2.0

Next patch comes out next Tuesday.

This Film Rated A for Awesomesauce

The Beta level cap has recently been increased to 70. Many players have reached the end of the road, accordingly. One such player is Aireon - a lvl 70 Paladin.

With lvl 70 comes Avenging Wrath.

K I C K A S S

Also of note:

Mass Dispell seems to randomly select a magic buff - not necessarily Divine Shield when it's up. Note in the video that Aireon's Blessing of Might was removed, not DS.

Spell Steal DOES work on Avenging Wrath, so be extra careful around Mages.

Monday Schumnday

Talesavo, who was featured in Vaelin's post, has a new video out which you should check out! Paladin tanking for the win.

Ghmou wants you to check these threads:
- Avenger's Shield passes through Ice Block (pic).
- Tier 5 reskins. Pic #1. Pic #2.
- And a REALLY long post by a Warrior on tanking. Popcorn thread.

Had some troubles with my guild last night. We got the blue/green combo on Nef and we just wiped and wiped (we normally don't do this). For some reason Battle Shout just wasn't grabbing enough aggro (we began to speculate that the threat nerf was pre-patched or something). After five tries and changing strategy twice, we called it quits. Today we did the same thing and did it on the first try. Really weird. Also...here's the funny part. After Nef we went for Ony. We had like more deaths on Ony than on Nef...and oddly enough that is always the case for us. Is it because we slack off so much? Dunno. Could also be due to that people relog on to their alts.

Also...here's a tip for you guys: don't have Lay on Hands next to Divine Intervention on the action bar! I just can't stress enough on this! Once on Ony I was freaking out cause the MT was losing health fast and mashed my keyboard and hit DI instead of LoH, causing the raid to wipe (it was my worst nightmare, literally). Anyways, that was probably the worst mistake I've ever done.

Some Fun 2.0 Builds

Been trying to figure out what build to get when 2.0 comes out. It's fun to try to figure out something when faced with the limitation of only being level 60 with the extended talent trees. Here's two builds of which one I will probably pick:

Stereotypical support-healer build. Guardian's Favor is too awesome to not get. Divine Illumination is "meh" but it's just one point after spending so much in to Holy anyway.

Here's the fun one: Tank-healer hybrid extraordinaire. This one counts on that we'll get our latest talent changes before 2.0 comes out...I hope so.
This one is just too much fun:
- Improved Righteous Fury cuts all your incoming damage by 6%.
- Spell Warding cuts all incoming spell damage by 4%.
- Improved Divine Shield (aka Sacred Duty) adds +6% of total stamina.
I mean, think of the healing survivability. It's incredible.

Btw, I know I have a bunch of email stuff. I'll check them all out after BWL.

Turkey Update

Ghmou wants you to check this out. Is +spell damage scaling better than healing? Belarin thinks so.

Did a pug run on Turkey40 tonight. A pretty good run since most of the people were from very established guilds on my server. When we got to Frank Wiess we actually wiped the first time cause we were using a really crazy Consecration + Fear combo. My guildies convinced to try our guild's strategy with having a tank just spamming Battle Shout. We killed the motherf.. snakes and got Frank down. Ultimately I had to cop out cause when we got to the Twin Turkeys I began to get lag spikes and since I wasn't on Vent (their server wasn't set to Speex) I didn't want to embarrass myself by being a total idiot (I know the fight decently but my guild hasn't downed them yet).

What's with the Libram of Grace anyway? Why do so many Pallies think it's such a bad libram? I don't think it is. 10 Cleanses and you've just saved 100 mana. Here's a thinker: if the libram said "You gain 25 mana every time you cast Cleanse" people would probably think it was awesome.

Happy Thanksgiving from Luke, Han, and Paladinsucks.com!

Click picture for ensuing hilarity.

Great TBC Paladin Tanking Video

I ran across this thread while browsing the Paladin forums this morning. If you're looking forward to tanking in the expansion, you should check out the video. Watch closely and you can even see him use the taunt once or twice.

My observations:

Talesavo has some impressive gear, having reached Grand Marshal at some point in his playing career. He's also sporting at least a couple Avenger's pieces. In spite of this, he doesn't seem to have very much "tank gear," i.e. with defense and such.

Spiritual Attunement looks really cool. You can see it clearly in action thanks to the built in scrolling combat text. I foresee forum signatures mirroring the Warlock lifetap ones, reading something like, "Turning healer mana into blue rage since 2007."

