Pally Changes

[vor_lord]

I remember specifically trying to divine shield out of being feared by a warlock back in February or March... has it always been this way?

Or maybe I'm senile?

Apparently I'm just full if it.
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Maybe not either one:

Code:

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 1.4.0 (2005-04-19)
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General
- Charm and Polymorph mechanics can now be reactively countered by
 spells and abilities (e.g. Druid Shapeshifting will now cancel
 Polymorph effects).

[oldmandennis]

I'm interested, Just a Guy, if you are ever going to address my argument that the Paladin plays the way Blizz describes him on the website, and the way Paladins played in WC3.

And var_lord and Rienheart, is it possible for you not to post a whole bunch of times in a row?

[Rinnhart]

You don't need large group PvP for a paladin to shine.  I'm talking as small as 3v3 and maybe even 2v2.  A warrior-paladin duo is *nasty*.  A warrior with *two* paladins is godly.

Any healer/warrior pairing is devastating. At issue is that paladins must at least duo to have any tangible benefit to their faction. No other option exists.

Unbelievable boloney.

Stole the words from my mouth.

Paladins on the other hand can HoJ and Repent opponents and heal to full if there's only a couple people beating on them.

Single target, minute cools, dispellable effects. I'll trade you either one plus devotion aura for War Stomp.

Then, physical immunity shield if it's physical people beating on him (yes, it can be dispelled if there's a shaman or priest nearby, but there's reaction time involved which is long enough to allow either the paladin himself or someone else on his team to heal him).

Five minute cooldown, PHYSICAL DAMAGE ONLY. We can still be counterspelled, silenced, CC'd, nuked to hell, /laughed at, or blinded.

Then, if there's enough fire directed their way, *bam* Divine Shield heal to full as well as dispel and heal other teammates.

When I hit my Divine Shield, I am bathed in an ultra sexy amber glow and scantily clad go-go dancers spawn to sing my theme song whilst waves of holy, purifying power FLOW FROM MY LOINS TO PROTECT MY ALLIES AND SMITE THE UNCLEAN HORDE.

It's twelve seconds. That's time to heal ourselves, and either heal an ally or cast a cleanse or two.

Oh, and if it's an important part of the match, Laying on Hands to full, too.

And hour timer and it uses all of our mana. It's there for #$%&ing RP purposes.

To kill a paladin, you have to kill them four times.

I'm done. I can't finish replying to this abortion of a post.

[Treesh]

And var_lord and Rienheart, is it possible for you not to post a whole bunch of times in a row?
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It's called using Outline view. Those replies you see right in a row are because they are replying to different posts and doing so keeps the posts in the branch of "subconversations" (I can't think of the proper terminology right now) where they belong. Since others use standard or linear+ view, it looks like they've posted a bunch in a row instead since those views only organize by time posted rather than where in the thread the poster replied.

[Treesh]

And hour timer and it uses all of our mana. It's there for #$%&ing RP purposes.
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Then you haven't been using it effectively if you think it's only there for RP purposes. I've seen it save a raid from an entire wipe on a boss because of using it at the proper time on the proper person. I've seen it save 5 man from an entire wipe. I don't PvP much so I couldn't tell you how much use it is there, but it most certainly is not just there for roleplaying purposes. Yes, other folks died in the raids and 5 mans, but a well timed Lay on Hands on the right person can actually prevent a complete wipe. Much love to the well played pally who don't get enough credit for what they actually do in raids.

[hiryuu1115]

Saw it on the main forums here, in a post Fangtooth responded to.
Pally buff time might be getting cut in 1/10th?
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Err, not to interrupt the nth argument about the usefulness of paladins or anything, but I'm actually pretty hopeful for these changes.

Re: Combining Seals, Blessings, and Judgments - I'm guessing that they will impliment catchall sort of talents where, as an example, 5/5 Improved Wisdom will improve the effect of Seal of Wisdom, Blessing of Wisdom, and Judgment of Wisdom by 30% or something like that. It would also be nice to see Improved Blessing of Salvation not take 22 points :P

Re: Group Blessing - I'm going to be hopeful and hope for the best. The worst would be replacing the 31 point talent somewhere with the group blessing spell and putting it on a timer. I guess it is a fragile balance between making it a lot easier for a raid to get buffed and introducing a spell that actually gets more powerful as the number of people in a raid increases.

Re: Increasing Blessing Duration - I am all for this, and so are most paladins that I am aware of. The only way this could be bad is if Blizzard decides that to get triple duration they need to multiply the mana cost by a factor of five or something.

