PaladinSucks.com

Many of You Probably Saw This Coming

2007-06-27T23:45:00.000+02:00

Thanks for the good times guys.

Finally.

2007-06-19T19:51:00.001+02:00

Some times Blizzard just does right thing. The attunement quests and requirements were a really large part of guild stress. Removing these requirements are an excellent idea.

Not enough Hybrid from a Hybrid

2007-06-08T13:55:00.000+02:00

Valandur emails me and says (this is slightly stripped down):

I have never wanted to be a pure tank or a pure healer. I figured that since a pure retribution build had little utility for raids, I would be a hybrid.

...I went to the Armory and looked for upgrades to my current mix of greens and blues. There is NOTHING that has more +spell damage than what I am currently wearing. Which means not only am I useless on raids, but there is no chance of a reward that will make me more effective in a hybrid role in raids. Blizzard has only created gear that will benefit a healadin, a tankadin or a ret pally that is only concerned with white damage.

This is why I loved Judgement so much. But now in today's game it is rather impossible.

Nihilum vs DnT

2007-06-05T15:19:00.000+02:00

I find these EU vs US threads funny and interesting on a geopolitical level.

Edit: Grats to Nihilum in Illidan.

One Dreaded Final

2007-05-30T20:07:00.000+02:00

So I have one last thing to do and then I'm finished with this stupid course. Loading myself up for a four-hour session of a hand numbing experience. I got six points already from the seminars, all I need is 19 points or more to pass. Here's what I know so far: Anarchy is what states make of it, postermodernism is stupid and the HDI is probably better measurement versus the GDP.

This has nothing to do with WoW except the fact that, if there's anything I've learned is that playing this game sure makes me subpar when it comes to educational performance. It is actually making me contemplate whether I should quit this game all together because my education is by far more important than this game. Hell, it's not only education, but social life. It really pains me when I reflect back upon how much I've sacrificed socially just to play my characters. Maintaining a blog by browsing endless posts on the main forum and all that jazz just adds another layer of stress on top of it.

Really, when playing WoW, you're using up the same entertainment time as when if you were watching TV. Would you watch TV, like, 6 or 8 hours a day? Would you leave a party just so you could go home and watch TV? Anyone who does that just makes me think of a couch potato with a mustard-stained wife-beaters garment and that shower with a rag tied up on the end of a stick.

I could play this game forever. I really could. But, I'm 21 years old. I've spent the last 2-3 years of my life playing this game. I really don't see how I can go on forever. When I put the blog on hold earlier is was cause of many contributing factors, and one of them the very reason I am giving right now.

Two months and four more days is left on my European vacation (fortunate to have a relatively permanent settlement over here). When I get back, I don't know if I'll ever end up re-subscribing.

Edit: I just did it and finished one hour ago. Huzzah!

Shattered Dreams

2007-05-28T23:51:00.001+02:00

Doh, I was preparing to go to BlizzCon....but then I evaluated my financial situation. So I'm not going anymore. I'm not that bothered about it. I'll eventually get to play Starcraft II and the second WoW expansion anyway. Beta, all and all, while fun, kinda ruins the experience of "finally" getting the box, installing the game and playing it for the first time. It did so for me for Warcraft 3 at least.

Anyone else planning going though?

Tier 5 Weapons!

2007-05-23T01:05:00.000+02:00

Thanks Msmart for giving me this link with class weapons which "look" like they are a part of the set.

Here's the Pally weapon.

Here's it's stats from a raid drop.

Finally Some Info

2007-05-22T11:09:00.000+02:00

Stratic Chat Highlights from Kalgan:

- On Enhancement/Ret being mostly solo-trees:

Want Ret to be more than just a leveling spec.

- Regarding Druid and Pally Tanks:

We feel [Crushing Blows] add too random an element for players in endgame content. We expect to deal with this issue at some point in the future (although it may not be immediate).

- Retribution viability:

I'd like to see ret become a bit more raid viable in terms of dps and overall utility. the ret pallies will save them! next patch'! ok, maybe not or maybe... Right. At any rate, something we've noticed in our testing is that ret pallies are in kind of a jam where their dps isn't enough to get the put in a dps group in a raid. ... which makes their dps suffer even more. Hopefully we can get that solved in a way that doesn't cause ret pallies to rule the pvp universe.

- Hybrids vs Pure classes:

we want "pure" classes to perform better in their primary roles, with hybrids coming close, but providing additional group utility to offset their reduced primary role power

Dum-dum-dee-dum

2007-05-20T12:45:00.000+02:00

I'm on a vacation right now. Going to be very absent.

Starcraft 2

2007-05-19T10:07:00.000+02:00

OMG!

He Popped Enrage

2007-05-18T09:38:00.000+02:00

Wow. Tseric got canned.

Basically the objective of the community manager is to pretend to be some form of aid in terms of false pretense of a community service. Their actual duty is to project the image of interactivity with consumers. The position never works in reality due to being wedged between the politics of company management with the obnoxiousness of ungrateful customers.

Imagine being in a job where everything you say is taken out of context regardless of what you say, spun around in masterful ways to twist it in to something completely opposite from the original intention.

Imagine then sustaining that day after day, continuously for years, leaving home for work preparing mentally to encounter an endless cesspool of such despicability of unimaginative behavior.

That he quit was probably for the best for his own personal health.

European CMs Are Great

2007-05-14T16:29:00.000+02:00

Good list of Ret concerns and good acknowledgment of respective concerns.

May 19th

2007-05-13T21:58:00.000+02:00

Blizzard.com

VOIP There It Is!

2007-05-11T19:55:00.000+02:00

I am aware of the irony of having a gigantic post declaring the blog to be back, and then suddenly keep things inactive. I think I picked a really bad time cause in two hours or so I'm going to be on my way for a 48 hour flight marathon over the Atlantic (somehow I am going to be stuck on Arlanda airport for 18 hours, fortunately they have wireless internet there).

In the meanwhile, while not Paladin related - chew on this by Tseric where he drops the hint of built-in VOIP and guild banks (from WoWInsider). Interesting indeed.

Consider this post to be an open thread.

"They want to know if he still got it"

2007-05-08T11:17:00.000+02:00

Still here. I got bored not blogging.

Had a really fun arena today in a 5v5. It started out like any battle in Blade's Edge - we usually confront them head-on by charging right at them. Things screwed up though and our guys were dying one by one. After about a minute or two the only two people left were me and our Holy Priest. The opposing team had two warriors. I was at like 30% health and the Priest was at like 15%. The warriors were hovering around 50-60%. I mean, there was no way in hell we'd be able to recover this. We were goners for sure...or so I thought.

Since the Priest was the squishiest target for the warriors and because he was at lowest health they insisted on killing him first. Really insisted. They completely ignored me, probably thought I had my bubble still up (which I don't think I did). Then the priest said to me "toss me a Blessing of Freedom". He wanted it so he could jump up out to the platforms. What he was doing was kiting both warriors with Renew and Power Word: Shield. Fortunately the warriors both (!) missed the jump and fell down to the lower level.

Then one of the guys on Vent said "Rez the shadow priest". So I was like "What? Oh yeah, shi--I can do that!". So I hit the rez button and began to cast it, biting my finger nails hoping not to be interrupted or getting targeted for doing it.

By this time one of the warriors were on their way up to the bridge again. They saw me casting it, and I was going like "OMG!". But for some reason, they ran past me trying to kill the priest on the platform - but both missed the jump AGAIN! They obviously didn't know what the heck I was doing.

I successfully rezzed the shadow priest, then me and the priest healed him up and I buffed him with BoWisdom to give him some mana

After that it's a bit fuzzy, but I believe we just feared one warrior and started to dot the second one up eventually killing them both.

It was truly an epic battle. Wish I would've recorded it or taken screenshots of it (think I got two). If I were the opposing team I'd crap my pants or rip my hair off. Literally. No wonder they're removing the ability to rez in arenas in 2.1. It's pretty friggin funny (and cheezy!).

Speaking of Arena PVP. Pallies who said that Scrolls of Blinding Light sucked should get slapped. It only got nerfed 5% speed between Classic and TBC - fortunately! Those who clamored it served no purpose were wrong back in the day and they're still wrong today. It is one of the best trinkets for Holy Paladins there is. Period. For over a year now it's been on my trinket slot. It is actually to the point where I am amazed it has not been nerfed more extensively. I can toss heals in really, really quick secession. A portable Heroism/Bloodlust. With arena resetting all cooldowns I can use it once every battle. Haha, I remember when the Burning Crusade came out, my first question was - "Did they add another level 70 trinket that's just like 'Scrolls?".

Combine it with Divine Illumination and it's like being a PVP-shotgun healer. It is like being Max Payne in Bullet Time, you know. Kinda same feeling. I can heal so fast that I can keep a clothie up with Mortal Strike, rows of dots who's being focused fired longer than you think. No joke. I find myself activating Scrolls, Divine Illumination and Divine Shield all at the same time to be a pretty bad-ass combo. Invincible tank healer that can throw cheap heals really, really fast. Kek.

