Is the state of Retribution Paladin really that bad?

[mst3kfan]

Complete amateur comment. You are just listing and isolating abilities without reviewing them in the proper context of comparing them to equivalents of other melee classes, the competition. All power is relative. You're not even attempting comparing powerlevel because you're either ignorant of that or because you know exactly what the outcome would be and you're trolling.

The failure is yours if you are not knowledgeable nor skilled enough to use the tool kit properly. In most situations I have no problem walking all over, any/all of the other classes with the defenses and mobility Ret has. If you perceive other classes to be "better" go play them. Ret is perfectly fine as is. Arms and Survival are far worse defensively then the other melee specs, though their mobility is slightly better, situationally at least.

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1. Blessing of Freedom is USELESS for PVE because you'd have to cast it AFTER divine steed which then that loses massive amounts of speed from the steed.

2. Divine steed is on GCD(global cool down) list, NONE of the other melee movement abilties are on the GCD.

3. Again, not even worth noting for PVE, from wake/consec/HoH .

Defensives.
Lay on Hands is not a defensive, its a heal yeah it's a massive heal, but it's sure as hell aint a defensive, again the problem is that we get smacked and we fall over, BOP is phyisical, unless your getting struck by the boss it's pretty crap over all, SoV is crap, it is literally crap, shields you for sod all, the Only damn reason people even spec into it, is because of the damage you get from it. Bubble.. oh great our ONE shining thing, guess what, it can be taken away from us so damn easy, especilly in PVP, spellsteal gone, warrior throwing their damn axe at us? gone.

compare what we have to say, Rogues. 15% leach, 10% movement FLAT + the rogues sprint and other abitlies like teleport behind your target every 30 seconds.

A different spec, with a different design. If you want the toolkit of a rogue, or DH go play them. All the tools a Ret needs are right there. It all comes down to proper use of abilities to counter the other specs abilities. If you are misusing abilities you can't expect to properly counter them.

[Donkeywing]

In most situations I have no problem walking all over, any/all of the other classes with the defenses and mobility Ret has

Completely anecdotal with no proof or argument.

Ret is perfectly fine as is

No argument provided, you just listed the spellbook.

Arms and Survival are far worse defensively

No argument provided

though their mobility is slightly better

No argument provided

situationally at least

No argument provided

You're extremely opinionated but you have yet to provide substantial arguments for anything.

[Gorsameth]

Walk up to a random elite out in the world when you don't massively outgear it and a Ret Pala gets his face punched in harder then probably any other melee.
That is the sort of frame of reference the 'average' player will be looking at.

[Jester Joe]

The failure is yours if you are not knowledgeable nor skilled enough to use the tool kit properly. In most situations I have no problem walking all over, any/all of the other classes with the defenses and mobility Ret has. If you perceive other classes to be "better" go play them. Ret is perfectly fine as is. Arms and Survival are far worse defensively then the other melee specs, though their mobility is slightly better, situationally at least.

Blizzard themselves said that Ret is in a bad spot for what they want.

I don't care what you think or want to argue, the creator of the game themselves is saying something they made isn't measuring up to what they aimed for it to be.

Coming into a thread to declare "Nah it's fine" is clearly just looking to start issues.

[Eon Drache]

Ret does insane DPS. It's the rest of their toolkit that is the issue.

Anyone saying Ret DPS is bad is retarded. Really no other words for that person.

https://raid.subcreation.net/vault-eranog.html

Literally one of the best DPS classes on 2 of the raid encounters, beating out other crazy melee dps like UHDK or Rogue

You have to look at why. You linked Eranog mythic. I go in, look at the top ret logs. First one I see 8 peopele died. Ret had 44% uptime on Wings thanks to retribution Aura. 49% uptime on Seraphim. 4 casts of Grieftorch. Next one gets 2 people to die. These rets are also hard padding on adds. Now, I think ret aoe is fine, we are pretty strong in aoe, you take that away and ret SUCKS ASS on boss damage and single target even with wings and grieftorch carrying.

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The failure is yours if you are not knowledgeable nor skilled enough to use the tool kit properly. In most situations I have no problem walking all over, any/all of the other classes with the defenses and mobility Ret has. If you perceive other classes to be "better" go play them. Ret is perfectly fine as is. Arms and Survival are far worse defensively then the other melee specs, though their mobility is slightly better, situationally at least.

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A different spec, with a different design. If you want the toolkit of a rogue, or DH go play them. All the tools a Ret needs are right there. It all comes down to proper use of abilities to counter the other specs abilities. If you are misusing abilities you can't expect to properly counter them.

if warriors and hunters are worse with defensives, why is it that the top 10% of rets die more often than the top 10% of both of those. Survival isn't even the worst hunter spec for deaths. Is it just that there are NO good ret paladins?