Also, increased Blessing duration means that the set bonus from Zandalar actually has a purpose! Yay for 10% longer duration on 10 or 15 minutes!

[Drasca]

Your example is two paladins guarding a flag. Pick two: rogue/mage/warlock- well timed CC's[right][snapback]93952[/snapback][/right]

Trinket, cleanse, diminishing returns kick in.

1v1, Rogue or mage (warlock situationally shard and talent dependent) has a great chance killing pallies. 2v2, CC's simply won't work. Interrupt game from then on, where DS is their ace in the hole. Pallies refuse to die (in the short PvP timescale). They'll hold off for a minimum of 30 seconds to 2 minutes or more.

Sap? Maybe. I don't know too many PvP or end-game raiding rogues with improved sap now-a-days though (not that it is needed but saps can fail). Also takes time, which is a crucial factor.

Some people also don't understand how overwhelming epic weapons doing physical damage are. Healers in plate [reducing phys] with shield skills [negating phys] survive when cloth [*&$# by phys] epic weapons don't.

How would you paladin players feel about an combat ability that is useful DPS, but temporarily disables all ability to use, through a long skill cooldown... say... Holy skills (Healing/Shields/etc, all the survivability stuff) for xxx seconds? Offensive trade-off for defensive abilities, so you can do either or, but not both. Shamans are limited by mana, mail, and totem limitations. I feel like in order to give Paladins offense, you must trade away all the important defensive abilities. One can only hope.

savaughn has this on the nose right now:

It's at this point that Paladins begin to look their best. The horde priests can be killed within seconds, leaving the Alliance with the only magic effect removal.

mages and warlocks become fairly trivial on the playground as their damage gets dwarfed by the melee classes and they are taken down so quickly its very upsetting - for the cloth classes damage ramps much faster than your effective hit point pool.

That is the reason why resiliance against Physical damage is important, why it is end-all-be all right now. Epic weapons one or two shot cloth wearers, where spells are... easier to mitigate (interrupts, silences, and increased casting time hits). Heck, as a warlock having fun with his shaman friends, I see his shocks and purges go resist resist, low damage resist, frequently.

Only way to stop Physical damage? Innate defense, or crowd control/snares. Uh... Pallies on field. CC won't work. Snares won't work, and they aren't (*$&^ over by cloth itemization.

Well. (&*$.

He is supposed to be the balance between healing and melee. That's what miffs me; currently, he's not. That's why I'm frustrated with him, both in PvP and PvE. --JustAGuy

That too is the reason I don't play WoW Paladins. D2 Paladins... loved, but translating to WoW, warriors really inherited their combat abilities.

Still, I feel Paladin's PvP staying power is currently obscene.

[Kevin]

How would you paladin players feel about an combat ability that is useful DPS, but temporarily disables all ability to use, through a long skill cooldown... say... Holy skills (Healing/Shields/etc, all the survivability stuff) for xxx seconds? Offensive trade-off for defensive abilities, so you can do either or, but not both. Shamans are limited by mana, mail, and totem limitations. I feel like in order to give Paladins offense, you must trade away all the important defensive abilities. One can only hope.
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How would I feel? I would love it as long as it wasn't a complete gimmick. There are so many times where I don't need my defensive capabilities but would love some damn offense for a choice on how to play the character. I pointed it out before. In PvP and PvE the paladin really only has one style of play. No other class is like that. The warrior is pretty much limited to offense in PvP, but a def spec warrior still has choices with stuns and silences that can be very effective when you use them that way and snares and fears are defensive tools as well. So even they can choose and suceed witha differnet style. Heck rogues have more defensive options than paladins have offensive options.

So yeah say a holy might spell that continually drains mana and locks out healing, casting blessings and the bubble but gives you more damage output or open ups some instant attack skills would be great. Or an instant attack spell that takes mana and puts the defensive skills on a 6 or 10 or whatever second cooldown would be great. It would give us a damn choice.

Sure that is kinda like the druid who gives up healing for tanking or DPS along with mana for the form switches and it seems to work pretty well for them. Possibly too well right now.