In other news, the reitemization of end-game gear is great! Worldofraids.com has an excellent list of item changes on the PTR.

For example look at the Justicar set and compare 'em to the existant Justicar.

Crystalforge tanking set is also available; helm, gloves, legs, chest and shoulders.

If you're one of the Pallies who grabbed the Pendant of the Violet Eye or Ribbons of Sacrifice for fun, consider dusting them off!

Legacy has literally become hunter loot. To redeem yourself, check the blacksmithing weapons.

2.1 is probably going to be the best patch in World of Warcraft history. Not only is the content absolutely massive, but they have done a lot of good moves in fixing end-game. Literally every answer to someone saying something in guild chat is "lol, wait for 2.1 - it'll be fixed". The Illumination nerf, for those who know I was kinda upset about - I'm over it. As long as we can still heal heroics I'm not that bothered about it. Combined with the reitemization changes I think the effect of the nerf won't be as big as initially expected.

Anyways, this Friday I'm off again back to Europe for two months or so. I'll be back in America right before BlizzCon and hopefully will attend (Northrend Expansion or Starcraft 2!). If anyone of you guys show up there I'd be happy to meet with you. Who knows? Maybe Blizz will have some bloggers' corner or something there which I can put all my gear. Just like as in 2004 Prez conventions where bloggers sit in a special room to stroke their own epeens. That'd be pretty cool.

To be honest, one of the things I look forward most to are the class panels. I would really like to ask what really is holding Ret Pallies back when it comes to raiding? Is it a philosophical question due to our heals/bubble/plate or technical question of just improving our overall raid utility? Also, obviously, I would like to ask where our class is heading and maybe what is in store for us in the future, and what we can expect to come for us.

Edit: Progressively fixing errors in text. Wrote this in the wee morning.

Indefinite Lockdown

2007-04-20T01:02:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-20T00:51:00.000+02:00

If you haven't checked it out, read Flibble's thread on list of Tankadin concerns. Extremely comprehensive. Nice read.

Kalgan Speaks!

2007-04-19T22:15:00.000+02:00

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).

...getting each class reasonably represented in highly rated teams is a more important goal, and unfortunately the paladin class happens to be somewhat grossly over-represented in this regard.
Then what is our pvp damage spec or are we never suposed to damage in pvp?
If you want to do damage in pvp as a paladin, then I'd say that ret is your spec. It just so happens that it's outshined by the reality that holy paladins are much more likely to help your team win.
I understand the illum nerf, but where did the 50% come from? It seems like a larger cut than needed!
Now that's a valid point. We're certainly keeping an eye on the 50% number.
Kalgan, what exactly is the purpose of the retribution tree?
It's an effective solo'ing/questing/"grinding" tree. It's also an effective tree for damage in [solo] pvp...Ret pallies can do some surprisingly strong raid dps if they're in a good melee group dps composition [thanks to new Improved Sanctity Aura].

Dang it Mastgrr!

2007-04-19T22:14:00.000+02:00

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:

It's an effective solo'ing/questing/"grinding" tree. It's also an effective tree for damage in pvp, although most of our pvp is group oriented and your groupmates will generally prefer that you play a support role since their classes can often supply the needed dps but aren't able to supply the support a paladin is capable of.

It's also quite possible to get groups for 5-person instances as a ret pally, provided you aren't the type that will rule out healing in an emergency or for certain encounters provided it would help more at that moment.

An exasperated Ret Paladin comments:

What answers do you need? The spec is worthless. Raid leaders won't take us, Kalgan has admitted it's useless in group PVP, and anyone with a spec of knowledge knows you need to outgear anyone to kill them. It's dead. Respec, reroll or quit.

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:

- "Sanctity Aura" now increases all damage caused by affected targets by 1/2% and no longer increases healing done to affected targets.

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.

T6 Pics Revealed

2007-04-18T09:53:00.000+02:00

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:

lol, gundam (helm/shoulders)
rofl, bewbz (seriously, what's up with the large plate nipples?)

What the Paladin Class Should Have Been

2007-04-15T19:50:00.000+02:00

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).

Quote of the Patch

2007-04-13T09:13:00.000+02:00

Q u o t e:
You mean you might need to actually mana pot after tossing a few Holy Lights? Unheard of, I know.
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.

oh...

As the guy below puts it, "sick burn on self".

PTR Paladin Notes

2007-04-13T05:45:00.000+02:00

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?

2007-04-13T04:44:00.000+02:00

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.

PTR Download Is Up

2007-04-13T04:03:00.000+02:00

Download the client, roll your thumbs and wait for Blizzard to activate.

An Indirect Confirmation

2007-04-12T20:53:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-12T05:42:00.000+02:00

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.

The Big Question

2007-04-11T04:56:00.000+02:00

Bill Roper or Kevin Smith? (don't cheat by doing a Google search!)

Let's Hope For a Troll

2007-04-10T03:13:00.000+02:00

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.

Feel the Fire

2007-04-10T01:54:00.000+02:00

Finally I can bubble without wiping the raid on Aran. Stupid bug.

Who Said the Hunter isn't Overpowered?

2007-04-07T06:38:00.000+02:00

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)

Eating the Cake and Keeping it

2007-04-06T00:53:00.000+02:00

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:

Our paladins heal
Our priests DPS

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 heal
Our shamans heal

OMG! 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).

Logical Fallacy

2007-04-04T03:01:00.000+02:00

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.

It's Almost Like the Tacitus

2007-04-02T21:03:00.000+02:00

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...

Big Announcement!

2007-04-01T10:57:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the new blog!

Ouch!

2007-03-31T02:25:00.000+02:00

Old opinions come back to haunt Tigole.

I agree though. Trash is excessive and the raiding rewards are incredibly lackluster. In fairness I haven't stepped in to Serpentshrine Caverns yet, but from my experience in Karazhan plus comparing loot tables it seems like it ain't any better on the way to Vashj.

Kicked in the Vashj

2007-03-30T03:38:00.000+02:00

Grats Nihilum. A guild mate of mine said to check out the Paladin gloves she dropped and compare them with these. Wow.

Even if $100 is Hanging Out of a Retnoob's Zipper?

2007-03-28T20:44:00.001+02:00

A guy in the Raid and Dungeons forum asks "Would you or do you accept Retribution-specced paladins for endgame raids?". Interesting responses, though fairly obvious and just reaffirmation of our existing beliefs.

In Fangtooth's Footsteps

2007-03-28T16:45:00.000+02:00

Eyonix has a Pally.

L'Europe Qui Gagne

2007-03-28T01:05:00.000+02:00

I strongly you guys check out WoWRadio's interview with Nihilum, listen to it here. Pretty damn interesting stuff brought up, and overall being a swell 90 minutes (!) of radio. Pop your popcorn.

Haha, I love it that their GM/Raid leader's name is "Kungen". Seems to be such a tongue-in-cheek name (translated in to English it literally means "The King").

Solo Group Mission

2007-03-27T22:05:00.001+02:00

A Paladin manages to solo Blood Furnace. Pretty cool.

Linkies!

2007-03-26T07:16:00.000+02:00

Ghmou wants you to check out this thread on respec costs and how it's overtly detrimental towards hybrid classes.

While Lorath wants you to check out a thread with info on Defense and Mitigation plus, of course, the Interactive Attunement Chart.

Thanks guys!

Epic Gruul's Lair Picture

2007-03-26T07:07:00.000+02:00

Note: Four-eyes is actually our MT!

Crystalforge is Truly Outrageous

2007-03-24T05:30:00.000+01:00

Clicky the pic-y!

You guys should remember this pic. I couldn't resist when encountering one of the latest YTMND cliche fads. It just had to be done.

Variations on a theme:

The Original (I think)

Jam is outrageous!

Picard Keeps the Galaxy Outrageous

LazyTown is Outrageous

A YTMND'er tires of the fad.

Crusader Strike (of Utility)

2007-03-23T04:01:00.000+01:00

Kilroy of Dragonmaw [A] responds to this forum post with a great suggestion for how to improve Retribution Paladin utility in raids.

I'd rather see something more creative with Crusader Strike though. Maybe if it did a different utility effect based on which Seal we have active at the time?

SoL + CStrike = group heal
SoW + CStrike = group mana regen
SoJ + CStrike = stops all enemy movement for a short time in a certain radius (or something)
SotC + CStrike = group attack speed increase
SoC + CStrike = I dunno....maybe make all damage done by the party into Holy damage for a certain amount of time?

The best ideas seem to be CS used with SoL, SoW, and SotC. I don't necessarily think every seal would need to have utility in conjunction with CS. SoJ is probably the weakest suggestion, and a potential coding nightmare. As far as SoC goes, Blizzard has said their combat system doesn't allow for a mix of physical and magic damage. An additional debuff on the target, on the other hand, may be workable. Something that increases overall damage dealt to the target by like 2-3%.

It makes me happy to see more people getting involved in offering positive suggestions on how to buff the weak aspects of the class.

Good News Everyone! I've Got Bad News!

2007-03-22T20:41:00.000+01:00

As anonymous pointed out, it's been confirmed:

[Mass Ressurection] is an NPC spell only. Sorry.

Boo! Hiss!

Nerf Spiritual Attunement

2007-03-21T07:37:00.000+01:00

Now that I have your attention, let me first give some background so that I might qualify my title and explain the details. I was thinking about Mastgrr's comment about Priests being the best healers in the game thanks to their wide variety of tools. I'm not saying he's wrong, but I think the current state of things in-game could fuel a very persuasive argument to the contrary. At the risk of beating a dead horse here on PaladinSucks.com, I would like to bring up the subject of endgame healing again. Specifically, I'm addressing the trend that has arisen among the hardcore raiding guilds of raids running Shadow Priests and Holy Paladins.

Spiritual Attunement was a godsend to tankadins. Let me be naive for a moment and say that I believe Blizzard added this passive ability primarily to solve the problem of Paladin tanks running out of mana. This it has done, and beautifully. The problem is that Spiritual Attunement, being an "always on" ability, does not require the Paladin to actually be tanking in order to function.

Enter clever players. Acknowledging this phenomenon, coupled with the double benefit it brings when you add the mana from Vampiric Touch to the mana Paladins gain via Vampiric Embrace heals, raiders quickly learned that the best and easiest way to get the healing job done was to simply make the Holy Paladins (already stupidly mana-efficient with the talent Illumination and a fair amount of spell crit from talents and gear) do the bulk of the healing. Like it or not, Paladins are - in practice and save for situations with massive AOE damage - the most effective endgame healing class right now.

So, here we are. Thanks to a tanking ability, we're now even more pigeonholed as healers in endgame than we were before patch 2.0. Whether or not Blizzard improves tankadin gear or tweaks Protection talents, raids will still require only a handful of tanks. Since Blizzard appears to still be using the quick and dirty method of increasing endgame difficulty (boss hits harder and take longer to kill, so everybody that can heal needs to heal), there won't be guilds scrambling to gear up Protection Paladins anytime soon - especially if they have no shortage of Prot Warriors who enjoy their job, excel at it, and haven't near the gear and talent issues Paladins still have.

This brings me around to the title of the post. Things have got to change. Priests, considered by Blizzard to be a "pure" class that focuses on the healing aspect of the "trinity," need reasons to fill that role again in endgame. The deep end of the Holy tree for Priests needs some serious buffing, but the details of this are not my concern. We have to nip the problem in the bud here and now. Spiritual Attunement needs to be reworked so that it only functions under certain circumstances. Here is my suggestion:

Change Spiritual Attunement to function only when the Righteous Fury buff is active.
~~Increase the threat generated by all healing done substantially (like, 300%) when Righteous Fury is active.~~
Modify Righteous Fury to nullify all threat-reducing effects (preventing people from using Salvation to counteract the threat boost on healing).

Some of you may now be wondering, "But what about Retribution in endgame? If it's ever made viable for raiding, this would severely hinder a Ret Paladin's ability to contribute to the raid over long fights." You would be correct. I've thought of this as well. Personally, I have no problem with our being newly billed the "tanking/healing hybrid." Under this rubric, Retribution cannot bring DPS to the table in order to make it raid-viable. Neither can it bring tanking, as a Paladin specced and geared for Retribution and using a 2H weapon would be only slightly better than having a Hunter tank. Retribution needs nothing short of a minor overhaul. Here are my suggestions:

Add a deep Retribution talent in the same vein as Righteous Fury. It would reduce threat from damage and healing substantially, and allow Spiritual Attunement to function.
Modify Crusader Strike to return a percentage of damage dealt to members of the Paladin's party within 15 yards. The full amount would probably be overpowered, amounting to no less than an instant cast AoE heal on a 10 second cooldown. A more reasonable amount would be 30-40%.
Possibly add another deep Retribution talent requiring 5 points in Fanaticism that restores mana to party members equal to 10-15% of the Paladins damage from a critical hit.

These changes would solve a myriad of problems simultaneously. For one, it would allow Retribution Paladins to resume gearing up as before. You would want to stack Strength/AP/crit as your AoE healing and mana restoration utility would scale with damage. I dare say that most Ret Paladins unhappy with the current state of endgame aren't so disappointed about not dealing massive damage as they are about being unable to play like they did leveling up. Paladins are not Clerics. Paladins should be hitting things more often than not. These changes would still leave the Holy tree in a strong state (there's enough spell crit and what not to maintain a high level of efficiency and healing potency), but make Ret a truly viable endgame spec as well.

Sadly, it's a pipe dream. Blizzard is slow to move, and I don't foresee them implementing anything remotely as drastic for the Ret tree. All we know for now is that Paladin burst damage is next in line to feel the full brunt of the nerf bat. Without positive additions and changes to counteract the loss of damage, Retribution will finally be declared dead at level 70.

EDIT: After getting some feedback from the forums, where I also posted this, I decided to eliminate the threat boost for healing (hence the strikethrough). There's a reason our heals are so low-aggro and it goes back to beta, when Paladins could hold aggro simply via healing spam. This change would send our threat generation through the roof and lead to all kinds of complaints from Warriors.

EDIT 2: Yoojmo, a Priest from Manneroth came up with a much better idea on the forums in response to my post. If Spiritual Attunement were made a 30 minute buff like Righteous Fury (able to stack with it, of course), you could simply add a built-in healing nerf for Holy Light and Flash of Light. It could triple their mana cost, or halve the amount of healing they deal.

Priests Are Not Hybrids

2007-03-21T05:54:00.000+01:00

Excellent post that dispel the talking points being spread by pro-Shadow Priests.

Tseric's post in question:

…you are one of the pure role classes in the 'Holy Trinity'…

So Santo concludes:

The answer to the question of "Why aren't Priests the best healers?" is "because Priests are hybrids". This is false. I'm repeating that to make it clear.

The post also brings up the often-said thing that Priests aren't the best healers. Sorry, but that's crap. Maybe not the most mana efficient, but Priests sure have the best tools for all types of situations - by far.

I Brought a Tier to Your Mom

2007-03-21T04:29:00.000+01:00

Tier 6 names and set bonuses are out. Our is called Lightbringer. Check Holy, Ret and Prot.

I hope our Tier 7 is called "Lawforge".

Seperated At Birth

2007-03-21T00:40:00.000+01:00

Shane Dabiri and Bill Roper.
From WoWInsider, check play.tm's interview with Shane too.

Yep, Tankadin Gear Review Next Patch

2007-03-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

Thanks Lorath for emailing me on this. Ommra says:

As previously promised I passed this on to the developers. I took the liberty of summarising the thread; basically saying that what you are after is gear with +Stamina, +Defense and +Spell damage, and that you are not very keen on +Intelligence and MP5 (Youngblood emphasised the need for more HP and damage mitigation instead).

The devs have read this and thought it sounded fair enough. Paladin tanking gear is going to be more geared towards tanking/hp so this concern should be addressed in the next content patch.

So, again, thank you for compiling this and helping me passing your concerns on to the devs.

I actually disagree with that intellect is not good for Paladin tanking, because some times we actually tank without taking heals so we need it to bust our abilities to keep things going. Good news regardless.

Branching Out

2007-03-19T23:45:00.000+01:00

This post brought to you by Cleanse.

Keeping you free of the 'rot since level 42.

This is just a quick note to my fans, and those whose interest I have sparked in a certain up-and-coming competitor to WoW. With my focus turning to what I hope will be greener pastures for my MMO experience soon, I'll be wanting to post more on this topic. PaladinSucks.com is not the proper forum for this, as the class in said game is not called "Paladin" and PaladinSucks.com has been and will continue to be focused on the WoW Paladin. I'll continue to contribute here when I run across new and exciting (or frustrating) news and insights into the WoW Paladin class.

I've registered the domain HammerofSigmar.com and hope to have it up and running accordingly. Don't expect updates too often, especially in these early stages (which is pretty much my trend here - I blog when I'm feeling like it and something is blogworthy). As development moves further along, into alpha and beta, I'm sure there will be more and more juicy tidbits to toss out.

Until then, keep on rolling on Warrior gear.

Irony

2007-03-18T06:21:00.000+01:00

A class with two out of three talent trees devoted to hitting things, but generally required to spec in the third that focuses on... not hitting things.

Discuss.

BTW - it's my new forum sig.

P.S. This video was shared in a forum thread I'm stoking. I just may have to check out this already-released PC game to get me stoked for... well, you know.

You Won

2007-03-18T00:34:00.000+01:00

I give up.

All I know is that a gravedigger will have fun once like all of the rumors turn out to be crap. Who knows.

There was a reason I removed them, but I can't do anything about it now.

Because Paladin is Bigger than WoW

2007-03-17T00:41:00.000+01:00

I present to you an update on a front that I've been keeping a close eye on, especially since Blizzard has expressed a desire to nerf the last remaining bastion of fun left in a Ret Paladin's arsenal - burst damage.

Gamespot just put out a great article on the Warhammer Online's Warrior Priest class.

