Help me not suck

[Liagala]

I've always avoided pvp like the plague, but recently a friend conned me into an agreement that I would farm up a full set of Ruthless gear and do a few arena matches with him. This isn't my favorite idea ever, but if I decide to do something, I do it right. I've been running BGs when I have time for the last week or so and coming up with a bunch of questions, but his answers aren't all that helpful. So, here I am. I'm a ret paladin, currently around 1800 resilience.

1 - Where do I go for info about stats/forging/etc? Arena junkies had a couple specs, but I can't find stat help and such. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't see it.

2 - I'm getting good at cleansing off movement speed debuffs, but I never know what I'm actually cleansing. I just know that I'm slow and/or stopped, so I hit the button. This leads to wasted time as I try to cleanse something I can't, or use GCDs/mana spamming it on something that's reapplied too quickly, and I should just hand of freedom it. What's the best way to get to learn which snare is which? Just plain watch debuffs and spend time learning what the icons are? Addons?

3 - Who the hell am I supposed to kill first? I get on the healer, and my friend yells at me for letting a hunter stand there unmolested and shoot people. I get on the hunter, and I get yelled at for letting the rogue dance around with his legendaries. I stun the rogue so I can get on the healer and/or hunter, and I get yelled at for wasting a stun that I could use to incapacitate the healer. I just can't win, and it's annoying as hell. I get that there isn't a set priority all the time and every situation is different, but there have got to be a few general rules. What are they?

4 - I zone into a BG and someone always mentions that the other team has X number of healers, or they're all the same guild, or some other piece of information that is not readily available from our position in the starting zone. Which addon tells them this?

5 - My friend keeps telling me that I'm doing well because I'm often at the top of the list in damage/killing blows and relatively low on deaths. I feel like the guy who blows the dps out of the water - for the 15 seconds he's alive before the fire he's bathing in kills him. Pretty numbers mean jack if you don't know what you're doing, and I don't. I'm still just blindly slamming buttons and hoping for the best. I thought running BGs would help with this, but it doesn't. It's a gigantic clusterfuck in there, and I'm not really learning anything. Is there a more controlled place to learn, or even a different way to approach BGs that won't degenerate into an 8-way brawl? I generally avoid road fighting and try to chase objectives, but when the entire opposing team is doing the same, it gets messy.

[Deleted]

To answer 4.

If you click the scoreboard icon when in a BG, you can hover over each players class icon and see the class/spec they are currently playing as.

And the guild thing. Well if you see a bunch of players from the same server you can pretty much just assume that they're a premade group.

[Greendog]

Never played a pally so cant help in that department, however for question 4 there are some addons that can help for both arena and bg's.

For bg's you will want an addon called BattlegroundTargets. This brings a box up that lists all players on the enemy team, class and spec to boot, also, u can click the names from this box and target them, without actually being able to see them. That is how people can inform you what the enemy team has.

For arenas maybe GladiatorlosSA will help you, this one gives a verbal warning to what cc or spell is being cast. As an example, a mage is about to poly your healer, and you are low on hp, this addon tells you that the mage is casting poly giving you a second to counter with whatever cc you have. This is essentially a sort of tracker for enemy cooldowns.

Thats all I can think of, hope that helps you mate and GL in your pvp career ^^

[Blueobelisk]

1. Probably look it up on official WoW forums or MMO champ forum Paladin class section.

2. Yeah you should try to recognize debuffs. Maybe there's an add on for that?

3. Depends on your comp and what you're playing. I think basically you zerg whoever you want if I understand correctly from another thread.

4. I believe there's one called BG spy but Minisynn's answer is the ghetto way to do it.

5. Duel people to learn individual classes but BGs are a good metric sometimes in my opinion. A lot of the time it's gonna be unfair but when you max out resil you should be prepared for back to back fights and maybe taking on 2 people at once.

2s are decent since they have no real value besides points cap and some achieves, but 2s are better for practicing with a partner than learning how to play in my opinion.

[Gandrake]

the first thing you can do is know every detail about every ability in the game. How long it lasts, how long the CD is, what it looks like, what it does and being able to accurately predict when you think someone is going to use it. Doesn't mean know 100% of the time when it's going to be used, but to be able to have the feeling of when it would be good to be used.

