Its a well known fact that ret paladins need more stats to function than other melee classes.
A naked warrior has 1200 more HP than a paladin.
For protection, we get 16% Stamina to counteract this imbalance(as well as gaining no stats from our ranged slot).
While this is indeed fantastic for protection paladins, ret paladins are left with very mediocre hit point pools. Not only is our base hp lower, but we devote item points toward int which drastically cuts down our stamina.
Comparing Warrior to Paladin 5/5 Vengeful we have :
+16 Str
-54 Sta
+119 Int
-252 ArP
-31 Crit Rating
+45 Resil
The paladin set is fairly well itemized, and the problem is not really the set itself, but a combination of that and the base totals for our class. Starting with a 1200 hp handicap combined with another 54 Sta + 3/3 Vind puts paladins over 2000 health behind warriors. As a melee class with the least defensive options versus magic, this is particularly devastating as plate is useless against spells.
A geared out paladin expects to have about 10000 HP, while a warrior will have something like 12500. a 25% increase in health points is fairly large in terms of survivability, and warriors sacrifice very little to obtain this. I would say a STR->INT conversion at this point is necessary to allow ret to function properly in PvP. Even if it scaled to some ridiculous level where ret paladins were getting to 9k mana, there isn't much of a consequence to game balance. Ret paladins still have no active regen, and their HP/sec while healing doesnt make a larger mana pool ridiculously overpowered. Even better would be to allow retribution to regain mana when dealing damage as a function of damage dealt or max mana.
Bottom line : Because paladin damage and healing are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, deriving additional int for free and gaining other stats does not drastically improve paladin hybrid function or power. When a paladin heals his teammate, he is unable to move. This is compared against say, a druid that can heal his teammate while moving(albeit for very little), or to a lesser extent a shadow priest that can swap out to heal while dots tic(and heal from VE). With no closer move such as ShS/Intercept/and Sprint/Dash to a lesser degree, the paladin loses more damage than just his swing timer as he attempts to catch up to his opponent.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
History Lesson
Taking a trek back in time, some ridiculous paladin "fixes", nerfs, bugs, and stuff that just doesnt make any sense.
Seal of the Crusader - This one is huge. SoTC used to be the damage seal, provided great baseline physical damage to any paladin, and only did as much overall dps as Windfury with NO burst whatsoever. It was then nerfed to just forcibly change your weapon speed so your autoattack dps remained the same. The recent SoTC/CS ptr change is simply doubly logged as a fix to this change, all that occurs now is SoTC adds 40% CS damage to make up for the 40% swing speed reduction(fuzzy math but I'm too lazy to work the numbers). Why shamans and blood elf paladins have better baseline melee dps than "melee hybrid" alliance paladins, I have no clue. For all the naysayers:
10 swings pre nerf-
Windfury Weapon - 20% chance for 2 attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 swings. 4 of those have additional AP
SoTC - IIRC 40% more attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 "swing timers". Each swing has additional AP.
So less burst for slightly more sustained DPS. This seemed balanced to me. Both moves were baseline, heck SoTC was purgeable and that was a huge problem in paladin vs shaman fights. Being different, but having the same overall effect was fine with me. Then SoTC got nerfed and paladin dps went to the pisser.
Spell Critical/Illumination - Pre BC it was way too hard to stack spell crit, and itemization for paladins was horrendous(and still is, sometimes). When TBC hit and spell crit was being stacked everywhere, and illumination became too strong with a shadow priest. Solution? Nerf illumination. Unfortunately our PVP sets didnt get re-itemized with this nerf and continue to have ZERO mp/5.
BoP+Judgement - Since judgements induce autoattack, you cannot judge while bop'd. This is a rather silly change and they say its not fixable. Not fixable? Are you kidding me?
CC+Judgement - For a while now, casting a judgement at the same time as eating a CC has resulted in a lost seal+mana, but no judgement effect.
