Warrs get a full rage bar every star explosion on Algalon too, so I’m surprised ret is able to rise above. Buff is working, I guess. Ret does cleave well on the adds at the end.
warriors had 0 representation in the pvp tournament or were in last place, and they are very underrepresented in the arena top brackets. If you remove doubles/alts (like dekel who runs multiple warriors) there are like 3 warrior players making top 100 in 2s and 3s when rogues have 25+ and shamans have 30+.
Its hard to do anything when starfall tics hit harder than execute
also, armor pen is not that good, it was nerfed in later patches of original and in PVP setting it will be difficult to acquire enough to make any real difference. Its worse than strength as a stat until you can accumulate PVE gear levels of it. Lose too much resilience and you wont do well when warriors are already often the focus target due to being pretty squishy and easy to lock down.
The last iteration of the game (that were playing on) also allows bladestorm to be disarmed by priests, mages, rogues, warriors, and hunters, which is a huge nerf. Execute also caps at 30 rage, a huge nerf. Their damage is bad outside of the planets aligning your PVP 15% effective crit rate into 6+ chain crits and they have low CC.
Warriors being great at PVP is a relic of earlier WOTLK patches. In the last patch they were dog poo and the stats we currently have confirm that. Unless youre a rank 1 warrior playing private server for 10 years that makes no mistakes being carried by a rank 1 paladin good luck, lol.
Based on my memory of it. The fact that Retribution was buffed early on after some drastic nerfs doesn’t mean they were a meme spec. There was literally never a time where a Frost mage would’ve dreamt of outperforming a Ret Paladin in OG Wrath, and yet Retribution is so weak in Classic that we’ve actually seen it happen.
Retribution wasn’t one of the very best specs in the game, but it was far from being relegated to the category of “meme spec” as it was until this new buff in Classic.
Also, other classes were buffed in the same patch, and not just the weakest ones. The fact that Retribution was buffed doesn’t mean it was a meme spec, or that it was at the bottom of the barrel of viable specs.
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Oh, perfect. So I can disregard it completely.
Don’t worry. I knew you were disregarding everything that doesn’t agree with your views the moment I saw any of your posts. 
Your memory of patch 3.1 in Ulduar is fallible. Like, super fallible. I’ll take the actual blue post saying ret was bad in Ulduar.
I have actual proof, you have your “memories” from 14 years ago. You’re wrong. It’s ok to admit it.
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Players being way better in 2023 and playing on the last patch is why reality is so different than memory. Warriors were good for much of original wrath but in the remake of 2023 they are the worst. They have tons of nerfs and nerfed armor pen next to classes that are now properly snapshotting, using weak auras, and generally just not being bots at the game.
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So paladins are? Gotcha.
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Ret has surpassed fury on Hodir, Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg, and Algalon (ie. the only important fights in the raid).
Also looking at literal #1 parses is dumb. 99th percentile is far better and I’d argue 95th is even better still due to the rng required for a 99th percentile parse.
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Your “proof” was that Retribution was buffed because Blizzard thought they needed to do more damage. So I guess every other class that was buffed is in the exact same boat?
I’d love to see you quote anything from OG Wrath blues stating that Retribution was in league with Frost Mage or Sub Rogue like it was just recently. But I know you won’t. Because I know you can’t. Because it never was.
Oh, definitely. I wouldn’t deny that for a single moment. Either way though, specs that are considered to be “meme specs” today were performing very closely to Retribution. Even if we remove the “PvP specs” from the PvE conversation, Ret was still never this bad.
Not sure what you’re looking at but fury is above ret on Mim and they’re basically tied on Yogg. Both specs are dumpster tier on Hodir and Vezax, where caster dps are the only ones that matter. Freya is just irrelevant.
Their dps was TOO LOW IN PVE. They weren’t “far stronger” than now in OG Wrath. You’re just making that up, man. Stop.
And I’d love for you to post literally ANY proof of the assertions you’re making. But you won’t. Because you can’t.
Population and representation are pretty much the same thing. Regardless of if a class gets taken or not. Paladins represent the largest percentage of the population (regardless of if they are raiding).
We can’t just not count the non-raiders, they are still paladins that are effected by this buff.
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You have to understand that:
All are equal but Ret Paladins are more equal.
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Their DPS could be too low in PvE in OG Wrath and still better than the broken version of Retribution in Classic. I don’t get why you think these things are mutually exclusive.
So you don’t have any evidence that Retribution was even remotely in the same league as the canonical meme specs in OG Wrath. Got it.
If you need me to post proof that Retribution always stood head and shoulders above Frost Mages and Sub Rogues, it’s even more obvious to me that you’re interested only in looking narrowly at any information that could be construed to support your fantasy. Or maybe you’re just so new to “old” WoW that this extremely common knowledge just hasn’t reached your ears?
Could be. You have provided absolutely zero proof to support this stance though. You just want it to be true.
The whole “tuned around T10” argument is total nonsense. Ret isn’t bad dps because they’re tuned around that set bonus. They’re just bad. Authentically so.
I have direct evidence that ret dps was too low in PvE in Ulduar. You have nothing.
eXtReMeLy CoMmOn KnOwlEdGe that I can’t support with any evidence whatsoever!
Retribution was always weaker and many raiders knew it at the time, retribution only did reasonably well on cleave fights or against low skill players due to how incredibly easy it is, making it almost fool proof compared to other, stronger classes.
h ttps://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/15864849919-ret/
(Fix the https)
"Gc, this is not calling you out, but it is painfully obvious that you are paranoid about buffing Retribution in any form. While we have seen “over the top” buffing on other classes, surv hunters for one, whatever rare buffs rets get are always gets minor and often insignificant.
In PVE, there is enough data to show that rets are 15-2-% lower than most pure and some hybrids in 3.1, you provide a minor buff to Divine storm, which in itself makes up for a very small percentage of overall Ret dmg. We are still waaaaay lower than most DPS classes, and 3.1 is very close to release."
(Response below)
"I’m totally paranoid about buffing Ret. 
We had to nerf Ret pretty quickly after Lich King launched, and it was pretty devastating to a lot of paladins, who let us know that in no uncertain terms.
If there is a spec we want to avoid over-buffing so that we don’t have to nerf them, it’s Ret.
Please don’t take that to mean that we will keep you down on purpose. That’s not what I meant."
Let’s keep in mind, my link is from the ulduar PTR of 3.1, the gap can widen further with better players, optimization and more gear.
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Thank you for finding another relevant blue post from the time. That one is even more explicit in describing just how bad ret was.
Yes.
The blue post already explained it clearly.
Warriors EXPECT to be bad DPS until the end(and never expect to be above a B tier raid tank)
Paladins EXPECT to be S tier tanks and healers, A-B tier DPS
Do you understand now?
Nah, they can nerf Prot/holy for all I care. There’s evidence that they are over the top, and they are part of the reason no one wants Ret’s utility.
Rets are still bottom tier DPS though, just no longer actively punished for having good tank/healer options. There was no expectation of being made A tier, and that didn’t happen with the buffs.
No please. No more tuning.