Wym me? Why would you try to kite a lvl 29 holy paladin? 
I love how rets say that when like 50% of the games I qued into pre-rework at 2300cr were Cupid. And before that in shadowlands rets were absurd.
Now if you don’t play with a ret at any cr, you are at a huge disadvantage.
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Hey! Not trying to be disputatious or come across as attacking, just wanted to put that out there before posting all this:
Relevant is all relative. However, given the insane inflation that happened between bfa and shadowlands, I’d say at the very least that gladiator level xp would be considered relevant by most of the community (I’m pretty sure Shadowlands Season 2 had something like 12%+ population getting glad).
I’m not sure this is true.
I’m not a ret main, but I’ve been glad xp plus on every class and most specs. I think ret felt “bad” at the start of the expansion, but that was half because it was S tier all of slands and half because demo, dh, dk, and sp were all overtuned and kinda hard countered the class. Despite that, I dont think any ret mains had trouble pushing in 3s or shuffle because radiant decree was so strong. Once the other overperforming specs got nerfed, ret was insane for a couple weeks before RD got nerfed. After that, it was DEFINITELY on the weaker end of the spectrum behind locks, wars, mages, and rogues, but wasn’t unplayable or awful. You just couldn’t press W and really had to play around your goes.
Of course not, but it’s disingenuous to represent this ret paladin situation as the above quote. Everyone - EVERYONE at every level of play, including mains of the spec are saying that ret paladin is obscenely broken and incredibly unhealthy for the meta.
I get that, but “useful” is a very unfair understatement.
100% agree here; no class should be inviable, and the game is way healthier when every spec is competitive… which is EXACTLY the problem with current ret. It is so far and above strong that it invalidates every other spec that doesn’t synergize with it. The only “counter” to a ret is another ret.
Same thing here. Theres always a “meta” of top classes/comps, but even within that meta theres always variety. Prior to 10.0.7, every class/spec had a r1 viable comp from things like cupid to war/caster/x to rogue/x/x to dh/boom to jungle to dk+ww/evoker/feral/war etc.
Now there is no variety. It’s ret+demo/hunter/war.
I dont have the graphic, but someone posted last week’s drustvar information and it showed ret at 58.5% winrate and was represented in 89.1% of all games.
While there are always classes at the top and no shortage of historical outliers, never in the entire history of the game has there ever been a single specialization that has pushed out every other class/spec and existed without hard or soft counters.
I want to reiterate on those numbers as well. If a spec has a 58.5% winrate overall, its on average winning ~50% more than it’s losing - its almost impossible not to climb on ret. That win percentage is even more staggering when you consider its representation. If a ret is in every game, it’s winrate should be 50% because 1 ret has to win and 1 ret has to lose. We see that that is NOT the case here. Of the 10.9% games that dont have ret paladins, 8.5% of those are won by the ret paladin team. That means that ret paladins beat non-ret paladin teams 78% of the time. That is INSANE and the most egregious balance outlier in the history of the game that there is data for. This is further compounded by the fact that so many of these rets are playing well above their historical mmr due to the aformentioned climbing. People are not exaggerating when they say “you HAVE to play with a ret or you’re at a massive disadvantage”
And this is the biggest problem with the entire rework. The last month is the MOST IMPORTANT part of a season ; its when inflation is in full swing and the only time pushing for titles actually matters. So to have the most absurd balance outlier in the game come in at the most important time at the season is not so much a slap to the face, but a kick to the groin to say the least.
I understand wanting to defend your class/spec, but I want you to understand why people are responding to your posts the way that they are. People were upset and frustrated with your post because it’s so focused on your experience as a ret, which is a VASTLY different experience from what the rest of the entire pvp community as a whole is feeling. And that feels really really crappy to have a community rep comment like that.
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a really good barometer for ‘is this class overpowered or not’ - play it yourself. your a ret pally player clearly so theres some bias i get it. have you ever rerolled to what was the super busted spec at the time just to see how it is?
i did. i rolled a ret friday to see if this was really as brainless as anticipated, shocking, i got to 2400 in 113 games played.
ret players have this crazy combination of gaslighting and zero situational awareness, its really weird to interact with
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Why even come here lol
Blizzard really since MoP. Legion was a fluke apparently.
That’s kind of harsh. Give the man a chance to redeem himself.
It’s aholinka led. What do you expect?
I LOL’ed. Do you even Lock Bro?
Demo durability, yes, there is some better durability there. I assume you are talking about Dark Pact, and “Resolve” as “general” durability. But a ret will force these before they pop their cooldowns, or do it in their stun to force a trinket. After that you are dead man walking.
Needless to say, I just leveled my Pally to 70, and delete people by just mashing buttons.
That’s sad.
Yes.
If you’re working with your partners properly and not wasting things demo can survive a really long time into ret.
Who asked?
Sorry that you are sad.
Then post on your lock, not your level 10 huntard.
Define a “really long time”? Incidentally, I never said that Demo is bad, but to say that it is a counter to Pally is a little ridiculous.
Something called “context”.
You should be.
Nah.
That depends on tons of factors but it can survive the longest into ret anything can while not being another ret.
It’s the closest thing ret has to one.
It’s not really context. It’s a 1600 player rerolling to the op class and mentioning it because he thinks it means anything.
Before you spent 10 hours trying to argue with me I literally admitted that if you could do it fast enough then it ISNT THROWING. But you want start arguments out of air because conflict gives you dopamine u remind me of my ex girl
thats still 1600 more than your rating, because you won’t post on your lock to show that you are anything but a troll. Just sayin’.
Lock is really good into ret for the exact reasons he mentioned
General lock durability
Lock movement/port being very strong bc ret doesn’t have a “step” mechanic
Amp curse of weakness is up for every wings
Demo “pets” are not dots so they cannot be dispelled by judgement of the pure
The ability to wall/pact during a hoj and not have to pre anything
There’s more than that but yeah. Demo being able to specifically deal with Ret better than many other classes is why they are meta rn. And bc ret deals with many of their natural counters and have forced those counters out of the meta, demo ends up the best caster you can play.
I’m not convinced demo is the best lock spec into every matchup, but it probably is the one that’s the best into the matchups people are playing right now.
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Now combine the two and you have the most annoying comp to exist.
It is less to do with any given achievement and a lot more to do with the take. The posts you get to write with special letters are supposed to mean more than the average poster. You get to post in a special forum that blizzard interacts with more supposedly. You’re not an unbiased or fair poster with that take. “My spec should get to be on top for a while” is not a valid opinion, especially given what we all know has happened since the ret rework. That’s the same opinion that every other inexperienced ret player who has magically shot up 800 points in two weeks has.
Idk, things were kinda less than ideal when he was gone, too…
He never really left. Folks just couldn’t get over the original ashran and his handling of ‘play it like we say so’ has ruined pvp ever since.
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While I get what you’re trying to say, ret in its current form is breaking PvP. The entire meta is being formed around a single spec. Prior to the changes, ret wasn’t great, but they weren’t awful either.
As of now, from a numbers vantage point, ret is one of the most broken specs ever to exist in the game relative to PvP. The game is essentially unplayable for a ton of specs right now. It’s the least fun I have had in arena in years. They could nerf ret damage by over 20% and they would still be on par with many other dps specs.
3% is nothing. 10% would be more appropriate, but it still wouldn’t change much.
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