BoS+BoF Nerf - I was fine with the BoF nerf, but the BoS one was ridiculous. With paladins still having no hot/instant heal worth a damn, BoS was one of our only ways to mitigate dot damage on our teammates while being CC'd. Against a mage BoS still required significant blessing swapping. You could freedom to remove a root(cleanse versus winterschill... yeah good luck), but would have to apply bosac immediately, leaving your teammate open to snares once more. With the changes to allow all buffs to be seen by enemies, the BoS nerf needs to be undone. Its very easy to tell who its on, and who you can snare at will.
Mass Dispel - Again, Paladins are no longer the PvP healing juggernauts they once were. I dont think this one even needs an explanation.
Aura Removal - Cyclone used to cancel auras permanently and it was working as intended. Are you kidding me? This one eventually got reverted but it sure took a while.
Reckoning Bombs - The infinite charge reckoning bomb was admittedly broken, but the current incarnation is relatively useless outside of pve server aoe farming. Single target threat typically isnt a large issue for paladin tanks, and paladin kiteability makes the current reckoning very useless in a pvp situation. Being able to save up damage while kited was a key benefit of this talent, much like a warrior that gains rage from second wind/damage while kited. When he arrives at the target and gets his few seconds of damage in, those seconds are quite lethal(HS/MS/WW). This talent may see more use in WotLK if the higher ret talents prove useless. A reckoning/CS/sacred duty build would be great for arenas.
Divine Purpose - This talent needs a rework, as crit damage reduction is capped at 25%. It was a decent bandaid when paladin ret gear had no resilience but now this talent needs to be in line with the druid and priest talents that were changed due to the reduction cap. Changing it to say, an on crit buff that increases damage dealt by 5%, and damage taken by -5%, stackable to 3 would be fine. Paladins suffer greatly under focus fire, and have very few escape moves. Alternatively, this talent could be the new reckoning, perhaps offering 5% damage mitigation, stackable to 3. On swing, uses all charges for extra attacks. This would allow a focused paladin to choose between defense or offense, with consequences in each. Its current incarnation leaves much to be desired, as crit damage reduction is not nearly as valuable as the mana burn/dot reduction that I'm fairly certain this talent does not provide.
Seal of Command - Should not be PPM, nuff said really. Weapon speed drastically affects SoC performance, as slower weapons not only increase the proc rate, but increase proc damage as well.
This list is not comprehensive, but its a good outline of the crap this class has been through.
Seal of the Crusader - This one is huge. SoTC used to be the damage seal, provided great baseline physical damage to any paladin, and only did as much overall dps as Windfury with NO burst whatsoever. It was then nerfed to just forcibly change your weapon speed so your autoattack dps remained the same. The recent SoTC/CS ptr change is simply doubly logged as a fix to this change, all that occurs now is SoTC adds 40% CS damage to make up for the 40% swing speed reduction(fuzzy math but I'm too lazy to work the numbers). Why shamans and blood elf paladins have better baseline melee dps than "melee hybrid" alliance paladins, I have no clue. For all the naysayers:
10 swings pre nerf-
Windfury Weapon - 20% chance for 2 attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 swings. 4 of those have additional AP
SoTC - IIRC 40% more attacks at additional AP = 14 attacks every 10 "swing timers". Each swing has additional AP.
So less burst for slightly more sustained DPS. This seemed balanced to me. Both moves were baseline, heck SoTC was purgeable and that was a huge problem in paladin vs shaman fights. Being different, but having the same overall effect was fine with me. Then SoTC got nerfed and paladin dps went to the pisser.
Spell Critical/Illumination - Pre BC it was way too hard to stack spell crit, and itemization for paladins was horrendous(and still is, sometimes). When TBC hit and spell crit was being stacked everywhere, and illumination became too strong with a shadow priest. Solution? Nerf illumination. Unfortunately our PVP sets didnt get re-itemized with this nerf and continue to have ZERO mp/5.
BoP+Judgement - Since judgements induce autoattack, you cannot judge while bop'd. This is a rather silly change and they say its not fixable. Not fixable? Are you kidding me?
