Pally Changes

[Rinnhart]

Actually, combining blessing of light with flash of light allows for some very good healing.  blessing of light gives flash of light 150 additional health.
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It also occupies another blessing's slot and effects only paladin heals.

[Rinnhart]

I completely agree the paladin class can be quite dull at times. And their talents are lackluster, I empathize. You leave out some pretty crucial things to make the "paladins are underpowered" argument though.

- Two lengthy posts about how you feel paladins are inferior to among other classes, yet not mention their survivability? No class comes close to matching them.

Bull#$%&. We last 12 seconds longer than any other class IF shield is up. If it's down, we die as fast as anyone else, if not faster than any other healer due to a lack of a decent fast heal or defensive spell besides shield.

Against well played casters and hunters, we're easily kited and burned down, against well played rogues, out lack of ranged ability is mercilessly exploited, and against warriors- again, if shields are down, we die like everyone else.

- Considering mana to heal ratio, paladins actually have the best short timer heal among classes.

A heal that is of only situational worth in pvp.

- Healing spells are much more mana efficient than damage spells.
JustAGuy, if you want PvP advice vs. shamans I'd be glad to help! Well-played paladins will win vs. a well-played shamans in 1v1 fights the majority of the time simply due to mana expenditure. It's just a matter of knowing what to expect from your opponent's class.

You wanna know how to kill a paladin as a shaman? Stop shocking and melee us except to interrupt our heals. You far outdamage us in melee and we have, assuming it's a protection build, two spells both on minute timers which we need to either interrupt your heals or stop the onslaught long enough to heal ourselves.

Anyway. I really hope the paladin talent changes are great. After seeing the druid changes I have some high hopes for the other two hybrid class talent changes when their times come. It would be excellent for both of these classes to have more variety and spice.
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They're going to suck. Blizzard has no clue what they want the paladin class to do.

[MissileToad]

Man. I'm really sorry but I don't know what to say other than "get better". If you think paladin defense is a joke, their heals are only situational at best, and you can't get around a 6 second cooldown interrupt with 1.5 second cast spells, I just don't know what to say.

[MongoJerry]

I actually just wanted to point out that the Paladin SHOULD play more interestingly than he does now, and in order for him to do so, the class must be recognized as borked so we can move forward, toward a bright future of Pallies completely owning in PvP and so forth.

In other words, the way things are right now.

Unfortunately, the fact is, with respect to combat, the Paladin is inferior to the Shaman. An un-talented crit-shock goes for 700-800 damage, and with talents, 1000-1200 damage. This is on-demand, instant, spell interrupting or enemy slowing goodness. The Paladin has nothing like that, not even close...

The argument can be made that a Paladin is also inferior in healing, thereby making the Paladin, in his two areas of "expertise", inferior overall. This means that the Alliance is gimped because they have a weaker faction-specific class.

You're not getting one thing: Paladins can't dish out as much damage, but Paladins don't die. Compared to all other classes in the short time scales that involve group PvP fighting, they are effectively invincible. Mix a paladin with another character -- particularly good combinations are paladin + warrior or 2 paladins -- and the results are just devastating. An Arathi Basin banner defence that has a paladin in the mix is mind numbingly hard to take down in time before reinforcements arrive. Two paladins? I've seen two well played paladins hold five experienced well equipped Horde players trying to attack them for an obscene amount of time. If everyone attacks one, that paladin gets healed. You crowd control one paladin, the other paladin dispells him. You mind control one paladin and the other hammer of justice's or repents you to break the mind control. If things get rough, one of the paladins finally bubbles and heals himself or the other paladin. When necessary, they throw on the other bubble to be immune from physical attacks. If the reinforcements haven't come by this time (and boy, that's an incompetent team for you) and it's a critical moment in a match, a laying on hands can be applied. Oh, and we haven't thrown in the obligatory engineering or alchemy fun, yet, either. Meanwhile, paladins are using plate and shields and absorbing obscene amounts of damage.

