Retribution Paladin 9.2 situation

[Atrea]

I can't really understand what OP is trying to say, but Ret's numbers for 9.2.7 look fine.

Aside from Destruction Warlock, all of the other classes/specs are within ~5% of one another in terms of performance.

In the hands of the average player that 5% is probably close to 1%.

If you can't find groups in spite of this, the problem is not the class, it's you.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I can't really understand what OP is trying to say, but Ret's numbers for 9.2.7 look fine.

Aside from Destruction Warlock, all of the other classes/specs are within ~5% of one another in terms of performance.

In the hands of the average player that 5% is probably close to 1%.

If you can't find groups in spite of this, the problem is not the class, it's you.

I get what you are saying but that's not really how metas or pug mentality works. Classes could all do the same damage and you'd still struggle to get invites as ret even with higher gear and score than a monk or hunter or etc. You just don't bring anything that groups actually need. No lust, no soothe, no ring of peace, no debuffs or buffs (Devotion aura is not important comparatively)

Monk: ring of peace is one of the best utility abilities in the game for like 10 reasons. Paralysis plus RoP can enable skips or at least take a mob out of the fight (like in Plaguefall). PHysical damage debuff. Excellent personal survivability and insane burst AE dps.

Hunter (any spec): huge AE damage, soothe (mandatory on weeks like this), lust (mandatory always), then less important but often useful stuff like ice trap and misdirect

Everything in ret's kit falls into the "nice, but definitely not necessary" category. Freedom is neat in a few places (like pre-freedom on the last boss in NW or in Streets) but not mandatory, BoP can be useful in some circumstances but also never mandatory, and BoS and LoH are neat but also not necessary. And you produce less overall healing than non healing hybrids by a lot.

This is not at all to suggest you can't do things with Ret, because of course you can. But there is never a specific reason to click the invite button over almost any other melee, let alone meta ones. And sadly with the DF talent trees as they are right now, nothing is getting added to the kit that's going to make a difference. The spec will be completely reliant on damage tuning, which is usually middle of the pack

[Aydinx2]

I actually kind of like managing holy power. It’s way better now with 5 and spending 3 vs just having 3 which is how it was a while back. You have to really manage is properly since you have a few +1s then a +2 that procs sometimes. I think it’s more subtle than it seems to get it right. It is at its core a builder spender like rage or energy/cp, but I’m actually happy with it I’m SL.

How is it managing? It's braindead easy to use it.
I don't even notice that I'm doing it. It takes 0 effort and braincells to "manage".

[Unholyground]

Tons of rets in BC classic atm.

Literally all love it. It feels like an actual paladin and it´s fun, engaging.

They could bring them back and maybe work on them a bit (with 16 years of experience on paladins..)

Just wait until they have long arm of the law again. I miss Paladin sprint lol.

[Gasparde]

Unless Rets dealt 10% more than any other spec they'll just about never be brought to anything.

Their utility simply doesn't match up to others - at least relevant utility that is.
A ST stun, a long ass CD aoe disorient and a handful of Blessings that don't do shit in 99 out of 100 cases don't even come close to shit like Ring of Peace or Shroud.
Add to that their absolutely ridiculous slowness and the circumstance that despite being a plate class, they still feel squishier than most leather or cloth classes - and let's not even talk about their laughable offheal.

Rets are gonna be... what they've always been: Absolute bottom of the barrel. Which doesn't mean they can't complete a +25 or raid at the highest mythic levels... it just means that just about every other spec is better than them - some only slightly, some massively. Thus it's gonna be the same argument as every single other time: Why would you ever bother bringing a Ret if you could bring literally anything else instead?

Luckily, DF doesn't seem to be changing anything about that - in fact, you're probably gonna lose half your current utility kit the way these trees are structured right now. Meanwhile Shamans get like a free 5 utility totems + absurd defenses, Mages get even more defensive tools, Outlaw Rogues even get party CDR and Evokers get all the movement shit in this world. But hey, Rets get Spellwarding - that's totally gonna be a thing that's gonna be relevant on 1 fight and maybe 1 dungeon in season 3 or so.