CC+Judgement - For a while now, casting a judgement at the same time as eating a CC has resulted in a lost seal+mana, but no judgement effect.
BoS+BoF Nerf - I was fine with the BoF nerf, but the BoS one was ridiculous. With paladins still having no hot/instant heal worth a damn, BoS was one of our only ways to mitigate dot damage on our teammates while being CC'd. Against a mage BoS still required significant blessing swapping. You could freedom to remove a root(cleanse versus winterschill... yeah good luck), but would have to apply bosac immediately, leaving your teammate open to snares once more. With the changes to allow all buffs to be seen by enemies, the BoS nerf needs to be undone. Its very easy to tell who its on, and who you can snare at will.
Mass Dispel - Again, Paladins are no longer the PvP healing juggernauts they once were. I dont think this one even needs an explanation.
Aura Removal - Cyclone used to cancel auras permanently and it was working as intended. Are you kidding me? This one eventually got reverted but it sure took a while.
Reckoning Bombs - The infinite charge reckoning bomb was admittedly broken, but the current incarnation is relatively useless outside of pve server aoe farming. Single target threat typically isnt a large issue for paladin tanks, and paladin kiteability makes the current reckoning very useless in a pvp situation. Being able to save up damage while kited was a key benefit of this talent, much like a warrior that gains rage from second wind/damage while kited. When he arrives at the target and gets his few seconds of damage in, those seconds are quite lethal(HS/MS/WW). This talent may see more use in WotLK if the higher ret talents prove useless. A reckoning/CS/sacred duty build would be great for arenas.
Divine Purpose - This talent needs a rework, as crit damage reduction is capped at 25%. It was a decent bandaid when paladin ret gear had no resilience but now this talent needs to be in line with the druid and priest talents that were changed due to the reduction cap. Changing it to say, an on crit buff that increases damage dealt by 5%, and damage taken by -5%, stackable to 3 would be fine. Paladins suffer greatly under focus fire, and have very few escape moves. Alternatively, this talent could be the new reckoning, perhaps offering 5% damage mitigation, stackable to 3. On swing, uses all charges for extra attacks. This would allow a focused paladin to choose between defense or offense, with consequences in each. Its current incarnation leaves much to be desired, as crit damage reduction is not nearly as valuable as the mana burn/dot reduction that I'm fairly certain this talent does not provide.
Seal of Command - Should not be PPM, nuff said really. Weapon speed drastically affects SoC performance, as slower weapons not only increase the proc rate, but increase proc damage as well.
This list is not comprehensive, but its a good outline of the crap this class has been through.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Utility
Today's river of tears focuses on utility.
All paladins bring a blessing and an aura. Beyond that they bring whatever mediocre function they have based on how many talent points they placed in whatever spec they chose to be doomed with.
Holy : Half of these talents have nearly no effect on your healing. Some of them just straight up dont belong (Holy Strength?). You're competing against Chain Heal/Earthshield, Hots/NS Heals, Circle of Healing, and of course the standard 1.5/3.X sec heals. Your utility is your blessing and your aura. Most of the time your aura is useless/inconsequential. You don't have Innervate/Rebirth, Mana Tide/Windfury, or an incredible assortment of heal spells that can be chosen for different situations. You have two heal buttons and a third you'll never use. Mana that tends to run out slower but no abilities that help you use it in as effective a manner as other classes.
Prot : MT or bust. Even then you're going to need a warrior to thunderclap, and someone to expose/sunder. Melee dps on an unsundered boss is ridiculously poor. If you choose to be an offtank, you'll find yourself being completely useless except for clearing trash. Your healing ability is gimped and all you can do is tank. Your dps is below awful and the group should already be LF Feral Druid. Its never advisable to turn a healer into a tank, most additional tank situations require as many healers as you had before. So a progressing 10 man group is sometimes going to have 3 healers + prot paladin healer on single tank bosses if the prot paladin is offtanking. This will place a lot of responsibility on your 5 DPS members. JUST GIVE IT 120% GUYS, MAKE UP FOR THE PALADIN SHOULD HAVE REROLLED DRUID! I see a lot of prot paladins rerolling deathknight if their tank tree allows for decent dps as well(as a DPS/Tank hybrid, I assume so).
