Juli

To get back on topic a little, I agree with the sentiments about paladin/shaman survivability. The ability for these classes to be so easily locked down by competent mages/warlocks/rogues, combined with the complete lack of utility (especially in the offensive department) and the illumination+10 other paladin nerfs patch is exactly why I rerolled (all the way from 1-70) priest from paladin at the end of season 1. I couldn't be happier with the decision and haven't regretted it even for a second. I feel much more durable on my priest the majority of the time (exception being purge happy enhancement shaman + warrior/rogue/hunter trains in non-arena BGs).

My fear is that they will never do anything about it. These issues are much less of a problem in 5v5 and they claim to not balance for anything else. As someone who enjoys the smaller brackets the most, that pretty much precludes me from ever considering playing one of those 2 classes as my pvp main again (or even as an alt at a competitive level). I enjoy my priest a lot, but I do keep my paladin up to date, just in case, with 30% of 10 games each week on an alt team.

 

◊ Praetorian

That's my basic concern as well. I can find a 2s partner or a couple of people for 3s with nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon and we can play 50 games straight if the queues are good. It's fun, and we learn and improve as we go. I'm sure it's different in guilds/groups for whom PvP is their #1 priority, but for me scheduling 5s games is like trying to organize a raid. There's always someone who has to go, someone who has something come up and can't make it, etc. 3v3 is probably my favorite bracket just in terms of the overall feel of it, but at the same time I've had a hell of a time finding a group where I don't run into a ceiling at around 2200. Granted, I could play better. I know I could, and I try to be critical of my own play and improve (and it's hard when there are basically zero 2400+ resto shaman videos out there, unlike basically every other semi-viable spec in the game -- anyone know of any genuinely top-tier resto shaman videos or other resources I could look at?). But it's frustrating facing a more "cookie-cutter" team like war/lock/dru or PMR and saying to myself mid-game "Wow, these guys aren't very good" as they make basic errors, and then finding out after the game ends that they're 100 points higher than us. I dislike feeling like a liability to my team.

 

Xavias

Anyone else think its quite an odd decision that they want to balance 5v5 over the smaller brackets?

I would think that it would be FAR harder to do due to the massive amount of variables involved (bigger game, more synergies, more devestating combinations etc), but at the same time the amount of variables that exist in 5v5 pretty much masks a massive portion of class imbalance. So in fact, one could argue that balance in 5v5 is an illusion that relies on random variables that are so complex, that micro-balance is no longer an issue that can be identified and adjusted fairly.

 

◊ Praetorian

It is odd. 5v5 is the least popular bracket (by far -- any look at Armory can tell you this) for logistical reasons. Perfect balance may be impossible, but I think that ideally every spec (except prot pal and prot war, because pure survival without offense or utility doesn't really fit in the arena environment) should have a number of possible options for teammates in order to form reasonably competitive teams. Some ideal of perfect balance may be unattainable, but "I'm useless, time to reroll" shouldn't be one of the possible outcomes. And for every player who decides to reroll a druid/priest/warlock/whatever in response to the situation, there are others who just quit entirely (like Moz in this thread). It doesn't make sense.

I can understand that 2v2 is inherently going to have Rock/Paper/Scissors situations and teams that are completely nonviable. But I don't think that 3v3 necessarily poses those same issues. If Blizzard is looking solely at 5v5 when making balance decisions, that's not wise.

 

Juli

I'd expect a pretty positive reaction from the community as a whole if they switched their focus to 3v3. When I looked at the poll results for "Poll: Which format should Gameriot use for its first ever WOW arena tournament?" on Gameriot (home of a lot of popular arena blogs) earlier today and saw 3v3: 64.3%, 5v5: 35.7% Total Votes: 2318, I was a little surprised. I suppose it makes sense though. There have been other unofficial tournaments based on 3v3 as well from what I remember (I don't follow it that closely though).

 

Malakitoo

I think this is completely true: the design behind the paladin class, and to a lesser extent shamans, was to be the most durable, most hp/sec healer in the game. In return for not being the most durable, priests and druids got utility that made up for their lack of pure defensive power. However, the game (in smaller brackets) has progressed to the point where paladins have less survivability and less healing power compared to the other healing classes due to crowd control, and specifically counterspell mechanics, and they don't have the utility that the others do.

There are two solutions: 1) Buff paladin utility. Add some offensive abilities, some cc or something. This isn't going to help paladins heal any better than they do, it will just make paladins more of a control class, which goes contrary to their philosophy of being the ultimate anti-cc, defensive class. It would make it more fun to play though, and isn't entirely without precedent (see cyclone).

