Paladin in Retail seeking reassurance for Classic

[Skrizy-thrall]

After I read this I had to legit check to make sure I was in the classic forums.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

Just making observations on perceptions of viable in the community.

[Mickymoo-black-dragonflight]

On the bright side Paladins are the most annoying and sometimes pretty lethal class in the game in PVP.

Almost as much as Druid.

Difference is Druid requires a lot more movement but not really weak against any class (Paladins can be roped by ranged).

[Caelle-exodar (Caelle)]

As someone who played Paladin in Vanilla, the best thing you can be is versatile, and really that goes for all hybrids. Work on you DPS gear, work on your tank gear, and yes work on your healing gear. Do what you need to to earn yourself a spot and then be willing to do what is needed.

Yes like most I primarily healed, but because I worked on it they would eventually give me chances to tank and DPS when we needed less healers for a fight, or needed an extra off tank.

If you take the attitude of refusing to heal, you are going to find yourself not raiding very much.

[Mickymoo-black-dragonflight]

plus offer to swing Nightfall

Will nightfall even be available in phase 1?

[Theloras-llane (Theloras)]

@Mickymoo-black-dragonflight

Will nightfall even be available in phase 1?

well shoot - it may not be until BWL is released which was patch 1.6 and according to the Classic phase schedule, won’t be until phase 3…

Classic Content Plan

At BlizzCon 2018, we proposed a plan to give Classic four content phases. These were planned to be centered primarily on raid power progression. Currently, based on both your feedback and our own deliberations, we’re now planning to increase it to six phases. Our focus is still primarily on player power-progression, but we’re also aiming to capture what it felt like to play in a realm community in original WoW. To do that, we’re planning to mirror the approach taken by original WoW, with patche…

Phase 3

• Blackwing Lair
• Darkmoon Faire
• Darkmoon deck drops begin

[Lorith-wyrmrest-accord-323166]

Clothadin was a thing.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Clothadin

[Cryogen-anvilmar]

Prot is very unlikely in a raid scene. No taunt makes it hard to justify bringing a prot pally over another Warrior or a Bear tank.

You can definitely raid as ret though. It might be harder to get a spot since a lot of people will just go from the advice of min/maxers and automatically dismiss a ret paladin.

If you are super desperate and really want a spot then Holy is the way to go but don’t feel forced into playing something you don’t want to.

[Randálthor-blackhand (Randálthor)]

This is just one of those things that is overblown. So, yes Ret isn’t optimal in raids but you can definitely still raid as that spec. You won’t be pulling insane dps but you won’t be doing nothing. There is a video on youtube testing ret dps and in pre bis I think you can still pull 250-300 dps. Prot is pretty useless in raids though, you can tank dungeons with it but raid tanking is most likely a no go.
Holy is the most optimal, ret is sub optimal, and prot isn’t viable (for raids)

This is the most accurate response.

[Deucebìgalow-nagrand]

I wouldn’t bother tbh. You have to put in 3x the amount of work to be half as effective as say an undergeared warrior. It just isn’t worth the time investment. You’ll constantly be passed over for loot since guilds are doing you a favor already by letting you tag along. Since you need to gear like a warrior to dps its very difficult if not nigh impossible to use your full toolkit since you’ll be tapped dry for mana. And even then, a dedicated holy paladin would be a greater asset anyway. Tanking is something you can do if and when you outgear content for laughs i suppose.

Either embrace the healing role for pve and to a lesser extent for pvp (if you want to rank up in premades you are expected to healbot, outside of that you can do whatever but just be prepared to cop a lot of flak) or roll something else. Warrior is always a safe choice given how theyre the only class in the game that can not only adequately fill 2 roles, but happen to excel at them too.

[Stimpäk-proudmoore]

Yuck light, but yes you can contribute. You probably won’t find yourself in top progression guilds but then again most players wont even if they are meta picks this being said, you can pve and pvp as ret, just find yourself a chill laid back guild.

