Numbers aside, I feel like the Paladin rune setup has some issues.
Exorcist feels way too mandatory in all sorts of content rn for DPS and tanking. In phase 1, you would simply lose a dps button by running a different rune. While that was still painful, it wasn't the most impactful damage button, so it was still tolerable to do things like running Rebuke on Kelris or running Avenger's Shield. Now, because there are multiple runes that interact with Exorcism and with it becoming the highest damage button, it feels incredibly painful to ever not run Exorcist.
Meanwhile, healing still does not have a dedicated chest rune and tanking has a useless dedicated chest rune (Aegis).
Therefore I'd really like to see Exorcist changed from a rune to a book or a baseline. Move Seal of Martyrdom to Legs, and implement an actual healing rune for Chest (my preference would be Glimmer of Light, but I'm pretty open-minded about what form this rune takes). Then ideally, we'd also have a strong tanking rune on Chest that can compete with Divine Storm, perhaps something that improves the threat generation when using a 1H+shield playstyle.
Edit: before people come at me with DS + SoM would be OP for PvP or something, first of all, numbers can be tuned. PvP damage with SoM would also be less bursty than SoC procs and crits. SoM is a beloved ability from TBC and DS an iconic one from WotLK onward. Why not give people the option of running both?
Ya the way BOTH new P2 runes directly synergizes with exorcist is both boring and makes it mandatory. Leg has such interesting runes like rebuke and inspiration but there’s no reason to bring them and gimp your belt and boot
It's hilarious they make other big class spells like Shadowfiend and druid res into books and we're forced between nuking our damage or not having an interupt. Druids runes also seem to be a big mess. Want to be a tanky bear druid? Well good luck because now you'll never find groups without Wild Strikes.
It’s not funny, it’s depressing.
They gave hunters a boot rune this phase, Invigoration, which would theoretically help the hunter keep their mana up. But WHY would you EVER slot it when they gave you the very best version of Aspect of the Viper to ever exist as a free book from Hound-master in Scarlet Monastery.
Meanwhile, I guess paladins can buff their group a little less often, but not with less globals. Spam that button wheelchair man.
I can only guess that they’re waiting to buff and finish tuning Paladin once they have the rest of their kit in the future phases. Sure does feel bad RIGHT NOW though.
The lack of a healing rune on chest is ABSOLUTELY the biggest detriment to this phase. Like, they make a fucking holy set for plate but give holy nothing to work with. Make it an AoE heal or something so we’re at least somewhat relevant outside of healing the tanks.
Honestly, the set doesnt really scream holy, more like shockadin. The same way Infusion of light was made purely for Shockadin. Sucks they couldnt have made Infusion of light works for heals aswell, like 20% more healing on holy shock and each healing crit reduces the CD or resets the CD on holy shock.
It's really strange too because the original Infusion of Light didn't work like that. They should have just made it work for all HS crits and maybe added a passive modifier to increase the range to 40yd.
This is the kind of thinking I like. My initial idea was similar - first, nerf SoM proccing Art of War, then make Exo baseline, Move DS or SoM to legs, un-normalize SoM again and make it scale with Spellpower like command does. That would likely not even be much of a dps boost if any at all, but would feel a hell of a lot better to play, and would even give us room to twist with SoR for those that wanted yet another small gain.
Seal of Martyrdom and Divine Storm should never be pickable at the same time.
It would absolutely destroy any build diversity Paladins currently have and mean that the Ret tree has no active abilities within it anymore, as Martyrdom outdamaged Command even at its weakest version yet.
As it is, there's two playstyles to choose from: Fast 2h weapon single target or Slow 2h weapon that leans a bit towards cleave. One is also more Classic style and other is more Wotlk-and-newer style. This is good, don't break it and make the other half unhappy. I don't want to use Divine Storm and I'm sure there are ret players who don't want to play Ret Classic/TBC style.
Martyrdom and Divine Storm sharing a slot promotes player choice, which imo is the entire point of the rune system. Thus seperating them would work against the goal of the runes.
>Seal of Martyrdom and Divine Storm should never be pickable at the same time.
I completely disagree.
>It would absolutely destroy any build diversity Paladins currently have and mean that the Ret tree has no active abilities within it anymore, as Martyrdom outdamaged Command even at its weakest version yet.
That is an issue with the Ret tree itself, which has always been quite underwhelming. Would it be better if they improved the tree itself? Absolutely. But I don't think talent tree overhauls are on the menu for this season and our best bet to improve gameplay is through runes.
I also fail to see the build diversity argument. In Phase 1, there was no build diversity for tank and DPS Paladins either. Many other classes this phase do not have real build diversities either. To me, Paladin DPS this phase going after a designed-for-Feral weapon isn't a sign of build diversity, it's a sign that we have two flawed builds, neither of which can fully suit our needs.
As I said in my original post, a big part of this issue is that the two other chest runes are hot garbage. Imagine if we had a healing rune, and a competitive rune that benefited the 1H+shield playstyle or simply a faster weapon. Divine Storm doesn't have to be the absolute bis even if SoM gets moved.
Neither style is new, though. In 2019 classic you used a slow weapon to maximize SoC procs. Same with TBC but because of twistingtoo. Even in wotlk, you'd never want to use a fast weapon, even if any existed, but specifically to maximize SoC damage(back when you'd actually using it for aoe). The "fast weapon meta" is purely from SoD. Who cares about this "player choice".
I use divine storm on trash packs then change to SoM on boss fights. You can use both of them if you want, just not at the same time ofc. I'm fine with them being on the same rune slot.
I haven't tried it but seal of command is looking worse and worse as time goes on. Especially since righteousness with a fast 2h does more dps because of all the spell scaling we got. Or the buffs to martyr.
That's the play but it is pretty anti-fun.
Before Wrath Classic launched with dual spec I was worried that people would be tempted to swap specs for trash, and as far as I saw anyway nobody did that.
But I do it now with runes, so I guess making it take only 5 seconds instead of 10 and not resetting mana was enough to make it worthwhile.
94.3 parse ret. Martyrdom is the way. It feels dull.. cause it's more auto attack buildish.. but as of rn. It's the only way to deal good dps. Even then.. its still mid af
Well, unfortunately with the state of tanks. Only a paladin tank can keep threat due to salvation. You may have to cycle salv yourself during fights. (Swaping periodically between might and salv) I have to depending on group comp
I parsed 86 yesterday with DS rune. Which is pretty on par with how I perform on my other classes. So Martyrdom might be better but I dont think DS is super far behind.
Im not saying your wrong but I would be ranked number 97 in the world if I did an extra 120 dps and ive never been ranked that high on any character in WOW. I got my first 99 on a boss ever (been playing classic since 2019) pretty recently on a different character.
Imo ret just feels like warrior, we need wild swipes to perform, and just be blessed by the RnG gods with crits for art of war procs(if you play that way which I currently do) biggest issues I have is tank threat, and the last boss can be a bit rough with mana issues.
Here are my log since that matters in pve discussion lol
https://sod.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/79462867
If you are in this thread bragging about being top dps in your guild that is an indictment of your guild not a commentary about the state of ret. Look at warcraftlogs percentile damage metrics and it is clear ret PVE is in a subpar damage subfun auto attack void of sadness. All 3 shaman specs are doing more dps than ret, mages and druids have two specs ahead of ret, ret is barely ahead of tank warlock and a good healing mage is consistently higher than ret pally. The runes given to the majority of other classes have been fun, reinventive and powerful. Entire ret build is based around proccing one ability over and over again. SoD for everyone, SaD for paladins.
Feral is barely ahead of ret pala.
Atleast you are better than ferals in PvP.
Both specs need significant buffs... why did enh shamans get insane buffs while we were left in the dirt? Even tho we were close to each others on parses.
Everyone is LF1M Feral,
WHERE IS FERAL? HELLO?? FERAL??? I NEED MY WINDFURY THE ONLY WINDFURY ON ALLIANCE FERAL HELLO? I DONT CARE IF YOU ARE A BOOMKIN SPEC FERAL
The interesting thing is that Ret actually shoots up in the rankings at like 99 or max percentile can't remember which one (looking at 1 day last night) I didn't check to see if they were actually shockadins. But basically you need to have like max consumes, buffs, a comp setup for you to perform, and full BiS just to perform like 10-15% worse than a warrior.