And, of course, while the enemy is wasting their time trying to kill those two #$@# paladins, the other 13 people in the Arathi Basin match are taking other banners. Paladins are the reason why the Alliance teams at Blizzcon dominated the top brackets of the Arathi Basin tournaments. You might think that priests are better healers than Paladins. But in a real fight, when all the priests are dead within 10 seconds of contact with the enemy and the Horde has no way to dispell sheep, charm, freezing traps, entangled roots, frost nova, or damage dots, suddenly those little "gimped" paladins and their dispells and heals start to look pretty good, don't they?

The price of effective invincibility is the lack of being able to deal out the damage. My greatest fear with all the talk of Paladin talent revisions is that Blizzard will finally cave and give paladins some high dps skills and talents. If they do, then paladins could then tank, heal, and dish out dps. Why would one bother to play any other class?

As far as taking a well played Paladin over a Shaman, that's a preference thing. I'd take a well played Shammy. The blessings are the trade-off; the nice thing about totems is that there are so many of them, and you can have 4 at once. With blessings you get one thing per person + aura, whereas you get 4 seperate things all at once, easily castable for any situation with Shammy. For the Paladin, there are a lot of things that the Shaman can't bring to the table, such as Salvation and Freedom. The Paladin can't AoE slow and clean poison off of 5 partymates at once, though. These trade-offs were supposed to be what make you attracted to either Paladin or Shaman.

There are some serious issues with totems. First, obviously, you have to be in the party with the shaman to get the buff. Second, the range on the totems is too small. Unless you stay clustered around the totems and make sure the fight stays all in one area (a not always realistic thing to do), your party won't get the buffs. (One of the tier two shaman set bonuses is to increase totem range -- but why should shaman have to wait until BWL to be able to make good use of their totems?). Third, many of the more useful totems are in the same totem schools of magic. For example, against Ragnaros, I ignorantly asked the shaman in our healing party why he didn't have a fire resist totem down and was informed that it's in the same school (water, I believe) as the mana spring totem. A paladin can put up a fire resist aura and throw mana regeneration blessings on healers. Shaman can't. Fourth, shaman typically have to use up their mana pools by dropping their totems in mid fight according to where the fight takes place for each and every fight, whereas a paladin can prebuff his or her party for several fights and drink before proceeding. The upcoming changes to 10-15 minute buffs would make this advantage even greater.

But the biggest thing is that Paladins can tailor their blessings according to the needs of each member of the party and/or raid group. Shamans have to choose. Are they going to drop a Windfury totem that would benefit warriors and shamans but rogues (because it doesn't stack with poisons) and hunters not at all? Or do they drop an agility totem that helps rogues and hunters but warriors and shamans very little? Do they drop resistance totems or mana regeneration totems? In addition, while paladins can run around with an armor buff on for free, shamans have to decide whether it's worth using up their mana during the fight to drop various totems for their parties.

PvP was the catalyst really. I crave it, I enjoy it, gotta have it. With the Paladin, having to rely on trickery instead of skill sealed it. Timing your stun and being basically a toothless animal when that Shaman casts purge on ya... If you're 1 on 1 with a Shaman, and he puts down a grounding totem and Earthbind, you put blessing of freedom, and attack the grounding (lest your stun be grounded). This is time that the Shammy loads up a lightning bolt and/or shocks and purgs you. Then you get to run up to him and stand there while you wait for a Seal of Command proc. What fun. You can understand, that for purposes of PvP, I went Horde and I'm not coming back until the Paladin gets fixed. Oh, and Windfury puts Seal of Command to shame. To shame!

