I have like 3 mental “settings” I start the game with for an arena. It varies based on a few items (DPS team, # of potential interrupts, etc) but it tends to boil down to these things.

1 Divine Shield and Spam Heal Early: Usually against DPS teams that use a FF approach with 1 person designated to CoT/ CC / Interrupt your heals, you have to preemptively bubble and heal your team in order to prevent your team from getting a man down. I stress my teammates out a bit during situations like this cus I say things like “kill something in the next 12 seconds or we lose” or “OMG pummel that dam mass dispel!”.

2 Holy Light Spam: Damage is heavy but I don’t fear immediate CC to my ability to heal. Try to maintain range to your team and away from hostile CC at the same time (usually impossible against a team that pulls your warrior into the trap forcing your exposure).

3 Mostly Flash of Light: If I am left alone to my own devises with no apparent efforts to CC me, I go for efficient healing that keeps everyone alive.

After I lose a game after picking “holy light spam” over “shield and heal”, I tell myself I’m stupid and suck at life for assuming the warlock on the other team didn’t know how to play with his ranged spell lock pet. I’ve been wrong before and lose because I hit the “win in 12 secs guys!” button when it wasn’t needed but it is a mixed bag. We are a vulnerable, CCable healing class and at times you have to play your cards and let the river tell you who won.

Mana problems WILL happen and if it comes down to mana than that is a plus for you because it means you and your team lived long enough for mana to be the issue. Depending on the situation, you may be able to get some drinking in between healing. So carry PvP water with you or if you have a mage on your team get him to summon the super cool mana/health in one biscuits. 2-3 seconds of mana and healing when you can get it is helpful and can win a close match.

The only bracket you'll ever see a chance to drink in is 5v5s, and then only if someone else on your team can pick up the healing slack. In most cases, drinking is prevented by a few things: Pets, incoming damage on your team, or someone actually attacking you.

Because of the nature of our healing, if the opposing team can pressure your teammates enough, you're forced to chain cast heals which definitely prevents you from drinking. Most of the time games are won long before you run out of mana, and from my experience, if I'm OOM and no one on the other team is dead yet, we've lost. Unless it's 5s and the priest on my team still has decent mana and isn't getting raped. Your goal is to outlast the other teams healers while keeping your team alive. If no one on the other team is dead, it means you didn't outlast their healers, and now someone on your team is going to die. Most of the time, however, you won't go OOM unless you're getting actively mana burned, or the other team is simply putting out such high sustained damage that the game might as well be over anyways.

If you go OOM and everyone on your team is alive, and one or more people on the other team are dead, you're fine. That's expected. Because people on their team are dead, it means there's less pressure on you to heal, which means if you need to, you can probably drink. But the game's pretty much decided at that point anyway.

I think I drank more in 2v2 than in any other bracket I played in and we had to in order to win. Finding those opportunities where you can drink is a big part of playing 2v2 games, though maybe that was only because we played a drain game. I can't count the number of times we won games when other teams took their eye off me because they thought the pet would lock me down and I was able to stun, run behind a pillar, and get several drinking ticks in.

Always being aware of drinking situations, even when you're at 90% mana, can make a huge difference in all brackets.

I almost never get a chance to drink in 2s, and if I do, it's because the other healer is drinking as well and his partner is trying to keep my war away from him. There's rarely, if ever, a time when a) My warrior is not being pressured, b) I'm not being attacked, or c) I'm trying to prevent the other healer from drinking. I play off the strength of my gear so my goal is not to drink myself, but to stop the other healer from doing it, which can give me the edge

Drain teams are rare now. Most people don't have the patience for it I think. I know I didn't. I can see drinking opportunities playing paladin/lock, since your warlock can keep himself alive fairly well against single DPS teams, but if they're not stopping you from drinking they're not very good.

I played about 600 3v3 games last year (mostly with a double healer team) and used at least that many waters. You can drink a lot if your team supports it.

I'm not sure what this is based on. There seems to be a rise in drain teams on every battlegroup, anecdotally speaking. Some hard data on the matter in like 2 or 3 weeks would be pretty interesting.

Hello, I have been playing mostly in 2v2 and I have run across a problem fighting Druids.

I am having a large problem healing my partner when fighting druids. The combination of Cyclones and feral charges means that I have been unable to heal my partner very well due to the excessive amounts of interupts that are all in a row. In addition they seem to do a very good job of getting away form my partener even when I judge justice on them and give my partner freedom. Should I bubble right of the bat to handle the interrupts or what?

