if you like to turn it this way,
then as already being said:
ret dont have unique utilities, no reason of bringing it before holy;
Stacking Holy Paladins isn’t exactly a good thing. I’m not saying Ret is going to be required for a min/max optimal composition, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing in vanilla requires you to min/max to kill a boss. Nothing in vanilla requires you to sit people in favour of more optimal specs. Warm bodies is the biggest requirement - warm bodies that are decent enough players and aren’t horrible people.
If you choose someone based on class and not because of who that person is in content that is largely irrelevant, then… I dunno. That’s a personal decision.
There is literally nothing that Retribution brings to a raiding environment that is either essential or warranted. They have ZERO unique utility and low personal dps. By all means if you want to bring one to your raid because the dude playing him is chill, then go for it. But if we are talking pure numbers:
- auras: brought by the other holy paladins
- blessings: imp bom and bos can easily be taken by holy
- sanctity aura: super helpful for all those smite priests and paladin main tanks your raid no doubt have
- repentance: no
- freedom: there are a total of zero raid encounters where this spell is needed, and holy can do it anyway
- offheals/cleanse: if you want to pull numbers anywhere above the main tank, you stack warrior gear. This means your mana pool is pitiful and barely enough as it is to get you through an entire boss fight. You arent offhealing and even if you throw out 1 holy light it will heal for peanuts and then you do less dps than the hunter pets
- rez/wipe prevention: finally some useful utility. However its not worth bringing ret as holy, once again, can also do this
- judgement of light/wis: not enough to justify a spot, even if you’re rocking full T1 for the extra heals, and if you are in full T1 you are outgearing content so it’s a moot point
Paladins are amazing healers. Durable, tanky supports that have a lot of great buffs for their allies. That’s it. It was the same in 2004, it was the same on private servers and it will be the same in 2019. You aren’t going to reinvent the wheel; theres over a decade worth of data to back up the fact that Ret sucks in a raiding environment. Either wait for TBC or roll Warrior.
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That doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Ret is viable; you can DPS as Ret in raids and clear content. Not just alt raids or being Holy and getting to DPS on farm nights either. You sure won’t be on the bleeding edge, but that also won’t matter to many, many people.
Nah, that only supports that Ret isn’t optimal; it’s still viable because you can play it and it functions and does well enough.
Again, there is a large difference between “viable” and “optimal” that people either can’t understand or are being willfully ignorant about… and I suspect it’s the latter.
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Unfortunate all the good guilds equate optimal to viable as far as building their raid is concerned, then, eh? Otherwise LOLRET wouldn’t have been as big of a thing as it was on OG vanilla and pservers. As it will undoubtedly be on these new classic servers.
Point is: It doesn’t matter what is possible. It matters what the community perception is. If you want to be on the front of the curve (note: not the BLEEDING EDGE world first blah blah, just the normal front of the curve crowd) and you expect to do it as one of the thousands of Ret-ards instead of expecting to have to roll holy or actually think you’re going to be lucky enough to get the token ret slot (unless you already have a group of friends you’re planning to play with) you are going to have a bad time. That is what OP’s intent was. That is the intent of everyone asking “Is ret viable?”
What they really mean is “Will I get a raid slot if I roll ret with impunity?” And the answer is and will always be a resounding no as far as classic wow is concerned. Stop lying to people. Stop trying to alter that fact. Stop being thick skulled “welll AcKcHtuAuLy if the community would just use it’s brain.”
No.
Just no.
Nope. The bad guilds do that, because good guilds run by good people realize the worth that a player brings and the non-DPS meter things hybrids bring. Even bleeding edge guilds realize this, but to them it’s not worth the trade offs; it’s not optimal (so they won’t take hybrid DPS), but that doesn’t mean that the hybrid DPS aren’t viable.
A big part of the bias against Ret (and Hunters, and Warlocks, and Druids…) is because of people remembering early on Vanilla and these tropes sticking with them. Huntards rolling on everything, breaking CC, having pets with growl on, etc. Does that mean all hunters are awful players? No, it just means that there are some who still had to learn the game (hunters, in general, improved markedly over the lifespan of Vanilla). The same can be said of Druids and, especially, Paladins.
