A few nerfs to holy paladins were announced last night, though I suspect most of them won’t make it through. The LOH one, for instance, has already been removed.
I play a paladin, but I’m not going to talk (much) about the repurcussions to paladins. Rather, I’m going to talk about what such a change has revealed about players in PvP.
My sample size, so far, is limited to the vocal, posting members of the official forums, MMO Champion, and Arena Junkies (AJ).
The two nerfs “everyone” (used in the loosest sense) is talking about are as follows:
- Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (up from 6. The holy talent, Infusion of Light, will reduce the frequency back down to 6 sec.)
- Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
The LOH nerf has already been reverted, the SS nerf is just being thought about. Something is going to happen to SS that doesn’t impact deep holy paladins, but does impact everyone else.
Both of these changes have almost universally been met with loud cheering. Everything from “thank god, finally” to “suck it, paladins” to “finally nerfs to the most unfair class in the game”.
Personally, I wonder what, precisely, Blizzard is aiming to fix. SS hits the PvP prot/holy healing build extremely hard, but that spec is only viable in 2s, and extremely specific comps in 3s where it’s role is primarily offensive support. Which leads me to believe it wasn’t nerfed for PvP reasons at all, due to everyone (including Blizzard!) not giving a damn about 2s anymore.
Considering “legitimate” 3s and 5s PvP, this change hits ret paladins the most.
And herein lies the difference in attitudes. Naturally, the folks at AJ don’t care at all about LOH, the SS nerf being the only thing that matters. Essentially, the attitude there is “good change, add a talent to deep ret to do the same thing (back down to proccing every 6 seconds) and we’re good.”
Everywhere else, on the other hand… oh my god.
On nerfing PvP:
Paladins are hated cause everybody when fighting them thinks the same thing: “Unfair”.
On this I agree. Those poor paladins have no idea what hit them when I’m done with them.
Oh wait, you meant the Paladins were overpowered? Read the full post here.
I’m probably going to pick on you quite a bit, dearest Taekrys, but your post is exemplary of everything that is utterly wrong with those cheering the LOH nerf.
I’ll state this up front, just so we can get it out of the way and move on to more “intelligent” (used in the loosest sense) discussion: L2play. Srsly.
Alright then. Here we go.
First off LOH is on such a long cooldown it can be used once, maybe twice in a BG. It’s only ever a game breaker if the Paladin was vastly superior to you in the first place (see Hofflerand’s PvP videos for this) and you were playing wrong. If you’re fighting one and he uses LOH while you’re there, you just got unlucky. And frankly, if you lose because of LOH, you would’ve lost anyway, you just wouldn’t have been able to complain about LOH when you did.
Second off, why is a shaman of all things complaining about paladins? Do you have any idea how easy it is to destroy paladins with access to offensive dispels? I mean, I have spellsteal, which dispels ONE buff at massive cost, and it’s enough to absolutely ruin a paladin.
Third, Divine Shield (the bubble everyone loves to hate) is an immunity ability, the primary function being to reset the fight. If you just stand there, waiting for bubble to come off… I don’t even know what to say to you. My left eye muscles are twitching out just thinking about such stupid.
I get that some classes have more, or different, options than others. As a mage, for instance, I either disappear around a corner and evocate, or even drink, or pop invisibility and then evocate/drink. Or, more often than not, do nothing as the paladin hasn’t even touched me yet. As a paladin myself, forcing the other paladin to bubble first is called “I win, thanks for trying.” As a rogue I wait out 6 seconds and stealth.
Forcing a paladin to bubble is how you beat a paladin. Once Divine Shield wears off, they are effectively helpless against whatever strategy you were employing before the bubble.
You say LoH is strong “just” on 1v1? Aside from the fact that it isn’t true (you can easly shot down two enemies in a road-fight 1v2 using all your CDs)
Ok, wow. First off, if two people are fighting a paladin on a road, they deserve to die for failing strategy forever. Second, if a paladin blows all of his cooldowns, he should be able to kill shit. That’s what cooldowns DO. That’s why you have your own cooldowns!
