Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Oops, did I forget to mention that I was nerfing you?

So,
I started the day today, just like any other.  Get up.  Go to work.  Start perusing blogs and informational sites about WoW.  Nothing special (well, except the new OOTS today).  Nothing out of the ordinary.
That is, until I come to my daily reading of MMOChampion, where I am greeted with this (Source):

Paladin Bug Fixes
  • Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and Hammer of the Righteous no longer incorrectly grant Holy Power on a miss

Now, this doesn't sound like much, but it is a real kick in the junk to the feel of playing a paladin.  For a Ret, it is not a huge deal, they should be hit capped anyway (or at least really close).  For a Holy paladin, this is not a huge deal, because more often than not, they are using Holy Shock on a friendly player, so they can't miss.  But for a Protection Paladin, this makes our rotation even more clunky than it was already.  The one thing we could count on before was the "pulse" of our rotation.  That every 9 seconds, we could ShotR, WoG, or Inquis.
The worst part is, I (and many other paladins in the community) can remember that Ghostcrawler himself made the change during Beta to allow our Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous to generate Holy Power regardless of if it hit or missed.  He felt, then, that the protection rotation didn't feel right, and needed be stabilized a little bit.
There are many other blogs and forums that are exploding over this situation.  It is not really the change that has us up in arms, so much as the way it was labelled at a "Bug Fix", even though it was an intentional change in Beta.
Oh well...I have played my paladin through all of the ups and downs of this game for over 6 years, but it may be time to finish leveling my Warrior.
We will see.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

A kick in the junk, indeed

So,

Many things have happened since my last post.  We didn't raid on Tuesday, the 25th, because we were short people.  That combined with all of the stuff from my last post was pretty deflating.

Then, Wednesday came around, which is not a normal raid day for us, and lo and behold, Alliance actually controlled Tol Barad.  There were about five of us online, so we started putting out phone calls and texts to guildies.  We wanted to get in there before our 2 hour window was up and get some shots in on Argaloth.  After much poking and prodding, we got 10 people online and in a raid.  We then headed to Baradin Hold to kill this guy.  We figured that he is a pretty easy boss, and we wanted our shot at free T11 gear.

So, we go in, and our raid leader starts explaining the fight and the strategy that we are going to use.  Seems easy enough.  First pull, we get to about 20% and wipe.  People (including myself) are having a little issue with the fire.  We come back and wipe a few more times.  Then we look at our timers, and we only have 13 minutes until the next Tol Barad battle.  

After everything that we had gone through in the previous few days, I started getting that "here we go again" feeling.  I really started doubting my skills as a player.  I mean, I killed the Lich King on 25, but I'm not good enough to kill the "lol" boss in Baradin Hold?  Seriously?

So, long story short (too late), we downed Argaloth on that last attempt.  There was a collective sigh of relief by everyone in the guild.  We ended the night on a high note, and it felt great to finally get a raid boss down.  Our raid leader, and my co-tank, even got his T11 gloves.  Grats.

Our next scheduled raid night was the following Sunday.  But we had to cancel again because of being short (so frustrating).  But Monday night came around, and we actually had enough people to raid.  So, we headed to Magmaw.  We were pretty optimistic, but there was still a tangible sense of tension.  We buff up, pull the trash, and then our raid leader starts going over the strategy once more.  We pull it, and surprise of surprises, we one-shot Magmaw!

We were on a guild high now.  So we go and take a few looks at Omnitron just to get comfortable with the rhythm of the fight.  

Then we decide that we are going to go take some shots at Halfus.  Because of the drakes we have up, we decide on a three tank strategy (odd in a 10-man, I know).  We didn't get him down, though.  We did however make some very solid progress.

Then, Tuesday night rolls around.  So, first thing is we go to Magmaw.  Even though we had our boomkin DC in the middle of the fight, we kill Magmaw on our third try.  Then we headed back over to Bastion of Twilight to put some more work in on Halfus.  We discussed our strategy with the different drake combination, and pulled.  We got really close on the first try, but ultimately wiped.  Then, on our second try, down he went.

That is two progression boss kills in as many days.  We took one stab at the double dragons, but that was ugly.  

So, when progression kicks you in the junk, the only thing you can do is kick it right back.