Pally Changes

[vor_lord]

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?
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Ummm, last I checked you couldn't use Divine Shield to break out of sheep or seduce. At all. Never have been able to.

And I thought the Blessing of Sacrifice trick had been fixed, but I haven't played my paladin in so long I don't really know.

My opinion is that paladins as a class are broken. They are very powerful in a few situations when that $%#$#@ shield is available -- broken. Blessing of Salvation in a raid situation -- a little unbalancing, maybe broken. The majority of their skills are useless most of the time -- broken. Their talent trees are the weakest in the game (shamans have a lot of totally lame talents, but several very good ones to help make up for it).

The combination of (at least perceived) overpoweredness in some highly visible situations, and toothlessness elsewhere, makes a broken class.

I think caster itemization needs a lot of help. I think mages need a boost. I think rogues need to be a little less dependent on timers. I think the shaman talent trees really need to be redone. I think the priest holy tree needs to be looked at. Lots of things in the game need tweaking.

But no other class is broken fundamentally like the paladin is broken. This very thread is evidence of that -- Horde screams "Overpowered!" and paladins scream "Gimped!"

[MongoJerry]

Ummm, last I checked you couldn't use Divine Shield to break out of sheep or seduce.  At all.  Never have been able to.

You most certainly can. You can even cast it while silenced or mind controled, which is ridiculous. Divine Shield breaks you out of *everything*. Except Burning Adrenaline from Vael and Mark of Frost from Azuregos.

I believe the paladin PvP trinket also breaks poly.

[MongoJerry]

I don't deny that paladins in large group PvP have roles and are significant and powerful in their own way.

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.

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.

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. Priests? A holy/disc priest can be killed quickly by a single fear immune MS warrior. If a second person helps with damage, that's gravy. A fully shadow priest can survive a solo MS warrior, but meanwhile the priest has been occupied and isn't healing or dispelling his or her party (sheep, frost trap, entangled roots...), and anyway, there's never just one MS warrior on a priest.

Paladins on the other hand can HoJ and Repent opponents and heal to full if there's only a couple people beating on them. 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). Then, if there's enough fire directed their way, *bam* Divine Shield heal to full as well as dispel and heal other teammates. Oh, and if it's an important part of the match, Laying on Hands to full, too. To kill a paladin, you have to kill them four times. Meanwhile, of course, the Horde team is being slaughtered by the rest of the paladin's team.

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.

A mage can't heal or dispel while ice blocked. That's the cheesy part of Divine Shield. A paladin is fully functional while shielded, while a mage isn't. (The attack speed debuff doesn't matter, because attacking isn't the paladin's primary role anyway -- and a slow attack is enough to break someone trying to tap a banner, which is also ridiculous).

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.

Preaching to the choir there, but at least a paladin has two shield options to survive it. Priests just die from the pet and hunter's barrage.

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.

I have. Druids are tough. But they're only tough in bear form, when they can't heal other people. When they switch to human form, they go down like a stone. Besides, Druids (and shamans) can't dispel crowd control abilities, so they aren't as tactically important as paladins and priests. Once one team's dispelers are dead or controled, the fight is over -- at least in any reasonably skilled fight. Once sheeps, entangled roots, freezing traps, frost novas, slows, and damage dots aren't being dispelled, the fight's over.

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.

Earthbind totems are useful. Tremor totems? Come on, the range isn't big enough. Chances are that most of the party isn't in range for the tremor totem to help. The biggest advantage horde has is that they typically have some undead who can WOTF out of the fear. Of course, if Alliance priests are smart enough to be dwarfs, then they can Fear Ward important players anyway. (Well, OK, I admit that shadowmeld can be very nice, so yeah it can make sense to choose a night elf priest, too).

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.

