Indefinite Lockdown
See you at BlizzCon 2007.
20 April, 2007Indefinite Lockdown
I've decided to lock the blog down for the indefinite future as I'm contemplating in a period of reflection.
See you at BlizzCon 2007. Flibble's at it Again
If you haven't checked it out, read Flibble's thread on list of Tankadin concerns. Extremely comprehensive. Nice read.
19 April, 2007Kalgan Speaks!
In this thread he addresses a lot of questions man of us have. Here are the juicy bits, first is regarding Ret spec viability:
...It isn't an immediate goal for every spec to be optimized for every aspect of the game (arenas, battlegrounds, solo-ing, raiding, heroics, etc). Dang it Mastgrr!
You beat me to it! Although, you did abridge some of his comments. Here they are in full, with respect to Retribution.
It took reposting the threads to version 6.0, but Blizzard has finally weighed in on the debate. A poster in the thread asks: Kalgan, what exactly is the purpose of the retribution tree? What is the advantage of choosing ret over holy or protection? Kalgan responds:
An exasperated Ret Paladin comments:
With Kalgan responding: Actually, ret pallies can do some surprisingly strong raid dps if they're in a good melee group dps composition. Encouraging raid leaders to do this is the reason for this change: The response from the more asinine neopaladins* on the Paladin forums is best summed up with this Q&D Google image search + Photoshop representation: *Neopaladin: WoW players who rolled a Paladin long after original launch and in full knowledge of their primary healer/support role and endgame caster playstyle. Usually antagonistic towards the few remaining original Paladin rollers who are unhappy with the direction the class has taken. Most recently bolstered by the influx of Horde healing classes rerolling a class formerly unavailable to their faction. 18 April, 2007T6 Pics Revealed
Graphics for the tier 6 armor sets, and just about anything else you'd want to know about patch 2.1 is available over at www.mmochampion.com (thanks to WoW Insider for the tipoff). Here it is: Lightbringer Armor.
As of writing this post, the only stats available are for the mage set. If Blizzard maintains their trend, there will be choices for different specs for appropriate classes. IMO, it's leaps and bounds better than Crystalforge. While I like the overall color scheme and feel, I can already predict some of the comments that will arise:
15 April, 2007What the Paladin Class Should Have Been
NOTE: This is not my work, but a repost of a forum thread by Targos of Smolderthorn - posting on his 70 Tauren Shaman. I found it well thought-out, and worthy of presentation to those of you who, like me, never really adapted to the WoW Paladin's only viable endgame role and playstyle. Flame if you want, but don't flame me because again, I didn't write it.
---------------------------------- First of all, this thread is not about Illumination. In fact, it's not about any current Paladin abilities. This is instead a reflection on what Paladins should have been -- as defined by Blizzard's philosophy but butchered in their execution. Blizzard has always touted Paladins as combatants, as knights wielding heavy weapons in the thick of things. They are not damage dealers, they do not go on berserker killing sprees. Instead they are reserved, honorable, defensive fighters who battle for the protection of others, and not for glory. The lore behind them is compelling. Paladins have shaped Azeroth like noone other throughout Warcraft history (and judging by Draenei, Warcraft future). However in this game, their current implementation is nothing short of an insult to that role by lore, and role by class description. To avoid the the bird brain attention span problem on this forum, I will post the meat of my suggestions first, and ramble on second. Basically, my proposal on how to fix Paladins is nothing more than 4 new (and old), linked abilities. Holy Strike A strike that converts 100% of the Paladin's next regular melee attack into Holy damage. Crusader Strike An instant strike that deals 100% weapon damage, plus 10% of your attack power and 20% of your spell damage. Righteous Strike An instant strike that deals 50% weapon damage and restores 300% weapon damage in health to nearby party members. Also reduces threat. Divine Strike An instant strike that deals 50% weapon damage and coats the Paladin with a magical shield that will absorb an amount equal to 100% weapon damage. Greatly reduces threat. All these strikes would be on a shared, 6 second cooldown. They would also all refresh Judgments on the target, as Crusader Strike does now. In addition, every time a Paladin strikes an enemy, a debuff would be applied to the target that increases the effects of his or her strikes by 5%, stacking up to 3 times. Holy Strike would be ideal for tanking, and Holy