PvP Paladina - ¿Holy or Retri?

I want to start to PvP, but I havent PvP'd since one and a half year ago.
I'm undecided about what spec to choose, Holy or Retri.

What spec do you recommend me?

Thanks for the advice,
Ri~

I would say it very much depends on your choice of pvp type and style. If you would like to play 2s to earn some quick battle points, then holy is the way to go. It's similar for 3s. For 5s I'm not quite sure as I don't play that.

For rated bgs it's not that important which spec you choose, but which role you're expected to play in a team.

I only have limited experience in pvp for Cata as I have to focus on raiding, and in arenas I haven't met many paladins. According to anecdotal information, experienced holy paladin+warrior is very hard to beat. It's also a good idea to team up with a feral druid, as their bleed dots are really imba at present.

Few people are playing in the 5v5 bracket at the moment, but I have seen other Holy Pallies in there. If you like healing, holy is in reasonable demand in arenas. But I agree, playstyle should be your primary concern here.

For my non-raid spec it is Holy pvp/adventuring. I chose the exorcism talents, and ditched the 30sec CD on Holy Radiance. Being able to chain cast Exorcism, can really save your ass. In AB, I lead a huntard deep into the mine and solo'd him and his non-monkey pet's ass (Monkey's are EVIL if you are a healer, stay away from them). OK, it did take like 2 full inutes, but I did get him. Avenging Wrath + Holy Shock + instant Exorcism = awesome finishing in 1v1 combat. I have always PvP'd as holy, and am very pleased that for the first time since 2.9 (6 sec Holy Shock CD), Holy once again has a credible offense against most classes.

My recommendations though: do not step into a serious PvP role without at least 1K resilience, preferably 2k. It is very easy to achieve, and the difference in survivability between a couple hundread and 2K is tremendous (~97 res per % reduction).

To get the resilience, buy a cheap 2-piece set (400 bonus res), and only the 2-piece to start, as you will have limited honor points. Then buy everything else thru AH or craftsmen. A basic set will quickly get you to ~1.1K+, especially if you kept your lvl80 trinket. Then, use additional honor for all the non-set pieces, like cape, ring, neck, trinket, etc. Only once you are full should you replace the AH/crafted pieces, as the 4-set bonus is not critical. Once you have the conquest points for it, prioritize weapon/shield (if holy)/relic, as these cannot currently be purchased with honor points and the conquest item upgrades are only modest vs the justice point versions. Also, run BH every week, and hope you get something for free.

Retribution is tough in PVP because it is difficult to build up holy power with the limited range on crusader strike/hammer of Righteous. In my opinion Ret is pretty broken for PVP. I would recommend Holy>Ret for PVP.

I'm not certain that Holy Pally/Warrior combo is particularly special. On Moday I did some 2v2 with an Elemental Shammy who was rusty at PvP. At first I wasn't certain what to expect as usually I heal/cleanse for a bunch of arena masters in 5v5. (I am pretty good, but they are awesome).

Anyways, most of the other groups in 2v2 were 2 dps, but we did actually face a holy pally + warrior team. The other Holy Pally was not as good as I am, waiting till health was below 90% to initiate healing and having almost exclusive reliance on Divine Light. We soon Pwned that team.

Use your Holy Shock and Word of Glory spells, use Beacon. Yes, use Divine Light when you can get away with it, but be aware of the interupt risk. Also, Flash of light shoulod always be ready in PvP, eventhough I rarely use it in raiding due to the mana drain. Keeping your dps alive for a few more seconds can make the difference between winning and losing.

Another team the shammy and I faced (twice) was a rogue/DK. The first time, the rogue sapped me, and I tried to wait it out to preserve my trinket and bubble (as I was taught when facing highly ranked teams with the arena masters). However, the DK zoomed over and the 2 began brutalizing my shammy. By the time I was able to adjust it was too late. We faced them again a few matches later, and they tried the same tactic. This time I bubbled and spammed Flash of Light on the shammy, who quickly got both of them to 50%. The DK then popped anti-magic shell, and I told the shammy to get them out of the shell. 10 secs later he had both of them down.

The lesson was keep the dps alive. in one on one I can actually handle myelf reasonably well against a non-healer spec, except against a huntard monkey pet. I have decided that monkey pets are evil, and if you ever face one, make certain your dps support knows to prioritize them. If you run enough BGs, you will eventually face one, and learn why I say this.

