Page 5 of 12 FirstFirst ...
3
4
5
6
7
... LastLast
  1. #81
    Quote Originally Posted by Mashanerz View Post
    Don't worry, I'm here to help. Paladins have an ability called Divine Storm, it's functionally similar to Templar's Verdict however it will outperform it when hitting 3 or more enemies.
    Thank you for further proving my point!

  2. #82
    maybe blizzard want to make a lot of changes in the latest patch 8.1.
    They have not even solved the problem of idle in rotation. I am wrong?

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Poundcake View Post
    Ret is NOT fine for raiding. Look at the post right above you. We have ZERO cleave damage, one of the worst sustained aoe in the game, one of the worst mobility abilities in the game, this class is not fine in any content.
    Its alot worse in m+ for obvious reasons (much fewer spots). Now combine that raid output + obvious shit sustain ae and you have ret in m+. Ret is one of those few specs that cant do both "decent ae and good/decent boss dmg" in one build/trait-alignment.

  4. #84
    Officers Academy Prof. Byleth's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Fódlan
    Posts
    2,225
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    I've mained a Ret since late BC (with an Elemental/Resto Shaman as secondary since late LK). As you'd expect I'm delighted with current class/spec balance and design. Honestly, it's as bad as I've ever experienced.
    As a former Shaman main (BC-1month ago), I sympathize. These two classes are not in a good place.
    Here is something to believe in!

  5. #85
    Usually top 5 for damage and dps in my mythic guild. Always last alive in any wipe (unless i caused the wipe...). The ret passive is really really underrated.
    Only issue is that pallies are juggernauts. They are slow, tanky, and hit hard. Uldir didn't really showcase extreme movement fights where we weren't useful in other ways so its not an issue atm.
    Prot is mid tier and will probably be stronger overall next patch. Prot has always exceeded at tanking large groups. So with the increase in ilvl next patch, we will have plenty of chances to outshine other tanks in m+.

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by gioderpington View Post
    Usually top 5 for damage and dps in my mythic guild. Always last alive in any wipe (unless i caused the wipe...). The ret passive is really really underrated.
    Only issue is that pallies are juggernauts. They are slow, tanky, and hit hard. Uldir didn't really showcase extreme movement fights where we weren't useful in other ways so its not an issue atm.
    Prot is mid tier and will probably be stronger overall next patch. Prot has always exceeded at tanking large groups. So with the increase in ilvl next patch, we will have plenty of chances to outshine other tanks in m+.
    So all you need to be succesful as Ret is to have your entire raid die one by one for the passive. Also, your personal experience in raids is not an indication of the state of Ret.
    People don't forgive, they forget. - Rust Cohle

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Faesroll View Post
    So all you need to be succesful as Ret is to have your entire raid die one by one for the passive. Also, your personal experience in raids is not an indication of the state of Ret.
    My bad, I see I wrote "my personal experience matters above all else, only read THIS post". I'll add a disclaimer next time stating that this is a forum and that nearly every post on every thread is based on personal experiences. Of course followed by a link to wowhead/icyveins.
    But yes, on fights where we have constant deaths, the 3 rets (including myself) do better. Use to be phenomenal when we had two priests with the leggo cloak and 5 shamans in our group... Retribution was constantly up.

  8. #88
    Quote Originally Posted by Eon Drache View Post
    To be fair ret is currently the worst performing dps spec in the game for Uldir Mythic.
    worst performing doesnt mean bad. someone has to be at the bottom. the margin between top and bottom is so small now due to hyper homgenization (niche withstanding) its purely psychological for the kids. Our guilds top end melee is strong to the degree we have ~8 who are regularly 90th+ and about half that who are regularly 95+ and our ret is always somewhere in the top 5 for damage.

    similar to monks in ages past. we'd always be mid to bottom for xxx raid, and yet i was always most often the top of the meters. A much larger number of factors at play than xxx class being "bad" such as number of peopel playing a class, number of people playing a class that knows how to cheese xxx fight relative to the aforementioned coupled with a guild that encourages such things.

    like zekvoz last night. I was like ~93rd yet I wasnt on orb rotation. If i were... well.

    TLDR - ret is fine not bad by any objective stretch.
    Last edited by klepp0906; 2018-11-21 at 12:13 PM.

