Skellingtoon

I run a ret/resto sham/rogue team in 3s, and we have had some luck with the standard strategy - Sap/repentance/hex a DPS and burn the healer. Given the huge range of stuns available to a Paladin, would it be a stronger strategy to CC the healer and burn a dps?

This strat would seem to work better against a priest/shammy healer than against a druid/pally, since druids are immune to repentance and pallies have bubble.

I'd love some critique of each strat generally against heal/2dps teams.

 

Paladinion

My team consists of 2v2 bracket ret/druid, We seem to be running quite well with a 76% win rate. The problem lies with warr/prot(holy)pally, shaman(restro)/lock(destro)(affliction), We cannot seem to put these teams on the defensive or it is extreamly hard for us to win usually having to outlast waiting for the other team to OOM.

I being the ret pally try to pressure and kill the warlocks pet as to prevent my druid going into defensive making myself vulnerable to attack, then try to pressure the warlock forcing the shaman to drain mana fast and eventually OOM, But with the purges and warlocks offensive / defensive messures its hard for me to pressure the lock, then i try to put a reverse method and pressure the shaman only to have myself always protecting my Druid from the locks fierce cc and burn tactics, Any information on this team setup would be helpfull..

Secondly warr/protpally setups i naturally try to put alot of burst on the warrior to make the prot pally burn all viable mana resource's also helping my druid escape the warriors slowing abbilities. In all i think this setup is only a gear check as my druid seems to be getting wasted everytime from the warriors offensive attacks. But any tips for this setup i would be thankfull, as these teams seem to be regular in my battle group for 2's.

P.S.

A druids resil in 2's? Should he be capped or would 800 resil be fine?

 

mekell

From what i have read, 800-900 resilliance should be fine in 2s. Take that with a grain of salt, as I have not yet experienced arena's since WOTLK (am about to start up again in 2s and 3s myself as a resto druid - haven't arenaed since season 4 or 5) and that is what I have found via research. Some is going to depend on the rest of your partner's gear as well.

I know i rarely have problems healing through 1-2 people beating on me for long enough for someone to help out, and I will be running around 900 when i finish making the gear changes i want to make, right now im over 900 res.

Not loaded with an experienced answer, but hopefully it helps.

Edit: regarding the druid surviving the warrior, anything you can do will help, but depending on his spec setup and glyphs, nature's grasp, barkskin is incredible now especially if specced and glyphed, even a bash in bear form will do wonders to buy him enough time to get free. Once he does get free, have him do everything in his power to stay out of charge range. I definitely remember running non-stop in matches that contained warriors on the other team, but fortunately my teammate in 2s is also a warrior, so hamstring can really help. Just keep the hots rolling, he will have MS on him as much as the warrior can get it, root and cyclone will be his friend here at buying him some breathing room between him in the warrior from what i have found in the older seasons.

 

Veet

My stun is used as a CC on a healer in almost 50% of the games we play. Some games you'll train healers, others you'll be on dps. It mostly depends on what kind of healer or dps, things like who has pre-hots, earth shields, bubbles.

 

Veet

Have you tried using Seal of Corr/Veng and sitting on a target? I played healer/ret vs. healer/dps and I found that if I used Seal of Corr, the dot damage ended up being 15% of my damage, as high as seal procs and white hits. This allowed us to out mana a lot of the teams. You will have a lot of trouble vs. other teams that have an MS effect.

The main reason I stopped playing healer/ret in 2v2 is because ret paladins lack an MS, an interrupt, and a snare.

 

Kenobe

Hi everyone,

A couple of basic questions I can't find an answer to in the OP or recent pages of the thread.

Is ret still viable in 2s and 3s?
What comps including ret tend to still do well?
What seal should be used?
Which classes can dispell the SOV debuff?
Should ret gem for strength or resilience?

Sorry for all the questions but the OP seems out of date and I don't know where to find this information which seems basic

 

Veet

SoR glyphed with 5/5 seals of the pure plays like Ret did back in 3.1 with Seal of Blood, easy to swap to new targets and burst.

So I was fortunate enough to get my hands on ToC25 Death's Choice. Contemplating whether it may be better to use over DMC:Death when playing with a rogue. They both have 45 second internal cooldowns with very high proc rates. The deciding factor for me would be whether the Paragon buff provides enough damage during the proc to allow for more burst than a DMC: Death proc.

 

Veet

Ret is still viable, more so in 3s than 2s. The most popular comps are ret/rogue/healer or ret/hunter/healer.

The spec involves using Seal of Righteousness, glyphed and generally talented with 5/5 Seals of the Pure. Some Paladins go with 3/5 Seals of the Pure so they can still pick up Improved HoJ.

SOV is dispellable by anyone with magic dispels (priest and paladins). Although if they are doing it, they will generally go OOM. SoV is really only useful vs. healers in 1v1s (including priests and paladins).

You shouldn't have to gem for resilience, your job as a Ret paladin in pvp is to provide burst damage and support abilities for your teammates.

 

Paladinion

Yes i have opted to use sov with certain classes to maintain alot of pressure on the healer, especially if the team consists of Healer/Warrior---Healer/Rogue setups, putting alot of pressure on the healer i have found always pulls the dps off my Healer and forces him onto me, at that time i usually try to gain 5 stacks per target to really ramp up the overall dmg and at that time the healer nearly always goes into defensive messures and pops cd's.

Anyway being Ret in 2's is a challenge unto it self and i know no matter what the setup 2's will always bring me troubles.
But i am hoping next patch were Spell power will be based apon strength, Will help give paladins a more stable place among the 2's and 3's bracket.

 

Kayvaun

So patch 3.2.2 is here and a few changes. I'm currently using SoR in a ret/rogue/priest 3v3 team fully talented and glyphed, but with the new change to Seal of Command (as seen in the patch notes*) would this be a possible dps increase in 3s or would it only be possible to gain full benefit of the proc in say 5s or BGs? Does anyone know the max distance for the chain proc?

*Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

 

Rej

On the PTR, the chain proc had a range of 10 yds, or a little under. I don't see why it wouldn't be the same on Live.

In 3v3, it all depends on the teams you face. It might be a little more effective against Cleave teams for overall DPS pressure, but you are still dealing less single-target damage. Many popular comps (like RMP) will naturally spread out, with little chance for SoC cleaves. With a Rogue for stuns and CC, I'd stick with emphasizing single-target DPS over cleaves.

In 5v5, it might lead to significantly better damage output, but keep in mind that it breaks CC.

Edit: Veet makes a good point below about Judgement damage. I had forgotten to mention that.

 

PageCCCXI

I've spent a few hours with google and arena junkies. Maybe I just don't know where to look, or maybe its because this is my first season of arena, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to know - help is appreciated. I currently play with two friends and our arena comp is currently Ret Pld, Unholy DK and Disc Priest. From what I understand Ret Pld is not what it used to be. I find my best controbutions are defensive any way. Maybe I suck, or maybe its just my gear, but I do not feel like a huge DPS threat. I'm considering a switch to Holy.

1. How much does our comp improve if I switch to holy and how would my friends best respec?
2. How much does our comp improve if I'm holy and the priest is swapped for a warrior?

 

Rej

Part of it is your gear, it does need some serious upgrading. With a DK teammate you lack a Mortal Strike, so playing a steady pressure game is difficult. When I did Ret-DK-RestoSham last season, we had to rely on coordinated CC chains and bursting a target down. Even still, without a real CC class or a Mortal Strike you'll be at a disadvantage (we could never get past 2050).

Switching to Holy for 2 healers means you're an outlast team. It's easier to play and games take longer than a normal setup, but it's not necessarily a stronger comp. If you then swap the Priest for a Warrior, you have one of the current popular cleave comps, and it works very well.

 

Veet

A number of players have asked about this on Arena Junkies and I'll give the same response here. Basically, you want to stick to Seal of Righteousness in nearly all situations. Here are a number of reasons why:

The seal procs from Command, while nice because they can crit and chain to other targets, do not make up for the very weak Judgments. Your judgments will comprise the majority of your burst damage on targets, mainly because it has a 10 yard range, which allows you to attack targets that are out of melee range. Judgments also bypass deterrence, Hand of protection, and a number of other defensive cooldowns. When you consider the actual time you have in melee range of a target, it is actually very low, you can't realistically use CS or DS on cooldown due to range limitations. Judgments are less inhibited by this and also have a 7 second cooldown with 4 piece PVP.

As stated above the focus of a lot of kills is single target pressure, which is much more difficult to achieve with Seal of Command. Blizzard seems to have shifted Seal of Command from being the "PVP" seal to the situational "PVE" seal, I see very little use for it in the current Arena play style.

There's an Ask a Gladiator section on AJ for simple questions, basic tactics and class specific advice. The AJ forums are not as well moderated as EJ and the quality of posts is telling, although the focus is Arena PVP and some people do have helpful contributions.

Rej is correct about Holy Paladin, DK, Warrior being your strongest setup with the classes and specs you have access to. With that setup you have all the primary tools most successful teams have, a healer, a dps with an MS effect, and dps with interrupts (2 in this case). You lack in CCs, but the amount of pressure and survivability this team has is enormous.

 

Mythilo

Greetings.

I'm a Healadin who runs with a Fury Warrior for 2v2. Until this patch, I've been a Prot healadin, but because of the new change to it, I've feel like I've had to go Holy to stay competitive.

Now, first of all, my partner refuses to go Arms for PvP. He feels like Fury suits him much more, so I'm going to have to go with this.
Second, I'd like to know a good Holy healing build for this team setup. Like I've said, I've been Prot healing until now, so I'm not all too familiar with Holy PvP.

Plus, I'm new here, so please be nice

 

Veet

With the appropriate re-gemming, Prot/Holy is still quite viable as a 2s healer and even as a healer in double healer 3s.

There are a number of Holy PvP builds, most of them generally have at least 51 points into holy and at least 17 points into prot. The differences in Holy builds comes down to preferences and play style. There is no definitive Holy PvP build, I've seen almost every variation being played successfully.

 

Scorpidlight

I've read elsewhere (multiple sites) that say the new SoC is an upgrade: it does indeed feel so using it vs SoR (glpyhed 5/5 sotp). It also allows me to pick up imp HoJ and imp DSac.

Out of the above information, I have a couple simple questions:
1) Is it worth specing 5/5 sotp and glpying SoR over imp HoJ/Dsac?
2) This question is more about top-end arena weapons (I'll hopefully get there someday): is there a reason to pick the sword over the mace over the axe? Or does it really matter?

My 2's comp atm is Spriest/Ret (me). My spriest is considering swapping to his arms warrior for extra pressure and MS. Barring that, would it be better to keep imp Dsac/HoJ in lou of 5/5 sotp and glyphed SoC?

Like the above poster, I find my team takes the win when I play more defensively and CC targets strategically vs running in there and dpsing something; at least that's the case with dps/healer comps. Double dps is a joke. We win 90% of those.

Thank you for any and all help!

 

Veet

There's nothing new about SoC other than the cleave effect. For the most part SoR is still the seal of choice for Ret PVP.

1) Yes, glyphed SoR and 5/5 SOTP is still very strong. For most teams it will be worth dropping Imp Hoj for the extra damage.
2) No, your weapon choice doesn't matter unless you're human.

You have an uncommon 2v2 team so you will know how it plays out better than I will. If your partner is going to play an Arms Warrior, you might be better off playing as Holy.

One last thing about 5/5 SOTP, it benefits both SoR and SoV which allows for more versatile game play. Lately, I've found playing Healer/Ret viable if you use SoV vs. other Healer/DPS teams, although it requires extremely good gear. We've been able to win mana wars vs. other Healer/DPS teams that have MS effects or just out right killing something due to the amount of raw damage SoV is capable of.

 

Scorpidlight

Thank you very much for your reply. Much needed information!

I've been invited to play with a frost mage/resto dr00d combo and just had one final question. Here's my current spec:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Yeah, I'm not in my pvp gear. My question is concerning my spec: is 2/2 in unyielding faith worth it? I get feared a LOT. Stuns aren't as much a problem, and point for point should I go 2/2 unyielding faith or 4/5 divinity (yeah, I know about double dipping). Also, while righteous vengeance is considered primarily pve, I've seen a lot of paladins picking it up in pvp. I currently have it (since it's better than the extra parry) but I'm curious if it's viable to spend the points in it or if
THIS would be more appropriate.

Thanks again for the help

 

Veet

Since you'll be playing with a druid, 2/2 unyielding faith would be a pretty good talent to grab. There really aren't enough points to spare to grab divinity. With your current spec I'd drop the 2 points in divinity and put them in Improved Blessing of Might.

 

Oxylos

The last time I played pvp paladin was the arena tournament and I recall roggues being no real problem as holy. Ive since rolled prot/holy on live and run 850 resil and 2.1ksp (just hit 80 couple weeks ago) and three times now ive been 1v1 against a rogue in arena and all three times ive been slaughtered. rogue play isnt exactly any different these days but if they have full cds i feel like i die without even getting a heal off (blind aura mastery or what have you). Am I missing something or has their damage just changed enough since then to turn this fight?

 

Veet

2.1 k spell power just won't cut it as prot/holy. Looking at your armory, I'd drop that hit gem, the stam enchant on bracers is no good and I'd look into replacing your two trinkets. You could potentially gain over 250 spell power just by replacing your trinkets. Also, resilience isn't that great of stat if you can't keep yourself alive via healing.

In an equally geared and skilled scenario, a rogue has very slim chances of beating a Prot/Holy paladin. If rogues are beating you, it can mean a couple things. You're either out geared and a very well geared rogue is just doing too much damage, or it is an issue with how you might be playing. Here are a couple pointers:

- Fake casting (aka juking) is a must against classes that can interrupt. Don't rely on Aura Mastery, most good players won't bother using interrupts during the duration. If you can fake cast a couple kicks, you pretty much can't die in a 1v1.

- Sacred Shield is one of the reasons prot/holy is able to heal as much as it does. Make sure it is always up, a good rogue will reset fights and some paladins forget to refresh it.

- Use holy shield, blessing of sanctuary, and consecrates. These are seldom used during regular play, but in 1v1s vs. a rogue they come in handy.

I sometimes use Aura Mastery with Retribution aura up against rogues. Most people have it embedded in their minds that they can't interrupt during AM, so using Retribution aura will increase the damage they take from attacking you and in the majority of cases they won't even interrupt you during the duration.

 

• Arikah

I don't post in the pvp section here very often, but thought I'd share a couple ret pvp videos that you might learn from. Two different playstyles (cleave vs not cleave) make for some unique pov's:

Arikah.2: PMP 3's By Arikah - World of Warcraft Movies - Priest Mage Paladin
Hofflerand 5: Less BG's By Hofflerand - World of Warcraft Movies - Arms Paladin Tree

They do share some things in common (heavy usage of cleanse and SS), but I found it interesting to compare the different playstyles and strategies.

 

Veet

Hofflerand is the first Ret Paladin I've seen successfully use Seal of Cleave. Although it seemed like Seal of Righteousness would have worked just as well. Kind of silly seeing all the targets dip low and they just switch to something for the kill.

There's a sudden rise of Prot-dps paladins playing in cleave set ups. I tried Prot on the PTR and I must say, I was very impressed with what Prot is capable of. It basically plays similar to Ret, replace your Crusader Strike with Shield of Righteousness and replace Divine Storm with Hammer of the Righteous. It has major advantages over Ret, including the ability to interrupt and snare as well as greatly increased survivability. The only major draw back is the lack of repentance, but you gain 30 second Hammer of Justice.

 

Scorpidlight

My 3's comp has changed again and due to my inexperience in arena I'm compelled to ask another question or two.

My comp is now Disc/Ele/Ret. We can put out some amazing burst, and recently we've decided to just bum-rush the healer. No idea if that's a good strategy or not, but it seems to have about a 75% success rate.
Our biggest problem comes when we fight (good) lock/disc/* or any melee heavy teams that train our shammy. I was wondering if speccing 2/2 Vindication would help as I think it reduces over 1k ap and would help slow their burst attempt, since we don't have a hamstring-esk move.
Against lock/disc/* teams (asterisk is for w/e) I've tried using SoJ on the warlock and we've tried to burn it down while I focus repentance on the priest/fearbomb/hex. So far no go. Is there anything worth specing for that would help against these comps, or can I just ask for general advice here? Would specing differently be too situational?
We seem to do fine if the other team focuses on me or my disc priest first, but if they hit our ele shaman - it's usually game over. HoP only does so much, and even with pain suppression it only takes the slightest bit of coordinated cc to down him.
Lastly, with my comp, could you recommend any changes to my spec? I was specced for imp HoJ and was informed last night by a full relentless pally buddy of mine that it wasn't worth the points, so I respecced 7/13/51.
Here's my armory profile Scorpidlight Armory
Due to some recent losses, I'm wondering if it's me messing things up for our team, or if it's just my gear (yeah I know ironsoul sucks, and honestly I feel it's one of the biggest problems with my gear). If possible, it'd be great if I could ask for some general advice on the whole of my character. (wrong libram is equipped atm, I normally swap to seal specific.) My main point for all this questioning is I want to make sure I'm doing all I can for my team.

Thank you very much for your time!
---------------------------

Did some testing on the PTR with a premade character - it does seem to be that my weapon is the biggest drawback to my gear. Well, that and about 1k ap. However, through my testing, I also noted it wasn't really our strategy that was lacking, it seems to be more my gear level. I would still appreciate any advice that can be given on the subject, as I would like to learn all I can. Also, SoCor seems to be especially useful on healers (ones that don't cleanse themselves) combined with [Libram of Valiance]. After 5 stacks, I have manged to burst down a disc priest (with well timed HoJ of course).

Looks like I need to run 25m toc for the [Dual-blade Butcher].