Tee
6th January 2007, 05:36
Posted by Ming in
Paladin:
1v1:
Quite simply, the poster child of TBC. Blood Elf paladins are so beautiful, so seductive, so powerful, that even Aedak is rolling an alt (that may even become his main). Blood Elf racial for a paladin solves one of their biggest problems, lack of spell interrupts. A retrib paladin can now stop three spell castings on demand with silence, hammer of justice, and repentance. This race/class combination alone can potentially solve the horde/alliance population imbalance, maybe not, but we will see.
Paladins have always been a rogue’s worst nightmare, one-shot reckoning bombs, deviate retrib-style, and protection/holy turtles were among the hardest opponents, but I am happy to announce this is no longer the case in TBC. Again, wound poison takes away a paladin’s most effective weapon against a rogue, outlasting! As long as you have 4-5 layer wound poison on him, even if he stuns you, his healing is laughable. This is especially if the paladin sacrificed his +healing for damage. You see a paladin can hit like a warrior, or heal like a priest, what balances him is the fact that he can not do both at same time. This is why holy paladins are extremely popular for high level PVP, because they can heal and damage from the same stats. However, I feel with TBC, a spell damage based holy paladin will no longer be capable of healing large health pools, and with the addition of wound poison, a paladin will have to fight a rogue the way I like it: DPS vs DPS.
Make no mistake about it, even in older patches, the paladins that gave me most problems were not the turtlers, it were the ones that are capable of one shot my 5K HP during HOJ if the stars aligned. However if you remember the Deviate vs rogue 1.11 test video, what really hurt us were the fact that after HOJ, Deviate does this fade away jumper (I mean repentance), now you are at 30% health and he is at 100% health, and you have to force him to shield, not a pleasant situation to be in. With wound poison and greatly increased stamina pool, the paladin will no longer be anywhere near 100%, he would be more like 50%, a much, much easier fight.
And how can we dismiss COS? The hardest part about rogue vs paladin pre-COS was that the paladin had total control of the fight. He can trinket/bubble/BOP your stuns, yet you are at his mercy when it comes to his stuns. Even after seeing Deviate does his baby fade away jumper 200 times and knowing he would do the exact same thing at exact same time, I could not stop it. COS changes this completely. Not only you can use it to bridge your stunlocks, you can also puts him into some really uncomfortable situations, like he is at 50% health and you activate COS, vanish CS->KS right before COS ends. You can play a lot more mind games with him and the skill of the player now matters as much as “do I have enough HP to survive his HOJ?”
Ironically, this is the only match-up in the game in which I feel resilience and stamina for that matter helps the rogue more than it helps the paladin. I had the pleasure of fighting 700 spell damage (before trinket activation) holy paladins, and a retrib paladin with Thunder, a 3.8, 106 DPS weapon. Basically if they don’t get chain crits, I have a lot of control in the flow of the fight, I can force them into doing things I want them to do. With 1 minute COS, and 1.5 minute blind if you feel like speccing it, not to mention quick recovery for 4000 HP bandages a minute (2500 if you use gouge), and healing items like heroism. I feel I can outlast a paladin’s mana pool with very little difficulty, thanks to the new wound poison, as long as he doesn’t auto attack me for 3000 (the Thunder paladin did, white crit + command crit). Bottomline is reduced crit rate helps the rogue in this situation. Once he coughs up the PVP trinket he is at the mercy of my stunlocks, and TBC rogue stunlocks can get a lot longer with proper use of garrote, improved kick, and COS. Basically, if a HOJ only takes away 50% of my health instead of 75%, I will win the fight, simply because a single holy light no longer fills him up to 100% and it is much easier to force a shield against paladins in TBC.
I feel I have advantage over all but the highest DPS paladins in TBC. I am no longer afraid of their healing. I am afraid of their DPS. For paladin players, this is probably good news.
5v5:
Warrior/paladin are probably the duo you will see on the majority of the top arena teams when horde teams get enough high level paladins. What can I say about paladins that haven’t been said already? Cleanse, blessing of freedom, blessing of sacrifice, hammer of justice, and oh, that thing we all divine shield. The only healer you can not focus fire, the healer with most anti-CC options. They fit every team like a glove, as long as the paladin is crafty at faking heals to bait earth shocks and counter spells, he will be fine. 2 paladins on the opposing team gives me headache every time.
Holy paladins are clearly the easiest and most effective spec to gear/play. Retrib with an extra CC, good micromanagement, balanced gear (healing/DPS) has tremendous upside, it will take a gifted player like deviate to unlock it. I can’t say much more about this class, I am 100% happy with one on my team, I like it so much I may even get two.
TBC Improvements:
Death Wish I mean Avenging Wrath (+30% damage, causes forbearance) is a very fun ability to an otherwise predictable class. I suspect paladins that master the use of this ability will have a better chance against me. If they can bring me down to 50% without using HOJ (not easy), this ability coupled with a big HOJ is pretty much GG. Mass resurrection, I don’t know if this can be used in arena. I do know for a fact that it is possible to resurrect people in skirmish arenas. Getting out of combat is not easy but not impossible either when you only have 2 people per team left. 1.5 second cast time makes it very usable in PVP. Blood Elf’s seal of blood seems much better than alliance’s seal of vengeance. Crusader aura doesn’t sound that appealing, but believe it or not, for my proposed war/war/pal/pal/rog team, I actually want everyone to mount up and charge into the enemy at start. The reason for this is element of surprise works better for a team like ours than casters, chaos in battlefield favors the team that relies on brute strength. Also, on the bridge map, I definitely do not want to give the enemy ranged users the two platforms. Mount up and charge in, our team certainly has the survivability for it.
