Ret PVP (post 4.0.6 and into 4.1)

I was looking for some current information on Ret PVP. I can't give a url to armory right now, but toon is Tolak - Stonemaul US. I'm logged out in PVP Spec/Gear. I'm just getting into PVP and want to start doing some Arena so any advice on gear/spec would be appreciated. I've been trying to find some guides to Ret PVP I've found a few and I'm working on my UI/Macros/Keybinds etc. If anyone knows of good current guides I could reference or want to give me advice I would really appreciate it.

You can find a guide on arena junkies forum.

However - given the nerfs retri is going to get, and current state of paladin pvp I'd say you will be much happier if you level a warrior or DK instead.

Hello,

I'm very far from a PvP especialist, hell, i'm very far from a average PvP player, but i can't find a "advantage" that a retri brings into PvP.

My advice would be to go holy or even prot.
If you don't want to heal, Prot loses a little burst/sustained dps, in exchange for a butload of ranged atacks/ranged Silences and very dinamic sigle/AOE damage but above all much more endurance.

but as i said before i don't do more that some random arenas, and other pala's should give better advices.

Mannstein wrote:Prot loses a little burst/sustained dps, in exchange for a butload of ranged atacks/ranged Silences and very dinamic sigle/AOE damage but above all much more endurance.

On the other hand, prot has very little counter for being kited; a ret paladin can pop inquisition, wings, and HoW/Exorcism, especially if they save it until they have an instant Exorcism proc waiting. Wings+inquisition makes HoW->Exo->Exo a really potent-seeming finisher. Ret also has a mild form of CC (repentance), and can cleanse snares (in addition to Hand of Freedom).

Ret paladins have a LOT of burst potential; when timed poorly this is useless, but when timed well it can be really painful to play against, especially on teams without healers, or healers that no longer have a CC-breaker. Prot can lock down a caster pretty well in many cases, but (so far) seems very vulnerable to kiting and CC in general. This means that I have a hard time staying in the fight to assist my partner, sometimes, even though I have lots of tricks like divine guardian and HoSac and a plethora of damage reduction cooldowns.

Thanks for the responses. I'm still torn, but I've started to build a holy set as well. And I may try some prot. I did look at arenajunkies before. Interesting enough the top rated twos team is Ret/rShammy. Vangaurdy (think that is right) is also in the top 5-10 of 3's and 5's. Pretty impressive Ret Pally. I do have a DK as well at 85 and started running more BG on him last couple days. I'll just play around to see what I like best. There are +/- to all the classes and specs.

However - given the nerfs retri is going to get

You talking about the WOG on CD? Or is there something else I missed?

Laser67 wrote:

However - given the nerfs retri is going to get

You talking about the WOG on CD? Or is there something else I missed?

Sacred Shield is copping a 1 minute internal cooldown, up from 30 seconds.

Ret was already not very popular, even holy isn't that popular compared to the other 3 healing classes, and there's only a select few of us who PVP as prot - hardly any break decent ratings with it.

I find it interesting that the highest-rated ret/x team on my server (over 2k, I believe?) is wearing gear that's worse than mine (at ~1500 rating). So clearly it's a skill and class synergy thing. Which is frustrating when I'm a scrub.

Ret + X follows a very simple equation I've found.

If X is amazing, Ret doesn't need to be. (to a point anyway, you can carry a DPS to 2200 in 3's and people do it on my server for 60k)
If Ret is amazing, X still needs to be. Ret can't carry like X can, X usually being a healer.

There's only so much we can do as Ret.

Playing scum cleave we can usually ignore Ret paladins if they're paired with a healer and we just tunnel the healer. If the healer is amazing however, we face several issues no matter how bad the Ret is. Killing the healer is difficult, keeping ourselves alive through feeding from a target is difficult, and ending the game before 45 minutes expire is difficult. If the healer is bad and the ret is amazing, we can just tunnel the healer without any issues at all no matter how much damage and cc the ret tries to apply to us.

Laser67,

What are you trying to achieve? It's 1500 rating, 2200? Just have fun?
If you are aiming to try to get to 2k, i'll silently exit the topic since i'm not qualified to provide any advice.

If the objective is fun read on:

Vort wrote:There's only so much we can do as Ret.

And the same for prot. As said before there are the same issues... (verrry kiteble).

As you said Vort, and from my point of view the Ret is the +1, when i play ret pvp, i must be the support team member, in 3v3 i must support the mage (dps) or druid (healer) and follow their lead.

As a prot, the objective is to force the contact and try to prevent the other team from thinking... but to be honest, the best part of prot, is to survive a full nuke (especialy in 3v3) and start to put pressure with a butload of vengeance.

But tbh against a good team the prot will be ignored more "easily" that a ret.

That's usually because with Prot PVP we're most functional in the 2v2 bracket. Unless another prot paladin has broken 2292, then I claim the best partner we can get is a PVP Blood DK. You need to have a partner with some self sufficiency or else you can't really win. We're easily controlled, but that's where our survivability comes in.

I don't 3v3 as prot and I don't ever intend to try doing it seriously, I PVP as Ret and I've found it's incredibly frustrating even just at the 2000 bracket (although we run with a dodgy setup, holy paly, ret paly, unholy dk). I spam cleanse almost every 3rd GCD just to keep up with people and different slow/root/snare effects that stack take multiple GCD's to remove. It's annoying as hell not having a 'snare' - seal of justice needs to be a stacking effect with truth. We do way less damage than warriors, we can't keep someone off of a focus like a rogue, and we can't debuff/slow/snare/peel like a DK, Kitty druids run circles around us and perma slow their target while causing consistent high damage. Ret isn't useless, but it seems so much less favourable than the other melee classes. If they really want to take WoG away from us in PVP as a 'peel' ability, then they're gonna need to give us either some consistency in damage buffs or give us justice in the seal of truth.

Not gonna ignore the fact that I've managed to kill a priest inside a HoJ with my DK partner, RNG Machines that we are... Give me consistency please.

I've had a great deal of success in arenas, but it REALLY depends on your comp. Rets can bring a lot to a match with things like WoG, Hand of Protection, Sacrifice, Freedom, etc, but to do well you'll need to be paired with another melee in 3s. In 2s, you can do well with pretty much everything. I find double DPS teams to be the most fun, and we usually win if it's my partner that's getting trained due to the utility I bring.

The best double DPS combo is probably Ret/Warrior or Ret/Frost DK for 2s, and make sure to put freedom on them when they use their cooldowns. The same goes for 3s.

Also, use a Last Word build for 2s and a Hammer of Justice build for 3s + 5s.

Since the discussion here is quite broad I didn't want to make a new thread (althgouth we're in 4.2 now and it's somewhat OT)...

I've been ret paladin in PvP (doing strictly rated BGs, never arenas) in the past season. Going into the new season, the whole PvP atmosphere just seems so frustrating. There is no real fighting going on, just endless chain of CCs and Snares and the skill of killing has been replaced by the skill of keeping someone's control over his/her char away for as long as possible. Lame.

Still, I'm at the beginning now and thinking what would be a better (or more FUN) role to play in rBGs. Stick with Retribution or try out Holy. Never been Holy in my 6 year span of playing this character, but as Ret I just feel like a trinket companion to better melee dps classes.

So what are your general thoughts on paladin uses in rBGs? Stay Retribution and polish the skills, change to Holy (or is that even more frustrating as healers tend to get focused on) or perhaps even try it out as Protection in Ret PvP gear?

Thoughts, comments and musings from those who delve in PvP will be very apprectiated. Thank you.

I enjoyed prot a lot more than ret (as I fell less squishy), but I've been really tempted to use my HONOR points to buy holy gear. They have substantial mobility, can cleanse all sorts of bad stuff, and can heal a TON when pressed. The down side is, you WILL be the target.

The stat upgrade from T11.conquest to T12.honor is like 18 stamina or 15 str, in most cases, and that just doesn't seem substantial. (I know, it adds up.) I guess it is pretty worthwhile, but yeah... seems lackluster.

Taeron wrote:Since the discussion here is quite broad I didn't want to make a new thread (althgouth we're in 4.2 now and it's somewhat OT)...

I've been ret paladin in PvP (doing strictly rated BGs, never arenas) in the past season. Going into the new season, the whole PvP atmosphere just seems so frustrating. There is no real fighting going on, just endless chain of CCs and Snares and the skill of killing has been replaced by the skill of keeping someone's control over his/her char away for as long as possible. Lame.

Still, I'm at the beginning now and thinking what would be a better (or more FUN) role to play in rBGs. Stick with Retribution or try out Holy. Never been Holy in my 6 year span of playing this character, but as Ret I just feel like a trinket companion to better melee dps classes.

So what are your general thoughts on paladin uses in rBGs? Stay Retribution and polish the skills, change to Holy (or is that even more frustrating as healers tend to get focused on) or perhaps even try it out as Protection in Ret PvP gear?

Thoughts, comments and musings from those who delve in PvP will be very apprectiated. Thank you.

I find ret to be very powerful in RBGs. Since the healers are generally getting tunneled and the matches lasting over 20 minutes some times, you're able to really exercise your full potential by getting off a lot of wings phases (also, being able to use divine storm in RBGs is fun). It might also be fun to try out prot (re-gem for stamina and resil) and try being the flag carrier. I don't have any experience in this, since for some reason my RBGs always opt to have a blood DK carry the flag instead of me.

I have no applicable experience with being a healer in RBGs either. All I know about holy in PVP is that all DPS will (or should, at least) switch to you as soon as you use your bubble.

I'm holy myself, but I don't find that many RBGs to join as I mostly raid. PvP healing tends to be different than raid healing. Raid healing is all about maintaining mana for the end of the fight, whereas RBGs tend to be very quick and focus more on short term throughput, lots of Flash of Light.

I mostly do raids and only rarely have time to join a rated BG run, but my experience is that I need to be unobtrusive and stick close enough to my dps protection in an RBG to survive any amount of time. Opposing teams seem to identify a Holy Pally and think: 'Holy Pally, quick squash it!'

Random BGs can be a lot of fun however, although is often more of a supporting role and it is difficult to defeat an opponent quickly enough to defend a base solo. With good resilience, going against PvErs I can go 1v2 and hold out defensively and can even survive for a while even in a 1v3 situation. 1v4 is actually survivable if you are going against noobs that don't know how to interupt/stun, which can be fun sometimes (this situation only available in randoms). Even against a geared opponent (or two), if they don't interupt I am very tough to bring down. The nerf to instant exorcisms makes actually killing any enemy player with any non-trivial self heal very difficult and extremely time consuming. (This means Huntards are still fair game, but otherwise I try to be carefull whom I pick on) As Holy, I make a good flag runner in randoms as I can Beacon and Hand of Freedom myself as needed. Also, I get a convenient speed boost from Holy Radience. I once survived as FC until 10 stacks of vulnerability when 3 enemies jumped me (almost lived). Why my team could not down the enemy carrier before then is beyond me.

I think most people who have played both probably prefer ret, but I have been holy since lvl 68 and it works for me.

I pvp as ret,and after ~4 years of suckage,I finally reached 2k in 3s with frost dk+restosham+ret team. Out of 10 teams,7 has feral druids ,the rest is some nasty rmp or castercleave.Balance:\