Drops

So, everyone loses because they played badly right, no skill at all? But wait, how do I keep winning dual ret comps--wait because I have no skill right?

Paladins can maintain success in melee combat distance enough to kill someone before they themselves die according to you, which should be blatantly obvious that it's incorrect. Ever tried running after a hunter determined not to get caught without any speed boost to help, as they slowly whittle you down?

I know of few people that bother to take that much care to fight a paladin, even in the few games I arena-ed this weekend. In almost every case I lost completely, it was a mater of kiting--others being lag and 'map not found'. I have a pretty strong building consensus again, that kiting is the way to go--something painfully familiar throughout S2, S3, and S4. What is so different about CCing and kiting a paladin now?

Healing and burst are the obvious high points, everyone knows that in 3.0. That's why I don't bother to make any utility argument for it. However, no one has really bothered to dissect on how to take advantage of our weaknesses, out of genuine ignorance, or willful OP propaganda. Is it simply impossible to weaken a paladin so he can be fought on more reasonable terms instead of face to face?

Is our burst too strong, yeah I can agree on that most of the time. But then, go fight a dual mage comp and see if it's any lower. Or moonkin, or even a hunter that's free to unload. Go try and burst a disc. priest with pure damage and see what happens. Ret isn't the only thing out there that's ridiculously buffed at 70, just the one that melees can't do a lot about.

Did it really take a lot of expertise to fight ret before 3.0? Were we really even much of a threat? Being used to our random, uncontrolled burst is more like our burst wasn't a significant merit to begin with, except when targets were so severely focused under optimal conditions, any DPS class would have sufficed. In some irony, it was our utility that was more important pre 3.0 and even that wasn't terribly great except for certain comps.

 

Angeron

You can kill any class that doesn't manage to pop an immunity shield in less than the duration of your bubble BY YOURSELF. That is the difference now, that you put out more sustained damage than any other class, and only slightly less burst than an arcane mage means that when combined with your pretty fantastic utility (thanks new hand spells, you were actually needed), you're a fucking juggernaut that cannot run out of mana.

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Drops

If you have to stand there and simply take it, sure you've going to get owned, but then, that goes for more than just ret. Our actual sustained damage over a match can be really high, but it's not totally out of line. Sometimes it's really low, but all we need is that free time to burst and the kill is made. It's the burst that's out of line.

Our hand spells haven't been changed much, except sacrifice, which is no longer nearly as helpful for breaking CC. They just don't overwrite our blessings.

Healing is much stronger obviously, and no longer a mana bound death sentence when choosing between heals or DPS. Mana regen is still finite--33% of base, not current; it's enough to cycle Judgment, CS, DivS, and Consecrate. Anything else while maintaining that DPS output is a deficit. If we run low, our performance drops until we get enough Judgment regen to make it back.

 

Angeron

With the combination of HoJ/Repentence pretty much anyone HAS TO stand and 'take it' from a ret paladin. You claim that sustained dps is 'not totally out of line' when the clear fact is that a ret paladin has better sustained dps over any type of arena match than any other class with the exception of rogues at this point. Add to this the fact that your burst is both spammable and matched only by mages means Ret paladins need massive tuning OR, other classes need massive tuning to respond to the sustained damage and burst.

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Drops

It's not terribly out of line because I see the totals every match, and so does everyone else. Compared to other melee, we're probably top most of the time, though I have been out-run by an enhancement shaman and particularly adept rogues (especially if it boils down to a duel).

I was running a DPS total on the training dummies yesterday compared to my warrior partner, my mobile DPS is not that far off compared to his. It's just that I need no time for procs and rage to come along to start up. My burst is reliable, his isn't--unless he hits bladestorm which still isn't nearly as usable. If I don't bother to use bubble, we both kill each other at nearly the same rate. I cycle my first upfront burst, which isn't enough to kill him. It's not till the second rotation is available that I can kill him, and by that time I'm in execute range. Whatever self healing I have is inconsequential with MS, casts are suicide. If he disarms for fun, he can win, but frankly, with bubble, it's no contest I'll win, which is either a sign to buff warriors or nerf paladins somehow. I used to need to counter every move he made carefully, but now I can just faceroll him if I'm serious.

Ranged classes often get 2-3 times as much cumulative damage as I do, and sometimes exceed that. It's only survivable because I can heal--I can't really CC-them into the ground unless they make a mistake. I can't hide or run from them unless I'm near a LoS point. Depending on how long I want to drag it out, someone on whatever side usually makes a move or mistake and the killing starts.

