Shaman Totems vs Paladin Blessings

[MongoJerry]

*sigh*

Point 1: Horde Shaman are far better in groups than Paladins up through and including UBRS. A single Shaman gives his group the equivalent buffs of _4_ Paladins. They can heal just as well, and do far more damage. They have a single advantage of plate armor which is effectively irrelevant since they rarely if ever tank and with to be blunt, shaman actually have better aggro holding skills and make better tanks.

Wrong. Read the original post, because you do not understand how shaman totems work, if you believe that four buffs can be up on a five-man party at once. First, fire totems do not buff a party at all. Second, several useful totems are in the air category, and you can choose only one. Third, not all totems help all players. A mana spring totem doesn't help a warrior or rogue, and a windfury totem doesn't help a priest or mage, as examples. One paladin can choose to hand pick his blessings for different people and place an aura on the whole party -- thus having the effect of having "four totems" up. Well, really three, because again, the fire totems aren't really buffs.

Point 2: Horde Shaman are far better in PvP than Paladins. Yes, Paladins can be hard to kill ... if you don't have a rogue, mage, priest, warlock, warrior, or any other class than can't silence/stun/interrupt heals. Simple fact. It is easier to completely shut down a Paladin than any other class. A Shaman or Priest can trivially eliminate their entire combat mechanism. Any tree-wide silence shuts off every single ability they have. Earth shock DESTROYS paladins. If you can't kill a Paladin in PvP, it's a PvP skill issue, not a class imbalance issue. A Paladin will also not be able to contribute significant damage and will spend any reasonable battle unable to even CATCH someone to hit them. This means that for every Paladin the alliance side brings, the horde side has vastly more DPS. Focus firing through a Paladin's tiny little heals is trivial.

Again, vastly ignorant. Paladins are dominating in PvP -- just in a different way. They are excellent 1v1, but they kill slowly, but in groups, they are absolutely dominating. Just because you like to pew pew kill things fast doesn't mean that that is the only way to fight. It is the paladin's surviveability and ability to transfer that surviveability to his or her groups that make them a terror in battlegrounds. It's the reason why on Tichondrius Alliance paladins outnumber Alliance priests in battlegrounds 3:1. Yes, I'm 100% serious. It is rare to see an Alliance priest at all in a battleground and at most you see one. However, in AB, you'll typically see three to four paladins and in CTF two or three of them.

Edit: I'll add to this. Two comments are key to your statements: "A Shaman or Priest can trivially eliminate their entire combat mechanism" and "[A Paladin] will spend any reasonable battle unable to even CATCH someone to hit them." If you play a paladin and are running around trying to whack people in a group PvP environment, you need to learn to play. That is not how to play a paladin in a dominating role. It is a paladin's ability to survive while being able to heal, dispel almost all forms of crowd control from his parties (Once you trivially kill a Horde party's priest, the Alliance can sheep, root, HoJ, and charm at will), hammer of justice, repent, shield, and cast useful buffs like the godly Blessing of Freedom that can make them a terror in a group PvP setting.

Point 3: In 20 man raids, Paladins and Shaman are radically different, but very much equal. You can't get 4 paladins in a 20 man raid which means the Shaman's groups will be far more powerful than the alliance equivalent while the pally can keep the raid as a whole moderately buffed.

Point 4: In 40 man raids, yes, Shamans are less powerful.

So wrong, I can't even start. In a 20-man, with four paladins, you can have all the useful paladin blessings on everyone and provide auras to their parties. Shaman are stuck giving only the same buffs they could give when they were in 5-man parties. Read posts before replying to them. Heck, just read the first post of this thread and your ignorance will be cured.