Of Trolls and new Tiers

I really need to get better at this blogging thing. I don't post anywhere near enough. Anywhoo . . .

Attendance is still our biggest problem in EF. We have picked up a couple of new players, but at the same time, lost a couple of our core raiders, so it was a zero-sum action. Anyone interested in joining a raiding team that is good, just perpetually short-handed?

Of Trolls

Cataclysm has done something that no other expansion has ever done before. It has continually made me feel sub-standard. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the harder content. It is just the virtual kick to the junk when you wipe in a 5-man. And let me tell you, I have been doing a lot of wiping in 5-mans of late.

Of the two new (new = recycled) troll instances, I have only seen Zul'Gurub. On raid nights, when we are short, we are just running random troll instances instead. I have queued for a random troll instance three times now, and have gotten Zul'Gurub each time. That also means, I have spent three nights in Zul'Gurub. I have yet to finish the instance. Not due to giving up, but just due to running out of time.

The boss mechanics are . . . unforgiving. Anyone who knows us EF people, we have traditionally been weak when it came to mechanics, and tended to just power through fights. In the Wrath era, that was possible, in Cataclysm, not so much. It is funny, most of the bosses we can one-shot (even on the first night). But others, whose mechanics are more brutal (like Zanzil) we wiped again and again on.

Tonight is another scheduled raid night, and while I am holding out hope that we will see 10 people online, I am planning on going back in and finally finishing Zul'Gurub.

New Tiers

Also, a few days ago, Blizzard released the new artwork for the Tier 12 Paladin gear. At first glance, I didn't like it at all. It doesn't even look like plate armor. It seems more like something a Warlock would wear. Much like Tier 10, as I have looked at it more and more, it has grown on me. At first glance, I didn't like Tier 10 either, but when it came time to get rid of it, it was hard. I had really come to love the look of the burning skulls on my shoulders. Maybe it will be the same with Tier 12. We will see.

I do recognize the similarities in style between Tier 12 and Tier 2. It very much has that Inquisitor feel to it again. This time with an added fiery theme.

Me, a Starcaller?

As has been well documented in this blog, Empyreal Fray has been plagued with attendance problems all throughout Cataclysm. Now, we have seen the return of one of our originally planned healers, and times are looking up. However, we still missed two out of three raid nights due to lack of attendance last week. My co-tank, and our regular raid leader was on vacation for one night, so that night was expected.

Anyway, I didn't want another soul draining raid cancelation, so I suggested that we go do all of the hard modes in Ulduar. Sort of a night off, while still spending time to gether as a raid team. Most people in our guild never got their Proto-Drakes out of Ulduar, so I thought that this would be easy, and fun. And, we could knock out the Guild Achievement for Ulduar while were there.

Also, only a couple of the guildies had seen Algalon, so this would allow that as well.

How did it go?

In a word, fantastic.

Flame Leviathan was easy sauce, even with all four towers up. Razorscale only took three attempts to finish off the Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare achievement, and only that because the boss has an enrage timer, and you don't get 25 dwarves in a single fight to begin with. Ignis keeled over without much of a fuss. XT-002 was a snoozefest. Steelbreaker was chosen, and found to be lacking. We got robbed of the Disarmed achievement on Kologarn, but would come back and get it on our second night in Ulduar. The crazy cat lady went purr-fectly. Hodir's hallway trash took longer than Hodir himself. Thorim, was interesting, because the debuff he puts on the tank still reduces defense skill by 200, even though no tank has defense skill anymore. And, to close out the night, we killed Freya, after having to remember the fight mechanics on the fly.

On our second night of the week, We blew through Uludar at a record pace. We skipped Razorscale and Ignis. Disarmed Kologarn, and did the hardmodes of Hodir, Thorim, and Freya again, as I was collecting the parts for the Algalon key. Then we moved on to do Firefighter. Afterwards we continued on to General Vezax, where we smelled saronite and loved it. Then Yogg fell.

We closed out the night with me completing the key to Algalon, and then us killing him as well. Guild Achievement gained, personal achievement gained. New mounts and new titles for most of us. But most importantly, we had a really good time doing it. It was a nice break from Cata raiding. I know, for me at least, it sort of re-filled my tank.

