Archive for the ‘Paladin’ Category
Best PvP Racial Ability
by Gamer at March 31st, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
There are four different races that can be played as Paladins in World of Warcraft. There for three for the Alliance (Dwarf, Human, and Draenei) and one for the Horde (Blood Elf). If you’re playing Horde then you don’t have a racial choice, but if you’re planning to play Alliance, you have three choices. There’s Stoneform (Dwarf), Perception (Human), and Gift of the Naaru (Draenei) for Alliance and Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf) for Horde.
Leaving Horde out of the mix for a minute, you’ve got three different racials to choose from as Alliance: Stoneform, Perception, and Gift of the Naaru. All three situationally great, but none far superior than
any others. While mainly Paladins believe that Stoneform is the best for Alliance, it overlaps so much with Cleanse (Cleanse will remove removes 1 poison, 1 disease and 1 magic effect from a friendly target) that it almost negates the ability. Stoneform use to break blind and when it did, it was by far the best, but no longer does. Perception also use to be better before you could see everyone’s buffs without the now removed Detect Magic. Stealth players will now be able to see if Perception is active or not, so it’s less useful. However, it can still be popped at key times by good players to catch a stealth player. That leaves Gift of the Naaru, which stacks with +healing, and heals for about 2500. Gift of the Naaru is good, but not game breaking.
Taken altogether, I believe that Stoneform even without removing blind is still the best racial for Alliance Paladins. Being able to remove Hunter’s poison stacks on you and if you’re being focused to gain 10% armor is better than what else is available. However, the Horde have it best with Arcane Torrent. Arcane Torrent silences all enemies
within 8 yards for 2 seconds and can be used every 2 minutes as opposed to every 3 minutes like the Alliance racials. This is unbelievably affective when combined with a Hammer of Justice to keep an opponent’s healer from healing. Sorry, Alliance, but all your Paladin racials do not compare to the Blood Elf one, but Stoneform is
still probably the best.
Stoneform (Dwarf): Activate to gain immunity to poison, disease, and bleed; +10% Armor; Lasts 8 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.
Perception (Human): Activate to increase stealth detection radius. Lasts 20 seconds, 3 minute cooldown.
Gift of the Naaru (Draenei): Activate to heal your target for 35 + 15 per Level over 15 sec – 40 yd range – 1.5 sec cast – 3 min cooldown. (At level 1 it heals 50 health, and 1085 at level 70)
Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf): Activate to silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds. In addition, you gain 10 energy or (5 + Level) mana for each charge of Mana Tap currently affecting you. 2 min. cooldown.
Add-On Spotlight: Librameister
by Gamer at March 31st, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
Librameister is a must have for all PvP Paladins who have a range of librams at their disposal. What it does is swap in a libram based on the type of heal you’re casting and if the target you’re healing has Blessing of Light on them or not. For example, if you are casting a Flash of Light on a target, it will equip Blessed Book of Nagrand and if you’re casting Holy Light, it will equip [insert name]. And if the target you’re healing has Blessing of Light on them, you can also set it to equip [insert name] if you have that libram from Karazhan. You have full control over Librameister and can have it equip any libram you choose. Librameister equips the libram during casting, so it does not affect your global cooldown whatsoever.
1/2 Imp BoW, 1/2 Purifying Power or 1/3 Blessed Light
by Gamer at March 31st, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
Besides putting 3/3 talents points into Precision as was blogged about earlier, thinking about where to put that extra filler talent point in the Holy tree is important. While putting 1 point into improved Blessing of Wisdom will give you 10% more mp5 from your BoW, BoW can also be dispelled leaving you with an entirely wasted talent point. Not only that, but if mana is never a problem for you, you should ignore this talent point. 1 talent point in Blessed Life, on the other hand, gives you a 4% chance for you to take 50% damage.
Blessed Life is better than Improved BoW, in my opinion, but not as good 1/2 Purifying Power at least for 2s and 3s. With 1/2 Purifying Power, not only do your Purify and Cleanse spells cost 5% less mana (almost like having Improved BoW), but more importantly it increases your critical strike chance of your Exorcism and Holy Wrath spells by 10%. Getting a crit Exorcism on a Warlock’s pet in 2v2 or 3v3 to finish off a pet can drastically help you. 10% crit for 1 talent point is huge. That’s why I choose 1/2 Purifying Power, because I 2v2 and 3v3 a lot, but if you focus more on 5v5, you’ll probably want to choose Blessed Life to help prevent teams turning to you after you’ve
bubbled.