And again, need I remind you of purge? Don’t talk to me about dispel protection, that’s why you push purge more than once. Or hell, hex them and purge them. CC doesn’t break if you aren’t damaging them. On a related note, a sheep looks hilarious with glowing angel wings.
Besides, a paladin who uses all of his cooldowns protecting a road is an idiot.
And complaining about 1v1 in the first place is rather dumb, considering even 2v2 “balance” is irrelevant anymore.
The changes themselves don’t really bother me one way or another. LOH is what it is, I almost never use it in BGs anyway, and in PvE it’s always been used as an emergency tank heal. The SS change will probably permanently kill the prot/holy healing spec, meaning my 2v2 team is officially obsolete. Which is fine, it’s an alt, I’ll just go PvP on my horrendously overpowered warrior or something.
What really “grinds my gears” is the amount of people who celebrated such a change, when every single one of them is wrong. Gah!
Why is it that, instead of making me want to go level my paladin, this post made me want to go sheep and spellsteal as many paladins as I can?
So … I spellstole Righteous Fury last night. Does my wand that does holy damage count as a holy spell so I can get that extra threat and be a mage tank? :p
I never spellsteal the right things. It makes me sad.
But I blow at PvP. If I kill anything in PvP, those people blow HAAAARD.
I agree with repgrind. I *really* want to see a winged sheep now.
I’ll see if I can nab a screenie at some point.
/squeee!!!!
I don’t think you can purge the bubble…I never could anyways, mass dispell, yeah (incidentally I loved being a forsaken mage with wings and sacred shield bubble, although now she’s be a troll mage with wings and bubble
)
honestly – I don’t think its a pvp nerf at all. its pure pve nerf.
and its not even a nerf to holy, its a prot nerf, pure and simple. mpore specifically, its a nerf to 5 mans and 10 man raids (as well as prot pallies soloing everthing under the sun). Ret pally in pve shouldn’t be taking so much damage that they need a sacred shield on them constantly. its nice, but not nessesary. if infusion of light talent change is going to go through as described then holy pallies sacred shielding their tanks have nothing to worry about. Prot however…
as of right now, when I’m tanking, keeping sacred shield on myself is one of my priorities as it helps my healers with extra damage mitigation I get from it. It also nice for when I’m soloing some 5 man quest. becasue I didn’t spec into divine sacrifice/guardian in my prot spec, I only get a 30 second sacred shield. 30 second duration, 30 second CD. instead of being mitigation staple, it becomes a rather weak extra cooldown for those oh shit situations.
this nerf is making me a squishier tank
to be fair. my pally is the only character i have that I can solo ridiculous things on. my bear doesn’t have as much survivability, my DK is all right my deathstrike doesn’t compare to judgment of light, coupled with seal of light and being able to actually heal myself. I’m not even speaking of warriors… So in a way, pallies did need a bit of a nerf. I just think this was the wrong nerf to do.
Sorry man – but if SS is saving you – you’re doing it wrong. Yes – it’s a nice bit of mitigation, but I did a post about this yesterday showing the math and logs from some Heroic 10 TOC (since my guild just does 10 man content). The numbers would be similar in 25s anyway.
For a 4:30 Anub fight my SS absorbed about 27k, a 2 minute Twins fight was 11k, and a 2 min Jarraxas was 9k. A protadin’s shield will absorb about 1400 every six seconds – that’s about it. You might be able to stack SP and STR to get it up there – but it’s not much.
You can see my logs and math at http://paladindivineplea.blogspot.com
This is a nerf to ret PvP, and the ProtHoly Arena build.
Oh – don’t forget the 50% increase to FoL – this is the real kick for the ProtHoly – as their crits are so powerful. Doesn’t hurt for Ret either.