[Atrea]

I get what you are saying but that's not really how metas or pug mentality works.

Seems like a problem that doesn't affect everyone equally.

I pugged ~70% of my KSM as Ret and never had a problem getting groups. Only about half of them were with my own key, even.

The most plausible explanation for the difference is player attitude.

[Gasparde]

The most plausible explanation for the difference is player attitude.

No it's not. It's merely one of a dozen of equally plausible factors. The one that makes it most plausible to you is that it underlines your narrative, makes you look good and everyone else look lazy.

- There was way less of an established meta in the beginning of the season and if you simply had adequate ilvl early on, that was enough to get you into groups.
- Coming from a relatively good r.io last season would have also gotten you into plenty of groups early on.
- Implying that you didn't PuG almost half of your keys means you could've either gotten a headstart or didn't have to drag yourself across the finish line due to premade benefits.
- Your perception of "never had a problem of getting groups" might mean anything from "I was fine with waiting 40 minutes to get a dungeon going" to "insta invites all the time".

There's plenty of other plausible reasons for Rets having a hard time - reasons that don't boil down to "you're just entitled and lazy".
I've pugged my way to KSM and beyond during every season on multiple characters - the difference between fotm / meta classes has always been night and day, and currently still is. My last key has literally had my group leader rather skip on a bunch of 275 adequately r.io'd Warriors / DKs / Shamans to instead wait 10 minutes before hitting up that oh-so-broken 262 Warlock with 1.5k r.io for a +17 key - only for said Warlock to surprisingly end up below the tank on damage.

You're not literally not getting into groups, it just takes you 10+ applications where Mr. Fotm gets in instantly. It takes you 10 more ilvls to be considered over Mr. Fotm. That is absolutely undeniable and has got nothing to do with "perspective". It's totally doable for someone to get KSM on Ret, duh - it'll simply take them ages compared to Mr. Fotm SV or Warlock. And some people simply don't have that extra time - and they also don't want to have to spend that time just to get the same rewards as Mr. Fotm.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

No it's not. It's merely one of a dozen of equally plausible factors. The one that makes it most plausible to you is that it underlines your narrative, makes you look good and everyone else look lazy.

- There was way less of an established meta in the beginning of the season and if you simply had adequate ilvl early on, that was enough to get you into groups.
- Coming from a relatively good r.io last season would have also gotten you into plenty of groups early on.
- Implying that you didn't PuG almost half of your keys means you could've either gotten a headstart or didn't have to drag yourself across the finish line due to premade benefits.
- Your perception of "never had a problem of getting groups" might mean anything from "I was fine with waiting 40 minutes to get a dungeon going" to "insta invites all the time".

Yeah this stuff is huge. I started last season 2 weeks late and I never would have been able to do anything if I didn't have friends willing to drag me through all the dungeons for the first 2 weeks just to get score. But in seasons where you "get ahead" quickly it's obviously a huge difference.

Also anyone who has multiple characters can see this very easily for themselves. I also played a marks hunter this patch and the difference in invite speed is laughable lmao. And it's perfectly rational! Despite the fact I'm worse at it, my marks hunter does more damage, has vastly better utility, and is ranged. There's no comparison, and I wasn't even playing the true meta, Sv!

