Divine Shield

[Arnulf]

First off, I'm playing a dwarf paladin on a PvP server.

I've followed the discussion in the CTF thread and thought it would be good to divert the discussion about the paladin's supposedly greatest asset to a place where people either can ignore it or contribute to.

I can only speak of my own experience of course, and I'm playing a protection paladin on a PvP server. I know fully well that the build I have (13/38/10) is not very good for PvP. I made it to tank in instances for my guild mates, which somehow works. With a little support from my friends ("No I don't use scattershot when you're tanking ;)")

That being said I've had my share of PvP encounters, many in the form of getting attacked while doing quests. But recently also many where both of us got into the fight with eyes open. Actually I loathe to use Divine Shield. In many cases it only delays the inevitable (my death, or a draw). I know that I'm not the best paladin player on my server, but I believe that I have some viable tactics and tricks under my belt. Can't speak much of Battlegrounds though.

When I'm activating Divine Shield I'm basically signalling: "Timeout! I need healing, do whatever you want in the meantime..." I've seen rogues calmly sitting down eating, warriors using bandages, or gaining distance for a charge. As far as I know shamans can use Purge (Rank 2?) to remove the shield, but did not experience that on myself. Running away while shielded is of course ridiculous. Especially against warriors. Druids and shamans can prevent me from escaping quite effectively, and there is always the risk of running into mobs and taking a 10% durability loss.

Just yesterday I was training my unarmed skill on champions in the Eastern Plaguelands when I got attacked by an Orc warrior. I didn't bother to switch in my hammer and proceeded to pound only with fists (maybe I get that last skill point while doing this? who knows...) Anyway, he was taking his sweet time to get me down, and I did the usual thing, DS for a heal, Repentance for a breather and heal, Lay of hands when both mana & health were down. About halfway into the fight an Undead warrior walked up and watched the fight. He didn't join, but they were clearly having a discussion over the /say channel while the fight was going. I don't know what they were talking about, but no way in hell was I going to shield myself and run.

So what can I do? I can use laying of hands, repentance, hammer of justice, several blessings. But eventually I'll be out of options and going down. There were only two cases where the opponent just gave up out of frustration and ran away. Not much I can do to prevent that either. I know how frustratingly hard it can be to kill a paladin. Just go to Hearthglen and take on two at a time and you will see what I mean. But eventually we're going down like everyone else.

Divine Shield is useful no doubt, but I believe paladins in general have to pay a high price in other departments for it. I've got the feeling that all these paladins that go the retribution route (Consecration/Blessing of Kings/Seal of Command) are doing this out of desperation to get a good damage output. I haven't tried a Holy build yet, but I think that paladins suck as healers. Certainly I do. If the priest/druid in my party goes down (because of my negligence) than it's basically end of story. My flash of light is too weak, and my holy light is too mana costly and too slow.

But still I love my little dwarf pally. It's probably like driving a Volkswagen beetle (the old ones). You know about its weaknesses and strengths but you won't swap it for a better car, ever.

-Arnulf

[Brista]

I think you may be underestimating the possibilities that are open to you simply because of your long survival time

If you assess the relative combat capabilities and decide you can't win in a slogging match you can
- kite a warrior into a huge sea of mobs, then bubble and hope some of them eat him before they eat you
- run to an alliance town
- call for help in chat and kite the warriors into friendly players
- kite the players along the road and hope you meet someone
- use engineering or potions to gain a movement advantage (swiftness potion, net-o-matic, rocket boots)
- lastly, a speculative one, what happens if you jump off a cliff and bubble as you fall? does it prevent falling damage?

I would say that the strength of a paladin in pvp, especially a protection-specced one is that you are at the bottom of every opponent's targetting priorities. This is a huge tactical advantage. Logically to gain your advantage you must introduce other alliance players into the fight. Once there are other alliance players involved then you will get the other team advantages discussed in the ctf thread, basically that if they target you it's an exercise in frustration and if they target your ally you heal him/her

With regard to the bubble I think that one of it's biggest effects is psychological. It's demoralising to almost kill a pally and see the bubble and a heal (or bandage, since most fights are about attrition it's very good if you can use a bandage rather than a mana based heal)