I don’t know if its saving me, but its sure as hell helping. then again, I don’t do hardmodes on my paladin, she’s an alt after all, so I’ve never really formally parsed her performance. I go by the visual ques of seeing “absorbed” over my character icon as well as the bubble proccing all the time. I gem at least partly for strength becasue it doesn’t just give me spell power – it gives me block and general AP increase, which is quite lovely for both mitigation and threat.
but the fact and matter that they are removing it from a prot rotation still stands. no point to refresh it regularly – better just time it, like on use trinket.
most of us will adjust, the way we adjusted when they decided to nerf righteous fury and switched to strength as source of spell power (I had threat issues when the patch first came out, 2 days later – I had no threat issues again, other then being careful not to pull of a second tank)
it just feels like such a clumsy nerf…
Lets not panic until patch notes are released.
Perhaps I am one of the haters but any time I hear about a paladin nerf I smile. As GC put it they are a “one-man army”. Anyone who argues differently is just fooling themselves. No other class can put out as much damage while mitigating as much damage and having as much self-healing.
I’m not arguing 1v1, 2v2, 10v10…I don’t care about all that. What bothers me is the unbelievable ease they have at utilizing their tools. My paladin is the only character I have where I can kill 3 people who are attacking me at once. (my gear isn’t great and I’m not a stellar player…the paladin is just simply OP) Oh, my…3 buttons to keep track of…what a challenge.
On almost every other class there are so many things that need to occur in order to best a paladin that a single mistake can cost you everything. On a paladin so few things actually ever occur that you can’t really make a mistake. Judge, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Exorcism/Heal if necessary and then repeat until dead.
When a 600 resil warr with 26k hp can get killed in a single HoJ stun something has to change. (yes, it has happened and I have it fraps’d)
Granted I haven’t got my mage to 80 yet so I can’t tell how easy it is to kill a paladin but with all my other 80s (priest, warr, hunter, dk and druid) paladins are my bane. When a single class is the “counter-class” to so many classes something is amiss.
There are plenty of examples of this sort of behaviour. A DK with 30k HP in frost presence and 800 resilience being dropped from full to 2% by Bladestorm alone, getting crit for a 9k chaos bolt, then immediately a conflagrate crit of 8k as a prot pally with 900 resilience, or hell let’s not forget about feral druids critting plate for 14k followed immediately by a DoT that ticks for 4k.
Or hell, look at my last post, where I can unload 20k damage in under three seconds.
Something is wrong, it’s not just ret pallies.
I rarely go out and drop a lot of comments, but I agree with your assessment of the situation. So long as they allow the Holy tree to maintain the 6 sec ability, I am not concerned too much about it.
Now on to the people who say they think Paladins are OP, I challange you to level one Holy. Go ahead, do that for 80 levels and then come back and tell me how OP we are. People tend to forget that not all Paladins are retribution. I accept that, but it gets really old hearing the claims about it.
As a Holy Paladin, I am not OP. I have abbilities that I know when you use and perhaps I understand my class better than some folks, which allows me to win in some situations. The thing that always bugs me by the folks who claim any class is OP is that they tend to be less progressed overall. For instance, Ricomoss, tells great stories of why it is all wrong and lists all his characters that he has leveled to 80, but I have to wonder how much time have you spent developing those charactes?
I mean if you are spending time to level and even moderately gear them, then you are probably not putting a ton of time on gearing them and researching straregies. To say that the Paladin is able to defy every other class is absurd. Warriors can remove our bubble. Mages can remove our bubbles. Shaman are able to hex this crap out of us. Druids can put us in Cyclones. Rogues can stun lock us. Let us not forget Mages can stop our only spell school. Oh and DKs are able to strangulate us, if build properly for PVP. Do I need to go on? Having participated in PVP for quite some time, I am all too familiar of what classes can destroy a Paladin. Hey every seen a Paladin fight without mana? No, then talk to a good Priest and they will tell you that is a sure fire way to beat them. I could go on for a while, but I will stop there. The only thing I would ask, is do some research and think before you start to cry wolf.
Amen, Ruhtra… I’m pretty destructible myself in my holy spec.
@ Ruhtra
For the Horde, bitch.
I know my 80s very well and do well to survive against any class. The problem is killing a paladin. That is unbelievably hard as compared to any other class.
