Could someone who has raided endgame content in Classic as ret paladin chime in and lmk their honest thoughts? I’ve read all the content online, but would like to source additional inputs outside of a guide (even if it confirms exactly what the guides are saying).
Good luck finding one. 99% of raiding paladins are holy.
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I assume you’re referring to vanilla/Era.
In summary, ret paladins are bad. Holy is better in both raiding and PvP.
If you’re ok not getting into an optimal raid group you might be able to get by. I wouldn’t expect to be clearing Naxx in a group that takes ret paladins though.
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This isn’t true. Naxx, for the most part, isn’t that hard and can be cleared with less than 40 players fairly easily, so having a Ret Pally on the roster isn’t going to change anything.
With that said, Ret, doesn’t do nearly as much damage as a Warrior. Best case scenario, if you are playing optimally and all your raid’s Warriors are doing the same, you can expect to do roughly half their damage. You can go look this up (along with the other classes) on warcraftlogs. If you’re in a competitive group, don’t expect to play as a Ret, but if you’re in a chill group and they’ve got a solid DPS core, there shouldn’t be any problems.
PvE is a weird space for Ret. It really shines in PvP where all of your tools can be employed to empower your team, but in PvE they are either not useful or brought by a Holy Paladins. It’s perfectly playable, just don’t expect to be topping meters.
ret is for leveling/pvp on vanilla/era. With the right gear though, ret-reck paladins slap. Most of the good pvp builds btw involve some ret talents. The best healing pvp paladin setup is 20/0/31, repent used for defensive plays > holy shock.
prot has more raid viable use than a ret, but you need 18 wars for kings spam.
holy is the reason you get invited most of the time. alliance only has priests for AOE healing, so most group use priests for AOE healing/paladins for tank healing.
Ret is as bad (If not worse than what guides lead on, as some guides have copium writers) as you hear. Not only that, Ret is one of the more common, if not the most common meme DPS, so getting a spot is difficult. Even if you get the spot, you will be last in line for gear (You get 2Hs pretty easily though which is nice), your rotation will bore/frustrate you, and you can hypothetically put in 5x the amount of prep as a Warrior and you will still do at most 1/4 of their damage.
No I am not joking. Your case scenario performance-wise is you join an extremely casual guild where nobody is World Buffing or consuming, and you Wbuff and Consume and you’d still lose by quite a lot in DPS, but at least it wouldn’t be doing 1/4 of everyone else
Yes it’s that bad. Some sweat guilds will take you as a nightfall bot but an optimized guild would swap you for another Warrior
If youre not dpsing as a warrior youre griefing
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One ret paladin would be fine, sure.
But what I’m talking about is being in a raid that accepts meme specs. That raid is going to struggle not only because of the meme specs but because of the general attitude of those that lead meme spec accepting raids. That and those who choose sub-optimal specs tend to be sub-optimal players in general.
also never use nightfall as a ret, your team ends up doing less raid DPS than if they were to let the ret sweat.
But you have to actually sweat as a ret in pve. highest ret parse on era was like 700 in nax, so there’s some teeth. But you gotta learn how to seal twist sotc to reduce your swing times.
I’m not advocating that the raid fill their roster with all ret, shadow, feral, balance, elemental, and enhancement players. There absolutely is a point where a raid group will struggle. However, it’s a pretty forgiving margin.
My guild was like 2% away from a KT kill with 30 players and no world buffs. Having one single extra player of any spec would have tipped that over to a kill (assuming they stayed alive). That’s a lot of room for memes, sir 
The real struggle with most memes is mana longevity and debuff slots. If you take one meme it’s usually fine in terms of mana longevity because fights will be short. If you take a lot and fights are longer, memes start running out of gas. It’s just the way it is.
With all that being said though, we don’t really need to be talking about stacking memes here. I don’t think that’s what the OP was getting at. A group who isn’t speed clearing can take a couple and it’s fine. You’re just unfortunately fighting an uphill battle against player expectations and entitlement, so it will really take the right group to fit in with
With the buff cap removal on boss’s everyone is doing more damage now…its vanilla…it isnt that serious…will you be top? No…but neither will everyone else who isnt warrior…if you want to be the best…play the best…if you want to have fun and enjoy the game…then play thr class you like and spec you like! Hopefully pvp so i can viper sting ya 
2 more days boys!
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There was a situation with a guild where they had a meme ret alt in the raids sometimes they liked to invite and everytime he over performed over the other fury warriors. Those warriors got a talking to.
They used the ret as a base line for the other to not fall under, ever under any circumstance.