[Temp name]

1 - Where do I go for info about stats/forging/etc? Arena junkies had a couple specs, but I can't find stat help and such. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't see it.

2 - I'm getting good at cleansing off movement speed debuffs, but I never know what I'm actually cleansing. I just know that I'm slow and/or stopped, so I hit the button. This leads to wasted time as I try to cleanse something I can't, or use GCDs/mana spamming it on something that's reapplied too quickly, and I should just hand of freedom it. What's the best way to get to learn which snare is which? Just plain watch debuffs and spend time learning what the icons are? Addons?

3 - Who the hell am I supposed to kill first? I get on the healer, and my friend yells at me for letting a hunter stand there unmolested and shoot people. I get on the hunter, and I get yelled at for letting the rogue dance around with his legendaries. I stun the rogue so I can get on the healer and/or hunter, and I get yelled at for wasting a stun that I could use to incapacitate the healer. I just can't win, and it's annoying as hell. I get that there isn't a set priority all the time and every situation is different, but there have got to be a few general rules. What are they?

4 - I zone into a BG and someone always mentions that the other team has X number of healers, or they're all the same guild, or some other piece of information that is not readily available from our position in the starting zone. Which addon tells them this?

5 - My friend keeps telling me that I'm doing well because I'm often at the top of the list in damage/killing blows and relatively low on deaths. I feel like the guy who blows the dps out of the water - for the 15 seconds he's alive before the fire he's bathing in kills him. Pretty numbers mean jack if you don't know what you're doing, and I don't. I'm still just blindly slamming buttons and hoping for the best. I thought running BGs would help with this, but it doesn't. It's a gigantic clusterfuck in there, and I'm not really learning anything. Is there a more controlled place to learn, or even a different way to approach BGs that won't degenerate into an 8-way brawl? I generally avoid road fighting and try to chase objectives, but when the entire opposing team is doing the same, it gets messy.

1: mastery -> crit -> haste for a ret pala
2: learn the animations on your character to perfection, or simple look at who's around you or what happened before you got slowed (if some dude with a 2hander is hitting on your, you (most likely) can't cleanse it, if some dude with daggers is hitting you, you can't cleanse it, and so on)
3: a general idea is killing healers, if there's an arcane mage he needs to die / get interupted as often as you can, seeing as he can pretty much 2-3shot people with 4stacks and with a decent gear.
4: the scoreboard
5: get a healer with you if you can, it really helps. if you want to train, doing some wargames against other people can help (bg's with 2 premade teams that reward no honor at the end), or just try your best to do the objective and hope your team knows what they're doing

[Gotjuice]

So I don't know jack shit about rets but I think I can help you in a couple of things:

1. Here is a guide with the stats/reforge/spec pretty much anything you would need to start your Ret career: http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/18...din-pvp-guide/

2. Its good you actually cleanse snares, most pallies would just waste freedom. I personally love paladins who freedom over my frost traps just to get it instantly dispelled and get concussive shotted. As you get better/more experienced the game will slow down a lot and you will learn what you can cleanse and what you have to freedom. Right now yeah you'll have to look at the debuffs and see what is snaring you but as you go on you'll know b4 its even applied because you'll learn the other classes too. As far as addons the first thing that came to my mind was Power Auras where you can make an aura for the snares you have to freedom and another for the ones you can cleanse.

3. There are no set rules but as you get better you'll learn which classes you can kill easier and that is who you'll go for first. The smart thing to do though is to kill healers first in BGs. In arenas I like to CC heals and kill dps. You'll learn to combine your CC with your partner's and land kills. Just work together with your partner. This is what the game is about!!

4. Battleground Targets is one of them but I bet there are others.

5. Again as you get better and more experienced the game will slow down. Just like some raid boss at the beginning is a cluster fuck but then you start getting used to it and it finally seems to even go slow and predictable. Try dueling since its a great way to learn what the other classes do and how to counter them. Dueling is probably the simplest way of PvP (since its 1v1 obviously) and in my opinion the easiest way to learn.

6. Finally try some youtube, I bet there are a lot of youtube channels dedicated to Ret gameplay and you can learn a lot just from watching the best do their thing. I know it has helped my huntering a ton. You'll find macro guides, dueling guides and lots of game footage.