[Niwes]

i agree to most comments, cause ret had this problems since after WotLK. ret is in some way the same swinging pendulum as shadow priest. they just never get it right. or at least get it kept in a good mid field. often ret is rather OP for 1 patch, or 1-2 months, before it’s back to the lower ranks. same goes for the the gameplay design per se, besides the performance. sometimes it feels they never had a real good idea what to do with the spec.

but all that said, i wanna add something to the m+ statements above, that many ppls often not realize:

there HAVE TO BE the m+ loosers. ret is one of them, but not the only one. there is SP and DK as well. besides specs like EnhShaman, AffLock, BM, DemonLock, Arcane Mage, AssaRogue, Feral, and others.

but why is SP, DK or Ret out of the window in m+ ? let’s have a look at it:

you have 3 dps spots in m+. if you have no shaman heal, 1 needs a BL/Hero dps class like Mage, Hunter or at least EleShaman. this means in most pug groups you have 2 spots left. often (depends on affix week) 1 spot is another range dps. so you have 1 potential spot for ret left. and even when both spots would be filled with melee, 1 spot is often placed by a SV hunter at the moment, or a monk. because of their absurd aoe dps.

so overall it most of the time comes down to 1 melee spot, left for ret. a slot that is targeted by Rogue (raw dps and shroud), by Warrior (raw dps), by DH (raw AoE dps) or by above Monk/SV when there is just 1 melee spot.

as many other classes or specs Ret brings not enough m+ profit to the table to compete with this 1 single spot. and it’s somewhat natural, because when you just have 3 dps spots, with 1 that have to be a BL/Hero most of time, there must be a lot of loosers. and ret is just one of them. if it’s not Ret, or SP or DK, it’s someone else. someone will always be the loosing end of the stick in m+.

that is not meant as some reason why ret shall be not good or anything. it’s just meant as some reality fact, that there will always be the non-profit m+ classes and it’s just a bit of RNG and historically evolving which these classes are. it’s sad to say, but based on m+ design, ret design and the fact that there are over 25 specs on 12 classes targeting 3 dps spots… results just in the fact that there HAVE TO BE loosers. in that sceanrio the truth is: ret is just no m+ class. as sad as it is.

[Gasparde]

i agree to most comments, cause ret had this problems since after WotLK. ret is in some way the same swinging pendulum as shadow priest. they just never get it right. or at least get it kept in a good mid field. often ret is rather OP for 1 patch, or 1-2 months, before it’s back to the lower ranks.

Ret isn't even in the same galaxy as Shadow though.

Shadow has been on average the very best performing spec across all of WoD, Legion & BFA, through just about all tiers. It's only recently that they've hit a slog.
Meanwhile Ret has, on average, been the worst performing spec across the same expasion span - with only 1 tier where it managed to reach the top 10. Other than that it's always just about dead average, competing with Windwalkers for the overall worst raiding spec of those 6 (!) years.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...QvY/edit#gid=0

That's fucking ridiculous. Being bad for 1 tier is one thing. Being a pendulum swinging from bad to good to bad to good again is another thing. But systematically being bad... always... is just retarded. And that's just always been the case. Rets are just always mediocre at best, meanwhile Warlock players throw a hissy fit every time they don't have 2 specs in the top 5 in the same tier.

All of this is only considering raiding, but its not looking much different for Ret in m+ either. Dunno about PvP, don't care about PvP - they have the technology to have that scale differently, so who cares. The state Rets have been in for the last decade is an absolute joke. Yes, there's always gotta be a loser, but it's simply retarded that it's always the same classes that lose and that, even at their peak, there's still better options.

It's not hard to fix that situation at all. Seeing how non-chalantly they decided to give Shaman 10 new utility tools, there's no reason why Paladins couldn't also get those. There's no reason that Mages, a class that can't possibly ever die already, randomly gets even more defensive tools (it's fucking stupid how cloth classes are so much more defensive than plate classes in this game). There's no reason that a class that already brings ALL the utility in this world suddenly also gets party-wide cooldown reduction in their talent tree - completely out of nowhere. Fuck, even Ferals have finally been given access to shit like Innervate. Even Holy Paladins have randomly gotten access to an interrupt.

Why is Ret simply not getting ANYTHING other than fucking Spellwarding? Is that the best you can do for that class? A spell that's gonna be useless 9 out of 10 times? A tree that forces you to go entirely into either Single Target or AoE, no middle ground, do one, suck at the other, that's it? I also can't wait for them to just not deal relevant damage in either area again. "They don't have the kit" is a silly fucking excuse - cause as we can see other classes and specs are simply being given the tools they didn't even need to begin with. It's just that some classes are absolutely left in the dirt - all the time.

