This is my paladin in the gear I wear as 37/0/34 for 2s (The World of Warcraft Armory). Currently I'm doing 2s with a DK as this spec and with this gear - I have 524 resil and 1912 spellpower with lightning generator, or a little over 2k if I use egg or forethought. I previously played with a rogue (until he quit) and found this spec to be the best option as well - I wore nearly the same gear, but swapped a pve belt and bracers in (gemmed/enchanted with stam) because I was seldom the target. If I had the optimal pve belt/bracers/boots (in my opinion), I would use those instead of deadly, and would compensate by swapping all my gems/enchants to defensive ones. I personally wear the same gear as all specs I have tried for 2s aside from swapping my ascendancy neck/ring/cloak for the crit versions.

I would absolutely never gem for int or mp5 for pvp, as I do not feel them to be necessary, and having more mana is not always ideal due to the current drain mechanics.

Also in my opinion I would swap your shoulders/helm enchants to the spell power + resil ones (I don't feel that gemming for crit is as 37/0/34 is necessary, and likewise would prefer to sacrifice the crit in the enchants so that I can justify gemming for more spellpower as opposed to resilience).

The problem I see with current PvE gear in arenas, is that the stats you want the most are sp/resi/stam/crit more or less in that order, and pve gear always has either mp5 or haste which don't seem as useful. So given a choice I would gem for SP and wear PvP gear, and only use PvE gear for the 2-piece bonus, weapon since I can't buy the arena one and it's not really a significant upgrade (and a higher Ilvl one is drops from KT), and shield because mine is higher Ilvl. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Regarding the Ilvl issue, I don't like how it's probably going to stay an issue where the Ilvl of some PvE items is going to stay higher than the highest Ilvl obtainable through PvP, making PvE not only required but required that you do a lot of it to actually manage to obtain the extra-high Ilvl drops (in current content - KT (and malygos) drops).

There are certainly pieces of pve gear without mp5, and I still consider haste to be very desirable. I agree that with the pve gear that you currently have (based upon your armory), I would wear the pvp gear instead.

And regarding the item level disparity between pve and pvp gear, I know they've said that at least the weapons next season will be equal to the best weapons available from Ulduar.

I'm not sure what PvE pieces you would use other than 2/5 T7.5 and Ilvl226 items, except maybe the belt from patchwerk (which would need 2 of since one needs to get PvE gemming). I'm not saying haste is bad but it seems like resil is much preferable, and the "good for PvP" items you can get in PvE are generally swapping resil for haste (and stam for int).

The "good" pve items (in my opinion) that I would use ideally would be a swap of resil (which I would partially compensate for by swapping to defensive gemming - just swapping my 3 jc gems to resil would grant me nearly equivalent resilience to that which I lose from the bracers and boots) and mp5 for crit and haste. I would use the boots from 25m heigan, the belt from 25m patchwerk, and the bracers from grobbulus. I compared the stats that one would have from using the deadly bracers/belt/boots instead of gemming/enchanting defensively to those which one would have if using pve bracers/belt/boots and personally found the latter to be more appealing solely because of the itemization of these deadly pieces (I consider mp5 to be nearly a worthless stat atm). If it were simply a trade of resilience for haste and stam for int (assuming equivalent item level), I would not even consider wearing pve pieces over their pvp alternatives with the exception of 2pc T7. Obviously this is just a personal preference - I currently am using the pvp offset pieces on live because I do not have the ideal pve pieces, so certainly you can be successful either way

I know the holy spec has a strong hold on this topic, and with the scarcity of info regarding ret in arenas apart from "lol faceroll to 2200", I've had to learn the tricks on my own. A couple of tips that I came up on my own while playing ret pally/resto shaman:

1) If there is a pet, kill it. There's a person healing you, so spending time to kill a pet removes some of the utility of the other team, and a chunk of dps. Yea, they can resummon it, but for the most part, its more work/mana for them to heal/revive the pet then for your healer to heal you. Hunter and Lock pets you might have to kill twice before they start using cast time to resurrect it. When you see them cast it, you attacks wont interrupt it, but stun and silence will. Since it's a long cast and the hunter lets you beat on him, its easy to time the interrupt till the end of the cast.

