Need some help/advice Ret Pal/Resto Druid or other options?

[Jellybeans]

Hi everyone.

As you can see this is my first post and i really need some help and guidance.

I play a Ret Paladin
GEAR
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...n&n=Jellybeans
SPEC
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...eans&gn=inSain

With my husband Druid heal
GEAR
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...llidan&n=Gummi
SPEC
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...ummi&gn=inSain

This is our first season in arena and we are playing 2V2. 3V3 isn't an option for us as our play times are very random. We have 3 young kids.

We have stalled at a team rating of 1055.

We could make 1100 but we cant beat 1100+

I can’t improve my weapon because on my server if you don’t have 5k5 dps you can’t even join a non hero crusade.

If you are wearing pvp gear you told you suck and you have to get inspected "at the fountain" before any group.

So that weapon is the best dps i can have until i get 1800 side.

Matches we win:

Rogue, Rogue,
Mage, lock
Mage, rogue.

Pretty much any team i can burst down while the other teammate is in cyclone…

I can’t kill a healer with a warrior/heavy dps partner before the warrior/heavy dps kills my healer.

I am using FCFS rotation with crusaders strike, judgement, devine storm, exo being chosen in order if cool downs are up.
I have everything key bound and mouse turn while straffing.

I am going to change the enchants on my head and shoulders to be arcanum of torment and greater inscription of the axe.

I am working on my blacksmithing and jewelcrafting and will be stacking force when they are 400.

I know i have too much hit and not enough crit so i am going to change my wintergrasp bracers for the pvp bracers.

I can’t get emblems as i only have pvp gear.

My husband and i are desperate and are considering turning my ret pal into a holy (or prot holy before the nerf - i will have to farm honour for all new intel gear) and adding another DPS like warrior

We also have a
Warrior
Priest
Rogue
DK
All level 80.

We are thinking without MS our team will never break 1800.

So are thinking of running a Holy Paladin with a dps warrior.

I really need to know if with hard work and learning to play the ret pal druid heal will be viable. ???

Or we cut our losses and regear for War/Holy pal.

Kindest Regards
Jelly

[Palatinus]

I can't get on the armory atm for some reason, so i can't comment on spec/gear/gems/enchants ect.

But, the bottom line is that the combo will never be truly viable.

It is an all-right combo, and works very well up to around 2.2-2.4k, then it starts getting much harder due to the lack of MS.

I played it last season at around 2.4k, even after patch 3.2, and it still works against pretty much every combo. You need to figure out what certain tactics for certain combos work, for example, warrior/healer, you mostly never going to kill the healer before the warrior kills yours unless you get lucky. For that combo we generally stayed on the warrior, with the exception of doing fast switches to the healer (especially if its a druid with no hots) when i have stun and wings up.

The main strategy to the combo is switching. If you keep tunneling a target your never going to win, mainly because you have no ms and your damage is easily healable. But if you can keep switching you can keep the pressure up.

The other problem you face is that i found this combo is very much about out lasting the other team while waiting for the moment to get a fast kill (through switching). Unfortunately for you this requires quite good gear, both me and my druid are full furious and my druid can pretty much outlast anything (with my help of course) until we can set up a kill >.<. Then again, that might just be how we play, we generally play very defensive but im sure offensively works too, but it would require a bit of pve gear - mostly on the ret palas gear :S. Like against warrior/druid, i can either tunnel the warrior and wait for the opportunity to switch to the druid with no hots up, or i can keep switching between them and we generally win by outlasting their mana, when innervate pops, the enemy druid has the choice of trinketing the cyclone from my druid to get mana back, or trinket hammer of justice to save himself from dieing. Again, not sure what spec you are, but for me personally i like to run ret/resto as 3/17/51, with improved sacred shield rather than hammer as i find that we have enough CC normally (with the use of cyclones) and the extra survivability from SS is amazing.


As i said the armory is down, but i can give one tip. What seal are you using in arena? Seal of righteousness, glyphed and speced right is the best seal for this combo due to the fast switching required to get a kill. I find seal of corr/veng is good against team where i have to tunnel a dps, but that's because i have the libram that gives me +200 str from the dot ticks, and it still allows me to switch by just switching libram and seal.

It really depends on what you want to do. If you like playing ret/resto, stick with it, as you will learn the tactics eventually but its very gear dependant. On the other hand, if you just want to get 1800 for weapons and 'cut your losses' war/holy might be better, or should i say, war/prot-holy.

Oh yeah, i'm also not sure if your alliance or horde. I would of said horde is easier due to arcane torrent (its amazing for killing healers as ret) and war stomp to help get that much needed cyclone off.

Edit: If you check my armory, just fyi im not currently playing with my druid partner. We did play this season at 2.4k MMR and still went 8-2, only losing to elemental/arcane or destro combos, due to us not knowing tactics on them yet :S

[axi0m]

Very good post, one of my RL friends has a resto druid on my server (alliance side) and I've got a warrior and a pally both at 80 in deadly gear with ironsoul(warr) and edge of ruin(pally) as horde alts, I wanna faction switch one of them over to play with them (mostly bg and then 2's to get furious gear) I'm not TOO concerned with getting gladiator or anything like that (obviously playing 2's) but I'm trying to figure out which is the better to go with, I've heard good things about both combos in 2's but I'm wondering which has more "branching" options so to speak if I decide to pursue a 3's team or something.

[Jellybeans]

Firstly Palatinus i want to thank you for the time, effort and care you put into your post. I know everyone raves about arena junkies and elitist jerks but your post was more thoughtful, giving and informative they anything I could hope to receive on either of those websites.
You have earn not only my gratitude but my respect.

Now to your reply:

My gear is the best i can get pvp wise before arena points.

