Ahhh, complaining. A fantastic past time.
I don’t know why people continue to QQ about ret paladins. Maybe it’s because I play a snare-heavy frost mage in PvP (or pally healer when I’m not doing that), but they just don’t strike me as anything fantastic.
Sure, their damage is high, but if you’re getting hit by one, you screwed up somewhere.
For instance, I was guarding BE in Eye, playing Peggle. While it pains me to admit that, Horde had basically won the thing. We had three bases, was in the process of capping the fourth, there was really nothing of importance for me to do.
So this ret paladin comes out of nowhere, I see a whole bunch of numbers show up on my screen, and before I know it I’ve lost half my health pool.
The ret paladin had, so far, only cast judgment and crusader strike. Oof. I blame my criminal neglect of my PvP gear, as I’m sporting a FABULOUS 350 resilience.
Anyway, once I was aware of the fight, the ret paladin was killed without issue. Ice Barrier handily absorbed Divine Storm, HoJ was met with Blink, Blessing of Freedom was spell stolen, and the poor paladin found himself either rooted or stunned for the entirety of the (very brief) fight.
Note to ret paladins: while wearing Ulduar gear into battlegrounds may help your position on the damage meters, it also means I’m going to kill you in three spells. Consider yourself warned.
It’s basically the same as a paladin healer. They might get a hit or two off at the start of the fight, but after that, it’s up to the ret paladin’s partners to try and pin me down again.
Maybe it’s a class thing. I’ve only done end-game PvP as two classes so far, though I have more in the works (hunter, death knight, rogue, and priest are all in Outland and beyond), so we’ll see with a few different classes under my belt.
Rogues, too, are still being complained about. Again… I don’t really see it. Rogues are kinda mean as a mage, but nowhere near as brutal as they were in BC.
It’s cooldown versus cooldown, with two high damage classes with multiple snares/interrupts/escapes at their disposal.
Here’s a tip for beating rogues: get resilience. Get a lot of it. Load up on the stamina, too. And when you think you have enough? You’re wrong. Get more. About 20k health and 700-800 resilience should be your base line for these stats.
For instance, my pitiful 350? Not going to do anything. You will watch in mild, fascinated horror as a single Eviscerate removes half your health.
The Paladins’ perspective is, of course, completely different. Rogues pose almost no threat at all on their own… it’s who their partnered with that makes them mean. A rogue, by themself? Won’t even be able to put a dent in a paladin.
If you’re still fixated on the whole 1v1 situation… you’re doing it wrong. This game is not about 1v1 combat, and never has been. It’s about group combat. 3v3, minimum.
Maybe you have few options when fighting so and so or this specific class. Maybe you’re a priest and you find it difficult to effectively fight rogues for some reason.
The game is designed that way. PvP was never intended to be about duels. It’s about teams fighting teams.
So to answer the questions “how do I beat class X in 1v1?” the answer is: you don’t. You’re not supposed to.
I mean, I can tell you tactics to use when fighting rogues, for instance:
- Never try to escape Cheap Shot. You should have enough stamina and resilience to not die to whatever the other team can dish out in those few seconds. Why? Because…
- You must always try to escape Kidney Shot. Ideally, you’d simply blink. If you blink out of Cheap Shot, the rogue will simply kidney you when he catches up to you. And he will catch up to you.
- Keep a rogue snared as much as possible. As a melee class, they should never have the luxury of moving around without a snare slowing them down.
- Run during Cloak of Shadows. There is nothing else you can do, so try to stay out of melee range.
- Snare them ASAP when they sprint. Some rogues will sprint and CloS at the same time. Flee.
- Never cast in melee range of a rogue. If you do, and get kicked, you deserve the lock out.
- Snag Icy Veins and it’s glyph if you don’t have them already. You can’t go wrong with an instant snare dispel.
- For the love of god don’t forget Cone of Cold! It’s the most powerful snare you have, don’t be shy in it’s use.
But this isn’t a list of “how to kill rogues”. This is a list of “how to fight rogues”. These are things you do to put your team in a position to win.
Every class has strengths and weaknesses. The whole idea of grouping up for PvP is to minimize those weaknesses, and maximize those strengths.
The statement “I can’t beat a ret paladin!” is fundamentally flawed. Of course you can’t. You’re not supposed to, and weren’t designed to be able to.
You’re supposed to grab a couple friends and beat the ret paladin and his couple of friends.
And really, if you’re all worked into a nerd rage over the 2v2 bracket, you can go right ahead and stop. 2v2 is barely better than 1v1; nobody cares. Nobody takes the 2v2 bracket seriously, and neither should you.