[Niwes]

Ret isn't even in the same galaxy as Shadow though.

Shadow has been on average the very best performing spec across all of WoD, Legion & BFA, through just about all tiers. It's only recently that they've hit a slog.
Meanwhile Ret has, on average, been the worst performing spec across the same expasion span - with only 1 tier where it managed to reach the top 10. Other than that it's always just about dead average, competing with Windwalkers for the overall worst raiding spec of those 6 (!) years.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...QvY/edit#gid=0

That's fucking ridiculous. Being bad for 1 tier is one thing. Being a pendulum swinging from bad to good to bad to good again is another thing. But systematically being bad... always... is just retarded. And that's just always been the case. Rets are just always mediocre at best, meanwhile Warlock players throw a hissy fit every time they don't have 2 specs in the top 5 in the same tier.

All of this is only considering raiding, but its not looking much different for Ret in m+ either. Dunno about PvP, don't care about PvP - they have the technology to have that scale differently, so who cares. The state Rets have been in for the last decade is an absolute joke. Yes, there's always gotta be a loser, but it's simply retarded that it's always the same classes that lose and that, even at their peak, there's still better options.

It's not hard to fix that situation at all. Seeing how non-chalantly they decided to give Shaman 10 new utility tools, there's no reason why Paladins couldn't also get those. There's no reason that Mages, a class that can't possibly ever die already, randomly gets even more defensive tools (it's fucking stupid how cloth classes are so much more defensive than plate classes in this game). There's no reason that a class that already brings ALL the utility in this world suddenly also gets party-wide cooldown reduction in their talent tree - completely out of nowhere. Fuck, even Ferals have finally been given access to shit like Innervate. Even Holy Paladins have randomly gotten access to an interrupt.

Why is Ret simply not getting ANYTHING other than fucking Spellwarding? Is that the best you can do for that class? A spell that's gonna be useless 9 out of 10 times? A tree that forces you to go entirely into either Single Target or AoE, no middle ground, do one, suck at the other, that's it? I also can't wait for them to just not deal relevant damage in either area again. "They don't have the kit" is a silly fucking excuse - cause as we can see other classes and specs are simply being given the tools they didn't even need to begin with. It's just that some classes are absolutely left in the dirt - all the time.

SP thing: yes. in raiding. but i talked solely about m+ above. and yes, also in raiding ret is shit. but that doesn’t matter at all, when you comment apples (ret in m+) with oranges (SP in raids).

for the rest: no, i don’t disagree. ret is bad in many places. but my post above never intended (nor does) building a picture that says otherwise. ret is bad in a lot of places. i just said ret is „bad“ (brings to the table) in m+ AND described additionally why some classes have to have this position and why ret has it. nowhere i said „ret is bad in m+ but hey, ret is good in raids instead“. ret is fucked everywhere. even in PvP it was always a swinging pendulum, that was only allowed to shine at the start of S1 before it was nerfed to the ground (in many older xpacs, no clue about SL, cause since a long time i no longer main ret, you can assume why).

besides the fact that i talked about different things: yes, i agree, ret is often bottom, is fucked up and handled like a useless side spec. no disagreement here. my advice: do what i did and play another class or spec.

[Kalisandra]

Unless Rets dealt 10% more than any other spec they'll just about never be brought to anything.

Their utility simply doesn't match up to others - at least relevant utility that is.
A ST stun, a long ass CD aoe disorient and a handful of Blessings that don't do shit in 99 out of 100 cases don't even come close to shit like Ring of Peace or Shroud.
Add to that their absolutely ridiculous slowness and the circumstance that despite being a plate class, they still feel squishier than most leather or cloth classes - and let's not even talk about their laughable offheal.

The only armour that really does anything without some major class ability/talent to buff it these days is a shield. Just about every expansion they reduce the scaling of armour, and that means reducing the value of heavy armour.

