Right, but what is “succeed?” That part is subjective.
To some, succeeding means the boss dies, but to some others, success might mean something else.
You could but then the ret doesn’t have the benefits of the melee group.
In my old raid the tank group was the melee group lol
Kings spam seems more like a cheesy bug exploit than any intended game design tactic (IMO).
In PvE? Killing the boss.
No one is going to discredit a Heroic Lich King kill that only had 1 person alive at the very end, but no one is going to credit an almost kill either as close enough. That’s why I find viability discussions to be pretty poor stand-ins for what people are actually trying to argue, which tends to be meta or socially constrained.
This.
If you still enjoy this game I’ll give you a tip, the moment you start treating it like a job you will one day become so burned out that even though you love the game and wanna play it you simply can’t motivate yourself to anymore. I wouldn’t worry about viability, all specs get invited to raid, focus on enjoying your time playing.
Now, for a more technical answer, they’re a lot more viable than they are in vanilla…but not by a whole lot There are bosses in which they’re kinda required, but the main problem with prot pallies in regard to viability is their lack of a taunt so they really didn’t become true tanks until WOTLK. Prot is actually a pretty savage PvP spec in BC though.
Depends, if you wanna by super tryhard meta LW…and maybe Eng
Holy is extremely powerful, but I’ve heard gets rally boring quick. Ultimately, will tell you now, do what’s most fun for you first.
They have Righteous Defense, I think that qualifies as a taunt
The Ret’s DPS is largely unimportant.
All they’re missing out on is Battle Shout and maybe Unleashed Rage. The Shaman in their group can still totem twist and give them Windfury and either Grace of Air or Wrath of Air, both of which at least give some benefit to the Ret.
That’s YOUR subjective definition of success. I hope I can at least drive this point home to you.
You are defining success as killing the boss. What if your goal was not just “kill the boss,” but killing it faster than anyone else in the world? Faster than anyone on your realm? Before anyone else in the world or on your realm?
I’m not arguing against Prot Paladin in TBC here, just to be clear. I just mean that “viable” is not as simple as “can be in the group as the boss dies.” By that logic, a naked gnome AFKing as 24 other people kill the boss is “viable.”
So these arguments about what is viable or not are entirely missing the context of “viable for what?”
I agree. That’s what I was pointing out in my response. People use the word viable when they’re really asking how it stands in the meta.
If they put out tbc with the nerfed content, you are most likely right. Don’t sleep on ret dps though, they can be top melee if geared and played well. Always behind ranged though lol.
They can only be top melee DPS if all the other melee are terrible, or 2 tiers behind on gearing.
We will see 
The key is Windfury for a Ret, its a 12% to 13% increase in DPS alone.
No Resto Shaman should be totem twisting in TBC. Your sacrificing too much heal potential for too little DPS gain, for a non optimized melee group.
For Ret in a Resto group your still getting SoE and Windfury…which combined, are more powerful for a Ret that all other class based buffs combined.
Rets, post 2.3, are slightly behind an Enh Shaman and behind a Rogue by a larger margin. However they do quite well in relation to their utility. But you can’t ignore the DPS side either.
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Every hybrid class gets MASSIVE buffs and reworks in TBC. Except Elemental Shaman. They are pretty much the same but have a couple extra on spell cast procs.
Mana issues are resolved and a shadow priest with some warlocks is infinite healing (5 man team of spriest and 4 locks killed loatheb at level 70). Its pretty common to put a spirest in a heal group to act as a mana battery for near unlimited healing in the 25 man raids. Also not uncommon to throw a warlock in there as well for additional mana returns. A warlock and spriest can often keep 3 other healers entirely topped off forever.
TBC also added some fun mechanics like 1:1 spell coef to hunters mend pet and once again for Baron’s Runeswrod, making it actually pretty OP for hunters who don’t need their weapon to be particularly good. A 2.5k Healing set for hunters, slap on the baron runesword and then swap back to your gear. Even more OP than is reasonable in TBC when that spell coef was put in place if they don’t break it again like they did in classic.
