Duilliath

Does this even work anymore with all those ECastBars around ?

Can't remember the last time I tried because noone ever fell for it in the first place.

 

Siddown

How does "it not work"? In current high ranking Arenas Shaman are by far the least represented healing class in 2v2 and 3v3, it's not even close. Again, this isn't like Spoh being the only Druid in 5v5, there are plenty of Paladin at 2200+, so at the moment, while the class doesn't work exactly the way people would like (and I am in agreement with that statement), it at least is working. Resto Shaman clearly don't work in 3v3 or 2v2 at the moment.

Now, I'm not naive enought to believe that Blizzard can only work on one issue at a time, so I'd like to see them both fixed, but if I had to put a priority on it, I'd say Shaman are in a much bigger need of a fix.

 

• Phara

Current standing is in no way representative for the paladin representation, Take this team, for instance. How many games do you think they played after gear switching in arena was removed? 0, and I refuse to believe that they are the only team that did that. A few weeks after Season 3 hits, you'll be able to see the true paladin representation in 2v2 and 3v3, not now.

 

◊ Praetorian

I honestly don't think there are very many teams that have been sitting on ratings since before patch 2.2. The season has been too long. I know lots of teams that stopped at like #5 on the ladder back in August figuring they were a lock on Glad and now are in trouble because they never imagined the season would last for 3+ more months.

 

Siddown

So all the teams with Paladin healers have simply stopped playing? I find that hard to believe, but I'm willing to concede it because it's not worth arguing about it. You are correct that S3 next week will definitely be a better barometer of the Paladin class.

I think we can all agree that Resto Shaman and Paladins need something.

 

ex-moz

Paladin healers haven't stopped playing but the fact is that unless you play very heavily to your advantage -- whether that means playing the queues/dodging or going with what is a small handful of strong team makeups, your chances at getting in the upper echelon of teams after the patch has gone down dramatically. Pointing to a #1 team and saying everything is fine means you just haven't read this thread at all or are clearly not able to grasp what is being said.

Of course every class has a chance to succeed given the right factors, it's simply that paladins currently don't have a lot of tools in the bag to bring to the table and have to resort to what I mentioned above to make it there -- which is why they are the least versatile healers in small scale arena right now. Needing something is a given, what that is is a harder problem and I don't have any hard answers -- suffice to say that playing one in general right now is an exercise in frustration unless you are particularly determined to try and get things to swing your way (not to mention the fun factor involved is pretty low). It's sad when pretty decent paladins who have settled on whatever rating they've managed to claw their way up to are re-rolling classes for next season, it's simply not fun at all -- you may enjoy it if you're a masochist I guess.

 

◊ Vectivus

I hesitate to suggest this for fear of extreme backlash from anyone with real experience as a Paladin (my highest one is a 19 twink!), but would giving all Paladins Repentance alleviate some of the difficulties Paladins are experiencing in Arena play? It would seem that the natural evolution of the game points to giving healers more offensive/hybrid capabilities, and I don't see this as terribly out of line.

 

• Iol

The problem is that each time you give the paladins something trainable, thus improving the class as a whole, further widen the gap between Holy and the other specs in PvP. Specially with the Healing to spell damage change, a Holy Paladin's offensive ability are quite strong, and way stronger than a Ret paladin's healing ability as a counterpart.

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.

 

◊ Vectivus

Right, but the problems that the Paladin class faces are universal in many ways - lack of CC, all of their spells in one school, etc. The gap between Holy and the other talent specs in PvP would appear to be more or less intentional on Blizzard's part - Prot does not (nor should it, necessarily) compete in PvP, and Ret has situational value (The World of Warcraft Armory is a Ret Paladin in my guild with a fairly competitive 3v3 featuring a Warrior and a Priest).

I guess I would rather see the class improved than the gap between the talent specs narrowed. I don't expect to see Prot Paladins, much like Prot Warriors, well represented in Arenas any time soon.

