Ret paladins are not overpowered, and have been underpowered for quite some time. They can put out absolutely huge burst damage against unprotected targets with lower than average resilience, and they have very powerful team based defensive buttons. That’s it.
We all probably remember that one week where ret was ruthlessly overpowered. A ret paladin on the field of battle was a mobile nuclear weapon, capable of completely devastating a target in a manner of seconds. Just like every other class with a DPS spec (except warriors, hunters, and priests, cause screw those guys). But that’s all in the past, and thus irrelevant. Let’s talk about today’s ret paladin.
Ret isn’t even doing that great in raiding. I mean, DKs suck in PvP but have a very strong presence in raids; ret paladins don’t even have that much due to crippling scaling issues.
Today’s retribution paladin suffers from an extreme case of “melee class without any melee class tools”. Namely, a ret paladin does not have any gap closing buttons, snares, interrupts, and other than one extremely restrictive defensive cooldown are the squishiest melee class in the game. Only a rogue caught in the open with zero cooldowns is easier to kill than a ret paladin is.
To put it another way, ret paladins have one defensive ability available at any given time. Technically speaking, they have Divine Shield (total immunity for 12 seconds), Lay on Hands (refills health bar), Divine Protection (half damage), and Hand of Protection (total physical damage immunity). All of those cause Forbearance, meaning the Paladin can only use on of those on themselves every 2 minutes.
Now, for arenas, this means the paladin picks one of those and that’s all they get, really. Lay on Hands is, of course, unusable, and Hand of Protection is usually strictly reserved for other players. So the choice comes down to Divine Shield or Protection, and it’s always Shield. Of course the paladin could use these more liberally if the given arena battle lasted longer than the two to four minutes (or significantly less) most arenas are decided in.
This situation is made even worse as the paladin’s only offensive cooldown, Avenging Wrath, is completely unusable within 30 seconds of any of the above (except, I believe, HoP, though I have never HoPped myself so I can’t be sure) and vice versa. Popping Avenging Wrath is always a huge gamble, because what if you need to bubble in the next 30 seconds? You’re SOL, that’s what.
It’s a slightly different picture for battlegrounds, as Forbearance doesn’t persist though death. Conceivably, the paladin could use Divine Shield and pop Lay on Hands on themselves in under 20 seconds, or even less depending on when they get to the graveyard. I can see how this might create an odd perception, due to the paladin effectively showing up in combat with a fresh defensive cooldown every single time.
Still, Divine Shield can be dispelled by priests and warriors, both very common classes, Divine Protection can be dispelled by anyone with a dispel button, as can HoP, and Lay on Hands is extremely overrated. Technically, yes, the paladin can Divine Shield and use that 12 second immunity to just flat out delay anyone without fear of failure for that entire time span, but… well, technically every single class can do that as long as someone reasonably competent is at the helm.
All this vaunted survivability that everyone likes to attribute to the ret paladin spec is nothing more than player skill. Think about it.
How does a warrior PvP? Charge, intercept, even intervene in some situations to close. Once there, they can use hamstring/piercing shout to stay in melee, throw up a powerful mortal strike effect, extremely huge amounts of damage (provided a decent weapon and ArP rating, which let’s face it all warriors have by now), and if things go haywire they have interrupts and numerous defensive cooldowns to rely on at a moment’s notice.
How does a ret paladin close to melee? They cleanse snares from themselves, perhaps blow freedom, or get out of combat so they can mount and charge. The latter is usable by anyone, the former two easily counterable by anything that actually uses snares (except moonkin, because they suck). Then, they have two interrupts on one minute cooldowns, no snares of any kind, and precisely one defensive cooldown to rely on provided they didn’t blow their only offensive cooldown.
The only reason ret paladins ever survive as long as they do is because good ret paladins think like casters. Ret paladins survive because they continuously duck around corners, constantly pillar hump to avoid damage and let their heals tick, and constantly fight opposing melee class from range.
To put it another way, ret paladin survivability is not a part of how the spec is designed. There is barely any survivability at a ret paladin’s disposal. What they do have are LOS blocks and very strange “melee” abilities.
Look at the range on the paladin’s abilities. Judgement has a 10 yard range. Divine Storm is 8. The only things a ret paladin has to be in melee range to do is crusader strike and auto attacks. Everything else can be used from outside the 5 yard melee range. Paladins beat and out survive warriors because the paladin does his best to never actually be in melee with warriors.
A ret paladin who thinks like a melee character and tries to act like one will fail over and over again. A ret paladin who thinks and acts like a frightened holy priest actually gets results and is called overpowered for it.
It’s worth pointing out that ret paladins can absolutely, completely, totally, utterly destroy the undergeared/underskilled/unattentive players.
Against undergeared… ret paladins scale rather poorly against resilience. Art of War gives rets the ability to heal themselves whenever they crit with certain abilities, thus the less resilience a given target has (read: undergeared) the more they crit, the more they can heal themselves easily, the more “unstoppable” they appear.
Against underskilled… this is self explanatory. As a spec, the ret paladin isn’t a complicated class. Few abilities with few applications means that their strategies are extremely limited and they are very easy to counter. However, the vast majority of players are not PvP savants. They don’t have split second reaction speeds or fantastic spacial awareness. When fighting a ret paladin who does, these people get destroyed.
Against unattentive… again, self explanatory. A ret paladin can bear down on a priest who isn’t paying attention or AFK making a sandwich and obliterate them. A ret paladin who gets to start combat already in melee range against an unshielded/hotted target has a major advantage.
Against anyone of equal gear, skill, and is paying attention? A ret paladin isn’t going to be able to do much at all besides stumble around, cleane their partners and give freedom to their more powerful teammates.