Now, if you’re going to talk about imbalances in the 3v3 and 5v5 bracket… then we can talk.
I dual specced my PvE Arcane Mage for PvP Frost and just got destroyed in 3s. It was horrible. I could survive but my ability to kill or do high volumes of damage was just abysmal. My play style wasn’t bad, I’d run PvE frost and respecced to PvP frost for arenas all through BC and did okay. It just seemed that with all the burst damage in Arenas, I should go glass-cannon for glass-cannon and respecced Arcane PvP which suited me much better.
Perhaps I should try Frost again now that I have a bit better PvP gear.
As a rogue, I rarely go 1 on 1 against a mage in a BG especially frost mages, mainly because of all the snares they can put out. They don’t need to kill you, just keep you and your team mates busy while their’s go around capping flags and stuff. If it’s group pvp though, I’ll kill either the mage, warlock or healer first depending on who looks squishier.
“1.Never try to escape Cheap Shot… Why? Because…
2.You must always try to escape Kidney Shot.”
I think that’s a really important advice, which I could never execute in practice.
I constantly hear crying from guildies, etc. about pallies. I’m not the best PvP ret pally, but I hold my own. Ironically, if I’m one on one with a mage, lock, or rogue I usually die given they know what they’re doing. I usually cry at the unfairness of it all at that point.
I have never thought about it except for one-on-one. Your comment “This game is not about 1v1 combat, and never has been” sheds the whole thing in a new light.
Maybe no one takes 2v2 seriously, but IMO, it’s a good place to start. I’ve learned a lot about communication with my partner, when to switch targets, etc….how to work together as a team …. that would have been a lot more confusing for me if you threw even one more teammate into the mix.
I’m not saying I’m good at it, just that I’m better at it than I was when we started. If we had started out in 3s though … I might have quit after one week.
I think the biggest problem, for me, is that … well, it’s sad but true: the rest of my team is usually full of mouth-breathing non-mage morons. The result? I usually end up by myself, because nobody else on my team will do anything worthwhile. 1v1, there are a few classes I simply cannot deal with. And while that’s by design, for some reason (selective perception, maybe) those classes always seem to be the most popular.
And when I’m not by myself, I have a DK or Retadin breaking my polymorph, or refusing to heal me while I’m sitting terrified in Iceblock on 26 hp, or standing right next to the flag practically asking for a rogue-druid funlock. I’ve never been a fan of the “if you want to PVP, roll Horde” thing, but when Allies can’t win a single BG before midnight, I begin to think it’s true.
Also, I know nobody cares, but PVP isn’t just level 80. I have a half-dozen toons all the way through the levelling spectrum. Hunters and rets (and DK’s once they come in) are always effective; other classes struggle at certain points. My 69 mage can’t do much against rets, because without spellsteal, they can close the distance with BoF and dispel Slow. Once Repentance hits, it’s over … have to use a cooldown to survive it, and there are just too many Retadins and not enough trinkets or POM-polymorphs.
In some ways, that’s far more frustrating than anything that happens at level 80.
I think you’ve touched on something important about pvp…although it doesn’t actually make me feel that much better about it.
As a frost mage if I come upon a class 1v1 I think I should have an equal chance to kill them as they do me. I think the difference should be in skill level, gear and spec. Although this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Also I think the problem with ret pally’s isn’t so much beating them 1v1, although that can be a problem, I think its beating them before another class can get there to help them. It seems like everytime I’m fighting a ret pally it takes so damn long that another class usually shows up and helps them finish me off. Yes you can spell steal blessing of freedom but if they have the right talent points they can usually cast it again in a few seconds. That combined with hammer of justice and repetence makes it pretty easy for them to get close to you. And throw their bubble in there for another 12 sec of immunity and it can seem like an eternity to kill a damn ret pally, since you have to go through their health bar 2 or 3 times.
It just seems like they have all the spells they need to counter any class. I do think they could use some reworking. I think its pretty obvious when you enter a bg and over half the players are ret pally’s that something is seriously wrong.
@Rumplestilzkin
It’s really not as bad as you paint it…while it may seem that we have all these tools at our disposal, we only have 3 means of escape, four if you count cleanse. We have our trinket (2min cooldown), bubble (5min cooldown), and Hand of Freedom with a 10 second duration (20sec cooldown talented). The trick to a ret pally is to keep distance because we can’t do a damned thing at a distance and have no gap-closing abilities like DKs, Rogues, and Warriors. We are designed to destroy people if they let us get close and allow us to remain close.