DPS Paladins. Crusader Strike is for Retribution Paladins, as it is now. Righteous Strike is for healers, and is exactly the kind of combat healing potency that is required to move Paladins out of the back of groups. Divine Strike re-emphasizes Paladins as a defensive class, and can be used by either healers or DPS, but not by tanks due to the threat reduction component. What would these abilities solve? Maybe not bugs, maybe not poor talents. But certainly 100% of everything that is wrong with the class at the core. The short version: - It would solve Paladins being the only melee class without a single baseline melee ability. - It would help bring Paladins to the front lines -- where they belong according to class description. - It would give Paladins some much needed control in combat, instead of total reliance on procs. - It would give Paladins some much needed interactivity, instead of seal + auto-attack. - It would finally give Paladins some combat options that are not dispellable. The long version: For one, most Paladins are in the "thick of" nothing. Everyone knows that during hard encounters, any class that can heal will be made to heal. And since currently Paladin healing is all ranged, it is best utilized from the outskirts of battle, where they don't get hit. This however alienates Paladins from participation in the actual combat, entirely. Unlike other healing classes, Paladins can't even help debuff or DPS from a range. Paladins also strongly lack interactivity and control in battle. Their combat system relies almost entirely on autoattack procs, which is laughable for a pure melee class. I say pure melee class because even though Paladins use spells, they are not casters and in fact have the weakest ranged combat options of any class in the game. Not counting their Undead-only spells, they only have 1 baseline ranged attack, and even that is only usable after they've meleed over 80% of your health away. The only other range they can get is via a 31 point Holy or a 41 point Protection talent, and those are on a 15 second and 30 second cooldown, respectively. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call that a "caster." Finally, Paladins suffer from a completely dispellable combat system. Their blessings, seals and judgments can all be purged, leaving them with little else but auto-attack and an aura. To be honest, it is really unclear to me why their seals are removable, when even Shamans -- who are not limited to their weapon buffs -- enjoy persistence. ---------------------------------- Since I can't post on the forums anymore with an expired account, I will add my own comment to this. I love his suggestions, and agree wholly with his analysis of the problem. The question at the forefront of my mind, however, is what about our healing spells? Even if all these changes were implemented, the presence of ranged healing spells with a cast time would still not alter the status-quo. My assumption is that in his thinking, we do not even have Holy Light or Flash of Light. Paladin healing is thus done completely through Righteous Strike. Even I haven't gone this far in my suggestions (I favored making HL and FoL instant-cast, with cooldown timers so they could be used when most needed but not spammed, thus allowing the Paladin to do other things in melee). I'm also assuming that he's gotten rid of the bubble, replacing it with Divine Strike - something much less potent per instance, but usable much more often. What would these changes do for the class? Quite simply, they would ensure a continuity of melee playstyle from character creation to and through endgame. Paladins would not be heavy damage-dealers by any stretch, but they would still be extremely hard to kill and able to beat the snot out of you if allowed into melee range for some time. Paladins would be the primary AoE healing class in the game, and do so by means of melee. Imagine trying to melee down a Paladin alternating Divine Strike and Righteous Strike. Anyhow, I'm bored on a Sunday afternoon and thought I'd give you guys something else to think about besides the nerfs. Targos' suggestions really resemble what I imagine the Warrior Priest will be like which, I suppose, is why they appeal to me so much. I just hope that all the Holy Paladins talking about leaving WoW for Warhammer now in their forum posts stay the **** away from my Warrior Priest. Please, roll a Shaman, Rune Priest, or Zealot (or whatever they come up with for Dark Elves/High Elves). 13 April, 2007Quote of the PatchAs the guy below puts it, "sick burn on self".Q u o t e:I guess Holy Paladins will have to just rely on the diversity of their heals now like other healers, right? Use their HoTs, big instant heals, group heals, and preemptive mitigation spells to be useful. PTR Paladin Notes
Volko brings us the Paladin bit from the PTR notes. Props.