Anyway hope it helps, Peace!

[Deleted]

Hello. Firstly you'll want a spec like this. http://wowtal.com/#k=7szq-4SA.bqj.paladin.Rm3hl0

You can drop the points in [Guardian's Favour] and move them elsewhere. Ie. [Sanctity of Battle] or 2/2 [Acts od Sacrifice]
Don't expect to be a powerhouse in 1.8k resi, ret is a class that needs its resi. You can't just sub out for pve gear like mages or rogues.
You want to reforge to crit. You should in best gear get about 12% crit. This plus [Last Word] giving 65% crit on WoG and [Rule of Law] giving another 15% crit on WoG, when at 30% or below HP you'll have 92% crit chance on WoG + 5% crit from a rogue or feral druid.

The main thing about ret pvp is using your hands to help team mates. In most cases using [Hand of Freedom] on others is better, as you can cleanse slows from yourself.
[Hand of Sacrifice] to help a team mate from dying, and can break CC on you.

For addons, i'd recommend Gladiator LoS for when you start, it will increase your awareness to cooldowns. Battleground Targets. Portrait timers helps by enlarging effects on yourself or target, good for following up CC on a focus target. And Omnicc heals just by showing a timer on your cooldowns (this one is just something i like)

In most cases CCing the healer is better than zerging him down, more so in bgs like WSG AND TP as the flag carrier is always the prime kill target.
Focus macros for HoJ, Rebuke and Repentance are a must.

---------- Post added 2012-05-17 at 06:48 PM ----------

PS. Kill boomkins as they are the gods of damage.

[Liagala]

This is why I came here. Lots of good information in this, thank you guys.

Spec from Shabutie - That's the spec I'm using, except I took one point from Art of War and put it into Acts of Sacrifice

Stats - One of you says mastery > crit > haste, the other says crit > mastery > haste. What are the reasons behind your assessments, so I can pick which one I think will work best for me?

Addons - I'll check those out. I never knew that power auras could categorize snares and show different things if I need to cleanse or freedom. That's pretty awesome. I also feel rather silly for not thinking of the scoreboard in terms of seeing who's on the other team. I still can't get over how many little details like that are painfully obvious, but I just don't think about it because I've always ignored pvp.

Dueling - Excellent idea. I can learn how to deal with a specific class's toolset without having a bunch of other guys mucking it up. I like.

Random note to Gotjuice - You have very helpful advice, but I hate you. Hunters who know what they're doing piss me off. Sorry, but that just means you're doomed. It's nothing personal (Stupid hunters on the other hand, make my day. I stand on them and they just have absolutely no idea how to handle it).

[Gotjuice]

Sorry if I didn't explain myself thoroughly enough. Power Auras can't categorize the snares but you can. You can make an aura for those you can cleanse and one for those you have to freedom.

Haha yeah hunter, bad hunters are completely awful while good hunters seem fucking unbeatable that is probably why I love this class so much.

[Deleted]

Mastery used to be the better option in season 9 and start of season 10. You can still go mastery for bgs, as mastery does aid to damage, more so with Inq and wings up. Crit stacking makes it easier to get really big WoG's. The offheals of a ret are gold, you can word of glory a team mate for around 60 - 100k. Crit is the way for arena, besides it is still very doable to land a kill with hoj and wings, without stacking mastery.

---------- Post added 2012-05-17 at 07:56 PM ----------

Oh and another good idea would be to check out Vanguards. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uards/advanced
He is without a doubt, the best Ret in the world.

He also streams fairly often, if you are intrested in watching Ret Arena PvP

[Liagala]

I will be doing some arena once I'm geared/less dumb, but for now it's all BGs while I sort out what the buttons I've never used do (hey, did you know we have a spell called turn evil, and it's actually useful on occasion? Fancy that).

Just about everyone mentions that ret's real strength is in utility - offheals, hands on teammates, etc. Right now, I'm still having trouble handling my own health bar, let alone anyone else's. When I first started raiding it was the same - tunnel vision at first, then as I got used to things I could start expanding my awareness to other stuff and being more useful. I'm sure that will happen here too. My question is, am I okay just kinda letting that happen slowly as I get familiar with things? Or should I push myself to watch people around me and help them out in BGs, even if it reduces my own survival/damage (since I'm not good enough to watch everything at once yet)?

