The Paladin PvP Thread - Page 51

Mordekhuul · 04/21/09, 3:06 PM

Originally Posted by lucien1412

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'm looking at 49/22/0 lately, but there are some really interesting choices to make in the build and I'm not really sold on mine yet.

Namely: Holy Guidance vs. Divine Intellect - More int feeds both crit (longevity/IoL/burst) and to a small extent spell power (particularly small if you don't max Holy Guidance), where Holy Guidance provides spell power alone.

Also, to spend 3/3 in Improved Devotion Aura (6% more healing done) or not. Not doing so gives you 3 more points for your holy tree, allowing less of a trade-off between HG and DI and/or allowing a point in Beacon for the (presumably rare?) cases where it is useful in 2's.

I have very little understanding of 3v3 or 5v5, but keep hearing mention that Beacon, despite it's cost, is highly useful there somehow, so when we form a 3v3 at some point, fitting Beacon into a 2v2 spec might be more cost effective than respec'ing every time we are queue'ing up for a different venue.

Gear

A similar argument runs in the back of my mind on gearing. If (reportedly) lowered burst in arenas makes IoL procs less needed for survival, I can see dropping the 2 piece tier 7 and going for more resilience/stam and more spell power.

Trinket choices feed into this as well. Where one might have fun with BB and PVP trinket before, now one can choose to run with a non-resilience WG PVP trinket where you choose between a spell power boost and a crit boost. Crit can help "make up" for the crit lost in retribution, or spell power is the way to go if you are less worried about IoL.

More experienced strategists, feel free to chime in.

Mordekhuul · 04/21/09, 6:20 PM

Just did a battleground on live. Exorcism cannot be cast against players now.

Crossbones · 04/21/09, 7:54 PM

Yeah, I figured that one out halfway through an arena match...

We made a change in the 3.1.1 patch to prevent Exorcism from being used on players. We didn’t announce this change ahead of time because we were trying to get the tooltip changed at the same time to reduce confusion. We still plan on getting the tooltip updated ASAP. Exorcism’s use in PvE has not changed at this time.

Going with a “not on players” solution is not ideal and we will be re-designing how the ability works in a future patch (the plan is sooner rather than later). We don’t like for PvE and PvP mechanics to work differently when we can avoid it. We also don’t like for a major damaging ability to be excluded from the PvP game. However, we thought this had become a balance issue serious enough to address at this time.

We shifted around paladin damage for 3.1 trying to increase sustained damage while reducing burst damage. Unfortunately, the Exorcism change did the opposite. Instead of stealing a GCD from a paladin, it actually gave them an extra one. A Retribution paladin could use Exorcism to cause damage while closing to melee and then be ready to go with their melee damage attacks. (Exorcism of course is not limited to Ret paladins either.) We changed the way paladins do damage for Lich King, so while it is unfortunate (and we accept full blame), it also isn’t too surprising that it is taking some effort to get their damage in the right place.

In the same patch where we remove the “not on players” limitation for Exorcism, we are going to change the way paladins do damage so that their normal combat moves have more depth to them instead of just using abilities every time they finish their cooldown. This should make causing damage as a paladin more interesting and also less bursty. While we have some ideas on how to accomplish that, if you have suggestions or your own ideas about how this could work, this would be a good time to share them. (As examples of abilities you don’t just use whenever their cooldown has finished, you might look at Conflagrate, Brain Freeze, Rip, Overpower or Arcane Blast.) We do request that you don’t fill the forums with posts of limited content or insight about how you don’t like to be nerfed. Nobody does.

It is always a judgment call about when a fix (a buff or a nerf) can’t wait. Some things we can’t change easily in hotfixes or small patches, and some things we consider too risky for technical reasons or for their potential effects on the game.

This can only be a good thing.

