It's heartbreakly sad to play retribution paladin

Classes Paladin
1

Hi

I just wanted to ventilate a bit guys, I just don’t think I can do this anymore. I honestly don’t want to take much of your time.

I’ve been playing ret for along time. I’ve been around in mythic raiding for a long time. Recently I killed N’zoth Mythic and did high keys as RET - that’s all I’m ready to reveal.

And this tier, in shadowlands. I just want to say that I feel utterly useless.

In mythic +
I really want to be a strong melee DPS that have strong utility, but or toolset is simply put not strong enough. There is no reason to pick me over a holy or protection paladin. I can’t make my group stronger in terms of DPS, I can’t make my group survival more, I can’t make my team feel safe. My heals cost DPS. My utility is just a niche.

In raids
I’m locked to a cov that I don’t want to play. And I can’t do single target DPS enough to be viable to other ranged classes that don’t have to move. And again, I don’t bring one single tool that is useful to the raid or makes me stand out.

Please.
Rets have a deep deep history with unique tools.
Why don’t we have anything that makes us stand out like WW or DKs?
You could argue that our healing is unique - but others don’t have to sacrifice dmg to bring group utility to the table.

How have we come to a point where an ultimate killing-machine like a DK has better group utility than a paladin? Really?

Please Blizzard. All I want for X-mas is a reason to be picked in higher keys. I want to be a choice that can be considered.

Imagine if I could BOP and the whole team was bopped?
Imagine if I could use Blessing of Sacrifice and I absorbed the dmg the team took (combining this with bubble and all our coundits that lower bubble cd = perfect)
Imagine if I used freedom and the whole team got it?
Imagine if I healed the whole team like in BFA and it didn’t cost me DPS?
Imagine if I used wings and everyone was inspired by my heroic presence?
Imagine if I had an aura that made me pop wings randomly (BFA style)
Imagine if my aura spread my blessings to the team?

Anything please. I don’t want to be bottom of the barrel again this tier.

4 Likes
2

WW? What utility does WW have? Honest question, i have no idea. Windwalking?

A lot of these things are stuff Ret had at one point and which proved to be very overpowered, or are so busted it would break the entire game, or doesn’t really affect the state of Paladins at all really.

I mean, bruh, raid wide BoP? With a couple of Paladins you could have 10 seconds of physical immuntiy every 30 seconds. Your raid would spend a third of the fight immune.

A raid wide Blessing of Sacrifice was a thing in WotLK. I believe it was called Divine Sacrifice or Divine Guardian, and it might also have been for just your party and not the entire raid. Regardless, it ended up being so powerful Blizzard had to design raid encounters around this spell or it would trivialize the boss. It was heavily nerfed and made a deep protection talent in Cata and then were ultimately removed.

MoP introduced a glyph called Glyph of the Battle Healer. Which turned the paladin into a disc priest. It allowed the paladin to convert a portion of their melee damage dealt into healing for your party and raid. At first people thought of it as nothing but a joke but a few months into the expansion some people discovered you could effectively replace healers with Ret paladins. The glyph was nerfed every patch after that until it 5.4 when it was made effectively useless.

Raid wide BoF would be kinda useless in PvE except for a few niche cases, and really overpowered in PvP. At least in Bg’s but nobody really cares about Bg’s so maybe this one would be alright.

“Random wings” are a thing i feel like should have been a talent. Maybe on the last row instead of Sanctified Wrath. Holy paladins have had something like this for years (Awakening) so i don’t see why Ret couldn’t.

Ret already have a lot of utility. A lot of niche utility. But adding too much could end up breaking the class.

What if Luminescence (the pvp talent) was made into a baseline passive or aura? That would make healers job easier without potentionally turning ret into some kind of pseudo healer.

Or if Ret was really tanky (for a dps)? TV could grant an absorb shield equal to ~30% of the damage done. Then Ret could have the reputation of being that one dps who never dies (unless it’s a wipe). Kinda like Affliction Warlocks during Legion.

What if Ret could cast Redemption in combat like in PvP? Actually no, lets not give another class BR.

Honestly, it’s really hard to give Ret new toys without them potentionally becomming really overpowered. That’s why Blizzard historically have been really apprehensive about giving Ret the same tools Prot and Holy has. I mean, the one time they did get unique utility it was the greater blessings, which kinda speaks for itself. But who knows, maybe those are the answer. Doubt Blizzard are ever going to bring them back though now that Auras are a thing again.

3

CR Combat ress is the EU name for this battle ress is a us phenomenon.

Physical damage is rarely if ever happening in raids.
BoP is stupid weak normally it is generally 1-3 fights per expansion that physical damage is what will kill people.
You are overestimating the power as all heck here.
And yet AMZ came back into the game a 2min cooldown 20% reduced magic damage (magic damage is what almosy everything in the game does in pve unless it is an anti tank mechanic)

This was an ability to get the group back up after a raid wipe originally.

4

I’m not really sure what to say to this…

I can’t talk about Holy because I’ve literally never healed anyone but myself.

