Judgement of Justice

As Lord Vir pointed out, this seems to be one of our sleeper abilities. It's going to be very interesting to use it in PVP and such. Maybe various encounters in the game, also.

Soulforge - Worth It With Expansion Looming?

I ran across this post on the official Paladin forums asking why more Paladins don't pursue the Soulforge armor set. The OP wonders if there's a viable alternative other than the new rank 10 PvP set or raiding all the way up through Judgement. I responded to the post, but thought I'd elaborate further here.

Many of you are undoubtedly at the point where you're wondering how much more to invest in your present in-game ventures, given the fact that greens and blues in the expansion will surely replace raid gear. Here are my thoughts:

Paladin itemization in the present live game blows, with a few rare exceptions. It doesn't help that Blizzard couldn't decide for a while what to do with a plate-wearing hybrid, and ended up taking the low road and shoving us in the back of groups with the clothies. Soulforge, as well as the updated rank 10 armor stand as the few diamonds in the coal available to those who don't desire to devote months of their life playing a Cleric in order to obtain Judgement or Avenger's armor.

There's a general rule to keep in mind when facing the upcoming expansion - get the best leveling gear you are able to in the time you have to play. Paladins face a particularly frustrating dilemma depending on where they're at in endgame. Having obtained all my Lightforge, upgraded it all to Soulforge, collected all of my Lawbringer, and half of my Judgement, allow me to present a heuristic analysis of your best probably path, based on your present situation in game:

Almost/new to 60, not in a raiding guild, have little or no Lightforge (mix of blues and greens). Not a PvP'er
- Work on collecting your whole Lightforge set. It's better than most blues/greens that you can get off the auction house, and has set bonuses that make it somewhat synergistic. Depending on how much time you have left, and the experience your guild has in UBRS, you may be able to grind most or all of your Soulforge in the months remaining before the expansion.

Been 60 a short while, have some or all of Lightforge or comparable. Not in raiding guild. Not a PvP'er
- Shoot for Soulforge. There are only a few links in the quest chain that will require much grouping (45 min Strath run, and Lord Valthalak fight being the peaks). Soulforge is Judgement Jr. with a healthy amount of strength. It will serve you very well as you venture into Outland, where you will soon obtain even better gear via drops and quests.

Been 60 for a while, gear is mixed and crappy, not a raider, enjoy PvP.
- Grind to rank 10. If you prefer PvP over running dungeons with PUGs or even guild groups, you will enjoy yourself more. Rank 10 in 2-3 months is doable, and the new Lt. Commander set is very comparable to Soulforge in quality and performance.

Been 60, guild is in early raiding stages (ZG, learning MC, AQ 20)
- Gather Lawbringer as needed to help the guild, but focus on ZG quest rewards. The Freethinker's armor has excellent stats and will serve as good gear early in your Outlands excursions. Augment with Peacekeepers drops and drops from AQ 20 if your guild can tackle it. Judgement is probably too distant a goal for your guild with only a couple months before the expansion, and Lawbringer blows for anything but helping your raiding.

Guild is struggling with but focusing heavily on MC, tier 1 set collecting going slowly.
The Hump - My advice is to sit down with your guild leadership and suggest spending more time in the 20 man zones, but it really depends on the commitment of the guild membership to plowing through and out of MC. You'll have to play it carefully here, as you won't have as much time to PvP when you're raiding, and you don't want to cause too much drama in an already stressed guild.

Veteran 60, advanced raider (MC mostly farm, progressing through BWL)
- Congratulations - you're over the hump. This is where I'm at, actually. My goal is to complete my Judgement set and hopefully snag a Herald of Woe before TBC hits the shelves and Outland opens up. With any luck you'll bag Nefarion's head and maybe even a piece or two of Avenger's.

Old Fart, hardcore raider (AQ 40 farm, Naxx progress)
- I don't really need to talk to you guys. Avenger's gear will probably serve you well into mid-late 60's. My advice is to try and collect it all, and then sit back and caustic-comment in your guild's Paladin channel as you spam heals in Naxxramas and complain about Redemption being so narrow and restrictive.

Kel'thuzad on farm, trying to win Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza every Sunday
- Check yourself into rehab.