I do prot for PvP. Vengeance is an awesome thing (18+k AP), as is 50-60k shield hits every 3 hp. Avenger's Shield is a great ranged interrupts, while inquisition is huge for a quick Sacred Shield at the start of the fight while giving you its 30% damage buff during the time it takes you to get to a full 3 hp. Having an extra 10% damage reduction on top of resil as well as blocking 40% damage cannot be overstated. And if you glyph for Divine Protection, the current mechanic will reduce damage by 40% from all casted attacks (not just from spells only), which is worth the investment right next the Focused and Dazed shield.

The downsides are lower burst damage, long CD's on your ranged attacks, and a very lack-luster Hand of Protection for dealing with CC-spam. You have to have a good dps partner, as a healer just doesn't cut it (HHTD).

The upside is higher survivability, constant moving while attacking, and enough self/partner healing to get threw most double-dps match ups.

SJ

Jeffersonian000 wrote:I do prot for PvP... The downsides are lower burst damage, long CD's on your ranged attacks, and a very lack-luster Hand of Protection for dealing with CC-spam. You have to have a good dps partner, as a healer just doesn't cut it (HHTD).

The upside is higher survivability, constant moving while attacking, and enough self/partner healing to get through most double-dps match ups.

I love pvp prot, but don't know how well I'd do with a healer. Just about everyone that I've faced (in low ratings) knows to focus my partner -- I don't have enough healing to keep him up before he can kill one, and I don't have enough damage reduction to survive the ensuing 2v1. A healer that could stay alive long enough might be good -- the down side is, I'm not sure we could pressure a healer/x team hard enough to win.

From the outside in, as a near complete Arena noob on a Resto Druid I can say 2 things-

Retadins are one of the 3 DPS opponents I genuinely loathe (the others are Feral Druids and Rogues). The issue is the ability to line up cooldowns for ridiculous burst, and they can be very hard to kite. Even at ~3500 Resilience, it seems they can destroy me with ease.

While Holy tends to be quite tough to kill, I don't usually have an issue against them in 2v2. It is quite likely I just haven't seen a *good* Holy Paladin, yet. I tend to be more concerned with Priests on the rare Healer/DPS combo I encounter. A large part of my lack of concern with Holy Paladins may be that my partner (Arms Warrior) does a good job keeping pressure on their target, so they don't have much time to do the nasty Exo spam. I'm fairly certain that when/if my rating gets higher (~1100, I said I was a noob, right?) I might start seeing better teams where a Holy Paladin could be threatening.

Finally, in regard to Hunters with Monkey pets, they really don't bug me. The only time I've ever seen them is in BGs, but they haven't done much. The vast majority of pet class players I've seen in PvP invest little or no effort in controlling their pet.

I honestly don't fear a ret paladin as much as an arms warrior. While the burst can be quite frightening, they're fairly easy to kite which makes the issue of HoPo generation quite difficult for them. Obviously you can't just sit there and spam heals and hope to survive but if you can keep some resemblance of distance on them, you'll be in much better shape. (I know, easier said than done...)

Holy is the weakest healer in any team makeup right now, they're too easy to CC and suffer because of it. While priests have the worst mana efficiency, paladins usually end up not being able to even use their mana because of CC/interrupts.

Ret is 'ok' and I only say ok because it's very makeup reliant and requires near perfect timing to properly not be perma cc'd/dispelled with your CD's up. It's usually due to WoG and Selfless Healer that we're usable in 3's, with 4.1 on the horizon and the 20 second CD on WoG we will see fewer and fewer Rets in high end teams because we're not getting compensated with a dps boost. In fact we're getting our survivability bombed due to Sacred Shield being on a 1 minute ICD coupled with WoG on 20 second CD.

Paladins are not a great class in arena right now, anyone that points out high rated Rets and Holy paladins should understand that these players are exceptions to what is a general observation. There is a much lower representation of Paladins in top rated teams than almost any class right now and 4.1 is only going to make things worse. In the 3v3 ladder I can count only a Handful of Paladins in the top 50 teams on Bloodlust. However I can see a ridiculous quantity of Shamans, Hunters, and Warriors. It's almost like they'd make a great team togeth- oh wait... KFC FACEROLL. If you look at raw numbers, there are around the same number of paladins in top teams as a few other classes but most of them play Ret, with 4.1 nerfs to Ret you'll see a dropoff in the already slim number of Rets that play in high end teams. Holy will be mostly unaffected by the patch since they're already so weak compared to other healers that even the MINOR buff they're receiving won't help them when they're perma CC'd.

thatguy wrote:I honestly don't fear a ret paladin as much as an arms warrior. While the burst can be quite frightening, they're fairly easy to kite which makes the issue of HoPo generation quite difficult for them. Obviously you can't just sit there and spam heals and hope to survive but if you can keep some resemblance of distance on them, you'll be in much better shape. (I know, easier said than done...)

