Burning Crusade Is Ret Paladin viable in 2v2 bracket?

[Ostlimpa]

This isn't just theoretically and demonstrably wrong but it also completely contradicts what you said about mages two shotting people in full resilience once S4 is here. You're not really making any consistent sense. Do you actually believe it gets harder to kill people as stronger gear is released? Do you understand that what you're saying is in complete opposites with what we're actually observing? Both BC and Wotlk follow the same trend throughout their seasons, they start slow and progressively get faster as more PvE gear gets released.

I shall try to explain my main points then.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it is actually casters that gains the most from gear upgrades. They are weaker in the start because their spell damage, haste, stamina, armor and resilience stats are low, while melee already has a very high stat from scratch - their weapon. Melee also lacks resilience and stamina, but their offense is also much greater because their strikes will hit for a lot more as armor values are lower, health pools are lower and resilience is 0. And the lack of spell haste means warriors can worry less about defense and focus more on offense.

Let's take the example with a warrior and a mage. The warrior's damage scales better the slower the weapon is, along with higher AP. It is here we run into one critical issue - the 2h weapons in the end game lack slow speed. Let's take Apolyon, it sits with a 3,4 speed. Meaning your AP values will be AP/14 x 3,4. Compare this to say a weapon with 3,6 or 3,8 attack speed and you see quite a big loss, because you lose burst damage, even though your overtime damage increases. But in PvP you will not have much use of overtime damage, because every class will CC you for their life, and this means you will often just get 3-5 seconds to do something, which means, you don't have a long time to DPS.

A caster like the mage on the other hand does not run into this issue. The damage of the spells is not dependant on the weapon attack speed, only your spell damage value. Next are the coefficients - they are rather high. Spells like Fireball and Frostbolt will get 1 and 0,8-0,9 of your spell damage value, meaning you lose next to nothing on the margin the greater your spell damage is, so you can stack your spell damage to infinity but you still get almost 100% bang for your buck.
And unlike the warrior, the spell damage will not only make the mage more hard hitting, but due to the haste rating, the mage's overtime AND burst damage will increase. It also opens up options to do more stuff in a shorter time frame. Which means, their "defense" also go up.

The bottom line is that warriors, despite their stats going up cannot match the stat upgrades for the mage, be it offensively or defensively.
I hope this made things more clear.

[Jakkre]

I shall try to explain my main points then.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it is actually casters that gains the most from gear upgrades. They are weaker in the start because their spell damage, haste, stamina, armor and resilience stats are low, while melee already has a very high stat from scratch - their weapon. Melee also lacks resilience and stamina, but their offense is also much greater because their strikes will hit for a lot more as armor values are lower, health pools are lower and resilience is 0. And the lack of spell haste means warriors can worry less about defense and focus more on offense.

Then how does it come that we experience the opposite in game?
Lets compare fmage and warrior for example:
Fmage was already very strong in s1 gear while warrior dealed pathetic dmg.
With every new season gear the dmg of warrior goes, in relation to other classes, up while the dmg of fmage is pretty constant.
That tells us that warrior are more gear dependent than mages.
That however does not mean that all melee are more gear dependent than all caster.
Every class has a different scaling with gear, separating it in to melee and caster is too simple.

[DamnOriginal]

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it is actually casters that gains the most from gear upgrades.

If by contrary, you mean contrary to actual facts then sure. Warriors have been the best scaling class since vanilla and they're literally the complete opposite of a caster. Listen to what the guy above me has to say and stop spreading misinformation.

[Peregrine]

Tell that to mage with 400 haste and icy veins,bloodlust,meta gem,on use trinket with 1200 sp.Where shatter hit 5*-6k.And frostbolt with those effects is roughly 0.9-1.3 sec.Even without that frostbolt will be 1.6 cast time so you will still get raped like no tommrrow.Let alone polymorph that will be 1.1 sec cast time plus other things.

[DamnOriginal]

Tell that to mage with 400 haste and icy veins,bloodlust,meta gem,on use trinket with 1200 sp.Where shatter hit 5*-6k.And frostbolt with those effects is roughly 0.9-1.3 sec.Even without that frostbolt will be 1.6 cast time so you will still get raped like no tommrrow.Let alone polymorph that will be 1.1 sec cast time plus other things.

