It is often said that the best way to learn something is to teach it.  By teaching something, one has to really understand it.  I decided that I’d put together this guide, and I’ve really benefitted from it…so I hope you do too.

Here is what I’ve put together this season while Bear and I have tried to take SansPants to 2v2 Arena awesomeness.  I’ll discuss the following aspects of my play style and strategy:

• Talents and Glyphs
• Tools of the Trade
• Gearing
• Techniques
• Key bindings

When I was an aspiring new PVP Paladin, I would have loved to have someone explain these factors to me.  This guide is intended for the new PVP Paladin.  That being said, I’m no Gladiator either, so I’m still learning and refining.  So to you experts out there, I’d love to hear from ya!  Leave a comment and tell me what I’ve missed.

Talents and Glyphs

I started the season experimenting with a Prot/Holy build, which I discuss here , but since Patch 3.2.2  I’ve been rocking the following Holy build.

Link to My Spec .

The talents explain themselves for the most part and it’s clear to see why they are useful, but a few things are particularly interesting about this build.  Infusion of Light, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination and Aura Mastery are talents of particular note that will be explained later in the “Techniques” section.

As far as glyphs are concerned, these 3 fit my play style.

Glyph of Turn Evil : Great for getting rid of that pesky DK or Warlock Pet.

Glyph of Salvation :  This one is interesting.  When coupled with Hand of Salvation it provides a 20% damage reduction.

Glyph of Beacon of Light :  Longer Beacon = good.

Tools of the trade

Here is what the Holy Pally’s PVP tool belt contains.

Sacred Shield :  Huge damage reduction.  Is a must on the opposing team’s target.
Beacon of Light :  I tend to put this on my partner because I prefer to heal myself.  Bear will get heals if he’s in Line of Sight (LOS).  Beacon is really great for the twos bracket.
Divine Shield :  Pally Bubble.  Use it.  Love it.  Don’t worry about trying to save it.  It’s not as precious as you might initially think.  If you have to bubble because double-dps is blowing you up, your teammate should put enough damage pressure out during that time (during their opener and your bubble) to maybe get a kill or at least even the match out.
Seal of Wisdom :  My seal of preference.  It grants mana on melee attack.  Often you will find yourself with a pet or melee DPSer in your face.  Just target them and auto-attack between casts for mana-regen.
Judgement of Light /Judgement of Wisdom :  40 yard Judgements are good for entering combat to prevent Sap.  I’ll also judge light on the kill target so my partner gets heals from attacks.  More often than not though, I’m using Judgement of Justice.
Judgement of Justice :  Only a 10-yard range, but my judgement of choice when it matters.  It matters when my partner (warrior) is trying to kill a druid or shaman or when I’m trying to kite a melee DPS.
Flash of Light :  Spam.  Very mana efficient.
Holy Light :  I’m very nervous about Holy Light because of its long cast time (afraid of interrupts/lockouts).  I rarely use it, except maybe while in the protection of Divine Shield if a Warrior or Priest isn’t on the other team (Shattering Throw and Mass Dispel ).
Holy Shock :  Though less mana-efficient than Flash of Light, it is the Paladin’s only instant heal.
Cleanse : Huge to keep you and your teammate mobile and free of DOTs.
Concentration Aura :  The aura I use because it eliminates pushback.
Hand of Freedom :  Necessary for kiting or for keeping your DPSer mobile.
Hand of Sacrifice :  Useful for when the opener comes on your teammate.  Rerouting some of the damage reduces the burst and is nulled by having Beacon up (your both getting healed).
Hand of Salvation :  When coupled with Glyph of Salvation becomes an awesome damage mitigation.
Hand of Protection :  Save your partners life…sometimes (only works on physical damage).
Hammer of Justice :  Stun for the win!
Hammer of Wrath :  Finish Him!
Blessing of Kings /Wisdom :  I roll with Kings unless the match appears to be turning into a mana-management fight.  I then will switch to Wisdom.  See the “General Points for Consideration” section for more details.
Divine Illumination :  Important for mana management for those long fights.  See the “General Points for Consideration” section for more details.
Divine Plea :  Important for mana management for those long fights.  See the “General Points for Consideration” section for more details.
Divine Favor :  Important to pump out some quick heals by forcing a crit-Holy Shock, which procs Infusion of Light which causes an instant or crit Flash of Light.
Exorcism :  Just in case a bit of damage is needed.
Avenging Wrath :  I don’t ever use this, but one could.  It makes me nervous to invoke forbearance .
Hand of Reckoning :  Good for getting/staying in combat if judgement is on cooldown.

Gearing

Basically, as a healer, you want PVP gear.  Opponents will try to blow you up, and the Stamina and Resilience on the PVP gear is exactly what you need.  If you study the top ranked Paladins in the twos bracket, you’ll see that most have about 2800ish Spell Power and 800ish Resilience.  That tells me that at some point, their heals are powerful enough to not need to stack Resilience.  I’m currently sitting at about 2100 Spell Power and 975 Resilience.  I feel I need the extra Resilience because my heals aren’t bomb yet.  As I continue to gear up, I’ll stop gemming Resilience and begin to gem Intellect and Spell Power.

If you’re trying to figure out how to sort through all the PVP gear, check out Bear’s Gear Guide .