 

Siddown

First off, I never said everything was fine, I have agreed in every post that Paladins need a rework. Secondly, it's not just one team, there are lots of Paladins in the upper rankings of 2v2 and 3v3. Are they there solely because they are queue dodging at this point? Nobody can say for sure, but I'm willing to take people's word for it and we'll have to wait for S3 to find out for sure.

I have read the thread, I understand the issues, but at the end of the day, there are plenty of 2300+ rated Paladins and if we believe the Arena Team Composition website posted, Paladins are still in two of the five most popular makeups for teams rated over 2200 in 3v3.

I'm sorry the class is boring, and I hope it gets a rework, but it doesn't change the fact that right now Paladins (with all their faults), are still better off than Resto Shaman.

 

◊ Vectivus

I think it would be hilarious if Shaman were given a totem similar to Amani Protective Ward - NPCs - World of Warcraft - immunity for anyone in range until the totem dies?

Clearly never going to happen, but fun to speculate on how Shaman will get even moderately comparable survivability to the other 3 healing classes.

 

Errelno

This is still a bad argument and it's a little frustrating that you don't seem to be catching on. I'd explain to you again why saying that paladins have it better than resto shaman doesn't really mean anything, but I'd just be repeating myself(like you're doing).

Also, I don't really see this paladin dominance that you seem to be referring to. When looking at the top of most 3v3 ladders I'm seeing very few paladins. There's 1 paladin the top 10 3v3 teams for bg9 (the team from frostwolf is pointfed, so I'm not counting that). Furthermore, as people stated, looking at the tops of arena ladders to determine class balance isn't really a good idea. Queue dodging, point feeding, luck, and player base are all factors which throw off your measuring stick significantly. You're twisting words when you say, "I don't think every top paladin team got there by dodging/feeding." The problem is that there are a lot of teams who got there that way.

Most battlegroups are also going to have a lot of strong PvP Paladins(they were incredibly strong in S1) who are well-networked into good teams. On Mal'Ganis, for example, there's a bunch of paladins who play arenas competitively, but when you look at hunters there's basically one in the entire battlegroup. When a patch like 2.3 hits, you'll still see a number of paladins doing pretty well, but you still won't see many hunters.

I guess it's just an issue where people keep claiming there are all these paladins doing well, but as somebody with a lot of games played at high levels in bg5 and bg9.............there are VERY few paladins.

 

Tutanka

Since when are resto Shaman good in 5's?

If you take a Resto shaman over a Priest your team is weaker in almost every set up.

Infact if you take a resto Shaman over a Priest in any 2's or 3's set up your team is also weaker.

I actually cant think of one situation where a Resto Shaman is the best fit for a 2's, 3's, or 5's team. Perhaps as the 3rd healer on a team that already has a Priest or pally, but 3 healer teams generally aren't great.

Dont mean to sound like a QQer, and I still have a lot of fun on my shaman, but we really aren't close to Priests in any bracket right now. We are also behind Druids in 2's and 3's, and Pallys in 5's.

We can of course still be on good teams and get good scores (2k to 2.2k in any bracket) but if you really want to play at the top Level you either have to be a vastly superior player (See Gclol from BG9) or you have to spec elemental and play on a 2345 team.

 

Perilous

You can armory me, but my 5v5 is 2365. We were in the top 10 of our battlegroup most of the season playing 5 or 6 different class compositions for fun. We havent played in a month(I think we are 15th currently) My 3v3 is 2293 that we got up in about 2 days of play. We will boost it to 2400ish on monday when our warrior gets back(he has been gone 9 days for thanksgiving). I played on a 2300 2v2 before we gave up out of sheer boredom.

Brute force aspects of the class I would consider to be extremely high heal throughput which cant be nerfed or it would make us useless in pve. High armor. No pushback on heals. Unresistable spells(think felhunter) Reasonable burst damage in a short span of time(Holy shock, JoR, HoW). Extreme mana efficiency if you are intelligent at all. These are all brute force abilities that require no real skill, subtlety or knowledge of game mechanics to play.

I play 4 70s in arenas from 1800-2200 in addition to my paladin. A rogue, druid, warlock and mage. A very close friend that is on my 5v5 and 3v3 plays a shaman at 2300 plus 2v2. Personally I think shamans are better off then pallies in 2v2. Not nearly as good as druids or even priests however. Shamans simply have more options.

 

Siddown

This is getting pointless, you obviously aren't reading anything I've written without some sort of irrational bias, because I never once said Paladins were dominant, I've never said they were fine and l2p, you are knitpicking individual statements out of context to try and make it sound like I'm saying something I'm not. I have repeatedly said that Druids and Priests are better healers, but despite their inherent weaknesses there still are Paladins playing at a high level.

With the way people add and drop teams, queue dodging, trading games, etc. it's hard to know what is accurate, but if this site is close correct: Arena Team Setup Statistics - World of Warcraft Realm History it shows that Paladins (at least right now), still have a place in 2v2 and 3v3. That is all I am saying. This is not like Spoh, or that one hunter in 3v3, or the one Enhancement Shaman who broke 2300, at least 23% of teams over 2200 in 3v3 have a Paladin.

As I have (repeatedly now) said, we'll have to wait until S3 to see how this plays out. The worse thing is, I have agreed with what everyone is saying, all I've said is that it's not as bad as a few people have made it out, and for that we've now derailed what could be a good thread for two pages now. Paladins have issues, we all agree, can we move on now please?

 

Duilliath

What's the 2345 team anyway - I'm not familiar with that term.

 

Tutanka

H-Priest
H-Pally
E-Shaman
Warrior
F-Mage

Or swap mage for Fel-noob Lock

 

◊ Praetorian

It's one of those dumb terms that somehow caught on.

2345 = warrior / mage / elemsham / priest (heal) / paladin

Edit: Why the fuck is this in Urban Dictionary Urban Dictionary: 2345

 

Juli

What was the 2345 name from anyway? I believe I heard at one point (in bg9 irc maybe?) that the composition was "so easy to play that you can just mash 2345 on the keyboard and win" and that's where the name came from, but someone could've easily been making that up.

 

jusion

Half of the things you listed here are things all healers or players need to do/know, and the other half really don't matter that much.
However, I have to agree with this. Unfortunately, the "core" of the class is horribly boring to play with no versatility.
You'd think it'd be something like 1234 in that case. :p You're could very well be right though.

 

◊ Kasi

I think it had to do with keybindings, mainly dealing with the EM/NS CL combo. 2 - purge, 3 - em, 4 = ns 5- CL

 

◊ Praetorian

In keeping with the general trend (bitching about shamans/paladins) in this thread, my 3v3 (spriest/rogue/shaman) had a decent run today, up at one point to 2200ish, with various tough matches along the way. (BTW, as an aside, regarding the brief discussion of war/lock/druid earlier in the thread, we ended up having a lot of success by opening hard on the warlock while also dotting the warrior -- if the warlock died, great. More frequently if the warlock managed to get away via hamstring + abolish spam, we could then quickly switch to the already-injured warrior while the druid and warlock were already thinking defensively.) Anyway, we beat 2-healer pal/sham/war by focusing the shaman hard and either running the paladin out of mana or setting up a fear-->blind on the paladin to force him to bubble, then switching and burning him down once bubble was spent. But at the end of our run we ran into warrior + resto druid + disc priest, and had absolutely no success or anything even hinting that we might have a shot at winning. Mainly for all the reasons outlined earlier in the thread. The warrior could control our rogue and do a large amount of damage, the priest was constantly going for mana burns, while the druid CC'd to alleviate any pressure. There wasn't really any target selection that could work unless they mad