Priests pvp representation in catyclysm.

[TwistedPower]

Do you realy think a pally is more offensive then a druid?

I have a pally, and the only offensive moves I might do are my 1 min colldown stun, exorcism, holyshock, Hammer and judment. All my damaging skills are horrible damage and I have nothing like Cyclone CC and roots. I do not feel offensive at all except when I'm stunning the healer to get a kill.

[harky]

Paladins have many more tools that can be used offensively than Druids. Protection, Freedom, JoJ and HoJ should all be used offensively. Aura Mastery should be used offensively. In the case of Prot-PVP they can be extremely offensive with the very low HoJ cooldown. Druids can only help offensively through extremely low damage abilities (for Resto anyway), Cyclone, and possibly roots. Paladins actually have a toolset custom fit for helping an offensive team, while Druids in most serious matches are tanks. You'll spend the majority of a fight in Tree form with no offense at all. You're basically the master of running away and healing from behind corners. Your main offensive spells? One causes damage immunity and makes it hard to chain CC, the other is a simple root spell which cancels extremely fast from damage.

Paladins on the other hand are amazing at preventing peeling. Protection can be used to cancel quite a few things and allow someone to get right back on offense. Particularly casters. Freedom prevents peeling allowing you to stay offensive. HoJ stuns being used offensively is a no brainer. Aura Mastery on caster teams gives you 10 (8 soon) seconds of pure nuking from a caster that can't be interrupted. Offense does not necessarily mean 'damage'. Priest does produce a ton of damage, but the reason they're such good offense is dispel and mass dispel combined with their damage. Paladin played properly can allow a team to play very offensively and keep the momentum going. Druid can't really do that. A good Cyclone, a Root to peel, it's about all they can do. By far the least offensive healer in game. The best use of Cyclone really is to tie up a healer right as you go for a kill. The problem? If it takes a double cyclone then in between them they will be able to get off a heal with instants unless you both have 0 ping, which is impossible. The range on Cyclone is also problematic. It puts you in very close and in caster form.

If you see a Druid out tossing Cyclone and Root heavily a lot they're either already winning easily, or they're going to lose from foolish play. If you see a Paladin playing offensively it's often the opposite. Their heals come in large spikes which allows them to switch back and forth on offense and defense while keeping momentum. Druid can't really do that at all. Priest is the absolute master of it. Shaman has the same dispel spamming nature, but also offers some passive offense through totems and Hex. Paladin is a step behind that, but not nearly as far back as Druids.

Just remember that a lot of Paladins 'defensive' abilities are actually extremely good offensive abilities as well. Protection in particular actually kind of sucks as a defensive ability because it can be dispelled and spells go straight through it. As an offensive move that isn't a problem and for the most part melee are going to cancel it immediately. All you wanted was that initial cast to break MS, remove bleeds, blind, etc, then right back on offense. If you threw it on a caster then they don't need to cancel it at all and you just wasted the time of any melee and baited a few dispels. I ran Holy/Destro/Ele for a while and yeah, your role is all offensive. There's enough defense there to be used similarly to a Druid, but most of those setups are just better off with a Druid anyway. There's a reason a lot of pure-offense rushdown teams (like beastcleave) use Paladins. They're extremely good at preventing momentum shifts and keeping offense going. Those setups basically don't work without HoF. Same thing with spellcleave, just doesn't work the same without AM.

[TwistedPower]

Well, Prot pally healing nerfs are uber in the next patch, so that is the end of prot healers, and they realy do not count.

But the main reason I still think pallys are more defensive is that I used to run a HP,BM,uhDK. And the strats are like this. If there is a warlock kill the lock. If there is a mage and no lock kill the mage. If it is a cleave kill the non-warrior. Under any curcumstances if I (the healer) was beeing double dps, switch to their healer and blow cooldown.