Paladin: 3/3 Talent Points in Precision
by Gamer at March 31st, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
It’s hardly disputed by anyone that 41/20/0 is the de-facto standard for a Holy Paladin PvP spec, but how those points are spent do vary between top Paladins. Recently Paladins are switching up their talent points and putting 3/3 in the Precision talent in the Protection tree as opposed to 4/5 in Toughness. By switching from the more traditional 4/5 Toughness, you lose 3% armor increase, but more importantly you gain 3% melee and spell hit. With only 3 talent points you gain 3% spell hit and you’re now hit capped for PvP and are less likely to have your Hammer of Justice, Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf racial), Holy Shock, Exorcism, Judgements, etc., resisted.
Most Hammer of Justice resists are due to talent points, Orc racials, meta gems, etc., but Precision doesn’t only affect HoJ as stated above. It’s very important for landing Rank 1 Holy Shocks to keep people in combat, Arcane Torrent (which seems to resist a lot), and other spells. How often is a Paladin ever focused down and would 3%
armor really make or break the arena game for you? No, but 3/3 Precision can in fact win or lose you the game by avoiding a resist. Next time you respec, I’d suggest putting points into Precision.
Spellsurge or +81 Healing
by Gamer at March 27th, 2008 in Druid, General, Paladin, Priest, Shaman | No Comments »
Spellsurge (Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to have a 3% chance on spellcast to restore 100 mana to all party members over 10 seconds.) was the rage in Season 2 for a lot of healers. It seemed as if the mana back was significant enough to warrant losing +81 healing. However, by the end of Season 2 a lot of healers were switching over from Spellsurge to +81 healing, because burst combos began to become really popular in all brackets. That extra 81 healing would make a significant difference whereas you’d rarely lose due to mana issues. And, of course if played right, you can grab a drink of Stars Tears now and again. Now in Season 3 most healers will choose to enchant their weapon with 81 healing as opposed to Spellsurge. However, if you want the best of both worlds, you can enchant one weapon with Spellsurge and one weapon with +81 healing and use a mod such as a CasterWeaponSwap to change your weapon over to 81 healing after Spellsurge procs.
Judgement of Justice Macro
by Gamer at March 27th, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
A Judgement of Justice macro is required for any Paladin playing 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 in arena. Mostly used on Druids trying to escape your teammate’s grasp, a quick Judgement of Justice will keep them slowed to normal run speed for 20 seconds allowing your warrior (or whoever) to keep dps on the Druid. With the following macro, with only one button yo can cast Seal of Justice and quickly Judge the target with the same button. It only requires you to select the target and hit the button twice. Because a Paladin’s Judgements are on a different global cooldown that seals, you can mash your keybinding twice to instantly put Justice on the Druid you’re chasing.
/castsequence reset=30 Seal of Justice, Judgement
Healer Enchants
by Gamer at March 23rd, 2008 in Druid, General, Paladin, Priest, Shaman | No Comments »
Nearly every socket of gear can be enchanted: Back, Chest, Wrist, Gloves, Boots, and Rings (if you’re an Enchanter). There’s also your Helm (note: Thrallmar rep), Shoulders (note: Scryer or Aldor rep), and Legs (note: Leatherworking), but those aren’t exactly enchants. We’ll stick to the actual enchants in this post. I use: Back (+15 Shadow Resist), Chest (+6mp5), Wrist (+30 healing), Gloves (+30 healing), Boots (Boar’s Speed), and Rings (+20 healing to each ring). Alternatively, if you are short on mp5, you can get 6mp5 to Wrist instead of +30 healing. I wouldn’t recommend +15 resilience to chest, though, unless you’re a Priest and normally get focused: with full Vengeful gear and all the honor pieces, you should be good on resilience.
PvE vs. PvP Gear in Arena
by Gamer at March 14th, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
It just goes without saying that PvE gear is better than PvP gear in arena for Paladins in most situations. First, let’s look at 2v2.
In 2v2, playing as a Paladin, you’re 99 times out of 100 not going to be focused, so having resilience will not help you. Far more important is mp5, healing, and spell crit (in that order). Given that a well geared PvE Paladin will have ridiculously high armor — my Paladin has 16878 armor in PvE gear, which I wear in 2v2 — any melee damage class will not be able to do high damage on me regardless of resilience: my armor is too high. Therefore, I wear full PvE gear and my Medallion of the Horde (20 resilience) for 2v2.