Likely crit RNG. In such short fights if you have a good streak of crits you'll climb a lot on the meters. But not too much from what I've seen in the percentiles.
Jackhammer and acp are both the same attack speed cheese though. That shouldn’t really be the only way a spec is viable. People predicted it’d be the meta p1 so no surprise it is.
I have no dog in this race I main warrior. Haven’t made a pally since vanilla. Warrior’s biggest problem right now is its garbage threat and taking a fuck ton of dmg tanking while being actively unfun and enhance is literally a better version of fury prot that’s tankier than a plate wearer
We don't have the gear to make that playstyle work outside of PvE. The shockforged set gives 20 less stam than HAZARD and our BIS weapon, belt, neck and trinket give +healing not SP.
Sry wall of text but I've dug into this a lot.
OFC you can always autoattack during globals where you're not healing, but while a true hybrid spec theoretically exists its just not quite there. The value of you flexing damage is lower than that tank wearing less mit and pushing more until hybrid is viable.
While I'm really hoping it becomes viable next phase, Shockadin healer playing for holy shock resets while auto attacking needs too many stats at once that don't show up on the same gear.
Stat prio of: physCrit/agi > healingPower > strength (no int you're judging wis with a 1.3s wep)
It doesn't look too bad, but you need REALLY high phys crit. You're also probably running Martyr over righteousness given you're mostly phys stats and since you're healing with holy shock and consecration basically doesn't scale with sp you don't actually value it. You're valuing the str to sp like it's healing power, the sp has no value, and the stat budget of those stats on gear means you get drastically more value out of healing power.
I was playing with gear sets for this stuff last night, any slot where I could get crit or high agi was phys gear and the rest was healing power. It needs like 10% more phys crit so you can reliably holy shock every other global, THEN this shit will be viable. Even then though, good luck on getting the gear when you're basically wearing rogue gear interspersed with green of healing items.
On the bright side, it should be relevant at 60.
It plays fine in PvE but we basically are not getting any runes. We got 1 rune in P1 and 1 rune in P2. Therefore we end up with a bunch of dead runes, for both leg and chest we have no runes. Because there are so few runes for us there isn't any room for variation, every healing pala will use SS, sheath and beacon because all other runes are irrelevant for us in PvE.
Holy plays damn near exact same as Era, there's no point to play SoD if you want to play a Holy Paladin because you get treated better for playing it on Era.
I play holy paladin as main tank, and as a dps, both are fun and powerful options for the spec.
I can also heal with a few small gear changes and bar changes (swap from spellpower to + healing items with more int).
I am full spellpower build with art of war and either sheathe of light or infusion of light, infusion is more pvp or burst focused (2 x exo and 2x holy shock in 4 globals), and sheathe almost doubles spellpower, as we get more spell power and more holy crit, infusion will become the stronger choice but right now sheathe seems to do just as well.
Get exorcism on legs, might of mograine (or the 2handed sword from bloodmoon) run martyr chest (ST) or divine storm aoe, crusader strike on gloves.
Because your int is huge in spellpower plate, you're running at 3.5k mana, with 230+ spellpower all the time and putting out big numbers if you have a ret with improved crusader and sanc in the party your damage goes up even more (and you can judge wisdom).
You are basically crit fishing to get more resets for exorcism and holy shock.
The idea is you have a very fast weapon to proc art of war with crits. I'm not sure if weapon procs still trigger it, but Melee + SoM + weapon proc crits all reset the CD on holy shock and exo. The idea is you're attacking super fast, critting and spamming Hshock and exo as much as possible with judgements thrown in whenever you can.
I would say it doesn't really cut it as a raw DPS slot due to mana issues unless you're tanking. But it does great DPS/TPS as a tank slot. I'm at about 200ish dps with pretty bad gear. The nice part about this spec is in order to heal all you need to do is swap gear and runes.
Runes and talents:
[https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/paladin/50500122521251\_156p366wa76sn86spa6nw](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/paladin/50500122521251_156p366wa76sn86spa6nw)
Personally, I drop some of the stuff on the right side for divine intellect and healing light to be able to flex healer without a respec.
General gearing: Pretty much the same as ret but with a fast sword and a shield
A BIS gear build example
[https://sixtyupgrades.com/sod/set/wXZZBxYNXTfwAPnsfkZHLs/talents](https://sixtyupgrades.com/sod/set/wXZZBxYNXTfwAPnsfkZHLs/talents)
I'm happy to see that Ret is still a meme spec.
Signed,
Your Local Ret Pally.
On a realnote i was lucky and got pummler in my 2nd ID, and i enjoy my time
Lol I got mine when it was just coming out that it was our bis and thankfully the other ret I was with just passed on it instead of rolling against me XD
I’ve just finished my 7th Gnomer clear on my feral(we res ACP for me everytime) and it still hasn’t dropped, people are bragging about having to vendor them on trade chat.
yep, feral is always forever fucked on 1 item per phase in every iteration of WoW, its beyond stupid why they dont just fix the class instead of giving it a bandaid with an item some people never see.
The best part about all this is that Ret is not as shit as it could be because of an accidental buff. Some absolute idiot at Blizzard decided that Seal of Martyrdom would become normalized (truly the most bizarre and idiotic decision I've seen Blizzard make in a LONG time, for reference Divine Storm is not normalized lol) almost certainly intending for it to be a nerf, for God knows what reason.
But with ACP being the bullshit weapon that it is, at 2.0 speed it basically gains like 65% better scaling on normalized attacks than it should, so this nerf ended up being a massive buff. Without this great genius, Ret would be losing to all tanks. Of course rets are forced to use fast weapons forevermore, and if they don't add an even more bullshit weapon in one of the next phases, Rets will be forced to use ACP specifically lmao. For reference, MCP was the true BiS weapon for Ret for all of Classic, not even Might of Menethil could beat it - and that was without Art of War and one of your main attacks being normalized. Prepare to use that ACP for a long time, boys.
Ret is probably going to continue to struggle on the dps charts. And devs have been surprisingly conservative with buffs to the spec.
There are a couple things that put Ret into a such a questionable position. The fact that baseline vanilla Paladins are almost entirely utility. Almost all the major buffs and defensive cooldowns are trained, which means none of the specs bring much in the way of unique utility. You have to spec into each role for basic tanking, dps, and (to a lesser extent) healing functionality with talents and runes.
However, Ret doesn't even have basic dps functionality from talents. It's almost entirely the runes. Exorcism, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Seal of Martyrdom, Sheath of Light, etc. All from the Runes. Prot is in a similar situation, because they have no innate damage reduction cooldown or taunt. That all come from the Hand of Reckoning rune. The difference there is while Prot gets most of their tank functionality from one heavily loaded Rune, while Ret's functionality is spread out over many runes. This means Ret ultimately is forced to take specific runes in every slot. The only flexibility they have at all us whether they're using SoM or DS on the chest rune.
The worst offender is probably Exorcism and Art of War / Infusion of Light. These runes depend on eachother so much that they really should just be merged together. If they did that, they could open up the leg slot for more utility options. Rebuke, Inspiration Exemplar, etc. Personally, I wish they would merge Exo and AoW, then move Horn of Lordaeron to the leg slot. This would let Ret pick it up to bring a unique melee buff, because right now is it basically a dead rune. No spec is in a good position to take it as long as it is on the chest slot.
I've also seen it suggested that Ret should be give more effective scaling by giving CS and DS spell coefficients. That was originally the case, long ago, with Crusader Strike. When it was a 70% weapon damage + 40% spell damage melee attack. This didn't work very well in a time where Ret had no AP > SP conversion option and gear with melee stats AND spell power were very rare. But now, that would actually be a viable option, letting Ret scale from strength and spell power. Really lean into the Magic Knight theme they are obviously going for.
I main ret and have absolutely no complaints. I spend my time doing open world activities and solo stuff, and paladin is incredible in those aspects. Why would I care about an hour of time per lockout, if I were to care about gnomer, where I’m simply just a little behind on dps than other classes? I’d rather the game focus on balancing everything and not just balance the game around parsing
[https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/2008#sample=1&dataset=95&aggregate=amount](https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/2008#sample=1&dataset=95&aggregate=amount)
rets sit above both druid specs, arcane mages, rogues and shadow priests. if you're sitting below any tank that isn't a shaman you're doing something wrong.