Don’t presume to know my abilities or experiences lest you look like a fool.
The thing that gets me is that both of those are the tools I use pretty frequently in PvE while soloing, and when I’m in poorly composed groups with my friends.
I get the PVP hate – paladins have two pretty good denial abilities, and those both suck to be hit with. I get the desire to balance the game too.
The combination of PVP vs PVE, the stat system and nerfs really hurts my ability to play the game as one of those horrible “casual” players. The changes that happen here are going to ripple through all the players of the paladin class, so I hope they keep that in mind.
The changes CAN’T just be about PVP. The goal of the game is way bigger than just that avenue. Hell, the game is bigger than PVP and raiding. And if it is about those things, can I please see a “make a new level 80 character in appropriate gear” button so I can get to the real game instead of leveling and gaining rep.
I don’t really think either of these proposed changes are PvP centric, though the SS change has a strong component there.
The point is that a very vocal group of people are taking it to be PvP nerfs, and cheering such changes on like drunken seals.
So, if I understand the topic correctly, we’re really asking “Why hate paladins over something that’s not true?”
THIS I can figure out.
The first point is that we see way too much of them. Last I heard, paladins were really up there in class representation. So, people are going to run into them. The fact that paladins can cover for all the major roles just means that there will even be more of them around. And it’s not just player representation, look at the NPCs! There are like a billion paladin NPCs around. All the argent folks, the knights of the silver hand, and the scarlet crusade all surround us. Hell, put a living guy in plate and he’s either a paladin or a warrior, and if he speaks formally or talks about doing the right thing, he gets thrown in the paladin pile.
The second point is that paladins get all the candy. Since paladins can DPS, Tank and Heal, they get all the abilities! Sure, a bunch of it is per tree, but they can get healing abilites, and stuns, and instant attacks and bubbles and more bubbles and more healing! Not to mention that one of the more annoying things in games is being unable to do anything. That’s totally Bubble and HOJ’s number right there. Paladins wear awesome heavy armor, and get to use cool 2 handed weapons, and blizzard even had to make caster plate just for paladins! And with Dual spec now paladins can take all the roles and roll on all the gear!
And the final point is that paladins have a judgement attached to them. The game context for paladins is about being a righteous warrior, being held to a higher moral standard, and so on. When this comes off badly, paladins are preachy jerks who think they know what they’re doing and order everyone else around. Yeah, THAT guy. Combo this with the billions of them, and the chances start getting pretty good that THAT guy who ruins my fun is also a paladin. The fact that there’s the scoial context for him being a jerk just makes stuff worse.
The result is a class that carries way too much stigma of ruining other people’s fun. In story, socially and gameplay wise, there’s plenty of reasons to feel that a paladin is taking candy that should be mine. Well, not mine, because I play a paladin, but you know what I mean.
But it remains that there’s plenty of reason to feel like the existence of so many paladins is taking away from everyone else’s fun. There’s plenty of reasons to see paladins as “The Man” or the representation of “Priviliged Elite”. There are pleny of reasons to feel like slapping down or mocking paladins is taking a bunch of self-righteous jerks down a peg. Now, the reality behind those emotions is a different conversation for a different day and has to be taken one person at a time.
@Rico
Try to take a deep breath and calm down. I am not trying to put you down, but to me you are just crying wolf. There are plenty of classes, who when geared properly and well played, are able to defeat a Paladin or any other class for that matter. Take a look at what Euripedes is saying.
As far as you taking offense about your skills? Well, if you got that offended over a question, then I guess that answered it. I am not going to sit here and get into a name calling contest or anything else. What I am saying is it sounds like you are not a full time PVPer, which there is nothing wrong with that. However, as I stated before there are plenty of classes that can rip a Paladin to pieces. My suggestion is to go research more about whatever class you enjoy playing and then work out your issues.
Best of luck.
Preach it. It all comes down to who you’re up against. I easily forget the squishy tree that I 3 shot – but I always remember the one that TWO retadins couldn’t burn. Damn leaf waving bastards.
