Ret is now among worst DPS in the game in PVE

According to heroic raid logs Ret is actually worst highly-played DPS spec in entire game.

Worse are only those that have other better DPS specs. So from all DPS classes - Paladin is now the worst. Even Havoc Demon Hunter that people cry rivers about how weak it is - is still a little bit higher than Ret at that point.

I really doubt that Ret players are so extremely bad in comparison to people playing other specs - I would rather say that Ret’s damage profile is just pure garbage that can work only in specific situations and this burst is extremely easy to be wasted. And unfortunately I know that from my own disappointing experience.

This spec needs some kind of rework or more direct buffs to certain abilities, because buffing damage by like 3% across the board is definitely not going to fix the issue.

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This is not news Ret doing badly in PvE has been proven to be the case from at least WoD.
The problem with ret is that the top logs makes it look halfway decent it makes it look good because you can cheese with it so easily.

The design feature that Bashiok likes the Retribution passive and now aura is the problem it makes a very false impression on the very top logs of where ret paladin actually are on DPS

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Top logs are chinese builds that are basically execute-bots because they are being pumped by Priest’s Power Infusion sometimes multiple times. This is not how it looks for great majority of players. This chinese build is still pretty much only non-Venthyr way to not be on the bottom right over the tank, because normal builds have just not enough burst and damage multipliers to not suck - and these builds are even easier to waste, because chinese build needs ~~ 10 seconds to pack great most of the damage.

And also like you mentioned - Retribution Aura that gives false burst windows, because nobody should want people to die, because when they are dying it’s often a wipe anyway.

But still - you need to do some kind of magical-voodoo-rotation (ES - Sera - FR with magical order of skill execution) and most probably still be worse than great most of specs that sometimes are played by randomly smashing face against the keyboard.

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Ret seems decent in Mythic only because of the fact that aoe burst is being required every single minute, which perfectly lines up with divine tol, seraphim and wake. But that’s it. If next raid require a more sustained dps profile, then the spec is doomed.

It was still okayish up until mid legion. Ever since tos, it’s seem like the spec simply did not recovered from poor scaling issues. Legion’s revamp emphasizing burst damages didn’t helped ret in that regard.

Hey can you link where you got this statistics from? Not that I don’t belive you, just want to see all the classes

Lol, I never thought about that before… That’s kinda riddiculous.

Warcraftlogs :

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/26/#difficulty=4

It’s not even only a scaling issue. Ret just doesn’t do damage outside burst windows. And if anything aligns badly with that burst window so you waste time because “it’s not yet time to burst” or some phase came faster than you have CDs - you end up being nearly dead last.

Ret is WAY too reliant on burst damage (2k without burst - 10k with burst), it cannot be fixed until sustain is better and/or that burst is easier to utilise.

For example WW monk has it’s “power skill” divided into two 15s parts with 1.5 min CD (Storm, Earth, and Fire) + also Xuen that is every 2 min + covenant skills (mostly Weapons of Order) just like Ret. When you can “half-explode” every 1.5 min and “full-explode” every 2 min while also having not exactly bad sustained damage it’s certainly going to be better.

Ret outside this one 1 min build always has 2 min burst window that can very easily be wasted because it’s so god damn long, and any situation where you need to move will destroy your damage. Wings are just too long, and Seraphim is pretty expensive.

But still - most important thing is probably absolutely trash sustained damage, and they should start from there. Apart from our HP loaders hitting like wet noodle (2 of them are physical damage - that’s okay, but at least CS needs like 25% buff, and Judgement could use 2 second less CD - BoJ can be buffed too, but it’s pretty decent with Expurgation, so I would be cautious there) Seraphim should probably be a baseline and cost no HP (in case of Ret) with 1 min CD to allow smaller burst windows as a baseline.

After playing WW monk I don’t like playing Ret anymore and nearly fully switched to Prot Pal, because Ret’s damage curve is just horrible. Also as monk you can get into group because of physical buff alone, as Ret you don’t even have utility that would matter to anyone in PVE - especially when there is Holy Paladin with Aura Mastery too.

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It is. I mean, ret could use +10 % damages buffs here and there but… Nope.

