The main problem, in my limited experience, with equipping a lot of (visible) PvE gear is that it makes you a target. People see you in raid gear and think your squishy, so they go for you, and in most of the teams I've played in we usually do best when I am not focused.

The effect of this is reduced, because they didn't recolor the Paladin arena gear, so it looks exactly like T6.

This isn't exactly true. The shoulders and helm look the same, but the blue highlights on the tier 6 are a fucia or pinkish color on the s3.

The only bracket where the other team focusing you would be a problem if you were wearing T6 gear is 5's. And then again very few setups would get away with it because if youre getting focused, that means your 4 partners are not and are free to roam around untouched.

CCing a paladin in arenas is RETARDEDLY easy if you know what you are doing and force him out in the open. By attacking other classes than paladins, you are limiting their ability to perform their role, but for a paladin all it takes is some CC to do so concidering all our heals are casts. If you attack a warrior, you limit his mobility and restrict the options to which he can turn to do damage. If you attack a mage, you basicaly nullify all of his damage and cc options. If you attack a warlock, you limit his cc and his damage somewhat. List goes on... Attacking a paladin is usualy a very poor choice even in the 5's bracket unless you are running a 3 healer drain team setup. Even then you'd be better served attacking a CC class.

For 2's and 3's the effect of resilience is even more drasticaly reduced for a paladin, because the incoming damage is even more manageable and your partners being free is a much larger benefit than you being free since you have plenty of tools at your disposal to get away. I realy dont see any setup at the moment that makes me want to have resilience except a poor setup that doesnt work with or without resilience anyway.

Keep in mind that I am talking about end game gear here from bt and hyjal to replace s3 gear. Meaning you gain like 60-70 mp5 and 400-500 healing in the pve gear as opposed to the pvp gear. that's ALOT to give up for resilience that helps against casters that can be los'd and controled.

I haven't arena'd much on my paladin since the end of S2, but it seemed to me that PvE gear was more viable in 5's and less so in 2's/3's because the likelihood that you get focused (or at least targeted with anything beyond CC) is much higher. I've started gearing out my pally in some s3/some PvE haste gear (is this worth it? dawnsteel pieces / ring / gorefiend belt, etc) to get back into it, but maybe I'll try my T6 with PvP accessories instead.

Also, I found wearing 3 items of epic SR constantly (neck/cloack/bracers) was often worth it in 2's/3's in the past - is this still true, or not worth the sacrifice?

It's the other way around goss. 2v2 with a paladin is about longetivity. That means you need better regen and the pvp set offers none.

There's absicaly two working setups for 2's with a paladin. Paladin/warlock and Paladin/Warrior. I cant think of one setup that would focus the paladin instead of the warrior/warlock and win the match except for possibly shadow priest and ua warlock. And resilience or not versus that setup, it wont matter much because most of the damage will be coming from dots.

As said earlier, attacking the paladin first in any setup is always a bad choice because melee doesnt do much damage to you (you can mostly tank a warrior while keeping yourself AND your partner up as an example) and for casters, ccing him and killing his partner is always a better option because then you limit the team's heals AND dps as opposed to just heals.

Resto druids are the new sl locks... They are overpowered in every way against a paladin in the 2s and 3s bracket, and are greatly preferred as well. Every combo a pally has, a druid makes it better, therefore if a pally is chosen its for lack of a better healing class... aka the druid. Now this isn't always true, but its mostly true. I've hit 2k a few times with different teams this season, but it seems like you need to be extremely skilled with a paladin in order to do so, or just lucky enough not to get warrior druid/lock druid/hunter druid. Running into pure druid healer teams from 1900+ is usually a common occurance, and given their incredible sustainability, cc capabilities, the only way to beat them is to out-skill them, and out-play them.

Sure they gave us JoJ for our counter, but often times, its only a warlock that can mana drain on it, the warriors are still usually slower then the druid for different reasons, often times if theres a druid your going to be going against either a lock with CoE, a warrior that hamstrings, or a hunter for obvious reasons.

The only class that can really counter these effects are a rogue, with the massive amounts of slowing capabilities and stuns they have, but pally + rogue = failure past 1900. If you can supply any advice whatsoever it would be much appreciated, as I'm tired of bashing my head into the keyboard every time we lose to some no talent druid.

Mode, BE Pally on Rivendare
300+ Res and 1900 Healing

Zilea on BG9 (kil'jaeden) runs Pally/Rogue and is 2.2k range. I'm interested in the strategies with this, but I'm sure the success has to do with basically every team in bg9 that I've faced over the last 2 days (1700-1750 range) has been something of Warlock/healer, Druid/Warrior, Priest/Warrior, double dps variant, not to mention he has access to a lot of pve gear. If only he would post here once in a while.

Can you give some advices on what retribution paladin should do / pay attention to?

I play with a retribution paladin and a restoration druid (as healer) in 3v3 sometimes. We didn't do too well in the 1st week. Any suggestion would be welcomed!

I started running a war/ret/elem shaman in 3v3 this last week. I basically just have a macro to cast cleanse on the warrior and bop on the shaman so I don't have to switch targets, as well as one for a mouseover repentance. One important thing I'm trying to work on is not having "tunnel vision." Basically you get so focused on what your target is doing that you aren't watching the battle around you or paying attention to your teammates. While I think generally healing is mostly a waste of time, you do have the option of swapping on your healing weapon and shield during bubble or in a long game where you just need a few spot heals to win. In general, though, time spent dropping 2k holy lights is time you could be spent dealing a ton of damage

I just replaced this paladin on a UA warlock Shadow Priest paladin in 3v3 and we're now 4th in the BG 2222 rated its a great setup which I suggest every good pally to try out. The offensive capabilities are amazing even hammer of justice is a game maker with the amount of burst your teammates have, one hammer after they trinket a fear and it GG.

Oh well he was doing really bad at the beginning of the season with about a 1650 rating(eww) and at the time I was just helping out friends get gear since I already had the personal rating I wanted from 2s. They tossed me an invite to test it out after their pally left.

What is everyones thoughts on good Paladin Ret 2 v 2 Teams this season? Class-wise?

So far I've had a very good time with my BM Hunter friend, and we passed 1600 Rating this week after a long break, and him dissapearing on me for the start of the season.

Also, good 3 v 3 teams class build, and 5 v 5 Class make-up for Ret Pallies?

I'm thinking about going Ret in 2s and 3s, trying to figure out wich kind of spec would be the best for arena.

20 prot / 41 ret seems the most versatile in forms of utility (shorter CD on HoJ, 30% dispell resistance on blessings/judgments, 6% less incoming damage, 3% hit/spell hit, 3min CD on BoP, "Impr. BoF", SDK ...)

what concerns me about that spec is the loss of damage output (no +10% str buff, and less damage talents in ret since we have only 41 points to spend).

Is this spec any good ? Or is there in the end only one, like 5 holy (+10%str) / 56 Ret.

Btw, is it possible have enough hit with just PvP and S3 gear, but without having 3% hit from talents and without having to socket 8hit gems?

I'd love to hear some of your strategies versus some of the more common compositions for the pal/lock/sp. I've played it off and on with a couple friends this season but we generally have a lot of trouble with smart PMR, drain teams and sometimes double melee. Most of our games can be pretty close with our SP eventually running OOM at which point we just gas and die, so it may just be a question of perfecting a synchronized burst.

We've beaten every RMP that we've played so far in our BG. The most important thing for a pally is to not get counter spelled with this setup. they have significant burst and can drop one of your teammates if that happens. The whole key to winning with UAwarlock/sp/pally is to stay in control of the game. You will have about more CC and dps and healing out put then most teams around. Though you might be pretty squishy and easy to CC yourself if you burst correctly the dps output from a mage will be all but gone and his CC as well. The hardest thing I would have to say is making sure your shadow priest doesn't run out of mana, thats probably just as important as not being CS'd. And if they're mana burning you that means you're not putting out enough damage anyways.

I must be a terrible paladin, but I have found 2v2 and 3v3 this season to be excrutiating- I find myself locked down all the time.

Any decent rogue, even judged with justice and freedom on myself can lock me down, warlocks treat me as a toy, and competent mages can deal with me quit easily. Throw in the fact that the opposition usually has a feral charge aimed at me for the rare occasions I can get away from the kick/cs to toss out a heal, and I spend precious little time healing.

As a pally, i just feel close to useless. They can lock me down quite easily, and if they ignore me, the worst thing I can do is heal. On the other hand, if you leave a druid or a priest alone, they can spam mana burn, dot, mass dispel, root, cyclone, feral charge, all while tossing out hots and healing. Maybe it is just me, but my paladin has gone from a fun and interesting arena class in 2v2 and 3v3 to pure pain. It is not uncommon for me to spend entire arena matches just trying to stay alive with holy shock, let alone healing my team.

I played this comp at WSVG Louisville. As you identified, your main loss condition is the Shadow Priest's mana, so every game has to be played as a race. Your primary countercomp is Priest/Healer/Warrior, especially if the Priest is Undead. The game against double healers is basically nonstop offense - output enough damage to force them to trinket early, wait out diminishing returns, fear again and kill the Warrior. If they don't trinket an early fear and are exposed, you can also get a lot of mana drains/burns in during that time. This team does well against most 2 dps setups, but well played PMR should still beat it - debuff wipes and defensive CC/interrupts let them outlast your SPriest's mana pool.

It's pretty ironic you basically need 4 piece T6 and strong pve gear to be effective in 2v2 and 3v3 as holy. The only strategy a holy paladin has in small scale arena is hump the pillar pop out to heal, try to fake out a cs. It's dead boring and extremely limited.

It's no surprise it's about 1000x more fun playing ret in 3v3 than holy in 2v2 or 3v3.

Somewhat suprisingly... ret/ms/druid, ret/ms/shaman, ret/ms/priest are fairly effective 3v3 makeups.

I could see Ret/Rogue/Druid doing well as a Druid-killing team.

Pretty much any team with 2 melee and a Paladin should be able to stomp on Druids because of JoJ. Since there aren't any War/Rogue/Holy Paladin teams (at least that I've seen), the main comp that can do it is Ret/(Warrior or Rogue)/Healer.

Im gonna be starting up a 2v2 as ret here soon, the build i went with is similar but not quite the same 3/17/41 or wow talent calc

i dont really see the 15 seconds off HoJ saving me, and i was kinda annoyed at losing a lot of damage going from my old BG 5/0/54 build....so that was my adjustment. I kinda wish i had the points to get Vindication as the %Stam debuff is nice, the other stats being fluff...

Its a good build while i get better gear, afterward ill probably drop the -Crit damage talent in Ret as im really overboard on Physical Mitigation once my resiliance starts to climb.

My partner options are Rogue, Shaman, or Warrior...and im thinking a half Elemental/Resto Shaman will fit best, for some dps, WF, and Rage...but we'll see.

Anyone know any good links for Ret pally pvp stuff, not pve....? this post is nice, but 26 pages is a little tough to skim through for current info.