• Deris

In almost any game, 2v2/3v3 or 5v5 - I dedicate the first x seconds to dropping any Felhunters. Exorcism/Holy Shock/JoR gets any dog to about half, and a swing or spell from any other class can finish it off more often than not. Same with Hunter pets - if a hunter sends in his pet early, HOJ and *drop* it right there. There is 0 reason not to - and it cuts the Hunters damage by sometimes as much as 70% in a well played match (since everyone on your team is obviously LOS'ing or Dead Zoning the Hunter.

Also one thing to never underestimate, espescially within 2v2 or 3v3 - SoJ. I constantly melee the other teams healers, and coupled with Belf Silence and HOJ - I've had a few lucky streaks. In 5v5 with Windfury and SoJ, i've been *EXTREMELY* lucky and gotten back to back stuns. You can really pressure people with SoJ. Killing totems is also another excellent task - thankfully the Arena Mace is 1.6 so its a great totem stomper. I R1 holy shock to get Grounding down the moment it comes out just so fears/dots aren't wasted on it.

Druids = dead meat as long as you JoJ them instantly. Most will shell up into bear, and then die in a terrible manner. Don't neglect JoJ'ing a focus target either. BOFreedom doesn't remove JoJ, and if your melee have run speed - you've effectively caused that BoFreedom to be wasted since your melee can still strike with impunity. I've kited many, MANY rogues and warriors around due to JoJ and runspeed, and that coupled with cleanse has allowed me to save BoFreedom for a teammate, which is far more important in my opinion.

 

Aesha

I was hoping you guys could give me some enlightenment on the viability of a Paladin gearing for +spelldamage in Arenas. Today was my first day really thinking about it, because as we were clearing SSC, I picked up both The Seal of Danzalar and the Fang of the Leviathan. (Yes, the raid nearly crapped itself when I was the only person to bid on the Fang.)

Now, my spec is 41/20/0, and will stay that way regardless of gear. My real question is-- how much spelldamage should I itemize for, if any? (Keep in mind, my focus here is on 5v5 Arenas.) I realize that taking +SD gear over +H gear costs me about 40% of my +H per item and some INT, at a gain of +Spell Crit, +Stamina, minor +Resilience. I'm just looking to see other player's thoughts-- should I take half-and-half (ex. all +H honor gear, all +SD arena gear, or vice versa), a different mix, or no +SD gear at all?

The mage in my 5v5 group thinks the idea of taking any +SD gear is nuts. But is it? What is the relative value of +250 H compared to +250 SD? My experience in arena, limited as it, suggests to me that members normally die not because of how hard heals hit, but because of how well the two teams manage their interrupts during an attempted-burn down. If this is the case, it seems worth considering dropping some of my +H for additional burst power against focused targets-- moreover, burst power that very few teams would expect.

This is just idle speculation spurred on by my loots tonight. (After all, even if the sword is worthless for PvP, it's excellent for when I tank.) Feel free to tell me I'm absolutely nuts!

 

Hérade

I'm usually speced 40/21/0, with +950 dmg. My ratings in season 1 were 2vs2: ~2000, 3vs3 ~1900, 5vs5 ~1950 ( so I'm not a hi-end pvper )

My 2vs2 partner is an arm warrior. Usually, foes don't expect me to be able to burn them down, so our main tactic is to surprise them.

Mirror matchs are a good example. If the opposing war start to chase me, I fake to flee, pull him to a distant spot, concecrate and heal, and once he reach ~50% health, AW+Trinket+HS+JoR, then stun and finish. An other possibility is to brust the other paladin from start so he bubble, BoP the war, heal to full, and repeat.

Lock+spriest are another interesting case: burst the spriest, then I bubble and heal while my partner slam the lock.

In these two case, the problem is : if the burst fail, we're somewhat doomed. It's really fun and exciting


3vs3 is so-so. Against a team with two healing-capable players, your burst dont means nothing most of the time. But it can sometime win the match.


In 5vs5, I switch to a healing set I'm too valuable as a pure healer here.

 

• Vinsent

I'm prot speced so arena play is mostly just me messing around for points.

But it is surprisingly affective to drop a consecrate that ticks for 180-220 in the middle of a melee, forcing opponents to move, or adding that little bit of oomph onto a stunlock or what not does make a difference I find.

Though I'm only at like 1500 arena rating so take that with a grain of salt. It is fun to surprise people though.

 

• Amera

It's really only viable in lower brackets. In 5v5 you are going to be carrying most of the healing load for your team (unless you run a non conventional setup) and you really can't afford to sacrifice it.

 

Roset

So, 2.2 patch notes have been released, and some pretty significant changes for us are in the patch. Having the downtime on Freedom increased substantially, and Sacrifice being given a one minute cooldown, will definitely be noticeable and hurt.

Not one Retribution change either.

See:
WoW Forums -> 2.2 PTR Patch Notes

 

Keeper

Snippet from latest PTR patchnotes

I highlighted the two biggest ones. The Blessing of Sacrifice change/nerf is enormous in my opinion.

Damage wins the fame, Healing wins the game.

 

Crossbones

PvP nerfs in 2.2

• Blessing of Freedom cooldown increased to 25 seconds.
• Guardian's Favor now increases duration of Blessing of Freedom by 2/4 seconds.
• Blessing of Protection: This spell can no longer be cast on others when stunned. It can only be cast on self (to break the stun) under those circumstances.
• Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1-minute cooldown. (HUGE nerf)

PvP buffs in 2.2

• Cyclone: Paladin Auras, Trueshot Aura, and Aspect of the Pack will now be automatically reactivated when Cyclone wears off of a victim who had one of the abilities active.
• Mass Dispel: The portion of this spell that removes immunity effects (Blessing of Protection, Ice Block, etc.), now has a chance to be resisted, and will display correctly to the combat log. It will no longer cause Rogues and Druids in Cat Form to lose stealth.
• Merciless Gladiator’s Redoubt: This healing shield has been added to the arena vendor.
• Hammer of Wrath cast time reduced to .5 seconds, global cooldown reduced to .5 seconds. (love this change)



The changes seem mostly reasonable. . .but Bosac? I could understand making the duration = the cooldown to make it vulnerable to dispelling but 1 min CD is a bit much.

BoF nerf means there's a 7 second window where you can't have BoF up.

 

Andemoni

Actually, the BoF nerf is more than just increase in downtime due to higher cooldown. The problem with BoF has really never been the fact that there's that four second lull period after the initial 16 seconds, but rather the fact it gets dispelled most of the time. Therefore the increased cooldown on it hurts more than it would if only the duration was decreased. I don't really foresee these changes affecting 5v5 gameplay that much, since paladins will still be in every team making it equal for all, though teams with a warrior in it, like ours, might take a bit of a hit.

The problem is how will these changes affect 2v2 and 3v3? What I fear the most is the BoSac change, as that ability is pretty much what makes us viable in these brackets. If you're up against a priest (most of the top teams have one) or a shaman, you can kiss your BoSac goodbye the instant you use it.

If Blizzard's aim is to make paladins optional in 5v5 teams, this is not the way to do it.

EDIT: What I forgot to add is that this does have impact in 5s also if the team types are different, as it gimps paladin solo healing capabilities quite a bit.

 

• Karakas

The BoSac change is huge, although I suppose it was being used in a "non-intended" way. However, I would have preferred them to change the CD to the duration, or up the duration to match the CD. Used in its intended way it's definitely not overpowered.

 

Andemoni

Do elaborate. What's the intended way of using BoSac? What is the non-intended way of using it? Blizzard must've been watching different WSVG and playing a different ladder than I have if they come telling us paladins that we are overpowered in the lower brackets.

Paladins are already heavily cooldown reliant, and this just makes things a whole lot worse. If these changes do make it to the live servers, I foresee us losing to most other top teams without pretty much even a fighting chance. One could propably change the name of this game to World of Offensive Dispelcraft.

 

glick

I'm going to assume he meant that when the developer's created the ability, they didn't foresee it's heavy use in breaking cc.

 

• syeren

I'd just like to point out that Mass Dispel has always had a chance to be resisted when Bubble or Ice Block are up, and it won't remove the immunity effect. I have experienced this many times before, and I believe I have footage of this happening.

I believe that this is changing the combat log output from saying "Immune" to "Resisted".

That's all I have to contribute sorry, carry on whining about being the best and most important class in 5s :P

 

• Amera

The freedom nerf is mostly a nerf to warriors and rogues (offensively) and other squishy classes (defensively). In 5v5 I don't have a chance to use freedom on myself all that much. Funny that when they nerf the support class, really they just end up nerfing the classes they support.


I think for BoSac they just made me wonder why you'd bother with a full-blown healer in a 2v2 team since now everyone can be CCd that much easier. Are people really still complaining about warrior/paladin combos when the top teams in the brackets are almost all warlocks/x? Or is this due to the warlock/paladin 2v2 setup specifically?

 

Jorin

Yeah, this is a substantial change for low man arenas. Paladins certainly aren't as much of a top-tier 2v2 class as they once were.

For 5v5s though, as someone said, it really is a nerf to the rest of the team. And mostly bof. Sac in 5v5s is still quite useful, you can have it up 50% of the time (assuming no dispell) and nearly all teams run with multiple other dispellers.

Still, doesn't seem like pally lock gets nerfed much in 2v2, but pally warrior is pretty rough nowadays.

Gogo lock/druid?

 

Weigraf

The BoSac nerf is going to make those heavy dot teams so much more powerful than what they are today. Hopefully they'll come to their senses and realize BoSac is not just there to avoid CC.

 

Jorin

True, I do find myself using it to mitigate against 4 dps teams (in addition to it being on for cc), but 50% of the time assuming no dispell isnt horrible. And most 4 dps teams don't generally dispell it, from my experience (although now they may )=)

All in all, the sac nerf is far bigger than the bof one.

 

Zraknul

The BoF change is sort of balanced in that it nerfs offense and defense both, while making the paladin less useful to the team. Priests for example are gunna find themselves squashed more by warriors/rogues, because they can't use this to avoid swings, and require more non-paladin support at kiting. At the same time, kiting classes (mages/hunters) are going to see less outside interference in their kiting (Positive and negative).

BoS change definitely makes mages more powerful against us, while at the same time, makes protecting people like rogues that much harder. On my competitive team last season, BoS was pretty much required on a rogue to mitigate damage; the change to blind isn't going to make up for this for them.

We aren't the only class that's going to end up hurt with us being as popular as we are.


In 5v5, it's true that most teams have 1 paladin in the battle, most teams also have a warrior. Looking at the top 20 in my bracket, 1/4 of the teams field 1.5-2 warriors, while none field 2 regularly; both are on 90%+ of these teams.

Are we a unique snowflake battle group in that warriors are extremely popular among arena teams? And if not, what was done to bring try and warriors inline like paladins?

And there's always the ever popular paladin compared to other healing capable classes patch analysis: What was done to make non-holy paladin specs more popular? What was done to make the other classes similar to this? I'm still seeing paladins as primarily heal bots, while the other classes enjoy more freedom of spec.

 

Braque

The BoSac nerf is madness, IMHO, even without it mages dominate me. I already feel useless against teams with mages, since even with BoSac up sheep interrupts spells, with BoF and BoSanc nerfed like this, how are Paladin+Melee teams supposed to kill Mage+Anything? Feels like each of my tactical tools and defences are being taken away (oh, and no equipment changes in arenas, so I can't even switch to +spelldmg gear if my dps gets killed), eventually all I'll have left is Flash of Light and Line of Sight. That sure sounds fun. ._.

 

◊ Shadowed

The change to Blind was reverted, it wouldn't have been a very good buff anyway and nobodies really morning the fact that we didn't get it.

2vs2 isn't balanced, this is why you don't earn the same points per rating as a 5vs5 team does, complaining that it's going to ruin it is rather silly. For 5vs5 it is rather high, I'd have though it would be more like 30-40 seconds but it is PTR anyway, nothing is final and I wouldn't be suprised to see them reduce it.

 

Antarius

So yesterday, I played some games with my 20/41/0 spec. (I just picked up faceguard of determination, finally giving me enough avoidance to become crush immune without any points in retribution)

I was surprised at how well it performed. I definatly missed having Light's Grace, but I feel it was compensated with being able to throw out rank 1 avenger's shields definatly helping our priest kite better than usual, and even once or twice using it offensively to snare someone kiting our melee. Between Holy Shield and Ardent Defender, the 1 game where the other team tried to go after me, they were completely shut down in their attempts to kill me.

We ended up going 11 and 1, with a final rating of 2231.

 

Mosely!

Is mass dispel going to be resistable yet? I think Divine Shield is a joke against any team that has a priest which is like 75% of all teams. Oh and 2v2 for paladins is dead come BoSac nerf.

 

Zraknul

I haven't tried it, but that's the impression I get. It's no longer on the bug forums.


On another note, does anyone use the Arena Librams? 31 resilience on this season's libram works out to .775% crit reduction, and only lasts 6 seconds using our flash heal.

 

• Amera

The buff is magic, which just adds more purge fodder, but that's probably about the only reason to use it over something else.