Paladin Lineups, Fomenting Hate, Death of Aion, Zilea Part 5

Breaking News

We've got some huge developments that are important to mention tonight.

Will of the Forsaken axed

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects.

As pretty much everybody has already pointed out, we've all been suckered on this one. Blizzard had no real intention to nerf Will of the Forsaken until it became obvious after the race change service was implemented that every competitive arena player would go horde. In any case, this change will mean that if you Will of the Forsaken out of a fear, you will not be able to use your trinket for 45 seconds. Good change, just a little too late.

Protection & Retribution specced paladins receive huge sacred shield nerf

Sacred Shield: The damage absorption effect from this ability now triggers only once every 30 seconds

Infusion of Light: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 seconds.

This was not exactly the change I was looking for in nerfing protection specced paladins, but it does the job just the same. I actually expected divine plea to be changed to not be refreshable as protection, but oh well. This change is rather significant because it will finally prevent the Peehil's of WoW from running rampant with protection spec. Blizzard killed two birds with one stone here because not only does the nerf to sacred shield hurt retribution paladins, but it also removes the only other remaining good thing about protection spec (while leaving holy unscathed). With this and the Touched by the Light talent nerf, we're talking about a spec that will no longer appear in arena, not even 2v2.

Aura Mastery now lasts 6 seconds (down from 10).

I disagree with this change simply because the real solution would be to make it only affect the paladin and not all party members.

Paladin lineups

I've been asked by people a number of times about what comps I feel paladins work in and don't work in, along with what are the strengths and weaknesses of those lineups. I'm going to go through what I feel are the viable paladin teams:

Paladin/Priest/Warrior


This is the lineup I've been running a lot lately (along with paladin/warlock/warrior) and it is what you will see in Zilea Part 5 in this article.

Besides the usual "omg noob double healer you are terrible" I find a lineup like this to be more respectable than some other lineups I will discuss in this article. When we are talking about any double healer comp, it is important to remember the context of the game we are playing in. In TBC, it was the type of double healer cheese like druid/priest/warrior that made me want to gouge my eyes out because they almost always came down to 30 minute mana wars. However, this is WOTLK and that puts a big skew on the prospect of any double healer lineup. Games cannot so easily be decided by "draining" the other team's healer out of mana as in many cases the damage put out by the other team is so excessive that a double healer team can actually go out of mana first.

Against RMP:

Running paladin/priest/warrior is one of the funnest match ups for me against RMP, simply because the paladin and the priest need to coordinate well enough to survive the burst that RMP is so known for in the first 2 minutes of the match. You can well expect for the RMP to attempt to sap one of you, followed by an opener by the rogue and icy veins + PI + mirror images + blanket counterspell + priest smites to drop somebody by the end of the first kidney shot. If they do not succeed there, a vanish cheapshot -> kidney shot occurs, followed by yet another if that is still not enough.

The paladin needs to be prepared to charge in and divine sacrifice if neither the priest or the mage comes forward in the very beginning for a judgment. That early sap can be a game changer if the paladin has to use a trinket before anything has even happened.

If you can manage to survive through that early burst, the paladin/priest/warrior team will finally have the freedom to run rampant and cleanse spam each other and the warrior as he either works on the priest or the mage. Both targets will work and often times switching between them based on either poor priest or mage positioning is the best way to go. It is just a matter time after the RMP's cooldowns are gone that the game will swing in your favor for a kill.

If I had to measure the lineup's performance against RMP, I would say that if you can manage to survive that initial burst without dropping too many defensive cooldowns, you are on a path to win.

Against RLS:

Yet another extremely fun lineup to play against as paladin/priest/warrior as not only is positioning is important so that nobody gets caught in a bad cheapshot/kidney, but so is cleansing. For me, cleansing is really fun simply because against a lot of teams you cannot afford to do so (eg: try cleansing off a polymorph or immolate against a wizard cleave like mage/warlock/shaman; forget about it!)

What really will decide this match is based on how good the paladin and priest are at getting off those immolates (keep in mind I'm assuming a destruction lock as they are pretty prevalent right now). Another big factor will come down to the destruction warlock himself. If he or she does not know how to utilize shadowfury and blanket silences, the paladin/priest/warrior will find the match to be extremely manageable in terms of damage control.

For the warrior's role, the biggest and most crucial part in my opinion is his ability to take down the warlock's pets. I wouldn't go so far as to say to just ride the pet all match until it is dead twice, but...well just train it all game. All that will take to guarantee the felhunter's death is a decent psychic scream by the priest followed by a HoJ by the paladin. Once the first pet is down, rinse and repeat when your cooldowns are up and the rest of the match should be a cruise.

Like against RMPs, however, the beginning of the match will be very difficult as you will be dealing with an early bloodlust with a lot of cooldowns popped in the first 2 minutes of the match. To deal with the opener, the free healer needs to be prepared to immediately cleanse immolate, even if that means trinketing an early blind, fear or even shadowfury if things are looking grim.

Other than cleansing, the paladin will be once again utilizing the infamous "charge in and divine sacrifice" tactic as the last thing you want to do is have to trinket 5 seconds into the match and divine shield right after as the rogue blinds you or you get shadowfuried.

Rating this matchup, the paladin/priest/warrior team is heavily favored to win as soon as they can get by those pesky rogue cooldowns.

Against Beastcleave:

Here we are dealing with what I consider one the hardest, if not the hardest matchup for pretty much any double healer team, even more so a double healer with a squishy class like a priest.

There is really no way around this one as the shaman is going to be purging sacred shield, prayer of mending, power word: shield, etc. Along with wind shock to interrupt the paladin, it is a tough situation.

Even if the hunter is BM spec and the paladin only has two interrupts to worry about (wind shock and hammer of justice), they are more than enough to drop a priest with no buffs to mitigate damage. Although you will see us beat Check6's new team of Twix/Flexx/Toes in Zilea Part 5, it is definitely not the way most of the games went against them. Keeping up a clothy like a priest against the melee onslaught of spirit wolves, an enhancement shaman and a BM hunter is no easy task. The priest, for his part, will need to be line of sighting the hunter's damage as much as he can and dragging the enhancement shaman behind pillars.

Your best bet as paladin/priest/warrior to win this match is to train the enhancement shaman all game and hope your warrior has tons of PvE gear. The enhancement shaman, while he may have instant hexes and shamanistic rage to mitigate damage, is the best target as getting on a hunter will lead to your warrior getting kited all game. You do not want to be handing out freedom to a warrior in this match as your priest will simply get annihilated in 5 seconds without it.

Other than that, hope for a miracle in this one as it is a huge uphill battle all game.

Against Paladin/DK/Hunter:

Much like the beastcleave matchup, it will be an uphill battle. However, there is some relief here as there is no purge on the paladin/DK/hunter team to take off the myriad of buffs that the paladin/priest/warrior team will have.

In this matchup, you will want to have the warrior train the hunter as much as possible with the priest purging sacred shield off as much as possible. The paladin will want to give freedom out to the priest whenever his psychic scream is up, as it is the only real window you will have to get a kill on the hunter. As soon as psychic scream is handed out, all 3 players will need to unload damage into the hunter. If the opposing paladin is smart, he will start going through his cooldowns to prevent the hunter's early death. Once those cooldowns are gone, a psychic scream -> HoJ on the paladin should be enough to drop the hunter.

The real risk with this strategy is that while your priest is purge spamming the hunter, your team may get caught off guard by the burst and just get globaled.

Again, I will say that it is still an uphill battle as often times all it takes is a good strangulate on the paladin followed by a HoJ for the priest to go down.

Against Wizardcleave:

This is one of those matchups that will have you puckering your rear the entire time. The typical wizardcleave in arena right now is mage/warlock/shaman, so that will be the focus here.

Against that lineup, the strategy is cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. The job of the paladin and priest is to spam cleanse as much as possible. The most likely viable target by the wizardcleave will be on your warrior, as it not only locks him down pretty well, but it prevents him from putting out any real pressure. The only way to counter this is to spam cleanse to prevent a shatter or conflagrate from landing.

