerfed to be inline with everyone else. When Awakened goes away, shroud is probably going to be dominant again and that mega sucks.

Its mainly DH tbh.. They just have too much. lol

[Sigxy]

You seriously never played vanilla and tbc to know the pain it was hoping the rnjesus gods blessed you with damage.

And this is what I love about these forums; people talk as if they know anything about the poster (even though they are absolutely wrong and knows nothing) - instead of acting like adults. Go you. :>

In the meantime; I think this conduit is great and wish we could have it baseline. A lot more entertaining than "Your next HoPo finisher deals some extra damage."

[kebabmasterxd]

Have they addressed ANY of the feedback so far in shadowlands? every SL build there is 0 for retribution, the talent rows are a mess, the pvp talents are a mess, the gameplay is a mess.

But they'll buff shield of the righteous

[Demsi]

Have they addressed ANY of the feedback so far in shadowlands? every SL build there is 0 for retribution, the talent rows are a mess, the pvp talents are a mess, the gameplay is a mess.

But they'll buff shield of the righteous

Not really no, we've had the same problems with dead talents for a very long time, in general paladins tend to get less attention than other classes since it doesn't stick out like Shadow priests or feral druids

[Harbour]

Are you fucking serious, Blizzard? Ashen and Seasons nerfs?
At this point just tell paladin players to reroll in a bluepost.

[Swnem]

And this is what I love about these forums; people talk as if they know anything about the poster (even though they are absolutely wrong and knows nothing) - instead of acting like adults. Go you. :>

In the meantime; I think this conduit is great and wish we could have it baseline. A lot more entertaining than "Your next HoPo finisher deals some extra damage."

Pretty cool assertion. Here a thing i like: People who arrogantly think they have a position of authority to talk others down.
Anyone who raided Ret in TBC (because in vanilla it was not viable at all) knows perfectly clearly what the hell seal of command was and knows that horde had the better seal. But hey, you came here to school us all, cause you know a lot, apparently, but say nothing.

RNG abilities are crap. That is what it is, whether you agree or not, i don't really care. I don't have any nostalgia for crap abilities. Sorry, if it disrupts your holier than thou attitude. You gonna have to deal with that.

The dumb aura nostalgia call is costing us Blessing of kings, wisdom, passive mount speed aura, passive retribution and word of glory AoE heal. Are you feeling nostalgic yet?! That is the kind of feedback that leads Ret back to the pit it was in. I want to see what nostalgia will do for you when you get turned out from groups cause Ret is s**t.

Seals are NOT the kind of thing we need back. They were a mistake and rightly moved, cause people have short memories. The damage for those seals is gonna come off your regular damage abilities and is gonna make your damage irregular. Do you think about that? No, of course you don't. You want a nostalgia thing and don't think about why it got removed and what the consequences will be of it's return.

Oh and to be completely clear, this conduit works just as badly, cause you will get the proc on TV some times and do great damage with it and others, where it will proc on the CS and deal crap damage. Now, drop from the crooked high chair and tell me why that this isn't right.

[Sigxy]

Pretty cool assertion. Here a thing i like: People who arrogantly think they have a position of authority to talk others down.

Sorry, must've misquoted me instead of someone else in that case and I don't think I have to read the rest! Laying down my opinions on a forum and if you don't like it; that's fine, it's your opinion. I'm not gonna look down on someone because of what they think.

I like it, you don't like it - we can still co-exist, don't worry! This game is really old and people will have different opinions on when their favorite moments were and what system worked best!

[Wries]

Felt very slow and clunky when trying it out on PTR. And here I thought they wouldn't be able to make it worse

[Swnem]

Sorry, must've misquoted me instead of someone else in that case and I don't think I have to read the rest! Laying down my opinions on a forum and if you don't like it; that's fine, it's your opinion. I'm not gonna look down on someone because of what they think.

I like it, you don't like it - we can still co-exist, don't worry! This game is really old and people will have different opinions on when their favorite moments were and what system worked best!

You quoted me though. With some good amount of passive agressiveness.

Yes, it's ok to disagree. I just wanted to say why it's a bad idea to want seals back, in my opinion.

[Kalisandra]

Im not arguing whether rets are taken to mythic+. I understand that they're not. As a 5k io player (which isnt even that great)...

It is if you're playing Ret, though, and that's a real problem, especially when there's no good reason to bring them to a raid either.

When it comes to m+, I looked at raider.io's world class/role leaderboards, and seeing as you reckon 5K+ isn't that great, how many of each class' DPS were at 5K+. Mages, Hunters, Rogues, and DHs are clearly the meta, with over 300 or 400 of each at 5K+. Everyone else is fairly awful, but there are groupings within that - Warriors are 'least awful' (46 at 5K+), Locks, Priests, and DKs are averagely awful (25-30 at 5K+), while Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Monks are most awful (8-15 at 5K+). The latter group are so unpopular/bad that you don't need 5K to be on the front page (Top 20).

So I'm not sure 'not taking a warrior', unless you mean "I wouldn't take any DPS that wasn't the meta", is a great statement that 'this group is poor'.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty cool assertion. Here a thing i like: People who arrogantly think they have a position of authority to talk others down.
Anyone who raided Ret in TBC (because in vanilla it was not viable at all) knows perfectly clearly what the hell seal of command was and knows that horde had the better seal. But hey, you came here to school us all, cause you know a lot, apparently, but say nothing.

RNG abilities are crap. That is what it is, whether you agree or not, i don't really care. I don't have any nostalgia for crap abilities. Sorry, if it disrupts your holier than thou attitude. You gonna have to deal with that.

People remember Seal of Command fondly because they're vaguely remembering that one time when they got a perfect hit on a stunned guy in AV and deleted them. Like the way people prattle on about 2-handed Enhance because of that one amazing multiple Windfury proc that blew someone clean away fifteen years ago.

The dumb aura nostalgia call is costing us Blessing of kings, wisdom, passive mount speed aura, passive retribution and word of glory AoE heal. Are you feeling nostalgic yet?! That is the kind of feedback that leads Ret back to the pit it was in. I want to see what nostalgia will do for you when you get turned out from groups cause Ret is s**t.

Personally I thoroughly dislike the Greater Blessings. Wisdom no longer giving a small passive heal means it's worthless except in group content (where there's a healer to place it on), and both it and Kings don't scale with group size the way all the other 'group buffs' do. The other losses bother me though.

Seals are NOT the kind of thing we need back. They were a mistake and rightly moved, cause people have short memories. The damage for those seals is gonna come off your regular damage abilities and is gonna make your damage irregular. Do you think about that? No, of course you don't. You want a nostalgia thing and don't think about why it got removed and what the consequences will be of it's return.

I did miss the late-LK to MoP DoT seal, once they got the stacking speed issue solved (mid-Cata onwards). Good for annoying Rogues, and improved our DPS in fights where we couldn't sit on a target all fight.

[Recovery]

It is if you're playing Ret, though, and that's a real problem, especially when there's no good reason to bring them to a raid either.

When it comes to m+, I looked at raider.io's world class/role leaderboards, and seeing as you reckon 5K+ isn't that great, how many of each class' DPS were at 5K+. Mages, Hunters, Rogues, and DHs are clearly the meta, with over 300 or 400 of each at 5K+. Everyone else is fairly awful, but there are groupings within that - Warriors are 'least awful' (46 at 5K+), Locks, Priests, and DKs are averagely awful (25-30 at 5K+), while Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Monks are most awful (8-15 at 5K+). The latter group are so unpopular/bad that you don't need 5K to be on the front page (Top 20).

SO the thing is... 5kIO isnt that great when youre tryinng to push high IO. I dont know the exact numbers but i assume its probably like the top .05%.

4k IO is having all 23s or something along those lines, which isnt necessary, its a competitive thing. I dont think the problem is so much that rets cant get there as it is a problem of people realizing it would be EASIER to do it on another class. A ret can certainly do it, but why make it harder? You could do it much easier on DH,rogue, hunter.

