• frmorrison

Maybe I misunderstand the 100% dispel talent.

I thought without other dispel protection, the dispel/purge will skip the immune Seal if it can, otherwise it will try and fail to eat the seal when no other buffs are present.

When I PvP without the dispel talent (other than the 100% to not dispel Seals) while a Seal is active, Arcane shot from a Hunter will always eat a buff.

 

Stolidus

Just to be clear, is what you're suggesting going 2/3 sanctified seals for better overall buff protection? That sounds ridiculously clever. However, you would still lose 1% melee/spell crit, but that could be made up with points in one of the % scalar talents rather easily I suppose.

I'm not qualified to state whether having any chance of losing seals when being dispelled is too harmful to consider though, so I'll stop the speculation there.

 

Juli

Dispel doesn't skip the seal if you have 100% resistance from the talent. When I first leveled my mage I kept getting failed spellsteals on ret paladins with blessing of freedom, and thought to myself "there is NO WAY that's just stoicism and I'm that unlucky". So I checked combat logs and armory for talents and I was in fact hitting the seal with spellsteal, and they did in fact have the talent maxed out.

 

Rej

Ret pallies hate having Avenging Wrath stolen by mages. It's quite funny seeing Undead running around with giant glowing wings.

 

lolz

Dispels do actually skip seals completely since 2.4, at least with sanctified seals maxed. Apparently even with 2/3 sanc seals it's pretty rare to have a seal dispelled before other buffs.

 

Fiola

AFAIK, dispel skips the seal when the seal is the only magic buff left to dispel. Getting 2/3 Sanct. Seals would make it so that people would continue to see the seal as "dispellable" (when it's the only buff), even though 2/3 Sanct. Seals + Stoicism = 96~% dispel resist.


Smarter players will recognize that you can't dispel a Ret paladin seal, but back before Blizzard changed it, I would regularly notice opponents trying to overcome 100% resist by spamming purge.

 

• frmorrison

I wonder how all the effects come together if you throw the 3% to miss talent. 2/3 Seals + Stoicism + spell miss talent = 66 + 30 + 3 + 1-4 chance to "miss" = 100-103%.


Likely better to max the talent if the game will just skip the spell if it goes beyond 100%.

 

Vitae

It attempts (and fails) to dispel with PoJ/Stoicism/2/3 sanct. It does not attempt at all (nothing available to dispel) with 3/3 sanct. I purged myself (two boxed shaman) ~40 times with a seal + blessing up with 3/3 sanct. It got the blessing every single go (rank 1 purge to test). With 2/3 sanct + stoicism, it often tried (and failed) to get the seal first instead.

This is pretty valuable protection against arcane shot/spellsteal, though less of a hurdle vs purge/dispel since they'll attempt to dispel both effects anyhow.

 

Castor Krieg

Hi guys,

I have a question and as I've been out of touch with WoW for a year I hope you can help me with starting in PvP. I had a holy healbot with +1600 healing, then quit WoW, now I'm coming back to play exclusively PvP (don't have time for raiding) and I want to do it as retri paly. I know that I should pick other class but I really have no power to level again to 70 so let's stick with pally.

My idea is to start farming honor and get S1 Set + S1 2H weapon, only then try arena. Is it a good progression? Does someone has another patch by which I should go? Also, is that blue PvP set good for starters, I can buy it right away as I'm revered with almost all factions.

Thanks for all replies!

 

Timi

I havent Arena'd in a long time on my paladin, but back in season 1 when I got gladiator, I didnt even switch my pve/pvp spec i stayed the same for both and did find in both =]

So i think 41/20 is the best spec u can go in all cases.

 

• Kestrel

Go as Holy in battlegrounds. A strong healer is miles more useful than a mediocre-poor DPS, and will win you noticably more games (and because of the token turn ins, more wins is substantially more honor). And thats really all a Retribution paladin contributes in the BG setting - damage. Get an arena team as holy for 10 games a week (even losses) just to accrue points (holding a 1400 rating isn't hard at all, takes maybe an hour-hour and a half a week, nets 250odd arena points). Collect Badges of Justice for a Blade of the Harbingers. Wait for S4 to release, then pick up S2 with honor, and what S3/S4 gear as you can with arena points that you've been accruing.

My husband is following pretty much exactly this scheme on his Paladin.

 

Himmel

Currently working on getting 2v2 team in shape: my Holy pala + Retri, it's pretty interesting combo and gives alot of freedom to dominate arena, keeping JoJustice up on high mobile targets, BoF on each other when snared timing of stuns and AT.
Doing well against such strong combos as rogue+druid and various resto shamans combinations

Weak spot of our team are MS warriors, I think it's absolute counterclass of our setup

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

Oscar Wilde, "The Remarkable Rocket"

 

Rej

The blue PvP set is also a great starter set. My ret pally is still using several pieces of it, and I would highly recommend getting it.

Starting out as Holy might not be a bad idea, since you'll be more effective in BGs, and possibly Arena too. Until you get some decent gear, Retribution might be much more frustrating.

 

Ragnor

I didn't see it mentioned so far but Paladins are unofficially the worst pvp 3v3 class in the game, not that it's news..

