Welcome to the duel grounds at the gates of Ironforge.
One on one encounters on a totally level playing field are rare in this game, but when they happen, ask yourself: how do I win?
Druid
A druid has, effectively, 2 methods of defeating a paladin. They can either be feral or restoration build. Balance druids exist, and you’ll probably have to fight one some day, but this is an extremely mana inefficient playstyle, so it should be possible to just heal through their damage then defeat them once they are out of mana without much effort. A feral build druid will try to ambush you and kill you before you can save yourself. This is just shy of impossible. A cat form druid has minimal defense and deals very little damage against a plate wearing class. The real threat is a restoration built druid, and the only serious threat to the paladin is if he makes a mana-consumptive mistake. A restoration druid will attempt to outlast the paladin by using bear form and healing, waiting until the paladin goes out of mana. Against a druid, it’s wise to increase your mana regen as high as you can by using Blessing of Wisdom and placing Judgment of Wisdom on the druid, then just slowly wear down on it. Don’t use any major, mana-consumptive finishing moves on the druid until the druid’s mana has been fully drained via heals or you are certain you can finish him off before he reacts. Always cleanse off the Moonfire debuff, since it deals more damage then the instant portion of the spell, and do the same for any Entangling Roots or Insect Swarms. Stay melee with the druid at all times and you’ll out survive it and win. Use your most efficient spells possible to keep your health high enough that they can’t combo you to death.
Rogue
Against an equally geared rogue, a paladin usually has nothing to fear.. Consecrate (Rank 1) and Retribution Aura are both highly effective, particularly against dagger rogues. Sit through the stunlock sequence and fire off hammer of justice. Take this opportunity to heal once (if your health deficit is low enough) and proceed to beat down on the rogue. The rogue can and will run from you, and will likely restealth, so be prepared to activate consecrate again at any time. [If you look at the builds I posted earlier, nearly all of them contained the spell Consecration. It is an intrinsic part of the paladin class, along with Spiritual Focus.] The rogue should crumble after the first or second hammer of justice, just remember to spam rank 1 Consecrate and to keep the rogue in combat as often as possible. It will restealth, but the moment it does you can take the opportunity to heal to as full as possible, using Flash of Light to conserve mana. If you find yourself in need of a heal while getting attacked, you may be in trouble. All it takes is one kick while you’re healing to totally disable you for more then enough time to finish you off. You can use Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection to heal, if this is the case, but remember that the spell Blind can hit you and disable you through Blessing of Protection. Stoneform helps a lot here, if you’re a dwarf.
Priest
This is a rough fight. Defeating a priest, particularly a shadow priest, as a paladin is an extremely difficult task, and as such there is no certain strategy for coming out on top. Instead, I will tell you what to expect during the course of the fight.
1) Periodic Dispel Magics on you. Your combat system (a Seal and a Blessing) will go away completely at the touch of a key to the priest, so if you have Seal of Command, use rank 1 (which is cheap) and open with Blessing of Wisdom on, but don’t go overboard about resealing it.
2) Mana burn. The priest will burn your mana away, leaving you helpless. Once your mana is gone, the fight is basically over, they can damn-near wand you to death.
3) Lots of dots and debuffs. Particularly against a shadow priest, you can expect to get hit by Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Weaving constantly, and when you cleanse yourself it’s not certain to hit the more powerful debuff, Shadow Word: Pain and instead remove Shadow Weaving.
4) Fear. Once an opportunity, the priest is going to fear you and start beating down on you (after healing to full).
A few strategies for dealing with this fight are: Shadow Resistance Aura, self-mana burning (spending most of, if not all, of your own mana as damage/healing BEFORE the priest manages to drain it all), Seal of Justice to interrupt casting, a prayer to the gods, and a good warrior buddy ambushing the priest out of no where. I have yet to defeat a competent 60 priest in a duel.
Hunter
You wear plate, you are unshakeable (due to Blessing of Freedom and Cleanse), so the hunter won’t deal unduly huge sums of damage do you and won’t be able to keep you at a range for long. Get in melee range, keep Viper Sting cleansed or purified, and run straight for the guy. You’ll hit his traps, but this is almost inevitable. You can bubble out of a trap if you feel it necessary, but for the most part it isn’t. Once you’re melee, do your best to stay there. Consecrate when you see him feign death and he might not drop out of combat and retrap you. Really good hunters can stay at a range from you for a considerable amount of time, and possibly even defeat you by staying far away, but it’s a hard fight for them.
Shaman
Although the shaman does have purge, it isn’t nearly as difficult a fight as a priest. The shaman’s mana pool tends to be much smaller, its regen smaller still, and the price of purge and all of the Shaman’s other spells are quite high, so you can safely reseal and maybe even rebless knowing that he’s going to go out of mana before you do. In fact, this is the best way to win, wait for his mana to drain away completely then beat him down. Shaman are the least efficient class in the game, mana wise, while paladins are the most mana efficient, and they are helpless without their mana. Kill the totems with either a melee hit or a rank one Seal’s Judgment. Killing them all never hurts. Remember that, if you try to heal, the shaman will more often than not use Earth Shock on you and interrupt you. You can try to fake them out by starting a heal and immediately canceling, and if you get hit by Frost Shock or (lol) Flame Shock you have a window of 6 seconds to heal uninterrupted. It frightens me how many times a shaman has cast Flame or Frost Shock on me. Earth Shock’s spell lockdown timer is very short, so for each time he successfully interrupts you, you should be able to pull off one large heal.
Warrior
Warriors are one of the easier classes for a paladin to kill. We want to stay melee, so hamstring is meaningless to us. We wear plate, reducing the damage the warrior deals by 40%-60%, and our damage is largely holy, which ignores armor. The fight against a warrior is slow and steady. Heal high (so that you never risk getting executed or combo’d) and be prepared to bubble if your health gets too low and Mortal Strike is on you, ruining your heals. Remember that the warrior has Pummel and Shield Bash to interrupt your casting, so be very careful about healing when melee. The interrupt costs rage, so if you see their rage bar is empty, go for it.
Mage
If you can survive their opening burst damage sequence of a mage, you can beat the mage. Just keep your health high and flying with Flash of Light and watch amusedly as their mana bar empties out on you. Counterspell is a threat to you, but if they don’t hit you with it as you cast, you can just bubble out of it. If you get spell locked, the fight is over, because the mage will have 10 solid seconds to do whatever he wants to you. The longer this fight takes, the more likely you are to win. Once the mage runs out of mana, the fight is over, but it’s not going to be easy for you.
Paladin
Do not fight another paladin if you are in a Battleground queue, it will take too long.
But if you have to, the winner is the paladin who’s mana lasts longer. Seal of Wisdom, Blessing of Wisdom, efficient heals and efficient damage, just be careful not to be wasteful. I don’t want to even think about these fights, I’ve seen them take 15 or more mintues.
Warlock
The second hardest fight for a paladin. Between Fear and Seduce, the warlock will get free reign over beating on you when it wants to, and if it has a Felhunter out you can expect to lose your blessings and get spell locked every time you try to cast. Similar to a priest, there is no very reliable method for downing a warlock, but if you can treat them as a mage and heal through the damage you can come out on top. If it starts relying on Life Tap to get mana back, you can kill it without resistance, but getting the fight to this point is very difficult. Expect to be feared often enough to make you want to throw your mouse through the wall. Cleanse the dots and keep melee with him if you can, and if you see s Succubus or Imp, you should cast Exorcise on it and finish it off with melee, as it will remove reasonable amount of the warlock’s fighting power
- - - Updated - - -
Master of Group PvP: Why do they want you?
A paladin is hugely powerful in group PvP due to its unpredictability and ability to combat heal. Remember that your presence in the group should be increasing everyone’s survivability, and not just your own. Your heals are slow, but powerful, and your Blessings are cheap and powerful. Save Blessing of Protection for a teammate and remember that a rogue or mage is going to deal more damage then you can, so keep them alive to increase your group’s overall DPS. When a paladin charges an enemy player, it’s difficult to predict what will happen. Is he going to dump a Reckoning bomb? Will he get a double-crit Seal of Command proc? Is his whack going to deal negligible damage? It’s never certain, but it is very disruptive. Heal until you get Horde agro then fight until they forget about you or you die and you’ll be a group PvP giant. If you can heal and melee at the same time, all the better.
Remember that the spell Blessing of Sacrifice actually deals damage to you, so any kind of crowd-control spell that breaks when you take damage will break when you take blessing of sacrifice damage. This is a hugely powerful pvp tool… it can effectively make you immune to seduce, sheep, sap, gouge, scattershot, hunter traps, intimidating shout cower, repentance (when the expansion comes out), blind, and any other kind of incapacitate. It also increases your ability to break out of spells like Fear and various roots.
Fin.
