I’m going to start this off by saying Blizzard has already stated that they will be watching class balance closely and that if a class becomes junk, they are open to making changes, but the community has to push for it. Here’s the article and quote:
“We will be watching class balance closely, and my perspective is we should just let it be, unless a class is pushed out entirely and the community says ‘this class is complete junk, we don’t even bring them anymore’ and then I think we should take a look at it”
With wrath ret being balanced around t10 set bonuses, the spec has been pretty much neutralized when it comes to being a DPS that is worth a raid spot in the first two phases. I play Ret on Benediction. I’ve consistently been in the upper 99% of ret players all the way through TBC to now. Last week I was #6 in the world for ret paladins on patchwerk and the only geared dps I managed to beat were a warlock and rogue who died to threat… and before you say anything yes I KNEW that ret would not being strong based on it’s 3.3 state and still chose to play it. This isn’t a HAHA YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT RET BEING GOOD moment. It’s about the fact that leaving it like this is ridiculous when originally rets were far better by comparison. They should be competent in their role for more than 3 months of this whole expac.
It has already been discussed within the guild that it doesn’t make sense to bring a ret paladin to our main raid now that splits are coming to an end and this is only naxx. Our dps is projected to get even worse in Ulduar compared to other classes. As a well known member of the Paladin Discord I’m aware that many other guilds are having this same conversation (even guilds that do not run splits). It’s a huge mistake to wait for a class to be pushed out of raid entirely before considering changes. The time frame in which a meaningful change for ret would happen if we waited that long would make the change itself irrelevant since we’d be closing in on ICC by then.
Ret is at a point where it will be complete junk for the entirety of the content that seems to be the main draw for this expansion, Ulduar. Yes we knew that ret on 3.3 would be bad, but that’s no excuse to leave it in this state when it’s a massive difference from how it originally performed. Is this a re-release or just a clone of a private server? Simply because private servers did something doesn’t mean it’s automatically the best possible course of action. There is no universe where leaving such a popular class in an essentially broken state until several weeks into ICC is good for the game.
I think that if the class is going to be balanced around a set bonus, it needs to exist in the game. It seems to me it would be incredibly fair to say, “you know what, since this class is balanced around a set bonus, we’re going to put that bonus on the paladin tier set in ulduar so they can out dps the tank.” (would like to hear other suggestions too this just seems like the lowest possible effort for blizz)
As it stands nearly every other class will scale harder with the coming ilvl increases than ret will . Some of them, like warriors, appear to be getting a nice buff due to this. The intent of the item level changes obviously isn’t to buff warriors but it’s having that effect and ZERO people are complaining about it. In fact almost everyone I know seems excited for warriors. Why? Because warriors are in a bad place just like ret. Is the spec still viable? Yes, because the content is so easy, but it’s pretty obvious that this is a healthy thing for warriors as a class, and potentially opens up some new theory crafting for raiders.
Personally I don’t need to dominate the meters to have fun, but when I see that I’m performing at the highest level and my damage still feels like a non-contribution something is clearly in need of change. And per blizzard the only way that happens is if we ask for it, so get in paladins we have to make ret mediocre again. And get ready for a ton of people to be toxic about this for no real reason.
Here’s a link to my Reddit post as well:https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/z1awkj/ret_paladin_deserves_slight_buff/
Ogb - Benediction
