The Paladin PvP Thread - Page 2

Katten · 05/02/07, 2:16 AM

Originally Posted by 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?

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 · 05/02/07, 3:01 AM

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 · 05/02/07, 3:13 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/02/07, 3:19 AM

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.

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 · 05/02/07, 3:43 AM

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

Mearis · 05/02/07, 4:07 AM

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.

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 · 05/02/07, 8:12 AM

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.

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

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

Telesis · 05/02/07, 8:24 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/02/07, 8:42 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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- · 05/02/07, 8:54 AM

Originally Posted by Thelyna

-- 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.

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.

goss · 05/02/07, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

I will go out of my way to kill a Felhunter in any bracket, otherwise the potential for it locking me is too high. I'll Exorcism + DF/HS + JoRighteousness right off the bat, which usually brings it to about 50%, have your teammates breath on it a bit and it'll fall over from that point. Not exhaustive evidence by any stretch, but I think every time I've killed a warlock's felhunter in a 2v2 or 3v3, we've won the match, it removes a serious advantage and will often throw the warlock for a loop.

hip · 05/02/07, 2:08 PM

I think it's kind of like a kick in the nuts when I bring up SoR in the process of attacking a felhunter only to have it immediately dispelled.

In regards to the monkey thing, I definitely wouldnt say that paladins are the most involved, but also not the least either. I do sympathize with what you're saying though, regarding the fact that its very hard to tell the difference between an OK paladin and a kickass one. After watching Sck's video the first few times I was really disappointed that I really didnt learn anything new or revolutionary from his tactics. I also noticed that it was the synergy and groupwork between his teammates allowed him to be reasonably conservative in his playstyle (IE he wasnt standing in one place spamming HL the entire game).

So I'm left with that kind of belief, that your teams performance really does wear off on your performance (as well as vice versa). If your warlock is doing well kiting opposing enemy warriors and other dps, if your mage is effectively sheeping dps'ers that are out of range of defensive dispels, then you begin to see a drop in the amount of healing you have to do, and you are enabled to contribute to the team in more "skilled" ways, like killing totems, interrupting enemy healers, and assisting with offensive and defensive stuns.

If I had to have a monkey though, I'd say it would be a warlock. Our warlock's main duty (and I'm sure this is the case for most other teams fielding one) is to keep CoT up on opposing casters, fearing opposing paladins, and staying alive. He gets some dots in and does the occasional damage when he gets a chance and his performance is definitely affected by "skill", but his most important jobs are very menial and replacing him with a monkey wouldnt necessarily destroy our team.

Leene · 05/06/07, 7:16 PM

I have a question for the paladins with more arena experience. First let me give you a bit of background information. My main focus with this paladin is pve and raid healing, specced 43/18 at the moment. I do however enjoy pvp and have recently begun to play in the different arena brackets with a few friends. My gear is mostly pve healing gear, with a few random blue pvp pieces. The teams that I'm currently playing in are either Paladin and Mage/Warrior for 2vs2 and Paladin, Warrior and Mage/Warlock/Hunter for 3vs3.

I've started to encounter more and more teams that focus fire me right of the bat. Now when I first started playing around in 2vs2 and 3vs3, this never happend, so the fact that I run around in mostly pve gear was never much of a problem. But I'm finding that once I get focus fired early on, I'm very often done for. In other words, I have to blow my bubble way to early and after my bubble is gone, it's an easy job for the opposing team to counterspell/kick/earthshock and god knows what to keep me from ever landing a heal. I've managed to run around pillars to take advantage of LOS issues, but this is won't always work. Not to mention the problem of being to far away so that my teammates will be killed, while I can't reach them and land a heal in time.

What I'm asking for is simply advice on what to do in these situations as well as what my goals should be when it comes to gear. Should I aim to switch out some +healing and get a lot more stamina/resilience?

Keline · 05/06/07, 7:48 PM

BTW anyone else using Violet Badge as trinket? It's pretty amazing how often I resist counterspells with just 50 arcane resistance

Ragnor · 05/06/07, 9:35 PM

I switch it in for 2v2 when I see a mage but I prefer infinite cycle for 5v5