But again the issues with paladins aren't just PvP they are there in PvE as well. Sure when you gear for it and you look at it over time paladins can contribute decent DPS though they will have no mana pool and likely shallow HP pools as well to get more crits and attack power, etc. But again you still have no control over that. I've seen my paladin in my offensive gear (which is still pretty poor as I'm still building that set) have strings of 600 damage from the weapon 1000 damage from seal of command another 600 damage from the weapon and 700 from seal of comman. So yeah dishing out nearly 3000 HP of damage in about 3 seconds. But that is 3 crits and 2 procs under the influence of vengeance and my Mark of the Chosen effect was probably up as well. I would much rather be able to hit a mortal strike, or shield slam or presence of mind pyroblast or whatever and have some kind of control on that damage. Heck even just more options of putting damage out there like these two DoT's and this direct damage spell and yeah lets burn a shard to get some more in there. Can't do any of that. Can stand around and hope I get a crit or a proc. Over time I can do decent DPS, but no control at all.

So yeah, let me limit my offense by my mana pool (thus hurting my defense) give me offensive skills that lock out my defense or heck even drop my armor value for a time.

It's often said warlocks are balanced by frustration and they too suffer from the mercy of the prng at times. But they aren't at the mercy of the prng all the time and they do have some control on some of the frustration factors. Paladins are always at the mercy of the prng and they always at the mercy of help from friends to kill anyone. Yes their D can be very powerful in PvP. But it's alll they can do. It's very very frustrating. Give me a choice like every other class out there!

[Skandranon]

This is exactly what MJ is complaining about.  It's entirely valid.  But the issue isn't with Paladins.  It's with cloth itemization as a whole.  Among other things, at this point mages and warlocks become fairly trivial on the playground as their damage gets dwarfed by the melee classes and they are taken down so quickly its very upsetting - for the cloth classes damage ramps much faster than your effective hit point pool.  This has only been compounded by other changes such as the nerfs to fear and the other caster crowd control mechanisms.
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Well said, Savaughn. One of the core issues here is that in the current environment, cloth simply dies too fast. A single MS warrior with a decent weapon will carve up any caster in seconds; a rogue with good timing and Perdition's can burst over 3k damage when they double crit ambush-backstab. Everything a caster can do is easily countered by a MS warrior (with the exception of polymorph, which is, I believe, the only reason mages die slightly slower than warlocks and priests).

Blizzard needs to ask the question: why must cloth die so fast? Warriors and rogues burst more damage than casters on a regular basis, barring two-trinket-arcane-power tricks that only a few mages can do and even then once every three minutes. Nor do casters really have any advantage of range; hunters match our longest ranged spell exactly, rogues are invisible and warriors' melee range is essentially 25 yards with charge and intercept, which are teleports in all but name. With the form of damage most easily countered (resists, interrupts), the least damage, middling burst damage at best, and with escape skills that most other classes can be immune to, why must cloth classes also have the lowest survivability on top of that?

Nevertheless, that's what it is for now. And so the primary method of fighting becomes stacking on warriors and rogues (but really mostly warriors) to eliminate enemy cloth. And yes, paladins do counter this tactic somewhat. But the problem isn't with paladins; it's with the global conditions. Spellcasters should be able to do significant damage, and to burst significant damage. Because they can't, a plate healer matters against all the physical classes that PvP teams bring. I think with a significant mage/warlock, and maybe even priest/druid non-physical dps increase, the paladin's weaknesses will become more glaringly apparent.

[Skandranon]

You don't need large group PvP for a paladin to shine.  I'm talking as small as 3v3 and maybe even 2v2.  A warrior-paladin duo is *nasty*.  A warrior with *two* paladins is godly.

Warrior-paladin is nasty, sure. Warrior-priest is also nasty. Also warrior-druid, and warrior-shaman.

Notice the common theme? Healing, sure, but there's a more obvious one.

Unbelievable boloney.  Druids can maybe last the longest of the three you mentioned if there's a very small battle so that there's not enough concentrated fire hitting them to prevent them from healing when they switch to human form.  But if they're being hit from multiple directions, they'll die quickly.  Shamans, same thing.

If they stand there and heal. Smart druids and shaman know when they're being focus fired and immediately travel-form/ghost wolf and get the hell out. It presents the attackers with a conundrum: chase down the target and let the rest of the team rip them up, or change targets to something closer (and let the druid/shaman get back and start healing). In general, you have to pick the second choice because chasing down a ghost wolf or travel form on foot can result in quite the merry chase and a lot of death. The moment a new target starts receiving damage, the druid/shaman starts bombing in heals from 40 yards away. It's a tough situation to be in.

