Long Time, No Bloggy

Since you last heard from me, my little ol' rogue is now 56, the priest is 64, and the pally is languishing at the Sunwell (at least until the expansion).

I've not been blogging because there is so very little to actually blog about. Sure, I could try to play keep-up with the fast and furious changes happening before Wrath, but why bother? It changes faster than I can type.

Bored? Yeah, still am. I left that little guild where I kept my pally because they really never did anything together. Never believe them when they advertise that they instance all the time. They lie.

I actually formed my own guild with some friends. We were all in another small guild together, but our guildmaster has since left/quit/gone-on-hiatus and no one had the ability to invite new people/alts or actually use the guild bank. Wasn't worth the effort of staying, so we formed our own. It's much easier to talk that way and we can actually party with other people. Imagine that! The novelty of it all.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Bored, Bored, Bored

I'm not quite this bored yet

Yeah, I gave in.

I "finished" my pally. He's 70, 490 def, and approaching 120% mitigation. He just needs some lovin' via instancing. For that, I'm waiting on the rest of my guild to catch up and want to do it. Soooooo, now I've got a ton of time on my hands.

I tried working on the rogue, and I got him to 41, but I just don't feel it. He bores me to tears. Maybe I'll spec him to subtlety or something more interesting. Combat Swords is very efficient, but is rather boring.

So, failing that, I tried working on my priest and "finish" levelling him. He's sitting at 62 and I really ought to just push on ahead to 70. Again, I'm just not feeling it. He's just not my idea of a good time. Maybe he'll get some love when my guildies get to his level. I'll probably respec him to holy and use him primarily in instancing or grouping.

I tried druid again, but you know how much fun they are to play until you get cat form. It's very similar to visiting the dentist without the benefit of painkiller or insurance. I'll re-visit him later.

Bored, I started another new character. He's a hunter. Yeah, I've got one hunter to 70 already, so what would I possibly need with a second? Beats me. I've been asking myself that same question. I suppose I'm just inspired by the pics of the motorcycles for engineers, so I'm working on this one as an engineer. Lame, but I did really enjoy playing my hunter the first time. We'll see how this one goes, or if he ends up in the delete file too.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

From the Nimble Fingers of Ghostcrawler

My favorite dev, Ghostcrawler, had some new and interesting things to relate about Paladins in response to the feedback Bliz has been given.

Here's what she said:

Here are some things we are looking at right now. You may not agree with them all, but I will share them with you in the hopes of making you feel better about your class, and maybe even getting you excited again. I also can't promise they are final because it's still the sort of thing we're wrestling with, and I don't want to disappoint anyone if it doesn't work out or we change our minds. Okay, massive caveats out of the way:

• We'd like to do something else with Kings. I don't know that a core ability is the answer, but burying it deep in Prot, when Prot warriors would just as soon play with BoSanc, doesn't feel great either.
• We'd like to mess around with the top 2 tiers of all 3 trees, still encouraging you to cross-spec a little, but making that initial bite into the upper tier more tasty instead of just an icky appetizer to get the what you really want down deeper.
• I think Beacon of Light is starting to feel pretty good. It may be a little OP right now, but I think we can get it in a good place. (I'm sorry, but I don't know if you have the version I'm talking about or not.)
• We'd like to get Vengeance back to 3 stacks, because that just feels more fun than 2. I can almost assure you that it won't be at 15% total damage -- that is hugely generous for 5 talent points, and would normally be budgeted at more like 15 talent points. If I had to guess, it will end up at something like 3 talent points for 1 / 2 / 3% that stacks up to 3 times (so 9% at 3 stacks). That is still over-inflated for 3 talent points. I understand that your dps used to depend on Vengeance. We'll just have to buff it in other ways. Death Knights will get the exact same treatment, whatever it ends up being.
• JotW was changed to support the new party buff system and it needs to keep that role. That is one of the main reasons why a group would want to take a Ret pally over another dps class. I understand your mana was dependent on this ability. We'll just have to buff that in other ways as well. Having too many talents that just lower mana costs feel like a band-aid, so we'd rather not overdo that route. Instead we'd just like to make sure you have enough mana. The new Divine Plea is one mechanic here (it works more like Blood Rage than Evocate now), but it's not the only one.
• Deep Ret and deep Prot need 1 or 2 more cool talents. We'll carve out room by bundling or just swapping out some of the current talents.

I hope you take this little view into our current thought process in the spirit that it's given. Sometimes we regret talking about stuff that isn't final because it ends up coming back to bite us. But I also thought it wouldn't hurt to cheer you up a little either, so hopefully something I've said will do that.

Beautiful. I'm really hoping these changes help fix some of the bloat that infests all three trees.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Paladin Love

Paladins (especially Prot) are about to receive a heaping-helping of love, come 3.02. What am I talking about? I'm talking about me some Blessing of Sanctuary.

Yes, the red-headed step child of Protection Paladins everywhere. This once, much-maligned (and rightfully so) step you HAD to take to get Holy Shield is actually going to be useful in the future. Not only useful, it's going to be freaking amazing!

Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.

That's right, boys and girls, BoSanc will actually keep our little blue rage bars juiced. Not only that, but it will help give us a little more raid utility because we can give this pretty little buff to other tanks and have it not only be useful, but very welcome.

I'm looking more forward to Wrath now than ever.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat