Amera

So it's pretty well known that many (maybe most?) people consider us the "EZ Mode" PvP class in every bracket. We are the second most represented class in 5v5 and certainly the most well represented healer in every bracket. So far there is lots of discussions in other threads about what we should be doing, who we should be doing it to, how we should be nerfed, and so on, but let's focus here on some gear/spec discussions, as well as play style options.

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.

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:


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?

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?

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?

 

Solipse

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

Snow

Hmm, I never really get much of the "EZ Mode" stereotype. Certainly it's a more "strategic" feel than some classes, but at least on my server, it seems the most respected pvpers are the healing paladins, and I think with good reason. Having clutch abilities on long cooldowns(DS, HS, BoF, BoP, HoJ), and being very screwed if a mage gets a counterspell off(with no HoTs and a weak instant heal) means you have to be very careful about when to use what ability, even if there isnt' much "variety" in the abilities you use. Perhaps every server has a different culture about it but most of the "local famous names" I can think of are holy paladins.

As for alternative specs, I think we all know the answer to this. 41/20 (with variations by taste) is currently the best PVE healing spec, and the best PVP healing spec. Paladins aren't currently anything in end-game but healers (Blizzard's half-hearted attempt otherwise nonwithstanding, and the ignoring the presence of a couple people bucking the trend), and in PVP it's no different. Ret I could see functioning on 2v2, but even there it seems suboptimal. Prot really doesn't have any PVP talents beyond reckoning which isn't going to one shot anyone anymore. I would hope that Blizzard would take steps to rectify this, but since the official opinion of the class designer is "In PVP, paladins help their team most by healing" then I doubt there will be any changes.

 

• goss

I disagree, its just harder to see the paladin win the match. Paladins exercise an enormous amount of control over who lives and dies (specifically on your team, but on the opposition as well). You have 2 trump cards, DS and BoP, then a couple lesser cooldowns that nonetheless significantly influence a match (HoJ, BoF, PvP trinket, Scrolls of Blinding Light). Choosing to use those equalizers, and when, and for what purpose (offensive BoP off the bat? Wait for your cloth to come under fire? Wait to remove a MS? BoF on which slowed teammate...sometimes its defensive too) are not easy decisions. You may not see immediatly that your choice tipped the match, but given the massive amount of control you do possess, its inevitable that it did.



I have run across some ret pallies healing in 2v2 and 3v3...but they were few and far between...and bad.

Stam, let SoBL and Light's Grace make up for throughput loss.


I retain pure healing gear, but a well placed holy shock and HoW isn't totally unknown. I hear rumours of very effective Ret paladins even in the upper echelons of 5v5 in my battlegroup, but they remain...rumours.

 

Zraknul

I haven't encountered a paladin that I could tell was anything but a tweaked 41/20 in my 5v5 team. Divine illumination is pretty tough to give up in intense fights, where it can pretty easily save a bunch of mana when you're chain casting HL on a MS'd target/Multi target healing.

I use a mixture of PvP and PvE gear. Obviously you want a plate piece to replace anything not-plate in your healing set. I like at least having the 2 piece for the resilience set bonus.

I tried putting in some +spell damage, but I really don't have time to make use of it unless we're going to steamroll the other team anyway. The amount of damage I do really doesn't warrent swapping for any spell damage. There's almost always something to cleanse, someone to BoF, or heal, and sometimes it's just best to save the mana.

edit:

Discussing the talents a little bit farther, there isn't much in the way of useful talents outside of a ~41 holy/20 prot build, just pvp/pve differences mostly. There's about 3 talent points you can play around with inside the holy tree with some pretty clear cut lines between pvp/pve talents. Then there's nothing really in ret worth taking, without major sacrifices that aren't justified.

 

Amera

First off, to eliminate confusion, this wasn't a "please tell me how to play a paladin" post, but more of a "let's share our experiences and thoughts on paladin abilities." I do play on a 5v5 team that's been consistently floating at about 1900 rating and we've played almost 500 games. I'm pretty sure we've seen all top 10 teams in our brackets at least once, sometimes quite a few times. I've made a point to really watch their paladins to try and learn, and in general my feelings have been that I do almost exactly the same thing, because it is really straight-forward and easy.

It's not really about glory, per se, its about the capacity for skill to make a huge difference in game play that I'm mostly talking about. I can put it another way. A priest who is "average" in terms of skill and gear is all but completely useless on a 5v5 team in my opinion. They will die almost instantly due to their vulnerabilities and contribute nothing. By contrast, a good PvP priest can completely control a match. Priests managing to survive assist trains by using LOS, healing/fearing/mind controlling and whatnot, coupled with knowing when and who to dispel, mana burn, fear, heal, and so on. There is an immense variety of choice and tactics, and thus skill becomes a huge part of playing a priest. Now look at paladins: even a poor paladin has plate armor and divine shield, and is almost guaranteed to be able to spam 2 second Holy Lights for at least 12 seconds every game, and realistically probably more since many teams still ignore paladins.

Put even another way, if you had to take one poor and one skilled player on your team, and for whatever reason you could choose what class would line up with what, I think I would put my worst player as the paladin every time.

Am I completely off base here?

I'm certainly willing to entertain the notion that the contribution is less visible. In some games it is very obvious - Solipse described a situation I have seen a few times, in which you end up with just yourself and your warrior vs their paladin and warrior, and you win because you outplay the other paladin. It happens, and games like that are awesome for this reason.

But, consider all the "invisible" things that other classes contribute, and weigh them versus a paladin. Does it really just seem like more of the same, or is your contribution vis-a-vis skill incredibly limited comparatively?

 

Zraknul

I think a "worst" player as a DPS class who assist trains with the rest of them would probably be better. Juggling BoSac, and BoF and some good use of HoJ/Arcane torrent in BE's case can make some pretty good differences.

 

Shade

I agree with this. I think paladin is one of the classes that takes the least skill to play effectively in PvP. Warrior is another. Both of these classes might have a great deal of difference between the skilled and unskilled, but I agree with the notion that a player of average skill can do a lot more harm (on the opposing team) as a paladin or warrior than they can as a druid, rogue, or warlock.

I think part of it is that paladin has many inherently powerful abilities, and very few offensive responsibilities. Compare to a priest, which has the same defensive responsibilities (healing and cleansing) but also has to offensive dispel and manaburn. Add to that fact that the priest often times has to do all this under heavy focus fire, whereas on many teams people will just leave the paladin alone and let him do as he pleases.

Note I am not saying paladins take no skill to play. I am simply agreeing with the notion that you can 'get by' with less skill as a paladin, whereas you can't do that as a priest or a druid.

 

• goss

I personally find this scenario rather boring...who can heal through MS better? Or alternatively, which warrior has a better critrate/weapon. Woo.

I think many classes do contribute the small stuff (snaring, reducing damage output from an oppositng player, etc.), but not as often/repeatably - with maybe priests being the only competitor. The routine small balance shifts I mentioned, as well as your big swings of DS/BoP add up to a lot of decisions, and I don't know that every class replicates that. Then again, I'm sort of projecting here - I only play a paladin in arena.

Sacrifice and Freedom choices are some of the more defining decisions in terms of "skill." The number of paladins I've seen who get CC'd without Sacrifice up on anything is really astounding. Alternatively, I had a very good opposing priest (managing to dispell my Sacrifice nearly instantly) force me to learn to hide it, so to speak (on a pet, or somebody who might happen to take AE). As I alluded to in my previous post, BoF choices are also really significant, blindly BoFing the warrior may actually make your job harder.

 

Solipse

If you're talking to me, I was just giving my own feelings on the matters, not trying to tell you how to play. I know you know how to play, I've fought against you enough on my rogue.

Yes and no... in reality, the only real difference is knowing when and how to use your cooldowns.

Casting freedom on a warrior 6 seconds before he engages is a shade different than casting it just before he gets snared the first time. Casting protection on a target as he starts to catch burst is a shade different than casting it when he's at 40%, etc.

Timing the abilities makes them more effective and so the paladin himself is more effective. Sure, a lesser skilled player could still be somewhat effective but a truly skilled player is going to be that much more effective.

Play a couple games non sober and I think you'll be able to see the difference between quick reaction times and slightly delayed reaction times. The difference becomes more than you would otherwise think it should as our abilities have such a good trickle down effect towards the effectiveness of the other players.

