Paladin (Retribution)

Holy, Holy, Holy. If you play a Paladin, you know the criticism you go through from others on telling you to be Holy or get out. Well, although it may be annoying and not right for someone else to tell you how to have fun with the game, there is truth to why a Paladin almost has to play Holy to be effective at all in Arena. There are several reasons, most of them obvious, but key factors consist that they are melee without an MS debuff and the Arena gear currently for Ret Paladins does not have any Resilience on them. With that said, there are upcoming buffs in the 2.3 patch that may give Retribution Paladins a shining hope come Arena PvP. The first big change deals with Seals activated from the Paladin.

“That of course means Sanctified Crusader needs something else, and it’s being renamed Sanctified Seals, which will increase your chance to critically hit will all spells and melee by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals can be dispelled by 33/66/100%.” -Drysc

This new talent adds a decent Crit chance to their melee attacks, but more importantly adds the resist to dispel on Seal effects. With this, Purge spam on a Paladin will be impossible and will allow for more mana efficient encounters in arena. Seals such as Crusader will not have to be recast after a Shaman or Priest removes it over and over again, and can be not only annoying for the Paladin, but very mana consuming as well for what is already such a small mana pool. A very effective debuff from Retribution Paladins is the Vindication debuff, which reduces the players agility and strength by 15% at 3/3.

“Vindication frequency and duration is being increased, and is going to reduce all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility.” -Drysc

This change can be great now, and instead of just being useful against melee classes, it will be great against all classes, not matter who the Retribution Paladin is focused on. It is also another debuff which has to be Dispelled, and with more frequent occurrences, can prove to be a great cover up for other debuffs that may be more important to keep on. Along with these changes, there is also the Crusader Strike cooldown being reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds, which of course will provide more DPS from a Retribution Paladin. Now although these changes may not seem that big, there is also the change to the gear in the next season, which may prove to be the difference maker in us seeing more Retribution Paladins in Arena. All of the new gear is being changed around in stats, including adding the most important PvP stat in Resilience. So the hope is there for a successful Retribution Paladin in Arena come patch 2.3, but there are still places as well which they need to improve before they are ideal for a very competitive team.

Priest (Discipline)

The Priest class is very popular in all brackets of Arena play. However, the usual spec for them is either Shadow or Holy/Disc. With the patch, we may begin to see some changes though from Holy/Disc priests to Disc/Holy Priest instead. Basically, 41 points into Disc will be looked at to become very viable from the patch. Reasons why Priests prefer to go more into holy at the moment is because of talents such as Blessed Resilience, Spiritual Healing, and Spirit of Redemption. Talents that Priests usually do not currently get in the Discipline tree at the moment consist of 5/5 Mental Strength, Power Infusion, Reflective Shield and Pain Suppression. Most feel that the Holy talents outlast the Discipline talents at this time, and this probably is true. With the patch however, there are a couple new changes that may convert some to go 41 Discipline.

“Pain Suppression is getting changed a bit to have more utility beyond personal use. You’ll be able to cast it on a friendly target and it will do a couple of things. First it’s going to reduce the target’s threat by 5%. and next it’s going to reduce the damage that person takes by 40%. The cooldown is also going to be reduced to 2 minutes.” -Nethaera

Pain Suppression, as of now, is on a 3 minute cooldown and does reduce 65% damage done, but it’s self-cast only. With the patch though, being able to place on another focus target may prove to be a game saver, especially with its high resistance to Dispel. It was “nerfed” by 25% damage reduction, but again, being able to place on another player at any given time can ruin a burst attempt by the opposing team. Also, a 2 minute cooldown may allow for this ability to be used more than once in a match, depending on the game plan of both teams. Another big change for Priests in the Discipline tree is Focused Will.

“After taking a critical hit you gain the Focused Will effect, reducing all damage taken by 1/3/5% and increasing healing effects on you by 4/7/10% for 6 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.” -Eyonix

After the patch, Focused Will may take the place of all those Priests scared to go Discipline and miss out on Blessed Resilience. With a lot of high end Priests already being maxed out on Resilience, this idea of reducing overall damage done may be more beneficial, so the appeal of this talent is there. This change alone may convert the most, which in turn will provide several other talents that aren’t getting buffed, but will be picked up by Discipline Priests simply because they are willing to go deep into the tree now. Power Infusion really pops out in my mind, with the ability to increase any teammate’s spell damage by 20%; when placed on a well time Elemental Shaman or Frost Mage, can result in insane numbers. This can also be used to help the Priests; to buff their own heals to help themselves or the team. Let us not forget the bigger mana pool for Discipline Priests, along with the Reflective Shield talent as stated before, which can be quite useful as well. So although this may not change play-style completely for Priests, it still is a talent tree change and we should see more of it in the patch.

Tags: Priest · Paladin · Articles

15 Responses to “Patch 2.3: A Spot for the Underdogs? Part 2”

1. Welkin Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 1:29 am

   “At the moment, this talent is very useless as far as healing goes, so it’s not appealing at all. After the patch though, this may take the place of all of those Priests scared to go Discipline and miss out on Blessed Resilience.”

   It seems you have Focused Will confused with Force of Will. Focused Will doesn’t exist “at the moment”.

2. Breaky Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 1:43 am

   Yes, you are correct, thank you for pointing that out!

