Kaziel's thoughts on my (mis?)adventures in MMOs

Posts already sparse are going to become even more so

2010-02-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted in a while. It's a combination of my work firewall blocking my main Blogspot page (can still get into the dashboard) and moving up in the world. Moving up how? Well, about 3 or 4 months ago I decided that I really wanted to see everything that endgame had to offer me and that I just wasn't getting that in my guild.

I knew my other much more progression driven friend wouuld come with me if I jumped ship (he was already really chafeing at the lack of progress in our guild), but I was concerned if my girlfriend would come with us. This concern was pretty much a non-issue since she was feeling it too and playing like it, logging in just for our raids and not otherwise due to a lack of anything to do.

After talking it over with the guild leader and his wife (an officer) and our good mutual friends, we explained and while he was sad to see us go, he understood our reasoning.

It was a long search to find a guild that matched our requirements. First off, my girlfriend and I live in California and I work, so I needed a guild that started raiding no earlier than 6:30 PST. Next, our friend lives in Texas, so we couldn't end too late at night either. Now, these two things alone wouldn't be enough to make it hard to find a guild, but every Tuesday night my girlfriend and I play D&D, which put one of the most common raiding nights out entirely.

After a long period of searching, we found Recognition of the Suramar server. They have two 25-man raiding groups, one that runs Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays (I think), the other Thursdays and Sundays, starting at 6:30 PST. It was a perfect match and what's more they needed all three of our class/spec combos. We applied and transfered servers when we were given a trial run in ToC the following Thursday. Even the worst of the three of us did well enough to be invited to the following ICC-25.

We were made official members, able to bid on stuff the following Sunday, and have settled in to our roles, quickly gearing up (over the course of the last two nights my girlfriend managed to upgrade both of her weapons, and I recently bought my T10 shoulders, and our friend who's a hunter got his BiS bow short of ICC-25 heroic) and overall enjoying our time there.

Well this Wednesday I got an offer to run with the other team's ICC-10 man group. I was feeling pretty ego-tastic after that because they were originally aiming for Tuesdays (which is, obviously not free) then they were asking me what night I was free. So I was like "Wow, I'm such an awesome tank that the other team wants me to go with them and are willing to see what days I can join them." I declined then because I was already running ICC-10 with other people from my own ICC-25 group. When I was talking to the GM about it, he said something along the lines of "We wanted to get you trained up on the fights in ICC."

Now, what does that have to do with anything? Well the normal raid leader has been absent due to RL stuff for a while, and the back up had RL stuff that night to attend to, so they got a backup RL on an alt and then the train hit me. "And Alixander will also be the Raid Leader and will explain the fights." I nearly got whiplash from snapping my head to look at the monitor. "Wait... WHAT?" I asked outloud, but not into vent. At the time I figured it was just a case of "He's a tank, he's good at raid leading." But then throughout the night the other guy brought in on an alt as the "raid leader" kept trying to help me out towards being more of a leader of our group.

About halfway through the night, when I got a tell from this guy telling me more tips on what to do as the RL, everything fell into place (had I not been tanking, it probably would have hit sooner). The other group, which counts for a lot of officers, wanted me to join them, were willing to change their schedules for me. They wanted to "train me up". All this, combined with being almost pushed towards raid leading it just clicked: The officers were grooming me to lead my 25-man team since the previous leader had been absent for two weeks (not clear on the details, but she had some serious RL stuff going on it seemed) and would be gone for the foreseeable future.

Note: I am probably going to jump over to the other ICC-10 group to get better trained up on the fights and quickly gear up my DK to tank for my current ICC-10 group so they aren't lacking a good tank.

I don't have any problems with being the raid leader, mind you. Someone has to do it, and while it is almost entirely a thankless task I've done it before and (it seems) will do it again. It just blindsided me a good bit since I've been in the guild less than a month. Seriously. As of the writing of my last post on this blog, I was still in my old guild. Anyways, what little time I have, for now, is going to be focused on making sure I'm as prepared to run my group through ICC-25 as humanly possible. I know some folks can balance a blog and raid leading, but I'm not one of them. I'll post occasionally, but not nearly as frequently as I have been. Once we've gotten everything locked down, I'll try to post more. Anyways, happy hunting all!

My thoughts on ICC-10

2010-01-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I got into a PUG ICC-10 run which was successful and I managed to down all 4 bosses in one run (but didn't one-shot them).

My opinion on the fights, all from the perspective of a tank:

Lord Marrowgar: The coldfire during the BONESTOOOOOOORM! phase makes it very hectic. I would imagine that it's just as hectic in 10-man as 25-man but for different reasons. In 10-man there are few healers which means you have to be careful of the fire and being too far from a healer, lest you nom on too much of the chilly burns. I would imagine that in 25-man, since (as I understand it) he moves from person to person, if you stack up, you or others will die, while if you spread out you get burnt.

But it's a fun fight, overall. Some movement, spacial awareness, plus the tanks need to move in tandem which gives an additional challenge.

Lady Deathwhisper: Phase one is a mad house. Both myself and Thornir would be on the same side wiping out the adds, then run over to the other side. We had little time to rest. When we finally got to phase two we made a few mistakes with early threat generation, but we got her down in one try (mostly because we didn't want to do phase one again).

Deathwhisper has an interesting twist on the semi-standard "tank until you get X amount of debuffs, then other tank taunts off you until the debuff wears off, back and forth" during Phase two. Thinking about the fights where this concept shows up, in most cases it takes the form of a DoT, so if the other tank doesn't taunt the target off you, you'll take too much damage and the healers can't keep you alive. Instead, this one either decreases your total threat by a set percent as long as the debuff is on you, or decreases the threat you create by a set percent. Either way, if you let the debuff get too big, the DPS will overtake you in terms of threat generation and they'll start dying. A very innovative way of using this concept, also meaning that this fight will always require a second tank since you can't overgear it and just heal your way through it.

The Gunship fight: Even without being the one that goes over to the other ship, this is a fantastically fun fight. There's a semi-frequent stream of mobs that portal over to your ship and you need to gather them up while tanking them all and avoiding the hail of rockets randomly hitting your ship. And you can't just keep rounding them up and letting them be, or they will become too powerful and squish you flat.

If you are the one who goes over to the other ship it's even better. You learn to be cognizant of the sound of your opponent calling for a mage to freeze the turrets, then you need to quickly hop over to the other side ahead of your DPS (and healers... at the time wasn't aware of the strat of pulling the leader to the edge of the boat so you can be healed from yours), hold threat on a boss that hits harder and harder, then get away before you become dead meat! Then get in a little extra DPS on the adds that the first tank is keeping before jumping back over! Wow! This is a technically challenging fight that I really really want to do again. Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face.

Deathbringer Saurfang: This is a technically challenging fight, but it's very different. It felt, very much, like I was almost completely divorced from most of the fight. I just had to keep Saurfang on myself and my co-tank, swapping back and forth between as one of us got a the debuff. The challenging part was being aware of when the beasts would spawn then making sure not to use any sort of AOEs. This made it hard as I needed to not fall into the pattern of the 969 rotation, and to cut out HotR and Consecration at key times (in fact I found myself rarely using Consecration, just to be safe).

I'm sure a bunch of stuff was happening over to my right, but it was off screen and there was little I could do to impact it beyond maybe cheering people on. I couldn't afford to do anything to the beasts lest I get aggro, so I just focused on the boss. Next time I'll rotate the boss so that my back is to the door he enters so I can see what's going on (plus it will make it so that the Blood Beasts don't run through me, decreasing the chance for an AOE to hit them).

========

Final assessment: Other than the Gunship fight, the encounters in ICC10 are fairly reactionary. You move out of the cold fire/death and decay, taunt off the other tank when you're supposed to, DPS these adds, don't DPS those adds, etc. OTOH, the Gunship fight is thrilling! High mobility, thinking on your feet, reacting to a situation as needed. Whew! Fantastic! Yet, despite my complaints about the other encounters in ICC, I still find the fights fun... I just think that the Gunship fight stands out in my mind so much that the others seem to pale in comparison.

And now with the next wing open, next time I go back to ICC, I'll go even further!

I was also a jerk pug tank

2009-12-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

One of my recent finds on the Blogosphere is Righteous Defense, obviously a tanking blog.

His most recent post was titled "I was a jerk pug tank", which tickled my funny bone as I had done something similar this past weekend.

I think it was Friday and I was doing the random heroic which dropped me into hHoL. Don't remember the party other than there was a rogue in it. I'm known for having a bad memory, so sticking out in my mind is either a tribute to your skill or a tribute to your utter lack thereof. As one might guess from the title of this post, it is the latter...

The rogue managed to pull hate off me on every pull up to the first boss. I'd mark targets, and then I'd lose on of the secondary targets. I dunno, maybe they were going after secondary targets b/c they'd live longer so they'd lose less combo points since of course the tank would taunt it off them. By losing less combo points (possibly also using Rupture), they'd get more DEEPS(!) on the meter, which is (of course) all that really matters.

We went right at the first intersection and cleared to the far right corner. General Bjarngrim was coming down the ramp, the lightning debuff gone. By this point, I had already noticed that the Rogue was being stupid, so I resolved not to taunt targets off them anymore unless it was the main target in the first few seconds (I put out enough TPS to hold threat off of anything but decently geared Hunters and Warlocks, both of whom have an aggro dump anyway...). I mark the two adds as the priority targets, then pull.

So we start killing, nothing special, and the first add goes down. Then by halfway through the second add, I see that Bjarngrim is at half health. Hmmm... Well, not hard to see what happened. After the first add went down, the Rogue decided to prioritize his position on the damage meter over doing the instance as a team. So about the same time as i notice this, I notice that the color around the Rogue's life bar has turned yellow, indicating they are getting close to pulling aggro.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't crack a small smile as I knew what was coming and decided to stick to my guns in letting him die.

So the yellow glow turned to red, and Bjarngrim turned on his new friend. There was a good two or three seconds which was more than enough for me to react (as I had shown earlier in the instance) as Bjarngrim tore the Rogue to little pieces. Meanwhile, the rest of the party finished off the second add and then moved on to the boss, easily defeating him.

Afterwards, nothing was said, I quickly rezzed the Rogue and we went on our way. Not surprisingly, the rest of the run was smooth, and the Rogue either spammed FoK or stuck to my target like glue.

Maybe I could have dealt with the situation in a more diplomatic manner, but I like to imagine that this really hit home the point that each person is responsible for their own survival on some level and it's not the tank's job to make up for their lack of control or desire to max out their DPS over being a part of the team.

3.3 Update

2009-12-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

So been too busy running around like a chicken with my head cut off to do much in the way of posting. Time for a bit of a stream of consciousness.

My guess about how long it would take me to get my shield that I posted about in my previous post turned out to be sadly too accurate. Running regular HoR at least once a day (often more than that) every day since 3.3 went live and I only just got the Splintered Door of the Citadel. I went from just barely having gotten the gloves and shoulders of T9 to 5/5 T9, the iLVL 245 shoulders, having both 245 librams, and being only about 20 emblems short of having the iLVL 245 helm before I finally saw the shield drop. Prior to getting it, it was one of my three remaining iLVL 200 pieces I still had. Despite the dour mood running HoR constantly left me in, at least it gave Emblems of Triumph, which allowed me get something from all those "wasted" runs.

After getting my shield, I was too pumped to sleep (despite the late hour) so I ran a number of random heroics to get the last badges I needed to replace my helm. This had a number of benefits including getting me back over the Expertise soft-cap.

Additionally I scraped and saved my Emblems of Frost enough to get the Corroded Skeleton Key yesterday afternoon. Between doing two of the weekly random raids and a PUG ICC-10 (with a good amount of help from fellow Maintankadin poster Thornir and my lovely girlfriend), we cleared the entire instance and managed to get the achievement "I've gone and made a mess.", I got all the emblems I needed a good week or so earlier than I might have otherwise.

In other news, my DK has been brought out of retirement. Not to make him my main again by any means, but mixing gearing him up with making money. "Making money?" you might ask. Well, as everyone who's paying attention to the various game news reporting sites knows the new Legendary, Shadowmourne, will require twenty-five Primordial Saronite, plus the new crafting recipes for ICC also cost one (or more?) of the same. Primordial Saronite is the new "orb" for this patch, and costs 23 Emblems of Frost along with having a chance to drop inside ICC (I believe...). On top of that, Primordial Saronite is not BoP and is able to be put up on the AH. So after realizing this (I knew it, but kinda had a brain fart about it), I started running my DK through one random heroic a night along with trying for the weekly random raid. And last night I got the emblems I needed for my first Primordial Saronite. Sold it for 2.4k, which is probably cheaper than some servers, but whatever. I'm gearing up my alt, and getting paid (albeit in an indirect manner) a lot of money to do so. I approve of this.

I realize in retrospect that my assessment that queue times for random heroics is not quite as fast as I guessed. For we tanks it's blindingly fast even at off-times. Queue times of over a minute are rare and I've only been waiting for two minutes once. For healers it is close to this, from what I understand, with the average being a minute. Meanwhile, the glut of DPS leaves them with a long queue time, the shortest listed average I've seen while playing on my DK, who I've changed as a primary role to being a DW Frost DPS, is 8 minutes and some as high as 15 to 20 minutes. Sheesh!

As for why I changed Kazalix to primarily being a DPS, while I love tanking, as I've mentioned elsewhere, tanking on a DK is a bit more than I can do effectively, so instead I hit things and have fun doing so. Though I am kinda considering going back to using a 2H. As a DPS, using fast weapons is less of a big deal to me, plus I'm now a Draenei and the male Draenei 2H animation is less ridiculous than the male Human 2H animation (as shallow as that is, it was a deciding factor for me...). Maybe when I get my second Battered Hilt (first one will go to my girlfriend for her Enhancement Shaman), I'll see about either a Blood or Unholy DPS spec with the STR 2H Quel'Delar.

3.3 WOOOOO!!!

2009-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

As anyone who logs in regularly (that is, those who aren't stuck in College-finals-hell) would know 3.3 went live yesterday. Beyond the standard "Servers are a bit unstable" for the first few hours, things went okay.

I got to try the new random dungeon thing for the new LFG tool. First off, not surprisingly, the LFG tool is BLINDINGLY fast. I got into a Heroic Gundrak run which went smoothly other than me getting knocked into the pool between the 2nd and 3rd boss (turned the targets around then got hit by a knockback off the ledge. Go me).

Next I queued up for the new 5-mans on normal mode. I had done ZERO research into the instance (mostly to avoid lore spoilers) so I figured doing it on normal mode would be a good learning experience. It definitely was, plus this time I got to see the Disenchant option in action (though I understood it's mechanics before). Managed to take down the first two instances before I had to go off to my weekly nerdfest (D&D!).

Afterwards before bed, I queued up for the final five-man (Halls of Reflection), got into one that had cleared the first two bosses and all that remained was the final gauntlet run. Did that really fast and completed it and then at the end of the instance you can get onto your airship (The Skybreaker for the Alliance and Orgrim's Hammer for the Horde). Not sure about the Horde, but it seems that a number of those who do it on the Alliance side get logged out when they try to get onto the Skybreaker.

Then I queued up again to do the instance, this time getting into one that hadn't been done before. Sadly I had a fail Elemental Shaman who insisted on running up and using Thunder (the knockback), sending all of my targets flying. RAGE!RAGE!RAGE! This was even worse as the first 10 pulls are a mix of casters and DPS. This morning I found out abou the LoS trick, which will be immensely helpful as the mobs are annoying if you're trying to pull them all together. After that went up to the gauntlet again (this time noticed the room beyond is made to look like the Throneroom of Lordaeron... NICE!) and completed it again, and as before got disconnected when I tried to get onto the Skybreaker.

I have two gripes about the new instance and the LFG tool, one minor and one major. The minor gripe was that I couldn't get onto the Skybreaker in either of my attempts. I figure this is due to the lag on the system as God and everybody does the three new instances. And I've heard rumors that it was a problem specific to cross server groups made by the LFG tool. Hopefully they will get this ironed out tonight so I can do it when I get home.

The Major gripe I have is that the first HoR pickup I joined was it was mostly completed (I really wanted the 2nd boss for his shield). It's not that I missed out on the shield that bothers me, but the LFG tool will replace someone who goes away. Not a real problem for a regular 5-man, but what about a heroic? If someone is lost, those players are locked into that heroic partially completed. The person brought in has no warning that he's being brought into a partially completed instance so he may be stuck in a bad situation, or the rest of the party is. Just have to pray for not being in a group with a failure.

Despite those gripes, I really love the new LFG system. It's much faster and easier than before. No putting up a list of heroics I want to do, then going off and questing for a while, maybe getting interrupted half way there or while I'm in the middle of a quest. My plan for now is to do one random heroic daily for the day to get my 2 Emblems of Frost (saving up for my super STA trinket! I should get it in a month or so...) then doing each of the ICC heroics for the day (I liek purplez), then doing HoR over and over and over and over until I get the shield and replace my stupid iLVL 200 sheild. -_- It's one of 3 iLVL 200 items I still have, and outside of a raid, this is the only upgrade available to me. There isn't even a heroic option other than the one I'm using now.

Finally, one personal bit of bitching... I was one quest away from getting the achievement Proof of Demise (which is now a Feat of Strength which I have on my DK). RAGE! Though at least I'm not Njall. The last quest he needed appeared Tuesday morning and he did the run and was moving like a bat out of hell to get the credit only for WoW to crash on him (as the servers probably went down) and he couldn't get back in. Now the quest is gone from his log but he still has the quest item. Ouch! I'm sorry Njall.

Alix is ready for Ulduar!

2009-11-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

First off, this weekend was a light one for raiding. On Friday I got in a ToC25 alt run with one of the better raiding guild as Kazalix (along with a number of other guildies). Was there as a DPS and Kazalix's DPS isn't too terrible, though he could definitely do better. Saturday was a non-raiding day for me (Halloween!).

Then on Sunday the guild put together an Ulduar run that turned into FL + Naxx. It originally had ten people, but after two no-shows (again), and one saved to Naxx and not wanting to get saved to Ulduar for one fight (on Sunday night? What?), which left us with seven folks (and a horribly undergeared and badly played eighth). Anyway, we chose to do Naxx to assist Alix in gearing up more quickly and it was definitely a score. Only did two wings (Spider and Plague), but netted me upgrades for my bracers and gloves and a good sidegrade of a ring.

All-in-all, I feel that Alixander is finally ready to join my guild in Ulduar10. He's sporting 28k Health unbuffed which puts him only 2k short of Kazalix unbuffed. While he still sporting a few iLVL 200 blues (cape chest and boots), he also has a number of iLVL 219 or higher items gotten from various sources. He's definitely not main-tank material yet, but he's definitely on his way.

Dual Wield Tanking in 3.3! And...

2009-10-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

So in the patch notes for 3.3 PTR were just put out on World of Raids (no link since I only saw the post on RSS feeder as I'm at work), but one of the changes was:

Death Knights:
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.

I was like "WHA?" but then I thought about it for a second and it makes sense. I posted about it in my post "Back from Limbo" but even with the 3.2.2 addition of Rune Strike to ToT, the current implementation of DW Tanking is pretty much non existent. The crux of the problem is that DWing DKs (whether tanking, DPSing or PvPing) need a Slow/Slow setup and almost all the tanking weapons (which is the only effective way to reach the Defense Cap when not using a 2H and RotSG) are 1.7 speed weapons or faster. Completely ineffective as DK tanking weapons.

So Blizzard realized this and is having DW DK tanks take the same approach as 2H DK tanks: Use DPS weapons and have them give a Defense boost through the enchant instead the weapon. The 1H version to give 13 defense points per hand (IIRC) and a passive 1% health bonus.

Now, I should be thrilled for this. Honestly I am a bit. But not ecstatic. Why? Well, I've been feeling this way more and more lately: I (personally as in me, not everyone) am not as effective a tank as a DK as I was as a Paladin. It's a number of things that have contributed to this feeling:

I have grown less pleased the rune system for tanking as time has passed. Sure, it has endless power and you need never fear running out of rage/mana, but at the same time it creates the problem that if you need a specific rune for something and you just accidentally used it, you're now up the creek no paddle. This is primarily an issue for talented tanking powers (Unbreakable Armor, Bone Armor and Vampiric Blood), which call for a rune of the type matching it's talent tree... This isn't much of a problem for Blood DKs, but Unholy and Frost are regularly using their Frost or Unholy runes on IT, PS and Oblit/SS and Blood Tap does not play well with Unbreakable Armor (I can't speak for BA, but I would imagine it's the same) so you can't one-button macro it if the matching natural rune is on cooldown. As a result of this Unbreakable Armor, despite being one of the best cooldowns I have, I almost never use unless I'm on a cooldown specific fight.

The introduction of the Dual Spec. One of my major gripes in tBC was that my healing wasn't needed and my DPS blew (as it would with a Prot Spec and my only DD attack being Judgement). Even without dual specs, Prot Paladins now have 3 DD abilities at their beck and call, boosting their non-reactionary damage a lot. But now that I can spec to Ret if we only need a single tank, I feel I'll be able to contribute a lot if we only need a single tank.

Less complexity. This one is really the biggest of the "personal" reasons, as in it only applies to me. As a Paladin in tBC I needed to keep track of a number of things, such as my active ability cooldowns (Holy Shield, Judgement, etc.), long cooldowns (which were primarily trinkets then) the placement of my enemies (and if they are running away from me) and the status of my allies. As a DK I need to keep track of all of those things in addition to tracking each type of rune (need to track them separately since there no overlap on them) and also my Runic Power. While I realize that Paladins have also increased in complexity with the 96969 rotation (assuming you don't use a macro) and the introduction of altered cooldowns like LoHs becoming a 20 or 15 minute cooldown and Divine Protection becoming a Shield Wall like ability, but even then they have about as much to track as DKs not counting runes and RP.

So in response to this, I finished getting the champion's tokens I needed to get the last of the BoA plate pieces, picked up the 2H Axe and tossed them over to Alix along with 1k and change for a dual spec (Ret!) and a copy of the Tome of Cold Weather Flight. Basically I was tooling him up for the 71-80 rush.

I hit 80 about two weeks ago and have been running a lot of instances both PUGged and guild runs and this past weekend I broke past the 540 defense barrier. While I know I was fine past 535 for non-raids, and I'm definitely not geared well enough for raids, it's still a major point to get past.

Now I'll just keep pushing on the non-raids, specifically ToC to soak up the purples I don't have yet from it, maybe even getting my guild to do a Naxx run (both for achievement's sake and for possibly more loot). So I'm back on the light side of things and pretty pleased as such.

New Races and their Racials

2009-09-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

Worgen: So we finally get more info on this interesting race. Maybe possibly having them tied into the future or past of Azeroth is an interesting thing (was implied that the Worgen aren't from a "Where" but a "When").

I'm interested in seeing how they introduce Druidism to the Worgen. It doesn't look like they are taking the "Worgen can change shape, so of course they are Druids" approach... They showed the Night Elves so maybe they will learn Druidism from them. Though I seem to recall mention about "old allies" or something? Maybe they plan on trying to connect the Worgen in Ashenvale to the ones in Gilneas (wait... what?).

Interesting side note: Go take a look at the Cataclysm teaser video again. Go ahead, I'll be here when you get back. ... Back? Okay, you saw that cool scene where the human starts turning into a Worgen? First one arm becomes wolf-ish, then the other and he stares at it, then he fully Wolfs out!

Looks kinda cool, right? Some of you probably think that it's just there for the teaser, but you'd be wrong. In the demo I got to play at BlizzCon, if you went through an out-of-combat transformation, then you'd got through that exact animation. Sweet, eh?

Anyway, for those who don't know, when you aren't fighting you can choose between staying in your normal human form or staying in your full Worgen form, or swap back and forth as you see fit (maybe you think you look awesome with a certain helm looking a certain way depending on form). Though no matter what, when you engage an enemy, you'll change into your Worgen form, though the transformation is instantaneous instead of a couple second animation (thank god on that regard...)

Goblins: While I'm still a bit bothered by this, Blizzard is good at crafting a solid story, so I wouldn't be surprised if they gave a decent reason (though I question if it will stand up to the test of time being that Goblins are quite mercenary and very rarely tugged by their heartstrings...) for them joining the Horde.

As far as the range of classes go, I'm pretty happy with them. The closest thing that comes to something that I'd have issue with is the Goblin Shaman, but at the same time I could totally see them making deals with the Elementals, thus binding them to their will. There's no give and take here in Goblin Land.

Racials: First I'll list the new racials available to the Goblins and Worgen:

Goblins:

Rocket Jump: This sorta works like a reverse Disengage, jumping you forward. Could be handy in PvP for quickly closing the distance to a target or running the hell away, or for charging into melee if you're not a Warrior (could definitely see the value for Goblin DK tanks). Shares a two minute cool down with Rocket Barrage (see below).
Rocket Barrage: Launches a volley of rockets at your current target, dealing fire damage that should scale (with level? AP or SP? Not really sure). Shares a two minute cool down with Rocket Jump
Time is Money: Goblins are always on the go. Time wasted is money not gotten, so of course goblins would always want to go a little faster than everyone else. This manifests itself in a passive 1% haste boost to their attack speed and cast times.
Better living through chemistry: Goblins are the iconic alchemists and this takes the form of a 15 skill bonus if the Goblin is trained in Alchemy. Additionally they will also gain a bonus (unknown amount) to any healing and mana potions they use.
Pack Hobgoblin: Introducing a new "race" in Cataclysm, your goblin will be able to summon, every 30 minutes, a "Pack Hobgoblin" which will give you access to your bank. While the time limitation are strong, you're essentially doubling or tripling your inventory space. This is going to be great for going out and farming for extended periods of time. No more need to throw away all those grays and whites to make room for the stuff you'll make a profit with. Now you can stuff them in your bank and sell them later. Forget to grab a quest item or piece of resist gear out of the bank for that boss fight? No problem! Definitely an awesome racial.
Best Deals Anywhere - Best possible gold discount, regardless of reputation. This one is just HOT! Still want to do some of the rep grinds for the rewards, but imagine how much money you'll save!

Worgen:

Shapeshift: Doesn't give any racial bonuses or anything. Purely cosmetic, changes you from a Human into a Worgen and back again.
Aberration: Reduce duration of Curses and Diseases by 15%. Certainly handy, especially in PvP against Warlocks and Death Knights.
Flayer: Skinning skill +15, skin targets faster and you use your claws (don't need a knife). Much like the Goblin alchemy bonus, this takes the normal skill bonus and adds a little extra to make it worthwhile.
Viciousness - Increase damage by 1%. Kinda like a counterpart to the 1% haste bonus the Goblins have, the Worgen get a straight up 1% damage bonus. In high endgame, this will be quite powerful (as of right now, it'd be worth 30-50 DPS in most cases, which is awesome).
Darkflight - Activate your true form, increasing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec, 3 minute cooldown. Sorta like a shortened, more powerful dash or sprint. Will be handy for getting around in the 1-19 range, plus fantastic for BGs like EotS and WSG.

So there they are. The first thing that stands out to me is how ridiculously overpowered they are compared to the racials of the currently available races. So they'll be brought in line, right? Well, kinda... as long as you define the "they" in this case as "all the other races". Yes, Blizzard has stated that they intend on boosting all existing racials up to similar levels as exhibited by the two new races.

A couple things that are likely to be added, using these two races as templates:

1% passive combat bonuses. These won't all be simple stuff like "1% bonus to damage". I'm sure Blizzard will figure out clever ways to alter this, but still have it be a 1% bonus that makes the race fun and unique. Additionally, don't expect all of them to actually be damage bonuses. Consider the Goblin bonus is 1% bonus to haste, which includes spell haste. This makes Goblins better healers than Worgen since the Worgen bonus is only to damage. Additionally, there's nothing saying that it has to be a damage bonus... I could totally see them giving peace-loving, tree-hugging hippy races like the Draenei, Tauren or Night Elves a 1% passive bonus to all heals cast (this would definitely work well for the Tauren as after Cataclysm goes live they will be the only race in the game that has access to all four healing classes).
Crafting skill bonuses will be given a passive minor bonus. Keeping in line with the bonus given to Worgen on skinning, I could see Tauren being able to pick flowers faster or maybe an increased chance to get an additional herb (like the Lotuses or Swiftthistle). Other race's bonuses will be minor as well, but still helpful. I could imagine a Gnome being given a passive bonus that lowers the chance of a critical failure when using their engineering devices. Draenei maybe are given a 1% bonus if they make their socket bonus or something. Blood Elves could be given a chance to get an additional enchanting material when they disenchant items or maybe they can just disenchant more quickly. Nothing too powerful, but a nice bonus if you are playing that race.
I'd also expect an overhaul of other outdated racials. Endless Breath? It's nice and all, but now that you can hold your breath for 3 minutes, it's value is much diminished (but still handy, just not as handy...). Things like that I expect will be given the once or twice over to see if they can't be improved or replaced (Wisp Form and Cannibalism also spring to mind...). Heck, maybe they'll even replace the racials based on specific weapons (i.e. the ones for Humans, Dwarves, Orcs and Trolls) and give them ones which are always active!

And for those wondering about it, I'll give my thoughts on the new race/class combos in a different post.

BlizzCon Post becomes BlizzCon Posts

2009-09-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

As usual I was biting off more than I could chew when I began this post. So instead I'm going to post each portion I've made so far in a mass posting spree (sorry if anyone's tracking my blog with an RSS feed), and continue posting my thoughts in individual bits.

Anyway, I'll start this off with the quotation of my introduction:

Much belated (which I blame on a combination of work, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Final Fantasy Dissidia, and another thing I'll post about later), here's my post on BlizzCon, or at least the bits which really stand out in my head:
Opening Ceremonies was dominated, for me at least, by the announcement of Cataclysm. I'll openly admit that I was almost completely wrong on my predictions about the expansion. I knew it would be called Cataclysm (the name was trademarked here in the States months ago), and I was kinda right about the revamp of the Old World (since I figured with the potential addition of new races and new race/class combos they would want genuinely new content for old players who are leveling anew). I was kinda right about the new race/class combos following a logical path I got from Arioch.
Though at the end of the day, my core thoughts were all that it was a sham and I was wrong. I'll now give Boubouille's leaks more credibility.

Before I jump into my posts concerning BlizzCon...

2009-08-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

There's something I want to talk about that wasn't really mentioned at BlizzCon: The unnamed MMO.

While there are probably people who are interested in hearing my thoughts on said event, I wanted to get this post out there before I forgot my thoughts about it.

First off, let's go over the very little we do know:

Blizzard is releasing another MMO.
It's a new Intellectual Property (IP).

That's it! That's all we really know.

So with so little to know, what is there that I could speak about? Is it that it's a new MMO? No. There are a ton of new MMOs, and really with the announcement of Cataclysm, Blizzard has shown that it has no intent of dropping its flagship moneymaker (WoW) the moment this MMO goes live.

But the development of new IP is big news. Not just because it's Blizzard, though that would be enough for me. I'm a huge fan of Blizzard's previous games, having beaten almost every one multiple times. Warcraft. Diablo. Starcraft. All amazing games and/or series.

But this brings up a question... Blizzard has both the Diablo settings and the Starcraft settings that they could expand into for the MMO market. Who here can honestly say they wouldn't sign up immediately for Worlds of Starcraft? So why make an entirely new IP?

Now, time out for a sec. I don't remember where, a while back I saw a blog post about the perceived "death" of new IPs for MMOs (if anyone recognizes the blog post I'm referring to, could you direct me to it?). The basic assertion of the post was that why should a company spend time and money developing a brand new IP for an MMO when there are, literally, hundreds of different settings which could all easily be used for MMOs?

Now back to the new MMO. If the above blog post is true, why is Blizzard... the leader of the MMO genre and one of the biggest names in the gaming field, doing something that makes so little sense? Or... does it make a lot of sense?

Blizzard has, since the release of tBC, increasingly prioritized Game Balance over The Lore. And while I'm a little sad, it's overall made my gaming experience that much more fun, which more than makes up for it. Prior to tBC, vanilla WoW was, almost blow for blow, a match to the lore of WC3 and the novels along with previous sources. If anything, it just expanded on what we already knew, fleshing everything out.

But they found that being too adamant about sticking to The Lore would cause serious, serious issues. The imbalance between one side having Paladins and the other side having Shaman is a stellar example of this. I'm sure there are other changes I could think of, but none spring to mind... but you get the idea.

So they chose flexibility over rigidity for the pre-existing storyline to make the game play experience that much better. While a part of me despairs of the changes to the story and moving away from what it was between the end of WC3 and the start of tBC, I realize that Blizzard is a business and will do what's best for the company. And honestly, as a game (but not a consistent storytelling device), WoW is a stellar success.

Now, let's take a step back from WoW and look over other MMOs based on existing IPs. I'm going to discount FFXI since each one is based on it's own world (even though I feel that it was a financial success, but that's separate).

I would say that the only other MMO based on an major existing non-MMO IP that has succeeded was UO, but that game was released back when there weren't many other real MMO options. UO, EQ, Meridian 59, The Realm Online and Asheron's Call were really it in those days.

Games like SWG, DDO, WAR, AoC, MxO, The Sims Online, and LotRO are all generally considered pretty spectacular failures.

I feel that part of the problem (though not the entire problem) is either you go into the game wanting it to match the source it came from and it does not, or it does match said source, but does so closely that it's no fun.

Early versions of SWG illustrated sticking to the source too well, making the game quite un-fun to play. SOE made SWG take place during the Galactic Civil War. As most already know, by then almost all the Jedi were wiped out. So as a result, when SOE was designing Galaxies, they made the Jedi class so hard to unlock that initially no one could figure out how to do it. Four months after the game's release no one had figured it out, and in retrospect it's pretty obvious why. I mean, in a Star Wars game there are those who will inevitably want to play Jedi. In fact a lot will. Sticking to the lore and being like "only a few and they have these limitations" pretty much hurt SWG from the get go...

Then later on SOE changed SWG to a system less skill tree based and more classical (ha ha, see what I did there?). In this case, when you started you picked your class of which one was Jedi. This created the other side of the problem. Sure, anyone could be a Jedi but it had to be balanced compared to the other classes. Unfortunately, they didn't rebalance other classes to bring them up to Jedi's power levels, they beat Jedi with the nerf stick until they were a shadow of their former selves. Thus while the game was balanced, it bore so little resemblance Jedi presented in the movies that it was an insult. With the game originally balanced around "normal" people, with the force sensitives being hard to unlock and having limited lives (no joke on that on...), it was okay. But bring the Jedi down to an equal level with everyone else just made them underwhelming.

In a very round about way, I'm saying that having an existing IP is actually showing itself to be a liability and not a strength. Sure... you don't have to spend as much money developing it, but balancing between being true to the lore and not alienating the fan and making a fun game is tricky at best and impossible at worst.

Even WoW suffers from this. As I mentioned, I quit the game entirely for a number of months because of the changes they made to the back story when tBC was introduced. I'm sure I'm not the only one (at that point Blizzard had around 5-6 million subscribers... no way I was the only one). And I came back, but who knows how many didn't? And as things went on, the lore was again and again changed for the benefit of the game which probably had a similar effect.

By making an entirely new setting, Blizzard is freeing themselves from any existing lore limitations! They can build the entire setting with how to make the best MMO they can think of in mind. Honestly, I'm even more excited about the prospects of this new MMO now than I was before (and honestly I was pretty excited...). If Blizzard can reproduce their success in the MMO department that they had with WoW in this new MMO with a lore that is completely without need for a retcon, I will love it SO MUCH!

