Sick of seeing the same thing every game

I am honestly at a loss as to how Blizzard has allowed this “meta” to keep going for so long without a nerf. I queued a good few RSS this week and honestly sick of seeing the same thing over and over and over again…

Ranged is either BM hunter/Frost Mage/Shadow Priest, Melee is either Ret/Feral and I cannot remember the last time I never had a Priest healer.

Honestly feels like there is absolutely no balance in PvP right now at all. BM Hunters aren’t being touched, Frost mage seemingly endless roots are shocking while they continue to hit through pillars. Ret and Feral damage is also scary high right now.

What is going on?

Thank you for making this post. This has been my experience as well, disc priest every single game. Contrary to what some other agenda pushing posters are saying trying to convince me that healers are perfectly balanced. Sorry I’m not buying it.

I’ve played some arcane/fire/frost lobbies and the breakdowns were as follows between starter mmr and 2200.

Frost/Aff/BM/Fury/Hpal/Rdruid
Assa/Feral/Frost/Fury/Hpal/Hpriest
Arcane/Frost/Feral/Arms/Hpriest/MW
Fire/Frost/Outlaw/Shadow/Disc/Hpal
Arcane/Ww/Hav/BM/Rsham/Disc
Arcane/Fire/Ret/BM/Mw/Mw
boomy/aff/bm/arcane/hpal/disc
Ele/Arcane/Surv/Balance/Disc/Hpal
Demo/Arcane/Ele/BM/Hpal/Rdruid
Havoc/Frost/Arcane/Balance/Disc/MW
Arcane/Mm/BM/Unh/Hpal/Rdruid
aff/ele/fury/arcane/disc/hpal
arcane/assa/shadow/feral/hpal/pres
Arms/Fury/Ret/Arcane/Hpal/disc
Shadow/frost/arcane/destruction/Rsham/pres
arcane/havoc/arms/ww/Hpal/disc
Outlaw/bm/ele/arcane/rsham/disc
Fire/Frost/Destro/Ele/Rdruid/Disc

Total Healers: (Out of 36 total since 2 per round, and 18 rounds listed)

  • 11 Holy Paladins (30.5%)
  • 10 Disc priests (27.7%)
  • 4 Mistweavers (11.1%)
  • 4 Resto Druids (11.1%)
  • 3 Rshams (8.3%)
  • 2 Holy Priests (5.5%)
  • 2 Pres evokers (5.5%)

Looks like you should expect either Disc or Holy about 36% of the time.

Not going to do all of them, but I think I only got 2 ret paladins the entire time out of 18 rounds. Feral definitely is seen a ton.

I had either a BM or a mage other than me a majority of my games, yep.

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Literally the scourge of PvP right now with Rets and Hpals. Disc is super popular but isn’t that hard to deal with - just very beginner friendly and somehow people still fail pressing the 5 buttons that spec is

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Idk think I’d rather fight a ret than a disc if given a choice, maybe not though. Why do you hate ret

Breakdown of Ret in Shuffle

  • Team immortal
  • Ret immortal
  • Unavoidable ranged damage from a “melee spec”
  • Removes CC from healer
  • Slow immunity
  • 5 second stun for healer
  • Can crit people for 3 million

need more?

I just watched Lontar get crit for 2.1m by some ret with wall up on Evoker (30% dmg reduction)

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Team bolstering is pretty lame, and a good ret makes it kinda hard to deal w/, but its not impossible. I’d assume if it was that good, Vanguards wouldn’t be 200 points below top of ladder winning 44% of his 3s game (18 total) in his Dec. 23rd session.

Unavoidable isn’t true, I can avoid it on every toon I q in shuffle.

Isn’t this part of team immortality, I’m sure you’d list sanc as a reason why they were immortal if asked to give specifics. Listing it twice is weird.

what point is this supposed to make lmao? Yeah and they got rebuke. ok? every dps has a cc for the healear.

I think Hammer does too much damage probably, do you have a timestamp or clip for this? I’m curious what ret was doing prior to cracking that.

Yeah, something a tad more specific with some data behind it other than you being mad because of shuffle.

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I was playing on my monk the other day, seen Wings go up on the Ret, I popped Karma (3.4ish million absorb (after the stupid 30% nerf)) and it got stripped away immediately and I still got hit for 1.6 million after it. All within 2 globals. The ret never even took any damage from the reflect.

Granted it wasn’t like 1 thing doing the damage, but 2 globals to take someone’s health down by more than 50% is just insane.

Whats the chance he pressed an immunity, do we have a death log here

S h u f f l e

Playing on 2.3-2.4-2.5 MMR lately any time I see a Ret and more than 1 more melee, legit automatic 4-2 or higher for the Ret. Doesn’t have a weakness. 2x phys or 2x magic immunity. No Forbearance problem. No melee range problem.

It’s literally a class without a weakness. It only looks balanced in the hands of new players who don’t know how to use half of its broken buttons.

Only other melee DPS either have shorter CC, or have to regain melee range to continue doing damage. While not having half of the rest of what Ret has.

Sadly I don’t currently have a sub to Lontar and his vods are sub-only. Happened about 20 minutes ago in a game against Ret / BM / Rdruid. Feel free to check the vod urself if you have a sub.

102 Ret chars above 2.4 in Shuffle (NA)

The only melee with more success is Fury warrior, likely do to popularity.

125 Ret chars above 2.4 in Shuffle (EU)

The only melee with more success there is again Fury.