[Tinytusk-darkspear]

You can tank, heal or dps 5 mans really well. For raiding you are expected to heal but there is a lot of leeway in how you build your talents, as long as you have the required holy talents you can put a lot of the rest in ret an still heal fine. You can put on some ret gear even when in holy spec and still kill people in pvp if thats your thing.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

i made an alchemist/herbalist at one point and farmed up the requirements for oil of immolation, it helped a great deal with generating aggro but it would fail in molten core since its fire based aoe and the mobs are all fire resistant. would likely work in other raids tho.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

the dragon eranikus in sunken temple has a trinket drop that has aoe poison dot. not sure if its the same in vanilla though, as i’m having trouble finding it. may have dropped elsewhere but if i recall, you had to loot one of the containers in the room after the fight, to get it. anybody know what i’m talking about? ah here it is. had to loot the essence of eranikus as part of a quest objective and you’d receive the chained essence of eranikus

https://www.classicdb.ch/?item=10455

also skullflame shield
https://classicdb.ch/?item=1168

[Theloras-llane (Theloras)]

@Deucebìgalow-nagrand

You’ll constantly be passed over for loot since guilds are doing you a favor already by letting you tag along. Since you need to gear like a warrior to dps its very difficult if not nigh impossible to use your full toolkit since you’ll be tapped dry for mana.

again Spelladin says hold my beer…

The Spelladin - new Retribution meta for Classic

Courtesy of DexterBravo: Gear competetion - That T2 gear that every pally wants for PVP or RP, isn’t good for holy. But it is BIS (likely forever) for Spelladins. That’s 8 pieces of items that is Spelladin prio, which won’t be replaced in ZG, AQ, NAXX. That’s a lot of gear for happy warriors, casters, etc., that otherwise was wanted by the AP ret. Actually viable DPS most likely (none of us know how Classic will be tuned in the end). Much better than AP ret – more dps, more mana uptime…

TLDR - 8/8 Tier 2 is BiS and so is either Manual Crowd Pummeler or Ironfoe (if Classic ends up going live with it having a 10% proc rate)

[Drakonov-borean-tundra (Drakonov)]

Seal of Righteousness is confirmed to proc on weapon hit effects and shadow oil is confirmed to scale off of spellpower.

Ret is a viable build that can abuse non-normalized procs better than ANY other build in the game. The datamining and testing from the beta shows some INCREDIBLE stuff, and even on private servers I genuinely never thought I’d see ret in such a strong state. Classic Ret will blow the hell out of original ret, and private server ret. We will see a rise of on hit builds that will rival or surpass the pre-normalization winfury.

[Tinytusk-darkspear]

Manual Crowd Pummeler

Can you switch out MCP to a different weapon while keeping the buff? that would be intense…
And yeah i was thinking of going paladin to abuse on hit affects and spell power but i didn’t know it would actually be decent in pve, that’s very interesting.

[Narinsil-wyrmrest-accord]

Finding a group will be hard. Finding a group that will let you get gear will be harder. By AQ and Naxx they’ll probably force you to change holy or be kicked out of the group.

Also, expect a lot of abuse when trying to find a group that will take you.

[Skjaldbjorn-lightbringer (Skjaldbjorn)]

I would advise that you ignore everything being said here, both positive and negative. Google legacy players, that will take you to a website with all of the raid logs from every major pserver. Now just start clicking on alliance raids. The left hand column should be damage done by default. Start looking for pink, should be towards the bottom. Be sure to mouse over when you find it to make sure it’s not a prot pal, the dps can be similar.

No need to get opinions from these people when you can look for yourself.

[Alys-warsong]

As you can see from my current avatar, I was an original classic raider. Your destiny as a paladin in classic raiding will on be as a raid/tank healer/buff/cleanse bot & judgment of wisdom bot.

Retribution is a auto swinging seal of command judgement spamming joke

And protection is even worst; although, it’s ok for SOME dungeons.

Give me BC/WotLK/Cata/MoP/WoD/Legion/BFA version of the paladin any day of the week beside 1.12 paladin.

With that said. My advice is go warrior because at least you can tank or DPS & not be pigeonholed into healing.

I would be excited about Classic if they just gave paladins Crusader Strike from the BC pre patch it would be a game changer but that will never happen.