Hello all,
Thinking of making a Ret Pally down the road shortly after launch for farming mats and stuff, mainly for the free mount at 40. Never played one before but just wanted to know from you all is Ret Pally gonna frustrate me soloing and are they gonna be good for group play as long as I am one of the dps?
I have no intention of using this as a tank character but I may dabble in healing down the road. Any advice?
Hi! I think they are pretty slow to level. So leveling might frustrate you a bit. Farming, they don’t have much aoe so they aren’t as fast as a hunter or mage to farm things.
Group play you should be fine in dungeons. Raiding, not so much.not as Ret anyways. Are you only leveling paladin to farm?
Ret is OK solo, but nothing like a pet class. Don’t expect to get dungeon groups - there are a million other melee players ahead of you in line, and you have a healing spec available. For what it’s worth, you can heal just fine in ret spec for most of the content before raids, but you’ll need to carry healing gear in your bags to do so. Don’t…don’t try to tank dungeons. 
The spec is ridiculed and castigated.
Ret pally in Vanilla. I loved it at the time, don’t think I would ever do it again.
Your gear is beautiful, your mounts are beautiful, your everything is…beautiful. If you just want to look like an awesome holy warrior, this is the class for you.
Their rotation is horrible. Calling it a rotation is kind of a joke…as you had no attacks, minus judging a seal every…what, 12 sec? (CD might be shorter/longer, been a bit).
Every solo fight is auto attacking with heals. You can chain pull, but your fights will be slower as you’re saving mana for heals.
You will do fine in groups, your buffs will be wanted…and cast on each individual player every 5 minutes.
When it comes to raiding, you will never dps. When it comes to PvP, you’ll do just fine. Back then, I used some addon to auto-buff upon movement (which is banned from retail at this point). I can’t imagine that buff hell without it tbh.
I followed pally with a warlock. I honestly hated the robed look, but it was such a relief to be able to play how I wanted again. I don’t recommend ret pally to anyone, to be honest.
You don’t make a Retribution Paladin, you make a Paladin that specializes into some Ret. talents. In all seriousness though, Paladin while leveling is a genuinely braindead class to play. You put on a Seal, auto-attack, sometimes Judgement, and then repeat until 60. It’s really easy to understand. On the topic of playing Retribution, even if you have a lot of consumables, the most you can hope for in terms of DPS is beating the off-tank’s damage. If you are looking to heal, there are some builds out there for leveling that have both Ret. talents and Holy talents.
No I already have a Mage lined up day 1, and rogue after that, I was thinking of a plate class, or class with healing capability. Always heard how Pallys make certain parts of the game easy. Maybe I am confused with them getting better in later expansions. If pally ends up not making my 3rd character slot then I will be considering a Shadowpriest or Druid.
Thanks for the quick replys. I have changed my mind like 20 times on classes in past 3 days and I been scouring youtube for WoW classic guides to get ready for next week.
lieutenant dan you ain’t got no wings
Go Druid, as your other alt over paly. You can aoe farm as moonkin, stealth to gather herbs/nodes in dungeons. Can swap and heal or dps. Much better choice
There is a reason that ret paladins used to be called “lolret” in vanilla.
They are the very botton of any melee class. The worst of the worst.
Holy paladins in other hand are amazing for both PvE and PvP.
Yea plus travel on a druid is better, maybe druid or s/priest is more my style
Thanks guys.
I think many players who never played Vanilla need to realize this is true for all the Classes. You don’t play a spec you play a Class.
You can have most of you points in a specific Tree but your still a Paladin, Warrior, Mage, etc. You have access to most skills minus the Talented ones like Mind Flay for Priests.
auto attack auto attack auto attack auto attack auto attack auto attack auto attack auto attack…
The very worst thing about ret pally in classic…oh god, how could I forget this…if an enemy ran in PvP, there was no way to catch them. No slows, no real ranged. Hammer of wrath was not yet a thing. I really do not recommend it lol
If you want to play it , just do it. 
if memory serves me right i remember the following…
-ret pally lfg
Ret is okay in PvP, garbage in raids.
If you want to play a paladin you’ll have to go ret for leveling. They’re slow as heck but fun on its own way. If you want to do group content you’re probably have to switch to holy, specially on raids.
Once you get your class quest hammer (Verigan’s Fist) + Seal of Command in your early to late 20’s, you will be outdps’ing everyone around you… at that one specific moment in time. Retribution talents actually ramp up very quickly from 20 to 45, and your damage will be highly competitive during those levels in dungeons. Once you start to get past 50, all the other classes will surpass your damage output quite quickly. Having at least 30 points in retribution at level 60 will allow you to deal passable dps in dungeon content, and you won’t actually have a hard time getting in groups… but it will be more due to your auras, blessings, and judgments rather than your pure damage output.
In raids, you will be asked to respec holy 99% of the time. That’s just the way it is. You might luck out and find a chill raiding group that needs a Nightfall paladin, or is full up on healers but could use another spare body. If that’s the case, count your lucky stars.
If you go with a heavy retribution investment, here’s my advice from a long time paladin player: play to the strengths of your class, rather than its weaknesses. Don’t be that paladin that only attacks enemies and doesn’t support your party. The strengths of the paladin are in its superior support capabilities: auras, the best short duration buffs in the game, a wide variety of seals and judgments for specific situations, immunity shields, damage sharing, the single best debuff removing spell in the entire game, and strong heals (regardless of your talent placement). Always be looking out for your party, no matter what you’re doing.
meme spec.
useless basically