I mained a Ret Paladin in the 2019 launch of classic and raided on it. My takeaways are that if you plan to do it you have to sweat and really try hard to function and bring value to the raid. Also Mana as a resource is rough. You will need to be willing to bring and use Mana potions and Dark/demonic rune constantly during boss fights to mitigate going oom.
As others have said you are never going to beat most other classes in damage output. One thing you do bring is a lot of utility, you add an extra aura, another blessing and can keep either judgement of wisdom or light on the boss for entire fights. Do keep in mind that in many cases a holy paladin can do most of these things as well.
As far as the raids there are some specific issues with the class itself and how it interacts with certain mobs. You end up having to stand in a specific spot on rag to ensure you don’t blow up the melee, BWL has the draconids that are never Holy weak and so you do almost 0 magic damage to them. Chromagus is the same way and in all honesty you will serve the group best there just by being a cleanse bot.
TL:DR
If you can commit to being sweaty, and learn all the nuances of where the spec succeeds and fails you can find some success raiding as ret. That said you will never be meta, you most likely will have to find the right kind of guild to indulge you and even then there will still be times were you will find yourself healing. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Dominica
Ret Pally was not viable at end game until TBC.
Bring agility potions, mongoose potions, and don’t expect to do lots of damage until you are super geared. I still had fun and was thankful my guild let me raid as Ret.
Not saying it’s right or wrong, but the reality is this:
Trying to raid as anything but holy in classic is a recipe for frustration. If you’re willing to deal with it, then go for it, but don’t be surprised when you’re not taken/meme’d on/and don’t get gear.
It is what it is.
There is so much information and raw data out there that all says pretty much the same thing. A short trip to wowlogs would tell you all you need to know.
Ret is among the worst, maybe even THE worst “”“dps”“” in the game. It’s a total meme.
Now that we have dual spec, you definitely should have a Ret spec setup for your spec switch.
But for raiding, you should just focus on Holy and gearing that spec out with raid drops.
To gear out your Ret spec, just wait for AV to drop and push for the R10 blue set or the R13 purple set on your own time. You will also get Don Julio’s during this time, as well as The Unstoppable Force if you don’t already have Obsidian Edged Blade or something else from MC.
This is super spot on. I raided every tier and downed all content as it was current as a Moonkin.
Ironically, like you pointed out, the only people who should raid meme specs have to be hyper sweaty, otherwise its best not to play them.
Unlike what others have said in the thread, that means finding a mid-core guild that is fine with bringing a few meme specs, but requires pots and world buffs. Otherwise mana issues get exposed and your dps tanks even further due to slow kill times.