Toward end game they catch up and pass hunters in raw DPS values but total damage dealt we often beat other “high DPS” classes because we hunters have more time on target than the other classes do because of our ability to always hit the target.
A lot of the values people post regarding DPS figures are just peak figures. These kinds of people ignore the total damage dealt to the encounter or other statistics that really matter in the raid encounter such as interrupts, dispel mechanics, re-buffing, saves of several kinds as well as avoiding damage. These kinds of things do not often get tracked and people hyper focus on DPS or Healing meters.
All that really matters is clearing the raid boss; considering that there are 39 other players in a raid and you do not need every paladin, every priest, every druid as a healer because 15 healers would be absurd; we do have room for a retribution paladin, shadow priest and balance / feral druid.
In reality does it matter that much if the paladin ret is doing 350 DPS while the primary damage dealers are doing 750? I could care less honestly because there are other times when those hybrid guys can save my bum.
I tried it in the talent calculator and you miss out on part of the holy power talent.
It’s not the biggest loss to have a holy pally do it but it’s still speccing weirdly just to pick it up.
Thing is, with 4 holy priests plus some number of druids (you want those innervates and battle rezzes after all) you won’t need that many healadins for the vast majority of encounters. Sure there will be some fights where you need more healing/cleansing where your rets will “have to put on their dresses” and help out but unless your raid is min-maxxing and swapping characters out for every fight there will be plenty of opportunities for some paladins/druids/shaman/priests to DPS.
The issue is, ret only becomes viable during Naxx due to gear, and mob types, but prior to that their dps is just terrible. The only benefit you would in taking ret is using sanctity and retribution aura but the minor benefit it gives is nothing.
The reason why you would only take a ret is if you need another important aura, had the axe, and was adamit on not changing specs.
The benefits of holy is, after 6 pally’s you wont really need any other pally’s. 1 of those pallys can get kings, and another get sanctuary but not diminish their healing by much.
H-pally’s - unlike druids/priests - with enough crit would never go oom, but with 6 pally’s you can easily have some be support raid healers where you don’t want the priests to Aoe heal as it’s a waste of mana.
pally’s basically reduces the need for getting druids, and pushes priests to Aoe heal and never really single target heal, only give tanks some minor support like CD’s.
This also allows preists a lot of down time to regain mana for more aoe healing.
Ret honestly gives nothing that a holy pally does, takes warrior gear, deals hardly any dps, requires a lot of gear, and only shines in 1 raid.
If the guild however is not going for server first then taking a ret would be okay, but generally, raid wise, they have no real strength.
Classic was never about spec but rather your class
Yup. If all else fails, let them DPS trash and make them heal the boss. Depending on the boss you could just have them be the cleanse bot too. We had a couple of Paladins that were Ret and we’d make them rotate out who got to DPS amongst themselves. Sometimes it was per raid, sometimes per boss, but it kept us from having 2 paladins healing and the other 3 DPS’ing.
Definitely. It was a defensive support class with basically a 2 button DPS “rotation”. Put a Seal on, Judge it, put a Seal on, wait till Judgment is off cooldown. Weeeeeeee. It was fun in PvP though from what I was told (didn’t play Ret till TBC), but it could blow people up when RNGesus blessed you and still be a team player with the defensive support.
Otherwise yeah, even leveling one was boring to the point of tears. I preferred Holy with SoR simply because attacking twice as fast made it look like more was happening.
Considering how popular paladins were and considering the % of people who play DPS specs versus healer specs of any hybrid, 1 per raid was no where near enough space to meet the demand of the number of rets looking for a spot. The proportions ret (and/or any other hybrid dps) had to deal with were way off versus what the other damage slots had to deal with.
There’s just a lot of subjective bias around Ret. It’s fine as it is. People underestimate and overestimate it constantly. I never expect to be #1 on every boss in every phase of progression.
But every once in awhile, even after we were clearing AQ40, I’d end up somewhere in the top 10 of damage done in AQ40 and our raid leaders would berate (playfully mind you) all of the DPS that were just going through the motions and not playing as hard as I was. There’s a lot of trash in AQ40 ;]. People get complacent and disregard getting their world buffs, or didn’t have time to farm gold for consumables and showed up empty-handed. This happened in many guilds I ran with even all the way through Naxxramas.
What allowed me to stay Ret and get to DPS was the fact that I helped these people out. Log in before raid by 30 minutes, and there I was, with my level 20 Warlock alt in Dire Maul, fresh tribute cleared from my Ret, getting people their buffs. I never wanted for gold because my epic mount cost half of what it cost everyone else. My prebis gear was cheap. I always gave Warriors and Rogues stacks of Mongoose or buffed em with some Jujus.
They, in turn, crushed the raids for us. I loved DPSing as a Paladin, and I was literally called “guild glue” many times by guys who parsed right at the top on a few private servers. There were always people in every guild I played in that thought I was a joke. They always lamented bringing me. But the amount of people I had helped attune and gear and consistently played with, providing a knowledgeable body for prebis, or for PvP, heavily outweighed these few.
You guys can talk top parses and log progression all you want, and I’ll talk fun. Ret is subjectively fun and objectively awesome in PvP. It is subjectively fun and mediocre in PvE. Ret is just another onion layer that not many will ever understand and even more will continue to be subjectively biased against. I’ve even lost Truestrikes on a Rogue to a couple Rets and I’ve hated more Rets in all my time on Vanilla than I’ve loved them. But there are some good eggs out there.
Yeah, it’s kind of like no one wanting Hunters early on because so, SO many of them were just utter garbage; gotta love the whole “huntards” thing. The same thing with Paladins happened, but it tended to stand out more. There were a lot of garbage, self centered Rets that wouldn’t buff, wouldn’t off/spot heal, wouldn’t cleanse, etc. They would just drop a Consecration (breaking CC) and auto attack, eventually dying with full MP, never healing themselves.
There were a lot of good Rets but there were also a LOT of bad ones… AND the bad ones were atrocious. It caused a really bad look for the class in general, but especially for any Paladin that wasn’t healing.
All this back and forth about Ret viability is pretty sad.
Every class falls behind mage. Also, melee dps tends to take damage compared to ranged, so they are an unnecessary risk. So no warrior, or rogues. Hunters are low dps and have pet/ammo issues. No hunters. Right?
Just healers, tanks, a warlock, and all dps slots mage.
You can do something like this: https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sVxhdxsxVMt0Lu
Lasting Judgement in Holy is optional as you really only need 1 Paladin who has it(assuming your raid is even using judgements). It could be dropped for Imp BoWisdom, but if you’re doing this build you’re likely on BoSanc anyway.
If you want a bit of AoE for when you aren’t raiding, you could drop Unyielding Faith for Consecration as well. Then you’d be able to Redoubt + Ret Aura + BoSanc + Consecrate to AoE farm somewhat decently(although not as good as a pure Prot with Holy Shield).
The only thing you’re missing with this build is Holy Shock, which is a mediocre talent to begin with.
It’s also possible to just go 20 or 21 in Holy and get either 30 or 31 in Prot or Ret. You give up Holy Power, but even without it you’re around 95% as good as a pure Holy Paladin at healing so long as you picked up Divine Intellect, Healing Light, and Illumination.
That also gives you more options for gameplay outside of raids. I used to raid with 20/0/31 and healed just fine with it.
Yeah, you can look at most guilds and people will take 4-5 Hunters and be like wat. Then by the end of Naxxramas you’ve got maybe 1 or 2 to tranq shot because they’ve totally fallen off the rails. Hunter Pets constantly face pull, Hunters roll need on a lot of things, etc. Yet they don’t go as full pepega as some Rets do. Agreed.
Also, that Rudy comment someone posted made me smile. Rudy also carried Frodo on his back and saved Middle Earth. /lawyered
Ranged in general tended to be a better option in vanilla. That’s not to say there wasn’t room for melee.
The issue is that the devs didn’t intend for ret paladins to be viable as DPS. They saw paladins as a support class. They envisioned hybrids doing mediocre damage and mediocre healing at the same time. That was their purpose. The reality is that people saw the flaw in that mentality and would specialize. Unfortunately, hybrids (except warriors) were relegated to the one role they excelled in - healing. It just didn’t make sense to fill out a roster of jack of all trades specs when it was much easier to choose specialists.
That being said, do what you want. If you want to be the underdog, go for it. Some people have something to prove. And they choose to do it in a video game.
Not saying we are. I’m saying he’s idiotic if he thinks a token ret spot is enough to let everyone with bright eyes on ret get a raid slot. Even among the “best” rets, there won’t be enough to go around.
Paladins were always intended to be holy warriors, but they got a massive change before release removing several abilities (that they wouldn’t see until TBC) and community feedback pushed for them to be heal/buff bots.
All of the early sets for paladins were for a frontline build, not healing. AQ gear? Another melee set. Paladins didn’t have a true holy tier set until tier 3.