Early on you had too many cowboys playing Ret that never even bothered to buff or heal themselves, let alone others. People grouped with them get a bad taste for “LOLRET”, and it builds as it happens over and over again. That doesn’t mean the class was terrible but that a lot of people playing it were garbage. Hence, the stereotypes and the player base aversion to them.
Then there are talent changes and skill changes/tuning that happened that people always seem to forget about too (looking more at Druids here) that improved the class past it’s “lolhybrids suck” first half or so of Vanilla. People still think Enhance is a great PvP spec because of mid-Vanilla WF triple crits. Those don’t happen in 1.12 because WF had been nerfed by then and people learned how to play around Enhance.
No that’s the strawman that you’re arguing against and, shocker, no class whatsoever will get, and keep, a raid slot with “impunity”. People don’t keep bad healers just because they are healers or bad tanks just because they are tanks. They replace them with someone worth a damn, just like what will happen to terrible Rets who tunnel vision and don’t buff properly or provide any of the support the class offers.
The only one lying to people is you and the others like you saying that Ret is a smoking dumpster fire. It’s not and, while it’s not going to get you top DPS, it is perfectly functional and can be a valuable member of a guild and raid.
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Given that they noted that all enrage timers can be beaten with nothing but hybrid DPS, then it seems that would be the benchmark of viable: Can the job be done not just by bringing one, but by bringing nothing but them in that role?
Gearing issues aside(because you’d have gearing issues with nothing but Fury Warriors too), any enrage timer could be beaten with but Ret Paladins as your raid’s DPS. That makes them viable. This goes beyond just Patchwerk.
You could not beat it with only corpses for DPS however, so that’s not viable.
Also if you’re going to dismiss Ret Paladin DPS against Patchwerk as “tryhard against a stationary undead target”, then we shouldn’t acknowledge the tryharding Fury Warriors pulling 1500 DPS against that same stationary target either. They’re stacked to the brim with world buffs and consumables to do that.
But people gush over Warriors like a cheerleader would over the leader of the high school football team.
Pserver elitist community says otherwise. And I’m not talking about just the “method” equivalents. There are plenty of try-hard guilds in both live and pservers that will completely and utterly trounce the number of scrub guilds as far as being places people actually want to apply to due to proven track record of downing things.
People never apply to the guilds you’re talking about first choice. They apply to good ones (good as in have downed things and are at or near the front of the race on a given server, not good as in friendly, etc) they settle for less when they get declined and accept their fate in bad or worse-than-they-want guilds.
You keep arguing like there’s only “good players on rets vs bad players on pures” like there won’t be 10x more players who desire raid spots than raids available, so please drop the fake comparison. If the guild has trouble fielding 40 top tier people on top tier classes/specs, then it’s already not the type of guild I’m talking about. Or the type of guild OP is talking about. Or the type of guild -insert any stary-eyed person with big raid dreams- is talking about.
A good person on a warrior, rogue, mage, priest, etc will get a raid slot with impunity. The best ret in the world will get passed over for even a mediocre one of those classes.
I can’t say I’ve read all 529 posts so I’m sure it’s already been said, but I didn’t see it put exactly this way.
A true Vanilla Ret gets invited because of their utility, not their DPS. In the couple raids I was in (literally 2, I was more focused on 5-mans, questing and professions), the first question that asked of me is if I was spec’d into Kings, which I was.
I was given two responsibilities; keep everyone buffed, and throw other blessings/Lay on Hands if necessary. I was specifically told not to DPS, for the reason that’s been stated probably 529 times already - I didn’t have much of it.
Yes, Holy Paladins can do those buffs/clears that I can. However, the raid was set up with people siloed into their role - healers healed, nothing else. DPSs killed things, nothing else - etc.