2) Hand of Reckoning + Vindication. It procs 100%, and I find it useful in those games where the other team has a range advantage and they positioned themselves to exploit that advantage. Vindication will take off about 2k hp and 1.5k mana. Then some extra mana for them to heal it up. It lasts 15 seconds so you can have 2 targets vindicated at a time. If this doesn't annoy them into running out into your territory after some time, open on them after the 2nd vindication goes up, usually your main target. I also use Hand of Reckoning to taunt the pet if its on passive and not on follow, or if they send after my healer.

3) Most of the time, our strat is to go after the dps and CC train the healer with repent, HoJ, and Hex. Do this a couple of seconds after opening to force trinket. Then do it every minute or so after that. This works most of the time, but there are some exceptions:

Don't HoJ a paladin unless you are sure he doesn't have Freedom ready. In 3.1 this will only apply for ret pallies. It's much easier to freedom yourself when you are stunned then for your partner to communicate that he was stunned and needs a freedom.

If the druid is resto, burn him and CC the DPS. The problem with druid's HoTs is that even if he is CCd or LoSed, his HoTs will still prevent the kill. A lot of times I would get a druid's partner below 20%, and while waiting for a GCD the HoTs would heal him back over 20%. Also, resto druid's mana efficiency and regeneration is rival to the Shamans. If you don't get a purge off on the innervate, it can be a long fight. That's why I usually stay on the druid as he won't be able to kite you if you freedom when it's up and CC the dps when freedom is on cooldown. He will go OOM very fast, and you partner must be ready to purge the innervate.

CC the lock. If you are feared and out of trinket, you eat the full duration and end up across the field. When you get ready to burst the healer, it's a good idea to hex the healer to prevent heals and repentance/HoJ the lock to prevent him peeling you when you are going for the kill.

Go for the healer in ret pally/healer comps. This happened a couple of times where we CC train in the beginning, bloodlust/wings/greatness/berserking blow up the ret pally before he bubbles, but that doesn't happen often, probably because there aren't too many rets playing. If they both are half good, the healer will be able to keep the pally good enough, making forcing a bubble very hard. Focusing on the healer not only forces the pally to try to get you off and therefore kill himself with JoB+e4e+aura, all while the healer is trying to keep himself up while you are bursting him, but also gives you a good enough chance to kill the healer before oom. He will make a mistake of healing the paladin, (if not, switch to the pally to force bubble or kill him if he's slow) that's when you CC them both, pally will have to waste a GCD to BoP the healer, at which point your shaman is already casting lava burst. That+judgement+shock should be enough to get them under 20% for HoW.


Hope this helps.

Your post has a lot of really useful information and includes some nice tricks. I really like using taunt to proc vindication, for example.

However when fighting resto druids you are usually in a mana war. You will probably not kill anyone on a resto team, especially one in tree, until he is oom. To make him oom a good tactic is to focus hard on one player until he has HoTs on him. Then switch to the other player. If you do this with enough pressure, he will go oom after a few switches. This is if the druid isn't notably good at kiting you, and the other player isn't very attentive to pealing you, if they are it can take longer. But at this point you can get a kill.

No holy shock means that your instant healing is on average 1 FoL every 20 seconds with 50% crit. With a IoL you get 1 HS every 6 sec (5 on 3.1 with glyph) and every 2 HS give you an instant FoL. It's not even close to being comparable no matter what gear/buffs you're using. Yes the patch changes suck, but giving up IOL for DP is not worth it, and giving up HS for sheath and repentance is even worse. We'll have to settle for extra healing and 30% stun duration reduction to partly make up for the 3.1 nerfs, which nobody can say are out of place.