P.S. Sorry for taking so long with this post. It ended up going through four iterations of this post before I felt it was a smooth read.

Not dead, but darned close!

2009-08-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

I've not given up on WoW or anything in light of Cataclysm (not that even if WoW went belly up I'd stop posting here since this is an MMO blog and not a WoW blog). I've just been bedridden since I got back from BlizzCon. I managed to pick up a particularly vicious bout of ConPlague while I was down in Anaheim.

For those of you unaware of "ConPlague", it's what happened when you get a few thousand people from all over together in tight confines, have them run themselves ragged so their immune systems are weakened and then BAM! Down you go.

I'm at work today for the first time since I left for BlizzCon on Friday morn, and even now I'm not 100%. Nose is still a bit stuffed up, throat a bit sore, but I think I've got the actual serious aspects of the sickness defeated. Even then, I can't really afford to just slack off more if I can help it.

So now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

I'm with him...

2009-08-21T03:29:00.000-07:00

So this weekend, Tobold made a post about MMO-Champion's "leaks" concerning the next WoW Expansion. Link here.

Tobold posted about them in an article titled Not Believing Everything (Also, thanks for pointing me at RSS feeds allowing me to read your full posts Tobold), and I have to admit that while I disagree on some of the details, I think his overall assessment is correct and that this is just someone pulling a hoodwink over others eyes for their own jollies.

First I'll touch on what Tobold pointed out:

"The level cap in the next expansion will be slightly lower than expected this time around; 85. This suggests Blizzard wants more room for expansions before hitting the level 100 cap." Already highly suspicious. There is no such thing as a level 100 cap. There is no reason at all for Blizzard not to add 10 or more levels per expansion and arrive at level 200 or more one day.

This one's spot on. Level 100 cap? I think this is just your standard placing of additional meaning on BIG ROUND NUMBERS! I mean, the how many people were predicting doom and gloom for the year 2000 (and not because of the Y2K bug). Eeeee! A big round number?! This obviously means something important! *facepalm*

Additionally, the change to adding 5 levels would call for a dramatic shift in talent design. Up until now, while there's an occasional X6 single point talent power, most of the talents which added a new power were X1 talent, like the 11 point talents. These were particularly iconic for the max level talents (31 point, 41 point and 51 point talents). For those who have leveled up as an Arms Warrior (especially pre-tBC Arms Warriors), remember when you got to level 40 and then suddenly... MORTAL STRIKE!

This is a huge shift in talent design because (assuming they add a new single-point max tier talent), there's no talent tier between the 51st and 56th talent (obviously, but follow me here). Now, we have much less wiggle room if we want to spend 20 points outside our given tree of choice.

Also, they usually add a lot of new talents and time is spent figuring out what are good choices and what are bad choices, but at least we have 10 new talent points to spend on them... now we'll get close to the same amount of talents, but only half as many talent points to figure out what to spend them on...

Next portion:

"Troll Druid" In the list of new race / class combinations there is just one new race allowed to play druid. Which would give the Horde two druid-enabled races vs. the Alliance's only one. Never going to happen.

This implies that there were only two races who could roll as Druids for balance reasons. I might buy this if it weren't for the fact that for every class that has an equal balance in races which can access it on either side (Druids, Mages, and Rogues), there are two that there are an unequal balance between (Hunters, Paladin, Priests, Shaman, Warlocks, and Warriors).

I do agree with Tobold this sounds wrong, just for different reasons. Class/race combos are based upon the lore. In fact, one could argue that it's one of the few areas where the lore still stands strong, and at least as of right now, there's no lore justifying Trolls as Druids (or a lot of the other class/race combos that MMO-Champion is listing). While I've seen it pointed out that the Trolls in raid instances change shape, that's hardly justification for Troll Druidism... first off, we know mobs, and especially bosses, do things we can't. Second off, if changing forms is a sign of being a Druid then that means every shaman that has ever existed... IS REALLY A DRUID! OMG! But seriously... Trolls have, since they were introduced in WC2, been practitioners of Animal Shamanism. This is where they get their shape changing powers. From their Shaman ANIMAL TOTEMS.

Before I go to Tobold's last point I'll give my thoughts on the other class/race combos:

THE ALLIANCE:

Dreanei ???: First flaw in this theory. Assuming this is the full list, all the rest of the races get one or two "new" classes. Draenei? They get diddly squat. Nada. Hmmmm...

Dwarf Mages: Being a Mage is merely learning magic. There's nothing stopping the Dwarves (and in fact, in Alpha and possibly Beta for Vanilla WoW there were Dwarven Mages).

Dwarf Shaman: Uh... what? I mean... it's been hinted that some of the WILDHAMMER Dwarves (as in the ones in the Hinterlands, who aren't the same Dwarves as the Bronzebeard Dwarves which are who the "Dwarven" players play as). So... either you're a Wildhammer Dwarf or the Wildhammers taught Shamanism to the Bronzebeards. >.>a I... guess? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me...

Gnome Priests: Again... uh... what? About the only thing that the Gnomes worship is Technology. I mean, unless Mimiron came and granted them powers or something.

Human Hunters: Hey, if Nathanos Marris (aka Nathanos Blightcaller) can do (before he became an undead monster), so can the rest of us.

Night Elf Mages: This one both works and fails at the same time! Exciting huh? Okay, so this one ties into a quest that's being datamined in 3.2.2, where there's a Highborne (not High Elves, but Night Elves who practiced Arcane Magic but hadn't started looking like Legolas) who comes out of hiding (there is a precedence for this with the Highborne in Dire Maul) and asks to rejoin "his people" (or something like that... haven't really looked into it seriously). So... Night Elf Mages, right?

Well, this works up until you have the whole "They caused the Great Sundering thing, then after seeing what they had wrought, they still thought Arcane Magic was cool, so to show what they could do, despite it being outlawed in Night Elf society, they attempted to help and caused another disaster (though on a much smaller scale)." Why in the Nine Hells would the Night Elf leadership let these guys back in? This fricken' baffles me. *froths at the mouth some more before continuing*

THE HORDE:

Blood Elf Warriors: Totally seeable. I've been of the opinion that the primary reason that there were no Blood Elf Warriors previously was to balance out the amount of classes being added with the Draenei. They would have needed to slip another class into them in order keep the total amount of class/race combos equal. But if they are adding a bunch of new classes to both sides, this gives them the chance to correct what they had to leave out before.

Orc Mage: No precedence for it, but far from being impossible. What happens to a Warlock if he decides to break his pact with his demon. Could take up Elemental or Restoration Shamanism, but becoming a Mage is a much closer step.

Tauren Paladin and Tauren Priest: Putting these two together because they both suffer from the same core problem, but the former much more than the latter. Tauren weren't even originally Druids in early development of WoW. Druids were limited to (as they had been in WC3) Night Elves, but this created a rather large gulf between the two factions, with the Alliance getting two unique classes, and the Horde only having one. So they worked it in that in the peace filled aftermath of the Third War, the Druids of the Cenarion Circle found information that there had once been Tauren Druids or that they had been on their way to becoming Druids, only they didn't finish their training or something. Anyway, it balanced the two factions with 7 classes that they shared and one class that was unique to that faction.

But I digress. Anyway, the problem with both Paladins and Priests is they are organized religion with all the Holy and Shadow stuff. While the Tauren are a religious people, their religion is very nature-based.

Now, I'll bite... I could maybe see Tauren Priests. There's the Earth Mother stuff, and this is kinda similar to how the Night Elves worship Elune and also are Druids. Maybe instead of nature worship through Shamanism, it's directly worshiping the incarnation of the Earth Mother herself. I've also heard rumors of worshiping the sun (as a sorta contrast to how the Night Elves worship the Moon through Elune).

But Paladins? Yeah, sure... Taurens are noble. Heck, they are, IMO, the most noble of the player races in the game, including the Draenei. Even the Draenei hate the Orcs for the mass genocide they committed on them while they were under demonic influence. The closest the Tauren come to hating anyone are the centaur, because they attack the Tauren, and anyone who defiles the earth. I mean, given a chance I'm pretty sure the Tauren would just chill out in Mulgore and take advantage of their Herbalism skill bonus... But being a Paladin is more than just being noble. It's also requires you to channel the powers of The Holy Light through you. Again the Sun comes up, but there's a very very big difference between sun light and The Holy Light. It's a very specific energy source that is either drawn through faith or taken by will (or was it ever taken by will by the Blood Elves? I know Mu'ru let himself be captured... did he fake letting them take the energy and gave it willingly, knowing his fate? I need to read up on this...), but either way it was The Holy Light... a source of energy and a religion that the Tauren have no history of associating with up to now.

Undead Hunter: See the Human Hunter entry. Even more-so for them since they have/had an active ex-Ranger General on their side.

Two more thoughts before I go onto the last part of Tobold's post: Arioch posted a detailed view on the new classes and amongst her thoughts, she included this very insightful train of thought:

My gut reaction is it is to facilitate the faction transfer process. How many Alliance paladins are out there that want to make the switch to the Horde but don’t want to be a blood elf? (To those of you in that camp – you don’t know what you’re missing /flex).

How many Horde shaman want to turn traitor but don’t want to be a space goat?

What if they don’t have The Burning Crusade expansion? “Ah, yes. I’m a human paladin and I want to switch to the Horde… but I never upgraded my account so can’t quite be a blood elf… so, what are you going to do with me? Upgrade me for free?” Yeah right. Now you can be a cow. Like it.

This is a really insightful, even if last point is a bit of a stretch (really... who hasn't upgraded?). At the end of the day, having choices will always trump being railroaded into a single option. Let's say you're a Night Elf Druid and your friends are all on the Horde side, so you transfer. As of right now, your only option is changing into a giant, hulking, cow monster... but after Cataclysm goes live you could change into either a giant, hulking, cow monster or a lanky, tusked, cannibalistic monster! Awesome! Okay, all jokes aside, more options are never bad, so with this in mind, I think the addition of more classes is... okay? I'm not thrilled about certain race/class combos, but this makes it seem a lot more sensible than they just got out two dartboards and started throwing one at each until they got the new pairings.

Oh right, and for those thinking "But there are only 3 Druid races. What if I'm a Horde Druid and I want to go over to the Alliance? I don't want to be a dorky Night Elf". Well if Arioch is right on why they are adding these new race/class combos, then it's far too likely that the Worgen will also have Druids as one of their classes (this starts an entirely different rant that I'll go into later).

The second point is that of the four I really have issue with (Dwarf Shaman, Night Elf Mage, Tauren Paladin and Troll Druid) three of those are the currently "single-race" classes on one of the sides, or both. Thus the driving reason for this addition makes me want to kick a puppy. I realize they have to stretch to figure out a way to slide these classes into races that don't quite fit them because if they were a fit, Blizzard would have already added them back at the start or during an earlier expansion (like tBC). While I can accept that these changes are there for The Game Balance over The Lore (note the capitals), they still really bother me. I have no intention of stopping playing because of this. As I mentioned in my previous post based on a Tobold blog post, I love WoW. It's the best MMO I've played to date and I've played a lot of them. This is mostly just me griping.

Anyway, the final part of Tobold's post:

"Part of the redesign of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is the introduction of flying to the two continents" There is already software available that allows you a virtual flight through Azeroth, basically a viewer of the World of Warcraft. And when you use it in the old world, you notice that large parts are just Potemkin villages, places of which only the facade exists. Enabling flying in the old world would mean completely redoing every single bit of that world, so people don't fly up and see behind the empty facades. Given the huge amount of work that would be, and the speed at which Blizzard traditionally works, this is rather unlikely.

This actually matches what Blizzard has said all along. Pretty much since the introduction of flying back when tBC went live, players have been requesting access to flying in the "old world". And all along Blizzard has stated that while it is technically possible, it's not an effective use of development time.

This is because (as Tobold pointed out) there are large swaths of the world that are not developed, or if they are developed, created just to add graphical flavor when flying over, and are not meant to be accessed by the player base. Shatterspear Village (aka The Happy Dancing Troll Village) between Darkshore and Moonglade is a perfect example of the latter.

So basically to do this, Blizzard will, literally, have to redesign a majority of the old world. This will be a very, very time consuming project, considering that they plan on also redoing much of the old world itself. Totally revamping, amongst other places, Barrens, Azshara, and major changes (if not total overhauls) to zones like Thousand Needles, Durotar, Gnomeregan, Wailing Caverns, and Blackrock Mountain.

So instead of developing new content for the majority of the playerbase who's already max level, they will spend time redesigning the world mostly for leveling players (Barrens split in two, but still for the 10-30 range) and Azshara being changed to a 10-20 leveling range (possibly to be the second zone for Goblins)? Maybe it's just me but this seems like a really bad use of development time.

Though I will give a counter viewpoint of my previous thoughts:

First off, back when Blizzard added tBC, the game was already a little over two years old. Those who rerolled as Blood Elves and Draenei were fine for the first 20ish levels in the new zones, when all of a sudden they were stuck back in the middle of everything with all the content everyone had run a million times over. Sure, they slipped a few new quests in here and there with the two new races spreading across Azeroth with their allies, but for the most part these were single quests or maybe a full quest chain. I know there's a mostly Draenei quest hub in eastern Ashenvale, not sure if the same goes for Blood Elves in a different location, but the point still stands.

It has now been over two years since the release of tBC, and with the exception of the revamp of Duskwallow Marsh in 2.3, there haven't been any quests added to the 1-60 level range. At this point, anyone who's leveled a non-DK alt has done most if not all the quests available in the 1-60 run.

With the potential addition of two new races, suddenly the dearth of new content in the 1-60 run rears it's hideous head once more. Sure Blizzard could do what they did in 2.0 and spread a spattering new quests across the zones with Worgen and Goblins popping up at the various quest hubs (wait... there are already Goblins at the various Horde quest hubs...), but it doesn't make the portions where you're stuck without new quests any faster.

Some people would just request that they remove the 1-60 (or even 1-70 or 80) grind. Have characters start at 55 like DKs, or even 60 to get past it all. While this has it's merits, what about those who want to do the newbie zones? Should there be a one-way trip to 60 or 70 the moment you finish it? Would it only be available to the new races or good for anyone?

Instead, doing a massive overhaul to the design of the old world, they will give players who start one of the new races or one of the old races a whole new set of quests to go through. And if all the new quests are not counted by the old quests' completion tracker, then if you don't want to start a new character, you can just run back to the old world on your level 80 and stomp through every quest for the thrill/lore of it.

Additionally, since the release of WoW, back when the core of the old world was designed, WoW has undergone massive changes. And I'm not just referring to in The Lore (though that alone could be enough), but also the technology of the game.

First off, the technological changes: Even if we look past the graphical upgrades, relatively minor as they are, there are additions such as Daily Quests and Phasing Quests. These two additions, especially the latter, would create a much different and more lasting situation in the world.

Imagine, first off the quests focusing on the Gnolls are removed from Lakeshire, so all the quests are focusing on the threatening Blackrock Orcs who control Stonewatch Keep. After defeating them, said keep is then filled with Alliance guards and others working to rebuild it. It could then become a quest hub to deal with the remnants of the Blackrock Orcs in and around Stonewatch along with the growing threat from the Gnolls.

And that's just one quick example I can think of. If pressed I could probably think of alterations for every zone currently in the game. Ways to give them a more concrete feeling. Additionally, these post-phase zones could be used to give a dynamic feeling to the growing conflict between the Horde and the Alliance.

What if, once you got to a certain zone, there were reports coming in that the other faction was moving in to take some strategic location, if they hadn't already taken it. So you, the loyal hero of your faction is tasked to attack an equally vital position in the hands of (whoever is the NPC enemy group of this zone), and take it in the name of the King/Warchief! So you go to this location, fighting your way through the zone and defeating the boss. You then report back to the quest giver, who thanks you for your work and tells you to report back to the location you just secured. Now it's a Daily PvP quest hub, all thanks to you!

So technologically speaking WoW's undergone major changes and the same can be said for the setting itself. Since WoW's release Blizzard has pushed the overall story forward, either via the game itself, or via companion products such as novels and the WoW comic book. While Blizzard as do minor things like adding and removing characters (for example, the removal of Katana Prestor and the "return" of Varian Wrynn), it's always been "fixable" with a quick change.

But if WotLK ends the way it's looking like it will end (with the death of the Lich King! O_O), this will be the most major change to The Lore yet. What difference will it make? Well, for starters, all the Scourge locations will be in disarray, their leader dead. The current implementation of places like the Plaguelands just make no sense with the Lich King dead. By redoing them, maybe focusing on other powers in the Scourge who have taken control of groups of its remnants (much like the Cerebrates did in Starcraft after the death of the Overmind).

Also, with the cold war between the Horde and the Alliance growing hotter with every patch, this will allow Blizzard to redesign many of the quests and zones to place a greater emphasis on it. This could very much be used as a replacement for the Scourge in certain zones such as Tirisfal Glades, the Plaguelands, and Silverpine Pine. If the Horde is depicted as defending itself against Alliance incursions in Silverpine and Tirisfal Glades, you still have a wide variety of quests, but they could show early the struggle between the two factions.

Other zones could also be used to emphasize the greater importance of the battle between the two factions, such as Ashenvale. Instead of having a few quests where you fought the enemy faction, we could have out-and-out war!

So while it would be time consuming, and a part of me wants more max-level content, I can understand the benefit that would come from redoing old content.

Anyway, all of this is just speculation. We'll have answers quite soon. In fact, I'm due to leave for BlizzCon in about and hour (and thus I cut down this post a bit...). Well, if you're interested in my thoughts and don't want to wait until after BlizzCon, check out my post below concerning my BlizzCon Twitter account!

See y'all later!

Twittering from BlizzCon!

2009-08-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of putting together a huge post on my thoughts on the Cataclysm leaks, but it's taking much longer than anticipated (What? Me be long winded? Lies and slander!). Anyway, either way I'll be going to BlizzCon tomorrow morning and I've made a twitter account just for my posts from said awesome event. I'll try to have my thoughts on the Cata leaks up before I leave, since one way or another we'll have answers after this weekend.

Anyway, if you're interested in reading my thoughts on it, you can follow me there and I'll post as frequently as I can (though I'm afraid I'm going to prioritize listening to the panels to tweeting).

Oh... right... 3.2!

2009-08-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

I just realized that everyone else is posting their thoughts on 3.2 and I haven't! Shame on me! (Though I was out of town this week so my experiences in 3.2 are somewhat limited...)

Let's see...

Trial of the Champions (that's the 5-man): Fun!

The transfer from being mounted to fighting the three champions on foot is really clunky. Your still using your lance, everyone's everywhere, and God only knows who has threat with whom. My core group that I normally run heroics with has done it twice so far. We have nothing but iLVL 200+ gear, and many slots are 213 or higher. Yet on both of our runs we have wiped. I'm sure we'll get better, but I think this could have been more smoothly designed. Maybe not give us a chance to engage them on our terms, but give us a moment to at least get out of weapons, please...
The second fights are cute, especially when Argent Confessor Paleteress (BTW, great reference!) summons an illusion of a fight of the past, but not particularly challenging. Got The Faceroller (hee hee!) achievement last night when we killed Eadric the Pure.
The Black Knight (oh noes! I spoiled it! D:) is an interesting fight. The first time I fought him I missed out that there was a phase three... so when he died the second time I was thinking "Well there we go." only to have him get up again. It was like "Why won't you die!?" But after that we were fine.
One thing I like that they did with this is that all the loot is on-par or better than Naxx loot, which means if you are like my guild and not deeply into Ulduar there are some decent upgrades. Heck, there are even good upgrades from normal TotC5. I plan on doing some PUG runs in the coming weeks.

Really beyond that I don't have a lot of comments. The lack of options for 1H tanking weapons makes DW tanking a non-option to me, so the major change to the Frost tree (my preferencial tree for DKs) doesn't matter.

Changes to other classes are interesting but not overly prevelant to me. About the biggest change is the addition of the Shaman Totem Bar, but that's because my girlfriend plays a shaman and we commonly instance/raid together.

I'm working on getting the Crusader Title and Exalted with the Silver Covenant so I can start doing the new dailies for the island north Icecrown and gain access to the new stuff that you can get for Crusader Tokens (or do you buy them with Emblems?). But I can't do them yet, so it's just more of the same. Woo.

And I haven't touched any of the PvP stuff added. Neither the new BG nor the revamped WG. I'm not really sure what to make of the revamped WG. Preface: My server is very badly imbalanced on the Alliance side of things. Prior to 3.2, when Horde was on defence they were almost assured to lose. One time I looked in the book outside of Arch's instance and the numbers were something like this:

Alliance Successful Offensives: 328
Horde Successful Offensives: 314
Alliance Successful Defenses: 316
Horde Successful Defenses: 39

No, I did not forget to add a number to that last bit. Seriously... they would only win when they were on the defense 10% of the time. As for why this happens, obviously because the Alliance can field way more players than the Horde can, even with the bonus granted for being outnumbered, they just get overwhelmed. Now with the sides being evenly capped at 120 per, I'm hoping it's more balanced. I'm just basing my statement on one of my friends saying a few unclear things. Honestly I hope it doesn't become an inverse where we were before, with the Horde winning all the time and the Alliance only able to occasionally take it from them only to have it stolen the next go around. Really, I want a nice balance between who has it and who doesn't.

About the only major change I've made recently has nothing to do with the patch and that was dropping Blacksmithing and Mining and taking Alchemy and Inscription on my main. My guild lacks high a raider who has either, so I decided to take both on my main.

Sadly, this is not something new...

2009-08-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Tobold (which is a blog blocked by my work firewall and that makes me a very sad, sad panda) recently posted a post (which I saw via my cell phone's internet) titled "Game design beats lore in Cataclysm". In it he details how http://www.wow.com/ is posting a lot about the theoretical new expansion (which, if true, will be announced at BlizzCon).

Tobold goes on to comment about how the Worgen are speculated to be the new race for the Alliance and then quotes the basic info from the WoWWiki article on Worgen which describes them as horrible, bloodthirsty monsters. His next point is that the pretense of the Alliance being the "good guys" and the Horde being the "bad guys" is gone.

Aside: Technically if you do all the quests like I have, you realize the Alliance is no more "good guys" than the Horde are "bad guys". There are very good and very bad people in both factions, but in the end, mostly it's just shades of gray. But that's not the point of this post...

Then he postulates that this is another attempt to balance the factions, giving the Alliance a "monstrous" race while the Horde will get the Goblins, which gives them a cutesy race, broadening their appeal.

Whether this is an attempt to add appeal to the Horde or if it's just an attempt to give some cool new races, the statement that game design is more important than the lore is definitely not something new.

While it didn't show up in RTS games since they could tailor the races to work with where they wanted the story to go, the same doesn't work for an MMO, and especially one like WoW>

First off, even ignoring the potential issue created when they decided to make it Horde vs. Alliance (a design change they made, since some of the original concept art have, for example, Humans, Orcs and Tauren working together), just having to balance the classes against each other made things hard. This DPS and that DPS need to not be too different from each other. One race needs to not be better than another in a given role.

Then mix in the initial issues of Paladins and Shaman on differing sides of the faction divide, not to mention other issues such as the Alliance getting Fear Ward and the Horde not, and it's more than just balancing around the lore. Other issues also popped up, such as the overall faction population imbalance.

Because of this, Blizzard decided to do a retcon. This wasn't the first time they decided to do this... they'd done it before with the storyline for going from WC2 to WC3, but that was done to create a more interesting story, while this was done for more practical reasons.

Draenei were changed from all of them being creepy shaman humanoid... things (See The Broken) to Light worshipping noble relatives of the evil Eredar. This was something that blindsided almost all the lore fans that I knew. There was nothing to back this up. And I remember hearing from a BlizzCon panel that one of the reasons Blood Elves were chosen was to give the Horde a visually appealing race.

Some consider the decision to make Paladins and Shaman playable on both sides the biggest lore travesty, though I viewed it as pretty common sense and less of a big deal. Opening up access to a class makes a lot more sense than changing something's entire history (Draenei). And both races had a precedent for their given "new" class. Elves have always been very magical and the High Elves had priests in WC3, so becoming Paladins is not a huge step. And as I mentioned above, the old Draenei were Shaman to begin with, so... that's fine.

Now, when I found out about Draenei I was livid. I completely quit the game (this was, obviously, prior to me starting this Blog). Eventually I returned, but I returned to play the game, not enjoy the lore as I had before.

Sure, I still did and do all the quests in the game and find them fun, but I'm now far less concerned with the impact of the story since I feel WoW is a game that a story is built around, not a story that a game is built around. And honestly, I'm fine with that. I think it makes for a better game that way, and I'm generally unable to enjoy either half in a vacuum.

Name change!

2009-08-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, forgot to mention it (though some of you more astute might have noticed the change in the link to the right), but I changed the name of my DK. Despite being a new character, everyone still called me Kaziel, Kaz, Alixander or Alix. This, combined with the fact that another of my guild name had a shortened version that sounded like my shortened name for my DK (Saiyarik's was shortened into Sai, and the other member was Sylaurin, pronounced Sigh-Lauren, shortened into Sy) I decided to change my DK's name and I did so choosing to combine my two known names into one:

Kazalix (pronoucned Kaz-Alex)

Before I decided on doing it, I had jokingly said I'd change my name to that. Then when I did it, I logged in and one of my friends commented "YOU DID NOT!" to which I repled "I DID!" and that alone made the price of the name change worth it.

Back from Limbo

2009-08-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

So the day of the DWing DK is nearing.

With 3.2 on the horizon, Blizzard is finally implementing something they mentioned in planning weeks ago: Making a talent in the Frost Tree which makes the abilities a Frost specced DK gets (including Death Strike) hit with both weapons if Dual Wielding.

For those not keeping up with MMO-Champion or the patch notes, the talent is:

Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death
Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a
30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand
strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.

Additionally the talent is deep enough in the Frost tree that only those going Frost can get it (or at least you can't get enough talents in another tree that you can reach a major talent in another tree).

Now, as a tank, I'm not immediately viewing this as the best thing ever. First and foremost, it's not made with DW Tanking in mind, since it doesn't effect Rune Strike. Mechanically Rune Strike is next to impossible to make hit with both weapons. This is, obviously, because it is based on the next hit, so having the off-hand attack as well would be a bit unbalanced (especially with 1H weapons having a much faster swing speed than 2Hs, so they could theoretically get off more Rune Strikes). Having MH + ½ OH damage every swing, plus additionally the normal ½ OH damage would be crazy damage, thus completely imbalanced.

Instead, a possible fix to making Rune Strike valid while DWing, would be a modification to it's threat generation. Currently Rune Strike does 150% damage plus a variable number based on AP, with a 150% threat modifier. If Rune Strike was changed to do the damage it normally does, only with (this is a random number and not truly reflective of the number needed to balance out the loss of damage) 200% threat modifier, our TPS would remain where it was with a 2H, while our damage wouldn't skyrocket. Now, from there, let's look at the pros and cons of DW vs. using a 2H.

Higher TPS: Two Hander

Straight numbers here. A DW attack, even if it uses two slow weapons, will still do less damage than a two-hander. It's just the facts. Assuming Blizzard does not do something for Rune Strike, there's the loss of TPS there too. While it's true that white DPS while DWing comes out ahead of a 2H (again, pure numbers), Death Knights' reliance on using weapon-based Strikes makes 2H a stronger TPS tool.

Side note: Remember that other classes that can use 2H and DW don't rely as heavily on weapon-based attacks as DKs do. Warriors only valid "strike" build is Arms, which only takes it's damage from it's main hand. Shaman only have Storm Strike (Lava Lash only does OH damage), plus the damage from weapon enchants. Basically, no other class is like a DK, so comparing it to other classes that can DW and pointing out how them DWing is better is a moot point.

Higher Overall-Survivability: DWing

As of right now, the most efficient enchant to use for a DK is the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Granting 25 Defense (non-diminishing) and a 2% health boost, this generally makes up for a DK not having access to a tanking specific weapon and a shield. While it's possible to take something other than SSG, you have to give up a lot in other areas because you're losing out on Defense.

Thus I constantly see people say that losing SSG makes you lose 25 defense, which amounts to 3% avoidance, not to mention that gear needs to be regemmed/re-enchanted for more Defense. These people are forgetting one very, very important thing about being a DW tank, and that is that you can... dual wield tanking weapons. Considering that Broken Promise is the best 1H tanking weapon currently available to a DK (will go over this later), and it gives 8.75 points (not rating) of Defense , if you were to DW two of them, you'd be sitting pretty at 17.5 Defense, thus meaning the loss of SSG actually only equates to a loss of 7.5 Defense points, and lose a grand total of 0.9% avoidance (and the 2% health bonus).

What I trade for those losses it the gain of 4% undiminishing Parry, along with a 50% reduction in disarm duration, and that's not counting any additional avoidance that one gets from Parry, Dodge, or Defense Rating on the two tanking weapons you choose to use. So in the end it's a decent gain in the avoidance department.

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So! Great stuff, right? Well... not really. The catch on all this: Blizzard isn't changing how the damage is based. All the attacks that are modified by ToT still do a % of weapon damage, which means you still want the weapons with the broadest damage ranges that you can get. Basically, fast weapons are bad, slow weapons are good.

No problem, right? Well... not really. Go run over to Wowhead, go to the PTR side of things, do a quick search of one hand, main hand and off-hand weapons useable by DKs, are iLVL 200 or higher, and have defense rating on them, but are slower than 2.0 speed. Go on, I'll be here when you get back...

What did you find? Unless they added anything new since last night when I checked for new stuff all you found were the Infantry Assault Blade, a blue iLVL 200 sword from Heroic Utgarde Keep and Broken Promise, which drops from Heroic Naxxramas. That's it folks. Two weapons, and even the best clocks in at only iLVL 213.

So by the time you're poking around hard modes in Ulduar or even normal mode on new instance when it comes out either tomorrow or the week after you'll start trailing behind in terms of available stamina. I mean, the amount of stamina that two Broken Promises gives you is about equal to what any other 2H will give you. By the time you start picking up even 10-man ulduar drops you're trailing, and you just keep falling further and further behind. While additional avoidance is good, falling behind in terms of EH is actually worse IMO. I've always been of the opinion that as long as you aren't neglecting either, EH > Avoidance. And yes I know it's only a little difference... but it will add up, of that I have no doubt. "Only 500 health" turns into "only 1,000 health" and keeps going.

It just doesn't justify itself in the end using two BPs when you have a perfectly good, up-to-date 2H.

Now, it's not a complete no-go. We don't have the full drop table from the new 5-man and the new raids, so it's possible that we just haven't seen some new slow 1H tanking weapon, but with Blizzard's track record, I wouldn't go holding your breath. Consider... one slow 1H tanking weapon in all the heroics (and only a blue, not an epic), one slow 1H tanking weapon in all of Naxx (both 10-man and 25-man), and absolutely no slow 1H tanking weapons in Ulduar, despite having something like over 800 pieces of loot between the 10-man normal and heroics and 25-man normal and heroics. If Blizz does add a slow 1H tanking weapon in this patch or in Icecrown, I'll do a respec, but for now it looks like I'll continue to use a 2H.

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Addendum: I'm really thinking about how I'm going to respec for my frost tanking build. One of the other changes in 3.2 was dropping Blood of the North from 5 points to 3. Previously I had just enough points get what I needed for a 15/51/5 build but now with my two floater points, I'm not sure where to put them... it'd be one thing to slip them over to Unholy to get something like increased disease duration, but they need to stay in the Frost tree so I can get Howling Blast.

I'm considering pulling more points out some of the handy but not necessary talents to go for Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons again. I had it before, but dropped it because we almost always have my girlfriend who plays an enhancement shaman. But with these damned floaters I might as well go for it and have her throw out the spell haste totem. It'll decrease my TPS a bit, but should boost overall raid DPS and I think that's probably the best for the guild. I mean, it's not like anyone can touch my TPS except the hunters when they are being stupid and not FDing... *glares at hunters*

WoW Journal 2/10

2009-02-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I'd like to clarify that a lack of new posts has less to do with falling back out of posting and more a general lack of things to post, though I'll give a general update.

Two weeks ago my guild began poking Naxx10 with a stick. Naxx10 poked back, but we poked harder. First time in (even though we had an experienced Naxx raider and some good geared folks) we downed the full Spider Wing with a few wipes and then went to the Plague Wing[1]. We got Noth the Plaguebringer on first time in. It was pushing on midnight server time when we reached Heigan and gave him a few attempts... *hums the Safety Dance* but were not able to learn the dance properly.

Then this past weekend we made our way in again, easily knocking over the Spiderwing with no setbacks at all and again finding our self at Heigan. Three tries of death, and we were ready to give up and try another wing but chose to gave him one last try. Managed to net us a win with three men standing. Warrior tank, Holy Priest and Retribution Paladin. Was a long fight but we danced right (and according to the people who did survive, their arms felt like jello afterward).

Also, if you're already dead, watching the Heigan fight while either Canned Heat (the song from Napoleon Dynamite that male Blood Elves dance to) or Yakety Sax (the Benny Hill Theme Song) makes it about a billion times better.

After downing Heigan, we continued on our way and took down Loatheb on our second attempt at it (first time the tank got hit with two seeds early on and people needed to slow up on DPS and we weren't able to down him in time...).

Other non-raidy news includes the acquisition of my first piece of Tier 7 gear: The Death Knight 10-man tanking chest. This is non-raidy news because I bought it with Emblems of Heroism. I chose the chest piece instead of the cheaper T7(10) Gloves for two reasons.

First off it drops from the Four Horsemen, and it's likely to be a while before we see those. As of right now my guild is only raiding one night a week (this is killing me!), so getting down Maxxena and then making our way to Loatheb took most of our night. Even if we were able to one-shot everything, that would leave us little time to poke the Construct Wing, let alone the Military Wing (I realize that we can do any wing we want, but that's beside the point).

Second off, on our first night in Naxx I got the tanking gauntlets from Grand Widow Faerlina, but I was still running around in the blue chest from Revered with Wyrmrest Accord, so it was a much larger upgrade. Yay for another piece replaced with a iLVL 200 epic!

Hmmm... what else... Almost done with the Elder achievement (just in time to boot!). All I'm missing are the Old World Dungeon Elders (can do those in a fricken snap!), though my friends are missing the Azjol-Nerub Elder, so on Wednesday we're gonna do a Heroic Azjol-Nerub run (would do it tonight, but tonight's D&D night! Woooo! I'm a nerd!).

Also managed to net myself the achievements for Exalted with Kalu'ak (Let us trade... for our prosperity.), Wyrmrest Accord and Knights of the Ebon Blade. Got Exalted with Alliance Expedition, though because I got Exalted with the Alliance Vanguard, I was given the achivement the moment 3.0.8 went live (whoops bug).

That about covers it for recent stuff. With me closing in on finishing up the rep grinds in Northrend (Revered with both Sons of Hodir and Frenzyheart, along with Argent Crusade and Kirin Tor) pretty soon I'm going to start poking the around Outland for the achievements up there. Rep grinds galor to spend my time doing while waiting for people to do other stuff. Honestly, it'll be a long time before I level up Alixander (if I ever bother to...)

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[1]Some people say the Construct Wing is easier than the Plague Wing. Others say the opposite. Not looking for opinions on what order we should do this in.

Thoughts on DK tanking gems

2009-01-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

So I was poking around the other blogs this morning really quickly before work when I saw Honorshammer's latest post: Patch 3.0.8 and Helms and one sentence stuck out to me:

In most of my analysis you will see disregard 'threat' stats like Strength, Hit
and Expertise. This is done with the belief that threat is a minor issue right
now. Gear decisions should be based on Survival stats alone. You'll get 'enough'
threat stats that come along for the ride.

