Their CC and mobility are not top tier but everything about them nullifies the vast majority of specs
Solo shuffle is effectively ruined by ret paladins existing - Judgements of the pure alone shuts down any dot based spec minus aff, and hunters/mages/destros (CC and immolates) hard as well. Rets were also always pretty good into other melee matchups and they still maintained that strength.
I know some ret defenders are going to post something like “Oh just coordinated and use cross CC to deal with Judgements of the pure”. It doesn’t factor in that so far this xpac shuffle has been the active game bracket, and you’re never going to have anywhere near the coordination available to you to possibly hope to counterplay JoTP on any control based spec.
Rets are just disgustingly powerful in an uncoordinated environment (shuffle) and yet they’re so strong right now that even in organized 3s the only way you really can deal with them is just to play with them yourself. The meta is entirely ret+ms/x, but mostly just boiling down to having a Hunter, a Warrior, or a Demo warlock as a dps partner and choosing Resto Shaman, Fistweaver, or Pres evoker as a healer.
They entirely control the meta and you are only able to fight fire with fire.
I know there will be posters that say “omg X years of rogue mage etc.” when we’ve had far more variety, especially on ladder through all those years minus maybe the past few AWCs (although you still did see other specs/comps appear in AWC they just wouldn’t be top 4 but still top 8). Right now playing without a ret paladin at any level of play is pretty much impossible. It’s also one of the worst states of skill expression available for ret paladins - and ret vs ret matches are also very dull with the current design.
I am not even a ret hater. I actually like playing with ret paladins. I’ve played this game for years at a high level and ret hunter has generally been one of my favorite comps to play. I am not trying to get the spec deleted - but the spec is legitimately deleting the diversity in the game but beyond the lack of diversity, the way the playstyle degrades with ret paladins leads to some of the most simplified gameplay possible.
I just want better for the game, I thought 10.0.5 was looking really great for WoW because shuffle diversity was pretty high. We did have a few specs on the weaker end which did need help but for the most part you could see a wider variety of specs in shuffle and that was cool. Assa rogues who were one of the meta-defining specs last patch were still nowhere near this meta-defining and oppressive - you could still play other specs and comps into them, they were just most optimal at high level so, unfortunately, AWC did still lack some diversity for winners (but you would still be able to make top 8 with some diversity at least). The game is at its most fun when you can see a ton of comps play. It just is not possible right now.
This is probably one of the stalest and most simplified metas I have ever seen (which is sad because Outlaw end of Shadowlands Season 4 was quite comparable and yet even then you STILL could play other comps to succeed on ladder with them being oppressive). The current meta entirely revolves around ret paladins - you are going to do very poorly without them at all levels of play, and I just want to see better for the game. I’m not trying to get ret paladins removed from existence and I’m not calling for them to be nerfed into the ground - I just want to have frequent attention until we can get them in a place that lets them be competitive without completely hindering diversity in the meta.