Source:
http://www.worldofming.com/?p=303&page=3
Paladin:
1v1:
Quite simply, the poster child of TBC. Blood Elf paladins are so beautiful, so seductive, so powerful, that even Aedak is rolling an alt (that may even become his main). Blood Elf racial for a paladin solves one of their biggest problems, lack of spell interrupts. A retrib paladin can now stop three spell castings on demand with silence, hammer of justice, and repentance. This race/class combination alone can potentially solve the horde/alliance population imbalance, maybe not, but we will see.
Paladins have always been a rogue’s worst nightmare, one-shot reckoning bombs, deviate retrib-style, and protection/holy turtles were among the hardest opponents, but I am happy to announce this is no longer the case in TBC. Again, wound poison takes away a paladin’s most effective weapon against a rogue, outlasting! As long as you have 4-5 layer wound poison on him, even if he stuns you, his healing is laughable. This is especially if the paladin sacrificed his +healing for damage. You see a paladin can hit like a warrior, or heal like a priest, what balances him is the fact that he can not do both at same time. This is why holy paladins are extremely popular for high level PVP, because they can heal and damage from the same stats. However, I feel with TBC, a spell damage based holy paladin will no longer be capable of healing large health pools, and with the addition of wound poison, a paladin will have to fight a rogue the way I like it: DPS vs DPS.
Make no mistake about it, even in older patches, the paladins that gave me most problems were not the turtlers, it were the ones that are capable of one shot my 5K HP during HOJ if the stars aligned. However if you remember the Deviate vs rogue 1.11 test video, what really hurt us were the fact that after HOJ, Deviate does this fade away jumper (I mean repentance), now you are at 30% health and he is at 100% health, and you have to force him to shield, not a pleasant situation to be in. With wound poison and greatly increased stamina pool, the paladin will no longer be anywhere near 100%, he would be more like 50%, a much, much easier fight.
And how can we dismiss COS? The hardest part about rogue vs paladin pre-COS was that the paladin had total control of the fight. He can trinket/bubble/BOP your stuns, yet you are at his mercy when it comes to his stuns. Even after seeing Deviate does his baby fade away jumper 200 times and knowing he would do the exact same thing at exact same time, I could not stop it. COS changes this completely. Not only you can use it to bridge your stunlocks, you can also puts him into some really uncomfortable situations, like he is at 50% health and you activate COS, vanish CS->KS right before COS ends. You can play a lot more mind games with him and the skill of the player now matters as much as “do I have enough HP to survive his HOJ?”
Ironically, this is the only match-up in the game in which I feel resilience and stamina for that matter helps the rogue more than it helps the paladin. I had the pleasure of fighting 700 spell damage (before trinket activation) holy paladins, and a retrib paladin with Thunder, a 3.8, 106 DPS weapon. Basically if they don’t get chain crits, I have a lot of control in the flow of the fight, I can force them into doing things I want them to do. With 1 minute COS, and 1.5 minute blind if you feel like speccing it, not to mention quick recovery for 4000 HP bandages a minute (2500 if you use gouge), and healing items like heroism. I feel I can outlast a paladin’s mana pool with very little difficulty, thanks to the new wound poison, as long as he doesn’t auto attack me for 3000 (the Thunder paladin did, white crit + command crit). Bottomline is reduced crit rate helps the rogue in this situation. Once he coughs up the PVP trinket he is at the mercy of my stunlocks, and TBC rogue stunlocks can get a lot longer with proper use of garrote, improved kick, and COS. Basically, if a HOJ only takes away 50% of my health instead of 75%, I will win the fight, simply because a single holy light no longer fills him up to 100% and it is much easier to force a shield against paladins in TBC.
I feel I have advantage over all but the highest DPS paladins in TBC. I am no longer afraid of their healing. I am afraid of their DPS. For paladin players, this is probably good news.
5v5:
Warrior/paladin are probably the duo you will see on the majority of the top arena teams when horde teams get enough high level paladins. What can I say about paladins that haven’t been said already? Cleanse, blessing of freedom, blessing of sacrifice, hammer of justice, and oh, that thing we all divine shield. The only healer you can not focus fire, the healer with most anti-CC options. They fit every team like a glove, as long as the paladin is crafty at faking heals to bait earth shocks and counter spells, he will be fine. 2 paladins on the opposing team gives me headache every time.
Holy paladins are clearly the easiest and most effective spec to gear/play. Retrib with an extra CC, good micromanagement, balanced gear (healing/DPS) has tremendous upside, it will take a gifted player like deviate to unlock it. I can’t say much more about this class, I am 100% happy with one on my team, I like it so much I may even get two.
TBC Improvements:
Death Wish I mean Avenging Wrath (+30% damage, causes forbearance) is a very fun ability to an otherwise predictable class. I suspect paladins that master the use of this ability will have a better chance against me. If they can bring me down to 50% without using HOJ (not easy), this ability coupled with a big HOJ is pretty much GG. Mass resurrection, I don’t know if this can be used in arena. I do know for a fact that it is possible to resurrect people in skirmish arenas. Getting out of combat is not easy but not impossible either when you only have 2 people per team left. 1.5 second cast time makes it very usable in PVP. Blood Elf’s seal of blood seems much better than alliance’s seal of vengeance. Crusader aura doesn’t sound that appealing, but believe it or not, for my proposed war/war/pal/pal/rog team, I actually want everyone to mount up and charge into the enemy at start. The reason for this is element of surprise works better for a team like ours than casters, chaos in battlefield favors the team that relies on brute strength. Also, on the bridge map, I definitely do not want to give the enemy ranged users the two platforms. Mount up and charge in, our team certainly has the survivability for it.
Source:
http://www.worldofming.com/?p=303&page=3