From everything I've read about DKs, there's an interesting contrast. In most cases, DKs are fine for survival, but have some issues with threat generation. According to the EJ thread on DK tanking, most DK tanks once they get some gear on them are fine for taking damage (large health pools and armor levels for their gear quality make them easy tanks to heal, plus a lot of low cooldown "Oh Shit!" buttons).

Since I already am well over 540 Defense (was there before the patch, now I'm even more firmly above thanks to the Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight and the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle), I can consider other gear and gems than stacking defense. There are a number of options available to me.

As a general priniciple I'm going to completely ignore Red, Orange and Yellow gems since they don't have Stamina on them. Stamina is a "Blue" gem stat, so only Green, Blue and Purple gems have it on them.

Greens:
Enduring: +Defense Rating and Stamina: While I'm already at the Defense minimum, these gems are still valid since they will allow for either freeing up Defense elsewhere if you would prefer gear that has little or no defense on them (Some good rings are heavy with Dodge Rating, for example). Also a very good option after you hit the cap for spell hit.
Vivid: +Hit Rating and Stamina: Since a Death Knight relies on both magical and physical damage, hit is a very important stat. By increasing hit, you'll have less misses on all of your attacks. Also, a miss means a thrown off rotation, which can be really bad for a Death Knight since they should be active almost 100% of the time.

Blues:
Solid: +Stamina: Obviously this is a high value gem, since tons of stamina will help out against all situations.

Purples:
Guardian's: +Expertise Rating and Stamina: Much like the Vivid gem, the Expertise lowers the chance of a Parry or a Dodge, which means that there will be less thrown off rotations. Plus Expertise will remove our minimal chance to get hit by parry-gib, increasing our survivability. It's wonderful to have double-duty stats.
Soverign: +Strength and Stamina: With threat being an issue, having more Strength helps to fix this issue, plus Death Knights have an ability called Forceful Deflection which gives 1 Parry Rating for every 4 Strength a DK gets, making Strenght another double-duty stat.
Regal: +Dodge Rating and Stamina: If you find yourself dying, but not having issues with threat, this is your best option for additional survivability.
Defender's: +Parry Rating and Stamina: The most undesireable of the various purple gems available to a DK. First off, due to just having a lot of Strength (my DK in a mix of blues and purples has around 800 STR) they will have a lot of Parry Rating. Since defensive rating stats (Block, Parry and Dodge) all suffer from Diminishing Returns now (implented, I believe, because of the Rogue who tanked Gruul and other bosses), so since a DK tank will already have a lot of Parry from Strength, getting more will do less than getting a Regal gem in general.

There is the option of choosing a AGI and STA gem, but that's a really bad choice in my opinion, since it gives so little crit, armor and dodge that it's almost painful, plus there's zero crit on tanking gear. Since crit is a stat that you get more for having more, since you're at an absolute minimum while in tanking gear, getting a little more is barely worth it.

Anyway, for now I'm gearing myself up with Vivids, Solids and Guardians'. I'm almost at the dodge cap for Expertise (have 21 expertise right now and need 23 or 24). I'm not sure whether I should concern myself with getting the additional 10% to completely remove parry chance. That's a lot of Expertise rating. Also working on getting my Hit capped for spells since I use Howling Blast and Icy Touch a lot as a Frost DK.

100th post, but not what I promised...

2009-01-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted in a while. I had this grand plan of a huge WAR post, but it became larger than I originally planned, then Mythic added the two missing tanking classes (Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun), and they just kept adding stuff (not a downside) that it became this Albatross around my neck. I finally decided to just say screw it, and go on without it. I still have the partially completed post and if anyone really wants to see it, I'll post it in it's broken form.

Anyway, what have I been up to? Well, work keeps me busy, which has been another thing prohibiting me from working on my blog (prefer to post while I'm at work during downtime... rather play games when I'm at home).

Still playing and enjoying WAR, though my guild formed of WoW friends kinda sputtered and died (coinciding with the release of WotLK... who would have thought!), so I joined Casualties of WAR (such a clever name), a guild formed of bloggers (but not only bloggers), and I play a couple of days a week with them.

Also playing WoW. As predicted, I've changed my main from Alixander to my new Death Knight. Was hoping to rename him Kaziel, but was made aware that a name is locked down for 3 months after a name change, so my options were either to transfer Kaziel (my mage) to a different server (didn't want to), delete him (no!), or rename him and then rename my DK to Kaziel later on (too much work). So I picked a new name for him (random name generator came up with Saiyarik) and threw myself into leveling with gusto!

I'm currently level 80, with a Frost tanking build and have completed, literally, every quest in Northrend, many of the group quests being soloed. DKs soloing capability is pretty crazy. Once I start gearing myself up with Naxx epics I'll start spending time soloing my way through old vanilla WoW raid content for rep (must... get... achievements!).

Also got myself to uncrittable by getting the Seal of the Pantheon a week or two ago. This is really hard as a DK before 3.0.8 since most gear's defense ratings are balanced around a tank having a tanking weapon and a shield, of which a DK deosn't do so well with.

Yeah, I know about the theories on EJ of DW DK tanking. I'm posting in that thread. AFAIC, with the forthcoming change to Killing Machine (the sole point of strength for a DW DK tank), DWing is mostly dead. I can see using DW tanking for certain spell heavy encounters (Kel'Thuzad for example) since you'll be able to maintain uncrittability without the new Rune of the Stonesking Gargoyle, plus can pick up double Spellbreaking runes on your tanking weapons for even less magical damage.

I've always been quite enchanted by Howling Blast, and my HBs seem to hit significantly harder than my Oblits anyway (averages around 400 more damage per attack, plus it's not parry, dodge or blockable) I'll probably put together a HB-centric build, picking up the new Killing Machine. Thankfully they are fixing it so that also the KB charge doesn't get used up if you have Deathchill active... or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a win for those of us who like Deathchill for some awesome snap aggro, but also like KM. I'll generally use a powerful 2H like the Sword of Justice (despite being only blue, it's ridiculously slow speed and high stamina make it better than most pre-Naxx epics, like Titansteel Destroyer or Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver) or Death's Bite and have a pair of 1H tanking swords ready to use for more magic-centric fights.

Anyway, my overall assessment on WotLK: Best MMO expansion, EVER. Not just best WoW expansion, but best MMO expansion. This includes City of Villains, which had previously held this title. While CoH/V may not have been my cup of tea, adding not only an entire new area, but adding an entirely new faction and making faction-based PvP valid, plus adding 5 new classes (with multiple new powers), it was no small feat.

While WotLK was missing quite a few things, even for an MMO expansion (looking at you 10-point Protection Paladin talent), what they did do was fantastic. Obviously there's the to-be-expected fantastic instances and bosses and new loot, new types of quest (oh all the mounts and machines and stuff that have their own spell bars!). But the one thing that really stood out for me amongst all the things done right was this: Mini-instances. I'm not sure what term Blizzard uses for them but it's when portion of an existing zone changes, either temporarily while you are doing a certain event, or permanently.

The first portion where this showed up was around the Wrathgate. Before, the place is flooded with Alliance and Horde fighting together to try to push back the Scourge menace and push into Icecrown Glacier. Then after the event everything changes (don't want to spoil it) and every time you go in there, you see the after effects of and don't see the undead everywhere in Wrathgate (addendum: remembering this awesome questline makes me want 3.0.8 even more so I can level up a Horde DK and see it from the Horde's perspective).

When you roll into Zul'drak you see it here and there (specifically when you go into the "Realm of the Dead" and when the Jaguar moves from one place to another). And then Blizzard just went hog wild, using it all over the place in Storm Peaks and Icecrown Glacier. I really can't wait to see the next expansion, because I expect Blizzard to be using this technique everywhere, and it will really feel like the entire world is evolving! Bravo Blizzard! Bravo!

Now, as I mentioned, Wrath is far from perfect. I felt, and still feel that Blizzard pushed it out a little earlier than they should have. Sometimes the changes to classes feel like things that should have been ironed out in beta, but at the same time I know Blizzard is always making these types of changes so it's hard to tell. But the lack of an 11-point talent for Protection is really a sign that Blizzard was rushing WotLK out the door. There are tons of other things that just don't mesh well, though none stick out in my head as prominently as the lacking of the Prot Paladin talent. Why was Blizzard in such a rush to release WotLK?

Well I think it was to compete with WAR. About the same time WAR hit the shelves, Blizzard did a massive Closed Beta invite (of which I was included). The Closed Beta servers slowed to a crawl. Maybe it was a stress test, but if so, it was never advertised as such. By timing this when they did, it gave those who wanted new content and were looking at WAR to sate their appetite an alternative.

Could I be wrong about WotLK being rushed? Completely. But by pushing out so close to the release date of WAR, they've sucked away a lot of players from WAR back to WoW (at a new high of 11.5 million players worldwide!). In the end they've hurt a potential threat to their dominance of the MMO genre, while reaching new highs. Even if WAR doesn't flounder and recovers from this (can't say how they are doing, where they were right after release or how much they lost since the normal sources of this info are about 6 months out of date), it took a good hit early on, which will hurt them.

If I was Blizzard I probably would have done the same thing. From a business perspective, it was a brilliant move. As a gamer who was going to play WoW anyway, it annoys me.

Anyway, not making any promises, but I'll try to get back into updating my blog. Hope everyone is enjoying whatever MMO is striking their fancy these days and having a Happy New Year!

So the Collector's Edition WAR beta test has begun!

2008-08-13T12:59:00.002-07:00

And, obviously, I'm a part of it. I can't say much since the NDA is still in effect, but I can say that I will be testing tiers 1 to 3. I don't know where, but that was posted by one of the Mythic folks. Anyway, so far the game is awesome. I will be making my next post when the NDA is lifted (also, that will be my 100th post). Anyway, see you all then.

A thought on current DW vs 2H mechanics for Death Knights

2008-08-09T22:57:00.001-07:00

I realize this is still beta, and everything is likely to change, but really I just want to vent. I spend a fair amount of time at the Official Death Knight Beta forums, lurking and reading. Now, one of the longest standing problems has been the lack of good DWing support.

Death Knights rely largely on their "Strikes" for their yellow damage, due to cooldowns of other abilities. Strikes are exactly what one would expect: A weapon damage based attack with possibly some bonus damage or an extra effect (or both). For example, Blood Strike is one of the first of these abilities you get. It is an instant attack that does 60% weapon damage, plus X damage per disease on the target (X varies depending on the rank) for one Blood Rune.

Now, anyone who's ever played an Level 40+ Arms Warrior will quite assuredly tell you that attacks of this nature are best off used by a high damage 2H (like Apolyon, the Soul-Render). The reason for this is because the majority of the damage is done by the weapon itself, and the bonus damage can only account for so much (even with abilities that scale, a good two hander will account for around half to two-thirds of the damage). Also, since instant attacks are outside of swing speed (and will most likely be normalized based upon what Blue posts have shown), what will matter is not weapon speed, but damage range (which again, benefits 2Hs).

I went through and figured out which abilities had a low enough cooldown to be put into a normal rune/RP rotation (i.e. every 10-12 seconds depending on if you want to include a two or three rune ability, and 1 or 2 RP abilities), and this is what I came up with (note these are for the next build, not the current one):

Key:
Red: Blood Rune
Blue: Frost Rune
Green: Unholy Rune
Purple: Runic Power
Black: No cost

Abilities with too long a cooldown:
Strangulate: 30 seconds
Rune Tap: 1 minute
Vampiric Blood: 2 minutes
Death and Decay: 30 seconds
Army of the Dead: 1 minute
Mark of Blood: 3 minutes
Hysteria: 2 minutes
Chains of Ice: 15 seconds
Unbreakable Armor: 2 minutes
Howling Blast: 30 seconds
Anti-Magic Shell: 15 seconds
Anti-Magic Zone: 2 minutes
Bone Shield: 30 seconds
Icebound Fortitude: 1 minute
Dancing Rune Weapon: 1 minute
Hungering Cold: 1 minute
Summon Gargoyle: 5 minutes
Unholy Blight: 1 minute
Raise Dead: 5 minutes
Lichebourne: 5 minutes
Death Chill: 2 minutes

Abilities with short enough cooldowns:
Blood Strike: GCD
Pestilence: GCD
Heart Strike: GCD
Icy Touch: 6 seconds
Mind Freeze: 10 seconds
Death Strike: GCD(?)
Obliterate: GCD
Plague Strike: GCD
Corpse Explosion: GCD
Scourge Strike: GCD
Death Coil: GCD
Frost Strike: GCD

Now, if you look over those abilities that have a low enough cooldown to be used in every rotation, you'll see a distinct lack of non-Strikes (despite it's name, Obliterate is also a Strike). Arguably, one could shun Strikes and rely exclusively on Icy Touch, Corpse Explosion, and Death Coil since those abilities either scale with AP instead of Weapon Damage (Mind Freeze should be saved for silencing and does less damage than Icy Touch anyway). There are problems with this idea of course too. First off, what do you do with the Blood Runes. Pestilence doesn't scale at all, according to what I'm reading, and generates additional threat, meaning it's crappy if you want to DPS. Corpse Explosion requires a corpse, and once you're out of them, it's value quickly is diminished.

Another idea I had while typing this is using various abilities over the course of a few cycles, meaning a real cycle for you lasts 20 or 30 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Obviously the longer a cycle lasts, the more abilities are added to the mix, so it would require a re-evaluation, but even at that point one can't rely on non-strikes, which means a great hindrance to a DK's DPS or TPS.

Looking at some of the stuff uploaded on Wowhead from the beta, at 77, the highest damage 1H weapon can hit is 353, or if you are using Blood Strike and have two diseases up, that will hit for, at maximum, around 650 damage. On the other hand, if you have the best 2H, it can do a maximum damage of 536, or with Blood Strike, around 850 damage. That's a difference of around 200 damage. Those numbers are assuming approximately 1,700 Attack Power, which is totally reachable as shown by this screenshot from beta.

After doing this math, I came up with a question: While 200 damage may seem like a lot, maybe as time goes on the difference is getting smaller. I ran the numbers, and thanks to normalization coefficients the difference in AP benefits will always be approximately 72.7% between 1Hs and 2Hs. Next numbers I checked were the difference between maximum damage ranges. This is even less in 1Hs favor, with the difference spreading a small amount from the highest quality blues pre-expansion and the best available blues, post-tBC (from 56% difference to 59% difference). If the trend I'm seeing continues (and I see no reason for it not too), 1H weapons doing Instant Attacks that use weapon damage as a modifier will never be comparable to doing them with 2Hs. There are exceptions, such as Mutilate which use both weapons, but that is an exception, and not the rule. Most Instant Attacks (and all the ones currently for DKs) are based on the main weapon.

Now I'm going to go over the individual talents and abilities which specifically be beneficial to each given weapon type. Now this is based on three assumption: Both setups assume equal AP (thus talents which give AP and are based on AP get equal benefit), DW has more white DPS, while 2H has stronger individual attacks (i.e. Weapon abilities like the Strikes).

Key:
Black: Core Abilities
Red: Blood Talents
Blue: Frost Talents
Green: Unholy Talents

2H:
Blood Strike
Death Strike
Plague Strike
Obliterate
Subversion
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
Heart Strike
Might of Mograine
Dancing Rune Weapon
Glacier Rot
Annihilation
Runic Power Mastery
Deathchill
Merciless Combat
Frost Strike
Guile of Gorefiend
Tundra Stalker
Vicious Strikes
Outbreak
Scourge Strike
Rage of Rivendare

DW:
Unholy Presence
Bloody Vengeance
Blood Rune Mastery
Will of the Necropolis
Nerves of Cold Steel
Icy Talons
Killing Machine
Necrosis
Blood-Caked Blade
Unholy Rune Mastery

Now, it may seem obvious to some that the quick-fix would be to make all Strikes work with either the 2H or both weapons, but this would be a very, very bad fix. Almost every talent that benefits a 2H more than DWing does so because it benefits a Strike ability. The only two exceptions are Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and Dancing Rune Weapon. The reason for this is because the combined damage of both weapons would almost always be greater than a 2H. Thing about instant attacks when DWing is the trade-off of a greatly decreased hit chance doesn't apply to yellow damage, so attacks which use both weapons work at a 9% decreased hit chance instead of 19+%. Basically we'd go from one extreme of 2Hing reigning supreme to DWing reigning supreme. Not what I want. I want, like so much else, for those who want to DW (like me) and those who want to use 2Hs to be equally valid or at least close enough so that there's a reasonable choice instead of the lopsided situation that we have right now.

Now for a somewhat offtopic point that will go back to my major point later: My biggest complaint about the above listed talents is that there are more talents in the Frost Tree that boost 2Hs than any of the other trees. Frost, which has Nerves of Cold Steel, the DWing talent. Now, I understand the talents like Annihilation, Deathchill, Merciless Combat, and Guile of Gorefiend, which boost Obliterate. But with ones like Glacier Rot and Runic Power Mastery, which boost Frost Strike, a core ability in the Frost Tree, which also is preferential to 2H over DWing, I think there's just something wrong.

The funny thing about Frost Strike is it used to be perfectly suited to 1Hs. Originally it was on a next-attack timer instead of instant (think Heroic Strike) and cost one Frost Rune. This was before the implementation of Blood of the North. At this point Blizzard announced that they had decided to scrap the idea of changing your rune setups, which meant you would only ever have 2 runes of each type, and never more or less. This change was done to ease balancing Death Knights because one would need to consider each setup of runes for each ability or talent, meaning way too much work for Blizzard. But this change also meant the planned Frost Tree, was far too Frost Rune costly, with only 2 Frost Runes.

With this in mind many players clamored for a change of both the availability of Frost Runes (in the form of Death Runes) and the current mechanics of Frost Strike, which was now doing far too little damage for a single Frost Rune since they were so scarce (since it was on next-strike, only the bonus damage actually was an increase in damage). For the latter problem, instead of doing one or the other, Blizzard did both. They changed it to an instant, meaning it was better to use a 2H, and made it cost Runic Power. Now, this coincided with the addition of Blood of the North which fixed the former problem, which was no longer a real problem since Frost Strike now cost RP, and there were far less abilities which called for Frost or Unholy runes instead of Blood.

Now I'm going to get back to my point, which is that for a deep Frost Death Knight, having abilities that mesh well with DWing and using a 1H for your attacks would be wonderful. First problem would be what to do with all the Blood Runes, but this one has already been solved: Blood of the North. Yeah, you need to spam Blood Strike every other cycle (except for the one you're using D&D on), but that's fine if it opens up more damage elsewhere.

Frost could use a Frost-Rune spammable ability that doesn't rely on AP... the funny thing is the best option about this is, IMO, going right back to where we were before, which is having Frost Strike be on next strike and cost one Frost Rune. At max it would allow for 10 or so Frost Strikes over the course of a 1 minute period, in addition to all the damage from the other abilities, plus it wouldn't cost a global cooldown. While one could counter by saying Frost Strike would do more damage as an instant than as a Next-Attack (and one would be right) the same problem occurs again and again: There's no reason to DW with Instants, while DWing while using Next-Attacks works best.

In lieu of making Frost Strike a spammable ability that relies on Frost Runes, the addition of a non-strike based attack would be wonderful. Something simple like a short range, single target instant that does mediocre damage. Doesn't need to be a lot, but enough for it to be worth the rune without needing to rely on the crappy weapon damage of a DWing Death Knight.

For Runic Power, DKs of all specs are fine: Death Coil works great as it stands, and currently Frost Strike is also a good option for deep Frost Death Knights.

The final area of issue Unholy Runes, but the utility that Plague Strike brings (Blood Plague), it's a useful ability, even if it's not perfectly suited to DWing. Not everything can be in favor of DWing, and this is an area I'd be willing to leave alone.

In the end, the lack of viable spammable Frost Rune based ability that does damage based on AP or is next attack (and not instant attack weapon damage) is my biggest gripe. If that was fixed, I'd have no real complaints about DWing because I think it would be in a similar setup to a 2H Death Knight as long as a proper spec was used.

WHOA NELLY!

2008-07-20T12:57:00.004-07:00

You know, every time it seems like I plan on doing a normal post, Blizzard goes off and reveals something that just blows my mind away. Well the most recent bout God and everybody has already talked about... but I'm going to too.

A while back Blizzard announced that the reason that Paladins were one of the last ones to get their updates because they were doing a major overhaul to how the class works. They weren't kidding. Most of the changes are coming in the form of the talent trees, but there has also been a humongous change to a core mechanic of the Paladins. In fact the changes are so big, I expect many people to be like "tl;dr lol" and this to be one of my most under-commented posts.

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First the huge change:

The Blessing system has gone through a major change, separating and streamlining a lot of it. First and foremost, the actual blessings (the 10 minute and 30 minute greater forms) have been cut down to 4 core blessings, two of them talented. Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom, Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Sanctuary are all unchanged from their pre-WotLK forms.

Now, the first thought running through the Holy Paladins minds is: "Blessing of Light! Where's Blessing of Light!" Well, you'll be glad to know that Blessing of Light's bonus to healing has been rolled into the core spells, meaning it's no longer needed. Much the way they rolled the bonuses from the old Improved Seal of the Crusader talent into the base spell (addendum: Seal of the Crusader has been removed entirely from the game. Good riddance I say). So Blizzard managed to free up one slot of Blessings from the Paladins. Yay!

The other major thought I'm sure everyone is having is "BLESSING OF SALVATION! WTF KAZ? WTF!?!?!" I did not miss it, they have removed Blessing of Salvation as we know it. But before you start screaming that the world is ending, let me explain. This will also lead me to what happened to the other three Blessings (Sacrifice, Protection, and Freedom). All four of those Blessings have become what will become known as Hands. Hands are short duration spells with cooldowns of 25 seconds or more.

First I will touch on the three "lesser" Hands: Protection, Sacrifice and Freedom. The primary purpose of changing these Blessings into Hands is to put them on a separate "spell list" from the Blessings. Far too often a Paladin would drop a Blessing of Protection on a DPS or a Healer to save him or her when they pulled aggro on a boss mob. This would save them, but then the Paladin would need to waste time and mana recasting their old blessing on the target to help them. Now if they do this, it won't erase the valuable Blessing.

Now, I will touch on Hand of Salvation. Unlike the previous three which have remained mostly the same, if not completely unchanged, Hand of Salvation is a completely different beast. Previously it reduced the threat generated by a person by 30%. Now it's a 10 second buff on a 2 minute cooldown that removes 2% of a person's total threat. Instead of reducing the amount of threat generated per attack, works like a threat dump, for 20% of your total threat. This is both better and worse than Blessing of Salvation. Now classes that have no threat dumps, like Warriors, Paladins, Shamans, and Death Knights can have some of their threat dumped off them without needing to disengage or slow down their DPS. On the other hand each player needs to be more cognizant of their own threat generation than ever before. While it appears Blizzard is intending to increase the threat generation of all tanks, the fact is that each person will be doing more threat overall and there's nothing that can be done about it (Tranquil Air Totem has also been removed).

Addendum: See here for the Hand spells.

Okay, now onto each individual talent tree I will quote the talent and give my own thoughts in italics:

First up is Retribution. I chose retribution first because it goes through the smallest change in my book.

But before I go into Retribution I have some bad news and I have some good news. First the bad news: As Blizzard stated multiple times, the Alliance is not getting Seal of Blood. I've checked it out and it's the real deal. We're not getting it. But the good news is we are getting Seal of the Martyr. Which has the exact same mechanics as Seal of Blood. dot dot dot. So there we go. The Alliance is getting Seal of ~~Blood~~ the Martyr. Alliance PvE Ret Paladins every can rejoice (minor note: Horde Paladins are getting a counterpart to Seal of Vengeance called Seal of Corruption).

Tier 1:
Unchanged.

Tier 2:
Heart of the Crusader: In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1/2/3%.

With the removal of the spell Seal of the Crusader (note: All holy damage abilities had their damage boosted to make up for the loss of Judgement of the Crusader), they couldn't have a talent that relied on it, so the just rolled the Improved Seal of the Crusader talent into the remaining debuff seals. Now, there's some talk about whether or not each application of a given seal gives this bonus, but I consider it unlikely since this was not doable before WotLK, and would be very powerful, being able to have +9% crit chance on a single target if you bring properly built Paladins.

Tier 3:
Conviction: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Previously Conviction only increased crit chance with physical attacks. With it also affecting spells, Ret Paladins can get more mileage out of their non-melee attacks (has some synergy with later talents and the Illumination talent in the Holy tree). In addition this talent is low enough on the Retribution tree that a Holy Paladin could pick it up for even more spell crit.

Seal of Command: 14% of base mana - Instant cast - Gives the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to 70% of normal weapon damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing Holy damage, double if the target is stunned or incapacitated.

Seal of Command... the mainstay of Alliance Retribution Paladins for so long. Does it have any value now that we have Seal of ~~Blood~~ the Martyr? I don't know. The wording of it is different than the wording of the talent on the old talent trees, so it very well may be different. Until we get some more clarification by someone in Beta, I can only guess, but if I were to guess here's my take: Seal of Command will remain the premier PvP Ret seal. With it's huge damage bursts, it can far outstrip what Seal of Blood or Seal of the Martyr can do per hit. But in a PvE situation, unless they have vastly increased Seal of Command's Proc per Minute ratio, Seal of Blood or Seal of the Martyr will come out ahead since it is guaranteed to proc every swing, plus they do a small amount of damage to the wielder, which means they get a little extra healing and a little extra mana from Spiritual Attunement.

Tier 4:
Unchanged.

Tier 5:
Sanctified Retribution: Damage caused by targets affected by Retribution Aura is increased by 2%.

Now for some devastating news to the majority of Ret Paladins: Sanctity Aura is gone, removed from the game entirely. It would be even more of a hit to Retribution utility if they took away the Improved Sanctity Aura effect, so they turned it into a one point talent and applied it to the Retribution Aura, a sorely underused aura as it was, which will find new life in WotLK with this and a completely new talent I will mention later. Also, remember, Aura's are now raid wide, so this will apply to all members it hits.

Sheath of Light: Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 20/40/60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds.

Any loss of damage and utility from the loss of Sanctity Aura is more than made up for right here. First and foremost is the AP to ppell power conversion which is something which should have been added at the same time a similar talent was added to the Enhancement Shaman talent tree. Anyway, it may not have been there then, but it is there now and it's worth it! Currently, fully raid buffed, Horgrimm has anywhere from 2.3k to 2.7k AP. If he had Sheath of Light, that would translate to over 700 spell damage, in some cases over 800. This would allow him to properly utilize many spells that are reliant on spell damage and not STR or AP which is the main stat for Retribution Paladins currently.

In addition to giving Retribution Paladins access to Spell Power (the new name for Spell Damage) through AP, it also gives them a handy utility boost in terms of healing. Every time a a Ret Paladin would crit, it would cause a HoT for a percent of the amount healed. This is actually a lot more powerful than it looks. First off, Blizzard is consolidating Crit and Spell Crit into one stat, so as one builds up crit, their spell crit also goes up. Using Horgrimm again, in his current Ret gear, raid buffed, he would have around 25% crit rating if he started tossing off heals. That's as much as many entry-level raiding Holy Paladins have. So he could put that part of the talent to full use despite wearing DPS gear.

In addition, while wearing his Ret gear, the boost he got from his AP would apply to his healing spells as well. Now, 700-800 spell damage doesn't seem like much until you realize that in WotLK they are doing away with +healing and +damage and everything is being rolled into one stat called Spell Power (as I mentioned above). For offensive spells, Spell Power will work like +damage did. For healing spells, Spell Power will give a much stronger boost, equaling the same boost +healing would give despite the lower number. Basically, wearing his Retribution gear, Horgrimm will be able to be a full DPSer, or in a pinch step back and start healing and be quite effective at it.

Tier 6:
Judgements of the Wise: Your Judgement spells restore mana to up to 3 group or raid members totalling 20/40/60% of the damage caused.

Prior to the addition of Sheath of Light, this talent would have been of little value. Judgements' damage are based on Spell Power, and it was a stat that Retribution Paladins were sorely lacking. But now with Sheath of Light it's a strong utility talent and alone would justify the position of at least one Retribution Paladin in every raid. While this does replace the old talent Sanctified Judgement, I think it will end up being stronger since it scales with Spell Power, while Sanctified Judgement didn't.

Tier 7:
Repentance: 9% of base mana - 20 yd range - Instant cast - 1 min cooldown - Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation, incapacitating them for up to 1 min. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids and Undead.

Ret Paladins have CC? Say what? Repentance used to be primarily a form of PvP interrupt, with minor PvE utility. In WotLK it underwent a major overhaul. The downside is it's mana cost jumped up a lot and will scale with level. The upside is that it's duration and availalble targets were hugely expanded. Previously it was only usable against Humanoids, but with it's new list of targets, there are few things that cannot be CCed. As for it's duration, it used to last 6 seconds, now it lasts 1 minute (assuming no damage is done to it) to match it's cooldown. Congratulations, Ret Paladins!

Divine Purpose: Reduces your chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of movement slowing effects by 10/20/30%.

A PvP talent to be sure, and it was that way before the changes. Previously, it lowered the chance to be critically hit by melee and ranged attacks by 4/7/10%, which was quite useful prior to tBC. But with the wide spread availability of Resilience in level 70 PvP, such a talent loses a lot of it's luster. Instead what was crippling Retribution Paladins was any CC that slowed them and allowed their prey to get away. With this talent they can quickly shed such things and catch up and continue the beat down, not to mention giving them a small avoidance boost against ranged enemies.

Tier 8:
Fanaticism: Increases the critical strike chance of all Judgements capable of a critical hit by 5/10/15/20/25% and reduces threat caused by all actions by 6/12/18/24/30% except when under the effects of Righteous Fury.

This talent is almost identical to it's tBC counterpart, with the only difference being the chance to crit on a Judgement being increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to it's current form. A straight buff right there.

Sanctified Wrath: Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 25/50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 30/60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath 25/50% of all damage caused bypasses damage reduction effects.

The first new Retribution talent, it's quite a doozy. Increased crit chance on Hammer of Wrath (which will be stronger than ever now thanks to Sheath of Light) will make it quite the potent ability, while the buffs to Avenging Wrath will turn many Retribution Paladins into lean, mean fighting machines.

Tier 9:
Swift Retribution: Your Retribution Aura also increases casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 1/2/3%.

Another new talent, again, buffing Retribution Aura, making it the aura to use for a Retribution Paladin.

The Art of War: Your damaging Crusader Strikes have a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Judgement spell to cause double damage.

This talent requires you to have picked up Crusader Strike before you can get it. Again, Sheath of Light shows it's value. With the new amounts of damage a Judgement can put out, double damage along with the potential to crit is a very large boost to a Retribution Paladin's damage.

Tier 10:
Righteous Vengeance: Increases critical damage bonus of all attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%.

With all the crits going on all over the place as a Ret Paladin, this talent is just amazingly strong. What else is there to say?

Tier 11:
Divine Storm: 12% of base mana - 5 yd range - Instant cast - 10 sec cooldown - Requires Melee Weapon - An instant weapon attack that causes Holy damage to up to 4 enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totalling 20% of the damage caused.

The crowning achievement of the new Retribution tree. Whatever utility Retribution Paladins previously lacked, it will be gone with this ability, IMO. Much like Shadow Priests with their talented abilities, now Retribution Paladins can DPS and heal and restore mana all at the same time. While it will not be in the same values as a Shadow Priest can put out, what they lack in numbers they make up for in targets. A Shadow Priest is limited to his party, while the Ret Paladin can cover the entire raid. A major boost to Retribution Paladins everywhere.

Next up is the Holy tree.

Tier 1:
Spiritual Focus: Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 14/28/42/56/70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.

This talent has undergone no textual changes, but instead has changed locations. Previously the spot it inhabited was held by Divine Strength, but that talent has moved over to the Protection tree, and this talent has moved up from Tier 2 to Tier 1 to replace it.

Seals of the Pure: Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption and their Judgement effects by 3/6/9/12/15%.

This talent used to be Improved Seal of Righteousness, but was changed to include Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption (the Horde equivalent of SoV). In addition it was moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1, swapping places with Divine Intellect. For tanks and Paladins leveling as Holy, this talent is a nice choice since either of the options it boosts for the given Paladin are strongly reliant on Spell Power and will get a decent boost from this talent and the talents innate in the tree of the player's choice.

Tier 2:
Healing Light: Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light, Flash of Light and the effectiveness of Holy Shock spells by 4/8/12%.

Much like the talents on the previous tier, this talent moved up one, going from Tier 3 to Tier 2. This will make it available sooner for leveling Holy Paladins, increasing their utility in early instances. In addition, it has been expanded to also boost the power of Holy Shock. I'm not 100% certain if that only applies to it's healing efficiency or it's damage output as well. If the latter, this is a very valuable tool to Shockadins.

Divine Intellect: Increases your total Intellect by 3/6/9/12/15%.

As I mentioned previously, this talent moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2. In addition, it's previous percentile modifier was increased from 2/4/6/8/10% to it's current value, giving Holy Paladins a nice buff, both to their mana pools and their crit chance.

Unyielding Faith: Reduces the duration of all Fear and Disorient effects by 15/30%.

First the more obvious change on this talent. Previously it increased the chance to resist Fear and Disorient effect by 5/10%, now it decreases the duration of these effects by a lot more. Quite a nice change, since it's always works as opposed to chance to resist which is only percentile. Plus lowered duration means it's faster until you become immune to the CC effect.

Also, much like the other talents I've mentioned this one got moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2. I'm now going to go into detail on why I think certain talents were moved to where they were. By having the Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, and Unyielding Faith talents all available in the first two tiers, it gives a level 19 Holy Paladin decent healing and access to vital PvP talents.

Tier 3:
Illumination: After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell.

Talent remains unchanged from it's pre-WotLK counterpart, but it's moved up one tier from 4 to 3. The only reason I can figure for this is because with all the other talents moved around, Tier 3 was left with too few talents for a single tier and this was an easy move.

Improved Lay on Hands: Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 25/50% bonus to their armor value from items for 15 sec. In addition, the cooldown for your Lay on Hands spell is reduced by 2/4 min.

First off an overview of the changes. The old bonus was a 15/30% bonus for 2 minutes, and the cooldown reduction was 10/20 minutes. Now, to truly appreciate how amazing this talent has become, one must understand how awesome the core spell has become. The new Lay on Hands no longer costs all of a Paladin's mana, and has a cooldown of 20 minutes as a base effect. While it still restores 100% of the Paladins health and some mana (max rank is currently 1950 mana). Now being able to give an armor boost along with not draining all of the mana and having a cooldown makes this spell a real "Oh Crap" button for a Protection Paladin and an amazing fast, powerful heal for a Holy Paladin.

Tier 4:
Improved Concentration Aura: Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 5/10/15% and reduces the duration of any Silence or Interrupt effect used against an affected group member by 10/20/30%. The duration reduction does not stack with any other effects.

This talent used to be in the 4th tier of the Protection tree, but normally the only people who would pick it up were Holy Paladins. Instead of putting it up high in another tree, Blizzard listened to the player base and moved it where those who needed it could access it easily.

Tier 5:
Pure of Heart: Reduces the duration of Curse and Disease effects by 25/50%.

Similar to Unyielding Faith, but this one applies to Curses and Diseases. Used to increase chance to resist both. Major PvP talent. Due to both of those effects not having diminishing returns on many of them, and because this talent is deeper in the Holy Tree I believe it was made stronger. In it's old incarnation, it was next to useless because diseases were next to non-existent in PvP and a Warlock could easily recast a resisted curse. Lowering their duration is very powerful and it gives a Holy Paladin much more survivability against both, since diseases can be stacked (thus hard for a Paladin to cleanse) and they can't remove curses at all, other than with Divine Shield.

Sanctified Light: Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy Light and Holy Shock spells by 2/4/6%.

This talent was increased to also include Holy Shock in addition to Holy Light. This makes both Sanctified Light and Holy Power potent offensive and restorative talents. A welcome change to Shockadins everywhere.

Blessed Hands: Reduces the mana cost and increases the resistance to Dispel effects of all Hand spells by 15/30%.

The first new talent for Holy Paladins, this is primarily a PvP talent, where being able to dispel or purge Hand of Freedom or Hand of Protection in arena is a killer. Honestly, none of them have overly large mana costs, so that's not a major selling point in PvE, but it is still helpful (especially since Holy Paladins will commonly be tasked with hitting the person who's highest on threat with Hand of Salvation).

Tier 6:
Unchanged.

Tier 7:
Holy Shock: Rank 7 - 650 Mana - 20 yd range - Instant cast - 6 sec cooldown - Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 1296 to 1402 Holy damage to an enemy, or 1431 to 1549 healing to an ally.

First, and most obvious change, is that it's had it's cooldown lowered from 15 seconds to 6 seconds. This alone doesn't make Holy Shock worth it, but it was one of the longstanding problems with it as a reliable healing spell. But when you combine it with the fact that the healing effect has had it's ranged extended (to 40 yards even though it's unlisted as an effect) and the amount healed has been strongly buffed, it makes Holy Shock a very viable tool for healing.

Tier 8:
Infusion of Light: Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 1.25/2.5 secs.

This is what really legitimizes Holy Shock as not just a gimmicked Holy Paladin spell, but a real useful tool. Every time the cooldown is up, I expect a Holy Paladin will throw a Holy Shock until this effect procs. And without a listed duration, this effect is probably permanent until you cast Holy Light, making it a strong power to be used.

Tier 9:
Sacred Cleansing: Your Cleanse spell has a 10/20/30% chance to increase the target's resistance to Disease, Magic and Poison by 30% for 10 sec.

I'm not really sure what was the intent of this one. I mean, it has utility in both PvE (if you're cleansing an effect, it will probably be cast again soon) and PvP (if you cleanse an effect, the person who put it up will probably reapply it). I'm just not sure of it's value. I'll leave it up to an actual healer to let me know the real value of this talent.

Enlightened Judgements: Increases the range of your Judgement spells by 10/20 yards.

This is half of the major change of Holy Paladin mechanics. One of the major complaints of Holy Paladins is they just stand there and heal. They have next to no ranged damage abilities, and really getting into melee range to melee while healing is far too dangerous. This gives a Holy Paladin the ability to stand back and do a small burst of damage every 8-10 seconds, allowing them to contribute more than just some healing. Also the range matches perfectly with the range of Holy Shock, and along with the new cooldown of Holy Shock, I'm sure it makes Shockadins quite happy in their pants.

Tier 10:
Judgements of the Pure: Your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 2/4/6/8/10% for 30 sec.

Here's the other half of the major change. Not only can a Holy Paladin contribute to DPS... they should contribute to DPS in order to make them better healers. If they aren't actively going out and casting a Judgement every 25 seconds or so, their healing potential will actually drop. It's an interesting change of pace for the Holy Paladin, and I'm sure quite welcome.

Tier 11:
Beacon of Light: Rank 5 - 2330 Mana - 40 yd range - 1.5 sec cast - The target becomes a Beacon of Light, healing all party or raid members within 10 yards for 2000 over 15 sec.

With a fast cast time, long range, no cooldown, ability to heal the entire raid, and the fact that there's no waiting to put a circle in it's place, Beacon of Light could easily find itself as one of the more powerful AOE healing spells in the game. A welcome breather to the monotony of Flash of Light spam (though it's not the only new healing spell Paladins are getting, though the details on the other one isn't fully clarified other than it will be a single charge version of Prayer of Mending).

Finally, we come to the Protection tree. Unlike the two previous trees there is not a lot of increased hybridization. Prot Paladins still will have a lot of life, very little mana, and their heals won't be fantastic. But the big change comes in the form of their gear and it undergoing a massive change. But I'm getting ahead of myself. All will become clear in time.

Tier 1:
Divine Strength: Increases your total Strength by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Moved from the Holy Tree (why was it there in the first place?) to the Protection tree. First impulse upon seeing this: Why is it there? But after looking over the rest of the tree, I've realized Blizzard's intent, and it's perfectly placed, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself. Also it's been buffed from 2/4/6/8/10% to it's current form.

Anticipation: Increases your chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Moved from Tier 3 to Tier 1, this talent has gone through a major change. Previously it boosted Defense by 4/8/12/16/20 points, it now increases your chance to dodge. While this version gives more total avoidance (5% as opposed to 2.4% avoidance and 0.8% chance to block) Defense gave a faster way to reach uncrittable, and gave some addition chance to be missed, which is always active even if you were knocked down.

Tier 2:
Stoicism: Reduces the duration of all Stun effects by an additional 10/20/30% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by an additional 10/20/30%.

Moved from Tier 4 to Tier 2, replacing Precision (not sure if it was rolled into the class or just completely removed), making Stoicism more accessible to players who want to stack more points in their primary tree, or for people who want to pick up both Stoicism and Unyielding Faith. Obviously primarily a PvP talent, this one has been changed from 2 ranks to 3, and had it's previous chance to be stunned changed to lower stun duration. A very good investment for any PvPing Paladin.

Redoubt: Requires Shields - Damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 6/12/18/24/30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.

This talent remains unchanged from it's pre-WotLK form, save that it was moved up from Tier 1 to Tier 2. This is a welcome change because previously you had to either pick Improved Devo Aura (worthless talent) or Redoubt (worthless save for it opening up Shield Specialization). Now this wasn't a huge deal for most Prot Paladins, because they were going to get Shield Spec anyway, but for Ret and Holy Paladins it was just filler points to get to the good stuff after. By making Tier 1 and Tier 2 have other viable options, it's not as bad to get there.

Addendum: Every Prot Paladin worth his salt really will want this talent now, if for no other reason than to open up Shield Spec. One of the new spells added to Paladins in WotLK is Shield of Righteousness, which is basically a Holy damage version of Shield Slam, including it's damage being based upon Shield Block Value. This is not a talented spell, which means it will be available to all talent builds, making it an amazing spell for MTs and OTs alike. A great addition to the class in general, and not just Prot Paladins.

Tier 3:
Improved Righteous Fury: While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 2/4/6%.

Previously this talent boosted your threat generated when RF was active from 60% to 90%, and gave the above listed effect. With WotLK, they rolled the bonus threat into the baseline spell, making it always generate 90% additional threat from Holy damage, and this talent is only really needed by the Raiding Main Tanks, and not anyone who wants to tank decently at all. This is a welcome change, IMO because it allows Ret (and in some cases Holy) Paladins the ability to either be a MT for a 5-man, or quickly pop up RF and throw themselves at a mob if the MT goes down, potentially saving the run.

Toughness: Increases your armor value from items by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Moved up from Tier 2 to Tier 3, this talent remains unchanged. If I had to guess why they moved it was to fill out this tier for the PvP who wanted stuff from the fourth tier, but didn't want any of the other PvE centric talents.

Tier 4:
Divine Guardian: While Divine Shield is active 15/30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.

The first new Protection talent, it is a very interesting talent, this has amazing potential for a Holy Paladin, any PvP Paladin, and an OTing Raiding Prot Paladin. This one truly epitomizes the idea of the Paladin sacrificing himself or herself for the good of their allies.

Improved Hammer of Justice: Decreases the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 10/20/30 sec.

This talent received a hefty boost in WotLK, doubling the cooldown reduction from 5/10/15 sec to it's above listed form. Hammer of Justice currently maintains it's 60 second cooldown without this talent, so with it one will be able to stun every 30 seconds. A marked improvement in ability. PvP Paladins everywhere rejoice.

Improved Devotion Aura: Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by Devotion Aura by 1/2/3%.

Improved Devotion Aura moved up from Tier 1 to Tier 4, replacing Improved Concentration Aura. It also went through a major overhaul, going from 5 ranks to 3, having the armor bonus boosted from 40% to 50%, which still is very little, but is a much more reasonable boost considering it is only 3 talent points now. Those changes alone might not have been enough to justify it's acquisition, but it also received the interesting effect of boosting the healing of any target effected by it by up to 3%. With Paladin Auras now affecting an entire raid, this makes Improved Devotion Aura a must-have for every Protection Paladin.

Tier 5:
Unchanged.

Tier 6:
Unchanged.

Tier 7:
Holy Shield: Rank 6 - 280 Mana - Instant cast - 8 sec cooldown - Requires Shields - Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals 211 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Damage caused by Holy Shield causes 35% additional threat. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.

Now, beyond the obvious change of increasing Holy Shield's damage to make up for the loss of Judgement of the Crusader, Holy Shield had it's cooldown lowered from 10 seconds to 8. I'm not complaining about this because against large amounts of monsters it means more HS uptime, and it means HS will never be down against raid bosses. But it does kinda sting that they are putting this in the game only after Protection Paladins no longer need it. Holy Shield was the means for a Protection Paladin to reach uncrushable status, but in WotLK, raid bosses will not crush at all. So the ability to keep HS up full time is no longer needed. It's not bad, just wish they had done it sooner.

Tier 8:
Unchanged.

Tier 9:
Touched by the Light: Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 10/20/30%.

The counterpart to the Retribution talent Sheath of Light, this talent is actually the real cornerstone of the changes to the Protection tree. One of the longstanding problems with Protection Paladins is there are a lot of tanking pieces with a lot of stamina and few pieces with spell damage. In tBC this wasn't such a huge issue because Blizzard needed to make separate tanking gear for each of the three tanking classes. But with Death Knights coming in WotLK and them sharing tanking gear with Warriors, it seems silly to make an entire set of gear for just one role when you could shift their abilities and stats to be more in line with the other two classes.

Now, when I thought about this, I went to Warcrafter.net and did the math. Fully raid buffed, Alixander has around 1551 Stamina, and 30% of that is 465 spell damage. To make clear, right now I have 446 spell damage. Pretty much, if this talent was already in the game, I wouldn't need a spell damage weapon, or a spell damage shield or any gear with any spell damage on it at all. I could focus on Stamina, avoidance, Block Value, +hit and expertise just like Warriors do.

Now, another way of seeing things is with this talent one could stack even more spell damage than before and be a veritable beast of threat generation, but there's more to this change than meets the eye. I can't detail it yet, but once I get to the final talent, all will be made clear. Simply put, this changes the entire setup of Protection Paladins everywhere, meaning a start over from the ground up and I'm behind it 100%.

Oh yeah, and so I don't forget it, the bonus to crit heals is a wonderful addition to hybridization of Protection Paladins, allowing them to easily assist with healing if needed. Plus the bonus Spell Power when a Prot Paladin is wearing Spell Power plate to heal with will be simply fantastic.

Avenger's Shield: Rank 5 - 1745 Mana - 30 yd range - 0.5 sec cast - 30 sec cooldown - Requires Shields - Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing 705 to 861 Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec.

Again, like Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield had it's damage range improved to make up for the loss of JotC. In addition AS had it's daze duration expanded from 6 seconds to 10, and it's casting time lowered from 1 second to .5 seconds meaning it could more easily be used in PvP, to snare runners, or to recast mid-combat for a quick threat boost. All around good changes here, IMO.

Guarded by the Light: Whenever you parry or dodge an attack you have a 10/20% chance to reduce the mana cost of your next Consecration, Holy Wrath or Avenger's Shield spell by 25/50%.

A wonderful talent for Prot Paladins tasked to tank multiple mobs at one time. With more and more mobs it means a greater chance to parry or dodge. This translates to having Guarded by the Light proc very frequently. Considering how often a AOE tanking Paladin will be dropping Consecration, and how costly the ability is, this is simply amazing! A must-have for any raiding Prot Paladin.

Tier 10:
Shield of the Templar: Increases the damage and reduces the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 5/10/15%.

Quite a helpful talent, improving single target and group threat generation along with allowing better mana efficiency, which is quite a problem once you overgear an encounter. While this talent isn't a must-have, it's certainly well worth the investment.

Judgements of the Just: Your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 10/20%.

Another of the longstanding problems for Prot Paladins is that it's not an illusion... we do take more damage normally, than warriors. At first many said it was the difference between Defensive Stance and Improved RF (10% damage reduction vs. 6%), but that wouldn't account for the numbers we would see.

Eventually one of our own put it together: Thunder Clap and Improved Thunder Clap. It would give a slowing effect of 20% to all white attacks from raid bosses. This would account for around 10-15% less damage a Warrior would see than a Paladin who didn't have a Warrior dropping TC on their bosses. And it was a problem for DPSing Warriors, because TC is not available in Berserker stance, meaning a Warrior would need to hop over to Battle, and do TC every 30 seconds, then hop back. Or even worse, do the entire battle in Battle Stance, which meant more threat and less damage. Of course, not to mention that TC would generate additional threat, which Warriors do not have a way to dump.

Well now those days are over. With Judgements of the Just, a Paladin can get the same slowing effects that a Warrior has without forcing a Warrior to be in Battle Stance. While Thunder Clap is still the better option when slowing down large groups of players, this talent allows us to do it on our own. Another use is if a Protection Paladin is DPSing and a Warrior is tanking, the Warrior won't have to waste rage on TC, if the Protection Paladin is keeping a Judgement up.

Tier 11:
Hammer of the Righteous: 6% of base mana - 5 yd range - Instant cast - 6 sec cooldown - Requires One-Handed Melee Weapon - Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 100% of weapon damage as Holy damage. This ability causes high threat.

This is the final piece of the puzzle we need to show exactly the extent of the changes Blizzard is intending for Protection Paladins in WotLK. The first piece was really Guarded by the Light, which showed a method for Protection Paladins to still use Consecration, Exorcism, Holy Wrath, Holy Shield, and Avenger's Shield effectively without a lot of Spell Power.

The second piece was Seal of the Martyr being made available to the Alliance, meaning both factions would have a Seal that procced on every swing and dealt Holy Damage based off weapon damage. This means both sides can get away with using high damage weapons and STR instead of needing to use Spell Power weapons.

Thirdly was Divine Strength being put in the Protection tree and not the Retribution tree. When I first saw this, it made little sense, but once I put the pieces together, I very much understood Blizzard's goal.

The final piece was this ability. A Protection-only Holy Damage ability which used white damage and not Spell Power as a base. To properly get maximum mileage out of this talent, one needs to have a lot of STR, and a high damage weapon.

One of my only real issues with being a Protection Paladin was that while I was a front-liner, swinging my weapon to help my allies, the actual swinging of my weapon always felt hollow. I was only using a sword or a hammer because it allowed my spells to do more damage. Now that's no longer true. In WotLK, Protection Paladins will use high DPS tanking swords and swing them to do damage, not just to have their seals proc.

In the end, I believe Blizzard's goal is for Protection Paladins to move away from Spell Power weapons and plate, and to embrace high STA weapons and armor that also have +hit, +expertise, avoidance stats, and STR on them. This is looking like what they also intend for Warrior and Death Knight tanks. Simply put, there will only be one setup for a plate wearing tank, instead of having one set for each class. Maybe there will be some Spell Power on the tiered set, but that will be all. Other than the Paladin Tiered set (and maybe not even there), expect Prot Paladins to stack STR and STA as their two core stats.

Personal note: With all this explained, I can also say that one of the reasons I was looking forward to DK tanking was it was a tank that used it's weapon for damage and not just for spell casting. With these changes in Protection Paladin tanking, I'm not sure if I will swap my DK to my main anymore. I'll still try it out, but in the end I'm just not sure. Instead I'll try both and see how it comes out. I'm very excited by these changes and can't wait to see them in-game.

The next part I'm going to touch on either new abilities I haven't mentioned before, or changes to existing abilities that I didn't mention in my review of the talents.

Avenging Wrath: 8% of base mana - Instant cast - 3 min cooldown - Increases all damage and healing caused by 20% for 20 sec.

First thing almost every Paladin will notice is that Avenging Wrath no longer causes Forbearance. This is not a typo, Blizzard did change this. As a counterbalance to that, they also lowered the percent bonus from 30% to 20%. While this is a bummer, it's well worth it to me, because it means that we can use it every time it's up and not worry about when we use Divine Shield. Also, Avenging Wrath has been changed to also increase healing as well as damage by 20% when it's used. Holy Paladins now have a reason to have this on their quick bar. Finally, with AW not causing Forbearance, a PvP Paladin can pop wings, then bubble themselves and not have to worry about it being stolen or purged. This is a great day for Paladins of every spec.

Sacred Shield: 35 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - Each time the target takes damage they gain a Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 seconds.

A level 80 Holy Paladin spell (non-talented), the details on this are really sketchy. Duration? Can it be cast on multiple targets? Does it scale with Spell Power? Can it be cast on self (for Protection Paladins)? All of these are unknown. But it looks interesting, eh?

Hammer of Wrath: - Rank 6 - 615 Mana - 30 yd range - 0.5 sec cast - 6 sec cooldown - Hurls a hammer that strikes an enemy for 1140 to 1260 Holy damage. Only usable on enemies that have 35% or less health.

Interesting to note that the health range that Hammer of Wrath can be used upon has been expanded from 20% to 35%. What is even more interesting is that the same treatment has not been given to Execute or any other talents or abilities which target "weakened" enemies.

Turn Evil: 9% of base mana - 20 yd range - 1.5 sec cast - The targeted undead or demon enemy will be compelled to flee for up to 20 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. Only one target can be turned at a time.

Interesting not because it's changed (other than the mana cost), but because it's available at 24, when you get the original version of Turn Undead, which only works for 10 seconds. Maybe they will add more ranks later, but right now there's only a single rank that works on Demons and Undead and causesthem to flee for 20 seconds.

Worthwhile addendum: If you use Judgement of Justice then Turn Evil on a demon or undead they will just stand there, unable to flee, but unable to fight. Enjoy.

Seal of Wisdom: 14% of base mana - Instant cast - Fills the Paladin with divine wisdom for 30 sec, giving each melee attack a chance to restore some of the Paladin's mana. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting attacks and spells used against the judged enemy a chance to restore mana to the attacker. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

Seal of Light: 14% of base mana - Instant cast - Fills the Paladin with divine light for 30 sec, giving each melee attack a chance to heal the Paladin. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will damage an enemy and grant melee attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

Seals of Light and Wisdom are both no longer given multiple ranks, and are being reduced to percent of base mana costs. While is true for every other Seal, Seals of Light and Wisdom get special notice because this could signify a change in how they work. It's a probable guess that their base mana and health recovered will scale with level, but they could also possibly scale with the caster's Spell Power, meaning that as the caster becomes more powerful, so will the Seals and Judgements. A nice possibility.

Also worth touching on is that all of the damaging seals are also getting this treatment. Seals and Judgements of Righteousness, Command, Blood, Vengeance, the Martyr, and Corruption all appear to now scale with level and Spell Power or Weapon Damage. It will be nice to always have a Seal be as powerful as it can be with every level. This will make leveling a Paladin much easier.

Righteous Defense: 40 yd range - Instant - 15 sec cooldown - Come to the defense of a friendly target, commanding up to 3 enemies attacking the target to attack the Paladin instead.

None of the actual mechanics of the spell have changed, but Blizzard was nice enough to realize that this is our only taunt, and despite it being multi-target, having it cost mana is just stupid, considering that Bears and Warriors don't need to pay rage for Taunt or Growl. Thank you Blizzard for not making Paladins have to pay for what should have been a free ability from the get go.

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The last portion will be for some prospective talent builds that could be used in WotLK once we're all 80.

Holy:
Raiding Holy/Ret: 56/0/15: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gGzGVuMxRtZE00x
With the usual gamut of talents in the Holy tree, but picking up the awesome tag-team combo of Enlightened Judgements and Judgements of the Pure means that Benediction is a must-have. And with Conviction now giving a crit bonus to spells and melee, it's a welcome addition, boosting a Holy Paladin's crit up an additional 5%. While one could pick up Improved Judgements, since the primary reason to get Judgements of the Pure is for the haste buff, which lasts 30 seconds.

Raiding Holy/Prot: 54/17/0: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gGzhVuMxRtVGz0T
This talent gives up some of the additional offensive and critting options of the Holy/Ret build to have increased survivability and more raid-wide utility through Divine Guardian and Blessing of Kings. Optionally one can drop three points from somewhere to pick up Improved Devotion Aura for those in the back row, since otherwise it will mostly be gotten by Protection Paladins and if you're either lacking one or too far away, it would be a nice boost to healing.

PvP Holy: 51/20/0: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxGbghdGVzMxRxVGz0Th
Beacon of Light is an amazing PvE spell, but is much more lacking in PvP where it could be easily dispelled, wasting mana and cast time. Instead by focusing more on survivability and offense, PvP Holy Paladins can support their allies and defend themselves as needed. The addition of Enlightened Judgements to the Holy tree gives Holy Paladins a effective new offensive option at their disposal.

Shockadin: 53/0/18: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sVAbg0dGizMxRxZVf0xh
Many of the changes to the Holy tree have turned it from a gimmicky PvP DPSer into the real deal. The obvious addition of Enlightened Judgements combined with Holy Shock's damage version range means a Shockadin no longer needs to approach their target to do maximum damage. Judgement of Righteousness plus Holy Shock, with enough Spell Power will be a potent combo at a 20 yard range.

Protection:
Main Tank Prot/Ret: 0/59/12: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZx0tIxckMgqeRGoVbx
This build focuses on survivability and threat generation. While there are some other talents I could pick up, like Anticipation or Pursuit of Justice, I chose to aim for where I did since I believe it's the most effective use of my available talents. It also keeps it's options broad in that it can effectively AOE tank and Single-Target tank.

Main Tank Prot/Holy: 17/54/0: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxG0gZV0tcgcdMgoeRGo
This one sacrifices survival and threat generation to have greater healing potential when they aren't needed to tank bosses. By picking up Healing Light, Illumination, and Improved Lay on Hands, a Paladin can vastly improve his healing potential without crippling his survival and threat generation (the loss of the 5% parry in tBC was really hard to make up for when being uncrushable was a concern).

Off-Tank Prot: 0/59/12: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZE0tcgcdMgoeRGoVbx
Despite the same numbers in each talent tree as Main Tank Prot/Ret, this build is fairly different. With the addition of more single-target non-reactive threat generating abilities Prot Paladins can more easily fill the role of Off-tank without relying on Mana Pots. This build sacrifices some of the major single-target damage reduction talents to pick up more avoidance (to work with Guarded by the Light) for when they are tasked to off-tank multiple adds (a common setup in bigger raids). It doesn't sacrifice anything in threat generation, so it will be able to keep up in that regard.

AOE grinding Prot/Ret: 0/54/17: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZE0xcx0zggoeRhoVfx00b
This spec is for a 5-man tank that has great potential for AOE grinding. Reckoning is amazing when you have low avoidance (i.e. prior to starting to raid) and Guarded by the Light will make it easier than ever to take on large amounts of enemies for easy money.

PvP Prot: 20/51/0: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxhbghZxGtcghzMxoeoho
PvP Prot? What? Well, between vastly expanding Prot's DD options and making it more healer friendly with Touched by the Light, Prot has had the potential of being a PvP spec added to it. Avenger's Shield has always been a powerful option in PvP, made moreso by it's lowered cast time and increased daze duration. Hammer of the Righteous will be a powerful tool since it's damage is based weapon damage, but it's damage is Holy thus not mitigated by armor. Shield of Righteousness will be no slacker either with it being Holy Damage as well. While maybe not as powerful as Ret, it will make up for it with a high amount of survivability.

Retribution:
Deep Ret Raiding: 0/7/64: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZxMZEf0x0fuAIoguAo
Picking up almost every worthwhile talent in the Ret tree, this build can put out some amazing damage with a some nice extra utility. It may lack some utility that other Ret builds will have from the other trees, but it's damage is second to none for Paladins. Also, this applies to all Raiding Ret trees: I don't take Seal of Command because Seal of Blood/the Martyr will probably be better.

Raiding Ret/Prot OT: 0/19/52: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZx0tcxZVf0x0fuAhoxuqo
What this talent build lacks in damage and utility, it makes up by being able to easily switch roles and provide Blessing of Kings. By taking Shield Specialization, a Ret Paladin will be able to strongly boost the power of Shield of Righteousness, and picking up Toughness will allow them to maximize their survivability when tanking.

Raiding Ret/Holy: 20/0/51: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gZZVf0x0fuAhoxuVo
Moving the previously stated talent points from Prot to Holy deprives a Ret of the nice STR boost of 15%, but opens up a lot more healing possibilities. Illumination is the cornerstone of any Paladin's healing arsenal, giving unmatched longevity. Divine Intellect will boost the mana pool of the Retribution Paladin, making him able to last longer in some of the more lengthy fights.

PvP Ret: 10/10/51: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sxhbZxGZVfcth0hAcsMzNo
Picking up key PvP talents up through the Ret tree, it goes deep enough into both the Holy and Prot tree to get some nice talents there. From the Holy tree it grabs Spiritual Focus and Healing Light for some quick healing when needed, and Unyielding Faith to decrease the power of enemy Fears. From the Prot tree, Divine Strength's acquisition was obvious, and Stoicism and Guardian's Favor bring strong benefits to any Arena or Battleground.

PvP Ret/Prot: 0/20/51: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZxG00ghZVfcth0hAcsMzNo
Dropping the talents in the Holy tree, this build dives deeper into the Prot tree to get Improved Hammer of Justice and Divine Guardian. Imp HoJ is very standard fare for a PvP Paladin, doubling (or more depending on the set bonuses from the PvP sets) the amount of times per minute that they can use HoJ. Divine Guardian has great potential in PvP since it can allow a lightly clothed player to survive a barrage by one group as the Ret Paladin runs through the enemy front-line unopposed behind his or her bubble.

====

Of course the talent builds I listed aren't the only options, nor are any of the changes I've talked about final. But this should give you an idea of some of the changes in store for Paladins of all shapes and sizes. I know I'm excited about them.

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Oh yeah, and a minor note that doesn't deserve it's own post: According to Wowhead, Death and Decay has been made an instant cast. I'm pleased as Punch.

What the bloody hell...?

2008-07-08T19:42:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm sure right about now everyone's wondering what in seven hells happened to me. "Kaziel!" you might say, "You said you'd be back to making regular posts now that you had a new job. It's been two *honk*ing months, and you've only posted three things, and nothing in the last month!" You would be right, and for this I am somewhat apologetic. I'm sorry because I've had a bunch of ideas popping around in my mind, but I've been too busy with other stuff to work on my Blog. While I'm not going to say I'm back, I am going to try to post a little more frequently. You see, my previous job kinda fell through (rather not talk about it) so since I had little reason to stay in Washington DC and a ton of reasons to leave and go to California, I did. For approximately the last month I've been prepping and moving from there to here, and here I finally am, happy and content if not a little (read: A LOT) hot.

Side note: If you're wondering why I titled my post like I was born in England, I have not, in fact, lost my mind. Instead have been watching too much Zero Punctuation, a brilliant and scathing review show by an Englishman living in Australia. While it rarely touches MMOs (or as he calls them "Mumorpugers" which seems like an ideal way to describe MMOs if you hate them), everything else is amazingly funny, in some cases making me laugh so hard I simultaneously cried and snorted (yes, snorted). If you are unfamiliar with a given show, give it a gander over at the Wikipedia then dive right in.

Anyway, as for the huge Death Knight post I was planning on writing, to hell with that. While there is a ton of useful information out there about Death Knights, all of it's changing so often, I might as well try to describe the crashing of the waves onto a beach for you.

There are only really three things worth posting about for Death Knights.

First is Death Grip, which has a forty-five second cooldown. My initial response to reading this was "Good god, Blizzard, you want Death Knights to suck at tanking, don't you?" This was until I learned of Blood Boil, an AOE taunt on a 15 second cooldown (reduceable to 11 seconds with talents) with no rune costs. All it requires is the target to have a disease on them (which of course is actually a lot harder than that sounds, since almost all diseases costs runes). Anyway, so we have, really, two taunts, it just has a small requirement (make sure you have an unholy rune), and it's great. Huzzah!

Second is how utterly and completely useless Death and Decay will be for almost anything other than occasionally doing AOE DPS. First off, whoever translated that bit on it having a fear effect needs to find a tall building, weigh themselves down and then throw themselves off of said building into rush-hour traffic. It does not have a fear effect, it has a stun effect as it has a (and I quote) "...chance to cause any affected to cower in fear." ... Cower. Not be feared, but cower in fear. I can only assume that the person who translated this to be reported to all the sites that reported the previous information has never actually played WoW. This is the only possible way such a horrible mistranslation could have gotten through

Now, this was great news when I found it out. It's like thinking you are getting piss in a cup, and finding out you are actually getting finely aged, couple-hundred dollar red wine. Unfortunately the other shoe must drop. What appeared to be a Grade-A Prime Rib steak to go with your piss-in-a-cup actually turns out to be moldy, rotted slice of roast beef to go with your amazing cup of red wine.

So, the other shoe that dropped. Death and Decay is on a 30 second cooldown with a 10 second duration. So 2 times a minute you can do some nifty-ish AOE damage to some things, but not very often, and it's ridiculously costly (one rune of each type currently). Now all of this would have just made it an "ehh" ability, but quite useful in PvP or tanking. But no, Blizzard can't allow that to happen. Instead we get a 30 second cooldown, 10 second duration and a 1.5 second cast time. I want to scream bloody murder. Cast times are almost universally a no-no in PvP, and a smart and/or lucky player will interrupt your Death and Decay, not only making you lose the spell, but cripping half or more of your repertoire. And cast times are even worse when tanking since it will mean you are getting a face full of "OH GOD IT HURTS!"

I mean, if Blizzard was really against Death and Decay not being able to be used on the move (which I don't get at all, but that's neither here nor there), give it a 0.5 second cast time. No on-the-move uses, but it's hard to interrupt and usable for AOE tanking, which is vitally necessary in todays age of Paladin Consecration tanks, which mean all 5-mans must have 50 hojillion trash mobs. As of currently, Death Knights are quite lacking in the AOE department (an intentional design, I believe, but with the game's current state of affairs, caused by the almost juggernaut-like abilities Paladins bring to trash mobs, it's a painful situation for most non-Paladin tanks.

The third point, on the other hand, is a gleeful jaunt down Awesome Avenue, making a stop a the train station, to ride the Amazing Train to Wonderful-ville. I've seen Death Knight tanking trees, and that leak, or whatever it was that I edited into my previous Death Knight post has been changed. It was correct then, but Blizzard said "Nah, let's do something else!" and something else is fantastic! There is no tanking tree. Now, I'm sure this is the point where everyone looks at me and thinks I've gone off my rocker, but I haven't. It doesn't mean that Death Knights aren't tanks. They are still as tanky as all the rest of the classes, but the various tanking talents are spread out to each tree. The Blood Tree is still the "Hit things hard" tree, the Unholy tree is still the disease/summon tree, but now the Frost tree is the "Crowd Control" tree (more like the Mage's Frost tree, which will probably make it more of the cookie-cutter PvP spec than the Unholy tree...). An example is a talent-ability requiring 25 points in the Unholy tree:

Bone Armor: Instant cast, 30 second cooldown. The caster is surrounded by 4 swirling bones. Each bone reduces the damage from the next spell or melee attack by 40% but is then consumed. Lasts 5 min.

While this obviously has PvP and soloing potential, the biggest potential I see for it is to a tank. In equal measure is the talent "Will of the Necropolis" which is basically a three rankArdent Defender, with 6 Expertise at max rank. Now, before anyone starts bitching that it's unfair that they get this talent when we have to buy that effect in two talents, it's much deeper in the Blood tree (yes this one's in the Blood tree) than either of the two talents which give a similar effect to Paladins.

In the simplest way to phrase it, you are not pigeonholed into a particular playstyle, if you want to tank. You can be a Blood tank, an Unholy Tank, or a Frost tank, and all three of them have unique and valuable talents which help in that goal. I've seen some complain about not having all the talents consolidated into one place where they can just min-max them all to hell and back, but screw them. I like it this way. Something new, different and AWESOME! Gimme variety. Screw cookie-cutter one-design tanking builds. Hooray individuality!

=======

Also a vital note mostly unrelated to Death Knights, but entirely related to WotLK and tanking, is that Blizzard does appear to be removing Crushing Blows from the raiding, with some interesting changes on the horizon for Warriors. Shield block goes from what it was to this:

Shield Block: Increases your chance to block and the amount blocked by 100% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack. 30 sec cooldown.

With Improved Shield Block only decreasing the cooldown by 5/10 seconds, and NOT increasing the amount of charges Shield Block has. Simply put there will be no way to reach uncrushable for early endgame, which clearly means they are intending on removing crushing blows from level 80+ raiding (CBs may still exist for previous raids, but the additional levels and gear quality should make those hits feel like we're being tickled.) This explains the lack of an Anti-CB ability for Death Knights, and makes me much more relived about the potential imbalance I was seeing.
This, of course, creates another imbalance in the form of Dire Bear form with it's billions of health and armor, and no crushing blows to equalize the difference. As of right now, Bears still have those ridiculous modifiers and, unless Blizzard gets on the ball before release, will reign supreme come raid-time (or even in 5-mans) in WotLK. Good job Blizzard.

There are some complaints about this, beyond the obvious one of how they are going to balance Druids. This one boggled my damned mine when I heard it, but according to an endgame raiding Holy Priest, Crushing Blows create a sense of challenge and randomness to encounters that would otherwise be lacking from a healing perspective. ... I'm not kidding here folks. I had this conversation on my guild's Vent channel one night while we were doing Ahune. I was almost positive that my ears were failing me, but they were not. Ignoring the fact that Crushing Blows create a ridiculous obstacle for entry-level Paladins to overcome to just stand on equal footing with Warriors and Bears (can you tell I'm still bitter about that?), but once they get on equal footing, the other two classes are left behind by Paladins 8 charges every 10 seconds of uncrushability, making them less desirable in many fights. Oh and of course if you have a connection speed that is less than perfect, kiss your dreams of being a raiding MT goodbye, because you're now on a one-way ride to crushable-town.

Oh and here's a petty personal prediction: Now that Holy Shield will not be needed to even survive in raids, I predict that it will be made a baseline ability. Blow me, Blizzard.

Quick update

2008-06-04T13:30:00.001-07:00

Working on another long Death Knight post, but in the mean time, two weekends ago (on the 24th) my guild did our first real foray into Zul'Aman (unlike our previous attempt) . We had a few issues with the learning attempts on both bosses (DON'T RUN FROM THE EAGLE UNTIL AFTER THE STORM IS OVER!), and apparently there are some issues with me taunting the Bear boss off of our other tank, but we still managed to walk away with the first two ZA bosses down! Woot! Got the Off-Hand fist weapon from Nalorakk and the healing neck from Akil'zon.

And last weekend I was traveling, and wasn't getting back until almost midnight Sunday, so my guild had to make due without me. It was a bit slower, and they only cleared the mandatory bosses in Kara up to Chess, but still it's good considering that I'm definitely the best geared tank. Plus this allowed others to practice MT roles which is something I usually end up doing for speed's sake.