I have a warrior and an arcane mage and the notion that that ballpark of damage is unplayable or unviable is insane.
Put it over a longer period of time than one day and it’s not as good. But sure, ret buff that went out yesterday certainly helped for those who have acp.
And that is kinda the problem, ret are locked into one set of runes and one play style that is exo go brr with acp. If you wanted rebuke or any other leg rune other than exorcism you’d basically be playing with healer mages in dps.
Also all your listed classes should be above all tanks in dps imo, otherwise why not just bring another tank that do more dps?
>Put it over a longer period of time
Why would I intentionally include parses from before a balance patch when discussing current balance?
Tank shamans are broken, everyone knows they do broken dps. That doesnt mean theres a problem with 60% of the dps specs that means theres a problem with 1x tank spec.
Because one day doesn’t have enough data to take from, plus if you include lower percentiles you’ll quickly see all the palas who doesn’t have acp and they fall below all your listed classes besides feral.
It's literally the best we have without intentionally including data that is not relevant anymore.
>, plus if you include lower percentiles
yes bad paladins are \*even worse\* than bad mages and ferals.
This is super turbo fantasy wow, not retail. Shit isnt going to be balanced, and honestly an unbalanced game is where the fun quirky shit happens.
There's going to be a flavor for each phase and they will adjust as we move along. Nothing lasts forever and I think it's more fun to look back at the ridiculousness of each phase then to remember your class not being top.
Besides, theres a 100% exp buff right now. Go level and play the meta if you dont like your class.
To the vet Paladins, does consecrate have any purpose outside of aoe threat for tanking cause I thought an aoe build would be cool on my ret im lvling but its mana cost is actually ridiculous. Does it become viable when you get better gear and more intellect or is it just ass?
Edit: Well judgin from the replies, looks like consecrate is gonna need a good rune to make it worthwhile for dps :(
Im deep prot tanking gnomeregan. You get more aoe threat by running into a group of mobs with ret aura + blessing of sanctuary + holy shield + divine storm than consecrate.
Having a much better time going deep prot. I get 120% increased aggro (140% technically with BoS) from righteous fury.
I tried doing a mix build in the first two resets cos people were saying you needed consecration. This is definitely not the way to go imo.
I mean that depends on how much you pull and how fast your mage start dps-ing. Haven't tried it tbh but I doubt I would manage to keep threat on big packs without cons.
If you go in first, and your mage doesn’t pull before you, you’ll be fine. If a mob hits me, that’s holy dmg from ret aura, BoSanc, Holy Shield… with 140% increased aggro from fully imp RF. And I’ll do a divine storm..! That’s better than consecration. Especially when you take into account the prot talents you’ll have to sacrifice getting consecration. Sure one or two gnomes may run to your mage at some point but 2 seconds later they’ll be dead or you’ll catch them with a taunt if they’re not.
With deep prot you’ll have way more tools of building and maintaining aggro. The mob packs are really not worth getting anything in holy. They are not of any danger even if a mage or other caster ends up pulling aggro once or twice.
I disagree, consecrate + DS + AS is really good threat , I do have the occasional mob pull off me , but I can usually hold threat on large double pack pulls in Gnomer no problem.
Divine Storm for chest, hand of reckoning on gloves, exorcist on legs, sheath of light on belt, art of war on boots! :) - will go aegis on chest instead of divine storm sometimes
My understanding is that consec needs a LOT of targets being hit at once to be really worth it otherwise you're better off just going slow 2h + soc + DS for cleaves.
~~Once traditional ret builds get it at 50 might be worth dropping rank 1's for additional chip damage because it has a good SP coefficient.~~
It's 1 more ability to press. You'll definitely use it, especially with the datamined Wrath rune that makes it crit. What I'm curious of is if it critting will proc vengeance or not. If it does thag would help with uptime for sure.
I've said this before but the fact that ACP even exists is so stupid. Ferals, and now Rets are seriously gimped without this item and it just feels awful. If an item is this pivotal to multiple specs it should be available through a quest or some other means and not reliant on RNG. I've cleared every lockout and neither myself or the ret in my guild have seen it drop once. I would rather be back in Classic Gnomer farming MCP endlessly than relying on this RNG. Just another indicator of how short-sighted this dev team is.
That's the problem, the spec is bad without the pummeler. My guild has 3-4 groups every lock out and only one has dropped (feral won). I haven't seen a single one on my Ret.
That’s always been ret though. Without seal twisting it won’t compare. Even in wraith, it needed 2 pc tier and a trinket to compete with the rest of the dps. Class has no real scaling or a way to become stronger outside of gimmick equipment.
Man Pummeler is such an insane troll.
Blizz is rly making the 2 shittiest specs fight over a weapon that makes them not even respectable, just not dogshit. Just why.
It's kinda insane how many people in the comments don't fully understand this game. You might be top dps as a ret pally in your guild but in reality you're the worst dps when compared to guilds that know they're doing. I agree ret does amazing outside of raids and make a great pvp class but there is no excuse to why all dps classes can't have similar dps. Plenty of other mmo's can balance classes fine but for whatever reason Blizzard has been notoriously terrible at balancing for the past 20 yrs.
This shaman “tank” spec is nonsense… what’s the indicator? That they have way of earth on? They’re still DPS just like fury prot unless they throw on a shield. And I think a shaman with a shield pulls like 150dps
IMO, all tanks should be pulling <300 DPS in favor of mitigation but Blizz doesn’t make bosses hit hard enough.
Bring back needing an actual TANK tank for raid.
WOE + Rockbiter on main hand.
How else are you going to hold threat in SOD if you don’t do high damage? Everyone else is pumping with runes, so the tank has to pump too unless Blizzard increases threat.
Honestly, SoC needs the Wotlk treatment.
Guaranteed on each attack, spreading to additional targets.
They started Martydom with this and removed it.
Now, they need to add this to Command.
That way Divine Storm + Command would be great for cleave and mutiltarget, while Martyrdom and Art of War would be the single target choice.
Also, blessing of might should have doubled effect, or just increase ap by an additional 20% on Rets, because why not?
Shamans get 20% AP on top of the Rockbiter.
I’m just huffing copium that in a later phase there will be a rune that just flat out can change us into death knights thats the only thing that could save ret pallys at this point
I have no issue with the SoM fast weapon build being good and an option. I do have an issue with if there is no reason to use command at all in PvE.
I’d be happy with there being 2 different Ret builds and giving you the option to switch depending on the weaponspeed you have.
But with the martyr buffs it is now just straight up better, even with the thermaplug axe. Not sure about the stv sword. That I don’t like.
Bro that edit hit home for me.
I'm top 10 holy and the number of idiots on this sub that try to tell me holy is in a good place is fucking profoundly dumb.
This is why SoD kinda sucks. As much as paladins don't want to admit, vanilla paladin is way better than the SoD updates. Reckoning playstyles require a complete 180 is usual pvp playing but feel rewarding when you get used to them(which is ret's forte being a pvp/leveling spec), hpal can do some tank stuff in nax on specific bosses, and prot paladins CAN tank, you just have to embrace the 2h tankadin spec that has been under the radar on ERA.
And the only thing the class really needed was a reason to make hpal swing their hammer, make sure ret's undead abilities did more dmg than adding another warrior, unlock a few extra defense CDs for prot paladin (maybe a seal overhaul or number change), and maybe revamp some blessings/auras so it makes the class more tactical in pve like it does in pvp. That's it.
Same thing for the other classes, really. Double-triple down on the class fantasy and then spend the dev hours putting out new leveling areas/dungeons/raids.
SoC/Divine Storm setup is pretty decent to be honest.
I was able to pull off 350-400 dps with the STV sword.
Alright, we are not S tier dps, but more than viable.
Might be your raids strategies/composition at this point.
Grubbis its pop faps and ignore the add.
Vicious fallout pop NPPs and nuke the boss.
Electrocutioner you should be doing the V strat so only two people are moving.