Full notes available here. Alternate link, in case that one gets farked. Paladins - "Ardent Defender" (Protection Talent) now reduces damage taken by 6-30% when below 35% health. - "Avenger's Shield" no longer has a minimum range. It may be used on any target within 30 yards. - "Avenger's Shield": The damage portion of this ability will now be applied even if the victim is immune to snare. - "Divine Shield": This ability no longer removes or prevents the "Weakened Soul" debuff. - "Eye for an Eye": Some spells did not trigger "Eye for an Eye" correctly. That has been fixed. - Fixed some data errors that caused "Seal of Command" and "Seal of Blood" to generate more threat than intended. - "Forbearance": It is no longer possible to use a macro to gain the benefit of "Avenging Wrath" and "Divine Shield" at the same time. - "Greater Blessing of Kings": The cost for this blessing is now twice the cost of "Blessing of Kings", instead of a fixed cost of 150. - "Greater Blessing of Sanctuary 2": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards. - "Greater Blessing of Wisdom 3": The range on this spell was incorrectly set to 30 yards. It has been changed to 40 yards. - "Hammer of Wrath": Rank 4, damage increased. - "Holy Concentration": This talent now affects "Binding Heal". - "Illumination": This talent now only gives 50% of the mana cost of the critical heal. It also now returns the correct amount of mana when used with ranks 4 and 5 of "Holy Shock". - "Improved Seal of Righteousness": The percentage increase in damage from this talent is now applied after all bonuses from items and effects which increase your spell damage. - New Protection Talent added: "Improved Holy Shield", 2 ranks: Increases damage caused by "Holy Shield" by 10/20% and increases the number of charges of "Holy Shield" by 2/4. - "One-Handed Weapon Specialization" (Protection): Now increases all damage caused by the paladin by 1-5% while a one-handed weapon is equipped. - "Seal of Blood": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger. - "Seal of Righteousness": This seal will no longer cause additional chances for weapon procs to trigger. - "Seal of the Crusader": The rank 7 tooltip has been fixed to read the same as other ranks of this spell. - "Spiritual Attunement": First-aid generated healing will no longer trigger this ability. However, "Lifebloom", "Earth Shield", and "Improved Leader of the Pack" will now trigger it correctly. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only works on healing from spells. - "Spiritual Attunement": Mana is no longer healed if the paladin is at full health. - "Stoicism" (Protection) should now properly affect all magic effects cast by the Paladin and no longer applies double its intended benefit to "Blessing of Might" and "Blessing of Wisdom". - "Vengeance" (Retribution Talent) now increases Holy and Physical damage by 1/2/3/4/5% for 15 seconds following a critical hit, but the effect now stacks up to 3 times. - Vindicator Aesom at Blood Watch will now correctly train a full range of paladin spells. EDIT: Also under the Priest changes: "Sanctity Aura" now increases all damage caused by affected targets by 1/2% and no longer increases healing done to affected targets. Not sure why they stuck it in the Priest changes. Who's the Lackey Now?
In Lord of the Rings Online, Captains get a "pet" at level 10. They follow you around, carrying your banner that provides an AOE buff to you and your fellowship (group, in WoWspeak). They also help you kill things, and can even heal you at the expense of their own life. Here's mine. Isn't he cute?
The Captain has little in common with the WoW Paladin, despite being the closest thing to a "Paladin" there is in the game. The only heal you start with most closely resembles Druids' Regrowth (small frontloaded burst heal with a HoT) and can heal your whole party, but can only be used after a kill. It's also instant-cast. The Captain is a melee class whose defined role in a party is to enhance other members and help focus fire. They can train to wear heavy armor at level 20 (cap is 50, I believe). It will be interesting to see how my Captain will be incorporated into group play.