Rets are gonna be... what they've always been: Absolute bottom of the barrel. Which doesn't mean they can't complete a +25 or raid at the highest mythic levels... it just means that just about every other spec is better than them - some only slightly, some massively. Thus it's gonna be the same argument as every single other time: Why would you ever bother bringing a Ret if you could bring literally anything else instead?

Another annoying thing is that even when Ret is middling-good in damage output, that almost always means as a class we're bottom or near-bottom, because the odds are really good that any class that has more than one DPS spec will have one high-performer.

Luckily, DF doesn't seem to be changing anything about that - in fact, you're probably gonna lose half your current utility kit the way these trees are structured right now. Meanwhile Shamans get like a free 5 utility totems + absurd defenses, Mages get even more defensive tools, Outlaw Rogues even get party CDR and Evokers get all the movement shit in this world. But hey, Rets get Spellwarding - that's totally gonna be a thing that's gonna be relevant on 1 fight and maybe 1 dungeon in season 3 or so.

The Shaman talent trees are how everyone's trees should be. Lots of utility, lots of different builds and ways to do damage, plenty of choice, and almost all the talents feel meaningful to pick - there's not a lot of +2/+4% going on in there.

I love my Pally, they've been my main almost the entire time I've played (since mid-BC), and they've been Ret main spec since late-BC, but this might be like mid-Legion where my main switched to my Ele/Resto Shaman. More fun, more utility.

- - - Updated - - -

Even Holy Paladins have randomly gotten access to an interrupt.

That's not random - when Paladins were first given an interrupt in Cata, we all got it. The real problems around that sort of thing came in Mists, when they decided that Holy could take Repentance. And then, because that was too powerful, Repentance got a cast time. Monks got to keep their physical, instant, CC though. Seems fair.

Why is Ret simply not getting ANYTHING other than fucking Spellwarding? Is that the best you can do for that class? A spell that's gonna be useless 9 out of 10 times? A tree that forces you to go entirely into either Single Target or AoE, no middle ground, do one, suck at the other, that's it? I also can't wait for them to just not deal relevant damage in either area again. "They don't have the kit" is a silly fucking excuse - cause as we can see other classes and specs are simply being given the tools they didn't even need to begin with. It's just that some classes are absolutely left in the dirt - all the time.

My theory is that there are roughly three teams that do class development. We see this in Torghast powers. One thinks that giving players anything powerful or fun ruins the game. One thinks that 'big numbers' are all it takes for something to be fun, but is fearful of going overboard (this lot did Pally Torg powers - they work, by and large, but damn they are boring). The last group thinks having options, stuff that works, things that change up the game, and so on, that are fun, might be okay in a game (this did the Shaman, Priest and Warlock powers for Torg).

The same teams seem to be on the job for DF, and they clearly don't play Ret.

[Tyris Flare]

Ret isn't even in the same galaxy as Shadow though.

Shadow has been on average the very best performing spec across all of WoD, Legion & BFA, through just about all tiers. It's only recently that they've hit a slog.
Meanwhile Ret has, on average, been the worst performing spec across the same expasion span - with only 1 tier where it managed to reach the top 10. Other than that it's always just about dead average, competing with Windwalkers for the overall worst raiding spec of those 6 (!) years.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...QvY/edit#gid=0

That's fucking ridiculous. Being bad for 1 tier is one thing. Being a pendulum swinging from bad to good to bad to good again is another thing. But systematically being bad... always... is just retarded. And that's just always been the case. Rets are just always mediocre at best, meanwhile Warlock players throw a hissy fit every time they don't have 2 specs in the top 5 in the same tier.

All of this is only considering raiding, but its not looking much different for Ret in m+ either. Dunno about PvP, don't care about PvP - they have the technology to have that scale differently, so who cares. The state Rets have been in for the last decade is an absolute joke. Yes, there's always gotta be a loser, but it's simply retarded that it's always the same classes that lose and that, even at their peak, there's still better options.

