You’ll always bring a Holy Paladin for Aura Mastery. It’s not even a question.
Most of those classes either have:
A. All utility is class-wide
B. Spec specific utility for all of their trees
As shown by the recent changes, they are taking most spec-utility and making them class-wide, so I feel like they should do the same for Paladins.
Paladins still have more than one aura, they just want ret to bring less, say it out loud. At the same time a raid can stack priests for PI, why? This is a direct attack to retribution paladins period.
Back to the trash can for Ret, I guess. Being good one expansion every 15 years is a decent track record, right?
Well probably should have told that to my guild which has been playing without one for a while now. Healers diversity has been pretty good and I’ve seen a couple mythic groups without one. But we do play with a prot paladin.
Which isn’t true for some of the example I gave with priest barriers, shamans slt or dk massgrip
PI got nerfed a lot but hey I’m still in favor of not making it a group buff.
I was a ret in the lich king era and was forced to play other specs due to ret being wheel chair, now blizz wants to do it again.
Shadow is still meta, broken, look at warcraft logs, regardless of the nerfs, PI is also stackable giving a reason for a raid leader to bring multiple priests, ret in the other hand, no reason to bring one at all.
So would devo aura alone be enough to bring a (currently on the beta) low dps spec like Ret though?
I guess Blizz and I have something in common. You still have a raid buff, you’ll live.
Next expansion seems to be wanting to bring back ret back to normal and to make them more comparable to other melees as they were much ahead on many grounds.
I’m expecting more balance tuning but yes devo aura would be a good reason enough to bring at least one paladin. This has been the same buff that rogues would bring (which both stack), the difference being that rogues don’t have to compete with a healer/tank spec.
Like you said we have to hope prot and holy being not good at all so we can come in and bring devo? Making us LESS than rogues, this is not balanced.
Why is it “balanced” when there is no reason to bring a ret to the raid?
Why would you bring a 2nd rogue, 2nd mage? Sure you’re competing with different roles but that’s the class you’re playing.
Current situation has put ret way ahead, but in the case where prot and holy would be played then the situation would be the same.
Rogue and Mages would just be competing due to performance, while competing with a tank and a healer is a totally different story sir.
You would still bring a ret that can play at a high level if good enough in most mythic groups. The same as you would with a 2nd mage or rogue. But those are your flexible spots and there aren’t that many.
If prot or holy is meta, Ret will disappear, rogues and mages just change specs. Totally different.
Which is the cost of playing a class that has only 1 dps spec. It happens the meta can change. But generally if you can play at the highest level that doesn’t matter. The best survival hunter would still stomp most people.
I can only Imagin being a survival hunter and sit in LFG for hours not getting invited. I also can’t remember the last time moonkins not being M+ S or A tier, being a four spec class they are.
And that’s what happens for most dps, the meta is really strict. If my goal was pugging I would always prioritize tanking or healing. If I play dk dps in raid I’ll probably still end up tanking in M+ because that’s just the nature of that content.
I think blizz should focus on making other specs more appealing instead of taking away what we love, the class fantasy, you cant force love, there are other games that we can be a true paladin, we don’t have to play wow.
I didn’t even know this was happening. That hurts ret badly. Oh well
As long as you can perform, a lot of guilds will still take you
I was one of those paladins. 
Ret was way ahead in term of numbers and I think it was obvious it was getting hit.
You will be playing on the same ground as other classes.
If for you that’s a deal breaker that’s your choice.
I’m personally in favor of a more spec based buff system like wotlk where multiple specs bring the same buffs and it gives a reason to play a spec not a class. But that’s not what current system is about.