If the paladin and priest can effectively cleanse spam the target (most likely the warrior), it allows the warrior to stay offensive. If this happens, the mage will be the target as it not only prevents a lot of polymorphs, but also damage. As noted before, since they will have a destruction warlock, their damage is completely manageable if you can get ahead of the game with cleansing, leaving very little damage taken by your team.

TSG (Paladin/Warrior/DK)


This is the lineup I started running after the DK and warlock nerfs that were handed down near the end of the 2009 US online qualifiers. I call this the "King of Cleave" as it is in my opinion the best comp to run if all you are facing are melee-oriented cleaves (this includes hunter cleaves like beastcleave and excludes wizard cleaves).

I have a lot of good things to say about this comp, along with a lot of bad things.

Let's start with the good:
-it is a very fun comp
-has a lot of power and potential to compete at the competitive level
-can be very fast paced, which a lot of people enjoy more over a slower, double-healer paced lineup.
-the king of cleave

Some of the really bad things about the comp:
-reinforces why WoW arena has so many problems as usually there is just too much front-load damage for the other team's healer to keep up with.
-too easy to run and succeed with, as can be noted by the rise of a lot of random, sub par players after my team started to rise to the top on the BG-Stormstrike ladder.
-extremely bad against wizard cleaves without the aid of some serious PvE gear

Unfortunately, I had to stop playing this lineup after the patch as wizard cleaves started popping up everywhere, leading to extremely frustrating games. However, lately it seems like wizard cleaves have been fading away... could it be time to restart what I call the king of cleave lineups?

Against RMP:

This matchup can be a double-edged sword as I really feel like a good TSG team can beat any subpar or mediocre RMP fairly easily by riding the priest from start to finish. However, as many noticed at the 2009 US Regionals, a high-caliber RMP can be nearly impossible to beat as TSG. More than anything I really think it has more to do with the mage knowing how to handle the damage while knowing when to unload his cooldowns.

That being said, the strategy is fairly straight forward. The paladin will charge in to a pillar on the side of the map where the RMP is with a good divine sacrifice to prevent a sap. A sap in this match is even more dangerous than if you are running paladin/priest/warrior because without a second healer to keep somebody alive, a warrior or DK opened on by an RMP will certainly drop them before the kidney shot comes off.

The strategy for the DK and warrior is as follows: if the priest has positioned himself poorly and is standing in the open right out of the gate, a quick grip/charge into a strangulate/bladestorm is all it will take to drop the priest. Freedoms in this scenario can be given to either the warrior or the DK, but I tend to give it to the warrior, even if he isn't being sat on. A freedomed warrior with even just a tiny bit of assistance by the DK is all you need to drop a priest.

If, on the other hand, the priest is hugging pillars and won't come out, then your plan of action is to ride the mage until the priest exposes himself enough for a death grip. Once that death grip lands (assuming the priest is in a bad spot), you will want to unleash everything on the priest (bladestorm, strangulate, maybe even HoJ!).

Generally though, if the RMP is high caliber like SK, the paladin will probably want to HoJ -> arcane torrent a frostbolt as stopping those shatters in the very beginning is more important than preventing a priest from getting a heal off.

Obviously, this matchup is extremely difficult to gauge and so many little things can happen that can completely change your strategy. It really is up to how the RMP plays it that will determine what TSG will do against it.

Against RLS:

This matchup will be similar to RMP in respect to the quality of the team. I feel TSG can steamroll any subpar or mediocre RLS. However, as soon as you run into a very high caliber, tournament-worthy one like Fnatic, you will start to have trouble. The upside here is that you can easily split with a good RLS, whereas against a good RMP you may be on the losing end at the end of a series.

Against a bad RLS, TSG can actually ride the felhunter down twice as usually the RLS will know how to respond or handle the situation before the pet is dead. Against a good RLS, they will know how to crowd control you while unloading so much damage that you will inevitably have to get off the felhunter.

