One of my friends tried that pre-patch and didn't like it. His main issue with it was that the burst from reckoning isn't on demand like DS, and with the loss of the RV dot meant that classes could invis/stealth without worrying. Plus, you lose 3% of your and your partner's damage from sanctified retribution...

Also, a little aside, why didn't you take SoC? They'll be nerfing seal of blood/martyr to the point where it won't be worth using in PvP anymore, imo.

You're losing more than just righteous vengeance and divine storm - prot only requires 17-18 points with a "normal" spec and with reckoning you have 25. Divine purpose is a very powerful talent.

SoB/M is still leagues ahead of SoC. Although they nerfed the judgement damage of B/M, they made up for it in the seal damage. Yes, the burst isn't as heavy, but you are still hitting more than SoC and not so reliant on the RNG.

SotM will still be usefull in pvp. Your judgments won't hit for as hard but all your white damage and special abilities will hit harder. And more so that's why I think that reckoning will be better in 3.1 than it is in the current build. It's not the on demand burst but at the same time it is. It lasts for 8 seconds and I'm sure that you can time a judgment with a reckoning hit for technically more burst damage (two white hits + two sotm hits + judgment in the same second) and pre patch I can see reckoning not being as nice but the change they're making to sotm will make the damage done very nice. The only thing I wonder about is how much it procs in pvp. Like I'm sure if you get into a match where you're constantly taking damage that it'll be up all the time and in scenarios like that reckoning will wreck face.

Are any holy paladins looking at Ulduar as a source of PVP gear? I am wondering how much Ulduar gear is likely to be useful in a PVP arena set, or if it is strictly irrelevant to someone decked in deadly gladiator gear (plus 2 pc t7) that enters season 6, and all upgrades will be honor/arena gear.

If the current burst remains, and the T8 bonuses stay not good enough for pvp, I bet PvE gear will only be an option in slots where it is higher item level than the arena gear, and even then it'll have to be properly itemized and still not nescessarily be better. I'd definitely save you a lot of points to get a top-end pve weapon, at least if it's itemized at least as good as the PvP weapon (which currently has mp5 if you hadn't noticed).

They've said 2nd tier arena weapons will be top-notch item level, but hard-modes will probably still provide higher item level than the arena/honor pieces and therefore in some cases may be better. If you're not doing any hard-modes, though, there will probably little point for you to do PvE for PvP gear, unlike the current situation where 2/5 valorous is very nice to have, and weapons from KT trump the arena weapons bigtime, yet are much easier to attain.

I (and many others) don't find sacred cleansing too useful at all.

Improved devotion aura is pretty awesome too, i think most will pick it up over Beacon for 2's, and for 5's people will probably put at least 1 point in it in 51/20 speccs. Divine Intellect vs JotP depends a lot on what bracket you are playing. For 2on2, the haste doesn't help your HS or IoL proccs much, and many fights will come down to mana in the end. For 5on5, mana is less important and you are a lot more dependant on Holy Light spam to heal. In the end though, i think people will get both and skip the CC reductions, since you can often depend on dispels from your teammates in 5on5.

Hand of Reckoning no longer works as a totem stomper (just pops immune message if used on totems / players). It's a good change because it was cheesy as hell just macro'ing it to one of your frequently used abilities, but now I'm not sure what to use to take out grounding totems without making it really obvious I'm about to swap to shaman. I'm thinking either wasting my pyro gloves since their new CD almost aligns with HoJ or asking my priest to SWD.

Ret changes are completely ridiculous in BGs (though we were already mostly ridiculous in BGs) and I cannot wait until next week to try them out in arena. Combined with priest buffs, ret/disc is going to be amazing.

Disc/ret was very strong and just got stronger.

Valid points, and ones that might lead to more of a 49/22/0 spec for 2v2 I suppose. Decisions, decisions.

The scope of this post is 2v2 arena.

This is the first arena season that I plan to play for more than just a few games. Last season, I started to warm up using the 37/0/34 spec that was so very common. Ignoring other class changes (perhaps someone else would care to comment on other class changes impacting the holy/ret spec), holy/ret still looks to be a powerful hybrid despite the loss of IoL. Shifting 2 points from holy to ret replaces IoL with AoW as the "next best option" and retains similar capabilities. Instant cast FoL's are no longer triggered by a spell you were going to cast as often as possible, and no longer on demand with Divine Favor. Instead, they're triggered by a spell you had planned on casting pretty often. You'll get fewer instant FoL's, and this will force you to stop and cast more often. Other than this loss of mobility, I don't see any other large capability reductions. Have I scanned the patch notes too hastily?

Mobility reduction hurts, but the spec was very mobile in the previous season. I think it will still prove to be sufficiently mobile to remain effective.

49/22 is for nice 2s if I am Holy again.

However, 31/40 (in Ret) looks to be the more popular 2s build, since with all that crit on Judgements you will be getting AoW and fun times with buffed JotW + CC + not losing Divine Purpose.

On further thought, I likely will do 31/0/40 because I am so used to having Divine Purpose.

Is there even an "if" on whether to go holy in 2's or not, considering your partner is a DK? Not just a joke question - I'd still love to hear a confident "yes" from someone that gives me hope I could go ret in PVP without ditching my partner =)

Honestly now, DK/Ret could be viable given enough skill, but I would not want to imagine having skilled mage/rogue or hunter/healer(just to give 2 exemples) as oponents, these are setups that can exploit melee comps weekness of dk/ret. Just my 2c.

I am considering it. Like if you were doing Ret/Frost DK, then you would need to chain CC the healer or other dps (like Repentance then Hungering Cold once it gets trinketed) and hope you kill the dps. That nearly requires the glyph of Hungering Cold though.


http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...0&version=9757 this is the Hybrid I was thinking of, it turned out to be 32/39

That is a good idea!

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...0&version=9757

I played Retribution/Unholy DK in the previous season, and did fairly well. We managed to break 2k, but ran into a wall of Surv Hunter teams. It's definetly possible to get a good rating in such a combo, but going Holy instead is much easier.

Personally I intend to go Ret/Resto Shaman this season, using either of these two specs:

If the general trend is to attack the Resto Shaman (using BoM to increase dps):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

If the general trend is to attack me (using RF + BoK to increase surv):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'll respec depending on what scenario is the most frequent.

What glyphs are people currently looking at for Ret in 3.1? i plan on running ret/ rogue as long as its as good as it seems on paper. currently i slapped on exorcism (crist for 4k ish) judgment, and divine storm. i went with DS over blood because i feel like mana wont be a problem. Also rogues get hit hella hard and theres only so much you can do for him after BoS and Divine Sac are expended.

Judgement / Exorcism / Seal of Blood. If I didn't feel I needed SoB, I would use turn evil or salvation, but I think I will need blood. I heal and cleanse enough that I never want mana to be a problem, especially with dispellable plea.

in 3.1 i've been looking at 47/24/0 for 2's and 3's. partnering with a dk/lock in 3's and either dk or lock in 2's.
the 1 point in reckoning helps quite a bit with mana regen through SoW.

i drop'd beacon of light because its completely unrealistic that any paladin is going to maintain it with incoming burst. due to mana constraints.

I don't see why you would spend more than 22 in prot. I'm not 100% sure that me going with 22 in prot and only 49 in holy (losing beacon and 3% haste) is worth the 4% extra healing or DG (whichever is weaker).
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft