#ret stuff

Well there’s Corrupted Remembrance

and vanilla Corrupted Ashbringer

and then there’s the Shattered Reckoning skin available next patch but I don’t consider that one “corrupted” persay.  It almost looks kinda dwarvish.

You could argue the Greatsword of the Righteous skin (red variant) could pass for blood elven or human.  

I want to say one of the temp titles for the Burning Reprisal skin had something to do with Liadrin (”Flames of Liadrin?”) cuz I remember folks assuming the fire Ashbringer was supposed to be the blood knight-inspired one.

Truthguard has the Vindicator’s Bulwark skin, which is where all the draenei paladin inspiration went apparently.  

Most of the Silver Hand skins look Lordaeron/titan-inspired with Protector’s Judgement being a tie-in with original T2, which is more dwarvish than human

Although there’s no obvious Blood Knight, Vindicator, or Sunwalker Ashbringer models, there are LOTS of blood elf, draenei, and tauren-inspired artifacts spread across all the classes.  We see these races clearly represented among mages, priests, hunters, and shaman particularly.  

I WISH we saw more non-human or just non-titanish designs for paladin artifact weapons, but the bulk of paladin artifact lore on Azeroth IS entwined with titan lore.  Ashbringer is the exception and I wish the available skins reflected that better.

Wisdom and Kings both got numbers buffs AND they’re usable in combat now, but as far as I can tell, they’re probably not worth the GCD to cast them in combat.  

You can only cast ONE of each now, so only 1 Wisdom and 1 Kings for the entire raid.  You’ll probably throw Kings on a tank or someone who tends to die a lot (hi mages).  Throw Wisdom on a healer I guess.. even buffed, it’s probably not going to contribute much to their mana reserves.

Ret is kinda EHH right now so chances are you’re doing the right stuff, but a lot of your damage simply depends on gear and how much AP you’ve spent on Ashbringer. 

Stats:  Haste to 30% > Crit>=Vers > Mastery

- Strength is your main stat.  Haste is your lifeblood, mastery is trash, everything else is gg.  

Talents I use in dungeons: Final Verdict, or Consecration | The Fires of Justice, or Greater Judgment | Fist of Justice | Blade of Wrath | Justicar’s Vengeance | Cavalier | Divine Purpose, or Crusade

Overview of ret’s talent choices

- Personally I find Fist of Justice better in most situations, especially dungeons where lots of mobs can be stunned.  Keep in mind Ashbringer can AOE stun undead/demons once every 30sec. 

- Word of Glory is a waste of HP in every situation.  Eye for an Eye only works on physical damage, which sounds good but really isn’t.  Overall, Justicar’s Vengeance will always be more beneficial to you.

- I always pick Cavalier because 100% movement speed on demand is nice in a lot of situations.  You don’t need to bubble if you can avoid the damage altogether lol.  Divine Intervention is better if you need to soak a killer mechanic, or if you don’t have a lot of combat awareness.  Seal of Light is absolute dumpster tier don’t even look at it.  

- When in doubt, pick Divine Purpose.  Always use the procs on Justicar’s Vengeance ESPECIALLY if the target is stunned (more reasons why Fist of Justice is awesome).  Never use a Divine Purpose proc on Templar’s Verdict (until you have the golden trait Echo of the Highlord, which doesn’t benefit JV). 

- Use Divine Storm instead of Templar’s Verdict at 3+ targets, maybe better at 4 depending on what’s happenin.

Traiting Ashbringer 

- Ashes to Ashes is your #1 golden trait and your top priority.  Ret paladins take the “quick way” to AtA first, then pool 67k artifact power.  After resetting their traits, they spec the “long way” around to AtA.  The idea is you get AtA quickly for dungeons without spending a while trying to get all the good talents from the long way.  You simply sit on your AP for a lil while before resetting.  It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” strategy.

- For relics, always go for the higher ilvl choice regardless of the traits.  The better your relics, the better your weapon damage.  

Overview of ret’s rotation

- The rotation is centered around the Judgement debuff, aka the Judgement window.  Basically you never want to spend holy power OUTSIDE of the Judgement window, or else you lose A LOT of damage. 

I always see people recommend using Shield of Vengeance as a DPS cooldown but you gotta be real careful with it.  Personally I always save it for when things get hairy, otherwise I use it to stand in bad stuff so I can keep DPSing without dying instantly.

Greater Blessing of Might

- !!VERY IMPORTANT!!  Ret’s DPS is balanced around having 3 Mights on 3 different players in the group/raid.  Always throw Might on the highest DPS, or usually just the most geared DPS/tank in the group. You will only ever use Might in groups, never Kings or Wisdom.

- You can’t cast Greater Blessings in combat so it’s important to throw your Mights on the group before the tank pulls, otherwise you’re locked out of a lot of potential damage. 

- Greater Blessing of Kings is semi-useful in solo content for the absorb shield, but Wisdom has no discernible impact on your play whatsoever.  It’s just a really really really bad spell and it literally doesn’t matter if you use it or not, even solo.

Be critical of Skada and Recount

- Greater Blessing of Might bugs out DPS meters sometimes, causing the meter to misattribute your Might damage to the player it was casted on (the damage is supposed to be attributed to the ret).  It doesn’t happen all the time but just be aware it happens. 

For more info and stuff check out the ret guide on Icy-Veins!

It’s tough to say what is/isn’t viable when the expansion is less than a week old!  Not many people are 110 yet, and of those who are, not many are ret so it’s hard to gauge anything accurately, especially in dungeon content.  Overall I would say every spec is actually viable, but it might be hard to tell while everyone is undergeared and using unfinished artifacts.  