Been a while since I updated what was going on in my guild so I figured I would.

Well I was going to do a number-cruncher post...

2008-05-20T11:25:00.003-07:00

...but then Blizzard decided to drop an info-bomb on us in the form of WotLK info.

EDIT: As of 4:10 PM, May 20th, Blizzard has put out new info on Death Knights. I've slightly changed my final analysis of Death Knights because of that.

For original sources and additional pictures check out these posts at MMO-Champion and WoWInsider:
MMO-Champion WotLK preview Part 1
MMO-Champion WotLK preview Part 2
WoWInsider Death Knight preview
Also make sure to check out the awesome trailer that Boubouille put together (at the bottom of both MMO-Champion posts).

I'll pick out the bits which are interesting to me. The first part is entirely Death Knight centric (shocking, I know...)

All players with a level 55 character will be able to create one Death Knight per realm, per account.

Okay, the fact that it started at a lower level than 80 or even 70 is old news to me, but now we have a hard number. Honestly 55 works for me. That gives a player time to play around in the "Old World" before going to Outland and learn a bit about the class.

Though the "one Death Knight per real, per account" thing comes as a bit of a surprise. Not that it changes much for many players, since most people don't play the same class twice, but still. At least this will stop people from making nothing but Death Knights for any alts they want to make after the first DK.

Spent runes automatically refresh after a set period of time, much like a Rogue's energy bar.

This falls into the category of things I expected. Even then, seeing it confirmed is a nice. This also means that, unlike Warriors and Paladins, for tanking Death Knights will not be needing to be punched in the face to effectively generate threat. I'm liking it already.

Death Knights also have a secondary resource called Runic Power generated by using your rune abilities. It will use the same mechanics as rage and increase when you deal damage, or slowly decrease if you're not using it.

Death Knights will have a lot of abilities that cost all available Runic Power with varying levels of effectiveness based on total Runic Power spent. (Same mechanics as Execute for warriors, or finishing moves for Rogues)

This one was unexpected, but not altogether unwelcome. Based upon this and later information this is merely fuel for an ability to be powerful or not, and not something used to power the ability itself. For example, it's like a Rogue's finishing moves. You still need energy (the runes) to use the ability, but the combo points (Runic Power) decides it's strength. Since this is a power you build up by dealing damage or using rune abilities I would have been worried about our reliance on it for tanking, but it seems to be more for DPSing. Either way, it's just additional fuel instead of the ignition for abilities so I'm not too concerned.

Death Knights will have spells equivalent to auras called "Presence", providing them with powerful self-buffs depending on their role in the group. (One for tanking, one for damage dealing, etc ...)

I'm a bit leery about this one from a tanks perspective. This sounds distinctly like how RF works, as far as buffing yourself, which would mean I would need to rebuff myself after a fight. I hope not. On the other hand, if it's an Aura-like effect hopefully it won't wear off like RF does, which will be a huge step in the right direction.

Also the fact that there is a Presence for DPSing means that Death Knights have more fluidity than Paladins and can more easily swap from a Tank to a DPS role which is a big complaint I have about Paladin tanking. I'm pleased about this bit.

An instant lifedrain spell (described as death coil without the fear component) will be available.

There is no way this will not have a long cooldown. Do not expect drain tanking. While I could be wrong, I really, really doubt it.

Death Knights will be the first class to use diseases as a source of damage, with abilities that become strong depending on how many diseases are already applied to the target.

This one is interesting in a "current class" way. In PvP, against Shaman, Paladins and Priests (or people with those classes on their side) Death Knights will lose a vital ability set. Since Death Knights rely on runes, thus probably can't spam abilities and use mana, rage or energy like other classes, one cleansed Disease can be crippling. This will mean that Death Knights need to be even more cognizant of what other classes they are fighting against than most of the other classes.

(MMO-C)"Army of the Dead" will spawn numerous undead minions to attack nearby hostiles targets.

(WoWI)Army of the Dead: This ability will temporarily summon a small army of Undead that will fight for you. It will apparently be channeled, which makes me think it will be closer to an AE attack like a Druid's Hurricane than an actual pet ability.

At first glance I was thinking of this ability as the Death Knight counterpart to Force of Nature. But the channeling part has me going "WTF?" It's use while Tanking or PvP is completely out. Maybe it will be cool, but I really dislike the Channeling part. We'll see.

(MMO-C)Death Knights will also revive an enemy (or ally) as a ghoul to use it as a pet with its own special abilities like a disease-inflicting strike and a stun.
When an ally is risen as a ghoul, a pop-up will appear and this ally will have the choice to control the ghoul if he wants to.

(MMO-C)Raise Dead -- Raises a nearby corpse to fight for the Death Knight for 2 minutes. If used on a player corpse, the player has the option to play as the ghoul for the duration -- gaining access to the ghoul's abilities.
The ghoul has the ability to do the following:
Leap to the target
Rend for decent damage-over-time
Stun target, and of course more

(WoWI)Raise Dead: This will raise an actual nearby corpse, including one of a fallen ally (even in Arenas) to fight for you as a Ghoul. An ally so resurrected will have the option to control their character as a Ghoul. Ghouls will get abilities to cause diseases, stun, and fear among other things, but it seems like they will be temporary pets all the same - at least, I assume PCs will eventually be allowed to resurrect rather than stay slaves of the Death Knight.

This ability sounds absolutely amazing! It's inevitable that an ally will die in some raid fight or in an Arena. If you don't have a druid, or if you are saving a combat rez for someone more important than a DPSer, you can get them up as a Ghoul where they can assist in the fight once more, even if it's only for a limited time. Plus a number of fights require people moving around, and ordering your pet around is rarely fast enough to remove them from all the danger. By having a player control your "pet", it will make it more useful.

The Death Knight's particular niche will be in tanking magic-damage-dealing bosses. They will have an ability much like a banshee's anti-magic shell, greatly diminishing the amount of incoming magic damage they'll receive in combat.

Anti-magic Shield -- Reduces the damage of the next magical spell cast on the Death Knight by 75%. It also converts the damage reduced into Runic Power.

This is awesome because it really is a much needed niche. While Warriors currently have spell reflect, it's their only real method of reducing incoming spell damage, and has a small window of time to cast it to properly reflect (and is next to useless against mobs and bosses with instant-cast spells). While there aren't many details on Anti-magic Shield, I expect it to have a longer duration and/or lower cooldown than Spell Reflect, allowing them to be excellent anti-magic tanks.

Death Coil -- Depletes all Runic Power, dealing 600 damage to a non-Undead target, or healing 900 damage on a friendly target.

Since this depletes Runic Power, I expect how much it hurts or heals to be dependent on how much Runic Power you have. This one is much Holy Shock, which could be a good thing healing ability, but will most likely be used as an offensive spell.

Death Grip -- This is the Death Knight's "taunt" ability. It also pulls the target to the Death Knight, forcing them to attack the Death Knight for a short amount of time. Yes, I said pulls the target; Blizzard is going to allow players to move mobs in the expansion both with Death Grip, and other knockback/pull abilities. This works on players too, so PvP balance ahoy!

I'm going to ignore the PvP implications, even though they are absolutely huge(!), and instead focus on the PvE side of things. This ability will make Death Knights amazing anti-caster tanks by being able to pull casters to exactly where they want them, instead of having to rely on LOS pulls. Hopefully it will not have a long cooldown, like Righteous Defender, and possibly have a talent that will reduce it's cooldown, much like Improved Taunt for Warriors.

Chains of Ice -- Roots the target in place. When the spell fades, it places a snare on the target that reduces in potency as the duration runs out.

This one isn't particularly noteworthy in and of itself, but there's some history behind the ability named Chains of Ice. Back in the original WoW beta, Mages had an ability like this, or similar. The fact that I can gain access to an ability I was denied makes me smile. I would imagine the existence of this ability relates to the limitations of the rune system.

This points even more to a respectably long cooldown on each rune (around 10-12 seconds for a full recharge). I would imagine that, generally speaking, there won't be small cooldowns on the common abilities of a Death Knight (beyond global cooldowns) since the class will be far more limited by what runes are available and not what cooldowns are up. This is a huge difference from Paladins where mana only becomes a problem in certain circumstances, and the class is far more limited to if an ability is still on cooldown. Will require some getting used to.

Death Pact -- Sacrifices the raised ghouls to heal the Death Knight.

When I first read this, my brain through it referred to Army of the Dead, until I read the bit about AotD being Channeled. So now I think it applies to the Raise Dead ability. But if that's the case, why phrase it as "ghouls" instead of "ghoul"? Hmmm...

Death and Decay -- Targeted, AoE Damage-over-time which pulses similar to the Paladin spell Consecration. Anyone affected by Death and Decay has a chance to be feared.

I'm looking at this and thinking: PvP spell. Yeah, it will have uses in PvE, but the fearing aspect means potential adds, which is never cool. Otherwise a fun looking ability!

Frost Presence -- Increases Armor by 45% and allows the Death Knight to generate 25% more threat. Only one presence can be active at any time.

Two very important bits of information here. First off is the increase to threat generated across the board, instead of focused. To clarify, when I say "focused" I'm referring to how Paladins get a large bonus to threat generated by Holy damage, but no threat modifier to any other type of damage. Death Knights are more like Warriors or Bears in that anything they do will generate additional threat.

While the large focused bonus Paladins get is nice, it's also limiting. First off, approximately 15-20% of a Paladin's total damage is from normal melee attacks, which get no threat modifier on them. In addition, any bonus damage from gear or buffs that's not Holy (Thorns for example) gets no modifier to it. If a Paladin is fighting a mob that has some sort of Silence (Maiden of Virtue) or has a mana burn/drain, it makes it a lot more challenging since they could have a period where they are only generating a very little amount of threat.

With Death Knights having a +25% threat modifier applied to everything, including normal melee attacks, that means when they can't use abilities for whatever reason, they are still generating a good amount of threat. This is a huge positive for them to me.

The second portion which is interesting is the armor modifier. Doing some quick math, Alixander has 16,469 armor current. I used Warcrafter and got how much armor he has without his shield, which is 11,137. 45% of that number is 5,012 armor, which would mean an equally equipped Death Knight would have only 16,149 armor. So Frost Presence makes up for the Death Knight's lack of a shield, right? Everything's even between Warriors/Paladins and Death Knights, right?

Not really. First issue: Shields scale faster than the rest of your tanking gear. Wearing my mix of Kara and BoJ purples, it's about even, but looking at Lore's Warcrafter info, it doesn't. He has 19,258 armor, and his shield accounts for 6,459 of it. Removing the shield leaves him at 12,153 armor, of which an additional 45% would only give him 17,622 armor. So at lower gear levels, 45% would probably put Death Knights ahead, but as gear continues to improve, shields will pull ahead and Death Knights will be left behind. Though in truth the difference betwen 19,258 and 17,622 is pretty minor. Maybe only 1-2% damage, so this may be a case of mountain making out of molehills.

The area where this will be a major inconvenience is Crushing Blows. A Druid lacks the ability to become uncrushable and just plows his way through them by having tons of health and tons of armor. Warriors and Paladins use their shields to increase their avoidance to 102.4% thus negating crushing blows. Death Knights appear to have neither of these. I'm hoping that they will get either a talent that negates crushing blows when Frost Presence is active, or a spell that allows them to somehow avoid crushing blows, otherwise Death Knights will not be viable raid tanks.

(MMO-C)Unholy Presence -- Increases Attack Speed and Movement speed by 15%. Only one presence can be active at any time. This was described by Tom Chilton as the "PvP" presence.

(WoWI)Unholy Presence will provide increased attack speed and decreased global cooldown, and is being billed as the PvP presence.

I'll be honest... this makes me happy in my pants. I like the way this looks, and having a "PvP" stance will be pretty sweet. Allows for much more flexibility in my class without needing an entirely different set of gear (though I will have another gear set too), something sorely lacking in Paladins.

Blood Presence - DPS. Increases DPS and heals the DK slightly when attacked.

This will be the solo/DPS Presence. The first part is obvious, and the second part is primarily for when soloing. I like it. Also, if this Presence doesn't have a threat down modifier, then it will be a good Tanking Presence for 5-mans once you reach Raid-gear levels. One can hope...

Strangulate -- Depletes all Runic Power, dealing minor damage and silencing the target for up to 5 seconds.

I'm guessing the duration of this ability will be directly connected to how much Runic Power you have. Will it suffer from DR? Reserving judgment on this one until we get more details.

Blade Strike: Attacks the target and applies a disease.

Blood Strike: Deals Damage based on how many diseases are on the target.

Complimentary abilities. Looks nice. I expect both to work via Blood Runes.

Mind Freeze - Interrupts spell casting.

Hello! Guessing a Frost Rune spell, wonder what the cooldown and duration will look like.

That's it for the DK related stuff.

==============================

EDIT: Oh wait. Blizzard decided to clarify stuff for me

Talent Trees

Death knight talent trees are complemented by Presences -- self-only auras that benefit the death knight. Selecting the matching Presence for each tree augments the class abilities for that school of magic.

Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage-dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage.
Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.
Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.

So... there we go! Each Talent tree is confirmed to be matched to one of the three runes, while they clarify what each rune does, which varied widely depending on your source. I'd heard everything from Blood is for tanking, Frost is for tanking, and Unholy is for tanking over the course of the last few months. It's good to hear something concrete.

Looking at the what Blizzard says each Rune will do, I'm thinking that I would use something like a 3xFrost, 2xBlood, 1xUnholy setup, or possibly a 4xFrost, 1xBlood, 1xUnholy. I'll have to see and experiment, but I know I won't have less than 3 Frost Runes while tanking.

They have also officially confirmed that Army of the Dead will be channeled, and unless it's Channeled and uninterruptable, it sounds like a PvE DPS ability only. Boo.

Anyway, yay for official info! And I'm much happier knowing I'll be a Frost-Spec Death Knight.

==============================

Now onto other cool info:

All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 10-person and 25-person versions. So at level 80, every major encounter and every big boss fight can be experienced with a group of 10.

25-person raiding progression is not dependent on 10-person raiding progression.

There will be no attunements or keys to obtain, and you won't be locked out of a 25-person instance if you decide to attempt the 10-person version, and vice-versa.

25-person raids will earn more, higher-level rewards, in what should be the equivalent of one "tier" of loot quality.

WHOA! I MEAN... WHOA!!! This is huge! While of course some are griping about it (as is any change to "appease the casuals" causes) I view this as an awesome and welcome change. Now any reason I'd ever have for leaving OWL is gone. Even though I won't see the 25-man versions of all the fights (which I hope and expect are different) I'll still get to see everything or at least close to everything. Kaz is a happy little raid-monkey.

The removal of attunements is a not a bad change. I don't think it's really good, but it's not bad. It can have bad repercussions if a guild is too lax on who can come in their raids. Of course this is not a flaw in the game but a flaw in the players who do it.

As for the "getting worse gear" thing, that's fine by me. Like I care about gear that much. Nope.

Going by the first (Inscription) recipe, which requires Peacebloom, they'll rely on the herbalist gathering profession.

What I read from this: My Death Knight will be the prettiest princess, as he prances through the fields picking flowers and singing happy songs.

Note: I hate Herbalism.

Every player will get a new spell book page to which they can add six glyphs - currently, four major and two minor.

Major glyphs will be effective in combat - adding damage over time or stun to a physical attack, for example - while minor glyphs will give convenient or cosmetic improvements, removing the need for some spell reagents.

The way inscription is going to work is you'll have a series of mats that you need to do and then you'll create a scroll that will actually do the buff of the spell in question. Each scroll will have a specific use, so you won't create a generic scroll, it'll be a special scroll that will upgrade this fireball to do this type of thing. Right now we're still trying to make sure we've got that kind of mechanic down. That's actually most of the work. Most of the work is figuring out how that all works, what the materials are, how that comes together, and once we have that, then figuring out what the individual spells are and what the individual spells are and what the effects are going to be is going to be relatively easy.

This is very interesting. So since Major Glyphs are the real deal, but there's a hard limit on how many you can have that will really mean a lot of number crunching to figure out what's the best choice. Will be interesting to see if there are more than one Glyph per spell, or if it's just one effect (for example Frostbolt has a glyph which makes it's chilled effect last longer, or if we can get extended chilled or increased range, or other stuff). Also can you stack Glyphs? The Potential strength of 4x +Damage to Frost Bolt Glyphs is scary.

Glyphs can be sold at the Auction House.

Allowing enchanters sell their enchantments at the Auction House is still planned.

EPIC WIN! (maybe I will continue to level Kaziel, since he's an Enchanter).

A raid encounter in the Nexus will let players free drakes and then fight on their back, allowing them to use their abilities. Bronze, Green, and Red drakes will be available and each one of them will have his own set of abilities. The boss fight is tuned around the abilities of the drakes and players will be able to pick any combination (e.g. 3 Green, 1 Bronze, and 4 Red). There's a boss fight that has lots of adds in it, and one of [the drakes] can apply this buff to a bunch of adds while another one can basically consume the buff and get health back from all of it and also assume a tanking role. So your tank is then healing himself based off of this debuff that another one is applying to everyone.

Okay, just gotta say... This sounds pretty freaking sweet. That's about it.

Developpers think they didn't reward PvE enough in the Burning Crusade, and will try to change that in WotLK.

Not that I'm complaining, since I love PvE, but... What? I mean, when they say "PvE" do they mean it like "Not PvP and Not Raid" or just "Not PvP"? If it's the former, then I understand, but the latter makes no sense at all. *scratches head*

Heroic dungeons weren't rewarding enough in BC, Wrath of the Lich King will change that and make player feel that Heroic instances have their own tier of loot instead of a few additions to the normal loot table. Expanding the Heroic Badge system will be a major step to achieve this.

Uh... no duh. Of course it didn't help that fully half of the Heroics had almost the exact same loot tables as the normal versions, other than the final boss fights. Way to go Blizzard.

The Arthas storyline will play out through the patches as well. So Arthas doesn't die in shipping Wrath of the Lich King. Arthas will die in a content patch.

I, Kaziel of Durotan, Lore-Monkey extraordinaire, approve of this message.

Anyway, that's the key points for me. There are some cool other stuff, but none of that really makes me go gaga. Yeah, I pretty much skipped over all the PvP stuff. Hard for me to get excited about WoW PvP with WAR still on the horizon (and with the Friends and Family Alpha only just now starting for WotLK, I really do expect WAR to come out quite a few months before WotLK sees the light of day).

And I'm back!

I'm back!

2008-05-08T10:34:00.002-07:00

Okay, I'm back to being able to post from time to time. Got a new job that gives me downtime in front of a computer where I can blog occasionally (along with an unfiltered internet connection!).

Anyway, I'll begin working on some other posts soon, but for now I just wanted to say "I'm back!"

News from the WAR front

2008-03-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

Oh I'm so clever with my post titles.

Anyway, two big points of information on Warhammer Online, one of them bad and one of them good.

First I'll start with the Bad News: Mark Jacobs announced that WAR has been delayed to a potential release date of Q3 2008. This is disappointing, but altogether not unexpected, news to me. While obviously I was hoping to enjoy WAR sooner rather than later, I really didn't expect it to get released in Q2. As we were coming into the new year, all the information coming out of Beta on WAR's progress made it seem like a Q2 release date was unlikely. Though, with the rate they've been progressing, I believe a Q3 release date is possible, but even if it gets pushed back to Q4, that's fine. I'd rather have a good game later than a bad game now.

Then there's the Good News: Collector's Edition is now available for Preorder! Okay, first off we'll touch on what we get for just getting the Collector's Edition. There's the usual gamut of stuff, like Art books and little pretty things like figurines and whatnot. Then there's the interesting stuff... the in-game stuff:

Twelve unique heads available to CE people only. Two for each race... one male and one female except Greenskins who are all male, so it'll probably be a unique Orc head and a unique Goblin head.
The Libram of Insight: An item that you can use that has three charges. Each time you use a charge you get a 10% bonus modifier to XP gained, and each charge lasts for an hour.
The final bonus is really the icing on the cake that ensured that I would get the CE: Twelve unique quests only available to those who have the Collector's Edition. One PvE and One PvP quest per race (though available to anyone on that faction). I expect these quests to be low level, so the rewards don't have a huge impact on endgame. Either way, each quest comes with a title that will be unique to those who have the CE. Honestly, even if these quests had no rewards or titles, it would still be enough for me to want it just for more quests!

Now, all this would have been more than enough (hell a non-combat pet is enough for me to get the WoW CEs). But that's not enough for EA Mythic. They are also giving you, if you preorder it:

Guaranteed access to the Open Beta for WAR.
A "Live game head start". They don't really clarify how this will work. Either you will be able to keep your Open Beta Characters or you will be able to start playing WAR on the normal servers a few days early. Either way, it's pretty damn sweet.

Finally two more in-game items:

The "Rittenbach's Portable Camp" which allows you to "Rest your weary soul and heal your wounds between battles" whatever the hell that means.
One of three "Bands" (rings?) with different names and effects depending on which store you preorder the CE from. They will all "increase your stats" and give you a buff that gives you a chance to do a certain type of damage. The catch is all these bands are only usable in PvE. Sounds fine by me.

Anyway, I'm totally sold on this. Not that I wasn't already, but now I really am! WOOO WAR!

New BoJ bought reward comparisons

2008-03-26T11:01:00.001-07:00

As I promised before, with the new patch out, I'm going to detail the new BoJ rewards and compare them to the previous ones of the same slot.

First up is the easiest one, IMO: Feet.

New Badge item:
Blue's Greaves of the Righteous Guardian: Plate Feet, 1212 Armor, 58 STA, 34 Shield Block Rating, 23 Spell Hit Rating, 26 Spell Damage, Red Socket, 3 STA Socket Bonus

This is compared to the previous choice of:
Sabatons of the Righteous Defender: Plate Feet, 1105 Armor, 45 STA, 18 Defense Rating, 18 Spell Hit Rating, 30 Shield Block Value, 23 Spell Damage, Red/Blue Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus

Opinion: The new Blue's Greaves are almost a total upgrade compared to the Sabatons. They have more armor, base stamina, a socket that can be socketed either for +9 or +12 STA (assuming you only use blue quality gems), more spell hit rating, and a ton of crush avoidance (though only through Shield Block Rating). One of the reasons I hadn't upgraded from my Boots of Elusion to the Sabatons is due to how much crush avoidance I'd lose. But with how much Shield Block Rating the Greaves have (over 4% at 70) this makes this a non-issue and actually gives me more crush avoidance so I can shed some of my other gear elsewhere. Maybe get some more Expertise Rating. The only situation where the Sabatons are better than the Greaves is when you are treading water on Defense Rating and picking up the Greaves would drop you under 490.

Next up is Waist:

New Badge item:
Girdle of the Fearless: Plate Waist, 904 Armor, 58 STA, 34 Defense Rating, 23 Hit Rating, 22 Expertise Rating, Red Socket, 3 STA Socket Bonus

This is compared to the two previous options of:

Girdle of the Protector: Plate Waist, 904 Armor, 40 STA, 11 Defense Rating, 27 Dodge Rating, 18 Spell Hit Rating, 23 Spell Damage Yellow/Blue Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus

or

Iron-Tusk Girdle: Plate Waist, 904 Armor, 45 STA, 21 Defense Rating, 33 Dodge Rating, Yellow/Blue Sockets, 3 Dodge Rating Socket Bonus

Opinion: This one is a no-brainer. While overall you lose out on avoidance, the Girdle of the Fearless has Expertise. Expertise is (IMO) the best of the non-necessary stats. Even with how much I rant and rave about Spell Hit, I would drop every point of Spell Hit I have for more Expertise. Plus the Girdle of the Fearless has some benefits beyond just Expertise. It has more Stamina, even after gemming up, and the regular Hit Rating will allow for less Avenger's Shield and Righteous Defense misses.

As for the Leg slot, we have two options at our disposal:
Inscribed Legplates of the Aldor: Plate Legs, 1406 Armor, 78 STA, 25 Defense Rating, 43 Dodge Rating, 37 Spell Damage, Red/Yellow Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus

Sunguard Legplates: Plate Legs, 1406 Armor, 78 STA, 43 Defense Rating, 35 Dodge Rating, 23 Expertise Rating, Red/Blue Sockets, 3 Dodge Rating Socket Bonus

Compared to the old:
Unwavering Legguards: Plate Legs, 1406 Armor, 73 STA, 22 Defense Rating, 30 Shield Block Rating, 59 Shield Block Value, Red/Yellow/Blue Socket, 6 STA Socket Bonus

Opinion: While the Unwavering Leggauards have more crush avoidance than any other single piece of armor, if you've already reached crush avoidance they lose some of their luster (but still have value since you can use their high crush avoidance to replace other slots). But when compared to the Sunguard Legplates, they just pale in comparison, due to the high STA, good avoidance and of course Expertise. In fact, I would say that the Sunguard Legplates are currently the second best tanking legs in the game (including compared to T6). The only ones that top them are the ridiculous awesomeness that are the Felstrength Legplates (drop from Brutalis in Sunwell Plateau).

Finally is the hardest part to decide on... the Chest slot:

Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate: Plate Chest, 1765 Armor, 78 STA, 26 Defense Rating, 34 Spell Hit Rating, 60 Spell Damage, Blue Socket, 2 Dodge Rating Socket Bonus

Chestplate of Stoicism: Plate Chest, 1765 Armor, 78 STA, 51 Defense Rating, 34 Dodge Rating, 39 Shield Block Value, Red Socket, 3 STA Socket Bonus

These are compared to the:

Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian: Plate Chest, 1607 Armor, 60 STA, 22 Defense Rating, 38 Dodge Rating, 35 Spell Damage, Red/Yellow/Blue Sockets, 6 STA Socket bonus

Opinion: This one is a lot more complex than it looks. With only a quick glance it looks like the Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate is much better (it does have a very nice amount of Spell Damage and Spell Hit Rating). It's quite easy to overlook the benefits of the Chestplate of Stoicism. Look at the numbers on the Chestplate: 51 Defense Rating and 34 Dodge Rating. Combined that's over 4.3% straight avoidance. There are few pieces that beat that much avoidance.

So which is better? Honestly, I'd say the Chestplate is since that much avoidance will allow us to aim for other gear more easily. But that doesn't mean that the Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate is worthless. It's tied with the Heroic Judicator's Chestguard (a drop from Sunwell Plateau) for the most spell damage on a single piece of Plate armor. After you pick up all the other pieces, getting the Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate would be a good move for a 5-man/heroic or threat building set.

Though on one final note for the chest pieces, the Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian is a happy balance between the two. If you find yourself needing more spell damage, but don't want to give up a lot of avoidance to get it (like you would with the Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate), the Chestguard is a viable option.

Also all the additional avoidance and Defense Rating that these pieces will give will allow easier access to other slots, such as the Broach of Deftness, and the Shapeshifter's Signet, both of which are nice and tasty sources of Expertise but are sorely lacking in the "normal" tanking stats.

Anyway, enjoy the list.

Inside World of Warcraft - Episode 1

2008-03-13T03:03:00.003-07:00

Generally I'm not much of one for machinima, outside of RvB, but I saw this linked somewhere and I was just dying laughing. Seriously... laughing so hard I cried and my jaw started to hurt.

EDIT: "It's like an orgasm on the surface of the Sun!" is my new statement for something that is amazing. I love that quote so very much. It's just so utterly ridiculous.

Re-do of my Pre-Karazhan gear list

2008-03-11T03:41:00.001-07:00

Since it seems a fair amount of folks are still looking at it and using it as a guideline, I redid my Pre-Karazhan list. Even if you're an old hat at Paladin tanking, give it a gander. Link is over on the side bar.

WSG: Blizzard's failure of a BG

2008-03-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

Obvious preface: WSG being a failure of a BG is my opinion, not a fact. Anything said here that you think might be an opinion and is stated like a fact is an opinion.

This weekend I took a little time and played my Druid. He's at 49 and I was taking some time to do PvP to get gear to help me out from fifty to fifty-eight. Not like I needed it, but PvP can be fun, so why not do something fun and get some rewards from it, right?

So I respecced to a resto build (was feral) did some AB and got the Highlander's Lizardhide Boots (for faster running in WSG). After this I started doing WSG for some of the rewards there... Over a few days the week before I had gotten the badges I needed for the healer cape, and did three more games. Those last three games lasted about forty-five minutes to an hour each.

This showed me the major flaw for WSG: Stalemates. This isn't really a huge revelation, but this is the first time I've really been effected by it. All three of the games I mentioned above were long games that happened not because both sides were effective in defending our flag from being taken, but because both sides would get the flag and then be able to effectively defend it. This problem stems from, I believe, a lack of foresight on Blizzard's part concerning the differences between FPSs and WoW. For most examples I will compare WSG with TF2, since I have played a fair amount of TF2 (compared to other multi-player FPSs with a CTF style stage).

First, the most obvious difference is player-controlled health and how healing works. In WSG, an intelligent healer (or two, if the flag carrier [FC] is really lucky) can keep the FC alive through pretty much anything. I've seen cases where two healers were able to keep the FC alive through an onslaught of the entire other team, while two or three of the DPS FC-defenders crushed the attackers under their heel. In addition, the ability to control and increase your health to levels making you close to, if not unkillable (with healing and, in limited cases, without), independent of your class (high DPS clothies with over 10,000 health?).

TF2 is an entirely different situation. With preset healing and health it means that you know what you're facing when going up against someone. If you see a Demoman and a Heavy coming at you, you know to shoot the Demoman first since they will die more quickly. and Also, in TF2, you can't heal yourself. Take the Medic in TF2, who can quickly heal others, and has a slow regeneration effect, but has no self heals. So focused fire on the healers can actually do something, unlike WoW where focused fire might kill them... if they aren't a Paladin or a Druid, or don't have any backup, or... well you get what I'm getting at. There's a way to equalize the advantage good healing gives in TF2, but it's not guaranteed in WSG.

These are just some examples of the problem, which is Blizzard didn't have foresight when it came to making a BG. It seems very much to me that when it came time to design the BGs, they put a lot of thought into making AV, and then realized maybe they should make another, a smaller one. So they started to brain storm that. Someone then thought... "Hey... people like playing 'Capture the Flag', right? Why not make a BG for that?" And it was generally agreed that it was a good idea. But without the limitations that most FPS designers place on the players, it's far less controlled, and leads to situations like I listed above, with players being able to stalemate the game for hours.

Does this mean that WSG is unfixable? Of course not. Nothing is beyond fixing, but it requires an ample change on the basic design to make it so that things like stalemates are not possible. Blizzard could take the simple way out and just make it so that you don't need to have your own flag to turn in your opponents, but this would make WSG very much like old AV, where it was a race to see who finishes first. You would have one person (most likely a Feral Druid) who's the FC, and everyone else guards them, as both sides run around and around on the opposite sides, making sure to not be slowed down by getting too close to the other side.

As for how to fix it? I'm not really sure, but the key is making it points based, much like AB and EotS are. Let's say both sides start at zero. Every 3 seconds 5 points are added to both sides, independent of the flag. For each kill that's done, that side gets 5 points (this is done to ensure that both sides won't turtle with their flag and cause a tie). For making a flag turn-in you get 500 points, and the goal is to reach 4,000 points. This would not change the mechanics of WSG too much (in fact it might encourage players to fight each other more), while allowing it so that if both sides are turtling, one will emerge the winner after a preset amount of time (discounting the points from killing and flag turn-ins, a game would end after 40 minutes (which would be guaranteed to be made shorter if by nothing else than points from killing).

And I'm sure that's not the only option. Does anyone else have ideas on how they could "fix" WSG or any other complaints about it? Or am I misguided in my opinions? Is WSG right the way it is, and if so why?

War(hammer)craft minis?

2008-02-08T14:31:00.001-08:00

I'm with Tycho on this one... The fact that Blizzard is making a tabletop strategy game from Warcraft is hilarious, especially in light of all the comments concerning Warhammer Online being a copy of WoW.

WAAAGH!!!!!!

2008-02-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

From my previous post, Fedaykin98 asked "Also, would you mind doing a post where you elaborate on your interest in WAR? I'd love to hear more about what attracts you to that game."

This post will ramble a bit, because I'm just going to list them as I think of them.

Note: In any podcasts I link, they will refer to factions as "Realms" (this is leftover from DAoC with the three realms of Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard). This sounds confusing to my ears since when I think of "realm" I think of servers. Just trying to clarify for others who may think like I do.

As far as PvE goes, the thing I'm most looking forward to is the Tome of Knowledge. I linked it in my previous post, but for those who can't go to Curse due to things like work firewalls, I'll detail a bit about it.

The tome will be filled out as you explore and kill stuff. Click on a friendly NPC? Get an entry on it's race. Find a particularly important NPC (such as Tyrion or Teclis of the High Elves or Grimgor Ironhide, the Orc)? Get an entry into your Tome on said person. As you kill mobs of a certain type, you will get bonuses such as a little XP, details on that critter, trophies based on them (kill enough wolves and you could get a wolf skull would be a possible example), or maybe even a bonus when fighting those types of mobs. Finally, as you complete quests and such you'll get entries into your tome, detailing the rise of your character through his or her story. Additionally, the Tome of Knowledge will also have some details on your PvP exploits, but that's a bit less clear.

As clearly detailed by my points above concerning important NPCs is that I love the setting of Warhammer. A few years back I tried getting into playing the Warhammer tabletop game, but I just couldn't. As an ex-military guy, trained in unit tactics, old military concepts like having units in tight formations just seemed stupid to me, especially since many sides had artillery that could be devastating to units setup like this. But I never disliked nor stopped liking the setting. (Interesting side note: While I'm not overly fond of the setting for Warhammer 40,000, I find the mechanics of that tabletop game much more sensible, with units able to spread out.) So being given a chance to play in the Warhammer world in a form that is not directly controlling huge armies appeals to me quite a lot.

=====

Another huge addition that WAR will add (compared to WoW at least) is an effective way for tanks to play in PvP. This takes two forms: Enemy-based collision detection and PvP taunts which don't directly control the enemy. As comes to no regular reader's surprise, I like tanking. But in WoW PvP you can't tank. Against a rogue or a warrior? He'll just run through you and behind you. What good does a shield do you back there? And stopping people on bridges? Only if you have CC available?

Well in WAR they will have collision detection, so you can actually impede your enemies progress by standing in their way. If you find a chokepoint, you can place a tank there and he can hold the point using a mix of knockbacks and collision detection while others support him and blast from behind him. Thankfully the collision detection only works on your enemies, so your allies can run through each other and you without being slowed down.

As far as PvP taunts go, these are brilliant! It will probably vary from class to class, but the general idea is that it's a buff or debuff that makes all attacks on non-tanks much less powerful. Because of this you have two options: Attack the non-tanks weakly, or attack the tanks at full strength, despite their strong armor. Sure you can choose to ignore them, but that will make things take much longer. It's a taunt that doesn't directly control the enemy, but gives too powerful an effect to ignore.

=====

As far as PvP goes, as I touched on in my previous post, everything you do matters. Even some little quest where you kill the infamous ten rats will award victory points towards capture of enemy territory. This is detailed in these two podcasts. Unlike WoW, which is an almost eternally unchanging world, what you do has an impact. It will only be a temporary impact, but the impact is there none-the-less.

