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

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

Mages Stunned Speachless, Film at Eleven

In a surprising statement, Koraa agreed with the Mage battlecry: Warlocks do too much damage.

Warlocks got to crazy land with the % modifiers to their damage output (specifically with Demonic Sacrafice), that's been toned down. Warlocks should never be able to out DPS a Mage with no pet out. Alike a Hunter, their pet should factor into their total damage output. Warlocks that sacrifice pretty much all utility talents should come very close to Mage DPS, but those who invest in group/raid utility should be lower.

I guess that makes Mages the new black.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

5 Little Words

And no, I don't mean "My Daddy's Rich. Take me."

Something hunters have been (justifiably) complaining about for ages is how broken growl is. Well, Ghostcrawler agrees.

Growl sucks. We'll fix it.

Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

New Hunter Build in Wrath

Hunters are altering drastically again in Wrath. Less QQ More PewPew has a nice write-up on the changes.

All I can say is that if some of these changes work as advertised, I'm going to be one very happy hunter!


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Pre-Wrath Blahs

OK, so you've got 5 level 70's with all the gear you want (right now), your raid group has basically quit raiding because lack of people on-line, you don't want to think about another alt, much less actually level one, and you're bored out of your skull while playing, yet you follow all the new Wrath of the Lich King info like a crack-head looking for a fix. Sounds like you've got the pre-Wrath Blahs to me.

What can one do to alleviate these symptoms? I have a few ideas....

1. Go to war with the Cenarian Expedition and use misdirection on some nubs in Orgrimmar (only works if you're a hunter).
2. Create an Alliance/Horde alt and spam their trade channel with "anal [whatever]" messages (admitedly this does get old quickly).
3. Roll a warrior and see how fast you can level while naked and barehanded.
4. Roll a new character on an RP server, join an emo guild, and whine about how bored you are.
5. Log onto the forums and find the oldest thread you can manage. Respond to it in a very serious manner, and watch as others respond before realizing how old the thread you resurrected is.
6. Take up a new instrument and serenade your guildmates over ventrilo with your amazing new hobby.

There are many ways to avoid boredom and I'd love to hear from others who have other creative methods.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

He Didn't Believe Me, So Here It Is

I was at lunch with a buddy the other day and was telling him about the engineering mounts being introduced in Wrath. If you've been hiding under a rock, you might not of heard of this yet, but I doubt it. It was pretty big news.

At any rate, here's a link to where I read it: The Roads of Azeroth, Now with biker gangs

Holy Crap! That's Some Stuff

Blizz is not only ramping up big-time for Wrath, but they're actually listening and responding to their players!

I don't know if you've been keeping up with the beta changes, but you should at least drop by the hunter boards there. I've never seen so much blue on one page. It's like Ghostcrawler opened up a vein or something (crabs...blue blood, oh nevermind).

Here's the short version:

• Animal Handler will be changed because it's lackluster.
• Serpent Sting will get a mana cost reduction and a coefficient buff with the aim of making it worth casting in your basic shot rotation.
• Deterrence and Master's Call will be trained abilities.
• Silencing Shot to be a proper interrupt (PvE).
  
• Trueshot Aura will now be raid wide.
• Hunters will be getting a big push with lots of changes in the beta build after next.

Update: Ooops! Koraa has been the one posting all over the hunter boards. My bad.


Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Feral-ly Yours

Druids have had a chip on their shoulders about tanking/dps'ing since I started playing the game in '05. At that time, they couldn't do either. My first character was a druid, and feral sounded cool on paper, so that's what I went with. Oh, my naivete knew no bounds! Let me just put it this way, I couldn't get a group to help me blow my nose.

With 2.0 and BC, feral druids got a massive change and were actually viable tanks and dps. With the right gear, feral tanks are massively tough. Sure, crushing blows still suck, but they've got the hit points to take 'em. And dps of feral kitties is a beautiful thing now. Sure, they're not rogues, but they sure can dish it out.

With the changes being made in the Wrath beta, feral druids have been sweating. Until recently, they've been worried about statements made by Blizzard reps, especially omissions, when they talk about tank classes. Some have made mention of warriors, paladins, and death knights, but failed to mention druids. This made lots of people nervous. Now, Ghostcrawler has been allaying some of those concerns.

