No Skill

I love how there are two common chains of thought for justifying Ret as it currently stands. 1) Ret is different at level 80 and they are not OP at level 80, all spells are balanced for level 80. 2) Ret neeeeeds this insane amount of burst because we have no other way to hurt our targets, nobody understands us or how to counter us and we are balanced until they learn how to fight us.

First to address issue #1:
Ret very well may be different at level 80 once DK's are thrown into the mix and there are other strong classes like mages and rogues able to beat you. Too bad at 80 those are the only four viable classes for... well, anything. Ret abilities that are currently dealing lots of damage are made to scale for gear and/or weapon damage. Just like all the other classes. In other words, Ret right now is scaling TOO well. The problem with the argument is that once level 80 is reached, Ret will CONTINUE to scale too well because of the way they are achieving the current insane burst at 70.
Overall though I would have to say this is the best argument, as the majority of players have Not experienced Ret at level 80, but there sure are a million Paladins claiming that it's not that great. I only say this is the best argument because it is the hardest to disprove, not because it is true.

Issue #2:
Just reading the posts that continue from Ghostcrawlers "NERF RET INTO THE GROUND" is laughable. There are Paladins claiming "we have no way to catch targets except HoJ", the "little time we have in melee with a target because we don't have enough abilities to get there or keep them there is why we need so much burst!". The worst is "once they find out our weaknesses they will see we're fine with all this massive damage".


The issue is not players feeling like they're facing a whole new class. The issue is not "oh wow, Ret paladins are suddenly playing with a different style" because in all honesty, THEY AREN"T. Everything is the exact same, it just works better now because of insane mitigation and insane burst damage. Not to mention much more powerful CC's. Trying to slow down a Ret Paladin? Hand of Freedom - 10 seconds, 25 second CD, almost no chance to dispel because of the new anti dispel talents. Divine Shield - 12 seconds. 3 seconds left on CD before HoF comes back up. Oh look it's back up, HoF again. That's finally all done with? Don't forget the ranged incapacitate, the 7 second stun on a 20 second cooldown, and the RANGED ATTACKS. Since when do Paladins get serious ranged attacks? Instant ones for that matter. 6 second cool down, can crit for 3k holy damage. Umm... oh look, I have almost 12k Health in PvP gear. Paladins can chase after you, Never hitting you in melee, and still kill you because you can't heal yourself.

Another problem? Group PvP. Paladins aren't balanced for group PvP. People might say you're just crying that Paladins are owning you in 1v1, but it's okay since it's not balanced. Well here's news for you, they aren't balanced in group PvP either. Unless you have another Paladin on your team, which kinda makes it lol, or you have a priest whose somehow not targeted first and is spamming Mass Dispel, it's not balanced. Requiring the opposing team to have one of the same class just in order to counter it is not balanced. Paladins deal more burst damage then any other class in the game right now. They do it all while their target is stunned and can't move. It doesn't matter if your team has a healer because the paladin will just target the healer and kill them first. It doesn't matter if you have two healers on your team because your dps can't kill the paladin, he has infinite mana and can heal himself almost as well as a Holy paladin because... oh yeah, he's spec'd into Holy, and of course the whole spell power change thing too.

Now to reverse the same chain of thought onto these scrubby defenders of Ret'arded players. If everyone else is having to play against what "seems like a whole new class" and "once they learn how to counter they'll do fine". Guess what. It means that all Ret Paladins are PLAYING what seems like a new class, and once they figure out more tricks and what they're doing then ... oh look, they will continue to destroy everybody.

Like the title of this post, it's true. Until Blizzard fixes Paladins, there is no such thing as a skilled Paladin. It's impossible to have somebody be skilled when the class is that easy. Want to see a skilled player? Look at the guy who managed to beat a Paladin. That's skill. Want to see a no name scrub? Yeah, that's the guy playing the Paladin. It doesn't matter how good you were before, it doesn't matter how many HK's you got or how high your arena rating is or what kind of gladiator title you have, if you are playing a Paladin on live right now it takes No Skill and therefore you have No Skill. More than any other class it should be Paladins that are calling for nerfs right now, because they are the laughing stock of WoW.