I’m under no delusions that I’d be topping the DPS meters in a raid as a Ret Paladin, but I’m also not gonna sit here and say that out of 40 people there’s not room for 1.
At best prob one slot for a nightfall wielding bro. Bout it.
I thought it was confirmed nightfall actually cost the raid damage, cant remeber wqhy though lol
Don’t forget, Hand of Ragnaros has to go to someone and Warriors certainly wont make use of it since DW Fury is the way to go.
It’s because it took up a debuff slot. But that’s not gonna be an issue in fresh.
I’m not forgetting, but you’ll never get to use it inside the raid, I’m not saying playing ret in raids makes the game impossible, after running classic the last go around with a more casual guild (10 paladins, 6 ret), and then switching to an actual non mouth breathing guild (4 paladins, 1 ret), I would never run with the mouthbreathers again.
You’re forgetting one major thing though. Something people overlook all the time when the argument of class validity in raids comes up. And that thing is this:
It’s vanilla WoW. It’s already piss-easy. If 40 level 56-58 Mages on day 2 can clear MC, there’s no reason why ANY class of ANY spec can’t be allowed to go.
Additionally, if someone is really insistent on being a Nightfall bot for a raid, they could form a pug - or even a full-on guild - for a lot of the content, and slot themselves as that ret pally/enh shammy/melee-weaving hunter.
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Oh yea totally, wow classic is piss poor easy, so my only suggestion for you is to A) Be the token ret in the good guild B) Enjoy the casual guild.
The notion that only the optimal builds and the optimal classes are allowed to go is a mentality brought on by those failures we colloquially refer to as “Streamers” who legitimately poisoned the community when it comes to what should be and what shouldn’t be allowed. For example:
When vanilla classic first came out my brother was very excited to play. He loved vanilla WoW. He loved his Paladin tank in vanilla wow. But because all these hobokin celebrities we call streamers said certain things were or were not viable and only certain things would or would not work, he got to about level 24 before he stopped playing because he realized nobody was letting him into groups. He’d try to get into groups for dungeons and instantly get kicked because they saw he was a Prot Paladin. Protection wasn’t the “optimal” build for Paladin, and if he wasn’t going to heal he simply wasn’t allowed in groups. So he quit playing and he’s lot all interest in this game he used to love since.
Streamers and their sycophantic followers literally min-maxed the fun out of classic for a very long time. It’s only now going into fresh that most people really don’t care anymore about that way of thinking.
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If blizzard wanted more even classes they had multiple chances to do it, minor tweaking, replacing trash talents, they chose not to, you have only the game devs to blame.
Sorry, the spec / class you wanna play is suboptimal for raiding.
Streamers just highlight things, it always existed, stop being delusional.
You completely miss what I say. You’re being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. Is it the wow player in you that makes you like this?
I’m not saying nor have I ever said that Ret Paladins will be able to stand at the tippy top with Warriors, Rogues and Mages. What I have been saying is that they are at least capable of earning their place in a group.
And yes, Blizzard DID design these classes with some absolutely abysmal talent choices/specs. That fact does not invalidate anything I said about the streamers in any such way though because before classic first came out you did in fact have all the streamers like Asmongold, like Esfand, like Soda, etc., etc., ALL say that certain classes weren’t viable. In Asmongold’s case he even said on many occasions that if you even so much as considered taking a certain spec you were bad and should feel bad. That kind of bandwagoning is what made a COMPLETELY VIABLE leveling spec like Protection Paladin and any who played it be ostracized by the community.
It’s only now that people are finally accepting that prot paladins can tank dungeons just fine. That while off-meta spec’s aren’t the best in a given situation, they are still viable. And viability is what we’re talking about here. Not optimal. Not meta. Viable. Ret Paladin IS viable, even if it’s not the best. Protection Paladin/Guardian Druid IS viable, even if it’s not the optimal pick, ec., etc…
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I had a lot of instances in TBC in 2007 where I was excluded for not playing, speccing, gearing in the most optimal fashion, as provided by posts on Elitist Jerks. I think the only WoW videos I saw at that point were machinima and maybe the Wowhobbs SM pulls. This behavior was there long before streamers were commonplace.
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I miss clicked, i was replying at 3 am before my first coffee =) 20 years!
Yeah but back then the community generally didn’t know any better. Today we know for a fact there’s places and situations where any spec/class is viable. Youtube back then was only like 2 years old and it hadn’t become this widely used thing it is today. A lot of people back then didn’t even know what youtube was. I remember more than one guild I was in thought Youtube was, given the name, an adult website.
Of course though there were still people who only wanted the best in their groups and if you weren’t playing exactly the way they thought you should be playing then you could gtfo. That’s not just a WoW thing that’s gaming in general. Hell I was a ringer for a Counter-Strike LAN team my cousin was a part of. A couple in fact; sT and HEX and I was even their ringer when they made the jump into CAL. I was never a permanent member of the roster though because I used off-meta weapons, despite the fact that I clapped peoples cheeks with them. I was winning fights with my UMP against AK’s that by all statistical logic I should of lost every single time.
So that kind of thinking has been prevalent since gamings inception. But it doesn’t mean that the Streamers didn’t issue a “call to arms” so to speak of sweaty hate towards any spec they didn’t deem valuable.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve never really given any mind to streamers in an MMO. It just seems like normal MMO player behavior to me, mostly how it has been since I was in high school - which probably isn’t a good thing, since that was 20 years ago and the average player age today is probably a lot higher than at that point.
In no world am I being “Argumentative” you asked, I gave you the answer to your OP.
Ret paladin is trash in raids and pve in general, PvP is fine.
You’re completely right about how WoW is now vs back then, can’t really complain about that though, it’s a solved game, and unfortunately it is how it is. I’d recomend either starting your own guild (so you can be the ret), making friends with the GM of a guild so you can be the ret, joining a more laid back guild.
You really need to look no further than this thread to see what kind of influence streamers have over people. All the people who’ve tried to stand up for them just in this thread alone is proof. Now amplify that by someone of Asmongold’s influence and viewership and you got a bunch of people running around kicking everybody out of groups that aren’t running optimal specs/classes while screaming for invites to the asmonlayer.
I mean it wasn’t something that happened to just me either. Like every 10 minutes in chat back then you’d see someone who got pissed because they were booted from a group for not being an optimal class and getting omegalul’d for it, which outside of streamer chats and people who watch them you never see the use of omegalul unless it’s used as a description of events.
Prot paladin isn’t even viable for ubrs. If all you want to do is spam scholo and strat sure prot is fine. Most guilds during classic had 1 ret that was some streamer or irl friends with the guildmaster. Everybody laughs at you and thinks you look stupid standing there auto attacking. Its boring af to do that every week when you see everyone else making plays and topping meters.
I also have near full bis ret set and ran bwl and mc with it. Very easy, very boring. Spent the whole time watching my swing timer and hoping for crits. Never once got to top 10 on dps meter on any boss even using wbuffs with trinkets active. Mind you i was running with a random pug with mages and warriors wearing blues and even some greens. Still **** dmg with near full bis.
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Yeah but I said they are perfectly viable while leveling. Which they are.