Ret : After fighting the stigma of a thousand years of RETLOLOL you can bring your 25 man raid group 3% critical, judgement refresh, and a weaker ferocious inspiration(with shorter range to boot!). As horde your grass is very green, and you'll find that your dps can rise to respectable levels with seal of blood. As alliance, you're going to find yourself rationalizing your raid spot with the said utility, when its likely an additional heroism would do far more for your raid's dps than your 3% critical. Your grass is also decaying and being used to fertilize the horde grass.
Basically, people are trying to find the least awful spec to bring paladins into raids for, and they're all fairly bad. Some guilds just have paladins outside buffing the raid so they can stack 5 resto shamans and a few holy priests. In the name of progression, all things can be rationalized away.
All paladins bring a blessing and an aura. Beyond that they bring whatever mediocre function they have based on how many talent points they placed in whatever spec they chose to be doomed with.
Holy : Half of these talents have nearly no effect on your healing. Some of them just straight up dont belong (Holy Strength?). You're competing against Chain Heal/Earthshield, Hots/NS Heals, Circle of Healing, and of course the standard 1.5/3.X sec heals. Your utility is your blessing and your aura. Most of the time your aura is useless/inconsequential. You don't have Innervate/Rebirth, Mana Tide/Windfury, or an incredible assortment of heal spells that can be chosen for different situations. You have two heal buttons and a third you'll never use. Mana that tends to run out slower but no abilities that help you use it in as effective a manner as other classes.
Prot : MT or bust. Even then you're going to need a warrior to thunderclap, and someone to expose/sunder. Melee dps on an unsundered boss is ridiculously poor. If you choose to be an offtank, you'll find yourself being completely useless except for clearing trash. Your healing ability is gimped and all you can do is tank. Your dps is below awful and the group should already be LF Feral Druid. Its never advisable to turn a healer into a tank, most additional tank situations require as many healers as you had before. So a progressing 10 man group is sometimes going to have 3 healers + prot paladin healer on single tank bosses if the prot paladin is offtanking. This will place a lot of responsibility on your 5 DPS members. JUST GIVE IT 120% GUYS, MAKE UP FOR THE PALADIN SHOULD HAVE REROLLED DRUID! I see a lot of prot paladins rerolling deathknight if their tank tree allows for decent dps as well(as a DPS/Tank hybrid, I assume so).
Ret : After fighting the stigma of a thousand years of RETLOLOL you can bring your 25 man raid group 3% critical, judgement refresh, and a weaker ferocious inspiration(with shorter range to boot!). As horde your grass is very green, and you'll find that your dps can rise to respectable levels with seal of blood. As alliance, you're going to find yourself rationalizing your raid spot with the said utility, when its likely an additional heroism would do far more for your raid's dps than your 3% critical. Your grass is also decaying and being used to fertilize the horde grass.
Basically, people are trying to find the least awful spec to bring paladins into raids for, and they're all fairly bad. Some guilds just have paladins outside buffing the raid so they can stack 5 resto shamans and a few holy priests. In the name of progression, all things can be rationalized away.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
@ ALL ROGUES I OWN YOU RET FTW
NO REALLY I DO, I MEAN A ROGUE JUMPS ME AND ITS LIKE HAMMER OF GG CRITS ALL OVER CHEAT DEATH HAMMER OF WRATH BOOM I WIN.
Why does every 1300 rated oathkeeper scrub ret paladin think he's beating rogues by virtue of his amazing pvp skillz? A rogue with all his cooldowns WILL BEAT a ret paladin 1v1. Make no mistake about it. A rogue has total control in that fight and you will oom and die, assuming equal gear and proper play.
Classic Ret vs Rogue pvp :
Cheapshot
Kidney->You Trinket
Evasion->You HoJ->They trinket
You repent, try to get some heals off with 5x wound on you. (Reversing this order is equally fruitless, a smart rogue will not trinket repentance).