Shaman/mage, new meta. Wait, are you saying you can kill people by stacking cds in this game? No way.

[Ostlimpa]

Tell that to mage with 400 haste and icy veins,bloodlust,meta gem,on use trinket with 1200 sp.Where shatter hit 5*-6k.And frostbolt with those effects is roughly 0.9-1.3 sec.Even without that frostbolt will be 1.6 cast time so you will still get raped like no tommrrow.Let alone polymorph that will be 1.1 sec cast time plus other things.

Peregrine you seem to understand this, would you care to explain to DamnOriginal and Jakkre why for example, a warrior will grow weaker and weaker and a mage stronger and stronger? Cause I seem to be unable to make any sense for them.

@Jakkre
The warrior and mage example is one of the best and most simple to understand. But the entire concept touches every class. The only classes that are not too touched by this are rogues and feral druids. Mainly because the target will be stunned/incapacitated for a good chunk of the time.
Hunters suffer from diminishing returns aswell, unless you go full SWP ARP gear - but if you do that, you sacrifice a lot of stamina and a ton of resilience.

@DamnOriginal
What Peregrine means is that casters won't even have to stack CDs, because the passive gains from the spell haste is more than enough to change everything. Additonal buffs from trinkets, metas, CDs etc just makes everything go faster.
I mean on my SWP mage I was able to deal almost 22k damage on a full resil target using a combo of AP+trink+mana gem+FB+PoM+FB+Sapper, all within 1,5 seconds. Non-spell haste targets had almost no ways to counter this because it happened so fast and within their 1,5 sec GCD.

[Peregrine]

The thing is meta changed from retail to now.People were unexperienced back then and with addition of no gear availability you got your self a new meta.
You will see steady incline of casters with healers in 2.4k ,especially disc mage where both act as dpsers with all that haste.

As stated before best part of it all,casters dont lose no stats.How in the world will average pvper stop 0.7 poly cast in tbc?How will you deal with shadow priest who has 300 haste and still retains godlike stats?When his mb/swd combo /mind flay will rape you in single cheap/kidney.

Warriors do get their bit stamina but resilence jump from s2 to s4 is marginal (look at the stats,1 or 2 resil gained) and thus you only gain few stam.
So it's not like they will do much more then they do now.But haste stacking addictivly in 2.4 reducing only gcd from casters will rape sh..... from melee.
One mistake,one proper stun most likely you will regret it.Since cc will be harder to avoid.Ele shamans will turret **** out of.......
Only warlocks are exempt of this case since they cant stack haste(well it doesnt benefit them as much as mage/sp/ele).

Still with s4 weapon warlocks will see low to medium decline in survivability due to pve gear used by warrriors/paladins/hunters/rogues.

All in all in s4 casters will dominate,apart from bis warglavies/pve gear rogues with t6 offset(the only class that has insane gear bonuses and survivability despite wearing ludacris pve gear).

And no retail tbc was marginal start of pvpers ,so nobody even know mostly how to min max in arena,not to mention downscaling, and other tips n tricks that emerged thru years (one such is kidney sap,r1 frostbolt).And tactics have changed as well.

[Ostlimpa]

@Peregrine:
"Warriors do get their bit stamina but resilence jump from s2 to s4 is marginal (look at the stats,1 or 2 resil gained) and thus you only gain few stam."
The resilience increase from S2 to S4 in terms of gear is actually 0. xP
The only gains will come from gems and IOQD Head enchant.

"Only warlocks are exempt of this case since they cant stack haste(well it doesnt benefit them as much as mage/sp/ele)."
Indeed. Only exception will be destruction which will go from crap to crushing.

"All in all in s4 casters will dominate,apart from bis warglavies/pve gear rogues with t6 offset(the only class that has insane gear bonuses and survivability despite wearing ludacris pve gear)."
Sums it up pretty good.

[Jakkre]

I'm kinda curious what private server u guys are referring to. It sounds like there must be more hardcore arena players and a more active arena ladder than back on retail.
Until I see such a private server I rather stick to my opinion that the s4 retail ladder gives the most accurate image of how things gonna be.