Enh shamans can do elemental-enh or enh-resto for hit% talents and totem cost reduction. The addition of more attack hit and dual wielding with only a 10 second base CD on storm strike makes them more than viable, and in some cases considering the new buffs they have actually optimal to have AT LEAST one per group.
Prot paladins and bear tanks are OP as hell. Even straight DPS feral is rediculous with mangle/shred. Ret paladins gain Windfury, an actual melee ability and likewise shamans now gain BoK, BoM and BoW for sustainability.
As a paladin, you’ll like TBC as you can tank, dps and heal.
Ret will get 100% uptime on Windfury regardless of what group their in, so long as the Shaman in that group is any good.
Strongly disagree. You don’t need to be spamming heals constantly. You can afford 2 Chain Heals and a Lesser Healing Wave (or any similar combination) for every totem twist.
Okay, so… what is the complaint, exactly? Just put them in the group with the Prot Paladin, who also benefits from SoE and WF.
If you’re going to have to sacrifice someone’s DPS to optimize the group, it should be the Ret’s DPS first and foremost. That’s just the way it is.
It doesn’t matter if they’re only slightly behind an Enh Shaman. That means they’re behind everybody (in melee). If the Feral isn’t powershifting, the Ret is probably ahead of them, though, but that group is pretty locked in as 1 Shaman, 1 Feral, 3 BM.
My point was…that Rets do pretty solid in a Resto group with SoE + Windfury.
It wasn’t a complaint. Read the above.
Of course your inherently combative nature and your overwhelming desire to try and represent the top 1% prompted you to post.
Totem twisting takes 2 GCDs every 9s to be safe and account for latency/batching.
With 2 x lantency +input and draw lag thats 3.3s every 9s…ie 36% of a Shaman’s time.
Add in Water Shield up to 4 times per minute, Earth Shield on their assigned tank and other totem drops, and your shaman in question has less than 60% of their time available to cast active heals.
If your Restos are that bored maybe you should bring in 1 less healer. And none of that nonsense will had in Tier 6 AE content.
Have you ever tried twisting on a Resto Shaman…let alone an Enh?!
Actually no.
Even in your own post if a Raid has a Ret and a Prot they should be together in the tank group.
Sometimes the tank group is the bulk of a raids physical presence, outside of hunters…who function just fine in a Resto group…
In Closing
Most people in game and on the boards don’t care about the top 1% of players and their ever present pursuit of group structure, consumes, and WB’s to shave 10s off a boss fight. Nor about their ongoing, and innately futile quest for bragging rights in what is, after all, supposed to be a game…and a 15 year old one at that.
One of the wonderful things about TBC is there is more than one way to skin a cat. This opens the door for more player satisfaction, guild cohesion, and in general something called fun!
Guilds will have multiple rogues, DPS Warriors, and even non optimized raid structures in TBC.
However they will do it their way and have fun doing it without answering to you or others like you!
Food for thought.
Ah, my mistake. I mistook you for the other person I replied to saying that having the Ret in the Prot Paladin’s group cost them because they weren’t in the melee group.
That’s why I thought there was a complaint about not being in that group despite having those two buffs.
I can’t say I’ve experienced lag that bad. Even being generous with ~30ms, that time is not going to add to very much over the course of the fight when I’m refreshing WFT and GoAT before it expires simply because I wouldn’t have enough time to cast another spell.
That’s assuming you need to just be bombing out heals constantly. Hell, I do that in Classic, but only because I like to keep active and downrank a hell of a lot.
I could just as easily stand around waiting for people to be lower health and hitting them with higher ranks instead, or Greater Heals, etc. Then my activity drops to less than 60%, or I wand to fill that remaining 40%. In Shamans’ case, they just fill it with their various totems instead.
It’s not a matter of being bored. It’s a matter of playing optimally. Resto Shaman healing is great, of course, but you don’t need to fill every second of combat with a Chain Heal.
Your group is going to be much better off having a Shaman totem twist to boost DPS than it will having them cast another heal every 9 seconds. Feel free to lean on your other healers a bit. It’s okay.