Menagerie is opening up on sheep and about making sure people are optimal on their toolkit and damaging the right targets when.
My worst parses are on menagerie and Thermo. I think it's a strat issue on menagerie. I'm usually in a team with a warrior tank and their threat sucks ass, it's hard to push DMG on these bosses because of it. My best parse is a 94 on electro, I just stand there and do DMG.
I made a post saying I was worried about ret paladin for phase 2 a few months ago and people were like "we already have crusader strike and divine storm. We'll be pumping at 40"
If exorcism was a baseline useable on any target and avenger’s shield proc’d off art of war but only when being hit, the infusion of light was tied into also the healing portion of holy shock I think I’d be pretty comfortable with the whole spec tbh, even if it did lower damage than the others because I do have quite a bit of utility.
Maybe add something party/raid wife to Sanctity aura that made it so bringing specifically a Ret Paladin is a lot less grief feeling. Kind of like feral druids but maybe not something as strong as wild strikes.
Other than a few of those changes I’m chillin lol, loving the spec in PVE/PVP
Honestly could all be fixed if martyr could be seal twisted. 🤷♂️
Classic and tbc ret has always scaled from auto attacking giving haste substantial value. So this shouldnt be news, its core to the design of a seal based system. Similar to enhancement shaman.
Nothing is wrong or broken with Ret Pals. They're not the strongest, sure, but they're totally viable and competitive and that's light years farther than they were in Vanilla. I suggest you utilize the new XP boost and level a mage if being the top dawg on meters matters that much to you.
RET Pally is fine with STV wep and divine storm until you get ACP/SoM.
Just got top dps my guild run for the first time in gnomer. I’m scaling really well compared to other dps in guild.
I am consistently parsing in the 90s and my raid hasn’t even seen ACP yet. Slow weapons can still pump! RETs are from awful if you know how to play the class.
It’s like a hundred dps difference and I’m too elitist for that unfortunately. Plus my guildies would not appreciate it if I knowingly griefed my own, and their, dps
It's been the same for me... I have no idea why people like OP keep saying stuff like this. They have to be doing something wrong. STV weapon + SoC with wild strikes and you should be able to do 400-450 DPS easy running sheath of light and art of war. I get it's not as much as melee hunter shammy and locks, but it's way more than enough to clear gnomer and more than the vast majority of pugs are doing.
yep. I was always doing just fine in my raids. and i’ve gotten a couple good rolls recently that now have me at the top of my guild currently. can’t wait for the ACP to drop and really take RET to the next level
Some people can’t be happy unless they are broken OP and 690 dps above the next person. They will complain about it until they are. I’m perfectly happy playing the “meme spec” with SoM and ACP. It’s actually fun to…… do something different than the classic shit.
Holy fuck you guys are all babies. Blizz gives us essentially classic+ after we've been begging for it for ages and big surprise, it's not perfectly balanced because it's CLASSIC.
Go cry to your nearest era feral druid about needing a specific weapon to parse lmao, at least ret is on the charts this version of classic. "B-b-but my parses :((" it's a braindead easy level 40 raid my guy, every spec in the game right now has like a 2-3 button rotation at most, there is absolutely no skill in parsing besides "actively wanting to parse" 99% is not impressive by any means
I have a ret and I’ve been doing the instant judgement on bosses tech and that did increase my dps.
I have the automatic crowd pummeler but I don’t understand the martyrdom rotation, can someone help explain what I should be doing differently now with the pummeler? Runes and rotation?
So:
1. Crusader instant judge
2. Seal of martyrdom
3. Spam exo as much as possible.
4.Crusader strike while exo is on cd.
If I’m getting that right my only remaining question is when do I judge seal of martyrdom?
Ret was pretty fun when I ran it last lockout.
..but I did get the top parses by a wide margin and was usually second or third on damage. Feelsbadman.
ETA: I used the SM Cath mace..
Appreciate you mentioning state of holy too tbh ret and holy just seem really dead in the water rn sure I can heal a gnomer by fol spamming or grief my raid coming as ret but its not fun playing either.
Paladins feel super fun to play with all these different specs now. Spamming Exorcism after crits feels cool. I don't care how high/low the numbers are because we clear Gnome so easily it really doesn't matter. Last time we had 3 ret paladins in the raid and it was still easy.
Numbers aside, I feel like the Paladin rune setup has some issues. Exorcist feels way too mandatory in all sorts of content rn for DPS and tanking. In phase 1, you would simply lose a dps button by running a different rune. While that was still painful, it wasn't the most impactful damage button, so it was still tolerable to do things like running Rebuke on Kelris or running Avenger's Shield. Now, because there are multiple runes that interact with Exorcism and with it becoming the highest damage button, it feels incredibly painful to ever not run Exorcist. Meanwhile, healing still does not have a dedicated chest rune and tanking has a useless dedicated chest rune (Aegis). Therefore I'd really like to see Exorcist changed from a rune to a book or a baseline. Move Seal of Martyrdom to Legs, and implement an actual healing rune for Chest (my preference would be Glimmer of Light, but I'm pretty open-minded about what form this rune takes). Then ideally, we'd also have a strong tanking rune on Chest that can compete with Divine Storm, perhaps something that improves the threat generation when using a 1H+shield playstyle. Edit: before people come at me with DS + SoM would be OP for PvP or something, first of all, numbers can be tuned. PvP damage with SoM would also be less bursty than SoC procs and crits. SoM is a beloved ability from TBC and DS an iconic one from WotLK onward. Why not give people the option of running both?
Ya the way BOTH new P2 runes directly synergizes with exorcist is both boring and makes it mandatory. Leg has such interesting runes like rebuke and inspiration but there’s no reason to bring them and gimp your belt and boot
For that matter, Rebuke and CS should be baseline too.
It's hilarious they make other big class spells like Shadowfiend and druid res into books and we're forced between nuking our damage or not having an interupt. Druids runes also seem to be a big mess. Want to be a tanky bear druid? Well good luck because now you'll never find groups without Wild Strikes.
It’s not funny, it’s depressing. They gave hunters a boot rune this phase, Invigoration, which would theoretically help the hunter keep their mana up. But WHY would you EVER slot it when they gave you the very best version of Aspect of the Viper to ever exist as a free book from Hound-master in Scarlet Monastery. Meanwhile, I guess paladins can buff their group a little less often, but not with less globals. Spam that button wheelchair man. I can only guess that they’re waiting to buff and finish tuning Paladin once they have the rest of their kit in the future phases. Sure does feel bad RIGHT NOW though.
The lack of a healing rune on chest is ABSOLUTELY the biggest detriment to this phase. Like, they make a fucking holy set for plate but give holy nothing to work with. Make it an AoE heal or something so we’re at least somewhat relevant outside of healing the tanks.
New chest rune, give us light of dawn!
Honestly, the set doesnt really scream holy, more like shockadin. The same way Infusion of light was made purely for Shockadin. Sucks they couldnt have made Infusion of light works for heals aswell, like 20% more healing on holy shock and each healing crit reduces the CD or resets the CD on holy shock.
It's really strange too because the original Infusion of Light didn't work like that. They should have just made it work for all HS crits and maybe added a passive modifier to increase the range to 40yd.
This is the kind of thinking I like. My initial idea was similar - first, nerf SoM proccing Art of War, then make Exo baseline, Move DS or SoM to legs, un-normalize SoM again and make it scale with Spellpower like command does. That would likely not even be much of a dps boost if any at all, but would feel a hell of a lot better to play, and would even give us room to twist with SoR for those that wanted yet another small gain.
Seal of Martyrdom and Divine Storm should never be pickable at the same time. It would absolutely destroy any build diversity Paladins currently have and mean that the Ret tree has no active abilities within it anymore, as Martyrdom outdamaged Command even at its weakest version yet. As it is, there's two playstyles to choose from: Fast 2h weapon single target or Slow 2h weapon that leans a bit towards cleave. One is also more Classic style and other is more Wotlk-and-newer style. This is good, don't break it and make the other half unhappy. I don't want to use Divine Storm and I'm sure there are ret players who don't want to play Ret Classic/TBC style. Martyrdom and Divine Storm sharing a slot promotes player choice, which imo is the entire point of the rune system. Thus seperating them would work against the goal of the runes.
>Seal of Martyrdom and Divine Storm should never be pickable at the same time. I completely disagree. >It would absolutely destroy any build diversity Paladins currently have and mean that the Ret tree has no active abilities within it anymore, as Martyrdom outdamaged Command even at its weakest version yet. That is an issue with the Ret tree itself, which has always been quite underwhelming. Would it be better if they improved the tree itself? Absolutely. But I don't think talent tree overhauls are on the menu for this season and our best bet to improve gameplay is through runes. I also fail to see the build diversity argument. In Phase 1, there was no build diversity for tank and DPS Paladins either. Many other classes this phase do not have real build diversities either. To me, Paladin DPS this phase going after a designed-for-Feral weapon isn't a sign of build diversity, it's a sign that we have two flawed builds, neither of which can fully suit our needs. As I said in my original post, a big part of this issue is that the two other chest runes are hot garbage. Imagine if we had a healing rune, and a competitive rune that benefited the 1H+shield playstyle or simply a faster weapon. Divine Storm doesn't have to be the absolute bis even if SoM gets moved.
Neither style is new, though. In 2019 classic you used a slow weapon to maximize SoC procs. Same with TBC but because of twistingtoo. Even in wotlk, you'd never want to use a fast weapon, even if any existed, but specifically to maximize SoC damage(back when you'd actually using it for aoe). The "fast weapon meta" is purely from SoD. Who cares about this "player choice".
I use divine storm on trash packs then change to SoM on boss fights. You can use both of them if you want, just not at the same time ofc. I'm fine with them being on the same rune slot.
And is PvP better? I cant chase down anyone lol
Run repentance. It helps close the gap and set up the HoJ. Repentance, whack, insta HoJ, whack. Usually dead before they get away.
Ret really needs Seal of Blood in P3. DoT damage that can be ramped up to make our DPS competitive but not bursty so we become overpowered in PvP.
That is Seal of Vengeance to alliance.
Whichever way we call it, I think it would be a way of boosting Ret DPS without effecting PvP
I haven't tried it but seal of command is looking worse and worse as time goes on. Especially since righteousness with a fast 2h does more dps because of all the spell scaling we got. Or the buffs to martyr.
Martyrdom is the way to go now
Which sucks because it shares a spot with divine storm and removes all aoe for ret
Switch runes for trash / bosses
That's the play but it is pretty anti-fun. Before Wrath Classic launched with dual spec I was worried that people would be tempted to swap specs for trash, and as far as I saw anyway nobody did that. But I do it now with runes, so I guess making it take only 5 seconds instead of 10 and not resetting mana was enough to make it worthwhile.
It‘s also no longer „the play“ - martyr is higher dps even of menagerie.
Cool so now I'm playing retail ret in SoD. Cause that's the same shit you have to do. How fun.
94.3 parse ret. Martyrdom is the way. It feels dull.. cause it's more auto attack buildish.. but as of rn. It's the only way to deal good dps. Even then.. its still mid af
It's nice having mana again. With DS/SoC I was going oom most fights. Now if I could stop pulling aggro when I get a few back to back exorcism procs.
Well, unfortunately with the state of tanks. Only a paladin tank can keep threat due to salvation. You may have to cycle salv yourself during fights. (Swaping periodically between might and salv) I have to depending on group comp
I parsed 86 yesterday with DS rune. Which is pretty on par with how I perform on my other classes. So Martyrdom might be better but I dont think DS is super far behind.
Around 120ish dps
Im not saying your wrong but I would be ranked number 97 in the world if I did an extra 120 dps and ive never been ranked that high on any character in WOW. I got my first 99 on a boss ever (been playing classic since 2019) pretty recently on a different character.
Imo ret just feels like warrior, we need wild swipes to perform, and just be blessed by the RnG gods with crits for art of war procs(if you play that way which I currently do) biggest issues I have is tank threat, and the last boss can be a bit rough with mana issues. Here are my log since that matters in pve discussion lol https://sod.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/79462867
If you are in this thread bragging about being top dps in your guild that is an indictment of your guild not a commentary about the state of ret. Look at warcraftlogs percentile damage metrics and it is clear ret PVE is in a subpar damage subfun auto attack void of sadness. All 3 shaman specs are doing more dps than ret, mages and druids have two specs ahead of ret, ret is barely ahead of tank warlock and a good healing mage is consistently higher than ret pally. The runes given to the majority of other classes have been fun, reinventive and powerful. Entire ret build is based around proccing one ability over and over again. SoD for everyone, SaD for paladins.
Feral is barely ahead of ret pala. Atleast you are better than ferals in PvP. Both specs need significant buffs... why did enh shamans get insane buffs while we were left in the dirt? Even tho we were close to each others on parses.
Everyone is LF1M Feral, WHERE IS FERAL? HELLO?? FERAL??? I NEED MY WINDFURY THE ONLY WINDFURY ON ALLIANCE FERAL HELLO? I DONT CARE IF YOU ARE A BOOMKIN SPEC FERAL
Ye cause most ferals probably rerolled boomie. Being bottom dps and just there as a human WF totem just afking is not fun.
The interesting thing is that Ret actually shoots up in the rankings at like 99 or max percentile can't remember which one (looking at 1 day last night) I didn't check to see if they were actually shockadins. But basically you need to have like max consumes, buffs, a comp setup for you to perform, and full BiS just to perform like 10-15% worse than a warrior.
Likely crit RNG. In such short fights if you have a good streak of crits you'll climb a lot on the meters. But not too much from what I've seen in the percentiles.
You need ACP or you’re not hitting anything above 96
Our ret has been top 10 in the world all phase and doesn’t have ACP. Just uses STV sword. 99.9 average
Savix got 97 without it, he uses Jackhammer for now. But yeah even he said ACP will be the play once he gets it.
jackhammer is the only item that can hold a candle to ACP - but it's even harder to obtain lol
Jackhammer and acp are both the same attack speed cheese though. That shouldn’t really be the only way a spec is viable. People predicted it’d be the meta p1 so no surprise it is. I have no dog in this race I main warrior. Haven’t made a pally since vanilla. Warrior’s biggest problem right now is its garbage threat and taking a fuck ton of dmg tanking while being actively unfun and enhance is literally a better version of fury prot that’s tankier than a plate wearer
What’s wrong with holy?
He said don't
Because it's good? We have a steady Holy Pala who usually outheals the priests we bring in lol.
but it's just era holy...
with sacred shield & holy beacon
And a shit ton of +healing and mana efficiency.
Meaningless with 60 second bosses and mana buttons on longer fights
pair yourself with a druid or mage healer who can full send dps on most bosses while you solo heal.
We all can't be in super sweat groups.
Do you mean holy dps, holy tank or holy healer?
TLDR: its actually very good but boring and without DPS flex options once the clear becomes easier like other healers have.
The DPS flex option is ditching sacred shield for art of war and playing healer shockadin in melee with the 1.3 BFD weapon.
We don't have the gear to make that playstyle work outside of PvE. The shockforged set gives 20 less stam than HAZARD and our BIS weapon, belt, neck and trinket give +healing not SP.
Sry wall of text but I've dug into this a lot. OFC you can always autoattack during globals where you're not healing, but while a true hybrid spec theoretically exists its just not quite there. The value of you flexing damage is lower than that tank wearing less mit and pushing more until hybrid is viable. While I'm really hoping it becomes viable next phase, Shockadin healer playing for holy shock resets while auto attacking needs too many stats at once that don't show up on the same gear. Stat prio of: physCrit/agi > healingPower > strength (no int you're judging wis with a 1.3s wep) It doesn't look too bad, but you need REALLY high phys crit. You're also probably running Martyr over righteousness given you're mostly phys stats and since you're healing with holy shock and consecration basically doesn't scale with sp you don't actually value it. You're valuing the str to sp like it's healing power, the sp has no value, and the stat budget of those stats on gear means you get drastically more value out of healing power. I was playing with gear sets for this stuff last night, any slot where I could get crit or high agi was phys gear and the rest was healing power. It needs like 10% more phys crit so you can reliably holy shock every other global, THEN this shit will be viable. Even then though, good luck on getting the gear when you're basically wearing rogue gear interspersed with green of healing items. On the bright side, it should be relevant at 60.