I am also having difficulties with warlock mana drain as I can't LOS it, I can't seem to outrange it and I cant cleanse it off since I have other dots on me.

Thanks
Greyspectre

2v2 team is currently Warrior Paladin
10.6k health unbuffed
290 resiliance
I have only played for about 4 weeks now, and this week is the first week I have had over 140 resiliance.
Last season my partner and I reached 1700 in rating.

This is about the same for me, against my better judgement, I will attempt to OOR blinds, LoS fears/sheeps/counterspells against burst teams instead of popping DS and HL spamming as I have the same fear of, once my DS is gone my ability to keep my team alive is not only incredibly vulnerable but I can very easily become a target myself, especially in 5s. I got mixed results attempting this until I pushed into the 2200 bracket where I see almost no success trying to pull this off.

DS is not so much a crutch as it is a liability in many cases; at the extreme end of the spectrum, a team I have had zero success against, double frost mage 2v2, they immediately put pressure on my warrior, Frost Nova goes out I have to either cleanse and hope to cleanse Frost Nova against Winter's Chill or toss out BoF to not only allow my warrior to get onto one of the mages or their pets, problem being that this is immediately spell stolen away, if I heal I have 2 different mages able to CS me and immediately Frost Nova again to burn my warrior or I. At this point if either of us survives long enough after the CS to let a heal cast I immediately Divine Shield to cast uninterrupted heals on my warrior and myself only to find that my warrior has been Poly'ed with 5 stacks of Winter's Chill rendering him unable to deal damage, he can trinket and will get Poly'ed, and I can spam cleanse and he will get Poly'ed. Once my DS is off they will Poly me and kill my warrior as the DRs on him for sheep are too great at this point, I will have cast BoSac at some point, even trinketing out of a Poly to cast a heal or cast BoSac, but again it is spell stolen off, I am Poly'ed again and I have no way of dealing with anything at this point. We have tried valiantly to use LoS to peel off and kill both pets, putting pressure on one mage while the other is out of LoS, but Iceblock makes this futile so we must retreat and wait for both mages to drink, Cold Snap, summon the pets again, and try again to no avail. In this makeup, the burst damage was mostly just a means to an end to make me blow DS as soon as possible just to make almost entirely sure that I was out of commision, completely stopping the damage output and CC'ing my partner rendering the 12s immunity relatively worthless

A much more frequent makeup we see is Warlock/Rogue in 2v2, we push hard initially, both trying to get in combat so I will not be Sapped, my warrior keeps a sword/shield on to eat the initial CS/KS/Vanish+CS combo so that my warrior will stay alive, I can possibly get off a heal because the rogue is OOR to Blind me or I stun the pet to cast a heal, saving a few seconds more before I have to blow DS. As soon as the initial stunlock is over my warrior will swap to a 2H and proceed to kill the warlock, I will likely have had to DS slightly before this to make sure he's topped off through Wound Poison and will not be susceptible to being burst down, during this 12s period of immunity if I haven't misjudged the situation and keep my warrior alive the rogue and the warlock will do everything in their power just to survive, additional stuns, deathcoils on the warrior, healthstones, if the warlock is not dead by the time DS is up, I am still under immense pressure to keep chain casting max rank Holy Lights to keep my warrior alive, while I can stay back and outrange the Blind, I am still susceptible to Fear and CS from the pet, so I generally hotfoot it over to the action and let my warrior blow a fear to take care of the pet. Hopefully my warrior has the HP to survive a few seconds as I will get Feared or Blinded, but wasting my trinket early on just one of these will simply give the other team the freedom to CC me again with no out, so I wait until I cannot wait any longer, hopefully I break both Fear and Blind with the same trinket and I heal, I stun the warlock so he can't get away or I stun the rogue to eliminate the stunlock or damage, I toss a Holy Shock as a heal or to help finish off the warlock as by this time the pet is back on me ready to CS my next cast. If the warlock dies, we can generally win, DoTs ticking down and the rogue still on my warrior, by going Defensive and Disarming the rogue or Intervening away from the Rogue we can catch up; but if the warlock is not dead, I have blown everything I had, both myself and my warrior are susceptible to being further CC'ed or CS'ed and being burst down.

As for 3, I find this rather... silly. I don't remember who said it, but it went something along the lines of, "You leave a priest alone and he will Mana Burn, you leave a Shaman alone and he will Purge/Shock, you leave a Druid alone and he will Root/Cyclone, but leave a Paladin alone and he will... heal?" This simply means that, barring keeping JoJ active on a Druid and HoJ on the ready to keep him near my warrior, I don't see much utility in the offensive realm as a Paladin in Arena. Not quite sure of the ramifications that alleviating this would bring, but I would certainly like to see some progression in this area of the class.