0 Holy paladins in the top 20 on any TR around the world. | Paladin HQ | GAMERIOT

Cliff notes:
After the first round of arena tournament qualification... there are 0 holy paladins and 1 ret paladin in the top 20 across the US/EU and Korean servers.

Class breakdown - Top 20 US/EU/Korea - Tournament Realms:

35 Priests
30 Druids
28 Rogues
22 Warriors
19 Mages
16 Locks
7 Hunters
7 Shamans
1 pally

Nick is a beast

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

 

• frmorrison

It is too bad that Paladins shine in 5s, because that means Paladins don't get 2s and 3s buffs.


Perhaps the Wrath leak spell that transfer spell damage to yourself (that is not a blessing) will help Paladins out in the lower brackets. Note it is not confirmed as a Paladin spell, maybe it is a mob spell.

 

sayedie

Hi,

I have a question about gear, pve vs. pvp pieces. I play most of my arena as holy on a 2s team with a frost mage. Obviously it's a fairly terrible setup in a bracket where pallies suck, but my partner tends to have the same whacked out schedule as I do and our 2s is our only consistent source of points for the time being. Plus, we're friends. So, I'm trying to make the best of it - I would just like to do better and make it into the 1600s (we hover in upper 1500s.)

Whats the line between resil and +healing? I have pretty good pve gear (a hammer of atonement, 2 karabors, T6/equiv armour) so I wear about 250 resil 3/5 vengeful with s1 shoulders and maintain 2k +healing. I'm at the point now where any pve gear I replace will lower my +healing, like replacing my T5 chest with the vengeful one or pearl inlaid boots with s3. I can keep my mage alive through almost all focused burst damage, but being mana burned is a huge issue and loses many fights for us. on the other hand our only hope of beating war/druid combos is me having a lot of +heal and mp5.

Anyone have any insight at all? General ideas on wearing pve gear for someone who's gear is better than the pvp options in terms of healing power would also be cool. (in before omgwtflolfindalock)

 

• Amera

There's almost no reason to wear PvP gear as a paladin in any bracket unless you don't have PvE gear. There's no point in focusing a paladin when you can shut us down without doing so. If teams focus you, your mage should be destroying them with CC and damage.

Amerah and Skymera of <Serious Casual>

 

whysoez

Not necessarily true. Speaking from a Warrior's perspective who runs War/Sham as his favorite combo, I'll almost always burn the paladin down when facing a 2's team simply because it's easier to interrupt his heals while I'm on him.

 

Ivanetta

Resilience helps against mana-drains. A big reason to wear pvp gear. One of them.

 

• Amera

If you are eating enough drains to where it is worthwhile, you are going to lose anyway. More often the extra crit and mp/5 on PvE gear will give you far more mana than from getting partial burns.

The only good 2v2 combo for a paladin is with a lock, and you should be wearing nearly 100% PvE gear for that if you ever want to beat decent teams.

Amerah and Skymera of <Serious Casual>

 

levk

That drain mechanic to resilience is completely useless, reducing impact of crits is understandable you don't want to get burnt down and resilience plays in the face of burn teams. The drain thing on the other hand is completely retarded - drain teams welcome making the fight longer, they're better suited for longer games anyway. Now if resilience prevented any mana drain past a certain % of your mana pool (20% for maxed out resilience just to throw out a number) that would make resilience far more useful.

 

tgbrown7

I think you are flawed in your thinking about how a mage / healadin should play anyway (i will ignore the fact its a bad combo because playing with friends > good rating). The reason is you are saying you need more long term healing ability, when in fact your matches should be very short if you stand a chance of beating a warrior druid, or warrior rogue (obviously your disadvantage is enormous). I would say whether or not you wear the pve gear is not the issue as much as your ability to play offensively without getting mana burned or overly CCed. Granted paladins offensive abilities are the worst of any healer by an extremely long stretch but you should stand no chance if you sit back and have long matches, because even a great mages can only burst so much (and on their own with a druid healing they should have almost 0% chance of zerging a target)

I play paladin and frost mage, i would say if u really wanna do well just go ret, i typically am only holy but i hear ret frost works well. I am playing ret boomkin and its super fun to just try to nuke nuke nuke

 

beneton

Im holy and paired with a rogue in 2v2, so i dont do damage, but in those few rounds where im left to finish off the enemy would spell penetration be an efficient use of my sockets?

 

• frmorrison

No, spell pentration on a Pally is a waste of a stat. Anything including spirit is better.

 

Stolidus

No.

Or, at least, it wouldn't be very efficient at all. Aside from the consideration that you aren't bursting anyone that frequently, spell penetration is wasted in most cases, especially for holy damage, since all it does is negate resistance effects from actual magic resist (and the only thing that gives holy magic resist, if anything, is MoTW), and not the inherent 5% pvp resist rate. If you did want to lessen that, you would have to gem spell hit (3% of which you should already have from precision).

But quite honestly I don't think offensive stats are ever an efficient use of sockets for a holy pally, since you rarely use offensive stats, and you can gain at least some spell damage from socketing +heal. How can you really ask if something is "efficient" for a permanent gem slot when you note that you'll use it only in "those few rounds"?