My opinion about a retribution paladin's problems in PVP

[Admuntour]

Firstly this isn't a whine thread, I want to start a good and educated discussion about a retribution paladin real problems in PVP, in my opinion the problem comes from a lack of tools, to illustrate this I'll start with a comparison of the other melee classes.
Every melee class has, a snare and an interrupt, some of them also have a CC and a ability to close the distance with a target and a couple of other twists too.

Warriors
Have intercept to close the distance with 30 CD, they have hamstring to make sure they stay in melee range spamable if they have enough rage, and if needed they can pummel to interrupt a cast with a 10 sec CD that is not on GCD, by specing accordingly they get a second snare Piercing Howl that is spamable and a root effect to hamstring.

Rogues
They have no less then 3 CC, sap that is used out of combat but is spamable, blind that can be used in combat CD of 3 mins or 90 seconds if talented, and kidney shot if they build up enough combo points with a 30 sec CD, to close the distance they have sprint on a 5 min CD, they can become almost immune to spells for 5 seconds via CoS on a 1 min CD, and they can become almost untouchable in melee with Evasion on a 5 min CD, they can slow a target with poisons and its spamable via shiv, with talents they can have a second distance closer its Shadowstep, last but not least they can kick with a 10 min CD not on GCD to interrupt casts.

Shamans
They get earth shock, 6 seconds CD and it interrupts casts, its on GCD though, as a snare they have frost shock and earthbind totem, if talented they can instantly get into ghost wolf and remove all movement impairing, I will assume all shamans have this since we are talking about melee PVP shamans, and now in WoTLK shamans are also getting a CC, Hex with a 45 seconds CD and a 1.5 sec cast.

Feral Druids
Surprisingly they don't have any interrupt at all and have to use charge or bash for that purpose, they have feral charge to close the distance with a 15 sec CD in bear and 30 sec CD in cat, and can also use dash , bash has a 1 min CD, as for CC the druid can use Cyclone that is spamable.

Death Knights
From the information on MMO champ on their abilities I can see they have, 1 snare and root effect all in one chains of ice, to close the distance they bring the enemy to the via Chains of ice its spamable as long as the DK has frost runes, to interrupt their enemy they have mind freeze with a 10 second CD that costs runic power, as a second interrupt they have strangulate with a CD of 30 seconds, however DK can gain a lot of other snares by specing into either unholy or frost, and for 12 seconds DK can become immune to stuns and have 50% damage reduction.

Now it should become quite obvious by now that most of these classes have a very wide arsenal of abilities at their disposal for PVP.
Paladins on the other hand have just, judgment of justice on a 8 second CD, limits the enemies movement speed to 100%, its supposed to act like a snare but its also our means of closing a distance, while it does have its uses, it doesn't make a paladins life that much easier, we don't have any interrupt, we have 1 CC, hammer of justice that is on a 1 min CD or 30 seconds if you spec for it, and 1 other CC, repentance that is also on a 1 min CD, so far I count just 3 abilities against a lot more the other classes have.

However I am not going to limit my argument to just this comparison, now I'm going to explain why these abilities are so needed by any melee class that wants to PVP.

So lets imagine a fictional combat scenario, of melee vs caster/healer.
Warrior
The warrior can open up with charge then hamstring to slow his opponent, if the need should arise he can pummel a cast or a heal, if the opponent gets out of range they can intercept since its only a 20 second CD (all serious PVP warriors will have improved intercept), again they can use hamstring to slow their opponents since its spamable and cheep and they can again pummel since it has such a low CD.
A warrior can intercept 3 times per minute, pummel 6 times per minute and keep his opponent slowed for a good long time.