2) Make it harder to lock down paladin heals. In this day and age of cast bars and focus macros it is arguably the easiest time ever to land a counterspell. From the ptr diminishing returns on silences, although they were shortlived, it is clear that blizzard is looking in this direction for a change. It's just too easy for a good mage to lock a paladin out, despite BoSac and divine shield. Something needs to change in the current silence model, whether it's reduced duration, DR timers, perhaps allowing downranking or something during a silence, I don't know. Maybe give paladins a counterspell ward, 5 sec duration, or add that functionality to divine focus. The casted heal model is losing out to the HoTs in hp/sec, and that shouldn't happen.

I don't think the solution to this problem is to turn the paladin into another support healer / utility bot. BoF and BoP is already solid utility, I hate to jump on the poor shaman bandwagon, but if paladins get more so should we

Anything where you need the burst of bloodlust. 2s this doesn't happen, 3s it used to happen with spriest/ua lock and perhaps will return with rogue / ice mage (icy veins for <1.5sec frostbolts woo!) although the current metagame doesn't have much to do with burst damage but with control and mana wars, 5s with a 4dps setup or a 2345 that prefers burst to draining.

 

gatzu.

Let me know how 4dps goes with a resto shaman. Also 2345 is elemental shaman

 

Errelno

Good thing that's changing next season.

 

Mex

Something that Gurg and Beef both mentioned has really hit me, cause it's something I've never really considered before. The number of possible spells / actions / things to do that druids / priests have vs pallies / shamans, which is what really separates the good from the bad and allows the good to be very, very, very effective. I think that should be something that Blizzard aims for with ALL classes - giving them a huge variety of choices in terms of abilities to use. I really dislike the idea of "idiot classes", like the stereotype of rogues being SS mashers, warriors equipping stormherald and automatically having all their arena teams raised to 2000, etc etc. Now of course this isn't exactly the reality, but some classes are a lot less involved that others.

I think a rework of blessings / seals to force paladins to juggle them a lot could be really effective. Having certain seals sync with certain blessings, offensive and defensive blessings, much shorter durations and mana costs (although this would have to be reconciled somehow with PvE), a whole new range of blessings and seals, to make sure that every single GCD the pally is thinking "do I buff my warrior's damage output, give myself protection from spell lock, give my shaman protection from CC, slow that druid, debuff that rogue's attack power, or heal?" Anyhow, none of the above has been thought through, it's just to give an example of the general idea I'm pushing - giving pallies more things to decide between than FoL, HL, or move away from mana burn. It would obviously require a huge rework though, WotLK maybe.

The same thing could be done with shaman totems. When I first played shaman in open beta and then early retail (back when they were stupidly powerful, frostshock spam + windfury = win), I never really got into the whole idea of totems. They always felt really cumbersome to me. An increase in totem utility would be great to see, maybe even something fun like being able to drop the totem anywhere in a 30/40 yard range (hello 40 yard aoe snare!).

Anyhow, to me that really feels like the crux of the issue - having 3 or 4 abilities in arena, compared to a dozen. When I play my pally, I'm constantly spending the time that I'm not healing trying to get the best possible position to be ready to stun the enemy healer, avoid mana burns, or heal my teammate. That's all I do is run around, spamming cleanse, pausing for a FoL sometimes.

Ignore the specifics of what I've suggested, it's just examples to highlight what I think is the need for more options for pallies and shamans. I know that both of those classes are a lot more vulnerable to spell locks than druids / priests, but I do think that that's really just part of the game, and something that should be remedied with PvP trinket removing silence / spell locks, or DR on them, etc, rather than making all healers too similar.

Oh, and Blizzard balancing for 5v5 primarily doesn't mean they don't consider 2s and 3s. There have been numerous changes made to attempt to better balance these brackets, but the core design elements of the game were centred around 5 man teams, for PvE and then that kinda moved into PvP balance too. I think a change in focus to 3v3 would require too much overhaul (mostly in terms of mana longevity etc). I would like to see more 3v3 and 2v2 changes made, and more aggressive balancing for those brackets, and at times even at the risk of slightly disrupting the 5v5 game balance, but ultimately I think a complete shift is unworkable.

And finally, I've heard 2 explanations for 2345. The first being that those were the keys the shaman needed to win, purge, em, ns, cl (does that mean 1 is autoattack though?!?). The second was that 2345 was the "countdown" (or countup?) to the target switch, where warrior would intercept a new target and MS, and then as soon as it hit 50% shaman would NSEMCL, and mage would shatter combo. Both strike me as being kinda dumb, but 2345 is fairly universally recognised now so I'm inclined to go with it!

 

◊ Praetorian

Really PI serves a similar function, PS is obviously amazing, and aside from the other utility priests have simply having magic debuff removal is fairly major. I can't really see the merits of a shaman over a priest with mage/rogue. Obviously a shaman could work. No question shaman/mage/rogue can be 2200+ if played well, but it's still strictly worse than PMR.

