How many successful PVP healadins choose SoW as their seal of choice, if any? Light obviously benefits from the glyph, but the occasional melee strike that returns 580'ish mana could be situationally useful, particularly for (and we should get used to it) non-JotW builds.

Actually most of the healadins I've talked to use SoWisdom. (I am a nub arena pally, my team is at a 75% win ratio but only 20 games in) Though now that I've learned of the recoil on blood, I might start using that. Honestly with JotW I just don't have any justification to use wisdom.

I may just be beating a dead horse here, but I do believe that the holy 51 point talent sucks ass in PvP, and that is the reason why we are pigeonholed into holy/ret for 2s. The only time I ever get any use out of it is in 5s, and against warlocks in 3s. I would suggest making it undispellable for starters, and/or make it so that whoever has beacon can be healed through pillars. Paladins undoubtedly need better spread healing in PvP, and the original beacon (A Mediocre hot) supposed to fix that in WotLK, however it was redesigned as a hot was useless in PvE, but they forgot to look at it from a PvP standpoint. If Beacon of Light reworked to be viable in PvE and PvP similar to the shadow tree has been in 3.1, then you help solve your problem of people speccing ret for the amazing talents in that tree.

Problem resolved/withdrawn; please delete post (I may be stupid for not finding a delete button but as far as I can see there is none)

I believe it's because they thought that moving infusion deeper into holy solved the problem well enough on its own. A lot of the reason 37/0/34 is so imbalanced is because the sacrifices that you make in holy in order to gain an additional cc and a huge mana advantage are really not substantial, whereas the sacrifices in holy would seem more appropriate for that which ret provides without infusion being available.

@ Mordekhuul: Most of the paladins (probably at least 75%) I've fought at or around 2300-2400 in 2s have used seal of wisdom. JotW specced paladins included. Personally I use light, although I have tried wisdom in the past and do find myself in games where I miss it sometimes. My reasoning for doing so is that I very seldom find myself behind my opponent on mana, so the extra healing output is convenient (because I only have just over 1800 spellpower as 37/0/34).

What does everyone think about ret in arena? it seems the changes in 3.1 aim more to streghten ret for arena.

I see a lot of high rated paladins (2500+) with a very low number of games played for the season (200'ish). Is that just previous seasons worth of PVP experience and teamwork coming into play or folks re-forming teams at various points?

Don't bother looking at my rating =) My partner and I are still learning a lot each week and losing to teams we shouldn't, so our win/loss is only a bit above 50% and our team rating only goes up around 50 or so each week, and that is doing around 200 games in the past 4 weeks since we started.

A more interesting question - I also wonder how many of the teams we are playing now that sometimes beat us will almost never play us if we improve into higher ratings, such as mage/rogue, a team I see no representation from on the sk-gaming arena lists.

Mage/Rogue teams are about luck and skill at the same time and in eqal ammounts, if they are both lucky and skilled they can beat any team out there because they have both the control tools and the dps to do it, the general idea against them is to survive long enough for your dps to lay the smack down on one of them. That beeing said you will meet mage/rogue teams at every rating. In my case I noticed I've met more of them at higher ratings.

More likely a result of abusing early game mechanics/imbalances to get to a gladiator rank then sit on it the rest of the season.

People reform teams all the time for countless reasons, too. And if you were at 2500, I doubt you'd team up with someone who's not at a similar skill level, and thus you'll reach 2500 back relatively pretty fast, especially considering the new system with hidden ratings.

I've always used SoW for the exact reason you mention. It adds up, fast. Especially against DK teams which leave their ghoul on you.

2500+ is very simple to reach with a modest win record. Paladin is very one-dimensional and past arena experience almost certainly correlates into high rating with paladins in their current state.

As far as R/M goes, it has fairly high "skill" requirement (for lack of a better word) now with the current state of rogues. Games need to be over in about 15-25seconds or you're likely going to lose, and with proper positioning/peeling, it can be extremely difficult to pull off those quick kills.

In past seasons, R/M could drag games out a little longer, giving you more chances to line up that big burst/CC.

I am almost certain that those changes will still leave paladins dominating. Priests lost their mana efficiency, but gained some overall net buffs. Resto druids got nerfed (???) and they were competiting with priest for the worst healer slot.

The one change might be that shamans might get slightly closer to paladins, but I doubt that.

I'd be interested to hear what successful arena healers consider their bread and butter tricks, at least the common ones that wouldn't be spilling the beans to share, but that experienced paladins have picked up over time.

What do you consider most important to have focus macros built around or to have macro'd for quick ability to hit up your teammate(s) with?

How are you making use of Gladius and it's clique features or of clique in general, given that the number of mouse buttons available is somewhat limited even with shift and/or alt versions of the mouse clicks?

What else has changed the game for you once you started doing it?

For DK/Paladin teams in particular, how is your DK using his abilities to save you against teams that can really mess you up (rogue/anything is just one example)?

I'll avoid offering my tips because I am quite new to arena healing, having just started 4-5 weeks ago, and certainly have more to learn than to share.

Side-question: A few folks now (look above this post) have suggested that losing IoL is no big deal. How on earth do you survive more than the 12 seconds your bubble lasts against a rogue/anything team without instant flashes proc'ing off holy shock crits? Certainly being stunned with mind numbing poison up while a rogue interrupts casts seems like a losing recipe for getting holy light off.

Unbind S from 'move backwards'. Bind it to stop-casting. Start casting holy light- about 1/4th or so into the cast, cancel the spell. Wait for the rogue to waste his kick, start casting HL again - at this point you force him to either kidney shot before he wants too, or you are going to get your heal off. If he does waste kidney, blow BoF, HoJ him, and sprint off to heal.

If he does have a partner who can also interrupt you cannot really rely on casted heals, juking two different interrupts before the first one recycles is pretty hard.

That points out a flaw in my interface and probably something other newbie arena healers need to change quickly. I never notice when a rogue kicks or not right now. I'm generally focused on ineffectually running away while spamming HS/FoL as they come up and BoF to try to gain distance when I really need my interface to be making it obvious when a rogue kicks, even if it misses, among other intterupt-style cooldowns I need to be notified of.

My first inclination is to sit down and spend however long configuring DoTimer or Parrot to flash up a big notification for Kick and related enemy cooldown use, though if others have more elegant solutions, please do share.

As always when it comes to PvP mod, download Kollektiv's 'interrupt bar'. It is by far the best mod for this, clean and does its job perfectly well.

You should also install spell alerter and his new enemy unit frames.

Also bind A and D to strafe instead of turn if you haven't. It will even make you better in pve almost immediately. If you tank in PvE you might actually need a backup key occasionally, but I can't fathom a reason why you'd ever need a turn key unless your mouse batteries die in the middle of a pull.

Seems like with PoJ some melee classes aren't hard to kite, particularly slapping JoJ on them first. DK comes to mind first, and getting distance on warriors isn't too hard at my rating level anyway.

Anyone else prefer just sitting and tanking rogues, death knights, enhancement shaman, etc? I certainly would never sit and tank a ret paladin - they are easily kited.

I would rather sit there and tank or be completely offensive. Kiting just makes it so u can only instant heal on a 6 sec CD with the chance for a proc FoL. Not worth it if its just a melee beating on you. A pally can barely be CCed as it is so why not just take the dmg and help your partner out?

Because if you run from a ret pally he's going to do 0 damage for a large portion of the time. Remember there's always minimum reaction time which is usually enough for you to leave melee range which means if he doesn't move faster than you he won't catch you until you need to turn. For rogues/warriors you can't really cast anything anyway so might as well run - it both helps LOSing their teammate and sometimes you'll get a good roll on the cleanse in between heals and lose crippling poison and get away until the rogue procs it again (which will happen the next time he can hit you, that is next time you have to turn or are slowed), making the rogue lose a lot of DPS. Basically there are too many gains VS too few losses for running away from melee.

I find fake-casting rather un-reliable. Sometimes you will cast and cancel before they even realize they need to interrupt (which is just time wasted standing still), and sometimes you'll cancel too late and get interrupted (which is time you stand still + delay your next HS which is more healing per GCD than FoL anyway). Granted fake-casting often works, but against an equal skilled/lagged opponent it should have at least as much chance to fail as it has to succeed. Granted if you're in a situation where there's no point of running and you've just casted a non-crit HS, you might as well try. But most of the times I find myself better off running.


Vengeance - anyone knows if this actually works as a trash buff to help dispel protection? I had a hard time telling if it helped anything while using it myself.

Preface: My main is an elemental shaman. I have a paladin alt that's approaching 80 that I've done some pvp in lower level brackets as ret; therefore, I'm not claiming to be an expert at paladin pvp.

Taking note of the second paragraph quoted, then having read the ensuing arguments about whether or not to leave the middle/bottom of the Ret tree alone, I started thinking "what could be done to *nerf* the hybrid holy/ret build(s)?". I can't see there being a problem with having CS and Repentance swap places in the ret tree...it gives leveling paladins another instant attack to help with leveling, puts Repentance out of reach from Holy (as far as I can tell), and doesn't nerf either ability.

Just food for thought.

Yea but what about the infinite mana thing? I would still spec a hybrid spec if it gave me infinite mana while still being able to heal effectively. JotW either needs to be lower in the ret tree so as it is unreachable by holy or they need to give holy pallys something to go after in either early prot or deep holy. I think making exorcism stun a target in deep holy as well as maybe allow for "cold snap" type ability which resets the CD for divine illumination or increases the mana gained from divine plea. This would therefore maybe help correct the "fotm" hybrid spec and still allow holy paladins to keep what they desire most, CC and the longevity.