Let's consider a raid in WoW attack some opposing faction's town. You go in, kill all the guards and populace and keep on, until you get thrown out. Within 5 minutes all the NPCs will be back like nothing ever happened. While I expect a similar thing in WAR for quest-hubs, your actions will help your faction wrest control of an area from your opponent. There will most likely still be a major quest-hub available in that zone, but I would guess that it opens up new quests to the faction that just gained control of said zone, while giving the "old" controllers of the zone an ability to wrest back into control their zone.

Also, as far a quests themselves go, Mythic is making some pretty sensible changes or adding some new cool stuff. For the knitty gritty details check out this podcast. I'll touch on the really cool changes here.

First is the change to kill collector quests aka go kill ten rats (again... oh god again...). Previously, you would need to have the quest before you could actually count the rats as dead. So lets say your wandering through some sewer and you come across a guy surrounded by rats... in fact just to get to the point where you could see the guy, you had to kill a dozen rats, and to get to him you need to kill a dozen more. So you fight through this horde of rats and you stand before him, drenched in rat blood, bits of rat strewn about, and a rat impaled on your sword. It's pretty damn obvious you've been killing rats. So you talk to him and he says "I hate rats. They stole my food. Can you kill those dirty rats for me?" At this point you look at him and say "And what in the seven hells have I been doing for the last few minutes?" Of course that doesn't count because you didn't know you needed to kill rats. So you go out and kill more rats, this time it counts, only to get back and realize that you missed one part of the quest: He wants his food back. Yeah you killed 10 rats but none of them had his food, so you go out and kill more rats until you finally get it, then go back to him.
Well all that is in the past with WAR. Every time you kill a mob, it is marked down in a database (probably related to the tracking of what you kill for the Tome of Knowledge). If you encounter someone who wants you to kill mobs, when you get the quest you will receive credit for what you've already killed. Alright, same situation... you're in the sewers and you find this quest guy. You fight your way through the rats, and he says "I hate rats. They stole my food." and the game checks this database and sees that you've killed ten rats, so the guy then says "Glad to see you've been killing them. So you don't have my food... they must have eaten it. Thanks for trying." and he hands you a reward. Simply put, now the game tracks what you've killed and no more worrying about some stupid drop rate on some random body part that proves you killed a certain mob type.

The other cool part is Public Quests. This is so cool it had half of a very long podcast dedicated to it. It's kinda like a group quest... only they are constantly going and you don't necessarily need to be in the group to participate. They are multi-staged, ending in a big battle where everyone in the area who participated get rewarded. In addition as you participate, even if you can't see these quests to the end, you still build up "Influence" (aka reputation) with a certain reward giver for that Public Quest, this way you can get rewards even if you don't have the time to stick around.
I'll use the example from the podcast for the Greenskins. The Greenskins see the Dwarfs hiding inside of some big fort type place. The Dwarfs know better than to come outside of it, so the Greenskins are left to try to figure out how to get them out. They try bashing the gates down, which doesn't work (duh... Dwarf craftsmanship is second to none), then along came this Giant being bothered by some squigs. So the Greenskins get an idea... first they get the giant drunk (a giant will work for anyone who gets them drinks). So the first job is to kill the squigs at it's feet, then get the Giant some booze and pour it down it's throat. Once the Giant is good and drunk you get a giant bomb and try to explain to the Giant to roll the bomb towards the gates. This doesn't work... the Giant's too drunk. So a clever Goblin shaman thinks up of an idea... he orders the Greenskins to paint a squig onto the bomb. Now, while the Giant doesn't know what a bomb is, he does recognize a squig. So they tell him to throw the "squig" at the door. This works and blows open the door, which makes the Dwarfs just pissed, and they all come rushing out in huge waves, which the Greenskins now need to fight. Wave after wave, until finally this big Dwarf hero comes out, and you fight and kill him, ending that cycle of the public quest. As you were fighting the big hero, the Dwarfs were closing their big gate you blew open, and the whole public quest starts over again. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

Anyway, back to PvP having an impact (told you this would be rambling). The final huge goal of PvP is to take and pillage your enemy's capital. Again, while it's only temporary, it has a real impact. The people are forced to flee, those that remain can be killed, and it opens up tons of new things to do, like public quests, normal quests, instances and a bunch of other really cool things. They even talk about it a little on this podcast.

Another thing that I like about PvP for WAR is that there will be a lot of different Scenarios. Scenarios are WAR's version of Battlegrounds, instanced goal based combat which rewards the players inside and makes it roughly fair (equal players, close to similar levels, etc). Personally I'm expecting no less than one scenario, per tier, for the first three tiers and at least three scenarios on the final tier (one in the middle, one on each of the normally controlled zones, with possibly more available after a capital is captured). This means per battlefront I'm expecting a minimum of six, or eighteen total on release. This is a far cry from Blizzards depressing four BGs over the course of three years released and a previous four years of development. Now, I'm not expecting each Scenario to be unique, but to me, playing a game of capture the flag in different terrain would be enough. Being able to swap around to a different land type or something with a slightly different gimmick (such as one I've heard about has trolls in it, throwing rocks down at people) would be enough. Variety is the spice of life, and WoW is sorely lacking in this department.

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Next is how WAR will deal with healers. One of the longstanding complaints and requests for chang by many is that healing is boring and should be more reliant on doing damage. While I've long opposed this view, because I firmly believe that everyone has their own thing they enjoy doing, thus those who enjoy healing in it's current form in WoW should be allowed to continue doing this. You shouldn't go into WoW and completely alter healing, since that would leave those who enjoy and have invested time in those roles with something they may not want to do.

WAR on the other hand is giving the people who want more combative healers what they want, and is building it into the game from the ground up. Unlike WoW where every class has the ability to DPS, but it's separate from the role of healing, they are putting some synergy into the system. The simplified way of explaining it is that most of the support classes build up some sort of power through combat, which then improve the power and reduce the casting time. Yes it will be possible for these healers to not do any damage and just heal, but they will be very weak and unable to properly assist their allies without smashing faces or blasting foes.

I remember reading a post over at Warhammer Alliance where someone had played a Goblin Shaman. At first he just tried healing, only to find that his spells were weak and took long to cast (around five seconds). Then he started using his Shaman nukes, and noticed a bar filling up. His WAAAGH! bar, and when it got full it glowed as did his healing spells. He then noticed that his healing spells would take only about a second or two and were much more powerful, healing half or more of his allies health.

(EDIT: Found the link for the post on Goblin Shamans)

Other classes such as the Warrior Priest (Empire), and Disciple of Khaine (Dark Elf) use a similar system, while the Chaos Zealot and the High Elf Archmage use a system based around draining their enemies and using that power to heal their allies. The only class that doesn't seem to follow this system is the Dwarven Runepriest, which excel at pre-combat buffs, and in combat fighting power. I expect their in-combat heals to be equally effective all the time, but based on their descriptors I also expect their combat potential (both physical and magical) to be strong enough that it would be a folly to not wade into combat (but we shall see).

Two videos concerning the healers:
Podcast (watch around the middle)
Youtube video

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One of the last things I can think of that I really like about WAR is it's simplicity of class design. While yes there are twenty-four individual classes (four for each race) each one falls into a different role for each race. There is one tanking class, one healing/support class, one melee DPS class and one ranged DPS. There is no need to balance each class against all the others, merely balance them within their role. And while there will be variable ways to play and customize a given class within it's role (detailed here, here, and here) there is one core concept a class is built around.

One of the biggest flaws in WoW, I believe is each class has too much flexibility. No class has one defined role (beyond what players assign), but then each class needs each tree to be balanced against other trees, but also need to consider how those changes will affect the other trees in that class, not to mention how those changes will effect PvP and PvE. Good lord that was a run-on sentence. But I wanted put it all in one thought to emphasize how much is needed to be done per class.

To hell with all that rubbish! Each class in WAR only needs to be compared to the other classes of the same archetype in WAR. Each class only needs to be compared to 5 other classes and balanced as such because they will be very different than the other roles as they should be!

Well that covers everything that really stands out in my mind. Hope you've enjoyed it.

Why do you fight?

2008-02-05T10:46:00.000-08:00

So as of late I've been in a funk. Got my Druid to the late 40s, but it's been a long time since anyone's done an arena match, which slowed down my desire to level the job. Since then I've been watching and reading a lot of the information on Warhammer Online (WAR) and it's got me really jonesing to play it.

This has gotten me thinking about why I suddenly lack such a strong enthusiasm to level up my druid for PvP, but really want to PvP in WAR. They are both just PvP, right? Not really, at least for me. For me, it's a matter of why do I fight?

In WoW, one PvPs to get gear, so you can PvP more (either more easily or at higher ranks in Arena if that's your cup of tea). There are two types of players that this model of PvP really appeals to:

The Loot as Reward playerbase. You do PvP, you get epics. In fact it is one of the most surefire ways to gear yourself up. There may be some luck involved but you know by a certain time frame you will be decked out in all Season 1 epics, ignoring the potential gear from doing Arenas.
The "I just like to PvP" playerbase. These are the players for whom fighting human opponents is the ultimate thrill and is where it's at. As detailed in Rohan's post here, the gear is merely there as a reward for the LaR players. For those who just like to PvP, you get gear to equalize everything else, and leave only skill and personal choices (like class and talent builds) to differentiate the great from the good. Challenging people and fighting in an arena match or in battlegrounds is the fun itself.

Now, for players of these types, WoW gives them everything they want, and plans on expanding that with the release of WotLK and the implementation of Lake Wintergrasp.

But that's not enough for me. I need a reason to fight beyond just fighting and beyond better gear. Let's take raiding for example. I go into Karazhan, and lead my guild on a merry killing spree through the whole thing. We get loot and kill more and get loot, but why? Ah, there's a good "why" here. I kill and get loot to see more.

As of right now I've beaten about 10 bosses more than I ever figured I'd see in this expansion. Going in, I decided I wouldn't worry about leaving my guild and joining a big raiding guild. I was fine with seeing what ever it is I could see. If I never stepped foot in Kara, so be it. The fact that my guild was able to push through Karazhan, and will some day probably move onto Zul'Aman and possibly 25-man raids is just gravy.

Anyway, watching the information on WAR, like how all the scenarios (the WAR equivalent of Battlegrounds) and quests and everything will add to the war effort of trying to capture the next zone, which all leads up to making an attack on your opponent's city. Realizing that things inside BGs and the like can have an amazing effect on the game at large makes all my efforts grinding honor and the like seem hollow and pointless.

So at this point I'm at a dividing point. Either way, it'll just be a time filler until WAR comes out. Either I continue to PvP in WoW as filler, or I work on playing DAoC and PvP there. Now, DAoC may be somewhat outdated, but conceptually it has the closest to what I want in PvP. The (so-called) RvR has fighting over keeps and relics and stuff. I haven't decided which way I'll go, but I'm thinking about both.

Anyway, whatever I decide, it's just a matter of time until I can play WAR and get what I really want. (Oh yeah, and the Tome of Knowledge looks ridiculously delicious.)

So as a final question to any of my readers, why do you fight? For gear? For the thrill of battle? To see more? Just to be with friends? There is no right or wrong answer, just different ones.

Why I dislike RMT and in-game currency farmers

2008-01-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

I apologize for disallowing comments on this one. I don't want to start any hoopla about it. Real-Money-Trading and in-game currency farmers are probably one of the top 5 hot button subjects for MMO players. Just go over to Tobold's and do a search for RMT related articles (BTW, Tobold's is a great blog and was one of the primary inspirations to start my own). In the end, this post is merely me venting my opinions for people to read if they want.

I've been steadily playing MMOs for approximately 4 years now. I had played them prior to this, but at the time I was in the Army, and was unable to get good long-term internet access (I would end up playing EQ for a couple months at a time before I would stop playing due to moving or going on a field exercise or something). Shortly after I left the Army, Final Fantasy XI was released, and thanks to the prompting of the artists of the webcomics MacHall and Real Life, I started playing and joined their Linkshell, Shirtninjas.

Prior to this time, RMT was a minor problem. Most of it was done via services like eBay, and the like, done from person to person. Approximately a year or a little more prior to the U.S. release of FFXI, IGE came into existence. I would imagine a few other companies of a similar nature also appeared along with it, but IGE is the big name on the block. The result of IGE and other RMT companies effects on MMOs is already very well known. The market for hiring and employing (even if only by "Contract" which many RMT companies use to get around direct legal action for "employing" those who break the EULA) in-game currency farmers (ICF). Here's where my first issue lies:

1) ICFs will monopolize single high-value targets or reduce the availability of targets high-value farming areas: The impact of this one has gone down greatly since WoW and the Burning Crusade was released, but it's still there.

First I'll touch on the second portion, since that applies to WoW much more than the other. Let's use the Elemental Plateau as an example. Most folks at 70 know of the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand. It's a place where Elementals of the four prime elements appear, and is intended to be a good place to hunt motes of the appropriate element. The problem is that each of the Elementals appear in fairly limited quantities and their spawn rate is intentionally limited (as opposed to a dynamic spawn rate, which I will detail later). I would be willing to bet that on every server at least one person up on the Elemental Plateau is an ICF. For every ICF up there, that means one less "real person" is able use the Plateau to farm.

One thing that Blizzard added in The Burning Crusade that lowered the impact of ICFs upon farming is Dynamic Spawning. Dynamic Spawning works as such: The more players in a given area, killing mobs will increase the spawn rate for those mobs. This is limited in who it works on, but for the mobs that are effected by it, it strongly decreases the impact that ICFs have upon player farming.

The other point is one that, essentially, does not exist in WoW, but does exist in previous MMOs. There were things called "Named Monsters" or NMs. The WoW equivalent are Rare monsters. The primary difference is that the rewards from NMs were easily much better than equal level gear, and in some later cases the best available anywhere. This was fine as a design not taking into account ICFs, but with their introduction they were, in many cases, able to claim a virtual monopoly on NMs, forcing players from either using them to make money themselves or farm the items directly, thus bypassing the need to save up large amounts of money to buy the item.

Either way, ICFs make life a lot harder for people who honestly are trying to make money.

Now, onto the second point. This was not obvious at first. In fact, it didn't really become obvious until the first "Christmas sale" by companies like IGE. As I mentioned in the previous post, at winter vacation time there is usually a surplus of people getting money and RMT companies lowering prices. This leads to a flood of money going from RMT bank characters who hold onto huge amounts of money to the economies on the servers they are on.

I'm no economist, but I'm able to figure out what that means. Let's say at Christmas, 5,000,000g enters the economy of each server. This is not so far fetched, since (doing a bit of searching) shows that current gold prices are around $250-500 for 5,000g. After the holiday price drop, we can estimate the max cost for 5,000g at $300 (and probably less), and I could easily see someone purchasing one or two of those with Holiday gift money. While a portion of this will be siphoned out through the act of buying an epic flyer, anyone who does the Netherwing faction quests will negate this loss by at least two-fifths, meaning that still a large amount of money is suddenly entering the economy.

So what's does it matter if a lot of money is entering the economy over a short period of time? Well, I'll use a Wikipedia article to sum it up, "Mainstream economists overwhelmingly agree that high rates of inflation are caused by high rates of growth of the money supply." Simply put, it will likely cause strong inflation. The average price on things bought from the AH will rise by a noticeable amount, and those who do not RMT will suffer because of it. So here's the core problem:

2) RMT companies do not consider what impact their selling of in-game currency will have on the economies of the game servers. When someone buys their money, they expect it promptly, and RMTs usually deliver it as such. While I would imagine that, generally, business remains predictable, during key periods such as Christmas, the demand for RMT goes up, and the response has a noticable impact.

Money floods the economy as hundreds and possibly thousands of people per server order and are given money. This impacts their buying habits at the AH (much more willing to pay whatever it takes to get what they need since they have money to burn), and as a consequence impacts how other people price what they sell and how much they are willing to pay for stuff (also willing to pay more).

In a simplified way of saying it, a sharp increase in the total value of money in the economy will cause temporary inflation. Over the course of a year, RMTs will use IMFs to siphon small amounts of money out of the economy. Since more money is entering the economy as this happens (and probably more money is entering it than leaving it), it doesn't have a noticeable impact on the server's overall economy. Then at the end of the year, much in-game currency is bought at once, causing the hoarded money to flood into the economy, raising general prices on the AH. While over time this inflation spreads money out amongst everyone (higher prices at the AH mean eventually everyone gets more money), the more immediate effect is newbie players on older servers are essentially cut off from buying things they cannot produce, either for wearing or for crafting (e.g. leather needed for crafting guns for engineering).

Now, this problem has been somewhat mitigated on WoW, due to the prevalence of Auctioneer. Since Auctioneer tracks previous sales, it won't cause a single person selling very high to skew it's numbers. On the other hand in other games that don't have things like Auctioneer, such as FFXI, it has a strong impact. I've seen many times, right after Christmas, the prices soar very noticeably.

Final point:
3) RMTs don't care how the money they acquire is gotten.

The way I've phrased this is fairly innocent sounding. As I mentioned back in December, it seemed like there had been a recent flood of WoW account hacking, along with the FFXI site hacking (inserting a trojan virus onto a few major FFXI sites which then downloaded itself onto anyone's computer that went to the site, leading to hacked accounts). While I can't back up with facts that these hacked accounts were used to fund RMT companies, the strong increase during this period (including at least 4 people in my guild) paints that picture to me.

But this point stands on it's own, even without the theory of RMTs using account hacking to acquire funds. The point is simply that I doubt companies like IGE don't ask where the money comes from. Even if they were to ask, there's no guarantee that it is "legit" (as much as that can be). They need to get the currency to their clientèle, so they make sure enough is available to meet the demand.

Again, I have no hard evidence of it, I firmly believe that many RMT companies use ill-gotten funds (ignoring the illegality of any RMT in games with EULA that ban it) to supply their customers.

Games like Second Life are less impacted, due to there being a legal method for transferring real money to in-game money and the other way around. For games like this, they were designed with RMTing in mind, thus they are not overly adversely impacted by them.

Sony also did something similar to this with the introduction of the Station Exchange servers, which allowed players to create or transfer characters to specific servers that "allowed" RMTing. And by "allow" I mean that SOE created their own RMT group and supplied all the funds and gear you could normally buy, but did it in-house and on servers separate from everyone else, again minimizing it's effect on the rest of the game.

While I dislike RMTs, games or servers designed with RMTing built in are perfectly acceptable (I won't play them, but that's beside the point). In the three ways I mentioned above, RMTs and ICFs have a profound impact on games that are not designed with RMTs in mind. While for a percent of the gaming population (I do not pretend to know how much) benefits from it, it comes at the expense of other's enjoyment. None of what we do in MMOs are on a "need" basis, so doing things that harm others enjoyment of the game in a way not part of the experience is not even close to acceptable to me.

Does this mean I'm famous?

2008-01-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Seems like I've managed to acquire the attention of a RMT company from the EU. Not going to name the company, and I'm deleting the posts as soon as I see them, but it seems interesting that I'm getting RMT ad spam in my comments.

As for my lack of posts as of late, I apologize. I've been working off-and-on on a post to continue my previous post, but in the end, I'm a gamer and when I'm at home I like to play WoW, not post about it.

As far as the game itself goes, my Druid is up to the mid 40s. Coming along nicely there. The guild lost a few members to some bigger raiding guilds as a few folks decided they wanted to raid a bit more quickly than we were. Luckily, about the same time, around half a dozen folks got keyed up for Kara and we've started helping them get geared up. We're also considering moving up to three nights a week for raiding. This is what I've been hoping for all along, and will allow us two nights for Kara and one night for new stuff (Zul'Aman or Gruul and beyond).

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to finish up my long post soon.

Be careful!

2007-12-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

This one is important enough to justify it's own post. Last night when I got home, I noticed a post by one of the officers in my guild's officer forums mentioning that an unfortunate member of our guild got hacked, and all of his gear was either liquidated or transferred. So I login, to check on him and double check my own holdings (all secure on the home front). The guildmate isn't online, though he has reported his losses to a Blizzard GM, which means recovery is on the way, but due to the loss of materials he's not up for playing much at the moment. Understandable.

I went on to play around on my Hunter, then do HMT as I mentioned earlier. At some point during this, some guildies mentioned that their friends' accounts had also been hacked, and there were reports of it happening on other servers. The officers began talking about it, and one of them made the connection I hadn't: It's almost Christmas.

Now, for those of you who are new to MMOs or WoW, this may not mean the same thing as it does to some of us. Christmas (or whatever the appropriate gift-giving holiday for your religion/ethnicity is) means many things, and of them it means people getting large sums of money, and RMTs are taking advantage of that by lowering their prices through the floor.

While I have only circumstantial evidence, I've seen this happen before. Right around this time of year there's a large demand for in-game currency on the part of RMT companies, which means they are probably paying slightly above average for it. This means that whoever is getting it, is putting extra effort, including into the realm of hacking, to get that money.

I could go into a tirade about why RMTing is bad, I'm not going to do that here. This post is more of a warning, and I hope folks spread it around.

First things first, if you are using Internet Explorer... STOP. IE is more full of holes that swiss cheese. While I personally prefer Firefox, I won't tell people what to use, just go for a more secure browser. Many trojans download themselves through adds on sites, and IE does little to stop them.

Next find a good Spyware and Anti-Virus program, if you don't already have one. If you don't have one, you can pick a free Anti-Virus program from here, and I recommend for a Spyware Scanner using Lavasoft's Ad-Aware.

One of the more common methods to get past any security setups you have is to piggyback or be built into mods we download. The first thing to do is when you update your mods, do them all at once, and before activating WoW, run your virus scanner. If any snuck in, it very well might catch them. Also, I advise against using automated downloading programs such as WoWAceUpdater or CurseUpdater. Instead I suggest going the long way, and only getting mods directly from their source sites. This way you can decrease the chance of them being tampered with.

Finally, if you don't already, turn on the option on WoW to automatically fill in your login name. One of the most common methods of account hacking is keylogging. The less you type, the less information they can get from you. If you never type in your login name, all they will have is your password.

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Some of these steps (especially the ones concerning mods) may seem a bit extreme, but the potential losses you can incur from being hacked are very bad. Yes, you are highly likely to regain your lost gear and money, but you may not get back your reagents or crafting materials which could be hundreds of gold worth of loss. Even worse is that a good estimate of the time it will take for them to return your lost stuff is a week or two. That means you can't really do anything until then. I know I certainly don't want to spend two weeks sidelined, sitting out of raids and Arena, because some bozo decided my stockpile of gems would be a good money maker.

Going to be slow until January...

2007-12-18T10:49:00.000-08:00

With (insert appropriate winter solstice holiday here) right around the corner, we are only getting minimal raids in, which is to be expected I would imagine. The earliest we might go back to two-nights-a-weekend for raids is the 29th and 30th of December (even that's iffy).

Anyway, this past Saturday 3 people were unable to raid, which led to postponing it until Sunday, so all we did was a minimum boss Prince run, with enough time at the end for a Nightbane kill. Prince netted one of our main healers her T4 helm (woo!) and Nightbane continued to be a stingy little *mumblemumble*. Of the 4 drops he's given us so far, all of them have been unneeded, and 3 were sharded, and the fourth was the Scaled Breastplate of Carnage, which was given to our Hunter only for her to test it out and find out it's worse than her current Thick Netherscale Breastplate.

Following up Kara, I was a stone's throw away from having 60 badges, so last night we hit up Heroic Mana-Tombs. I have to admit that Heroic Nexus-Prince Shaffar is easily the hardest heroic boss I've fought yet. We got him down, but it took three tries. On the upside I can now summon Yor, I picked up a good tanking sword, the Warp-Storm Warblade, for swapping in on damage intensive fights like Prince, and got enough badges for me to pick up my Girdle of the Protector, putting me at 3/8 BoJ items bought and 170 Badges spent.

Finally, I continue to work on my Druid. He's up to 17 at the current timeframe. In addition, since my Druid is a Leatherworker I've decided to level a Dwarven Hunter together with my Druid. This way I'll be providing armor for both characters. Part of the reason behind this decision is that I enjoy engineering, but one of the biggest things that bothered me about engineering on my Paladin was I couldn't use any of my guns. So I have an Dwarven Engineer Hunter, with his Prairie Wolf pet, McKinley, that I ran from Dun Morogh to Mulgore to get (but that's okay, he barks when I click him!). While I enjoy being a Druid and a Bear (rawr!) there's something really fun about having a pet wolf to sic on people and mobs. Hee hee hee!

Nightbane down, and I need better DPS gear...

2007-12-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

This weekend my guild started out in Karazhan, clearing Moroes, Opera, Curator, Chess, Prince and Attumen (in that order). After we finished up Prince at 11 or 11:30, we figured we had enough time so we hopped down and kicked Attumen out of the way so we could access the repair guy.

The following night we re-entered Kara, starting off with facing off against Nightbane. Now, I realize it's possible for a Paladin tank to take on Nightbane, but I tried twice, and each time people died, even when we got him down to 50% (prior to the call for a wipe). Can it be done? Absolutely. Can I do it? Yes I can. But much like Maiden, having me do it is harder than it needs to be.

So Gurneyman, the warrior tank who has been gearing himself up, was called upon. He preformed more than admirably. His first try, we downed Nightbane with a minimal amount of deaths, and those only happened when Nightbane was in the air. After Nightbane, we went and downed Illhoof and Aran (first time for a guild-only run). Go us!

For me, during the Nightbane fight, since we already had 3 healers, I opted to try my hand at DPSing. In a dismal performance, I was only putting out 250 DPS during that fight. While I wasn't ideally geared for DPS (more tanking gear than necessary) it made me realize that I really need to do what I mentioned a few posts earlier, and wade into BGs to pick up the Gladiator's Aegis set.

Now, it was offered to me to join the Arena team I play with on my Mage. I considered, but hadn't decided. Last night I hit up Arathi Basin on my Paladin, trying out a few different specs.

First I went for a Prot/Holy build, with enough points in Prot to be able to tank if needed (33 for Holy Shield + Imp HS), while the rest in Holy. While I didn't mind healing, needing to stop and stand still while I healed, would lead to a dead Alix. It took my a while to figure out the right balance for Kaziel, but I've learned that unless the spell has an incredibly short casting time, or the enemy is running away, you don't want to stand still while casting a spell. On my Mage the only spell I normally stand still to cast rank 1 Frostbolt, which only takes 1 second. This is too short to normally interrupt and slows my target for 9 seconds, with a 15% chance to freeze them in place. For everything else, I use insta-casts. Having to stand still to heal my targets in PvP is a dangerous and painful gamble... one I would rather not take. In a way, this experience was very enlightening. It showed me that I'm not likely to enjoy playing as a Holy Paladin in PvP, so I've put Derras on hold, possibly indefinitely (If I level a Ret Paladin I want it to be a Blood Elf and not just for SoB).

After that, I tried a more offensive build, emphasizing survivability and the type of gear I already have. While I did not suffer from the problem of holding still and being interrupted, I learned something else valuable: Without a good source of Damage Over Time or high burst damage, a class doesn't bring much to PvP. Since another class can come in and heal quickly, unless a class can constantly quickly sap another's health or blow them over in two to three hits, they will be taken out by others who can. While I do have access to a DoT (SoV), it is neither ranged, nor overly powerful. SoR's damage pales in comparison to the type of damage I need to put out. While I was able survive decently, my lack of good burst or DoT damage really diminished much value I could bring.

So I've moved back to my previous 0/45/16 build, and I'll just crappily PvP in that, maybe trying to heal. Not sure. After I get the Marks I need, I'll just throw myself time and time again into AV for the honor, since I know I can tank there and I'll do a damn good job at it too. Also, not going to join up for my Arena team on Alix. Just too much of an annoyance.

Finally, this cemented the previous move I was working on. I had been thinking before that I wouldn't like all the standing around healing and being vulnerable. On the other hand, I knew Druids excelled at HoTs, two of which are insta-cast (Rejuv and Lifebloom), along with another insta-cast that uses a HoT as "fuel" for it's heal (Swiftmend). This allows Druids to heal on-the-move, making them a painful class to oppose in PvP. Prior to my experience PvPing on Alix, I had already started working on Cielthan, a Night Elf Druid. In my spare time I will continue working on him, both as a means to further understand Feral Druids (how I plan to level) and to make a Resto Druid for PvP (planned level 70 build will be something like this).

I am a sad panda

2007-12-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

So I was using my new toy, Warcrafter, to test out where I will stand with my Badge of Justice purchases. After doing some testing I am happy to announce that I do have enough avoidance, even prior to upgrading my shoulders, to equip Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian, Slikk's Cloak of Placation, the Girdle of the Protector, the Unwavering Leggards, the Sabatons of the Righteous Defender, and the Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx. That's six of the eight items I planned to buy with Badges of Justice. Unfortunately, taking those 6 items, even after I upgrade my shield and shoulders, I will still be just barely be remaining uncrushable.

While it's great that I can use those 6, that means even after I upgrade everything else, I'll still be using my Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden. I'd prefer to use the Bonefist for the great boost in STA and armor, but I just can't afford the loss in either Defense or Avoidance. And the fact that I don't have enough avoidance to put on the Brooch of Deftness is a bummer. I <3 Expertise.

BTW, here's my setup with my 6 BoJ purchases

The value of Honor/Arena gear for a PvE Paladin and "Goodbye, Seal of Vengeance"

2007-12-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I mentioned I've taken up doing PvP on my Mage to help a friend. Since then it's caused an increased interest by certain members of the guild in PvP and arena. We even started a 3v3 and a 5v5 team. But we really lack one key thing: A dedicated healer. Both teams have a Paladin, a Shaman, and a Druid but all of them are offensive specs. No Holy or Resto specced players. So I rolled another Paladin and began leveling him up (35 currently). Still going to play my Mage, but also working on a Holy Paladin (leveling as Ret to get some experience in that tree since I've never been above 16 points in it).

But I digress, my point is that since I've got a Paladin-in-planning for Arena I've been looking at the Arena sets. The Gladiator's Vindication and Redemption sets are pretty obvious to which spec they "belong". But then there's the Gladiator's Aegis set. This set's name would imply that it's built for Protection, but the problem with that is that not many protection talents beyond the 4th tier are really made for PvP. The best PvP Protection build I could go for was this, and without enemy collision mapping protection does little good in PvP.

While I still don't think the Aegis set has a lot of value in PvP (anymore at least with the change that added spell damage to +healing), for a Protection Paladin that doesn't need to tank the boss in a PvE encounter (Maiden, Aran and Nightbane come to mind), the Aegis set has around the same amount of spell damage as the equivilent quality tanking set, along with a fair amount of +crit which would allow for respectable damage output in a raid scenario.

One thing that's lacking from PvE itemization is a straight spell damage plate set. Now I understand why there isn't one: There has yet to be implemented a purely magical DPS tree for a plate wearer. The closest you get is a Protection Paladin, but he needs more defensive stats, so they aren't going to waste good itemization on a very small portion of the playerbase.

It's my opinion that when a Protection Paladin doesn't need to heal or tank, having the Aegis set is their best option for DPS, since it plays to their strong points (1H, access to +spell damage gear). If I wasn't already working on 2 PvP characters at the moment I'd probably throw Alix into BGs full strength to start getting this gear. Maybe even do Arenas for S2 or S3 pieces.

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Now, onto Seal of Vengeance. I love Seal of Vengeance. In terms of damage output (and thus threat output) from the Seal itself and the Judgement, it's second to none. In addition, since it's a DoT and not direct damage, if you're fighting a mob that moves away occasionally (such as a Charge, or Moroes's Vanish) it will continue to tick. Problem is that despite it's strengths which are very powerful, it has some very bad weaknesses. For the sake of any comparisons, I will use Seal of Righteousness, since that's the other "Main" spelldamage seal.

Ramp-up time: While SoV does put out more damage than SoR, it takes time to get there. With my current 2.7 speed weapon, average time for Holy Vengeance to stack up to five is 13.5 seconds, assuming each hit procs SoV. This ramp-up time is really bad since it means that your DPS need to wait even longer for you to generate enough threat for them to start to kill.
Holy Vengeance falling off the mob: Despite increasing the duration of Holy Vengeance by three seconds in 2.3, Holy Vengeance still has a chance to run it's duration without being refreshed. Which means in addition to losing damage just because you have to start over, it will be another 13.5 seconds before your running at full speed again. The fact that Holy Vengeance can fall off ties to my next point...
Weapon speed and Procs Per Minute (PPM): Seal of Vengeance is on a 20 PPM system. This means that you will average no more than 20 procs of SoV per minute no matter how often you swing. This also means that in order to effectively get Holy Vengeance to a stack of five quickly and to keep it up you need a weapon of 2.5 speed or slower. Unfortunately with the exception of the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets, every spell damage weapon has a speed of 1.6 or 1.8. Without another high spell damage slow one-hander, eventually SoR will surpass SoV in damage output.
Judgement of Vengeance isn't able to be used as a lead-in: Since JoV relies on at least one Holy Vengeance effect up on the mob, you can't use it to generate a quick amount of threat at the start of the fight. This means that your spell rotation needs to look like this: SoR > Judgement > SoV (for 7-9 seconds) > SotC > Judgement > SoV > Judgement > SoV, etc. While it's not too hard to do, it's thinking needed to be done in addition to the about dozen other things that need to be tracked as well. I just don't need all that, not to mention that in an emergency situation ("ZOMGZ! got too close to the mobs and pulled and now I need to pick them all up and save !") I'm probably not thinking about how JoV won't generate any threat for me without Holy Vengance on the mob. I'm just trying to get threat quickly and I waste a Judgement and then I'm in an even worse situation.

Considering all the problems with SoV, despite the benefits it gives me right now, in the long run the best option for me is SoR. This also means that once I reach 107.7% avoidance, I can upgrade to the new BoJ libram (not that I think I'll reach that level any time soon...). With this perspective, I'm (sadly) going to retire SoV for most situations, and do a bit of shopping around for weapons again (now Exalted with Honor Hold). If I find a weapon that suits me better than the Gavel, I'll upgrade to it, at least until I can get my hands on the Amani Punisher or one of the 25-man weapons.

Making money

2007-12-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

First off is a reply to a question asked by Honorshammer and Galo concerning how I actually got up the 5,000 gold necessary for my epic flight skill. First thing I cannot emphasize enough is to be very very careful with your expenditures. Simply put, if you don't need it, don't buy it. When you boil it down, the only things we need to spend money on are elixirs/flasks/foods for raids (even in 5-mans you can get by without food), repair bills, gems/enchants, and flying places. Everything else is extraneous. Giving some money to your alt to help him along? Nope. Buying that recipe that's up on the AH? Nope. About the only exception towards this line of thought is if you know the purchase will have direct and fairly immediate monetary returns. For example, purchasing a rare recipe that you know you can make and will sell well. This is obviously a good investment and even if it takes Primal Nethers will pay off in the long run (my guild leader can make Felsteel Longblades and does this).

Now as for what I specifically did, I will admit that I kinda cheated. As a Jewelcrafter I'm sitting on a goldmine. I refer not to prospecting ore for jewels. While I found in general I could make some decent money with that at first, as the value of certain jewels dropped and the price of ore generally remained the same, the average value of prospecting went down. Too much of a gamble hoping for a high value gem like a Living Ruby or a Star of Elune instead of a low value gem like a Talasite. I found it better to go with the sure profit of 25g per stack of Adamantite Ore. No, what I refer to for JC being a goldmine is cutting of gems. Easiest way I've found to do this is to get Auctioneer, do a quick scan of the AH, and then go though your gem list looking for gems that have "No competition". Make sure not to pick gems with Spell Penetration, Resilience, or any blue colored gems with anything other than STA. After that buy some uncut gems of the type that have "No competition" and cut them and sell them back at 5-10g more than you bought the uncut version for. If you're cutting a Meta Gem, go for 10-20g more. The obvious downsides are that it requires you to have JC and do some prior investments both in money and reputation grinding (if you can access the Consortium Vendor in Kara and are Revered with them you can get the Design: Bracing Earthstorm Diamond, which sells very well due to it's relative rarity), but after you get enough designs for gems you can basically make almost endless money with no effort on your part.