Rogue
The rogue should always get the jump on his opponents and make use of his first CC, sap, when finally engaged in combat he can use cheep shot for a nice opening move, followed by kidney shot to prevent any action, during this time the rogue is passively applying poisons from his weapon slowing the enemies speed thus snaring them and at any time the rogue can interrupt with kick, if a opponent somehow manages to get out of range the rogue can chose to either sprint to the target or if speced can shadowstep and again can apply poisons easy with shiv and again kick when he wishes, all the while the rogue can blind whoever sees fit or use vanish, CoS and evasion if threatened.
A rogue can kick 6 times per minute, can blind one target every 3 mins or 90 seconds, can kidney shot 2 times per minute, and can get a cheep shot opener at least 2 times during a fight.

Shaman
Can use earth shock at range to interrupt a cast, can use ghost wolf to gain distance, and to maintain melee range can use earth bind totem and frost shock, all the while can try and CC one other opponent with Hex.
A shaman can get of 10 shocks per minute, which can be either earth or frost shocks, ghost wolf can be used at leasure, hex every 45 seconds.

Druids
The druids have a bit of a harder time without a proper interrupt against casters/healers, however the creative use of charge will help close the distance and prevent the enemy from casting too much, bash can help but suffers from a 1 min CD, its a bit sluggish for a druid to shift to caster form to use roots though they are spamable and use Cyclone to CC.
A druid can charge in bear form 4 times per minute, in cat form 2 times per minute, can use bash 1 time per minute, can use dash every 5 mins, can root and CC as much as he wants.

DK
I can't really make a very good argument here since I haven't played the beta and only heard of DK via the forums, as it stands they seem to be easy to kite, but they do have the tools for combat, being able to use chains of ice at least 12 times per minute, the rate at which their frost runes regen, they can use strangulate 2 times per minute, can use mind freeze 6 times per minute and can use death grip 2 times per minute if speced, right now I guess its a case of their abilities just needing to be balanced out.

Compared to all the above a paladin can only use hammer of justice 2 times per minute, and repentance once a minute, and joj 6 times per minute.

Well it just won't cut it for PVP, the paladin is one of the few classes that has to waste his CC to interrupt a targets cast and close the distance, and he can only do it 3 times per minute.
I don't think I've ever seen a rogue that uses blind to interrupt a cast, they use it to CC, it will probably be the same with shamans and with hex, druids have are almost in the same boat as us but they can at least spam their cyclone and use feral charge 4 times per minute.

I think I have made a good enough argument and its probably quite plain for all to see that paladins lack some major tools for PVP, but why? Blizz have chosen to give every other melee class the tools required to PVP well, and they more or less work.

Is it because paladins can heal? Well so can shamans and and druids and even they have the snares, interupts and distance closers available and CC on top of that, DK also have a bit of healing via death pact and rune tap if speced for it.

Is it because we can become immune for 12 seconds once every 3 mins? Well I hate to burst the bubble so to speak but, I heard warriors are getting shield wall every 5 mins but at the cost of it reducing only 50% of the damage done, druids are getting a last stand like abilities, DK have icebound fortitude which reduces damage done by 50% and also makes them immune stuns, shield wall and icebound fortitude last as long as bubble does, rogues can make themselfs almost immune to spells for 5 seconds every 1 minute and can avoid lots of melee damage with evasion every 5 mins, and on demand they can reset those CD if they are speced for it.

So far I find most of the reasons why a paladin doesn't have these PVP tools to be very, very weak, our healing and our immunities just don't cut it against the overwhelming arsenal the other classes can muster.

Now I'm not saying I want paladins to get a all the other tools the other classes have, if we had an intercept like ability even with a 30 second CD, a interrupt with even a 10 second CD and a slow, on top of our 2 CC, judgment of justice and bubble+heal then it would be indeed to much and we would probably become as OP as rogues.

However a fix in some way is still needed, at least an interrupt would be nice, a small snare effect to joj like reduces movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds during which a target regains 10% speed every 1 seconds then after the snare their speed is capped at normal run speed.

A change to art of war would also be needed, we can only use hand of freedom every 25 seconds, 21 with talents, it is vulnerable to being dispelled, but worst still now it has a stun removing component, now on top of having to consider how I want to use my HoJ and Repent talents, to either close the gap, interrupt and what not, I have to make a choice of removing a stun on a team mate or removing snares of me if they are undispelable.

