I think it largely depends on your own personal playstyle, the comp in which you are running, and the comps that are popular in your battlegroup. I myself gem for +10 strength for red sockets and then +5 str / +5 crit rating for yellow sockets. When I do play as Ret in arenas I'm either with triple melee for 5s or warrior/ret paladin/resto shaman for 3s, both of which primarily train one target and try to bring it down with overwhelming melee damage. You're going to be focused and, even if you are not, mana will be an issue for you no matter what you do. I prefer to build my stats to increase the chance that I'll take someone down very quickly. Even if I die first, I hope to have done enough damage to make him and his healers notice.

If you can, I would strongly suggest you pick up the PvP neck, rings, boot, belt, cloak, and [Battlemaster's Cruelty]. That should increase your resilience total enough to the point where you don't need to socket resilience gems into your gear. And I personally shy away from using +attack power gems. You'll receive much more benefit from using +strength gems, in my opinion.

Thank you Drae! Unfortunetly I have a long honor grind ahead of me, but I hope to start removing the + resillance gems. Should I start Regemming right now? Or do it slowly as a I gain more PvP gear? Also any advice on the meta-gem?


(The AP gem was left over from MgT, I will replace that as well.)


Thanks again!

As for the meta gem, I personally use [Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond]. As for regemming, that is entirely up to you. If you know you aren't going to be replacing a certain item for a long time, I would probably regem it. If I know said item is going to be replaced soon, I probably wouldn't. Depends on how much you're willing to spend in the short-term. That said though, you can probably get much more detailed and ultimately better advice from those that have faithfully played and remained Ret in PvP longer than I have.

The reason why most Pallies do Str/Crit is because of Resilience, you need to stack crit to put up Vengeance.

If you think you need resilience (you get targeted a lot and mana burn) get it, otherwise str/crit is best.

You need a base healing to start stacking spell haste. You have sunwell t6 lol so ur +healing is fine to start stacking haste but other pallies are running in full venge or a couple pieces of brutal so their healing is only 1800. 300 healing is much more important that 200 haste. .2 sec cast time and losing a ton of more mana or taking .2 seconds longer but healing for 600 more. one holy light reg heals for around 4200 in pvp gear so that's about 7x that ur getting the +healing so 7x.2 = 1.4 so ur .6 seconds behind on healing so u have to have another .6 seconds of haste to have it equal the same effect.

In my experience kings is better than sanctuary because of the extra stats that it gives people. The extra 800 mana and stam that resto shamans will have will more than make up for 80 damage per hit.

Good morning to ya, paladins. I've got some questions.

I 2v2 with one of my best friends, who is a ret paladin. He's currently in the midst of gearing up, so, our ranking still is a little bit low. We usually jump up to 1570ish in the middle, and then get unlucky and fall back down to 1510, all within the same ten for the week. That'll change when he gets geared up, however.

Now, our strategy is that our paladin either hides and waits for me to pick a target (always the healer or the squishiest DPS) or he picks a target and opens up on them, allowing me to open second. From there, we time our stuns and pound the hell out of that person, and they usually either die during the lockdown or live with about 20% HP left. From there, we just clean up and finish the last guy.

However, we're having a lot of problems on Warrior/Disc Priest team, as well as healer/Rogue teams. The first being the worst of the two, we just cannot find a way to live long enough to see the Priest go OOM, or we can't kill the Priest fast enough. As well, with Rogue/Healer, we open up on the healer, and then the rogue usually pounds down hard on our Ret Paladin, forcing a bubble (remember, his gear is sub-parish at the moment), leading to the healer making a comeback, putting us at the clear disadvantage.

What strategies should I use while working with a Ret Paladin? As well, does anyone have any insight of what I can do against those select teams?

Hey, I am just getting into pvp with my healadin, and I am trying to spin a new look onto the talent tree. I tested it out a couple of days in BG's just to see if it was crippling to use, and it seemed viable but there are some obvious flaws to it. How I have it mapped out so far is 28/33/0

Talent Set-up
Paladin Talents - World of Warcraft Talent Calculator - WoW Tools

It's an awkward layout and is not your typical layout for a healadin I'm sure. I lose out on my instant heal spell as well as the lights grace, but I gain some nice talents in the prot spec that could be useful, in particular for oh S**t moments the holy shield gives a couple seconds of possible breathing room when running concentration aura and BoS. That being said I'm aware this is a very weird spec and I'm sure people haven't tried it out.

I have several questions, firstly, how noticably will I suffer without LG and my instant heal. And what other ways could I mix this spec up to allow for better healing while still maintaining holy shield if its even possible. Should I completely scrap this if I plan to raise up passed 1800+ or does anyone think I might (with practice and patience) have a chance at being sustainable to healing a 2v2 team or back up healing a 5v5?

Assuming I keep the spec (I like its look, but functionality could be an issue) What are good block % numbers to have for my holy shield and blessing of sanct. to be a legitimate contribution to my viability in arenas? What types of gems would I be looking at for a healadin but that is leaning on his prot for sustained life? Should I enchant my stuff +healing and +int and gem for block and defense/stam or vice versa? Does defense boost my block rate (druid tank, I know nothing of shields)? Cookie cutter this is not, thats for sure. I am an open minded person looking for some legitimate helpful feedback, feel free to laugh at me with my idea if you would like, but please don't post it and say so, as I am looking for help not belittling.

Thanks in Advance, Uheals

Scratchs (Druid Tank - Arthas)

A good idea in this situation is to ask yourself why you want holy shield. The short answer is that you don't.

Essentially, holy shield is a self only defensive mechanism which is effective against dual wielding melee classes. Typically, melee classes already have some difficulty taking down a holy paladin in arena because of their high armor values. Because of this, melee classes also typically won't target you, unless they're getting a quick interrupt or pinning you in place for a shatter combo/generic magic damage (where holy shield helps you not).

Now, if holy shield won't do you that much good in the few situations when it's actually useful, that rarely occur, you have to first acknowledge (aside from the fact that it's a rather absurd spec) that gemming/gearing for it would be folly.

Of course, it's all somewhat irrelevant since LG is pretty goddamn valuable and holy shock is a pretty big deal too. Not to mention you have the idea that holy shield=speccing for survivability, when a single holy shock (which is instant, so you will get it off) will heal you for more than holy shield will likely absorb in the same span of time.

Also, specs that seem successful in BGs can be a pretty terrible indicator of arena success, since PoM Pyro mages with pve gear also do reasonably well in BGs, while performing sub par in most every arena situation.

Attempting to be as polite as possible, anything past 20 in Prot is stupid, and I can't even fathom why anyone would think holy shield is a good idea in a serious PvP environment. For one, you won't get targeted nearly as much as other people on your team, and when you do blocking doesn't matter anyway. You don't block while casting or stunned - two situations you will be in while you are focused. And you don't block magic damage, which is the biggest threat you face anyway. For two, you cannot heal in PvP as a holy paladin without light's grace or holy shock, and you shouldn't without divine illumination.

You can certainly get carried by your teammates to 1800+ as basically any spec if they are good enough, but there is a reason 99% of all holy paladins are 41/20 or some very close derivation thereof.

I realize it is still early in Beta, but at this point, a friend and I are looking at taking a Pally/War combo to 80 for 2v2.

He will be MS (obviously) and I am trying to decide whether to go Ret or Shockadin.

Keeping in mind that my partner is a Warrior, and that I would rather have short matches (played S1-4 in a MM Hunter /Priest drain team) any advice on which way to spec?

Also, I have a fairly standard Shock spec in mind, but my Ret spec is giving me trouble.

I have been bouncing around between anything from 10/10/51 to 0/5/66. Really, I am having problems not taking EVERYTHING in the Ret tree.

With the new E4NE change, combining it with Imp Ret Aura seems pretty potent at this point, but is it even worth it to get the Imp Aura for a strictly 2's spec?

