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.
In haste gear I have ~1870 +healing, ~10k hp with 260 resilience.
In my typical healing set i have ~1960 +healing, ~10k hp with 260 resilience.
I wear full merc, pvp mace, pvp libram, honor boots and neck. Bracers, belt, rings, and 1 trinket are off pieces. I've never felt like I'm too squishy with 260 resilience. It's pretty much GG if a team decides to train me. Between LOS, a ton of armor, competent teammates and being able to kite effectively, training the pally is a pretty good way to lose the game. My Armory
Originally Posted by 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.
I've noticed the BOS changes to be pretty rough. I know in 5s I generally have freedom up for an escape for whoever is being trained, and a sac on a secondary target who is taking splash damage to counter CC (poly, blind, ect). I also tend to swap sac onto the target being trained to mitigate the damage they are taking if my freedom is on CD. Now though, juggling blessings is a bit more difficult without sac being continuously available. I hate seeing BOF purged immediately, then watching as Sac is stripped just as quickly as if Stoicism didn't exist. Nice 30 seconds without anything to offer in terms of defensive blessings.
Pretty much, playing a paladin small-scale arena (3s/2s) is an exercise in frustration post-patch -- the changes are horrible in every way. I can't think of a reason you would want to use a paladin if you have any aspiration of getting into the upper brackets. Sure, you can get some decent matchups but any team with the ability to dispel + CC has a field day.
Pretty much, playing a paladin small-scale arena (3s/2s) is an exercise in frustration post-patch -- the changes are horrible in every way. I can't think of a reason you would want to use a paladin if you have any aspiration of getting into the upper brackets. Sure, you can get some decent matchups but any team with the ability to dispel + CC has a field day.
Yup, that's exatly how I've felt as well. One week on my 3s team we ran into spriest, ua lock, frost mage. Now, we're not running an ideal set up-- warrior, hunter, paladin, and the team isn't serious or at a high bracket. We hover between 2-2.1k and the team is just used to get points for my priest alt. However, against that set up, I am really at a complete loss. Getting locked out isn't even a problem-- imp cs, spell lock, and silence give the opposing team time to drop one of us without me being able to do anything. Preemptive bubbling isn't effective with Mass Dispell and numerous fears.
And just to clarify, it's not like the hunter or warrior are bad either.. We're all experienced in arenas and higher bracket pvp. It's frustrating to try, especially with the fairly continuous nerfs paladins have experienced since BC. TBH buffing the ret/prot tree isn't the fix for me, when I have no intentions of doing anything but healing on this character, lol.
I enjoy small bracket pvp, but until I can find more utility in this class, I'm probably going to be shifting my focus to healing as a priest in 2s and 3s.
The lack of control now is just sad in 2s, if the enemy team has a priest or lock (which is probably 90% of teams 1900+) I spend the entire time just running away trying to los fear/mana burn/cot/spell lock.
It's just not fun.
Sometimes I'll los for ~2min+ while my warrior with full s2 + the bt/hyjal dps gear and weapon tries to kill something. Usually I'll eventually get tagged with a fear before he's managed to kill one of them and it's game over.
If I was a shaman I could r1 es enemy casts and would have about 1000% more control over what was happening in the game.
The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.
The lack of control now is just sad in 2s, if the enemy team has a priest or lock (which is probably 90% of teams 1900+) I spend the entire time just running away trying to los fear/mana burn/cot/spell lock.
It's just not fun.
Sometimes I'll los for ~2min+ while my warrior with full s2 + the bt/hyjal dps gear and weapon tries to kill something. Usually I'll eventually get tagged with a fear before he's managed to kill one of them and it's game over.
If I was a shaman I could r1 es enemy casts and would have about 1000% more control over what was happening in the game.
Yeah, any sort of control would be huge for pallies in arenas atm. It seems like our advantages in small scale pvp have been nerfed so hard that we really don't have anything to counter a lot of the teams out there. I'm pretty much in the same situation Rag, just run away and hope my warrior can kill something before I get an unlucky fear or cc I can't get out of and am drained to death.
Maybe they should make judgement of justice the same as curse of exhaustion =D now that would be fun.
I agree completely. If I had to boil all my problems with 2's and 3's down to one word it would be control. Paladins have become almost 100% defensive and reactive in nature while other healing classes have, or have been given, various offensive and proactive abilities that allow them a much greater level of direct contribution to the outcome of a match.
I know I find it incredibly frustrating that in dps/healer matchups I have to constantly be aware of where the other healer is unless it is a paladin because they all have some means of screwing me over if I am not prepared for it. Manaburn, earthshock, cyclone all force me to constantly reposition myself in relation to the opposing healer while maintaining range on my partner. There isn't a single class that ever has to think, "Oh shit that paladin is edging over near me, I wonder if he's going to ___."
The deterrent aspect of a paladin has, at lest for me in 2v2, gone to the point where I know that zero intelligent teams will ever try to attack me but rather will CC me over and over until I just have zero options left.
It appears our only control is hammer of justice which is resisted 1/2 the time it's cast, though, if used at the right time, it does make the difference between winning and loosing. It would be nice as most posters are saying to have to some offensive capabilities (aside from hammer of wrath) while going the traditional 41/20 build.
I was wondering if anyone have seen any videos of pallys in 2/3s going against the dreaded combinations of locks/pally, locks/shadow priests because it appears that drain tanking is becoming the predominant strategy for fighting against warrior/pally combos. Any advice or video of doing this effectively would be helpful.
It's pretty much GG if a team decides to train me. Between LOS, a ton of armor, competent teammates and being able to kite effectively, training the pally is a pretty good way to lose the game.
Do people not often go for paladins in your battlegroup? I wouldn't say they do it often in Rampage, but there are a pretty good chunk of 4 DPS teams who can pretty much kill paladins indiscriminately if they chose to. Just most of the time they go for the warrior.
Mainly curious if there are differences in "paladin targeting frequency" among the different battlegroups.
Pretty much, playing a paladin small-scale arena (3s/2s) is an exercise in frustration post-patch -- the changes are horrible in every way. I can't think of a reason you would want to use a paladin if you have any aspiration of getting into the upper brackets. Sure, you can get some decent matchups but any team with the ability to dispel + CC has a field day.
Yeah I basically stopped playing 2s completely, and I really only play 3s for profit at this point. I doubt they will change anything because paladins are well-represented in 5s, and because to the average player paladins still feel like the "unkillable healer" while good players of most classes can take you out of the game pretty easily.
There are times the arena seems like a mini-ecosystem. If we find a way to introduce more rogues into it, perhaps we will control the warlock and priest populations, and our viability in lower brackets will go up again. =P
I'm really feeling useless in 2s and 3s against warlock/spriest teams. You would think that a 3s team of paladin/MS Warrior/Ice Mage would run well against Warlock/Rogue (MS poison)/Druid Or Shaman but all 3 of those classes have ways to reduce my ability to heal while DPSing a team mate. Druid teams using Cyclone has an healing debuff to counter my only real chance to crank out heals sucks too.
Being married to the global cooldown, having cleanse become a complete liability with all the debuffs it removes that don't remove what you need it too( sheep/fear ), and having no HoTs or Earth shield type skills except Holy Shock just feels crippling. Honestly, why have a paladin on your 2s or 3s? Divine Shield is becoming as gimmicky as Arcane Power mages.
As for FF on Paladins in 2s and 3s, I don't find myself being ignored and left to heal all that often. Even in 3v3, teams put pressure on me DoTs, fears, CoT, pets, etc while killing the non-warrior team mate or some 3 DPS teams just coordinate and burn down the warrior first. I've run into Full S2 3 DPS Kargath teams (in the dam 1500 range, wtf?) that have just flat out ignored my heals and out DPSed my healing for 12 seconds while finishing it off with a deathcoil on me after 6 holy lights (3 crits) only kept my 200 resilience MS warrior (1500 bracket here) at 50% health. Some fights, I don't know if it is because I ran into 2 bored 2400 rated 5v5 peeps smurfing up a team for a 3rd or if I'm against a fair match.
Have we just been eclipsed in many of the 2s and 3s match ups or are their strategies we can honestly employ to counter them?