Why Fanaticism Nerf > CS/Vengeance Nerf

I'm posting this, mostly because I'm tired of refreshing PaladinSucks.com and still seeing McHammar's shpiel. Nothing against the man, I just like to keep things moving. Here's my take on the CS/Vengeance Nerf (which, according to Beta Paladins, did not go through in the last patch, while the Mage/Warlock nerfs did, so I'm still hopeful they're considering other options). I've modified it slightly from a forum post I just put up here.

For the TLDR Crowd, I'll keep this short and sweet.

A) Vengeance is something many of us have grown to know and love. We know what it means to neuter it by 1/3 after two years of reliable damage increase.

B) Increasing Crusader Strike's cooldown to 10 seconds defeats the purpose of its main utility - refreshing multiple judgments on a single target - in the likely event it misses or is dodged/parried in a raid.

C) Fanaticism in its present form is extremely potent. Imagine if Conviction gave 15% melee crit for just 5 talent points (as opposed to its current 5%). That's essentially what this talent does, only for our judgments. Since very few have had a chance to actually experience this talent, a nerf here wouldn't hurt as bad. At 10% crit or even 5% crit, if it means keeping Vengeance at 15% and Crusader Strike at 6 seconds, it will still be a worth-while ability and a better way to balance things.

In a nutshell, Blizzard:

You'd have a lot fewer angry Paladins on your hands if you modified a damage-increasing talent that's still largely unknown to the Paladin community, than by nerfing an old stand-by or an ability for which we have some basis for comparison and thus a feel for (Mortal Strike).

Honestly, I was surprised at how potent Fanaticism was initially. When you think about it in light of our Conviction talent, it's extremely powerful. Having read many of the beta Paladins' posts, a 6 second CS seems to make our class much more fun and interactive in many situations. When the nerf news hit, it wasn't so much our DPS cut that hit me hard as the thought of such an old faithful talent being nerfed along with the increased cooldown meaning that much less interactivity. A change like the one I'm proposing (I think 10% crit bonus on Fanaticism, or maybe 9% for max 3 points or 8% for max 4 points would be ideal) would allow us to keep our good old Vengeance intact as well as the short cooldown on CS and still present an ability that was attractive to spec into.

So what do you guys think?

Too Legit To Quit

Anyone who's visited the US Pally forums knows of McHammar, the guy who popularized the Reckoning bomb. He quit playing and isn't expecting to re-subscribe until BC comes out (= can't post on the forums). Here's his thoughts on the recent debacle:

Hi there. It's me, Mchammar. I've been watching the Paladin forums again with great interest recently. It seems the new Burning Crusade has a lot in store for Paladins. And of course, since I'm Mchammar, I really mean PvP Paladins. But also maybe all paladins, for all I know.

My favorite, favorite thing about the expansion is/will be Crusader strike. I know it's not an original sentiment, but even with a 10 second cooldown I love this talent. Why? Because it's exactly what I wanted from back in the day. An instant attack for Paladins. I don't love it solely because it improves our DPS, but because, as a mostly PvP player, I love burst damage. And what more could a Paladin want? The 6-to-10 second nerf barely effects us in PvP, save in drawn-out duels. The real beauty of the skill is the way in which it actually augments a Retribution Paladin's ability to heal in PvP.

As of right now, almost all a Paladin's dps is autoattack. Crusader strike, even at 10s, helps this figure a lot. As far as burst damage is concerned, we can now break out a fierce combination of one melee attack + a JoC (at +15% increased crit rate, remember) + a CS, and possibly a SoC strike, all within less than a second thanks to unlinked cooldowns on Judgement and CS. Then, we have 8 or 10 seconds to choose between hitting an enemy once or twice, firing off a HoW, and/or healing a little bit, before releasing our next salvo. This combination, with the extremely believable BC character stats of 20% crit, 250 spell damage, 800 attack power, and 70 DPS on a 3.8 weapon, is capable of delivering almost 4000 burst damage, if everything crits. And that's without Vengeance, Avenging Wrath, Sanctity Aura, or even 2h mastery; with all these factors that number can increase to 6000 or more! On average, you'll be doing about 2500 damage to the enemy if you hit all 4. That ain't bad for a plate-wearing, bubble-popping, heal-tossing "tank" class like us.

