Friday, August 8, 2008

Am I a PRO Paladin?

Hey folks,

Back in the beginning days of the blog, I wrote an article on "Am I a good Paladin?" which went thru all the minimum requirements to be viable as a ret spec. Today I'll go thru what it takes to be PRO in PvP, both for stats and for play style. Future article will delve deeper into some of these, but here's the overview.

You might be saying to yourself... "Drunk, what the hell do you know about being PRO you can't make 1700!". I need to point out that currently Ret Pally is a gimped class and spec. You can play at a pro level and still not make it. Don't believe me? Let's look at some live stats.

You can customize the reports in even more ways, for example if I pick the top 10 teams with Paladins, 9 out of 10 teams with Pally's have a Holy Pally.. not RET. I refuse to re-roll and try each week to get better, while waiting for the new expansion, which (assuming no major nerfs) should make us much more viable in arena.

First let's look at some basic stats. To be at the top of your game, the stats have to be there. At minimum you should see:

1. Attack Power - 2,000 (buffed)
2. Health - 10,000
3. Resilience - 400
4. Melee Crit - 30%
5. Melee Hit - 81
6. Mana- 7,000

Your stats go up based on gear, and a bare minium you should have all of the current S4 honor gear that does not require a personal rating requirement, along with the S2 sword. Normally I'd say you need even better gear, but PRO players on the forums always say SKILL > GEAR so with that in mind, let's see how to up your skill!

#1) Keybindings - All Gladiator player's agree you cannot be PRO by clicking around. You need to bind your most common spells and play untill it becomes second nature to use keys instead of clicking (look for a more detailed post on this in the future)

#2) Movement - I've also been told you should be moving iwth your mouse, not moving and turning with a keyboard (I havn't been able to do this yet, one of the reason's I'm not a gladiator i guess :)

#3) Play Frequency - Unless your an OP class and spec (cough... Resto Druid...cough) you're never going to get high ratings with just 10 games per week, the best players out there are doing arena the majority of the time they're on.

#4) Communication - Obviously key. Get on Vent or TS, and just leave the mic on voice pickup. Wasting keys on push-to-talk will only hamper you and will result in less communication. Leaving the mic always on you can call out pretty much everything, resulting in better timing of stuns, cleanses, heals, etc.

#5) Pick the right partner - For Ret Pally's a 5's team is best if you can get it, but many people cannot. In 2's partner don't go partnering with the wrong class like a hunter, or with the wrong spec like a ferrel druid. In 3's there are more possible setups, the most cookie cutter being Arms Warrior/Resto Druid/Ret Pally. Others will work if the communication is there.

6 comments:

Darraxus said...

My main arena partner is a Ret Pally (Muralyon on Scarlet Crusade) and he is pretty pro. His 5s team is like 25-5 this year and at around 1780. He has most of the best gear and is a very good player. I usually team up with him as my Warlock and that has been working pretty decently so far.

The worse part about 2s is that Cookie Cutter teams are so dominant. You have to be a certain spec with a certain partner or you just dont measure up as well.

With the Ret Pally team, our one common hated enemy is the Rogue. If it ends up 1 on 1 with a rogue, Im gonna probably die and if they are good with cooldowns so will Mura.

My main enemies besides the rogue are the Druid (who doesnt hate them) and the Warrior. I just cant get away from Melee classes, and a fear will probably get kicked making it so I cant dot them either.

Mura has a hell of a time with Frost Mages and Priests. Mages are impossible to catch up to as a melee class unless they suck or you are a rogue. Priests just mana burn and mass dispel you bubble, plus they can take a big beating.

Tom said...

Even Muralyon's ratings are 2's and 3's are

2v2=1583
3v3=1632

He seems fortunate enough to find a good 5's team (where you realy need to be go get a high ranking)

I've been playing 2's with a Rouge and it's been alright. Our common enemy seems to be the warrior as he tears my rouge a new one

Darraxus said...

Yeah it helps that Mura's 5v5 is composed of 4 members from the best PVP guild on our server and him.

I dont mind rogues as much on my Warrior since I can still crit the crap out of them when they are using evasion. Rogues just tear me apart on my lock though.

Darraxus said...

We had a match the other night against a Rogue Mage combo. I died and Mura killed the mage shortly after. The Rogue was almost dead, but hit Mura with a blind and bandaged. He then popped back out, hit evasion and won the fight. It sucks that Rogues can basically use every cooldown in arena. I wish I could use curse of doom.

Tom said...

I'm sure your pally knows this, but I highly recommend spamming level 1 concecration and making sure Seal of Justice stays on the rouge.

I think it's telling that teaming up with 4 others in the BEST PvP guild on the team only gets you to the mid 1700's in 5's.

Looks like the best thing for Ret Pallys is WOTLK

Darraxus said...

To be fair though they have only done 30 games in 5s and have won 25of them (whihc is the third highest rating on our server for 5s sadly. Last week they went 12-0 and then one of their members had to leave.