EDIT: Another example. We beat a team that was 300 points over us twice last week. The team was 2 MS warriors, elemental shaman, resto shaman, holy paladin. Lots of physical damage and enough elemental damage to burn through BoP, right? Well, the first game they came for our warrior. They had him to 50%, I HoJ'd the elemental shaman and then BoP'd him. I got the BoP in when he was at 10%. He lived and we won. Next game we did a similar thing (they switched to Porthios' shaman the next go) and won in a similar manner.

Leaving the elemental shaman out and just blindly BoP'ing the warrior would have been a loss. HoJ'ing the guy who can drop insane non physical burst damage and THEN BoP'ing probably saved the match. That's where the differences are seen... even if it's harder to tell in the course of normal play. The good paladin is going to make the right decision when it matters, though.

 

Snow

Yeah, I think you might be off-base. I would never put the monkey-at-the-keys to the paladin. Granted, some of our contribution might be passive and thus provided by just about everyone who can turn an aura on, but you are presupposing that all classes contributions are equal, when it's clear in pvp the paladin healer is king. It's true that someone who basically fumbles with the keyboard could probably be taught to operate a paladin easier than say, learning to operate a warrior, but I don't think that really means much when you assume a basic level of competence.

I will admit I don't arena much seriously, but I do try to get 10 games in with a few guildies every week. One such team of PVErs usually runs with 2 paladins. I've noticed that one paladin seems to get counterspelled, killed, or otherwise cc'd without a working sacrifice more often than the other. He is by no means incompetent, and his gear is slightly inferior, but I'm not sure he's getting focused on more just because he's a dwarf. There's a "court vision" factor that's very prominent- spacing yourself away from mages, baiting ranged to waste time closing on you, etc. Seems like skill, rather than luck, is making the difference.

 

Daays

With the recent changes being made and now allowing you to block while casting, I wouldn't be surprised seeing more builds going deeper into prot for ardent defender and holy shield

 

Crossbones

On a team with war/pal/lock/rogue/shaman, that only started playing seriously a couple weeks ago (was just a rotating arena pt team prior to that), I've had zero need to gem/enchant for my survivability and we're ~1900 without any kind of plataeu yet. I'm wearing gladatior gear, mostly because it's better than my PvE gear anyway, but it's all socketed for heal/crit, and I'll likely switch to four pc t5 when I get it. If teams did begin to focus me, it sill takes a considerably long time to kill me and it's quite dangerous with the team I'm playing on if the DPS is left alone. Plus my 2 years of PvP priest evasion skills kick in.

As far as paladin skill goes. I think the problem is that the breadth of abilities you use is very small in comparison to other classes. You need the right kind of awareness, but every class does, especially the other healers. Then it comes down to timing your immunities correctly, and keeping BoSac up. I think one of the major reasons paladins are deemed so necessary is that they are so much easier to gear and play than the other healers. Not to say a skilled paladin isn't clearly better than an average one, the gap just doesn't seem quite so large in comparison to say, priests, or especially druids.

 

Amera

I wasn't really evaluating whether or not paladins contribute - they are clearly in demand and the predominant PvP healer. But if you wouldn't put your "monkey" as a paladin, what class would you pick?

 

Fjord

The real skill definetly seems to be the art of keeping a low profile.

 

Katten

I think you are oversimplifying things. A mage could be a monkey, if he was trained merely to counterspell anyone casting a heal. A warlock could be a monkey, with CoT bound to a key. A rogue who mashed KS, CS, CoS, gouge, backstab and kick on a caster in pretty much any order. A warrior; deathwish and start hitting someone with MS. Divine shielding and chain casting heals does not a paladin make.

 

Thelyna

Question for the thread then, what are the roles, in detail, of a paladin?
- BoS someone to be more or less immune to CC (excepting cyclone) - picking someone that doesn't need to have kings to survive while also taking hits
- defensive BoP ... unless you have a suicide strat I can't really see BoP being an offensive weapon.
- defensive BoF (to save someone in your group from a slowed attacker)
- offensive BoF (so your warrior or rogue can keep up with their target)
- auras, concentration aura for bad warriors/rogues (non-interrupting types, basically) and interrupt-happy teams, devotion aura for tanking warriors/rogues (when someone else is healing you and you can't get a heal off), resist auras as appropriate.
edit - I completely forgot to mention healing. Oops. Any other nuances of arena cleric-in-plate I'm missing? (I'm not counting DS, I presume that goes up the first time you drop below 30-40%.
Also, a really obvious tip some people might miss is to put Righteous Fury up every game .. another buff to eat, as well as being 6% redux if you're specced for it. Are there any other buffs beside RF+blessing that we can put up?)