You judge the rogue with whatever you want to try to keep him in combat(usually justice).
If JoJ,CloS->Sprint, or just Gouge re-stealth, wait as long as possible before...
Sap->Bandage->Restealth. (Drinking is pointless. Once you sit, SHS->Sap).
Cheapshot -> You have to divine shield here, or you eat Cheap->Kidney->Gouge Restealth.
Sprint/CloS(depending on delay)->Vanish. Nothing you can do about this as a paladin. There is a slight chance you can JoJ/HoJ the rogue but its unlikely they'll still be in 10 yards after your Divine Shield global.
Sap/+Cheapshot->5PT Rupture->Mash Hemo->You Lose. Somewhere in there you'll get your second HoJ, depending on spec. However you wont actually deal enough damage to kill a rogue in the 6 seconds. The rogue also can still blind you, but it is typically unnecessary.
Tips for beating bad rogues :
JoJ works through CloS, like all other debuffing judgements. Unresistable. CloS does REMOVE it, though.
Sword and Board through evasion, your overall damage is reduced by an average of 70% against a rogue with evasion up.
Healing resets your swing timer. When you Divine Shield try to get your last swing in and then start healing.
Your only real hope is he screws up his restealth chain, you land a HoJ, and do a ton of damage(LOLRNG). Then you live till your forbearance wears off, and you do bop+bandage before wound stacks too high on a re-open from restealth. Repent is up and you use it to keep him from restealthing on your BoP, then try to finish him off toe to toe.
This post isnt to say paladins cannot beat rogues. They simply cant beat a competent rogue with cooldowns ready that has equivalent gear. Note dwarves have a slight advantage in this matchup, but it typically isnt enough. For most rogues, it simply means they need to restealth one more time.
Why does every 1300 rated oathkeeper scrub ret paladin think he's beating rogues by virtue of his amazing pvp skillz? A rogue with all his cooldowns WILL BEAT a ret paladin 1v1. Make no mistake about it. A rogue has total control in that fight and you will oom and die, assuming equal gear and proper play.
Classic Ret vs Rogue pvp :
Cheapshot
Kidney->You Trinket
Evasion->You HoJ->They trinket
You repent, try to get some heals off with 5x wound on you. (Reversing this order is equally fruitless, a smart rogue will not trinket repentance).
You judge the rogue with whatever you want to try to keep him in combat(usually justice).
If JoJ,CloS->Sprint, or just Gouge re-stealth, wait as long as possible before...
Sap->Bandage->Restealth. (Drinking is pointless. Once you sit, SHS->Sap).
Cheapshot -> You have to divine shield here, or you eat Cheap->Kidney->Gouge Restealth.
Sprint/CloS(depending on delay)->Vanish. Nothing you can do about this as a paladin. There is a slight chance you can JoJ/HoJ the rogue but its unlikely they'll still be in 10 yards after your Divine Shield global.
Sap/+Cheapshot->5PT Rupture->Mash Hemo->You Lose. Somewhere in there you'll get your second HoJ, depending on spec. However you wont actually deal enough damage to kill a rogue in the 6 seconds. The rogue also can still blind you, but it is typically unnecessary.
Tips for beating bad rogues :
JoJ works through CloS, like all other debuffing judgements. Unresistable. CloS does REMOVE it, though.
Sword and Board through evasion, your overall damage is reduced by an average of 70% against a rogue with evasion up.
Healing resets your swing timer. When you Divine Shield try to get your last swing in and then start healing.
Your only real hope is he screws up his restealth chain, you land a HoJ, and do a ton of damage(LOLRNG). Then you live till your forbearance wears off, and you do bop+bandage before wound stacks too high on a re-open from restealth. Repent is up and you use it to keep him from restealthing on your BoP, then try to finish him off toe to toe.
This post isnt to say paladins cannot beat rogues. They simply cant beat a competent rogue with cooldowns ready that has equivalent gear. Note dwarves have a slight advantage in this matchup, but it typically isnt enough. For most rogues, it simply means they need to restealth one more time.
