How to win in CTF

[Brista]

Actually, yes.  Not as intensely, but yes, I've never liked the paladin as a class or the typical player who came to play them.  Yes, of course, there are good players who do decide to play the class, but the general average paladin, no, I never liked them.

Seems to me that hybrids are naturally more geared towards soloing tough content(tank - dps - healer all in one) and specialist classes are geared towards parties. So judging a paladin on their group role is failing to see the whole picture

The biggest job of the paladin that I ever saw in any instance group was to sit out of fights and rez the other four people when they suicided attacked mobs.

He he, more flamebait, think you're going to get some sharp replies to that one ;)

An advantage of a hybrid is in grouping you fill up the necessary roles much easier. I don't remember ever being in a group with more than one priest unless I'm playing a priest myself. It's much more common for us pickup players to have mage mage warlock or something and be looking for 2 more. A hybrid is a godsend because it means we can have a viable group so much more easily. If the mage mage warlock group recruits a priest then they still need a tank but if the recruit a paladin then either a tank or a healer will do. So while hybrids may not be good for optimal groups they go a long way towards promoting viable groups

Your main is Horde. I'm just wondering if you have experience of well-played paladins (and no I don't have either, but I like my pally and I can certainly see potential for a very useful group role)

You also didn't mention buffs. Paladin + Priest = 2 compatible sets of good buffs, Priest + Priest = PW: Fortitude

The difference between shamans and paladins may simply be player attitude, but whatever the difference is, it's real and it matters.

I'm very surprised to hear you say this. I find shaman often quite frustrating to play with if I'm on my druid or my priest

Typical pubbie shaman is enhancement windfury shock searing totem zerg monster. They only look to do damage. Their mana pool is empty 10 seconds into the fight. If my priest is there and I run out of mana I can guarantee the shaman will be empty. Shamans are great for groups that blitz through instances to the last boss then wipe and ask "why didn't you heal me?"

I particularly dislike Searing Totem when used by bad players. If they park it in the wrong place it will shoot adds pulling otherwise unaggroed adds into the brawl. It also shoots downwards which sometimes causes a vast train of mobs coming the long way around the dungeon to eat us

Pre-30 all shammies use Rockbiter which makes them huge aggro stealers

The main pro of shammies over pallies when played by idiots is that if you have someone who is simply using their hybrid as a dps monster then shammies are better suited to the role

However, shamans in general seem to know that their class is a support class. 

We've had different experiences. I've played with tons of shamans who think their job is up front banging on things, in fact it's an overwhelming majority

because I'm confident that if she played with another priest, druid, or yes, shaman, she'd find her ass saved a lot more often by them than by a typical paladin.

I don't know those players in-game but give me a good pally over a bad priest druid or shaman any day

But then, PvP comes along, and then all those stupid paladins suddenly get their automatic "I win" buttons.

Actually they're not "I win" buttons they're "I don't lose" buttons. Generally if I die to a pally it's because I'm so pre-occupied with getting them down that I get sloppy. A class with no move speed buffs and nothing that works at over 10 yards is not able to win in pvp unless the opponent gets reckless (short of potion and engineering tricks)

I think actually that's where a lot of the animosity comes from. I do think Rinnhart is correct that calling paladins noobs is essentially xenophobia. But another aspect is that most classes fighting one on one resolve the fight in under a minute. A paladin can make the fight stretch out for ages which actually hurts both players in terms of efficiency over time. So that's the newbie quality - to play a class that is very hard to kill in a game where killing brings rewards and death is trivial.

Thinking of smaller group PvP like CTF, the Alliance gets this huge advantage that Horde can't compete with.

Utter utter bull

Horde win 80% of matches

Besides give me dispels + purges over dispels + dispels if the team is good

First, it doesn't happen because people have just learned not to bother even trying to kill paladins, so paladins live to heal and dispell all they want.  And second, if people did try to kill the paladin, paladins wear plate and can therefore take a lot of punishment, and just when he or she is about to die, suddenly they can noob bubble heal to full and waste the time of the other team.

Actually all it takes is persistence. Once the paladin runs out of tricks they're toast. I find paladins not especially difficult to kill in ctf unless someone else is healing them. Your example of 2 rogues and a warrior would absolutely splatter a paladin, probably as fast they kill a priest unless the paladin was lucky and got his bubble off between stuns

Their strengths are balanced pretty well by the shaman's ctf strengths, notably the awesome snares although it does sound to me like your experiences are with more organised teams than the ones I generally face

Even so I think this point is more about naive tactics by players facing paladins plus a certain frustration with trying to play a priest with players who all run off and leave you to die :)