Along with much of the same promising news we've been hearing, this article brings us some of the first screenshots and gameplay footage of the Warrior Priest. The inset picture is itself cropped from one of the screenshots found within the article.

I've heard that the developers at Mythic are not permitted to play WoW, so as to prevent consistently drawing comparisons. Clearly they have not been prevented from surfing the WoW forums or related websites (perhaps even humble PaladinSucks.com). The article is chock full of music to the ears of this disgruntled former Ret Paladin (who still refuses to spend a point in Holy out of protest, even if it is the strongest and perhaps the only viable option for general gameplay). I'll just give you the opening bit, and let you delve within for more juicy details:

GameSpot: The big reveal this time around is the warrior priest class. Give us an overview of this character and its abilities.

Steve Marvin: The warrior priest is a follower of Sigmar and comes of age in the Empire, the human lands savagely beset by the forces of Chaos. He is part churchman, part soldier, part healer, and part justiciar. His realm, his race, and most importantly his faith are all in danger of extinction at the hands of a ravening evil flood of appalling monstrosities. He is the levee that will hold back that dark tide. This is no Friar Tuck; the warrior priest strides to the front line, singing the praises of Sigmar and inspiring his fellow soldiers to hold fast. His is a grim responsibility, and the only times he smiles is as his hammer slams a creature of Chaos to the ground.

Warrior priests revel in combat, with their blessed hammers sanctifying each blow to the greater glory of Sigmar and his inevitable triumph over darkness. As his faith and righteous fury rises within him, his god fills him with the power to heal and bless those who join him in his struggle. There is no sight like that of a warrior priest in the thick of combat, dispensing death to his foes and life to his allies.

His blessings deliver health, morale, and strength to all of those within range of his voice, which seldom halts in its righteous soliloquy. Any who stand close to a warrior priest for even a few moments feel their bodies refreshed and their faith renewed. In the height of his faith and fury, he can call upon Sigmar to heal the injured, purge taint and poison from the faithful, or even return life to the newly dead. He can also call holy power to his hammer to deliver devastating blows, or channel Sigmar's wrath directly into the hearts of his foes.

The warrior priest kicks butt and takes names. He wades into combat and smashes things left and right, building up his righteous fury ability with every blow. He then releases that pent-up power with heals, cures, and devastating attacks. Just being near a warrior priest buffs you.

A Galapogos Island Report

2007-03-16T20:27:00.000+01:00

Thanks Anonymous for highlighting this thread. Sky has a thread detailing the evolution of the Paladin from release to the Burning Crusade. Very good read and in my view pretty accurate.

It's pretty obvious though that our class has evolved. My prime example of this our talent Illumination (mana back on spell crit) which Blizzard used to think was totally overpowered for us, but then went "Hey...it makes Pallies unique! Let's build on that!".

This is why all the spell crit gear we could scavenge out such as the Eye of the Beast and Cap of the Scarlet Savant locked us out.

I actually began to notice that they changed their philosophy on this right before 1.9 when they gave us the Sanctified Orb as a quest reward for level 50. That trinket is probably the first Pally-only gear that had spell crit.

And of course...after that, it all just got better. The dungeon 2 set was arguably one of the best itemized sets ever. Only strength, intellect and stamina and +spell gear with some +crit and +spell crit thrown in there. One of the set bonuses was a melee +spell damage proc thingy, which is pretty cool. Pretty much in every aspect better than the Zul'gurub set (which had agility, wtf?).

Anyways, I'm rambling on. Read Sky's thread.

Lack of Healing Healers!

2007-03-15T20:46:00.000+01:00

Ghmou wants you to check this thread and says:

I see a lot of the complaints that are posted on your website also being posted in this thread, often very clearly and simply. It really made me feel for all the healing classes in the game - and some of the tanks!

The game revolves around killing things.
Healing doesn't kill things.
Tanking doesn't kill things.

I wonder why Priest Holy, and Druid/Shaman Resto aren't all that loved by players? I left out Paladin Holy because, well, we can PvE and PvP up a storm (Arena in particular) with the same build.

It's an age-old question when it comes to WoW (and MMORPG games). Non-DPS spec classes are kinda "left out" when it comes to killing stuff. My opinion is that there's no real solution to this and it's something that will probably never be solved, unfortunately.

Interesting question the thread poster asks though considering that Shamans more often now spec DPS, Pallies spec tanking, Priests spec DPS, Druids spec Feral and so forth...non-healer abundance!

Hybrids: Resurrection

2007-03-13T22:02:00.000+01:00

There is only one true hybrid class, and that is the Druid and they said it themselves at Blizzcon.

Then there are officially two semi-hybrid classes which is the Shaman (Heal/DPS) and the Paladin (Heal/Tank). And I guess if you want to be modern, you can throw in Priests (Heal/DPS) and Warriors (Tank/DPS) there too.

I love it when Priests say try to explain the prevalence of Shadow Priests all of a sudden with scoffing at that their Holy tree sucks. I disagree. I'd say that Holy Pallies and Holy Priests are quite even when it comes to healing power, but that Pallies absolutely suck when it comes to anything else than single-target healing. Priests live the good life with plenty of tools to their disposal whereas Pallies are left with two options (and a marginal third at best). Pallies have greater mana efficiency. That's about it.

The Shadow tree is too good! It even out-hybrids the real hybrid.

Shadow Priests are this patch's Feral Druids.

LOL PVP FoL

2007-03-13T21:14:00.000+01:00

I don't get Libram of Justice: Causes your Flash of Light to increase the target's Resilience rating by 24 for 6 sec. That's about 0.61% resilience. Not too shabby because it's free and gearless for the target.

This just brings us to a much larger question: who uses Flash of Light in PVP? Yeah, in one-on-one maybe - but no way in 2v2 to 5v5 arenas!

Shaman's slot item Totem of the Second Wind does the same, but Lesser Healing Wave rank 7 actually heals for a decent amount so I can see as to why Shamans would use it in PVP.

But Flash of Light? It heals for too little to be of any marginal difference. If the idea is for us to throw it every once in a while, then it's the global cooldown plus the short duration that's making it effectively worthless.

I think the best way to fix it would be to make it apply to Holy Light as well. It would be a great addition, cause then I'd actually consider getting it.

The sweet irony here is that it's currently the highest budget libram available.

For Retributionists, consider running Heroic Blood Furnace.

Thread Spotlight

2007-03-10T20:33:00.000+01:00

Lorath shot me an email and want you to check these threads out:

Youngbloods compilation of paladin tanking itemization problems is truly Legendary, it almost gave me shivers to see a Blue acknowledging the work and promising to pass it on to the devs.

Gribbles summary of the tanking classes relative weaknesses is nothing short of perfect aswell. No Blue yet but one can hope. Being a EU realm player I can only praise them from abroad :)

Rheyah ponders the 'pala dps too high! zomgnerfit' situation, and offersa fix... very nice + Blue attention.

Good reads!

Bright News for Tankadins

2007-03-09T03:09:00.000+01:00

Tseric has responded to a player post in the Paladin forums asking if they should just give up the whole notion of tanking beyond Karazhan. Distane from Rexxar[A] wants to know, and rightly so, I think.

Clip of Dethecus[A] chimes in with a few troll comments to try and stir the pot.
Shortly after, Tseric settles the issue and says,

The devs actually mentioned today that Paladin tanking wasn't exactly where they wanted it to be and there would be attention paid towards that end of things. Overall, they do expect Paladins, Druids and Warriors to fill tanking roles in end-game, whatever they may be. While there may be a flavor distinction between tanks, we don't want to (or want the players to) find some rigid hierarchy by which classes are measured in their tanking potential to the third decimal point.

Edenite's response made me chuckle, when he quotes Tseric and simply notes,
"Clip just got owned by a blue, lawl."

The Definition of Absurdity

2007-03-09T00:15:00.000+01:00

In this thread where the OP brings up the fact that all Death and Taxes Paladins are 41/20/0 specced (fyi: I am too!) this list is brought up by Nidhog from DnT:

Our warriors tank
Our paladins heal
Our druids heal
Our priests DPS
Our rogues DPS
Our hunters DPS
Our warlocks DPS
Our mages DPS
Our shamans heal

The only real primary healing class in the game doesn't heal? Nidhog adds, "we have 2-3 shadow priests and usually bring them because their utility + DPS is unmatched". And truth be told from my own experience, he's spot on. Shadow Priests are an incredible value to a raid because they both provide good DPS, healing and mana regeneration. I prefer being in the same party as one because I know it will aid healing my party and give me mana back.

In the end though, doesn't this strike you as a bit of a whack situation? The non-hybrid class is better at being a hybrid than the hybrids. The one top-of-the-line healing class is asked to not heal. I find the whole thing completely absurd.

It Just Keeps Getting Better

2007-03-07T09:17:00.000+01:00

I was compelled to do some more browsing tonight, as I find myself seeking greener pastures in WAR for my Paladinly tendencies. Lo and behold, I ran across this recap of a press event. Here are some juicy bits regarding the Warrior Priest class:

Each race in WAR has four classes from which to choose. As the name implies, they're always war-like classes. This is not a game for the non-violent. Forget spending your career behind the lines making armor, not even the healers get a break.

"[The Warrior Priest] is a joyous healer class because he can smash the living snot out of you," Barnett said with not-at-all contained glee when he introduced the Empire healing class. In Warhammer, no one is just a healer. Everyone must and can fight.

The four Empire classes are:
Knight of the Blazing Sun: In MMO-speak, he's a melee-tank. In Paul's world this guy is, "King Arthur meets Monty Python Knights of the Holy Grail with more violence." The Knight of the Blazing Sun is an extravagantly armored and decorated warrior class.
Warrior Priest: This guy is both a healer and a melee class in the traditional world of MMOs. Luckily, he has a large hammer or two with which to brain people so Paul can enjoy them as well.
Witch Hunter: Traditionally, he'd be a melee DPS class. Barnett though was far more impressed with his hat.
Bright Wizard: This guy is a ranged DPS class, aka a nuker, and the one we got to play in our demo. Literally, he looked like he'd recently been on fire and - although this wasn't in yet - Barnett promised that when he died he'd explode in a ball of flames. "He's basically a nuclear weapon," Barnett told everyone.

So the Empire "tank class" gets to wear the fruity armor this time around. We will be beating on things, as the Paladin should, and can even dual-wield hammers. DUAL FARKING WIELD BABY!

Someone Finally Getting It Right...

2007-03-05T08:53:00.000+01:00

... or at least they seem to be from their concept write-up. This was posted by Tonic on the WoW General forums. Behold - the concept write-up of Warhammer Online's Warrior-Priest:

A Warrior Priest of Sigmar is a fearsome master of battle and tireless defender of the faith. These holy warriors are the hammer of the church, serving in both defense of the Empire and the furtherance of the church’s goals. A deadly melee fighter, the Warrior Priest relies on the blessings of his god to protect him in combat. His zeal for battle further reinforces his Righteous Fury, spreading the strength that Righteous Fury provides to his companions and allies. With the might of the divine strengthening his arm and protecting the faithful, the Warrior Priest is a lethal combatant and potent supporting character all at the same time.

Warrior Priest Specialty
For the Warrior Priest, faith is life. Sigmar demands bravery in defense of the Empire, and he grants the greatest blessings to those who demonstrate this trait. A Warrior Priest’s Righteous Fury grows strong with every swing of his arm against the Empire’s foes. As his Righteous Fury grows, his powers expand as enemies are smitten more fiercely and allies are protected from greater harm. With sufficient Righteous Fury, the divine power invested in his righteous litanies and sermons is extended beyond his immediate circle of Righteous Fury to all those who can hear his words.

Playing as a Warrior Priest
As a Warrior Priest, your place is in battle. Your Righteous Fury grows as you strike down the enemy in Sigmar’s name, and your divine powers grow with Righteous Fury. Thus, to reach the peak of your power you must join in the fight. Your prayers bear the power of your god to take life, or give it back, but they are designed to compliment your melee capabilities. Your blessings bring powerful boons to those around you, but you must be close to the fight for your words to reach them. To do your job you must place yourself at risk, but it is in this risky position which you are most powerful.

Fighting the Warrior Priest
A Warrior Priest can be a deadly opponent, and a very difficult one to kill if you are not prepared to counter both his melee and divine capabilities. His faith is a strong shield, and so to defeat him you must break that Righteous Fury, either by denying him the ability to gain it, or by preventing him from using it. Denying his Righteous Fury means engaging him without letting him engage you – a sound strategy for a ranged attacker – but disrupting his divine abilities will be a better strategy for those who must close with him to fight. Without the powers of his Righteous Fury, the Warrior Priest will become far more vulnerable to your assault.

The Warrior Priest Look
Moderately armored with breast plate worn over a long robe and vestments of faith
Wields a powerful war hammer or great hammer in the finest traditions of his patron deity
Ornamented with symbols, books, regalia, and various other articles of faith

Tonic follows up with his coments,

So let me get this straight... in order to be able to:

Heal

Buff

Smash harder

I have to put myself in melee combat, and stay there?
Pinch me, I must be dreaming :3

and later adds,

I forgot to mention that the W(arrior)P(riest) was quoted to "radiate healing" by building Righteous Fury.
AoE passive healing because of my smashing? Yes, please!

THIS is what many of the so-called "retnoobs" wanted in WoW. It's not that we don't want to heal or support others. If we simply wanted to play a Warrior, we would have rolled one. We wanted to play LIKE a Warrior, but benefit others more directly in the process.

Edit: Added link to official Warhammer page with this description and concept art.

Ret Blues

2007-03-02T07:11:00.000+01:00

Very good post in defense of Retribution Paladins by Thrommel, check it out. Long and popcornish. Ret has gotten a lot of flack recently, not only due to the outcries of feeling bad in PVE (versus for example Shadow Priests and Feral Druids). And now with the jab in the stomach that Paladin burst damage needs to be nerfed, I feel with you guys. I honestly think that if Paladin burst damage is going to be nerfed, they should lower the cooldown on Crusader Strike or something - at least to make Pally sustainable damage up to par with other hybrid specs.

No Longer Vanilla WoW

2007-03-02T01:52:00.000+01:00

Tseric makes an appearance in the Pally forum and says this regarding our class role and DPS balance philosophy:

[You are] A healing/tank hybrid. Every class needs some capacity to deal damage, as that is the primary component for the solo game, but Paladins have always placed fairly low on the damage spectrum.

Rogues define the baseline measurement and, on average, all classes fall below that baseline. Now, in certain cases some classes may exceed that baseline, whether they be a Mage in a particular raid encounter or a Fury Warrior having a good run in a BG, but on average that is the way damage is arranged.

Burst damage and big crits are harder to control and design from a development perspective, due to the number of random or unpredictable elements in any formula. Therefore, crit-based abilities and burst damage tends to see more fine tuning and tweaking than sustainable damage.

As far as tanking and healing, the Paladin has been given plenty of tools for healing and threat gain/management.

In other news, regarding raiding - Tigole adresses a couple of concerns and in a nutshell says:
- The consumable situation is "under investigation". Anyone who's been to Naxx knows how crazy it can get.
- Raiding gear isn't that much of an improvement and will probably be buffed.
- Keying process (getting revered, doing quests, etc) needs to strike balance of challange and sense of accomplishment. A way for newer people to "catch up" is under works.
- The 25-man raid encounters are too hard, so Magtheridon and Gruul are going to be nerfed.

Boohoo, Warriors?

2007-03-01T21:42:00.000+01:00

Interesting class statistics on arena teams.

Go And Riot, Association Football-Style!

2007-03-01T21:16:00.000+01:00

WoWInsider has a post on how blogger Relmstein's conclude that class riots seem to actually have an effect.

Now, I've actually thought about this myself. The first time I felt like a had an immediate effect was when Shaman's got their Windfury totem nerfed but subsequently reverted. Yeah, they reverted it cause Pallies had superior buffs. But still, it was kind of a weird solution cause Windfury Totem did not make up for the Pally buffs anyway. In my view what Blizzard seemed to do was just please the angry mob.

However, after that I started to pay attention to things I began to think about this more. However, I've always kept in mind that there's a difference between participating in the behemoth mentality and just straight-up complaining about legitimate concerns.

For example recently in our case: the planned nerfs to Forbearance and Avenging Wrath completely lacked legitimacy because it failed on solving what it was sought to fix. This is different from Warriors nag the crap out of how "poor" they have it because Pallies (who have less health in an end-game where 2k more HP can mean everything) and Druids (who can't block or parry and suck healers dry) can tank just as well.

Anyways, nice to see though that despite what many people claim, Blizzard do take your words in to concern. The big deal is however whether its due to fear of the angry mob or not.

Check Diz Out Yo, Boyakasha!

2007-02-28T22:57:00.000+01:00

The official World of Warcraft website has gotten a new addition, the Armory! (Euro) (US)

It allows you to search for characters (I found out that there's plenty of human females named Florune, even one tard that's a male warrior) and search for guilds. Even check arena teams - sort em by battlegroup standings, server, wins, losses, the wholeshebang!

Pretty intuitive interface. AJAX solution web 2.0 zomg. Unfortunately it's a bit buggy, cause I can't load guild or character pages. Otherwise pretty damn cool. Strongly recommend that you check it out.

The Big Question

2007-02-28T07:29:00.000+01:00

It's funny to look at the mass of posts on the Pally forum. Most of them regarding Eyonix's comment that Paladin burst DPS needs to be toned down.

And in what way were these (scrapped) change supposed to fix it? It did nothing to reduce our burst DPS. Hell, if they did anything, it was improving our burst DPS through increasing Avenging Wrath for 10 seconds.

Blizzard feels like nerfing us on something that nobody really thinks or thought needed nerfing and they nerf it by buffing what they wanted to nerf and instead nerf what they didn't intended to be nerfed. Ironically if they changed BoP mechanics slightly our nerf would've really been a buff!

So, anyone know what the heck that's going on?

Yes!