The other big thing a Protection Paladin can do is AOE grinding. If you haven't already go grind your rep with Sporeggar up to Honored for the shield (also a good way to make money for Herbalists if you kill Fungal Giants) then go to one of the many places mentioned over at Maintankadin forums for AOE grinding (I find I like the Demon Hunter Supplicants for the Scryer tokens). What I've found best is using Retribution Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary, Judgement of Light, and Seal of Wisdom. Those, combined with the shield brings down even the largest crowds quickly. A fast attack weapon is also advisable. If you happen to have a high level tailor and enchanter, send any Netherweave to them and have them make Netherweave Bracers to make and disenchant. You can sell the mats for way more than you would sell the straight Netherweave.

Even then, it's a slow process. I've been working on getting the 5,000g for around 8 months or so. Unless you get super lucky with a epic quality BoE drop or recipe to sell on the AH for a grand or more it's just a matter of plugging away at it a little bit at a time.

300 Riding Skill, Pursuit of Justice, & DK tanking

2007-11-27T13:20:00.000-08:00

First and foremost: EPIC FLIGHT RIDING SKILL! WOOOOOO!!!!

Sorry about that. But this weekend I finally reached 5,000g and purchased my 300 riding skill. I immediately flew out and began my Netherwing rep quests, doing the dailies got me the 200g I needed to get my Epic Flight mount (Swift Purple Gryphon). By now I'm up to Honored with Netherwing and I'm going to keep plugging away at it until I get my Netherdrake.

Next, two posts ago, Galoheart asked about my thoughts on Pursuit of Justice. I picked it up with the patch for the -3% spell hit chance. Well, first off is the reason I took it, the -spell hit chance. Unfortunately, as one might imagine, it's hard to gauge the value of decreased spell hit chance, but I know it's there and I know (at least to a small degree) it's increasing my survivability.

Then there's the bonus side effect: +15% movement and mounted speed. This is a really great thing. First off, for flying around Nagrand mining it means I can do it without Crusader Aura. Since Crusader Aura doesn't stack with other movement increasing effects instead of getting +20% from it, I only get +5%. This means that when I need to land in Nagrand to get the ore I'm hunting for I can have Devotion Aura on for additional survivability. As far as the running speed goes it's a mixed bag. On the one hand I can get reposition faster (this one is very important), get places faster to rez folks, and get through indoor places more quickly. But on the other hand, when running with folks I'm constantly running a little bit faster so I need to stop for them which makes me feel like a jerk.

Finally, DK tanking. Over on Maintankin forums Lore posted a link to and quoted a Tigole interview stating that Death Knights would be viable tanks. Tigole's exact words were:

"We made some really good strides in The Burning Crusade to improve the feral druid as a hybrid tank/dps class. That will be the general direction we'll be looking to go with the death knight. Obviously, the protection warrior is in a good place in terms of dungeon and raid tanking. And the protection paladin is hands-down the best multi-target tank. Of course, there's always room for improvement, but you can see the general direction the tanking classes are headed. While all of these classes are capable of fulfilling similar roles, they offer very different abilities and playstyles."

This makes a lot of sense. One of the key problems for Paladins and Warriors who tank is in dungeons that require multiple tanks for some of the fights, on the fights where only a single tank is needed, the Warrior or Paladin is much less useful. An example of this is in Karazhan you generally need 2 primary tanks for the Attumen, Moroes, Romulo & Julianne, Crone, Illhoof, and Netherspite fights. On the other hand you never need 2 tanks for Maiden and Prince fights. There are also a number of fights where the role that can be filled by a second tank can also be filled by another class, like any class with high DPS and high health can be the bolt soak for Curator. On fights where you don't need another tank, having a class like Feral Druids that can easily shift from Tanking to DPS without needing a respec is a huge boon.

Over on the Subcreation forums I posted my thoughts on where the Death Knight will exist in the current realm of tanking:

"If you can imagine each of the current tank falling along a line. This line represents the value to the raid the class generally brings with a "true tanking spec", when it is not tanking. By the phrase "true tanking spec" I mean an investment of no less than 41 points in the given tanking tree, with or without the 41 point talent.

On the far right you have Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors. I'm not going to say which is further down on this side, because that boils down to individual players, specs and gear. Fact is that someone who specs as deeply into either of the Protection trees as I mentioned above will have very little utility outside of the tanking role. An additional bit of info is that I've found most people who spec to be tanks for raids will, in addition to spending over 41 points in their given tanking tree, spend their additional points outside the tanking tree on talents that will improve their abilities while tanking. By taking this approach they are able to expand their abilities while tanking at the expense of their non-tanking role value.

On the far left you have Druids. Unlike Paladins and Warriors, Druid's melee DPS tree and their tanking tree are the same trees. While there will be some differences between someone who specs to be a bear tank and someone who specs to be a cat DPSer, many talents have overlap into both forms. This combined with both forms generally calling for the same stats (STR, AGI, & STA) means that a tanking Druid can more easily adjust to a DPS role, both in combat and out of it.

While I have no hard evidence to back this up I imagine that Death Knights will fall somewhere inbetween the two extremes, probably more towards Warriors/Paladins than Druids, but not very much so. The ability to shift between an effective tanking role and an effective DPS role in-combat is not something I'm expecting. I consider it highly unlikely that Blizzard will allow for changing armor in-combat, combined with the statement Blizzard has already made that you cannot change rune configurations in-combat means that much like the Paladins and Warriors, once they pick their role and combat has begun, that's what they are doing. Also I'm guessing Blizzard will not make the Unholy tree (according to Tigole a rune setup for tanks would be 4xUnholy, 1xBlood, 1xFrost which indicates that the Unholy tree will be the tanking tree) much more than a debuff/tanking tree. I would be very surprised if it had a significant DPS aspect to it, again putting them closer to Warriors and Paladins than Druids. But the fact that they can alter their rune setups to emphasize other trees, would give them much more out-of-combat flexibility than Paladins or Warriors. No matter how it turns out, it's possible that a Death Knight will require a fair amount of STR to tank effectively (having a stance/buff/form that gives increased threat, some additional mitigation and decreased damage output), meaning that if they are required to tank then transfer to DPS, they could move from one role to another without taking too much of a hit in DPS output."

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I'm really going to prefer being a Death Knight tank to a Paladin tank. Before I can go into detail on that I need to post my views on Druids:

One of the prices that Druids pay for being a semi-fluid tanking-DPS hybrid is that they generally take more damage (even with the high increase in armor). Now as all three classes get better gear their armor will go up, so the difference in percent of damage mitigated between them will (generally speaking) stay the same or close to it. Warriors and Paladins have higher avoidance in general (hello 2 u Parry), are uncrushable, and have the flat damage removal of Shield Blocks.

A Bear Druid's much higher armor and health balance out the lack of things listed above. Problem is somewhere after entering SSC, a Bear will hit 31,750 armor. For those who don't know what that number signifies it's a little over the hard cap for armor mitigation, which is 75%. At that point the Bear can focus more on STA and avoidance, and start swapping out the high armor rings and cape they were previously using, but in the end it's not enough. Paladins and Warriors continue to advance in all ways becoming better tanks while Druids have hit the cap in one of their perks.

Now I'm not making this up. Using the sandbox at Warcrafter (btw a great site for figuring out the effects of gear changes and gem swaps) I found that with the best of the best gear, a Druid (make sure to buff him to get the right numbers) sits at 75% mitigation (32.2k armor), 24.3k health, and 48.22% avoidance. While these stats are really good, putting together a Paladin also wearing very good tanking gear (went for set pieces, non-set might be better in certain slots) has 65% mitigation (20.3k armor) + 6% from Righteous for 71% mitigation, 22.4k health, 54% straight avoidance, and 350 block value. The difference in mitigation and health is more than made up for by the blocks and the additional avoidance. The flaw with druids as tanks is that once the advantage in armor caps out and begins to shrink, the other advantages of Paladins and Warriors start to shine. As tanks, Paladins and Warriors will come out ahead, but since Feral Druids can shift from Bear to Cat it can put out respectable DPS. Doing some minor changes to the setup (different buffs and Cat Form) the Druid I linked above can put out a minimum of 800 DPS with a tanking spec and wearing tanking gear with gems and enchants for tanking. This type of flexibility is just not possible with a Warrior and forget about it with a Paladin. Simply put, when you need a secondary tank for an instance like Karazhan, a Bear Druid is the best option since on fights with multiple mobs where they are killed first (Attumen) or fights where you just don't need another tank (Prince) they can put out very good DPS with a tanking spec.

======

Now, back to Death Knights. If my interpretation of what Tigole is saying is correct, Death Knights will be made for being off-tanks much akin to Bears. While this are certainly not just a guess, there are questions that still need to be answered before I can figure out where a DK stands in the grand scheme of things.

For example it's been stated that you will be able to engrave the runes you want onto your blade when not in combat. Are these runes engraved onto a "runeblade" you carry around or the actual weapon you will wield? (Preface: I'm making the basic assumption that they will not have us "upgrade" a runeblade and only use that, and also that you cannot change armor in combat.) If it's the latter of my two suggestion, then can you carve two different rune sets onto two different blades and once you kill the boss you're assigned to you swap blades (like a Druids changes forms) giving you access to more DPS oriented runes. Like have a tanking sword with 4xUnholy, 1xFrost, 1xBlood and have a DPS sword with 3xBlood, 2xFrost, 1xUnholy, and swap them out as needed (Note: in an interview, Tigole stated that the first rune setup I posted would be an ideal setup for tanks)? Or once you go with 4xUnholy, 1xFrost, 1xBlood you're stuck that way until combat ends no matter the sword. If it's the latter then, while a DK will be much less flexible than a Druid, the innate flexibility of being able to design your rune setup will still make a DK more flexible than a Warrior or a Paladin making them a better "secondary tank" option than another Warrior or Paladin.

Also another key question that needs to be answered about Death Knights is how much of the Unholy tree will be tanking oriented? Will Death Knights be similar to Warriors in that the Blood and Frost tree are both purely (or mostly) DPS trees and the Unholy tree is mostly tanking, or will it be more similar to Druids in that the Unholy tree will directly mix DPS and Tanking in one?

Once these questions are answered along with knowledge of the basics of how Death Knights tank at all, I'll begin to be able to decide what I will want to do. While it's very tempting to go Death Knight just because I've been frustrated by how useless I feel as a Paladin when I'm not tanking, the idea of standing back for Paladin or a Warrior just because I'm not as good a tank without a gear advantage leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. It's really a case of picking which type of poison I want.

Zul'Aman & shiny new helm

2007-11-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

This weekend, being the first weekend after the 2.3 patch, we decided to take a stab at Zul'Aman. According to Blizzard it is "for guilds that can defeat Prince Malchezaar", and one of the officers used this to base that we would be ready for Zul'Aman (since downing Prince is something we do almost every week). Problem was that I believe when Blizzard said "for guilds that can defeat Prince Malchezzar" what they meant was "for guilds that have all of Karazhan on lock-down".

We haven't even done a full clear, let alone have the place on lock-down. Even for guilds that can do Kara in a single night, if they aren't doing 25 man instances, they probably need to get some upgrades from the BoJ vendor. Very clever of Blizzard to add those items to help guilds that can't do 25 mans catch up a little to do ZA.

Anyway, so we went in and poked around. Met some of the mobs, like the Amani Bears, Amani Warbringers (eeek!), and did the gauntlet leading up to Akil'zon's area. The Akil'zon gauntlet is a total blast and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately our group was ill prepared to fight the pull right before Nalorakk (lack of humanoid CC hurt us badly). As for our few attempts at Akil'zon, we learned some stuff but we weren't really ready for it. In the end we left without beating a boss, and really decided we just weren't ready for ZA quite yet. But we'd be back with a vengeance some day!

After our less than successful attempt on ZA on Saturday, the next night we went back to Karazhan. We did a mandatory-only boss run up to Prince. As I've already stated, there's nothing I want from Moroes, Opera, Curator or Chess save the Badges, but we got some good loot. When we made it to Prince we had a little trouble with our first two attempts from Infernals dropping right on top of me, but our third try was just easy as cake. Prince then dropped his healing cape, healing mace and the token for my helm! Wooo! Since I was the only one in the raid who could get the token and hadn't already gotten it, it defaulted to me. I now have both pieces of my T4 from Karazhan, and everything I want from Kara that we can currently get. The only things that I really care about getting now are the Mantle of Abrahmis and the Shield of Impenetrable Darkness (going to replace my Breastplate very soon).

I was originally planning on making this post two more topics long, but since I take so long in making each post I'm just going to do this one, and follow it up with the next two topics.

It's list time!

2007-11-14T09:05:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I put together an item upgrade list. Of course that's because almost every upgrade I could get was dependent on a raid level boss dropping them, so it was less a case of working towards them so much as just praying they drop what I want. But with 2.3, suddenly there's a ton of shiny shiny BoJ items. I'm going to list the items, and list them in the order I plan to get them.

1) Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian: Plate Chest, 1607 Armor, 60 STA, 22 Defense Rating, 38 Dodge Rating, 35 Spell Damage, Red/Yellow/Blue Sockets, 6 STA Socket bonus
Cost: 75 Badges
Personal thoughts: The basic fact that it's a Paladin tanking piece is not the driving reason this is first, though that's a definite perk. Due to Nightbane being probably the last boss we'll fight in Karazhan, the Breastplate of the Righteous will most likely be the final rare-quality piece I replace. Instead of hoping for the Panzar'thar Breastplate, I'll be proactive and replace the Breastplate of the Righteous first.

2) Slikk's Cloak of Placation: Back, 346 Armor, 37 STA, 16 Defense Rating, 25 Dodge Rating
Cost: 35 Badges
Personal thoughts: Again, buying this to replace a blue. The only real drop from Karazhan that was a tanking cloak was the Gilded Thorium Cloak, which would cause me to lose too much dodge compared to the Devilshark Cape.

3) Girdle of the Protector: Plate Waist, 904 Armor, 40 STA, 11 Defense Rating, 11 Dodge Rating, 18 Spell Hit Rating, 23 Spell Damage Yellow/Blue Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus
Cost: 60 Badges
Personal thoughts: While I already have an epic belt from Kara, the Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable, with it's wasted points on STR, it's definitely a Warrior belt. While I could aim for the Iron-Tusk Girdle, the thing that pushes the Girdle of the Protector from "Nice" to "Awesome" is the spell hit. Such a rare stat on tanking gear so I'll give up points elsewhere to get it.

4) Unwavering Legguards: Plate Legs, 1406 Armor, 73 STA, 22 Defense Rating, 30 Shield Block Rating, 59 Shield Block Value, Red/Yellow/Blue Socket, 6 STA Socket Bonus
Cost: 75 Badges
Personal thoughts: Upgrading to the Girdle above and the Sabatons below will cost me a fair bit of avoidance, possibly putting me into the realm of being crushable (I have some blue gems I can swap out for green or purples if needed but I'd prefer not to take that route). By getting this fourth instead of fifth, I'll be able to ease the pressure I think I'm going to feel from losing a fair bit of avoidance. In addition, the 30 Shield Block Rating along with the amazing Shield Block Value makes these an awesome upgrade from the Wrynn Dynasty Greaves.

5) Sabatons of the Righteous Defender: Plate Feet, 1105 Armor, 45 STA, 18 Defense Rating, 18 Spell Hit Rating, 30 Shield Block Value, 23 Spell Damage, Red/Blue Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus
Cost: 60 Badges of Justice
Personal thoughts: Much like the Girdle of the Protector, the Spell Hit Rating on this makes it a humongous upgrade from anything else available. Unfortunately, since I currently have the Boots of Elusion, upgrading will cause a net loss of a little over 2% avoidance (pre-gems), which is why it comes after Unwavering Legguards, despite being cheaper and having spell damage and hit.

6) Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx: Plate Wrist, 703 Armor, 45 STA, 23 Defense Rating, 22 Expertise Rating
Cost: 35 Badges
Personal thoughts: The Expertise on this makes me giggle with glee, but since it will be an upgrade from the Bracers of the Green Fortress, I will lose about 10 Dodge Rating (gain a little Defense Rating), so I'll need to be careful of my slots when I upgrade to these.

7) Bonefist Gauntlets: Plate Hands, 1005 Armor, 51 STA, 30 Parry Rating, 21 Hit Rating, Red/Blue Sockets, 4 STA Socket Bonus
Cost: 60 Badges
Personal thoughts: Amazing Armor, Stamina, Sockets, Parry Rating, along with Hit Rating for more threat and less resists on Righteous Defense. Unfortunately, compared to the my current gauntlets, the Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden or the Justicar Handguards loss of all Defense Rating, Shield Block Value, and other stats may not make this a worthwhile upgrade. Will need to do some actual number crunching once I get my hands on them.

8) Brooch of Deftness: Neck, 48 STA, 22 Hit Rating, 21 Expertise Rating
Cost: 35 Badges
Personal thoughts: Wheee! More expertise! Unfortunately, this will (possibly) replace the Barbed Choker of Discipline and has absolutely no defensive stats. Until I can reach uncrushable without the Choker, this one is my lowest priority. :(

All told I need 435 Badges to get everything. @_@ Looks like I need to get cracking!

I'm not dead!

2007-10-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

This is the third attempt at a post like this I've made. Work has changed for me recently, and left me with much less downtime, which is the primary time I update my blog. So I'm just tossing a quick update here.

Done Karazhan the last few weeks. Managed to get almost everything I want from the bosses we can currently down. Wrynn Dynasty Greaves, Moroes' Lucky Pocketwatch, and the Eternium Greathelm puts me at everything I want save the T4 helm of the bosses we can currently down. Also, this past weekend we took our first stab at Shade of Aran. 2 attempts at 10:30 at night. No win, but that's to be expected. We will attempt him more next week.

I've also started doing PvP on my mage to help out a friend in arenas. PvP is surprisingly fun if you aren't PvE specced. Who knew!? Currently a 0/27/34 spec. I like it the best of the ones I've tried so far, though it is very weird not having points in arcane.

Finally I've rolled a Blood Elf Warlock on Mal'Ganis with some friends named Kaziele. Only level 19, but I've done some PvP (for the WSG trinket) and I have to admit playing a Warlock in PvP is a blast!

Anyway, I'm off!

Guide to consumables for raiding.

2007-10-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

I noticed this via a quick glance at WoWInsider on my way out the door this morning: Big Bear Butt Blogger has put out a call for a complete listing of every consumable a class or spec would need on a given raid night. While I am arrogant, I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know what every class or spec would want or need. So I will limit myself to merely listing what Ret and Prot Paladins would want (Holy Paladins can pretty much copy what the Egotistical Priest recommends along with adding a Greater Ward of Shielding for some additional damage absorption to hide behind).

Protection:
The core difference between Protection Paladins and any other type of tank is the question, "Are you uncrushable?" Usually when a Prot Paladin either first enters Karazhan, or decides to respec, they don't have enough crush avoidance. At times like these, +AGI consumables are very useful for their additional dodge they give. In each catagory, I will list the +AGI stuff but I'll also denote it that it's for when still crushable. Otherwise, they are listed in the order of how I prioritize them.

Food:
Fisherman's Feast and/or Spicy Crawdad: Gain 30 Stamina and 20 Spirit for 30 min.
As every Prot paladin worth their salt should have the talent Sacred Duty, this translates to 310 more health. Definitely a win.

Grilled Mudfish and/or Warp Burger: Gain 20 Agility and 20 Spirit for 30 min.
If crushable, this will give you an additional 0.8% dodge.

Flasks:
Flask of Fortification: Increases maximum health by 500 and defense rating by 10 for 120 min. Counts as both Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Is tonight new content night? Then it sounds like a good night for a flask. More expensive and giving less effects than four elixiris, if you expect tonight to be filled with death, then the fact that it will persist through death probably means it's worth the extra money.

Flask of Chromatic Wonder: Increases resistance to all schools of magic by 35 and all stats by 18 for 120 min. Counts as both Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Flask of Fortification is your primary flask. Flask of Chromatic Wonder is for when you're tasked to be the tank on a resistance heavy fight like Hydross the Unstable. It doesn't give as much health, but on resistance fights, defense rating probably isn't your biggest concern, while having high resists is.

Flask of Blinding Light: Increases spell damage caused by Arcane, Holy and Nature spells by up to 80 for 120 min. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
This flask is best used for really twitch threat fights, like ones with a threat reduction ability. My personal experience has shown that generating threat, even without Exorcism, is not a huge problem. As a result since I know of only one fight with a threat reduction move (Void Reaver) I think this is too much money spent (30-40g on my server) for only one fight, after you've learned it. Though it certainly would be the best option when you're finally get around to taking on Void Reaver.

Battle Elixirs:
Adept's Elixir: Increases spell damage and healing by up to 24 and increases spell critical strike rating by 24 for 60 min.
More spell damage means more threat, which means a higher threat ceiling. Higher threat ceiling means your allies can do more damage before they need to scale back.

Elixir of Mastery: Increases all stats by 15 for 60 min.
For fights where you're just being laid into and your healers are having to healbomb you to keep you standing, the Elixir of Mastery gives you that extra bit of health to help out. Of course, if the situation is that dire, you're probably better off with a Flask of Fortification...

Elixir of Major Agility: Increases your Agility by 35 and your critical strike rating by 20 for 60 min.
Again, this is used when you haven't reached uncrushable levels yet. The critical strike rating portion of it can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care, but the 35 AGI nets you an additional 1.4% dodge.

Guardian Elixirs:
Elixir of Major Defense: Increases armor by 550 for 60 min.
"550 armor? That's nothing!" you might say. While this is true, considering that by the time you get to Karazhan you should sitting at around 13,000 armor minimum. But 550 at those levels is about an additional 1% mitigation. Still doesn't sound like much, right? Well let's do the math shall we? Fully buffed I sit at around 68% total mitigation (including the 6% from Righteous Fury). Prince was hitting me for around 3,000-4,000 damage per swing. That means, prior to any mitigation, he's smacking me for 9,000-10,000. 1% means I'm taking upwards of 100 less damage per swing. Not a lot, but that's way more than, say... an Earthen Elixir.

Elixir of Major Fortitude: Increases maximum health by 250 and restores 10 health every 5 seconds for 60 min.
When you're going to be facing down a boss that does at least a middling amount of magical damage, Major Fortitude is the better option since armor is only good against physical attacks.

Scrolls:
Scroll of Agility V: Increases the target's Agility by 20 for 30 min.
Normally AGI items are for when you're still crushable, but this one is the exception. More AGI = more armor and dodge, which is never a bad thing.

Scroll of Protection V: Inceases the target's armor by 300 for 30 min.
Same thing with the above scroll: More armor is never a bad thing.

Scroll of Strength V: Increases the target's Strength by 20 for 30 min.
This one requires a bit of explanation... physical damage, for a protection paladin, has no additional threat modifiers. Why would you worry about more physical damage? Well, until recently I didn't realize how much of my total damage was melee. Looking at WWS, around 20% of my damage done over a whole night is physical. While that's very little of my actual threat, every bit counts and if I can push my threat ceiling a little bit higher, I'll go for it!

Scroll of Stamina V and/or Scroll of Intellect V: Increases the target's Stamina/Intellect by 20 for 30 min.
These are good if you know you're not going to have a Priest and/or a Mage for your run. Unfortunately they don't stack with Power Word: Fortitude and Arcane Intellect.

Temporary Enchants:
Superior Wizard Oil: While applied to target weapon it increases spell damage by up to 42. Lasts for 30 min.
As already stated, more damage is more threat. And for additional benefit these last through death!

Greater Rune of Warding: Enchant a piece of chest armor so it has a 25% chance per hit of giving you 400 points of physical damage absorption. 90 sec. cooldown. Lasts for 1 hour.
Even if it only softens the damage of one blow every minute and a half, it's still 400 less damage that your healers need to heal.

Greater Ward of Shielding: Applies the Greater Ward of Shielding to your shield. This ward absorbs up to 4,000 points of damage before it fails.
This is a handy little temporary enchant which absorbs 4,000 points of any type of damage (physical or magical). Just be careful, since on fights where you aren't taking a lot of damage, you might run low on mana.

Potions:
Minimums per night:
10 Super Health Potions
5 Super Mana Potions

============================

Retribution Paladins:
Preface: First off, this portion assumes we're working from what my previous post said about STR/AP being the priority stats for Ret Paladins, while eschewing an emphasis on spell damage. Also, the priorities are based upon the theory that the Ret Paladin in question has 5/5 in the Holy tree talent Divine Strength. The 10% bonus to Strength should

Food:
Roasted Clefthoof: Gain 20 Strength and 20 Spirit for 30 min.
With Divine Strength, this talent gives 22 Strength, which turns into 44 attack power. A step up from Ravager Dogs.

Ravager Dog: Gain 40 attack power and 20 Spirit for 30 min.
While not as good an option as Roasted Clefthoof, when you are unable to get said food, this is a decent alternative.

Flasks:
Flask of Relentless Assault: Increases attack power by 120 for 120 min. Counts as both Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
Pretty self-evident. More attack power is more damage. Good for learning nights when you are lacking.

Battle Elixirs:
Elixir of Major Strength: Increases your Strength by 35 for 60 min.
With Divine Strength this gives a nice 76 attack power. Flask of Relentless Assault may still be better from a purely attack power perspective, but this allows for some flexibility in the Guardian Elixir area.

Fel Strength Elixir: Increases attack power by 90 and decreases Stamina by 10 for 60 min.
Technically, this one is better than the Elixir of Major Strenght. If you think you can live without 100 health (and I could easily see that as being a justified statement) then this is the better option.

Guardian Elixirs:
Elixir of Major Mageblood: One of the longest standing problems for Ret Paladins is that they have no reliable source of mana recovery, and will run out of mana before the fight is over. This problem hasn't fixed itself yet, so this helps out.

Scrolls:
Scroll of Strength V: Increases the target's Strength by 20 for 30 min.
44 more attack power? Yes please!

Scroll of Agility V: Increases the target's Agility by 20 for 30 min.
While AGI won't directly contribute to your damage, it does give a small bonus to your chance to crit, which means more damage over the course of a fight.

Scroll of Stamina V and/or Scroll of Intellect V: Increases the target's Stamina/Intellect by 20 for 30 min.
These are good if you know you're not going to have a Priest and/or a Mage for your run. Unfortunately they don't stack with Power Word: Fortitude and Arcane Intellect.

Temporary Enchants:
Adamantite Sharpening Stone or Adamantite Weightstone: Increases weapon damage by 12 and critical strike rating by 14 for 30 min.
Bring the type that matches your weapon of choice.

Potions:
Minimums per night:
5 Super Health Potions
15 Super Mana Potions

==================================

Well there we go. If you think I missed anything, or anything is wrong, just let me know and I'll take it into consideration.

Retribution Paladins and STR/AP vs. Spell damage

2007-10-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Retribution Paladins really are a unique creature. While Ret Paladins isn't the only spec to do both melee and spell casting, it's the only one that requires on a mix of both for it's DPS. While yes, Enhancement Shamans can get a boost to their DPS via casting spells like Flame Shock, it's not a part of their tree, so it's not really considered "necessary". Hell, they even changed Enhancement Shaman's T4-6 sets to not have spell damage, and have even more +STR.

So let's take a look at the average plan and damage output for a Retribution Paladin (based upon numbers gotten from WWS for my last few Karazhan runs):

Puller pulls.
Ret paladin queues up either SotC or SoC, depending on how long the mob will last.
Tank gets a little hate (like 5k threat).
Ret paladin charges in judging whatever seal he has up, then starts the SoC > JoC > SoC cycle. In between JoCs, he uses Crusader Strike, along with (if undead or demon) Exorcism.
If at any point the Ret Paladin runs low on mana, he will put up SoC, and merely refresh it every 25 or so seconds, while his mana regens.
Once the mob reaches 19% health, he begins to mix Hammer of Wrath into his spell mix.

Now, just by looking at that, it doesn't seem like melee damage accounts for much, and it's mostly magical, right? Well, according to our WWS numbers (will link later), a Ret Paladin's white damage accounts for around 35-45% of his overall damage. Now, the remaining numbers are magical damage. With over half of a Ret Paladin's damage from spells, it seems like it would be pretty easy to stack spell damage and just go that route, right?

Well, for those who've never looked at Crusader Strike and/or Seal of Command probably don't know how it works. Both take a percent of your melee damage and use it as the base component for your damage on those spells (i.e. damage for SoC = 70% of the damage from the attack that caused it). Both CS and SoC (not JoC) account for another 20-30% of the Paladin's damage.

Now, with this information in hand, it raises an interesting question: Is there a reason to go for spell damage? If you can boost your white damage while simultaneously boosting your SoC and CS damage, accounting for, at a minimum 55% of your overall damage, is there any reason to not go for max STR/AP and AGI/Crit? With the forthcoming change to CS (from a 10 second to 6 second cooldown) I expect that average damage to go up by at least 5%. By cutting out spell damage, and not casting judgements (the only spell that relies on spell damage entirely and isn't situational) a Ret Paladin can probably extend his mana pool by a lot.

At BlizzCon, they stated they intend to remove a Ret Paladin's reliance on spell damage, or at least minimize it. When I first heard this, I imagined a huge overhaul to how Ret Paladin-ing worked. Now after giving it some thought, the only thing that really needs to be changed is the source JoC's damage. If they changed it so it's similar to SoC in that it's partially based upon the damage range of the weapon, then it would be a viable option for a STR/AP build.

Though I will be the first to admit that some of the problem is that the devs really didn't put enough gear with both STR and Spell Damage in the game. Let's look at what gear, has those stats. There's a handful of quested blues and greens for the 60-70 level range, along with the Blue Lightforge non-set. This gear doesn't really hold up and should be replaced by the end of 70. Then there's the Red Lawbringer. This would be a good option to get into Karazhan with... if it weren't for the fact that almost all of it only comes from Heroics. After that, other than PvP, there's 15 pieces of armor throughout the raid dungeons (Tier sets). Maybe if there was better accessible Ret gear things might be different.

Not just "yes", but "Hell yes!"

2007-10-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

As usual this weekends nights were dominated by Karazhan raiding fun.

I didn't go into detail last week, but we took a couple of unsuccessful attempts at Terestian Illhoof, before going onto Chess Event for easy loots. Side note: Paladin tanks would probably be best for the Illhoof fight as either imp add tank or for Terestian. Kil'rek is bad for Paladin tanking because there are long periods where we aren't getting hit, which means no mana recovery. Even chugging pots I was still dry for most of that fight.

This weekend, on Saturday we cleared up to the Opera event by 10 pm. We usually go to 11-12, but we were down a person. This is notable only because it means we can clear all the way to Curator (possibly beyond) in a single night. That means more time for working on new encounters for Sunday!

On Sunday we hopped in the backdoor and bowled over Curator like the wussy trash he is (now). He dropped Garona's Signet Ring and the Gloves of the Fallen Champion (Paladin/Rogue/Shaman gauntlet token)! WOOO! I even rolled a 100! Double WOOO! So yes, I am now the proud owner of a pair of Justicar Handguards!

After this we pushed our way to Chess Event, spending way too much time on the library (15 minute AFK wut?). Chess event dropped healy plate and a +STR/AGI/STA neck, both of which went to our ret paladin. After which we worked our way up to Prince (decided to try Prince instead of Illhoof).

So we get up top and see Prince Malchezzar clomping around his area. So we go over the strategy, making sure to impress on everyone that a lot of the fight is luck (where the infernals land). So we go in, and on our first try we make it to 17%! The only reason we lost was that I moved and got out of range of the healers who couldn't get closer due to infernals.

The way we ended up wiping we had to release and run back. This is where the fact that we spent too much time in the library came back and hurt us: We had to reclear some of the mobs from the ground floor of the library to get back in. We got hit hard on the second try, losing 2 people in about a minute, then an infernal landed on top of someone, causing us to lose them. We called a wipe at that point.

We get up and try again, this time trying an altered position. I get in position, and the Hunter used Misdrect to pull onto me (Prince is running at hunter, hunter shoots glowy shot from her to Prince, Prince takes a sharp left running right to me... WHAT?). We were able to get him down on our third try ever, and on the first night! What's that mean: We're awesome! I did have to use LoH at the last moment, but otherwise it went great (at least for me... not sure how frantic it was for others).

The one thing I really noticed is that I'm really not well enough geared for this fight. I was staying at almost full mana the entire time. I need better armor, more block value and more avoidance. I simply need to be taking less damage, because right now I shouldn't be able to spam every ability (including Consecrate) full time and still not run out of mana, due to incoming heals.

Anyway, the Prince dropped the DPS caster cape, the Decapitator (or whatever the 1H axe you can throw is) and the Helm of the Fallen Champion. Unfortunately I didn't win the roll for it, but hey, we still got him down on our first night! WOOOOOOO!!!!!

In a few more weeks, once we are sure we can consistently get him down we'll start taking stabs at Shade of Aran (for completing the quest to get access to Nightbane). Hopefully I can get my grubby little mitts on a Justicar Faceguard soon.

EDIT: OMG super missed word from hell. Edited in red and bolded.

Now it's time for more introspective.

2007-09-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

I was thinking, this weekend. So other than getting my Epic flying mount and my Netherdrake, both of which are works in progress (farming when I feel like it), I've done everything I can do solo or PUGged (well I still considering doing a few more Shadow Labs runs for Exalted with Lower City...) So basically, other than when I raid on Saturdays and Sundays... I'm done with WoW until the next patch or the next expansion. When 2.4 comes out with the Sun Well and at least one new 5-man, I'll definitely hit that up, but since I'm raiding I doubt it will be much good as far as upgrades go.

Now, I'm not the only one to reach this point. But there's a vast difference between what they do and what I'm do. Most of my other WoW friends, upon doing everything they want to do... roll an alt and level it up to 70 (or up to a predetermined level and twink it out and beat the crap out of people in BGs). So far I have found one class that I enjoyed enough to level it from 1 to 70, after I finished playing my Mage, and that was my Paladin. Which then became my main (in fact at the time I started leveling Alix I was planning on making him my main, got him to the 60s, changed my mind and stopped playing him, then changed my mind again, making him my main when I realized how much I liked tanking as a Paladin).

I'll occasionally try another class, but even then the highest I've gotten them to before I stop playing them is the 30s. Usually in the 20s (if even that far). I just end up back on my main working towards my goals there. Why? Because I'm a perfectionist. Look at the goals I had set for myself. They included insane things like getting exalted with Scryers and the Consortium. >.> Even I have to admit that's a bit nuts (despite having done it).

Now, I'll step away from WoW for a moment, and go to FFXI. For those that haven't played FFXI or read some of my other posts, FFXI's job system takes a cue from FFIII, FFV, FFT and FFTA. You begin by being able to play one of the six "classic" jobs from the original Final Fanatasy:

When you start out, you pick one job, and you can level it from 1 to 75. Also, you can go back to your Mog House (an instanced player housing) and you can change what job you are. Tired of playing a White Mage? Swap over to being a Warrior or a Monk. While you have to start over at level 1 for that job, you can play whatever you feel like playing, and can benefit from all the things you've done as that character.

