I assume Blizzard does not want to create another Shadow Priest (providing a large benefit to others and high dps) via the Ret Pally with more group buffing abilites.

Honestly, I think Ret is not going to change much, but at least the Wrath card seems like it would help Vengence roll.

Paladins are in the relatively challenging position of being extremely durable in PvP, so giving them damage competitive with pure DPS classes probably won't happen. I would expect a buff to come in terms of a group-based damage modifier rather than an increase in raw damage output. However, Blizzard probably feels that global 3% crit (they can't really buff this much without putting LotP to shame), an aura, and a set of blessings for everyone in the raid is already fairly compelling in spite of middling damage. If anything, the issue is that paladin healers are so compelling that they far overshadow the benefit of a Retribution paladin if you assume that only want three paladins per raid.

Come to think of it, another reason Ret paladins are hard to justify in endgame raids is because Prot paladins are hard to justify in endgame raids. Assuming 70% of a protection paladin tank's damage comes from holy damage (just a guess--anyone have a damage meter breakdown?), a Ret paladin in the same group would increase that tank's threat ceiling by a bit over 13% now, and by almost 16% in 2.1. That's very significant for any threat limited dps class if the Prot paladin's tps is already competitive with other tanks.

A paladin, wielding a two hander, is not that durable in pvp and has far fewer escapes than other classes. The bubble is the crux of the problem. When it runs out, all that so called survivability goes down the drain (especially in 2v1 situations).

I don't think that's entirely true, there's still two fairly lengthy single-target stuns, and in a pinch paladins can heal through damage in a number of cases. When you're talking about being assist-trained or playing against very good 5v5 teams then maybe you have other concerns to deal with, but the fact remains that Blizzard doesn't want to create classes that dominate in "normal" PvP (or PvE) scenarios.

If Retribution paladins ever do as much direct damage as mages, then I'm fairly certain that most people including Blizzard would see something as being broken.

Yah, my warlock twink is perfectly balanced and adjusted to the "normal" PvP environment and doesn't grossly out damage people that are better geared than him in PvE either. Based on past behavior, Blizzard's balancing on PvP aspects seems to come at a whim rather than anything really substantive, unless it's something glaringly obvious. Even then, it's a 50/50 chance whether or not they'll make a change in less than a year's time.

Nerf the bubble and add utility and then the retribution tree might be less than 41-point investment to refresh blessings.

That are on excessively long timers that can easily be escaped from through a host of means available to a multitude of classes through skills, talents, and items.

For most cases in 1v1 PvP, certainly. But in organized PvP or in situations where the people trying to kill you aren't mentally retarded that becomes less of an option without using your bubble.

Mages really aren't the crème de le crème damages dealers they once were, but as a utility melee tree retribution should at very least be able to offer the same DPS indirectly through melee related buffs to others.

The pet doesn't really play the largest part. 2v1 and sometimes even 3v1 pvp is quite the joke with the large number of CC and escape options available. Warlock damage is as interruptible as Paladin healing, especially with intensity and the slew of instant cast dots. The largest threat to a warlock's existence is cloak of shadows and deathwish, each with a little luck can be countered in their own right.

3% crit is easily overshadowed by the variance in individual performance. 5 points into the retribution tree for improved BoM does not make someone a retribution paladin.

Paladins only have one decent [raiding] tree and it's getting nerfed. It's not as bad as the other trees, but it's definitely lacking in many areas (variety/utility). It'd be nice if Blizzard brought the other trees in line with the Holy tree, but I think it's more realistic that they'd further nerf the Holy tree to bring it down to the level of rest. Essentially creating a festering shit pile that can cast a blessing every 15 minutes.

But paladin still wears plates and can heal and LayOnHand, cleanse and use blessing of freedom.

Now if Blizzard gives paladin DPS that can compete with other melee class in raid, imagine how hard they will rule in pvp situations.

In my view of things, priests should be better healers overall than paladins. Really, what will determine whether priests get buffed or paladins get nerfed is whatever Blizzard sees as being the appropriate baseline level of healing. Personally, I'd like to see them come up with a solution that makes mana potion consumption undesirable, and then work from there. But in the case of healing, I would definitely not consider it a simple case of buffing or nerfing.

One thing that I understand from WOW is that in pvp, number rules, unless you grossly outgear your opponent, or outlevel your opponent, (or your opponent just bought the toon from ebay) you are not supposed to win 2vs1 fight, and even smaller chance to win 3vs1 fight.

To state the obvious, a paladin wielding a two hander has about as much AC, if not less, than an elemental shaman that can easily out damage/burst a paladin. Lay on hands is on long cool down and rarely sees use in most situations, outside of being used for the gimmicky AC buff in raids, because it completely saps a paladin's mana which is normally a waste.. Other hyrbids, even those specc'd for DPS which overshadows a paladin's, have some sort of cure. If you're really intimidated by blessing of freedom, there is something wrong with you. It's far more effective on a paladin's ally than the paladin. Even if they didn't have the ability, most of the slowing effects could be cured, shielded, trinketed, or BoP'd out of.