2007-02-28T02:38:00.000+01:00

In the context of BoP being a griefing tool (-15% damage for one minute), Eyonix says:

We've decided against moving forward with the particular changes you're referring to, Nickelplate.

Success! The change was completely unnecessary in so many aspects. On the Euro boards it was mentioned by a blue that the change was to prevent people from popping Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath at the same time - that makes no sense considering the current implementation. I tried making a macro to throw them at the same time and it didn't work either. (edit: nm, I managed to make it work. Haha! omg)

Also Divine Shield already nerfs damage output 50% with the weapon speed debuff. An additional 15% is over the top and excessive.

It's funny, because I was just about to pose this question: what about being able to throw Blessing of Protection offensively? We'd be able to "stun" Rogues and Warriors for 10 seconds and nerf their damage output by 15% for one minute. It'd be kick-ass!

The Silent Treatment

2007-02-24T23:34:00.000+01:00

Vaelin said we relatively dodged nerfs, and we get this:

...Forbearance now applies a -15% physical damage [edit: some reports are saying all damage] penatly for the duration. It does not seem to affect healing, did not test damage spells. This is for forebearance caused by BoP/DS. DS and AW are also now on linked timers, and AW does not cause forbearance. So if your DS is on cooldown, you cannot AW even if forbearance is gone. Likewise you cannot DS until AW cools down.

(thanks Anonymous)

I remember when we were giving suggestions to Blizzard on how to improve the Paladin class 18 months ago we suggested giving us a damage increasing ability that shared the same cooldown as Divine Shield. This was before the creation of Forbearance!

My suspicion as to why Forbearance now causes a -15% damage reduction is for the obvious reason now that you can Blessing of Protection yourself while also using Avenging Wrath.

If this change still exists, Avenging Wrath shouldn't be a magic buff and the Forbearance debuff should be shortened down to 30 seconds to the least. One minute of -15% is ridiculous. It makes throwing it on cloth in PVP and PVE an uneasy decision. No longer you can BoP at the start of the fight or anything, cause that means your DPS will be punished for his damage output of at least one minute of the fight. That is far too long. Especially in for example arena PVP.

In my opinion Forbearance should last 15 seconds: it prevents session casting due to that BoP is 10 seconds and Divine Shield is 12 seconds while it also makes you consciously give the target a damage output reduction debuff. One minute as it is right now is absolutely over the top.

Otherwise I think this change was completely unnecessary. Nothing was broken, so nothing needed fixing.

The Nerf Bat Fell...

2007-02-24T07:52:00.000+01:00

... and I have to say - we seem to have dodged it relatively well compared to other classes.

We need to be real about a number of things:
1) Mass Dispel was put into the game specifically to screw us over in PvP. We knew this when it was announced. They just finally got around to making it work like most of us thought it would in the first place. All the new crying in the world now won't make a difference. So pop your bubble and heal while you can, then pop AW later and go beat the everliving sh1t out of that priest who now has to wait 20 seconds before throwing up subsequent PoMs.

2) Priests and Druids got hosed. I'm talking big time. It's hard enough to find a good priest these days, and Blizzard's totally unnecessary nerf to a big chunk of their healing utility will only send more to the account cancellation or character creation screen. Druids... I can't say we all didn't see it coming. Bear form was pretty ridiculous. Any way you slice it though, these two classes took the big brunt of the bat this time around.

3) Warriors got necessary buffs. Some are worried this will stunt our chances to be welcomed as something other than healbots. I wouldn't go that far. Even the most zealous proponents of Paladin tanking didn't seek to replace a class with a singular viable PvE role. The goal was to become viable ourselves, provide alternatives in certain situations where our tanking would be preferred, and ease some of the burden borne by one of the roles with a burnout rate second only to a Holy Priest.

4) The only direct "nerf" enumerated for our class pales in comparison to the whoppers handed out elsewhere. Avenger's Shield still dazes its targets, and Judgement of Justice Rank 2 will still keep would-be sprinters capped at run speed.

Overall, I count us lucky this round. So log in, pat your guild's Warriors on the back, comfort your Priests, and give your Druids a good ribbing (and a tissue).

=======================================================
Addendum since I posted the above on the forums:
=======================================================
I'm rather unsympathetic toward feral Druids. Recently, it had been pointed out on Paladinsucks.com that there was an element of unfairness in a Druid's ability to focus talents and spec for both melee damage and tanking viability. Cat form is one thing, but dishing out such high DPS in tanking form was clearly overpowered - especially given the huge amount of armor and stamina gained (as well as some healing potential via regeneration).

Drysc notes, "There are some straight up nerfs in this patch, and that's from our testing showing that Druid damage was just much higher than we would like to see bear form doing. The threat generation was far and beyond what we would have thought or intended, and this type of information on what a class is able to perform is based on internal testing and statistical information."

I'm happy for Warriors. There are some really great and dedicated folks that play Warriors in my guild, and I completely sympathized with them as they tried to cope with their perceived potential phasing-out of their group value in PvE. I never really wanted to be a MT in place of a Warrior. I just wanted to be back on the front lines (where we are supposed to be, traditionally).

I'm annoyed alongside the Priests. It's a tough and boring class to play in endgame PvE. I have no doubt that Holy Priests have the highest burnout rate of any class/spec combo in the game. What little survivability they were given in PvP has been destroyed, and their "off-spec" value in PvE took a big hit with the removal of a substantial amount of threat reduction and healing capability while in shadowform. From a Paladin perspective, I look critically toward any reduction in healing potency among other classes as it means we inch that much closer back toward our former pigeonhole.

Finally, I'm hearing frustrating reports that certain pieces of gear highly prized among tankadins (even myself, with only 13 points in Protection - enough to MT lower-end stuff and offtank endgame in a pinch) have had their stamina values substantially reduced. Specifically, the Junior Technician 3rd Grade Bracers as well as both popular pairs of superior quality tanking pants (one from Netherstorm questing, the other from a vendor via Caverns of Time reputation). The bracers, being only rare-quality and an easy to obtain quest reward, had their stamina nearly halved. The pants both lost about 10 points worth of stamina. Given that Paladin tanks tend to have the lowest health pools of the three tank classes, this hurts us the most. Maybe I'll hang onto Engineering a little longer and crank out a Goblin Rocket Launcher to help offset the loss. Then again, it was probably nerfed too.

NO MY GOD

2007-02-24T04:06:00.000+01:00

Patch notes are out:

If a targeted enemy has a magic effect granting immunity to spell or physical damage, “Mass Dispel” will now always pick that effect as its target.

Fan.

Arena System Quarrels

2007-02-20T19:49:00.000+01:00

It just seems extremely unfavorable to those who do not do 5v5. This guy explains it. Like...I didn't even bother playing on my 2v2 team cause I knew that my 5v5 team that lost 10 games would still yield more points.

This guy also goes it through pretty well and comes to the conclusion that real PVP is 5v5 whereas 2v2 and 3v3 is just matchups.

At It Again

2007-02-20T18:59:00.000+01:00

Schwick revisited his list yesterday. Check it out.

The Resurrection of Mass Resurrection

2007-02-20T08:59:00.000+01:00

Anyone who tooled around with data websites during the beta knows that we used to have a spell called Mass Resurrection. A 1.5 second cast, cost of 76% base mana that rezzed everyone but not usable in combat. Basically a spell which payed homage to the Warcraft 3 Paladin.

As far as we know it is not in the game right now. Much like the test version of Divine Intervention, Blessing of Spell Warding and Seal of Vigor (gave us Hammer of Wrath instead to catch runners) this was probably on the drawing board before ultimately being cut.

Some guy though on WoWhead is claiming that if you do Shattered Halls on Heroic and save a guy, run to Karazhan and "use a machine" you will get the spell. Anyone got any reports on this? Seems to me to be highly unlikely, if it's true though I'm definetly working on my Honor Hold rep!

Make Battlegrounds Faction-Neutral

2007-02-18T08:21:00.000+01:00

Now that both factions have Shamans plus Paladins and with the release of arenas, I can not foresee a sufficient argument as to why this can not happen: it would ease up queue times considerably for battlegroups that have an alliance overpopulation and it would make battleground games more balanced with the bonus that no longer would map layouts be to blame for losing.

My proposal is to do the following: make it so that it's possible for either Horde or Alliance to start on the opposite faction's side and use the technology employed at Old Hillsbrad to masquerade the races to add relative consistency to the map environment (i.e. Humans become Undead, Dwarves become Trolls, etc. just as if using Orb of Deception).

You know how great this would be? Battleground strategies would double because the layouts will double. Overall things would become more dynamic and interesting because you would never know which side you would start on. And of course, most important of all queue times would be cut in half.

Arena's Are Activated!

2007-02-16T08:28:00.000+01:00

Registered a team? How'd it go?

Blips and Blurps

2007-02-13T03:03:00.000+01:00

Ghmou has some thread tips: he recommends that you visit this ridiculously comprehensive post on Paladin tanking. Popcorn-thread!