Now that last point is the biggest thing. Except for other pallys we would always win if both the other teams dps was on me, no matter what the team, becuase I could bubble and the other healer could not. And even vs pally teams our dps was much burstyer. Our dk had just about 50% crit chance on his scourge strike. 4 in a row with empowered rune weapon durring a CC effect in addition to the output from our hunter is automatic your going to blow all your crap or you are already dead. There have been times where all 4 of the SS's were crits. And more oten then not I bubbled way after any other pally.

The thing about it was that I never used offensive played cooldowns except for stun and judment once we pasted 2100. They just stuck on my hunter and the freedom was used on him so he could kite through traps. Aura mastery was always for shamen/lock teams that kept interupting me durring bursts on the hunter. Even my stun was often used on one of the dps (usally the MS one) to stop another MS application so I could get a big heal off. I can understand if you are talking about beast cleave where you can sort of do w/e you want becuase your dps are glued to a target if you give them freedom but I have never experienced any other comp like that.

Druid healer teams get kills becuase of cyclones. They also get leads becuase of cyclones. If the druid is not the target he better be casting cyclones and even roots if applicable while his hots do their job or else it is not a good druid. Druids double dot the dps target and apply armor pen. My judment applys healing or mana back, niether are offensive. My exorcism does not even close to the damage of even 1 dot. Insect swarm also while doing damage reduces hit chance. They have recastable spells for burst like starfire. The only defensive thing they have going for them other then the obvious fact that they can heal and CC things hitting them is their shifting which is simmilar to casting freedom on myself. Other then that I would say that druid has far more agressive ability and the pally has far more defensive.

[Gigajot]

We won't know till cata is live..

[harky]

@TwistedPower: Honestly the problem sounds like it's coming from the way your team was running, not the class itself. DK wasn't spam-chaining melee on the Hunter? Hunter not waiting to burn BW until a good moment? Not using Disengage well? Hunter is about the last class that should need Freedom. I did run beastcleave for a while, but honestly it has the same problem. The Shaman/DK will get detached from their target and without them in there you won't be getting that kill as easily. Yes DG and CoI help with that, but it's definitely not enough, especially against Warlocks on BE. With BM/Unholy you should be getting peels from the DK and the hunter. If a team is stupid enough to stick on you they should be eating Freezing Arrow setups, being pulled off and CoI spammed, etc. Playing defense on a Paladin is a bit like quicksand, once you get back on your heals it can be very hard to get back going. That's why they're under Shammy/Priest after all for offense.

Druids do more damage than Paladins though, yes. Barely, but yes. I know it's easy to think about how Cyclones win games, but really it's the nail in the coffin normally. Think about say DK/Lock/Druid (shadowcleave). Cyclone is only viable very early, or very late in the game. Otherwise you're protecting the other team as much as hurting them. The whole idea is to make them burn mana and spreading out damage all over. With something like War/Shaman/Druid it's more about burst, so Cyclone can be used offensively. Still if you're doing more than Moonfire and IS you're trying to damage far too much. Channeling that big Starfire is not going to do a lot at all as the cast time is far, far too long. You'll actually find that Holy Paladins burst damage is higher than Resto Druids by quite a bit, so while you can spread out those Swarms and help a bit with FF it's really not having a big impact. Meanwhile you can throw out Exorcism + Judgement + HoW + Holy Shock very quickly if needs be. When you see that double Cyclone + Bear Bash + whatever else keep in mind how loooong that takes. Now think about how long it takes for a Shaman/Lock/Rogue to die against better teams. Starfire is a 3 second cast as well so if you're using that offensively... you have it in the bag anyway.