-- Situation I had today was me+resto shammy+MS warrior vs. lock (unsure of spec), shadow priest and holy paladin ... with no other shadow resist, is it worth it to switch to shadow aura? exposes us to spell pushback (and full interrupts), but cuts maybe 20% off their dps. They were also silencing/spelllocking liberally. General process is they'd load the shaman and warrior up with dots with just the felhunter on me, and just explode the warrior with dots+DD. Should I bubble early, BoF the warrior (and maybe stun the opp. paladin), and hope he kills the warlock before he melts? In that situation I feel like the warlock is the linchpin in their offense, kill him and the felhunter goes away, as well as over half of their fears.

 

Zraknul

Priests and paladin "cleansing" really isn't comparing apples with apples. Paladins need to deal with poisons and movement impairing effects ontop of a priest's dealing with magic. I'd rate movement impairing effects alone on a similar level with purging; it can be done well or it can be done poorly, and the difference is huge.

 

Amera

Right, but would those people be filling their class role as well as the monkey playing the paladin? Where would the monkey do the least damage?

I also find it hilarious that monkey is appearing in this thread a lot.

 

Zraknul

There's some pretty effective methods over a variety of classes to deal with a monkey paladin.

 

Mearis

I wanted to dispell this notion a bit. As a priest, if I am focus fired, my abilities to survive are pretty much limited by how well do the other healers in my team assist heal me.

If I am being focus'd on, odds are I am at the very least snared, and more often than not stunned. I also am likely to have MS on. Trying to lose LoS when snared is impossible, and fear is completely useless versus most assist trains. The strategic choices when on the offensive are much greater - because I can choose if manaburning a healer, dispelling the assist target, mass dispelling the paladin, etc etc etc - but a reactive role you are more often than not pouring heals on the assist target otherwise he will die.

I do think if MS gets fixed and the healing throughput requirements to heal through MS drop down, we might see healers taking a more active role, but right now MS pretty much forces everyone to non-stop heal.

 

Keline

I'm actually maxing out heal and crit, because high crit heals let me heal through MS attacks. Stamina has not been an issue yet, I get focused like once in 30 games.

Yes, if only Noggenfogger worked in the Arena...

 

Telesis

I do think that a large amount of critical decision making falls on the shoulders of the Paladin, especially compared to, say, a warrior. (Just in Cooldowns availible even ;P)

Slightly OT: My team runs with 2 paladins that alternate slots. While they have very similar playstyles, one has 35 sec HoJ's and uses them offensively, the other uses untalented HoJ and uses it defensively. The difference is large, and the style's benefits depend largely on the team we are facing. Sometimes the offensive style is just what we need, and vice versa.

EDIT: There's some vids out of the paladin from Power Trip, and aside from jumping around a lot, he's got a very good grasp of positioning. It's a very subtle skill that can make all the difference in a fight.

 

archz0r

I have to disagree with this, priest is by far the healer that have the most abilites at hand when getting focus fired, compared to other healers. A paladin can bubble once, then all he has is BoF, Shamans can put up grounding and earthbind (pretty much useless since you're going to be hamstrung or whatever when getting focused) every 15 seconds, other than that you can only help on the offence, druids get completely locked out since they get stuck in bear while priests have a bunch of skills at their disposal.

This isn't meant as whine, just simply explaining that priests DO have skills useable even though you're getting focused, while other classes do have some aswell, but they are far more limited.

On the topic at hand though I do agree with OP, paladins don't really make the game just as much as other classes do, we have a team in our BG whose priest is really skilled and comparing the difference he does with a poorly played priest is huge, even game breaking.

 

XI-

First you want to kill the warlock's pet. An exorcism, and then the warrior on it after snaring the lock/priest, and maybe a shock from the shaman should down it pretty quickly. Now the lock probably won't be SL (or if he is the match will be easier for you anyway) so the pet is out of action. At this point you want to focus on the priest. Shadow priest are very squishy, and getting on them will make them think twice about spamming SW. Your shaman's play here depends on the warlock's spec. If he's trying to channel shadowbolts/etc, your shaman probably wants to interrupt them, otherwise if he's trying to spam dots, have him concentrate on interrupting the paladin to put him behind on heals.