My Retribution Paladin & Enhancement Shaman "meme spec" experience

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The time has come to vent about my meme spec experience.

I raided as both an Enhancement Shaman and a Retribution Paladin for months. On both of them I cleared all of MC, Onyxia, and BWL…several times. This is my experience.

My goal here is to save someone a lot of time before they roll these specs.

The most important thing you need to understand if you choose one of these specs is the guild will try to force the “Nightfall” axe onto you. This is an axe that has a chance to increase spell damage by 15%. Even though I had better weapons (like Hearald of Woe that only druids want. Luckily no druids were in the raid the night I got it or I wouldn’t have been able to get it.) I wasn’t allowed to use them. So what this did is drove my damage into the ground while increasing other people’s dps. Once the “Nightfall” ball and chain is attached to your ankle you will never be able to escape it. What is even worse is that since your damage is so horrible with the Nightfall Axe…the raid assumes you are garbage dps and so you are not allowed to roll on the melee dps items (unless everyone else already has them)…even though you are melee dps. You heard that right…the items that can improve your melee dps…you are not allowed to roll on.

But wait…it get’s even worse. The Paladin Tier 2 set that was designed for dealing damage…is holy prio lol. My guild gave a holy paladin Tier 2 boots that were worse than the healing boots he had on before me. Because you must never forget…as a ret paladin you are at the bottom of loot prio. The list goes like this…Main Spec…Off Spec…PvP Spec…then Ret Paladin gets the scraps left over that they throw onto the floor. Want that Ashkandi Sword as a Ret Paladin? GOOD LUCK! As long as there is a Warrior who needs that weapon for pvp…you will not be rolling on it. Need rings and trinkets as a Ret Paladin or Enhancement Shaman? Pray to the God’s that they don’t Master Loot or you won’t be able to ninja them and run off into the night…like a starving monkey who stole a grape at a food market.

And then there is the armor. An argument can be made for Ret Paladins getting Tier 2 since the set is bonus to damage…but let’s be real…all those Paladin Tier 2 pieces will be going to the holy paladins. And Enhancement Shaman…well they don’t even get a tier set. That’s right Enhancement Shaman…you have to steal your armor from Rogues and Hunters.

Let’s talk about Enhancement. I hope you like twisting totems because that is all you will be good for. Totem Twisting is a strategy where you drop a different totem every few seconds so that the buff on both totems stays up. You know what that means? NO MANA FOR YOU! Enjoy auto swinging your life away with your garbage Nightfall Axe while slapping totems on the ground as you watch your rank on the damage meter fall until you can no longer see it.

It’s a nightmare and in the end I will probably be rerolling new classes on Horde and Alliance. You put in so much effort for scraps. I just quit my guild tonight that I had raided with as a Ret Paladin for months because the Eye of Hakkar dropped and I was told Ret Paladins are not allowed to roll on that item. We are talking about a neck piece with attack power and crit. After months of raiding with them and not being allowed to roll on melee dps items when I am melee dps in the raids…I said to Hell with this and /gquit. The GM then messaged me and asked me to pay him back for the Nightfall axe I was forced to use for months to increase the caster dps. I replied “Since I’ve raided for months as melee dps and was unable to roll on melee dps items…I consider the Nightfall payment for my free work.” I did get scraps of gear that no one else needed, but was never EVER allowed to roll against rogues or warriors. Only after the rogues and warriors said they didn’t need the gear…or the paladin said he had a better piece of armor…only then did they throw the scraps to me.

Please do not play as a Ret Paladin nor Enhancement Shaman. It is a HUGE waste of time and energy. Had I rolled a “normal” dps class I have no doubt that I’d be at the top of the damage meters every raid with the amount of time and effort I put into it. You will spend 1,000’s of hours as these specs just to be in the middle of the damage meter “if you are lucky with the RNG mechanics”.

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This is my 60 after I transferred him (months ago) I had to change the name…the 55 on the original post is from my old server. The only reason I transferred my Ret Pally off the server is so I could level with my friends on the Horde side.

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So, don’t roll ret or enhance cause you are trash damage and substandard utility, and along with that people don’t want to give you good loot that might be beneficial somewhere else.

Thank you. I get it now.

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Why did you roll the worst meme spec twice? After seeing how bad it was (and how accurate everyone is when calling them meme specs, why did you swap factions and do it again?

