Paladin or Priest?

[Dominian]

Seems like i hit a wall and im stuck at nearly 1700 rating, i sure dont lose rating but gaining it seems hard aswell. Well we lost 75% of the matches last night and we gained 10 rating since it was only teams who had above 2k team rating it was realy nice training against some of the best teams. Playing on thuesday will push us over 1700 pretty easy with abit of luck since there are tons of teams we simply outplay.

The top teams still outplay us yet, but winning 50% of the matches against teams like that would get us to the top so its def possible.

I started out with a paladin earlier and i might have been realy realy unlucky and im cosidering recruiting a new one. He was above 2200 rating in 2v2 last seson as holy/lock but im not sure how much skill such a comp require from the paladin, ive personally played holy paladin/warrior in seson 3. From my experience how skilled the paladin is doesnt matter much, also my old paladin never played 5v5.

Anyway the question is to you who use a paladin:

How do you counter dispell teams with heavy meele?

Lets say Arms warrior/Unholy DK/Ret paladin/Resto shaman/disc priest.

What ususaly happens here is that the priest plays with me mass dispelling all my buffs before they attack, aka water shield and Blessing of kings. I always try to dispell the priest as much as i can but its generaly very hard since purge got 20y and mass dispell is much much longer. A good paladin would rebuff kings when they zerg i presume while i refresh water shield. The meele zerg comes and they focus one target, my paladins needs to use Hand of protection after a few seconds but the aoe damage realy aint a problem. The main problem is that the priest is just chain mass dispelling with bloodlust aka all my buffs including elemental mastery can be gone if im unlucky. The resto shaman spam purges the one they are focusing and the shield gets removed nearly instant even with dispell resistance. (This is one of the reason i like priest and pain supression alot better)

Theese teams seemed realy realy hard, while eurocomp and 2345 was a walk in the park even when skilled.

I faced a realy nasty team wich i doubt im ever able to beat.

Arms warrior/Unholy death knight/disc priest/resto shaman/holy paladin.

Warrior/DK was sitting on 33k hp each buffed ofc, i managed to pull the buffs of the warrior and blow him down but the dk kept me to busy to notice the ressers.

So any tips if i decide to go with a paladin again?

[asonimie]

I'm ran holy paladin/disc priest at the start of the season, and now run disc priest only. We are currently at 1740 and rising fast after ~2 weeks of seriously "working" on the team.
(my team is full deadly equiv - unbuffed: 22khp, 2200-2500sp, 900-930 resil)

To be honest the only thing I miss is Aura mastery, and I dont miss it that much: aoe stuns shut you down in 5v5, not interrupts, making AM almost useless. The priest however has been great. Aoe healing is very nice, PS for focus shielding works great and is tough to dispell. My priest even discovered that holy nova makes a good addition to his healing rotation once the cooldowns and burst have subsided. Aoe fear is ok, mainly we've found it useful for Ring of Valor to disrupt their opener and give me ~2 secs clear firing range to LB/CL/FS my first Gib target (never open with the kill button).

Against Cleave comps, which are obviously very tough for us, I have just been VERY patient with my opener. I will gently TS 2-3 times bouncing them off me a few times before doing much of anything. This really helps disrupt their rythmn and lets some of their burst + CDs die off. My priest drops a scream in here somewhere(usually trinketed), at which point I can TS+Earthbind and get my first clear shot. This all looks good on paper and in reality i am getting Feared/shadowfury spammed, but it has worked better than trying to go balls out. Keep your damage abilities until after they blow their AOE CC, only then can you get a good combo off and actually kill anyone. The more relaxed and patient I have been with my abilities (instead of instinctivly OMGWTF spamming TS), the more these matches have started to make sense and I could actually start getting practice.