The game is still in open beta (with a level cap of 15), but since I went ahead and preordered I will be able to keep my characters into live (game launches April 24th) as well as the benefit of a reduced subscription rate. I'll try and keep you guys posted about comparisons to WoW, and specifically to WoW Paladins. Competition is the refining fire of capitalism, after all. 12 April, 2007An Indirect Confirmation
Wow, as anonymous pointed out in the post below, Nethaera basically confirmed supposed "leaked" patch notes on this website. How? Well, check these notes out from the text there:
Additional darkmoon cards can now be found on high level outland creatures. They can be turned in to the darkmoon faire to make powerful new darkmoon card trinkets. Look for Lunacy, Storms, Furies and Blessings cards.And then you quote Nethaera's latest post: You will now have the chance to find additional Darkmoon cards (Lunacy, Storms, Furies and Blessings) on high level creatures in Outlands, which you can turn in to the Darkmoon Faire to make powerful new Darkmoon card trinkets.Balls. That is all I have to say. Balls. Good quotes from this thread: My biggest complaint is that this nerf - if true - is almost completely out of the blue, with no comment from a CM to the paladin class that they're currently looking into the healing tree. The last we heard they were concerned with the burst DPS of the retribution tree, there has been no communication at ALL about healing.and... To me nerfing Illumination instead of buffing raiding Priests is like saying "We really don't know what to do for holy priests, so we're just going to make Paladins a less desirable option."By the way, Tigole says the PTR might go up tomorrow: ...we're hoping by tomorrow or early next week...Brace yourself for the incoming patch notes. A Reply
Pallymcbeal has written an interesting post about how Illumination will be nerfed. However I have some concerns:
1. The statement that Blizzard originally made the talent Illumination to make paladin healing raid viable is incorrect. The talent was in the game before we even were allowed to wear crit gear. Blizzard actually took time and effort to make sure that we could not obtain items that gave spell crit (Eye of the Beast, Cap of the Scarlet Savant). When our talent review came at 1.9 about a year ago our class was basically redesigned completely: our healing aggro increased, Holy was changed from being support heal/semi-burst DPS/support in to a more defined pure healing tree and they took our talent Illumination (which is considered to be a concentrated class coolness ability which separates us from the other healers) and based our healing around that; hence the reitemization of giving us gear that focused more on spell crit and mp5. 2. Being able to heal longer than other healers is most definitely intended. We're the most basic healer in the game. We've got two spells. That is it. Nothing more. One that is mana efficient, one that is time efficient. We have no tricks beyond Lay on Hands or Holy Shock. A class like us, which has an extremely limited amount of healing tools which are all reactive only have the outlasting factor in our favor. 3. The notion of that Blizzard, due to working hours and lazyness, is going to take the quick solution to fix healer balance, is wrong. Yes, while Blizzard is a private entity who factor time vs cost, they so far as I know, always take the long route over the short one. Their philosophy is pretty rigid in that they have no problem fixing things even if it takes a long time. 4.. I really do not think Blizzard will nerf Paladin healing. If we lose our outlastingness, then we have nothing left. The only reason people consider us to be powerful today, rather than before, is that fights in the Burning Crusade are much longer. That work to our advantage, and we happened to scale better than the other classes. We're the exact same Paladin as pre-TBC. We've gained nothing. 5. The focus on Illumination is extremely unfairly attributed and singled out. I'm not saying Illumination is not a good talent, without a doubt it is, but as this guy points out spell crit is mainly favorable towards Holy Light (hence our talent Sanctified Light). It is our heal which favors speed over efficiency. Anyone who plays the Pally knows that tossing those Holy Lights certainly doesn't make you last very long. Anyways, I still believe Paladin will remain relatively untouched, whereas Priests will gain buffs in the next patch. I have a hard time imagining the status of our healing if we're nerfed. I really find it hard to justify, despite what other people seem to think. 11 April, 200710 April, 2007Let's Hope For a Troll
If this is for real, then I will seriously go and smack something in real life. Stupid. Unwarranted. Idiocy.