Most likely those are just people leveling teams to sell, though they could also just be team re-rollers trying out newsetups and whatnot.
You can still do fine in 3x with certain setups, war/pal/sha, war/lock/pal and such. Warriors are much better with a paladin than without obviously, but again it isn't so much that our abilities are limited or bad, it's that they are all easily counterable by competent players. Without offensive abilities, you have to sit back and react, which is antithetical to most PvP style combat - you always want your opponent to be on the defensive, having to react to what you are doing, not vice versa.
Castable heals are easy to counter, via tongues/interrupts/stuns etc, not to mention MS or WP. Stun is resistible 20% of the time by anyone with their stun talent and the meta gem, and the cooldown is long anyway. Plate is great, but counterable by magic, and even melee can rip through you since you have to actually cast in order to heal (though we are still best in this regard among healers). BoS, BoF, and BoP are all dispellable and easily recognizable now, and once dispelled they have lengthy cooldowns.
The only other ability is divine shield, which is definitely still great, but counterable by priests and usually ignorable by everyone else. But it does still give us tactical options no other healer has against many teams.
Every other healer has more potent offensive abilities to "take the fight to the enemy":
-Shamans have heroism and totems, though these can be dispelled/or killed. Earthshock has a short CD and can win games. Purge is spammable and if used properly can just obliterate people. And of course they can do all this while speccing to deal insane burst damage or solid healing.
-Priests have fear, mana burn, and dispel, the latter 2 being the most important. You can't really leave a priest alone or they will just rape your casters with mana burns in any bracket. Dispel is more powerful even than purge since it works both ways. And again priests can spec for damage or healing and still do all of this.
-Druids have cyclone, roots, and feral charge. Leaving a druid alone is like asking to play 4v5 the whole game as they rotate cyclones on your team. Combine that with the fact you can't lock out most of their heals, and there is immense utility here. And they can again spec for magic damage and still maintain their CC.
I think the defensive specialization of paladins is just suited for 5v5, and becoming increasingly worse in smaller brackets where having more options and utility is far more important than being one dimensional. The great irony is that paladins, supposedly a hybrid class, are the most one-dimensional in their PvP role in terms of spec and in terms of available options.
But anyway, again, I don't see this really changing simply because we are well-represented in 5s and that is what they want to balance PvP around.
I think the defensive specialization of paladins is just suited for 5v5, and becoming increasingly worse in smaller brackets where having more options and utility is far more important than being one dimensional.
I agree with some of things you were saying, but don't really agree that being a defensive healer is such a bad thing in 2s and 3s: especially 3s. As long as you pair yourself up with offensive people in 3s (wars, rogues, priests, warlocks, mages, etc.), you're fine to sit back and heal. This is especially true if you run two healers in threes: one offensive healer and one defensive healer (the paladin). But, generally, I've found in 3s that at least one of your teammates needs to be really good at CC mainly to keep their CC off of you. With a warlock casting fear, a mage sheeping, etc., you'll be fine in 3s.
In 2s, it's sometimes more of an issue. Like you mention, we have no CC (fear, mana burn, cyclone, root, feral charge, purge, etc.), but what we lack in offensive abilities in 2s, we gain in survivability. As you mentioned, if anyone actually gets on the paladin then they're likely going to lose as we can kite very effectively while our partner(s) can deal lots of harm to the other team if left free.
Honestly, I think there's a perfect balance between paladins/druids/priests in low level brackets. (I leave shaman off that list, because I think they're by far the worst healer in 2s and 3s.) While druids/priests have more offensive abilities, their survivability is far worse than ours. What do you guys think about those three healers in 2s and 3s?
It's obviously not unplayable - there are still many teams in 2s and 3s with paladins on them. But some of that is a legacy from season 1 where warrior/paladin teams dominated in all brackets, and some people are still figuring out how powerful other setups are.
Anyway I don't disagree with your points that there are some advantages to survivability and our defensive options - hard to say this isn't true. What I'm getting at, though, is that among the most skilled teams in these brackets, I think paladins have some real disadvantages. The inability to force your opponent to play defensively is a serious problem.