Also, Prot PVP isn't quite dead. The shield and HoT changes hurt a little, but the CC and survivability is still very high and the healing is still good. Holy will see a bit of a comeback on most teams, but they'll still be the target for Priest teams. You gave the example of if you were being double DPS'd you'd go for a healer kill. Against any good Priest team you'll eat a MD as soon as you bubble and you'll die long before them as they throw up PS, hide from the hunter and tank the DK. That is if your DK isn't stuck away from the Priest already. I still run RLS and whenever we come up against a Pally/Hunter/X team the goal is to train the Paladin until they go defensive, then switch immediately to the third member and BL. It's typically a win as soon as it happens. If the Paladin gets peels and support, the games go on for a while. Usually it becomes a case of force a bubble via Silence/Blind/Fear while bringing down the Hunter. The goal is the same though, make the Hunter blow some cooldowns on defense instead of offense and while they're up switch targets. Force those good offensive abilities to be used purely for defense and then wait 12 seconds to switch back. With RMP we'd just peel off me and drop MD so that there was no waiting involved. Pain Suppression with 2 DPS and no solid dispel counter eats bubbles.

Again though, I didn't put Paladin way up on offense anyway. They're not. They are however more offensive than Druids. I'm not sure if you've played one though, or watched whole matches with them. I know playing against them they do seem offensive, but if you watch just them for an entire match you'll see that they really aren't. Yeah there are big moments with Cyclone hitting right at the end of Strangulate, or Fear, or Hex while you burn down a DPS. But in those cases would HoJ have done any worse? You can throw Exorcism>Holy Shock>HoW>Judge in during an HoJ. Druids can get off Starfire>Moonfire. You're looking at upwards of 10k damage vs around 4k damage. In 2s a Druid can control a match and dictate pace with Cyclone, I will admit... but then again 2s suck. :P

[baele]

Yes read the patch notes, they are completely destroying any viability of healing in either prot or ret for paladins. This is why I'm rolling priest, I was one of the first people playing prot paladin in arena, its a spec I've enjoyed the most for my class for pvp. Then they came along and nerfed the hell out of it, forcing me to play holy which is a completely different playstyle that I don't enjoy (although I like holy for pve), or ret, which is a terrible spec and always has been. Run up to a guy whack him and press a couple of buttons, yay! Spriest is so much more involved and interactive of a playstyle, and I imagine disc is too when compared to holy (I've only been playing shadow at the moment, not disc).

Anyone who is claiming holy is in anyway offensive has no clue what they are talking about. It is the most defensive spec of any spec in the game. It's all about running away and pillaring people while holy shocking. The survivabilty of holy is terrible, which is in stark contrast to prot, so if you aren't constantly running or pillaring you die, simple enough. With all the running and healing you have no opportunities to help your partner score a kill, even if you had some abilities to do that, which you don't. Your partner has to do all of the work themselves. As a priest on the other hand I can fear people, dispell heals, shields and buffs, dispel bubbles, mana burn healers, mind control people off bridges, even do some damage with dots, holy fire and penance. No wonder half of the top players in the world are disc priests.

[harky]

Reading the patch notes is one thing, playing on the PTR is different. Prot still works, it's simply not blatantly overpowered anymore. Also the question wasn't Priest or Paladin who is more offensive. Priest is. So is Shaman. Druid is the only healer with less offense. All healers pillar hump and pop off instants. All healers run and kite. It's not about that. It's simply a matter of Paladins having better offensive abilities than Druids.

It's like comparing a Warrior and a DK. If you focus a DK they blow cooldowns and stay offensive. If you focus a Warrior they have to shut down nearly all their offense to survive. A Druid who gets too offensive winds up focused, OOM, or lets people die. A Paladin who gets offensive is not in that much danger comparatively. Heals come in bursts instead of simple constant HoTs so while a Druid needs to go into emergency mode if they're too offensive with NS/running like hell/etc. A Paladin doesn't have to. They toss a HL, throw out a hammer, etc. Druids are like Warriors, if they get too aggressive they pay for it by being pushed into pure defense very quickly. Paladins are more like DKs, if they get too aggressive they have tools to keep things moving.

I'll admit a lot of Paladins don't play that way, but when you watch higher rated Paladins they all do.

[baele]

Drop prot from the discussion, you are losing all credibility even using that in your argument. Prot healing is impossible in 3s, and not very good in twos either. The nerfs are destroying sacred shield and removing the hot, basically the only things prot pallys had when ccd. The spec will be as dead as shockadins are now come 3.3. Any creative spec people come up with that makes paladins somewhat interesting to play blizzard completely nerfs it into the ground.