Really if I ever manage to repent a ranged class and they trinket it, there's pretty much no way to catch them unless I'm out of combat so long I can mount up (almost never happens), or I can wait for my warrior partner to intercept--provided he isn't busy; depends on the tactics we use per comp.

We're pretty hard countered by mages, and I'm often left to solo them to keep pressure up while my partner goes after the other. We don't win double mages unless they're retardedly geared and/or experienced. I don't think we've killed a good disc. priest that simply stood there and took it, pre and post 3.0 before their partner took us apart. So I don't see the clams that we're impossible to beat as valid. OP-ed, yeah probably. Impossible no.

 

Mearis

Drops, your post basically boils down too: Everyone should always run away from me, if they are bad enough to let me establish contact with them at any point, they are dead. Also everyone who dies to ret paladins is a bad player, the reason 1400 superstars are now at 2200 is because they improved a lot in the 4 days following the patch.

There is no way you can permanently kite a ret paladin - they move faster than you, they got blessing of freedom. They will catch up with you at one point. You are labouring under this delusion that somehow merely letting you get in range is a sign that somebody is a bad player and therefore deseves to die.

Do you really believe you are somehow a better player than those people in different classes who die during a hammer of justice? Could they have outplayed out somehow?

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Rasputin

At the risk of turning this even further into a ret paladin cry/get angry thread, I'm curious about people's perceptions on a few things.

First, without any of the "traditional" melee offensive utility, what matrices do people see ret paladins fitting into? Assuming that they will continue to balance our burst dps until it is more in line with other melee DPS specs(we still haven't seen the crit damage bonus nerfs, for instance), a ret paladin will bring the same dps potential as any other melee DPS, but will lack the offensive abilities that they each have in part or in total. In return, we have a 30s CD stun if specced(the 10s PvP set bonus is being removed), reasonable offhealing, and Hand spells. Now some of that is admittedly powerful, even if I think our offhealing power is exaggerated; it's good, but short-lived after which we operate at some 60% offensively for close to 40s to regain our mana.

So with all that considered, we have a fairly unique hybrid: melee DPS and purely defensive utility. We have no snare, no interrupt, no healing reduction and even if we are not infinitely kiteable, we are kiteable for long periods of time. So while people generally bring a melee DPS to an arena team for the additional DPS and those named offensive utility abilities, what would you bring a ret paladin to a team for? The only possible solution I can come up with is a drain/outlast team. We have Replenishment, infinite personal mana, and strong defense to weather burst, both for ourselves and our teammates. I'm not sure how powerful these comps will be because I haven't arenaed in beta, but you have to admit that this is a pretty unique role for a melee DPS spec.

So do people honestly think ret paladins, post burst nerf, will be viable options in any type of offensive team, as opposed to defensive teams? And if not, we have to look at the past viability and popularity of those type of teams as compared to the more offensive teams.

Basically I'm concerned that once all the balancing is said and done, we'll end up back where we are now: bringing certain interesting unique utility, but our specific role of melee DPS in an arena being better filled by nearly any other melee DPS spec, leading to a very slim number of viable comps for Ret.

 

Amera

It's really impossible to say until nerfs have been dealt out and there is a baseline for comparison. It's also hard to say how the game dynamic is going to change - will sustained healing remain powerful as it largely was in s1-s4, or are we going to be in a massive burst environment? I'm leaning towards the latter since I just can't see how anyone is going to be able to survive DPS trains, especially with things like Death Grip to forceably control enemy position and the Org arena that starts you out right in front of the other team.

 

Drops

No, you're ignoring everything and going to extremes for the sake for being smarmy, just like everyone does when they want to make an exaggerated point. Most, and I said most people I have not seen try to pick me apart--I'm pretty sure that's the definition of bad.

Of the ones that do, if they are melee, they usually get owned because, well I never denied being OPed against anything that have no choice but to fight me face to face to the death; the ones that have the ability to kite don't always see success, but I've seen my self worked like a clock too. The same way that worked in every arena season I've ran, up till now. There's nothing new about our weaknesses besides healing being significant and not a death knell to our DPS (provided we can keep judging to regen).

You're saying it's pretty much impossible, but all my experiences are to the contrary. Even when our burst is nerfed, health scales faster than our DPS, you will play against us the same way, and we won't change much either.

