Hey everyone. I played vanilla in 2005 but I was shit at video games and had no idea about any of the deeper mechanics of the game, never did any dungeons, etc. So for all intents and purposes I'm a noob.
As I've inched closer to 40 and started doing Scarlet Monastery runs I'll be LFG and get messages telling stuff like "give up, you're shitty DPS, no point" etc. etc. I guess I'm kinda second-guessing my choice of spec and wanted some advice from the pros. While looking for a list of BIS gear for my level I've come across a lot of people essentially saying I'm SOL for getting into any proper raids or guilds who are serious about raiding. I want to do end-game content and have fun, but it sounds like I'm going to have a hard time getting into any groups. I've been following a guide on Wowhead for retribution paladins, but it seems like I'll be more viable for higher level dungeons, end-game content, raids, etc. if I respec to holy?
tl;dr some questions:
- Will I have a hard time finding groups as retribution/DPS for dungeons from 40-60?
- If I re-spec to holy/healing at 60, will I be able to do raids and end-game content?
- Should I just surrender my paladin and roll a new character with a more viable class?
@halot
If you are looking to get to 60 as fast as possible.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- No. Play what makes you happy. Playing the less popular specs of the paladin will require more effort once you get to level 60 for players to recognise.
Level up to level 53 as ret, then respec holy. You should be able to AH most of the initial healing gear you need.
Then you will have plenty of time to gear up holy while dungeon grinding.
If you are planning to do dungeon grinding earlier than level 53, respec to holy already.
I wanna point out that the class guides on Wowhead are in general terrible, especially the ret guide.
It is nothing you should follow.
Well its a tricky situation for sure, Ret paladins have an excellent class fantasy associated with them, but it kinda stays with fantasy as executing the holy judgement part is lacklustre at best. Going the Retribution route, is a challenge and it is almost guaranteed that you will hear more and more of those comments as you step into MC and beyond.
Holy on the other hand, is highly viable and quite heavily sought after at all tiers of raiding - but you have to be into it, to have fun with it, but holy will always be there as a fall-back. For Retri, then I think your best odds is to join a casual raiding guild, where its more about getting the 40 people together, than it is about fast progression ; it will still require a solid investment from you to be the least bit competitive, but at that level of raiding, you playing retri is not going to be a deciding factor for your guild to succeed or not.
If you wanna Retri up, then check out these discords;
https://discord.gg/u4dhWpU
https://discord.gg/9qFcUnn
Both provides solid tools that you can use, and are better resources than the terrible wowhead guides. If you decide to go holy, and want a resource for gearing, then you are welcome to visit the vault in my signature - it has more or less all you could need ;)
|Paladin|Firemaw EU-PVP|
A comprehensive tool for guild managers maintaining rosters & loot distribution in LC based guilds
Vault of the Silverhands, A Gear Primer for Holy Paladins
A progressive and customisable item, enchant and buff overview for Holy Paladins
Leveling as Ret is perfectly viable. No one has been asking for my spec when healing dungeons - gear and level is more important.
Once you approach 60, that's another matter. The prejudice against Ret is powerful.
Should you reroll? If you love the Ret playstyle specifically, no, because there's nothing else like it. However, if your goal is simply to DPS and you're not married to Paladin, there are far better class & spec combinations which will also make it easier for you to get into groups and raid guilds.
Yes. It will be harder to find a group as a ret than other pure DPS classes. So comparatively, yes. If I get a pm from 2 dps classes (at any level or time), and one is ret, he probably wont get an invite. However, if I need that final slot and only the ret messages me, he will likely get an invite. To avoid issues, you can always build your own groups. You still wont be well received by a good portion of the population, but ANY class or spec can do a 5 man, regardless of their performance.
This extends into raiding. I wont recruit a ret to my raid team. But if a casual ret happens to be online and I cant fill with people, I would take him.
This is likely the ONLY way you will be able to see endgame content, with few exceptions.
Every CLASS is viable. Every SPEC is not.
Holy paladin = S tier
Ret paladin = meme
Spelladin = meme
Shockadin = meme
Prot paladin = meme
(within the context of high level PvE content)
"But! Look at this video of a guy who is an outlier with lots of consumes in a specific encounter playing with people who are awful at the game and using gear that either outpaces the content or outpaces his team, doing content that is on farm because his parse was really goo-" No. No. No. Shame on you.
That being said, feel free to level a paladin as any of the three specs. They wont really excel regardless of how you level them and due to them having such a poor leveling capacity, all three specs are viable because all are relatively bad.
2000 IQg0bledyg00k wrote: ↑4 years agoNever making a single investment again until I 100% know it pays off.
No you won't find issue geting into dungeon groups.
If you know what you're doing you can top meters as a ret paladin.
I top meteres as a prot paladin sometimes.
Dungeons are easy
Very easy
No ones gatekeeping dungeons unless you're just a weirdo like stfu.
When you start to raid you'll see the dropoff in dps. You'll be extremely gear dependent and do mid/below average dps. But usually most people dont bitch because you're still giving out blessings, freedoms. Seal of wisdom and light will usually be applied by you and you'll most likely be swinging nightfall once you get that. You're support. Basically on the same spectrum as hunter.
Hardcore guilds won't accept ret paladins unless they're bored. You won't see progression raiding with hardcore guilds as ret. (If you do, they're not a hardcore guild. Hardcore level is where I draw the line for rets/prot, etc)
There are plenty of casual guilds that will take a ret paladin that clears the same content.