A properly-played retribution Paladin will be a substantially stronger force on the battlefield, thanks to the improved Ret gear present in BC, and to CS. This is true even taken relative to other classes. Paladin gear, and it would seem hybrid gear in general, is being tuned more properly. It looks like Blizzard has finally figured out what Paladins do all day: Everything. Stamina, Spell Damage, Strength, Crit Rating, and Int make a good Retribution Paladin, and thanks to the new level cap and relative powers, it's finally possible for all of these to be doled out in adequate amounts, at once. Take a look at the Thottbot beta plate.

And now, to return to what most of you have probably come to expect from me, comes the part where I tell you to quit yer bitchin'. The recent nerfs to vengeance and CS reek of an attempt to reduce Retribution Paladins' raid (read: sustained) DPS, it's true, but who's to say that that's such a bad thing. I still think anyone who rolled a Paladin with the intention of being a damage-dealing machine when they had the option of being a mage, warlock, rogue or hunter (whose ONLY possible role is to be a dpser) has brain damage. In PvE, we're supposed to be a "tank-healer hybrid." I'm not prepared to analyze our tanking, but I think the combination of our new abilities with new gear, horde paladins (and therefore, encounters allowing for or even demanding Paladin tanks), and a shift towards more hectic raiding experiences will give us plenty to do. Also, unlike what some people have been saying, unless you have perfectly wrong timing, you still have 2 chances to hit a Crusader Strike in order to refresh a Judgement. Remember, Judgements are 20 seconds now. You can miss a CS 5 seconds into the jJudgement and still get another shot at 15.

I've said it before, and I'm just about to say it again: Paladins are, above all, a hybrid class. There are, of course, still plenty of people that know this, but there seem to be many who don't quite get it. In BC PvE, we'll hopefully be scrambling around protecting the wee squishies like I remember doing back when I was leveling my Paladin. In PvP, we'll be able to take hits, throw big fat heals around, and hit like a wrecking ball. And based on what I've seen of the new armor, we won't even be all bloody golden anymore.

Oh, by the way, remember when the only way to really outfit your Paladin beyond Soulforge was to be a rank 13 PvPer and/or raid Nefarian every week? Well, some of the blue stuff dropping in TBC is actually balanced towards Ret Paladins, and has stats comparable to current PvP armor. Speaking of PvP armor, that's been made easier for the average person to get, too. Finally, I can just play the game how I want (by PvPing), without having to do it for 16 hours a day, and get the gear without having to waste my life away feeling like a greasy asshole talking to my guildmates on Ventrilo. I can't wait.

It's Da Sound of Da Police!

Anonymous alerts that Nethaera has a feedback thread up on our forums. Go there and write constructively!

Jorin alerts that Tseric speaks on the DPS decrease.

Nonnobis alerts that to a thread which reports that Holy Guidence seems to add flat damage to hits.

Cheech and Chong Needs More Work

If you haven't read my opinion on the Ret changes, please check it here. If you have any thoughts about what I said, please comment about it. I know that my stance is probably not the most popular one to take.

Orcpaladin nails it why Protection still is junk. He makes points that we Pallies, who are supposed to be the #2 or #3 tanking class in the game (healer/tank primary) still lack two basics (I'm discarding the third one, gear - mainly because I haven't seen BC itemization yet):

- We don't have a single talent that increases our stamina while Druids, Priests, Warriors, Rogue, Warlock have one. Oh! And Hunters have two.
- We also have zero passive damage reduction (outside Improved Resistance Auras) whereas Hunters, Mages, Priests, Rogues, Warlocks have it. And of course Warriors have Defensive Stance and Improved Defensive Stance.

Higgen on the other hand proposes an awesome change to Holy: make the 41st talent simply give a passive +100% critical strike bonus for for Holy spells (not to be confused with giving us a 100% critical rating).

He lays out the reasons for this very effectively: it would enhance the entire tree, all the way from Judgement of Righteousness to Holy Light and Holy Shock. Maybe Blizzard could slap in two 41st talents in to the tree for fun.