The changes made to things like armor were done mostly to solve itemization problems. We didn't make them to nerf Ferals (or anyone). We did them because we started to consider bosses who needed to drop 30 different pieces of armor (or tokens to trade for them or whatever) because classes and even specs were heading off into distinct niches. You'll get something to make up for it. No, you aren't there yet.

We're not entirely happy with the way the Feral ended up in BC. The idea was that you could be a decent tank and a decent melee dps class, so Ferals were something you wanted to bring if you weren't the kind of guild that swapped different people out for every boss. But I don't think "convenience factor" is ultimately a great value to bring to a raid. The problem was we were kind of stuck because if we made Ferals end-game tanks and amazing melee, then the rogues were screwed, because they couldn't go respec to tank or heal.

But now we have a chance to add some new talents, and we'd like for some of them to be the kind that let a druid declare that she is more of a cat or more of a bear. It doesn't have to be shoehorning two whole talent trees into one, but even offering a few choices would go a long way.

I didn't mean to sound condescending. The pot example was to offer that we haven't forgotten about bears. My point was NOT: hey, you lost armor but gee you got health stones, so why all the QQing? It was cool to see those big armor numbers on bears, and we have some plans for how to replace them (and not just with pots).

The DK gets a lot of attention because it has a lot of catching up to do. There were no DKs in UBRS or MC or TK or even Arathi Basin. Nobody knows how their abilities and power system are going to work so we feel like we have to cover a lot of the ground that was explored literally years ago for some of these other classes.

We will be really disappointed if there aren't bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that if not consistently as high as rouges, are at least a lot closer than they are now. (Source)

Hopefully this will help still the fears of my tanking brothers and sisters. After all, you shouldn't be afraid of anything if you tank with your face.

Update: It looks like feral swiftness will now be allowed indoors!

The new feral form: the Jackalope!

Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Positive Feedback

Paladin changes in the Wrath beta have been coming hard and fast. Lots of changes have been for the better, lots are 'meh'. I'm going to take a quick look at some of these.

This list comes from the beta forums, via Rill (much kudos).

Changes:

• Holy Wrath is Instant.
• Lay on Hands is 20 min cooldown instead of 1 hr. Also costs no mana.
• Divine Intervention is a 20 min cooldown instead of 1 hr.
• Ranks of all Seal Spells have been removed. There is just one rank now that scales with level/gear depending on the seal.
• Seal of Wisdom and Light scale with Spell Power.
• All Seal spells now last 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds and are no longer consumed when casting a Judgement spell.
• Blessing of Freedom changed to Hand of Freedom. 25 second cooldown, immunity to movement imparing effects for 10 seconds.
• Blessing of Protection changed to Hand of Protection. Same effect.
• Blessing of Sacrafice changed to Hand of Sacrafice. 2 min cooldown, lasts 12 seconds. Transfers 30% of the damage taken by the target, to the caster.
• Blessing of Salvation changed to Hand of Salvation. 2 min cooldown, lasts 10 seconds. Reduces the target's threat by 2% every second for 10 secons.
• Righteous Fury changed to increase threat by 90% instead of 60%.
• Avenging Wrath now increases all damage and healing caused by 20% for 20 seconds instead of just damage by 30%.
• Hammer of Wrath's animation speed increased and is a .5 second cast and affected by haste. Can now be used by targets at 35% health instead of 20%.
• Retribution Aura damage increased. Example: rank 6 causes 26 holy damage in live. In beta causes 62 holy damage.
• Judgements are currently affected by global cooldown.
• Divine Shield and Divine Protection cooldowns are no longer linked.
• Forbearance timer increased to 3 minutes from 1 minute.
• Divine Protection now only has one rank. Additionally, Divine Protection will absorb 50% of all damage and reduce your attack speed by 50%. Duration increased to 12 seconds.
• The following spells now scale with spell power and attack power: Consecration, Exorcism, Judgement of Wisdom/Light/Justice.
• Righteous Defense no longer costs mana and the global cooldown has been removed.
• Seal of Blood now increases Judgement damage by 45% of weapon damage.
• Seal of Command now increases Judgement damage by 30% of weapon damage, 60% on stunned targets.
• Seal of the Crusader has been removed. The effects of Judgement of the Crusader have been folded into all relevant abilities.
• Seal of Righteousness deals damage based on weapons peed plus an amount based on attack power and spell power, increases Judgement damage by 25%.
• Seal of Vengeance damage over time effect duration increased to 18 seconds and now applies its effect on every swing, causes damage based on attack power and spell power, and increases Judgement damage by 10% per stack of the damage over time effect.
• Summon Warhorse and Summon Charger mana cost removed and no longer causes a global cooldown.

