mhh that strategy does sound quite promising when i come to think about it . Issue only is that my mate does not pve and so doesnt rly have any strict pve dps gear. But we will give it a try and see how that goes, the dps lack from pve gear should be made up by his deep combat spec I hope.

Here is my confusion as of late. In a lot of battlegroups I see warlock/paladin doing quite well. Last season I ran 2v2 with a warrior but lock/pally was just not a team we ran into problems with. General strat was just for my warrior to keep on the warlock and pummel anything shadow school with a cast time. I found it quite easy to dispel any instant cast dots and keep my warrior topped off with FoLs. Their paladin generally wouldn't have much time to drink because of the warlock needing constant heals, and he would eventually run out of mana. Obviously this makeup has found some way to beat warrior/paladin, and I have the option of running with a warlock this season. I am curious to know how these high rated teams handle this matchup.

Well my Warlock has 414 Resil, with something retarded like 12k health and a Felguard that mauls people. We just outlast the War/Pal with Felguard + COAgony while he has Fel Armor and BOL up. Also one pummel or two means he can still Shadowbolt, and just uses Fire spam to try and draw interrupts - either way its damage. He usually just keeps damaging both, trying to moderately control the Paladin - enough where he has to make important decisions about who to heal next. When the Paladin makes his decision thats when we strike (assuming he has bubbled already) and if the Warrior is at ~40%, Paladin tries to heal himself at 50% - we go ahead and try to drop the Warrior. Fear primarily, with HOJ as an emergency valve, on top of Silence/Death Coil for maxx staxx interrupts. I think most games we win via dropping the Paladin first, since alot of Paladins tend to neglect their own health too much. 50% without Bubble means you are a target for a potential lockout and kill.

We have *massive* problems with Any team that has a Priest and a Melee Class - any team basically where I have to heal my partner alot. Same with Rogue/Anything - Rogues just shut him down . Any tips for dealing with MB spec Priests that don't invovle kiting for 20m? We tend to lose because I have to make a choice : Stand still and heal and get MB'd - or Kite and use Holy Shock for heals, and occasionally silence or HOJ to HL my partner. For those games I tend to swap to pve gear asap and just straight outlast them.

Hi there. I've been playing arena for a while, mostly 2v2, and I feel I'm stuck trying to hit 1900 rating. My combo is paladin/rogue (He's mutilate specced), we both have around 240 resilience and his PVE gear is way better than mine (His guild is at Black Temple, my guild just killed Lurker Below and Hydross). The thing is that I feel I do a lot of mistakes and we lose due that. And then there are certain match-ups that are just too hard for us.

Examples :
-Paladin/Warrior = Mortal strike somewhat forces me to use Holy Light if I want my partner to be topped up, so I'll probably run out of mana earlier than the rival paladin. Although we've won against some warriors with Stormherald and some season 2 gladiator pieces, it's not the common thing. Mace spec and those random stuns make it just worse. Maybe I need more +healing (only 1252 in PVP gear). I'm keeping him under BoF all the time. I usually use my stuns against the warrior so MS debuff goes out for a second and I can heal him. Sometimes I stun the warrior if the enemy paladin is at low HP, so the warrior can't do anything weird to my partner. Thing is, my partner usually dies by the insane burst damage or because I run out of mana. I'm open to suggestions.

-Mage/Priest = The mage, being frost, is a pain to kill, even if my rogue partner is under freedom all the time. Thing is, we're not sure if go after the priest or the mage. If the priest is being pressed, his healing suffers, his mana goes out soon and he can't mana burn me. However, the mage is free to spam polymorph and his attacks (frostbolt and so on). If he goes on the mage, the priest will be dispelling me, the rogue (who'll get rooted) and trying to mana burn me, which forces me to run and I can't heal, and it seems the mage can survive enough for me to be out of the game by any means. With a priest around, I'm very vulnerable to CS since I can't rely on bubble.

-Mage/another DPS = Dual DPS focussing me from the beginning, even if I try to move around the pillars forces me to bubble quite early. It's almost impossible to heal, and I got to wait till my partner has stunned one, so I can try to fake heal/heal. I probably need more hitpoints, but then my +healing will suffer. After bubble is done, I feel I have like no chance to survive against two characters DPSing me. If my partner fails to kill someone when my bubble is over, the game is probably lost.