My bet is that Warr + rdudu will be the top 2s and warr + double healer the top 3s setup.
Due to the simple fact that warrior is the most gear dependent class in game, I assume that they will gain the biggest dmg boost from s4 and swp gear and they gonna be cappable to global opponents when BiS geared.
Casters might get haste but melee will get tons of armor ignore which is also a huge benefit.

[Peregrine]

Well warrior will die ultra easy if he wears any pve gear (overgear with pve).On 2nd notion the armor he will ignore is already quite high ,its not like he will do much dmg then he is doing now.

Rmp will just shred warr in 3s,any proper spell cleave.
In 2s proper mage rogue will shred **** out of warr/druid.

And in 5s ,well in 5s they are quite high but with all that haste i woudn be surprised if spellcleave took over ladder.

Rogue is only class melee wise that will stay dominant in each ladder.

Mark my words Jakkre.

[DamnOriginal]

Peregrine you seem to understand this, would you care to explain to DamnOriginal and Jakkre why for example, a warrior will grow weaker and weaker and a mage stronger and stronger? Cause I seem to be unable to make any sense for them.

Yes, Peregrine, please. You seem to be just as biased about mages as I am! Please support my unsubstantiated claims that contradict previously observed data with some random numbers and maybe later I'll let you touch my hasty magic wand.

@DamnOriginal
What Peregrine means is that casters won't even have to stack CDs, because the passive gains from the spell haste is more than enough to change everything. Additonal buffs from trinkets, metas, CDs etc just makes everything go faster.

Ooooo, dam. Now they don't even need their cds because haste is literally god, they just kill things whenever they like by snapping their fingers. Why stop there? I heard casters don't even need to be at their keyboards to win, their enemies just kill themselves at first sight to save themselves the trouble.

I mean on my SWP mage I was able to deal almost 22k damage on a full resil target using a combo of AP+trink+mana gem+FB+PoM+FB+Sapper, all within 1,5 seconds. Non-spell haste targets had almost no ways to counter this because it happened so fast and within their 1,5 sec GCD.

Now it's getting about as comical as the time you said arcane mages have no counters. Nice 10k frostbolts on full resilience you got there, buddy. Don't bother providing any evidence, I've been fully converted to the church of mages, I no longer operate within the boundaries of reality because I'm that cool.

The thing is meta changed from retail to now.People were unexperienced back then and with addition of no gear availability you got your self a new meta.

Don't fool yourself, we're talking about BC in its last season, not S1. People knew exactly how to play and they knew exactly what stats they want.

You will see steady incline of casters with healers in 2.4k ,especially disc mage where both act as dpsers with all that haste.

You wont, because there are no 2400 rated teams on Outland. These guys sure are gonna shake up the meta with their superior skills.

[Peregrine]

I meant in 2.4 swp part.Not in 2.4k rated teams lols,my bad i guess.
You guys just dont get how haste can change meta....And yeah haste for mages is god.But you will see when u start meeting rmp in 3s and mage rogue in 2s with bis gear....Will be fun to watch ladder changes completely due to people dying in opener from insane dmg from mage n rogue...And in 3s rmp when priest also stacks haste>Triple dps with healer....

[Ostlimpa]

Now it's getting about as comical as the time you said arcane mages have no counters. Nice 10k frostbolts on full resilience you got there, buddy. Don't bother providing any evidence, I've been fully converted to the church of mages, I no longer operate within the boundaries of reality because I'm that cool.

Well just calculate your damage with 2,5k spell damage + talents and you will land on about 9,7-10400 critical damage per FB + the sapper charge for about 1,8-2k dmg.

[Peregrine]

On side note,how do you get to 2.5k spell power:)

[Ostlimpa]

Go for SWP gear with gemmed + SP and use flask, oil and food. Then use your trinkets Shifting Naaru Silver (320) and a mana gem (which procs Serpent-Coil Braid which gives 225 spell damage). The charm of this trinket combo is that while you can't use 2x trinkets at once, your mana gem is not a trinket and thus the bonus from your 2nd trinket will still be activated.