How to deal with BiS arms as ret?

So, recently made a ret paladin as an alt. However i keep running into issues with arms warriors.

How do you deal with them in a 1v1 (i know i should win every fight, but i dont somehow)? Same inside the arena, often the fight ended with the hpala dead and my m8 dead and i just die to the warrior in a 1v1. Same with arms warriors that are on me in stuff like ret/Dk or ret/mm hunter.


Basicely, if i/we push the warrior defensive 1hander + shield + healing seal + healing judgement is sometimes enough to keep me up, however if i queue into a decent-ish 6.8k war with a healer (disc is even worse then hpala) i just die through all cds if im up close and if i run away i go oom way to fast (if the war doesnt catch up and kill me in a intercept, since i cant really get away without freedom). In comps such as mm/ret or fmage/ret that is doable due to the peels but otherwise im kinda screwed. And if i play something where my partner is a viable target the war just goes through my healing and their selfstustain (i.e a DK in frost spamming deathstrike + me in 1hander + shield with sacred on my partner offhealing like crazy, and the DK still just flops over, all the while the hpala/disc keeps the war running around merrily).

I usually surive fine(-ish) vs pretty much everything else (outhealing enemy healer as ret is funny), its just that if i queue into an arms war i feel useless.

Same in 1v1s, i just die soo fast that i have to instantly abandon my 2hander to not just flop but then i dont do enough damage and still die, somewhat slower.

So how do you deal with arms warriors? In 1v1, 2v2s etc? Is it "learn to deadzone", play like a caster with judgement + kite with freedoms? IDK.

Might be worth noting that i dont have Smourne (maybe i just dont do enough damage to push the war into sword and board). Running 1.1k resiliance.


Please keep in mind that the 1v1 thing is mostly about inside the arena and in general without countergearing/speccing. So no bauble etc, just double dps trinkets.

I wrote up a wall of text and lost it, so I'm going to write a shorter version this time.

It comes down to one of two options;
You bulk up your resilience and try to force the enemy Warrior to tunnel you instead of your Partner. (You can do this by being an extremely good support.)
Or you and your partner CC and try to kill someone on the enemy team before they have the chance to deal with you.

Shadowmourne won't help you outside of #2 against an Arms Warrior. If your strat isn't "nuke it harder than they nuke us", then the weapon isn't going to help you much.

Also, a tip I can offer, try jumping the Warrior's charges. By that, I mean jumping just before the stun effect lands on you, so that you're mid-air while stunned, and thus still moving. If you can manage to always be jumping around when you're not sitting on a healer, it can make pulling this off a lot easier.

I could copy/paste some info for fighting Warriors from my PvP guide, but it appears you're already aware of most of it at least.

As far as 1v1 goes -
Stack tons of resil (the more the merrier - I play with ~1600 resil vs arms in duels/WPvP - with human it's a bit less because of the lack of medallion) with heal mace and shield. It's too much for them to deal with and you'll still hit them a lot with judgement crits because of their low resil.
Use Divine Sacrifice and Hand of Salvation (if you have a glyph) on Retaliation and Divine Protection on Bladestorm.

Now if you're talking arena wise where you can't predict who you'll fight and switch your gear accordingly, I'd suggest that you never fight a warrior with a 2h weapon unless they trinketted something and got a full HoJ with Wings, and never use Wings on Retaliation.

There's no point in kitting the warrior because he has way too many things to close the distance, you're not a DK to chain him in place with Chains of Ice and kill him with Death Coils/Ghoul/Butterfly.

So, how do you deal with them?

I can see bulking up on resiliance in 1v1s outside where you can countergear, but inside the arena i cant really run 1600 resi or so (need the damage vs other comps). How does a good DK/RET or War/Ret deal with a war in 1.1k resi? Because i just die through 1hander/shield and everything.

Or do i just have to stack resiliance in all comps bar ret/healer and ret/frost mage, ret/mm?