Anyways, hopefully that's just a random troll. He says PTR notes will pop up tomorrow, so if nothing happens within 24 hours it's cool and we can just point and laugh at him. Edit: Probably got it from here. Looks fake. Edit 2: Uh, where's the nerf to our burst DPS as was foretold by Eyonix? Anyways, I just want to say that if our healing is nerfed, then our healing is dead. I believe that Paladin healing is pretty balanced as it is right now. With the gear I have I can heal pretty well, but I still find myself having a hard time and being pressured pretty bad solo-healing heroics. If our healing is nerfed in any way I have a hard time imagining us being able to main heal at all. We're absolutely horrible when an entire party is taking damage. Abysmal. Our efficiency of single-target healing is in my opinion as of right now striking a very good balance versus the other classes ways of healing. I wouldn't personally mind seeing the other healing classes getting a little boost on single targets, but otherwise I think things are very balanced. 07 April, 2007Who Said the Hunter isn't Overpowered?
Solo Scholo and BRD and BWL bosses at level 60. Now this?
Also check this hunter's gear out. Looking at his gear me do a belly laugh for real. I am still lauging IRL about it! (got the link from here) 06 April, 2007Eating the Cake and Keeping it
I love it when Priests refer themselves to as primary healer in an effort of trying to make sure that there is only one best healing class in the game - themselves, that is. It's ironic that when talking about Shadow tree power they're suddenly Healing/DPS hybrid, but when talking about healing, voilà, they're back to being in the Holy Trinity.
Much like tanking, healing is something that should not be left to one sole class. And as if that wasn't interesting enough, later in the thread, paladin Nidhogg of D&T posts, and actually lays out just what every class' role is in their raids. There's some surprises:I love using that list as an argument of trying to nerf Paladin healing, conviniently leaving out the other two from the list, which is: Our druids healOMG! NIHILUM THINKS SHAMANS AND DRUIDS ARE OVERPOWERED AND BETTER HEALERS THAN PRIESTS! If you couldn't tell the sarcasm, the answer is pretty obvious: Shadow Priests give SUPERIOR support in form of both extremely good DPS and mana plus mana regen. Using Nihilum's list is an incredibly bad argument. “Flash of Light is one of the most mana-efficient heals in World of Warcraft, and that efficiency increases even more when used on a target with Blessing of Light.” If paladins are going to have the highest survability in the game, they should not also be able to put out the best healing.Flash of Light is also the slowest healing ability in the game. It heals for the least amount in the game. Nerfing Flash of Light is extremely stupid because it'll make it worthless and as of right now it's less powerful than it used to be due to the much higher stamina values and much stronger burst damage from bosses. It's ironic that they think it is the basis of our overpoweredness when in reality it lost its power from Vanilla to TBC. It is ridiculous that spamming the most mana-efficient healing spell in the game is more than enough for a paladin to keep any of their teammates up.In heroics? In raids? In PVP? Lawl. Paladins simply have too many group utility spells for a single class. They can cleanse dots off their teammates....which was nerfed in TBC. Pretty much any Paladin who does PVP knows what I am talking about here. Cleanse these days in PVP is borderline useless. Cleanse fights in PVE a la Chromaggus don't exist in TBC anymore. They can cast Blessing of Freedom to make teammates immune to snares. They can cast Blessing of Sacrifice to free people from sap. They can cast Blessing of Freedom to make teammates immune to snares.Blessing of Freedom is good, yeah. But Priests and Shamans can dispel it with ease. Its use is very limited, but I admit very good. They can cast Blessing of Sacrifice to free people from sap.I laughed out loud. It's: we can't be sapped with Blessing of Sacrifice on someone else, we can get people out from sap with Blessing of Protection (cooldown ability, makes them unable to do physical attacks). They can cleanse all the crowd control put on their teammates.As far as I know, Priests can dispel Polymorph, Frost Trap, Seduce, etc. Pretty much the only