So… like… are you doing this? What did you roll? Will you in fact top the damage meters?

I really do want an update when you get serious with a real spec. I’ve often wondered (for instance) what happens when a meme spec ret actually gets serious with something like fury warrior.

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Windfury Totem is not “substandard utility”. Neither is having an extra Lay on Hands, Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, Kings, etc… The problem is the stigma attached to these specs…and that stigma is why people don’t give those specs the gear they need to succeed.

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You don’t actually bring any of that for being ret/enh, what unique thing do you bring as ret or enh? If I want those things I can bring any paladin/shaman.

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Its not an extra lay on hands though. Its a lay on hands that can just as easily be brought by a holy paladin, which is an exceptional spec.

Ret pally (sadly) brings literally nothing to the table that is unique and separate from holy paladin, except it takes a slot (and the corresponding gear) that could be used by a warrior.

Exactly. :frowning:

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Do Resto Shamans bring improved Windfury Totems?

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This talent is not as good as people believe. The main thing about this talent is that it increases WF totem attack power. The thing is the only reason you use this totem is for warriors for extra rage generation. The slightly more damage per windfury they do would not increase their rage generation. The two talent points could be moved elsewhere such as guardian totems that reduce the cooldown of grounding totem to help with spells.

(Taken from classic wowhead, using a quick 5 second search into google.)

To be honest, I think you are completely missing two very important points:

  1. Yes, it turns out that meme specs were bad and you wasted a ton of time and energy.
  2. Mostly, I’m legitimately curious how you will fare once you decide to roll a viable damage spec. Will you actually enjoy it? Will you enjoy not being disrespected every time you want a good piece of gear? Will you in fact top the charts?
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They can.

Also with full naxx bis it comes out to about 10 more dps for fury warriors. That includes world buff scaling and stuff. The talent is legitimately close to worthless.

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I always encourage people not to roll meme specs, and it’s not because I’m a jerk who wants to gatekeep how people play a 15 year old game. But it’s because it genuinely sucks not to have anything good to contribute to your raid and it engenders resentment from the rest of the raid. Just play a genuinely good class.

When it comes to gear, you really can’t justify giving a BiS melee DPS piece to a class that has so so much more potential to perform with the item and will get more mileage out of it. But screwing you out of gear on account of OS or PVP items is silly.

Regarding Nightfall, the proc rate is complete trash compared to private servers and not even worth using at all in my opinion.

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Don’t forget that Shaman have something like a 8% proc rate on Nightfall, while Warriors are closer to 20%.

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I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks.

I’m in a guild with 3 raid teams, all of which smash BWL around the 60min mark each week. Each team has exactly 1 ret pally, which we allowed (at the time) because we knew they would be swinging the nightfall. We even prio’ed Hand of Rag to them as a consolation for their dirty work.

The proc rate is garbage, and its even worse when its being used by a ret paladin, that basically can only stand there and ‘right-click’ most of the time. Even a warrior spamming hamstring is 3x better at this than a ret pally.

So now its back to… why bring a ret, exactly?

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Warrior :heart:

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Give it to a hunter, Wing Clip is insane for NF. The downside is, your hunter will cancel their sub before next raid.

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According to the forums here nightfall doesn’t even work right now well enough to justify the materials. We have one in guild, it’s on an arms warrior and you’re not kidding about how bad the damage is, he does less dps with that axe while doing his whatever it is rotation than I do with only auto attack, not joking not even slice and dice and and I still do more than that garbo weapon. That’s got me thinking why is it so popular when it’s output is so horrible and the chance to proc is so bad like according to the forums maybe 1 proc per 2 min fight and that can according to the forums get also pushed off the debuff list.

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Should be “Just play a genuinely good spec.” All classes are genuinely good.

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Bugged PS rates created a meta that people are slow to shift away from.

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We had an Orc off-off-offtank use it and spam Hamstring, and he had Windfury too of course. Literally the best wielder you could possibly ask for, and you would be better off just equipping actual DPS weapons.

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As shadow priest i even myself feel bad for stealing loot from real casters like warlocks and mages. (And my second 60 is warlock because of that feeling). And also very very useless. Both my lock and SP at 320 +spd right now and lock due to lifetap does several times more damage. (+aoe ofc)

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