It's sort of hard to explain. I guess one example I can think of is real-time strategy (RTS) games. Good players basically always rush as fast as possible, harassing their opponent and making them play defensively, make mistakes, and get behind. Poor players typically play defensively, building bunkers or towers or whatever to protect their base, not understanding this almost guarantees a loss. I think there is some similar logic in WoW PvP.
Consider one cookie-cutter 3v3 setup, the mage/rogue/priest. I would never take a paladin here, despite their superior healing and survivability, because the priest allows you to control the other team with their offensive abilities. Attack the priest? The mage sheeps your DPS, the rogue locks someone down, blinds/saps someone. Leave the priest alone? He mana-burns your healers dry in no time. If they put in a paladin, you just ignore him/her. Outside of our healing, we are not a threat in any capacity, and our healing is easy to neutralize or even ignore if you have good DPS.
While you can certainly take steps to minimize your ability to get CCd, to stun, to shock when appropriate, and the like, I just keep going back to my original point - I almost never get the feeling I was defeated by the opposing paladin. I know what he will do 95% of the time, because it is the only thing to do. Whereas I am often amazed by the skill of mages, priests, druids, and even shaman who are simply so much better than others of their class it is really noticeable, and they win games that way.
I'm hopeful that some of the Ret changes, if they go through, may spruce this up a bit, even in a healing build, giving you more options. Things like the new PoJ against might introduce some new strategies, especially in lower brackets.
I have both a holy priest and a holy paladin. Having played both in Arenas, I'd have to say both sides have merit to their complaints. A paladin's only real weakness is CC. In 5's, this is not as big a deal since you have backup healers, your own side doing CC, and enough happening within the first 20 seconds so that your "get out of jail free" cards make a big enough impact. The heavy burn is more of a danger, and in this regard paladins shine. In 2's and 3's, CC plays a much larger role, and your ability to counter it can make or break matches.
I do have to say - a priest is not much better off in 2's and 3's, despite how much fellow paladins complain about CC. My priest tends to avoid CC with greater ease (more instant casts) and this enables him to pop out Shields and small heals in bad situations, but that comes with its own problems. And my priest - outside of the trinket - has no way to remove CC. My paladin can at least use a 1-time bubble to wipe the debuff slate, and he can remove poison. The Concentration Aura + pushback talent is simply godly, and the reduced Counterspell duration takes the edge off of warlocks and mages (although I still fear them). Without a classic team matrix (like Rogue, Mage, Priest), my priest has to deal with all the CC a paladin encounter, and also worry about a fast burn just dropping him.
What my priest does have is utility. When counterspelled or not busy healing, my priest can still manaburn and toss out fears. My paladin cannot do much, although I've tried to make use of Seals and melee to stay somewhat useful (stuns, regen, etc). Still, manaburn isn't as great as people think it is - when you needed to heal, manaburning isn't much comfort as your buddy dies. It's only useful if you are on the offensive, and your opponent cannot harass you. Most of the time I'm occupied trying to keep a buddy alive (or stay alive myself), and can't spare the time or mana to manaburn.
I don't agree with the "paladins have no CC" argument. HoJ is as good an ability as Fear. The times my priest needs fear are often the times when it is useless (when a 'zerkered Warrior or CoSed Rogue is beating on you). I have never felt that my HoJ was resisted more than fears (more the opposite), and even the Alliance Fear Ward does nothing for stuns. Blood elf pallies even get a racial Silence effect. Seal of Judgement has procced stuns on the healer I was knocking around plenty of times, delaying that heal just 3 more seconds and sealing his buddy's fate.
One more thing: Adding more offensive/CC capabilities for paladins will make them far too powerful. I know that's what the previous poster asked for, but I think that's a mistake. Paladins are not that gimped in 2's and 3's. I run into some tough teams that are simply going to run me over with CC, but the difference lies mostly in my choice of classes to team up with. Additional utility outside of deep Retribution is unnecessary.
Oh I'm not asking for CC, just pointing out the weaknesses of the class, which are more evident in 2s and 3s than 5s.
The only thing I would really like to see is PvP buffs to other trees, so that not every paladin is exactly the same spec as every other paladin. I think it is still 95% of paladins or more are 41/20, to the tee. I would love to see Ret become a viable option, just like priests have shadow, druids have balance/feral, and shaman have resto/elem.
Oh I'm not asking for CC, just pointing out the weaknesses of the class, which are more evident in 2s and 3s than 5s.
The only thing I would really like to see is PvP buffs to other trees, so that not every paladin is exactly the same spec as every other paladin. I think it is still 95% of paladins or more are 41/20, to the tee. I would love to see Ret become a viable option, just like priests have shadow, druids have balance/feral, and shaman have resto/elem.
Amen to that. Retribution needs some interesting options in order to lure pallies away from your standard 41/20. (And yeah, 95% of paladins do use that spec). And I wish they'd tone down the giant flashy graphics for BoP and BoF - I can understand that they were too subtle before, but the new graphics overdid it.
I'm starting to get annoyed by the advantage Paladins gain through PvE progression in PvP. A large chunk (I would guess two-thirds) of the Paladins I play against in my arena matches are wearing a significant amount of PvE gear. 4/5 Crystalforge for the bonus, stacking spell haste, or even just pushing max healing stats with tier 6 is pretty common. Blizzard's done a pretty decent job at separating PvP from PvE with every other class. Is it possible to do this for Paladin's or am I just doomed to start at a disadvantage compared to the other five PvP Paladins on my server.
I do have a paladin that I pair in my normal 2v2 team in order to leech some points. I found that in some cases, the changes to BoSac didn't matter one whit, because I was used from playing a priest to always having to LoS sheeps, etc. I found that on a paladin I often got sloppy and could play out in the open, BoSac being the safety net to protect me. On the other hand, it still makes it difficult in many situations still because it's not like I have HoTs/shields or any kind of instant heals, outside of Holy Shock every 15 sec.
I guess I really didn't see the need for this change -- it's not so much that Paladins are strong, it was more that other healing classes lacked options -- namely, Shamans. Druids also take a high level of skill to play effectively at all, while admittedly Paladins don't take quite as much skill to heal effectively with.
The biggest issue I had was making this change in the middle of a season, even if the season has been dragging on for far too long. This was still a fundamental change, and just isn't right to change the playing field in that manner.
I should probably also add that the BoF change was fine, it's just the BoSac change that was the issue here. And yes, the new icons for BoF/BoP are over the top, but oh well -- just ask Shamans how they feel about their Mana Tide totem eh?
Actually we pull off full-duration Mana Tides all the time against the ~2k rated crowd at least. Our (Orc Male) Shaman just got in the habit of standing on top of it. ;>
We've felt this change in 5s though and not just 2s and 3s. We play Paladin, Moonkin, Resto Shaman, Warrior, FG Warlock (<--) and the lack of a second dispeller really hurts both our Warrior's sheep duration and makes our Paladin very vulnerable to Poly. We've had to shift our strategy a lot since the patch and are still adjusting to how badly we need to stop the opposing Mages now. Dropped a hundred rating to that this week and last. Need to crawl back up for the Drakes now. :<
I, a weekend MS warrior, is thinking of starting a 2v2 team, I'm looking for an off the beaten path partner though, how would a MS warrior+ret paladin work?
I, a weekend MS warrior, is thinking of starting a 2v2 team, I'm looking for an off the beaten path partner though, how would a MS warrior+ret paladin work?
Horribly because of the Warlock + Healer meta-game which is rather dominant in all BGs, they would have so much fun with the Ret Paladin it would be untrue. I would suggest a good Druid, but try and get the Paladin to be Holy if you can :P
That's strange, I thought ret would be better against warlock+healer since it has that extra CC, and burst damage.
They also have zero mana pool, one way out of fear, and the combined burst damage in 2's won't touch a SL/SL lock. If you want to make a gimmicky team, go for it.
Once the 2.3 changes go through you will be a little better (buffs + resil on armor), but you won't have the staying power to compete against better teams, and you'll still have no chance against good shadow cheese or mana burn teams. For a while, though, you'll just be able to blow people up. And yes, in some cases it would be better than a Holy paladin, but in most of those you're going to lose either way most likely.
You also only have 1 freedom for both of you, so it makes you pretty easy to kite.
10/02/07, 8:22 AM
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