Mem

As you said, its quite often enough to get a 10 second window of opportunity to kill a target if it was prepared beforehands. Chaining imp CS, fear, blood elf racial is certainly easy to pull off. In our setup our priests starts to play more and more aggressively which enhances our final burst on the target.

Furthermore: if your warrior has to play defensively you are not putting a lot of pressure on the other team (the priest can easily keep the party up against a SL WL) while still being threat in terms of manaburns. Also you have to watch not to eat a target switch if you get to close. A quick intercept coupled with a nuke from the magical dps part can knock out a druid really fast if he gets cought in casterform.

To be honest, this also requires good coordination and rather flawless play from the other team but as you said, were getting there slowly

But thats what I like about 3:3 its very dynamic, allows for a lot more strats than 2:2 while lacking the zerging aspect I dislike about 5:5.

 

ex-moz

This is about as good a summation as one can get with paladin small-scale pvp. It's pretty great that even though this has been the case for a while, the other healing classes have received some type of buff and paladins have remained largely a liability for 2s and 3s.

The fact that one has to consider leveling another class in order to be competitive at the high-end is ridiculous and one of the primary reasons I stopped playing.

 

◊ Praetorian

No, it's not irrelevant. That's part of the concern. Honestly, druids have bad players to thank for their buffs, and druids are by far the hardest class to balance in arenas. A mediocre druid is really, really, really bad. The kind that just sits there and keeps HoTs on like he's healing in a raid. They're awful, but a paladin playing that style works much better.

Take a mediocre paladin and a mediocre druid, around 1700ish. The paladin may stand in the open and spam FoL and some Holy Light when needed. He will BoP his target when his target gets low from melee, and he will bubble when he's under pressure and panics. He probably casts Freedom too, either on himself if he's being snared by a warrior or something, or on his partner. Not optimally, but he'll use those abilities because they're obvious. He may not use BoSac at all, probably uses HoJ poorly, etc. But the thing is that this play actually isn't that far off from the play of a 2000+ paladin.

Now, the mediocre druid. He'll heal with HoTs because that's what they do. He may barely use CC at all, but probably tries to cyclone the opposing healer. If he's focused, he'll run around like a chicken with his head cut off and crumple. He might go bear so he can absorb damage better. I've seen a lot of bad druids at low ranks (and some at higher ranks even), and this is how it plays out. But it's like a completely different class than a 2k+ druid.

To 95% of the players seeing these two guys, paladins seem very strong and druids seem mediocre and maybe a little fragile if anything. So paladins get nerfed and druids get buffed. Yet druids have so much more potential; when you put them in the hands of a truly skilled player who can use the CC appropriately, can kite and mix up travelform to break snares and get out of LoS, bear to feral charge offensively to help lock down enemies and defensively to get away, etc., it's maddening. They're like ghosts you can't pin down yet who keep themselves and their partner alive, yet if you ignore them they will cripple your team with roots and cyclone.

But most players aren't seeing that level of druid. But it hardly means it's irrelevant in terms of balance. If a theorycrafting player in optimized gear can put out ridiculous amounts of PvE DPS (see, e.g., MSD arcane mages), that gets them nerfed even though most players can't even approach those levels. Tuning takes multiple levels of skill and experience into account elsewhere, and it certainly should in PvP. It especially should if anyone at Blizzard still has any aspirations of promoting WoW as an eSport.

Here's the core of the problem: Paladins (and shamans to an extent) only "seem" equally good at lower levels because: 1) their "unskilled" playstyle more closely approximates what a "skilled" player should do, due to fewer choices available to the class at any given time, reducing the number of mistakes one can make; and 2) "unskilled" opponents are unable to capitalize on their weaknesses. A 1700 mage who's trying to kite and being focused hard isn't going to CS me the instant I start to cast an important heal. A 2300 mage will. A 1700 warlock probably puts Agony on me and maybe even has his felhunter on auto-lock (seriously I've seen this even at 2000, wtf?). A 2300 warlock is going to Tongues me and time a spell lock to land right before my painfully slow heal would've completed, otherwise using his pet to munch any groundings I may drop next to me.

I think balance shouldn't assume poor play. It's not fair to say that we have no answer to someone trying to CS/spell lock us because most players aren't good enough to time that ability properly or to remember to use it. So many games that I've won, I knew were gifts, and that frustrates me. I knew damn well the mage had CS up because I was following it since his last one. But I said "fuck it, I need to heal or my partner's dead" and just spammed LHW for 10 seconds straight. No CS came. If one had, we'd have lost with certainty. But we won, because the opposing team was too uncoordinated (or maybe just the opposing mage) to exploit my glaring weaknesses.