I'm under the impression that a blizzard dev was waffle stomped in AV and has it out to not make retribution a legitimate tree.

And yet it happens largely based on the determination of class and spec. WoW PVP isn't balanced, and based on past behavior, I think they've given up trying.

What're the expected DPS numbers for all of those classes?

Is (DPS War + Enh. Shammy + Feral Druid + Rogue + Rogue) >> (DPS War + Enh. Shammy + Feral Druid + Rogue + Ret pally) * 1.02? Close? Depends?


What about being put into a S-Priest/lock/etc group? I don't consider the personal DPS of the Ret paladin to be important... The question is if he brings enough to be desirable?

I personally think he does, but people get focused on "best" over "good".

I've got to ask, what about the nontrivial level of threat a retadin is generating?

1:1 threat generation is really huge, and we've all seen (I'm sure) some of the dangerous levels of threat Enhance for example can output (with 15% reduction on most of thier attacks).

While I don't think the dps is quite there (yet) to require massive concern about it, with this new patch in an optimized group that Ret will be pulling out easily more threat than any other class at lower damage. I'm not saying that most of the high end fights are overly threat sensitive, but if we're looking at competative dps outpacing the tank might well be a real concern.

As for group placement, I think it probably just matters based upon raid makeup. If you have a prot pally tanking the Ret lives in that group, otherwise there are some other options- and personally I very much like putting them in the SP group because thier dps isn't precisely free (though not hideously expensive), and giving them some mana to offheal while upping the mana regen of the group a bit. The 2% to a warrior however might make a significant difference in rage generation...

I still just keep coming back to overwhelming threat though. It's all well and good to say that that is rarely a limiting factor in fights nowadays, but if your tank is putting out 750 TPS while the Retadin is pumping 1100 dps and gets a couple of crit chains, squish goes the pally.

Forgive my potential ignorance, but don't Retadins also provide a 3% raid-wide crit bonus against their targets? Doesn't that have to be taken into consideration when crunching the numbers and deciding whether they're worth it?

From my guild's perspective, we have 5 paladins. All of them are currently holy because we only have 4 holy priests and 1 resto druid - both our shaman are elemental. If we pick up another resto druid/shaman, one of the paladins wants to try out Ret. He's been defaulted some ret gear that would have been otherwise sharded, so I'm very interested to see if people are able to draw conclusions as to their viability.

Ret paladins will be incredible after patch 2.1.

I have no mathematical basis for this. I do have some logic to support this assertion, like the fact that Vengeance is going to be over twice as effective, melee hazard is being nerfed across the board, and the change to sanctity aura will allow pallies to stack in melee groups (windfury/battleshout, anyone?).

I don't think it's so much the bubble as it is 2 forms of CC that will never see ret do any damage.

If you bubble the other guy goes to bandage, stealth, gets a breather for cooldowns, maybe even eat/drink and besides it's such a long cooldown. Sure you can argue the CC is weak on longish cooldowns, but really HoJ is the most powerful stun in the game and repent is ranged gouge.

I never understand why people let this happen in a 1v1 situation. You usually need 1-2 heals when you bubble (I do anyway), so I just try to run very close and only bubble when my judgement is off CD. That allows you to heal quickly, then judge/holy shock to reset the combat timer, run abit closer again and throw off another heal. This usually doesnt allow for any form of restealthing or more then 1 bandage tick.

Sorry for the OT.

I'm more of the opinion that Paladins just cant be 'too good' at anything, because however we are specced, we will always have some of the best buffs in the game, not to mention BoP and an extra dispelling class.

Raids will generally take Holy because it's another good healing class with a sweet dispel and sweeter buffs.

Tanking is a sticky situation due to the fairly min/max nature of tanking and also the very limited number of tanks in a given raid.

DPS is initially tough when you think about how crowded the role is. But if you think of Ret as less melee and more "melee activated buffs", we can make the tree into something like Shadow Priests for melee, but with less damage and more buffing.

I only brought up the 1v1 situation because it's the strongest suit for ret. Not particularly strong in the bigger scheme of things, but it does alright.

It's not worse than a warlock having three flavors of fear (coil, howl, fear) and seduce. Mages with CS, polymorph, iceblock, etc. So, you can easily stun lock an opponent every minute-ish and occasionally kill them before they can do anything. I don't see that as a reasonable justification because such gimmicks prevail in the bulk of the classes.

In the patch notes they said they fixed SoC generating too much threat however melee 2h ret paladins still have no passive -threat other than blessing of salv which everyone gets anyway. So say your tank does 600ish threat per second if you are able to do 1000dps you are very very close to pulling agro and dying.

I dont think Retadin raid viability would be questioned if we could reach any sort of agro cap due to sheer DPS.