You say that you don't want to focus on PvP and yet you say that PvP was really the catalyst for you. One falacy in your argument is that you make the mistake of believing that 1 v 1 dueling is somehow real PvP. Even though paladins do very well in 1 v 1 combat, where they really unbalancingly shine is in group combat. I think the problem is that your personality isn't suited to playing a defensive character. You seem to believe that PvP is primarily about dealing damage, but as someone who plays defensive characters, I know that crowd control, dispelling, and healing are equally and possibly more critical in PvP when you are trying to take or hold down a resource point or capture a flag. If your personality favors playing someone who likes to dish out damage, then definitely don't play a paladin. Play a rogue, hunter, warrior, mage, or maybe a shaman. If you like crowd control, play a mage, hunter, or warlock. But if you appreciate the finer points of the defensive "Oh my God! This guy just won't die and my sheeps don't last more than one second with him around and God he keeps healing the warrior who's pwning our priests and shamans" game, then you should play a paladin for PvP. It looks quite fun. I know it's not fun being on the other side of a fight involving a paladin, that's for sure.

[Rinnhart]

In other words, the way things are right now.
You're not getting one thing:  Paladins can't dish out as much damage, but Paladins don't die.

Oh, yes, this line again. :rolleyes:

Let's pick the one situation where paladins aren't worthless and pick it apart. Let's completely ignore the fact that two shamans, druids, or priests could do the same and also kill at least some of their attackers. And they can do it more than once every five minutes.

[Drasca]

Let's pick the one situation where paladins aren't worthless
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One? That's the only one that matters. I wholeheartedly agree with MJ here. Plate damage physical damage reduction, moderate stamina coupled with cheap heals, damage negation and damage debuff interrupts is overwhelming when a Pally actually plays his defensive class.

Pally's aren't in the spotlight in PvP, but pair'em up and the results are sick.

Druids can either tank and kite, or sacrifice a lot of staying power for rogueish dps without the single target stun / disorient abilities (which ruins real pvp use). Druids being buffed so much in the past few patches... fine. They're the 'it' cool class to be right now.

Shamans: Are in mail, and have extremely mana costly totems. I love my shock troop shamans, but they are not cleanse/heal in plate. Coordinated shamans will take down Paladins, but shaman are anti-every caster... so long as the battle doesn't last long. They cannot 'survive' an onslaught like Paladins or Druids can.

Priest: Cloth. Need I say more? Priest bubbles don't survive dispels. Their damage reduction is in cloth alone is simply not enough. When worse comes to worse, they're just torn up while Paladins take less than half the damage and shrug off damage and snares with flash of light healing and cleanse dispelling

My greatest fear with all the talk of Paladin talent revisions is that Blizzard will finally cave and give paladins some high dps skills and talents. If they do, then paladins could then tank, heal, and dish out dps. Why would one bother to play any other class?

Exactly. Back when WSG was played, my biggest fear was seeing more than one paladin. In fact, more than one paladin anywhere in open pvp was simply too much trouble to go through.

[Rinnhart]

Man. I'm really sorry but I don't know what to say other than "get better". If you think paladin defense is a joke, their heals are only situational at best, and you can't get around a 6 second cooldown interrupt with 1.5 second cast spells, I just don't know what to say.
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If you can't out DPS one Flash of Light every six seconds all I can say is "get better". PvP healing is about dumping life as fast as possible. Flash of Light is efficient, but it's a garbage combat heal except under specific circumstances.

Paladin defense is a joke. I'm not denying that they can soak up some physical damage (and even in that regard, a rogue with decent HP is about our equal thanks to massive avoidance over mitigation), I'm saying calling paladins the "defensive hybrid" or "invulnerable" is bull#$%& when that defense doesn't exist 96% of the time. The single difference between the shield and any other defensive ability is that it cannot be countered. Of course, it also doesn't do anything to protect your fellows, whereas abilities such as stuns, roots, fears, and crowd controls can be used in defensive capacities to the benefit of others. What does a paladin do while shielded? Heals himself and others with impunity. Nothing that cannot be done during the pause generated by any stun, root (assuming a lack of ranged interrupts), fear, or CC ability or simply by nature's swiftness, of which, is there a one that has as great a penalty as a 5 minute cooldown while still being essentially limited to such a narrow application?

Oh, sorry, they can hearth during that period, too.

