I never said they are. This isn’t a thread about paladins as a pvp class, or paladins versus shamans. It’s about the ridiculous view that Ret paladins are responsible for Alliance losses. They’re not. Ret is fine, if it plays to its toolkit instead of lol-zerging the Horde front line. (The exception might be Reckoning/Ret rather than deep ret, if the paladin has a healbot. )
Also, you think I’m Horde? Nah bro, I’m Alliance. This is the one Horde character I ever leveled (at the time). I basically only play paladins. Shamans overall are much better than paladins in PvP, especially outside of an organized team.
One weird thing about ret is that much of their contribution won’t show on the scoreboard, if they’re good.
Like clutch cleanses, blessings, off heals, and ccs, while ALSO having pretty underrated burst are what makes them decent. Most of that won’t show on the show board, so sadly most rets are selfish morons who ignore their team constantly and just try to yolo dps which they aren’t great at.
I remember running into a premade with a ret a while back with my team’s premade. I absolutely destroyed them on my lock, and the second game their ret basically suicide charged me the entire game no matter where I was on the map. He died a good 20x to 3 kills (and the rest of his team still lost) , but he did basically entirely remove me from from that game by constantly murdering my pet and keeping me from ever having time both eat /drink to full after each fight, and get a new pet going, and the game was closer as a result. None of that showed on the scoreboard, but it did at least give his team a chance.
No, they’re certainly not, but the notion that Ret Paladins are good is equally as absurd.
Even a Ret Paladin playing properly is worth less than half of a Holy Paladin. Their damage is pitiful at best, laughable at worst, and their utility isn’t unique to their spec.
For example…
All of these are things that Holy can provide while actually being one of the better healers, and having a mana pool that support doing it for long periods of time (which Ret most certainly doesn’t have).
I find it really telling that everyone defends Ret with these sorts of actions, yet they are not specific to Ret at all. You have to assume those things are a given as far as Paladin goes, then look at what Ret gives you specifically.
So what does Retribution give a group? Repentance. Maybe some decent auto attack damage at the expense of their mana pool and healing throughput.
Retribution is just a net loss for your group. You’re better off just playing as Holy and actually being useful to your team.
Are Paladins not playing Holy the sole cause for Alliance losing most BGs? Absolutely not, but they’re probably the biggest example of lost potential.
Alliance don’t lose significantly more often outside of av, where it is very unlikely that ret palas or any other class are having a big impact one way or another
That’s speaking from a PvE perspective. In PvP only one thing really matters when it comes to dealing damage. And that is burst damage or damage dealt within an un-healable timeframe. And starfire+moonfire does some darn good burst damage.
When your “bosses” have 4,000-6,000 health instead 1 million+ health the meta completely changes.
And yeah, at the end of the day player skill massively outweighs your spec in PvP.
As its already been stated - if youre a good player youll be a good ret paladin. A good ret paladin is a better teammate than a bad cookie cutter spec.
The perspective is irrelevant. I’m talking about the fact that some specs are just objectively better than others.
Okay, so you do understand.
So being able to delete someone’s entire health bar every 8 seconds tends to be much better in PvP than 10 seconds of immunity every 5 minutes.
I wasn’t commenting on Balance in PvP… I was trying to make a point that class balance exists and you can’t dismiss it with a simple “you’re just bad.”
Some advantages, or disadvantages, cannot be negated or overcome by skill. Sometimes your spec just sucks, and, even at peak performance, you’ll be behind simply because of where you started: your spec.
I agree, generally speaking. I’m just saying that there’s more to someone’s success than their skill alone.
The reason I used Balance in PvE is to exemplify that exact concept in an extremely easy to quantify manner since PvP is a little more nuanced than just smacking a target dummy for 3 minutes.
I don’t really want to spend an eternity discussing the exact merits and demerits of Ret compared to and versus every other spec in the game, so I was just making a general point.
This is probably the most important thing. Communication and cooperation are imperative to success in PvP, far above and beyond spec.
H Paladins are NOT one of the better healers in pvp… They’re single target only healers that have to hard cast and all of their utility is literally brought by a Ret paladin.
People always get confused about this in vanilla, because they see Hpally teams winning random bgs, but they’re winning because their team actually had healers in general, not because their healer was a healadin. By the addition of arenas in TBC, healadins are exposed as being basically the single worst healers in the game, for pvp purposes.
Their pve dps is lackluster, but their BURST damage is actually pretty substantial when you come across one of the very few ones that actually has good-great raid gear. I will concede however, that I’ve only encountered maybe 3 total rets in classic that actually had the gear to be any kind of threat beyond Eye for an Eye procs chunking half my health when I globaled them… That said, 3 rets in classic is still more than I’ve come across for quality moonkin , ferals, and enhance shamans combined.
Are you really going to blame a class spec that almost effectively does not exist for Alliance losses?
Do you really want to know why Alliance PVP sucks?
Alliance Classic WoW healers are literally the worst I have ever seen in PVP, EVER. Although there are occasionally healers who do use their healing abilities, but its very rare.
Alliance Warriors often FAIL to actually charge the target, land hamstring and REND enemy rogues, or use pummel VS healers.
Alliance Hunters almost never trap grave yards, or scatter healers, or even use frost / freezing trap properly. They typically do not concussion shot enemy melee, instead tend to put serpent sting on everything because “That will teach em!”
Alliance mages rarely use Sheep, and rarely use frost nova correctly, instead they play “on the run” rather than offensively as a good mage should.
Alliance rogues do not know what the sap button is, often flat fail to use kick, ever…
Alliance druids, the number of them that I have seen sit roots or get sheeped is just shocking.
Alliance Paladins almost don’t exist, and the few that do are usually Holy and they tend to be the only healers in PVP that actually know what healing or dispel looks like.
Alliance Shadow priests have zero combat awareness, do not use power word shield on team mates nor do they dispel magic offensively or defensively for their team mates, in other words they are utterly useless.
Alliance players lack the needed vigor provided by testosterone to play aggressively enough to be useful in combat, and instead roll over in most combat situations.
You can assume someone is bad in PvP if they’re losing in the same way that you can assume someone with lung cancer is or was a smoker. Could it have been prolonged radon exposure? Sure. But 9 times out of 10 it was smoking.
So we agree we’re just saying things differently and making different points
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