Not without "dev"ine intervention it ain’t… jks
Interestingly Feral were doing a fair bit better than Fury at that point too. So, they scale as well as Fury (or better) and also got a significant buff … hmmm.
Feral should not #1 overall and Ret #2 melee dps in phase 4 because of arbitrary buffs in classic. People arent complaining about fire mages. Theyre complaining the DPS ranks are totally broken.
If you were like, beast mastry or arms buffed from worst in the game to middle of the pack, likewise there would be little complaints. But going from middle of the pack to best in the game is a situation where blizzard should not be touching class balance.
They totally reworked the class rankings in phase 4 and made 2 support specs top tier S++ dps specs. That is completely unacceptable. Its worse than private server level shinanigans.
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Sims are hardly ever right
Doesn’t matter.
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Original Feral scaled roughly the same as warriors without Shadowmourne, maybe slightly higher.
I just added a row to my sim chart for Retribution with DSAC, which is going to be necessary on a number of fights/hardmodes for progression at least (unless you already have 3-4 DSACs without Retribution). DSAC spec costs us DPS by having to drop points in Seals of the Pure. DSAC spec is dead center middle of the pack on the short 120s sim, 8th place 180s (vs. 5th place with AM) and 6th place on 300s (vs. 3rd place with AM).
We already pay a significant tax for this specific utility, not to mention giving up DPS globals to cast them, so simulated DPS is not comparable with a Retribution that is casting lots of utility.
When taking DSAC numbers into consideration, you get to see the bigger picture behind Retribution DPS. Retribution is perfectly fine where it is, will have no negative impact on class representation, and needs neither nerfs nor buffs. It is basically where people have always expected it to be in ICC.
Take a look at it now:
https://tinyurl.com/iccprojections
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Alright if you do want to actually talk about what proper balance would be, remember that DSac got nerfed in MoP as it was too good in an expansion where every healer had strong raid cooldowns.
- Not a Goal – Make Retribution competitive with the highest output specs and classes in PvE. The utility of all Paladins cannot be overstated here and is absolutely a factor to consider still. With access to critical raid buffs, auras, and raid cooldowns such as Aura Mastery and Divine Guardian, all flavors of Paladins have a vital place in any raid composition, and as we’ve previously stated, we are pleased with their overall representation in raids, as a class. We do not want to start seeing Retribution become stacked in raids. Most raid groups that run Retribution Paladins typically include a single Retribution Paladin, and we feel that 1 or 2 is still a good target number to have in each raid.
Do you reckon having upper-range damage is required on the DPS spec with arguably the strongest utility? Ret no longer needs the adjustment they received when they were dog tier in Ulduar (and still brought on prog there).
Do you think there’s a problem that raids run 4-5 paladins and 1 of other classes? The irony of some Ret players holding up TAJ interactions as blizzlike when completely ignoring the buffs is something to see.
It is basically where people have always expected it to be in ICC.
What are your thoughts on Feral in this instance?
Arguing that some players thought Ret would be omega pump in ICC doesn’t really hold up when we know exactly how much damage Ret would be doing without the glyph/SoV changes. Nearly every other class just deals with expectations from original Wrath being different in classic due to optimisations.
Further why should Ret keep their buffs to be ahead of rogues, enh shaman and dks? Classic isn’t a game that’s being actively balanced in the slightest, however two specs did get those buffs and no longer need them, they should be reverted.
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Do you reckon having upper-range damage is required on the DPS spec with arguably the strongest utility? Ret no longer needs the adjustment they received when they were dog tier in Ulduar (and still brought on prog there).
Blizzard’s own post says they want to avoid Retribution being stacked in raids, and they won’t be. They are not the meta stacking class in ICC. So what’s the issue? Every raid is still going to bring 1 Retribution.
If you’re talking about DSAC as our strongest utility, then use the DSAC numbers, which aren’t anywhere near the top DPS. As you can see in the sim sheet I posted a few posts up. So we are already fairly taxed via talents (300-500 dps) for going DSAC, and to give up a damage global to cast it. The fact that the raids run so many Prot/Holy paladins is exactly what hurts our utility as a selling point, as you already have more than enough DSACs and the rest of the utility, as has been stated many times in this thread and others.
The only reason we were brought on Progression in Ulduar was because you literally needed to have at least 4 DSAC/AM to kill Algalon, and that isn’t really the case for any other fight. If we didn’t get buffed, we were going to be unviable and replaced by Arcane in Ulduar, DSAC being necessary for Algalon was the only mitigating factor there pre-buff. Even post-buff, by the end of Ulduar we were still among the worst DPS. In Ulduar pre-buff, if you had 3 Prot/Holy paladins, then you already had at least 4 DSAC/AM and didn’t need Retribution at all for Algalon, and would bring Arcane instead.
What are your thoughts on Feral in this instance?
I think bringing Feral down to where Retribution (AM) is would be fine, and maybe better for balance, but then you end up with Fire Mage being the only S+ tier DPS a decent margin ahead of everyone else, and just change the issue from stacking Feral/Fire to just stacking Fire Mage.
Arguing that some players thought Ret would be omega pump in ICC doesn’t really hold up when we know exactly how much damage Ret would be doing without the glyph/SoV changes. Nearly every other class just deals with expectations from original Wrath being different in classic due to optimisations.
Just because Retribution would’ve been xyz dps without the glyphs/buffs doesn’t mean we should get nerfed, you need to explain why it’s a problem for Retribution to be where it is and how it negatively affects the meta or class representation. As already stated many times, if you revert the taunt buff you make Retribution among the worst DPS specs in the game without a legendary, and with a legendary slightly below middle of the pack. What is the benefit to doing that, besides “that’s where they would be without buffs”? How does that positively impact the raiding scene, the meta, and class representation? Why SHOULDN’T Retribution deal more DPS than xyz class? Seems like some people feel that Retribution is never supposed to deal good damage because of our toolkit.
Removing the taunt glyph also reintroduces taunt weaving, where Retribution will taunt when they can get away with it for damage purposes, then ask for a taunt back to the tank, which is super cringe gameplay and nobody wants that.
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Arguably, but also wrong.
Not a Goal – Make Retribution competitive with the highest output specs and classes in PvE.
CONTEXT MATTERS This was in reference to rets dps during the Ulduar phase. They did not want to buff them up to the top during that phase.
Ret was always going to be good in ICC once and IF they get Tier 10, Taj, AND Shadowmourne. Until then they are low end dps. And by the time most rets will get all of those items, it’s time for Cata. This is reason enough for the buff to stay until at least Cata.
Removing ret buffs will absolutely ruin prog for rets during ICC. They will be sat again, like many were in Ulduar prog for dps checks.
-15years ago i remember blizzard saying “we don’t want hyper’d class to do same dps as pure dps classes” they intentionally claimed during original wrath that feral is meant to be 5% dps behind a Rogue.
-But now the new team of blizzard "screw the old beliefs, let’s change what so ever and makes every class equal in dps…‘Tweaking in progress’ Oops… it seems that the bottom class flied to the top! who cares! let’s get some drinks and party! we don’t even play our game. xD
that’s bliztard when they never anticipate the outcome 
Were they though? Really?
I mean, there’s an argument to suggest that Rest may have been sat after Ulduar was on farm but they were getting brought to prog (as we’re Fury).
At any given point Ret population always never lower than around 40000 parses lower the Fury - at it’s worst.
Mostly sat for Iron Council and Hodir week 1.
If you average out dps for each phase top bis sims, throughout WOTLK classic, you will find rogues beating ret. By quite a bit.
that won’t last, ret will trash Rogues in icc…and blizzard is also giving them free legendary, i personally think that certain encounters will be done easier with ret stacking.
but i don’t mind tbh i’m a fail rogue anyway! i just made a sarcasm about how blizzard used to think in original wrath and how they think now, not gonna whine though! the classic wrath has got too many changes so far so no point in even pointing at anything out.
Aye.
Just getting ready to enjoy my time in the sun and blast my way to Cata.
PS Buff Single Minded Fury in cata pls
Let’s wait and see what happens on H LK, that’s looking like a fight that might not favour prot pallies and you really want a lot of AM and/or DSac’s.
Sure, however choosing 120s isn’t really representative. Different fight lengths favour different classes due to cooldowns and ICC has a range of fight lengths. Choosing the worst fight length and discussing projections from that is misleading.
It doesn’t change the point that Ret is ahead of rogues, enh and dks even when giving up 300 dps for the best raid cd in the game. This is no longer Ulduar, Ret isn’t looking at being the lowest dps by 1k.
ICC is looking to shape up a lot more like Ulduar. DSac has little utility if damage intake doesn’t matter, but having access to DSac and Hand of Sac is huge on fights where tanks fall over.
I think bringing Feral down to where Retribution (AM) is would be fine, and maybe better for balance, but then you end up with Fire Mage being the only S+ tier DPS a decent margin ahead of everyone else, and just change the issue from stacking Feral/Fire to just stacking Fire Mage.
This goes for both Ret and Feral:
The difference is that Classic is a recreation of the original game. It’s not about “what specs deserve to be anywhere” but rather that’s just the way it was. If a spec is falling down a hole in representation then buffing it seems reasonable, but you are taking it from the bottom to just over the bottom (like Ret in Uld).
The whole point of my post was that Blizzard said they don’t want to change how specs are scaling, and yet they’ve done that for Ret and particularly Feral.
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Let’s wait and see what happens on H LK, that’s looking like a fight that might not favour prot pallies and you really want a lot of AM and/or DSac’s.
You really think people will stack Retribution for 1 fight, when they likely already have 3-5 DSAC/AM?
Sure, however choosing 120s isn’t really representative. Different fight lengths favour different classes due to cooldowns and ICC has a range of fight lengths. Choosing the worst fight length and discussing projections from that is misleading.
Where did I mentioned 120s? There are three fight lengths listed there, 300s 180s 120s. DSAC is not near the top DPS in any one of them. On our best fight length, 300s, we are 6th place with DSAC and 800 DPS below Feral.
180s - DSAC is 8th place, -825 dps vs. Feral.
If you wanna argue DSAC, then use the DSAC numbers. I think people also overestimate the impact of having a 4th/5th DSAC. On a lot of fights, it just doesn’t have much impact.
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Enjoy the sunny days 
P.S rets will be way behind in cata especially in tier 13 for such dps check fight as Ultraxion heroic.