 

Tutanka

This is prety much exactly how I feel about 2's and 3's, at the moment. They are fun, I can win with a couple of diferent classes, I can hover between 1900 and 2100 fairly easily, etc. I do not however think, I will be winning a gladiator title on my Shaman.

Is this a problem, not sure, I'm still having fun right?


And as for "Balancing around 5v5" what a crok that is.......

Mages have very good representation in 5v5, they get buffed.... Priests have even higher representation is 5's and they get an even bigger buff.

Resto shaman are bad in 5's and they get almost nothing, while Elemental shaman who are gret in 5's get even stronger.

If Blizzard really wanted to "balanace for 5v5" they would have given Resto Shaman a castable Pain supression tallent like they gave Priests (who were already the off healer of choice by a landslide). Pain Supression is essentially the counter to the "lolgibedyourwarrior" shadow Priest/rogue/afliction lock teams that were upsetting the applecart last season.

And what does Blizzard do, they essentially give the "counter" to the class that was least in need of a buff and thus made the gap even wider between resto shaman and priests. Does this seem like a real atempt at balancing for 5's? Seems like the opposite to me.

Blizzard did not use this patch to "balance for 5's" they essentially buffed the crap out of the already dominant set up (2345) by giving even more utility to 3 of the core classes (Priest, Mage, E-Shaman).

 

Malakitoo

61-2 to 2357 so far, will keep you posted.

I was using the term 2345 to refer to the general warrior/paladin centric 2 healer 3dps team. Although in retrospect I do think that an elemental shaman is a better fit in that setup.

 

• Calantus

I think the priest buffs were less about buffing priests and more about buffing disc. It's been a very long-term issue and they kept promising on the buffs right up until they gave them. It's undoubtably a buff and others were probably more deserving, but I don't think Blizzard saw it as buffs to improve the failing priest class. It was just something whose time had come around, like guild banks.

 

Opioid

I think the silence DR was the wrong idea, it broke a mostly alright mechanic to save a couple classes.

I think the real problem is that Paladins spell skills are all Holy. Thats what screws them over from a school lock, they can't do anything. Every other class can do something for 8 seconds to pass the time without being a complete waste... paladins are just bricked. Even shadow-heavy deep affliction warlocks isn't as screwed as a paladin.

I think something worthwhile should be made (or created) nature or arcane or physical. If you just add a flat random resist talent or whatever it makes close wins seem too lucky, which no one likes.

Addendum: Looking at their design soulmate, the shaman, paladins were meant originally to be the physical/healer class whereas shaman were the caster/healer class. Shaman have a few different schools to resort to when nature is locked down. Paladins, during Burning Crusade, were fixed to be better tanks/damage, but not in a physical sense: their melee viability is still based on the Holy School, thus screwing them when they are counterspelled.

If we look at the one other class in the game that loses its spell damage and healing powers in totality when counterspelled, we have druids and Nature School. Even then, however, druids still have amazing capability to shift at will and some good melee powers not dependent on Nature School to use: Feral Charge, cat bleeds, etc.

Paladins being completely screwed healing-wise and having their already-pathetic spell and melee power all shut down over a Holy School lockdown makes them uniquely victimized by counterspells given their design. I think *that* is what needs to be remedied.

I think some sort of oh-shit-panic, almost Bloodlust caliber physical power or 10s buff talent/talent revision would be a good solution. It would only work on counterspelling, so it wouldn't radically redefine the paladin utility vs. healer paradigm, it would be PVP focused, so raiders wouldn't want to get it and unbalance the whole PVE endgame, and it would incentivize stun/disorient style paladin counters over having them baby-guarded by mages/felhunters as is currently their problem (since it would be a risky decision to counterspell a holy heal and presumably saved by good teams for only precise moments in the game, not used as sophomorically as they are now.)

 

Solarion

The only non-nature spell a shaman has is Fire Shock.(and possibly Frost?) All of their lightning and healing spells are in the nature school.

Druids have a pair of nukes in the arcane school, plus all the feral abilities you mentioned.

So, there really IS a large gap between shaman and druids in this respect.

 

Opioid

Well they do still have their fire and water totems, which is something (though none are very good, I am aware.) Fire Elemental is pretty keen, perhaps it should have its cooldown revisited. Maybe Grounding Totem or something Air could have its school changed. The X Shields all being Nature School strikes me as similarly silly. Stormstrike is still there for enhancement.

I fully admit Shaman are way worse off than druids, but they are still a good deal better off than paladins when counterspelled.