  9. #89
    Quote Originally Posted by klepp0906 View Post
    worst performing doesnt mean bad. someone has to be at the bottom. the margin between top and bottom is so small now due to hyper homgenization (niche withstanding) its purely psychological for the kids. Our guilds top end melee is strong to the degree we have ~8 who are regularly 90th+ and about half that who are regularly 95+ and our ret is always somewhere in the top 5 for damage.

    similar to monks in ages past. we'd always be mid to bottom for xxx raid, and yet i was always most often the top of the meters. A much larger number of factors at play than xxx class being "bad" such as number of peopel playing a class, number of people playing a class that knows how to cheese xxx fight relative to the aforementioned coupled with a guild that encourages such things.

    like zekvoz last night. I was like ~93rd yet I wasnt on orb rotation. If i were... well.

    TLDR - ret is fine not bad by any objective stretch.
    I'd love to see logs on that. It also isn't just about the numbers for ret. We offer near no utility. Nearly no cleave, the worst mobility in the game for a melee spec, and a very clunky rotation. Not only does this make us the worst performing raid spec for dps but the worst for Mythic + as well. Being the worst at everything IS objectively bad.

  10. #90
    Quote Originally Posted by klepp0906 View Post
    like zekvoz last night. I was like ~93rd yet I wasnt on orb rotation. If i were... well.

    TLDR - ret is fine not bad by any objective stretch.
    Your percentile only compares you to other players of the same spec.
    That means that high percentile shows are better than other ret paladins but has nothing at all to do with comparison to other classes.

    You say that you have a lot of well performing players of various classes and ret holds his own damage wise. Why not post the logs then?
    It's actually fairly simple to find the statistics for this. Here is a comparison of different specs all performing at the same (95 percentile) level:



    Your other major point is that while ret is technically at the bottom, the balance is so good that the difference between all specs is insignificant.
    That would indeed be the ideal situation but I'm afraid I can't agree that we are there just yet.

    First of all, on just a pure single target Patchwerk type of fight, I agree with you. The balance for single target sustained dps is good. It doesn't matter what class you play because the difference between best and worst class is minimal.
    The problem is that not all fights are Patchwerk. Different fights have different requirements and different classes shine on them depending on their niche.
    So let's look at some examples.

    General utility
    I want to start with general utility/performance that isn't reliant on the fight type and is always relevant.
    Single target sustained damage would be here, but as I already said, it's reasonably well balanced across the board.

    Raid buffs
    This is the simplest example of a utility that's not fight specific.
    A warrior will bring 10 % Attack Power to the whole raid meaning they are borderline mandatory on every fight.
    A demon hunter gives you 5 % more magic damage for the whole raid making them mandatory as well.
    While monks also bring a mandatory debuff, brewmasters and mistweavers are common enough that this is usually covered already.
    Paladins weren't given a raid buff even though one could argue that thematically party buffs fit the class very well.

    Raid cooldowns
    There are currently no offensive raid wide cooldowns other than Heroism/Bloodlust and those are available to multiple classes.
    Unique defensive raid cooldowns include Rallying Cry (warriors) and Darkness (demon hunters).
    These are also not fight specific because increasing the survivability of the whole raid is always useful.

    Non-fight specific utility of ret paladins is a bit of healing (mostly WoG, but also LoH and Blessing of Kings) and Blessing of Wisdom, which ends up being some extra healing as well.
    While this healing is nice (I like it thematically and it's decent game-play wise), it's not strong enough to compete with raid buffs or raid wide cooldowns mentioned above and it isn't enough of an incentive to bring a ret paladin by itself.


    Fight specific utility
    So let's look at less general things that aren't applicable on all the fights, but at least some of the time.

    Cleave damage
    A lot of fights have 2-3 targets that are all high priority targets, often intermittently. (examples: Vectis, Zul, Mythrax, G'huun)
    The strongest classes in this situation are probably warriors and DKs, though many melee classes have decent cleave.
    Paladins are easily the weakest cleave class by far.

    Burst AoE
    Waves of adds are also nothing uncommon (Zek'voz, Mythrax intermission).
    Some of the strongest melee here are warriors, DHs and DKs. These classes can burst upwards of 100k dps.
    Paladins are not the worst, but nowhere near strong enough to bring over the mentioned classes for this type of fights.