In any case, this must change. It absolutely must. I don’t think a lot of people quite understand how horrific the loss of cleanse is for ret paladins. Cleanse is our primary form of team support (dispelling CC) and a very potent defensive button (dispels snares and things like Immolate), both for the paladin and his teammates.
To put it another way, an arena ret paladin spends something like three out of every five GCDs on cleanse. Possibly an exaggeration? I kid you not, I have Cleanse bound to S on my and I have hit that button more than any other on my keyboard. My average arena rotation as a ret paladin was:
Judgment -> Divine Storm -> Crusader Strike -> Cleanse -> Cleanse -> Judgment -> Cleanse -> Cleanse -> Cleanse -> Cleanse -> Repeat
Losing Cleanse is a huge blow to ret paladins. Absolutely huge. Mages losing polymorph huge.
But as always, Cataclysm will fix it.
yep, i have cleanse on a hot-key as well… if you are not in range of your target and judgment is on cooldown, you don’t have many other buttons to spam so you might as well clean yourself up a bit.
I totally agree with this post 100%, Ret pallys do not scale well against resilience. Ret pallys are crit based, so its not surprising.
Totally 100% agree with everything you pointed out in pvp.
On the other hand I really like where we are sitting in pve right now. I finally feel like a true support class. Take an example from last night in our ICC25 raid. During the Rotface encounter I was hitting the ooze tank with Hand of freedom, using Hand of Sacrifice on the tank when big hits where coming, used my DS/DG + Divine Shield during the last 10% to protect the raid, constantly healing myself with art of war procs, providing mana to the raid throughout, buffing everyone with auras and blessings, used Hand of Protection on a mage that didn’t get out of the exploding goo fast enough, and all the while coming in at number 3 on the dps meter behind a hunter and dk.
There is a perception that the ret pally is just a faceroll class, but damn our toolbox is huge. Since our rotation is so easy to maintain i can look around the raid and help out where needed. Beats the hell out of the BC days where I had to justify my raid spot as ret.
Great blog,
Hal
And you know what they say about having a huge toolbox..
Thanks for the post Rip! Whining, complaining, and some great PvP advice mixed in is exactly why I keep coming back here!
I have been attempting to PvP on my freshly 80 paladin in greens/blues (not even resilience ones) and have had… moderate success.
“A ret paladin who thinks like a melee character and tries to act like one will fail over and over again. A ret paladin who thinks and acts like a frightened holy priest actually gets results and is called overpowered for it.”
I will do my very best to take this to heart.
To be honest, a ret paladin almost seems like an underpowered holy paladin. We both dispel, heal, and do a little damage, but holy can do much better healing in the process, and they have more tools to do so.
I disagree for undergeared, given equal crappy gear, a ret paladin will destroy other classes within 3 or 4 GCDs, that is why I think they are overpowered. And, you have stun, repentance, hand of freedom and I think, a judgement for slowing down people, all of which can be used to catch up to your target. The ranged execute is also annoying.
It is worth noting that, out of twink BG’s and 80 BG’s, Rets do pretty well (or they do once they gain access to major offensive buttons like Crusader Strike and DS).
Part of this is, of course, that Rets have a low skill cap, and people below 80/people who aren’t twinked are less likely to know what the hell they’re doing, and in a battle of faceroll vs faceroll a Ret will always win.
Part of this is the much higher crit:resilience ratio favoring Rets.
If you’ll consider the 69 bracket: no Mass Dispel (level 70), no Shattering Throw (71), no Spellsteal (70), among others. Rets are monsters.
But naturally Hunters are monsters at level 19. You have to balance for some level, and Blizz chooses the endgame.
The judgement isn’t a real snare, it reduces people to 100% movement speed rate.
It can nullify a fire mage’s Blazing Speed procs, a rogue’s sprint, and it reduces anyone on a mount to their standard speed.
The best this does is limit someone to 100% speed while the paladin runs at 115% speed. It isn’t a true snare, against most classes this doesn’t do anything at all.
It is possible that my DK is very undergeared, but I know I cannot go toe to toe with a decently geared Ret pally. The strat I read for taking them on pretty followed what you are saying that Rets should do. I am unholy so, hit PS to slow him. Use Chains to keep him away and deathcoil as runic power allows. Also have the ghoul munching his face the entire time.
The only time I really smile while facing a Ret is when I see him pop his wings right away. Chances are those are the stupid, but it means I have 2 min to keep him snared, away from me and kill him before he either runs away or becomes immune and I die a horrible death as I am bursted down through a shield. Of course it always seems to take longer than two minutes to kite these guys to death.
I think that you have already mentioned one reason people hate Ret is that they look awesome when you are undergeared. I think that the other reason is that people hate immunities. At least things like AMS, have a short duration and a maximum amount of damage absorbed. Iceblock has no mobility (so I can really just wait the 12 seconds and then kill the mage…), but any pally can run away with their shields up, do damage (even reduced damage), or hell heal themselves/others to full. I am not saying that this/these abilities are not things that pallies need, what I am saying is that I hate seeing “IMMUNE” pop up for 12 seconds straight while either running for my life or chasing down some bastard pally who just won’t die.
I must admit I’m happy where ret paladins are. Most of it is out of residual hate for how OP they were for such a long time.
Arena? I personally don’t care at all how they perform in arenas. To me, PvP is about BGs. Arena is a bunch of pillar humping and counter-comping. I’m very excited to experience the rated BGs in Cata.
You are right about them becoming less of a threat when you have high resil. I now have 4 characters with over 850 resil and I can generally laugh at ret paladins. If they have all their CDs available they can still lay the pain but on the average encounter they are pretty soft.
I would like to mention one closer you forgot to mention – Repentance. I get Repentance cast on me all the time when playing my priest or mage. It’s quite the gap closer. With my mage it’s not much of an issue because I have so many ways to get away but with my priest I’m kinda screwed…unless I have fear up.
