Is ret currently enjoyable?

[Crudence]

I am surprised to see how many hate ret in pvp. I find ret much more fun in pvp than pve. Unlike my fire mage, I feel like I do dmg and can kill stuff. With my mage I just pop combustion and do a full rotation to someone and see them drop maybe 20% hp. While my ret just stuns someone and chunk em down. Guess all the melee is like that though, my rogue feels super powerful in pvp as well. In pve ret is really meh. It is kinda fun going divine purpose in low mythics and spam divine storm when you're lucky with procs, but other than that, I rather stick to my mage or ele shammy.

[Zenny]

Ret sucking in PvP is a bit exaggerated here, at least going by representation statistics. The spec has decent representation in both RBG, 3V3 and 2V2 in the 2200+ bracket. Even the 2400+ bracket. It's certainly not the best, but seems to be far from the worst.

I don't do competitive PvP myself, so am I missing something?

[Jieun]

Ret sucking in PvP is a bit exaggerated here, at least going by representation statistics. The spec has decent representation in both RBG, 3V3 and 2V2 in the 2200+ bracket. Even the 2400+ bracket. It's certainly not the best, but seems to be far from the worst.

I don't do competitive PvP myself, so am I missing something?

probably the fact that most posters are 1200 rated

[Morally Grey Storm]

probably the fact that most posters are 1200 rated

or probably the fact that the endeavors to result and fun ratio is slightly off when it comes to Retribution.

[xxcloud417xx]

I'm a 969 ilvl Ret Mythic raider currently. I don't PvP so I can't speak for that aspect, but for raiding and M+ it does okay.

As some people pointed out, fresh 110 it feels like garbage, but I'm using T21 4set, cloak+soul legendaries and have like 32% Haste and 62% Mastery now, plus Khaz'goroth trinket. Obviously it's a whole different ball-game for me than fresher Rets. The spec is a tad too gear dependent for my taste (as in needing really specific pieces), but I'm commited pretty deeply now, so there's now swapping for me.

Have you tried Frost DK? Honestly that's my 2nd choice for a melee DPS and kinda regret not doing it now.

[Evolution69]

I'm a 969 ilvl Ret Mythic raider currently. I don't PvP so I can't speak for that aspect, but for raiding and M+ it does okay.

As some people pointed out, fresh 110 it feels like garbage, but I'm using T21 4set, cloak+soul legendaries and have like 32% Haste and 62% Mastery now, plus Khaz'goroth trinket. Obviously it's a whole different ball-game for me than fresher Rets. The spec is a tad too gear dependent for my taste (as in needing really specific pieces), but I'm commited pretty deeply now, so there's now swapping for me.

Have you tried Frost DK? Honestly that's my 2nd choice for a melee DPS and kinda regret not doing it now.

Samething.

I tried frost dk, but the lack of self healing in raid (Death strike really? ) made me stick with my paladin.
You have a battle rezz as raid utility,
and you are really dependant of which legendaries you get.


I found Ret paladin less bound to specific legendaries although the ring(SoH) is a must.


What I like about ret is, you have multiple way to save your raid.

You get a debuff and you need to go far from the group, you can heal yourself before getting back with a perfect timed flash of light. ( or 2 - staying alive is more important than dying)
Someone get aggro in M+, BoP
BoF for some fight in Anthorus.

Your tank died from a one shot, Bubble taunt while hes getting rezzed!!!
Someone is about to die, and is out of range of the healers, Lay of hand. (Even on yourself it's a savior ability and remove a lot of stress on the healer.

And much more.


People always rank classes for the dps they can output versus other classes.....but from a raid perspective, I found the paladin really viable and ultra useful

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Started Legion as a Warrior after having mained a Ret Paladin since the start of WotLK, played Arms and Fury until christmas 2016 when I got fed up with Legion and the entire AP grinding bullshit.
...anyways I came back couple weeks ago and decided to play my old main, Ret Paladin, and to be honest there's nothing special about being a ret paladin at the moment- much like it was in WoD. It feels like you're a copy of Arms Warrior but filled with light, maybe with a bit of Fury Warrior mixed inn. The point is that I don't feel like a Paladin anymore, there are no tools that make you feel like a paladin that is powerful enough or used enough to justify being a ret paladin ...so why play one if you're progression oriented?

Ret was in it's prime in MoP when you could spec for Light's Hammer, Holy Prism and other things to help out healing during progress when you'd drop healers to gain dps. We had Aura Mastery that almost alone gave us raid spots on some fights, Hand of Protection was used on at least one fight every tier, Hand of Sacrifice was an important tank or mechanic CD. We still had powerful spot heals with talented Flash of Light and Lay on Hands- now they barely do anything.