This is one of those retarded things "they" have that "we" don't. The shield is garbage. But since the horde doesn't have it, it becomes a rallying cry for every slice of steaming newb pie that loses a fight.

We also have cleanse, which will shortly be decimated from any useful capacity in a heated fight thanks to them deciding to break the functionality of Decursive. I wonder how many more crutches we can kick out from under the gimp before he goes down. Without decursive, I promise you that there will be a noticeable alteration in the capablities of any paladin to handle debuffs, dots, and crowd control as a more defensive posture is really necessary to combat the #$%&ing onslaught brought down by all the instant cast crap. Which, really, is as it should be.

[Rinnhart]

Sap them! Seduce them! Fear them! Sheep them! Once the Divine Shield is gone, all they have is plate, and sorry, two out of the eight other classes do physical damage, that's 6 classes that are dealing damage the paladin might have the right aura up for.

Shed damage. Yeah, sure, whatever. Warriors and your average warlock are far tougher against spells thanks to larger hitpoint pools, and forget casting on a warlock that has a felhunter out.

Shamans mitigate slightly less than paladins, and if they didn't nuke, they'd be much better combat healers than paladins thanks to worthwhile flash heals, generally better caster stats on their gear, and actual healing spell talent progression. The only reason paladins "last longer" is we have nothing to spend mana on except heals. The rest of our mana-consuming abilities are rendered useless by the first rank of a talent.

Druids certainly can defend flags easier than paladins against massive groups, and they could before the patch, too.

Priests can fricken solo defend objectives. Their bag of tricks is deep and when well played they're arguably the most formidable class in pvp.

More to the point- any class can defend, especially in an organized group (oragnized being loosely used to define a group that actually responds when someone says "BS needs help").

Why should the performance of paladins in a single instance, that favors defensive play, be any rule of measure in defining the actual strengths and weaknesses of the class? Anyone who has played a paladin will testify to the shallow nature of the judgement system and bitter realities of the abysmal talents.

[MongoJerry]

Sap them! Seduce them! Fear them! Sheep them! Once the Divine Shield is gone, all they have is plate, and sorry, two out of the eight other classes do physical damage, that's 6 classes that are dealing damage the paladin might have the right aura up for.

You're assuming there's only one paladin? It's a rare AB or even CTF where there's only one paladin. And if you sheep or charm at the start of a fight, a priest or two might still be alive to dispel. Why would a paladin bother using Divine Shield to break out of sheep or seduce when their partymates can break them out of it for free? I suppose if they really had to, that's an option, but a paladin who wastes Divine Shield too early doesn't know how to play his or her class. The whole point of Divine Shield is that it's that it's that ever present ace in the hole. The paladin should be using every other trick in the book to keep alive first and only when there's finally enough damage directed at them Divine Shield, heal to full (possibly dispelling or healing other partymates), and laugh at the foolishness of the Horde players who wasted their time attacking the paladin while their party was being picked appart and crowd controled by the rest of the Alliance players.

Shed damage. Yeah, sure, whatever. Warriors and your average warlock are far tougher against spells thanks to larger hitpoint pools, and forget casting on a warlock that has a felhunter out.

You're going to honestly say that a warlock can last longer than a paladin in a fight? And even warriors can be killed -- unless they're being healed by paladins, of course.

Shamans mitigate slightly less than paladins, and if they didn't nuke, they'd be much better combat healers than paladins thanks to worthwhile flash heals, generally better caster stats on their gear, and actual healing spell talent progression.

Dispel, dispel, dispel. God, it's like banging my head against a brick wall. Why don't Alliance players get how unbalancingly powerful cleanse is? All Alliance players have to do is kill the squishy Horde priests and they can sheep, freeze trap, entangle roots, charm, frost nova, and dot all they want. All the paladin has to do is stand there and spam decursive while his or her teammates wipe the floor with the Horde team. I think that Alliance players don't realize how powerful crowd control spells are, because they're so used to not being crowd controled. Meanwhile, Horde is obsessed with it. Every AB game, I get our warriors shouting, "Need dispell!" after being sheeped, and I repeatedly have to call out, "I'm dead!" The Alliance side just doesn't have to worry about that with thier effectively invincible priests in plate.