Strategically speaking, TSG can kill anybody, but your plan A will be riding the warlock as much as you can. Later in the match, when cooldowns start going down, swaps to the rogue or shaman are viable. And, if you are able to cough up the rogue's evasions, a quick swap will mean certain death if there is a HoJ on either the rogue or the shaman.

The RLS will do everything they can to wear you down with consistent burst. I will confess however that this matchup can be so different based on whether the warlock is destruction or UA. If it is a destruction warlock, handling the damage as a paladin healer will be infinitely easier as your team already possesses a ton of interrupts (mind freeze, pummel, death grip, gnaw, charge, intercept). However, don't underestimate a destruction warlock's damage coupled with a rogue as a hex is all it takes for the paladin to start coughing big defensive cooldowns to keep his teammates up. If the warlock is UA, the match will turn into a game of attrition as they are going to try to wear down the paladin's mana pool and try to catch him in a good rotation of CC with damage being spread everywhere.

Against an exceptional RLS, it will most likely be a 50-50 matchup barring that the TSG melee are not using insane PvE gear.

Against Paladin/DK/Hunter:

As seen when my team played eMg and Shipit, the strategy is as follows: DK on paladin to lock out heals and do damage and the warrior on the hunter. With freedoms being handed out to the warrior, it is just a matter of time before the paladin buckles from the constant flow of damage and interrupts and has to divine shield. Once that happens, the option opens to swap to the paladin when his divine shield is down. This is a pretty basic strategy that works if the warrior and DK on your team are coordinated and know what to do.

Against Beastcleave:

Although I never actually got a chance to play against a beastcleave team as TSG, I will say that I'm fairly confident that a good TSG team can destroy a good beastcleave team. I will also add that I felt X6 played the TSG lineup extremely badly at the last MLG event and lost because of it.

If I had to come up with a strategy, though, I would do the strategy used against paladin/dk/hunter: warrior on hunter, DK on paladin. It might sound scary to just leave the enhancement shaman alone, but leaving a BM hunter open just sounds too scary. And it is important to remember that enhancement shamans have their own pain suppression and their spirit wolves heal them. Going through those two cooldowns, divine sacrifice, hand of sacrifice and hand of protection just seems too long when we all know how fast paced this matchup would be.

Against Wizardcleave:

It is unfortunate that caster damage scales so well because it is the one reason that the TSG lineup can never fully succeed in arena in season 7. On the TR, the story is completely different as damage in season 5 gear is significantly lower. But, this is what we have to deal with, hence this is why I consider this matchup impossible to win without the warrior and DK having the absolute best PvE gear to utilize.

What will happen in this game is there will be so much CC being tossed around that the paladin will not be able to keep his teammates alive and free from CC. Eventually, once the paladins drops all of his cooldowns (this could even happen before cooldowns are all gone too), somebody will inevitably go down. The sheer damage from 2 casters in the WOTLK environment of season 7 is just too much for a lonesome paladin.

As I mentioned before, it is this type of matchup that made me stop playing the TSG lineup.

Paladin/Warrior/Warlock


This is the other lineup I've been playing recently with Hoodrych and Uckington. It has the strengths that destruction warlocks bring (tons of burst) along with the constant heavy flow of damage from a warrior. Damage wise, this composition can be downright frightening. Don't be surprised to see people on the other team get seemingly globaled. I would consider this a pretty balanced lineup as it doesn't seem to hard counter anything or get hard countered by much.

Against RMP:

This matchup is a little tricky because it really can go either way based on the luck of the draw with felhunter dispels and positioning. Typically, any one on the RMP is a potential target simply because of the high damage output that can be unloaded by a warrior/destruction lock combo.

For the paladin, the biggest concern is, again, going to be the opener. If the mage or priest come too far out, you can judge to get in combat. Otherwise, expect to divine sacrifice as a sap could be devastating.

If your warlock is good he will be able to take care of a lot of polymorphs being tossed around, which will greatly increase the amount of uptime your team has to go offensive, which is critical in stopping RMP momentum.