But I think the arena game in fact has to be balanced around the 2300+ level, because then at 1700 you have a bar by which to gauge your progress. (Note: I am not at the 2300+ level myself. I've peaked at 2250ish so far, but it's something towards which I continue to strive, and I love getting to play 2300-2400 players -- except when they're on goddamned 2000 rated point-selling/feeding teams that kill our rating -- just because the style of play is so markedly different and I always learn something.)

But in balance terms, it's a lot more satisfying to be able to say, "Damn, yeah, we lost because I missed that CS, my bad, I need to work on paying attention to my focus target more" than it is to say "Fuck, we couldn't have done a fucking thing there." Balance the classes so that it's "fair" when people play well. You can't balance around the assumption that the average player is going to make all kinds of mistakes, because that's actually not balance at all.

 

Caal

I don't understand the peopel complaining about Paladins. Well, I understand why.. but the results don't reflect what you're saying. Look at the top of the list on BG9.

 

ex-moz

This clearly nullifies everything that has been said. Think before you post.

How many of those results were obtained before the paladin changes or have players with a non-trivial number of games played that aren't in the 5v5 bracket?

 

Juli

This is a cross-post from a thread I started on arenajunkies: [3v3] Shadow Priest Compositions - Arena Junkies Forums

I'm planning on going shadow in season 3 primarily for 2v2, but I also enjoy 3v3 (ranked up 3-4 teams above 2300 in s2 as disc priest/rogue/mage), so I'm wondering what setup I should shoot for. I have access to a good number of different classes with great players behind them.

My initial thoughts have been:
Spriest/Rogue/Resto Druid: same strengths as in 2v2 from the rogue and priest, druid adds low-maintenance healing, high personal survivability, and some great CC to mitigate potentially painful physical dps

Spreist/Rogue/Frost Mage: 3dps gib team, mage has excellent CC (especially against warriors) to protect teammates, rogue benefits burst with snares+stuns to reduce LOS issues

Spreist/(UA?) Lock/Resto Druid: lots of dots that ignore LOS (+possible UA-covered priest dots), great burst potential, CC from the druid. however, vulnerable to shadow resist gear

Spriest/Lock/Rogue: another 3dps team, also vulnerable to shadow resist gear, seems vulnerable to rogue based teams with a healer

So what combinations (listed here or otherwise) can a shadow priest participate in that is viable at the high end; 2200-2300+ all the way up to rank 1? I'm very open to creative suggestions or non-cookie-cutter setups. What would you consider to be the best? Are there any glaring weaknesses I'm not seeing?

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It's not even necessarily instant cast spells. Paladins just need something to do besides cast one of two heals, and bless. What needs to be boosted is the decisions per second a Paladin has to make.

If Blizzard were to do something silly like give Paladins mana burn, they'd suddenly become an active threat that can't be ignored. They need something that says "If we don't keep on the paladin, he'll do X which will hurt us".

Nothing significant will likely happen along those lines until the next expansion I'm afraid.

I know Blizzard originally intended the paladin to be the "easy" class to play, but really they need to stop with the passive durability (So many talents with % chance to resist something is an obvious example of this.) and make things more interactive. Make Paladins need to carefully juggle a variety of options in order to support their team, and reward those who do well

 

Xavias

This is very accurate.

In my history of playing Arena, I have only had one "wtf, that paladin is insanely good" moment, and it was because he was moving perfectly rather than using abilities creatively etc. They definitely lack a "cool, you didn't put pressure on me, now i'm going to do X to you" ability.

Druids on the other hand, are extremely easy to determine skill level on, because there are so many combinations of abilities and movement that will change the outcome of the game.

Every serious Arena player wants the ability to show off their skills, and it really is fun to do so. Its a kind of fulfillment/satisfaction when you do something really well, and it visibally changes the outcome of the game.

That is why I love playing Druids so much, as opportunities to do so are literally thrown at you.

 

gatzu.

Simply put class balance needs to be done based on the assumption that every class is being played to full potential, anything else would be foolish. As far as my locks spec he switched it around many times but pretty sure soul link ended up being the best spec for him.

As Gurg said I also love playing teams in the 2400 rating. A 2200 rogue mage priest team will play totally different then a 2400 one and we learned a lot from playing those teams. What I don't like however is zoning into an arena knowing we already lost because of class makeup.

 

Opioid

Very interesting, and I tend to agree. I have to ask: would you be okay with imbalancing all the arenas under something like, say, 2000ish for that model of balance (because certain classes are a lot more effective dumber played than others dumber played?) Would you balance around 3v3 instead of 5v5? (Out of personal experience I would say that the warlock arena game is very much more accomodating to dumber play in the 5s than the 3s, though I admit freely as you do that I've never breached the truly epic ranks you'd balance for)

 

Darkmantle

The one time I had a true "OMG that paladin owns" was watching the kollektiv ragdolled video. When Sck and Ecilam kite for ages and you just marvel at Sck moving perfectly from position to position avoiding los as much as possible and always being in position to heal but this had little to do with his class abilities.

 

Caal

I'm talking about the top of the 3's bracket. Are you really talking about someone being on the top of the 3's bracket when the Paladin changes happened... how long ago?

Thanks for the tip on how to post though.

 

Caal

Sickness is awesome.

 

Thir

This is so true, the fact you can just ignore a paladin till time comes to cs him seems like the most relevant weakness of the paladin class in an arena situation. Of course one could reply, if we don't keep on the paladin, he'll heal his team mates, which will hurt us, as we can't kill the target, but we all know that's not true.

I was thinking about a pacification spell, something like :
2 sec cast, target = enemy, cd to determine (not holy school for csing this non affect healing capacity), target affected cannot take any harmful action for 6 sec. (no cast or dps on enemy target, damaging or not)
This would work as a cs preventing, you cast that on the mage, if he cs it, cs id down, you can heal .
Or a dps shut down, lowering the dps on a target.
This could also be combined with another cc ability, like casting this on a mage, to have your druid cyclone it with no fear of being csed.
This of course would not shut down any opponent healing capacity.

That might be a little too powerful thinking of it, may be the cd needs to be 30 sec or 24 to match cs.
But paladins would really benefit from gaining this "If we don't keep on the paladin, he'll do X which will hurt us" component they lack.

 

dares

There's a pretty clear difference between rating and the strength of a class relative to its competitors. In this case, it's comparing Paladins to the other healing classes.

Simply saying, "Well, PALADIN_X got top 5 on BG9 so the class is probably fine, no problems here" is a very misleading statement and hardly relates to the concept of class balance. Rating is volatile and not necessarily representative of much because of how the arena game works. It matters somewhat, but if my team is strong against 5% of the teams out there and weak to 95%, and I queue one night against that 5% and bounce my team's rating up to #1 in the Battlegroup, does that mean the class is fine? Not really.

For example, my 2v2 team is successful because we farm most Druid/Warrior teams, which happens to be a pretty common setup. At the same time, we lose to Druid/Warlock, basically anyone with 2 DPS, and as of late, almost every good Priest/Rogue team. The point is that we're strong against a very small percentage of possible combinations and weak against the majority, but lucky queuing can result in any amount of rating gain. I hope Blizzard doesn't pay too much attention to rating to determine class balance.

 

Caal

Dude the same can be said for any class comp out there, seriously.

Druid/Mage/Rogue is an absolutely awesome comp right now. You could fly to first place in no time playing against all the Rogue Mage Priest teams out there right now. But, that comp gets absolutely worked by Druid/mage/Lock. That comp is FAR from common.

I dunno, if you're capable of reaching #1 I don't know how much complaining you're entitled to. I don't particularly think Paladins are where they need to be right now, but it's a pretty fine line right now. Chastise is a good example of an ability Paladins could put to really good use. A semi-long cooldown ability that would interrupt without being completely game changing.

 

Siddown

This isn't really the case though, it's not like when Spoh was the only successful 5v5 Druid and people pointed to that as "proof" that Druids were fine in 5v5. There are quite a few Paladins ranked 2200+ in 3v3, not just one. So I doubt they are all getting there by being selective on their opponents or by fluke. While I tend to agree with most of what has been said, right now the relative easy of the Paladin class means that quite a few very good players have gotten to 2300+ with them even though Druids and Priests are likely better suited to the bracket.

A Paladin/Warrior/X team is still formitable regardless of the problems with the Paladin class simply because the Paladin can keep the Warrior on a target. That's probably not good enough for most Paladins, and they'd have a fair arguement that I'd agree with, but at least they are better off than Shamans who get shafted in the same bracket.

 

Malakitoo

I thought the problem with paladins was that people never did leave them alone in the first place? Unless something drastic has changed, nobody leaves paladins alone to sit there and heal. The "active threat that can't be ignored" is that nobody will die unless you do something about the paladin. The problem here is that paladins, and to a lesser extent shamans, are relatively easier to control than priests and druids. Why is that? Lack of instant heals and heals over time which force paladins/shamans into LoS and force them to cast heals, which in turns leads to ccs and spell locks.

Would I love to have a cc that I could use if I was left alone? Sure, I would use it all the time against bad teams that don't cc me or don't put out enough damage so that I'm forced to heal. If you want to force people to pay attention to you just because you have a 30 sec cd silence or something, spec repentance.