I am chomping at the bit to get back to raiding current content this Sunday night.

Let’s just imagine for a moment

I've been chewing on this for a while, and decided to go ahead and post it.

Not that this has any chance of being implemented, but let's just imagine for a moment. I think that each paladin spec should have its own single target and AOE HoPo finisher, unique to that spec. I also think that each spec should have a single target and multi-target HoPo generator. Something like this:

	Single	Multi
Prot Generator	Crusader Strike	Hammer of the Righteous
Prot Finisher	Shield of the Righteous	Blinding Shield (the old abandoned level 81 Cataclysm ability modified to use HoPo)
Ret Generator	Crusader Strike	Holy Storm
Ret Finisher	Templar's Verdict	Insert AOE spell here (how about Inquisitor's Tempest for a name?)
Holy Generator	Holy Shock	Insert small AOE heal here (how about Virtue's Illumination for a name?)
Holy Finisher	Word of Glory	Light of Dawn

I am a really big believer in symmetry, and believe that the paladin class could use a little more.

A Rifting we will go . . . or will we?

Attendance problems are killing us in WoW. We have three scheduled raid nights a week, but are lucky if we can actually raid once a week right now. It is really a catch 22, as we need more people to join so that we can raid more often, but who wants to join a guild that is having problems putting a raid together on a consistent basis?

So, to pass the time, several guild members have bought and started playing Rift. As I mentioned in my last post, I have done the same (because I am weak).

Now, I know this may come as a surprise to many of you, but I decided before I ever set foot in the game, that I wanted to play a tank.

I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment that way.

For those of you that don't know, in Rift, there are only four classes. Warrior, Rogue, Mage, and Cleric. Sounds boring, right? Each class has eight "callings" to choose from. However, you are limited to three callings in your spec. And initially, you are limited to the first three callings that you choose at level 1, 2, and 4. So imagine that you are new to MMOs in general. This system could get REAL confusing, REAL fast.

That aside, obviously, I am NOT new to MMOs. So what class do I choose? Why warrior of course. Duh! What calling do I choose at level 1? I'll give you three guesses (but only the first one counts).

*crickets*

No one? Okay, I'll give you a hint. It starts with the letter "P" and ends with "aladin".

I know, you're all shocked.

I rounded out my spec with Void Knight (for more magic damage reduction), and Reaver (for more AOE threat). And I started playing with ferver.

Things were moving along well, I got to about level 16 or so, and was getting ready for my first foray into a Rift dungeon, when something strange happened.

I started to resent Rift.

Everytime I login to WoW, things are just stressful and depressing…a.k.a. not fun. Rift, on the other hand is perfectly fun. I just don't want to play it anymore. Not because it is a bad game, it is probably the best MMO I have played outside of WoW, but because deep down inside, I think I blame Rift (fairly or not) for our WoW attendance problems. So now, I have a $50 game that I don't even want to play. And that makes me resent it even more. Because not only is Rift destroying my ability to have fun in WoW, but it also tricked me into paying out $50. I am not only weak, but apparently I am also a moron.

I DO know, that if my WoW guild falls apart, and we quit raiding, I will most likely just quit playing MMOs altogether. I really have no drive to go raid in Rift. As it stands right now, I can't even stand to login to Rift. I would rather go watch TV.

Maybe Star Wars: The Old Republic will capture my interest.

Holy Power Woes

Man, the nerf to HoPo generation that I wrote about in February is both worse, and better, than I initially thought.

Worse, in that I have seen as many as three to four Crusader Strike misses/parries/dodges in a row at times. Let me tell you, that REALLY slows down the inflow of HoPo. It also makes the playstyle feel odd. It's just "off" somehow.

Better, in that I haven't really noticed any practical difference in my ability to tank, because after the first 25-30 seconds, nobody is catching me on threat anyway. It feels sort of like a return to the way Paladin threat was in BC. Back then, a paladin could drop a Consecrate and then go get a sandwich. In Cata, it is similar in that I can do the rotation for about 30 seconds, and then just auto-attack my way to victory. Once Vengeance is stacked up, there is no way I can lose threat.

I wish I was joking.

Back on topic. My HoPo inflow has plummeted in the past few weeks, and other than the annoyance of missing with Crusader Strike over and over again, It has had no measurable effect on my ability to successfully perform my job in a raid situation. We could almost completely ignore one of our resource mechanics if we wanted. Sure, we need to cast something every 20 seconds to keep Holy Shield up, but that is nothing. This is not how I believe Blizzard wants tanks to function.

During Cata development, Blizz stated that they wanted there to be a bigger separation between good and bad tanks. If that is really what they were going for, they have failed. They didn't make the Paladin rotation any harder than it was in Wrath, they just made if less elegant.

One of the big changes in the upcoming patch is that if you use Avenger's Shield within six seconds of a Grand Crusader proc, it will generate a HoPo. So, instead ignoring GC procs, and just sticking AS in its assigned slot in the rotation, we will actually want to use it when it pops up. That would be a welcome change, except that following your rotation/priority system to generate maximum threat is pretty meaningless right now.

Marry the potential increase in HoPo generation with the announced 20 second cooldown on Word of Glory, and Paladin tanks will be forced to use HoPo for threat, when the last thing they need is more threat.

So, what do we do? Well, since we will not be able to use our primary resource system for survivability, and we don't need threat, then the only thing left is to increase our DPS. Also, the increased HoPo income might allow us to perform the taboo and forbidden interweaving of Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous.

Welcome to the New World Order, where tank DPS actually matters.

With patch 4.1, the "skunk line" will get a lot higher.

I am weak

After all of my big talk about not buying Rift, you got it, I bought Rift. I have only played about as far as I got in the open beta, so nothing new to report yet. I did get together last night and form a guild with several other guildies from WoW to form a guild in Rift. Guess I will give it 30 days and see what comes out of it. I can say this . . . it is the best non-WoW MMO I have ever played.

New beginnings

I have a new pet project.

Empyreal Fray currently only raids on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights.  On the other nights, the guild is sort of a ghost town as people are either doing other real life things, or have decided to play Rift on our off nights.

I am intrigued by Rift, but personally, I don’t need another subscription to another game right now.

So, what to do?

I started wracking my brain, trying to decide what to do with my Wednesdays and Thursdays.  I started weighing my options and came up with the following:

1.       I could go back to LoTRO.  They have gone free-to-play, so no financial commitment needed there.

2.       I could try out Champions Online, as they have also gone free-to-play.

For those of you that don’t know, I played a bit of LoTRO before.  I had a sub, I bought expansions, and it was a really good game.  But somehow, for me at least, it didn’t measure up to WoW.  So I decided against going back.

Champions Online I downloaded and played through the first ten levels or so.  I quickly decided that I did not like it.  The graphics and sound reminded me too much of City of Heroes (which makes sense since the games are made by the same company).  And the gameplay just didn’t jive with what I wanted.   On a side note, I think Champions Online is the first MMO I have ever played where I believe you have way too many appearance choices when it comes to character creation. 

So those two choices didn’t fly.

I have a druid alt that I have already leveled to 85.  And a warrior one that is lvl 85 as well.  I have a priest that is lvl 83.  Hey, I could finished him off!

Nah . . . I think I am done with the 80-85 grind for a little while.

No character has ever engaged me as much as my paladin, hence, why Gathorc is, and has been since 2006, my main.  But, my first characters I played in WoW, were Horde.  I have a lvl 44 Undead Rogue that I haven’t played since sometime in 2005.  So, that got me to thinking how the story line has progressed on the Horde side.  Then it hit me.  Create a Bloodelf paladin on a different server and level him up from lvl 1!  And just to make it interesting, I’m gonna stick with the default UI (at least for now).

So that is what I am going to do.  See how the other hold lives.  I hear Orgrimmar is really pleasant this time of year.

With all of that in mind, I would like to introduce . . . Khur.

Now, before anyone makes any comment on the name, “No, I did not ‘steal’ it from Khor, of Retributionpaladins.com”.  It came up in the random name generator and I had gotten to level 9 before I noticed the similarity.

No heirloom gear.  No loans of gold from a main with tons of money.  No friends to speak of. No fancy shmancy UI.

Just a lowly lvl 1 paladin learning how to make his way in the World . . . of Warcraft.  LOL