Yes, it’s incredibly easy to manage. It’s expensive, I s’pose, but that’s easily offset by Mp5 and talents.
Also, if you’re playing a Shaman, you’re basically choosing a class that excels at support and utility, so choosing not to take advantage of the fact you can benefit from two totems at once because it takes up part of your time is just silly.
Especially as Enhancement, which has tons of downtime where they sit there just waiting for their CDs to come back up.
Yeah, I already said that, remember?
The whole reason we’re even talking about this is because I said that you could just put your Ret Paladin in the Prot Paladin’s group to give them Sanctity Aura instead of having the Prot Paladin sacrifice talent points to get it for themselves.
I find this argument to be silly.
Basketball is a game. Do you think that means people don’t enjoy winning and improving? Even if you play casually in your drive way with your friends (or even by yourself), do you not care at all about getting better? Isn’t it more fun to be able to make shots than to have it bounce off the rim or backboard every time?
Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean people should be discouraged from caring about their performance. In any case, that’s not what I was talking about, nor is it what this thread is about, either.
I’m not talking about “the top 1%” when I say Ret is lower DPS, or Shamans should totem twist, or put the Ret in a Prot Paladin’s group, or anything else I’ve said in this thread.
Okay? Duh.
Do you think I’m unware of the fact people will play with unoptimized groups and have fun all the same?
Not sure what your point is here.
And there’s a big middle ground between top 1% min maxxers and let everyone do whatever they want with no consideration for performance.
Ehh… this is adding a modifier to “viable” like I mentioned before, and in some cases isn’t even about being viable, it is about being optimal.
- If you’re trying to be the fastest ever, you’re not looking for viability, you’re looking for the absolute best and need optimal setups
- If you’re trying to maximize anything, regardless of what that is, you’re beyond the threshold of viability, you’re optimizing now
- If you’re arguing viability within some other parameter in mind, like social constraints or meta influenced constraints, you’re still talking viability but that constraint needs explicit naming
I get all of these goals and constraints can be subjectively chosen, but viability is still the floor and optimal is still the ceiling, and those meanings don’t change. The bare minimum of viability in PvE will always be simply “Boss is dead”, and for most that is more than enough. However, that’s an exceedingly low threshold and folks typically have more than a limping victory in mind when they talk about “can I do X”, so getting the constraints and other considerations out front is necessary.
I get you’re not arguing against Paladins, I know that, I was merely being illustrative of the two terms.
Avengers shield alone will carry most 3 target pulls threatwise enabling you to focus on positioning yourself for the next pull in dungeons. For raids it’s incredibly useful for trash and initiating pulls. It’s also good to generate threat on targets that arn’t hitting you.
Except you can have a ret in your group provide that with the added benefit of them applying better JoTC and other benefits.
I think that would be the bare minimum of viability for a raid comp and/or strategy, not necessarily a particular specialization.
I’m not saying this is going to be the case in TBC, but if the Prot Paladin tank couldn’t hold aggro, died, or ran out of mana 20 seconds into the fight, but the group killed it anyway, would Prot Paladin still be viable as a tank? Not really.
Similarly, if you look at the DPS requirements for certain fights (generally dependent on healer mana than any actual hard enrages), if a spec is not performing the minimum DPS every damage dealer needs to sustain in order for the boss to die, but other people are doing more DPS than necessary, thus the boss still dies… is that spec still viable as a damage dealer? No.
Thankfully, not even vanilla class balance is that bad, and it’s much better in TBC, so every spec as far as I’m concerned can meet what you say is the bare minimum of viability.
I don’t think more than that necessarily means something other than viable, because we need to know “viable for what.” I think you said it quite well with this:
I think when most people ask if a spec is viable, they’re asking if they’re going to get hounded for playing a terrible spec or if they can reasonably expect to get into groups as that spec.
In this day and age, I think the social constraints and meta, and how a spec fits into those things, is what determines if it is viable, not whether the boss dies. The boss dying is pretty much a given for most folks, and for those whom it is not a given, I doubt even an optimal raid comp would make any difference.
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