Ret as a whole in mythic +

Classes Paladin
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I currently sit @2.4k RIO so no, I am not even close to R1 but I still feel like I have pretty good understanding of the spec in m+ situations. If the stuff bellow has some false statements, please correct me.

So lets talk about the problems ret have in m+

Aggro
Yes it is a real problem. As a ret you better play with rogue or hunter, otherwise you will have lots of aggroproblems while bursting. If there is no rogue or hunter in your group In many cases it isn’t even enough that you wait +10 seconds before starting to burst as so much of your dmg comes from your 8s burst windows. Rets have 2 bubbles that resets aggro, right? No. It only transfers your aggro for the duration of the bubble which means after bubble drops you are dead. Also obviously bubble wont be up for every pull.

Group utility
Rets simply has none of the good ones. This is and has been singlehandedly the biggest problem of ret in m+. Literally none of your utility abilities is good enough to make a difference. You have freedom, BoP, Sac, LoH and devo aura. There are some useful spots to use freedom, but those are mainly for selfcasting except couple niche places like NW last boss. Bop also usually goes for yourself as mentioned to help you with your enormous aggroproblems. If you sometimes don’t need bop yourself there are couple of places to bop someone else, mostly in sanguine. But what about bopping tank in necrotic weeks? Yes, that is a thing, but first of all it 100% requires a premade and yeah… no one plays on necrotic weeks anyways :smiley: Sac then… it is kind of good don’t get me wrong but you need a premade to use it properly. LoH might save your tank sometimes if you use it right, problem is that it has enormous cooldown. Devotion aura is groupwide flat 3% dmg decrease, better than nothing if you don’t already have a paladin in your group since every aura except devo is useless. In conclusion the main problem with ret’s group utility is that no one, I repeat NO ONE is going to invite you to group because they need something you provide. Oh and don’t forget you play Kyrian as 50% of the playerbase so no one will need you because of your covenant either.

Defencives/selfhealing
Ret is a hybrid class, yet it is one of the worst classes to mitigate dmg. Healing isn’t good either. Word of glory is great, but at the same time it destroys your dps, which you especially don’t want in m+. Shield of vengeance is an absorb shield with huge cd compared to the absorb it provides. FoL isn’t that good either even if you played selfless healer while using your procs with 100% efficiency. That is kind of all when it comes to reactive defencives, since you usually need your bubbles for bursting because of above mentioned reasons.

Dps
Overall Id say its in the middle of pack, not bad but definitely not good. Higher keys you go, worse you will feel about your 5 hardcapped aoe. You will stand in the corner like a kid without his favourite toy in those 10+ mob pulls where boomies, mages, monks etc are pulling tons of dmg. We will see how this changes in 9.1.5, depends entirely on the scaling. Only good thing about ret’s dmg currently is that majority of it is an on demand dmg as it is tied to “one minuters”. When you master your cd usage, you will deal good dmg when it is needed (this however doesn’t translate to overall dps which everyone stares in pugs, so you better play with premade). My opinion about ret’s dps might be optimistic since I have seen many ppl judging it as trash and tbh that is not far fetched either… I can’t post links here so can’t link the performance of ret in m+ according to Warcraft Logs but I can tell you, it is the very bottom one.

Mobility
Lets not even talk about that, everyone already knows how bad it is :slight_smile:

So what is good then?
I can’t come up with other good things compared to other specs than that ret has excellent on demand dmg and is fun to play.

I hope this thread brings some discussion about ret’s health in m+ situations.

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It feels like a lot of talk about your utility is “I have to use it on myself cos my burst”

Well if you don’t open hard you’ll have no aggro problems and its not like stuff doesn’t live long enough for you to hold long enough for threat to be established.

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We are sadly exactly as you describe. I made a similar post at some point in season 1 (and we were not even last back then) predicting that with poor scaling this will be even worse. And it has.

Our utility is mediocre. I find the most useful spell to be sac. Only used BoP on pug tank once but he had a macro and expecting it.

Our defensive are a joke, sure bubble is good but it’s a way too long of a CD and SoV is… well as you described it. I would much rather have something like rogue’s Feint.

Healing to self is decent-ish but it DESTROYS our DPS. At least back in BfA it could save the group being a 3 target heal.

And last but definitely not least the damage is mid of the pack. Of course without CDs we are literally below tanks but at least the one minute CD circle is doing something there.

Overall even i as a ret don’t see a reason anyone should pick us for an M+ over any other melee. Not because of meta bs but of what we (do not) bring. Hence why ret is bottom is m+ logs and unfortunately I don’t see it changing very soon.

Edit:typos

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Thank you for your reply Dejarous but I have to disagree on that for a couple of reasons. First of all especially in tyrannical weeks if you start your ramp up at lets say 10-15sec into the pull, yes the mobs will last your 8 sec burst window but not the whole duration on wings (25 sec) which is also part of the burst. Secondly even if we managed fine without ever bopping ourselves, what then? Bop is definitely not that good utility tool that it would make an impact even if we saved it for others. There are couple niche spots to bop others for sure but not many. (EDT typos)

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laugh’s in enhancement Shaman.

you are absolutely right, my twink is a Paladin.

there are a few classes that have serious problems compared to other “meta classes”
this gets worse(or better for some) with the removal of Target caps, for enhancement nothing changes we’re still “meh”

Divine Storm isn’t target capped with 9.1.5 anymore

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It kinda is how it is for ret currently. And you can’t always wait to open hard because the burst window isn’t that long and in non fortified weeks, a trash pack may last less than your cd. Constantly waiting for the tank to have aggro to burst will inevitably makes your number suffer, and combined with a lack of real group utilities, really raise a question on “why bring a ret”.

