How are Ret Paladins currently?

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

In my experience in this tier Ret has the strongest AOE/Cleave of any melee class - the only classes that beat me on AOE are Elemental Shamans and Warlocks, though it's not a huge difference. We have the best mitigation and survival of any dps spec, the best on-demand burst cooldowns, arguably the most utility, and respectable single target dps.

Ret is probably in the best spot it has ever been right now.

It's not as good as you make it sound but yes ret in it's current form is probably the best it's ever been if you have T16 (SoO) 4set bonus.
Our AoE is 100% dependent on RNG for you to do any significant dps, then again because of RNG we have the highest potential aoe damage of anyone.
We do indeed have the strongest mitigation for personal survival in the game, by far the strongest single target utility tools and a raid cd.
Our burst is nothing compared to what it was or even compared to other classes, I've seen enh shamans burst over 5m dps.
Our single target is lowermid table, around where DKs are. DKs do way more passive cleaves however which make them look way stronger.

All that's up for change in WoD, losing our raid cd, our aoe (by the looks of it) are going to be even more clunky. The talents they're trying out though is really promising.

[Farabee]

Ret has loads of utility right now. I use pretty much all my Hand spells, one of the things I see mentioned very little is that Hand of Sacrifice also dispels magic which makes it very useful on fights like Thok when everyone is spread out and dispels are crucial. Our DPS isn't great but with enough work we can easily push to top 5 of meters.

Really wish they weren't taking away our Devo Aura though. I'll probably go back to Prot in WoD on that alone.