Any comments are appreciated! =)

You can use line of sight to avoid mana burns...but in all reality, it is up to your teammates to keep priests off you. Much of your position is going to be dictated by your teammates, so you have to work out good places for both of you to be. You can't just leave disc priests alone in any setup because of mana burn. The typical approaches are 1) target them; 2) put shocks/interrupts/pushback (pets) on burns while targeting someone else; or 3) put out enough pressure that you force them to be healing rather than burning.

How you do that completely depends on the comp of both teams.

Is there someone missing from your 2v2? All I'm seeing is holy pally and resto shaman, which I'm hoping is not your team because then you have bigger problems than priests. Who your partner is matters a great deal on how you deal with priests (or anybody for that matter) so you should tell us what you run. In general you need to heal early and often and LOS the priest whenever you see him wind up a burn. You also need to never get feared. Doing this is made easier or harder depending on how well your partner positions themself to allow you to LOS and how well they can keep the priest snared and/or CCd.


EDIT: Die Amera.

Since talents and mana cost still in flux, it is too early to know what is the best spec for your makeup.

Shockadin spec needs Seals to do good damage therefore Sac Seals is important to not get them removed, so that limits the healing talents it can pickup. The addition of Shield of Righteousness adds some Shockadin utility. However, you can't pickup improved Hand of Freedom/Protection.

Ret looks better now, since you can still "heal" via JoL and Divine Storm while doing damage, and putting 7 into Protection isn't tough.

I know it is early, I am just fighting a losing battle with anticipation. =)

By 7 points in Prot, I assume you mean Divine Strength and Guardian's Favor?

Looking at the Ret tree, it is actually hard for me to put less than 66 Points into it. ><

Does anyone have any clarification of the wording of Sanctified Wrath?

As it is, I take it to mean things like Resil, Armour, Cheat Death, etc... for sure, and possibly things like Iceblock and Hand of Protection.

If that is the case, I will be forced to put points back into Fanaticism, and find 3-5 points from elsewhere (Pursuit of Justice?) to go into Prot.

I've been playing an alt paladin for a 4 shaman dps zerg team, and we are consistently losing from my getting excessively CC out the box, and loosing moment by an early death. I feel strongly at our rating currently (1500-1600 -.-) its mostly do to my skill as a player as the set up can easily go much higher. (You simply can't call a burst on demand like a NS/CL)

I am feeling frustrated by getting early CC and can't catch up on healing, I know that I should be doing more as far as placement, but from what I've read the weakness of a Paladin is because of their heals they are really susceptible to interrupt lock outs (rogue/warrior especially) - I feel like I almost turn into dead weight. Is there some trick I'm missing or should I just take the lumps and hope for non-burst teams? :P (and pigs can fly...)

If someone is getting bursted down early, you need to recognize when you are playing that type of team and bubble the moment you enrage to avoid an early lockout. Keep a BoSac up on someone to avoid sheeps (the main target is not always a good idea because he is probably getting spam purged). Other than that and some LOS, it is mostly up to your teammates to keep you from being CCd via shocks and offensive pressure.

@Narphet: that seems right, I've never tested that.

So I'm looking at a choice of weapons for ret pvp at the moment, I could go with the s2 sword/mace, the blade of harbingers badge axe, or a torch of the damned assuming one drops at some point. We don't run Hyjal anymore so Cat's edge is out and I doubt I'll be good enough to get the rating up for the s3/4 weapon. So, among those choices what is the best way to go?

I would assume Torch of the Damned simply because it has a higher top-end than the others as well as stam vs BotH. The only exception would be if you are in desparate need of the resilience granted from a merc weapon, but even that is probably debatable against a such substantial difference in damage.

I believe this is correct. If you have 100% dispel resistance on seals, then purge and dispel mechanics ignore it completely.

Torch (top end is great for Command) > Badge Axe > Season Two.


Having a good weapon very important, so if you have 150 badges get the Axe.

Anyone here play a serious Mage-Retadin comp? I was wondering how the composition pans out compared to other "strong" teams, particularly the Mage (is he a weak point?). Deep Frost seems to be the way to go, but my partner is interested in an Arcane/Frost spec for better burst damage.