Let’s compare this result with other “mid to low performance melee specs”

25 havoc Demon hunter chars above 2.4
45 unholy DKs
33 Frost DKs
46 Arms warrs
49 Windwalkers

And just for the memes, I’ll also include BM hunter’s results:

217 BM hunters above 2.4 in Shuffle

So statistically speaking, Ret is 3 times more likely to get high rating than mid-range melee specs

It is 4 to 5 times more likely to get 2.4 than a Havoc DH

and BM hunter is 9 times more likely to get 2.4 compared to more-low performance specs

Didn’t say I died. I have other CDs at my disposal. All I’m getting at is what Lfg is saying, I agree with. It’s no coincidence that Ret’s are sky rocketing in rating and one of the most represented specs right now. If you want proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54uWfewTHiE

Oh my bad, do you want the game to be balanced around this? I flat out would say that is a mistake, and that most people agree that 3v3 is where balance decisions should be made from.

Community perception + lacks tools that it should have + has too many tools it shouldn’t.

Ret is 3x more likely to succeed in shuffle than mid to low performance melee specs. This isn’t really data that I’m convinced by either. You left out quite a few specs that make that the case.

Above 2.4k Shuffle Eu/US:

  • 326 Fury Warriors (19.37%)
  • MASSIVE DROP OFF
  • 229 Rets (13.61%)
  • 200 Ferals (11.88%)
  • 194 Assa rogues (11.53%)
  • MASSIVE DROP OFF
  • 110 Ww monks (6.54%)
  • 107 Outlaw rogues (6.36%)
  • 106 Enh shams (6.3%)
  • 103 Arms Wars (6.1%)
  • MASSIVE DROP OFF
  • Frost dk (5.1%)
  • Unh dk (4.1%)
  • Surv hunt (3.1%)
  • Sub Rogue (1.9%)

I pose two questions to you:

  1. Should we expect Blizzard to balance the game around Shuffle? If so how would you nerf ret in Shuffle and maintain it’s effectiveness in 3s given the below data?
    The highest ret in 3v3 on NA is 2713, R1 on ladder is 2903. (Vanguards, R1 & Tourney ret).
    The highest ret in 3v3 on Eu is 2657, R1 on ladder is 2989. (There are no rets above r1 cutoff in eu currently).

  2. Since Outlaw rogue is bottom middle of the pack, should we buff it? What about Sub rogue since it is by far the worst solo shuffle spec by a comedic level, how would you buff it in Shuffle while ensuring it doesn’t absolutely turn in to a clown fiesta in 3s?

The game should be balanced around high ranks, but not the absolute highest rank.

Because that would be completely unrealistic.

PvP balance should revolve around the people who play between 2100 and 2400.

Because realistically 2100 is where people learn to play their spec to a decent level (at least sometimes)

Rogue is a separate scenario for Shuffle. That’s why I didn’t mention it in the first place.

By default you are more likely to lose on Rogue because of your team than the enemy team.

Two words: Stun DR.

If a Shaman, DH, Warrior, etc AoE stuns an entire team, you are useless as a Rogue. Or if people just keep stunning the kill target. People breaking your Blind / Gouge.

This is why Rogue performs much better in a coordinated setting than Shuffle, and is a complete outlier in Shuffle specifically.

And ret performs much better in an uncoordinated setting than in coordinated ones. Thus the data (imo) that you provided isn’t really pointing to much, right?

If we can write off rogue for the above reason, we can write off ret for the same reasoning (that reasoning being that their success is based on coordination, or lack thereof, not really anything else).

It’s pointing to quite a lot. You only care about 3v3 data?

Because 3v3 by itself has 10 to 20 times less participation.

You cannot write off Ret.

Because Ret has too much and has no weaknesses. If you base your entire arguements off R1 3v3 cutoffs, which is basically like 100 players competing with eachother, what about the other tens if not hundreds of thousands of players that aren’t even close to those ranks?

And by the way, Ret BM is one of the strongest comps in 3v3 in the game right now.

But your arguements are like those people who complain that their 1m$ Lamborghini is going 3% slower than it should be? How many people have that problem?

If ret is so good why aren’t you playing it and getting 2.7k?

For me , the problem is Hpal/Ret pallies where my priest, hunter, mage, shaman etc refuse to press dispel more than once if at that entire lobby, leaving me with this dispel roulette on BoP which is a joke.

Idk, Ive played quite a few games in the last 2 weeks to grind out my glad wins and I saw:

-Every healer spec (mostly hpal, then rdruid, couple priest/mw and only 1 rsham and 1 dragon)
-all 3 hunter specs
-assa and outlaw
-spriest (so all 3 priests)
-all dps war specs
-both dps dk specs
-all 3 dragon specs (aug was pretty meme, though)
-dh
-ret (weirdly with dh/dragon, but not hunter)
-all 3 lock specs
-all non-tank druid specs (several ferals, only 1 other boomy)
-all 3 mage specs (only 1 fire mage though, kalvish)
-all 3 shaman specs (enhance is sleeper I swear)
-ww and mw

So everything is definitely fine and viable for 2 4-2.6 cr atm.

That being said, I think there’s always going to be less variance in shuffle because the mode is functionally different because of how it starts in dampening which leads to rerolling which is easier now than it has ever been.

Paladins in general were always good vs melee.

I suggest you to learn about the spec. Ret does not have blessed hands talent >> only 1 bop/spellwarding.

Was never a problem when not playing with multiple paladins in a team.

You still lose some damage/procs when you are not able to be in melee range + rebuke is 5 yds now.

Drama queen.

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Okay, I don’t agree that ret is an OP class rn - I actually think it’s on the relatively weaker side due to its inability to end games (at least in 3s, it’s still excellent in shuffle).

That being said, you can do ~90-95% of your rotation entirely from evoker range which I do think is silly.

When you watch vanguards play into wizards or verse teams that would out cleave he literally doesn’t go into melee range and still tops damage (I know a lot of it is dawnlight pad).