A paladin with a lot of debuffs like multiple poisons, magical effects and such will cleanse them very slowly and will be vulenrable during that time or just flat out ineffective since he isn't doing damage he is slowly trying to remove snares that may also have dispel resist mecanics too, or you can have some snares like curse of exhaustion or hamstring that are not dispelable, in this case you must use BoF, but what do you do if your partner is getting stun locked?

So once every 21 seconds I have to make the hard choice between saving myself or my team member, a 21 CD ability for a lot of other abilities that are spamable, I think its is a problem no one has considered, the new art of war is really not as good as it seems, to me its quite worst then we had before.
I hope everyone can see that in all seriousness its just way to much, I know there are probably ret paladins that have gotten to 2k or more rating, but I bet its way harder then with any other class, also the argument of how paladins are so good at support and must have someone to support is also null since it seems blizzard decided that all other classes deserve these combat tools, and shamans, druids, rogues, and DK all have their own utility too.
Rogues have CC, wound poison and are generally a very big nuisance, warriors have mortal strike, shamans now will have a CC, WF and BL, DK have lots of different buffs depending how they spec, from Improved Icy Talons to Abomination's Strength.

Well I've said what I had to say, now I'd like some feedback if possible, and I'd prefer if flaming would be kept to a minimum but I believe that is a luxury I won't have.

[annomander999]

/shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

try youtubing "retri pala"

then you will see what i mean

come videos show a paladin critting 11k...

yes thats true, ELEVEN K, IN ONE HIT

some beta video

try searching for "retribution paladins are overpowered"

and u think you are going to have trouble?

ham is hardly spammable, neither is piercing howl, and, take a look, ham is shit AND piercing howl only lasts a short while

since when have paladins who are retri ever suffered from pummel? and its on TEN sec cd... so stfu, the only time u need to heal is if we are beating your ass (which is like, all the time) and when i last looked, i categorise "divine shield" as spammable... never been against a paladin who HASNT used it, the only time they dont use it is if they have the debuff, which is silly in pvp cos it is removed once you die

on your intercept gurn, i can only answer that paladins have like 0 ranged spells which inflict enough damage for you to NEED to stay out of combat, what do you want... holy charge? divine intercept? you are still the most annoying class, bubble then heal to max health, so a warrior effectively has to kill you in melee combat twice, which is ridiculous bcs rage starvation etc + you sill low cd spells which inflict damage mean the warrior is unlikely to be able to inflict almost 190% damage on you b4 our health burns

[euthanasian]

LOL Cyclone is spammable?...

You know that each time a druid uses it on the same target, it gets MUCH less effective to the point that it's cast time becomes longer than the actual CC... lol...

[Admuntour]

Firstly, the 11k hits you are talking about most likely have come from the beta, that will most likely be fixed, so its not a valid point.
Secondly I wasn't talking about a paladin vs warrior duel, I was talking about the paladin's lack of PVP tools, I may not be a warrior expert, maybe hamstring isn't spamable, or piercing howl, but at least the warrior has those abilities available to him, at least he also has intercept even if it is on CD and pummel even if it is on a CD.
After the beta is over and all those 20k and 11k hits become history what will the paladin be left with in PVP?
With the recent change to spell push back a paladin has absolutely no way to interrupt a cast unless he wastes one of his 2 CC that he can only do about 3 times per minute while, warriors, rogues, DK, shamans can do it twice as much.

And yes I know Cyclone has diminishing returns, but a clever druid could still switch targets to wait for the diminishing returns to be gone.

Really no one has touched upon the point I was trying to make.

[Bad Acid]

Stop treating PVP like it's 1v1 and a lot of these problems go away idk.