I'm aware of the lack of updates as of late, but it's due to plenty of things such as IRL business and full yadda yadda. All I know is that from running this blog for such a long time is that Paladin activity comes and goes in cycles. Right now we're probably in the middle of one: we're not really in the center of attention in any form of debate that's taking place (it's mainly focused on Druids) and we don't know of any updates or changes that we're going to get in 2.0.7, and so forth.

Oh wait, I know what I can talk about!

My guild took down the Curator this weekend and he dropped the Tier 4 gloves. I passed it for another Pally cause I already got a pair of epic gloves from the undead horse-rider whatsitsname, the first boss. Anyways, for you who don't know - you actually have the option to trade the gloves in between three different sets: healing, tanking and damage.

My experience so far of Karazhan is that it requires you to be relatively raiding experienced, very focused and concentrated on your specific role, geared up properly and importantly min-maxed depending on your class role. I mean...I'd really like to hear of any Paladin that has tanked the Curator. A lot of these boss fights require a ton of HP on the tanks, and we're the tank class with the least amount of HP. If you're Prot and stuck healing on fights, why take the pieces to aid your tanking when you obviously get stuck in the back healing in Karazhan anyway?

So my question - is the option for us to pick different set pieces with our sets a false option? Thoughts?

Back in-Action

2007-02-09T00:14:00.000+01:00

Arenas are not far away! How are you guys preparing for it? I've been tinkering around and for days now trying to figure out a good PVP-healer build, and I think I've settled.

Here's my rough draft of a PVP-healing build.

There are two things we excel at: healing and staying alive/survivability. So it comes to no surprise that I focus on those powers in my build, with a twist of a third focus: resist talents. It will definitely lack a lot when it comes to PVE healing due to the fact of the loss of Divine Illumination, but this is just meant to be PVP-focused. I wouldn't recommend main-healing five-mans with this build.

Holy Tree:
- Divine Intellect, Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, Illumination, Divine Favor, Sanctified Light and Holy Power. A no-brainer path. Unfortunately only three points in to Holy Power.
- Grabbed Unyielding Faith due to the prevalence of fear, plus Pure of Heart due to the fact that we can't dispel curses.
- Light's Grace is a must-have. It is extremely crucial.
- Holy Shock is useful for some increased offense for burst DPS when needed. Feel free to ditch it for one extra point of spell crit if you want, but I chose not to.
- I know Divine Illumination is very important for end-game PVE, but I had to sacrifice a lot of the high-end talents so I could go deeper in to Prot.

Protection:
- Righteous Fury and Spell Warding reduce magic damage by 10% and melee by 6%
- Toughness to increase armor rate, "just cause". Feel free to put points in to Precision instead.
- Guardian's Favor. Hands down my favorite talent in the game. How could you not get this one? A 16 second Blessing of Freedom is extremely powerful. Three minutes Blessing of Protection's are pretty damn useful too.
- Blessing of Kings: This will be your primary blessing on yourself.
- Sacred Duty to increase the stamina. Every bit of stamina is worth it. Unfortunately fights don't last long enough for you to pop the four minute Divine Shield, so you should consider that to just be a bonus.
- Improved Hammer of Justice: Hammer of Justice is extremely powerful. Cutting fifteen seconds off of it is godly.
- Improved Concentration Aura: This is your primary aura. The 15% silence/interruption resist is what you want!

And here is the most underrated talent in all the Pally trees now:
- Stoicism: extremely, extremely interesting talent - it makes Mass Dispel/Dispel/Purge/Spell Steal resist 30% of the time. Theoretically this includes Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom on other targets! Another thing: If someone's trying to dispel a Judgement of Justice on their Druid - whoops, 30% resist rate! Even crazier: according to some reports Hammer of Justice have a 30% chance to resist the Mage's Blink! OMG! Cry nerf?
Notes: Tier 4 in Protection is too good for PVP. Probably the best PVP Tier in all trees we have. All four talents are pretty damn useful. The most annoying part is that it's worth 8 points. If they only could move Imp. Concentration up to Tier 1-3 it'd be perfect (I've long supported the notion of moving that talent somewhere else, the placement of it right now stinks).

You get a total of 6% melee reduction and 10% spell reduction. In stats you get 16% more stamina and 20% more intellect. When it comes to resist you're loaded: 10% fear resist, incapacitate and stun resist, 15% curse, disease and silence resist, 30% dispel resist. With Rank 1 Blessing of Sacrifice you're basically also un-sheepable/un-sappable/un-seducable.

So in theory? You should be one pretty damn annoying PVP-healing Pally.

Burning Crusade Open Thread #2

2007-02-07T00:23:00.001+01:00

Blizzard Moderation is Top Notch

2007-02-03T22:01:00.000+01:00

Seriously. Hate them or love them, but when you look at the World of Warcraft forums - despite many of the stupid threads you see, they're very relatively properly moderated and "managed". (Well, there was that one time when a Diablo 2 forum moderator told a guy that he should stop flipping burgers, but that's about it).

Look for example at EA.com's Command and Conquer 3 forums: petition threads on useless and absolutely boneheaded subjects exist for days, threads on calling other people low-lives and idiots aren't deleted, basically no observable form of moderation or forum care taking exists... seems to me that an entire cluster of forums for various different games is moderated by one sole person.

Just think of this...absolutely trashy forums for a game that's a huge franchise (one of the largest in the world) on a website of one of the largest gaming companies in the world. Yet they can't find the resources to more properly take care it?

It actually makes you appreciate the hard work that is apparent on the WoW forums. Also just Blizzard as a company overall.

Congratulations CayCounter!

2007-02-02T06:30:00.000+01:00

CayCounter broke 400 days! Another milestone for complete irrelevance! Thanks Ghmou for putting this to my notice.

To celebrate, I strongly recommend that you check out this thread regarding Seal of Blood. Very insightful comments, indeed. The word that Seal of Vengeance is superior seems to be true, unfortunately. It'll be hard for Blizzard to really balance the seals out...we'll see what they'll do about it in the future.

The Blogspot "Titan Bar"

2007-02-01T02:45:00.000+01:00

Upgraded the Blogger.com version and um...that stupid banner on top is back. I've used code previously to remove it, but it doesn't work anymore. I'll have to find a way to do that again.

The Great Escape...erhm, Great Mob Dodging.

2007-01-31T07:15:00.000+01:00

Paladinsucks.com: the best World of Warcraft blog in Azeroth:

Had a fun time tonight with another Pally in my guild. I wanted to grab the second key part of Kharazan attunement. Since I couldn't find a group to help me out - and I really didn't want to do the entire Steamvault just for the key piece which is at the very beginning of the instance. One Priest in my guild said something interesting: just run and bubble. Get a soulstone and run and bubble.

So yeah, that's what I did. I got a Warlock to soulstone me and I ran in. It failed horribly because I was wall-hugging the right wall. I didn't even get to the tunnel. This made me upset cause I just wanted to just get it over with. But while grabbing the third piece in Arcatraz I crafted another plan to get it...

A couple of hours later I got the help from another Pally. This is how we did it: we both potted with Invisibility pots and ran for 18 seconds. After that we both bubbled and ran for 12 seconds. Then he Divine Intervented me. I let myself regain some health and watched the location of the patrols before I released myself from the DI-bubble and Blessing of Protected myself, tossed a Lay on Hands while running out towards the water and jumping in. There I died and waited for the Pally to tell me when it was safe to pop my soulstone as the mobs had returned.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

About 30 minutes later a Mage in my guild did the very same thing, except he first used Invisibility together with an Invisibility potion.

I wish Blizzard would actually design encounters that would kinda work in this way. But the big question is obviously: how would that work to fit all the classes? Nevertheless it was a lot of fun.

Prot vs Feral

2007-01-31T04:59:00.000+01:00

Ghmou's at it again - wanting to alter the way the Druid's Feral tree works. Read it here.

I don't think though that there is any way to split +spell and +heal abilities. The recent variation of the tree makes the choice between a talent that benefits cat or bear very scarce.

A lot of good blogs

2007-01-30T02:40:00.000+01:00

There are a lot of good blogs out there, and here's a couple of links:
- Mortal Temperatur is one which I go to every day. His latest stuff on the Burning Crusade is pretty insightful, especially this article.
- Another one is this one, by Dr-1337. Yeah, he's very self-serving and hold himself in too high regard, but he's a pretty good Druid player and knows the game very well.
- For you Swedish readers I strongly recommend Kuken i Rovhalet for some nordic-style WoW commentary.

Mumblings

2007-01-28T10:58:00.000+01:00

Level 68 currently, 3/4 to 69 and just respecced Holy. When leveling up I've been speccing back and forth between Holy, Protection and Retribution so I'm maxed out at 50g, fortunately I have a lot of money.

For some reason when main healing Old Hillsbrad tonight it felt really tough...I don't know. I ran out of mana too easily (including using Divine Illumination) and my Holy Light was barely healing for anything (disregarding debuffs). I guess it'll change once I get to 70 and am able to get a rank 11 and all that jazz. It's tough to feel undergeared. Not used to that.