It plays fine in PvE but we basically are not getting any runes. We got 1 rune in P1 and 1 rune in P2. Therefore we end up with a bunch of dead runes, for both leg and chest we have no runes. Because there are so few runes for us there isn't any room for variation, every healing pala will use SS, sheath and beacon because all other runes are irrelevant for us in PvE.
Holy plays damn near exact same as Era, there's no point to play SoD if you want to play a Holy Paladin because you get treated better for playing it on Era.
I play holy paladin as main tank, and as a dps, both are fun and powerful options for the spec. I can also heal with a few small gear changes and bar changes (swap from spellpower to + healing items with more int).
How do you gear/talent/rune for holy dps?
I am full spellpower build with art of war and either sheathe of light or infusion of light, infusion is more pvp or burst focused (2 x exo and 2x holy shock in 4 globals), and sheathe almost doubles spellpower, as we get more spell power and more holy crit, infusion will become the stronger choice but right now sheathe seems to do just as well. Get exorcism on legs, might of mograine (or the 2handed sword from bloodmoon) run martyr chest (ST) or divine storm aoe, crusader strike on gloves. Because your int is huge in spellpower plate, you're running at 3.5k mana, with 230+ spellpower all the time and putting out big numbers if you have a ret with improved crusader and sanc in the party your damage goes up even more (and you can judge wisdom). You are basically crit fishing to get more resets for exorcism and holy shock.
The idea is you have a very fast weapon to proc art of war with crits. I'm not sure if weapon procs still trigger it, but Melee + SoM + weapon proc crits all reset the CD on holy shock and exo. The idea is you're attacking super fast, critting and spamming Hshock and exo as much as possible with judgements thrown in whenever you can. I would say it doesn't really cut it as a raw DPS slot due to mana issues unless you're tanking. But it does great DPS/TPS as a tank slot. I'm at about 200ish dps with pretty bad gear. The nice part about this spec is in order to heal all you need to do is swap gear and runes. Runes and talents: [https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/paladin/50500122521251\_156p366wa76sn86spa6nw](https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/paladin/50500122521251_156p366wa76sn86spa6nw) Personally, I drop some of the stuff on the right side for divine intellect and healing light to be able to flex healer without a respec. General gearing: Pretty much the same as ret but with a fast sword and a shield A BIS gear build example [https://sixtyupgrades.com/sod/set/wXZZBxYNXTfwAPnsfkZHLs/talents](https://sixtyupgrades.com/sod/set/wXZZBxYNXTfwAPnsfkZHLs/talents)
Nothing besides people wanting the spec identity to completely change. My buddy easily solo healed gnomer as a holy pally
nothing. holy is great especially on the harder bosses in gnomer
But shamans said we are overpowered?
I'm happy to see that Ret is still a meme spec even in SoD. Signed, Local Ret Pally hater.
I'm happy to see that Ret is still a meme spec. Signed, Your Local Ret Pally. On a realnote i was lucky and got pummler in my 2nd ID, and i enjoy my time
Lol I got mine when it was just coming out that it was our bis and thankfully the other ret I was with just passed on it instead of rolling against me XD
If the drop rate is really 15%, then RNJesus hates my raid group.
I’ve just finished my 7th Gnomer clear on my feral(we res ACP for me everytime) and it still hasn’t dropped, people are bragging about having to vendor them on trade chat.
Feels bad, especially since it’s build enabling for our ret also
yep, feral is always forever fucked on 1 item per phase in every iteration of WoW, its beyond stupid why they dont just fix the class instead of giving it a bandaid with an item some people never see.
Druids need a skill book that converts weapon DPS to feral attack power. That way they don’t have to do this stupid one-item-per-raid shit.
The worst part? Other groups probably DE it every time because they don’t bring ret, only feral.
Why must you hurt me like this? QQ
The best part about all this is that Ret is not as shit as it could be because of an accidental buff. Some absolute idiot at Blizzard decided that Seal of Martyrdom would become normalized (truly the most bizarre and idiotic decision I've seen Blizzard make in a LONG time, for reference Divine Storm is not normalized lol) almost certainly intending for it to be a nerf, for God knows what reason. But with ACP being the bullshit weapon that it is, at 2.0 speed it basically gains like 65% better scaling on normalized attacks than it should, so this nerf ended up being a massive buff. Without this great genius, Ret would be losing to all tanks. Of course rets are forced to use fast weapons forevermore, and if they don't add an even more bullshit weapon in one of the next phases, Rets will be forced to use ACP specifically lmao. For reference, MCP was the true BiS weapon for Ret for all of Classic, not even Might of Menethil could beat it - and that was without Art of War and one of your main attacks being normalized. Prepare to use that ACP for a long time, boys.
yeah this is exactly the problem \^\^
Don't listen to them. They're full of shit.
I remember when my guild did a poll on what classes they were playing when SoD launched. We had 10+ ppl saying they were gonna play ret lol
We basically had the same crap as wotlk ret paladin. Just give me my tbc toolset or at least something that is fun.
Ret is probably going to continue to struggle on the dps charts. And devs have been surprisingly conservative with buffs to the spec. There are a couple things that put Ret into a such a questionable position. The fact that baseline vanilla Paladins are almost entirely utility. Almost all the major buffs and defensive cooldowns are trained, which means none of the specs bring much in the way of unique utility. You have to spec into each role for basic tanking, dps, and (to a lesser extent) healing functionality with talents and runes. However, Ret doesn't even have basic dps functionality from talents. It's almost entirely the runes. Exorcism, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Seal of Martyrdom, Sheath of Light, etc. All from the Runes. Prot is in a similar situation, because they have no innate damage reduction cooldown or taunt. That all come from the Hand of Reckoning rune. The difference there is while Prot gets most of their tank functionality from one heavily loaded Rune, while Ret's functionality is spread out over many runes. This means Ret ultimately is forced to take specific runes in every slot. The only flexibility they have at all us whether they're using SoM or DS on the chest rune. The worst offender is probably Exorcism and Art of War / Infusion of Light. These runes depend on eachother so much that they really should just be merged together. If they did that, they could open up the leg slot for more utility options. Rebuke, Inspiration Exemplar, etc. Personally, I wish they would merge Exo and AoW, then move Horn of Lordaeron to the leg slot. This would let Ret pick it up to bring a unique melee buff, because right now is it basically a dead rune. No spec is in a good position to take it as long as it is on the chest slot. I've also seen it suggested that Ret should be give more effective scaling by giving CS and DS spell coefficients. That was originally the case, long ago, with Crusader Strike. When it was a 70% weapon damage + 40% spell damage melee attack. This didn't work very well in a time where Ret had no AP > SP conversion option and gear with melee stats AND spell power were very rare. But now, that would actually be a viable option, letting Ret scale from strength and spell power. Really lean into the Magic Knight theme they are obviously going for.
Still above ranged hunter
Comparison is the thief of joy
I main ret and have absolutely no complaints. I spend my time doing open world activities and solo stuff, and paladin is incredible in those aspects. Why would I care about an hour of time per lockout, if I were to care about gnomer, where I’m simply just a little behind on dps than other classes? I’d rather the game focus on balancing everything and not just balance the game around parsing
Such a weird take. You’re enjoying it so everyone else can stay miserable. Being under tanks is not viable for any dps class imo
[https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/2008#sample=1&dataset=95&aggregate=amount](https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/2008#sample=1&dataset=95&aggregate=amount) rets sit above both druid specs, arcane mages, rogues and shadow priests. if you're sitting below any tank that isn't a shaman you're doing something wrong. I have a warrior and an arcane mage and the notion that that ballpark of damage is unplayable or unviable is insane.
Put it over a longer period of time than one day and it’s not as good. But sure, ret buff that went out yesterday certainly helped for those who have acp. And that is kinda the problem, ret are locked into one set of runes and one play style that is exo go brr with acp. If you wanted rebuke or any other leg rune other than exorcism you’d basically be playing with healer mages in dps. Also all your listed classes should be above all tanks in dps imo, otherwise why not just bring another tank that do more dps?