[mst3kfan]

Every single raid boss fight is scripted. If you are not paying attention to the timers, and mechanics and are not using abilities accordingly; The problem is the player.

Please refrain from talking down to other forum users, and please do contribute to the thread while posting. Outright dismissing counter-arguments without offering actual further proof/examples isn't constructive at all.

[Eon Drache]

Every single raid boss fight is scripted. If you are not paying attention to the timers, and mechanics and are not using abilities accordingly; The problem is the player.

So every ret paladin is bad and all hunters and warriors are god mode because their defensives are worse than rets but they die less?

[Donkeywing]

So every ret paladin is bad and all hunters and warriors are god mode because their defensives are worse than rets but they die less?

Don't bother with that guy, he hasn't even substantiated his claim on the matter and is just throwing out random opinions with no argument to back them up. His last post was so vague and general its application even transcends the game. He's just hardtrolling. This in part why we really need these defensive buffs, because this is exactly the type of guy who will laugh at you when you die while hes playing dh or dk.

[Flaks]

Personally I dont see how mobility is an issue for paladins. We have a 100% boost for 4 (iirc) seconds with 2 charges on a 45 sec recharge if specced fully into the mobility upgrades. That's strong. May not be rogue strong, but we are armored knights not agile fighters.

Having the boost on judgement would be nice for on-call movement mid fight but you should have the horse for that by rights.

In a vacuum, it's great.

When you put ret mobility against literally every other melee's, it falls completely short. Add to that super easily counterable defensives (in part due to that lack of mobility) and we see why ret has no place in high end pvp and slightly mobile raids/M+ space.

[Raven]

No its not that bad and as all classes it has some issues, but players like to overexaggerate becouse they think it will increase the chance of getting buffs and most of the time anything other then fotm is "bad".

[Donkeywing]

and most of the time anything other then fotm is "bad".

Imagine coming in a ret paladin thread even mentioning the notion of ''fotm''. No Ret paladin is playing the spec because of an illusion that we were going to be fotm, like ever. The spec has more issues than others because the flaws in the specs became worse after the relative increases in power of other specs. This is mobility, utility and defensability primarly (details are in other posts/threads).
Also, we're not coming out of the rework ''all buffed up'', blizz is litteraly implying they will nerf our dmg profile (burst).

[mst3kfan]

So every ret paladin is bad and all hunters and warriors are god mode because their defensives are worse than rets but they die less?

I made no such statement claiming all Ret paladins are bad. Because they are not all bad. I am having absolutely no problem staying alive.

Every single raid boss fight follows an exact pre-determined scripted sequence of abilities. I am suggesting that to avoid dying, those that are struggling to stay alive should download, and use a raiding addon which gives the exact timing, and sequence of those abilities. Then research the dungeon journal to understand what those abilities do so as to properly learn how to react to those abilities with the very capable talents Ret possesses to keep themselves alive.

[Gracin]

Imagine coming in a ret paladin thread even mentioning the notion of ''fotm''. No Ret paladin is playing the spec because of an illusion that we were going to be fotm, like ever. The spec has more issues than others because the flaws in the specs became worse after the relative increases in power of other specs. This is mobility, utility and defensability primarly (details are in other posts/threads).
Also, we're not coming out of the rework ''all buffed up'', blizz is litteraly implying they will nerf our dmg profile (burst).

As someone who's mained Ret(and now abandoned) since mid-BC, I can only think of 1 instance where we were FOTM. It was during the WotLK pre-patch, and we didn't even get a full M being FOTM.

[Wrecktangle]

Personally I dont see how mobility is an issue for paladins. We have a 100% boost for 4 (iirc) seconds with 2 charges on a 45 sec recharge if specced fully into the mobility upgrades. That's strong. May not be rogue strong, but we are armored knights not agile fighters.

Having the boost on judgement would be nice for on-call movement mid fight but you should have the horse for that by rights.

Have you uh, done any high end raiding or keys? If you get targeted for 2 mechanics in ANY short time frame you're walking there and back and it feels awful. The other melee's don't have this issue. Not to mention, our mobility is like one of the ONLY ones on the GCD.

What are you muppets smoking? Ret has plenty of mobility, AND defensives.

Mobility wise Blessing of Freedom is a row 1 ability with a 25 sec cooldown. It has like a 30% uptime. Which is great. Not only that you have Divine Steed. While it is short, it only has a 45-sec cooldown, but you can get two charges of double movement speed. There are also multiple abilities you can take to slow targets either through Consecrate/Wake of Ashes/Hand of Hindrance... or Consecrate can protect you from being slowed.

Defensive wise there are plenty of options. BoP, Shield of Vengeance, Bubble, Lay on Hands, ect... There are also tons of talents in the tree that directly benefit or provide healing sustainability. Judgement of Light, Seal of Clarity, Golden Path, Selfless healer...