Removals:

• Judgement has been removed. (See Judgement Notes further down)
• Forbearance has been removed from Avenging Wrath.
• Seal of the Crusader has been removed. (*sniffle* We had such good times!)

Additions:

• Judgement of Wisdom (see Judgement Notes further down) - Appears to give you mana back when cast. Might be a bug. Checked to see if it was just Judgements of the Wise kicking in but it does it with or without it.
• Judgement of Justice (see Judgement Notes further down) - Still works as if you had cast seal of justice and judged it. Except you don't have to cast seal of justice before judging anymore.
• Judgement of Light (see Judgement Notes further down) - Still works as if you had cast seal of light and judged it. Except you don't need to cast seal of light before judging anymore.
• Seal of the Martyr - Alliance version of Seal of Blood.
• Seal of Corruption - Horde version of Seal of Vengeance.
• Divine Plea - 5 minute cooldown. Channeled 6 sec cast. While Channeling this spell you gain 50% of your total mana. Animation is a blue book and fist that hovers over your head while you kneel and channel the spell. Requires level 71. Currently affected by haste.
• Sacred Shield - 40yd range, 35 mana, instant cast. Uknown cooldown, requires level 80. Each time the target takes damage they gain Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 seconds.
• Shield of Righteousness - 6 second cooldown, instant cast, requires shields, requires level 75. Slam the target with your shield, causing holy damage equal to 200% of your block value. High threat.

Talent Specific Notes
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents2.html

Changes:

Holy

• Spiritual Focus moved to T1 from T2.
• Divine Intellect moved to T2 from T1.
• Divine Strength moved to Protection T1.
• Healing Light moved to T2 from T3.
• Unyielding Faith moved to T2 from T3. Increased the resists % from 5/10 to 15/30.
• Improved Lay on Hands now increased armor bonus of the target by 50% instead of 15% and the duration reduced to only 15 secs instead of 2 min. Also reduces the cooldown of Lay on Hands by 4 minutes instead of 20 minutes.
• Illumination moved to T3 from T4
• Improved Concentration Aura moved to T4 holy instead of protection.
• Pure of Heart now reduces the duration of curse and diseases by 50% instead of increases resistance by 15%.
• Holy Shock has had damage/healing increased, mana decreased, range increased, cooldown decreased.

Protection

• Divine Strength moved to T1, from Holy T1.
• Anticipation moved to T1 from T3. Now increases your Dodge by 5% instead of your Defense by 20.
• Stoicism moved to T2 from T4. % increased.
• Redoubt moved to T2 from T1.
• Toughness moved to T3 from T2. Increased % of bonus armor value from 10% to 20%.
• Improved Righteous Fury no longer increases threat.
• Improved Hammer of Justice decreases the cooldown by 30 seconds instead of 15.
• Improved Concentration Aura moved to Holy.
• Improved Devotion Aura moved to T4 from T1. Now increases healing effects on targets with Devo aura by 3%. Also increases armor bonus by 50% instead of 40%. Also uses 3 talents instead of 5.

Retribution

• Improved Blessing of Might now increases AP bonus by 50% instead of 20%.
• Vindication is now 2 points instead of 3 and decreases stats by 20% instead of 15%.
• Pursuit of Justice is now 2 points instead of 3 and reduces chance to be hit by spells by 2% instead of 3%.
• Eye for an Eye Eye for an Eye: All criticals against you cause 10/20% of the damage taken to the attacker as well, instead of 15/30% damage return for spell attacks only.
• Divine Purpose changed to reduces chance to be hit by ranged/spell by 3% and reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 30%.
• Repentance duration increased to 1 minute PvE, 10 seconds PvP.
• Fanaticism increased crit strike chance of judgements to 25% instead of 15%.

Removals:

Protection

• Precision removed.