The overwhelming number of immunities that paladins have makes people love to hate them.
Even then it’s still on a 1 minute cooldown, and it only lasts a handful of seconds.
Besides, priests can very easily completely destroy a ret paladin anyway. Rets can’t pressure healers, the best a ret can hope for is a stalemate against a priest healer. Shadow priests destroy rets extremely thoroughly.
It can definitely screw a mage up severely, but that depends largely on relative skill levels in that case. A good ret will never use HoJ until blink is used, and usually will use repentance immediately after that blink to catch up to the mage, stun them, and blow them up.
A good mage will never be in a position where he was to use blink.
No gap closer? WTF is Hammer of Justice and Repentance? I’m tired of the Ret QQ.
You also failed to mention Pursuit of Justice and Hnad of Freedom.
With those tools you are quite capabale of closing the gap and bursting people down. I see it everyday.
Quit the QQ. No one is buying it.
He *did* mention HoF and Repentance. They may be “gap closers” but there are also our only interrupts and our only “CC”. And they both have a 1 minute cooldown.
Oh, and moving 15% faster is useless if you can’t move. Just saying.
As for “Hnad of Freedom”, it can be used to break out of one effect, just like any other trinket could do, but it can (and probably will) be Purged or Spellstolen or Dispelled.
The issue here is that you’re thinking strictly 1v1.
If I’m on a Feral Druid or Rogue, I can attack my main target, keep him stunned or snared while I CC any potential healer or peeler with Blind, Cyclone, Roots, whatever.
If I’m on my Retadin and my target’s getting heals? I have nothing … already blew Repentance to close the gap. I could throw a hammer, but he’ll just trinket.
Nothing is funnier than Ret vs healer. I’ve seen Holy Paladins kill Rets 1v1 because the Ret runs dry on mana and can’t hurt the healer.
JoJ is 10 yard range and reduces enemy movespeed to 100%. Since I’m at 115%, that sounds great, provided I can close to 10 yards. But this assumes that the target doesn’t CC me. Any snare or root in the game will be sufficient to make him faster. I can blow HoF, but that doesn’t protect against Polymorph, Blind, Fear, or subsequent stuns. And it’s easy to dispel or steal. There’s Cleanse spamming, but it’s hard to hurt things when most of your GCD’s are spent keeping yourself relevant.
In short, a Retadin willing to blow all of his cooldowns almost immediately every single fight will do well against uncoordinated opponents—which is the majority of them. But any sort of spanner in the works can really screw him up.
Hammer of Justice – 1 minute cooldown, max range 10 yards.
If you’re within 10 yards, the gap is already closed. This isn’t a gap closer.
Repentance – 20 yard range, lasts a bare handful of seconds, 1 minute cooldown.
20 yards is on the low side as far as gap closers go, and with ret not having a snare anyone who wants to can quite easily escape afterwards.
Pursuit of Justice is a 15% movement speed boost. To put it another way, chasing a mage who was running away from a paladin, it would take over half a minute for the ret paladin to catch up if the mage was 30 yards away.
Hand of Freedom simply returns the ret paladin to max speed, is easily dispelled, and any target where using HoF to break a snare is perfectly capable of never letting the ret paladin touch them.
With those tools a ret paladin is perfectly capable of closing the gap and bursting down people who aren’t paying attention, are severely undergeared or aren’t nearly as skilled as the ret paladin.
Which is exactly what I said in the post.
This is a pretty ignorant comment. At least read the post before responding to it.
There’s no doubt that the perceptions of Rets as OP is due entirely to Battlegrounds. Bubble is far less useful in Arenas, and there’s more coordination with heals, dispels, cleanses, trinket usage, and CC, all of which screw Rets over hard.
All of which ret is going to run right into in rated BGs anyway.
Correct me if I’m wrong… but a properly specced pvp ret pally will have 6% damage reduction from righteous fury, a 1 min sacred shield that absorbs 1k base damage + spell power coefficient. The use of hand of sacrifice and divine sacrifice to virtually become immune to sheep/charm/sap/freezing trap/blind.
Also hammer of justice is a 40 second cd talented.
You can also get out of stuns with hand of freedom without having to reach for a trinket/racial.
Sure… you are weak against a smart mage who actively keeps you dispelled… or any combo with strong offensive dispel… but that is a lot of classes.
And against mages… i’d rather be on my pally than my warrior.
Plus judgement of justice is just nasty against a druid /shaman whose only real defense is to run away.
Pallies are very flexible in their speccing, but Rets always have choices to make.
The Ret-Prot build you suggest precludes some of the damage and healing talents in Holy, as well as Aura Mastery and Unyielding Faith, and mostly ignores Toughness. This build makes them even more blow-all-cooldowns-immediately, as they’ve very little to mitigate CC outside of cooldowns. It’d be basically worthless in Arena, too.
Additionally, in my experience, using DS in a BG isn’t always a good idea.
Also RF is dispellable, although it costs nothing more than a global to reapply.
“Properly” specced ret paladins put 5-7 points in the holy tree, they can’t have righteous fury, 40 second HoJ and the 1 min sacred shield in the same spec, it’s physically impossible.
Most ret paladins don’t have any of those, righteous fury or 1 min SS or the 40 second HoJ (there is no difference between 40 seconds and 60 seconds on HoJ).
Out of the top 100 ret paladins in the world, SEVEN of them have any of those talents.
Technically, ret is weak against every caster except moonkins, at which point it’s an even fight.
Warriors are much better. Two gap closers with stuns attached? An interrupt? Spell Reflect?
I’d take a warrior any day (yes I do have a warrior).