If you are blindly following some cookie cutter build, without actually reading and understanding your talent tree gtfo of here. Read your tree, understand what it says, and learn when to use the variable tools at the appropriate time.

I read it, and I play it. Do you? Because all those healing things added together are less healing than every other melee spec does passively. Ret's defensively are one of, if not the worst in the game in both pve and pvp. I mean the Devs literally confirmed it so you don't have any argument to stand on there. It's also why Ret's are the EASIEST go target in PVP. I have mobility problems compared to nearly, if not every single other melee spec. Ours are on the GCD, ours have longer CDs, and are generally less useful.

Ret does insane DPS. It's the rest of their toolkit that is the issue.

Anyone saying Ret DPS is bad is retarded. Really no other words for that person.

https://raid.subcreation.net/vault-eranog.html

Literally one of the best DPS classes on 2 of the raid encounters, beating out other crazy melee dps like UHDK or Rogue

Yeah, you uh don't know what you're linking LOL. Look at Ret being high on DPS on Mythic, but near bottom on Heroic. It's called Retribution aura artificially inflating our wings uptime. Not a single Ret actually wants this mechanic and we're tired of people not understanding it. We have one of the worst ST in the melee, and awful burst ramp time (the burst itself is good, but nothing special comparatively). Our sustained AOE is good, but incredibly limiting in that if the tank has to move the mobs, our damage plummets.

No its not that bad and as all classes it has some issues, but players like to overexaggerate becouse they think it will increase the chance of getting buffs and most of the time anything other then fotm is "bad".

You know that Ret has been the worst performing melee spec in 10 seasons of M+ right? This isn't anecdotes or feels, this is data you can search. Ret is playable, but it is not good. It has bad ST, awful ramp up time, awful mobility, is made of paper, and lacks any meaningful M+ utility.

[Nymrohd]

As someone who's mained Ret(and now abandoned) since mid-BC, I can only think of 1 instance where we were FOTM. It was during the WotLK pre-patch, and we didn't even get a full M being FOTM.

We were pretty solid in ICC with Shadowmourne.

[Gracin]

We were pretty solid in ICC with Shadowmourne.

And how far down on the list were you for bloods?

[Gloriandus]

Some Ret changes on 10.0.7 PTR (assuming I'm reading the notes correctly):

• Final Verdict range increased to 20 yards;
• Wake of Ashes CD reduced to 30 seconds;
• Blade of Vengeance (New): Looks to be a modifier of BoJ (BOJ now cleaves!);
• Expurgation's burn DoT no longer requires a crit;
• Art of War bumped from 12% to 20%;
• Vanguard's Momentum: Rank 2: Hammer of Wrath has 1 extra charge and increases Holy damage done by 4% for 10 sec, stacking 3 times. 4 extra charge, 10% increased critical strike chance, and on enemies below 20% health generates 4 additional Holy Power.

Might we become mid-range melee?

[Delever]

Some Ret changes on 10.0.7 PTR (assuming I'm reading the notes correctly):

• Final Verdict range increased to 20 yards;
• Wake of Ashes CD reduced to 30 seconds;
• Blade of Vengeance (New): Looks to be a modifier of BoJ (BOJ now cleaves!);
• Expurgation's burn DoT no longer requires a crit;
• Art of War bumped from 12% to 20%;
• Vanguard's Momentum: Rank 2: Hammer of Wrath has 1 extra charge and increases Holy damage done by 4% for 10 sec, stacking 3 times. 4 extra charge, 10% increased critical strike chance, and on enemies below 20% health generates 4 additional Holy Power.

Might we become mid-range melee?

This cannot be all the changes because it is barely a rework and also doesnt tackle half the issues we have but it sounds like a nice start.

[Alanar]

Personally I dont see how mobility is an issue for paladins. We have a 100% boost for 4 (iirc) seconds with 2 charges on a 45 sec recharge if specced fully into the mobility upgrades. That's strong. May not be rogue strong, but we are armored knights not agile fighters.

Having the boost on judgement would be nice for on-call movement mid fight but you should have the horse for that by rights.

Its pretty much required to use freedom in combination with steed. Which sucks..

We are not going to win this with the devs. We cant have mobility of rogues. Sure, but what we should get, is better ways to slow our targets. I think that should be the offset. Ret is bad at both, we should atleast be able to stick on our targets better imo.

[Delever]

Its not strong.

Its pretty much required to use freedom in combination with steed.

We are not going to win this with the devs. We cant have mobility of rogues. Sure, but what we should get is better ways to slow our targets. I think that should be the offset. Ret is bad at both, we should atleast be able to stick on our targets better imo.

The problem is that our mobility also sucks in pve. I agree we shouldnt have the mobility of rogues but we also do not have anything to compensate for the fact that we do not have this mobility. We still need 2 5hopo spenders and out huge cd to do any sort of meaningful damage and if something forces you to delay this for whatever reason you are fucked.