Prot is in a great place right now and most groups I know prefer a Prot Pally over other tank choices for most content… We’re super strong in mythic+ most weeks which is arguably the most challenging content right now.

In terms of Ret, I don’t see your problem? - Granted it sucks blizzard took away our blessings and a few other abilities that made us unique but Retribution is in an incredibly strong place right now in terms of DPS. I’ve literally never seen people cry so much at how broken we are right now, which I don’t think is the case are just competitive for the first time.

Granted we probably have the most insane bursts but when you average are DPS its not as broken as people make it out to be.

I have also played a paladin for a long time and I can tell you, I’d rather have less utility and actually be a viable DPS than the other way around.

When it comes to M+ and Raid I’m usually beating most DPS on the meters, the only ones I can’t beat are broken classes like NF Hunters.

5

Only in PVP, and we aren’t even probably broken in there, we are just very strong.

Things he wrote are most probably PVE only because some of these suggestions would destroy PVP so I assume OP is not PVP player and doesn’t consider such things.

That being said it’s true that Ret is lackluster in PVE. I mean - what does Ret have that would make you pick him over something else? First of all - it’s a melee. That alone is kinda throwing him few levels lower than basically any ranged.

Is his DPS high? Well, if fights align with burst phases and cleave / AoE is involved - Sanctified Wrath can break the DPS chart. But that’s rarely the case in practice. Our sustained DPS is nothing special in both single target and cleave / AoE.

So, what else do we have? Maybe some party wide buffs? Well, this -3% dmg is rather a joke and nobody actually cares about that at all. We have heals? Well, yeah - but what about it? Many other classes have them and they also do better DPS than Ret and also are ranged. Maybe BL? Nope, nothing like that. Maybe CR? Nope. Shrouds? Some damage buffs? The only useful thing (outside heals that we are not even supposed to use, because when we use them we will be kicked from raid group for too low DPS) we have is Blessing of Freedom - for something that healer dispels anyway, Cleanse Toxins - something that most of the times healer can dispel, and very rarely a Blessing of Protection that is more useful in PVP than in PVE. Blessing of Sacrifice rarely saves anything, right now it’s more like an exploit to fire fully loaded SoV into boss face while not having aggro.

How can Ret utility compare to many of the other classes when at the end of the day these pretty interesting things actually doesn’t matter to people? We have a way to be desired - if auras were actually powerful and each of our specs would have different ones (even if only in PVE), currently they are a joke. How can you compare -3% dmg to Time Warp? It’s a joke. If you have one slot for melee because melee suck in general in current PVE meta, why would you take Ret instead of Outlaw?

6

I agree, to some extent.

We 100% don’t have anything that makes us unique when it comes to a group composition which is disappointing, so your right we don’t have anything that makes somebody think “we need a paladin”.

I mean we have our Auras but they’ve been changed and nerfed so many times they’re literally so negligible they’re not even worth mentioning.

But that said, we have very strong DPS in PVE now, the strongest it’s been in my opinion, at least that’s what I’ve found. I usually top meters with relative ease in Mythic+ and I’m in the top pack in raids, obviously under classes like Hunter, etc.

In regards to PVP, we’re also strong there but from what I’ve found we’re very bursty, if someone can survive our burst we’re not too difficult to deal with. We have mad survivability so we can outlast someone who doesn’t have healing, like a warrior or something. but it’s very depending on the caliber of the player your fighting.

7

When were our auras strong? What nerfs did they get to make them be what they are today?

From my point of view they are what they have always been, cosmetic class fantasy relic from warcraft 3. The only times they were good is when combined with other items like i think it was in classic or TBC? Making interupts last a very short time for holy palas.

I guess some conduits now exists to boost effect and later they might add others but the base aura is cosmetic. Ret aura aint an aura as to what they should be either.

8

Retri paladin’s aura in WotLK used to provide +3% damage and +3% haste, so I’d say that’s more appealing than -3% damage taken.

Also Pallies were historically the class with the most buffs, yet nowadays none of it remains. Where is the Blessing of Kings, or Might, I ask?

9

1- Four talent points used to get them as ret so not base aura now is it?
2- Was haste a thing in Wotlk?
3- Swift Retribution - Your auras also increase casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3% - Weird that it doesnt say haste but line it up this way. So no decrease in GCD nor CDs on attacks like haste does now. Meaning only the speed of our auto attacks.

Edit: As SoC was still a thing back then, decreasing speed on auto attacks was a bad thing, atleast for alliance palas right?

10

No, it’s not baseline, Base Retri aura effect was just a holy damage thorns-like effect. Nowadays basically all passives would be talent points in previous system, so it’s somewhat a moot point. Haste was a thing, so idk why it was worded like that.

11

Blessings sucks, because most of the times Pallies would rather want to use them on themselves because they are nowhere near meta and can use every single help they can get. We need auras that buff us and not only us. We could certainly use some powerful aura that has CD, something like BL but not necessarily haste or something like that.

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