Mist · 04/22/09, 1:27 AM

If Ret's primary attacks become too situational, and Ret goes back to being the kings of autoattack, that could be a bad thing. Realistically, I think Ret has been revamped enough times at this point, it's time to just start tuning what already exists. I would make Exorcism into a DoT, and make either Judgement or Crusader Strike refresh that DoT. That'd free up a GCD in PvE, and not make Exorcism overly powerful in PvP but also not completely useless. Every 2hand DPS class is going to need 2-3 strikes that can hit pretty hard, which Ret has now and that shouldn't be taken away.

caboom · 04/22/09, 4:44 AM

I've tried some 2v2s last night with some friends in Skirmish matches and mana is starting to feel like a problem, I am using around 700ish resilience however, with none of the PVE pieces(27% crit aprox) but I can't imagine a holy/prot build at this stage lasting too much in arena in the next season, not in 2v2s anyways. So for me it's still gonna stay as a holy/ret build with AoW as a pseudo IoL.

Maylander · 04/22/09, 5:35 AM

The removal of Exorcism in PvP is a significant nerf to Retadins. Right now, we have nothing to make up for the reductions made to Judgement of Blood/Martyr, so we might have a hard time trying to actually kill things in arena. We're still very good at keeping our own healers alive, and at maintaining a high pressure (we rarely go OOM), so we'll still manage, especially with disc priest/resto shaman.

Hopefully, we'll know more about the planned changes soon.

Calibri · 04/22/09, 11:56 AM

The exorcism nerf sorta bites but it was really needed else ret be overpowered and simply faceroll.
We have enough utility and burst coming multiple sacs, sacred, AoW, and solid spot heals.
I haven't had any trouble killings healers, except one druid.

My gear is pretty awful too.
The World of Warcraft Armory

You can still exorcism player pets and totems

Mordekhuul · 04/22/09, 2:28 PM

To read arena junkies forums (never the most fun thing to do) you would think holy paladins have now become the bastard step-children of arena PVP, particularly in the 2v2 venue, and that the following months will mostly consist of gnashing teeth as we run out of mana while our disc priest and resto shaman opponents sit around 40% or more without drinking, laughing to the bank.

Only you'd think that with a lot more needless abbreviations of words like "the" and would need a few ibuprofin.

With the season underway, lets have some feedback here on the state of play and what is or isn't working for us. Between a new (to 2's) holy/prot spec and a few other less common specs being discussed, I think we have a lot of room for reporting on live data here.

caboom · 04/22/09, 2:43 PM

Originally Posted by Mordekhuul

To read arena junkies forums (never the most fun thing to do) you would think holy paladins have now become the bastard step-children of arena PVP, particularly in the 2v2 venue, and that the following months will mostly consist of gnashing teeth as we run out of mana while our disc priest and resto shaman opponents sit around 40% or more without drinking, laughing to the bank.

Only you'd think that with a lot more needless abbreviations of words like "the" and would need a few ibuprofin.

With the season underway, lets have some feedback here on the state of play and what is or isn't working for us. Between a new (to 2's) holy/prot spec and a few other less common specs being discussed, I think we have a lot of room for reporting on live data here.

One of the discipline priests I met yesterday was watching with frustration how his mana would go down and mine up as he was mana burning me and I was smashing his face with judgements every CD. I know IoL is big and it's one of the key holy pala abilities but with all do respect fuck it rather than running oom, and you will run oom in my opinion as the season progresses and resilience reaches new peaks. I am ofcourse talking about the 2v2 niche.

blacksuit · 04/22/09, 3:30 PM

What glyphs are people using? We now have some choices to make.

For Ret, I'm using Judgment, Turn Evil, and HoJ. I'd like to squeeze in Seal of Blood if mana is a bigger problem than fearing gargoyles.

• frmorrison · 04/22/09, 4:22 PM

Originally Posted by blacksuit

For Ret, I'm using Judgment, Turn Evil, and HoJ. I'd like to squeeze in Seal of Blood if mana is a bigger problem than fearing gargoyles.

Those seem to me to the best options for Ret at this time.

galzohar · 04/22/09, 9:14 PM

It seems like missing DP is not really an issue - healing power and survivability are quite better (both due to spec changes as well as trinket change due to the WG trinket having SP rather than resil). However mana efficiency is terrible compared to other healers and DK DPS is nerfed to the ground to the point where we hadn't faced a single DK in like 10 games.

Mordekhuul · 04/22/09, 9:57 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

It seems like missing DP is not really an issue - healing power and survivability are quite better (both due to spec changes as well as trinket change due to the WG trinket having SP rather than resil). However mana efficiency is terrible compared to other healers and DK DPS is nerfed to the ground to the point where we hadn't faced a single DK in like 10 games.

How are you doing as Holy/DK? My partner and I are just losing game after game - we were really just learning to play better when the patch hit, only really getting up around 1837 when season ended, and it just seems like almost regardless of the team I have to chain cast to keep him alive and at the same time can't chain cast because of certain interrupts.

I was running 50/21/0. He ran a frost build at first, and out of frustration at being just flat unable to kill things because he had to be in melee range to do all damage he went unholy just before we stopped (kid came home, had errands, raid coming up, blah blah). Very frustrating.

caboom · 04/23/09, 6:32 AM

Concerning DKs it looks like everyone running either frost or unholy builds, unholy builds are just superior(they kill me faster generally speaking). I am teaming up with a arms warr this time and I have to say it's a complete change from the fury warr I started last season with.

@Mordekhuul : have your dk grind top end resilience gear, this way he gets survivability aswell as keeping some of the DPS he loses coming from PVE gear, also I noticed most DKs use some valorous pieces, your partner could do that too. It's what I did last season when my DK was squishy and it worked like a charm, same as you we started late when pretty much everyone had an idea how to beat holy/dk comps but we managed to hit 2100 by the time the season ended.

Mordekhuul · 04/23/09, 9:53 AM

Originally Posted by caboom

Concerning DKs it looks like everyone running either frost or unholy builds, unholy builds are just superior(they kill me faster generally speaking). I am teaming up with a arms warr this time and I have to say it's a complete change from the fury warr I started last season with.

@Mordekhuul : have your dk grind top end resilience gear, this way he gets survivability aswell as keeping some of the DPS he loses coming from PVE gear, also I noticed most DKs use some valorous pieces, your partner could do that too. It's what I did last season when my DK was squishy and it worked like a charm, same as you we started late when pretty much everyone had an idea how to beat holy/dk comps but we managed to hit 2100 by the time the season ended.

He's wearing 11 pieces of deadly/hateful gear at this point. Seems like most every team we see has a priest and/or rogue on it, and a lot of them are double DPS teams with good spell interrupts and CC. I'm sure 80% of this is a skill issue - a lot of times, fairly early in a match against a mage team, I'll have used AM, HoSac and DG, will be line-of-siting the mage to avoid sheep, come out to get off a heal because my partner takes some burst, get sheeped, break it with bubble to heal, and he's dead before I'm off GCD and have time to cast a big one.

That sort of thing. I thought about trying a holy/ret build similar to yours, but the long holy light cast times seem unlikely to help me much, and none of these matches are ones where I'm going OOM.

Criteris · 04/23/09, 5:01 PM

I've been playing a 52/19 build in 2v2 with a dk, about 50 games so far this season against 2.1k+ opponents and we're going about even, started to pick up our play later on in our games and we are gaining mmr. It seems that holy/ret isn't viable at all because of the amount of burst rogue teams are dropping on me and the throughput I need to keep up my dk versus ms classes. We've been largely forced to play mana drink games and lots of LoS. Frost presence and defensive play till our lined up frost cc and hammer can down the dps or with switches hammering a healer at 50% or so. Holy/ret just doesn't seem to give us the survivability to make use of all that free mana. Caboom I'd personally be more afraid facing frost dk's, the cc train they can throw down with any partner, especially a druid, is ridiculous, while unholy does hit pretty hard they're pretty comparable in damage.

caboom · 04/24/09, 5:50 AM

Originally Posted by Mordekhuul

He's wearing 11 pieces of deadly/hateful gear at this point. Seems like most every team we see has a priest and/or rogue on it, and a lot of them are double DPS teams with good spell interrupts and CC. I'm sure 80% of this is a skill issue - a lot of times, fairly early in a match against a mage team, I'll have used AM, HoSac and DG, will be line-of-siting the mage to avoid sheep, come out to get off a heal because my partner takes some burst, get sheeped, break it with bubble to heal, and he's dead before I'm off GCD and have time to cast a big one.

That sort of thing. I thought about trying a holy/ret build similar to yours, but the long holy light cast times seem unlikely to help me much, and none of these matches are ones where I'm going OOM.

The thing is with a rogue/mage teams it's always about their luck, and it's not much you can do about it but hope your DK has killed one of them before you run out of trinkets/cds to stay alive. I for one trinket only when my team mate is below 50%, have freedom on him every CD, removing a kidney shot if possible and dispel w/e CC the mage can throw at him. When my team mate is starting to hopelesly got below 30-50% I bubble and start chaincasting HL till he's full health again, then again continue dispeling. Last season when I was playing with a DK, we were always trying to kill the mage 1st, because you alone can technically solo kill a rogue(in case your DK dies in the process, mage is almost impossible) and mage down means no more counterspell so you can be casting. Now since I am playing with a warr we are killing the rogue 1st.
Rogue/Priest teams were the biggest pain in the ass we faced as holy/dk comp, idealy you want to kill the priest so he doesn't cc/mana burn you, if chose to kill the rogue, run away and los the priest as much as possible, or interupt and CC his casts.

Originally Posted by Criteris

I've been playing a 52/19 build in 2v2 with a dk, about 50 games so far this season against 2.1k+ opponents and we're going about even, started to pick up our play later on in our games and we are gaining mmr. It seems that holy/ret isn't viable at all because of the amount of burst rogue teams are dropping on me and the throughput I need to keep up my dk versus ms classes. We've been largely forced to play mana drink games and lots of LoS. Frost presence and defensive play till our lined up frost cc and hammer can down the dps or with switches hammering a healer at 50% or so. Holy/ret just doesn't seem to give us the survivability to make use of all that free mana. Caboom I'd personally be more afraid facing frost dk's, the cc train they can throw down with any partner, especially a druid, is ridiculous, while unholy does hit pretty hard they're pretty comparable in damage.

Speaking of that i've faced a full deadly frost DK in arena yesterday and his healer was holy/prot build, and we've basically lost only because my DPS was not able to kill his pala(my warr has shiety gear still, but he's working on it now that we have the rating for most of the furious honor pieces).

Tzeni · 04/24/09, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Mearis

Dodo, I will be very precise on this point. Are you willing to bet a certain amount of in-game gold that following the 3.1 patch, paladins will still be by far the most popular healer in arena and very highly over-represented in the top 100 players?

Originally Posted by Tzeni

I would take that wager-- that priests will be within 2-3% of the representation of Paladins next season (give it 4 weeks to stabilize first). You're on EU server, so a gold exchange would be impossible, but we can work out some other friendly wager if you wish.

I was wondering, Mearis, even with only very preliminary results coming in right now, if you're still willing to make some sort of wager on this.

jaofos · 04/24/09, 11:18 AM

I've been contemplating running a deep Prot healing build for 2's with my Arms buddy. We're not aiming for the top by any means, and neither of us have much Arena experience, so it would be more for the entertainment value.

Seems like a 20sec CD stun and 30sec CD 3s silence would give a lot of opportunity for kills, and the crit healing bonus from touched by the light.

No Holy Shock would be my main concern.

caboom · 04/25/09, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by jaofos

I've been contemplating running a deep Prot healing build for 2's with my Arms buddy. We're not aiming for the top by any means, and neither of us have much Arena experience, so it would be more for the entertainment value.

Seems like a 20sec CD stun and 30sec CD 3s silence would give a lot of opportunity for kills, and the crit healing bonus from touched by the light.

No Holy Shock would be my main concern.

In my opinion no holy shock or instant casts whatsoever are bit bad, because there are classes like DKs/Warr/Rogues/Mages that you cannot simply tank, sure you have a ton of survivability compared to holy/ret or lower prot builds but you can't really expect to heal yourself too much either. Do share your experience tho, I am curious.

Mearis · 04/25/09, 7:24 AM

Originally Posted by Tzeni

I was wondering, Mearis, even with only very preliminary results coming in right now, if you're still willing to make some sort of wager on this.

Right now the meta-game is in a status of complete flux. The old s5 teams are horrible (hunter/paladin and shadowfrost dk/paladin) and those are farmed by priest teams.

If I had to wager a prediction I'd say that it will be a rock/scissor metagame with warriors/healers going against rogue/healer with a healthy amount of double dps. Offensive healers (priests/shamans) will be with rogues and defensive healers (paladins, druids) will be with warriors. The things thorns/overpower does to rogues are scary to behold.

What's screwing up the metagame is that a lot of paladins/dks/hunters have a personal rating that is way too high for their real skill level, and it will take a long time for it to settle, since the system 'remembers' their old rating from season5. This leads to other classes being able to farm terrible dks/paladins/hunters for 47 pts a win.

For 2s though, the repentence spec is still king.

caboom · 04/25/09, 8:37 AM

Originally Posted by Mearis

For 2s though, the repentence spec is still king.

With the sole mention that if you have full deadly DPS(beeing it any class) and yourself similar gear, it's probably better to go for the holy/prot spec instead.

blacksuit · 04/25/09, 4:56 PM

Originally Posted by jaofos

I've been contemplating running a deep Prot healing build for 2's with my Arms buddy. We're not aiming for the top by any means, and neither of us have much Arena experience, so it would be more for the entertainment value.

Seems like a 20sec CD stun and 30sec CD 3s silence would give a lot of opportunity for kills, and the crit healing bonus from touched by the light.

No Holy Shock would be my main concern.

Appears to be viable in 2v2:

The World of Warcraft Armory

It's hard to know if this person ran that spec all the way to 2600, but the spec has generated some discussion on AJ, and it's visible on the ladder. If you sort the sk100 by paladins in 2v2 you can see a number of them with 50 or so points in prot.

Mearis · 04/26/09, 7:17 AM

BTW, I'd like to eat crow, at least partially. I logged on my paladin for the first time since 3.09 and I was seriously struggling - I suspect this is in large part because:

a) I am actually a pretty awful paladin even though I got pretty high in season 5

b) I am trying out new comps I have never played before

I am having a heck of a time adjusting to the lack of IoL though.

vyce · 04/26/09, 3:41 PM

Originally Posted by caboom

With the sole mention that if you have full deadly DPS(beeing it any class) and yourself similar gear, it's probably better to go for the holy/prot spec instead.

My DK(frost) and I are both in full deadly, or at least 95%... and we've found 32/0/39 to work pretty well. Every minute we can hungering cold, hammer, repentance, strang, and get the dps down on the second or third chain. It's tough vs rDruids though as the hots are still ticking during the cc. Vs Druids we've had to keep up heavy pressure and oom them. We faced a war/druid team who at one point had me at 5% mana to the Druid's 95%... we still came back and won after ~15 mins. That would have been impossible as holy/prot, especially because I had almost no time to drink.

I'd say our toughest fights are certain double dps teams. To win those we have to cc and bubble within the first 10 seconds. Otherwise I can't outheal the damage.

Our MMR is only 2100 so far, but we're getting better.