I dont think its a problem that there arent many rets in the top 1% of m+ players.

There will always be a meta in WoW. There will always be classes / comps that excel in areas that others dont. There will always be a class or 2 or a spec or 2 that are just bad.

This is how WoW has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be.

But i can agree with some things people have said on this thread.

Either blizz needs to make rets sustained damage more attractive, OR, blizz needs to make their utility more attractive to groups. However, there is a fine line in doing both things because you dont want the community to adopt the idea that its mandatory to have a ret in your group.

I believe we will see alot of changes in the meta of all areas of the game in shadowlands due to target caps.

[apelsinjuice]

pretty much every class just got huge updates with big blue post but ofcourse nothing at all for paladin and obviously not ret

[Schattenlied]

pretty much every class just got huge updates with big blue post but ofcourse nothing at all for paladin and obviously not ret

Yup... This shit is really disappointing... We've been giving feedback all through alpha and beta and not one of our concerns have been addressed.

[Kalisandra]

This is how WoW has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be.

That's all very well, but we have a situation (and it's one that's been common throughout WoW's history) where the only DPS spec for the Paladin class has been part of no meta for the entire expansion - not arena, not RBGs, not m+, and not raiding. When your favoured spec is NEVER the meta, and often never even average in most content, you start to wonder why you play.

As for target caps - that'll help the casters with good AoE spells, but it won't help us unless they de-cap DS.

[Couchpotato2013]

Right now ret operates like a melee fire mage that cannot apply ignite. Sure you can stack IT and Masterful3 corruptions (100+% ideal), along with 1xEP, 2-3xLD, 3-2xAM, Vial/Vita/HBS, VoP, lucid, CnS, botd, Zeal, HoW, WoA, US, WoG, and Crusade (2+ build, ok for ST but whenever is anything really ST these days) but where does that get you?

-5th lowest on 80 and 90 percentiles for the raid
-it doesn’t even show up on the top 15 most represented for 3s on arenamate
-which necessitates having to play CnS major and likely cavalier plus stacking +speed gear and a +movement gem cause the class/spec is a waddler
-like why would you ever play ret in m+ when you can play holy and bring a fisher-price button spec that can do more and a ranged ret that can apply a mastery scaling dot (aka fire mage)

Looking back on the whole affair of BFA, I can say hey I am happy with what I have done (working on arena right now as holy), sure I can have done more, but honestly I would have less of a hassle if I just played a caster. More gains for the same amount of work.

Not going to play paladin for shadowlands or any melee for that matter until blizzard actively creates a reason to bring melee besides a shorter kick (cause you know they are going to make more fights like uu’nat), which can be covered with other CC or tanks. Just going to avoid the heartache of not seeing my effort pay off in the final tier (arguably my most fun time to play the game). Playing lock in shadowlands, since blizzard will at least deliver one good spec that manages to be desirable in alot of areas, not to mention it is a class that chronically escapes scaling issues (it’s the reason why we don’t have snapshotting anymore). Been fun playing paladin on and off from MoP to Legion and finally a main with BFA but I just can’t put up with this from blizzard anymore.

I hope you pallies get what y’all want out of ret, I really do. Maybe I will come back if I find free time to gear mine out if things look better.

[Isenholt]

Im not arguing whether rets are taken to mythic+. I understand that they're not. As a 5k io player (which isnt even that great) i wouldnt bring ret, warrior, or dk to a group. lol

You cant be good at everything, bud, and every now and then your class is going to get the shaft. Look at Affliction warlocks for basically the entirety of shadowlands. Look at enhance. Look at ele. Look at feral. look at MM. look at WW.

Youre acting like rets are just the red headed stepchild of BFA. lol. They're far from it.

So, what would you recommend to "fix" rets?

I see you've explained your position a bit better after this post, which I appreciate, so I'm not going to jump down your throat too much BUT:

Of the specs you listed in comparison to Ret only WW is lower in rankings for NYA. I'm not sure if you were talking keys specifically, but this statement came off as really tone-deaf.