No doubt that selective memory does play a role, but it's less of an effect than Alliance players think. The survivability of paladins goes beyond Divine Shield. They have plate+shield, two stuns, the physical immunity shield, and the ability to dispel all magic dots and snares. And Divine Shield is far more devastating that the Alliance players here are admitting. It lets the paladin live far longer than 12 seconds, because you only use DS as the last resort. If it takes 10 seconds to finally get that #$@# paladin down to a small amount of life (that's if you're concentrating fire on him), then DS lets the paladin survive 12 seconds, heal to full, and effectively start the fight over again. So that DS basically let the paladin live an extra 22 seconds, which is an eternity in a PvP fight. And all that time that the Horde team has been trying to kill that paladin, their team is being ripped to shreds. And all that time, Horde can't crowd control for anything.

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.

Yeah, in an outdoor 1v1 situation where you have an eternity to finish up a fight, a priest can use Mana Burn and eventually take down a paladin, but in the real world which is rarely 1v1, there's no way a priest is going to get off several 3 second casts of Mana Burn in a row. And anyway, a priest has more important things to do like healing and dispelling. The best thing to do is to run up to paladins and psychic scream them. Hopefully, that gives your team enough of a chance to take an Alliance player down before the paladin gets out of fear. Of course, the Alliance team is doing the same type of thing, so that's not a guarantee.

[MongoJerry]

And a 23 paragraph set of diatribes on how Paladins are broken because of DECURSIVE... seriously, man... WTF?

Since I only mentioned the use of decursive once in an offhand comment, I must assume that you didn't really read my post, and I ask that before responding to a post that you read it first. Paladins are broken due to their overpowering ability to survive to heal and to cleanse their team out of nearly all forms of crowd control. Whether they have decursive or not, that's incredibly powerful. If you don't understand that, then you're not getting the power of paladins in 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?

I never once said this, so I again must assume that you didn't actually read my post. Rogues don't bother me so much. I win some and lose some against them. It's not cloth wearer itemization that's broken. It's the MS + fear immunity warrior combination that is broken. Give a holy/disc priest a chance, please!

[Roland]

I think rogues need to be a little less dependent on timers.

Don't you touch my timer-based skills! We get along just fine without them, but ALL of our really powerful skills are timer-based. Get rid of that, and we are TRULY glass cannons. Without our abilities, we are NOTHING.

Rogues do need some TWEAKING. Certain talents and talent trees need a bit of reworking and/or replacing, and a few other minor changes here and there. But that's about it. We have our very serious deficiencies, and we do need our "love" too, but at least we can get by them. Although, it does suck being forced NOT to put points into a Talent simply because it almost BREAKS one of our skills. :P Now that's absurd.

IMHO, and I've said this before, Paladins need a small DPS boost. They should be able to contend with, but NOT outdue, a base Warrior, even a Defensive-oriented Warrior. They should NOT be able to contend with an Arms / Fury Warrior (who should, however, be able to contend with a Rogue, to some extent). They should ALSO have a few more, or a bit better, offense-oriented spells. Nothing game-breaking, but tweaking what they have or giving them one more option wouldn't hurt. Primarily, all their offensive spells target Undead only, which is absurd, given that only 1/8th the populace is Undead and MUCH less than that are monster undead. Make our spells work on everyone, not just Undead, and it'll be a great start.

And, as has been said before, Judgements, Seals, and to a minor extent Blessings need to be reworked. What worked in Beta was completely changed, and is now rather screwed up.

I don't want to see Paladins turned into unkillable casting warrior-gods. I DO want to see them have more versatility available to them, better Talent trees, and something to help them boost their damage a bit (enough to contend with a Druid in Bear form, for example). I do not think, nor can I ever imagine myself thinking, that they should be as powerful offensively as a Warrior, but they SHOULD be able to at least tank without the "click... wait..." syndrome.

[vor_lord]

You most certainly can.  You can even cast it while silenced or mind controled, which is ridiculous.  Divine Shield breaks you out of *everything*.  Except Burning Adrenaline from Vael and Mark of Frost from Azuregos.

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Well it has been a long time so I'm not too surprised I'm wrong about that. I'm surprised you can cast it while silenced or mind controlled, since you can't do it while feared (I tried that specifically -- if you can do that now, then something has definitely changed).