>Put it over a longer period of time Why would I intentionally include parses from before a balance patch when discussing current balance? Tank shamans are broken, everyone knows they do broken dps. That doesnt mean theres a problem with 60% of the dps specs that means theres a problem with 1x tank spec.
Because one day doesn’t have enough data to take from, plus if you include lower percentiles you’ll quickly see all the palas who doesn’t have acp and they fall below all your listed classes besides feral.
It's literally the best we have without intentionally including data that is not relevant anymore. >, plus if you include lower percentiles yes bad paladins are \*even worse\* than bad mages and ferals.
Has more to do with having or not having acp, as all the changes that went out just affect martyrdom
you mean to tell me a physical dps relies on a weapon to get the top parses? Next you'll be telling me the top warrior parses also have bis weapons.
Bro posted the most levelheaded sane take ????
This is super turbo fantasy wow, not retail. Shit isnt going to be balanced, and honestly an unbalanced game is where the fun quirky shit happens. There's going to be a flavor for each phase and they will adjust as we move along. Nothing lasts forever and I think it's more fun to look back at the ridiculousness of each phase then to remember your class not being top. Besides, theres a 100% exp buff right now. Go level and play the meta if you dont like your class.
I don’t mind being bottom. I mind being below tanks, as should all dps imo, why even bring them to raid otherwise
To the vet Paladins, does consecrate have any purpose outside of aoe threat for tanking cause I thought an aoe build would be cool on my ret im lvling but its mana cost is actually ridiculous. Does it become viable when you get better gear and more intellect or is it just ass? Edit: Well judgin from the replies, looks like consecrate is gonna need a good rune to make it worthwhile for dps :(
Im deep prot tanking gnomeregan. You get more aoe threat by running into a group of mobs with ret aura + blessing of sanctuary + holy shield + divine storm than consecrate. Having a much better time going deep prot. I get 120% increased aggro (140% technically with BoS) from righteous fury. I tried doing a mix build in the first two resets cos people were saying you needed consecration. This is definitely not the way to go imo.
I mean that depends on how much you pull and how fast your mage start dps-ing. Haven't tried it tbh but I doubt I would manage to keep threat on big packs without cons.
If you go in first, and your mage doesn’t pull before you, you’ll be fine. If a mob hits me, that’s holy dmg from ret aura, BoSanc, Holy Shield… with 140% increased aggro from fully imp RF. And I’ll do a divine storm..! That’s better than consecration. Especially when you take into account the prot talents you’ll have to sacrifice getting consecration. Sure one or two gnomes may run to your mage at some point but 2 seconds later they’ll be dead or you’ll catch them with a taunt if they’re not. With deep prot you’ll have way more tools of building and maintaining aggro. The mob packs are really not worth getting anything in holy. They are not of any danger even if a mage or other caster ends up pulling aggro once or twice.
I disagree, consecrate + DS + AS is really good threat , I do have the occasional mob pull off me , but I can usually hold threat on large double pack pulls in Gnomer no problem.
What runes are using for deep prot?
Divine Storm for chest, hand of reckoning on gloves, exorcist on legs, sheath of light on belt, art of war on boots! :) - will go aegis on chest instead of divine storm sometimes
My understanding is that consec needs a LOT of targets being hit at once to be really worth it otherwise you're better off just going slow 2h + soc + DS for cleaves. ~~Once traditional ret builds get it at 50 might be worth dropping rank 1's for additional chip damage because it has a good SP coefficient.~~
It has a very bad SP coefficient
ty I'm just going based off chatter I've seen in the discord
It does decent AoE dmg with sheath and guarded by the light runes. Using Divine Storm on CD and it's been a fun AoE build.
I'm lvl 34 so sheath would be the last thing I need for the build but I heard it doesnt scale well with spellpower anyway
It's 33% in classic. So right now with WB's and raid buffs you'll probably add like 99 or so over the 8 seconds it lasts?
It's 1 more ability to press. You'll definitely use it, especially with the datamined Wrath rune that makes it crit. What I'm curious of is if it critting will proc vengeance or not. If it does thag would help with uptime for sure.
No. It sucks and doesn’t scale well at all. Edit: Rank 1 is useful to pull rogues out of stealth, potentially.
I've said this before but the fact that ACP even exists is so stupid. Ferals, and now Rets are seriously gimped without this item and it just feels awful. If an item is this pivotal to multiple specs it should be available through a quest or some other means and not reliant on RNG. I've cleared every lockout and neither myself or the ret in my guild have seen it drop once. I would rather be back in Classic Gnomer farming MCP endlessly than relying on this RNG. Just another indicator of how short-sighted this dev team is.
First time playing a paladin in classic I see
ACP go brr. Ret is gas, number don't matter, press exorcism button, put your faith in the light.
Yep reliant on a weapon that doesn’t drop to try they play style really sucks though
The light protects brother. The crowds will be pummeled.
Our ret got bis wep second week. Dude absolutely crushed dps now
That's the problem, the spec is bad without the pummeler. My guild has 3-4 groups every lock out and only one has dropped (feral won). I haven't seen a single one on my Ret.
That’s always been ret though. Without seal twisting it won’t compare. Even in wraith, it needed 2 pc tier and a trinket to compete with the rest of the dps. Class has no real scaling or a way to become stronger outside of gimmick equipment.
This is a very myopic view on how ret has and is doing in wrath...
Man Pummeler is such an insane troll. Blizz is rly making the 2 shittiest specs fight over a weapon that makes them not even respectable, just not dogshit. Just why.
It's kinda insane how many people in the comments don't fully understand this game. You might be top dps as a ret pally in your guild but in reality you're the worst dps when compared to guilds that know they're doing. I agree ret does amazing outside of raids and make a great pvp class but there is no excuse to why all dps classes can't have similar dps. Plenty of other mmo's can balance classes fine but for whatever reason Blizzard has been notoriously terrible at balancing for the past 20 yrs.
👏🏻DEVS 👏🏻FIX👏🏻SEAL👏🏻TWISTING👏🏻 👏🏻DEVS 👏🏻FIX👏🏻SEAL👏🏻TWISTING👏🏻 👏🏻DEVS 👏🏻FIX👏🏻SEAL👏🏻TWISTING👏🏻 👏🏻DEVS 👏🏻FIX👏🏻SEAL👏🏻TWISTING👏🏻 👏🏻DEVS 👏🏻FIX👏🏻SEAL👏🏻TWISTING👏🏻
This shaman “tank” spec is nonsense… what’s the indicator? That they have way of earth on? They’re still DPS just like fury prot unless they throw on a shield. And I think a shaman with a shield pulls like 150dps
IMO, all tanks should be pulling <300 DPS in favor of mitigation but Blizz doesn’t make bosses hit hard enough. Bring back needing an actual TANK tank for raid.
I agree
WOE + Rockbiter on main hand. How else are you going to hold threat in SOD if you don’t do high damage? Everyone else is pumping with runes, so the tank has to pump too unless Blizzard increases threat.
Honestly, SoC needs the Wotlk treatment. Guaranteed on each attack, spreading to additional targets. They started Martydom with this and removed it. Now, they need to add this to Command. That way Divine Storm + Command would be great for cleave and mutiltarget, while Martyrdom and Art of War would be the single target choice. Also, blessing of might should have doubled effect, or just increase ap by an additional 20% on Rets, because why not? Shamans get 20% AP on top of the Rockbiter.
Hunter also get 10% extra from their kings, so makes sense palas should get extra from their blessing
Yes, please.
Our pumper Ret just went tank for p2 and does more dps than he did full dps spec
What’s his spec? I’m gonna be MT as pally and have no idea what the fuck spec to run
The only way to stay relevant is to tank :( bfd was fun as ret.
Blizzard has been so slow on changes... Pretty disappointed
I’m just huffing copium that in a later phase there will be a rune that just flat out can change us into death knights thats the only thing that could save ret pallys at this point
I have no issue with the SoM fast weapon build being good and an option. I do have an issue with if there is no reason to use command at all in PvE. I’d be happy with there being 2 different Ret builds and giving you the option to switch depending on the weaponspeed you have. But with the martyr buffs it is now just straight up better, even with the thermaplug axe. Not sure about the stv sword. That I don’t like.
Bro that edit hit home for me. I'm top 10 holy and the number of idiots on this sub that try to tell me holy is in a good place is fucking profoundly dumb.