I can't agree more about this. The worst you can expect to suffer from a loose paladin is healing while the other 3 healers bring interrupts and CC. I fail to see how 12 seconds of uninterrupted healing (if no priest) counter balances having an interrupt, snare, mana burn, or other offensive skills that would actually effect the battle more directly.

Your warrior needs to be on the druid at all times. Druid should never, ever be able to chain cyclone->feral charge on you, ever. If you have to, freedom yourself so you can stay on top of the druid (prevents feral charge and keeps JoJ up) because you can always cleanse NG off the war and he should be able to stay on the druid with spamstring/piercing howl. If you somehow do get cycloned and your war gets low, bubble immediately afterwards. It really just sounds like an issue with your warrior, since a druid with a warrior on him can't really stay in caster for any period of time. It's still an uphill battle, though.

lock/healer teams are tough. Spam cleanse yourself and your warrior at all times. The goal is to stay completely out of LoS of the warlock most of the time, only coming out with a big heal every once in a while or to cleanse occasionally. If you keep the dots off yourself, it should be easy to hit the inevitable mana drain. And make sure you kill those pets!

Are there and stat standards for a Holy Paladin in PvP. Like Stam, +Healing, Resilience that you should be aiming for. I only saw a few posts with personal stats but I did not see any with goals to shoot for.

The amount of +Healing, Stamina, and Resilience that you should have varies by bracket and your group composition. It depends entirely upon how much you are actually being damaged.

In mostly full PvP gear, Paladins generally sit at somewhere around 1800 +Healing and have somewhere around 400 resilience. If you are not being damaged very much, as is generally the case, especially in 3v3s and 5v5s, a Paladin can get away with dropping resilience for more +Healing.

You should just go through and build a full set of PvP gear, and then you can mix and match PvE items to get to a level of resilience and +Healing that is ideal for how much damage is thrown at you. It's very easy to sense both when you have too little resilience and when you have more than you really need.

In any case, your health won't fluctuate too much. Most Paladins stay fairly close to 10k health unbuffed.

Cleanse being the "universal solvent" is also it's biggest weakness. Abolish poison may only do one thing, but it is more useful a significant portion of the time due its ability to chew through debuffs so quickly; the same goes with dispel magic.

I wonder if in wotlk they'll introduce an "abolish magic" spell that essentially does the same thing. I also wonder who they would give it to.


Anyway, on another point, the other day I was thinking of a potential solvent to lower bracket problems, which is actually the Lay on Hands ability. I've never understood why this ability has a 60m cooldown and drains all your mana for what is essentially an NS + 150-200% big heal. Blizzard could easily rework this ability to buff the class without breaking PvE at all. A few options just off the top of my head:

1) A high CD (5-10m) instant heal usable while spell locked that heals for a significant amount + your +healing.
2) A short CD (~30sec) instant heal that restores a small amount of health and maybe mana (something similar to swiftmend, so maybe a 2kish heal modified by +healing)
3) A short CD (~min) ability that restores a small amount of life but also gives the target a protective buff. Think about this like the talented LOH now, but instead of a flat armor buff maybe a damage reduction buff similar to pain suppression or something.

In general the ability should be usable during spell locks, I think, to assist with our crippling weakness to them.

Holy shock needs a buff. For the cooldown time of use it should be healing for closer to a holy light. I think that would help balance us to be able to compete more in the lower brackets, which are currently lame for paladins.

DS was overpowered before TBC for a whole number of reasons, not the least of which was guarding nodes in AB. But the ability has gotten weaker and weaker since then, and now that there is an actual competitive aspect to PvP it's on the list of abilities (shared with other classes) that haven't gotten any attention. There is this perception that DS is insanely powerful still, and in some situations, it is. In BGs when 95% of the players are horrible and have no idea how to support each other, paladins are gods. In season 1 when much this same was true, you had the same result. The big difference is that now people just know how to play.

Another big irony is that it isn't really a defensive ability anymore. In 5s I almost never use it as a survival tool - I use it as as defense against CC or interrupts during a period when you absolutely have to be healing. But in the grand scheme of a match it is only 12 seconds out of every 300 that you have control over your destiny.

That being said, as long as we fill up the healer slot on the majority of 5s teams I doubt much of anything is going to change.

I really can't whine much about Cleanse. While it doesn't "focus" on a particular debuff type, it really shines when you're cleaning off someone with both types. BoF, BoP, and DS are all really just debuff removers (and preventers). Can't really say the Paladin is gimped at debuff removal.

