Aett

From the patch notes: So once the patch comes out it will be even more useful. I'm pretty sure it's currently four seconds.

 

xellos

Just wondering how much +healing people are running around with. I have about 1500ish right now and feel like it's kinda lacking. At the same time, I don't want to sacrifice too much stam/resilience till I get better pvp gear.

 

Ragnor

~1500-1700 is typical for full s2 + veterans.

Of course it depends on whether you socket royal nightseye's for mystical skyfire or teardrop living rubies and whether you prefer spell surge or 81 +heal.

You can get away with wearing more +heal in the back, belt and boots slots pretty easily in 5s imo after all not many teams will focus the paladin as it leaves your teams dps and cc free to do what they want.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

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• Deris

I wear full T5 with T6 helm, all pve except for Libram and pvp trinket in 5's and I almost always have no problem being focused. Post patch I may wear my pvp gear more frequently, but even then I'm only in 259 resil. People just don't touch Paladins.

 

Jitta

A guildmate of mine has been 2v2-ing with this build w/ an arcane mage.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm wondering how others feel about this kind of spec for 2v2 and 3v3 where raw healing power to counter the assist train doesn't seem to be the main requirement of the paladin. Used with 200+ resilence as well, I was thinking about trying it out in my 2v2 and 3v3 since I struggle to figure out how to keep up and do my job through the interupts already.

 

Victarion

I'm curious if there are any other paladin healers in 2v2 that are running into lots of trouble versus priest teams. I run a (usually) SL lock/holy paladin 2v2 with a friend of mine and we've dropped somewhere around 150 points in the last couple weeks primarily against teams with holy priests.

The main reason our team seemed to do so well before is because teams would try to lock me down and kill me at the start giving my partner time to dot them up and start fearing etc. In the last couple weeks we haven't had a single team even attack me outside of pets / hitting me to keep me in combat. Instead we keep facing lock or rogue or warrior / priest teams that just put the DPS on my partner and than chase me around throwing out manaburns.

I've honestly been at a loss to figure out any way to beat these teams outside of somehow getting a 300 SR set. Between instant hots/shields and dispel it is very easy for them to heal while forcing me to run from them or run OOM far before they will.

The only teams we seem to have any success against anymore is double DPS gib teams which is probably only 30% of the teams with the rest almost always priest/druid healers with lock/rogue/warrior partners.

 

• Deris

I'm the other end of the spectrum Victarion.

My partner and I have dropped over 170 points this season, from a high of 2230 - to our current 2071 all because of double DPS Teams. Frost Mage/Warrior, Lock/SPriest, Feral Druid/Rogue, Frost Mage/Frost Mage, Frost Mage/Warlock.

We have even managed to accumulate a winning record vs. ALL team setups with a resto druid. Resto Druid/Rogue, Lock, Warrior - all flattened in record time now. We get excited every time we see that there is 1 healer. We get sad when we don't see a healer.

Double DPS teams to me seem like an exercise in futility - our best attempts usually comes down to Dead Warrior, Dead Mage or Lock, and me vs a rogue 1v1. Not fun.

 

Jitta

2 new changes to the arena game that effect paladins in 2.3:

1. Hunters can now dispel magic buffs with arcane shot.

2. Blind is no longer a poison attack and appears to be a physical ranged attack. Can not cleanse it but BoP might remove it.

So to buff hunters and rogues they gave them anti-paladin skills. Should be an interesting patch to say the least.

 

Aett

Heh, the blind change hits shamans just as hard if not harder (gogo poison cleansing totem), so I would hardly call it anti-paladin skills. Druids too could dispel it before.

At the same time though, the new blind shares diminishing returns with cyclone, so there is a slight limitation there.

Same thing with arcane shot, hardly only anti-paladin.

 

• Deris

Except Paladins have the only "DISPELL ME NOW" abilities in the game with BOP (Thanks alot new graphic.), BoS and BoFreedom (also thanks again, art department). BoFreedom/BoP espescially hurts hunters.

I guess with Druids and Shamans they could remove Bloodlust and Innervate?

 

Aett

Earth Shield, Ice/Molten Armor, Pain Suppression, HoTs of any kind, Inner Fire, to name a few.

Arcane shot dispels are going to happen as a matter of course, with every other classes you have to manually cast a dispel. With hunters it's just going to happen, no buffs are safe.

 

Obligatory

Yeah, this seems like a pretty bad idea, balance-wise. I really would have preferred that they give hunters MS-shot instead of adding yet *another* offensive dispell to the game.

 

xellos

Yet another meta gem question. Does the snare resist on the 12 crit rating meta stack with the surefooted enchant?

 

Kadrok

So I am being beaten down fairly badly, in 3 v 3s at least, with Blessing of Sacrifice on a 30 second cooldown. How are other people doing?

 

Braque

I've only been playing 2v2 recently, but it really didn't hurt my team as badly as I expected it too. I'm using it reactively, after I've used DS or trinket to exit the first CC/sheep, which keeps me safe for a little while, rather than using it as proactively as I was before. Only had 1 team purge it in this weeks games, but that might just be a product of the rating I'm playing at (~1700).

