Friday, April 30, 2010

Holy Paladin!

So . . .

Attendance issues are slowing killing our raid progress, and by extension the morale of the guild in general. It makes me sad. I have been with Nerd Rage since May 2009, and I have come to like quite a few of my fellow guild mates. Two weeks ago, we downed Sindragosa on 25 and took our first look at Lich King 25. Morale was at an all time high.

I knew that we were at least a couple of weeks away from a LK kill, but I was also confident that we would get that kill. The one I have been waiting this whole expansion for. To finally get a chance to take down the Lich King is something that I have waited for since Warcraft III.

What has changed since then? People stopped showing up. We went from having 30+ people online on Tuesday nights to having 13-14 people online. All 25 man raids have stopped for lack of bodies. It seems people have taken their “pre-expansion” breaks before we were even done with this one. I don’t understand this personally. I can’t stand to leave a job unfinished.

So last night was another no-show raid night. 13 people online at “pull” time. So, since I had cleared my schedule for raid night, and no raid was happening, I thought I would respec my second spec as Holy, and try a pug as a healer. This would mark the first time I seriously healed on my paladin since WotLK launched. My holy gear is a mishmash of ilvl 200-264 pieces that I have picked up on offspec rolls when no one else wanted them throughout this expansion. So I queue up for my first healing duty in WotLK, and what heroic do I get . . . Halls of Reflection. I immediately think, “oh shit”.

Surprisingly, it went pretty well. There were ZERO deaths throughout the entire run. I figured out that I didn’t even have all of my abilities key bound when I tried to cleanse someone, and couldn’t find the button. Then, during one really intense moment, I tried to drop a Lay on Hands to the tank, and couldn’t find that either. Good times! Regardless, we got through the entire instance without a single death. I credit the other four people in my party for this, because, I was certainly not up to form for Halls of Reflection.

Monday, April 26, 2010

10s vs. 25s

Does anyone else feel like World of Warcraft is becoming the test bed for Blizzard's new MMO?  This has been an idea floating around in the back of my mind since Ulduar.  It seems like every patch, there is some big change; something that effects raiding a great deal.  For instance . . .

Today, Blizzard announced their changes in raids for Cataclysm.  To sum up:

1.       10s and 25s will share a lockout.  So you can do the 10-man version or 25-man version of a raid each lockout, but not both.

2.       10s and 25s will drop the same gear.  Not just the same ilvl, but literally, the SAME gear and the same type of badges.  25s will just drop more of it per kill. (Source)

Now, I don't have a problem with these changes.  As a matter of fact, I kinda like 'em.  When WotLK dropped, I was in a very casual guild of RL friends.  We never had enough people online to even think about 25-man raiding, so we came into WotLK looking forward to the ability to progress through the entire expansion on 10-man.  As it turns out, just after Ulduar dropped, I left that guild and joined the one I am in now.

All things considered, I still think I prefer 10-man raiding.  It feels much more like a team, like a close knit group working together to solve a problem, and much less like a job where you have to tolerate people you don't like because you need them to get the job done.

The one thing that made dealing with 25s worth it was the higher ilvl loot that 25s provided.  In Cataclysm, that will be gone.  I honestly think that both formats being equal, most people would prefer 10s to 25s.

So the big question is . . . come Cataclysm, why would anyone run a 25-man again?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Initial thoughts on the Paladin Preview

New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin's shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

Interesting . . . A nice AoE snap aggro tool. Very similar to warrior’s Shockwave, but still retaining the paladin flavor
Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Effectively does the same thing as having Consecration heal friendlies. The paladin still has to physically go to where the healing is needed. In 5-mans, this is awesome. In raids, it will need to be used a little more judiciously. All that said . . . I like it. A paladin, being a holy warrior, SHOULD be wading into battle even if it is just to heal his compatriots.
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

This spell seems pretty cool. I love how it is a single spell, but has a different effect for each of the three specs. Hopefully, the artwork on this temp pet will be new (not a rehash of the Val’kyr art).

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

I like the Crusader Strike change, but it is not a surprise at all. Regardless of the post I made yesterday, I pretty much thought that Crusader Strike would become the low level “strike” for paladins. The big question is . . . what is the talented improvement/replacement strike in the Ret tree going to be?

Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
The Cleanse change is pretty much old news.

Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.


Further simplification of the Blessings system is more a quality of life change than anything else. Also, it helps make bringing 3-4 paladins to a raid seem less mandatory.

Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

Holy Shock becomes a core ability (I called it yesterday!!!!!). Although it seems it is going to be all healing – all the time.

New Talents and Talent Changes

We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we're considering is lowering Divine Shield's duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.


I knew this was coming, so I go nothing to say at this time.

We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.


/agree . . . Make it so.

We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don't feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.


Another quality of life change. But one that I am fond of.

We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.


The thought of a “heal bomb” that is bigger than Holy Light is a little disturbing at first. But this is not an unexpected change.

Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

No news here

Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.


Again . . . Called it yesterday.

Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.


So we are going to be further cemented into the “block tank” niche.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
These are all pretty much as expected, and as such, I have nothing new or interesting to add.

Today is the day

So today, we will find out if my predictions from yesterday are even close (probably not).

For now, all we have to do is wait . . .

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

One little change that can fix paladins . . .

It was announced earlier today on the European forums that the paladin preview, originally slated for release on Friday the 16th, will now be released Wednesday the 14th. So I am getting this in right under the wire. (source)

I have one, single change that could go a long way to fix many of the Paladin’s issues.

What is it?

Holy Shock becomes a trained ability. First learned at level 10. But, it is reverted to the original version of Holy Shock, where it only does damage (there will be a talent deep in the Holy tree to add the healing component back to it).
This adds another button to the Ret/Prot rotations. So, this one move makes the Ret rotation more complex, and at the same time, kills the 969 rotation for Prot. This also follows the trend we are seeing with Blizz giving low level players more buttons to push.

I do believe that Blizz wants us to choose between different spells whether we are tanking a single mob, or a pack of mobs. So, we Prot paladins need a new single target threat generator. Hello Holy Shock.

Because of this one change, Beacon of Light moves up to the spot in the holy tree where Holy Shock is now, but is otherwise unchanged. In Wrath of the Lich King, Beacon is pretty OP. In the new model of mana management we will see in Cataclysm, it will be a real and serious choice as to whether or not a paladin can afford to keep Beacon up through an entire fight (I doubt they will be able to).

Then, an AoE heal spell (named Aura of Radiance or something like that) is added to the top of the Holy tree (where Beacon of Light sits now).

Thoughts on other changes or new spells . . . .

Paladins need a Gap Closer of some sort. Not that I want a clone of Charge, per say, but we need an ability to get to the mobs quickly. I mean, over the years I have become pretty good at face pulling, but come on.

Paladins need a reliable interrupt that is off the GCD, and that has a short cooldown (8-10 seconds).

Unlike most people, I have no problem with our two “cooldowns”. So one of ours is automatic . . . so what? It comes into play right when you need it to. I can’t tell you how many fights have been salvaged and downed because of Ardent Defender kicking in (I am positive we downed Heroic Gormok sooner because of Ardent Defender). I don’t think it is OP, though, because we only have the one cooldown that we can reliably use for scripted events. So do we need another cooldown? Not in my opinion.

That is all I got for now. I guess we will see tomorrow.