It's not hard to fix that situation at all. Seeing how non-chalantly they decided to give Shaman 10 new utility tools, there's no reason why Paladins couldn't also get those. There's no reason that Mages, a class that can't possibly ever die already, randomly gets even more defensive tools (it's fucking stupid how cloth classes are so much more defensive than plate classes in this game). There's no reason that a class that already brings ALL the utility in this world suddenly also gets party-wide cooldown reduction in their talent tree - completely out of nowhere. Fuck, even Ferals have finally been given access to shit like Innervate. Even Holy Paladins have randomly gotten access to an interrupt.

Why is Ret simply not getting ANYTHING other than fucking Spellwarding? Is that the best you can do for that class? A spell that's gonna be useless 9 out of 10 times? A tree that forces you to go entirely into either Single Target or AoE, no middle ground, do one, suck at the other, that's it? I also can't wait for them to just not deal relevant damage in either area again. "They don't have the kit" is a silly fucking excuse - cause as we can see other classes and specs are simply being given the tools they didn't even need to begin with. It's just that some classes are absolutely left in the dirt - all the time.

This is a good post. Another thing is that nerfing the Retribution passive from Legion/BFA was a significant nerf that at least made ret somewhat useful in progression (ret aura is dogshit by comparison).

I wish they would figure out way to integrate some of the pvp talents, which are both super thematic and also super cool. Sanctuary would be another good utility button, at a minimum (though still not all that great).

Personally I think it is ludicrous that classes with 1 DPS tree (aka, no choice) aren't always in the top half of damage in all content. If Fire mages suck, they have two other specs to play!

The fact that ret has such shitty off-healing in most circumstances is also criminal. Prot paladins are actual off-healers, ret paladins are not.

- - - Updated - - -

T

My theory is that there are roughly three teams that do class development. We see this in Torghast powers. One thinks that giving players anything powerful or fun ruins the game. One thinks that 'big numbers' are all it takes for something to be fun, but is fearful of going overboard (this lot did Pally Torg powers - they work, by and large, but damn they are boring). The last group thinks having options, stuff that works, things that change up the game, and so on, that are fun, might be okay in a game (this did the Shaman, Priest and Warlock powers for Torg).

The same teams seem to be on the job for DF, and they clearly don't play Ret.

I suspect it's not actually all that complicated. More likely it's just that they have limited resources with X devs, and none of them ever have enough time to actually finish something. And even if they do, people quit and get replaced so there's almost no institutional knowledge.

[Kalisandra]

The fact that ret has such shitty off-healing in most circumstances is also criminal. Prot paladins are actual off-healers, ret paladins are not.

There is a tiny amount of passive healing in the main paladin tree. I miss the old passive healing from DS. Sure it wasn't much, but it was something. What irks me is how much self-healing warriors have - and they're getting MORE in SF AND a ton of mobility.

I suspect it's not actually all that complicated. More likely it's just that they have limited resources with X devs, and none of them ever have enough time to actually finish something. And even if they do, people quit and get replaced so there's almost no institutional knowledge.

I reckon there are different teams (which may be teams of one person) because the Torghast experience is night and day depending on class.

[Tyris Flare]

There is a tiny amount of passive healing in the main paladin tree. I miss the old passive healing from DS. Sure it wasn't much, but it was something. What irks me is how much self-healing warriors have - and they're getting MORE in SF AND a ton of mobility.
I reckon there are different teams (which may be teams of one person) because the Torghast experience is night and day depending on class.

Triple cleave WoG in BFA at least let you feel like a support during like bursting and stuff. The current version does basically nothing in pve (except in pvp where it has been nerfed). And selfless healer is also obviously pathetic. Meanwhile other specs like DH have insane leech and can't die, and DKs have death strike (absolutely godly in the hands of a skill player), AMS, etc.

The price for having bubble is insanely high. I think they've been overvaluing it for like a decade.