Against RLS:

Against RLS the paladin and the warlock need to both be very aware of immolate. It may sound very easy to simply cleanse immolate before the destruction warlock can conflag your teammate, however, the RLS will most likely be making swaps to your warlock's felhunter. This will most likely be the biggest concern for the paladin healer as there should be no surprises from the RLS. The RLS will ride your warlock with potential swaps to your team's felhunter whenever they feel there is an opening.

However, damage-wise, we're talking pretty similar numbers from both teams. From my experiences against RLS, the biggest concern was always whether or not I would go out of mana before the shaman. This is what you need to watch out for as the paladin healer as the most will most likely not be decided quickly. Mana efficiency is a must and you need to make sure you turn evil the felhunter and get behind pillars whenever you need to divine plea. Even one tick can make the difference in this matchup.


Against Paladin/DK/Hunter:

Although seemingly a tough match, I've had some fairly decent success against paladin/dk/hunter as paladin/warrior/warlock. The best strategy is to have the warrior and warlock on the hunter with a HoJ -> arcane torrent on the paladin. This tactic followed by a blanket cs -> shadowfury should be more than enough to cough up a divine shield by the paladin. Once the divine shield is down, a swap to the paladin is always a viable strategy, or you can just keep on the hunter as it is just a matter of time before the paladin loses his teammate.

The paladin/dk/hunter, conversely, will ride your warlock from start to finish, and may even make an effort on your warlock's pet. But, due to the nature of this matchup (unlike with beastcleave), you do not need very much time to get a kill on the paladin/dk/hunter team. Your warrior and warlock need to go as offensive as possible as quickly as possible to prevent a lengthy match.

The lack of purge by paladin/dk/hunter is why it is a manageable fight, unlike beastcleave.

Against Beastcleave:

This match is extremely difficult because any decent beastcleave will ride your warlock's pet from start to finish, leaving your team with limited time to get a kill. Once both warlock pets are down, there is no hope to win the match as the damage will be overwhelming.

The way to handle this as the paladin healer is to aura mastery very early for your warlock to dish out big damage, followed by a good HoJ on the beastcleave's paladin. Other than that you are fighting against time as it is just a matter of time before you run out of ways to deal with the heavy damage.

Against Wizardcleave:

Like running TSG, this is a huge uphill battle as even the felhunter dispel is not enough to handle the constant stacking debuffs like winter's chill, immolate, frost nova, cone of cold, etc. The best way to deal with this matchup is to have your warrior (who will be the target all match long) line of sight when the mage's pet is up.

I really cannot give tips to deal with that CC/damage as a paladin, because it is just so difficult when you can only cleanse 1 debuff at a time.

Strategically, your best bet is to have your warrior and warlock train the mage from start to finish to prevent shatters, with the paladin assisting as much dmg as possible when divine sacrifice and other cooldowns are up.

Paladin/DK/Hunter


Against RMP:

I think it is safe to say we have all seen how this match goes in tournaments. But a quick recap is the paladin/dk/hunter will train the priest from start to finish, especially if the priest has positioned himself poorly.

However, that is not the limiting strategy as I have actually seen paladin/dk/hunter teams focus mages all game long and be successful with it too.

Against RLS:

According to Twix, this matchup is really fun because the paladin/dk/hunter can swap between the warlock and rogue at any time and create potential kill oppportunities at any time. The RLS will be training the DK from start to finish as sitting on the hunter is a risky move. The ability to simply death grip the rogue off of the hunter is more than enough to stop the early momentum by the RLS. As a paladin healer you need to be prepared to keep your DK alive. Fortunately, the DK has a myriad of defensive tools (bone shield, AMS, AMZ, frost presence) to help mitigate damage whenever the paladin's own defensive tools are down.

Paladin/Enhancement Shaman/BM Hunter


The supposed new king of cleave. Unfortunately, it is the one composition I've never actually played. So you're all out of luck on this one. Plus Twix wouldn't give me any inside info on this comp until after MLG Anaheim.