 

Kadrok

I haven't had one stay up for more than 5-10 seconds yet, heh. All of the teams I have fought have been very quick about coordinating a dispel and sheep.

 

• Deris

Mages are handily spellstealing BoFreedom to the point where putting it up actually hurts our chances. Also spellstealing sac. Good fun having only 1 buff. I've been trying to keep the Libram buff up, and I'll need to check what else I have that can be dispelled - BT Trinket and Ribbon of Sacrifice maybe?

 

• Deris

Except most of those are little consequence to a Hunter except for Pain Suppression. BoP and BoF are two of the only direct "lol@hunter" abilities in the game at the moment.

 

Mitsune

I'm aware of the complexity and impossibility of such a simple question, but has anyone done some thinking about how combat mace rogue and a ret paladin might work, with the changes in 2.3? Not that they're arena-related changes all, but it might be the little thing that makes me try it out.

I have semi-decent holy gear, and my rogue teammate is somewhat of an ass, sitting on a huge pile of weapons and the S2 shoulders only. (I've told him that if he doesn't get proper resilience soon, I'm gonna stop healing him alltogether). We sit between 1800 and 1850.

Of course it'll be a lot harder - I fully expect to lose massively the first few weeks while getting into it, but, well, thinking about it - we have an inane amount of short-duration control (stuns plus hoj and repentance), some nasty burst and sustained as well as long as we get that wound poison up. Between all the stuns availible, and trinkets/"tactical warfare" (cleanse, clos, bubble, bof, bosac etc), it sounds atleast theoretically like a competent double dps team able to down any nonplate fast.

Naturally, war-pala and war-resto shammy and such will be harder, but again, enough stuns, and with the change to blind incoming, it shouldn't be autolose at sub-2k rating.

Alternatively an ass-sub build could be attempted for greater control, utilizing the long-forgotten hemo, assuming it recieves a buff, which they've been talking about.

Any thoughts? Is this folly, and should I get the last pieces of healing merciless/veterans, or is it possible for a well coordinated retpala-rogue team to actually get anywhere, d'ya think?

 

Naive

Not this season, but come season 2.3 when they change it so our +healing does +spell damage as well, you'll see me using many more holy shocks offensively than I do now. My holy shocks already do ~800 damage. I'm guessing they'll be upwards of 1.2k or so. I don't know the exact math, but for some burst damage quickly in a 2v2, it's going to be great. I'm really looking to refining my play style.

 

Naive

I don't see how this build could work. Any PvP build without holy shock scares the daylights out of me. How do they fair, do you know? The mage would have to be really good at cc'ing targets. I think the reason that most people go 41 points holy is mainly because paladins are very very very rarely targeting in 2v2, so stacking as much healing power as possible to keep up your teammate is vital.

 

• Symbul

Friend of mine stacked SD to 800+ (I forget the exact number, could've been higher) with Lamellar gear and it worked out alright for him in smaller brackets. Being able to bring home a Wings burst to seal a kill won them some games, esp in 2s and 3s. But in 5s and in endurance matches he could really feel the difference playing with a "real" healing set, making the drop to Lamellar from Ornamented not worth it. His teams were all 2k+ in Season 1 (switched to Ornamented S2).

 

Jitta

Yeah, I agree about holy shock. At times, it is the only heal I can get off between CoT and kiting a warrior/rogue, etc.

The Armory

They are playing in the 1550-1650 range with some success but neither is over serious about arenas. I was intrigued when I was told about it and was curious if others have tried to go with a 300 resilience Prot build in 2v2 or 3v3.

 

• Amera

I haven't really noticed the sac change, but I really only play 5s and 3s. In general on my 3s team (war/sha/pal) I have to give freedom to whoever is getting focuses that I can't really dole out BoSac that easily anyway. I try to use it against mage teams to at least mitigate the occasional sheep, but it's really not reliable anymore.

I've noticed the freedom duration nerf even more, mostly thanks to the HUGE DISPEL ME PLEASE graphic that was added. If the other team is paying attention, it is so easy to remove freedom it is pretty silly.

Oddly this just goes back to my original post here months ago that paladins are a reactive class reliant upon the competence of your enemies or (lack thereof) more than individual skill most of the time.

Since druids are the most skill-based healer (and probably class as a whole) in arena, I've been dying to try one out beyond just the PTRs and see how the other side lives.

 

Victarion

As someone who primarily plays in 2v2 I've really noticed the BoSac change in particular, and the BoF one as well. Before they added the cooldown to BoSac I'd often juggle blessings on my partner but now I find mages and rogues to be quite a bit more annoying. Thankfully it seems as though a lot of mages haven't figured out what the BoSac change means and don't spam poly very much.

I also find it ridiculous that they are continually adding larger and more obvious spell effects for various blessings. It's completely unnecessary in PvE and only serves to lower the threshold of competence for dispelling in PvP when something like BoP gains a gigantic crown floating in the air.