Blood Elf Ballads

Simple fact:

Meterosexuals aren't gay.

In our society a fashion for middle-to-upper class is to be very thin. Simply a really thin body type. The male Blood Elves certainly reflected that.

Nice to see that anything that goes against the stream of the male being muscular and large equals being homosexual. The homophobes won this battle, that's for sure. Now we can all crawl back in to our caves and conform to the age-old stereotypes that we grew up with once again, rejoicing the sweet victory of homogenization.

Thankfully this was changed before someone played Blood Elves and became converted to the practice of lezzies and gaylords.

Crusader Strike and Vengeance Nerfs

The scoop here. Crusader Strike's cooldown uppet from 6 seconds to 10 seconds, and Vengeance decreased from 15% to 10%.

Lieutenant Commander Spell Data and CayCounter

Micah says to check out this thread which gives the data on the new spell coefficients from beta. Sweet!

The Caydiem Counter also hit 300 days! Yay! Why do I keep it up there anyway? While she never came back, we've gotten the answer for our question already. I'll probably keep it up to the one year celebration.

Interesting Perspective

Micah wanted me to alert you guys of this post by Anazgros where he goes through as to why Pallies need to have increased spell damage coefficiency.

Judgment Durations Increased to 20 Seconds

The latest round of player-generated screenshots and Thottbot information has revealed that our duration on judgments that place debuffs has increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds - presumably to make up for the loss of the Lasting Judgment talent.

Seal of Light

Seal of Wisdom

Seal of the Crusader

The forums are down for maintenance presently, so I've been unable to locate any threads that had links to screenshots to back this up. Above, I've given the thottbot links.

Crusader Strike - Its Place in the World

Now that a lot of the initial excitement has abated, people are starting to sit down and examine how exactly this new and long overdue talent will work. As I have not been fortunate to be a part of the beta, I can only speculate. Based on the feedback of beta players and analysis of the expansion Retribution tree, however, I can venture to explain how I believe Crusader Strike will factor into the 2H wielding Paladin's playstyle.

First, let's look at the description of Crusader Strike:

An instant strike that causes weapon damage plus 40% of your Holy spell damage and refreshes all judgments on the target.

It's still up in the air at the moment whether or not the weapon damage element is or isn't normalized. What will really help this abilty scale, though seems to be one's spell damage stat. The description is unclear, as it specifically enumerates holy spell damage - something which is only specifically enhanced by Sanctity Aura and Judgment of the Crusader (spell damage and healing found on armor and such is general spell damage, not just holy). If one takes the narrow interpretation, we might conclude that Crusader Strike won't scale very well at all with gear like Judgement Armor. I'm still waiting on a blue post to clear this matter up.

Regardless of how well it scales, I believe it will still only hold a ministerial as opposed to a magisterial place in a Retribution Paladin's playstyle. If you're going to pick up Crusader Strike, chances are you'll also be grabbing Fanaticism. We know for certain that our existing means of dealing damage benefit from general spell damage. Fanaticism, and many other talents in the Retribution tree are designed to increase our holy damage output more than physical.

I find this phenomenon to be more than just coincidental. While Retribution Paladins will still want to enhance their critical strike rating, Blizzard has helped ease our conflict with Warriors, Rogues, and Hunters by ensuring that the best way to scale our damage is through both crit and spell damage.

Alright, enough farting around. What's your point already?

My point is that in the Burning Crusade, Retribution Paladins with Crusader Strike will still want to stock up on a substantial amount of spell damage gear. One of the most significant benefits of Crusader strike is that not only is it instant cast, but it will not reset the swing timer. Reading the Paladin forums, I'm getting the impression here and there of the notion that Crusader Strike will be the new damage dealing dynamo for Retribution Paladins. I don't find this to necessarily be the case. Our talent tree tells us that the real meat and potatoes of our damage output will come from holy damage with SoC procs and various judgments enhanced by Sanctity Aura, JotC, Fanaticism, etc. What Crusader Strike does is give us an edge that Holy and Protection Paladins won't have - added damage on demand that we can squeeze in between regular weapon swings. Crusader Strike is the green stuff - the asparagus - on our plate, rounding out the meal called pwnage. It's the vitamins that give us that extra punch, or keep us swinging through counterspells and the like that would leave a Holy Paladin impotent.