3. Eyska Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 2:18 am

   while these changes kind of helped, ret pallys are still horrid from my PTR experience. Their mana pool is simply a joke and with most arena matches running a while they will always oom earlier than anyone else forcing them to drink or they might have a pet on them to the point where they run around with no mana.

   Crusader strike 6 sec helps a little, but it’s also a quicker mana drain.

   As for the seal issue, it might not be so great some of the time. I’m not sure how exactly the game works but in duels mostly (i know not arena but still an issue sometimes) with aura and seals undispellable, blessing of freedom will always be hit, and with the nerf to BoF 2 patches or so ago, pallys are unbelivable easy to kite.

   Pretty much ret pallys just got buffs to existing stuff, but they really need new things because they are garbage.

4. Opportunist Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 3:30 am

   “As for the seal issue, it might not be so great some of the time. I’m not sure how exactly the game works but in duels mostly (i know not arena but still an issue sometimes) with aura and seals undispellable, blessing of freedom will always be hit, and with the nerf to BoF 2 patches or so ago, pallys are unbelivable easy to kite. ”

   BAM absolutely right.

5. Slappywag Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 6:03 am

   Yeah Reflective Shield is a good talent.

   Oh wait it breaks CC with DoT’s on the “shieldee”.

6. Eyska Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

   “I’m not sure how exactly the game works”

   oops lol, i meant to say, im not sure that when a hunter shoots arcane shot at a pally, whether it will say “immune” because it hit the undispellable seal, or if it will just hit BoF because it will be the only dispellable one. Regardless i doubt the immune thing exists.

   And actually it’s not even duels, Once BoF is down, and hunter’s popularity probably getting bigger, aoe frost traps will own pallys even harder now, freedom will easily be dispelled or just waited out (10 seconds, 15 sec cooldown, stupid) and with all the debuffs that pop onto people in arenas (winter’s chill, shadow vuln, easily 5-10 stacks of random stuff at a time) cleansing off snares is also pretty hard.

7. kag Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

   “And actually it’s not even duels, Once BoF is down, and hunter’s popularity probably getting bigger, aoe frost traps will own pallys even harder now, freedom will easily be dispelled or just waited out (10 seconds, 15 sec cooldown, stupid) and with all the debuffs that pop onto people in arenas (winter’s chill, shadow vuln, easily 5-10 stacks of random stuff at a time) cleansing off snares is also pretty hard.”

   If youre a ret paladin and youre losing duels against hunters, you need to rethink your strategy. This should be a VERY easy matchup.

8. Morgan Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

   having a paladin myself i find it kinda funny, your a plate healer that can dispell anything, u can bop out of anything…

   anyone who goes ret must be a joke unless your having some PVE fun tanking =]

9. Ixiroth Says:
   November 11th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

   @8) Because Paladin healing is the most boring thing in the game. People who go Ret want a challenge from the game and/or are stupid. The latter is just much more common.

10. Eyska Says:
    November 11th, 2007 at 11:38 pm

    “If youre a ret paladin and youre losing duels against hunters, you need to rethink your strategy. This should be a VERY easy matchup.”

    I’m talkin high end resil and stamina, where both people are pushing 10k hp and 400 resil (0 i guess for the pally or whatever his veteran’s is), if you think about it, once a hunter reaches 21 yards (outside repentance range) the paladin will NEVER catch up in a duel because he can’t snare the hunter back judgement of Justice will only go so far, and with that much hp and resil, it is almost impossible to burst down a hunter in the HoJ, repentance damage dealing time, and if they are beast mastery they can just BM out of all of that.

11. Eyska Says:
    November 11th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    and then kite for the rest of the fight.

12. Valance Says:
    November 12th, 2007 at 1:16 am

    Ive been on the PTR and watched Ret Pallys duel. Most do very well…I will actually being adding a ret pally to my Arena team this next season.

13. Valance Says:
    November 12th, 2007 at 1:18 am

    Holy>Disc

    Though Disc may be nice fro 5v5 as In focused fired alot..I could see it being useful there for PS and Focused will…but overall Holy is still the better buy.

14. Zøe Says:
    November 12th, 2007 at 2:56 am

    “If youre a ret paladin and youre losing duels against hunters, you need to rethink your strategy. This should be a VERY easy matchup.”

    mighty theorycraft. but wrong and misleading. playing paladin myself and enjoying duels and nonzergpvp alot (because playing an underdog is the challenge i enjoy most), i have to tell you that in fact its the hunter loosing to a retpaladin who has to rethink his strategy. eyska hit the nail on the head listing a hunters stregths; all you need as a hunter to win is a pvp trinket or BM. if you have both there is no way a paladin can catch a hunter watching his range and mana.

15. Badpanda Says:
    November 18th, 2007 at 12:32 am

    I think the strength of the Retribution is that they are both a support class and a high DPS class (yes, they are), which can be very attractive to a 4DPS team, because they provide a Holy Pally’s utility (BoF/BoP/Blessings/Cleanse/Stun), making possible to add another Healer, or allowing a double BoP on Casters and double BoF on Meleers simultaneously (combine this with Bloodlust and you have a very solid dps that can hardly be stopped for about 10 seconds). Obviously, theorycraft FTL, but so far I’ve been doing incredibly well in 2v2 and 3v3 with many different setups.

    I think that the extra Strength and Resilience on s3 will further increase our DPS and surviability, at the cost of some healing (wasn’t big anyway). I think that a good 5v5 would be something like that: Holy Priest, Retribution Paladin, Elemental Shaman, MS Warrior and Frost Mage.

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