Kill Order: I have found with 2healer/cleave comps, warriors and DKs are too resilient to out dps the healers, and its too dangerous to waste ur kill button on these guys, so I have started gibbing one of their healers now, and its working great. I bounce them around with TS to mitigate the initial melee burst, drop a healer, and then (if applicable) blow the rogue up who is guaranteed to be sitting on my priest. With 1 healer up and melee having lost much of their cooldown advantage, you will have a super easy time dropping the melee juggernauts with a one of our many 3 button kill combos.

With that last comp you mentioned, I think the strategy is similar. Pull them back away from the pillar if possible by bouncing the melee around with TS. Ghost cast on the melee (LB/CL), draw the healers out, then TS and drop one of the healers. As stated above, DKs and Wars are far too resilient and beefy to out-dps 2 healers, let alone 3. Get 1-2 of those those healers down and those melee become cake. I have started ignoring warriors all together until almost last, and its worked well. They are a sponge and a distraction. Kill them once, and the rest of the night they'll sit in sword/board 90% of your matches, making them useless anyway.

As far as high rated kill targets go in general, it is becoming more and more difficult to fake out the healers and get kills off (unless its druid/shaman/rogue after CoS which are all very soft) which SHOULD be the case with good healers who are watching your target switches. For this and other reasons, I have not yet, but have been meaning to create a focus based kill macro which I know has been mentioned already by some of the other arena boxers here. This will help immensely against these comps, focus the priest/druid healer, throw some LBs at the warrior then BAM healer down.

Hopefully this helped it can be tough to put arena strats on paper, as they are such a random zerg fest nowadays. Bounce some more questions and let me know what has been working for you if anything.

Good Luck!

[Dominian]

The main problem with healers who use max range while im slowed, its pretty easy when they are stupid enough to get into my LB/lvB/CL range.

Dropping a healer will force the team to go defensive and def something im about to try out.

If i can drop the priest early then pop bloodlust it will get very hard for a resto shaman/druid or holy paladin to keep the rest of the team up alone.

[asonimie]

Ya definitely true. Try to TS them backwards, that could help move the pressure your way. Especially when the first TS'er is your main, who is usually a bit forward, its usually easy to bounce melee backward with Thunderstorms. Its all just theorycrafting but could make a difference. A well timed HoJ could help you finish that healer too, which I dont have with my priest.

[Dominian]

Like i expected we played on a monday night this time and went up 130 rating and blew 1700 and 1800 in one night! The goal tomorrow is certainly to breach 1850 and get the wepons wich will be the best upgrade in 4-5 months for me!

The idea by now wasting EM on the first kill is pretty awsome, we had some bad luck getting orgrimmar arena 3 times in a row vs a heavy cleave team. We farmed them easy in all other arenas but they stole 16-20 rating each time due to beeing low rated. If it hadnt been for theese losses we would have seen 1850 and a new dagger already tonight! :(

[asonimie]

Glad to hear you gained rating!! Now share the wealth what did you feel you did differently? Did you mean "not wasting EM on the first kill"?? Elaborate on some of your strategies :)

I ground to 1740 against 2200 teams who were quite good this weekend. It was veeerrryy frustrating but such excellent practice. I wish we could have played monday night when all the noob teams play for free points but my priest was MIA. This week we are definately hitting 1850, which will raise my Team spellpower by about 300 since my clones are sitting with Titansteel maces still :( But ya overall 5v5 is muuuch more viable than it seemed at the beginning of the season. Things are looking good.

[Extreme]

hey asonimie,
i checked your toons in the armory and i saw that you have only one toon with elemental oath... you know that you gain +10% dmg when elemental focus is up? it's a huuuuuge dmg buff, especially if you cast EM > FS (crit maybe, so you gain +10%dmg for your next >>>> ) LvB !! :D
so specc 2/2 elemental oath with all of you toons aaaaanddd ..... profit ! :D


(sry 4 my bad english :D )
Extreme

[asonimie]

hey asonimie,
i checked your toons in the armory and i saw that you have only one toon with elemental oath... you know that you gain +10% dmg when elemental focus is up? it's a huuuuuge dmg buff, especially if you cast EM > FS (crit maybe, so you gain +10%dmg for your next >>>> ) LvB !! :D
so specc 2/2 elemental oath with all of you toons aaaaanddd ..... profit ! :D


(sry 4 my bad english :D )
ExtremeNp and you're totally correct, no idea why I left that out - 2 of them actually have it but ya should be all 4. I think I was toying with new talents when 3.1 came and forgot to put the EO back in after. Especially with EM active and the +15% crit during those 17 seconds... ya huge dmg loss thanks for catching that!