I haven't necessarily been set back by the news of greens and blues blowing raid gear away. If for no other reason, I'm endeavoring to complete my Judgement Armor because it looks badass. I'm hoping to pass through the Dark Portal on release day, in full Judgement with melee crit accessories, and strike faces - but mostly to enhance the big 1 - 2 punches I'm throwing around with my SoC procs and judgments.

Brev Brev Brev

Micah told me about the Tier 4 info Kalgan spilled yesterday (post got deleted):

There is a tier 4 set for most builds for each class.

The boss drops a "token" for a certain slot for a certain set of classes (it's not really called a "token", but I'm speaking of it mechanically here), which you then turn in for the type of set piece of your choice (ie: for a warrior, the tanking plate or the dps plate, or for a druid you choose between the healing, moonkin, or feral gear).

Pretty darn cool.

And Metrokard explained Crusader Strike and said among things that spell damage increases output more than physical damage. It's bugged because it doesn't seem to work with the Maelstorm trinket. It can proc off judgements such as Wisdom and Light. It doesn't reset the swing timer (which kinda makes sense considering we're hybrids; instant abilities never reset our swing timer). Overall he said that he kills stuff faster (yay) but that it's buggy in its current reincarnation.

Don't Raid

Your Elementium Reinforced Bulwark is worthless.

Two Thingies

Micah sent me a mail informing me that I needed to post a link to the Burning Crusade PVP rewards. Sweet stuff, eh?

Then there's the news, as reported by Lord Vir in comments: SoR was bugged and is going to be fixed. Oh well... We can always dream of a better SoR some day.

New Combat System Explained

Eyonix has drawn up a post explaining how the new combat system and corresponding stats will work.

Here it is, reproduced for those of you behind firewalls and such.

With the upcoming release of the Burning Crusade, we thought we would take the time to explain more on a new stat that we are introducing: Combat Ratings. These ratings are being used for any combat stat that previously was percentage-based such as: critical strike chance, hit chance, dodge chance and defense skill. Combat ratings are only used with effects generated by items and do not apply to effects that are generated by spells and talents which will continue to work the same.

The following combat ratings are currently in use: weapon skill, defense, dodge, parry, block, hit chance, spell hit chance, critical strike chance, spell critical strike chance, resilience, haste, and spell haste.

*We may introduce others at a later time.

Combat Skills

Unlike fixed percentages such as 2% critical strike chance, combat ratings diminish in potency as your character increases in level. 2% crit is the same at every level, while 28 critical strike rating grants 4% crit at level 34, 2% crit at level 60, and 1.27% crit at level 70. This allows us the ability to create and add new and better items to the world without eventually reaching a point where every character has a 100% chance to critically strike.

Below is the level 60 conversion for combat skills:

Weapon Skill Rating 2.5 rating grants 1 weapon skill
Hit Rating 10 rating grants 1% hit chance
Spell Hit Rating 8 rating grants 1% spell hit chance
Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% critical strike chance
Spell Critical Strike Rating 14 rating grants 1% spell critical strike chance
Haste 10 rating 1% haste
Spell Haste 10 rating grants 1% spell haste

Defense Skills

The impact on the defense skill and weapon skill systems is slightly more complicated. Many people do not realize these skills actually grant percentage-based benefits already. For example, every 25 points of defense skill grants a 1% dodge chance, 1% parry chance, 1% block chance, 1% increased chance to be missed and 1% decreased chance to be critically hit by physical attacks. Weapon skills have a similar effect for the attacker. Items will now grant skill rating rather than skill directly, and that will convert to an actual skill increase.

Below is the level 60 conversion for defense skills:

Defense Skill Rating 1.5 rating grants 1 defense skill
Dodge Rating 12 rating grants 1% dodge
Parry Rating 20 rating grants 1% parry
Block Rating 5 rating grants 1% block chance

Resilience

Resilience is a special new rating which we have created to reduce the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by X percent, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2X percent. X is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.