    Execute
    A fairly common mechanic where the boss has a soft enrage in last phase that you have to race (Zek'voz, Mythrax, G'huun).
    The strongest melee for execute are warriors.
    While paladins technically have an execute ability when talented into HoW, it is nowhere strong enough to be relevant (our damage below 20 % is only a couple percent higher than our "normal" damage).

    Mobility
    Benefiting from better utility is so extremely common on so many fights that it could arguably be considered general rather fights specific utility. It improves your up-time on pretty much every fight in the raid whenever you have to switch targets, run out with debuffs, counter a knockback etc. It also allows to do cool stuff like solo-carry orbs on G'huun.
    The most mobile classes are monks, DHs and warriors.
    As for paladins, I think that all the wheelchair memes kinda speak for themselves.

    Survivability
    Another category that is borderline general because it's relevant on so many fights.
    The most durable melee are probably still rogues with only 2 minute cooldown on their strong immunities/debuff removals (Cloak and Evasion) and insane 15s cooldown on Feint.
    Paladins are about average. Bubble is obviously extremely strong, but the cooldown restricts its usage to once per fight. SoV suffers from its counter-attack component that forces you to sacrifice damage if you want to use it in the best defensive manner.

    Misc
    Abilities that don't really fit in any easily comparable category and are extremely fight specific.
    For paladins, we haven't covered Freedom, and more importantly, BoP.
    BoP is useful on Fetid (where you can BoP the off-tank to fully absorb 2 Thrashes) and Zul (where you can remove the bleed from your tank in last phase). While very nice on these fights, I would rank it at a similar level as Ring of Peace on G'huun. It's nice to have it, but not really worth bringing an otherwise inferior class just for this (unlike some stronger 1-hit wonder utilities like Grips from DKs which are sometimes the sole reason to bring one).


    Conclusion
    While you are right that the difference in just sustained damage isn't that big between classes, there is more to raiding than just Patchwerk fights and there are two major issues:

    1. Limited melee spots
    There are only so many melee you want to bring. Typically, a ranged class can do everything a melee can do, and they can stand 40 yards away to do it. Because so many fights require you to keep spread, it's much simpler to play with a ranged heavy setup.
    So ideally you only want 4-5 melee spots on average and DH + warrior are basically mandatory for the raid buff/debuff. Now you have 9 classes with melee specs competing for 2-3 melee spots left.

    2. Lack of niche
    Those 2-3 spots are often given to classes that you need on that specific fight. Rogues on Zul, Warriors on execute fights, DKs on Mythrax for grips, DHs + monks + warriors on G'huun to solo orbs etc.
    It's not that ret is necessarily that bad (even though some would argue they are), it's more that you never think to yourself "if only we had a paladin on this fight." So why have a ret on your team and gear him up when you're gonna swap him out for a rogue/warrior/DK/DH on every other fight when you can just have the warrior instead?

  11. #91
    Epic! Vordie's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Somewhere over the Rainbow
    Posts
    1,654
    So, I've been raiding as raid with my guild for the past 2 weeks, and though I don't have a LOT of ret experience, I must say, it feels so.. well, bad. The worst part is I'm a trial right now. How am I supposed to convince these people that they should bring me over ANY other melee DPS on any fight? It makes me feel like I'm giving them a handicap.

    The two biggest issues in my opinion are cleave and mobility. It became very apparently in a couple of fights..

    Fetid was pretty hard to navigate, especially depending on your assignment and the globule spawns.. It also depends very much by your raid's awareness of "melee needs to get back to the boss, I should probably move a bit" (the no1 ret paladin is rank 559 overall, which you'd think is not THAT bad, but he got 2 external BoPs from his holy paladin).

    Vectis, also super apparent where you have to literally switch to the mob and do SINGLE target DPS on it, with the hope that maybe your Wake of Ashes will align with its spawn so that you can get 15k extra damage on it (the no1 paladin is rank 2098 overall. TWO THOUSAND, THAT'S how bad we are at cleave bosses), on the bright side we get to bubble one of the soaks so... yay?

    Then you have Mythrax, same issue, when the add spawns, you have to fully single target it down. Rank 1 Ret Pally on that boss is rank 1095 overall (and he used wings during phase 2 on the little adds which are literally irrelevant).
    G'huun, I had a relatively bad assignment with the orb on phase 1 (2nd orb on the right side). It took me literally 1 full minute to be done with it and get back to the adds. I can't think of a single class that it would've taken longer.

    Going back to my original point, I can't think of a reason why to bring a ret over another melee. I understand the class fantasy is "bulky slow juggernauts with strong hitting abilities", but it's currently not working.

    If you don't plan on raiding mythic or if you're not a competitive person, then it's fine, the spec definitely doesn't feel bad to PLAY. But if you are the tiniest bit competitive, don't touch Ret.
    Last edited by Vordie; 2018-11-24 at 08:46 PM.

  12. #92
    I've gotten declined a lot from many +10 groups. I ask the leaders why, and most of them give the answer it's because I'm retri. Guess it's time to reroll a new class.

  13. #93
    Quote Originally Posted by Meiffert View Post
    Misc
    Abilities that don't really fit in any easily comparable category and are extremely fight specific.
    For paladins, we haven't covered Freedom, and more importantly, BoP.
    BoP is useful on Fetid (where you can BoP the off-tank to fully absorb 2 Thrashes) and Zul (where you can remove the bleed from your tank in last phase). While very nice on these fights, I would rank it at a similar level as Ring of Peace on G'huun. It's nice to have it, but not really worth bringing an otherwise inferior class just for this (unlike some stronger 1-hit wonder utilities like Grips from DKs which are sometimes the sole reason to bring one).
    .
    .
    .
    It's not that ret is necessarily that bad (even though some would argue they are), it's more that you never think to yourself "if only we had a paladin on this fight." So why have a ret on your team and gear him up when you're gonna swap him out for a rogue/warrior/DK/DH on every other fight when you can just have the warrior instead?
    You didn't mention the other reason BoP isn't that big a deal - a Prot or Holy Paladin can bring BoP (and Freedom) as well, and they don't use up a DPS slot. Heck, Holy is still considered almost mandatory for split healing across the tanks, so you have your short duration blessings already.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Vordie View Post
    Going back to my original point, I can't think of a reason why to bring a ret over another melee. I understand the class fantasy is "bulky slow juggernauts with strong hitting abilities", but it's currently not working.

    If you don't plan on raiding mythic or if you're not a competitive person, then it's fine, the spec definitely doesn't feel bad to PLAY. But if you are the tiniest bit competitive, don't touch Ret.
    I think it does feel bad to play, because it has large chunk of downtime when you're just standing there watching cooldowns wind down. If I wanted to play a spec like that, I'd look at Feral or a Rogue of some sort, where pooling energy is a thing.

  14. #94
    Deleted
    It's ok-ish. Not great.

    You will struggle on top end content as other specs are much better. (DH,rogue,monk)

    If you got a stable group it should be fine.

    Prot i find to secretely be the best tank around. Tools for everything. No bouncy health bar. Requires a lot of knowledge of dungeons to properly tank and make keys on time though. If you haven't already it's gonna be tough to start now. You will need a group of friends.
    Last edited by mmoc80be7224cc; 2018-12-06 at 02:30 AM.

  15. #95
    Herald of the Titans Dristereau's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Posts
    2,531
    Seem alright from what I've seen and heard. From playing a little at 110 since pre-patch it functions similarly to Legion overall. Has some very nice burst and strong single target, but AoE is extremely poor and a friend said CS hits that little it can't kill explosives in Mythic+. Apparently downtime is a problem and you need an unattainable amount of haste to get to no downtime. In short, like every other spec I've seen/played so far it works alright, but Legion version was better.
    Dristereau - Axxolentus - Infernus - Sequentia - Nulo - Desterrar

    Silvermoon
    - Shadowsong/Aszune - Tarren-Mill/Dentarg (SL Mage Tower: 29/36
    )

  16. #96
    Ret is fine unless you're a hardcore raider or pvper, which the majority arent.

    I top metres in every raid I'm in as an MM hunter, 2.4k in arena too. I'm excited for troll pally, my only issue is the movement and thats only coz I've played Warrior & Hunter who have really nice mobility.