The balance issue here is lack of cc vs. cc. If you don't mana burn, cc and burst, or otherwise use some sneaky technique to disable the paladin, his raw armor, hp/sec and mana efficiency will win the battle. Remember why chance to resist silence talents/items were changed? Because resisting the clutch cspell means the mage loses for no good reason. The problem is that other healers (druids) have nearly the same suriviability (in small brackets), passable hp/sec (in small brackets) and great mana efficiency, while not being susceptible to the same cc. This obviously brings up the issue of 5v5 vs. 3v3 balance, as balance in one bracket does not mean balance in the other.

Having said that, it is frustrating seeing the other classes apparently in the driver's seat, where their skill or lack of it determines matches. That's how playing a shaman has been since release, with no cc and no worthwhile counter-cc. Dueling a mage straight up always seems like it's up to them if they want to win, if they land the cspell, they win, if they don't, you win. So juke the silence. Use your hearthstone instead of healing wave. Posistion yourself so you can't be cc'd. Skill as a healer isn't "can you hit your cspell focus macro", it's can you fake out the mage, or can you kite the rogue. Unless you're a druid, in which case this doesn't really apply.

 

Perilous

I play a pally at 2300 plus and the difference between a good paladin and a bad one is sadly much more subtle then between a good druid and a bad one.

Is the pally hard to find and always just out of CS/cyclone/sheep/manaburn/fear range? Good pally. Does the pally cast BoS just as a mage is sheeping him? Good pally. Does the pally stun the other healer when his team's burn target hits half and people are blowing cooldowns? Good pally. Does the pally pre-cleanse junk debuffs off during his free time so he can get the important stuff off instantly? Good pally. Does the pally have an appropriately sized heal halfway casting before his target even takes damage? Good pally. Does the paladin instantly recognize the type of team he is against (drain, burst, outlast) and change his playstyle accordingly? Good pally. Does the pally burst down warlock pets when they get low? JoJ the druid right before you swap to them? Use SoW on that voidwalker to get mana back? Good pally. Does the pally use is focus target and target of target windows to good effect? Good pally. The list is longer then this but you get the idea.

A really good paladin can only be recognized by other really good players because the differences are pretty damn subtle. Any one can see the difference between a great druid and a horrible one.

Does the pally stand in the middle of the field and spam holy light? Bad pally. Sadly that is enough to get 2000 rating with good teammates and decent composition.

Yes pallies need something. However the the core of the class is too strong to justify anything in the way of buffs. What is needed is a change in the way a pally is played and that would require a complete overhaul of the class. Not gonna happen. 17k armor, concentration aura(and other auras) and very strong, fast heals are too high of a bottom line to build much upon or you make them overpowering.

One thing I would like to see however is make cleanse remove 2 magic affects and not poison or disease. I will use purify to get rid of poison. Its already loaded in case of those rare hunter/affliction warlock teams.

Fortunately my druid will have full season 3 and vindicators less then a month into the season. I should have lots of fun in 2v2 and 3v3 again.


Oh and I like the druid/warlock/sp combo. There are many ways you can play it based upon what you are facing and its a pretty nice combo. SR is a bitch tho.

I prefer set ups that can change their style based upon their opposition and arent forced into one strategy or lose.

 

dares

Any class is capable of reaching #1 in any bracket. The difference is the varying degree of difficulty and the limited opportunities that you are given. Being able to reach #1 does not mean your class is fine. Being #1 is a measure of queue dodging to give yourself the best chance to gain rating, not a direct measure of skill or an indication of your class being in line with others, although of course you won't get there without possessing some degree of skill. Never did I say that there aren't counters to every comp out there; you are clearly missing the point. There are more counters to Paladins than there are Druids.

This is true of every healing class. Having the capacity to sit there and heal does not qualify the Paladin as an active threat in the same manner as another class.

Ok, you're really missing the point here and this isn't really an acceptable topic of contention.

This is just pure lack of creativity. You can effectively fix Paladins by doing any number of small tweaks, like:

1.) Changing Holy Shock
2.) Changing Divine Shield
3.) Removing a useless talent like Pure of Heart and replacing it with something that would address a significant weakness
4.) Altering Divine Illumination to provide additional protection while it's active
5.) Adding Repentance to baseline
6.) Changing Hammer of Justice by tweaking its properties, increase range, making it undispellable, anything
7.) Altering Seal system, changing Seal of Wisdom to a zero mana cost would allow you to keep it up and at least return some mana during lockouts

Any of these ideas I came up with in twenty seconds, I'm sure Blizzard can do better. That does not qualify as a "class overhaul."

 

gatzu.