[asonimie]

Also Extreme,
I checked out your guys and I have a suggestion, you'll probably want to get rid of some +24sta gems and replace them with +20spell pen. I've found stacking pure stam isn't very viable, and you should really try to reach 100-135pen. Only reason my clones aren't fully gemmed yet is because I'm waiting for their upgrades this week. It should really help you even out your LvB dmg and get more consistant 7k+ crits... the dmg is way too variable without enough spell pen.

[Dominian]

Glad to hear you gained rating!! Now share the wealth what did you feel you did differently? Did you mean "not wasting EM on the first kill"?? Elaborate on some of your strategies :)

I ground to 1740 against 2200 teams who were quite good this weekend. It was veeerrryy frustrating but such excellent practice. I wish we could have played monday night when all the noob teams play for free points but my priest was MIA. This week we are definately hitting 1850, which will raise my Team spellpower by about 300 since my clones are sitting with Titansteel maces still :( But ya overall 5v5 is muuuch more viable than it seemed at the beginning of the season. Things are looking good.

Struggeling today vs high rated teams, everyone i try to kill is left with 1k hp :(

We seem to struggle abit to break 1810 but i feel were not far away with abit of luck.

Faced some realy nasty meele teams today like ret,warrior,feral,disc priest and resto shaman. No way in hell i could keep my priest up even with pain suppresion, however i dont feel that im far away either since i faced my old guild mates who have no clue who i am. Im winning 10 points and getting a 70-80% win rating, but there are lots of goods team playing thuesdays.

If i can down one early without EM+LvB+CL they cant seem to decide if they should go defensive or offensive! :)

[Fat Tire]

Glad to hear you gained rating!! Now share the wealth what did you feel you did differently? Did you mean "not wasting EM on the first kill"?? Elaborate on some of your strategies :)

I ground to 1740 against 2200 teams who were quite good this weekend. It was veeerrryy frustrating but such excellent practice. I wish we could have played monday night when all the noob teams play for free points but my priest was MIA. This week we are definately hitting 1850, which will raise my Team spellpower by about 300 since my clones are sitting with Titansteel maces still :( But ya overall 5v5 is muuuch more viable than it seemed at the beginning of the season. Things are looking good.

Struggeling today vs high rated teams, everyone i try to kill is left with 1k hp :(

We seem to struggle abit to break 1810 but i feel were not far away with abit of luck.

Faced some realy nasty meele teams today like ret,warrior,feral,disc priest and resto shaman. No way in hell i could keep my priest up even with pain suppresion, however i dont feel that im far away either since i faced my old guild mates who have no clue who i am. Im winning 10 points and getting a 70-80% win rating, but there are lots of goods team playing thuesdays.

If i can down one early without EM+LvB+CL they cant seem to decide if they should go defensive or offensive! :)I ran into the same issues as your kinda having. I would EM/Lvb+CL and sometimes they would still have like 1k health left. I starting doing frost shock right after CL and it helped me alot.

[Dominian]

We dropped to 1775 and i decided to do a restart, after that we won 7 matches straight and hit 1856 while my healer is on 1852 wich is awsome since we both get the dagger/mace tomorrow!

The 2 last teams i even forgot to use bloodlust and they were all gladiators!

[asonimie]

We dropped to 1775 and i decided to do a restart, after that we won 7 matches straight and hit 1856 while my healer is on 1852 wich is awsome since we both get the dagger/mace tomorrow!