  17. #97
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Yhcti View Post
    Ret is fine unless you're a hardcore raider or pvper, which the majority arent.

    I top metres in every raid I'm in as an MM hunter, 2.4k in arena too. I'm excited for troll pally, my only issue is the movement and thats only coz I've played Warrior & Hunter who have really nice mobility.
    a neutrino back from future, hm?
    cuz the only ret-experience u seem to have other than ur future troll pally is ur actual MM hunter (u top meters in every raid, gz!, which is quite relevant to topic).
    or wait - if u travel backwards in time, than u dont have any current 2,4kxp with MM, cuz u (will) play a non-pvp class.

    ofc pvp isnt relevant content like mythic raids or highkeys, hm?

    well, i guess u already arrived in pleistocene...

  18. #98
    Quote Originally Posted by Dristereau View Post
    Seem alright from what I've seen and heard. From playing a little at 110 since pre-patch it functions similarly to Legion overall. Has some very nice burst and strong single target, but AoE is extremely poor and a friend said CS hits that little it can't kill explosives in Mythic+. Apparently downtime is a problem and you need an unattainable amount of haste to get to no downtime. In short, like every other spec I've seen/played so far it works alright, but Legion version was better.
    Haste does not reduce the amount of downtime. It makes each period shorter, but makes them pop up more often. This is generally less frustrating than low-Haste, but it's still there.

    Aside from the frustration of having these periods of up to 4s when you can't do anything (unless someone happens to need BoP or the like just when you've got that gap), there's the lovely feeling of having a priority add show up and being unable to do anything other than auto-attack it. It needs to die NOW, and you can do nothing to help with that for 3-4s. Great contribution.

  19. #99
    Epic! Ryuji's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    A place, with stuff
    Posts
    1,603
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    Haste does not reduce the amount of downtime. It makes each period shorter, but makes them pop up more often. This is generally less frustrating than low-Haste, but it's still there.

    Aside from the frustration of having these periods of up to 4s when you can't do anything (unless someone happens to need BoP or the like just when you've got that gap), there's the lovely feeling of having a priority add show up and being unable to do anything other than auto-attack it. It needs to die NOW, and you can do nothing to help with that for 3-4s. Great contribution.
    This right here is my biggest gripe with Ret. Not even a numbers thing, it just feels really bad to sit there white-swinging on something, especially a priority add that needs to die asap but oh well, everything's on cooldown.

    Even if I had a Crusader-Strike esque button that didn't generate HP, I'd want it just because I wouldn't be sitting there white-swinging.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sakpoth View Post
    I find it unreasonable to ask for other than obvious reasons, when the reason obviously is the obvious reason.
    Armory: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch.../dalaran/ryuji

    Song that's currently stuck in my head: pretty much anything from Dance With the Dead

  20. #100
    Quote Originally Posted by Kalisandra View Post
    Haste does not reduce the amount of downtime. It makes each period shorter, but makes them pop up more often.
    Good to finally see people understanding the haste interaction with cooldowns + GCDs.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tiaron View Post
    "finally we can use our utility without losing dps" (because utility is magically ALWAYS needed during our downtimes).
    I don't understand how anybody can defend such a design decision.
    To be fair this argument is partially valid. The opportunity cost is lower when you have open GCDs. Both because sometimes you get lucky and actually happen to have a free GCD when the BoP is called for, but also because the open GCDs allow you to better recover from an "unfortunate" BoP (you lose less damage in almost all cases).

    Also, some specs are GCD locked (Havoc, Fury), other's are not (Arms, Ret). Having less flat damage profile is not an issue by itself in my opinion. Sure, it sucks when a priority add spawns and you have nothing, but arguably you could have saved some HP and maybe a BoJ cast for them.

    Few people complain that Arms feels bad to play because sometimes you have nothing for a priority add, despite the fact that it can potentially happen in the same manner as for a ret.
    The difference is that when handled well (maybe pooling a bit of rage), you can Sweeping Strike into Warbreaker -> Mortal Strike/Slam -> Execute and do massive damage to the add while cleaving the boss for very relevant damage for free.

    Similar design idea (intermittent downtime) doesn't feel so bad when your spec doesn't suck.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •