Taugrim's MMO Blog

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my fourth Arena video for Cataclysm for Season 9.

We started the week at 2002 Rating and finished at 2005, with a record for the week of 31-25. It was an up-and-down week but we continued to learn a lot from our mistakes – hopefully you will too

Last week was not a great week for us – we had a couple ugly slumps, but we managed to dig ourselves out. We finished the week ranked at #221. I looked through the top 200 teams on Shadowburn, and there were 0 Prot Pallies and 7 Enhancement Shamans.

Last night (Tuesday) we did go 6-2, which raised our rating to 2036 and our ranking to #175 in our battlegroup. Onward, upward!

Opposing Comps

• DK / Holy Paladin
• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Resto Druid
• Rogue / Resto Shaman
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Rogue / Feral Druid
• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Rogue
• Mage / Warrior

Tips

• As discussed in the video, Kashmír switched from 8/33 to 5/33/3, putting points into the Spark of Life talent. For a dual-DPS comp that has been a great move, as I have an easier time keep his HP up with my healing
• One thing I forgot to mention in the video: if we know that we are facing a Caster/stealth MDPS comp, we have Kashmír wait out of LoS, so that when the  MDPS opens up on him, the Caster has to ride around the pillar to DPS Kashmír. This buys us valuable time until we can get control of the situation
• I treat Divine Shield as a second trinket. Long gone are the days where a non-Holy Pally can bubble and heal to full. I can heal about 30-35% of my HP while bubbled
• As I said in the video, against Rogue/DPS comps, I will break Sap with my PVP trinket, because these fights go quick and if I ride out the Sap duration the outcome may already be determined. This isn’t 1v1, where you wait out the Sap against a Rogue
• Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec, including my take on the upcoming changes for Prot in 4.0.6 (Rebuke!!!)

If you have a questions for Kashmír or me, please post ‘em below.

P.S. there are over 330 comments posted on the Prot Pally PVP Guide – there are dozens of Pallies sharing their tips and tactics there, and I am glad to see the Guide grow as a resource for the community.

P.P.S. blog readers and players from other servers in BGs been kind enough to express their thanks for the material I’ve been posting. One player last night found a funny way of contacting me:

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Protection Paladin in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in an Eye of the Storm battleground, queued with two guildees. This is my 5th PVP video for Cataclysm.

In this video I showcase the mechanics of the excellent Landslide weapon enchant.

For detailed information about Prot PVP, check out my PVP Guide.

Please post feedback / questions / comments. Thanks!

Here are the mechanics for Landslide (LS):

• Procs for 1k AP buff for 12 seconds
• No internal cooldown
• Can re-proc while it is up. This does not stack the buff but rather refreshes it

Those are great mechanics and allow for extended LS uptime, which is awesome for burst.

Kashmír and I got LS on our weapons, and we went 5-1 to start the fifth week of Arena 2v2 and we’re up to 2042 Rating. Looks like we haven’t hit our Rating “ceiling” yet. Our 2002 Rating from last week raised our weekly Conqueror cap to 2378 points, so we were both able to pick up two upgrades tonight.

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my third Arena video for Cataclysm.

Our Team by the Numbers

We worked our way up from 1850 to 2000 rating in the 4th week of Season 9 and earned the 2k Achievement

We started the week by going 9-9, adjusted our tactics, and then finished with a 16-7 run over the next 23 games. We barely missed out on the Hotter Streak Achievement (10 consecutive wins at 1800+).

We were ranked #213 for Shadowburn as of Tuesday morning, and we have climbed up to #119 as of the time of this post.

We are the only Prot Pally / Enhancement Shaman comp in the top 200. We’ve never faced a mirror comp.

Here’s the link to our team page, if you want to check out our gear/spec/enchants/gems/etc:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/wildhammer/2v2/beasteh/

Opposing Comps

This video features the following opposing comps:

• Mage / Shadow Priest
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Mage / Shadow Priest (same team, different map)
• Warrior / Mage
• Rogue / Shadow Priest
• Death Knight / Holy Paladin
• Death Knight / Restoration Druid

Tips

• As discussed in the video, “reverse kiting” has worked really well for us. Basically we kite a MDPS out of LoS from his team mate. If the team mate is a Healer this makes it difficult for the Healer to heal the MDPS without using instant casts or fast-cast, mana-inefficient heals. If the team mate is a Caster this prevents them from freecasting on us. I call this reverse kiting because teams usually expect us as a dual-melee comp to come after them. We’ve learned the hard way that that can put us in very vulnerable situations
• Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec, including my take on the upcoming changes for Prot in 4.0.6 (Rebuke!!!)