I have a combination of Furious, deadly and wintergrasp gear. My weapon is the titan steel destroyer with beserker enchant.

My gems are force and my enchants AP.

My crit is low due to too much hit rating from my wintergraps pieces. I will swap them out for their Furious/deadly counterparts if i don't change to holy/prot.

My husband and i only want to achieve a side of 1800 so we can have the updated gear. After we are geared and experienced we want to push higher. But that would be in 3s i think as whats the real point (except for increased arena points) in pushing a 2s side over 1800.

I love playing Ret and i have put a lot of time and effort learning my class. I feel scared to be a holy/prot paladin.

Not so much scared to be the over powered prot/holy.

But i am scared to change to that spec and when the nerf hits find myself hating holy.

I have played heal classes before. Holy priest but not in arena so i understand the concept, i hate being targeted and going down like a 2 dollar ho.

Is holy paladin fun to play or is it a brain drain. Does it have survivability in arena?.

Ret is fun.
Almost as much fun as a warrior.

We are alliance.

We find that if we face the 1200 teams we have to play perfect games as a ret/resto druide team to win.
Both my husband and I fear that if we have to play perfect from 1200 there is no way we can make it to 1800.


I have blacksmithing and JC nearly leveled and will stack strength there. Farm the faction needed to change my head and shoulders enchant.
Try and get the second part of the PVE t8 set for the 10 bonus to dmg.

But is it WORTH it?

I will have to do all the same things but farming the intel stam gear for Pally heal.

Everyone says its soo easy to reach 1800 ANYONE could do it.


Kindest regards
Jelly

[Palatinus]

Well, firstly holy is fun to play, and i wouldn't of said it was a brain drain. Yes it does have survivability, you've got bubble to fall back on ofc, instant heals (2x if you crit holy shock) and you can get off some nice healing through beacon. I'd say it was a bit different to a holy priest, you certainly won't go down as fast (especially if its melee) and again you do have bubble to save yourself, even if its only lasts as long as the cast of mass dispel/shattering throw. That said, i haven't play holy a whole lot, i played it through S5, but that was holy/ret, and done a few games in s7. But the thing is, prot seems to out do it by so much theses days its not really worth it, especially in 2s.

I wouldn't be so scared to change to prot/holy, honestly, its not getting a massive nerf that people are talking about. It is still OP in patch 3.2.2, that said blizzard might more changes to it. But currently, the nerf is essentially 10 second longer CD on hammer, about 5 or 6k hp (depending on whether you even gemmed stam) and about 300-400 spell power (since you'll gem for full spell power in the patch), oh and -10% damage reduction when below 35% . They can still get off large flashes since that +30% crit healing talent hasn't been changed and still have the offensive abilities that made it so good in the first place. Oh and infinite mana...I wouldn't expect the patch to suddenly course all the prot-holy/warriors stop playing in 2v2. In 3v3 i could see prot/holy dropping a bit as the single healer due to the loss of survivability and spell power, but it will probably still exist in double healer.

Moving on from holy, there is the problem that even if you reach 1800 as ret/resto where do you go from there? You said you wanted to do 3v3, but the problem here is that there aren't many combo's that you can play with X/ret/druid. War/rogue ret druid works but there isn't much outside of that. Which is fine if you are happy to do it. On the other hand, warrior/holy (or prot) has a lot of combos that you can choose from for a 3s.

Ultimately, its your decision, i can only suggest that maybe you try holy, and prot and decide if you feel you can play them, and whether its fun for you. I would probably say the easiest and cheapest (gold) way to do this is to download the PTR and copy a premade paladin to it. That way you can try each spec out in full deadly gear (and blue gems) to see what you like best. Oh and you can test the new changes coming in patch 3.2.2 which might make you less scared of speccing a spec without fully knowing whats happening down the line.

Mid-way last season i played with the druid that i play with now on my warrior, just to reach weapon rating like yourself. We did manage to do it with me in full hateful and titansteel destroyer. The only thing i would say, is that it took a lot of games and we found double dps extremely annoying. That said i haven't done much prot/warrior and i can see it being a bit easier due to the amount the prot pala can survive against double dps.

As you said its your first season playing, i don't think any combo will be just instant 1800, as i said before you just need to keep playing some games and learning new tactics on what to do against certain teams. Obviously there might a gear problem, which is why quite a few games might be necessary. I guess to finish up, both teams, and the classes you listed before can reach 1800 which you will probably reach at some point, but i doubt anything anyone says will be able to get it for you over night. However, if you main goal is to play a decent 3v3 combo, i probably would of said that war/pala has a few more options to choose for a 3v3 than ret/druid does.

[Jellybeans]

Well it looks like the patch as hit so there will be a lot of information soon on the better Paladin heal spec for 2V2s.

I am starting to farm for my heal gear now so will be a few weeks before i am ready to arena as a heal.

This forced change could be the best thing for my player skills as i will learn to play two sides of my paladin.

A very special thankyou again Palatinus.

[Palatinus]

Well it looks like the patch as hit so there will be a lot of information soon on the better Paladin heal spec for 2V2s.

I am starting to farm for my heal gear now so will be a few weeks before i am ready to arena as a heal.

This forced change could be the best thing for my player skills as i will learn to play two sides of my paladin.

A very special thankyou again Palatinus.

Yeah, i wrote all that and then 2 hours later patch comes out :

[Aterrorist]

Here's what you do.

Ret Pally on kill target
Druid Cyclone's off target (mostly healer)

Cyclone the healer again

Bash the healer after 2nd cyclone

Cyclone again

When the kill target is nice and low on health, cyclone him to prevent heals until the diminished returns come off of the healer.

Cyclone spam the healer again
Kill the kill target