[vor_lord]

Don't you touch my timer-based skills! We get along just fine without them, but ALL of our really powerful skills are timer-based. Get rid of that, and we are TRULY glass cannons. Without our abilities, we are NOTHING.

That was my point. In situations like BG, I'd think rogues have a legitimate complaint about their performance when their timered abilities aren't available. That's what I mean by tweaking rogues a bit to make them a little less dependent on the timered abilities.

But I am not speaking from much experience with rogues, just my opinions about stuff.

[Quark]

They should NOT be able to contend with an Arms / Fury Warrior (who should, however, be able to contend with a Rogue, to some extent).
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I don't agree with this, as people know, due to one big thing - Fury warriors can tank. They can tank quite well. If a Fury warrior is close to a Rogue in damage, what does the Rogue bring that comes even close to that?

[Boutros]

I don't agree with this, as people know, due to one big thing - Fury warriors can tank.  They can tank quite well.  If a Fury warrior is close to a Rogue in damage, what does the Rogue bring that comes even close to that?
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Stealth maybe? Yes, warriors can tank, but not in PvP. A character that can take a lot of damage but can't deal damage or heal/dispel/buff is useless, the enemy will just ignore them. In PvP warriors are damage dealers only, we don't have any additional utility like buffs, dispelling, heals, stealth, or serious crowd control.

[savaughn]

Since I only mentioned the use of decursive once in an offhand comment, I must assume that you didn't really read my post, and I ask that before responding to a post that you read it first.  Paladins are broken due to their overpowering ability to survive to heal and to cleanse their team out of nearly all forms of crowd control.  Whether they have decursive or not, that's incredibly powerful.  If you don't understand that, then you're not getting the power of paladins in PvP.
I never once said this, so I again must assume that you didn't actually read my post.  Rogues don't bother me so much.  I win some and lose some against them.  It's not cloth wearer itemization that's broken.  It's the MS + fear immunity warrior combination that is broken.  Give a holy/disc priest a chance, please!
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I read your post just fine. I don't think you got where I was going, though. Your post reiterates the same points. Again, you're rallying against game mechanics and blaming the Paladin as a class for it.

1) They can survive to heal.
Paladins wear plate armor. This gives them a defense against physical attacks. They have the same defense against magical attacks that anyone else does and are pretty easy to kill that way. However, melee itemization is such that at the end game physical attacks are far more effective than magic items. If a Warrior or Rogue is carrying a purple weapon, they can and will be 2-shotting cloth wearers. As a cloth wearer, priests are significantly impacted by this itemization problem. The farther away you get from the end game epic weapons, the less impact this has. This is not a "Pallies are INVINCIBLE!" issue - this is an itemization issue.

2) cleanse their team out of nearly all forms of crowd control
Is there some set of significant disease or poison based crowd control out there that I'm unaware of? If not, then the issue isn't cleanse. It's anything that can dispel magic effects. This ability is not itself a game breaker. Most priests can keep only 2-3 people dispelled tops. The problem is decursive. Decursive can keep an entire field of people clear of magic effects, trivially negating virtually all forms of crowd control and most DoTs as well. Cleanse is no more spectacular than Purge or Dispel Magic - it's just that it lasts longer on a class that benefits from the current itemization problems in the game.

Can a pally bubble? Sure, once every 5 minutes. Can he get an extra full heal once per hour? Sure - but is that significant?

Here's the real core of it. A pally does NOT provide that much of a threat on the battlefield these days and is a survival class to boot. That means they're at the bottom of the threat list and no one ever really attacks them much. Because of this, the odds are they DO have that bubble available and they DO have their Lay of Hands up. If rogues hit for as little damage as Pallies do, they'd have most of THEIR timers available to them during BG, too....

[Quark]

Stealth maybe? Yes, warriors can tank, but not in PvP. A character that can take a lot of damage but can't deal damage or heal/dispel/buff is useless, the enemy will just ignore them. In PvP warriors are damage dealers only, we don't have any additional utility like buffs, dispelling, heals, stealth, or serious crowd control.
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Stealth is worthless endgame PvE, and the ease in which it's broken/prevented is a big reason I support Camoflage over Master of Deception for PvP (though my build has both maxed). Find a Rogue out of stealth, you just greatly increased your chances of survival.

As for warriors not tanking in PvP, I've seen quite a few rush in to break up the lines, do tons of damage, get healed by teammates, and stay standing much longer than anyone else could. Damage Mitigation + Damage Dealing + a fear spell. Great way to start a charge.

Of course, I worry about PvE more than PvP. And right now the difference between Warrior and Rogue damage can be small enough that the extra backup/dog/whatever tanking ability makes it more than worth it.

[oldmandennis]

Well, if you read the expansion notes, it seems like the trend is away from 40 man dungeons in general. There stealth/sap may be more important, can you sap the mobs in ZG?

Part of the argument here may be that MJ is PvPing at a higher level then some of the rest of us. It sounds like he is in a coordinated squad that is focus fire/assist training, actually using their CC and probably not poping a lot of sheeps, etc. The buff pally crowd does not seem like they are talking about particularly good pvp teams.

And that's not to bash them, Pallys should be balanced for the whole game, not gimped 1v1 and godly on good pvp teams.

And Savaughn, purge can not be used to clense your own team. Cleanse is way more valuable. Purge is most useful for getting rid of priest shields. Cleanse knocks a whole pile of abilities out.

[savaughn]

Part of the argument here may be that MJ is PvPing at a higher level then some of the rest of us.  It sounds like he is in a coordinated squad that is focus fire/assist training, actually using their CC and probably not poping a lot of sheeps, etc.  The buff pally crowd does not seem like they are talking about particularly good pvp teams.
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Haven't a clue what gives you that impression. The better the team, the better gear they're carrying which actually makes the itemization issue I mentioned radically worse. If a rogue jumps a cloth wearer with a Shanker, there's still time for some kind of response. If you're staring down the field at warriors with Reapers, rogues with Perdition's, and Hunter's with Rhok'delars then all of the cloth wearing classes become support only since they are unlikely to survive the initial encounter.

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.

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.

[Arnulf]

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.
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(emphasis by me)

There is only so much physical damage in this game; PvE and PvP alike. Paladins have nothing to offer against arcane & holy damage. Fire/ice/shadow resistance auras are laughable. While the divine shield is a barrier against all types of damage and crowd control, the blessing of protection is only against physical damage.

Yes, divine shield helps a lot in certain situations. Plate damage reduction is nice. But it is not the end-all-be-all. For instance it doesn't help one bit against all the shocks and elemental damage types a shaman can bring to the table.

-Arnulf

[JustAGuy]

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

It's not that I'm not getting it, it's that I recognize that this NOT fun in PvE and generally frustrating as a damage-oriented player in PvP. This is especially true when the Paladin is, contrary to some people's beliefs, supposed to be a healing warrior. Shouldn't a warrior be able to be effective in melee? The Paladin is not, not with the skills he currently has. He is advertised as a holy warrior.

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.

This is definitely true and irritating. I've been in many a small-scale fight with Paladin x 2 or Paladin+Druid + warrior that took forever, and every conceivable cooldown burned that you can imagine got burned. In these situations, the ones where we ended up winning, the key was to make the pallies bubble asap, but doing that is all about huge DPS... And as a Shaman, it's been noted that that takes a lot of mana.

I've also been the Paladin in the small group that beat the Horde down. As a personal preference, I do not like keeping my teammates alive as much as I do making my enemies "less alive".

As far as the Paladin being gimped, I said that they were gimped in combat, and inferior in healing, therefore making the Alliance gimped overall. That was an incorrect assessment, as the Paladin's abilities actually make the Alliance better suited to certain sitautations, and the Horde better suited for others. He, the Paladin, is definitely gimped in combat, though. There's no doubt about that. He has no offensive damage abilities except for a couple of piddly talents, and some situational PvE undead damaging stuff.

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?