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Which’s why i ussually wait for either the boss or for when that we pull a huge pack of mobs.

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The problem is that if you have to wait too long to use your cds your numbers and overall output will suffer really fast. Usually you would want to use your cds when they become available. This is principle of every class. For example the max Ive done in NW without powers is 11k overall. That obviously isnt max ret can do but even that required very good tanking and aggressive use of cds. I had 14 casts of wings in 33min run which means I could have sqeezed in 2 more. So in that particular run on avg I waisted 21 seconds between each use of wings after they came out of cd (probably to wait better spot to use them as you mentioned). That is also far from perfect but just to make a point that too much waiting will hurt your numbers.

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Works on the boss only most of the time. Again, outside of fortified weeks, even on high keys if you have a big burst group, mobs dies faster than your wings duration so you waste half of it on nothing, and outside of wings, dmg is very low.

It’s the same issue from bfa and before, and there is no solution for it.

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Well i mannage with the bis legendary

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Remember Divine hammer from Legion? Cause i do. they need to bring it back fully uncapped, I was always top dps on aoe fights with that talent, both raid and even M+. We need it back via legendary/talent rework it is that simple. Also deff is pretty good i offen heal myself, so what i loose some dmg, i can recover to 100% almost with 1 WOG+due to conduit it even leaves absorb shield for small ammount. Ret can survive a lot, if you sacrifice dps. Also you have best full immunity in game, you can do full dmg inside without any worries, no other class can say that. Only rogue comes to my mind but still only for magic atacks.

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And none of this actually matters in keys or in raids outside very specific niche scenarios were you bubble taunt or cheese some mechanics.
They are very very very tiny plus compared to the big lack of utilities and dmg.

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Tahen can u please finally delete ur wow account and go play some fluffy ff14?

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And leave you alone spitting nonsense about paladins all the time? Can’t do that mate.

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Ret spec is trash, only good to burst stuff if you need it for some achievements or mythic raid bosses. Only Holy, seconded by Prot are good. This has almost always been the case.

The thing is, as we all know in terms of gearing, DPS specs are the most rewarding. Tanks/healers on the other hand tend to be less needed the more you overpower content, like in a 2 2 8 raid or a 1 tank 4 DPS M+ runs, heck, even some dps specs can tank, look at feral druids.

Why am I saying this? because ultimately, you gear up either to push certain content or to be rewarded with overpowering most content. This game unconditionally reward DPSers far more than Tanks/healers, not only with more satisfying “big numbers” but enforces the fact that the more DPS you do, the LESS you have to worry about Boss/mob mechanics, which is ironic given DPSers have the least responsibility in any content.

Usually your best bet is going a RANGED DPSer, in case you want to be “wanted” by others, Mage/Lock seem to be doing great next patch, Hunter/Ele shaman as well. I can’t get myself to play a mage, so I will most probably go with an Ele shaman with Resto Offspec alt.

Fury/Arms warrior can Afk-button mash on 3 abilities to outDPS a Ret paladin by a good 25% margin without trying, let that sink in for a moment.

TLDR: Don’t waste your time playing a Ret paladin, its a sheet spec this expansion and this won’t change, it will get worse. Go a Viable Ranged DPS spec: Mage/lock/hunter/shaman.

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Once hunters start to get to 2.3K+ rating, aka some brain, they start taunting off necrotic stacks or certain mob debuff ability with the right-timed pet taunting, in addition to all the other stuff they bring.

Some classes can do what we can do but with better utilities. I feel the class needs a bit of a revamp, we have outdated abilities and we need to get in line with other specs in terms of constant useful utility that doesn’t need some" cheese" tactics to make us somehow valuable to prevent some wipe.

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Exactly. And the nail on the coffin is that ret “utilities” are not exclusive to ret, but available to the other two specs. So if i really need those utilities, why bring a subpar in dmg ret, when i can get the same either from a prot or a holy, with all the other benefits those brings?

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First of all I am not telling that you are wrong by any means, infact you are 100 % correct. However what I find questionable is that in a nutshell you are telling “ret sucks go play something else” in a thread that is intended to talk about ret, its problems and to bring some attention for the spec. Its the same thing than you go to a vegan cooking forums where ppl are talking about what spice they should add to otherwise tasteless broccoli to tell that “meat tastes better, stop being vegan” :smiley:

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Actually I would 100% tell them that, and they should try some crispy bacon. :stuck_out_tongue: I managed to convert a few vegans back to meat-eating. They look much happier now.

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Fairly sure they didnt need to be told that, the taste is beside the point as to why they tried to become vegan.

Same can be said as to why ppl want to play ret. They know it has never actually been on top nor will ever get a real spotlight outside their burst. But it wont hinder them to want ugrades to make them wanted.

The “utility” ret has is as old as the class itself with upgrades over the years because they had hefty downsides like a debuff or long CD for the notion of “this feels to OP” but not so much in the hands of a ret.

New utility is saved for new upcomming classes. New ideas for Ret will never come that isent dmg /heal related.