So a glaring issue with paladin is definitely it’s retribution spec. That isn’t to say it can’t do well in keystones and mythic raiding, yet due to community perception it’s extremely hard to do anything as ret. Unless your like a godsend of the spec and find a community tht is willing to tolerate it.
I personally am okay with playing ret, I have it to where I can manage to pull 10k overall in keys. Which is about where I should be, yet I still struggle to do any keys as ret. Even when it’s my own groups as players will just take one look and nope out of the group sometimes, or just not que due to the fact that I’m trying to play retribution paladin, which is a major issue that I’m sure feral and survival hunters have run into as well.
The big issue I’ve had with it is the fact that utility speaking it simply doesn’t compare to warriors, monks, rouge’s, demon hunters, and to an extent hunters and druids. Players simply will bring the above classes more often as ret does indeed have big CD’s that can help the group, the issue is their more situational and have very long CD’s attached to them. Along with overall having a limited CC toolkit out side of talents that barely scratch the surface of what monks are rouge’s are capable of doing. With demon hunters and warriors both just being able to put out more DPS and bringing party wide buffs, with toolkits to match that provide dungeon and raid easements.
What needs to happen is they need to work on rets utility. They need to add some abilities to counter balance the fact that it simply doesn’t bring much to the table in comparison to the classes I mentioned. In terms of CC, buffs, and overall party and raid wide utility. That prot and holy paladin have in spades and awkwardly ret does not.
I really hope they work on ret in 10.0 and bring some unique qualities to it. It sucks that it’s such a nice spec to play, yet community perception trumps how well your going to be able to play as well if you care about upper level content. As it’s a zero win situation when applying to groups given how the toolkits of other melee classes and spec’s work.
Mythic+ it doesn’t bring a lot of utility. Ret paladins have crazy off healing to assist in mythic+ but most of them choose not to use it and groups don’t really look for that when making groups.
I mean the thing is you have to spend holy power to even heal, which is a waste of DPS and is the core issue. Similar to monks and druids, they scant ever cast a heal onto themselves or another person. Now that isn’t to say I won’t personally help the healer or group out if someone get smacked hard or gets hit by stupid. I off heal all the time as prot seeing as my HotP WoG casts pretty much act like a lay on hands as tank when someone gets dangerously low. It’s just all HP counts as ret as that’s the only way your able to cleave or do DMG. Given if you spend it on a heal then your forced to spend 1-3 builders before you can even cast a spender again and ensure your losing DPS as a result. With how they designed keystones, every bit of DPS counts pull for pull. As it can literally be the difference between a time or deplete.
I agree that they should sit within range of each other. Which is why I called for ret to be buffed up to what monks, warriors, demon hunters and rouge’s are capable of. Given its always been the case of it’s better to buff over nerf as when they nerf, it simply changes the community perception and in many cases causes the spec to fall off the map. Something I am a bit concerned with holy paladin in 9.2, although with how the tier set is designed it should be fine given we’re make up for it with the short CD on wings. Yet I have a bad feeling that their gonna mess with the tier set right before the patch drops, and it’s gonna really mess up the meta all over again.
Combat healing can be an amazingly useful ability for ferals as well but it’s not easily noticed by anyone and really it doesn’t allow you to push any further, just helps you recover from mistakes.
It’s always a problem with “class utility” isn’t it? People have caught on that some class has to be the lowest DPS and Blizzard doesn’t react to "lowest DPS’ comments with tuning, and so whenever these conversations come up people have to pretend the reason their spec isn’t doing well and deserves a buff is because of their utility, when 9 times out of 10 what makes a class highly desirable is their DPS.
Ummmmm no, I guarantee if it was on par to other classes and spec’s it still wouldn’t be brought along as much. As again utility is another component when to comes to building groups and dealing with affixes and mechanics. In fact basically ret is 1k under what warriors and monks can do overall DMG wise. Literally when I build group’s, like for instance mist’s, I have to build around having a lust, a way to cc the mob to skip seeing as you skip the start. Which means you have limited room for who you can bring along as a result. As that one slot has to be taken by either a rogue, monk or demon hunter. Which means that warrior and monk instantly gain a ton of value as all three classes I listed will benefit from the monk debuff or battle shout. Which in turn comes back to whether I have a shaman healer or not, or a list for that matter, that that means comp wise it makes you want a hunter as they’ll benefit from the buff or debuff. Which leaves no room for a ret as a result, which as a result ties into utility as it has nothing going for it to synergize comp speaking compared to other classes and spec’s. Like I said if ret was on par DPS wise it still wouldn’t be brought along as much. It certainly would be considered more often, yet when you have monks and warriors that buff physical damage dealers by 15% essentially when combined. It’s hard to justify a ret when you also need a lust, and is why ret needs something similar to make it more balanced utility wise.
