Healing stream and Spirit Link competes with other healers CD not with shaman other specs , whichever is “stronger” will be brought or if they are equivalent, the strongest Shaman spec will be brought for the raid buff.
Assuming BDK are part of the 2 tanks brought on the team.
If other tanks are stronger than you won’t bring one.
Then you’ll still want at least 1 DK to be geared for the 1 or 2 fight where grip is very useful.
The problem with Ret isn’t that it needs to brings something else the other 2 don’t bring.
It needs Holy to stop being consistently a hard locked spot on the roster due to its healing CD being valued very highly by every guild that raid mythic.
Spirit link now includes damage reduction which is on par with aura mastery. It’s one of the strongest healing CDs in the game. Shaman is most likely a locked in spot with the current tuning.
The problem is that DR is so valuable that any healer that brings it will automatically brought given the nature of early mythic progression. That is not a paladin exclusive problem. The same thing occurs with priest and will most likely occur with shaman moving forward.
Again, Ret is in a spot where it’s DPS tuning will most likely determine it’s spot. This won’t change if holy’s DR is removed.
Ret has to compete with other DPS specs and the performance of it’s other paladin specs. Holy only has to compete with other healer specs. It brings other utility that is unique to itself (outside of DR) that other healers cannot compete with - 2 immunities, root cleanse, mana recovery, cooldown reduction, etc.
Holy would need to be stripped of everything that makes it unique (blessing of seasons, aura mastery, beacon) in order for ret to even be considered.
Such is the nature of hybrid specs.
On top of that, holy has the added benefit of literally doing no damage, so it’s utility value is inherently higher because it can be picked as one of the classes to deal with mechanics (Larodar comes top of mind, among with other bosses scattered throughout the years) with little to no impact to raid progression. You can make up for lost heals, you can’t make up lost DPS.
When your DPS doesn’t matter, the utility you bring will always be valued more. As Ret, your damage will always be the first thing considered.
Also, aside from PVP, a stranger will read this thread and imagine that Ret is doomed. Some food for thought:
Ret has great representation in keys historically; currently the highest represented spec in Season 4
Ret has been in a good spot compared to most DPS spec in raids throughout all of Dragonflight
The class and spec has been looked at more closely than other classes for TWW beta
Ret is currently performing very well on TWW beta
Ret is fine. There are so many classes and specs that would be ecstatic to be in the position Ret is in right now.
And it will be interesting to see whether this dislodge Holy from its spot.
But both Shaman and Disc priest have drawback on their CD, they are heavily dependent on raid positioning and it’s not always guaranteed that they can hit everyone with it where as AM doesn’t have this restriction.
I disagree.
If the DR is removed they outright loose their de-facto spot, they would compete with other healers on HPS CDs, which are mostly interchangeable.
If they are interchangeable then it won’t be a big deal to NOT have a Holy which opens the door for Ret.
If Prot Paladin isn’t top 2, then the Raid need devo and this is all Ret needed to find spots in high end competitive raiding without having to be top DPS in charts
You are on the Paladin forum you realize. But let’s play your game with the other dps specs such as shaman.
Enhance and Ele Shaman has faced the same issue as Ret throughout the history of the game. That is they bring nothing besides damage to the raid, thus their representation in competitive raiding has been very limited until enhance got windfury totem back. History proves this fact and anyone who competitively raids for a long time will be able to also prove this fact.
Now with windfury totem disappearing and skyfury be given to resto shaman shamans will enter the same issue as Ret. You will only see dps shamans in raid if resto shaman is bad.
Monk has had the same problem throughout its history, except it was always brought as a tank. WW and mistweaver were/are rarely brought unless a fight would require revival.
The issue is there are 2 melee dps classes that bring something extra on top of dps. Those being warrior (rally cry) and DK (AMZ and Grips). So unless dps tuning is just way out of wack, a competitive raid team will always prefer to stack extra warriors or DKs instead of filling that spot with WW monk, Ret, or enhance. These are the facts and likely will be what will be seen in TWW as it has always been.
To continue with what you will see in TWW Druid (balance) will now enter the same problem as Ret, WW, and enhance due to the introduction of the evoker. You would almost always rather stack aug evokers over bringing more than 1 druid. So you will only really see balance to the extent a resto druid is not worth running.
To end with the shaman you will see Elemental shaman to the extent that resto shaman isn’t worth running, enhancement shamans will become very rare in competitive raiding due to the desire to stack Warriors or Dks in your melee extra slots.
