Ret paladin viability

Its crazy that I made this post kinda as a joke, because I planned on playing retribution regardless of what was said in this post. I wanted to see what others had to say even though I knew it was going to be both negative and positive. I never thought this post would reach as many replies as it did.

Especially not with all the useful information in the post, some stuff I playing ret paladin on two different private servers didn’t even know myself. even with all the negative replies that were in this thread there was so many useful positive ones. And for that I want to thank you all that gave feedback in this thread, long live the retribution paladin!

-Sinclaire -Torch-

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He could have raided in vanilla in that 6 weeks…

Also, compared to the utter lack of vanilla knowledge Akaidian constantly displays his “opinion” could easily be considered expert…

Did you serously just log onto an alt to agree with yourself? LOL

I was hoping this thread would come back.

Nope, me and Elliane don’t always see eye to eye on everything adn we’re completely different people/accounts.

ret paladin

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At least it isn’t a new thread. Ret paladin is viable but you will watch a lot of Netflix and have to endure the memes.

I think if you have the right kind of Paladin with the right kind of personality who is just this super nice and relaxed guy who manages to make the raid feel better just by being such a bright and shiny person, then it would be worth it to have him as a ret. Especially if he goes all out and always uses max consumes. If this persists he/she very may well become sort of a mascot or something for the raid. People will see them showing up and pushing themselves to the next level and want to join them. People forget that the Paladin was never meant to be this strong beefhouse who could kill dragons in one hit. Paladins at their very core are supporters and they lift people up and inspire them. This is the true nature of Paladins and what I hope to see in Classic, despite my playing Horde and Warlock.

Also paladin souls taste delicious.

Also did you happen to play a human warrior named SInclaire on Misha during wrath?

You could say that for any class though.

I disagree. No other class in the game is as built around helping/protecting other members of the party as Paladins. Shaman and Druids come in close second/third but they arn’t able to compete with just the sheer amount of buffs/spells/auras paladins can do.Now their effectiveness is another question but the Paladin was crafted with a teammate in mind.

If you have someone dead-set on raiding and they are dead-set on a class they want to play then it’s not ignorance nor stupidity. It’s love for that class. You have someone who’s willing to take severe sacrifices in order to play what they enjoy most even if it hurts how they are reflected in game. That’s the person I’d like to have in a raid. As long as no-one else who is on that level of commitment is being left behind in order to keep the Paladin in I see no problem with it.

A class is fine, but the spec is not. Paladins aren’t the only one with a spec that’s not good in raids I think almost every class has one. You say the ret is taking “severe sacrifices” to play his spec, but he isn’t it’s everyone else in the group who showed up ready to contribute who have to carry somebody who wasn’t willing to change their spec for raiding that are making sacrifices. I’m not saying it’s ignorant or stupid to be doing it, but it certainly is selfish because you have no problem dragging everybody down because you won’t switch specs when everybody else in the group did.

If you really cared about helping your group you will throw on the dress.

Idk man. Lately I’ve been reading Tides of Darkness and maybe that Paladin lore has just got me on that coolness high. I’m Horde so I won’t have to deal with it but I’d certainly bring a ret along if they had the school spirit to make up for their dps drawback.

I guess there’s just too deep of a cut between authentic vanilla playstyle and effective/efficient raiding.

Oh believe me I’m going to be wearing the dress and I won’t like it either because I am coming from DnD and going from plate to a dress is pretty humiliating. The class fantasy of a paladin is awesome in my mind, but everybody knows what we got here and holy is the spec that is great for raiding. I wouldn’t have a problem with a ret either if they are a good person, but when the loot gets distributed I’m sorry but he is not exactly a priority.

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This nails it on the head. Ret’s are fine but suffer from the fact they’re not warriors.

What I’m hoping for is that PS have actually botched their resistance calcs and taking 8 paladins purely for res aura will become mandatory.

That way it will become a race between rags systimatically one shotting the raid one by one vs the dps people can put out.

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Paladins overall were a bitter disappointment in vanilla.

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resistance works on pservers mostly correctly;
exact boss resist values possibly are incorrect;

ragnaros was not scripted for targeting ppl in range ;
it was scripted to just target ppl with mana;
may be it was changed at some point, like adding elite spawn on onyxia 2nd phase, may be i remember this wrong, i dont know ;
but those who scripted it really did not care about such things like ret or enh; it seems that they did not think such specs to exist

yes i know there is a spot on ragnaros, where single enh/ret could stay safely but …
there would be 8 holy paladins heh

We had a paladin who refused to go lower than Mail armor as a point of pride. It’s not like you need to put on the teal bathrobe from Baron in order to heal well. Not everyone will be or needs to be in a top tier “progression” (whatever that will mean in Classic) guild.

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The class is fine you’re right and the spec does have its flaws, but it does bring a massive amount of support 85% of it being brought by a holy paladin.

The other 15% is nightfall, and that is huge for any raid. Yes a prot warrior can wield it and spam hamstring or a hunter and spam wing clip, or the ret paladin using seal of the crusader, who also brings an extra BoP, Lay on hands, blessing coverage, and aura coverage. And the best part about nightfall, you generally want two weilders of the weapon in the raid, so why not give the ret paladin that opportunity?

With all the info we know currently there’s just no reason not to, boss dps checks are proven to be doable with nearly any set amount of dps specializations. Especially if mentioned before the paladin Ian someone who gives it his all to play that specialization.

-Sinclaire -Torch-

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