Originally Posted by Amera
Paladins - Carbon Copies?
Before laying out some specific questions, I figured I'd give a bit of personal experience here. After playing hundreds of arena games and talking with other players, I've started to get a little "blah" about traditional paladin PvP - not because it isn't effective, but because it seems so...well, easy. Playing my alt warrior, for example (which I just got to 70 and started playing some arena this week), it seems like my skill/choices are hugely dependent upon the outcome of every match in every bracket. As a cleric paladin, I almost never feel this way. While it is probably largely due to the reactive nature of paladin abilities, it often seems to feel like the battle is basically unfolding around you, and your win or loss is determined largely by your teammates, some degree of luck, and whatnot.
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Unfortunately, that's one of the downsides of the class. Paladins aren't 'heroes'. They're the guy who gets out there, does as much as he can and hopes that the rest of his team don't suck too badly and can get people dead.
At the end of the day, he's the guy who makes a huge difference but doesn't get the recognition. I can heal 100k in an arena match and see my name at the bottom of the kill list. Everyone tells the warrior who killed all five guys that he did a good job. What do I get? "Thanks for doing your job, jerkface". That's just the way it goes.
Why I do enjoy the class are the rare few instances where it's down to me+the warrior against 2 warriors and an opposing paladin and we win through perseverence. We've eeked out 2 vs 3 victories a few times and that's really the only place where skill differences between paladins have stood out... but they've stood out pretty plainly.
Originally Posted by Amera
Also, after playing some of the top teams, I've also noticed I am almost never impressed with their paladin, or paladins on any team. They all seem to be carbon-copies of each other; either you control them, kill them, or you lose, but their skill and choices seem largely irrelevant to this. Now obviously there are many poor paladins, but I guess my point is that the difference between an average paladin and a great paladin is razor-thin, whereas I see the difference between a great warrior/rogue/lock/mage etc and a good one as possibly being match-changing.
Anyway, on to some more specific questions:
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Paladins are never a glory role. You will notice the best paladins far less often than you notice the poor ones, because those are the ones who are keeping out of range of mages/locks/priests and generally moving all over to make CC impossible/hard. The ones who sit there spamming gheals are typically the ones you will notice and it won't be too hard to shut them down.
You don't notice the paladin that's interrupting to lessen a counterspell, you only notice when he's locked out for 10 seconds, etc.
Originally Posted by Amera
Spec
A cursory glance at the top teams reveals a ridiculous similarity in specs with Paladins, more so than any other class. I believe a few weeks ago 97 of the top 100 5v5 paladins were 41/20/0.
Has anyone tried any radically different specs? Healing as prot? Going Ret for repentance?
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I went ret for a bit and found it pretty powerful (I was sitting around 2k ap selfbuffed) but I really didn't like it. I rerolled away from my rogue because I was tired of being the glass cannon... it's just not fun. I went back to Holy/Prot for that reason.
Largely it depends on the combination of the top couple tier prot talents that make up the difference between paladins.
It's well known that you need Stoicism in the arena to help make dispels harder... that's why I don't take it. (Afterall, it's only 30% chance and everyone KNOWS no paladin goes without it - the main focus fire target is going to be fully dispelled anyway and that priest casting 1 extra dispel isn't going to turn the tide of the match. Since everyone KNOWS all paladins have it, they don't bother dispelling EVERYONE and switch to mana burning/healing/dpsing after dispelling the FF target anyway).
I do however have Imp Concentration 3, and I find it to be much more valuable than anything else, especially when we play with our mage or priest.
Originally Posted by Amera
Gear
The only current PvP gear debate I see is some paladins insisting that PvE healing gear is better than arena gear because it gives more throughput. Yet most of the top teams are packing gladiator gear. Personally I noticed that past about 1800 rating you need to have hp like anyone else or you are going to get smoked.
What types of gear do people prefer? Are you into the Dmg/Crit type, or Heal/crit type? Do you use PvE or PvP gear?
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I'm slowly shifting my gear over to resilience/hp, because the good teams don't have a problem with coming straight for the throat.
Poor teams are frustrated by paladins because they largely leave them alone (and alot of times their team doesn't have a priest, just some mindless paladin mong). On good teams with good priests, I can quite easily die before anyone else. Some teams will come straight for me with a mounted priest circling the outside of the arena to try and come from behind and mass dispel my bubble off. When this happens there's nothing I can do but fall over dead. Resilience will at least delay that and give my healers some extra time to heal me and my offense some extra time to kill someone that's on me.
Paladins aren't much more durable than any other class once MS and other debuffs are on them, especially if they can't keep DS up due to mass dispel.
Originally Posted by Amera
Play style
The accepted play style of paladins in every bracket is the "cleric" approach, healing/buffing/cleansing and generally outputting virtually no damage. The general wisdom is that no other class can output as much raw healing as a paladin in a PvP situations.
Have you tried alternate play styles in arena? Has anyone gone the +spell power, more "hybrid" approach (like an elemental shaman)? Has anyone gone Ret and been primarily a melee force?
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I typically run around 250-300 +spelldamage in my pvp gear and try to land holy shock and judgement of righteousness on targets that are being bursted, especially ones who get bop'd while low. I've killed low hp targets a few times after a BoP, especially when the opposing pally is sitting there thinking (they've got all physical dps, BoP is going to win this one for us).
I can typically, with that much spelldamage, burst for 1200-2k when I need to/can (read: the shaman and/or priest aren't being harrassed). Not many people expect it so they don't try and keep themselves away from me.