The 2 last teams i even forgot to use bloodlust and they were all gladiators!Give Details!!!

[Extreme]

Also Extreme,
I checked out your guys and I have a suggestion, you'll probably want to get rid of some +24sta gems and replace them with +20spell pen. I've found stacking pure stam isn't very viable, and you should really try to reach 100-135pen. Only reason my clones aren't fully gemmed yet is because I'm waiting for their upgrades this week. It should really help you even out your LvB dmg and get more consistant 7k+ crits... the dmg is way too variable without enough spell pen.

100-135spellpen means 3-5 gems + cloak enchant
but which classes have resistances against fire/nature spells?

shaman (totem) .. i have never faced a team with a shaman which used natur resistance totem, they use grounding totem
frost dk: 150 resistance if i hit him with a spell (30% procc chance)
mage: 80 ( +40-60 if they use mage armor but lots of them forget to change their armor buff infight, pvp mages normally have ice armor)
mark of the wild 75 (i can purge it)
fire resistance aura/totem 130, yes this is a big problem, so if a frost dk gains fire resistance totem/aura i cant kill him, cause he is fa fcuking facerolling dk with no skills and 8k crit frost strike cause he can wear pve gear in pvp !!!!! nerf this fcuking class .... sorry but this must be said :D

the most teams with paladins/shamans dont use any kind of resistance aura/totem in my realmpool so the most of my enemys will have only around 80 resistance
if the enemyteam in arena wait behind a los object and run forwand/backward an cast a spell or something i purge them completely off so mark of the wild is up on nobody, kings an stamina also.

before i get the hateful legs armor i had a secound 20 spellpenedration gem so i had 75 spellpen ... but after facing a lot .. a lotttt of melee zerg teams i gemmed for stamina cause rogues,rets and warriors meleezerg teams have only one and the same taktik ... nuke somebody with facerolling instant ... no CC, no targetswitch .. nearest enemy with no defensive talents or spells .. nuke it !!!

okay, enough trash talk, hope you understand what i'll say ... a lot of melee comps in my realmpool with no skill but with more than 3 faceroll classes in their 5v5team ... so who cares about spellpen if i am instant down ...

[Eloxy]

well, i have to say things are kinda loosening up after the last patch. Altso getting better gear.
ONe thing i still have on my heart though.......



gIEf Movays!!! i wanna see how u do shit in arenas =)

[Dominian]

We dropped to 1775 and i decided to do a restart, after that we won 7 matches straight and hit 1856 while my healer is on 1852 wich is awsome since we both get the dagger/mace tomorrow!

The 2 last teams i even forgot to use bloodlust and they were all gladiators!Give Details!!!

The last match was in the orgrimmar arena wich ofc have to be considered abit random, someone suggested to start with aoe fear and it works superb! If we last 30 seconds to get the 2nd fear, the game suddenly turns in our favour alot more.

We play agressive sure we lose matches but its far better than waiting them out and losing every match, playing defensive simply gives the teams to much time to plan. Going up on them while hiding behinde a pillar often force the healers far out in the open since cleave teams ususaly use crap meele players who have no idea how to place themself to make healing easy. If they play the los game just purge,purge purge,purge!! :D Remember that druids are superb healers, but not if you keep swapping targets. Once that Nature swift heal is gone they cant deal with the damage unless the target is pre hotted.

Im gonna test something new against teams that is hard to get kills against now that i got my new furiouse dagger and respeccing for more damage.

The idea is to change focus targets during the match and use this macro to pick down healers/ranged:

/target [target=focus]
/castsequence lava burst,chain lightning,flame shock
/targetlasttarget

I have no idea if it works but i should have enough power to take down semi buffed healers.

[asonimie]

First off: Spellpen - sorry but you do need it. Not dropping a druid or pally because 2 of your LvBs hit for half dmg isnt acceptable. Who has spell resist worth mentioning you ask? In 5v5 lol? Everyone does. I've heard a safe number of 80 spellpen mentioned in the past, which is a good number as well... i would say a minimum, considering in 5v5 pretty much guaranteed that every target will have min 75 resist. And @getting instagib'd by cleave comps.... that 500, 800, or even 1k health from solid gems will NOT save you. Melee will DPS cut through your hp like butter. Stam ONLY helps you in the beginning of a match, after that healer spellpower and your resilience/defensive play will save you against cleave comps (see: thunderstorm rotation to wait out the melee burst strat above)

Secondly: @dominian - Im glad opening with a fear in RoV worked for you. It has worked well for us. I have discovered a huuuuge difference in the way matches flow (in RoV) if we can make them go defensive in the beginning. One glad team we faced(cleave comp gg) kept steamrolling us because I got caught in their aoe CC rotation and instagib my main. After a few matches, we dropped a mounted scream on them, nuked their healer... and destroyed their team. Next match? They mounted and ran away behind their pillar... which was the BEST THING EVER. We just destroyed them even worse. gg +24pts per match.

Third: @That focus macro. I have been giving the focus macro a lot of thought... how to best use it, how to best assign it, which spell sequence is best, to use /stopcasting first or not. I've come up with a couple ideas I'm going to try this week. First, I am thinking about using Gladius to assign focuses, because you can assign a hotkey->focusenemy#1,2,3,etc(this will only work if gladius displays the enemy players in the same order on all team mates). That way you dont have to click, assist, assign... making it rather obvious to a trained watcher who your going to gib. Which spell sequence does the fastest, hardest burst? Im torn between LvB/CL, or CL/Lvb. Although CL+Lvb delivers the most dmg within a short window, I think to maximize initial dmg its important to use LvB first. So the best focusgib macro imo is:

#showtooltip elemental mastery
/use platinum disks of sorcery
/cast elemental mastery
/castsequence [target=focus,harm] reset=12 flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning

You dont want to actually target them (which your macro does), this defeats the whole purpose of using focus if a healer is watching your mains targetting. Plus using target switches in a macro this important can sometimes cause problems and I wouldnt be surprised if you saw an instant cast lightning bolt fly off at your current target once in a while as a result. Anyway this is what I've come up with so far I'll be testing it this week as soon as I find a new keybinding to use for it :P Let me know if you notice anything in the meantime.

/endrant

[Dominian]

Thats why i added /targetlasttarget! :)

I use /targetlasttarget on all my slaves on every macro aka you can never see what they target since my last target always was blank.

If i target the priest but have the druid as focus it keeps my priest as target while i blow down the druid.

[asonimie]

So does mine, why risk it. That macro is more clunky, hands down. And yes it DOES change targets, just switches really fast. Which COULD create problems if you're button mashing.

Write macros however you want, I'm just providing the cleanest way to do it.

[Kruschpakx4]

try 5 dps, not bad
played 22-30 with ret pally we got also 2-1 vs rank 1 team means +28 rating :>
if you do it right, healing a lot, you can put 5 dps into another lvl... i wouldnt say sucsessfull but i ended up 1813 vs 3 melee dps, 4 melee, wl /rogue / mage teams, some of them well rated

[asonimie]

um, no thanks. What a nightmare waiting to happen.

[Dominian]

We started early and there was only 2 teams play and we got pretty much pissed on, we only lost 1 and 2 rating so it was nice training.

DK/Ret/Warrior/Resto shaman/Disc priest and i belive this is by far the worst comp there is to face, even though i dropped the warrior once but one of my shamans died aswell aka it was over. The other team cleared my tremors with pets and i didnt actually realise it before we lost 3 matches, ofc we were winning the last match but made a retarded mistake, it wont be hard to beat them if i surive thoose fear bombs. After a while semi decent teams showed up and we got to 1897 pretty easy..

Im sure we can get over 2k rating but im not sure how to counter theese teams on a steady basis once we reach a rating were we start to lose alot of points to them.

Im dropping the stoneclaw totem to get the thunderstorm one!