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This coming from a oldtimer Retribution Paladin...
Rating cap with my old 3vs3 team was around 2160 points. And only thing limiting our rating was the fact that Retribution ran out of tools. I had unreliable damage, none can deny that. Sorry, that is too unreliable damage for high rating. I had best possible gear available, I had extremely skilled team members... But I had to quit because I saw where we were going. My spec was the bottleneck against our nemesis teams, and there were many combinations that work well against team with Retri Paladin. My friends didnt want me to quit. The yasked me to continue, they wanted to keep going. And we could have most likely reached higher ratings if we got our things well. But I could not accept it. I knew what was weakest link in our team. And that made me stop playing Arenas. I knew that if I was playing my Warlock for example, that it would have easily secured our route to higher ratings.
BoF is no good? Purge, Dispell, Devour, Spellsteal. Defensive skills loose always when there is counter for em. Thats one of the major problems. if your support can be easily countered, you are eliminated from the advantages of team. BoP the holy priest is no good? Purge, Dispell, Devour, Spellsteal. Being immune to CC (BoSac) is no good? Purge, Dispell, Devour, Spellsteal. DS? With decent retrigear, lets say you focused on spell dmg to cover this area, you will be throwing about 3k heals. Thats ~3 heals under DS, consuming majority of mana (If you even have much mana left due your extremely manaconsuming Casino combat system). Cleanse is no good? Most of the time your cleanse is waste of time. Its many many many times a lot more useful to just throw 1 heal instead or BoS or DS than waste countless GCD on trying to dispell some trash debuff. Not to mention all the talents against this. Stun and range incapitate is no good? 1 minute cooldown, 2minute trinkets. Repentance can be good and works 1st time against each team. 2nd time they are prepared for it. Offhealin and huge burst is no good? Mana, Healing efficiency, damage. Sweet dream. Everything we had pre TBC have been limited and exponentially "indirectly" nerfed for Retribution spec.
"That is because ppl dont know how to use Paladin properly." You will see this different when you understand how extremely efficient other hybrids are and how great support tools they have combined with great damage output. You will understand how lacking Retribution really is when you see best of the best. And no matter how perfectly you play or perform, even when your enemy makes mistakes you see that if you were some different class you would have won them with ease.
I have said before, that we got great future ahead of us at lvl 60 when TBC was released. But things really didnt turn out well. Everything scaled above us, all those little indirect nerfs and scaling problems pushed us to lvl 60 state when comparing to other classes. Our toolset is extremely thin when comparing to any other "pvp" spec. 40/0/21 spec can produce very similiar damage than Retribution does... They do it with Shield giving them huge boost in physical mitigation and they have extremely good healing capacity despite their offensive spec nature.
Retribution lacks all that, we lost the edge when TBC was released. And thats why I wish TBC never got released. I love good old times of having 1vs1 against skilled people, fighting for 15 minutes without result. All those good friends whoop my ass now. Druids as 1 example. I have a lot of great pvp friends from the old times, but unfortunately I cant compete anymore. I would love to give them challenge, but with given toolset its not possible anymore.
Do I suck? Maybe... Thats very likely. But from the experience and knowledge of pvp system, from the endless studying of my enemies pre TBC have given me slight information of how different kind of skills behave under pvp environment. And currently Retribution have fallen deep behind. I spent hours after hours after hours studying all possible specs of my enemies and all little tricks what top skilled players did on their pvp routines... Now when Im doing same, I can not find solutions to counter many of the tricks and ways they perform against me as Retribution Paladin. Even when I know that my enemy utterly sucks, I know that they can perform set X or Y what makes them win no matter how I play personally. At some cases even good crit strong and luck cant overcome the routines of extremely skilled players. I know exactly how my enemies should play to win me with 100% succes rate. If they make mistake and I win, it wasnt because I was better in handling Paladin, it is because they failed. I came into point where I knew too much of this game and pvp, at that point I gave up.
Many claim that 6sec CS was overpowered. But the fact is that it was only competitive. By no means overpowered. It could make havoc and slaughter clueles noobs with bad gear in the hands of proper player... But there was still plenty of classes who were at equal stage. Giving equally geared and skilled Retribution paladins fun for their money. I can admit that there were players who could win me, I knew how they should have played in order to beat me, and many did. Thats what is called balance.
Unfortunately the crying was too big for Blizzard to keep us at that stage. All the hate, mockery channeled into pure embaracement on players when they lost to a paladin. Unblievable, can you imagine the pain and agony and shame when you realise that Paladin won you? To make it short: As Retribution PvP Paladin all I got from TBC was Judgement of Justice rank2 combined with huge amount of indirect nerfs to core abilities that were advantage for me pre-TBC
There would be so many good tales from my path, and so little time to tell em all.
Last edited by Cromfel : 06/05/07 at 7:51 PM.
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