Ugh. Not big on es at all. And all this post is “make es be the end all and be all maintenence buff.”
Ret is better without the maintenence.
thats a slippery slope but you do you
Lathspell - damage/tree tuning aside what would you like to see Ret have in the vein of raid/M+ utility for high key pushing/mythic raiding? I ask that because I don’t feel the need to hash out the performance/talent tree of the spec since it’s obviously bad and needs attention, but was more curious what would make it a desirable pick while still being thematic?
There are a lot of desirable things about Paladin in general. Ret Paladins do not lack utility in M+. Their utility in raid is nonexistent due to its counterparts, Holy and Protection - which bring everything a Ret brings and more.
There are essentially three things an M+ choice can bring: damage, synergy, and buff coverage.
Great tuning is the first and most important aspect of M+. Damage makes the timer faster. Damage covers up mistakes - the longer mobs are alive, the more likely you are to die. Secondly and nearly as important, synergy. The spec needs to synergize with other meta choices.
Ret needs to do things that other meta specs cannot do. In regards to stops, Rets really only have a kick and Blinding Light. It’s difficult on a lot of weeks to take quick HoJ - and even that is less desirable in a lot of ways compared to an AOE stop. For example, Incorporeal makes it quite hard to take the quick HoJ. The positives are blinding light, hand of sacrifice, BoP, and Freedom. The last two are good, but not game breaking. Most of the time these utilities are bonuses for a group when Protection or Holy Paladin are meta choices.
Buff coverage is something that plagues a lot of classes. Andybrew, at Blizzcon, was talking to Ian about how BDK will never be meta unless it is tuned through the ceiling (see S3/4 SL). Why? It really doesn’t bring anything for a meta comp. Grips are nice, but not game breaking and AMZ is good but not a pulling factor for the spec being meta. In the same way, Ret aura really doesn’t push Ret over the edge. 2% damage and healing (now that it is fixed) is pretty good, but there are other buffs that are generally more desirable and fit into the “synergy” category like DH buff and MotW. Mage buff is also quite strong, as a side note.
To sum it up, Ret brings bad damage, a competitive buff, poor mob control, and zero to great utility depending on the tuning of Holy and Prot - it brings nothing unique to those specs. Divine shield is also a plus - along with the specs tankiness.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please, explain.
Expurgation does radiant damage…
Survivability and utility are the last things ret should be whining about…
The spec literally inted and died nonstop all of 10.0 for being as squishy as boomkin is (and still is) so they could take a 1% dps increase in shield of vengeance and now has the lowest death stats in raid alongside some tanks because they got overbuffed for acting like morons.
They could use an aoe buff really, especially in regards to burst aoe and keeping dmg up as you said with fights like tindral and fyrakk being a big deal, but ret is doing pretty well in most other regards.
You could slap ret as-is into aberrus where there were plenty of single-target fights and they’d be a fine middle of the pack spec on overall, but add in some cleave fights and they seem awful. Volcoross, Nymue, and Smolderon are the only reason their stats pages for overall aren’t much worse.
Well that and the fact that they’re a less popular spec, but not bad enough to have not killed the last 2 bosses in public logs yet. Their stats will shoot up a lot when a lot of other less meta specs finally get (public) tindral and fyrakk kills.
Anyways overall stats page is dumb, as usual, but yeah, burst aoe with st is good in raid and keys rn.
Anyways, once the fight takes another round of nerfs and is solidly on farm, parsing for tindral as melee is going to be some kind of meme competition where you beg some hunter or healer to do your bomb instead or bring 9 melee and is going to drag overall stats into even further silliness…
Ahh come on man.
An entire span of the player were abnormally playing worst or intentionally dying?
No
There’s a certain homogenized average skill level across wow players.
The classes/spec that dies the less are usually those with the strongest survivability.
The fact that Ret was dying the most wasn’t a coincidence then nor is it now with the opposite situation.
If you give a spec defensive power, it’ll die less, simple as that.
Add that to the fact that our best stat is now Versatility and you got your explanation as to why we don’t die.
They can start by shifting these stats priority and then we’ll see where we land.
And frankly, if it WAS the players trying to edge SoV (as you suggest), how come it’s not still going on?
SoV deals even more damage now than it used to, they buffed the shield through a talent everyone take 100% of the time and it’s even further increased by the fact that it has a Vers scaling that we now stack.
Yes.
I don’t think we need a pure AoE buff per say but a more consistent cleave in ST situation (and a better ST in AoE).
Cleave Divine Arbiter should provide but doesn’t right now because of the delay in attaining the stacks.
When it procs it deal 75% AP to targets within 6yd of primary target (base DS is 93%).
They could easily tune the primary target damage and stacks it requires to make it a reliable cleave, push it to 8yd and make it seamless for ST output.
Hell, does it even need a stack mechanic?
And if they don’t go with that, could it at least not stop at 25?
So that we can bank those in M+ and use them as funnel damage on a big add on specific packs?
The blessed hammer part of HoW really gives a lots of stacks in AoE but not nearly enough to be relied on to use DA consistently to funnel.
And with the priority given to BoJ and Judgement, there’s barely space to use it in the burst window of wings.
And we don’t get stacks for the cleave of blessed champion on either CS or Judgement.
The more I think about it, the more I realize it must have been meant to work as such.
Why else would DA have a cleave component if you can’t even reliably use it when there are adds?
I feel the dev who made the rework might not be the one in charge of Ret now.
EDIT:
Made a bug thread about DA, it seems like it doesn’t behave as it should?
i guess players these days doesn’t know how to throw hand of sacrifice and spect to instant flash of light anymore.
no one is complaining about rets survivability its utility is somewhat controversial but frankly who cares
rets issues are clearly talent based with the st and aoe divide. theres no need to reinvent the spec or aura buff it to the point it snowballs out of control. when the issues is very clearly stufff like rush of light not procing with divine storm. vangaurd momentum not making hammer of wrath cleave like aberrus dog tier. stuff like that
you are literally a holy main
1 Like
I really just wish they would buff TV by 15%-25%.
This would be nice as well. But we also need this 20% damage modifier for ST, unless they buff TV by 50%, but then Divine storm would need to be buffed to be optimal at 4+ targets.
Final Reckoning baseline fixes all of Ret’s problems. It buffs our ST burst window by synergizing with ES and wings, and it gives us reasonable burst AoE without gutting ST dps by not taking ES. It also makes a very simple spec just a tiny bit more engaging to play.
Just add that useless 3 holy power talent to the node FR already has (for when you really don’t need ES) and add an actual worthwhile capstone talent at the bottom. Hell, I’d take Seraphim off the GCD there (or talent to bake it into wings).
One more thing, let us generate HP from WF totem. It’s embarrassing that an Enhance actually loses dps by taking that talent because it’s so bad for Ret. Plenty of other specs generate resources from WF, there is no reason for Ret not to.