Right, but the spec in general is barely used at all, so the fact that it is still seeing use in Algalon is promising for it. It is still in the range of being avoided, and understandably so.
That’s because there are almost 3 holy paladins per resto shaman in the general population of healers.
Algalon is skewed toward holy paladin representation a bit, but you aren’t less likely to see an Algalon kill just because you chose resto shaman as your main. They are being taken to that fight at a solid rate compared to their population breakdown.
Resto druid and holy priests are the healer specs being avoided compared to their population
Promising how? The spec is dead, a few memers getting kills with it on Algalon does not change that.
Most people playing holy are just not that serious about the game, considering how incredibly strong disc is. I don’t think guilds are actively avoiding holy priests in choosing Algalon rosters, I think most priests in guilds capable of doing Algalon at this point are already playing disc.
Ret buffs and the reasoning given only make sense in a vacuum where only paladins matter. There is no justification that makes sense combined with doing nothing for classes/specs in a worse position.
If it’s being brought to the hardest content at a rate similar to the rest of the DPS options that aren’t being stacked when compared to the population, it’s hard to call it dead.
DPS wise there are no specs in a worse position that lack an alternative DPS spec. (Honorable mention to ele shaman, whom have an alternative DPS spec, but it is an entirely different kind of DPS spec)
Both in raw numbers and in relationship to the total population, rets are in dead last by a fair margin when seriously playing the game.
Basically that, and even then, holy priests aren’t that far below where rets are in terms of representation. Resto druids also appear to be struggling there at about the same level as ret.
4 BM hunters have done Algalon25, and the spec has less than 3k parses total. No, it’s not hard for me to call it dead. This is why I can’t help but think of your framing here as ridiculous.
The fact that of the 3k of them still managed to get 4 into a 25 man Algalon group that is capable of killing the boss gives them a more successful rate of success than other specs even when accounting for the fact it is severely underplayed.
So yeah, most of them play surv/BM because they deal more DPS, but even with that, if you are one of those 3k playing a BM Hunter in raids, you currently have a better chance to have killed Algalon right now than a ret paladin…
I.e. if you rolled a die across all of the BM hunters, And all of the rets, you are more likely to land on a BM Hunter with an Algalon kill than a ret paladin.
And that’s the “dead” spec of hunter.
But feel free to ignore that line due to a small numbers issue. Hunters still have survival as a competitive spec to choose if they need to, while still DPSing.
I find it fascinating how many people in this thread (and some of the others recently) seem to consistently misunderstand or just give no value to the entire argument behind Ret getting a buff. We’re playing an mmoRPG for crying out loud. We’re playing a 15-year-old role-playing game, to be precise, and people want to be able to play old content with their characters without having to “reroll” or just change their class role entirely.
I don’t like the idea of any changes being made, but I think it is fairly sad if you want to play a specific class/role but are not able to experience content due to the lack of strength in that class/role.
Ret is clearly in a unique spot (shoutout to Ele shaman too) of just being left by the wayside due to their class/roll combo. The other unplayed specs (e.g Sub rogue) happen to be good PvP specs and/or have a strong PvE alternatives (e.g. combat) that fulfill the same class/role combo. Keep in mind this is all coming from a warrior main.
I know this was a bit ranty, but give the whole “hOLy aNd PrOT aRe sTiLL StRonG” and “wArRiorS sHouLD gEt buFfeD tOo” comments a rest; those arguments are not acknowledging the core issue behind the change.
This is the logical response to nonsense. They are rebalancing paladins,a class grossly over represented in healing and Tanking to the point of excluding other classes because they have low damage, not even the lowest dps, just low dps.
That’s all well and good but the argument in favor of this is pants on head idiotic.
It’s the lowest by a good margin of any relevant PvE spec. The other ones we are competing with were never attempted to be made PvE viable due to being traditionally PvP specs in Wrath.
Even ele shaman beat us (but our utility gets us used on Algalon more). If not for DSac, ret would be just as bad on Algalon representation. Even with it we are still in PvP spec territory.
Stop bringing up how over represented prot/holy are though. It’s not relevant.
“Sorry paladins, you can’t DPS because you can tank and heal well” is a terrible argument. Nerf Prot/Holy for all I care.
Have you seen the breakdown of tanks and healers for Ulduar?
Is your argument that Ret is just so special, the class being massively over represented in 2/3 of the game isn’t relevant even though every tank class being massively under represented compared to paladins is just fine?
No, absolutely not this is ridiculous.
Whether you like it or not, the over representation of Holy and Prot absolutely does matter because it destroys the core of Blizzards argument for buffing ret.
I specifically pointed out that Resto druid was struggling quite a bit for Algalon (to the same degree as rets)
And that prot warrior and blood DK also looked a bit pained on the tank side.
Some of this is due to overall raiding populations in those spec (which isn’t always a balance issue, and I tried to normalize out as best as I can with available data), some from class stacking at the high end. This was just a small picture into how class stacking beyond class population.
Ret was notably poorly performing there on the DPS side, and is the primary focus people have because of recent buffs it received.
This data shows that there’s probably a good argument for Resto druid and maybe Blood/Prot War to see some love as well.
They said they didn’t plan to make every spec competitive.
They showed they were willing to step in when a class can’t effectively fill the role they specced into when lacking alternate options, which Resto druid at the very least seems to be seeing major struggles with.
I have. And apart from Paladin and Druid being overwhelmingly favored as tanks on Algalon, warrior and DK are being used relatively similarly to the representation of most of the DPS specs compared to their actual population numbers.
So some of this is just a result of player perception that caused paladin tanks to be way more common in the first place. Some of it is the fight playing into many of paladin’s strengths (a DSac and a cheat death). Some of it is class stacking for those reasons.
I wouldn’t call the tank distribution on Algalon good. I don’t know if it reaches a threshold for blizz to intervene.
It should for resto druid though if we are using ret paladin representation as a measuring stick.
If they raided as an alt spec, it’s being counted as the total population of that spec.
It doesn’t matter too much what their 2nd spec is on Algalon as a measurement, given that for whatever reason, that spec was not being used for an Algalon kill.