I'll have to watch it again, but it seems like he uses a macro for our taunt. Thanks to the somewhat clunky mechanics of Righteous Defense (though I fully understand Blizzard's reasoning in designing it as such), Paladins who wish to MT will need to set up such a macro if they want optimum reaction time. Retargeting and manually casting the spell takes far too long.

Along with the above comment, it bothered me to not see the target-of-target turned on. I would think you would ensure that was activated, especially if you were main tanking. I love this feature and am really glad it got brought into the default UI.

Mo' Ghmou

Micah wants you guys to check out Flibble's latest suggestion post which arguably gives a couple of interesting changes. He makes some good articulated arguments, though some which bring up certain complications such as how Retribution Aura would scale pre-50 when we have no spell damage gear.

He also wants you to visit the thread and ask, "Are we angry?"

Ahn'Qiraj Gates Was Just a Long Filibuster

In a Slashdot thread regarding the "lameness" of World of Warcraft, user Archimonde writes a pretty damn good piece on why the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event almost a year ago was a complete travesty. While most for certain it was world changing and epic, it pretty much failed on all other aspects.

A Couple of Thingies

Spell Warding is in! Kinda...

Aelic reports that Improved Resistance Auras has been changed to Spell Warding. Instead of giving 3/5% of spell damage cut per aura, we get a flat 2/4% spell damage cut to all spells. It's an improvement to tanking but a slight nerf to support.

Micah wants you to check out this Ret PVP video from this thread.

Tier 4 set bonuses are out.

Fooled around with a Prot build all the way up to Avenger's Shield last night on the PTR. I forget who critiqued it a while back, but...it has too many trade-offs to make it really get that oomph! It's not bad. It's descent. I really wish the cooldown was lowered because it'd create a more interactive gameplay. When specced Prot all the abilities are based on semi-heavy cooldowns (shortest is 8/10 sec for Consecration and Judgement) so there's nothing we can really "do" between them. Found myself rolling my thumbs after Judging and Consecrating. Our taunt is great also, but it fails when you're trying to grab aggro from Horde.

Judgement 3 Piece Set Bonus Nerfed?

My guildmate has informed me of the change he noticed on the PTR. I hadn't noticed it myself, but then I wasn't trying a Holy build.

Previously, the bonus read, "Increases the radius of a Paladin's auras by 10."

The 3 piece bonus now reads, "Increases the radius of a Paladin's auras to 40yd."

Some testing may be needed to determine whether or not this is actually a nerf. I would assume the change was made to prevent Paladins investing in the Aura Mastery talent from upping their aura radius to 50 yards. At best, then, it would allow Paladins with at least 3 pieces of Judgement armor to spend those points elsewhere.

2.0.1 PTR Download

For Windows and Mac OS. The file size is 477 megabytes (no joke).

I'm not sure of the authenticity of these but here's the supposed patch notes (not fully comprehensive for some reason).

Update: Tseric explains why character transfers are disabled.

Vengeance Info + The Ultimate Showdown

Metrokard has some info on the latest change to Seal of Vengeance:

seal of vengence on proc with a one hand only gives one application of the dot, but proc with a 2 hand it gives you two applications of the proc

Seems to me like a good change to make it semi-scale with the kind of weapon used, much like what is now done with Seal of Righteousness. Cool stuff!

Update: He's given me an update stating that it also seems to give double procs with one handers as well, but that it's random. Bug then I guess?

Also Credit to Micah: a 40 Paladin versus 40 Shaman smackdown took place on the Scarlet Crusade server. Who won? Appearantly the forces were so massive that when they clashed together they took down the server (and Chuck Norris almost died). There are videos coming.

Sisters of the Light - ACCESSORISE!

Fun with Photoshop! Credit to Anhurt of Hyjal for the edit, though I'd love to take credit for this one.



I need some aspirin for my sides after that.

A Dire Change

Micah alerted me that in this latest patch Druids got an incredible upgrade to dire bear form, most likely in return for the increased damage mitigation and health bonus we got. As Micah puts it (together with this picture):

Adding an extra 90% armor bonus from items, and increasing the amount of health given from ~1200 to +40%. UGH!

This plus the fact that Feline Swiftness now add +4% dodge.

I don't think it's anything bad for us at all. They have crapload of more health plus armor than us, but we have better damage mitigation, blocking, parry and reactive damage, ranged taunt, etc.

