is Ret really viable in raiding? Follow

Actually it does.

Thanks for showing up though. I'd take a moment to explain why later today but it seems like you guys have a hard on for consistently exposing your own ignorance and lack of experience and using it as a shield of fail to consistently explain why you are only able to talk about the very beginning steps of raiding which are in no way indicative of raiding as a whole.

The proc is useless for raiding unless you're strictly soloing some kind of add. Even the trinket you get from the level 60 five man in hellfire is better. It's an amazing soloing trinket, but it sucks bad for raids. There are two awesome pre-raid ones to strive for that I can think of. One from regular mech, one from regular BM if you're curious.



The neckpiece is best replaced pre-raid by the one off of the 2nd boss in SL. There's also a decent craftable one from JCs. Moroes drops what is, IMO, the best caster neck pre-Kael. Can't remember what it's called, though. Capes: 2 best choices are either the one off of regular Ikiss in Sethekk(it's what I'm wearing ********* you Prince Malchezaar, **** you). Belts...hrm, the one out of Heroic Mana Tombs is awesome. Girdle of Ruination is the better crafted route. Won't find better til Illhoof. Battlecast is halfway decent(for an epic raid DPS gear, though, it sucks), but if you're going to go to the effort to craft something, you really can't beat spellstrike for the same slots. But have her hang onto battlecast in case you do Gruul. It's not bad for mage tanking.




First of all, make sure he isn't using those for instances. If he is, many many options for trinkets(both him and the mage). Badge trinket(Icon of the Silver Crescent) > Scryer's Bloodgem > Quagmirran's Eye > Shiffar's Nexus-Horn > Xi'ri's Gift > Vengeance of the Illidari > Some crappy green quest rewards > Skyguard trinket. As far as stats, what I mean is that destruction doesn't really hold its own compared to say, Affliction, til T6 content. That said, if he's intent on staying destro, have him focus on +hit, then probably damage and crit evenly, kind of how I do a mage.

Optimally, the wand off of Aran, the one from heroic UB, or the one from badges with a nice spell hit rating gem in it.

Like I said in my first post here, I am honestly not that down on Ret at all anymore. Provided his personal DPS was good enough, I would still be more than willing to take a Retadin along. I wouldn't expect him to be beating out Rogues or Hunters, but as long as the raid as a whole is putting out sufficient DPS, it's not something that I would have a problem with.

I just wanted to give tg v. 2.0 a little reality check before this turned into another "oMg ReT iS wTfPwN" thread and/or his e-peen gets too big.

First of all, don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to be some big champion of ret (my pally is prot, after all) but I find it interesting that the guild who got that (admittedly)PTR world first kill on a boss takes a ret pally along to all of their raids (or so they say), yet everyone talks about how much ret sucks and is non-viable in raids. I would assume that a guild that could take out Sunwell bosses must have cleared BT/MH, so they obviously have experience in 25 mans.

Like I said, don't take me wrong, I'm not saying that ret pallies are awesome or anything, but it seems that at least some advanced guilds think that it's worthwhile to have a (presumably) extremely well-played ret pally along.

Of course, I suppose Vis Maior (I believe that was the guild name) could just be a bunch of scrubs who got lucky getting that kill. It didn't look like too tough of a fight (though admittedly, the video they have posted isn't very good resolution.)

He.

And yeah, I see how a Feral has more utility in the form of Innervate and Rebirth whereas one or two Holy Paladins would bring enough to the table to make the Retribution dead weight, seeing as his role would be DPS and he'd suck at it compared to a pure DPS class, like an extra Rogue or whatnot.

Right?

People just like to underestimate the value of something like imp. Sanc. Aura, Imp. BoM, Imp. Seal of the Crusader, and Crusader Strike when they're min-maxing. It's nearly impossible to fully quantify the benefit that these things bring to a raid so the natural (and incorrect) assumption is that they are insignificant. After that, you've got a bunch of people who, when faced with the benefits of the above et al, would rationalize them away by saying "well, a group of pallies (2-3) could provide those benefits if they actually tried.

The auras, blessings, and judgments given by any pally are extremely useful. Assuming you aren't living in a world where there are 4+ holy pallies in every raid (and thus a lack of more versatile healers), a ret pally is more desirable than prot for filling those roles. While prot has an added benefit of tanks, assuming you have a proper distribution of both healers (i.e. no more than 1:3 pally to total healers) and tanks (i.e. no more than 1 prot pally), there is certainly room for a ret pally just like there is room for a moonkin druid or ele shaman.