This is the fear, and this is why they don't do DPS right now. That ended up being Blizzard's mis-guided attempt at balance. What they did was give the Paladin the Divine Protection/Shield skill, and then, with that in mind, built a class around it that was intentionally weaker than the Warrior. "Since they can be invincible, and yet still attack, lets make it so he can't do many attacks and/or make the attacks very weak in comparison to warrior". Boooo-ring. They made him too weak.

A healing tank that can do DPS on par with the Warrior would clearly put the Warrior less in demand, since the Pally can also wear plate and use the nice weapons. Just look at that Epic weapon quest that involves having Onyxia breathe on it -- "Classes: Warrior, Paladin". What's the point of that sweet sword when they can't do much with it. I've seen many a Paladin decked out in +int and +healing spell gear that is cloth, leather or mail, even holding a little tome or orb in his off-hand. When you don't melee, what's the use of the armor, eh?

What needs to happen is that divine shield should be removed. Oooh, yeah I said it. Remove it, or make it a talent. Make Divine Protection the only thing they can use, unless they talent spec to get Divine Shield. In addition to that, there should be more combat maneuvers that they can do (like an instant holy blast or some sort of weapon damage move), but no aggro control (no snap aggro, like a Warrior's taunt), and no AoE attacks (no cleave for you).

There are some serious issues with totems.  First, obviously, you have to be in the party with the shaman to get the buff.

Having the raid get full advantage of the totems would really throw balance off with respect to Paladin buffs. He has to cast it on everyone all the time, and the Shaman just drops one totem for the entire raid -- that'd be a bit too skewed in the Shammy's favour. So, that's the way it has to be.

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?). 

The range is a play-issue. A good shaman puts the totem in range of those who need it. In most situations, the Windfury, Strength and sometimes Fire totems go close to the melee in the party, whereas the mana spring/tide (for those who have it) goes beside the casters. A good shaman recognizes the range limitations and deals with it appropriately.

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. 

While it's true that there are useful totems in the same category, those are game-time tradeoffs that have to be made. If you need fire-resist, then the casters will just have to do without the mana spring. Another thing to decide is Windfury vs Grace of Air -- Depending on the make-up of your party, Windfury usually wins out, but poison using rogues usually benefit from Grace more often than not. Again, good Shamans (Shamen?) recognize the tradeoffs and totem up accordingly. The same goes for a Paladin that sees the need for x blessing vs y blessing in any given situation. The Paladin should recognize that armor boosting aura means practically nothing against Ony, so fire resist is the thing to do.

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.

This is definitely an advantage for the Paladin. In fast-paced raids, as a Shaman, I go through mage-water like it's nuttin'. Generally, totems get dropped early, then drink, then mid-fight, when the totems have worn off, re-cast only the most crucial, like mana spring and grounding when necessary.

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.

Yep. Totems are all situational, and that's what seperates a good Shaman from a bad one. Take for example, the Sleeping Dragon in Sunken Temple. Lots of Shamans will drop a tremor totem to counter the sleep effect after he has put someome to sleep. This is incorrect, and a good shaman will realize that the sleep effect is a directed magic attack, and a grounding totem takes care of it before the sleep is cast.

One of the things Blizzard has stated was that they're going to look at Shamans sometime after Paladins, so perhaps this is what they'll take a look at? I've always thought the mana costs for totems are a bit all-over the place.

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. 

I said that I didn't want to focus on PvP in my post, not in my personal decision to stop playing the Paladin. The two are distinct. PvP was the catalyst for me stopping Playing my beloved Paladin. I put a lot of care into him, he was my first character, I even made him ride a Ram and not that stupid mana-hogging horse. But, PvP has become my main focus of WoW, so he's, in my view, inadequate to the task. Sure, he can heal and clease, but that's not enough for me. That's a personal decision, and I hope that with the upcoming changes that Blizzard makes the Paladin more viable as a melee combatant, and not just a heal/cleanse/buff bot (without relying on Engineering that is).