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That had to have been the Ret fully World Buffing and consuming and the Warriors not, along with the Warriors not knowing anything about their class
I’m sure you had a good raid leader. Raid leaders that take meme specs usually let a lot of other things slide which ultimately means the raid struggles. That’s all I’m saying.
There is no way to really raid as a ret paladin and have viable DPS. Even with the best gear, using all consumes, you will simply do a fraction of the DPS that others will, you simply can’t overcome the fact that the class really has no real attacks and no big DPS cooldowns which really matter it also scales horribly. Also while people like to talk about utility and healing, most utility that paladins bring is mediocre to worthless in raids assuming buffs are already taken on by Holy paladins, and Paladin heals without inspiration and a dedicated healing set are poor, ultimately are they simply bad DPS which is the problem.
While this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find a raid, ultimately you would simply be a carry in most cases. This is a bigger problem in progression, however as raids become on farm, getting a spot as a ret is more likely. Casual raids especially those struggling to fill spots will also happily accept a Ret, as usually even a bad DPS is better than an empty raid spot assuming a competent player.
The final problem you will have is gearing will be painfully difficult, as Ret needs the same gear as rogues and warriors, and that gear is already in demand, and from a priority standpoint, ret would be a distant last.
We do have a good raid leader, and a great team of players. There’s nobody I’d rather be spending my WoW time with.
That’s a pretty loaded statement and really comes with implications that suggest either you have some pretty unrealistic expectations for the game, or have had some pretty negative experiences.
At the end of the day it all boils down to what your objectives are for the game I suppose. Some objectives just aren’t going to support anything but stacking the best DPS classes with the best consumables. Other objectives involve just clearing content and having a good time. This doesn’t mean its a bad objective, or that the raid leaders let things slide, it’s just a different value set than some might hold.
If the OP wants to play a Ret Paladin though, they are absolutely effectively locked out of that first group entirely and would be far better served playing a Warrior.
don’t listen to the nay sayers 
yeah ret is bad but if you really wanna play ret you can find a guild that’ll indulge you. the raids are not hard enough to warrant refusing a ret pally.
My 2019 was super chill and casual (though most world buffed and consumed) and we full cleared the game. We had 2 ferals (bear and cat), a ret paladin, a prot paladin, a shadow priest, 4 warlocks, and like only 8-10 warriors, plus sometimes a moonkin. If you find the right community you can raid however you want.
Though sometimes our meme specs would have to respec to healers for like a week or two if we were stuck on a boss or didn’t have the healers required, so make sure you also build a holy set
I’ve played ret in every raid tier in most expansions, primarily the trilogy and parsed decently well for the “three” of us that played it in raid.
My HONEST thoughts are it is classic play whatever you want, it does not matter, content can and has been done with less than 40 people in less than optimal gear. Vanilla is meant to be fun. I personally think the auto-attack bot is fun and will be more fun this time around being allowed to consecrate and judge crusader on bosses.
However, most people are tryhards and you are a suboptimal DPS. What that translates to is: you need to be in a tightknit guild and be their token ret paladin to be able to play the spec. What that translates to in the pug life is: you will not be raiding unless you put on the blue dress from scholo and heal or lead your own raids. If you whisper someone looking for a DPS to do MC, for example, they will ignore you and bring a fresh 60 full-greens warrior instead.
Also, to the spec in any scenario, you need every consume and every WB to do medicore damage. That will be the expectation if you do raid as ret. Major mana potions, Dark Runes, Songflower, all of that jazz. As pessimistic as I sound, this is the truth coming from someone who has played it forever and will be playing it again this time around.
It also depends what you want to get out of end-game. If it is instant group invites and topping meters, I suggest a more meta driven spec.
TL;DR: It is fun, but hard to get groups for anything. Requires a lot of time/involvement for minimal reward (DPS-Wise), and you may get frustrated unless you orchestrate your own endeavors for end-game. Best of luck!
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I mean it’s possible. classic is easy, and unless you join some tryhard guild they probably aren’t going to care (more so with debuff limit gone, previously in classic you couldn’t always judge crusader and use consecrate).
Are they GOOD? No, not really. Good enough to clear anything in Vanilla though, but they’re not GOOD and are incredibly boring. If you spam consecrate you’ll go OOM super fast.
Basically if you want to play one, find a guild that isn’t pretending vanilla is super serious business. I found it too boring and actually wanted to go back Holy because it was more enjoyable.
Also you get to have full T2 and a cool sword like Ashkandi and win Fashioncraft.
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