I once said : Being a burst spec is not the solution to ret problem, being a burst spec IS the problem.

I’d rather Blizzard kills that idea of “damages profile” as it advantages some specs and punishes others.

IMHO, WW should not have such strong burst since it has strong sustained. This reminds me of fury warriors complaining about recklessness being bad but on the same time, they would not accept loosing execute or sustained damages.

They won’t… Sadly.

Many people would still say ret has good utility. On the same time, those guys also don’t recruit ret paladin, using utility argument…

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Scaling issues come from lack of synergies. I would say that Ret has quite some synergies to be honest. Also flat buffs like Seraphim will be better towards the end when people will be reaching secondary stats soft caps.

Not even burst is that much of a problem - Ret just has TERRIBLE burst curve while also being melee. If you have 2 min burst window, but this window is extremely violent - like Fire Mage’s combustion, then it’s not this much of a problem. This is not only 10 seconds but also ranged. In 10 seconds not many things can go wrong. In case of Ret normal wing-build (SW or Crusade) has 25 second wings and these 25 second is not enough to do as much damage as Fire Mage does in these 10 seconds. And in 25 seconds LOTS of things can go wrong, especially when you are also melee.

Ret’s curve is just probably the worst in entire game. Long, spreaded burst that can very easily be wasted (at least in case of PVE).

I personally don’t think WW is broken, it’s just pretty modern and better thought spec (apart from scaling problems). When I played my WW it was rather like “god damn, THAT’S how playing Ret should feel!”. WW has way more control over it’s burst. It’s like WW has a tap that can dose it’s burst, you use as much as you need. Ret has “all or nothing lol” and you better place your burst properly because even 5 seconds wasted will put you way behind others with your 2k dps sustained damage.

Yeah, that’s the best thing in all this. Dude comes to a forums and starts spewing some random BS “but you have bubble, BoP, freedom, LoH bla bla bla bla”. And the same guy asked if he would took Ret’s to Mythic Raid progress would say “lol, no - it doesn’t have any meaningful party-wide buffs and it has trashy damage” xD

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Oh you have nothing to cry about. Imagine not being a Fire mage… Your actively kicked from raids and M+ grps because you don’t enjoy playing fire and the community only thinks there is a fire spec…

You get taunted “Learn to play” or “Stop being a meme” if you play anything else than fire… Mage is in a really bad shape now as an overall class compared to paladin, at least you don’t get kicked.

In case of Mage you can at least change spec to viable one and still remain DPS. In case of Paladin you have only one DPS option, so if we compared all CLASSES in the game (not specs) in terms of DPS - Paladin is worst of them all.

And we can’t swap specs to better one while staying DPS. You need to go tank or healer. If you go tank - you are probably not going to be invited into raid, because raid only needs 2 tanks, and Prot Pal is pretty bad raid tank. But at least you will be decent in dungeons. And going healer is a completely different kind of game, so even if Holy Paladin is good in every content - most people will not be willing to use this spec.

What I implied is that ret’s burst is not that great…

In order to avoid this, Blizzard will nerf ret before scaling becomes good!! (joke)

Since we’re still tied to legion design… Well, in Legion, I could get crusade up to 1 minute. Yeah… Wings lasting up 1 minute was quite too strong, but it was great.

That’s true, ret ain’t designed as a true modern spec.

It’s boring… :x

Coming from a S tier class, that’s hypocrite.

That’s a community issue. I’d rather recruit a frost mage with 1k Rio rather than a fire with 600 Rio. Also, mages 3 viable specs in CN. According to logs, even arcane is decent.

As paladin, you have high chances of being kicked (ie not recruited, even for guild) or being benched. That ain’t fun.

Yeah, it seems like Ret could probably be fixed by making wings better accessible. For example like Vision of Perfection with some random procs or something.

But to be honest I don’t like this over-reliance on wings at all. I think that Seraphim deserves more love as mini-wings-between-the-wings-and-sometimes-even-during-big-wings - for Ret it should be baseline and HP-free. Ret should not have longer or stronger burst. It needs more accessible burst.

