Blizzards inability to understand the crux of the issue isn’t really all that surprising. Leaving the sole DPS spec for Paladins at the weakest state cripples many Paladins ability to raid.
“No it doesn’t! There are plenty of Prot and Holy paladins!”
True. But how many Prot and Holy Paladins are you bringing? How many total healers and tanks are some guilds using for zerg/farmed progression?
This effectively removes the paladins ability to act as a viable hybrid in a raid setting. Rarely will you have a spot in a raid where your offtank can flex to a heals or vice versa, typically if you need more tanks you need more healers.
Now on the fights you don’t need more tanks and healers, those paladins asked to swap to Ret are more likely to be benched, or better yet just replaced with a more viable hybrid class like Druids, Shamans, Priests or Warriors coming up.
Also, balancing a spec around a tier set at the end of an expansion isn’t the most logical thing I feel, considering that’s nearing the end of the expansion.
Personally I don’t care all that much. I’m a main tank so my role is secure. But I do feel bad for the flex Paladins we have in the guild as they feel as helpful as wet noodles when we ask them to dps. If they want to feel useful they almost need to find a new team that doesn’t have a holy or prot, but goodluck with that.
Did people really expect them to do balance changes to classic?
If there was ever a precedent to set for that it was the disgusting state of warriors in classic. Once that was left as is, it was very clear there would not be balance changes in a re-released game.
Not in Classic but in WotLK, yes. They did mention they would monitor the class but some of us interpreted that as roles too.
I don’t think it would be an issue if paladins had a viable dps spec, but right now we don’t.
And it wouldn’t be a balancing act as much as it would be a different snapshot of the ret paladins workings. They’re balanced around a tier set that doesn’t exist until the very end.
Considering that we didn’t have data on how paladins performed in the first tiers with a last tier spec balance, people did not know it would be that lackluster of a role.
Yeah I was referring to 5 mans. I don’t get how you pulled raids out of that nobody has ever insinuated that there is a shortage for those roles in raids.
and no I don’t raid I just photoshopped my avatar to have loot from 25 man raids