Once you reach level 30, you'll have the option of getting other jobs unlocked. It requires completing quest or a questline, but in doing so you will gain access to as many as 12 (soon to be more) other jobs. Those are:

Also, in the coming expansion they are adding, at a minimum, two more jobs. One of them has been announced and it's the Dancer job (minimal details on this job so no link). Anyway, what all of this means is that once you roll your current character, you can do every quest, and mission, level every job, and crafting skill and do every type of endgame all from one character. Doing everything you want to do for that one character takes a long time, but it's doable.

Now, back to WoW. Maybe because FFXI was the first MMO I was able to play extensively, it shaped my views. Maybe, it's just that I'm something of a perfectionist. But either way, I pick my main and work towards making him the best character I can get him to be. Because of this, any alts I would create exist to benefit the main. But since in most cases the items gotten from alts are also available via my friends, it really devalues what I can get from this. At most it would be having two crafting skills on my main, while having a collecting skill on my alts. But even this isn't worth leveling a character from scratch. Thus I have no desire to level alts in WoW, which limits it's longevity.

I also think this is why, despite Final Fantasy XI being well over half a decade old, I'm still very much enthralled with it. I've been playing it since December of 2003, and I've only met a handful of my goals. It has enough content that I can do on my main character, either leveling jobs, doing quests, doing missions, etc (not even counting doing it's endgame options), and none of it becomes obsolete, so if I ever decide to go back and do it, it won't be something that will be done for a purpose, not just for the sake of reminiscing.

It's not what you do, it's why you do it.

2007-09-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

This is a quasi-response to Galo's post, quoting Vanifae. I'll be honest, I'm not overly fond of Vanifae. While I certainly will admit that he's usually right, how he answers people's questions, in most cases, really bugs me. He gives very short, abrupt answers. Technically he's usually right in his answers, but he's not that helpful.

There's an old adage: "Give a man a fish, feed him for day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." Vanifae gives people fishes. A lot of his answers are minimalistic and only give them the direct answer to the question they are asking.

What I think we should be doing is not only explaining what, but the actual whys behind it. Understanding the whys is what really separates the good players from the bad. It allows people to make decisions about what abilities to use on the fly, and makes people more flexible.

An example of this could be gear. There are a bunch of lists of good pre-Karazhan tanking gear. You can even find one here on my blog. And while that list is certainly good (over 11,000 health, uncrushability, and over 250 spell damage), what happens when you start hitting up Karazhan and get certain gear pieces.

While most of the direct upgrades from blues to their purple Karazhan counterparts are actually upgrades, what about if you already have a purple and are moving to another purple.Two examples that come to mind are moving from Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden to the Paladin T4 Gauntlets and going from the Boots of Elusion to Battlescar Boots. The Paladin T4 gloves are a huge step down in the avoidance department, and if you aren't careful they could easily push you into crushability range. As for the boots, I got the Boots of Elusion early on (very lucky on that mark) and while the Battlescar Boots are one of the last pieces of tanking gear you can get in Karazhan (assuming you do it in normal order after Curator and don't jump straight to the Chess Event like we did. *cough*) they are a huge step down, almost a full percent lower dodge chance, not to mention, generally speaking, lower stamina (can be gemmed higher but then lacking in other areas).

By understanding what value a piece of gear gives instead of "Hey, this is what you should get." you can better understand what's actually an upgrade. You don't need to go searching for information on whether item X will be worse than item Y with all your current gear. You can figure it out pretty quickly off the top of your head.

The same applies more generally to everything you do. It's one thing to know what spell cycle you should do. But if you know why you should do it in a certain order, if you need to change it, you know what to change and you can weigh the options yourself.

This is why I spend so much time thinking and digging for details and theorycrafting. If I know the why, I can figure out the best what on my own, and make myself the best player I can be.

Annnnd... we're back!

2007-09-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

And I'm back from my travel-born hiatus.

This weekend I waded back into Karazhan, and despite having a low showing both nights (only 10 people as opposed to the normal 12ish).

On Saturday we got through to Maiden, and while we could have continued to the Opera Event, two of the folks were feeling sick so I called it then. Got the belt from Moroes, and after a bit of regemming (swapping out +spell damage/STA gems for +AGI/STA gems for more dodge), I am uncrushable with full raid buffs (this includes Flask of Fort...). I have another two percent or so to get to be uncrushable w/o buffs, but hey, at least I made it to uncrushable in the first place.

Sunday we went back in, got Romulo and Julianne for the Opera Event (still no Big Bad Wolf yet), then went on and one shotted the Curator. WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Seriously, so happy with my guild taking him down first try tonight (and on the second try overall). We got the Forest Wind Shoulderpads and the Gloves of the Fallen Defender (T4 token for Warriors, Priests and Druids). We followed that up by running up and doing the Chess Event, which netted us the Battlescar Boots (went to the Ret Paladin) and the Ring of Recurrance.

A very good weekend overall! Also, I dusted off my Mage, and respecced him (previously a raid/5-man Arcane-Frost spec, respecced to a solo/5-man Frost-Arcane Shatter spec) and sent him to slaughter elementals for Motes of Fire in SMV. Decently profitable, and a nice change of pace from riding around Nagrand (despite it being so beautiful there still *_*). I like to keep mixing things up when I'm out farming.

News is gonna be slim.

2007-09-05T09:17:00.001-07:00

Didn't post at all in the last few days, due to being away at Dragon*Con. It's one of the biggest multi-genre conventions (aka geek cons) out there, and this was my first year. I left on Friday and got back on Monday. I met up with a bunch of my MMO friends, meeting a lot of them for the first time, and seeing a few I met quite a few years back. Sunday night was a riot as we played a 3-4 hour game of Zombies!!! But being that 4 of the 12 usual raiders, along with 2 of the 3 tanks, were out of town meant no raid this weekend.

Next weekend is going to be similar, but just me. I'm traveling down to FL to take care of some family business. I'm flying out on Saturday, and not flying back until Tuesday. Since I don't have a laptop, that means no raiding.

I might still update with some theory crafting posts, but actual updates will be pretty slim.

About all I have to report on the MMO front is that I played a good bit of FFXI. Leveled my White Mage to 37, the last bit I needed to use it as a Subjob, for meriting. This was followed by getting a roving Meripo party. Now, I would have had no issues with this if said party had a secondary MP battery, such as a Corsair or a Bard for the entire time. But it didn't. And people didn't slow down when I had no MP. So they died. Later on we got a Bard, which mostly removed the issue of people dying except for when one person had to go AFK, and he wasn't there to provoke. Beyond that it went pretty well and I got three merit points. Two of them went to Parry and Evasion skillups, and saving the third to be used in one of my other skills. Probably Sword or Shield again.

Hiatus begone!

2007-08-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

While I'm not fully back, the Drama issues seem to have been resolved. The friend is back in the guild, and now fully in the guild (she used to raid with another guild on another server) and transferred her Warrior back to my server.

This is a good thing on many fronts. First, it gives the guild another tank on call. One of our biggest issues so far is that we've only really had me on-call for both of our raiding nights. While this is fine for Attumen, beyond him you really need a second tank. We have had another tank available, but he's busy in school right now, which means sometimes on Saturday, our first raid day of the week, he can't come. This leaves us stuck at Attumen usually. Also, her Warrior is geared with raid stuff including some SSC/TK gear, which translates to one very well equipped tank, which should alleviate any issues we have with getting a tank

Second off this makes the raid not revolve around me. While I'm very thankful to be raiding and happy to fill the role of the main tank for my guild, prior to my friend bringing her Warrior back, if I couldn't show up the raid was canceled. Other classes we have enough of the right types of replacements to make up for it if one of our main healers had to go or couldn't show that night. But for tanks, it was me. There was another guy who had a tank, but it still creates the problem of only one tank. Now if I'm going to be busy for a night, the raid isn't screwed. Yay!

This past weekend was the first week for my friend to raid with us. We took down every boss up to the Curator on Saturday, plus got a new Opera Event. Romulo and Julianne. One shotted the Opera Event.

The next night we devoted it to fighting the Curator. Dude's tough, but I think a lot of it was just learning the fight. This is the first fight that we've had issues with b/c of a non-luck based component. While we had trouble on Moroes originally, I think a lot of how hard he is depends on what adds you get. I have nightmares about getting: Holy Paladin, Ret Paladin, Holy Priest and Shadow Priest. But I digress, for the Curator doesn't have a random aspect like that. So it's a combination of fine tuning our strategy along with getting better gear. Luckily we have a Shadow Priest that we're going to turn into our primary Arcane Bolt soaker, and since he's going to be going all out on the Curator, that means he'll be keeping the mana and health flowing towards the healers (and me, but this is a lesser point). I'm hoping we'll get him down in the next run or two (won't be this weekend since it's D*Con weekend).

========

Anyway, last night I logged in to FFXI for the first time that wasn't a set night in god only knows how many months. Got a party and ground out the last 3 levels I needed for Warrior to get it to 37, which is the level I need it at to use it as a subjob for Paladin. Had to burn three (of four remaining) charges on my Anniversary Ring, which sucks because I can't get a new one nor recharge it, but still... done with leveling Warrior! So it was worth it. Next up on my agenda is getting the last 4 levels for White Mage to use that as a subjob for Red Mage merit point leveling. That will finish off my immediate subjob leveling needs and I'll probably get a few merit point parties to start upping my skills for Paladin tanking (Sword, Shield, Parry, Evasion come to mind).

Hiatus

2007-08-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

For the immediate future there's not going to be much I'm going to be posting here.

On Sunday just before the raid, some things were said in-game by members of my guild that were either badly phrased or badly received. This has led to my guild's second major bout of drama, with one guildie temporarily quitting the game, then even when she came back, feeling like she couldn't log onto my server for various reasons.

I, in usual human nature, am unable to not blame myself to a degree for letting this happen. Because of said drama and the person who has left the guild (so to speak) being a close friend of mine, has left me with little desire to play WoW for the time being, as myself, the Guild Master, and some of the other Guild Officers work on some sort of resolution, and possible fix for this situation. It sucks because both myself and the GM want some sort of fix, and it's just not that simple.

In the mean time, I've been playing some Starcraft, Overlord and Civilization IV when I'm not on FFXI.

Who's spreading these rumors?

2007-08-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Reading the latest GUComics strip, and I can't help but wonder... where do these people think we raiders get money from? In the post for today's strip Woody says "I'm sure some kind soul in tier 6 would toss a few measly hundred gold my way if they truly understood my plight." Now I realize he's just saying this for a quick laugh, in that he is a comic writer and his job is to make jokes. But this is a impression that goes beyond just him. When I was wandering around in original WoW on my mage in epics, I would get comments about my gear, then sometimes requests for money.

On the one hand I can understand the line of thought: As you play and get better gear you can make more money. Therefore obviously someone in full epics from raiding is making a lot of money. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. A large amount of the money goes into repair, reagents and consumables for raiding. I know I spend around 75-100g per raid counting consumables. And the thing is, the further into raiding you go, the more costly it becomes, as your repair bills ramp up. At 70 in mostly I'll pay around 15~20g for a full repair. Once I get into full epics I expect to be paying 20g minimum for a full repair.

In the end, raiding is a way to have fun, not make money. In fact, it's probably one of the greatest money sinks out there, even more so they the 5000g you spend on epic riding skill, because you keep going back to raiding and spending more.

y helo 2 u Exalted with The Consortium

2007-08-08T08:19:00.001-07:00

So like, I'm done. With Rep. Pretty much for good.

Yeah, there's still the Netherdrake Faction, but since that's limited to Daily Quests, and I'd end up doing them all anyway, just for the moneys, I don't consider that a rep grind. This marks the last true rep grind I had to complete, and it's done.

Last night I log in to find that some guildies (Mage, Balance Druid, Rogue, and our new Holy Paladin who's in some T4) want to do Black Morass. I'm like "Hey, I'm game." So we go out to the instance, only to find that the Rogue (one of the two who really need it) hasn't done Old Hillsbrad, so 5 level 70s proceed to tear their way through it, and move on our merry way to Black Morass. We easily clear through it, despite it being the Rogue's first time.

As we're finishing up BM, I notice I'm at around 2,000 rep until Exalted with the Consortium. I ask four of them (not the Rogue) if they are willing to help me get Exalted by doing half of a Heroic Mana-Tombs run. They agree, we replace the Rogue with the guild's Shadow Priest, and zone in. We sweep through the zone pretty easily, taking down the first two bosses, which is enough to net me Exalted!

About half way through I get asked to do a Shattered Halls run. No rest for the weary, I guess. So I finish up with HMT and hop a ride over to HFC. We do a very fast run. Of course it had to be fast... we had no CC. Party consisted of Warlock, Prot Pally (me), Ret Pally, Balance Druid, and Holy Priest. Twas fun. Killed almost everything, and the only time anyone died was when I was Scatter-Shotted in the second hallway.

Finally finished up around 1:30ish and pretty much straight crashed. Was a good night, but a long one.

WoW Journal 2007-08-07

2007-08-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done an update on my status in WoW. With the recent announcement of Death Knights my interest in Deis, my warrior has pretty much completely dried up. While I like the physical nature of warriors, compared to paladin tanks primarily magical approach, Rage makes me (pun intended) see red! It's an interesting, innovative, but really annoying system. I understand it's value. It's a permanently renewable resource which depends on something important: The warrior hitting or being hit. This is important because it encourages DPS warriors to hit the enemy to be able to hit the enemy harder, and it encourages tanking warriors to be hit, so they can use abilities to control the enemy and make them not hit the warrior as hard. In the end, the game rewards the warrior for doing what they should be doing anyway for the role they're in, by allowing them to do even more of that. Unfortunately, my problem is very easy to explain: 0 rage to begin with. Yes there is bloodrage, which gives you a small boost to begin with, but that's rarely enough to do much, beyond use one shout or maybe one other attack. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I want to be able to drop a few high-threat hits in the first few seconds and work on building up threat from the getgo.

Anyway, my initial interest in Death Knights was based upon the (not so far-fetched) idea that it would have mana. Being that it was a casterish (as much as Paladins were) in Warcraft III, it seemed reasonable guess. Obviously based upon my post below, that's not true. But once I realized how it would work, in a way it was even better. A fully renewable resource, that allowed for an initial burst of action. While the obvious potentially long cooldowns would be less than ideal between actions, the fact that it would be a permanently renewable resource that will most likely not in any way be hindered by getting better armor, or dodging, or parrying should make up for it.

Anyway, so for now (and possibly permanently) Deis is on hold. I pretty much put him on hold starting halfway through last week as word of the Death Knights began to pop up. So I slowed down playing, in case word came that it was real. Obviously it did, so now it's just a matter of waiting for the expansion and focusing on Alix. So for now I'll get Alix to Exalted with Consortium (only faction left that's non-raiding :D) and get my Dragon Mount (currently half way to the 5200g mark). That should keep me busy until the expansion since I'll be helping others with 5-mans and stuff.

The weekend before last we didn't raid since too many were unavailable. So this weekend we zoned in on Saturday. Did a quick Attumen kill, and the decided to skip Moroes (due to lack of certain party members) and try the Opera Event. And before you say it, we found out that you need to kill Moroes first. So we went back down and threw ourselves at him a few time to no avail.

Came back the next night went straight to Moroes with a killer strat. Setup was: Balance Druid, Resto Druid, Hunter, Mage, Prot Paladin (me), Ret Paladin, Holy Priest, Rogue, Warlock and Prot Warrior. Moroes' group was Prot Warrior, Shadow Priest, Holy Paladin, and Ret Paladin. The Prot warrior was MT for Moroes, I was off-tank, while I simultaneously off-tanked the Prot Warrior. The Rogue stunlocked the Ret Paladin, the Priest shackled the Holy Paladin, while our Ret Paladin tanked the Shadow Priest as it was burned down first, followed by the Ret Paladin, then the Holy Paladin. After the Holy Paladin was unshackled the Prot Warrior was shackled and I went fully to town OTing Moroes. We left the Prot Warrior shackled and killed Moroes in our easiest run yet.

Following that we did a quick Maiden kill (got me my gauntlets from her!!!!), and moved onto the Opera Event. We got the worst one to start with: The Crone (Wizard of Oz). Our first attempt was a disaster. Plan was: I would tank Tito and Roar (who was being feared by the 'lock). The Warrior would tank/kite Tinhead, while the mage Burn-kited Strawman and the rest would tear down Dorothee, then onto Strawman, then Roar, then Tito, and finally Tinhead. What we didn't realize was Tito silenced. >.> Not good since I that meant I couldn't Holy Shield occasionally, nor cast at some vital points. So I died. Next try I was on Tinhead and the Warrior was on Tito and Roar. Worked like a charm! Had a few deaths, but in the end we got the Crone out where things went to hell in a hand basket. We went from 8 alive to 5 in a matter of seconds due to, I think, people not being ready and dying to Chain Lightning (myself included). But we still walked away with a win. Got the ribbon and the Crone's hat (the Mage got it and was saying "HAT! >:D" for the rest of the night). At that point we called it a night.

We've also expanded our weekly raids to 2 nights a week permanently on Saturday and Sunday nights. This coming weekend the plan will be to take down Moroes, followed by the Opera event on Saturday and then take stabs at the Curator. On Sunday the plan will be to do Attumen then Maiden, followed by either more attempts at Curator, or if we beat him the night before then we'll do something beyond it. (Chess event, I hope!)

Death Knights, what we know, and a bit of speculation

2007-08-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

Preface: Anything that is in italics is pure speculation.

So, turns out my previous posts was very wrong, concerning the Death Knight. They are a hero class, which is a fancy way of saying "You don't have to start at level 1." The only catch is that you will need to do a fairly long questline at level 80. Not that this bothers me, because if there's a questline out there, I'll do it anyway. Even if I was never planning on rolling a Death Knight I'd do at least what I could do solo, just to see more of the story!

Anyway, as I hoped, it's a tanking and DPS hybrid class, with some sort of magical effect. Noteworthy is that it does not have mana. Instead they are introducing a new "rune" spell system. In the place that normally is a mana bar, they show a Vampiric Runeblade with a currently planned 6 runes on it. You choose which runes you want inscribed on your blade from three possible runes: Unholy, Frost, and Blood (with each Rune type being one of the talent trees for Death Knights). This is an interesting setup since you decide which runes you want to use, and can set them up in a way that will be deemed useful to you. For example you could have a "balanced" build of 2 Unholy, 2 Frost and 2 Blood, or if Blood spells are what you really need, 4 Blood and 2 Frost. After you cast a spell, the rune or runes that the spell called for will be used up and will take some time to refill at which point it will be ready to be used again. I would guess that each spell will cost no more than four runes, and even that will be for a fairly powerful one, and said spell would also probably have a cooldown. Also, taking into account the pace of the game, I would expect each rune to go from empty to full about 10 seconds and I doubt they will be recharging for more than 12 seconds. I base this guess taking into account Rogue energy regeneration rates, in that they can go from empty to full in a mere 10 seconds. Finally, I would speculate that the first of the listed runes, Unholy, to be a counterpart to the more well known magical type: Holy. By that I mean that it's not Shadow, but a new magical type that is similar to Holy in that there is no natural resist for it, allowing it to bypass most mob's defenses for good threat generation. This would make Unholy the primary magical type for tanking. A continuation of that line of thought is that Blood runes are used to power draining and debuff type magics, which would either be used to supplement the Death Knight's health and/or stats and drain the target's which would be highly beneficial for tanking. Finally, Frost spells usually relate to slowing and snares, of which most bosses are immune to, meaning it would be the least useful for tanking. A personal prediction that is just based on guesses is that an ideal tanking rune setup will be 3 Unholy, 2 Blood, and 1 Frost (I would imagine some spells will be powered by 1 of each rune, so the Frost is there for those spells).

The plan is, after you complete the long questline at level 80, you "unlock" the ability to create a Death Knight. The current plan is to allow you to make any race a Death Knight (relating to the fact that Death Knights are made by corrupting a valiant hero, much like Arthas was) but I find this idea a bit... out of place with certain races. Humans, Gnomes, the Forsaken and Blood Elves were obvious choices for being a Death Knight, since their races having Warlocks shows they are willing to be tempted by ill-begotten power. Orcs were a possibility, being that they have Warlocks, but having a new group fall to "the Dark Side" as it were, after the glory of them beating their Demonic Blood addiction really kinda makes it seem much less impressive. Dwarves and Trolls are both very defined by their "religion" as it were (Titans and Mojo), and imagining them as Death Knights is a bit of a stretch, but I could still see it. The ones that really get me are the Tauren, Night Elves and Draenei, which are all defined as these moral guideposts for the rest, and the idea of them as Death Knights really bugs me. Of course, it would probably be a personal decision, but still it bothers me. One nice touch, though, is that it seems they will use flavor text to show that most normal NPCs aren't quite trusting of Death Knights (as it should be).

One of the more interesting aspects is that it will be a tanking class... without shields. Now, they didn't specify whether Death Knights will be unable to use shields, but merely that they can tank without them. To elaborate on that, the Death Knight is said to be able to tank with a two-hander or dual wielding. Now, this raises the single largest question of "Crushing Blows?" Now, I have two lines of thought on this one. First off is Death Knights work in a way similar to Druids in that they have either very high Health, Armor, or a strong mix of both. This would allow them to not need a shield to push crushing blows off the table, because they could just (as it were) shrug them off. This would be an uninspired but workable approach, but could have repercussions in PvP as Death Knights would have to have very high armor or health full time, and at the same time have decent to high DPS. The second method, which I just thought of, is an interesting approach. Death Knights have an ability which pushes crushing blows off the table for it's duration, and gives a small boost to armor (to make up for the lack of a shield but not enough to make them equal to a Druid's mitigation). This ability in it's listed form would allow Death Knights to be an equal tank to Warriors and Paladins in terms of crushing blows and mitigation without needing shields, but not vastly surpass them. It would have to be an activated ability (maybe coincide with additional threat generation) because if it was a passive ability that removed crushing blows from the table it would make Death Knights the most powerful tanks in the game, being completely uncrushable without a chance of it wearing. If they took this route, I would guess said ability would cost one to two runes, havng a cooldown approximately equal to the regen timer of the runes. This would also be an effective way to put a mediocre stopper on Death Knight DPS as 1/6 - 1/3 of their available runes would be fully tied up in keeping them alive. This would be a way to lower the Death Knight's DPS while tanking, and when they are not, those runes would be freed up allowing them to be able to keep up with other DPSers.

Final cool point is that you can "choose your own type of Runeblade. You can choose from a traditional sword Runeblade or an axe variant". Very cool (sword for me of course). This brings up a minor but potentially important question: What do you need the Vampiric Runeblade's look for? I imagine that its just for "casting spells" (in whatever form that takes)? If so it's a nice nod to the concept of Death Knights, but really just amounts to a pretty thing to look at (which would be enough for me). It's possible that they plan on giving you one weapon that will continue to evolve as you use it, but I find that a bit hard to believe since it would need to be programmed to take into account what you do (Tank vs. DPS in 5-man and Raids, and PvP), not to mention how you would plot it's growth when you start reaching whatever your endgame is. I can think of ways to do it, but it seems like too much trouble. But as a counter, why would the concern themselves with it's appearance if it only appeared during casting animations? And if it's only your initial weapon and you can replace it later with no penalty I'll be a bit miffed.

They've also given us a sneak peek of two abilities, one seen in the WotLK trailer, and one mentioned at BlizzCon:

Unholy Embrace
Instant Cast.
5 min cooldown.
Target is embraced by a silhouette of darkness for 6 seconds, corrupting any healing spells and effects cast upon or currently affecting the target to cause damage for 50% of their healing potential instead of restoring health. Any damage shields cast upon or currently affecting the target will also be instantly consumed, dealing 50% of their absorption potential in damage. Once afflicted with Unholy Embrace, the target cannot be afflicted with Unholy Embrace again for 1 minute.

While this one will have uses in PvE, since mobs and bosses that heal are somewhat rare, we can expect this to primarily be a PvP ability. Still pretty cool.

Army of the Dead
Raises several temporary minions (ghouls)

This one we don't have any actual details on beyond "summon undead things", but it has been stated explicitly that it will be a temporary summon akin to either the trees by Balance Druids or the Water Elemental by Frost Mages, and this spell will not be a central aspect of the class. Just a nifty little extra.

Anyway, last thought is I'm probably really wrong about a lot of these, but it's fun to speculate.

It's official.

2007-08-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Death Knights are going to be a new class. And based upon the initial text, it will be a normal class. Woo!

While I love Alixander to pieces... If DKs can tank...
Death Knight.
Death.
Knight.
Deathknight!

Heeheeheeheehee!

For details, keep an eye on http://www.mmo-champion.com ;)

Buh... huh?

2007-08-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

I don't get it. I just don't fucking get it.

So, with the new expansion on the horizon, already the bitching has begun. With the likely potential of a level cap increase, people are complaining about the likelihood that their raiding and PvP quality gear will be replaced quite quickly. This is what I don't get. So you're complaining because you're getting better gear?

I realize the real complaint is that you "put a lot of hard work into getting the gear and now it's going to be replaced" but... isn't that the point of getting better quality gear? So you can go farther, and get even better quality gear? (two separate concepts) I mean, even if they didn't release the expansion, you'd still replace the gear? The gear you did get will assist you by making it easier for you to get even better gear. Does replacing the gear soon after you get it diminish the achievement you got from getting it?

I... I'm serious when I say I just don't get it.

As a side note: I doubt the gear divide will be as humongous between tBC and WotLK as it was for vanilla WoW and tBC. Between the rating system being added and the change to the iLVL value for stamina, the type of gear that could be put without imbalancing the game out vastly changed.

On the horizon!

2007-08-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

"So" you say. "Kaziel, what's up? What's going on. ¿Qué Pasa?"

Well, my friends, it seems like the next expansion is finally set to be revealed. In about 2 days hence, on the opening day of BlizzCon, you can expect to hear more details about the second WoW expansion. The only thing that has been confirmed is it's title: Wrath of the Lich King.

This title confirms a number of things, foremost of which is that the expansion will add the continent of Northrend as a playable zone. While it was highly likely in light of the folder named "Expansion2" with Northrend textures in it, that wasn't confirmation. With the name of the expansion confirmed, it's pretty much set in stone.

Other rumors abound, the biggest of which is a new class: Death Knight. A plate wearing melee/caster-tanking/DPS hybrid class. Sorta like a paladin, only without the healy-bits. Now, the details on this class are really up in the air. Most sources are claiming that Death Knights will be a Heroic Class (or some variant of that name), and will only be opened up by doing a quest chain or something like that. My views on that can be summed up with a quote of a post of mine:

I find the idea of the Death Knight being a hero class a really annoying idea on multiple fronts:

First off is the idea of having to do stuff to open up the class. This makes me doubt it a bit. On the one hand, the event chain could be easily soloed, at which point one has to ask: Why bother? Why go to such great lengths to open up something that will be available to pretty much anyone anyways? On the other hand, if the chain of events requires doing group quests, 5-mans, and possibly even raids, they will end up excluding people from accessing an entire class, which is just bad business. I would really doubt they would do the latter.

Next, experience. If you take someone who's played their class from level 1 to level 70, and at the same time, take someone who's never played this class before and put them in the same situation, the player who has never played before will obviously be far worse off than the person who leveled the entire way up. Dropping people into the game at level 70 (which is probably where they would "start") would be a nightmare as players tried to figure out how to play their new class, use all the new abilities.

Related to them starting at a higher level is professions. Whether you like it or not, professions are directly tied to where you can go and survive, or more commonly, your level. The higher level you are, the greater quality materials you have access to. So in order to level up their professions, the player basically needs to spend the next 2-3 weeks going back to old zones and leveling up their professions, or spending through the nose to level up their skills. Not fun.

Finally, the most minor note would be gear. How are you going to start them out? They can't pop into the game fully formed, but only wearing cloth or even plate white gear and a crappy white weapon (like a level 1 does). They would summarily be devastated. And obviously you can't expect them to send money from an alt. What if they completed the quest to open up Death Knights on their Alliance character and roll a Blood Elf Death Knight. Now they are 70, and pretty much naked, with no ability to get access to their gear. And they can't drop them into the game with a ton of money or normal green or blues... just sell them and make a small fortune. This one's minor because I can see a semi-easy fix: Bring them into existence with Blue quality gear that can't be sold.

Anyway, I digress. Even if the Death Knight is a hero class, if it's a tanking class that can cast without healing, I'm so very very there. I don't care what I have to do, I will do it. I will sell my soul to the Lich King if need be! If I'm really lucky, Death Knights will also be able to dual wield. Even without that, I will finally get the class I wanted: Paladins who can't heal. *glee*

Either way, we can expect more details in about a day and a half, when BlizzCon starts on Friday.

Side note: For details on this, check out both http://mmo-champion.com and my post over at Subcreation forums.

Saying "Share" is not the way to ask...

2007-07-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

So this weekend we didn't raid. Certain key people weren't going to be there, so we called it. So when I wasn't working on keeping Heroic Pandemonius on farm status trying to get the Balance Druid robe, I was leveling Deis.

On Saturday night, I decided I'd hit up the Deadmines. So I do the prequests, get all the quests and go in to the outside "dungeon" (not actually in the instance, but still underground). I'm wandering around killing stuff waiting for my escort (lvl 70 mage = EZ mode!) when I get to a Tin Vein. Hey, cool, I need more tin to feed my pretty, pretty princess jewelery-making habit. So I mine it once, twice, and during my third mining attempt this little gnome runs up to me and says "Share". Not "Share?" or something like a question. And then he starts mining the vein!

Now, if he had said "Share?" and waited, I might have stopped and let him have it. I mean, it's not like I won't find more Tin as time goes on, or I can stop and hunt for Tin if I need it. But he just tells me "Share" (lack of a question mark makes a huge difference) and starts mining the vein I had gotten to first. Grrrrrr.

Class descriptions and their aptness (or lack thereof)

2007-07-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm over posting on one of my gaming forums (for some reason they've made me a Mod for the Warhammer Online forum... don't ask me...) and we're talking about getting into the WAR beta. So I reply to one question with this:

Also, I'd like to play WAR to get a real feel for it as it grows, and get a good look at it. Yes, I can read about it all I want, but there's a huge difference between reading about it and playing it. Esp. from just the class descriptions.

To this post I get an agreeing reply of:

Yep. Look back at the class diescriptions blizzard gave when the game was released. They describe mages as 'glass cannons.' When in reality, we ended up being something like a 'glass musket?'

My immediate thought was "Yeah, but 'glass musket' isn't nearly as appealing." And that's when something clicked. I'd always been of the opinion that you shouldn't take the class descriptions from gaming websites at face value but that was more of a "what is" than a "why".

The "why" is that the purpose of a class description is to give a general overview of the class while making it look appealing. That second part is where the problem crops up. Every class has it's undesirable aspects. Whether those are due to a player's interpretation ("I don't like this, so it's bad!") or a lack of vision on the dev's part (pally tanking pre-expansion), something will be considered bad. That is a fact.

The problem is that they can't put stuff like "while this class does not put out the most DPS, it makes up for it in utility". Players don't want to read that. They want words like "Master of (insert damage type here)" or "Glass cannon" or other good descriptive terms. Some of the fault lies in the players, as terms like "Glass cannon" are interpreted to mean "Does the most damage."

In the end, the fact is you should take the class descriptions you see on the main site of the game or in the manual with a grain of salt.

The Libram of Repentance is mine!

2007-07-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

It seems kinda minor since technically I could do it in three nights if we did entire Mechanar runs, but I finally got my 15 Badges of Justice last night and went and bought myself my Libram of Repentance. With MotW, BoK and Holy Shield this puts me at 99.29% uncrushable. Almost there. About the only thing that would really be an upgrade to me now would be the Faceguard of Determination.

It always kinda floors me that people say that the LoR sucks. Of course they are comparing it to things like the Boomstick from Anzu the Raven God (Heroic Sethekk Halls) which has lots of stamina. Now I take a look at the equipment of high level warriors and most of them are using trinkets that give either dodge, defense, or block value. Here we have an item that fills only one slot that gives more crush avoidance that two trinkets of approximately equal iLVL value. Tell me, where are you going to find 5% and change crush avoidance in one slot?

While I will admit that as I get more and more crush avoidance gear it will become less valuable, I know, for a fact that I can replace some of my gear and enchants with +damage or +stamina equivalents.

And this applies to gear in general. It seems like people focus too much on individual slots, instead of looking at the greater whole of all gear. They need to realize that you can essentially consider all gear one giant pool of iLVL points that are assigned to certain positions. Having one slot cover 5~% of the required crush avoidance is a very efficient way to spend those iLVL points.

Also, by spending iLVL points from your total pool on trinkets with a "Use" ability, a lot of those points are going to waste. While I'll be the first to admit that "Use" abilities are quite handy, even the shortest ones I've seen are on a 1 minute, 30 second cooldown, which means that you can't rely on them to keep you alive. Just help you out in a pinch.

Until I reach the point where I cannot find something that I can swap out, instead of the LoR and lower my crush resistance to 102.4% or a little above it, I'm going to hold onto it. Plus I know I'm going to lose some of the uncrushability I get from the early Karazhan tanking gear, as I slowly gather my tiered gear. I still think too many people dismiss the value of spell damage gear. But that's just me.

WoW Journal 2007-07-23

2007-07-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend was very atypical for me.

Friday was an easy night, and Saturday I didn't play much because I actually went out to a party that night. *gasp* Yeah, my comic book store owner has an annual party (the "Tenleytown Throwdown"), and despite him being the owner of a comic book store it's a genuine party, not a geek gathering. You know... drinks, music, dancing, chatting, etc. Had a good time.

Sunday began with us taking a stab at Heroic Mana-Tombs. Without a CCer, it was really hard. We got to Pandemonious (which is really all we wanted) and dropped him, still no Balance Druid robe. :(

I logged out then, and came back around 7 for the weekend raid. Since I wasn't available on Saturday which left us mostly tankless, we moved the raid ahead one night. So we hit up Attumen and knocked him over like the loot piñata he is. Then went up to Moroes and one shotted him, albeit with a bit of difficulty (survivors = paladin x2, mage, druidx2) so we still have a bit of work to do on fine tuning that fight. Didn't help that we had the Shadow Priest and the MS warrior, nor that the off-tank for Moroes died early in the fight. But hey, a win is a win. Then moved onto Maiden of Virtue. Bad news is that it's really just not viable for me to tank her with my guild's current gear quality. Good news is we have a warrior tank who's available (swap out Shadow Priest for a Prot Warrior) and we brought him in and got her down on our second try, ever. :D After that we cleared to the journal for the quest and called it a night. I expect pretty soon we'll be adding a second night to our weekly raiding, once we smooth out the bumps on Moroes (damn butler!).

Well that was a let down...

2007-07-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

So one of my druid guildies finally got the 5,000 gold to buy her 300 riding skill and on Monday night she did all the quests in prep for her epic flight form. By the time I was called in, it was 11:30, so we planned on doing it tonight.

This was my second run through Heroic Sethekk Halls, so I kinda knew what was coming. When we got to the second to last room (where the Saga of Terokk is) that's where we fought Anzu the Raven God. While certainly not raid level difficulty, it was a fair bit easier than I expected (hence the title). The only parts that really made me struggle was when he banished himself and summoned the adds, and that was only because they randomly aggroed people. Best plan for that with a paladin tank is to have everyone stand right next to the paladin as he or she hits Consecration to pull the birds off of everyone else.

Finishing the entire heroic puts me at 9 of 15 badges of justice needed to get my Libram of Repentance, and got my guildie her epic flight form. Woot!