The added spell power from sheath fitting in with sacred shield, as well as rolling crit hots from FoL will make up for it, along with the fact that in a mage matchup I can now pop aura mastery and blatantly heal in his face through any damage he throws, while he blows a CS cooldown.
Trust me I love holy shock but I can win without it. Repentance and infinite mana however, are too good to miss. So is 500 free spellpower.
As for breaking the spec: Meh, they could've just moved JotW higher up and reduced its talent point cost, didnt have to break the hybrid spec. People's only complaint about that build is the infinite mana aspect of it, which I am skirting nicely.

There's no use in having infinite mana if you can't spend it due to being constantly interrupted by melee. Without holy shock your survival rate against rogues / dks / warriors will be awful. Sacred shield is nice but just doesn't do enough on its own; plus you lose out on a load of burst healing from holy shock. Get CC'ed and can't break it and your partners on 1500 hp when it runs out? It'll take you at least 1.5 seconds to land a heal, with an IoL build you can throw a divine favoured holy shock + instant fol within 1.5 seconds, with your build you get 1 flash of light in that time (which can be interrupted). Your build offers no added protection against cc's outside of stuns, against a majority of teams you will simply watch your partner die whilst you can't dish out enough healing even though you're on 90% mana.

You're points are valid but in my mind this is just a discussion of what weakness do you want to present? I personally feel that full holy builds are going to be weak now due to the nurfs, and that the top talents (including beacon) are totally shit in 2's unless you get the one single team that will be dual dps and split their dps evenly.
First off melee dps interrupting me heals has never nor will it ever be a problem. The big scares in my mind are locks with tongues and mages with CS. Not that this build addresses either of these, outside of repentance and aura mastery, but I think it has it's own strengths. You're right about the lack of holy shock, I don't disagree that HS is amazing (I am currently a 37-0-34 as stated) but let's be honest- if you're dps is at 1500 hp you've already put yourself in a really bad position. If my dps hits 30% hp I start popping CD's to keep him up. If it's that dicey, use aura mastery and pop a few FoL on him for rolling crit HoT's.

Now obviously I haven't tried this in rated arena's yet so I can't give any specifics, but I am convinced it's a viable build.

I guess I'm just fighting bad teams in my 1900 bracket, but about half the time I can kill the healer (druid or otherwise) before he ooms just with good switches. I know that wont happen as the rating gets higher, but I think I do it out of frustration of my partner failing at CC.

Last night, after a month of playing together, he told me that Repentance and Hex share diminishing returns? First he said it was Hammer of Justice and Hex, now Hex and Repentance. I looked it up and HoJ is on a stun DR, and Repentance is on a Sap/Poly DR. It said nothing about Shaman's Hex. I'm assuming it shares Sap/Poly. I'll check Shaman forums on EJ, But if any one knows for sure it will be most helpful.

Noted. Let me change direction and ask, why in God's name do all the top holy talents blow for pvp other than IoL? Would it be so hard to give us something valuable? Increase judgement range is great, bur hardly a pre-req for a successful combat healer especially now that the talent doesnt include justice. Increase judgement damage and haste is pretty much worthless, the cleanse talent sucks (though I'd take it if it was a 30% chance to increase your resistances by 100%), beacon is too situational to be any good, I mean wtf? It's a stark night and day comparing a hybrid spec to a full holy spec.

I do agree and do wish that the hybrid spec would still be viable as the bottom of holy is, as you've stated, pretty heavily PvE focused. I wouldn't say that the talents are useless, the haste helps to boost burst healing, the 40 yard range is nice for breaking sheep using JoB, but it doesn't really do much to add any offensive utility (especially with the removal of justice from the increased range talent) to the class which is what makes having repentance fun; good paladins could at least stand out with well timed CC combos whereas the future of the class seems to be running around in circles spamming holy shock every 5 seconds. Prehaps putting the un-interruptible effect from aura mastery as a separate talent at the bottom of holy or like you said, making sacred cleansing actually useful (does anyone actually use this at all?) whilst moving JotW further down in ret - so you would have a choice between repentance and extra utility from holy - would have been a better approach to the class. Note that even with the current changes paladins will still be the most mana efficient and most survivable healers in the game, so its unlikely that anything will be done to help us out.

