If you’ve taken even a passing glimpse at the World of Warcraft forums of late, you’ll notice that the discussion revolves around WoW Ret Paladins, who got a significant rework in Dragonflight patch 10.0.7. Turns out the MMORPG‘s PvP players absolutely hate it, and given its pick rate in the Arena, it’s not hard to see why.
While one of WoW Dragonflight patch 10.0.7’s best features was one of its smallest, the sweeping changes to the Retribution Paladin skill tree have been met with ill feelings – especially in the realms of PvP.
Ever since the update’s release on March 21, Retribution Paladin has seen a massive spike in performance, soaring to a 28.7% pick rate in 2v2, 27.9% in 3v3, and 19.7% in rated solo shuffle. While WoW Arena Logs lists these as the peak values since release, Ret Paladin’s rate has largely remained in the high teens (and low twenties in 3v3) ever since; a massive jump from well below 5% across the board.
Given the pretty staggering shift in pick rate and performance, this has led to huge amounts of backlash, largely condemning Blizzard’s choice to release the rework so late into the PvP season.
“This is yet another call to nerf Retribution Paladins in arena immediately, so that myself and thousands of other players who were genuinely improving and working towards mid-tier+ seasonal rewards can at least finish their pushes,” writes one angry player. “Having one spec one-shot all others kind of takes away that fun and capacity of the other specs to play and improve reliably.”
“Never ever again give a spec a complete rework right before the season ends,” writes another. “Do it after the season is actually over or before it starts.”
One thread claims “Rets have more games in the past 24 hours than 99.9% specs,” attaching a screenshot that shows this. Please be aware I couldn’t personally verify this, but the point still stands that there has been a major Ret Pally resurgence in PvP.
I don’t play PvP, so this doesn’t affect me directly, but the rework has clearly impacted the health of the game, and that’s not good for anyone. Blizzard will have to do something given the volume of complaints; nerfs, removing the rework, issuing different rewards are all on the table, but whatever happens, it needs to be implemented fast.
Thankfully there are other classes on the WoW Dragonflight tier list that continue to perform, so I’d lock in one of those if you’re looking to keep playing PvP. It’s worth loading up some of the best WoW addons, too; after all, it looks like we need all the help we can get.