Ret scaling, Leveling up
Everyone always talks about how ret is a "gear dependent spec". And they're right. Whats unfair is how ret scales entirely on gear and has very minimal base damage. To simplify I'm only going to examine physical dps, as casters get new ranks that obviously scale well for leveling.
Examples :
Rogues - Sinister Strike - Weapon damage + X, Eviscerate - High damage but doesnt scale well, great for leveling.
Warriors - Heroic/Mortal Strike - Weapon damage + X
Hunters - Multishot - Damage + X, Pet Damage, Aimed shot - Damage + X, Steady Shot at 62+.
Druids - Claw - Damage + X, Mangle - Damage + X
Paladins - No inherent base damage on their primary damage abilities. For secondary abilities, they have Judgement of Command, which does awful base damage, doesnt scale at all with gear, and has a DPM of something like 0.5 compared to using Rank1 SoC. Stunning the target beforehand also has a mana expenditure and only increases the DPM to 0.33 or so. Spammng judgements also breaks FSR regen which can be used by paladins to some effect. SoC procs have a "base" damage through JoTC and the 20% coefficient SoC gets, however you spend tons of mana doing this, and it really isnt a base damage value since you need to apply a judgement to possibly add at most 40 to your RNG damage.
Shamans - In the same boat as Paladins, no base damage on any primary damage abilities, besides shocks.
Basically this means that an undergeared rogue/warrior/hunter/druid is always going to beat an equivalently undergeared paladin/shaman in physical damage simply by virtue of free damage granted by their class. For leveling this is huge. Base damage is meant to smooth out undergeared fights, and is why ret/enhance leveling is so frustrating unless you constantly slot upgrade your gear as you level. What this means is ret will underperform any competitive dps situation, preventing many from getting groups as ret, making it very hard to gear up. Without gear they'll never get to the point of meaningful damage, and thus the spec is in a catch22 situation. Arena is pretty much the best way to get around this, and it is quite unfortunate that the only viable way to gear for PvE as ret is to arena.
TLDR : With gray weapons, completely naked, paladins will be dead last in damage in any fight. That gap lessens, but other classes maintain a huge lead in damage until at least high end blues/full epics at 70.
Examples :
Rogues - Sinister Strike - Weapon damage + X, Eviscerate - High damage but doesnt scale well, great for leveling.
Warriors - Heroic/Mortal Strike - Weapon damage + X
Hunters - Multishot - Damage + X, Pet Damage, Aimed shot - Damage + X, Steady Shot at 62+.
Druids - Claw - Damage + X, Mangle - Damage + X
Paladins - No inherent base damage on their primary damage abilities. For secondary abilities, they have Judgement of Command, which does awful base damage, doesnt scale at all with gear, and has a DPM of something like 0.5 compared to using Rank1 SoC. Stunning the target beforehand also has a mana expenditure and only increases the DPM to 0.33 or so. Spammng judgements also breaks FSR regen which can be used by paladins to some effect. SoC procs have a "base" damage through JoTC and the 20% coefficient SoC gets, however you spend tons of mana doing this, and it really isnt a base damage value since you need to apply a judgement to possibly add at most 40 to your RNG damage.
Shamans - In the same boat as Paladins, no base damage on any primary damage abilities, besides shocks.
Basically this means that an undergeared rogue/warrior/hunter/druid is always going to beat an equivalently undergeared paladin/shaman in physical damage simply by virtue of free damage granted by their class. For leveling this is huge. Base damage is meant to smooth out undergeared fights, and is why ret/enhance leveling is so frustrating unless you constantly slot upgrade your gear as you level. What this means is ret will underperform any competitive dps situation, preventing many from getting groups as ret, making it very hard to gear up. Without gear they'll never get to the point of meaningful damage, and thus the spec is in a catch22 situation. Arena is pretty much the best way to get around this, and it is quite unfortunate that the only viable way to gear for PvE as ret is to arena.