Edit: More questions, about this Vanguards guy.
1 - He's human, so gets a free trinket. I'm not. Right now I'm running around with heroic creche(which he has) and the Ruthless Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity (resil + movement impairing effects). Should I keep what I have, or replace creche with something that has more resilience?
2 - He reforges everything into mastery. You said crit is better for arena. I'm confused.
3 - 2-piece PvE gear. I'm so glad he has this. I really didn't want to give up my holy power from judgement.
4 - He's gemming resilience everywhere. My friend said I'm better off gemming dps stats. Obviously this guy knows more than my friend, but is it a huge difference?

[Deleted]

Find someone's stream (vanguards at twitch is good for a ret pala) copy their armory and playstyle, easiest way to get good.

[Deleted]

Well one of your main ways to survive will be using word of glory when you get sacred shiled, as it increases healing you take by 20%. Using cooldowns at the right time will also help. When another class uses a big cooldown, use your divine proection for 20% less damage and try to kite away from them/ Line of sight them, or get a team mate to slow them off you. You can use most ablities offensively and defensively. Using Bubble, is best to prevent damage, not to get as close to 1% and then try to flash heal up in the bubble.

And old trick in 1v1 as a ret, is when the enemy, (say a rogue) uses his shadow dance, repentance him. He might be silly enough to trinket, if he does, HoJ him and use wings. You'll nearly kill him in those 6 seconds. Survival isn't about just tanking the damage, it's about trading cooldown for cooldown. If a feral druid is on you, and he uses berserk, thats 20 seconds of him using abilties at 50% the cost. Anyone can die to a berserking feral 1v1, so it's best to reduce the time he can on you. You could hoj him, get a team mate to fear him, maybe trap him. CC out his cooldown. Unless you have a healer, this situation can be easier as you won't have to trade as often, for rets to bring such great utility, they lack in some areas, ie. kiting. So having your friends help you "peel" melee off you at times can be helpful.

My suggestion to watching other people, is in the Interface, go to Raid Porfiles, and check "Raid-style Party frames" you can adjust the size, show class colours etc. Very helpful. As with most things, you're awareness will take time. Just make sure you don't use "A" and "D" to turn. Keybaord turning spells death for most melee.

[Liagala]

A is cleanse and D is bubble. Have been for a long time. I always have raid frames showing and set up, my problem is that I don't think to look at them during pvp. I'm too busy tunnel visioning on my debuffs and the guy I'm trying to squish. If I'm raiding, yeah. I can tell you at any given moment who has how much health/mana and which debuffs on them, whether they're using their buttons properly or not, all that good stuff. As soon as my "raid boss" starts moving around and getting a huge array of abilities instead of the 3-4 I'm used to however, I turn stupid. Time will fix it.

This trading cooldowns thing is exactly what I need to learn, and have never had to deal with. That's what I tried to explain to my friend when he was talking me into this mess - he seems to think that because I can stomp all over everyone else in pve, I must also be awesome at pvp. His exact words were, "You know how to maximize dps. That alone puts you above 80% of these guys." He just doesn't get that all the pretty numbers in the world don't do me any good if I spend all my time CC'd and/or getting my teeth kicked in by a berserked kitty. Hopefully that GladiatorlosSA addon Greendog mentioned will help with that.

[Gotjuice]

This is from the guide I linked earlier. It will answer all your questions give it a look. This is Vanguard's guide! His quote:

"The biggest argument and most questions I get as a ret now is "Mastery or Crit?" There is no definite answer here, but from my perspective crit is better in most comps a ret would run. Mastery would be better in comps such as ret lock shaman perhaps. Crit has gotten buffed in 4.3 since judgement is a good portion of our damage, and mastery doesn't help it at all."

[Deleted]

Gladiator LoS will help a tonne. As it calls out cooldowns and abilities. The difference between pve and pvp damage is simple. In pve, you do a set roation, and you prefect doing it. Keeping up things like inquisition, no abilites on cooldown etc. In pvp, there is no rotation or order. It's all situational, you can't keep up inquisition up all the time in pvp, unless you get super lucky with divine purpose procs. Using Zeal with wings and Inq up, and you're trinket up leads to big burst, as it is mainly burst that will land you kills. You can't just sit on a target using crusader and judgement off cd and you'll do enough damage to finally kill him (unless he has ass gear). You need to coordinate your damage with your friends, or you're cc. Being on skype or vent is always very helpful too, and always be vocal of your situation.

If you do vs a premade, you'll have to remember that they'll most likely be better at negating your burst, and thats why cc is important, if you try to blow up a healer of theirs, they'll most likely start throwing cc on you like cyclones, stuns, etc. Thats what seperate the damage in pvp, you need to create a window or situation to land a kills. As most classes that is, most rbg teams are 3 healers, 2x Boomkin, Fire Mage, Lock, Spriest, rogue (sometimes a frost dk) and they just spread aids and kill everyone.

[coralluswow]

I do play a ret paladin...And wanted to jump in here and try help clarrify some stuff.

Mastery gives you extra dmg as holy dmg. I find this better than crit, because 99% of the teams you face now can dispell your wings, so bursting with wings is less of a game changer. In the past wings gave you 60% chance to crit with hammer. Not its 6% and the amount of crit you will have to stack to make it "game" changing is going to nerf you in the long run.

Also someone mentioned crit helps with Word of glory i can see how this "makes sense" but you would rather just spec for this, taking the WOG glygh, the "last word" tallent and selfless healer talent, this if used on a team mate below 35% hp, will still crit for 100K and will crit alot.

Haste is mentioned but in actual fact the priority is more like....

Hit (to cap)> resil (atelast 3800)> mastery (32% extra dmg)> crit

Any haste you get is because it happens to be on the gear and u cant reforge it off

Now to speak of PVE trinkets and PVE 2 set....as a new person to PVP i would honestly say you should go 100% PVP gear, your lack of knowlege of other classes, and your own class. You cannt afford to be below 4000 resil. Vangard is arguably the best ret paladin in the world, your can definatly take spec and reforge tips from him. But he can run with 3000 resil and 1 vs 2 most people simply because he knows his class, you cant

This also brings me to gems discusion, this all depends on ur gear and reforging, following the stats priority...say u couldnt live without the 2 Set PVE, then u would need to gem as much resil as u can to reach that 3800 minimum, or which ever stat u missing, ive seen ppl take some crazy peices and the gem Hit to get the cap. But there stats over all worked.

Some addons:
1.) Battleground targets
2.) GladiatorlosSA
3.) Gladius (its different to number 2)
4.) losecontrol - this puts a icon ontop of your character showing you are stunned
5.) clique - this allows you to assing spells to you mouse eg: shift+left click = word of glory (on mouse over) OR shift+right click = Hand of protection
6.) Tidy plates - I am assuming you already use Name plates for improved tracking of enemies, if not turn it on, and this puts tons of info on the plates, cast bar, debuffs, class colors.
7.) Platebuffs - this works hand-in-hand with tidyplates but helps it only show relevant buffs eg: who has becaon of light, ur stuns are made bigger so u can track time left.

Last tip is a personal thing but i changed the UI to X-Perl as the player and target plates are "biger" not the default huge player picture and tiny little green line showing health. This helped me be more mindful of my own health, i also moved the frames to the middle of my screen, eg }[Player Frames] <Actual player> [Target frames] so that i dont have to keep looking up and down between my frames and what my player is doing, and if he is actually facing the right way.

[Illana]

1 - Where do I go for info about stats/forging/etc? Arena junkies had a couple specs, but I can't find stat help and such. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't see it.

The main thing about ret specs if that you pick up last word from holy tree. Everything else is personal preference, some people like having that 30% chance to keep 3HP from eternal glory and some can live without and put more points in ret tree for stuff.

Crit is your number 1 secondary stat. Mastery only increases the damage of your hand of light, crit increases ALL your damage and also double dips by increasing your hand of light damage because if you crit a crusader strike or TV, your hand of light is going to scale accordingly.