[Drasca]

It's often said warlocks are balanced by frustration and they too suffer from the mercy of the prng at times. [right][snapback]93991[/snapback][/right]

You're right that warlocks have control over their damage (mostly).

Its not the prng that bothers me. Its the skills and talents that are bugged, don't work as advertised or devs completely neglect through CM response "Working as intended" or we can't be smegged to care.

You're familiar with the CC warping bug, yes? It isn't lag snapback, the local client inherently reports wrong position from the server, and when the mob breaks out of CC, they're in a different position--usually right on top of you. This bug makes good arguement for warriors to purposefully pop sheeps rather than wait for them to eat non-tanks. Unfortunately, when combined PvP and a requirement to 'face your target' for spellcasting, and the fact that fear randomly chooses a direction for the feared target to run in, it is impossible to direct a spell toward a feared target. Enemies are essentially invisible until client/server's corrected.

That's one example. About 2/3 of our skills, including 31 pt talents are dispellable or cleanseable (so glad pallies can't offensively dispel).

Difficult to use what's available, and bugged available talents. Gee. Great.

You have no control over your DPS, I have little control over any abilities actually bloody working. I feel like a tinker gnome. I try to cast, and it blows up in my face. Goodbye proc, goodbye 6 seconds trying to cast. Spell interrupted? Where from? They didn't use any abilities on me. Oh bugger. Pet does something odd (which I have almost no control over), and I get punished for it.

Yes, I can stack the deck, play it safe, and change my playstyle... but the fact is, the bugs shouldn't be there in the first place. Warlocks are punished for difficult to avoid bugs that shouldn't exist.

Did you know Life drain and mana drain are dispellable? You can cleanse them off yourself. Is starfire and arcane missles dispellable? Mind flay? (Not that anyone with half a wit uses starfire, or AM much in pvp) But the fact it is dispellable is sick and thus makes it unreliable. What works? Duh.... Make it a challenge for warlocks! Yeah.

I don't approve of relying on prng with Ruin builds, but I wholeheartedly supported one-two shotting mounted foes with 3-4k shadowbolts. Why? Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors, heck even Mages, attempt it all the time. Its a means to fight back. Not reliable, but the most of warlock abilities simply aren't. When haven't I been ambushed/backstabbed? Aimed shot from shadowmeld & pet sent at me, frost trap / aimed shot from distance when I have no felhunter out, fear immune warrior charged and mortal struck.

Where is the means of reliable retaliation? That seems to be the question.

[Kevin]

Yeah I agree that warlocks suffer more from bugs than any other class but at least you got my point that paladins face the same frustrations, but it's not from bugs it's from the design of the class, though there are bugs that do hurt (judging crusader any rank will still only add 30 damage to a seal of command crit when it should be adding more for one)

I have no problem with crit kills of mounted foes if you get so lucky. But again you can still have some control on your DPS, and your problems aren't as severe in PvE where the paladins still persist in many cases in PvE and PvP.

That was all I was getting at. Since you know very well the pain of the warlock, the paladin feels very similar pain as well though from a different source. Just something that I wanted to make sure was getting across.

I do wish the would fix lock bugs and address many of their other issues as well.

Paladins are not gods and they are not completely gimped either. The real issue as several are trying to point out is they are so very very limited compared to other classes. Even the bugged warlock, as you said can "Yes, I can stack the deck, play it safe, and change my playstyle...". Paladins can't. There is one, and only one playstyle where they are effective. Though I will concede do to other issues with the game world (that Skan pointed out) that one and only one thing they can do well they are probaby too good at.

[JustAGuy]

So, you want to know how Paladins differ from how they are described in that html link you provided, from WC3, to WoW. To quote the aforementioned page:

Paladins are described as:

Upholders of the Holy Light and defenders of the Alliance. ... Wielding their mighty hammers and the strength of the Light, these holy warriors command forces in battle, continuously throwing themselves into the fray wherever the fighting is the thickest

With Blizzard's current implementation, this is what they are. They defend, and ... uphold the holy light. They sure do wield mighty hammers. They do throw themselves into the fray. Notice, holy warrior.

The Paladin is a mix of a melee fighter and a secondary spell caster.

At current, no. Not even close to a mix. He's described as a secondary spell caster. Currently, spell casting is his primary function, as he has no real damaging melee abilities (aside from the bandaid Hammer of Wrath). But, that sentence describes his role in a party, wherein he's the "secondary spell caster" to be sure.

Paladins are pretty hard to kill, thanks to their assortment of defensive abilities.