Do you think a pre 3.0 priest that tanked me just just using a single DoT to kill me was somehow a better player? A hunter spamming viper with his snakes and scorpid, only to run up and melee me for fun when I'm oom? A warrior killing my healer I could do nothing about? Yes, always much better than me according to you. I'm only saying that most are probably not that skilled, but a few are--but don't need it anyway, just like I don't need it most of the time now.

PoJ is a whopping 7% speed boost over enchanted boots. A snare for a split second is enough to push a paladin back to keep him away. HoF is 14 seconds out of 25, 56% of the time if spammed and never purged, an 11 sec space where a paladin can be hit with all types of snares and do little except cleanse and a bubble to keep moving. Or stand there and be a punching bag trying to heal. Don't tell me you can't tell it when it's worn...

It's not necessary to kite a paladin perfectly, just enough to kill or remove him as a threat. A moonkin has few ways to kite, cc, and do damage, but they can keep me away just long enough to work their damage that it matters little if I close range to burst, I'm highly unlikely to win past a certain point. Again arguing perfect extremes is nonsense and unnecessary.

 

panny

Getting away from a Paladin is impossible if you don't some kind of stealth ability due to Crusader Aura. I kited some scrubbily geared Paladin for about 15 minutes but could never really get away.

 

Mearis

Health scales faster than DPS? Are you high?

The 'situation at 80 is different' does not apply here. At 80, people will have roughly 1.8 times as much HP, 1/3 as much resilience, and well well over 1.5x the dps they do now, and that DPS will continue to increase during the entire expansion.

At 80, people are not sitting at capped resilience. They will get flattened even faster.

How can a priest 'kill you' with a single dot, given that you can cleanse all priest dots with cleanse for half the mana? A disc priest would probably kill you in a duel one on one, but if he uses dots for anything other than using r1 to make the pala waste mana cleansing he is dumb.

I am also a bit unsure how you can claim that you cannot help your healer getting trained by a warrior - errr, what exactly are blessing of freedom/protection for? Do you remember the YOU ARE GOING TO GET KITED Pandemic team running priest/warrior/paladin where the priest would talk shit to all warriors since they never got to stick on him with BOF? I mean you cannot possibly make the claim that you have little ways of helping your team-mates under fire.

You are quite apparently a horrible player, and this isn't remotely controversial. Healers should be able to survive against DPS while they have mana, otherwise healers are flat out worst than another DPS. As Sky said, it seems like the current direction is that they want arenas to be all about burst and fast match ups, which means that healers don't really play an active role.

If you have a difficult time beating any class one on one right now as a ret paladin you are a bad player. This doesn't mean that one on one has anything to do with game balance, but the fact that you claim that you lose to hunters one on one means that anything you have to say about game balance can be safely ignored.

For example, a disc priest beating a warrior in a duel says nothing about the relative balance of warriors and priests, but a disc priest who says that he loses to warriors in duels is obviously completely clueless about PvP and anything he says can be dismissed as dumb.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Drops

Ret paladins won't get any new abilities damage abilities besides a shield slam on the path to 80, and only a very slight increase in defensive buffs. Essentially every other class gets more of both. Effective health and forms of mitigation come into play that are not countered by any increase we have besides gear.

A priest kills with with just SW:P because I run oom just trying to DPS, and nothing else. Cast cleanse, heals, I run out even faster. Use seal of wisdom--o wait, why bother... If you're such an expert on paladins you should have realized this over a year ago. Priest just sits there, every 5 seconds gaining more mana than I can force him to expend.

This is 2v2 anyhow, I don't play 5v5 or 3v3 much due to available play times. Put BoF on the healer, and I sit there with hamstring. I'm a big help now as the other team is free to run off and drink. BoP every 3 min, but with MS, I get out-lasted since I can't output 1.5x the damage of a warrior to even out the healing needed for both sides. Complete lack of healing pressure lets other healer teams out-last with more efficiency, dual DPS with more CC to wreck us in less than a minute. I get ignored and can't regen with SA, or mana-drained as usual, and it's over. Just about every team comp is steeply uphill except for retarded non-healing melee comps like dual warrior.

It's really obvious pre-3.0 ret is heavily reliant on a perfect comp on his side to have a decent chance. I now run ret/arms, which was a little better, but was still totally horrible against any healing or decent CC, and mostly effective post 3.0 due to me being OP, and people ignoring him as an unworthy threat.