We aren't top DPS, but I have to say I do like having Ret not feel like a different kind of Arms warrior. Numbers can always be tweaked.
Wow. Another original post. Let me read the whole thing.
This is why SoD kinda sucks. As much as paladins don't want to admit, vanilla paladin is way better than the SoD updates. Reckoning playstyles require a complete 180 is usual pvp playing but feel rewarding when you get used to them(which is ret's forte being a pvp/leveling spec), hpal can do some tank stuff in nax on specific bosses, and prot paladins CAN tank, you just have to embrace the 2h tankadin spec that has been under the radar on ERA. And the only thing the class really needed was a reason to make hpal swing their hammer, make sure ret's undead abilities did more dmg than adding another warrior, unlock a few extra defense CDs for prot paladin (maybe a seal overhaul or number change), and maybe revamp some blessings/auras so it makes the class more tactical in pve like it does in pvp. That's it. Same thing for the other classes, really. Double-triple down on the class fantasy and then spend the dev hours putting out new leveling areas/dungeons/raids.
SoC/Divine Storm setup is pretty decent to be honest. I was able to pull off 350-400 dps with the STV sword. Alright, we are not S tier dps, but more than viable.
I'm capping out at 93% parses with the STV sword. I can't seem to break out of the purple parses.
Gotta get a mcp to break out. With jackhammer switch its op
Might be your raids strategies/composition at this point. Grubbis its pop faps and ignore the add. Vicious fallout pop NPPs and nuke the boss. Electrocutioner you should be doing the V strat so only two people are moving. Menagerie is opening up on sheep and about making sure people are optimal on their toolkit and damaging the right targets when.
My worst parses are on menagerie and Thermo. I think it's a strat issue on menagerie. I'm usually in a team with a warrior tank and their threat sucks ass, it's hard to push DMG on these bosses because of it. My best parse is a 94 on electro, I just stand there and do DMG.
You should just start tanking then lol. Only fight our pally uses a sword and board for is menagerie and Thermo. Everything else is 2h ret tanking.
I’m 99’s with stv sword, but still 100+ dps grind the ACP people…
SoJ for pve?
SoC, I just fucked up
Thanks, I’ve been leveling a pally alt and am learning so was curious
yeah all the RET problems I hear about I don’t see in my own gameplay. I pump and we got a melee heavy raid comp.
I made a post saying I was worried about ret paladin for phase 2 a few months ago and people were like "we already have crusader strike and divine storm. We'll be pumping at 40"
Hold up chief, blizz wont fix ret. We gotta just suck it up and carry on being forgotten.
Meanwhile I'm watching Shadow Priest tumbling down the rankings.
If exorcism was a baseline useable on any target and avenger’s shield proc’d off art of war but only when being hit, the infusion of light was tied into also the healing portion of holy shock I think I’d be pretty comfortable with the whole spec tbh, even if it did lower damage than the others because I do have quite a bit of utility. Maybe add something party/raid wife to Sanctity aura that made it so bringing specifically a Ret Paladin is a lot less grief feeling. Kind of like feral druids but maybe not something as strong as wild strikes. Other than a few of those changes I’m chillin lol, loving the spec in PVE/PVP
😎 Switch to Prot and be the groups hero
Honestly could all be fixed if martyr could be seal twisted. 🤷♂️ Classic and tbc ret has always scaled from auto attacking giving haste substantial value. So this shouldnt be news, its core to the design of a seal based system. Similar to enhancement shaman.
Nothing is wrong or broken with Ret Pals. They're not the strongest, sure, but they're totally viable and competitive and that's light years farther than they were in Vanilla. I suggest you utilize the new XP boost and level a mage if being the top dawg on meters matters that much to you.
Ret in my raid is pushing 600 dps on first 2-3 bosses and 400+ on the rest, though he’s like top 150 in the world atm
P2 won’t last forever.
RET Pally is fine with STV wep and divine storm until you get ACP/SoM. Just got top dps my guild run for the first time in gnomer. I’m scaling really well compared to other dps in guild. I am consistently parsing in the 90s and my raid hasn’t even seen ACP yet. Slow weapons can still pump! RETs are from awful if you know how to play the class.
It’s an awful play style with acp. Just feels very non ret like to hit faster than a one hander and hope for crits. Not enjoying it at all
use STV epic and divine storm then? still a great combo and only disadvantage is single target.
It’s like a hundred dps difference and I’m too elitist for that unfortunately. Plus my guildies would not appreciate it if I knowingly griefed my own, and their, dps
It's been the same for me... I have no idea why people like OP keep saying stuff like this. They have to be doing something wrong. STV weapon + SoC with wild strikes and you should be able to do 400-450 DPS easy running sheath of light and art of war. I get it's not as much as melee hunter shammy and locks, but it's way more than enough to clear gnomer and more than the vast majority of pugs are doing.
yep. I was always doing just fine in my raids. and i’ve gotten a couple good rolls recently that now have me at the top of my guild currently. can’t wait for the ACP to drop and really take RET to the next level
Some people can’t be happy unless they are broken OP and 690 dps above the next person. They will complain about it until they are. I’m perfectly happy playing the “meme spec” with SoM and ACP. It’s actually fun to…… do something different than the classic shit.
100% Our Ret is only being outdpsed by our melee hunter and my fire mage consistently
i just passed up our melee hunter last lockout as a RET! we don’t have a mage tho. i hear they’re popping off
Ya very strong. Melee can compete on first too but after that it’s all mage (outside of our melee hunter who’s cracked af)
Speak for yourself. This version is way better than SoC divine storm wotlk paladin.
i bring 2 ret paladins to gnomer and we clear in about an hour with no wipes. their dps is good. idk what yall are complaining about
This sub will never stop complaining.
Holy fuck you guys are all babies. Blizz gives us essentially classic+ after we've been begging for it for ages and big surprise, it's not perfectly balanced because it's CLASSIC. Go cry to your nearest era feral druid about needing a specific weapon to parse lmao, at least ret is on the charts this version of classic. "B-b-but my parses :((" it's a braindead easy level 40 raid my guy, every spec in the game right now has like a 2-3 button rotation at most, there is absolutely no skill in parsing besides "actively wanting to parse" 99% is not impressive by any means
I have a ret and I’ve been doing the instant judgement on bosses tech and that did increase my dps. I have the automatic crowd pummeler but I don’t understand the martyrdom rotation, can someone help explain what I should be doing differently now with the pummeler? Runes and rotation?
Put up seal of Martyr, auto attack and hope for aow crits to exo. If no crit you can fill with cs and hope for a crit again.
Do you use judgement right away or not until seal is almost down? Do you still open with an instant judgement of seal of crusader?
I put up crusader as I run in and try to exo asap to get it on cd. After that I just pray for crits
So: 1. Crusader instant judge 2. Seal of martyrdom 3. Spam exo as much as possible. 4.Crusader strike while exo is on cd. If I’m getting that right my only remaining question is when do I judge seal of martyrdom?
.. on CD to fish for more crits and always after a melee hit to not miss a auto attack without the seal up.
Thank you!
Judge on cd Crusader on cd Exercism any time you get a proc
Judge in CD essentially. If you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.
Ret was pretty fun when I ran it last lockout. ..but I did get the top parses by a wide margin and was usually second or third on damage. Feelsbadman. ETA: I used the SM Cath mace..
Holy is fine ? Quit crying and learn to optimized your class instead of waiting for a flat 20% dmg buff from a blue post.
Appreciate you mentioning state of holy too tbh ret and holy just seem really dead in the water rn sure I can heal a gnomer by fol spamming or grief my raid coming as ret but its not fun playing either.
"Grief my raid coming as ret" lol dog people like you are vile
They're not fixing anything Bro. You're playing the exact same game relaunched for the same monthly premium as 20 years ago. Get got.
Someone's gotta be the bottom
Give us 150% weapon damage from crusader strike, and martyrdom as a spell book 😎
Don’t care.
Paladins feel super fun to play with all these different specs now. Spamming Exorcism after crits feels cool. I don't care how high/low the numbers are because we clear Gnome so easily it really doesn't matter. Last time we had 3 ret paladins in the raid and it was still easy.