This may feel like theorycrafting, but it usually goes like that. Mages are usually my bane. I've practiced fake healing against melee, but maybe I need it against mages. Thing is, my partner is being focussed and needs healing before he dies, so I got to bubble to secure it, since I have no time to play around with fake healing. However, after Divine Shield is over, I'm very vulnerable, so I'm looking for some tips to help me keep my partner healed. Stunning the mage is usually not good enough (low range, blink, etc.)

I've read some pages of this thread, but I'm seeking something more specific. Maybe we both just need more resilience and hit points (obviously working on that) but I feel a bit frustrated that I'm so easily shut down by dispel and counter-spell. Maybe I'm failing at exploiting our strong points while minimizing my weaknesses. I also need more healing, but that's on the works. Getting epic mace this week (Sha'tar one, since Prince and Maiden don't love me enough) and the metagem with chance to halve casting time on spells instead of stun resist. So feel free to check my gear and give me ideas or tips. My partner didn't log out on his PVP gear, but he has around 10800HP, forgot how much AP though.

Like my previous post stated, best spec for rogue/paladin is for the rogue to go prep+ar.

It gives you so much advantage in your "troublesome" matchups.

Against Warrior/Paladin it gives you 2xEvasion 2xAdrenaline Rush + Ghostly Strike, ghostly strike + evasion brings me to around 98% dodge, mortal strike doesnt stick and opposite paladin goes oom before you do, just make sure you keep their paladin from drinking.

Against Frostmage/X you gain 2xVanish 2xSprint 2xAR, your rogue will be on the target almost at all time the first 30 seconds, and thats usually enough to gain the momentum in the fight.

The only fight thats loosable is the Warrior/Paladin matchup, but otherwise you should have alot of freewins.

I think he's going for a Combat/Subtlety build very soon, something like 21/40. He's waiting for Syphon of the Nathrezim to drop (From Najentus), so we'll see how it goes against those very bad matches.

What is everyones opinion on "shockadin" builds?, since I'm primarily concerned with raiding on this character i need a have holy to raid, but one of my main concerns is PvPing for fun with my extra time. I watched a video called "Fury of the light" it was a shockadin that could out put some pretty good dps in PvP with a hybrid holy/ret build. Anyone have experience with this sort of build?

Link to video: Fury of the light - 40 0 21 palla PvP

Tried it last season, not nearly as effective as you would hope. You lose all the good prot pvp talents, 6% less damage taken, spell lock reduction, stoicism, toughness, and the utility you gain isn't really enough to swing matches in your favor at high ratings.

Even in full healing gear, I can still toss out about 1k-2k of burst with JoR/Divine Favor Shock if I need to, which is usually enough.

Always take videos with a grain of salt. Remember, nobody is going to show you the 40 times they failed to crit any of their attacks and only put out 1k damage over 10 seconds, they're only going to show you when they crit everything and dealt 3-4k (Which is still only 300-400dps - put it in perspective).

Average performance is more important than top end performance. On average shockdin builds just can't sustain much damage. Sure they can occasionally burst but if it's burst you're after a good ret pally will burst for twice as much far more often. The upside to shockadin builds is that you can still heal ... but unfortunately, you CANNOT shock AND heal at the same time. Your heals are just too gimp in spelldamage gear.

I've got a gearset that gives me about 800 spelldamage and my shocks still don't hit hard enough to even dream of a shock centric build... especially with having to lose so much spellcrit to get my damage up high.

Thats the thing i want to be able to heal PvE encounters but i still want to do BGs and such in my free time but i dont feel like just doing heals.

I generally run a 40/0/21 shockadin build with ~800 spell damage and 20% spell crit. I really enjoy it in BGs, world pvp, and of course soloing/questing, but it's not really useful for anything in arenas other than really casual "Hey let's play 10 games a week" stuff. If I ever got serious about arenas I wouldn't think twice about going cookie cutter 41/20/0.

You lose way too much from the prot tree by going shockadin, and you're generally always more useful to an arena team healing than you are doing mostly RNG based damage.

Yea i dont want to be dealing damage in arenas, i don't even feel like doing arenas other than casual play for random gear.

With all PvP gear + Quagmirran's eye and the heroic trinket, I figure you can hit 1100 spelldmg with full lamellar.

10k hp, 9k mana, 16k ac, 350 resilience, 980 healing.

Holy Shocks should hit for a bit over 1k.
JoR should hit for 750-800ish.
SoR hits should be right around 209.

Let's assume Holy Shock is about 120 dps at that point.
SoR/JoR work out to be 206 dps.
Melee with the gladiator spelldmg mace is 68 dps.

So, that's about 3 months of work for a build that can do about 400 dps.
If everything crits inside of 6 seconds time:

3 melee hits.
216 crit x 3 = 648
209 sor x 3 = 627 (I don't believe it can crit?)

1550 holy shock crit
1125 jor crit

So, five straight crits nets you 4k damage over 6 seconds, give or take. Maybe close to 5k if you consecrate.

Conclusion: Shockadin is a great way to get someone half dead.

Well, a shockadin should never use a 2 hander and SoComm. The reason you take 21 points in ret is to pick up Imp Judgement and Sanc Aura (and Imp SoC to a lesser extent). It's a pretty big boost to spell damage output, which is what a shockadin strives for, not physical damage.

My current plan is to pick up enough Gladiator gear to hit 1k spell damage and then go 40/21/0. Simply by swapping weapons/shield I'll be able to have ~1400 +healing and all the lovely spell crit from the MG lamellar gear.

Sure, there's really no mana regen other than what I get from Illumination, but it's not like I'd be PvE healing in this set.

Edit:
I have way worse gear than what you modeled that math on, but my average JoR already hits for 1.1k simply with SoC judged. (My max crit is ~3k, but thats with trinkets and AW) I totally agree with you that shockadin is mainly a vanity spec, but it's a little better than you describe.

Good point, I didn't model that with Crusader judged.

The problem is if the mage is lucky/good and catches your heal with CS when you're at 60%, its pretty much game over. Seems too risky.

Does anyone use Spellsurge? Few people on my team have been tossing around the idea of getting it, and I'm picking up the S2 healing mace this week. I've heard it's got a higher proc rate than its description indicates, but also has a rather devastating hidden cooldown that would basically make it a low Mp5 amount for the party, which doesn't seem overwhelming in the face of 81 healing.

We usually run Mage/Priest/Pally/Rogue or Hunter/Warrior, so at worst, only 3 people would benefit from it, and in 2v2 my partner is a warrior, so no benefit for him. Is there some other nuance to this enchant that I am missing, or is it rather useless?

Dispel protection. If you have that and the +resil libram buff up on your warrior, that's possibly two more purges before they get to his BoF. I'm not sure if Stoicism affects buffs like that though.

Getting better at it, but still not good enough.

Now, which route do you recommend for season 2 gear? I got 2 pieces now, probably enough arena points for gloves next time, but I'm not sure if save for the mace or go for full season 2 set.

I went S1 gloves/shoulders and S2 legs/chest/helm.

Reasoning:
1) The effect on the gloves is the important thing, and it's the same between seasons.
2) Shoulders have always been one of the least stated items, so it'll hurt less than having S1 in any other single slot (think Bloodfang Spaulders).

I went this route for double +35 resil bonuses. That lets me squeeze in a few non resilience items to keep my healing up and still remain high on resilience.

I have pretty much the gear you described and I'm only sitting at 930ish spell dmg and 285 resil. Spell damage paladins are fun but most classes can just run away from you once they figure out they can't kill you and mana/dmg is so inefficient that it just isnt that fun.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal'Ganis&n=Mosely

Mmh, I collected spelldmg in Season 1 (not really playing my Paladin much S2) and it was the very definition of underwhelming. The spells you're buffing have too bad coefficients and too long cooldowns to be worth stacking SD for. And even while you're doing pathetic dps you're still going oom at an alarming rate.

SD is good for winning some duels every now and again (practically only against Warriors/Rogues) and aoe farming, but that's it. If you could cast Holy Bolts maybe. Won't hold my breath waiting for that change though.