If you still think we’re overpowered, try being a ret paladin against a healer…
I’d be interested in your PvP spec your rolling with.
I think most of that is how easy the class is to play … BoF snares, close to 20 yards, then Repentance and press your damage buttons. If something goes wrong, you have not one, but two panic buttons (LOH and bubble), plus possibly other cooldowns depending on spec.
Pretty straightforward. No finesse, just clobbering. Sure, there are details, and a good retadin will fare better than a bad one, but it’s not hard to kill people.
Wait i can SpellSteal BoF?
Suddenly my odds against a paladin look a bit better, i hate geting shredded to pieces while leveling though.
I usually play passively so i’m almost always on the defensive, unfortunately for me i have Blink on a very quick button combo and usually use it around half a second after being attacked.
Damn i almost forgot i had Spellsteal, i used it a few times to steal runes of the vrykul in UK then forgot about it, fun spell depending on what you steal.
excellent advice…especially on teh 2v2.
I was banging my head on the wall for weeks about my crappy 2v2 performance. As a warrior it just sucked.
3v3 though and a whole new world of opportunity oppened up and it’s definately more enjoyable…
Now if I could get my other 2 partners to be online more I might be able to do something with it.
A tip from me:
Make sure your spells are trained to max rank.
I made my way to 1200′s without knowing I had 5 more ranks of Ice Barrier to train.
Jeez, no wonder I was so squishy…/doh.
Spellstealing HoF is very satisfying but more often than not I find I have to spam it 4-5 times before I steal the right buff. When a Pally is loaded up with other buffs I end up stealing all the useless ones first, and considering each cast of spellsteal is a GCD, sometimes by the time you’ve done it, it wasn’t really worth the effort.
I don’t do Arena (and have no desire to any time soon), but I do enjoy the occasional BG as Frost PvP, and I do have some Hateful/Furious gear now – so at least I’m not quite a free HK.
What you said about 1v1 pvp is beautiful. As a rogue, I used to hear constantly- ZOMG ROUGES R SEW OVRPWRD – all over bgs. I still do now and then, usually it’s because someone died in 1v1. What you’ve articulated is how Bliz has always been- rock>paper>scissors…ideally at least. But that’s only for 1v1, and a lot of that can be changed by being intelligent. You Blink from a Cheapshot, I WILL kill you. You wait for KS, blink+snare+nuke me before I can CloS/Sprint/Break, you WILL kill me. Rock always beats scissors…buut, two rocks don’t always beat two scissors, probably don’t beat a rock and a scissors, and can’t ever beat scissors + paper.
In my pvp experience I’ve come across two universal truths:
1. 90% of any teams problems can be solved by better communication.
2. The other 10% can be solved by not teaming up with retards.
@ Scott
Stick with whatever you’re better at. If you see better results as arcane, stick with arcane.
There isn’t really a “you’re doing it wrong” PvP spec anymore. I mean, really, we have Prot Paladins kicking it in arena now.
@ Apsalar
I have a 69 twink rogue, and I have to say, squishy hunting is fun.
@ jong
Easiest way is to get a combat text addon that will show you big alerts when you get hit with debuffs. I use SCT myself, but really anything that will flash “KIDNEY SHOT” on your screen will do wonders.
@ repgrind
Awesome point. I agree.
@ Lucy
Ret paladins are horrendously overpowered in the 60-69 bracket. My paladin used to be twinked for that bracket and… well… two shotting people got boring after a while.
@ Rumplestilzkin
Find a priest and be friends with them. Ret paladins won’t really stand a chance anymore.
Other than that, really just blink out of HoJ, trinket/ice block out of repentance and you’re good.
Try preemptively spell stealing so it’s easier to grab BoF when it comes up, and if you’re frost…try your best to use Deep Freeze while their BoF is on cooldown. Preferably right after they use it, so they’re kicking themselves in shame.
@ Koushirou
The list of things you can’t spellsteal is actually very small.
For instance, Avenging Wrath. 20% additional damage? YES PLEASE.
@ Magejuego
PoM + rank 1 Pyroblast ftw.
@ theerivs
This is what I run with for PvP. Glyphs included.
The extent of my PvP is blizzarding people in the valley of strife in alterac for lols. I really ought to change that, especially considering that I’m a frost mage.
Thanks Euri!
@Rip: It’s better than seeing Mages use Frost Armor at 80…in ULDUAR. Holy crap how do these people get here.
[...] about it. I’m sure there are people out there who will say “1300? lol l2pvp” and others who will say “2v2 is not serious” … but hey, it’s our first season and [...]