Below is the level 60 conversion for resilience:

Resilience 25 rating grants 1% resilience

Each time you go up a level, the amount of rating needed to get the same benefit will increase. An example of the scaling involved would be the current implementation of Agility which has always worked this way in the live game, requiring more agility for the same critical strike chance as you go up in level

Scaling Schmaling

I've heard a report that Judgement of Light is scaling with +heal/spell gear. Can anyone who is in beta check this and see if it's true? If so, it contradicts what Kalgan said to Gregthegreat last week.

Latest Round of Changes

Thanks Lord Vir for bringing this up. Here's the latest round of Paladin changes:

- Holy
Lasting Judgement - Replaced with "Sanctified Light", which "Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 2/4/6%."
Holy Shock - Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds.

- Retribution
Empowered Judgement - Renamed "Sanctified Judgement".

Haha...man. Those were some good Holy tree changes. See! I just said I wanted more spell damage and healing power to make the tree more attractive. The Holy Shock cooldown cut is two birds with one stone.

Consider this: Now with Holy Power and Sanctified Light you get 11% spell crit with Holy Light out of the box. Then stack factor in Illumination, Divine Illumination and Light's Grace. Sweet jesus! Every time you crit with Divine Illumination you get base Holy Light mana cost back.

I'm really sad to see Lasting Judgment go. It was actually one of my favorite talents in the entire tree. I guess now we're really going to be forced to stay in melee range to keep our Judgments up, which our community is probably very divided on. Many of us have always wanted to be in melee range in fights and love when this is promoted. But, then again, there are plenty of fights when we simply can't/don't go melee (I don't know of of anyone who does it on Huhuran for example). So what we're getting here is really just losing out on options how to play our class. It's going to be fun though now to have to adjust mentally considering I've been using Lasting Judgement now for such a long time.

"Avenger's Shield" More Like "Avenger's Suck" And Other Ramblings...

Theris has made a very comprehensive post. The general consent right now is that it's a very poor ability and only useful for pulling mobs. Kinda sad since I was really pepped for speccing Protection for the expansion. I was relieved that once and for all I could go Prot and not feel like I was missing out of anything from Retribution thanks to being able to throw shields and wtfpwn mobs.

The problems that Theris bring up is basically everything: High Mana Cost, Low Damage Yield, Dead Zone, Cast Time, Spell Crit and Long Cooldown. Doesn't sound good. Not at all.

But now with Crusader Strike and the fact that Avenger's Shield pales in comparison, Protection is once again looking like it's not that good anymore. Also consider the fact that Weapon Expertise is just completely out of the loop...increases white damage (which Imp. One-Handers already does) through reducing glancing blows when our aggro is based on Holy damage?

Retribution is great now. You can really tell that Blizzard spent the most time on this tree. Why? It's got 8 new talents versus the two other trees who only got six. And the Ret 41st is really good.

I'd really like to see Protection polished up first because it really needs the least amount of work. It's got lots of retooling so far but it still needs to be fleshed out more. Make Weapon Expertise better or just completely change it to something else. Just give Protection Pallies more Holy damage options.

After that they need to increase the attractiveness of the top tiers of Holy. I really hope Blizzard focuses a lot on this tree because right now it's the least attractive one. One thing that really disappoints me is that there's not enough focus on healing. There's just too many weird abilities: disease and curse resistance together with Consecration and Cleanse cost reduction. What's up with that? That doesn't have anything to do with healing!

Give Holy something that boosts Holy damage or improves healing even more. Improved Blessing of Light or an Improved Flash of Light that decreases casting time by 0.1 seconds or so, is stuff that I'd like to see.

We're Gun Be Nerfed

Krysta posted on the Pally forums about this: Check this video out of two Pallies absolutely pwning the arena. It's increadible! Something tells me that SoR is probably going to get reduced in spell damage efficiency.

It's on the GooTube

Thanks Thordurin for mailing me: he's got a thread where he's recorded seal and blessing animations. Check it out!

Buff, buff and away!

Thanks metrokard for emailing me about this. Appearantly many people have experienced that SoR has been REALLY buffed. Here's metro's literal explanation of it:

example you swing with a weapon and you get 295 and the seal says it ads 75 holy damage so...the proc does 370 and the judgement is freaken insaine becuase now...im judging rightouseness and doing 850 damage per judgement

There's a thread about it on the beta forum.