[AnArmedKurd]

My opinion about retribution paladin's problems in PvP is they're playing the wrong class

[Admuntour]

If you read my post you will see I'm not treating PVP as a 1 vs 1, and even so the problem won't go away, a paladin still only has 3 interrupts per minute that he can also maybe use as CC or to close the gap on his opponent with no interrupt, a natural choice might be to team up with a DK or MS warrior+ shaman.
However the other team could contain, a DK+ MS warrior+ Shaman healer, then what, the paladin still has minus a interrupt unless again they waste their CC instead of using them like they should be used as CC, all the while the entire opposite team has interrupts, CC, snares and distance closers.
Really, no matter how you slice it the problem kind of persists.

And again your post isn't relevant since even though PVP isn't basted around 1 vs 1 Blizzard still had the common sense to give every other class a snare or interrupt and on top of that maybe a CC or distance closer cause if it ever does come down to 1 vs 1 they could still perform well.

[Bad Acid]

What if the other team is DK Mage Shaman, mage has more snares and less interrupts and blah blah you want to make all classes have the same number of interrupts and snares, so this just goes back to the troll earlier which actually has a point. You can't discount everything else a paladin can do and think they'll be fair to play when other classes don't have those advantages.

[Deca]

l2p

justice is great

[PaleFolklore]

You fogot about the huge amount of anti-cc paladins have. They are the melee class with the biggest amount of anti-cc (Hand of Freedom, Defensive Dispel and Bubble, most of it is castable on others, too). If you want a snare or a distant closer, you'll have to lose some of your anti-cc. Also, HoJ on a 30 sec CD talented is amazing.

And by the way, Rogues also have Deadly Throw and Gouge : )

[Tachi]

welp. U know, for a long time... many people have felt like ret was OK but needed some tweaks.

But then, there are those scrubs who we inevitably pwn; who show up on threads like this and claim "omg ret is good enough," Yet later on when we bring up the fact we are seldom viable in 5 man's or raids, they'd say "Lolret reroll nub" Well... i guess one can have it both ways...

One thing is for sure, Once upon a Beta, paladins were "too strong". So just before the launch of wow they got nerfed.

Low and behold here we are again.. If paladins make it out of these final few passes with 70% of the strength we have now, i'll be impressed.





Oh and Btw, OP..

Your wall of text is like... Ultimate.

But no one is gonna read that beast.

[Admuntour]

I said I'm not asking for paladins to as much tools as all the other classes, but at least a interrupt effect would be nice and bring so much more flexibility, I could live with judgment of justice the way it is, and HoJ, Rep if I didn't have to blow them all just on interrupts, which might or might not be resisted too.
As for the anti-cc with AoW dispeling stun its a bitter sweet thing, again you have to quickly think a situation out before using HoJ, Rep and HF while all the other classes really don't have such a hard choice since they have more tools with lower CDs too.
Or to put it another way I'd like to have paladins at least on the same foothold as other classes.

I know its probably too much to ask but a nice post that would counter all to most of my points or most would be nicer then, just a constant flame.

[Slade]

First of all, thank you for your post. Those that read it's entirety and think objectively will see the argument is a valid one.

In response to several posts here:

The YOUTUBE.COM VIDEOS of giant OP ret pally dmg is obsolete... purely for fantasy and laughs now. Those abilities have been completely nerfed and changed several builds ago (for good) so that stuff is never going to happen in the release, garanteed.

Next, the ret spec has always been intended for pvp melee, TBC patch enhancements aside (only now is it truly being given pve dps utility). We have some great passive talents like vindication, eye for an eye, and movement speed increase is decent enough, however we do not have quite enough active abilities to let us compete in the 2v2/3v3 space fairly... I would argue that ret pallies who excel in those arena brackets are exceptionally good players, probably healed and supported by resto shammies, and I would even go so far as to say they're better overall players than equally rated players of other classes because of the inherent handicaps of the spec relative to the other melee. Largely because ret pallies are the worst melee class against healers of roughly equal gear, ability.

