Death Knight - ado

I hope everyone is having fun playing the new Borg....erm, I mean Death Knights.

Now don't rag on me. I've got one (or two) myself. I know how much fun they are, but they are also sort of annoying. I mean, while leveling in Outland, it's always "4 DK group LF healer" or some such. Also, while playing your Death Knight, it's a pain to get a group yourself. No one trusts them to tank much yet, and even then, they're annoyed that there are so many around and don't want you in their group.

Well, if you haven't figured out all the wrinkles of your favorite new bad guy yet, there's a nice write up over at Squidoo on them. Lots of info, including talent builds (some of which are featured on Elitist Jerks) and gear guides. Good info for those who want it.

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

OK, Now What? Part Three

As Robin and my guildleaders pointed out, I missed the point of One-Handed Weapon Specialization entirely. Back to the drawing-board.

*sigh*

Oh, and it's 490 defense, not 415. No clue where I came up with that.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

OK, Now What?

So I hit 66 on my Pally last night. I finally got the opportunity to dig some of that armor out of my bank that I've been holding onto for a while (most found with another character--I just kept it. And yes, I really do plan that far in advance.)

I'm sporting 413 defense, just in excess of 9500 armor and 8700 health. Not too shabby for 66 (the Armory apparently isn't completely up-to-date. It still shows 65.) Now I'm starting to see why protection specced Paladins opt out of Reckoning. You honestly get hit so little, that the chances of it proccing are very slim indeed.

So, I'm now looking at re-speccing into more of a "pure" protection build. I dug around and most point to this. That looks more-or-less like what I planned, but there are some differences that have me scratching my head.

In their build, one would forgo Blessing of Kings and Spell Warding in favor of One-Handed Weapon Specialization. I can't figure out why.

Blessing of Kings (BoK) is the most requested buff I have. I use it myself on a regular basis. That extra 10% to all stats is a beautiful thing and comes in handy when you know that you're going to be tanking something where just a little edge is all the difference between an impossible fight and a do-able one.

Spell Warding isn't much, but as Han said, "Short help is better than none, Chewie." That extra 4% less spell damage adds up pretty quickly when fighting multiple casters and bosses.

On the other hand, an extra 5% weapon damage sounds good on paper, but really it's kind of pointless IMHO. Let's face it, pally's don't hold agro with their damage. In fact, my damage is downright pitiful. In the areas like Nagrand, when Horde has the Halaa blessing and I do have the extra 5% damage, honestly I can't tell much of a difference. I mean, I might hit for 125 white damage ordinarily. Now I'm hitting for 131! Woohoo! I'm cooking with gas now, sweetheart!

Really, and for giving up Kings and Spell Warding, I'm not even getting that much. It's really only a 3% boost. So what gives? Hell, I'm probably getting a 3% damage boost from Kings anyway by bumping my stats 10%. Lord knows I'm getting much better mitigation, and isn't that the name of the game for prot pally's?


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Wrath Talents Updated

I know you are as excited about Wrath of the Lich King as I. I've been snapping up every bit of news that came out of the alpha and now the beta testing.

The latest tidbit that Blizzard has released are the new talent trees.


I'm looking forward to playing with these later. More to the point, I'm really looking forward to Wrath.