thing we can dispel which they can't is Sap, and it's not really dispelling at all, but a creative use of game mechanics. Of course the list leaves out the powerful Priest abilities, such as Powerword: Shield which is not only basically an instant heal but can also do damage back to the attacker. Fortitude is a pretty damn good buff since improved it adds around 1k extra health. Improved Divine Spirit is damn good and all casters love it. Spirit of Redemption allows them to heal for free when they're dead! Mass Dispel allows them to dispel debuffs and dispel buffs all at the same time within a targeted area. Renew allows you to heal people efficiently over time. Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending is superior AoE healing. I just find it sickening that Priests are focusing on nerfing Holy Paladins when it's obvious that the case is Shadow Priests need a nerf. They're a better viable hybrid than us - a hybrid class! I find it even more sickening that our own Paladin community is drinking the kool-aid, caving in and basically out-right supporting the Priest cause by eating our own (not realizing of course that they will achieve nothing). I happen to believe that Holy Paladins are very balanced, and that our "superiority" is extremely overblown. I consider myself to have pretty decent gear and I tend to run out of mana on fights such as Kargath Bladefist and Shade of Aran. It is going to be really interesting to read the upcoming notes of the big content patch and see which side Blizzard agrees with (edit: I forgot; Holy Priests are getting a buff. Hopefully this means no nerf for us). 04 April, 2007Logical Fallacy
I agree with this post by Blackhalo on that Pallies who want a self-nerf should stop complaining. He goes through pretty much every single reason as to why the Holy tree is balanced and that the word of it being overpowered simply isn't the case.
To think that just because we're desired to heal in PVE and PVP Holy is overpowered is a completely mistaken conclusion. The truth is that it just means the other two trees suck ass. That we are desired to heal in raids doesn't mean that Holy is overpowered. First of all, Protection Paladins aren't desired or viewed as highly versus Warriors or Feral Druids because of simple talent/balance/itemization issues. Once that is fixed, we're going to be both considered tanks and healers in PVE. Hopefully next patch. That we are desired to heal in PVP doesn't mean that Holy is overpowered either. Tanking is completely out of the question in PVP. So in the end that means we've really only got one tree left. The truth though is that Retribution will never be as useful as Holy or Protection. Ever. It's the tree that is not a part of the main focus of our class. If Blizzard are ever going to boost Ret Pallies for raiding I'd place my bet on that they focus more on utility than our damage. Ret DPS in raids will never be on the highly competitive scale. Utility however, can sometimes be good enough for damage output to be overlooked. I very much see them approaching Ret that way. I would love to see changes such as in an increase to 10% on Imp. Sanctity and 5% on Sanctified Crusader. The last point Blackhalo makes is the best one: Without the Holy tree with are left witha currently poor Retribution tree and a mediocre Protection tree...A random idiot below makes the comment in response to it: So we're on the same page here, you're calling the other trees worthless, but they shouldnt complain for holy nerfs because they feel it will buff the other trees? /boggle.Congratulations on winning top score for most idiot reasoning of the day. Nerfing Holy won't buff the other two trees. It just won't. It's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. I can't wait for Blizzard to nerf Shadow/buff Holy for Priests and buff Protection. Hopefully all this unnecessary bitching will die out. 02 April, 2007It's Almost Like the Tacitus
Tigole's posted a very interesting post which adresses major concerns of the game right now, from melee DPS, glancing blows, raid gear itemization, flasks and trash respawns. Good stuff and it's very nice to see that all the concerns we have with the game are seriously being overviewed.
Most interesting of all I think is the thing where he says that the flask system is getting a complete overhaul. Makes me wonder in what way they're changing it... 01 April, 2007 |