Definitely true, no one refutes this.

Paladin can also heal with Holy Light, unlike other combat classes.

They refer to him as a combat class. My feeling is that they mean "combat class" as in "melee class". Every class can engage in combat, therefore every class is a combat class. As far as Paladin being a melee class, it's pretty clear that he is not.

The Paladin is an Undead specific fighter as well, with several abilities designed to be used against the Undead.

This should be changed to "undead only fighter", because as far as fighting goes, he doesn't do much against humanoids. He cleanses and heals vs humanoids, and only against undead, he can do real damage.

Now, that was blizzard's preamble. They continue with a bulletted list of strengths and weaknesses. This is where they list him as a "melee fighter" that can also heal. This is where you seem to think I have gotten the impression that he should be more than he is. Well, it's one of his "strengths", isn't it? The preamble I just read told me he's a melee fighter. The strengths told me he's a melee fighter. Shouldn't he be a melee fighter then? He isn't, and that's where Blizzard's false advertisement has me ticked-off. He's not, and he should be.

Also in the strengths is "Can wear the heaviest of armors". Why would he need the heaviest of armors if he's not in melee range? In practice, he's not needed to be in melee range, he could hang out at the back with the clothies. In theory, he's suppose to be in the thick of it, like they said in the preamble, causing a ruckus with his melee prowess. The armor is only needed for that purpose, and nothing else. For healing, there's plenty of better cloth items he could be wearing. In his current implementation, the Paladin does not need plate, nor does he need "[not] as many weapon types as the Warrior". He could use a wand for all I care. He'd still be as effective as he is now. The only reason for a big weapon is to use it. He does not.

Now there's another section, that describes his class role.

Paladins are the consummate knights in shining armor, meant to be in the thick of things.

Well, I suppose he is. He's in the thick of it, he's got shining armor alright.

Their defensive abilities allow them to stand toe to toe with monsters and take a beating - they are tanks overall.

They do take a beating, but they are not tanks in the WoW sense of the word. A tank takes damage and holds aggro. Only a well played Paladin with an intentionally easy-on-the-dps party can accomplish this, but it's not because of the Paladin's abilities. This is a player-skill issue, and not how the class plays.

This is not the sole purpose of a Paladin, of course; their auras, seals, heals and resurrection spells give them the chance to act as a support healer.

Well, yeah.


The rest of Blizzard's page goes into detail about his available skills. One tibit I found interesting, was this:

Two-Handed Weapons vs. Shield and One-Handed Weapons
Both are great. A two-handed weapon is good against monsters with a lot of armor. A one-handed weapon is better against monsters you wish to interrupt and against monsters with less armor. You might want to train both up and switch between them.

This implies that the Paladin, at some point, either had or was to have a shield-bash maneuvre to interrupt spells. Currently, he can only stun with that devestating 6-second job he can do. So, in actuality, 2-handed vs 1-h + shield is a non-issue, because his damage output is so miniscule to begin with and his spell interruption is independent of his weapon setup. You'll notice, also, that shield bash ended up being a Warrior ability.

So, as far as how the Paladin is advertised, he is advertised as melee more than once. It is made to sound like he is going to be a threat in combat not just for his healing, but for his damage capability.

Here's a tidbit on the Shaman page:

The Shaman is similar to a Paladin without as much armor.

Not even close. Even their healing abilities are dissimilar.

So, the Paladin plays much differently than how he is described in the page you linked. I'd quote some more, but I'm at the limit of quotes that this forum software can handle.

As far as how different the Paladin plays in WC3 to WoW, the difference is in the combat. The Paladin runs in, with an aura selected, and bashes things with his hammer. He uses divine shield when necessary, and throws some heals around. That's exactly how he plays in WoW. The problem is, that's not fun. People agree with me when I say it's not fun. Having no push-to-attack combat abilities makes him boring. This is World of Warcraft, not Warcraft 3; the way the Paladin plays is acceptable in an RTS game, but in a MMORPG, you should be in more command of your character. You can buff and heal, sure, but with respect to combat, there's not much you can do except "click... wait...". This is not fun and not intended (from what Blizzard has stated on their page). The WC3 Paladin should be similar to the WoW Paladin. Currently, they are much too similar.

BUT, all of this is just crap anyway. None of the stuff written on that page matters, because it was written during the beta, at a time when the classes were all still in flux. It's my opinion that they never actually finished the Paladin, and having played him in the beta and having played him recently, there's not much difference in how broken he was then, and how broken he is now.