Rets can only use JoJ every 7 seconds. Shamans and Druids both have plenty of options to counter that.
Meh…when you’re right you’re right and this time you’re only partly right. I would gladly give pally’s a “charge” type ability or a snare ability in exchange for their LoH to be done away with and one of their other “Survivability” skills. Nothing is more frustrating than having to kill something twice except when I have to kill it a 3rd or 4th time. Also, against warriors ret don’t do to horrible because all the magic defense we have can be equated to warriors holding up a sheet of paper to ward off a fireball. The only time plate comes into effect is when they are in range to auto attack. Ret’s like all other classes have certain classes that just counter them very well. Ret’s are like warriors in a lot of ways, they are dangerous when they are right on top of you, but get a little distance on them and we’re pretty much just target practice. The difference being that ret can melt your face in a matter of seconds, warriors on the other hand have to be on you for a decent amount of time.
But yeah any decent warrior who’s ever heard of DISARM should literally EAT ret pally’s, next to a hunter without a bow a ret pally is screwed without their weapon. It’s also fun to kite them around with hamstring. I got caught unaware in wintergrasp onetime while farming some ore, I’d just killed a group of mobs and was running low on health when I got stunned by a pally. A quick shield wall, disarm, hamstring and run away to bandage technique had me back at full health and on the pally’s ass like white on rice.
Ever since the drop of WOTLK when a level 60 pally was soundly destroying me in AV as a level 70 warrior because of the pure awesomeness that was ret during WOTLK launch I’ve made it a point to KILL all ret pally’s (especially dwarves) when I can.
Every single ret paladin in the world would trade a 16 minute LoH, Divine Protection and Cleanse for a Holy Charge ability with no hesitation or regret.
It’s interesting to hear your strategy for surviving that ret paladin, considering that’s the exact same strategy I use to fight and kill warriors.
I also abuse the minimum range on charge and intercept like nobody’s business. I do find it very odd that warriors, of all people, have a deadzone.
Ironically enough I took the survivability advice of a mage friend I have to learn how to kill ret when I was lacking resilience and such because honestly they still melt face when they are on you but if you can get past the first 2-6 seconds and get out of range then for a warrior, a ret pally is pretty much a mage without blink.
I could speak volumes on the dreaded “deadzone” which turns into a pump fake competition with me running at people and then running away. At least in world PVP I can charge a grey mob, they should put critters in all arena too, it would be a great thing.
I don’t know I think ret better be careful what they wish for, I know as a warrior I’ve sometimes said I would gladly give up in battle charges to heal myself, but in the grand scheme of things I like how I play out. I think ret will see a new rebirth as BG’s become more palatable in Cataclysm. You don’t have to worry so much about being kited when you have 9 other friends stunning people.
Ranged DPS = Artillery
Warriors = Mobile Tanks
Ret – Short ranged tactical nuclear missiles with healing capabilities.
I mean let’s be REAL honest here, in a 5×5 foot room a Ret pally is going to be EVERY classes nightmare, BG’s will help provide that type of situation more and more IMHO.
I would gladly take you up on that charge offer if you were a Blizzard Dev. And LoH isn’t usable in Arenas, which are the only place where PvP skill is really tested.
And the difference between Warriors and Paladins is that you have a way to GET right on top of someone, whereas I just have to run slightly faster and hope they don’t have a snare/sprint/rocket boots/blink/disengage/intervene/whatever.
I think your point about killing Rets whenever you can illustrates nicely the idea that most people (even if they consciously know this to be false) think of us as the OP death machines of 3.0.2 and the week or so that followed. The truth is that now we don’t have anywhere near the burst, using defensive CDs locks out offensive CDs (and vice versa), and we don’t have any way to stop someone from running away.
Arena isn’t the only place PvP skill is tested. It’s just pillar-humping and counter-comping. Blizzard openly admitted that the arena system was their biggest mistake in PvP design. I fully agree.
I’ll happily admit that I don’t think the way arenas work is fair/good/whatever, and it presents huge balancing issues in the game. That said, the only other options are world PvP and BGs? Neither of those really test PVP skill, do they? I mean your individual skill DOES matter, but if you get mobbed 4v1 because your teammates are retarded and don’t defend AB nodes, you are dead unless you are INCREDIBLY good/lucky. You can argue that arenas are full of issues, but I’m willing to gamble that people with high arena ratings are good PvPers. If you want to take gear out of the equation then you can look at the Arena Tournament. Maybe when rated BGs come along they will be awesome indicators of PvP skill, but for right now, Arena seems like by far the best choice.
To be honest though it makes me a little sad to see Ret getting straightened out.
I really liked the idea of a spec that could faceroll stupid but was easy to handle with a couple seconds of thought or an ounce of teamwork. I liked the idea of a spec with powerful burst but no tools to handle healers. I liked the idea of a quasi-melee spec, a spec without the usual cooldown-based Point-A-to-B “gap closers” like Charge or Deathgrip or Shadowstep or even Sprint.
It was different. It was fun. It was ridiculously easy against idiots and keyboard-pounding frustrating against good players.
It will be missed.
To be fair though, it stopped being fun the moment you graduated from fighting idiots to fighting reasonably skilled players.
And going into an arena match being able to do damage while your partner dealt damage, snared, handled healers, closed gaps and interrupted spells got really old really fast.
I have no idea what you think is good about a spec being “keyboard-pounding frustrating against good players.” Personally, I try not to judge myself based on how I do against idiots. I already know I’m better than them, what good does it do me to have it proved? What I want is to be in a situation where I am actually capable of proving myself to be competent against good players. Ret doesn’t really provide that, since said good players can essentially prevent your skill from being meaningful at all.
Mostly I meant that I like the idea of a low skillcap class that can be countered by some degree of skill.
It’s fun like Sturgeon’s Law meets Darwin is fun. Fun insofar as 20 kills per BG, doing little more than pushing buttons, is fun. More of a people-watching kind of fun. The masses qq about Ret. How do the masses try to fight Ret? This one is stupid, this one … oh, he just ran away. That one ruined my day. I bet he doesn’t cry about Rets.
If I want a real challenge, I’ll play an undergeared alt in BG’s, or head to the Arena.
I should probably note that I’ve respecced Holy for Arenas; I’ve not wielded a two-hander for a single Arena match.
/agree
“an arena ret paladin spends something like three out of every five GCDs on cleanse.”
Is any class weak against ret pallies? Maybe another ret pally of inferior gear and skill.
Fury warriors maybe?
Because of cleanse a Ret can nullify a lot of DK damage, esp an unholy one. As I mentioned above if I go toe to toe with a Ret I will probably lose as I will not do enough damage to kill them first and Art of War procs can heal them while my death strike will do virtually nothing because I don’t have any diseases up. Also they can fear my pet away, taking away a decent portion of my damage.
Being unholy, Ret has difficulty closing on me if I am kiting because we are the same speeds through talents. I will say that the number of Rets I have killed since I learned how to kite properly as a DK has gone up significantly. This probably has more to do with the fact that most Rets seem to forget that they have healing spells. They just want to charge in and pretend they are a warrior. If I am kiting I am not doing enough damage to pressure them they can stop and heal. I’m probably not going to run in there to mind freeze them at half life and I may not have an unholy rune available to strangulate them. Ghoul stun is a 1 min CD.
So really I have to kite them to under half life, make sure they have forbearance up, then if I see a cast strangulate, drop gargoyle, (get 20 runic power which is one SS or one set of diseases up) MF next cast, Ghoul stun, and (get 40 runic power) explode ghoul. If that somehow doesn’t drop them I’m running for my life.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this. Ret’s ability to PvP has been consistently damaged through Wrath (with significant effects on raiders as well, I might add). Everyone just remembers that week or so where we were invincible killing machines, no one really pays attention to the current iteration of the spec.
I do still wreck some people in BGs, but that isn’t a good indication of how skilled players match up. A decently geared and skilled player of almost any class has the tools they need to shut me down or outlast me until a friend shows up. We NEED more tools, or we will be extremely difficult to play at all in PvP.
Hell, I’ve gone into BGs and absolutely destroyed people as a HOLY PRIEST. Battlegrounds aren’t a good indicator of relative class effectiveness.
LOLSmite FTW, no doubt
…i’m gonna call a halt to all the “BG’s aren’t a good indicator” type arguments, YES THEY CAN BE. I know this because it does take skill to know HOW to put up good numbers with CERTAIN classes. (Obviously no one here has read my Dated pvp guide for warriors) but trust me MELEE classes have to be skilled to survive in an AoE Environment with multiple NUKE classes targeting you. I can see where a caster DPS requires little to no skill at all (I know as I can go into a 49 bracket BG with a 42 affliction lock and get tops in 3 categories) but for melee BG’s are a nightmare if you suck. Imagine you see 5 mages in AB guarding the BS, you charge into 1…what do you think the other 4 are going to do?
I’m on a mage blog right now and I think I can say all you blinky bastards target warriors first and foremost…i’d like to say it’s because warriors demand such respect…but I suspect it’s because you know we’ll go down faster than Mrs. Promiscuity 2010, especially with the utter lack of healing in BG’s. Arena play on the other hand IMHO is fairly simplistic as there are very few variables, but get 10 v 10 going or 15v15 and with multiple objectives and REAL SKILL will show IMHO…you can’t judge BG’s off of premades either because 9/10 you have a premade vs. a pug and well those usually end up 5 capped, but get 2 premades going with people organized and MY GOD is that some fun.
Any dumb ass can figure out how to put 2 people together to take on another 2 people where the OBJECTIVE is to kill the other 2, but how much of a skillful indicator can something be when a large majority of arena fights are determined in the first what…10 seconds? When your strategy is BLOW SOMETHING UP you really come off thinking more like a warrior and less like a strategist.
As a damn good BG warrior, I can’t wait to get into the mix of things when BG’s become important.
So you’re saying that in the incredibly rare case of two premades going against each other, BGs are a decent indicator of skill? Given that 99%+ of BGs are not this particular case, I think the argument that BGs are not a good indicator of skill is valid. Moreover, while I don’t like arena play all that much, it IS the best test of skill in PvP that is widely available (not many people have regular access to BG premades). While the objective may be siimplistic (kill the other dudes), that does not mean the gameplay is. At the really high end of arena play, matches are rarely if ever decided in the first ten seconds unless someone makes a really bonehead move (which is itself rare). Watch videos of world-class arena fights, they can be pretty incredible displays of knowledge of one’s class and the ability to apply it.
Also, I think a lot of casters would disagree that it takes no skill to play one well in PvP. I’m sure they see things a little differently than you, since they’re the ones being Charged, Hamstrung, etc. And I saw that you are awesome in the 49 bracket on your lock. Anecdotal evidence about a bracket that Blizzard makes no real effort to balance does not sway me in the least.
You’ve also got to take into consideration that as you said not everyone has access to premade or even well thought out BG’s on the same scale people have access to organized arena. I’ve been in some decent arena teams and while I love the game play I’ve had way more fun and have been required to do much more work to win a well fought BG than a well fought arena.
Your argument is that since all BG’s aren’t organized then they are not an indication of skill. I’m arguing that when they are organized they are a better indication of skill as you’re required to think more on your feet than in an arena. I’m also arguing that a BG CAN(emphasis on can) be a better indication of skill for the very reason you’re saying it’s not…they are unorganized and when the are unorganized for you, as an individual to perform requires you to often times pull the weight of the guy who’s gone AFK or the dk wielding a fishing pole(which I’ve seen) turning a 10v10 into a 8v10 and still managing to out maneuver and outplay an opponent.
