Retribution in higher m+

Classes Paladin
1

Hi

I’ve really been struggling with getting invites into m+ groups. It’s been ongoing since +8ish where i can queue up for 100+ groups in a day and literally get 0 invites.

I’m by no means a new player, i’ve played this game since late Vanilla and been Retribution Paladin since early Wotlk, my Raider io is ‘okay’ and my M+ logs are awesome. I sim every item i get, always enchanted, buffed and up to date but i still cant get an invite… Why? Why has this game become so much about bringing the metas (Fire mage, MM hunter etc) just because they are stupidly broken with a 1m CD that does 15k dps? You really have to reroll for meta to push mythics beyond 15 or is it just me that is bad?

Anyone feel the same?

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It is also the way the debuffs work. Ranger dps tend to taken a lot less dmg. That, and a lot of nubs around not avoiding stuff makes people hesitant.

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To be honest, most M+ affixes currently hurt melee dps way too much but I feel with you. Ret Paladins bring big AoE burst (also on 1 Min cd), big boss dps and some nice support, especially healing. But BL and BR seem to be more important.

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DPS? Yeah, sort of, sometimes. I guess most ranged specs are better anyway.

Support? What? Resorting to healing is a DPS loss, you pretty much shouldn’t be doing it. And Ret has no AoE CCs, Blinding Light does not count because it’s immediately broken. I don’t know why people are still telling tales about this utility when most of our utility are heals that we shouldn’t even use and laughtable parody of an aura being 3% dmg reduction.

Compare it to mage or balance druid, Ret has zero utility in comparison to them and also does less damage AND is melee that needs heals himself, because every second mob in shadowlands leaves acid pools, explodes, cleaves or is doing something else to convince you to make ranged alt.

Our utility is good in pvp and that’s the only place where it is actually good.

Paladins can have good utility but they would have to make auras actually powerful things not like this joke we have right now.

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If you want to do it with pick-up groups? Yeah, pretty much.
If you want to push keys, as a spec that is not meta (like ret in PvE) you need to find an organized group for it or respec to a viable spec - like prot and holy.
But still, get your own push group. Don’t make your life a fing nightmare in pugs.

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BoP, sacrifice, freedom, very short duration single target stun. That is not laughable by any means, quite a lot actually.
And why, please tell me why, you think that great offhealing shouldn’t be a factor in utility of a spec? I know you are new to the game and overall not a big achiever right now but… that’s a really big plus to a spec. Not everything is about damage, surprisingly.

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Things you want your dps to bring and a ret paladin doesn’t bring, in order of importance:
1)Bloodlust
2)CR
3) battleshout/arcane int/stamina/monk-dh damage amplification debuff
4) a safe, classic, infinite duration cc like poly/trap/imprison
5)shroud
6)healthstones

Things a ret paladin brings: random stuff no one except the paladin himself will notice if they get used or not.
If i really had to reach to find something, i guess you could say devotion aura is a buff, kinda like stamina buff but even less noticable. When was the last time you got invited to a party, looked at the members and went “oh no we have no priest! we’re going to be so squishy with no stamina buff!”. Devotion aura is like that, but even smaller.

I dont mean to sound negative but you know the bar is really low when you consider a single target stun or blessing of freedom “good utility”. Thats like someone trying to argue shadowpriests bring incredible unique utility because they have Mind Control so if the tank wants to kite a group of humanoids, the shadowpriest can mindcontrol one and walk it the other direction. Thats what it sounds like when you’re trying to argue Blessing of Freedom is reason to get invited.

Im not saying that a ret doesnt have buttons they can press to help their group in ways other than doing damage. I’m just saying they are non important extras, the group would be totally fine without them.

If you’re trying to push high keys and your group doesn’t have bloodlust, thats reason enough to not even try, disband the group and remake from scratch. Same with CR. If your group doesn’t have a ret, who cares lol? Sure its welcome to have an extra disease/poison dispel in ToP and PF, but compare it to what a mage brings in just 1 dps slot:

Bloodlust - no discription needed

Arcane intellect - an extra ~90-100 int, which is like a permanently active trinket. Not only does this help every caster dps in your group, it also helps your healer A TON, much more than any ret sacrificing 65% of his damage to “offheal”, which just ends up making your healer’s heals that land 0.32 sec later overheal hard.

Polymorph - classic cc

Decurse - like the paladin’s cleanse, okay to have if your mage remembers to press it, wont make or break any groups, but in mage’s case it is on TOP of everything else, not the main arguement to bring one.

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Hey man, said so myself. And, yeah in comparison to other dps ret brings… yeah, extras that group would be fine without, like you said so yourself. If not in this thread, I’ve mentioned utility other pala specs bring that (imo) should be class wide. Like Aura Mastery or Spellwarding. Devo is… yeah, yay something I fing quess. Think most rets run Ret aura anyway, hoping someone will fail.
Point of my comment was that ret is not a spec that brings 0 value or something similar, not even close, but in comparison with other dps or with other pala specs - it is laughable.

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If we had some active aura on Ret that can activate party-wide Seraphim for 15 sec once per 4 min even - that would be buff that makes difference. Static BS that lowers damage by laughtable 3% is not important, you can freely think like it doesn’t exist because people treat it this way anyway. I would rather have at least one special kind of aura per spec that kicks balls and people can feel “oo nice”.

