Blizzard to Paladins:

[lemekim]

Someone on the forums suggested replacing Stormstrike (a pretty bad 31 point Shaman talent at the end of enhancement tree) with Bloodlust - single target buff with something like 10% attack speed increase and 30% threat generation increase. That would make it a worthy talent at the end of the Enhancement tree, similar to Blessing of Kings for Paladins, and would provide the answer to BoS.

Now in response to acidjax:

It's debatable in comparison to the usefulness of purge. Only magic debuffs apply since shaman can cure poison and disease. Cleanse is reactionary and purge is offensive; primary healer priests already take an almost purely reactionary role. Paladin blessings can be purged. A shaman can be a real menace with purge while a paladin would be more like "haha i can cleanse your debuff... but i can't do anything back".

Anyways the whole point of what I was saying is that not enough magic debuffs tend to be thrown out that a couple priests can't keep up with and still heal in pvp.

I am at a loss... Apparently taking a player out of fight completely with fear, sheep or charm is less powerful then taking off maybe 500 life or 150 attack power off a single player. Cleanse is inherently more powerful then purge, if even for the simple fact that purge is pretty much only used against one target (the one you are trying to kill), while cleanse is used to cure multiple party members.

Again, it's an unfair comparison. You can't just hand-tailor a theoretical matchup to make your argument work and use it as a proof. I felt that in many cases you could replace a paladin with a priest and be better off. You are trying to change that alliance-only opinion into a horde group and taking out the paladins without replacing them with priests.

It's a very fair comparison. What it means is that Horde has to bring several priests (not exactly most popular class) to PvP against competent players, while Alliance can split this role between two classes.

What "real pvp" is differs per opinion. While in CTF you can have smaller fights where each individual is making a bigger difference, CTF lacks the strategic depth potential of AV. CTF is a skirmish; AV is a war. Things like baiting, flanking, and sandwiching between graveyards you don't see in CTF. CTF is to FPS as AV is to RTS.

You are right. For some people AV is the real PvP. However, in organized AV groups, the fighting will be MUCH different from what you will see in pickup groups. It's like comparing a backyard kids game of Basketball to NBA. And in those groups, paladins and shamans have their roles, and that role is that of a healer.

Since the majority of damage in AV is done through mages using AOE (and in part warlocks), paladins can also extend the lives of those mages by putting Blessing of Protection and/or Blessing of Freedom on them (it is hard to purge it if you have several mages go in at once, with warriors fearing everyone). They can stun the opponents' mages/warriors, and they can go invulnerable and heal other people while the Horde mages AOE. Shamans of course have uses too, but the point is that even in this AV situation, you are still quite a good healer because of your various abilities (and in organized groups, healers don't really do DPS).

Let's look at the actual usefulness of various paladin skills in raid encounters:

Devotion - the extra armor is for the most part useless. It's a slim chance that a rogue that dies in 3 hits will now die in 4 with the small increase to damage mitigation.
Retribution - junk
Concentration - not very useful
Single Resist - This would be more useful if the resist bonus stacked with other resist bonuses. If you have paladin +60 fire resist aura with MotW and the effects of a magic resist potion, you still only get a total of +60 fire resist. Also, paladins tend to play more of a support role so oftentimes many people don't even get the buff during fights.

Seals - pretty much the only judgements used are light and wisdom. If judgements had a static low mana cost with better offensive effects perhaps more of them would be used.

I don't know why are you listing Auras and not Blessings. So you might have to choose between Fire resist aura (mind you, Horde version has lower range, costs mana to cast and STILL does not stack with MotW) and Devotion.

So with one paladin in your party you can have only 1 aura at a time... Well what about:

Blessing of Kings
Blessing of Might
Blessing of Salvation
Blessing of Wisdom
Blessing of Light
And for the hell of it, Blessing of Sanctuary.
And lets not forget Judgement of Wisdom. That alone beats Mana Tide totem, and that's a 31 point talent.

No, I don't think paladins are gimp.