Verdak

As most of you know by now, I don't typically pull punches. I like to tell it how I see it and I like to express my views, even if that angers some people. I've been reading a lot of the comments about Verdak, not just in her articles but also by my co-workers and other WoW people I play with, and I agree with a lot of it.

I really feel that Verdak was, is and always will be a bad idea not just for the reader's standpoint, but also for the quality of WOM. Her lack of professionalism and her irrelevance to WOM in general is not only frustrating for me, but it angers me that I have to consider her an equal to me when it comes to writing for this website. In my opinion she lowers the quality of WOM significantly. Unfortunately, opinions of the readership means little if there is increased traffic. We can all agree that traffic is very important and I've looked at the numbers, and yes, her first article was the most visited for the entire month. And, just as Ming talked about last night, her profile was actually more popular than a large majority of the articles this month. As sad as that is, how can we begin to talk about removing Verdak if she is actually bringing traffic? That isn't the fault of me or anybody else on the staff, it is the fault of the reader. If you don't like her being on WOM, you need to not just post comments about that, you need to stop going to her articles. It's silly that I have to explain this, but I mean come on. On top of that, she is still getting a lot of +likes on her stuff.

So, what do you expect Ming to do? Female writer, bringing increased traffic to WOM, bringing tons of comments to articles and getting a lot of +likes with it? Ming isn't an idiot, it's a good model for WOM, even if I despise what Verdak brings to it.

It really is up to you.

Death of Aion is Blizzard's biggest asset

For those that are still playing Aion (really?), there have been some interesting developments, which are, more than anything, symbolic to the upcoming death of Aion in the United States. Just recently, Veev unofficially quit the game "indefinitely", which is pretty important considering he was pretty much the poster boy for the migration from WoW to Aion. With Veev calling it quits at 47, I was completely astounded that Serennia managed to hit 50, passing Veev, with a job. Ok, that was clearly a joke as it has become apparent to me and everybody else that Serennia doesn't live in New York or have a job. I mean, Veev was pretty damn hardcore, playing 12+ hours a day, yet he somehow got passed by a guy who has a job? Don't think so, ace.

Before I go off the rails completely, Veev had some interesting things to say about the game which were pretty much what every critic of Aion has said:

It is a good game, no doubt, but it is just too clunky and the grind is stupid. On top of that, you pretty much need to bot to compete in the economy.

There is a reason why Blizzard has over 11 million subscribers, and it isn't because they have some mystical spell that mind controls you into playing World of Warcraft. Let's face it, hate them or love them, Blizzard is the best and biggest in the business of video games on the PC. They know what they are doing and even if a profit is their motivation, they do it wonderfully.

Blizzard, unlike a lot of companies, does not put out a product that isn't extremely high quality (not anymore anyway). Starcraft, the Warcraft series, Diablo 2, World of Warcraft? Soon to be Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2? Who remembers Starcraft Ghost being canceled due to internal conflict about getting the product up to date with the new Xbox360, Wii and PS3? These guys don't mess around with their games. They make sure their product is exceptional, which is something companies like LucasArts don't do (who, by the way, keep squeezing out real smellers just to make a pretty penny).

If you ever thought Aion was going to siphon away players from Blizzard's World of Warcraft, you were sniffing something illegal. I knew 2 hours into playing Aion that it would never last, and I was right. The only thing that will ever take down Blizzard will be one of their own games, not another company. You need to hand it to them, they make some great games despite all of the criticism we may give them. By the time Cataclysm rolls out all of the WoW haters who quit the game will be back.

Zilea Part 5: Double healer edition

I heard the feedback on part 4 about how boring double healer is, so I decided that this will most likely be the last time you see double healer matches in my videos. Unless, of course, they are good matches. I decided that I wanted to start fresh for part 6 so part 5 is essentially going to be my way to unload the last remaining decent matches of the paladin/priest/warrior combo. You can probably expect a lot of paladin/warrior/warlock in the upcoming weeks.

Oh, and Hoodrych picked the first song in this video.



Filefront link here.

On a final note I also plan on doing a preview for MLG Anaheim next week along with my picks to win it all.