I don't entirely agree. While beacon is highly situation and the damage portion of JotP is lackluster, I certainly don't consider the haste to be worthless, especially with it's long duration. Holy guidance is obviously a nice bonus as well, and I really miss enlightened judgments as 37/0/34 - both for having something other than taunt for keeping people in combat, and because it grants me the ability to martyr sheep casts from max range. Illumination is a godsend without JotW. The issue right now is just that, as you're saying, these talents aren't imperative for success, which is why we see paladins (including myself! :p) putting almost as many points into ret as holy for the purpose of healing. Nevertheless, I don't consider them to all be worthless.

I've heard the "martyr/blood" for breaking poly a couple of times, how does this work?

I think you should also take a step back and see why people were taking the hybrid build. I remember back in the pre-expansion days hearing Blizzard explain that they were going to avoid hybrid specs all over the board by making the top tier talents valuable.
I think that nurfing the hybrid spec was probably unavoidable, but it doesn't address the root issue that the talents just aren't valuable enough to take! With the games current state of massive burst damage, I really don't need increase judgement damage, or 15% haste when the issue is that I cant get a heal off with a mage and a rogue watching my every move. Haste doesn't do you any good when you can't cast.

I think they DO have a good reason to buff holy, and that is that people are already looking at other ways to exploit the holy/ret hybrid. They need to add something in to the top of holy to give it value for pvp, or continue dealing with hybrid specs with infinite mana.

Holy Shock is invaluable for PvP, and it is near the top. If you are referring to Beacon, just don't pick it up if you feel you don't like it.

When Pally is 30% of the representation, you know something is wrong. They don't need to add any PvP talents to Holy.

I fully agree its overpowered, and the only "problem" with the paladin class as a healer as of 3.1 will be a low skill cap, which isn't necessarily something that needs adjusting (sadly).

It's basically the same mechanic that priests use with SWD, use judgement as sheep is being cast, then there's a minor delay before you get the recoil damage from your seal which hits you and breaks the sheep.

Holy shock is tier 7, out of 11. It is more top than bottom, but it surely doesnt do anything to justify the other 4 tiers full of crap.
Pally is 30% of the representation because we have class specific buffs, plate, bubble, and auras. They are adding warrior bubble removal, but until they fix the fact that hybrid spec is still going to be superior due to infinite mana through judging, they won't fix representation.

They are barking up the wrong tree by breaking hybrid (and not giving us anything valid in deep holy)

The point is I doubt they're going to spend much development time improving deep holy when paladins are currently the most dominant arena class in the game's history. Deep holy is fine for PvE and doesn't need to be improved in PvP until the class is less powerful as a whole. Paladins don't need compensation for hybrid spec nerfs or nerfs in general - they are nerfs for a reason. If during S3 and S4 they nerfed the restokin balance spec for druids as the dominant healer, they wouldn't have needed to buff deep resto in compensation.

It's lamentable not every tier of every tree can have nice attractive talents, but that's a much smaller concern than trying to rein in the class first and worry about details later.

What I am saying though is that this entire issue is with hybrid paladins because they have all the utility and infinite mana of a ret pally with all the burst instant healing of a holy pally. They are JUST barely touching that by moving IOL so far out of reach, but I've already spoken with a few 2k+ paladins that will just be switching to art of war for their instant FoL's and using holy shock as always, noting the reduced CD for HS will help.

End result: Hybrid still dominates, paladins now have even MORE mana due to JotW buff, BoF still breaks stuns, they still have repentance, but since all the great talents for holy in the bottom we now have an improved conc aura, and aura mastery.

That is not how you tone down pally representation in arenas. That is how you ensure that the pallies that are in arenas stick with straight hybrid builds- the exact same builds everyone's been complaining about all this time.
If you want to fix overpowered paladins in arenas, force them out of ret's utility, control, and mana regeneration by buffing holy's straight healing ability.

Until then it's just going to be more of the same.