Paladin Concern Summary

[Arnulf]

[...]

Judging by some of the paladin's abilities (Blessing of Salvation, Cleanse and Lay on Hands), it would seem to me that paladins are far much more useful in PvE than shamans are. Just the fact that Horde get 1 class that can dispel (which got its mana cost tripled in patch 1.9) and Alliance gets two classes is enough proof I guess. Then there's Blessing of Salvation which makes aggro sensitive fights such as Onyxia and Vael a joke (my guild is still ironing out the Vael fight and the occasional rogue pulls aggro now and then).

In terms of PvP, I would say Paladins are more useful than shamans when it comes to battlegrounds. In Arathi Basin, a lone Paladin can single handedly make it impossible for 15 horde to cap a flag long enough for reinforcements to arrive. When it comes to WSG,  two or three paladins chain spamming Blessing of Freedom and Cleanse, not to mention healing the flag carrier from behind their invulnerability shields and toss in their IWIN buttong (Lay On Hands) and it's just too much. Most of the organize WSG teams on my server stock up on paladins for this reason.

[...]

In terms of DPS, well what can I say. I play a mage, and I've been critted for 800 to 1000 damage by paladins wielding arcanite reapers in PvP. Don't even get me started with those reckoning bombs.

[...]
[right][snapback]97782[/snapback][/right]

* Blessing of Salvation is probably one of the greatest assets paladins bring to a raid. Unfortunately it was never meant to be a group-buff. I just want to mention that I as the only paladin who brings BoS to my raid have to cast it around 30 times every 5 minutes. Of course this becomes now a non-issue with the arrival of 1.9. On the other hand I thought of BoS always as more of a reactive spell that should be used in certain situations in mid-fight. Much as I use Blessing of Protection now. That being said BoS is pretty useless I think if the blessed raid-member overcomes the boon by doing way more damage than BoS can compensate for...

* Cleanse is of course the biggest thing in an environment where many magic-based debuffs are thrown around (e.g. in Molten Core) by monsters. But I believe it would be absolutely useless if there wouldn't be some such thing as the Decursive mod. Sometimes I've got the feeling that certain raid encounters in dungeons like MC were created with the designers knowing of the Decursive mod. They would be impossible without it; Lucifron, Baron Geddon come to my mind here. I have to add that I'm not a twitchy 17-year-old and cannot react as fast by clicking on nameplates and pressing the Cleanse-button. So I attribute the usefulness of Cleanse more to the existence of Decursive. The same holds true for PvP.

* Lay on Hands uses up all of your mana. A paladin without mana is a sitting duck. What's more you can use it only once every 60 minutes (40 minutes if you spent some talent points). I tend to use it only when I have no more mana left for anything else and the situation is pretty desperate on the whole.

* Having defended a flag in Arathi Basin myself I can say with some confidence that the proper use of Polymorph, Frostnova, Counter-Spell, Pyroblast is enough to keep me frozen, sheeped, helpless for a long time enough that the enemy can capture the flag at leisure. And I have my insignia equipped and use it often (along with Divine Shield to break some effects).

* 800 or 1000 critical strikes I cannot achieve with my current talent specification. The only time I can see values of nearly 1000 if my Hammer of Wrath strikes critical. Critical strikes by me (with my Aurastone) usually range around 300, with Seal of Righteousness added I can get 600 if I'm extremely lucky and the opponent is debuffed with Seal of Crusader. I know that with a different spec values of 800/1000 are feasible.

So in conclusion it all depends on your viewpoint. :)

-Arnulf