Problem is the comp, DK/Ret and Warr/Ret can't get high ratings because they're faceroll comps but against proper teams and warrior teams (aka Warr+Hpala/Warr+Disci) you really can't do anything except try bursting the healer or the warr right away, if you fail to do so then you're pretty much dead. You can't outheal warriors damage as ret on that resilience and with warrs proper healer, and you can't kite him forever, he has 2 charges and intervene and also priest/paladin are going to dispell/hof chains and other slows of his butt.

Other comps outside of ret+disci have enough peels, slows and ccs to make it a lot different, I mean, depending on your gear your resil might be fine... or might not. If you want you can link your armory here or just send it as private message if you don't want to post it publicly.

You can roll them pretty hard just by using 1h + shield and seal of vengeance but you will need a decent amount of resil. 1600 is more than enough, it would actually be depressing for the warrior because all they can do is tickle you to death lol. I play a lot of ret myself (main comp being ret and hunter). Ret paladins have extremely strong support tools and like Mercy said, if you support your partner well (by means of kiting, healing, reducing their damage taken, cleansing their cc, etc), then your partner gets to live longer and return the favour by helping you also. Super golden when your partner kites the warrior np and the warrior has no choice but to go on you or continue to chase your partner until their charges are down. Freedoming intercept stun does wonders but just be careful against decent war/hpala, the war will bait freedom on intercept and hpala will HoJ you while your freedom is already used and the warrior will switch onto you. If you trinket the hoj it's a full fear later which can be devastating. If your partner has nothing to get away from bladestorm you might want to use hand of protection if the warrior is going to kill them. Also know that hand of protection removes mortal strike on its target meaning you will do full heals on them which is HUGE against warriors especially if you stack flash crits which tick for massive sheath of light ticks.

Death's verdict and whispering fanged are great choices for dps trinkets which will help you heal the damage. When both trinkets proc, you have much higher spellpower, coupled with a defensive cooldown this makes it so much harder for the warrior to actually do damage to you because their damage gets absorbed. If it comes down to 1v1 you can also just judgement of justice the warrior and run around a pillar and there is absolutely no chance they can charge you unless you fail hard.

I've experimented with all the 1h shields and what I find best is wrathful 1h and shield wall. Reason being is that more spellpower won't help you as much against mortal strike healing debuff as much as the bonus resilience. However, if you do come to 1v1 a full geared warrior I will also have to say it wouldn't be realistic if you aren't decently geared yourself because 6.8k warrior would easily mop a 5.6k gs ret pala. So it could also be a gear issue.

Against Disc Warrior you don't really want to be getting freely dispelled. If the priest spams dispel on you then you're in a really tough spot. Even if you bubble the priest might mass dispel or warr shattering throw and then GG. Either try to bait warrior behind a pillar or CC the priest. During the time the priest actually does get to dispel, you can pressure the warrior because the priest won't be healing because they are too busy spamming dispel. Constantly rebuff yourself and crit as much as possible to get vengeance buff. Vengeance stacks can also be dispelled which is favourable because you don't want the priest to dispel your sacred shield/flash procs. Also forcing warrior to go defensive is another way to reduce the damage they do to you because they do less damage with 1h shield. Look out for psychic scream because if the priest gets you without trinket it can go from a likely win to an instant loss. However it is hard to dodge warrior fear; you usually trinket this depending on the situation.

If you see your sacred shield procced (6 second internal cooldown; keeping track of this is really important), use flash of light to make it crit. It helps out tremendously because not only are you getting extra heals you also proc a HoT which stacks on itself.

6.8k GS warriors are usually 1065 resil in 2h and 1.3k with 1h shield (They all copy pasta gems and gear from rank 1 warrior). I almost never pull out my 2h and easily tank them 1v1 because your judgements still do sick damage with 5 stacks of vengeance. Don't worry if you can't repentance them because they have berserker rage anyway. Only time you can repentance is on enraged regeneration but the warrior has to be really bad to sit it because they don't know that you have to cancel enraged regeneration to use berserker rage. If he pops retalliation bladestorm you can just bubble or divine protection or even avenging wrath coupled with divine sacrifice to literally make the warrior tickle you. You can also win him by popping Avenging wrath yourself coupled with divine sacrifice and hand of salvation (glyphed).