Hand of Freedom and cleanse are defensive tools not offensive ones. Hand of freedom is more important for the paladin to run away and kite than it is for the warrior or dk who has is own gap closing and slowing methods. Sure it can be used offensively at times but its marginally offensive at best. And that is assuming you are running a cookie cutter setup, if you play with a warlock like i did, hof is a straight defensive tool.

And holy paladins are the only spec in the game that has a nearly useless 51 point talent for pvp. 2 seasons ago people would spec 22 points into ret before they nerfed that, now they just take it because there is nothing else to grab. Some even spec 22 points into prot filler talents.

Anyways, holy paladins are great pve healers but are at the bottom of the heap in pvp healing, mostly due to their lack of offensive abilities. I don't really mind because I'm retiring my paladin for my priest unless some really interesting changes occur in Cataclysm.

[harky]

Anyways, holy paladins are great pve healers but are at the bottom of the heap in pvp healing, mostly due to their lack of offensive abilities. I don't really mind because I'm retiring my paladin for my priest unless some really interesting changes occur in Cataclysm.

Speaking of losing credibility. You do realize that Paladins are the most represented healer in 3s, right? Wonder why. Must be because they're bad. :

If you don't understand why Prot PVP works now and while worse in 3.3 still works, then I don't know what to tell you. Go look at the Prot healers in the 2200+ brackets and tell them that they're not viable. Warrior/Pally/X teams that even though Freedom on the Warrior is what keeps up pressure, it's a waste of time. Also. No one said Cleanse was offensive. Freedom definitely is. So is Protection if you use it right.

You are right though, if you're using some random team with a friend, then Paladins are best playing to their strengths, instead of using their abilities to give their team a boost. Especially in 2s. Then again... who cares about 2s? Can't get the better gear, matches last for years and there's basically no momentum to swing. However, contrary to what you're saying Paladins with a Warlock partner do have offensive options. Named HoP and Aura Mastery. Both should be used offensively along with HoJ to allow your Warlock to dump into someone. Or were you running with an Afflic Lock and pretending to be a Druid? Also you do realize that Beacon has good uses in PVP right? Or are you just spouting off not understanding Paladins in general?

Seriously, I'm not comparing the offense a Paladin puts out to a Priest, but to a Druid. You know, stands in tree form all day and puts up HoTs waiting for a safe moment to Cyclone someone? Druids aren't Feral hybrids shifting like crazy interrupting everything and keeping someone Cycloned at all times anymore. Wrath is not BC. Paladins are not the laughing stock of PVP and Druids are not offensive juggernauts anymore. When's the last time you saw a Restokin? It doesn't work that way anymore.

[Bigslick]

If you death a sheep at the right time as its being cast on you the damage you receive from it will hit after the sheep lands, thus bursting yourself out of the sheep.

Not if your PWS absorbs the backlash >.<

[baele]

Dude, there are no prot pallys in the top 100 on sk gaming, they are holy pallys. The only prot pally that are rated more than 2k are dps prot pallys (they don't heal) or prot pally running double healer. With the upcoming nerfs they will lose what little healing viability they have at the moment. Give it up already.

http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/playe...l/all/all/all/

[harky]

If you'd actually looked you would have reaized that the 'all class top 100' list only goes down to like 2660. Even the 'Paladins only' list? Only down to 2550. You're still looking at 5% being Prot at 2500+. You'd also have seen that the healing Prot Pallies are actually more common than the DPS version. Furthermore you'd see that among healing Paladins only that goes up to 7%. Also, since when does being on double healer mean you're not a viable healer? Makes no sense.

Of course, none of that really matters because 90% of what I was talking about was for Holy. Thus calling them 'Holy' and referring to Holy Shock, which Prot can't get. I certainly will 'give it up' though, pointless argument is pointless.