2 Paladins 3 Mages

[Apatheist]

Can you explain in a little more detail why pally priest i have also been planning pally pally same as dreadone. same as him i thought running the cross buffs on pallys and having wisdom on mages would be better?

Two paladins don't really do much for mages. All you need is salvation. Kings is a minimal DPS increase of perhaps 1-2% crit if you have enough intellect on your gear. Wisdom is negligible past level 20-30 since your pulls will last ~30 seconds and you'll drink after every pull with a paladin tank anyway. Wisdom is 39ish mana per 5 when talented, which means on an average trash pull of around 30 seconds you'll gain ~230 mana from wisdom. That's not even one arcane explosion. Wisdom is great in longer fights (raids) but it doesn't do a lot for you in short fights. Especially when you have free water from mages to drink between every pull.

One paladin gives you either kings/sanctuary on your tank, wisdom on your healer and salvation on your DPS. That's all you need. Likewise, I always use retribution aura on my tank. Devotion aura isn't bad but it's nowhere near as strong as priests inspiration which is straight 25% armor increase on your tank for 15 seconds every time a heal crits. Inspiration is huge.

Priest is just a stronger dungeon healer overall. You get a HoT, shield, party-wide heals, shackle, fear and an offensive dispel to remove annoying buffs like the fire aura on Scarlet Wizards.

If you plan on PvPing a lot I'd choose paladin because they're much tankier when you get jumped by rogues or warriors. In PvE priest is the superior choice by a fair margin IF you already have one paladin in your party for salvation.

[Dreadone]

Two paladins don't really do much for mages. All you need is salvation. Kings is a minimal DPS increase of perhaps 1-2% crit if you have enough intellect on your gear. Wisdom is negligible past level 20-30 since your pulls will last ~30 seconds and you'll drink after every pull with a paladin tank anyway. Wisdom is 39ish mana per 5 when talented, which means on an average trash pull of around 30 seconds you'll gain ~230 mana from wisdom. That's not even one arcane explosion. Wisdom is great in longer fights (raids) but it doesn't do a lot for you in short fights. Especially when you have free water from mages to drink between every pull.

One paladin gives you either kings/sanctuary on your tank, wisdom on your healer and salvation on your DPS. That's all you need. Likewise, I always use retribution aura on my tank. Devotion aura isn't bad but it's nowhere near as strong as priests inspiration which is straight 25% armor increase on your tank for 15 seconds every time a heal crits. Inspiration is huge.

Priest is just a stronger dungeon healer overall. You get a HoT, shield, party-wide heals, shackle, fear and an offensive dispel to remove annoying buffs like the fire aura on Scarlet Wizards.

If you plan on PvPing a lot I'd choose paladin because they're much tankier when you get jumped by rogues or warriors. In PvE priest is the superior choice by a fair margin IF you already have one paladin in your party for salvation.

Ok many of your points absolutely make sense.

But this is just a 5man dungeon farming team built around the protpaladin. My endgame with this team will be stratholme i guess

The Priest :

The castable shield:
I want my paladintank to get hit. This is what its all about.To reflect damage. Its the same with that shield on warrior = no rage. So the castable absorb shield isnt something i benefit of. Maybe when a mage gets aggro what most of the time should not happen. Or am i wrong with that?

Inspiration:
A low level/fresh lvl60 priests and crits . I dont want to rely on some random crit to boost my armor. Thats why i prefer improved devo aura since its always up.

Shackle & Fear:
Great tools. But not needed with this group. exorcism and holy wrath anyone?

So with switching my holypaladin for a priest i get:

- Aoe heals which are situational and most of the time not needed
- A hot which is only nice to have
- A 10% stambuff

but i loose :

- An armoraura which is up all the time
- More stats on all of my chars with result in more avoid+mana+dps with kings
- A buff which reduces the aoe aggro of my dps and mp5 for my healer
- Manareg or heals for my team since the holypaladin can judge light or wisdom on the boss.
- And when im about to wipe one of the paladins can sacrifice himself so we can rezz back up (DI)

A priest is a great healer or maybe the best one in classic!

But like i said it wont benefit the group i planned. Maybe im wrong and a priest would be better. I
have to try it first But on paper at least the holypaladin wins in a mile. Im going to test a priest later for sure.
We got enough time to really test everything.

[Hksix]

Two paladins don't really do much for mages.

While the benefit to the mages may be small, the benefit to the paladin tank is huge. Putting wisdom + sanctuary on a pally tank is really nice. ALSO you can spec the paladin healer 30/0/21 and give the pally tank sanctity aura for 10% additional holy damage which is pretty big. ALSO you can have one paladin judge crusader (for increased holy damage) and the other judge wisdom for mana back on the entire team. Not to mention the benefit of having double consecrate with mage AE spam

[nodoze]

While the benefit to the mages may be small, the benefit to the paladin tank is huge. Putting wisdom + sanctuary on a pally tank is really nice. ALSO you can spec the paladin healer 30/0/21 and give the pally tank sanctity aura for 10% additional holy damage which is pretty big. ALSO you can have one paladin judge crusader (for increased holy damage) and the other judge wisdom for mana back on the entire team. Not to mention the benefit of having double consecrate with mage AE spam

For at least PVE I think Dwarven Priest with all the above mentioned Pros plus "Fear Ward" brings more and see both options as viable for PVP with pros/cons. If there were 2 actual players behind the characters I would likely want a Priest in my BG instead of a 2nd Paladin but if I were doing World PVP with me multi-boxing a 5 man group with 2 healers I likely would want 2 Paladins.

For me though swapping in a Priest isn't really an option as I want to main a Paladin Healer again (in both PVE & PVP) and my brother will likely also prefer to play Paladin (he mainly played Protection or Retribution or a mix of the 2 in Battlegrounds) even though a Warrior would likely perform better for his play-style (thus my team will thus likely have 2 Paladins and 2+ Warriors so he can see both in action).