I’m curious. Is any spec worse than ret? And why
3 Likes
Ret is the absolute worst DPS in keys atm. Enhance might be worse, but I’ve never seen one this season. Feral has much better DPS and utility than ret. Survival also has better dps and utility. Currently rets dps, gimp wogs, gimp mobility, gimp legos, gimp conduits and incoming gimp tier set just shows that they dont care to make it playable. The nubs on here will say it’s just because of the meta, but no, ret really is just that bad.
17 Likes
Outlaw rogue being aoe capped for fort weeks.
Paladins have the same AOE soft-cap.
Outlaw rogues also bring shroud which is a must-have for many paths. They additionally can sap and blind. They have arguably more survivability than rets as well with 4 strong defensive powers (feint, cloak of shadows, evasion, and crimson vial)
But the biggest advantage here is that if someone plays a rogue they have 2 other dps specs to choose from. If you play a paladin and want to do dps you are stuck with ret as the only option.
3 Likes
There is absolutely no reason to take ret over survival hunter which is uncapped, has the same stun, and lust. There’s not really a reason to take survival over bm except the shorter cd interrupt and possibly huge pulls. And then if you’re getting BM, might as well upgrade to frost mage which also slows with their enemies while dealing superior damage and has spammable poly.
Maybe the reason is offheals? If so, even take feral which brings slightly better cc, about the same bad damage, good offheals, and brez.
5 Likes
Eh, good rets are actually onpar on overall damage in a lot of keys.
I am holy main, but I eff around as ret in 15’s for funzies. I get bursts upto 35k, withoverall being 9-9.5k…And I am trashy paladin.
Issue with paladin is not their raw damage, but the fact that there is never any need for 2 paladins in a single M+, given that Hpala/Ppala are quite common and sought after.
Tho capped, it sux, I agree, I play Outlaw (2.4IO) and on overall I still come out 10k+. Tho OL lacks 30k+ uncapped bursts, OL dominates 2-5 target packs and ST /w Necrotic Wounds is, in fact, one of the strongest ST builds in the game.
But even if rogue is lower on overall at some really really high tiers, physical 15% DR, insane stunlocks, mobility, insanely strong survival CD’s really make up for that.
Yeah, there is. 3% Flat DR is massive. Not to mention good paladins use their blessings ALL the time. Single sack can save from a wipe. Not to mention LoH.
I’ve seen solid Survival hunters, and even ferals, but I have also seen godly level Rets who came out at the same overall damage as firemage. Very few players come out with more than 11-12k overall. Very few. Most of the 20/21/22s I ran (not a lot, maybe a 100 timed across all toons), I may seen 13k only a handful of times
….
On par with what? Cause the best Ret logs are far behind MM.
8 Likes
Bro, srsly?
eh, so you’re comparing 0.000000001% vs 0.000000000000000000000001%?
Look at 15’s. This is some MDI level 
that no1 cares about.
I can go ahead and run a few 15’s right now as ret and post screenshots. Because, the vast majority of M+ do 15’s, if not lower. And my 245 ret spec will likely beat most 245’s MM’s in 15’s.
Or at least look 20’s. Fine. I bet for every 1,000 hunters there is 1 ret. Heck. I’ve seen Ferals come out with 12k+ on overall in keys.
4 Likes
Someone already did look at 15’s, and while Ret wasn’t last it was in the bottom quarter of dps:
But you can look for yourself:
Keys for Ret:
Keys for MM:
The only time they are sort of close is the top 10 or so, otherwise there is a significant gap between MM and Ret. You can easily look at 20’s there as well and see that MM maintains a 2-3k advantage for nearly every key.
You can also look at other specs as well from those same links, just click on the class and switch to another spec. What you will find is the comparison made in the first link I posted here remains fairly valid across most keys. Ret is bottom quarter dps, as in 25% and below, but they are not last. So you can hang your hat on the fact that feral is objectively worse at dps than Ret…
That last bit was a little unfair, Ret should be a bit better than Feral, Demo, Enh, Sin, and Destro. Ret should be on par with Frost DK. Ret should be a bit worse than Unholy, Shadow, BM, Arcane, and Outlaw. And Ret is objectively worse than Balance, Survival, Sub, Fire, Arms, Affliction, Elemental, Havoc, MM, Fury, Frost, and WW.
But not everyone can be WW, I encourage you to take a peek at WW. WW is broken.
9 Likes
Ret is trash and as someone who pugged last patch for KM and tried this season, the declines are way too often.
Not having fun as ret that I’ve mained since TBC.
8 Likes
3% DR is massive? Do you people work for blizzard, or whats going on?
1 Like
No.
Dead last as per Warcrft logs.
2 Likes
One of the biggest problems with ret is it doesn’t excel at anything, on top of its lackluster utility. Feral druid pumps insane single target burst, and sustained damage for priority targets and bosses (and is getting a giga busted tier set). I would take a feral over ret and day. Ret also doesn’t do great aoe. It has burst aoe on a minute/two minute cycle, but it’s nothing compared to numerous other specs, on five targets or twenty. There is no world in which picking a ret over most other DPS specs is a good decision to make, were it not for skill/gear gaps, and friends. Furthermore, the tier set seems to me god awful, and unlikely to meaningfully contribute to better performance in keys, and with specs that are already much better than ret getting much much better tier sets, this is likely to get worse. I want ret to be in a good spot, but right now, prot paladin is almost a better DPS in keys than a ret paladin.
8 Likes
every class and spec is capable of completing 20s across the board. if your aim is higher than that sure play the meta otherwise play what you like
4 Likes
I’m fairly new, and I don’t mean to be elitist or anything but I was able to jump into 20’s within a few months of starting keys. Simple difference is that was my goal.
So now I don’t really view 20+ as high … but nobody will invite my ret. I spent about a week on my hunter I barely knew how to play and timed a few 22’s super easy because I could get into groups. my ret could do more damage, and I know how to use all the “extras” like blessings but I simply can’t get invited to anything as ret. As hunter (BM, even) it rarely takes me longer than 15 minutes to find a group
I guess 22+ is somewhere around 1% of people doing keys but we run A LOT of keys on average. And most of the people I know with score around mine will run plenty of 15’s to help friends, fill in the vault etc. I think it’s a big hole that the classes are built so that above a certain level bring the flavor of the month.
1 Like
I’d argue Retribution is one of the worst. Maybe not the worst. Would be nice to get some actual unique utility as Retribution… basically anything even remotely unique, at this point. Maybe bring back Hand of Purity? Or something. I dunno. I would just really like to have something that Prot and Holy don’t.
2 Likes
I main prot pally (almost 2.6k io) and I’m not going to lie I’m biased against ret. I really never invite ret to any keys unless it’s a low key or I don’t care if I time. I def pref pretty much any other melee…
No, its just that holy/prot are meta so why? -that and the cd structure doesnt work the best for M+
Eh, holy and prot weren’t meta early in bfa and neither was ret. At the end of the day ret is one of those specs where it’s only going to be seen as competitive if it’s relatively overturned. If ret did Frost mage damage there would be one in many more keys, but alas it does nothing close, but even then it doesn’t provide much of any of the mandatory utility for higher keys (control, survivability, list etc)
2 Likes
its healing, blessings etc are really nice in the right hands! Another reason I rarely see a ret doing that sorta thing just mongo’ing… so i think the reputation of them is bad on top of not a meta dps. If all rets put there util to really good use there is no reason 15-25 key shouldnt invite one especially if it doesnt have a prot/holy
1 Like