To humor myself after getting 3 arena matches in a row that consisted either entirely of ret paladins or almost entirely of ret paladins – myself not counting of course – I decided to look at the real data. So I looked up 2400 solo shuffle players, filtered by spec and took a dig at the numbers. Here’s the conclusion.
There are 38 specs in the game – I count tanks and believe they should be balanced in such a way to be viable. In my opinion, the overabundance of CC stuns and interrupts everyone has should only exist in the hands of tanks, who are disruptive instead of burst damaging creating a third archtype in PvP for gameplay but that’s neither here nor there.
Ret paladins make up an unbelievable roughly 13% of the high rating solo shuffle ladder right now. Things like my class at the bottom(Enh Shaman) are bottomfeeding with about 1.4% representation. In theory youd want everyone to be close to about 3.2% because that’d give everyone a similar representation and show that all specs had a place in the game.
For simple math, ret is currently represented 400% higher than it should be. Its overperforming by a factor of freaking four. If I were a developer of this game’s PvP, I’d be hanging my head in abject shame, writing a public apology for my inability to do basic algebra in a game with health pools normalized, damage values standardized, dps cd’s homogenized and every class just permanently attached to their target so kiting barely even exists anymore. The numbers couldnt be easier to tune and Blizzard still, in a random mini patch half way between content patches, managed to steroid up one spec so much it outshines every other spec by 400%.
And your hotfix nerfs to deal with it? Divine Arbiter down by a little bit. A 3% damage nerf. A slap on the wrist to their bonkers defensives now.
You wanna redesign ret? Redesign it back into something that looks like its origins. Some seal-weaving and seals-effecting-judgments spec where they choose where their power focus is by what seal they activate and judge with. Make them ramp up by cycling through multiple seals and judgements over time. What you did instead was create a new class by deleting an old one.
But regardless, these are the plain numbers on just how bad the situation is on the ground floor. I dont know what to say, Blizzard. I cant even really enjoy the game much anymore because ALL I fight are ret paladins. I may do fine in win rates, but its just not fun to fight the same spec every single match in a game with THIRTY EIGHT choices.
You have to assume tanks being made viable comes with them not being grotesque abominations of tons of damage tons of cc tons of survivability. Viable doesnt mean strong. Think about how my spec is now viable. Sometimes I burst okay, I have pathetic cc, decent interrupt, decent heals, weak mitigation. That kind of viable.
Imagine if they did the lord’s work, got rid of most cc stuns and interrupts from DPS – because every dps shouldnt have all 3. But made tanks do medium damge but generally have all that control. Youd see tanks as a kind of disruptive bruiser role. There is a level of frustration to letting tanks do that, but its far better than what we have now which is EVERYONE does that and EVERYONE has tons of nukes.
In a well designed alternative wehre you let everything be viable, healers are not op and overhealing everyone to full every GCD, tanks have a place as disruptive interference fighters that do steady damage or weak damage with occasional burst based on which class they are and dps are designed more to kill and have SOME but not all the cc/stuns/interrupts based on spec.
i.e. shaman wouldnt have a stun and its cc isnt the best, but with a ranged interrupt its got its measure of control over a fight. But a prot warrior would have a concussive blow stun, shield bash interrupt plus fear and aoe slows.
I dont think these devs are that bad at their job that they cant figure this stuff out. Most of their logic and changes have been good. This ret mistake has been just that, one mistake after quite a few good changes.
By “including” tanks you naturally drive down the average percent, effectively enforcing your idea. In reality tanks will never and should never be considered. I understand your point, and it’s a decent one, however they are not balanced for that. If they were you could have tank, healer, X. You can’t because blizzard understands how that would play out. Regardless what you failed to take into consideration is all the rets that pushed the second 10.0.7 came out and are now sitting on rating because they haven’t played since the nerfs. That is not an accurate representation of active ret players.
See I think gladiator stance was the right direction, not the early first season versions, but after they were nerfed down a bit.
That I think would make for a great direction to take tanks in pvp.
Just make them utility support dps, instead of dmg soaking annoyances.