Let the Tiers Flow

Micah just contacted me and said that there's been shots of the T5 sets leaking out. Here's our set - cool eh? Still with the theme of a crystal on the helm. Here's Priest and Warlock.

Schedule Your Sickdays!

Thanks Jade. Blizzard has announced the release date of the Burning Crusade, and it'll supposed to be out in stores at January the 16th! This means that there has to be at least one month (or three weeks) of leeway before that as the game's been declared gold and being reproduced. That means that patch 1.13 might be released within 5-6 weeks or so.

Impressive, Indeed

Ghmou wants you guys to go and read this thread by Targos. Good stuff. Seems like we're going to be able to tank pretty darn good in BC.

Awesomesauce! Impressive. Most impressive.

Lots of Mail

Sorry for not checking up on your mail faster, but sometimes I just don't feel like checking my email and blogging and all that stuff (usually when I'm in a bad mood, which I've been all week for some reason). Dunno, can't control it. Sometimes it just happens. Anyways, here it is and hopefully not a moment too late:

- Metrokard mentioned that the mechanics of Righteous Defense has changed. If I'm not mistaken interpreting his description of it - it now basically a buff that lasts x seconds and the mobs who target that character is moved to you. Seems like a good change because the previous incarnation got critique for being clunky.

- Thordurin sent me a pic of the Tier 4 Pally sets so I could host it (ImageShack fails!).

- Gmhou gives plenty of links: Pneumahagion on speccing Ret for BC, Johadaelak's post on SoB vs SoC, a Warriors grumbles on tanking and PVP, and of course the very long discussion on changing the Seal/Judgement system.

We're Rotten Bastards?

Protection Sweetness and Retribution Sourness

Who says that Blizzard doesn't listen to us?

Gilthorn spills the beans.

I'm literally crapping myself in the pants.

Improved Righteous Fury now gives 2/4/6% reduction to ALL.

Improved Divine Shield has been changed to not only decrease Divine Shield cooldown but give you 3/6% total more stamina!

Oh my god? This is just what Protection Paladins wanted. And now Righteous Fury has a use outside of PVE as well! Oh my gawed. I am so happy. Protection just got so much better!

No good news on Ret: Crusader Strike is once again 10 seconds and Vengeance is once again 10%. Oh well...

Bonus!

Tier 4 sets! Three: tanking, damage and healing.

The Paladin Ideology Scale

With the US midterm elections coming up, and drawing on my undergraduate roots in Political Science, I've been inspired to compose this topic. If there's one thing that can be said about the WoW Paladin community en masse, it's that they're all over the place on how the class is perceived. In the American political system, people are generally described as being on a linear scale, with left being more liberal and right being more conservative.

In the last post, Mastgrr highlighted a thread started by Joram - a notorious proponent of the extreme Retribution end of the Paladin spectrum. I thought this would be a good starting point, so for the sake of model building let's tack him on the far right. If you've browsed the Paladin forums with any degree of regularity in the past, you are probably familiar with Nobilityownu - a low-level troll (probably with a 60 Warrior main) that insists that Paladins should stick to (nothing but) healing, buffing, and keeping "pure classes" up and running at peak efficiency. We'll put him on the extreme left.

Thus, our scale is born. Bear in mind that this scale helps to identify how you believe the WoW Paladin class should be played and designed (as opposed to its actual performance and capabilities - something that could probably be quantified in hard terms). Below I've placed our extreme examples, along with my own perception of how I prefer to play the class.

I've always been a proponent of having options. If you like to heal and that's your thing, then I think you should be able to spec deeply into Holy and do that. If you like to tank, then Protection should return your talent investment richly. Likewise with Retribution and dealing damage. We should always remember, however, that the core of our class definition and lore is the service and protection of the greater good. This is why our Greater Blessings, heals, Cleanse, auras, etc. are all baseline abilities, but so are plate armor, Exorcism, stuns, and the ability to wield a wide variety of martial weapons. We are more versatile than Warriors and more durable than Priests in the face of a physical onslaught. Never completely neglect a valuable facet of the class. Pick a playstyle on the scale - whether it be dead center or closer to one side or the other. Just don't fall off the edge.

Worst Suggestions Ever

This thread makes me laugh my ass off. His suggestions + the comments after that...popcorn.

In Real Life Paladins

Without Helm equipped, with helm equipped and full body armor.

I lol'd.

Inflammatory Title

Take a gander over at this forum thread that clearly delivers. If you post in it, please maintain the pattern.