This is what I've noticed in leveling my now almost all-grows up Ret Tauren Paladin:

Rets continue to have amazing utility. The Crusade talent keeps you going while leveling, and if you are in a BG and have the mana to toss out a heal, you can keep someone up for a couple of seconds with FoL. Plus all the hand spells and damage reduction abilities.

Ret PvE damage is low. Very low for single target, in fact. For AoE situations, it's not bad. This may improve with mastery and Inquisition, but reports I've read aren't really that encouraging.

Ret PvP damage is almost laughable. Judgement spells hit for crap. Exorcism is great when you get a proc, but they aren't that often. TV with no mastery even at 3 HP is not hitting all that hard; and even then, try to actually get 3 HP to begin with. About the only steady burst you have is Avenging Wrath with Hammer of Wrath. Ret damage is also balanced around a 5-stack dot/debuff on a target; while this is okay for single target raid boss fights, with all the movement and action in a pvp situation, it's absolutely horrendous. Some advise going with SoR for more upfront damage. And then pallies are also balanced around inquisition, I can see what a nightmare that would be to keep up in a pvp situation too. The issue as I see it is that there is no real sustainable/quick burst when your dps cooldowns are unavailable.

In regards to being kited in pvp, I think LAotL has helped that immensely. Combined with Hand of Freedom and Acts of Sacrifice, rets have a lot more escape mechanisms and the speed boost from LAotL is one of the most fun things about Ret pallies right now. While not impervious to being kited, at least rets have a fighting chance against ice-lance spamming frost mages. The bigger issue is once you get into melee range, can you dish out enough damage to kill that mage?

Generally speaking, no to that last question. Therein lies the biggest issue, rets are a damage spec, and just aren't doing enough burst damage, and don't have the talents and abilities to dish out that damage right now. The only way you could get it done is with a lucky proc to get to 3 HP for zealotry or a TV, because that mage isn't just gonna stand there for 15 seconds while you build up all your stacks of everything.

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