Healers can actually survive against my burst if it's just me on them. I can put pressure on them enough to burn mana on high maintenance heals now, but they aren't insta-gib 8 second faceroll like you claim. They see me coming, they prepare. Think anyone would just sit there and not stack the buffs and HoTs if a rogue is up? It's not unless both myself and my teammate temporarily indispose of one and focus the healer that it's going to be quick. Unless of course, you're just playing with bad healers right?

Fighting one-on-one with full cooldowns ready sure, I can pretty much win against anyone. But I'm not interested in that, I'm not talking about that and neither should you. I'm in 2v2 almost all the time where there's more to worry about than just myself and a single target. Occasionally it ends up 1v1, but it's not a clean start, and I just work with what I have. You already said 1v1 was invalid for PvP and yet that's all you're referencing me in? Look at the title of the thread?

 

gia

Please, I'm not sure if I should be even replying to this, you're obviously not playing the same game as everyone else.

 

Mearis

You said you have issues fighting classes you could never reasonably ever lose too if you were even slightly competent. The fact that those classes give you trouble invalidates anything you have to say about 2 vs 2. Would you listen to somebody about PvE balance if he discussed how difficult shade of aran was?

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

panny

Perhaps the people you're beating are even worse than you? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest any double Ret Paladin 2v2 at 1580 is either not very good, or badly geared.

 

Adrammelech

This is actually not a smart ass question, but could someone explain to me why so many paladins say they have no snare when we can basically assume any pvp player worth a toss moves at 108% speed or faster, and JoJ reduces that to 100% and the paladin themselves move at 115%?

I realize it's not the agonizingly slow snare of say crippling poison or a blizzard from a deep frost mage, but... it is typically a gain and while it can be dispelled it doesn't count as a movement reduction so it doesn't get countered by a lot of innate class abilities or talents. Things like blazing speed, shapeshifting, snare reductions, and earth power... Unless I'm mistaken none of those work.

 

Drops

Pre 3.0, a priest can literally just stand there with the occasional heal, tank all my damage, and kill me with nothing but SW:P as a insult. Did you read my previous posts? Doesn't sound like you did.
Go look up crusader aura. I don't see how extra mounted speed helps, maybe you can explain that. Sound like all the usual uniformed BS I keep hearing.

I already stated, I don't lose much, but it's not perfect record either (does anyone?). The number of games I actually lost at the hands of players instead of instance not found is so far, about 10%.

Unless you're going out on a limb to be arrogant enough that 100% is the rule and not the exception. There isn't such thing as perfect here, and certain classes are just as OPed as ret--mages the most obvious one. Any comp that has a lot of CC, and caster DPS ends up with me babysitting the warrior while I go in splitting my abilities between two people instead of reserving it just for myself. That opens up a rather large window of opportunity. If you can't see it, then I don't know what to tell you. Going to keep covering your ears and yell OP at a ret/arms combo?

You looked at my team and saw double ret, what are you smoking? Who do I keep referencing as my partner? An arms warrior since S3/2. If you look at my record it doesn't record last week because I wasn't here, and should be a rather obvious indicator that rating is well before 3.0. The rating I have now 1680 from about 20 games, having to rebuild from 1400 or so thanks to not getting into the map and instantly losing regardless of performance. The point of the matter is that people better than me are losing, not that bad people are losing--that's supposed to happen. And yet for all of my supposed OP-ness it's not like I escape unscathed because that's completely unrealistic.

Fist of all, I classify it as a snare, just one that's not as genuinely beneficial across all classes. Warrior, lock, rogue, mage, priest, paladin, it's not very helpful, or marginally helpful on rogues. Druids, shamans, hunters are the main targets, but it does require a 10 yard range to apply it, every 8 seconds talented. When worked in conjuction with PoJ and HoF, it can cripple the escape routes for those classes to varying degrees, but it's almost specifically anti-druid. Once it's on you, you have to either get it off via trinket or cleanse, or periodically keep the paladin snared long enough to maintain distance, which is harder with it on you.

 

Bula

It's too early to tell anything, there is no balance, no one has enough talent points to make a difference. Apparently the new 2v2 environment is a 1600 rated s2 paladin telling us all we're awful players. This thread would've been locked already if LodeRunner was around.

 

Voljun

Forgive me for jumping around a bit but I have a huge headache at the moment.

Drops, you keep referencing pre 3.0 as the reason for many of your arguments. While some of them do make sense, the entire purpose of this thread was to talk about the new 2v2 environment. I'm not really sure how the fact that a disc priest could pretty well tank a ret paladin with minimal effort pre 3.0 has any bearing on the game now or in the future.