My thought was to allow Paladins to generate an item similar to Healthstones, only usable by the Paladin (like Mage conjured mana gems), and can be used on another friendly player (like a Soulstone). This would allow us at least 1 instant heal that can be used while spell-locked, and I like the suggestions mentioned above (especially #3, I think 30 seconds is far too short a CD, and 5-10m is too long).

I like the idea of adding a small healing coefficient to cleanse in the vein of 8 piece tier 3. Maybe 25% of the paladin's +healing, so even at the top end of the gear spectrum, you won't get much more than a 550 heal for 177 mana. In resilience gear, that'd be maybe 450ish.

Retribution Resilience-capped gearset

My apologies if this is offtopic given the recent Holy discussion, but I couldn't find a more relevant thread.

I throughly enjoy taking my two-hander out for a spin in BGs, but being crit by Frostbolts for 4k with my ~40 resilience is getting a little embarassing. I don't like doing arenas anymore, so I decided to try to build a gearset that would reach the 25% crit-damage-reduction resilience cap with the help of 3/3 Divine Purpose but without touching one piece of S2/S3 gear.

Comments on my math and possible alternative gear selections are very welcome

Resilience cap: 25%
Minus Divine Purpose: 15%
Resilience rating per 2% reduction: 39.4
Rating required: 295.5

Head: [Exorcist's Plate Helm] - 11 resilience
Neck: [Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph] - 18 resilience
Shoulders: None in particular
Back: [Sergeant's Heavy Cloak] - 19 resilience
Chest: None in particular
Bracers: [Vindicator's Scaled Bracers] - 19 resilience
Gloves: None in particular
Pants: [Slayer's Leggings] - 25 resilience
Belt: [Vindicator's Scaled Belt] - 26 resilience
Boots: [Vindicator's Scaled Greaves] - 26 resilience
Ring 1: [Vindicator's Band of Triumph] - 22 resilience
Ring 2: [Veteran's Band of Triumph] - 22 resilience
Trinket 1: [Medallion of the Horde] 20 resilience
Trinket 2: [Talisman of the Horde] - 34 resilience
Weapon: [Gladiator's Greatsword] - 28 resilience
2 of either Shoulders/Chest/Gloves: Gladiator's Scaled xxx for 2 piece bonus - 35 resilience

That puts us at 305 resilience, or 9.5 points over our goal. This gearset also has a meta gem slot and three yellow sockets across the necklace, bracers and leggings. I currently use a [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] on my [Furious Gizmatic Goggles], but in the interest of survivability I might switch to a [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] instead.

For the Gladiator pieces, Chest and Shoulders would probably be the best considering the STA upgrade and flexibility via sockets, although Gloves and Shoulders would be the fastest way of hitting the set bonus.

At least it's cheap? The priest Dispel Magic costs more than twice the cost of Cleanse. I still find it extremely useful in a variety of situations, and making it better would just be unfair to other classes.

That would be quite overpowered. Something to protect BoF and BoP? That would ruin so many teams that rely on being able to counter those with dispels in a timely manner.

Well, you can use your dispel both ways, and it dispels 2 magic debuffs each time. Which is the problem here, the ease of magic debuff stacking to cover more important ones.

Well, PS is dispel protection and much more all in one.

On magic debuffs, Dispel Magic while costs about twice as much but removes twice as many. Seems even without considering that priests tend to have better mana regen stats in PvP than paladins/shaman. Priests also get 2x the effect for 1 GCD. So many events in arena boil down to GCD efficiency that you can't ignore this.

I’m not sure I would call “buff protection” overpowered. UA is a clear debuff/CC protector so why shouldn’t buffs have an equal protection option? Is the fact that any successful 5v5 includes a spam-purge on the focus not evidence that dispel mechanics have a higher value then buffs?

Not really. Dispelling doesn't do anything at all by itself. It doesn't do damage, CC, or heal. It can't even be cast unless a buff is present. In short dispelling is worthless, utterly worthless, in a vaccuum and requires the presence of buffs worth dispelling to determine its value. The fact that the most common high level makeup involves both a shaman and a priest who spend a large amount of time dispelling buffs points more to the importance of being able to remove buffs than anything else. BoF is basically immunity to kiting for melee or immunity to melee when kiting. BoP is literally immunity to melee and hunters. If you've got a situation where you can't dispell those 2 buffs you're in for a world of hurt.

I'd wager that Illumination comes out to far better over all mana regen than the additional mp5 found on priest arena gear, assuming any kind of situation where the paladin can heal for an extended period of time.