Paladins and 1.9

[Tal]

Tal, you definitely need to get that trinket, and since it's one of the first things you can get as a PvP reward, it's not a hard thing to get.  Paladins who bubble the first moment they get sheeped do get laughed at on the Horde side, unless it's a desperate situation where it is actually important that they bubble.  I suspect that the reason you don't see the survivability attributed to paladins is due to simple inexperience in PvP.  All classes play differently in PvP than in PvE.  I ended up rearranging my hotkey bars, when I realized that my original setup which was so good for PvE was not helping me at all in PvP.  This is one reason why I was so saddened that so many Lurkers went to PvE servers rather than PvP servers, because I think people have missed out on experiencing a whole different side of their characters because of it.  Yes, I know that you can PvP on PvE servers, but unless you're practicing your skills and learning PvP skills and tactics from others on a regular basis -- and playing against people who are passionate about PvP (who tend to congregate on PvP servers) -- , you're not really going to get to experience the richness of PvP in WoW.[right][snapback]96631[/snapback][/right]

I'd love to get that trinket but between raiding two nights a week, putting together 5 mans on another night, working every thursday night and a family I have very little time left for PvP. The offtimes I can pvp I tend to sit in the queue for longer than I have time for.

One small tip I have for you is that you don't have to necessarily trinket or bubble out of the first sheep you get hit with.  Let's take as an example (Note: This is an *example* to demonstrate the general principle.  This is not the only case where this works) the situation where you are defending an AB flag with two other people.  A party of five enemies comes at you and a mage immediately poly's you.  If you trinket out of it immediately, the mage will just poly you again for eight seconds.  If you bubble, you'll have wasted your valuable shield.  However, there is a third choice: just sit there.  Your teammates are at full health and probably are using whatever tricks they have to stay alive themselves and keep the enemy from tapping the flag while calling for reinforcements.  They don't necessarily need you in those openning seconds.  So, you can sit there and watch the action unfold and decide what's best to do.

Often the sheep will break early due either to your resistances or due to a careless attack by the enemy (a badly placed aoe attack, for example).  But if not, at worst you'll be sitting there for 15 seconds, knowing full well that you can break your sheep at any time.  If the situation requires you to break your sheep, then you can trinket out of it.  By this time, the mage will likely be targeted on someone else, so you can probably get a spell or two off (maybe stun the mage!) before you get cc'd again.  Then, if necessary, you can break that cc with your shield, heal a teammate if you can or toss an EZ-thro dynamite at the flag.  Hopefully, by the time your shield wears off and by the time you've used all your other tricks to stay alive, reinforcements will arrive and/or have rezed up.

However, I sometimes find that I can go ahead and let the full 15 seconds go.  Mind you, this is a little easier as a priest, since I can let a teammate's health drop pretty low, since I can shield instantly and use Flash Heal to heal in 1.5 seconds after I get out of my sheep.  But, if I am able to do this, then I'm in a good position.  If the mage then sheeps me a second time, I can just trinket out of it.  If the mage sheeps me a third time, diminishing returns will have kicked in and it'll only last like three seconds.
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You assume of course that I would bubble or trinket out at the first opportunity. I try to wait as long as I can until I can either unsheep naturally or out when a teammate is in imminent danger of dying. The last couple of times in BG I've been teamed with a warlock, a rogue and a mage for defense. They tended to take a lot of focus fire damage while I was sheeped.