Fire mages are even worse in that regard though. Their damage outside of cds is so bad they might as well afk until Combustion is up again. And despite that they are doing great.

Because their burst is quick, violent and ranged. Not many things can go wrong. For Ret maximum burst requires about 12-14 seconds in which NOTHING CAN GO WRONG for chinese build (ES + sera + FR) and all other builds require pretty much whole 25 seconds without any disturbances - no running away, no stuns and other things. And even then this burst is often not enough to carry Ret above others in general.

Also let’s remember that Fire Mage has Shifting Power that reduces their burst CD very significantly. If Ret had wings every 1.5 min it would certainly be waaaay higher on damage charts, but to be honest I don’t personally like this wing-reliance, and would rather prefer Seraphim to be baseline for Ret and free of charge in HP. So every 45 sec we can go with Seraphim and every 2 min we can go Sera + Wings for maximum burst.

I did a couple of mythic+ dungeons today as Ret with my guild. I couldn’t keep up whatsoever unless I had my cooldowns, so it was pretty much embarrassing on trash, which is bad because it slows everything down and makes it difficult to meet the timer.

I’m at the point where I think I might just refuse to run any more mythic+s, purely so I don’t drag the group down. I’m not sure if it’s Blizzard’s intention to make me feel like garbage, but here we are.

Yup, that’s exactly how it is. If Ret has CDs to blow - it’s likely going to be first …for a while. Then mobs are dead after 10 seconds, because other people used their burst too, and you literally wasted over a half of your burst (if you are Sanctified Wrath build).

Before getting into next pack wings are gone and you are now tank-tier damage for next 1.5 min. And if that tank is Prot Pal or VDH - you have very high chance of being below him in damage actually.

Ret doesn’t need stronger burst, but better sustained damage OR more often access to burst. If Ret wings had 2 charges 10s each with 1 min CD - that would probably solve A LOT of problems. Ret would be way more likely to have wings available (pretty much always at least this one charge), and they would be worth using even on smaller packs that will die fast - single charge uptime is 10s so it’s worth popping wings on 10s fights too. Also wings would align better with Seraphim, that would provide serious burst phase.

Adding baseline free-of-HP-charge Seraphim to that would also be a very interesting option, because Ret Paladin would have access to 2 burst skills cut in 3 parts (kinda like WW monk). Seraphim would often have more uptime than wings (15s vs 10s), so wings would most of the times be just an extra booster to Seraphim that can be used pretty much every pack. Cooldown and HP management would be soooo much better this way.

Also we would probably use Divine Purpose (or that other talent that would replace Seraphim, maybe some old one from previous expansions), so Ret would be less HP starved (right now it’s sometimes kinda starved to be honest).

I really doubt anything else than baseline Seraphim + splitting wings in two charges would have to be done to resolve 90% problems this spec has.

Unfortunately what would make Ret nice and strong PVE spec with nice burst flow would also make it unstoppable monster in PVP… Full scale Ret-sized burst every minute? That would definitely break balance. Ret does most damage in first like 3-4 GCDs of this burst, so that would effectively make it twice as strong in executing bursts.

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Your dps at the end of a run mostly matters. Its technically possible to dominate the meters there but you require deep knowledge about every dungeon to know where to use all cds, some cds (Seraphim and Wake only) or spare them. So stop playing ret at this point maybe isn’t the best idea.

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Ret paladin Burst isn’t quiet enough to name it as BIG burst
Ret paladin used to top their dmg meter with their bursts for 20-25 sec and then scales down until they have their Burst cds again.
in high mythic keys it really depends on your comp and also on your tank how many packs he can grab
if he’s a paper tank and grabbing one pack at a time Ret paladin will have the lowest dmg meter because it takes time to build your SR/FR/ES and you wasted half of it on 1 pack only
sometime as Caelifer said you need to dump the learned mechanics and use small cds ( SERA , WOA ) and spare the 1 min cds to another pack but you need to be careful if you wasted all your mini cds while you’re going to engage a boss fight.
so yea you need to have the timing for each dungeon.
i think either our holy dmg need a slight buff or our builders as (CS/BOJ)
Ret Aura needs to be removed or at least make it passive.