How are Retribution and Protection performing in ranked Battlegrounds and Arenas?

[Aleksej89]

I am trying to rekindle my interest in WoW's pvp scene (mostly ranked Battlegrounds, but some bigger Arena compositions as well), however i was completely uninvolved in PvP Class changes since WotLK ended.

Can you fellow PvP paladins provide some insight into the current strengths, weaknesses, overall performance & other important/useful features of Retribution/Protection specs in Ranked Battlegrounds and Arenas?

Thank you for reading and helping me out.

[pld]

Prot has a very minuscule representation in both arena and RBGs. Without Vengeance, the damage is negligible and the raid utilities we bring are also available on Holy and Ret so...there's no real point in prot PvP. We're also a very weak FC so most groups will opt for other classes (especially with the change to FC damage) so Ret (or holy) are your two realistic options for PvP in MoP at the moment.

Ret was recently buffed pretty significantly so our damage is really strong. We have some of the best burst in the game, but you'll need good support to make the most of it. Whenever anyone sees gigantic wings (AW), they'll know to CC you for the majority of your cooldown. The hope is you'll have enough back up support to cleanse so you can get back to facesmashing.

Unfortunately, Ret's biggest weakness is still our survivability since we have very few defensive cooldowns. We are pretty reliant on our teammates to help peel and CC. We've also garnered a bit of a reputation during the early stages of the expansion when we were pretty bottom of the barrel so there's a stigma in the community towards Ret paladins. You may find yourself having a difficult time getting picked up for RBG teams and/or finding arena partners, but fortunately that mindset has been seeing a shift lately.

So all-in-all, prot is unplayable in PvP, ret has pretty big gaps and weaknesses, but is still a solid melee class at the moment....just hope you find a good partner(s) to play with.

[Exac]

As far as I can tell with an under geared ret set in PvP, you basically have the opportunity to 2-shot anyone you want providing you ensure you don't get CC'd. The 30 seconds of playing god is followed by 4 minutes of off-healing and getting trained.

As holy you're not as strong as the other healers, but you should eb able to keep people up with beacon + FoL spam.

[Aleksej89]

Thank you for replying

Any more answers are welcome.

[zehzao]

Alek sorry to steal your topic but i want to add some questions.

paulleedot you said Prot is unplayable on rated bgs, but can you have some fun with it on random bgs and low lvl arena (1600<) or are you going to get stomped as well?

[mmmmmmmBacon]

Alek sorry to steal your topic but i want to add some questions.

paulleedot you said Prot is unplayable on rated bgs, but can you have some fun with it on random bgs and low lvl arena (1600<) or are you going to get stomped as well?

Prot is effectively worthless aside from being an annoying fly. The damage is negligible without vengeance, and Prot's selfhealing with sacred shield and seal of insight(which is largely what keeps them alive) is neutered without sufficient vengeance. Any other tank specced class will outperform a prot paladin in a pvp scenario.

If all you want is to be a speedbump, then prot can work for you. Otherwise, to be of any use to your team, you should pick a different spec.

[zehzao]

Prot is effectively worthless aside from being an annoying fly. The damage is negligible without vengeance, and Prot's selfhealing with sacred shield and seal of insight(which is largely what keeps them alive) is neutered without sufficient vengeance. Any other tank specced class will outperform a prot paladin in a pvp scenario.

If all you want is to be a speedbump, then prot can work for you. Otherwise, to be of any use to your team, you should pick a different spec.

awesome, thanks mate ^^