On me switching between specs...it really feels like Retribution had the least down time - I'm not kidding. The mana efficiency for the damage output is very, very good. With Holy and Protection you have to use abilities that use considerable amounts of mana, especially with Prot considering the fact that the best way to grind is to gather 3-4 mobs and Holy Shield and Consecrate.

Yeah...I could always be Ret up to 70, but I really don't feel like I have to rush myself. I'm playing at a descent pace I think. Just started the Karazhan key chain quest at 68 so I hope to be able to have my attunement done by next weekend or so.

From Gamasutra:

British newspaper The Independent has published a list of what it claims are the top twenty best selling video games franchises of all-time.

No Blizzard game, unfortunately. Curiously enough, the "rival" of Warcraft is on there:

18. Command & Conquer (Westwood Studios/Electronic Arts): 25 million

Then again, counting all of the Westwood/EA games in to the Command and Conquer-brand is kinda like bunching together Warcraft and Starcraft together in a 'Craft-brand.

Speaking of that, I can't wait for Command and Conquer 3 to come out. I'm hopeful that it'll be a good game, but it's not really the multiplayer I want to play...it's the single player. I just love the entire tiberium universe. I also like a lot that they're paying tribute to the old days of FMV-movies. Kane is awesome, peace through power.

Not for Critics

2007-01-27T08:40:00.000+01:00

Penny Arcade on the Burning Crusade...and Pallies.

A Minor Observation

2007-01-26T07:00:00.000+01:00

Still busy playing. Even more busy with school work.

Is Retribution Aura rank 6 is scaling? The tooltip says 26 damage, yet I seem to do 27-28 damage at times. What the heck? If it is due to the fact that it now scales with spell damage gear it contradicts with their old design philosophy of not allowing damage-reactive abilities to scale.

Anyone else seen small and odd stuff like this?

He Can't Find Mankrik's Wife

2007-01-23T21:46:00.000+01:00

Is the vice president of development at Blizzard, Itzik Ben Bassat, some form of newcomer or something to the company? He just can't keep his mouth closed. I wouldn't be surprised if it upset Michael Morhaime in one way or another. Last week we got to learn this:

"We'd like to say to our fans of Diablo and Starcraft that we haven't forgotten we have these franchises. We cannot wait to be here in a few years, or however long it will be. It won't be a decade, and we'll be celebrating the launch of [the next] Starcraft together." Since Starcraft went on sale in 1998, some took Bassat's comments as meaning a new Starcraft and/or Diablo would be out by 2008. Others interpreted his words as meaning new Diablo and Starcraft titles are less than 10 years away.

I guess it depends on how you interpret the comments, but if he spoiled the fact that they're announcing Starcraft 2 before 2008 - uh-oh.

Recently in Empire magazine he said this:

"When we announce our next MMORPG it's not going to be another WOW--we're not a company that tends to tread the same ground," he told British film magazine Empire. "It'll be something innovative and new that really brings entertainment to another level." American Blizzard reps delcined to expand on Bassat's comments, although the fact that the company began hiring real-time strategy developers last summer might offer a clue.

Ahh...So Blizzard is tinkering around with another MMO. Not a huge surprise when thinking about it though because this game is a cash cow and Blizzard now knows how to set up infrastructure properly and all that to speed up development and such things. There is no doubt in my mind that the development teams are looking at WoW right now and seeing specific fundamental problems or have ideas that would be impossible to implement. A Starcraft MMORPG could be different in so many ways...

Remember though - WoW has content for at least a couple of years worth of more expansion packs (one new world where the Burning Legion has invaded, Northrend, The Maelstorm). They could probably time the release of the game a year or so after the release of the last expansion or something.

Burning Crusade Gear Scales Too Good

2007-01-22T07:43:00.000+01:00

'Nuff said.

Spotlight on Hot Paladin Lewtzor

2007-01-20T03:33:00.000+01:00

Behold - the Libram of Saints Departed.

Libram of Saints Departed
Binds when picked up
Unique
Libram
Requires Level 61
Equip: Causes your Judgements to heal you for 41-49.
Sells for 2 8 72 to vendors
Item Level 88

Where it drops: Blood Furnace
Who drops it: The Maker (1st boss)

Awesome for almost any build, but ideal for Retribution and Protection Paladins who are judging nearly as often as Judgement is on cooldown. Got mine last night and I absolutely love it.

Burning Crusade Open Thread

2007-01-18T10:00:00.000+01:00

Comment away.

Who uses it except for Judgements?

2007-01-17T07:02:00.000+01:00

Whoop-dee-doo! Seal of the Crusader rank 7...our last rank of it coincidentally.

Go play!

2007-01-16T09:10:00.000+01:00

It's out.

Ca-ca-ca-yeauh!

2007-01-16T00:32:00.000+01:00

Valid Statements to Back Up My Argument of Ultimate Important Subject

2007-01-15T11:04:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago in Vent I referred to Bill Roper as a "celebrity", but it was shot down pretty quick. After thinking about it I realized that people might not consider him to be one. I don't really consider myself to be more of a Blizzard fanboy than any other regular Blizzard-company-liker person-always-buyer. All and all, I think a pretty hard and solid case (air-tight proof with no breaches whatsoever, nuh uh) for my calling him a celebrity:

- Even if he wasn't directly involved, World of Warcraft has like 8 million subscribers, and that's larger than certain countries for crying out loud. ZOMG! That's 8 million people who should in some way or form know who this man is. How many players who play WoW in percent who Bill Roper is versus people living in your state knows the senator or even president?
- He did the Grunt voice for WC 3, Warrior and Peon/Grunt for WC 2 + narration, and all voices for WC 1. Various Diablo vox stuff too. Those games sold millions and millions. How many people here can't say they haven't heard his voice at one point or time?
- He also used to do a lot of heavy PR work for them back in the day, so if you worked in the gaming press or read a lot of gaming 'zine outlets you must've read him sometime. Specifically I remember listening him being interviewed on a Mac radio show and the host gave him the very broad question to describe all the three Blizzard universes: he had the balls and stamina to bite his lips together and very professionally run through all of it...must've taken like 30 minutes to do that! If I was him I'd challenge the host and question him for asking that - but that's me. He even accepted to talk for an additional 45 minutes (I think), wowza.
- Oh, did you know that he's a singer? So if my other cases fail I have the "local celebrity" category to fall back on. Yes...I know it's stretching it!

And that is that.

One last note: if you add me to your Nintendo Wii friends list you'll find Roper in your parade. Truth be told he looks eerily similar. Unfortunately Hawaii t-shirts are not available for the customization process so he had to settle with black.

Yes...I am going a bit insane waiting for the Burning Crusade to come out.

The Next Expansion Is Only One Year Away

2007-01-13T09:18:00.000+01:00

The Burning Crusade is coming out this week. After 1.5 years of waiting and arguably 2 years of development we're finally getting to hold the boxes in our hands and installing the expansion on our computers. It truly is sweet.

But is this the last expansion? No! According to Blizzard COO Paul Sams in an interview five months ago they're expecting to release one every year from now on (BC was delayed due to the fact that they were developing regular content at the same time).

So what does that mean? If Blizzard follows their schedule (hard to type without bursting in to laughter) 12 months from now we might be sitting here and enjoying our new Spell Warding blessing that we like to throw on Warriors and Rogues so they can wtfpwn casters.

In other note: I love the fact that when they changed Improved Resistance Auras they called the new talent Spell Warding, cause it seemed to me as a subtle wink-wink nudge-nudge to us. All of our spells and abilities have some form of naming consistency so here's a list I produce (not promising it's comprehensive). I know that some of these explanations might be a bit wormy, but bear with me:
- Crusader is thrown around when it comes to the idea of charging, doing swift damage (Seal of the Crusader, Crusader Strike, Crusader Aura, Crusade)
- Divine is instant beneficiary and protective (Divine Strength, Divine Intellect, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, Divine Intervention, Divine Favor, Divine Purpose)
- Illumination is used for mana (Illumination, Divine Illumination), much like Wisdom (Blessing of Wisdom, Seal of Wisdom).
- Light is obviously used for healing (Flash of Light, Holy Light, Blessing of Light, Seal of Light).
- Righteousness/Vengeance is for involvement of Holy damage of some kind (Righteous Fury, Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance, Vengeance) which makes the choice to name our taunt "Righteous Defense" really puzzling.
- Wrath is used for all-ends-to-means damage contribution (Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, Avenging Wrath)
- Avenging is used for when it's time to get down (Avenger's Shield, Avenging Wrath).
- Holy is very broad and is just for raw and pure Holy spells (Holy Power, Holy Guidance, Holy Shield, Holy Light).
- Power is used for increased chance to crit with spells (Holy Power, Purifying Power).
- Justice is stunning and incapacitation (Hammer of Justice, Seal of Justice).
- Retribution is pure holy damage (Retribution tree, Retribution Aura).
- Sanctified means augmentations of existing spells (Sanctified Light/Crusader/Judgement), whereas Sanctuary and Sanctity refers to holy damage output contribution with slight inclusiveness of defensive mechanics (Sanctity Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary) - and yes, I know I'm being very broad there! Hah.