[Quark]

(and even in that regard, a rogue with decent HP is about our equal thanks to massive avoidance over mitigation)
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Man, I don't even get how you can say that. You obviously have never tried "avoiding" damage PvP - where you benefit against two whole classes with dodge, and actually get hurt by another. You can't really have tried it raiding the endgame instances either, where as a Rogue you should never be the target, thus you're only taking AoEs and random target attacks. Half of those are magic based. Off the top of my head, I can't think of one MC boss fight that involves a physical AoE that's not avoidable simply by being behind the target. Any meleer who doesn't know the difference between the conical and circular AoEs deserves to die, anyway.

Give me stamina anyday over dodge.

Edit: wait, I got it! Golemagg when he goes pyscho near the end of the fight! One of the many times people say "no melee".

[Skandranon]

In other words, the way things are right now.

Sigh.

I firmly believe that Horde have even more of a complex about Paladins than Alliance have about Shamans. And given how much Alliance are freaked out about Shamans, that's saying quite a lot.

I don't deny that paladins in large group PvP have roles and are significant and powerful in their own way. I do argue against the Horde proposition that this constitutes omg overpowered imba, just as I'm usually the one pointing out to the Alliance that shaman aren't omg overpowered imba either.

You're not getting one thing:  Paladins can't dish out as much damage, but Paladins don't die.

This is an amusing myth. Paladins are only slightly more survivable than shamans, priests and druids on the battlefield - and that's if their shield is up. If their shield is down, they're not more survivable than any other healer class. Probably a little less.

Divine Shield's amusing because its greatest effect isn't making the paladin invulnerable. Its most powerful effect is scaring and demoralizing Horde players, which it does surprisingly often. Horde players look at a paladin, think, "if I attack him, he'll just bubble...I'm not going to bother". It's funny because Horde players would never think the same thing about a mage with ice block. They boast confidently about how mages who ice block are dumb and that it just delays their death by ten seconds. But a paladin? OMG noes. Let's not bother, they're invincible.

Plate matters, sure. I don't dispute that paladins take less damage from physical damage classes (though not significantly less; the mitigation difference between a paladin and shaman is around 10-12%, and disappears entirely if the paladin's using a two-hander and the shaman is using a shield). On the other hand, when the opposing team's focus-firing (and really, why would they not?) the majority of any character's survivability is not mitigation but healing. The paladin can dish out ~1400 points of healing every 2.5 seconds. In a desperate situation he can force crit it for about 2100 points. Shamans, meanwhile, get around 1k healing every 1.5 seconds, druids can get 1k with a 1k HoT every 2.0 seconds assuming they somehow miss their 50% chance to crit with regrowth, and priests can instantly shield 1k and flash heal for another 1k every 1.5s. Shamans and druids can NS-bigheal in desperate situations. When they're being focus-fired, I've seen shamans and druids and priests heal themselves through it. Paladins, however, have to bubble. They have nothing else.

Fun tip: send a beast specced hunter's pet into Bestial Wrath and unleash him upon a paladin. The paladin will have to burn a shield in order to live.

Paladins also are not immune to any form of spell interruption. You can screw with their heals the same way you can stop anyone else's. Counterspell, kick, pummel, earthshock (oh hi counterspell with 500 damage attached). Not only that, paladins have a bigger window than anyone else to interrupt. They can't even bubble out of it, since interrupting a heal puts all of a paladin's shields on cooldown.

The idea that a paladin somehow "doesn't die" more than any other healer is absurd. More upfront mitigation at the cost of far less healing trades off, in my opinion. And if you think a paladin doesn't die, you've clearly never bothered to focus fire a druid.

There are some serious issues with totems.

