delete holy power.
That’s what I’m finding, with this brand-new character. It was a choice between Holy and Prot.
1 Like
im not a tank my self but when i pve in the new zones i like prot it just feels better then ret.
1 Like
I also am not a tank, and definitely agree with you so far. I’ll see how the different specs feel as I level up this toon further. 
I go with templars verdict personally and I grab divine purpose. I keep hammer of wrath though. In bg’s I still give people blessing of freedom(unbound freedom) and do a good amount of heals with word of glory. I actually like the modern ret. Warrior sucks though. You’re also right that wotlk version was better though. Get unbound freedom pvp talent and you have one of the most powerful mobility spells in the game. If you cast blessing of freedom on an ally it duplicates it onto your pally AND it’s undispellable AND it increases both of your run speed.
I have absolutely zero past experience but I enjoy first wow class, the Retribution Paladin! The animations and abilities are all iconic and pleasing to use, and now that I have a bit of gear and adjusted my build to my enjoyment have very little downtime.
In any game I preference a two handed weapon wielding melee character and it appears wow is limited in those options. After watching a ton of YouTube videos and reading a ton of guides here’s my take away:
Unholy: Now this seems to be the most complained about and clunky spec to choose from.
Feral: Seems to be in a decent place but if I can’t get the mage tower skins I wouldn’t want to play this spec. Also, don’t enjoy constantly tab targeting and multi dotting so this one’s not for me.
Arms: Probably the slowest looking rotation in the game, based only off speculation but during the videos I was watching it was very slow and boring with way more downtime than ret.
Survival: seems to be the black sheep of wow right now, new and interesting but people who invite a hunter into pugs expect solid ranged DPS and are often disappointed to see survival. This probably would be my second choice although the current iteration of top parses on warcraftlogs don’t even seem to use serpent sting which just seems like a design flaw.
And then there’s ret… I just enjoy this spec although admittedly I don’t enjoy Inquisition or execution sentence but my DPS is only simming 800 less than the optimal build in it’s current configuration.
To be fair a lot has changed in the ret spec in the 7 or so montha since this thread began. Azerite gear is better, we have some really good essences now and the overall spec just plays way better. I really enjoy my rotation now and have switched this toon back to Ret full time from Prot.
I’ve enjoyed ret for most of my time playing. Patch 4.0 kinda put a damper on things. I quit shortly after Cataclysm, and came back in mid MoP. My paladin has been my main pretty much the whole time.
I found that ret became terrible in the immediate wake of 8.0. I found that the rotation slowed way down. As of 8.2 i find that changes made to azerite gear and the addition of essences has completely changed everything for the better. The essence that makes your holy power generation double for a short time is just out of this world. Couple that with avenging wrath and you can put out just a ridiculous amount of damage.
So in short my opinion on ret paladins has completely changed since 8.0.
I suppose that makes sense. I quit for 3 years and came back around May of this year.