No need to countergear or spec, just use 1h shield with seal of vengeance and use cooldowns at the right time and you will be golden. If you dodge/parry the first mortal strikes you can easily top yourself up as well.
Seal of light from the beginning is not that great because you won't have damage. You'll just be healing the warrior with your crits xD I would only use it if I'm literally about to die. You should be running with improved hammer of justice so lasting until 2nd HoJ is usually a kill for me.


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/222168889?t=02m14s

As you can see here, the disc priest dies but so does the shadow so it becomes War/Hpal vs Ret/MM. The Retri is one of the highest rated rets on arena tournament. Notice how he uses 1h shield with 5 stacks seal of vengeance relying on judgements to do damage and fast auto attack crits to sustain himself whilst supporting the hunter to allow him to freely damage and cc whilst moving away from his hunter to separate the warrior.

I play 1hander + shield vs them. I just die through it. Im 6.3k basicely (BIS without smourne), but a warrior thats hitting me doesnt allow me to do anything.

On arena tournamnet its fine for me, because of the lower gear and damage. But if i play on icecrown the warriors preassure is just to much.



So its basicely, play a different comp or countergear the warrior by wearing 1.6k resiliance?

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Originally Posted by Meowto

So its basicely, play a different comp or countergear the warrior by wearing 1.6k resiliance?

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If you're not stacking resilience in a double-DPS comp vs. Warrior+Healer, your life is just going to be difficult regardless. If you want to climb the ladder at all, you HAVE TO be willing to swap items out depending on what opponents (usually weapons) you're up against.

This isn't saying that you should "counter-gear" the enemy. It's just that in a double-DPS comp, you are almost always going to be the kill target, and you have to be prepared for that.

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Originally Posted by Multisnipe

Seal of light from the beginning is not that great because you won't have damage. You'll just be healing the warrior with your crits xD I would only use it if I'm literally about to die.

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To add to this, if you do decide to use Seal of Light in this way, make sure that you are hitting as many targets as possible with your Divine Storm. Each target hit (up to 4) will provide additional healing from the Seal.

Try tracking hes target, if hes on you, you start kiting, if hes on your partner he kites etc, drag him to los when he has hof . shouldnt be that hard to kite with desecration, seems more like a syncing failure.

edit: Could be wrong tho i dont have much exp with rets on icc gear lvl

skeleton key
i have found only using 1h + sov makes hilariously short work of prot, have had less good results with arms but then i only run with like 1200 resil.

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Originally Posted by sukacakers

Try tracking hes target, if hes on you, you start kiting, if hes on your partner he kites etc, drag him to los when he has hof . shouldnt be that hard to kite with desecration, seems more like a syncing failure.

edit: Could be wrong tho i dont have much exp with rets on icc gear lvl

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Kiting works for me if im playing a comp where my partner can kite as well, i.e a frost mage, a healer or a hunter. But if i play with anything that cannot run properly then the second i kite he turns to my partner, and then that person dies unless i go in as well (for constant procs), but then he is back on me. And if we both kite we dont have the preassure/CC to endanger the warrior. So i guess its a comp thing. Was just wondering if there was a way to deal with a warrior at 1.1k resiliance without just kiting, but seems there isnt.


Follow up question, if you were running the "normal" smourne setup that most players seem to run (i.e agility/strenght 1k resi), how do you win in a 1v1 vs an arms warrior? Or is it really only possible with countergearing?

Countergearing, I mean it's possible to win with normal resilience and everything, but that's what Mercy said above "nuke him faster before he nukes me" and depends on crits, you can delete a warrior or he can delete you, it all depends on how stars align for both of you. It literally goes - trinket his first charge, pop wings and hope for the best.