TLDR : With gray weapons, completely naked, paladins will be dead last in damage in any fight. That gap lessens, but other classes maintain a huge lead in damage until at least high end blues/full epics at 70.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Ret + Rogue
Its late in the season so its not really a feat, but i picked up shoulders yesterday after a long night of 2v2 going from 1500 to 2008.
Ret Rogue is really only weak to druid lock, unfortunately a very popular 2v2. Other than that it has a fighting chance against most other comps at the sub 2k level. Not sure if player skill can change the awesome powers of the random number generator at high level play but 2v2 is not where paladins should be anyway.
Ret Rogue is really only weak to druid lock, unfortunately a very popular 2v2. Other than that it has a fighting chance against most other comps at the sub 2k level. Not sure if player skill can change the awesome powers of the random number generator at high level play but 2v2 is not where paladins should be anyway.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Holy and Arenas
A lot of people tout the holy paladin's effectiveness in arenas. In particular, their staying power at healing and unkillability. I'm here to debunk most if not all of this nonsense.
Cleanse : A complete lack of MP/5 on our PvP gear makes cleanse total garbage in 2v2/3v3 endurance fights. When using it constantly against an increasing number of garbage or resistant debuffs, it fails to do much more than waste mana and globals.
Illumination : Is not active regen. All other healers have a way to restore mana actively. Watershield/Mana tide, Shadowfiend, Innervate. Paladins have the lowest mana pool availible of any healer in arenas. Each mana burn removes more potential healing from a paladin than any other class. Cleanses, Blessings, Judgements, and Seals get no benefit from Illum either. This makes paladins a much better target to mana burn/drain among the healing classes. There is simply less mana that needs to be removed before they are rendered useless.
Plate : Plate is fantastic until you realize that warriors have more defensive options than Paladins do and still die very quickly to coordinated burst. Sure warriors and rogues dont do a lot to you, but they can interrupt your casts far more easily than any other healer. They also provide the critical healing debuffs that ensure your demise. Attacking a paladin ensures he will not be healing and leaves it up to his remaining healer(or rarely two) to keep him alive. This means your solo heal viability is nil against a competent team coordinating interrupts. Assuming no heals, your time to live is higher than a priest. Factor in other abilities such as PS/instants, and this all changes.
Offensive/Disruption moves : Paladins dont have any worth a damn. HoJ is all we have. JoJ is maybe a half, but makes the target immune to fear. It is extremely frustrating to not be an actual threat when nobody is taking damage. For example, a priest on a 5v5 team taking low damage or benefitting from heroism can quickly mana burn/dispel the enemy. A druid can cyclone/root/feral charge. A shaman has shocks, earthbinds, grounding. A paladin can expose himself to CC by moving to the enemy to HoJ. Thats it. A holy paladin left completely alone contributes nothing but health points and freedom/cleanse/bop to his team. All other classes have disruption/prevention moves that give them more options in combat besides just heal spamming.
Inability to prevent damage : You see a burst coming on your warrior. The ele shaman is bop'd, target is nova'd with 5 winters chill and freedom was just dispelled. Suddenly the warrior intercepts over to your warrior and heroism goes off. What can you do in the next 3 seconds to prevent your warrior's death? A shaman has ground+shock+ns heal, a druid has the option to FC/ns heal and maybe cyclone, a priest can PS/shield/renew/mend. A paladin HAS to wait for damage to occur before he can do anything about incoming damage. This means you expose yourself to counterspell before any burst begins, and typically results in a loss at higher levels of play.
Mobility : Paladins have poor mobility because they have few instants. While repositioning a paladin can only cleanse and buff (holyshocklolol). A shaman can purge, shock, drop various totems, and earth shield while moving, priests have many instants, and druids have speed increases/feral charge/tons of instants. The problem is not paladins moving slower than druids and shamans, it is that paladins have far more to lose while moving than any other class. Moving means the enemy knows exactly when you will start a heal and makes your actions too predictable. It also means you sacrifice practically all of your healing power, which is pretty much all you're there for to begin with.