Not that casters can simply mop the floor in BG’s regardless of skill, because obviously a skilled caster is going to show up big in a battleground, but the idea and the dynamic of BG’s is actually a lot closer to a raid setting than most people realize, that being casters in the back and melee up front…which as you can imagine is more beneficial to casters.
I’ve also played level 80 BG’s with casters and been both decently and not so decently geared and it is decidedly simpler to put up big numbers and kills with casters than with melee classes (i.e. warriors and pally’s) there’s a reason I personally advocate going after casters first and it’s because it disrupts BG play for the other team the most.
I wasn’t talking about the big confrontations. In a huge fifteen on fifteen brawl, yeah, anyone can really rack up big damage and KBs really fast.
I was talking more like guarding farm as a holy priest and defending it against all comers, usually 1vs1-3.
By their very nature, BGs pit people of hugely varying skill sets together.
The most extreme example I can remember is an Eye of the Storm a few months ago. We had two Warlords and a High Warlord, and the three of them were absolutely phenomenal. They went 3vs9+ without any difficulty whatsoever.
This same battleground also featured a backpedaling night elf hunter that had a throwing weapon equipped.
The gap is just too large to be of any real use as a relative skill or class balance indicator.
Pre-mades, on the other hand… well, you made that point already.
As a shadow priest, who does passable well in BGs, and recently took up some low-end arena, retadins are basically a free lunch.
In open arena, assuming they aren’t prepared to blow divine shield offensively, they have one gap-closer, plus their initial mounted state, for a total of two, whereas I have fear every 23 seconds, plus psychic horror, as gap-openers – and two 5-6s periods of massively reduced damage (silence and dispersion) to get me between those.
The only ret paladins that scare me are the best-geared who have focussed on damage output – they really hurt if they’re prepared to blow cooldowns, and I’ve got anything on cooldown. Which… well, gee. Who’d have thought it?
Played well, they’re a pain to kill, but VT’s dispel penalty hits hard enough, and with HoF dispelled off, mind flay will leave them stranded in the open for an eternity.
I’ve also PvPed as a holy paladin, and a prot paladin, the latter of which felt like an unstoppable wrecking ball in battlegrounds (indeed, I got the achievement my first week of playing with it) – but I don’t think of them as any scarier to my shadow priest.
In fact, given your arena role, why *not* play protadin? You get a better stun, the silence/snare/nuke that is glyphed AS, and lose… erm… Repentance. Plus you can suddenly go toe to toe with melee and laugh. I guess you lose AoW, too. But you can still cleanse…
I have tried protribution before (I don’t really have the gear to seriously try it again at the moment) and it was weird as hell.
With judgement as my only “ranged” attack, it was just… extremely odd. Moving from an 8 yard Divine Storm to a 5 yard Hammer of the Righteous was so cripplingly strange.
Those 3 yards on one ability completely threw me into “woah wait what the hell is going on here omg” territory.
And frankly prot is so much easier to play than Ret. Braindead easy.
I don’t play PvP to get bored, thank you very much.
I’m surprised that 3 yards made such a difference, but interesting to know, certainly.
And yeah, I know what you mean about braindead. I’ve got no PvE DPS specs at all on any active toon, which confuses the hell out of my guildies. “Sorry”, I say, “I don’t find it interesting…”
My kill order in battlegrounds is based on my hate for particular classes too. I kill hunters first, warriors second and ret paladins third. Hunters for being complete gods in battlegrounds while leveling, warriors for Bladestorm and Ret paladins because of the short time at the beginning of Wrath when they were just stupid broken.
Now that my mage has about 800 resilience things are much much much better against Ret paladins but I’m never going to stop hunting them down.
I always go for the warlock first when I’m playing my warrior for the exact same reason.
Heh, that whole time at the beginning of wrath when rets were all uberpowered, I was specced arcane on my mage.
*wince*
I WASN’T OVERPOWERED AT ALL, NOPE NOPE.
Hilariously I never noted the OPness of rets because I could blow them up so fast they never had a chance to even get into melee range.
I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you, E.
I think the problem with ret is not necessarily that they’re overpowered. They do have a wonky, simplistic design that causes some odd situations.
In a way, offensively, a lot of the problem is Hammer of Justice, combined with their cooldown-based damage attacks. Everything a ret does is on a short cooldown. That means, each of their buttons are instant casts with some of the highest DPC (damage per cast) around. That also means they can put out a heck of a lot of damage while moving. So in the situation where HoJ is up, you can throw on that stun and unleash some massive damage. Sure you can trinket it, but that means you won’t have your trinket for other longer cooldowns, such as blind. You don’t really have a choice though – if you let the ret get some free damage off during HoJ you’re in trouble. Its a lot like rogues – you either have HoJ up and you can rock somone’s face in, or its not up and you have a tough time getting to your target.
If you don’t think 2-4 sec stun is enough time to do damage: If you time your HoJ so that your weapon swing lines up with your next GCD, you should get 1-2 instant casts off and a weapon swing. That’s a lot of damage.
I think you misjudge warrior PVP. Sure, you can play the way you mentioned, but you won’t do very good. That’s like cutting off 2/3 of all your abilities. In order to do well, warriors need to stance dance – you have to set up a lot of macros for these abilities, and be able to time their use correctly. Getting caught inside a stun in the wrong stance (especially by someone who does a lot of magic damage, which warriors are very weak against) will really put you behind.
Anything with a stun can really ruin a healers day. For the most part, a healer stays alive by casting. If they can’t cast, they’re toast.
