is Ret really viable in raiding? Follow

Tell him to stop being a noob and stand behind the target. Then again, if he cant figure that out on his own chances are he's just bad completely and gearing wrong, using bad rotations, etc.

Edited, Feb 15th 2008 10:23am by KTurner

I pulled a 25% damage kara just last night. and im only in S1/vind. skipped Nightbane, Illhoof, Netherspite.

We one shotted Prince so im going to assume that the other DPS where at least capable in their own right as well.

Rets are Viable in the right hands in the right circomstances, at least in the early raid content. sounds like your friend, however, isnt good/knowledgable enough to play a handicapped DPS class.

Also, PvP epics for Ret have more DPS stat then most PvE stuff. and after 2.4 they will take all of the SD and add it to even more DPS stat. which is pretty convenient for any woodbe Rets.

hmm, i'm gonna have to add something like this to the "what does ret bring" section. back from another week in the field, so i'll put a few more mins into updating the ret guide.

luckily the other pally isn't our guild. We didn't have enough for a full 2nd kara group, and took 5 guys from another newish guild who couldn't fill out a kara group. The first pally though is in our guild. He seems alright, but complains alot. But I just don't think he knows how to put out high dps. One night during steamvaults he was trying something to try to increase his dps. You guys should know what it is. It does damage to him or something. The damage is no big deal, my healing stream totem can take care alot of it (or I just use chain heal). So whatever works. But I think it causes damage to him, but increases his holy damage 35% or something. My pally is only 45, so I'm not sure what it is.

But is there any good ret pally gear in kara or beyond?

Edited, Feb 15th 2008 2:05pm by thrashering

that SoB story makes me laugh/cry at the same time.

my guild kara runs have been so melee heavy lately that Prince was near impossible. check my armory, im uncrushable raid buffed with 16k hp. our make up the last few weeks has been this.(however we usually have a 2nd rogue over the hunter). which is awesome for many of the fights.

during Prince i hop into my tank gear and druid goes melee. so our usual set up for Prince is 2 healers, 1 tank, 3 range, and 4 melee! the best we did this week was 8%(then infernal dropped on the grp). melee would usually end up being boxed in or get picked off 1 by 1. we had tanking done, healing done, but melee's lack of dps gimped us big time. the only people that had alts were already ranged :\

this shows how you need to weigh your effectiveness for any given raid and adjust.

I figured he meant the shield from Nightbane.

I am actually toying with the idea of picking up a ret set for when I don't need to tank, I guess a thunder and a bunch of ragesteel and dungeon drops should boost my DPS significantly for Shade of Aran and curator if I am not tanking. Time to make ANOTHER gear list for myself. Just about to start running my GF through a ton of instances to gear her holy pally up, so time to conveniently pick dungeons with plate DPS drops also. =)

As much as we rag on Ret, at the point it's at now I can honestly say I would not mind a Ret Pally in my raids one bit as long as he's geared right and plays well. I recently joined a new guild that's very low on Paladins; my raid group typically has two Resto Druids and a Resto Shaman (me) healing, and I would appreciate Paladin buffs no matter where they're coming from. The 2% damage increase aura and extra 3% crit chance on targets is nothing to write home about, but again, I can't say I'd mind it one bit. They could even provide some highly situational CC on fights like Moroes.

But again, I reiterate that it would depend on the individual player. Kara may be a concerted 10-man effort, but the other four DPS aren't there to make up for your shortcomings. I expect everyone to pull their own weight, and if he's seriously slacking on the DPS then I'd tell him to GTFO.

... No. That is all.

You'd rather have a Ret Pally standing next to you than a Holy Pally in a BG?

Nope.

Off-healing in end-game PvP isn't really as viable as one might think. People just do too much damage. If you're not geared to heal, trying to heal through damage allows you to achieve, at best, a status quo that's only going to go on until either you run out of mana or you just end up falling too far behind from silences/interrupts.

When you're fighting an Enhancement Shaman, Ret Paladin, etc., and they start to heal, that's usually a sign that the fight is about to end. They'll keep themselves alive for a few more seconds, but in all likelihood they're still going down.

Case in point: If the Ret Pally's the one getting beat on, he can pop a shield, heal himself back to full, and buy you guys a little more time. But if you guys are going two-on-two against anyone in even remotely well-geared in 70 PvP epics, he's not going to be able to heal through the damage and he's probably going to go OOM as a double-whammy. (Saying he could heal through one-guy's damage is pretty pointless, there's not a 2v1 situation in the world you guys should lose. But eventually, people's damage is going to get so high that he won't even be able to do that anymore.)

Edited, Feb 17th 2008 3:11am by Gaudion

i agree that when a ret is healing, fight is almost over. when we tag team the dps down, i like to sit back and watch my hunter eat the healadin while i toss a couple FoLs.



this is the defensive playing that ultimately hurts a ret pally. i'd recommend bubbling up and finishing the job. heal later.

how did we get to a pvp discussion, lol?

They're not entirely unheard of, however.

This was linked on the shaman forums, it's a PTR world first, so I imagine the guild must be pretty darn decent, and they raid with a ret pally.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all ret pallies are raid viable, but they very best of them apparently are. And, from what I understand, that extra lay on hands can save a wipe.

Yeah, most of them are terrible. It just seems to me that if they weren't viable, a raid that managed to be the first to down a boss (even on the PTR) wouldn't be running with one. Of course, I've never been on the PTR, so it's entirely possible that none of the really good guilds bother to go there to try out new content (although I would think they would.)