Most people in this thread have covered the majority of what you need to know, however there’s a little more to it.
If you want to play ret and do end game content, you will have that option. There are many guilds running 1 or 2 rets in their core progression group.
As people have mentioned, you will likely not win any damage meters. even with full AQ40 set and Hand of Rag, full raid buffs, and ungodly luck with crits and vengeance uptime. Gear that you compete with warriors for or holy paladins for will likely go to you last.
When attempting to join a pug for a dungeon as dps, some people will respond with negative comments then continue to advertise for other dps. This is something you will have to take on the chin. There are many ret paladins out there who do not know how to play the spec correctly (inb4 “how complicated is it to white swing a mob?”) and also bring negative attitudes to the game. They have set the bar low, and jaded many people’s view of rets. What this means is you will need to bring a positive and friendly demeanour with you at all times if you wish to be invited back to pugs, or become a core member of a progression raid team.
You will need to prep for each raid with world buffs, consumables, and have all your gear enchanted. This is because ret is one of the very few classes in the game that benefit from both physical DPS buffs as well as magical DPS buffs. Having the appropriate enchants and buffs will mean grinding rep.
Now that all the doom and gloom is done, here’s what you can do as ret.
mid-range single target dps
mid-range aoe dps
spam cleanse without interrupting your dps
maintain Seal of Wisdom on a target for your caster/hunter dps mana regen
(“a holy paladin could do that” yeah they could… but they dont. and you know it.)
additional Improved Lay on Hands armour buff for tank
(rets are better off using this than holys due to the mana dump)
aura coverage for melee
(holy paladins will often be standing more than 30 yards away from melee, thus not providing an aura. T2 set does help, but high movement fights can cause interruptions with coverage)
blessing of sacrifice assignment
(our health pool is also a resource we can utilise to redirect damage from the tank. maintaining the 30 second blessing is easier for a ret than a holy paladin who is usually far busier with other stuff)
If you decided to roll a paladin now, by the time you reach 60 and get geared Naxx will be just around the corner. We dont know for sure if undead mobs will help our dps compete yet, but it will be a far more enjoyable experience than any other raid we’ve had so far.
Personally, I went the Spelladin-Ret, and I’m working on trying a Crit build, where it’s all +agility enchants (even the weapon). Might be fun, might not be.
With a focus on spell power, a Ret can easily fill the roll of a healer if one drops during the raid.
((One of the fun things I’ve done is build Resist Sets, Tank Sets, Healing Sets, and DPS Sets all around the idea of maintaining 8/8 Judgement.))
If people get uppity just remind them that even disorganized raid comps are downing bosses in less than a two minutes. This stuff is piss-easy now, with 15 years of experience.
it’s not holy resist - which doesn’t exist - but level based resistance against higher level mobs/raid bosses
for each level above you, NPCs gain a level resistance for each spell school, including Holy - which cannot be overcome in any way (not even spell penetration)
iirc it’s 8 resistance to all for each level so raid bosses have +24 res to all which cannot be overcome
I’ve seen more resist from LOWER level mobs than higher. I mean mobs where I’m technically a raid boss against them. It feels like one of the stupid PServers that thought it existed in every mob.
I hope I’m wrong and I probably am.
PS–would Sageblade lower this resist since the tooltip clearly says -10 all Resistances?
A BiS Ret vs a BiS fury warrior, both parsing 100’s
Warriors will easily do triple your damage, so gear given to a ret rather then any other dps is equivalent of throwing away gear given how poorly Paladins scale with dps gear.
Just grab a set of tier 2, a big 2 hander and spec 31/0/20 or similar and you can both raid and pvp as either a healer or smash people with a big sword.
are we talking about damage spells or utility spells like Hammer of Justice or Repentance?
HoJ, Rep, Judgement of Righteousness, Holy Shock are still based on spell hit and have to actually land due to that mechanic - level resistance is what causes partial resists on our damage attacks against higher level mobs in raids.
And no, Sageblade will do nothing to help with either spell hit or to reduce partial resistances to our holy damage.
Heroic Strike and Diamond Flask bugs say hello - no one is disputing what Warriors can achieve but you guys have received buff after buff after buff in Classic with the devs being so lazy to fix glaring issues from Vanilla.
The ONLY net gain Paladins received during Classic was GBoK spam - that’s it - everything was a nerf across the board or Blizzard being too lazy to even respond to our bug reports which still remain fallow.
200 to 400 single target dps(That’s with dispelling going on)
Aoe can range from 300 to a few thousand which helps with casters not dying.
Bubbles, healin, lay on hands when needed. I even seen rets parse at 99 for hps.
So, one good ret per raid is worth having.
Most guild have lack of knowledge, understanding, or just special.
They let others say and they listen. Instead of theory crafting or actually looking at the data per encounter.
How many are bad rets? A lot it’s not a class/spec to just blah in. You need a plan, theory crafting, items a lot, and always watch ur surroundings.
Let say ret has T2.5 hand of rag and all hit/crit needed.
Doesn’t have buff nobody they would be pretty close on dmg.
Now let’s do realistic of what I have seen.
Let say Paladins has T2 and the axe to help casters.
They nerf one self to give whatever buff.
What else can they do?
Well 60 to 150 dispels with 200 to 400 dps single target.
Warrior give 200 to1000k dps single target only seen one with world buffs get 1k. Average 200 to 600 and only ret in our guild does 200 to 400, while suppling buffs, enhanced dmg to casters with axe, and 60- 150 dispels.
Same ret when ask provides heal that hit 99 on parsing.
So, on average I have seen Warriors do 200 more dps than a Paladin but cannot do anything else.
60-150 dispels save ur life. One good ret works very well in a raid. I haven’t seen a heal out do the ret and still maintaining hps. I am not saying stack but having one good one is enough.
They are on record as hating the Paladin class in Classic. They are on record saying essentially that any time a Paladin won a duel, it was studied and nerfed SO IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN
But they left lay on hands and bubble? Major oversight guys