Update: Snowlockk calculated the spell damage coefficiency:

i'm seeing .165*weapon speed for 1 handers and .2*weapon speed for 2 handers.
this means a 2 speed weapon gets .33 of your spell damage on SoR
a 3.5 two handed weapon gets .7 of your spell damage on SoR

also am seeing 1.35 times spell damage being added to JoR.

Holy crap? That's an INCREADIBLE buff to SoR.

The Philosophy of Raiding

There's a huge post on how a raider feels like all the time spent in MC to BWL to AQ40 to Naxx was a waste. Plenty of pages long. Including a response from Eyonix. Here's an excerpt from the OP that hit me:

...there IS no long term reward for raiding, except the prospect of more raiding.

Hence the saying I heard from a friend of mine: World of Warcraft is a pie eating contest where the reward is more pie.

Kaaaalggaaaaaan!

Gregthegreat receives the honor. Through that he wins a copy of the Burning Crusade from Flibble.

Funny thing is that I was right. He was holding off for these changes before coming to our board.

Update: Thanks Suicidal Zebra, he's answered more stuff now and also confirming that Blessing of Spell Warding won't make it in to the game.

ZOMG CRUSADER STRIKE IS BACK!!!

The post.

Now the 41 point Retribution talent.

Paladin:

Retribution

• Divine Purpose - Now 3 ranks for 4/7/10%.
  
• Sanctified Crusader - Moved to one column to the left of Repentance. Now 3 ranks for increase of 1/2/3%.
  
• (NEW) Crusader Strike - “An instant strike that causes weapon damage plus 40% of your Holy spell damage and refreshes all Judgements on the target.”
  
  Protection
  
• Redoubt - "Successful melee..." changed to "Damaging melee..."
  
• Reckoning - Changed to: "Gives you a 2/4/6/8/10% chance after being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack."
  
  Holy
  
• Blessed Life - Now 3 ranks for 4/7/10% chance.

Faptastic!

World of Warcraft pr0n?

Appearantly it's no joke (the link definetly is not work safe!).

*rubs eyes*

*rolls eyes*

*shakes head*

*shakes fist*

*shakes fist*
*shakes fist*
*shakes fist*
*shakes fist*

*shakes fist*

*heavy exhaling*

My Eyes...the Goggles Do Nothing!

Sorry. I was too caught up in chatting in Ventrilo about epic lewtz and playing my Druid in ZG to think about what impacts the Closed Beta has for leaked info and such. Ah well...

Ghmou alerted me of two threads by Tinaris where one encompasses several aspects of the class from things such as Spiritual Attunement (which he says is very powerful, just as I expected) to Judgement of Justice and such. And the other is a write up on Seal of Vengeance which looks pretty sweet, full of goody details. Third, there's one by Bruse that details more about the Holy tree and group PVP.

I suggest you read all the responses they make in the threads. It's good non-blue reading.

Popcorn. Soda. Yum.

Talent Tree Updates

Eyonix has created a thread with some latest updates of the talent trees. He's going to update it more throughout the day. Here's an excerpt:

(Druid) Leader of the Pack - Increases crit % by 5, increased from 3.
(Druid) Moonkin Form - Increases spell crit % by 5, increased from 3.

Holy Jesus! What is that? What the heck is that? Makes Sanctified Crusader slightly more useless now and feel like it pales in comparison? Right? Remember also that Improved Mark of the Wild heals your party members when critting.

Anyways, hold your thumbs for hoping that we're getting sweeping changes to our trees (which could explain Kalgan's absence from our forum; why talk about something that's going to be changed/revised soon?).

What Is Love?

Thanks Eddie for alerting me on this. Nethaera is asking us "Why a Paladin? What do you love?". She did the same to Shamans four days ago. So...she's done this to both the classes who have zero responses from Kalgan. Coincidence?

Interestingly enough she states in her Pally post:

There are no motives for my post other than both the fact that I like hearing people's stories and that it might help those considering a Paladin know what they can expect from playing one.

We're Still Waiting...

Message to Kalgan.

New Seal Animations

Check out this thread that has pics of the new Seal animations we're getting. Don't they look awesome?