Now, for immunities. Sure, they all cause forbearance, but really the biggest issue here is the bubble. First, only two classes can dispel it, so except for warriors and priests, you have to kill the ret paladin twice, because they can freely heal themselves back to full without worrying about being interrupted. No other class can do that (and certainly no DPS). When I hear them say “ret plays too defensively” this is what I see as the biggest part of that. You have to kill rets twice, everyone else you kill once.
Even as a Priest or Warrior, both of their removal abilities require a short cast time – so it means you have to basically time them perfectly. Shattering throw is on a 5 min cd and actually has a fairly long cast time, and Mass Dispel has a targeting circle. The effect is that half the time, the ret can get a heal off inside their bubble before you can manage to dispel it off and interrupt it.
Hopefully, in Cat with the bigger health pools relative to damage and healing, an HoJ stun or a heal inside a bubble won’t be so game changing as they are now. We’ll have to see.
Now, gap closers. I agree that ret needs to stand out of LOS in order to close distance (they also have judgement of justice, which while not as reliable as hamstring its still *there*, and hand of freedom, which I think a lot of rets underestimate). That’s true for everyone. You better believe I don’t stand in LOS of Hunters, Mages, Warriors, or anyone else in PVP on my Priest!
I think a lot of rets look at warriors and assume things are all peachy if you only have a gap closer. Warrior is basically about gear: if you have the right trinkets, a raiding weapon (an axe specifically), and lots of arpen gear, sure you’ll do great. But if you don’t you might as well not play, or you should probably just go prot. A warrior doesn’t have access to a resource that is full at the start of the fight, they have to build it up. That means that you don’t charge and then release all your abilities. That means you charge and build up a full rage bar and then release your abilities. Meanwhile, the ret has up sacred shield, Seal/Judgement of Light, and ret aura and the warrrior has no way to really counter the ret’s damage except for Disarm. Sure, if a warrior has a healer behind them, and the best gear, they can probably go toe to toe with a ret. A warrior can’t really stay in melee range of anyone with magic damage without going sword and board half the time especially if there’s no healer. Without a healer, the warrior is in trouble.
I will agree that ret does poorly in PVE at the moment. I think that ret is held back by its burst: the devs can’t give you guys comparable PVE damage because your burst in PVP would be too high. Also, the difference between a skilled ret paladin and some nubcake hitting shiny buttons is not much; certainly much less than the difference if both players were playing a feral druid, for instance.
In arenas, I think the lack of an interrupt really hurts ret. Getting to the target, as well, perhaps, but if you play defensively using LOS, or use your partner as bait, you can close the gap. If you can’t go to the enemy, make the enemy come to you.
Where ret really shines right now is battlegrounds. With ret’s high amount of defensive abilities, they can afford to run around your average BG in full raid gear, massively scaling their burst. Also, A HoJ at the start of a zerg can really put somone out of position and allow the other classes around them (or more rets) to unleash their damage on the target without the target being able to respond. (same problem with rogues, just ret’s is on a min cd) Time and again, you’ll see Rets topping the damage/kill meters on both sides.
The problem with burst, specifically: ret relies on instant attacks to do damage, and they start with 100% of their resource at the start of the fight (unlike similar classes, like warriors, who start with 0-15% and Dks who start with 1 of their two resources full). That means they are ether massively overpowered, or impotent unless they can stay on the target long enough to blow every single one of their cooldowns. There’s no in between when all your abilities are instant attacks with cooldown levels of DPC.
Now, when burst is brought up, rets will say “well we use vengeance, which has a lot of ramp-up”. Baloney. No one else gets to ramp up their full PVE rotation in PVP, rets don’t get to either (anymore). You’re just in the same boat as everyone else on this one.
To fix ret, then:
Shorten or remove bubble, or remove the ability to heal inside of it for rets (leave it for holy as a talent, maybe).
Change their damage rotation. I could even go for a strike that could be spammable for a short period: say crusader strike starts with 3 charges, and once the charges are gone its on a short cooldown or something. They need less of their damage in instant strikes they can just unload on a target. THEN, we can talk about a gap closer. This should also increase the “skill cap” and the amount of damage they can do on sustained targets (read: PVE). Unless you give up strict reliance on burst, you aren’t getting spamstring. You don’t need a consistent gap closer/snare when you only need a few moments on the target to unleash all your damage. And really, what’s the point of having a gap closer if all of your abilities are on CD? Save your “gap closer” CDs (HoJ, Hand of Freedom) for when your rotation is off CD, then blow your “gap closer” CDs when the rotation is up. That’s essentially the same thing as staying on the target the whole time, minus a few white swings.
Make ret less capable of self-healing. The base Paladin class has the most powerful spammable single target heal in the game: holy light (flash of light isn’t too shabby either, especially with art of war procs). Sure it costs a lot of mana, and you aren’t wearing SP gear, but I sure as heck wish on my Shadow Priest that I could heal myself to full using one button and without exposing myself to 15% greater damage (by dropping shadowform).
At the moment, stuns are too game changing in general. As a rogue player, I know it is holding rogues back from becoming a more well-rounded class. I think paladins suffer from a similar problem.
Ret’s damage dealing buttons are near pefectly suited towards PvP combat. Ranged attacks, and everything comes with a cooldown attached. Due to the high movement of PvP, this usually means a Ret will engage in combat with someone with all their buttons lit up, unload a huge mountain of damage, and due to LOS/snares and all that other lovely stuff that goes on, by the time I get back into melee properly all my buttons are ready to go again.
Huge burst, nearly no sustained. It’s perfect for PvP.
Shattering Throw’s cooldown is exactly the same as bubble, and I think you underestimate the skill that arena warriors and priests have. Yes, the lower brackets are definitely worse than the uppers, but even arena teams at 1100 rating are way better than the average schlub in BGs.
When I bubble, it is absolutely necessary to shut down the opposing priest immediately, as otherwise that bubble is coming down within a second.
Blizz agrees with you on the game changing power of stuns and bubble. They’ve flat out said rets will not be able to heal to full within bubble’s duration, so that effect right there is disappearing.
As for rogues, cheap shot and kidney shot are going to share DR, so using them back to back won’t really be effective.
I don’t know what Blizzard plans to do with ret’s healing come cataclysm
Holy Shock is becoming base line (instant cast healing ability), and that Healing Hands business, yet another instant cast heal, is also planned to be baseline.
Giving rets three instant cast heals, in addition to the standard casted ones and what they get back from seal/judge of light and divine storm.
Maybe ret will never get a snare/gap closer.
I suppose that will work out okay for me, considering my best friend plays a snarebot DK.
By the way, using seal of light absolutely cripples a ret paladins damage output. As it should be, that’s a logical trade off, but a ret paladin using Seal of Light is dealing over a thousand damage less per attack.
Ret is totally fine in PvE. They aren’t in the very upper echelons of DPS, but they are right behind.
They should be right up there with Fury warriors and DKs. They aren’t. In fact, most of the healing hybrids have historically lagged behind on DPS. Shadow Priests, Boomkin, Ele Saman, Ret Paladins in the past, Enh Shaman currently. Ferals have been pretty good DPS throughout the expansion. Some of this has been because of PVP balance, some of it because someone at Blizzard seems to think that DPS characters will want to wear mana regen (the original Quel’Delar caster mace, as well as the original LK caster mace drop, were both INFURIATING for a caster DPS who doesn’t wear swords), or other such nonsense.
Melee/tank hybrids, such as DKs and Fury Warrriors, have long been more equal than other hybrids in terms of DPS. The last time Warriors were truly bad at DPS was the great rage normalization of BC, and the middle of Ulduar. Both were results of overnerfing rage from an earlier point where warriors had been wrecking the meters. DKs have grown into quite the PVE DPS powerhouse as well, when played intelligently. But one or another healing hybrid always tends to lag behind.
Heh, my DK friend has spent literally dozens of hours perfecting his use of disease propagation, to the point where he roars along at 32k DPS on trash and pulls 16k against the Lich King, when no one else can even crack about 7k on that fight.
Dear All,
First of all PVP = arena period. BG is only for gearing. If you call skill, to kill undergeared people who is busy to fight with another one, in 2 – 3 GCD forget it. I didn’t say is not fun to go in BG with more then 1200 resilience and to blow up naked players, acting like God. But again this requires no skill.
“I can win against any class”, if you can say that after doing this in arena after all 1 vs 1 situation at high rates, then can be true. But remember all in WoW is based on rock/paper/scissors and believe me no class is overpowered.
I’m a mutilate rogue and I play with a retribution paladin in 2v2. The ret have only one big advantage = high damage output and no one have resistance against holy. My task is to lock down the target, tricks of the trade and allow to partner to unload the damage while we keep CC the other with Sap, Repentance, Blind, Vanish, Sap.
For this job the ret pally is damn good.
“Knowing you and knowing the enemy is the way to win”
/salute
Shun Tzu
PvP = arena? Laughable. There really isn’t even PvP in WoW…it’s PvG (player versus gear). If you are rolling a character that has 1200 resil it doesn’t matter how skilled you are the undergeared player is toast. You said so yourself. Where is the PvP in that?
So, you suggest arena fixes that? No, not really. It presents a very specific ‘style’ of PvP that is absolutely necessary to win. (i.e. pillar-humping and counter-comping)
What if someone is more inclined for other styles of PvP? I, personally, have more fun fighting in open situations where you can’t always account for everyone’s actions. Nobody, no matter how skilled, cannot predict what 15 opponents will do. This is where true improvisation (i.e. player skill) will emerge.
Current BGs don’t always allow for this style of PvP but it sure sounds like rated BGs will.
Ultimately it’s about having fun. To suggest that arena is the true PvP setting is based solely on opinion. If someone is 2600 rated in 3s it just tells me they are very good at 3s, not that they are very good at PvP. What happens when 5 people mob that player in WG? He’ll be dead…and the 5 people have shown better PvP skill because they worked together.
PvP includes taking advantage of the weak – hell, that’s what rogues were designed to do! haha
VERY well put. I cosign completely
As a long-time rogue, I view my fresh 80 ret pally as a caster (hello! We use mana and cast things…). While, we are usually thought of as melée and one of our most important abilities requires melée range, we don’t have a set rotation (a far cry from my rogue’s rigid rotation), which makes for more interesting gameplay and the ability to decide between ranged or melée dps.. My point is, I think, that, having played a rogue for so long… I see ret pallys as extremely versatile and resilient in comparison. Not only should we not think of ourselves as melée, for sure, but not as casters, either. We have a million different things we can do at any given time, and we do those things well. No abilities sit forgotten in our skills book. Whereas my rogue uses about 20% of her abilities in a single raid. I believe calling a ret pally overpowered is rightly justified, as we can melée like a rogue, range dps like a Mage/hunter, survive like a warrior, and heal like a priest… All without shifting forms (druid). having all of this together at any given moment is what makes us overpowered.
Ugh. My thoughts will come *after* my blog-o-versary celebration week. Bah! Why couldn’t he have said these silly things one week earlier, or later? I have an angry rant coming!!!!
I feel your pain bud. Just tired my wrathful/relentless paladin on PTR. And you know it’s bad when 3 stacks of holy power heal for 5k and your only sprint from judgement is dispelled and so is your freedom… -_-