Duelling is something I don't do often. I was referring to one on one encounters out in the "real world". These are not generally important battles, but they do happen. For example, I was 52ish in Tanaris, and I had just "shoo'd" a ganking rogue (that is he just ganked someone out in mid Tanaris, and I tracked him to lower Tanars and killed him). After my battle with the rogue, a 60 Paladin stepped in, and it was a good 6-7 minute battle, one that entailed a couple of potions, and every trick in the book and every timer used to survive. He hit me at least 4 times with that hammer of wrath... Each time I survived, barely, and got a heal off. At one point, I 1-second wolfed away to hide and get out of combat to drink (which I did for a moment, when he found me and continued battle). That was a very difficult experience against a good player, who had the level advantage against me, that I still won, despite both of us using all of our cool-downs.

The moral of that story? If he wasn't so gimped in combat, it wouldn't have taken that long, and he wouldn't have lost. A 52 Shammy vs a 60 Paladin should be a cake-walk. Yet, he burned every cooldown and still lost. It's an example of how inadequate the Pally is in combat.

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.

I enjoy dishing out the damage. But, if I wanted to do only that, I would have played a rogue or mage, instead I chose a Shaman. Why? Because I like to be anything that's required for the given situation. I'm the utility guy. I'm not just pure DPS, although I do a ton of it, I'm a healer as well. That's why I played a Paladin to begin with. I thought he'd heal and kill, but it turns out, he just heals... If I wanted only healing, I'd play priest. But, I crave both, the ability to save lives and take them, with efficiency. In that respect, I'm primarily a Shaman now, at least until they fix the poor Pally.

Sure, healing and cleansing is just as important as the DPS in PvP. In the long-term, you need both to win. It just so happens that the Paladin isn't my cup of tea when it comes to his role in PvP and in PvE (they're both very similar). 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.

[Rinnhart]

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.

Your example is two paladins guarding a flag. Pick two: rogue/mage/warlock- well timed CC's, you've got an open flag and someone's burning a cooldown when you rush the flag.

You're going to honestly say that a warlock can last longer than a paladin in a fight?

Against other casters? They certainly can! Against rogues? They can dot kite/tank rogues almost as well as undead priests. Warriors? No one lasts against warriors (don't tell them that, though, they think they've almost got blizzard convinced that they need mo' powa).

And even warriors can be killed -- unless they're being healed by paladins, of course.

Why would you ever attack anything besides the healer? "But they have bubble and we can't kill paladins they r 2 hard 2 kill nerf shield blue plz."

CC the warrior. DoT them both. A paladin who's cleansing isn't healing. Stick a rogue in his face so his only shot at getting a heal off is to shield. KILL HIM.

Why am I posting this #$%&? I like winning AB's against zerging hordelings more than I like proving a point.

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.
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#$%&, at least you have priests. I've gone days on end of ABs without seeing an alliance priest. Oh, but we have paladins! WE R INVINCIVULNERNABLE!!!111!1one1.

[Rinnhart]

Well it has been a long time so I'm not too surprised I'm wrong about that.  I'm surprised you can cast it while silenced or mind controlled, since you can't do it while feared (I tried that specifically -- if you can do that now, then something has definitely changed).
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You can use it to break fear.

Any counterspell's "school lock" also nails down shield. That hurts the most as all paladin spells are holy school.

[Rinnhart]

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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The class already needs to be reworked. Making shield dispellable would essentially mean renaming the class. It's the cornerstone ability to the WC3 paladin, and really the only thing providing class continuity between WC3 and WoW.

Rogues- if it's a duel, I'll lose if they really go all out with the cheese factor. I don't lose to rogues on the battlegrounds, though, they fight differently there.

[Rinnhart]

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".
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I'm confused as to what your objection is. If it's simply my use of "avoidance," sorry, it's EQ jargon for abilities that wholely "avoid" attacks rather than mitigating the serverity of the damage sustained (Parry and Dodge vs. Block and Armor Class). As to warriors in regards to rogues' damage avoidance- honestly, I'd rather dodge the Mortal Strike and eat an Overpower.

And I'd take Stamina over Dodge any day, as well. Can't dodge a shadowbolt.

[vor_lord]

You can use it to break fear.

Any counterspell's "school lock" also nails down shield. That hurts the most as all paladin spells are holy school.
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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.