The weakness of the bubble is that it can't cope with sustained pressure. In ctf matches 5 minutes is a pretty long time so if the horde victimises a paladin methodically they will usually catch him with his bubble on cooldown. Of course this almost never happens since most Horde are so frag-oriented and always seek the easiest path to the contribution points. But at least in theory, a good team can persistently catch the paladin without 3 of his big tricks simply because they have long cooldowns (Blessing of Protection, Divine Shield and that spell that heals anyone to full once per hour for whatever mana you have left)

Strategically I think the gameplan of a pvp paladin should be to enhance the reputation for being unkillable. Never give the opponent an easy kill, and certainly don't just stand there and let him win by patience. From the perspective of a mainly horde player and an active pvper I would always accept a guaranteed but slow kill and I think 99% of pvpers would do likewise

I have lost to paladins with my hunter (who is generally a very successful pvper). Where I've lost it's been part sloppiness but also partly down to good movement. I tend to think that if my pet takes damage it's time to stop and shoot and one excellent paladin player caught me out that way by hitting the pet then running in to whack me up (I took some damage while getting a Wing Clip on him, which was necessary because I cant use aspect of the cheetah to outrun someone who's hitting me because of the daze effect). He clinched it with Hammer of Justice. I was very impressed with how he anticipated hitting the pet would make me stop and consequently ran up to me fast enough that I decided to Wing Clip before running

I see great potential for paladins in pvp

- never give anyone an easy frag. They'll remember you and come for you again

- be ambitious. Getting him killed and you killed is a lot better than letting him kill you. Paying a few silver for repairs is trivial compared to letting pvpers victimise you on a pvp server

- enjoy it. It's simply more fun trying to win than just turning passive and thinking "woe is me, I'm doomed"

- you're a herd animal, your best pvp tactic is to lure someone into your herd. If you're alone find company or simply run along the road in the direction of the nearest alliance base

- horde players waver between contempt and frustration where paladins are concerned. You work much better against discouraged opposition so never give people an easy win and always strive for maximum frustration. The two qualities are yin and yang - the more frustrated they are the worse they will play against you and the more cheap wins you give away the more they will attack, the more they will catch you with abilities on cooldown and the more they will think pallies are easy cp

- engineering is huge for a pally. No other class gets such advantage from a profession. If you don't have it you need to think hard about dropping your current skills and taking it up. If you do have it re-read the list of products, there are many many ways to offset your class's weaknesses

- gain cp's by striking at advantage. In a typical busy raid a priest will spend 50% of the time dead and not getting cps where you should almost never die. So it's very important to teach the opposition by example that you're too dificult a target to bother with. The more intimidated they are the less often they'll go for you which means the more often your special butt-saving tricks will be off cooldown when they do try and kill you, which in turn will enhance your seeming invulnerability. You're probably best doing a lot of hitting when the horde are focus firing someone else if your goal is simply to maximise your own cps. Bear in mind though that what you're hitting needs to go down or you won't get points. Healing will get you some cps but anecdotally it seems to be less effective than killing. Dispel doesn't seem to get you any cps at all. If you care less about cps and more about your team winning then the order is probably reversed: 1. dispel 2 healing 3 hitting. This analysis, if correct, indicates a 2hander for when you want to focus on cps and a shield for when you want to focus on team success

(*all theorycraft, my pally's only 20)

[oldmandennis]

It seems I am the "voice of the shammys" here for some reason.

Purge does NOT work on the "save yourself" shield. It may work on the "save anyone" blessing.

[Concillian]

I haven't tried a Holy build yet, but I think that paladins suck as healers. Certainly I  do. If the priest/druid in my party goes down (because of my negligence) than it's basically end of story. My flash of light is too weak, and my holy light is too mana costly and too slow.
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Yet another 'I give up without even trying scenario' I haven't played my paladin much, but I can look at the mana efficiency and yep, Paladins are right on a par with everyone else on mana efficiency and not far behind on healed per second

Your real heal is 2.5 seconds, but that IS doable as a secondary healer.

- The best holy talents for healing are all within the first three tiers, so you can easily get other useful talents

- going INT/STAM like a proper healer plays BIG TIME into your strength... being hard to kill. As does making your heals more effective. I come up against paladins in BG that have enough mana for like two or three heals and that's it and I'm always totally confused. INT is tremendously important as a pally, it's like 3 health for every mana.