Saying "you can't be good at everything, bud." is also just odd to me. Most of the complaints we rets have are about our talent tree being littered with more than a couple of "dead" talents. For someone like me, I'm not looking for a damage buff, but rather some transformative talents and build variety (thankfully more in BfA than Legion on that front).

And yeah listing your 5kio followed by "it's not that good" could easily bee seen as a humble brag. I'm curious what your parses on your ret look like though if you care to share that and your xp in M+ in io on the spec you are debating about.

There's quite a few of us who are passion players for this spec. It's what we do, no matter how it's tuned. Obviously, I don't echo some of the more hyperbolic statements that some rets make, but there's a lot of legitimate upset and concern here; to have that waved aside in such a way is unfair.

[Couchpotato2013]

5k io
Bad

2832 characters in the world currently have that score or higher

Out of the 491583 characters that have a 1932 (flat score for all 15s in time, yes this does not mean that character has all 15s timed). Which place you in the less than the top 0.576% of the population of characters for scores. I use all 15s as a baseline because blizzard does not recognize anything in game beyond all 15s (besides more TR, AP, echoes earned). So it is an appropriate baseline, sort of like the real game being getting the highest score on the extended scale for PFTs. But back to the main point, stop trying to humble brag, you make people not want to listen to what you have to say.

[Recovery]

5k io
Bad

2832 characters in the world currently have that score or higher

Out of the 491583 characters that have a 1932 (flat score for all 15s in time, yes this does not mean that character has all 15s timed). Which place you in the less than the top 0.576% of the population of characters for scores. I use all 15s as a baseline because blizzard does not recognize anything in game beyond all 15s (besides more TR, AP, echoes earned). So it is an appropriate baseline, sort of like the real game being getting the highest score on the extended scale for PFTs. But back to the main point, stop trying to humble brag, you make people not want to listen to what you have to say.

I didnt say 5k IO was bad. Don't put words into my mouth. What i did say, is that it isn't that great... And it's not, from the perspective of a player that's competitive in that aspect. This is the exact reason i said it. For every person that cries "humble brag" theres a person that would have said "5k io isnt all that amazing. There are people who are 7k and nearly 8kIO".

Getting 5th place out of one thousand participants still isn't first.

.05% isnt .01% meaning there is still room for improvement.

You can apply the same logic to pvp. Gladiator is better than MOST of the wow population will do in pvp, but its not rank 1, meaning there is alot of room for improvement. The difference in skill level between a rank 1 player and a gladiator level player is insane!

- - - Updated - - -

That's all very well, but we have a situation (and it's one that's been common throughout WoW's history) where the only DPS spec for the Paladin class has been part of no meta for the entire expansion - not arena, not RBGs, not m+, and not raiding. When your favoured spec is NEVER the meta, and often never even average in most content, you start to wonder why you play.

As for target caps - that'll help the casters with good AoE spells, but it won't help us unless they de-cap DS.

Target cap indirectly helps rets by reducing the amount of aoe damage the other melee dps can do. Eye beam was so strong due to the massive amount of targets it could deal damage to. The value of eyebeam is GREATLY reduced on 3-5 targets. The value of Mage combust is even further reduced on fewer targets. It's really not that hard of a concept.

[Kalisandra]

Target cap indirectly helps rets by reducing the amount of aoe damage the other melee dps can do. Eye beam was so strong due to the massive amount of targets it could deal damage to. The value of eyebeam is GREATLY reduced on 3-5 targets. The value of Mage combust is even further reduced on fewer targets. It's really not that hard of a concept.

So is the value of Divine Storm, currently. Fury will benefit, because it's main AoE skill is already target capped. Other specs, like Ret, that aren't capped in BfA will all suffer. Now if our ST damage was extremely strong compared to everyone else's, then yes, everyone having capped AoE would be to our relative advantage because the ST building part of the rotations would matter more. However, unless the tuning is quite different in SL that's not going to be the case.

[Thundering]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9XB..._channel=Savix

kinda says it all, but Shadowlands will "fix" retail right!