Granted. Yet I caution everyone not to underestimate earthbind, grounding, and tremor totems. Especially in Arathi, well placed Earthbind totems can stutter the Alliance flow of reinforcements badly. Tremor totems give the Horde an enormous advantage: fear-bombing is a powerful tactic and Alliance has no way to counter it, while the Horde does. As for grounding totems, they effectively pre-emptively cleanse all harmful debuffs on the party before they land, especially given their current bugged state where they absorb everything instead of just one thing every 10 seconds. Yeah, they can be tracked down and killed, but you'll find that very few people have the attention to spare to kill totems in the middle of fighting.

I know it's not fun being on the other side of a fight involving a paladin, that's for sure.
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And I think this is the core of the problem. No, it's not fun playing against a paladin (fyi: it's no fun playing against a shaman either). But that's not a reason to cry imbalance. The way human memory works, we all tend to remember the frustrating incidents and forget when we didn't have that hard of a time. Hence the overwhelming sentiment from Horde that DS is BS, and the strongly communicated impression from Horde that paladins can invuln whenever they feel like it and that they don't die. You remember the times when they don't die, you remember the times when they bubbled and healed to full and you hated it. You don't remember the times when they were countered or didn't have the shield up and died quickly.

[Tal]

To me the answer is simple - make paladin shield dispellable but give us more control over our DPS. And before anyone stops reading to reply hear me out. I'm not asking for more overall DPS. I'm asking for a way to CONTROL my dps rather than waiting on a lucky roll on the RNG. Playing a priest I can choose to fight slow and steady or burn a mob down fast with the shortcoming of having to drink afterwards. With a paladin I can choose to...do nothing. There is no skill I can use to speed up a fight at all.

Its amazing in group PvP against well played horde just how quickly I draw attention and damage. I start healing/cleansing and I get CC'd, or feared, or the priests mana burn me. If I pop my shield the horde just wait until I'm done and focus fire on me. I've yet to be in a group pvp situation where I was the last paladin standing.

And ask Quark how often anymore Sharanna beats him in duels without a lucky string of SoC procs? A well played rogue will lock me down in no time flat. Hell a good Shaman will give me a run for my shields like nobody's business with Priest's being the bane of my PvP existence.

[NotSoDarklord]

Paladins would cry bloody murder at their shields being instantly dispellled on sight every time ... we both know that sir ^_^

On a more serious note, it seems that paladins are KoS for a reason. Paladins are amazing in pvp in my opinion, and there are times when the class that I'd want the most by my side is a paladin. Survivability, heals, and buffs all in the form of one party member... I've pullled off some sick XvX's with my rogue whenever he had a paladin backing him up.

If paladins were as useless as people make them out to be. (As far as dps/healing go) I doubt the hk farming horde groups would make such a point of targetting paladins early on *shrug*

pstal: The only paladin that a rogue should lose to is a reckoning bomber with a nice weapon :)

[Tal]

Paladins would cry bloody murder at their shields being instantly dispellled on sight every time ... we both know that sir ^_^[right][snapback]93763[/snapback][/right]

Some paladins will cry no matter what. Me? I prescribe to Talesavo's motto: "Godshield is the anchor around our neck, drowning us."

pstal:  The only paladin that a rogue should lose to is a reckoning bomber with a nice weapon :)
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I used to have a 50/50 record versus rogues. Its now more like 25/75 now. :( Though I do like when the farmer's duel me and lose. ;) I'd like to try out a duel against a rogue with my new axe though :D

[Kevin]

Skan> While I agree with pretty much all this and while you touched on the debuff clearing I still think that for Mongo at least this is the biggest issue.

Cleanse is powerful. It's poweful in PvE and PvP. Totems are much harder to use reactively and while a well placed pro active totem is a pain, reactive totems (and you can't be reactive on a fear) do get killed. Alliance does have a more usable debuffer. Cross party debuffing as well as faster response to a single target. A reative totem takes time to pulse, heck a proactive totem still takes time to pulse. In all that I see from Mongo this really seems to be the sticking point. Though the horde has more people that can wipe buffs than alliance does but this doesn't seem as powerful since debuffs are stronger than buffs in most cases and situations.