Everyone crying “Nerf Paladins” only remembers the ones that beat them – not the ones they left crying in their wake.
As a mage any nerf to a melee class in PvP makes me giggle…manicaly. I tear them apart like they are made of tissue paper already, woe to them that receive further nerfing. I PvP arena with a deep holy paladin so this doesn’t really change anything for us anyway lol, though my tank buddy might get pissed.
I agree, Pallies are pretty damn easy to tackle with the right strategies and lack of fucktardness. Honestly, I rip through Retadins like they were really wet cardboard on my DK.
A resto druid can outlast retadins and protadins, and on a rogue, if I get a dismantle off on a retadin? He’s mine. Holy paladins mess my little rogue butt up, but guess what, that happens. It’s me needing to learn how to handle a healadin, not instantly screaming ZOMGOP! Some beefs are legit; others just need to take a little responsibility for the fact that there are holes in their pvp game.
Incidentally, it’s warriors and PRIESTS, not MAGES, who can remove pally bubbles. Unless they’ve added some new ability I’m not aware of.
Very few things cannot be dispelled. Basically everything except Divine Shield and Seal of Something, Divine Plea if they’re deep prot and I believe Righteous Defense cannot be dispelled, but I might be wrong there.
Everything else, whether it be Art of War procs or Sacred Shield or even Beacon of freaking Light can all be dispelled/stolen/purged.
I cheer any pally nerfs. Why? Because the class is over-represented and I can’t help but feel that 70% of its population rolled after the 3.0 made Ret ridic. Most paladins in PvE have no sense of subtlety, aggro management, or How Not to Break Poly With Consecrate (hint: it’s not hard); most paladins in PvP have no understanding of teamwork, target switching, or how to pressure healers.
It is my fondest hope that, whether or not the incoming nerfs break paladins (and they won’t), enough qq will result such that when I fight in Wintergrasp, only one-in-three Horde will be a belf pally, down from the one-in-two seen today.
I know this is irrational. Let me be petulant. I still haven’t forgiven twink retadins for facerolling through my hit points a year ago, and I’m not about to stop the hate now.
Personally, I don’t worry about whether pallies are OP or not. I can’t control that. What I can control is improving to a point that I can beat them. Your statement that you dismantle them give me hope in that regard. And when I DO get the killing blow on a pally, it’s the highlight of my BG experience.
However, I do have to point a couple things out. In an earlier post, you talked about how a pet peeve of yours was authors/screenwriters not adhering to their own rules. Change physics, fine. But don’t ignore the physics (rules) you’ve created.
You made the very good point some time ago that PvP isn’t balanced around 1 v 1. It’s team versus team. Well, in the example above, it was “2v1 on a road”. You attempted to discredit the poster, saying if they fought on the road, they’d already failed strategy.
You made the very good point some time ago that strategy and tactics are two entirely different things. Winning PvP is dependent on tactics. Winning battlegrounds is dependent on strategy. So the fact they failed strategy is irrelevant to the debate.
So, in one statement, you essentially ignored two of your own “rules”. A TEAM couldn’t beat a single pally. Failing strategy was irrelevant to the point, as strategy doesn’t apply to combat. The debate isn’t “are pallies OP on a road, versus in the lumber mill”. It’s simply “are they OP?”.
They failed strategy, therefore, they “deserved to lose”? Well, anyone, in a battleground, who attempts to fight against superior numerical odds, deserves to lose as well. When I find myself in that situation, I’m doing everything I can to escape, not fight. Not so with pallies. I see it time and again, a pally fighting my 1, 2, 3, or more, of my teammates, while I’m stealing every buff they have, and interrupting everything I can… and they survive until their team arrives to bail them out.
So are they OP? The game’s lead designer, seems to think so. The fact that you can beat them, and I can’t really proves nothing germane to the debate, other than you rock, and I suck.
Anger causes failures in logic.