Suppose in a perfect world, Damage is perfectly balanced at 10k across the board.
I have my healing Paladin, healing Shaman, Dk Tank, and everything else besides two slots filled. (18/20)
Okay, we have 2 slots open, a Ret, an Ele and a Unholy DK applies…
Hello Ms Shaman. what do you bring to our raid group?
Ele Shaman:
10k DPS
AoE Healing Stream Totem
AoE Poison Cleanse Totem
AoE Stun
AoE Mana Spring
AoE Tremor Totem
AoE Root
AoE Knock Back
AoE Wind Rush Totem
ST Hex
AoE Ancestral Guidance
wow, that’s a lot of AoE!!
How about you, Mr Ret Paladin?
Ret Paladin:
10 k DPS
AoE Judgement of Light
AoE Blind (that breaks on damage and removes debuffs)
ST Poison Cleanse
ST Stun
ST Freedom
ST BoSac
ST BoP
ST Lay on Hands
wow, that’s… that’s not a lot of AoE. That’s a lot of single target gameplay. But let’s see what the DK has…
What about you, Mr DK?
Unholy DK
10k DPS
AoE Snares
AoE and multiple Grips
AoE AMZ
AoE Blind (that does not break on damage or remove debuffs)
AoE AMS
ST Stun
(Also, I’m personally immune to knock backs and have more mobility than ret, XD)
Sorry Mr Ret Paladin, but since you all bring 10k DPS, I’m gonna take the classes with multiple AoE tools… good luck in your 3 man devles though!!
When Frost Barrier and AMS start to effect other players… it might be time to rethink the idea of Paladins being a “niche ST utility class” is all I’m saying.
except now if someone else likes playing Paladin what do they bring to the table? It would have been nice to be something that would only benefit them, class fantasy is nice.
I mean, I don’t know how to respond to this without sounding like a jerk…
I know, no Ret specs Cleanse, no Ret specs BoP either, and soon, as long as there’s a Holy or Prot Paladin, no Ret will spec Auras…
I’ve been asking for an update to the class/class tree for 2 years.
Auras as “Warrior Stances (Druid Forms) 2.0”
Seals as Runeforges or Weapon Imbues (DK/Shaman)
Updates to Blessings
Updates to Forbearance
Judgement of Justice, Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom
LAotL, PoJ
Updates to Capstones
All Ret builders are copies of one another; do X Holy damage, generate 1 Holy Power
Judgement = Hammer of Wrath
BoJ + Expurgation = Templar Strike
All Ret cooldowns are copies of one another:
Divine Toll, Final Reckoning, Searing Light, Divine Arbiter, and Hammer of Light are all cool for “big flash of AoE Holy Damage” … but what more do Paladins do?
Ravager vs Bladestorm
Champion Spear, the Hunt, Abomb Limb, or Summoning a Pit Lord, idk
The modernization and diversity just isn’t there for Paladins and it’s kindof boring. I don’t know why it has to be this way, but yea… =/
With the removal of Ret aura, I thought I saw that Ret were going to get Greater Judgment as part of their base talent build instead. Did that not end up happening or is the ret tree currently bugged on live?
Blizzard pushed an old build onto the live servers and not the most recent beta build. Lots of things are missing like the recent tank changes and a lot of talent are wrong. Rets spec tree is a few weeks old.
Why this happend i am not sure, but i guess it’s because Blizzard stated in a blue post last week that the beta had a lot of stability issues and maybe it wasn’t a server issue but a software problem. So they had to release the most recent stable build instead.
Realistically i don’t think that’s going to happen for a very long time. Midnight at the earliest. The Paladin class tree might be borning. The class might have a lot of abilities that do the same thing. But at least all 3 specs are mechanically sound.
Non-sub rogues are basically full on broken. In the bad kind of way. The capstone of the Trickster Hero tree (Coup de Grace) is a straight dps loss for Outlaw rogues and its not a tuning issue either but a design one. Coup de Grace breaks Crackshot windows. Assassination Rogues basically doesn’t have any Hero talents and are still heavily reliant on stealth to do any AoE at all.
Destruction Warlocks wants to cast Rain of Fire over Chaos Bolt in single target because they generates more Soul Shards than they spend, and the spec is designed around spending as many Shards as possible, as fast as possible. Also Chaos Bolt does baby damage.
Arms Colossus hero tree is so all-in on crit that if Demolish doesn’t crit they are competing with the tanks on the damage meters. They actually lose about 200k-300k dps if Demolish doesn’t crit. I am not even joking. And that’s single target dps.