 

Siddown

I'd have to disagree with that, when CS'd, Resto Shaman really can't do much. If anything, he has less armor than a Paladin. Could he Flame Shock? I guess, but if he's CS'd, he's likely being focused and all he can do is sit there and take a beating. I'm not saying the armor increase makes Paladins better off, but it's that versus Flameshock. I think it's safe to say that both classes are FUBAR when CS'd.

 

• Snowy

Generally speaking the armor doesnt matter, as when you CS either a shaman or paladin you're not trying to drop them, you're trying to drop your main target.

This thread is quite interesting, and really it's the culmination of stratagies and gear. When you have little gear (on both teams!) Paladins (and Shamans to a lesser extent) are durable sturdy healers, whereas Druids and Priests are rather flimsy and are easy targets to drop. But once you're in full S2+honor gear, those "flimsy" healers are a tough nut to crack combined with their talents. I don't think anyone, including Blizzard, could have realistically forseen this evolution, and all of these healers are balanced rather nicely in PvE to boot. So what it really distills down to is this: How do we give the Paladin and Shaman more flexibility and options in PvP like Druids and Priests have?

For Paladins a few issues that I see are the following:

1) Hammer of Justice is simply not very useful anymore. The problem is, you don't want your Paladin anywhere near the main fray, and the range on it is just way too short.
2) Holy Shock needs to be reworked to be a useful and reliable instant heal. Numbers can be debated, but right now a ~1300 heal every 15 seconds is hardly worth the GCD.
3) Seals and Judgements should be some other school besides Holy. At least let the Paladin do SOMETHING when he's locked out.
4) Make Divine Illumination increase casting speed for that time as well. Make it significant enough to almost counter CoT for that 15 seconds. Another possibility -- make it castable on others.
5) Revert the BoSac change. Was this really so bad? The Freedom change was perfectly fine, and was warranted.

That's just 5 things I came up with off the top of my head. Surely Blizzard can think of many more ways to overheal Paladin PvP mechanics, and this goes for Shamans as well. Right now, they just have little flexibility compared to Druids and Priests -- and I argue that actually Druids/Priests are structured very nicely, so it certainly shouldn't come as a nerf to them, but as a buff to Paladins/Shamans.

 

Juli

It was forseeable. I started leveling my priest to drop paladin when they were still considered to be "best arena healer period", before the paladin nerf patch (the nerf patch was just the nail in the coffin for me). People who played armor priests (hakkar heart armor trinket i love you so much ;-* i miss you honey) back at 60 should have easily seen this coming. A 1000-2000 armor increase is night and day difference. I'd argue that priests are the most gear dependent class in the game in pvp. When the season 2 gear was revealed and myself and our arena team saw the bonus armor on it, our reaction was "wow, do they realize what they're doing? hope they tested it and tuned the values appropriately!".

The recent priest buffs are exactly what Calantus said: they wanted to buff disc, not priests. I believe the goal was to make it lateral to holy (or very slightly better, to get entrenched players to try it seriously), but they just didn't get the tuning exactly right and it ended up a little more powerful than it should've been. I expect nerfs, or buffs to others to counterbalance it.

This is exactly what needs to happen. I won't bother theorycrafting abilities or changes specifically, but hopefully they will recognize this needs to happen and go with it. My stance on paladins has always been that they need to be given more utility, then nerf the power of whatever other aspect of the class needs nerfing to bring them in line (on the whole) after they gain the new abilities. I felt the same way about druids - I wanted them to remove the GCD from shifting and remove the mana cost of shifting completely, then nerf whatever needs to be nerfed to bring them in line; I felt it would make the class feel much more fluid and interesting to play (I refused to play a druid until the GCD removal patch for that specific reason, at least they did part of what I wanted and I didn't get bored before level 25 this time when I started a druid alt).

 

Errelno

It was also largely an answer to 4 dps teams in 5v5.

With that said, I'm afraid you might be right. They may not really be seeing the larger picture with respect to these changes. The problem is that a few classes (rogues and priests for example) have 3 very strong and viable talent trees for arenas, while others (mages and paladins) only have 1. Why are they so worried about making 41 disc a strong talent build when every arena mage is water elemental and every paladin is 41/20 holy/prot?

 

Xavias

There is another pattern that we are seeing here - "Passive" healing (aka HoTs). HoT's are heals that are usually very mana efficient, instant, ignore LoS (after being casted) and ignore Silences.

The main reason Druids can do so much in Arena is because they don't generally use heals that have a cast time. The mobility alone is glaringly effective for a healer to have, to be able to heal on the run. It takes less than a second to cast a HoT and run behind a pole, effectively reducing your exposure by a significant amount. Compared to running into LoS, stopping, casting for 2.5 seconds, and then moving out of LoS again. Not to mention the very real (and likely) threat of being CS'd and controlled. Is it really any wonder that the Classes with HoT's are usually the most effective in lower brackets by a signifcant margin?