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.