- spiritual focus + concentration makes you the ONLY healing class to never lose casting time, which partially offsets your time to heal, again this plays to your strength of being virtually impossible to take down. It also lets you heal yourself WHILE you tank or PvP, something I think is infinitely more valuable than having like 0.5% more DR or whatever piddly amount paladins have with the aura they tend to insist on using. This also means you can bandage while you bubble so you can regen mana during that time, rather than heal, because you don't HAVE to be bubbled to heal.

- In PvP people will focus on healers ... unless you're a palading because you're a pain in the ass to bring down. You can contribute huge as a healing pally.

Pallys make good healers, you just haven't tried. The best thing is, that it fits into whatever else they want to do, as there are fewer than 20 talent points required to be pretty decent. Really 14 points can make a pretty good pally healer. INT/STAM makes sense anyway for a pally, concentration + spiritual focus rocks for a tanking pally and PvP pally

Also in PvP, using blessing of light or blessing of wisdom plays more to your strength of 'outlast the opponent' than the amount of damage that blessing of might offers. Especially if you are healing others (something that seems quite rare, and usually I'm horde, so that makes me happy). I know I haven't played a paladin much, but I know which types of paladins I dread coming across most, and it generally isn't the kind who think they can beat me down with their uber-DPS. It's the kind that heal their teammates, and 1 on 1 take 3 minutes to kill because they have 9 lives and 5000 mana.

[MongoJerry]

Also in PvP, using blessing of light or blessing of wisdom plays more to your strength of 'outlast the opponent' than the amount of damage that blessing of might offers.  Especially if you are healing others (something that seems quite rare, and usually I'm  horde, so that makes me happy).  I know I haven't played a paladin much, but I know which types of paladins I dread coming across most, and it generally isn't the kind who think they can beat me down with their uber-DPS.  It's the kind that heal their teammates, and 1 on 1 take 3 minutes to kill because they have 9 lives and 5000 mana.

Bravo. I couldn't say it better.

[Warlock]

Paladin healing is actually quite good. The 'slow' Holy Light is a full second faster than healing touch and roughly as efficient (a bit less without Blessing of Light, a bit more it). No Innervate, no Nature's Swiftness, no Rebirth, no Rejuvenation... but a custom blessing for every party member, wider choice of armour hence potentially much less squishy while healing, a faster main heal that can force a mana-free crit and reach 100% prevention of casting delay, a weak but efficient heal for those low mana moments, unlimited non-combat res, a shield for the nuke-happy mage, lay on hands...

Suffice to say that if I ever take my Paladin back up I'll be looking for Int, Sta and Spirit gear.

[Arnulf]

Yet another 'I give up without even trying scenario'  I haven't played my paladin much, but I can look at the mana efficiency and yep, Paladins are right on a par with everyone else on mana efficiency and not far behind on healed per second

Your real heal is 2.5 seconds, but that IS doable as a secondary healer. 

- The best holy talents for healing are all within the first three tiers, so you can easily get other useful talents

- going INT/STAM like a proper healer plays BIG TIME into your strength... being hard to kill.  As does making your heals more effective.  I come up against paladins in BG that have enough mana for like two or three heals and that's it and I'm always totally confused.  INT is tremendously important as a pally, it's like 3 health for every mana. 

- spiritual focus + concentration makes you the ONLY healing class to never lose casting time, which partially offsets your time to heal, again this plays to your strength of being virtually impossible to take down.  It also lets you heal yourself WHILE you tank or PvP, something I think is infinitely more valuable than having like 0.5% more DR or whatever piddly amount paladins have with the aura they tend to insist on using.  This also means you can bandage while you bubble so you can regen mana during that time, rather than heal, because you don't HAVE to be bubbled to heal.

- In PvP people will focus on healers ... unless you're a palading because you're a pain in the ass to bring down.  You can contribute huge as a healing pally. 