Super Crazy Idea

Get this...here's an insane proposition on how to make Sanctified Crusader more appealing: up it from 2% crit to 3% crit. zomg!

Paladin vs Shaman Balance Redux

Tseric says among things:

Balancing classes in a 1 to 1 setting was something that was happening with the Shaman and Paladins. This conflicted with how all of the other classes were being balanced in a group setting, as changes could be made to a class with the overall game balance in mind, not one particular class such as was occurring.

Basically yet another reason as to why they decided to give Pallies and Shamans to both factions.

Thanks Ghmou.

We've all joked about it...

Not Paladin related, but this guy got balls of steel.

A Fun Thing

A couple of Pallies were talking about some stuff in the Paladin guild chat and we thought of this: Scrolls of Blinding Light + Freethinker's 3-piece set bonus + Light's Grace = super fast Holy Lights. If I'm not mistaken, it should be at 1.254 seconds per cast. Think of doing that with Divine Illumination? Insane! Nothing that of any particular importance, but just wanted to mention this. Hehe.

Urge to kill...rising...

Over the last few days, the Pally community has gotten more and more relentless and posts like these have begun popping up back again, repeating the familiar talking points (Tigole's hatred of Paladins in Everquest) and adding new ones (such lack of posts, which I detailed in my post below).

Is it good or bad when we engrage like this? You think this'll make them go on the offensive or offensive towards us? The only time I really can recall this worked out in our favor from the top of my head was when we got absolutely balistic about the fact that no Paladin (in the US) won the Test of Honor contest; giving us Hammer of Wrath.

I think that...they've simply waited too long. Now when blue will post it'll be looked down upon. And probably it's come to the point now that whatever they do it'll be unsatisfactory in one way or another.

The Blue Post Blues

Since the Burning Crusade talents came out September 1st here's a list of the blue posts regarding classes in their respective forums that actually answer stuff. I ignored threads which were moderated, and I think I definetly missed certain posts on classes that were in the Generals forum. If you find any more, post it in comments and I'll add it to the list.

Drysc:
One Druid Post

Tseric:
One Warlock Post
Three Mage Posts
Two Warlock Posts

Eyonix:
One Warlock Post

Kalgan:
Six Mage Posts
Five Hunter Posts
Four Mage Posts
Two Mage Posts
One Druid Post
Two Druid Posts
Six Druid Posts
Three Priest Posts
Two Warrior Posts
Six Priest Posts (one can count as a Paladin)

You're telling me, with all these questions on the philosophy of Sanctified Crusader, all these complaints on how *everything* we have can be dispelled including Divine Shield, Seal of Blood versus Seal of Vengeance balance, our Divine Illumination nerf, how we rely on only one school for our entire arsenal leaving us to be completely locked down in PVP, whether Avenging Wrath is counted as a magic buff and where Blessing of Spell Warding is - we haven't gotten a single blue post yet?

This is ridiculous in my opinion, especially considering the seriousness of our concerns. The only real answer from a blue we've gotten was that Mass Dispell now removes Divine Shield. That's it - and it wasn't even in our forums!

Interesting Flash of Light Idea

Wow, Gigex came up with a clever reinvention of Flash of Light: enable casting while moving.

Blizzard without a doubt considers one of the strategic elements of being a healing in fights is whether you decide to move around or stand still and cast a heal. Heal over Time spells are less serious because they heal for small amounts at a time.

However, consider the fact that Heal over Time spells will stack in the Burning Crusade (Priests Renew and Druid Rejuvenation together, no joke!). What's the difference really between Flash of Light and someone who's packed with a bunch of HoTs? (I know though it's silly to compare one class versus who others) The only main problem I would see with this is that FoL simply is stronger than their HoTs, so it would have to be nerfed pretty bad in some way by increasing casting time or nerfing healing points. Also many peeps in the thread bring out the point that HoTs can be dispelled.

It would bring an awesome dimension though to the class. No doubt about that. And that's the simple reason why it won't happen. Unless it's a simple change that doesn't require extraordinary amounts of rebalancing, Blizzad won't do it. And unless it's a completely new spell, it's all about changing existing stats and stats on the stats and stats.