The most frustrating aspect of Blizzard’s response is how off-tone it is. I’m specifically referring to the piece where Blizz wants to “preserve the authentic wrath experience.”
Here’s my experience. In Vanilla, Ret was this weird, clunky, hybrid spec that didn’t have much of a place other than world pvp. In OG TBC, it was still a very mediocore dps that never really found itself. I don’t remember “seal twisting” ever being a thing in the original version. Maybe it was in very high end guilds, but I had never heard of it until Classic TBC re-release.
Then came Wotlk.
Their damage toolkit smoothed out incredibly with Divine Storm. The changes to Seals kept them engaging, but manageable. They were a solid, sought after dps, but they suffered some nerfs throughout Wotlk that were bandaid fixed by the ICC Tier.
That was the “authentic” Ret experience. A wonderfully designed, valuable asset to a raid both in terms of utility and raid damage. It was finally the specs time to shine after two expansions of unviability or mediocrity.
My only point (if there is one) is that there is a reason the Ret community is so frustrated. Rets finally had their moment in Wotlk from start to finish. That was the authentic experience. Whatever this is, isn’t that, and it’s disheartening that such a great spec has once again become a meme.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but Blizzard’s response left me feeling even worse than before I read it.
Updated Proposal for Ulduar:
Here is what I think would be the most balanced and efficient way to address Rets abysmal single target.
The Ulduar 2-Set Bonus offers Ret a 10% increase to Exorcism. What if Blizzard tweaked this, so that instead of a flat 10% damage increase, casting Exorcism placed a DoT on the target that dealt decent damage. This wouldn’t impact our Cleave all that much, but could potentially help bring us up a bit with Single Target. If PvP is a worry, they could just make it the 4-Set Bonus, so it wasn’t used.