2 - I'm getting good at cleansing off movement speed debuffs, but I never know what I'm actually cleansing. I just know that I'm slow and/or stopped, so I hit the button. This leads to wasted time as I try to cleanse something I can't, or use GCDs/mana spamming it on something that's reapplied too quickly, and I should just hand of freedom it. What's the best way to get to learn which snare is which? Just plain watch debuffs and spend time learning what the icons are? Addons?

The only way really is to practice, I know pretty much every skill, every class has through years of pvping and know immediately what to cleanse when facing a specific class. General rule of thumb though is that if facing a rogue/feral it's not really worth it to cleanse unless freedom is on cd and you REALLY need to get away somehow.

3 - Who the hell am I supposed to kill first? I get on the healer, and my friend yells at me for letting a hunter stand there unmolested and shoot people. I get on the hunter, and I get yelled at for letting the rogue dance around with his legendaries. I stun the rogue so I can get on the healer and/or hunter, and I get yelled at for wasting a stun that I could use to incapacitate the healer. I just can't win, and it's annoying as hell. I get that there isn't a set priority all the time and every situation is different, but there have got to be a few general rules. What are they?

Its all situational: don't ever let someone pressure you into killing a healer first, 5 times out of 10 it's probably the worst target as they are geared and have people people peeling for them.

You are melee without teleports (rogue, feral, warrior all have some way to teleport to someone) which means overextending is REALLY dangerous as a ret as you only realistically have 1 get out of jail free card and that's a 5 minute cd.

You hit whatever is available: dk overextend? smash his face in. Hunter running in to trap your healer? Punish that. Over time you will learn what to target and when it's all a matter of experience.

Generally these days a geared healer will not fall unless pressured by 2+ people. So unless you see someone else going for a healer, 99% of the time it's best to throw a repentance on them and then HoJ them after it ends or if they trinket while smashing up someone else.

4 - I zone into a BG and someone always mentions that the other team has X number of healers, or they're all the same guild, or some other piece of information that is not readily available from our position in the starting zone. Which addon tells them this?

BG spy is one addon, but as people have said before you can see what specs and what realms they are on anyway

5 - My friend keeps telling me that I'm doing well because I'm often at the top of the list in damage/killing blows and relatively low on deaths. I feel like the guy who blows the dps out of the water - for the 15 seconds he's alive before the fire he's bathing in kills him. Pretty numbers mean jack if you don't know what you're doing, and I don't. I'm still just blindly slamming buttons and hoping for the best. I thought running BGs would help with this, but it doesn't. It's a gigantic clusterfuck in there, and I'm not really learning anything. Is there a more controlled place to learn, or even a different way to approach BGs that won't degenerate into an 8-way brawl? I generally avoid road fighting and try to chase objectives, but when the entire opposing team is doing the same, it gets messy.

unfortunately this is what BGs are like. Defending objectives usually ends up in smaller scale skirmishes unless both teams are playing for them as you said.

A good habit is to look at your combat log and see what killed you. Then you can assess what the biggest threat is and plan how to eliminate them next time.

[worsthitmanNa]

Learn to stare at your debuff bar, main target, and focus and the sametime. Know your rotation by heart and when you glance down to look at a skill glance down don't stare till it's up. Just stand in front of the training dummy and practice it's not something you get instantly but over a couple weeks so don't give up. There are addons that will tell you or you could just learn to do it without them it's really up to you. Top damage/ top kills doesn't mean anything really are you peeling for healers and ccing healers that wins games on top of putting out retarded damage learn to do both. Pvp group fights seem like really crazy at first but after a will you get more and more awarness. That would depend in arena or bgs hitting a hunter with an un cc healer won't do anything. A rogue can babysit a hunter with dispels but not really a ret you have hoj and repetance not much crowded control.

What class is your friend and is this arena or bg because if your going heals you need to cc the hunter and tunnel the healer. So if your friends a hunter he should scatter trap the hunter and blank silence the healer so he can't dispel the trap the hunter will probably trinketed and your hunter needs to monkey blind him out of his trinket. repentances the hunter after monkey blind and hoj or lock the healer out of his healing tree to stop dispels. He is at fault to tunneling a hunter won't do much when the healer is free casting. Running bg will help just awarness in pvp isn't something you get in a couple weeks there is a lot to learn.