Pallys make good healers, you just haven't tried.  The best thing is, that it fits into whatever else they want to do, as there are fewer than 20 talent points required to be pretty decent.  Really 14 points can make a pretty good pally healer.  INT/STAM makes sense anyway for a pally, concentration + spiritual focus rocks for a tanking pally and PvP pally

Also in PvP, using blessing of light or blessing of wisdom plays more to your strength of 'outlast the opponent' than the amount of damage that blessing of might offers.  Especially if you are healing others (something that seems quite rare, and usually I'm  horde, so that makes me happy).  I know I haven't played a paladin much, but I know which types of paladins I dread coming across most, and it generally isn't the kind who think they can beat me down with their uber-DPS.  It's the kind that heal their teammates, and 1 on 1 take 3 minutes to kill because they have 9 lives and 5000 mana.
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Good points. And I acknowledge them. I will certainly try a holy build.

To clarify my intentions: if it came over as someone who's complaining about his supposedly sucky class, then I want to state that this is not the case. I like the paladin, just my experiences as 1on1 PvPer and main healer are like that I cannot cut it. But that's just me. I have experienced, on the other hand, that with me in a party, PvP is a fun experience and we can wreak havoc on enemy groups.

Also all my observations are from a level 60 character.

[Tal]

Yet another 'I give up without even trying scenario'  I haven't played my paladin much, but I can look at the mana efficiency and yep, Paladins are right on a par with everyone else on mana efficiency and not far behind on healed per second

Your real heal is 2.5 seconds, but that IS doable as a secondary healer. 

- The best holy talents for healing are all within the first three tiers, so you can easily get other useful talents[right][snapback]81892[/snapback][/right]

Have you compared base mana pools for paladins versus the other healing classes?

- going INT/STAM like a proper healer plays BIG TIME into your strength... being hard to kill.  As does making your heals more effective.  I come up against paladins in BG that have enough mana for like two or three heals and that's it and I'm always totally confused.  INT is tremendously important as a pally, it's like 3 health for every mana.  [right][snapback]81892[/snapback][/right]

The issue with that is that for most capped paladins INT and STAM on plate was very hard to come by for quite some time now. Its gotten much better than it used to be, especially with the addition of Lightforge but it used to be ugly. And finding intellect on mail and shields? Was very difficult pre 40 (seem to find more of it post 40 for some reason ;)) But yes as I have had this conversation with many a young paladin who builds gear for str/stam that INT and STAM is really the only way to go. (INT/SPR may also be viable but I haven't played much with it. Perhaps on the test server)

- spiritual focus + concentration makes you the ONLY healing class to never lose casting time, which partially offsets your time to heal, again this plays to your strength of being virtually impossible to take down.  It also lets you heal yourself WHILE you tank or PvP, something I think is infinitely more valuable than having like 0.5% more DR or whatever piddly amount paladins have with the aura they tend to insist on using.  This also means you can bandage while you bubble so you can regen mana during that time, rather than heal, because you don't HAVE to be bubbled to heal.  [right][snapback]81892[/snapback][/right]

Provided you're not facing a rogue with kick. I do find it useful however to heal at 80% to let the rogue burn his kick on me and then switch to concentration and heal uninterrupted when the kick has passed. :) Most paladins don't bother to switch their auras around in combat/PVP but I find I am more effective if I add that into my skill juggle. :D

Pallys make good healers, you just haven't tried.  The best thing is, that it fits into whatever else they want to do, as there are fewer than 20 talent points required to be pretty decent.  Really 14 points can make a pretty good pally healer.  INT/STAM makes sense anyway for a pally, concentration + spiritual focus rocks for a tanking pally and PvP pally[right][snapback]81892[/snapback][/right]

I must honestly state that I haven't played much with Spiritual focus but I don't think Paladins will ever be good main healers like a healing specc'd druid. Our lack of a heal over time means we spend even more time being a expectant healer than even druids do.

Also in PvP, using blessing of light or blessing of wisdom plays more to your strength of 'outlast the opponent' than the amount of damage that blessing of might offers.  Especially if you are healing others (something that seems quite rare, and usually I'm  horde, so that makes me happy).  I know I haven't played a paladin much, but I know which types of paladins I dread coming across most, and it generally isn't the kind who think they can beat me down with their uber-DPS.  It's the kind that heal their teammates, and 1 on 1 take 3 minutes to kill because they have 9 lives and 5000 mana.
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A little hint that a lot of paladins don't seem to understand. Judging seal of light or mana in conjunction with blessing of light and wisdom goes far more towards your surviveability as a paladin. This is how many paladins are able to solo even-con elites or even take on 3 to 4 opponents and string together multiple fights without stop.