That’s nice, because those elitist guilds are gonna be, guess what, elitists. They are going to want optimal, and that’s fine.
That’s more than “good”, that’s getting into the top slice of the pie. Also, people apply to middling guilds all the time, because some things matter more to them than being #1 on the DPS meters all the time, or being a top 5 guild (even if just on their server).
Not at all, but you keep arguing that anyone who wants to level past 20 will discard Rets as a waste of time when that’s obviously not true. Plenty of people have, and will, level, 5-man, PvP, and raid as Ret. Not all of those will do it well, but enough will learn the class and do it well. They will be viable.
When we’re talking about viability, we’re not talking about in the top 10% of all raiding guilds. We’re talking about guilds that can manage to get things done, but not necessarily top of the game. Ret Paladins (and other hybrids) can do this.
Exactly. I’m still astounded that people can’t figure that out.
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I love how people are ignoring a few massive advantages taking hybrids over pures/warriors as dps.
-Less gear wastage for the alliance side.
-Faster raid gearing.
With the relative scarcity of drops you really can’t be throwing away/sharding everything thats not required. Taking hybrids massively reduces the amount of wasted gear and speeds up overall raid gearing.
Between 2 tanks,5 rogues and 11 dps warriors that’s a metric messload of 1H’s you’re going to have to find. Rogues don’t want the daggers for anything but pvp and the 2H’s are useless for the alliance unless you suddenly want an outbreak of “I can’t raid anymore, I’m going for GM” to occur.
Hunters actually improve the least from tier 1-3. Warlocks the most. Of course, Paladins would be up there too, since they didn’t really have much going for dps outside prot builds until the talent tree patch.
Ret Paladins also have this incredible, magical effect on other DPS that causes them to be almost hyper-self-conscious about their own performance. They just DPS harder, better, by simply being near the Ret. It’s like a secret, hidden aura forcing them into a “weird flex”. Adding a Ret Paladin to your raid increases all other DPS by a substantial percentage ![:beers:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/beers.png?v=6" ":beers:")
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This reads like satire but it’s likely true to some extent. No one wants to be out DPS’d by that “thing”.
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You’d have to be really… REALLY… bad to be threatened by a ret as a good dmg class.
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Maybe they can claim that they died because they didn’t get heals?
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That’s precisely the premise when a Ret walks into MC and people are still fishing to complete their BiS. I rolled in there with a bunch of NOPE guys and their Mages and Hunters began stammering as to why they were behind me on DPS. I didn’t say a word and I’m pretty sure I spent 100g that first raid on just Major Mana Potions lol. It takes a sincere amount of effort just to sit below the Rogues and Warriors. But ironically enough, I beat even a couple of those guys. Guys who were considered the cream of the crop on private servers. Rankers and guys who had been playing for 4-5 years before I even got back into it. It completely and irrevocably stamped an idea in their mind that I wasn’t pure trash. We rolled into UBRS after the raid and I was swapping Devotion and Fire Aura between the adds on the Rend encounter. They laughed and I remember Ektelion saying, “is this guy aura dancing in Vanilla?”
I /flexed and we had a good laugh.
I always sat below the rank 14 Warriors and Rogues. I always passed the gear I desperately wanted. But by and by I was invited to raids every week. They asked me to heal at times so I did. Then the inevitable happened.
“Guys. Who gets the Eye of Sulfuras?”
The chorus was resounding and I felt like a part of the raid. A ton of guys sent me gold and materials and got me through the humps of purchasing Sulfuron Ingots. Week in and week out I slaved away, destroying every DPS in 5-man dungeons, carrying their alts and their gold-farming runs. I made it back up and got my Hand of Rag.
I wouldn’t trade that experience for any 1800 DPS #1 world parse on Patchwerk where everyone says, “well yeah, you’re a Warrior.”
I was the unicorn. The bastardized and ugly step child. Loved it.
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I can’t believe this is still going…
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Paladin threads never die =P
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Another very insightful post by Matcauthon, the most wise and literate force for good we have in these dark times.
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