The ideal group for the ret pally would involve something like a rogue, feral druid, fury warrior, enhance shaman and himself. The other four are easily around 900 DPS in T5 content. This is now 2% greater for each of them.

Raid wide DPS is also going up by a factor of their crit dependency. For Mages this is almost a straight 3% damage increase, as well as for hunters. Moonkin and Ele shaman are around there. Others get around 2% increase and Affliction locks and Spriest garner around 1%. If you're running a balanced raid it's anywhere from 250-350 extra DPS.

Imp. BoM is a small DPS increase for all melees.

Crusader Strike provides a JoW for an immeasurable (although more significant than JoCrusader in most cases) DPS increase for all casters.

Even assuming the ret pally is far below at around 700 DPS, he's still providing hundreds of DPS to the raid indirectly. Yes, you could grab a 900 DPS rogue, but even then you will suffer from lower raid wide DPS. Shaman and Moonkin provide greater party benefits but lower raid benefits. All 3 are viable for raiding. Just because they don't produce their numbers directly doesn't mean they aren't there.

I think we have to really look at the raid as a whole to determine if a ret paladin is a viable addition to the raid.

Do your holy paladins judge the bosses? If the answer is no, ret loses 1 point.

If the answer is yes, ret gains 1 point because he can keep those judgements alive so the holy paladin can back out, and get to a safe healing distance for the raid.

I, as a prot paladin, would love to be the one judging crusader @ 3% crit, having a holy judge light, and a ret judging wisdom, or vice versa, and having that ret paladin keeping all those judgements alive and active for the entire fight.

At that point, its like making the boss a mini-shadow priest to your raid. Sure, its 95 hp and what, 74 mana for every arrow / spell / melee hit. But what does that do for the rest of your raid? A shadow priest only benefits returns of HP/Mana to the other 4 members of its party, not the other 20 in the raid. It lowers the amount of healing that the ranged classes have to take in most cases, if a hunter can fire an arrow every 2 seconds, 30 times a minute he has a 40% chance to return hp/mana to himself. If you figure that 40% as a true static #, then 12 x 95 = 1140 hp, and 888 mana a minute that he doesn't have to consume pots for, that the healers don't have to account for, etc etc etc. Considering you can only chug a pot of one or the other every 2 minutes. He can restore that amount of HP and mana back to himself, saving that pot for the "oh chit" situation.

If he's geared well enough, he'll do feasible DPS. Topping the charts is something only 1 person can do every raid, period. There's always gonna be a #1, and then "the rest" of the raid. If his DPS helps down bosses, and his 2% to dmg brings up the abilities of all the other DPS'ers in his group, then in what fashion do you believe they are not viable?

I would never expect a ret to outdps warlocks, mages, rogues or hunters, its not their fault that Blizzard gimped the **** outta their gear. You have to view the full picture IMO to determine if its viable for YOUR raid.

We roll with 5-7 paladins pretty much every single raid, myself and the rest holy. We do have a ret paladin in the guild that will on occassion pop by to raid with us (he's a busy guy in college and what have you).

If he raids tomorrow, I'll gladly show ya WWS #'s and tell you where the others in the raid typically fall in terms of DPS, so you could make a somewhat sensible judgement. Sure, it's only 1 instance, but he doesn't raid enough with us to give you a months worth of data, and try and substantiate yes or no, but its something.

Me personally, I'm anxious to see 2.4 gear changes for ret paladins. Cause I believe they are the one part of the tree that yes has been abused with the whole lolret thing, but its utility as a class has been lost because of that.

P.S. - This is not 10 man Kara content, this is 25 man content, and while its not BT / Hyjal, its still applicable to most persons posting here.

Then again, I've always been a firm believer that any class can be beneficial to a raid IF the person knows how to play their class effectively.

I've never been the kind of person to be **** about spec's. Sure there are those that work better, and in certain fights, you cannot spec certain ways (frost mage on Hydross for example, or elemental shaman either, you lose 50% of your DPS potential because of it), there are the full, 100% hardcore DPS spec's, and then there's the spec's that might not be the chart topping of the DPS, but they offer utility that pure DPS cannot account for.