If you have a questions for either me or Kashmír, please post ‘em below.

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my second Arena video for Cataclysm.

We worked our way up from 1750 to 1850 rating in the 3rd week of Season 9. Our team moved up the ladder from the 600s to #213. Here’s the link to our team page, if you want to check out our gear/spec/enchants/gems/etc:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/wildhammer/2v2/beasteh/

Opposing Comps 

• Feral Druid / Holy Paladin
• Feral Druid / Holy Paladin (same team)
• Death Knight / Holy Paladin
• Death Knight / Restoration Druid
• Warrior / Discipline Priest
• Warlock / Holy Paladin
• Warrior / Mage

Tips

• As I discussed in the video, bridging the gap between an Enhancement Shaman’s Feral Spirit ability (a.k.a. Wolves) is to key to winning an endurance match against a DPS + Healer comp. This tactic will not work against a Warrior + Healer comp due to the Warrior’s high DPS
• To maximize the effect of Feral Spirit, Kashmír activates his PVP trinket (Badge of Conquest), casts FS, then casts Bloodlust
• For endurance fights where we are focus firing the DPS, I should have used Hammer of Justice (HoJ) stun more frequently to reduce incoming damage. The cooldown on HoJ is so long that there is no issue with Diminishing Returns (DR). However, once we’re getting close to a CC-burst sequence it’s worth waiting until we both have HoJ and Hex off cooldown
• As I mentioned in the video, if you need to heal your partner and they have a melee on them, sometimes you should create a gap before healing so that you can’t be interrupted by the melee, and if the melee decides to interrupt your cast (e.g. Warrior Intercept), they’re off your partner anyway. Force them to choose
• Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec

If you have questions for either me or Kashmír, please post them.

This is my 1st PVP video @ 85.

My partner Kashmír and I are new to this comp. Our record was 5-5 in WotLK, 10-7 last week, and 19-7 this week (which was really 18-6 when we factor out DCs). We’re still in the learning process.

It’s a fun and uncommon comp and our matches tend to go quickly as we’re both “DPS”.

I make some silly mistakes in the video – do as I say not as I do

Excerpt from the YouTube video description:

This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Protection Paladin in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. We won 18 out of 24 matches in which neither side lost a player due to DC.

This is my 6th Prot PVP video since 4.0 launched and my 1st at 85 in Cataclysm.

This video features the following opposing comps at ~1800 MMR:
- Feral Druid + Rogue
- Warlock + Restoration Shaman
- Mage + Enhancement Shaman
- Warrior + Discipline Priest
- Mage + Holy Paladin

Tips / Notes
- As I talk about in my Prot PVP Guide, you should try whenever possible to not use Shield of the Righteous unless you have the Sacred Duty buff up. The reason is that SD guarantees that SotR will crit, and if you use SotR without SD you’ll be using our Melee Crit rate, which with my gear was ~6%
- If you need to bubble yourself to heal up, it’s a good idea to use the first GCD after popping Divine Shield to cast Judgement, which procs your mana regen. Then spam-cast FoL. That way you can heal up without going bone dry on mana
- CS is often my #1 source of damage (~22% of my total). This make sense given how frequently we can use it and the synergistic buffs to damage and crit from Wrath of the Lightbringer, Crusade, and Rule of Law
- We did face comps that went after my partner since he can’t bubble, but with his Wolves and the Paladin abilities Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Guardian, and Holy Radiance, we had instant-cast tools to extend his time-to-live. I usually charged in ahead of Kash to force opponents to deal with me, and shortly after Kash would engage
- Attacking a Restoration Shaman is not a smart thing to do, it generates mana for the Shaman. LOLZ
- I had thought that Seal of Truth and Retribution Aura were underwhelming at 85, but after looking at Recount from matches I realized that SoT and RA is still worth using. SoT is typically 10-12% of my total damage and RA against melees is ~3%

Errata:
- The 2nd comp was incorrectly listed in the video as Warlock + Holy Paladin, but as I said in the video it was actually Warlock + Restoration Shaman

For detailed information about Prot PVP, check out my PVP Guide:
http://taugrim.com/2010/10/14/guide-wow-4-0-protection-paladin-class-mechanics

Please post feedback / questions / comments. Thanks!