In arenas extra mounted speed doesn't make any difference unless the other person is mounted (they usually aren't). You catch up with them because you are mounted and they aren't. I don't see the logic in a statement along the lines of "Ret paladins can be kited relatively easily (especially if they have a partner to babysit BoF) so if they catch up to you, you deserve to die in one HoJ".

I think its pretty obvious that a dps role is going to be more popular than a healer. The dps burst is just so spectacular in 3.0 that any decent cc train of more than 15 seconds is going to put you way behind. Personally, I've moved from healer/dps arena teams in my 2s to double dps. It just isn't worth it being a healer anymore and I don't see that changing at 80 unless there are some pretty significant changes.

I think alot of people are underestimating spriests currently. If it wasn't for ret paladins burst being so high, spriests would be right up with rogues. The dispel glyph is very strong and I wouldn't be surprised to see it nerfed to 4 or 5%.

 

Drops

I figured the thread was started as a statement to the current situation of 2v2 and gave my opinion on what is happening from my PoV. I'm not making any specifics about people here, ret is obviously OPed, but there's some things that can be taken advantage of, some that can not--which isn't as important now as is will be later. That's all I really wanted to get across, which is a confirmation of the initial post.

That was probably needless drama, since according to people, my pre 3.0 rating on a ret/arms team is validation of me as a bad player.

I make no justification for "so if they catch up to you, you deserve to die in one HoJ". I actually repeatedly say our burst is OPed. I only say that if you want to seriously kite a paladin it is possible, and under certain conditions, easy, and that it's neither necessary or vital to be 100% effective at it as long as you can channel it into a leading advantage.

At this point yes, dual DPS with hybrid healing is the way to go.

 

Voljun

Anyone know what the best combos are in 2s for DKs now? I'm thinking Ret Paladin/DK assuming they don't nerf that nice healing ret paladins got. Aside from the burst I kind of like where they are.

 

Bula

This is comical at best. You can actively remove stuns, snares, have on demand immunity to spell and physical damage, you run faster then anyone without needing an enchant, you can remove run speed effects from players at will from range, and on top of that if you do leave combat you can mount and run 20% faster then anyone else to close the gap. If a ret paladin wants to catch someone, they will, end of story. And this thread still sucks.

 

Drops

Of all those, we only gained the ability to remove stuns this patch if you talent for it, doesn't work on yourself, and uses HoF for that purpose which makes it possibly unavailable when you need to save it for something else. Nothing really new about any of that, tactics are still the same. And yet none of it really that punishing by itself without the new damage we got to make it count.

Splitting that utility along myself and a warrior teammate will make one of us much more susceptible--it's up to whoever we're fighting to watch that. It not like I magically teleport next to someone or stealth; you can see us coming and prepare. What do I do when fighting dual ret? I can't kite either, so I just prepare and start off a list of counter for counter play. I haven't lost yet to dual ret, though I have lost to dual mage, and resto-moonkin.

If you lose track of me for so long to get out of combat, I'm pretty sure my partner makes for a rather easy target. If you're not doing enough to keep me worried about staying in combat, you have bigger problems.

I mean, I could eventually get into range of anyone pre 3.0 too, but often it didn't matter, or the advantage is too heavily stacked in the opposition's favor. Either by that time I'm totally worn and finished off, or start attacking praying for a burst to proc before they can recover. In 3v3 and 5v5 there was always plenty of distractions to close range, but 2v2 maintaining mobility can be extremely difficult with a team that has the tools.

 

Arakan

I thought this thread was about the new 2v2 enviroment. Not a paladin nerf thread...

It would be nice if everyone can stop throwing the comments about how this and that is overpowered, and get back to what this thread is about?

 

Raised

The reason that it turned into a whine about pallies from both sides is that the complete subject/question of the thread was answered in the first few (or maybe even the first) post.

Right now, 2v2 is all about burst. Healing and survivability didn't scale with the new talents nearly as well as damage did, so even a healer who is being completely ignored and spamming their best heals isn't going to be able to keep their partner up through any sort of RNG string or back-to-back CC chain. Ret pallies, rogues, mages, shadow priests and balance druids are the worst offenders at this point, in roughly that order. Basically pick two of those classes and do a Double-DPS or bash your head against a wall.

That's about /thread until we get to play with 71 talent points.