I try. I have more success with some than others. Almost every Warrior I've seen to this point has been Fury, and only one of those was worth a damn. The one Arms Warrior I've faced thus far was hardly something to write home about.

Topic change. What do folks think of an Enhance Shaman+Balance Druid combo for 2s? I was thinking the control with Cyclone, Roots+Solar Beam, Hex, etc. combined with the sheer burst damage output might be pretty brutal. I think as long as you could hit first and fast, you could win against most comps pretty easily.

On the other hand, I know very well I see very few of either spec on Arena teams. In fact, I've seen one of each (not together) and they were really, *really* bad (i.e. stand and spam single target nuke rotation on the Arms Warrior punching your face in, Mr. Druid).

Admittedly, its mostly me trying to justify to myself making a friend do Arena with my Shaman on her Druid. She may decide she'd rather heal anyway, but I've no inclination to play Elemental or Resto on my Shaman.

Hokahey wrote:Admittedly, its mostly me trying to justify to myself making a friend do Arena with my Shaman on her Druid. She may decide she'd rather heal anyway, but I've no inclination to play Elemental or Resto on my Shaman.

If you aren't resto in arena as a shaman, don't hope for high ratings. They're the strongest healer right now followed closely by druids/priests (comp dependent).

Resto Shaman, Affliction Lock, Balance Druid is one of the fotm faceroll teams right now. I've seen locks and druids that can't get 1400 normally get to 2k with that setup.

Vort wrote:

Hokahey wrote:Admittedly, its mostly me trying to justify to myself making a friend do Arena with my Shaman on her Druid. She may decide she'd rather heal anyway, but I've no inclination to play Elemental or Resto on my Shaman.

If you aren't resto in arena as a shaman, don't hope for high ratings. They're the strongest healer right now followed closely by druids/priests (comp dependent).

Resto Shaman, Affliction Lock, Balance Druid is one of the fotm faceroll teams right now. I've seen locks and druids that can't get 1400 normally get to 2k with that setup.

You're talking to a person who was excited when he hit 4 digits in Arena rating last month. I'm not holding out much hope for a high rating. I'm only likely to do matches that earn points, and quit once I'm capped. Mostly, I don't want to set myself up to be completely roflstomped every time I walk in Arena due to a glaring oversight on my part regarding the comp. Plus, I like being a unique snowflake.

No doubt, just letting you know so you don't get disappointed about ratings as enhancement. The annoying thing is, resto/boomy is actually an amazing 2's team. You just survive until the other team runs out of steam. I'm not even joking.

My take on arena has always been the fotm will be the best setup until one aspect of it gets changed, then something else will come up. Shamans were incredible back in s3 running a 5's team with a phys train setup going Enhancement, Rogue, Warrior and Disc Priest with a Holy Paladin. That team was so ridiculously broken in 5's, they just trained someone into the ground.

It swaps every few months when they change a single class, all of a sudden some comp is broken due to class matching.

Hokahey wrote:You're talking to a person who was excited when he hit 4 digits in Arena rating last month. I'm not holding out much hope for a high rating. I'm only likely to do matches that earn points, and quit once I'm capped. Mostly, I don't want to set myself up to be completely roflstomped every time I walk in Arena due to a glaring oversight on my part regarding the comp. Plus, I like being a unique snowflake.

Honestly, if you just want points, play with whatever setup you want. Sometimes you get stomped, sometimes you stomp. You'll win 5 matches eventually.

I do arenas as prot, teamed with a DK currently and a feral druid previously. If you have a good DPS partner of any kind, you can irritate the opposing healer long enough with your stun, rebuke and silences to finish it off in tandem with your partner, and then kill off whoever is left as you have cooldowns and healing to keep both of you alive.

My stepson and I only really have major issues with teams on which both players can heal, and those teams are rare.
If it's healer/DPS we kill the healer. Druids are annoying, but not too bad with stuns. Shamans are annoying if they run in ghost wolf form.
If it's two DPS classes, we pick the most threatening one and smack him, then we go back to watching TV while we kill the second one - and both of us are far from geared.

Finally, in regard to Hunters with Monkey pets, they really don't bug me. The only time I've ever seen them is in BGs, but they haven't done much. The vast majority of pet class players I've seen in PvP invest little or no effort in controlling their pet.

Deadmines monkey pets were nerfed shortly after I made the post calling them evil. when they were first used in PvP, a mine-monkey was effectively a rogue with lower dps. It would automatically interupt (even at range) on CD, every ~10secs, resulting in a ~6? sec lockout. As a pally healer, a mine monkey could practically shut me down all by itself. I guess enough people complained that it was ridiculously OP to pair hunter DPs with rogue interupts, and they got nerfed hard.