So he slipped and said strategy instead of tactics..give him a break. If you read the other guys post you would see that it doesn’t really need discrediting as he clearly has no idea how to PvP in the first place. Also if you want to kill a pally it is as easy as forcing them to use their CD’s then getting out, make them use wings by appearing vulnerable or by getting close then stay at range (easier for a mage I guess) then they wont have a bubble available while you destroy them.
Conversely you can have them pop their bubble at which point you simply evade them and it isn’t hard to do that either, there are enough LoS mechanics out there that you can utilize, which is why anyone going toe to toe with a pally has already failed and deserves to lose.
Seriously would you stand in the middle of a raod and throw rocks at an M1A1 Abrahms and get mad when it kills you? Just drop bombs on it for gods sake. Thats how you beat hard shelled heavy hitters, by not getting hit.
No, it was meant to be strategy. Fighting on a road somewhere is incredibly stupid, and yes, that fact is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Had it been, say, two people failing to beat a ret paladin guarding a flag, then that would make more sense.
Then we are left with no strategic issues, merely tactical ones.
At which point we have a ret paladin, having used all of his cooldowns, able to beat down two opposing players.
@Underbridge – I read the other guys post, and I don’t particularly care “if he knows how to PvP”. Why is the assumption always that the guy getting beat doesn’t know how to play, when it’s not YOU (in the generic sense) getting beat?
Why is the assumption, when Euripedes beats a paladin, that the paladin knew how to play, but when the paladin beats me, it’s because I don’t know how to play?
If I challenge Euripedes on things, maybe he’ll keep talking about the subject, and really break down his points. When he talks, I learn.
@Euripedes – Ok, so the paladin used all of his cooldowns. Were the two opponents just standing there, with their own cooldowns sitting on the sideline? Again, why is the assumption that the other player didn’t know how to play, or in this case, wasn’t blowing THEIR cooldowns?
So what you’re essentially saying is “A paladin using all of his abilities should be able to beat any two other classes using all theirs.”? I don’t think that’s what you’re saying at all, but that’s the implication of what you are saying.
Do everyone a favor, go back and update those PvP pieces you did. And yes, I know, you’re in college, and don’t have a great deal of time. Welcome to the world of us old farts that have been juggling umpty-leven things for more than half our lives, and still try to find time to play WoW.
I don’t think there ever was an assumption made that paladins I defeat/have defeated were magically really good paladins.
BGs are a tossup. Sometimes you have all your cooldowns, sometimes you don’t, sometimes your opponent has tons, sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes the only difference between a good paladin and a bad paladin are the ones who use repentance properly to close when they can’t mount rush.
In regards to the original quote.
There is a great deal we don’t know, and that’s done intentionally by the original author. All we know is that a paladin blew all of his cooldowns and killed two opposing players.
We don’t know what counts as “all cooldowns”. Is that just trinket and AW? Does that include LOH? Bubble? Repentance? HoJ?
We don’t know what class(es) the opposing two players were (though we might be able to safely assume the author, thus shaman, was one of them), we don’t know what their gear was like, we don’t know their talents or whether they even used cooldowns.
All we know is that they weren’t very effective at playing a BG correctly. This goes for all three parties involved.
What I do know is that it isn’t unreasonable to expect a single player to kill two opposing players, especially when the lone player uses cooldowns of some sort. In such a case it goes far beyond simply “is class X OP”.
There are far more factors in play than class balance, and I think that’s what you’re getting at.
As a rogue, anything which puts less shields on prot pallies carrying the flag in WSG is good in my book :p.
I do find one instance of fighting on the road useful and that is to provide a distraction so team mates can go cap the flag. People will always try and chase down a rogue, we are a much hated class
. It works even better if you manage to take out somebody before you start running.
I’m so lost right now… Pallies are not OP. They just aren’t, I was in a 2V2 (yeah I know who cares) VS 2 Ret pallies, my partner was annihilated in the first 10 seconds because he made an error and was out of position. I then went on to kite and whittle down both palllies forcing them to each bubble individually and use all their mana chasing me and healing. Once they were OOM it was cake to kill them, Just because YOU can’t beat them doesn’t mean they are OP.
