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 !!
so specc 2/2 elemental oath with all of you toons aaaaanddd ..... profit !


(sry 4 my bad english )
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 !!
so specc 2/2 elemental oath with all of you toons aaaaanddd ..... profit !


(sry 4 my bad english )
Extreme

Np 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!