Deciding... (Pally arenas)

Hi,

I am in sort of a unique situation. I have been playing WOW since launch, and have played every class to at least 70. Because of my job I have to spend about half of every year in a tiny country on the other side of the world with terrible internet service. So I can't play for 2 months at a time.

Anyways, towards the end of TBC I got a new computer and 2 more accounts to start the standard 4 shaman team. My friend and I had a little success in arenas but I didn't see the point in grinding the honor to buy gear that was just a month from being completely obsolete. Then right as WOTLK came out I left for 2 more months. While I was gone I kept reading the forums and realized that shaman seemed to be having a hard time. So I started thinking about other classes that could be viable.

My first thought was arcane mages, as they could start from invis, and use instants to hopefully drop 2 people right out of the gate. Also with WOTF, trinket, and Ice Block I figured that fears would be managable.

Then I thought about paladins. At the time they could bubble, wings, and destroy anything they were standing near. The only thing that kept me from originally trying that was that during my RAF time I only made shaman, priests, hunters, and locks. So I didn't want to spend the time getting to 70 instead of trying the new Northrend stuff.

In the end I started to play my shamans, got to 76 and got discouraged. I was still killing it in BGs, but no one seemed to be having any real success in arenas, so I just gave up. Instead I just played a couple other characters to 80 so that I could try all the new 5 mans and raids. I did everything that was out, and left right as Ulduar was coming out.

So now I am on the other side of the planet again, and am about to come home. I need to come up with a plan for when I get back. It looks like people are having success with paladins in BGs, has anyone given arenas a serious try? It seems that a quick stun, followed by 4 crit judgements and 4 storms would drop at least 1 person with minimal cooldown use, plus having bubble and trinket for fear, in addition to freedom and a BOP for my healer, we could have some success. I am just curious if anyone has tried it and what the main problems are.

Powerleveling the paladins is going to be a fairly large time commitment, so I don't want to do it if there isn't at least a chance at being competative in BGs and arenas. Although the new XP in BGs thing seems like it could be pretty fun. I am just trying to figure out if it is viable.

Lastly with the new patch notes it sounds like they are nerfing pally burst, but keeping DPS the same. I am thinking that this is going to hurt pally viability in arenas as far as multi-boxing is concerned. What do the experienced players think about this? If Judgeing command does half DMG (just making numbers up) will you still kill people quick enough? Or is this a stealth buff as now you wont just be standing there waiting to line up cooldowns again for maximum burst.

Ultimately, is leveling a team going to be worth my time (given my endgame goals).

Thanks for the help.

NOPEACE

First i would like to warn you about rets upcomming changes, its kinda hard to say if its nerfs or buffs before TPR is up. (there is currenlty alot of arguing and they are not even close to beeing the final changes)

I can seeing this setup doing well against teams who arent that good, aka you should be able to hit 1700 or maybe even 1800. Your hand of freedom will certainly not be for your healer as you will to often find yourself slowed by dks,frost mages and warriors.

Hand of protection helps your healer but it sure counter you pretty hard aswell.

One of the changes upcomming for 2.3 atm is that crusader strike does 25% less damage but have 25% shorter cooldown aka damage is not changed but the ability to burst is.

A good team will mass dispell you to the ground im afraid then drop fears and frost trap,frost nova,dececration,pircing howl etc.

Bursting down a warrior or dk with 30k hp without mortal strike isnt easy, both got good ways to migate damage in addition you got pain suppression from a priest + maybe a hand of protection from a healer.

Hand of protection can be saved for your healer, but it realy doesnt help vs counter spell wich is one of my biggest problems atm even with 4 grounding totems. A rotated hand of sacrifice should make your healer pretty much impossible to kill however. Hand of freedom has to be saved for yourself though or you will find one paladin slowed. Expect them to train one paladin while a rogue stun locks another one, aka you will only dps with 3 paladins and the burst will fail. When you finally use divine shield you lost since they will run away and reset the fight, then drop a aoe fear and win the match.

Teams without a clue always say "NUEK the main and he will die", they charge in and you wipe them in less than 2 seconds wich should be pretty fun! :)