Not to mention, hammer of justice stuns are rediculously over-resisted... I am nearly raid-boss hit capped (with precision) in my pvp gear and I still get ~30-40% resists on stuns in arena. I've recorded it and it's hard to believe, but true... someone please enlighten me on how such a variety of classes have that much resistance to stuns? I have 20% stun resist with stoicism but my logs show less than 20% actually resisting.

To be fairly balanced with every other melee class, we would need a true interupt, OR a sprint/intercept effect, OR a real slowing mechanism (100% movement speed limitation is WEAK, be honest... how about 90%???), OR a healing-on-target-reduced debuff. JUST ONE of these additions would drastically level the playing field. There is no valid argument against any of this reasoning. But, I do know that Blizz officially states that they dont intend classes to be all balanced, however singling one melee class out is pretty lame, even if we are supposed to counter with anit-CC and defensive abilities.

Finally, I'm sick of other classes defending their CC spams with "Diminishing Returns!". PLEASE! The only dim return that's reasonable is polymorph, and that heals you. Cyclone, even when it's spammed to the point of lasting 1 second or less is still viable interupt power (interupt of spells and just pure fight momentum) Same for roots, and Fears are even worse... probably THE worst. Their dim returns are pathetic and you can receive alot of dmg during fear. And you sure don't have to wait long in any case for these CCs to last several seconds again. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if there were a more balanced representation of classes/specs in arena, but since the same uber-arena classes appear so often in matches, we need something to be more competitive. Hell, everyone I know is relieved when they're matched against a team with a ret pally.

[b37x]

someone please enlighten me on how such a variety of classes have that much resistance to stuns?

1) Orcs
2) Talents Like Stoicism
3) Powerful Earthstorm Diamond
4) Diminishing Returns

[Ongomar]

First I just want to mention, I liked your post, as it underlined a lot of problems faced by retribution paladins against melee classes. I completely agree with what you have said.

Second, I want to thank you Slade for taking all of my opinions and writing them out for me :P But seriously, I totally agree with what you've said, and couldn't have put it better myself.

/salute

[Tachi]

and isnt the Live version of stoic still 30%?

[Vengeful]

Death Knights
From the information on MMO champ on their abilities I can see they have, 1 snare and root effect all in one chains of ice, to close the distance they bring the enemy to the via Chains of ice its spamable as long as the DK has frost runes, to interrupt their enemy they have mind freeze with a 10 second CD that costs runic power, as a second interrupt they have strangulate with a CD of 30 seconds, however DK can gain a lot of other snares by specing into either unholy or frost, and for 12 seconds DK can become immune to stuns and have 50% damage reduction.

Not only they have 12 seconds 50% damage reduction and immunity to stuns, but this spell has only 1 min cooldown! 1 min and no debuffs.
It's too overpowered, imo. In 5 min, they have 250% damage reduction and 1 min immunity to stuns; paladin has 100% immunity in 5 min, but also 100% attack speed penalty,3 min (!) forbearance and it is dispellable by Priests.

I think Divine Shield ability should be unique only for Paladins, but now, there are many bubble-like abilities: DK has this OP(imo) Icebound Fortitude, Warrior has Shield Wall, Shadow Priest has Dispersion (90 %damage reduction and 30% health regeneration in 6 sec,wow!).

At this point, why doesn't Blizz give all classes Divine Shield?

[greenmasheen]

i dont think paladin shield is dispellable.

[Vengeful]

i dont think paladin shield is dispellable.

Why? Priests have Mass Dispell

[Admuntour]

1 out of 10 classes being able to dispel bubble isn't the problem, the problem is that bubble is used as an excuse to prevent the paladin from getting the much needed and much desired PVP tools they lack.

I'm glad some more can look objectively look at the information I've posted and agree paladins need these tools, at least an interrupt of sorts, would help greatly, I think with judgment of justice+ a good capable partner the other weak points can be worked around.

As for DK, they probably are OP right now in certain areas and Underpowered in others and will get a balance check eventually.