Do or Die : Paladins are often put into do or die situations. If you try to fake out a spell interrupt, the lost time wont allow you to finish off a holy light. Your ability to prevent this situation from occuring is practically out of your control, as you have no way to prevent damage. At this point you have to divine shield or lose a team mate. After this you are forced to play entirely defensively as you can be quickly focused down and killed.
It is unsurprising then that paladins are good in 5v5, where you have a backup healer to cover for you when your glaring class weaknesses are exploited. Spamming holy light is hard, after all.
Cleanse : A complete lack of MP/5 on our PvP gear makes cleanse total garbage in 2v2/3v3 endurance fights. When using it constantly against an increasing number of garbage or resistant debuffs, it fails to do much more than waste mana and globals.
Illumination : Is not active regen. All other healers have a way to restore mana actively. Watershield/Mana tide, Shadowfiend, Innervate. Paladins have the lowest mana pool availible of any healer in arenas. Each mana burn removes more potential healing from a paladin than any other class. Cleanses, Blessings, Judgements, and Seals get no benefit from Illum either. This makes paladins a much better target to mana burn/drain among the healing classes. There is simply less mana that needs to be removed before they are rendered useless.
Plate : Plate is fantastic until you realize that warriors have more defensive options than Paladins do and still die very quickly to coordinated burst. Sure warriors and rogues dont do a lot to you, but they can interrupt your casts far more easily than any other healer. They also provide the critical healing debuffs that ensure your demise. Attacking a paladin ensures he will not be healing and leaves it up to his remaining healer(or rarely two) to keep him alive. This means your solo heal viability is nil against a competent team coordinating interrupts. Assuming no heals, your time to live is higher than a priest. Factor in other abilities such as PS/instants, and this all changes.
Offensive/Disruption moves : Paladins dont have any worth a damn. HoJ is all we have. JoJ is maybe a half, but makes the target immune to fear. It is extremely frustrating to not be an actual threat when nobody is taking damage. For example, a priest on a 5v5 team taking low damage or benefitting from heroism can quickly mana burn/dispel the enemy. A druid can cyclone/root/feral charge. A shaman has shocks, earthbinds, grounding. A paladin can expose himself to CC by moving to the enemy to HoJ. Thats it. A holy paladin left completely alone contributes nothing but health points and freedom/cleanse/bop to his team. All other classes have disruption/prevention moves that give them more options in combat besides just heal spamming.
Inability to prevent damage : You see a burst coming on your warrior. The ele shaman is bop'd, target is nova'd with 5 winters chill and freedom was just dispelled. Suddenly the warrior intercepts over to your warrior and heroism goes off. What can you do in the next 3 seconds to prevent your warrior's death? A shaman has ground+shock+ns heal, a druid has the option to FC/ns heal and maybe cyclone, a priest can PS/shield/renew/mend. A paladin HAS to wait for damage to occur before he can do anything about incoming damage. This means you expose yourself to counterspell before any burst begins, and typically results in a loss at higher levels of play.
Mobility : Paladins have poor mobility because they have few instants. While repositioning a paladin can only cleanse and buff (holyshocklolol). A shaman can purge, shock, drop various totems, and earth shield while moving, priests have many instants, and druids have speed increases/feral charge/tons of instants. The problem is not paladins moving slower than druids and shamans, it is that paladins have far more to lose while moving than any other class. Moving means the enemy knows exactly when you will start a heal and makes your actions too predictable. It also means you sacrifice practically all of your healing power, which is pretty much all you're there for to begin with.
Do or Die : Paladins are often put into do or die situations. If you try to fake out a spell interrupt, the lost time wont allow you to finish off a holy light. Your ability to prevent this situation from occuring is practically out of your control, as you have no way to prevent damage. At this point you have to divine shield or lose a team mate. After this you are forced to play entirely defensively as you can be quickly focused down and killed.
It is unsurprising then that paladins are good in 5v5, where you have a backup healer to cover for you when your glaring class weaknesses are exploited. Spamming holy light is hard, after all.
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