Blizzard to Paladins:

[MongoJerry]

Plate isn't all it's cracked up to be.  It doesn't offer any inherent damage mitigation to spell damage.  They also have to choose what stats they want to buff.  That paladin with 6.5k mana doesn't have anywhere near the 5.5k life of a decked out warrior.  No, he has around 3-3.2k life.  The paladin with 4.5k+ life has half the mana.

Please, give me plate. I'll show you what my priest can do if you give me 5-6k armor, the ability to wear a shield, and the ability to go invincible for 12 seconds.

Cleansing in PvP is debatable.

I stare blankly at the screen when reading this statement. Sheep, frost nova, entangling roots, slowing poison, as well as most of the offensive power of two classes -- warlocks and priests. And you think it's "debatable"? Cleansing is one of the most powerful tools in PvP that completely alters the course of battles.

In the large AV fights there's not many important debuffs to get rid of.

Ah, now I understand the confusion. You mistake the large battles in AV for PvP. That's not PvP. That's just a zerg-fest reputation grinding. You can't even discuss most PvP with regards to the large battles in AV, because most people don't get to use most of their best PvP or crowd control abilities there. Real PvP happens in 5-10 player confrontations. People who fight outdoors or in CTF matches understand this and occationally you get these smaller battles in AV. Perhaps more people will get to see this when Arathi Basin comes out, since it looks like a more real PvP battleground. In these situations, cleansing absolutely destroys the other team, because they can't use any of their crowd control abilities. If one side has dispellers and the other doesn't, the one that doesn't is dead. Period.

A couple priests using decursive easily cure everyone of magic as enemy priests and warlocks periodically decide to dump mana trying to mass DoT people.

Again, what you're not getting is that against any reasonably organized opposition, those "couple priests" will be dead within 5 seconds. Groups make macros with the names of priests on them to target and kill them instantly. For example, I was in a CTF match a couple nights ago against Notorious and I was the only priest on our team. I was *way* in the back of our group and on initial contact with the enemy, three warriors charged me and knocked me around with Unstoppable Forces. All were fear immune, of course. I had enough time to cast one PW:Shield before dying. If I were a paladin, I could have bubbled, healed, and laughed at those idiot warriors who were wasting their time attacking a paladin while their team is being ripped apart by my partymates. Instead, I died.

Now my party has no dispeller, so three of my partymates are sheeped, one's entangled, and the rest are frost novaed and have dots ticking on them. Meanwhile, the enemy team is free and clear to do whatever they want. The warriors now charge one cloth wearer at a time while all the ranged dps picks people apart. The party gets routed within 30 seconds.

Of course, having more priests would help and it does, but it doesn't change the fact that priests are the first ones targeted by the enemy and they can be easily killed, unlike paladins. Get a couple good paladins together, and it's devastating in any 5-10 player confrontation. Heck, a good paladin combined with a warrior alone is quite an amazing combination.

I would think purge is just as useful as you have a class that isn't (usually) a primary healer that can pay attention and target enemies rather then focusing on allies.

There's only a few things that purge is useful for in PvP -- and most of that is dispelling priest and mage shields. But those shields can just as easily be "purged" by dealing damage, so purge really isn't any special advantage. Cleanse is far and away more powerful.

Cleansing in PvE is useful.  Unfortunately most debuffs in raids tend to be magic or curse and oftentimes an extra priest would've been more preferable then the paladin.

I agree that Paladins are strong as buffers, most noticeably in PvE.  Paladins can actually get in range and use judgements to good effect.  Judgement of Wisdom is great for hunters and wanding casters.  Salvation is awesome.  They don't get all the nice offensive buffs that compare to shaman totems but they definitely get better "defensive" ones.

Cleansing is definitely useful in PvE, although I agree that it's not strictly necessary. The boss fight that first comes to mind is against the Baron in Molten Core, where Horde has to use "reverse roles" for healing. What The Core does is have all the shamans and druids be the main healers on the main tank when fighting the Baron, while the priests heal and dispell their parties, since priests are the only dispellers that the Horde has. Alliance raids, in contrast, can keep priests on main tank heal duty while paladins continue to dispel and heal their parties as usual. However, this is a small difference.

The bigger difference in large raids is all the buffs that can be specialized according to class. Sheesh, the aggro increase and aggro reduction seals alone are incredible. But even without those, the auras and seals are still amazing and definitely outshine what shamans can bring to the table.

Paladins might be seen as weak because they have distinct weaknesses that offset their strengths.  They lack in damage on call, ranged options, and "spammable" snares/stuns.  When you look at a class like shaman, you don't see any glaring weaknesses.  Mana in-efficient shocks might've been a more apparent weakness in beta but not now with the buff to mana gain from int and new gear.

Shamans are good. But they can be killed, unlike paladins. And they don't have cleanse, unlike paladins. Those are huge advantages that paladins have over shamans in PvP.


Now, let's clear up any perceived "contradictions" in my past assessments of paladins. Any contradictions seen are merely due to the reader wishing there to be contradictions and not due to any changes on my part. Let's clear up the situation right now:

1. I have consistently said that paladins as a class are far and away overpowered in PvP. The only times that paladins are weak in PvP is because the player has no clue how to play one and thinks that his or her job is to whack on people. If the player plays the character as a "priest wearing plate," he or she can be incredibly devastating. And, as a bonus, I'd like to add that paladin dps is climbing sharply with all the new weapons being added to the game. They're starting to hurt now, too, which is disturbing. Having an invicible player who can also kill things is would over the top unbalance the PvP game.

2. I think that paladins aren't as useful in 5-man PvE parties. I would much rather have two priests or a priest-druid combination than a priest-paladin combination. If you have a good warrior tank who knows how to keep aggro on multiple targets, all of that paladin invinsibility goes to waste. And in small parties, those seals and buffs, while nice, aren't as useful as in a large raid. Again, however, this has much to do with the ability of the player. If the paladin thinks that his or her primary job is to be up front and whack on things, then that paladin will be less useful than he or she could be. If he or she believes that placing seals and healing people is of primary importance and that whacking on things is of secondary importance, however, the paladin can play a useful role in a 5-man PvE party.

3. In a raid situation, paladin seals become incredibly powerful as all those seals and auras and such add up. Also, the ineffectiveness of their short cast time heals become less important as they can spam their long heals on the tank(s). Plus, they can do various "oops" skills like Lay on Hands once an hour to heal a tank to full if the tank gets too low (also a very annoying skill in CTF when used on a flag carrier) and sacrifice themselves to get a rezer out of combat. (It is much more difficult to do this with a shaman ankh, because the shaman has the contradictory task of finding a spot where he or she can die and then rez in a spot where he or she won't get hit and put in combat). The shaman heals and totems and such while useful aren't nearly as powerful or versatile as all of the seals and other abilities that paladins bring to a large raid. In a large raid, shamans are basically relegated to dropping a fire resist totem and either an agility or windfury totem. Or in a caster group, the shaman can drop a mana spring and/or mana tide totem. Otherwise, shamans are just there to add some extra healing. A common comment on our guild chat during raids against a tough boss is, "What I wouldn't give for just one paladin...".