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.
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