Originally Posted by Rej
I'm the opposite. Arena PvP on my priest was reaching the breaking point of frustration. Finally, I rolled a paladin and watched our team shoot up 200 points in rating to dabble in 2k+ rating matchups.
Really, you play teams with great support for your priest. Without a paladin backing you up in a 5's team, can you say the same great things about your priest? Without great CC classes holding DPS off you in 2's and 3's, can you say the same about your priest? The paladin isn't always an inferior healer - it's just a different role that works better than a priest in some combinations and worse in others. Had I had the same teammates as you did, I might still be on my priest checking out the new Disc. talents. Instead I rolled a paladin, and I haven't regretted it at all.
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The question here isn't whether a paladin/shaman can get to 2K rating. You can, it's been done, and it's probably even true that a fairly bad shaman/paladin player (along with a bad team lineup) could do that more easily then a priest/druid who is also fairly bad or with a wierd lineup.
The problem is that once you get to about 2150 or so and start having matchups with 2200-2300 teams a good paladin/shaman is far worse then a good priest/druid since they are much more easily interrupted/cced forever, with little ability to do anything else while this is done to them, or to put pressure on the enemy team themselves.
Of course if the team you're fighting isn't good enough to chain interrupt/cc you until they kill someone, then this isn't much of an issue and a pally/shaman is fine.
Another thing that makes shamans have such a hard time at the higher end is how easily earthshield is dispelled - it's obvious when someone has it, shamans don't have many other buffs that they tend to stack, and so most teams will get rid of your ES which is actually a fairly huge amount of healing, especially since it's not interrupted when you are. Some sort of high inherent dispell resistance (like the one for the priest damage reduction talent), would help alot against classes who do not have a very good dispell (i.e. wouldn't stop shamans/priests but maybe hunters/warlocks/mages).