[mjdoom]

If they stand there and heal.  Smart druids and shaman know when they're being focus fired and immediately travel-form/ghost wolf and get the hell out.  It presents the attackers with a conundrum: chase down the target and let the rest of the team rip them up, or change targets to something closer (and let the druid/shaman get back and start healing).  In general, you have to pick the second choice because chasing down a ghost wolf or travel form on foot can result in quite the merry chase and a lot of death.  The moment a new target starts receiving damage, the druid/shaman starts bombing in heals from 40 yards away.  It's a tough situation to be in.
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Nothing is more annoying... Oh, he's almost dead, one more shot to execute... OH CRAP! He's running away, intercept on cooldown, ARGH! :P With travel form my only hope to stop that druid from running and resetting is to pray that I can intercept without getting myself swarmed and killed. Shamans usually don't even bother with ghost wolf; they drop an Earthbind totem and slow everyone down to let themselves get away.

This was supposed to be a pally change thread but I guess we devolved to some PvP stuff so I shall follow:

I play a pretty well equipped warrior and I must say that I am pretty powerful even though I don't sport the big bad Mortal Strike (I can't stand slow 2h weapons). Give me a dedicated healer and I need to be seriously focus fired to be taken down in my offensive gear; put me in my tank gear trying to run a WSG flag and I can run straight through the horde with a decent support team. The mentions of warriors being powerful have merit...

But, we can still be countered and I think Bliz is working things out. It used to be that if I ran across a warlock without a succubus that warlock was dead. Period. Now that deathcoil is actually useful warlocks with solid gear can give me a run for my money and certainly delay me a bit longer in the worst case. Time is money in BGs when you have organized teams and 2 or 3 seconds can be the difference in a flag cap attempt in Arathi Basin.

Mages are slowly starting to get more damage boosts as Blizzard is finally adding to the pool of +damage gear equipment. This was a necessary thing but now that it's happened I'm not sure that mages are THAT gimp. The mage is one of the few classes that can delay their death when under severe focus fire via blink and ice block. Sure, a focused effort will still kill them; but once again time is money. HKs are always nice but sometimes it's those delayed deaths that have the greatest effect on winning and losing.

I also see complaints about resists and the like. Sure there is decent amounts of resist gear out there but who wears all of that in PvP? If I want to be a big bad warrior that people fear I'm not running around with any significant amount of resistance. Even if I decide to try to pile on resistances I have to pick what I want... being highly resistant to shadow, frost, and fire at the same time is not really possible. If the other team is highly loaded to priests, fire mages, or frost mages I can try to tailor it but that's not a common theme. I'm not a miracle worker... in the rock/paper/scissors world I have some advantages over certain casters but still if I face two casters I'm as good as dead without a friend.

This makes me think of one of our priests in my guild. I could duel Heda forever and ever and with my lack of MS I will never win; even with it I'm not sure if I could. Sure this does not directly translate to BGs but that's kind of my point. If people load up and spend talents in such a way as to beat your class then they will with any skill (surprise!). If things are arranged the other way around then the results will be opposite. For example MS warrior vs. fire mage will probably produce different results then Fury warrior vs. ice mage.

It's always easiest to see your side of the fence though.

As for paladins; they certainly make good defenders. This is especially due to the time is money thing. Paladins are great for delaying incoming rushes in order to allow backup to come. Druids, Shamans, and Mages have some extent of this ability as well. Thanks to their bubble they have a way to delay even overwhelming forces which I think is where some of the (warranted) frustration comes from. Thankfully this (and LoH) are on a long cooldown which can be exploited if you are smart about it. The counter is that they are not so great for offense.

If you want to talk about balance between factions (as opposed to amongst classes) you have to look at Paladins vs. Shamans. With the combination of ghost wolf and earthbind Shamans have some delay tactics at their disposal but they still don't match the pally. The shaman will add more offensive capabilities and utilities though. In the end it is not much more than a simple tradeoff. Everyone on one side of the fence wants a piece of the other's pie but the reality is that for faction balance you simply get some more offense for Horde and some more defense for Alliance.

As for class balances, imo superior numbers and skills outweigh everything in group PvP. Better gear helps immensly but unless the gear gap is huge it doesn't always turn the tide of battle; it just expedites the effects of the superior skills, numbers, and tactics. The relative skills of the various classes will be used well by a good group and will be wasted by ragged PUGs. This is simply how the game works and I don't see much problem with it.