[Biomega]

The fact that ret has such shitty off-healing in most circumstances is also criminal. Prot paladins are actual off-healers, ret paladins are not.

Probably another PvP thing ruining PvE lives.

Also, Ret may be suffering from a self-fulfilling prophecy problem: it sucks, therefore few people want to play it; and then because so few people want to play it, it gets less love from devs and doesn't get better; which makes even less people want to play it; etc. etc.

We don't really know how class design works EXACTLY but it does seem that there exist at least some preferences on the dev side as to who gets more attention and who gets less. Maybe it's not personal and just numbers-driven (see above), but who knows I guess.

[Tyris Flare]

The best counterevidence to that is that nobody played survival and then all of a sudden they made it amazing

I think the more likely thing is that they are way too worried about homogenization, so a bunch of specs just get left in teh cold

[Kalisandra]

Also, Ret may be suffering from a self-fulfilling prophecy problem: it sucks, therefore few people want to play it; and then because so few people want to play it, it gets less love from devs and doesn't get better; which makes even less people want to play it; etc. etc.

Well, that certainly didn't happen in the day when paladins were extremely popular, and thus should've got all the love.

[Biomega]

Well, that certainly didn't happen in the day when paladins were extremely popular, and thus should've got all the love.

Paladins != Rets.

Paladins are probably still one of the most popular classes, but their representation is unlikely to be in simple proportions - also, the type of player in question matters. I'm sure a lot of Ret players are rando commando casuals who couldn't give two fucks about actual balance, whereas in the field of players who DO care Ret is likely highly underrepresented; a cursory glance at WL shows them well near the bottom in number of DPS parses in raids. They're about 20% of the number of Warlocks, say, and ~50% less than DKs, DHs, or Rogues. Among melee only Feral Druid has less parses, but we all know Feral is the red-headed, one-eyed, albino step child of WoW.

[PaladinBash]

Ret has the problem of being a shit spec that is not only mediocre in terms of performance but has long had a deserved reputation for being braindead and boring to play. The only times it hasn't been boring have been when it has been fiddly and overcomplicated, often at the insistence of the few 'successful' players who play it, themselves almost invariably being underperforming players of better specs that rerolled Ret because it is played entirely by roleplayers, shitters and people that care nothing at all for parses/rankings in general. This is the other thing, almost nobody good plays Ret so an even modestly competent player of another spec, who would be quite far down the rankings if he played say a Mage or Warlock or whatever, will standout as exceptional at Ret not because he's particularly good at the game but because he not only has no competition but because the often-justified belief that Ret paladins are terrible.

This leads to the 'high end' players of the spec wanting it changed in ways that nobody that earnestly plays it out of either a misguided belief that Blizzard actually designs Ret properly (they don't even try to) and so think increased complexity will be mirrored by increased performance OR, more cynically, they KNOW this to be the case and want the spec made worse on purpose to discourage anyone else good from playing it. Why, you ask? Because they want to be kings of the scrap heap that this spec is. They actively want fewer people to play Ret (and if it's shit overall, it will be played less by good players by default), making their rankings higher and if it's very fiddly and gimmicky, only they will bother choosing those talents and builds that allow them to parse high to begin with. A few dozen people worldwide doing this as, say, Mages, would be a drop in the ocean but how many 'good' Ret paladins do you reallllllllly think there are parsing? And don't you dare even think it's more than that number, it's not.

So what we end up with is a spec that Blizzard hates and treats with contempt, that has a history of being played by shitties and elitist shitties, that is itself mediocre at the best of times and routinely far less, that doesn't scale well with gear, that gets nerfed immediately and needlessly if it ever does well at anything, that has a braindead and often unlikeable playstyle and will have to struggle to pug or join any decent group that doesn't personally know them? Again, your mileage may vary, but I never take Ret paladins to any key I ever have to find people for. Ever. And I've mained one for years.

The ultimate enemy of every single ret paladin is every other ret paladin. You can't fight it. To even think this is wrong is to think it.