In 3v3, it’s a bit different for a Paladin. It depends slightly on what type of set-up you play whether or not teams are going to focus you or not. I’m currently playing Warrior/Hunter/Paladin in 3v3 and never get focused, so I play in PvE gear, however, in other combinations I’ve played such as Warlock/Priest/Paladin and Warrior/Warlock/Paladin, I’ve had to wear about ~200 resilience to avoid teams switching to me after my bubble. What’s different now with my current set-up of Warrior/Hunter/Paladin, we’re putting out such pressure on cloth/mail wearers that teams need to shutdown our DPS rather than my healing.
In 5v5, in anything under a rating of 1900, you can get away with not wearing any PvP gear, but as you get to higher ratings and start playing better teams, you’re to need at least 200-250 resilience to slow teams switching to you after bubble. One of the only things that separates good teams from the best teams (besides excellent crowd control) is quickly switching to a new target and killing them before the other team can react. Therefore, entering a 5v5 arena with only your Medallion of the Horde (20 resilience) is not advisable.
Until Blizzard adds mp5 to Paladin’s arena gear and/or reduces the armor value for Paladin PvE gear, it’s more favorable for a Paladin to wear as much good PvP gear as possible. In 2v2, wear as much PvE gear as you can and in 3v3 and 5v5, you’ll want to wear about 200-250 resilience to avoid being bursted down after your bubble is on cooldown.
We’re Broken in 2v2
by Gamer at March 13th, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
In Season 2, Paladins could still be seen in the top 25 of most Battlegroups. My partner (Shadowborne, Warlock) and I ended the season ranked 7th on Cyclone and I also ended the season as the top Paladin. We could beat nearly any combo (Warrior/Druid, Warlock/Healer, double DPS, and Rogue/Priest) and probably could have ended the season as Merciless Gladiator if we both didn’t get trounced with work during the last four weeks of the season. That aside, while we’re still around 20th in Season 3, we now lose to any Warrior/Druid and I’m the only Paladin in the Top 50.
What has changed? Are the skills of Paladins diminishing? Are Druids and Priests finally learning how to play the game? I don’t think it’s either of those two things; I think the problem is that the weaknesses of Paladins has been finally discovered and is now being exploited by any decent 2v2 team out there. Those weaknesses being that Paladins have to stand still and cast and have limited to no form of crowd control (Hammer of Justice is a poor excuse for CC).
Now in Season 3, Druids — our counter healer class that has both heal-over-time spells and great CC — has found their niche in 2v2. You now see Druids, and Priests to some extent, as the only viable healers in 2v2. A quick look at the contrast of those two classes with us and you easily see why they’re so strong and we’re so weak. Both classes, but primarily Druids, are excellent CCers (cyclone, root, feral charge, pounce, etc.) and also have the ability to heal-over-time if they themselves are being crowd controlled. Paladins have neither good CC nor heal-over-time spells (Holy Shock is a joke) and are therefore broken in 2v2 and to some extent 3v3 as well.
How can Paladins be fixed for 2v2 and 3v3? Easy enough: give Paladins some better form of crowd control that doesn’t require us to be standing next to the target and some form of heal-over-time, some offensive dispell/purge ability, and/or an instant heal that’s better than Holy Shock (come on, 15 second cooldown and tons of mana for a 41 point talent?). I understand that Blizzard wants to havve diversity among classes, but there’s no excuse to leave Paladins — and Shamans too for that matter — broken in 2v2 and 3v3. Please help us.
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Trinkets
by Gamer at March 31st, 2008 in Paladin | No Comments »
There are really only two good trinkets for Paladins besides the required Medallion. However, the better of two choices is only available from Illidan Stormrage: Memento of Tyrande (Equip: Increases healing done by up to 118 and damage done by up to 40 for all magical spells and effects.; Equip: Each time you cast a spell, there is chance you will gain up to 76 mana per 5 for 15 sec.). Being that it’s off Illidan, you need to be in a Black Temple farming guild to gain this trinket. Therefore, it’s off limits from most PvPers. If you cannot get the Memento of Tyrande, the single best trinket is Scarab of the Infinite Cycle (Equip: Increases healing done by up to 70 and damage done by up to 24 for all magical spells and effects.; Equip: Your direct healing and heal over time spells have a chance to increase your spell haste rating by 320 for 6 secs.) This trinket is very accessible and drops off of Aeonus (the final boss in Black Morass on Normal and Heroic Difficulty) at a decent drop rate.