Call it tactics or strategy or whatever you want the fact remains that a mage should be able to tear them apart 1v1, 1v2 or whatever. Are mages OP? Maybe vs Melee but Warlocks sure give me a run (lol) but that just shows that you need to find the counter to the class not scream “unfair”. No class in my opinion so OP in PvP as to be labeled unfair, not even rogues.
Amen, I say!
Completely agree with you on this, and i’ve lost to many a paladin, but because they were more skilled than me. I have also won alot, because i was more skilled than them.
Stop whining because you suck more than someone!
Ah, but you’re talking arena. 2v2, 3v3, etc. You know who your facing, and how many. Tell me, while you were kiting, did you have a mage slowing, or snaring you? Do they not allow stuns and such in the arena? How did two competent opponents not position themselves so as to corner you so you couldn’t kite?
And that’s not “oh, you’re full of shit!”, that’s “please tell me, I want to know!”
Yes, you used tactics to whittle them down, and beat them. I’m not putting that down at all; it’s the level that I’M trying to achieve. But the arena is not the end all of PvP. I would dare say you find more people in battlegrounds than arenas. And in a battleground, while you’re kiting that paladin, his teammate saps you, and you last about one iceblock, a blink, and the time it takes his DK teammate to deathgrip you, and then how long you last is purely a matter of your resilience and stamina.
But reverse the situation. The Paladin get stunned. He breaks it. He gets critted down to his underwear… and then starts popping cooldowns, and suddenly, tada, he’s reset the fight… against multiple opponents. Meanwhile, the rest of his team is pelting across the field, and the mage, who as been using his mana to slow, spellsteal, interrupt, freeze, and even shatter, is suddenly trying to survive, and the paladin is back up to full.
That’s the perception – and I stress, perception – that prompts people to say “not fair”. It’s like fighting the friggin’ Energizer Bunny, that ability to just keep going, and going, and going. Sure, it can be beat. Even I’ve managed to pull it off once or twice. But is it balanced, even from the standpoint of “every class has it’s counter” balanced? That’s where I think Ghostcrawler is coming from with his observation that the pally has become a one-man army.
You’re describing inherently unfair situations, as the mage doesn’t have reinforcements of his own.
If a paladin can delay a fight long enough for his teammates to arrive… so? A lot of other classes, I suspect most, can do the exact same thing.
Let’s flip the paladin and mage in your latter instance.
The mage gets stunned, or something, let’s say HoJ, so he blinks out of it. The paladin repentances him, and for some reason the mage doesn’t trinket it, and the mage gets crit down to his underpants.
So he starts popping cooldowns. Through any combination of ice block, polymorph, invis and evocation, the mage can easily reset the fight himself. Either by healing himself or simply kiting the paladin around forever.
Meanwhile the mage’s team is rushing over, and suddenly the paladin is horrifically outnumbered and fighting for his life.
Or the first example, where it’s a mage fighting against a rogue, paladin and death knight all by himself. That’s not exactly a winning situation, and that’s got nothing to do with the paladin.
If we truly want a “fair” situation, the mage wouldn’t be alone. What if the paladin was hit with a MS effect? What if a warrior or priest was around to destroy his bubble? Or a rogue or something to disarm him?
The perception is there, I say the perception is wrong.
Nerf prot pallies. My level 56 is completely unstoppable. She can’t kill anything, but she’s unstoppable. ~_^
“The perception is there, I say the perception is wrong.”
Now we’re talking!
First, a question… am I supposed to be able to evocate while invisible? Maybe my timing is just bad, but it hasn’t seemed to work that way. Or are you talking just use invis to get away, find a safe place, and then evocate?
The mage, more often than not, is me. I tend to let my sense of “stop the flag carrier!” or “help the flag carrier!” get the better of my sense of self-preservation. Or, more often, I’ll go diving in to help 3 or 4 teammates, only to look up and find that said teammates are in the graveyard, and lo, I’m in the deep kimchi, looking at 4 or 5 Horde around me.