TL;DR
Ret is now just a semi mix of Arms and Fury Warrior- covered in light.
There's nothing special that ret brings and their numbers, as far as I've seen, isn't as good as other melee.

[Jester Joe]

Started Legion as a Warrior after having mained a Ret Paladin since the start of WotLK, played Arms and Fury until christmas 2016 when I got fed up with Legion and the entire AP grinding bullshit.
...anyways I came back couple weeks ago and decided to play my old main, Ret Paladin, and to be honest there's nothing special about being a ret paladin at the moment- much like it was in WoD. It feels like you're a copy of Arms Warrior but filled with light, maybe with a bit of Fury Warrior mixed inn. The point is that I don't feel like a Paladin anymore, there are no tools that make you feel like a paladin that is powerful enough or used enough to justify being a ret paladin ...so why play one if you're progression oriented?

Ret was in it's prime in MoP when you could spec for Light's Hammer, Holy Prism and other things to help out healing during progress when you'd drop healers to gain dps. We had Aura Mastery that almost alone gave us raid spots on some fights, Hand of Protection was used on at least one fight every tier, Hand of Sacrifice was an important tank or mechanic CD. We still had powerful spot heals with talented Flash of Light and Lay on Hands- now they barely do anything.

TL;DR
Ret is now just a semi mix of Arms and Fury Warrior- covered in light.
There's nothing special that ret brings and their numbers, as far as I've seen, isn't as good as other melee.

I mean, I'm all for buffing Ret...but there's some very odd claims here.

1) Hand of Protection still has quite a few usages is Antorus specifically, like if someone screwed up on the Weight of Darkness from the dogs, it removes the fear from them. It also negates the damage of Worldbreaker after his intermission, so you can let someone either continue to beat on the boss, or save someone with low health. It removes a lot of debuffs actually, takes quite a bit of testing to figure out though what it removes and what it doesn't.

2) Lay on Hands is still as strong as its ever been, unless you're talking about reducing its cooldown.

3) There's a few reasons to bring Ret to certain fights over warriors, like Portal Keeper to deal with the imps, since Ashbringer is usually up for each wave for an aoe stun, while the 2pc and Greater Judgement allows you to quickly nuke the imps down.

[Grogplus]

Ret in WoD was everything it was in MoP but better, except the loss of Aura Mastery probably, kinda agree with the rest of your post.

[Deleted]

Samething.

I tried frost dk, but the lack of self healing in raid (Death strike really? ) made me stick with my paladin.
You have a battle rezz as raid utility,
and you are really dependant of which legendaries you get.


I found Ret paladin less bound to specific legendaries although the ring(SoH) is a must.


What I like about ret is, you have multiple way to save your raid.

You get a debuff and you need to go far from the group, you can heal yourself before getting back with a perfect timed flash of light. ( or 2 - staying alive is more important than dying)
Someone get aggro in M+, BoP
BoF for some fight in Anthorus.

Your tank died from a one shot, Bubble taunt while hes getting rezzed!!!
Someone is about to die, and is out of range of the healers, Lay of hand. (Even on yourself it's a savior ability and remove a lot of stress on the healer.

And much more.


People always rank classes for the dps they can output versus other classes.....but from a raid perspective, I found the paladin really viable and ultra useful

Wth is happening in your raids!?

[Logwyn]

Wth is happening in your raids!?

I honestly wish raids were more dynamic that just the same.... tank boss..... move out of fire......keep green bar to green.

[chocbear]

Ret sucking in PvP is a bit exaggerated here, at least going by representation statistics. The spec has decent representation in both RBG, 3V3 and 2V2 in the 2200+ bracket. Even the 2400+ bracket. It's certainly not the best, but seems to be far from the worst.

I don't do competitive PvP myself, so am I missing something?

You are missing the main subject. "Is it enjoyable" honestly i can get 2.4k+ on my ret but would i enjoy it hell no. It is a glass cannon that gets kited and destroyed ones bubble is gon. The pruning removed any satisfaction from playing ret. No ranged execute, no sac, no mobility , no self dispell.

Don't get me wrong ret is not bad, it just isn't fun , it hits like a truck in pvp when you manage to get to your target.

[Demsi]

Pvp is kinda the same, you do decent damage but your mobility is easily the worst out of all the melee specs (yes dk's have it better, death grip is an amazing spell and wraith walk is superior to divine steed) and Survivability is very poor now after they nerfed Justicar's vengeance early in Legion.

Pve isn't that bad i find myself being high on the dps meter quite often, and once you have soul of the highlord the rotation becomes quite fluid too with enough haste. And Wake of ashes is amazing in M+ that has demon and undead mobs, such as Vault of the wardens and Black rook hold.

[Malthanis]

As others have already stated, how much you enjoy a spec won't necessarily be how much others enjoy it. You'll just have to give it a shot to see if you like it.

Closing.