Techniques

Double DPS:

Remember, they DO NOT have a healer.  Their strategy is to do burst damage and crowd control so they don’t need one.  I’d say 80% of the teams we’ve seen in the twos bracket have been Double DPS.  Our strategy is to survive their opener.  We usually start with Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light active on Bear…hopefully encouraging the opener on me so that Bear is free to do damage.  However, this isn’t usually how it plays out.  Bear is usually opened and I am controlled. This is done by a variety of ways depending on the opponent.  Blinds, Polymorph, Counter Spell, Repentance, Fear, etc…  They use these abilities on me while they blow damage cooldowns to get the quick kill on Bear.  Their goal is to make it difficult for me to heal through their damage.  Our goal is to survive.  If you can make it through their damage cooldowns (Mirror Image, Avenging Wrath, Bladestorm, etc…) you can then get a kill (remember…they have no healer).

Surviving this burst is very challenging.  If we were better at it, we’d be ranked much higher this season.  However, here are some techniques that I’ve picked up.

Be ready with Divine Shield and Hand of Protection (for your partner).  Try to enter combat ASAP if there is a rogue on the other team.  This keeps him from being able to SAP you which give them time to DPS your buddy without heals (unless you trinket the SAP, which is not good either).  If they open your partner, which for me they usually do, Hand of Sacrifice him to reduce the burst damage.

While you’re healing like a mad-man and trying to survive, you’ll no doubt need to be Cleansing and using Hand of Freedom intelligently.  This is important to keep your team mobile.  You do not want to get caught out in the open for ranged dps to nuke at will.  You’ll need to be breaking Ling of Sight (LOSing) from them as much as possible.

Let’s play out an example match for fun.  Say the opponent is Rogue/Mage.  The match will go like this.

Rogue will Sap me (assuming I couldn’t get in combat first).  Bear (Warrior) will run to buy as much time as possible.  They will open Bear but time is remaining on the Sap.  Usually, I’ll eat up to 4 seconds on the Sap because I know Bear can take it.  Meanwhile, he is going into his damage mitigation mode.  He is switching weapons to Sword and Shield, and putting up Shield Wall, and dropping a fear-bomb if necessary.  As soon as my Sap is off I’m casting an Insta-crit Holy Shock (thanks to Divine Favor ) and a instant or crit Flash of Light (thanks to Infusion of Light ).  This should catch Bear up on heals.  Now I’m throwing Hand of Sacrifice on him and I’m ready with Hand of Protection just in case I can’t keep him alive.  Healing at this point is very tricky because the Mage is looking to land his Counter Spell on me as soon as I go to cast…this causes a 6 second lock-out and means death for Bear.  It is my job to LOS the mage, or juke his Counter Spell.  Juking is risky, and something I usually won’t do on a mage because things are happening too fast for me at this point.  Aura Mastery can be used here to prevent the Counter Spell.  If after all that Bear still hasn’t got a kill, then I’m looking to preemptively Divine Shield so I can heal uninterrupted for 10 more seconds.  This is all happening while still having to deal with Polymorph and Blind (yeah, Rogue Mage does suck that bad).  If we’ve survived this long, and I’ve done everything correctly (which doesn’t always happen), we’re still alive and likely to win the match at this point because they’ve given it their best and haven’t got the kill…and they have no healer.

Healer/DPS:

This combo is so much simpler than the douple DPS combo it’s not even funny.  It is unfortunate that Healer/DPS seems to be so rare in twos from what we’ve seen…cause we do pretty well against them.  Usually these matches play out like two 1v1 matches.  The DPSers will try to kill the healers, but will also be intelligently switching targets to apply complicated pressure (compared to just sitting on one target).  I usually find myself playing with a Rogue, Warrior, or DK while Bear is off doing his thing.

A couple of things to consider that make a huge difference.  Keep your DPSer mobile if necessary.  “If necessary” means if his target is a Druid or Shaman.  If that is the case, especially because Bear is melee, I make sure to Cleanse and Hand of Freedom him as much as possible.  I will also judge Judgement of Justice on his target when given the opportunity.

General Points for Consideration:

Use Line of Sight.  Even top ranked Paladins claim to still have room for improvement in this area.  It is very tricky.  You need to LOS ranged DPS and Priests (Mana Burn ).

Mana Management is a very important issue.  The Paladin has at his disposal a couple of abilities that are significant.

Divine Illumination :  I’m not sure there is an optimum way to use this.  You can either use it proactively, or save it for when you get in trouble with mana.  I like to use it when I know a lot of heals are incoming, like for the double-DPS opener.
Blessing of Wisdom :  I’ll start each match with Blessing of Kings, but will switch to Wisdom if mana is becoming a problem.
Divine Plea :   You can really screw yourself with this one if you’re not careful.  Basically, to be safe about it, you can only use it when you don’t expect excessive incoming damage.  But, if you need mana you need mana and this is the way to go.
Drink:  Not Paladin specific, but if you get a few seconds and drop combat, immediately start drinking.

Bindings

When I first started PVPing, I was clicking a lot.  Being used to faceroll PVE tanking, it was a bit overwhelming to open up the spell book and figure out how to use all these abilities that the Paladin has at his disposal.  So I would click stuff until I realized how inefficient it was.  I then set in my mind that I would train myself to not click anything…everything would be bound.  So here is the binding scheme that I came up with that works well for me.  I uses Dominos for a bar mod and a standard keyboard and mouse.

Note:  I have Divine Shield mapped to F1-F4, Hand of Protection mapped to F5-F8, and Hand of Salvation mapped to F9-F12.  These are my “oh crap!” buttons and I don’t want to miss them when they are needed.  Also note that in screenshot below, S = Shift (i.e. SQ = Shift Q).

Legend below

Thanks for reading…feedback, advice, opinions, and corrections are all welcome!