In that situation, I’m using everything my little fingers can come up with to get away. Sometimes, usually if the enemy have blown their cooldowns already, I can get away. I stress that, *get away*. Not fight. Get away.
But in a similar situation, when I’m giving, rather than receiving, I’m not seeing a paladin trying to get away. I’m seeing this blaze of light spinning around my team members like a Tasmanian devil on crack. I’m stealing every buff they have, and interrupting as often as I can, and they’re not going down.
Sometimes, eventually, they do go down. Sometimes, I’ve had them finish off teammates, and come after me. At that point, sometimes I hand them their ass, sometimes the ass-handing is mine. It depends on their cooldowns and mine, and more importantly, whether I’ve had coffee. (Sleep is a damned poor substitute for caffeine!)
But what I’m getting at is that there seems to be an inherent edge in survivability with a paladin that is lacking in other classes. A “margin for error”, perhaps.
Maybe I’m wrong. Heck, half the time, I don’t know what spell I’m interrupting, and my question above shows how little experience I have mage-wise. I’ve got a long way to go as far as situational awareness goes, and my class knowledge of other classes is nowhere close to yours. But that’s what I perceive, and as I said, that’s what I think GC is alluding to.
Ok, so I just read through everyone’s post here about the pally class and to be honest, after playing a lock/hunter for about 3 years, I went back to my original WoW character (the evil pally) and started leveling her up again. Yes, I’ve found that in some 5-mans I can almost top the DPS carts (mages still own me) but it’s the utility that I really enjoy. Though I don’t arena anymore (2′s are broken…/cry), I chose to make this pally my new main and spec her holy/prot in order to both help in PvP or when I’m bored enough to raid.
Are they OP? I have to agree with the other person that said, in most cases, it comes down to the spec/skill of the players and not so much the class.
Anywho…. I was planning on doing the 18/53/0 (???) prot-healer spec once I hit 80 in the next day or so but after reading the current specs on many sites, it looks like that option is gone for 2v2 and BG’s? Can ya’ll tell me what a good survival-based PvP healing spec might be now?
Prot/holy is still fine for 2s, and will be until the SS changes hit live.
Eventually you will have no choice but to spec into the rather terrible holy tree.
Hmm.. Well, until I get a full set of caster plate to use for healing in PvP, would you all suggest I just stay RET or change over to that Prot/RET spec I tend to see lately.
Generally speaking, my server (Ravenholdt), like many others, has a terrible need for more healers but being as Blizzard doesn’t mak it possible yet to get weapons from honor, it looks like I’m stuck to doing heroics for a decent mace/sword.
This is awesome, its not affecting holy at all! I can still rape at 2s and 3s woot.
if they dont give ret the 6 second SS thing, they will still own
[...] there was a post a couple weeks ago or thereabouts over at Critical QQ where it was mentioned that paladin wings (Avenging Wrath) can be spellstolen. Well, of course I had [...]
Pallys dont need to be nerfed i destroyed them b4 this
Hey man, I’ve been reading your blog for awhile and your PVP posts are always stellar.
I play a holy paladin, so all I do in BGs is heal other people doing the killing, or if I see an opportunity I try to hep them burst down somebody who’s annoying.
Something that always gets me though, is rogues. I take a cheap shot, if I wait for it to wear off wound poison has set in and I can’t heal through it from all the resilience gear. If I trinket out then my cooldown’s down and he simply kidney shots. If I bubble he disappears or just backs off, waits for it to fade, and I’ve already lost. If I try to cleanse off the poisons he’s stabbing so fast I use all my globals on removing them as he just replaces them. If I run he sprints or otherwise snares me; same trinket problems.
I’ve beaten elemental and enhancement shaman, warriors, some ret paladins, boomkin druids, mages once in awhile, and even some deathknights if i can stay out of melee range and stay cleansed. But to this day I cannot remember beating a rogue one on one.
How can a holy paladin beat a rogue? I don’t want to complain, the rogues that kill me are just htat much better at what they do than I am at what I do, but I would still like to learn some new things.
Thankyou!