I read some stuff about ret players feeling weak in heroic>mythic dungeons over the last few days but people forget the basic variables.   Most players entering these dungeons are undergeared so of course their damage looks bad, especially next to specs that are better designed for cleaving/AOE.  Ret’s strength is single target.   Doesn’t mean they aren’t good in dungeons necessarily, just means that they’re not as strong RIGHT NOW and especially without a fully traited Ashbringer.

Speaking of Ashbringer our artifact is a huge part of our damage, moreso than most specs in fact. If the player isn’t optimizing the way they spend artifact power then they will absolutely be weaker in dungeons.  

Ret’s first artifact goal is Ashes to Ashes, a golden trait that empowers our Wake of Ashes ability to give us 5HP on demand every 30sec.  Coupled with stuns and Justicar’s Vengeance/Divine Purpose combo, we can nuke targets (and keep ourselves alive).  There’s 3 ways to reach the Ashes trait (as detailed in this video by Thete, a well known ret theorycrafter) in these few weeks before raids open up.  

The Long Way, in which you you spend artifact power on throughput talents.  This will make you stronger in the long run when raids open up, but in the short run, you’ll definitely feel weaker in dungeons for the next 3ish weeks.

The Short Way, in which you spend artifact power on the most direct route to Ashes.  This trait is really good in dungeons and anywhere with demons/undead, but spending power this way means you miss out on the throughput talents and will be a bit weaker in raids initially.  

The Cheesy Way, in which you spend artifact power on the most direct route to Ashes and then refrain from spending any more power.  Pool power until you have 67,000 and then respec Ashbringer for the Long Way.  Now you have access to Ashes in dungeons for the first few weeks, then when raids come out you can respec for more throughput.  The idea behind this is the more traits you buy, the more it costs to respec.  This way lets you have your cake and eat it too for the low low price of 600ish artifact power (the respec cost), but in the meantime you cannot spend your artifact power at all and Ashbringer is playing catch-up.  Of course you can still augment your weapon and raise it’s ilvl/stats/damage with relics. 

Depending on which way a player traits, their damage is going to be naturally weaker in some content than in other content.  That’s just how it’s gonna be.

TL;DR right now I can’t say for sure how ret will be because too many people are trying to parse in sub-optimal gear with an unfinished artifact lol.

Personally I see a lot of potential and viability for this spec.  I’m going the Cheesy Way and I have about 13k AP pooled.  Again I can’t make any concrete claims because I’m not in the best gear either.  

Tbh I will probably just have two mains like I used to.  In Wrath I dual mained moonkin and ret but went paladin fulltime when the raid’s other ret quit in ICC.  I’ve been through hell and back as ret ever since then, and as DISAPPOINTED as I am in Legion’s incarnation, it IS a functional spec… and that alone means TECHNICALLY I’ve played/succeeded with less….

So I will still play my paladin, both ret and prot - that’s the plan anyway.  As long as it’s functional I’ll hold out hope it will eventually be fun again.  Ret players live to suffer.   :P

The absence of Holy Power is still really weird and I keep looking for my HP bar before I hit ShotR lol but I’m probably not playing it right yet - OVERALL their animations and spell effects are amazing and my buttons feel fun.  Some of prot’s talents are REALLY COOL TBH and we get pony baseline with a talent to make it even better.  I actually feel like I’m playing a PALADIN and not a starving warrior with colossus smash.  Prot pally is righteous sparkles and justice hammers and pretty ponies all day errday.  

So ya if you rolled a paladin to smash faces but you don’t wanna play ret anymore, I would recommend giving prot a try 

UNFORTUNATELY if you’re like me and your raid already has their tanks figured out for Legion, switching to prot probably isn’t that simple. Thus, I am stuck with ret... 

Hopefully Blizzard throws in some good ret changes before Legion launches but we might have to wait 1-2 months into the tier before anything happens (if at all)

Why did I rate Ret so low?

(he rambles a bit -- i skipped the video ahead about 2min just to cut out some of it lol)

Most recent Preach video talking about ret’s PVE gameplay in Legion.  As someone who’s mained ret for the last 9 heroic>mythic tiers and been in Legion Alpha/Beta for months, this video is my exact experience with Legion ret.  

Main point: we have little to no gameplay even with talents. I'm so used to ret being a versatile spec and now we're the opposite, and there's no clear reason why because we never had a clear design direction. It’s bananas because this is an expansion full of evil demons and yet ret paladins, the WoW version of Tyrael, were left in the dust from a gameplay standpoint AND a fantasy standpoint imo.  Pretty much all the fantasy elements we typically associate with paladins belong to prot now and ret got the table scraps.  Ashbringer is the start and stop of our spec’s identity, there really isn’t much more to rets than that.  

Preach makes a good point in the video: it seems ret's redesign is meant to appeal to a certain type of player, the type who doesn't want their rotation to change much no matter what talents they pick.  It's perfect for people with lots of alts or for people who only log on a couple times a week. 

Long-term though, ret doesn't feel like a raiding spec to me. It doesn’t even feel like a support spec anymore tbh.  There's nothing versatile about the playstyle. I don't feel good hitting any of my buttons. I don't feel rewarded for playing it correctly.  It feels so static.  There is no excitement whatsoever. 

More gear will make the rotation quicker but it's a double-edged sword because eventually Judgement uptime becomes trivial, and then we have even less gameplay. 

MECHANICALLY yes this spec works. Ret IS playable, which is a huge improvement over a couple months ago!