As I explained to someone who asked me why I like Classic more than Retail…
Both games are MMORPGs. But in Classic, my role is a Mage. I can deal damage, crowd control, provide support with conjuration spells, etc.
In Retail, my role is DPS. Not even “damage-dealer”. Just DPS…
Save the min/maxing and spreadsheet jockeying for Retail and the Elitist Jerks. They love that sort of thing. Leave Classic for those who want to actually play an MMORPG that has better fantasy roles than simply tank, dps, and heals.
This isn’t about min/maxing. The problem isn’t that enhance shaman/Ret pallys are not optimal. The problem is that they do not bring anything to the table to justify their raid spot. They aren’t behind other classes by 15-20%. They are literally doing less than half the DPS of the top specs. This could be mitigated if they brought the kind of support to the table that could make up for that DPS loss, but they don’t. The difference between an enhance shaman’s totems and a resto shaman’s totems is minimal. Bringing an enhance shaman when other DPS or a resto shaman is available is always going to hurt your group.
Yes, a group can succeed with a Ret Pally or Enhance Shammy in the party, but they will always be succeeding in spite of the choice to bring those players instead of because of bringing them.
That’s what viable means. It means that a spec is built in such a way that, played well, you can make a meaningful contribution to the raid’s success. Otherwise you are just being carried. If you want to be carried instead of meaningfully contributing and you can find a raid group to carry you, then go nuts. That doesn’t change the reality that you are being carried though.
Average Ret Pally parses are WAY behind other classes. At the 75th percentile, the average Ret Pally is doing less than half of what the average Rogue or Fury Warrior does. It’s not any better at the 90th percentile. For some reason it isn’t letting me link the log rankings for Lucifron to illustrate this, but the difference between the top specs and these non viable specs at the 75th percentile is:
Fury War = 536.22
Assassination Rogue = 473.50
Combat Rogue = 458.86
Ret Pally = 213.21
Yes, your group can succeed with you being carried by the raid as a Ret Pally, but you are being carried. That’s the point. That is what it means to say that Ret isn’t viable.
See above. Yes, you can down bosses with a carry in the group, but the point is that a Ret Pally or Enhance Shaman is always being carried by their raid. They are not meaningfully contributing to the success of the group. You can succeed in spite of their presence, but never because of it.
And still got it, because min maxing specs in vanilla pve content liek ony/mc and BWL is useless.
They are 35% behind those
Even with them being behind 75% boss would still die.
1.12 plus 15 years is amazing eh.
A m a z i n g
So instead of killing the boss in 4 mins you kill it in 3?!
OOOOOH
lmao.
You can down vanilla bvosses with 35 carrie sin a group.
All they gotta do is not die and dont be obnoxius.
If you really want to do hard pve content full of pre requisites, mechs and complciated fights go retail and do mythic raids
Right now on faerlina people are doing pugs with people in greens and getting 7/10 MC bosses down.
213.21 compared to 536.22 is nearly 60% behind, not 35%.
Again, no one is arguing you can’t carry Ret Paladins. That doesn’t change the fact that they are being carried. I can complete an escape room with my 3 year old niece. That doesn’t mean she meaningfully contributed to our success. That’s what it means to be viable.
But again, that doesn’t mean they are not carries. You are stubbornly missing the point of what it means to be viable. If your group is succeeding in spite of bringing you even though you play your class well, that’s not being viable.
I’m not conflating those things. We aren’t talking about squeezing every last point of DPS out of the group. We are talking about bringing class/spec combos in a DPS slot that cannot even pull 50% of the DPS of other melee DPS. They aren’t just sub-optimal, they are not viable contributors.
You are confused about what it means to be viable. Yes, the content is easy enough that groups can succeed despite bringing a Ret Pally. They could also succeed while bringing a super low level or two. That doesn’t mean the low level players are viable for raids. They are just being carried.
I don’t care about min/maxing. If you want to take an odd talent here or there and you can still do respectable DPS, you won’t hear me say that you aren’t viable. If your DPS spec played skillfully cannot pull half the DPS of those doing the heavy lifting, then it’s idiotic to pretend that spec is viable. For that matter, if your raid group knows it can succeed and thinks it’s fun to bring you despite your inability to meaningfully contribute, go ahead. I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m saying that it’s foolish to pretend that you are contributing when you aren’t.
As long as people are pushing their buttons… I don;t care what class/spec they play. I want them to have as much as I am having and we all should play what we enjoy.
I was in a guild during Vanilla that did this weird thing of letting people play whatever they want and accepting people on their merit as a person/guildmate.
We cleared everything other than Naxx (I remember trying first boss once, but BC was around the corner and interest was waning) and had a good time doing it.
We had feral tanks & dps, Ret dps, a fair number of pvp specs that weren’t told to respec for optimal pve builds (including fire mages in MC), and we also had a rule about DPS charts. If you spoke about one or linked one during a raid, you were kicked out of the raid for the night.
One of our tanks was a retired guy pushing 70 that could really only do one thing well, and that was stand in one spot and hit a boss. We had some serious keyboard turning, ability mouse clicking players that often never made it through any fight mechanic requiring awareness.
We still never hit a wall of more than a week or two on any boss, and had a great time getting everything cleared and on farm status.
People take themselves far to seriously in video games.