I also agree that the horde would find their priest in mail more powerful if they had more people that played them as priests in mail. I remember in the past Mongo ripping paladins that tried to play offensively with lots of learn to play your class. But yet I never saw him rip shamans that played offensively when they can be damn powerful defensively as well.


Now I'll get to my point and not directly respond to Skan. Priest - can play offensively and defensively. Shaman - Can play offensively and defensively. Warrior - Can play offensively and defensively (though really they seem much better on offense). Druid - Can play offensively and deensively (though except for capping they seem to be more defensive). Mages - Can play offensively and defensively. Paladins - can play defensively get laughed at and killed quickly when trying to provide offense.

Do people see the issue there? Do peopel see what the paladins are complaining about? I would gladly give up some of my defensive abilities to have some damn control of my DPS.

I'm not going to claim that paired with another class paladins don't really start to shine and in PvP probably add more to a duo than any other class would. But except for priests how many other classes are pigeon holed into just do one thing in PvP? You have to play defensively all the time you don't have the option to do anything else. I just don't see this for other classes.

Oh well.

[NotSoDarklord]

Some paladins will cry no matter what. Me? I prescribe to Talesavo's motto: "Godshield is the anchor around our neck, drowning us."
I used to have a 50/50 record versus rogues. Its now more like 25/75 now. :( Though I do like when the farmer's duel me and lose. ;) I'd like to try out a duel against a rogue with my new axe though :D
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In my opinion, when the servers go up IT'S ON ^_^

[NotSoDarklord]

Paladins are unccable in group pvp. Blessing of sacrifice damage breaks it last I checked.

[NotSoDarklord]

Bull#$%&. We last 12 seconds longer than any other class IF shield is up. If it's down, we die as fast as anyone else, if not faster than any other healer due to a lack of a decent fast heal or defensive spell besides shield.

12 seconds is forever in pvp. Sure you can't attack... but you can heal. Hell. The extra 2-4 seconds that you might last due to having an extra 1k hp (over rogues/casters) or so is significant as hell in my opinion. Everything happens so fast in pvp that an extra second or two of survivability goes a long way. Look at the epic pvp gear.: tends to give classes an extra 1-1.5k hps that they normally wouldn't have in tier1 epics, it's only 1 or two extra seconds of life when being focus fired, but I've always found it makes a huge difference. Especially in things like WSG/AB where focus firing and outlasting are key. Yes these arguments only apply to group pvp... but then again I don't think people would argue that godshields aren't useful in smaller scale/1v1 pvp encounters

[savaughn]

You're not getting one thing: Paladins can't dish out as much damage, but Paladins don't die.
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MJ, you SERIOUSLY need to play a paladin.

I thought Shaman were horrifically evil terrible things. Then I played one, saw what it took to kill me, and can now do Very Bad Things to them.

You play a Priest. Killing a Paladin is trivial. You cast Mana Burn on him 3-4 times, hit him with a Dispel Magic, and he's done. Hell, if you want, at that point your Priest can probably beat him in melee. I've been wanding them to death because it makes me giggle. Can a Pally do well if you play to their strengths? Sure. They can rock/paper/scissors like the best of them. But they're not TERRIBLE INVULNERABLE KING OF ALL PVP THAT CAN LAST FOREVER OH DEAR GOD NO NO NO... I mean, seriously. If you have 5 guys that can't take down 2 pallys in fairly short order something's pretty wrong.


And a 23 paragraph set of diatribes on how Paladins are broken because of DECURSIVE... seriously, man... WTF? We all know for a fact that decursive is broken and breaks PvP. For that matter, complaining that Paladins are broken because cloth wearers have crap itemization and are killed by a single Epic dagger Ambush/Backstab combo... again - this is the Pally's fault?

[NotSoDarklord]

Priests can just melee a lot of classes... especially not-so-well geared ones. I've seen a priest melee hunters/paladins/warriors/rogues/mages... as long as they don't have a particularly devastating weapon.... it's sad.