Right now Ret compared to mage is inferior DPS, has inferior CC and also disgustingly inferior party buffs, so bad that you can just say that Ret doesn’t bring anything at all compared to mage. And that can be said about nearly every melee DPS. Melee DPS are in most cases inferior to rangeds in terms of utility in general, and Ret IMO is particulary bad among them.

Self heals are very good in solo and PVP, NOT in normal PVE with healer. Don’t treat it as meaningful utility because Ret utility starts to kick when things are going REALLY BAD. And who calculates their run to go REALLY BAD? So healer dies at the end of a boss fight and party will wipe? “Hmm, I better take a Ret so we have some off-healing just in case…”. No! Nobody thinks like that. People are expecting things to generally go well, they don’t want to bring “loser-failsafe-class” with them that brings nothing in terms of chewing through mobs.

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That would literally be the most powerful CD this game ever had. Only comperable to Drums from TBC when you could have them chained on party/raid for full duration fo the fight, quite literally.

Depends on your definition of “normal PvE”. Judging by your history in both raids and dungeons - yeah, it’s not something really worth having there. In high-end stuff? It’s quite good.

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That was just an example of something that would kick balls so heavily that you would think about taking Ret only because of that. Just like you think about taking Mage or Shaman only because they have BL.

And I watched videos how are things done in high end stuff. Ret is even more useless there than anywhere below, because tank does not take damage at all. You take 2x bala + 1x mage and they root and slow everything so it doesn’t even come near because it’s going to nearly one shot the tank anyway, so Ret heals are even more of a joke. Go and watch yourself. The higher you are in PVE content the worse Ret is.

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There are many paladin tanks (at least on lower mythics keys) so there is no reason to invite another paladin to group. I was having the same issue and the only way to get to M+ as a retri was to group up with a healer and then get invited as a duo.

Honestly I do not blame them. There isn´t really a reason to bring retri paladins to the group over other classes. We don´t have BL, CC, dmg buffs, purge etc… and our damage is average at best… I think it is great retri can off-heal etc., on the other hand when composing the group you´ll better get a good healer who does not need that help + pure dps.

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We honestly need to be reworked in some aspects. I’m thinking maybe give consecration a snare effect since its basically useless damage anyway. Auras need a buff, like we can literally remove Retribution Aura effect that gives us wings when someone dies… thats just stupid. Give it an overall damage increase by 5% instead like warriors or w/e gets.

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Best would be an additional set of talents only active in keyed dungeons and only provide some sort of utility like damage buffs, br and other stuff to balance out the classes.

But Ret is far from having just some average dps. Havent done high keys so far but until now there has never been a mage, hunter or whatever beating my overall damage as long their gear wasn’t at least 10 ilvl over mine. The only thing that limits my damage is the cd of Bubble/BoP because only dh tanks seem to be able to keep their aggro when I blast trash packs with 15k dps every minute or 20k every two minutes.

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We should honestly just get Divine Intervention back. I think it would bring alot more value to retributions where we can DI the healer in case of a wipe for a quick ress regroup. Saves alot of time and its an original spell that we’ve had a long time ago, since Shadowlands wants to bring back old stuff like Auras we should get DI back imo.

As far as damage goes, if the hunter or mage know what they are doing and have equal gear then theres no way you can outperform them in overall. They have burst intervals alot more often than we do, aswell as better sustain damage. Meta ATM must be Outlaw rogue, MM hunter, Fire Mage, Boomkin Druid and UH DK.

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Yes, absolutely. Ret is in dire need of a rework/rewamp of our utilities. IDK why things like spellwarding or aura mastery that makes them actually really ncie and strong are not something avalaible to us.

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As long as Blizzard won’t buff the Melee (as it should be, risky to play ) and / or Nerf the overperforming specs these threads won’t over. Also %80 of community stick to "Range Meta " or "Rio thing "

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It’s laughable as a toolkit for m+ compared to what others have.
Sacrifice on high keys is mostly a suicide mission, bop can be used on some scenario, but mostly is a “you screwed up and i’m saving your butt key”, not exactly a utility you plan things around, and yes we have a stun but most of the big mobs are immune to it so the utility of it is questionable compared to a hard CC other class have. And freedom is again useless since outside pvp does not give speed bonuses, and afaik, there is little to no slow in any dungeon that makes it relevant.

Stop pretending ret toolkit is fine, it’s not. It’s fine in solo content, it’s fine in pvp, it’s not fine by a mile in any group content.

We’re in the same bad spot we where in bfa. No changes.

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Seems like flavor of the month-picking is even more prevalent this season than before. Unless you’re a druid, mage, hunter, and perhaps to a certain extent rogue, you’re gonna have a hard time getting into keys other than your own as a DPS these days.

I think this is in part because melees seem worse than before, but it’s also because of the new weekly chest, which encourages people to do a lot of lower level keys than they are capable of. This makes the competition very stiff indeed.

This hits Ret especially hard, since we’re not exactly in a good state for M+ to begin with.

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Too situationnal compared to a lust, CR or mass stun

Too situationnal

That’s the only relevant part of our toolkit. Sadly, we’d rather have MASS stun or cc than single target CC.

First thing first, ret has been a DPS spec since wrath. We’re loosing too much DPS to cast a WOG and flash heal is realistically usable when using selfless healer, which is not that much efficient healing.

Second, if your raid group has to rely on off healing from DPS specs like shaman, druids, paladin and monks, then the issue is your healer roster, since those guys should be healing a lot.

TL:DR : Yeah, utility, but unreliable utility. I still don’t get why ret does not provide a raid wide CD as the “”“support”“” compared to warrior and DK…

2 Likes