Retribution

• Sanctity Aura has been removed.
• Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed.
• Improved Seal of the Crusader has been removed.
• Sanctified Judgement has been removed.

Additions:

Holy

• Seals of the Pure, T1, 5 points
• Blessed Hands, T5, 2 points
• Infusion of Light, T8, 2 points
• Sacred Cleansing, T9, 3 points
• Enlightened Judgements, T9, 2 points
• Judgements of the Pure, T10, 5 points
• Beacon of Light, T11, 1 point

Protection

• Divine Guardian, T4, 2 points
• Touched by the Light, T9, 3 points
• Guarded by the Light, T9, 2 points
• Shield of the Templar, T10, 3 points
• Judgements of the Just, T10, 2 points
• Hammer of the Righteous, T11, 1 point

Retribution

• Heart of the Crusader, T2, 3 points
• Sanctified Retribution, T5, 1 point
• Sheath of Light, T5, 3 points
• Judgements of the Wise, T6 3 points
• Sanctified Wrath, T8, 2 points
• Swift Retribution, T9, 3 points
• The Art of War, T9, 3 points
• Righteous Vengeance, T10, 5 points
• Divine Storm, T11, 1 point

Judgement Notes

The Judgement spell has been removed. Now, you have three Judgement spells. Judgement of Justice, Judgement of Wisdom, and Judgement of Light. When you cast a seal, you are able to cast one of the three judgements. When you cast the judgement, you get the effect of the judgement itself plus your seal will judge the target as well. However, you no longer have to recast your seal after using a judgement spell. (May be a bug?)

Example:I cast Seal of Command. I cast Judgement of Wisdom on my target. My target will then have the effect of Judgement of Wisdom but they also took damage as if I had judged command on them too.

Currently, doing a judgement with any seal will deal various amounts of holy damage. Unsure if there are plans to change that or not.

Keep in mind, these changes are just the Paladin changes!!! It's almost like a completely new class by itself. It's obvious that Blizzard has give a LOT of thought about how to make the Paladin better and it shows. Will all these changes make it out of beta? No way. Some are too powerful, some are about useless. There's a lot of good feedback on the beta forums for the devs to chew on. Ghostwalker is already gathering some info and giving ideas on the info s/he would like to see.

I'm hoping to get a beta invite. I'd sure like the opportunity to tell them that Prot damage needs to scale better if nothing else.




Camp Taurajo, just a little south of Barrens chat

Flying Chicken of Doom

I thought the idea of the Death Knight having a cool looking flying mount was awesome. Well, it's available for the beta testers and the reality doesn't quite match the expectations.

See for yourself:

Picture courtesy of Theris

At Home Today

I'm working from home today, and wouldn't you know it, it's the busiest day my department has seen all year.

The guild I'm a part of is a small, family guild. When I say family, I really mean it. Most of the members are an actual family, and the rest are all friends. That's a terrific situation when you're a part of an active group. Everyone knows one-another, there's a lot of kidding around and good-natured fun, and everyone has fun. But what happens when it all starts to fall apart?

Currently, we have about 45 members in this guild. They're all either mains or alts, so in effect, there's really only about 15 real people playing those 45. When everyone logged in regularly, getting help for quests or doing instances was not a problem. Now, people seem to have the pre-Wrath blahs or other, more personal, things are going on in their lives, so at most we might have 3-4 people logging in at once. And because of different schedules, even trying to complete the easiest group quests becomes an exercise in frustration.

I was enticed to this guild by some friends. I had taken a hiatus from the game for a few months late last year, and when I came back, my friends had all moved to a different server. I have no idea why they did the move, but they did, and if I wanted to play with them, I had to pick up sticks too.

Now, because there's no one playing anymore, I'm bored and tired of trying to schedule things for people who never show up.

I guess I'm ready to move on. I've been finding myself looking at guild recruitments posted on the server forum for a few weeks, and I finally took the leap and put in an application yesterday.

I feel bad that I will be leaving my home for so long, but what else can you do when you feel your guild has abandoned you?

Retribution Indeed

vCoag on the beta realms has posted about a bug in the Paladin Retribution tree. And now he's off having fun with it.

Watch and be amazed as a Pally downs Onyxia, solo and less than 60 seconds.

Beta Key Pick-Ups

Amanda Dean has a great write-up on a little informal contest happening on the WoW forums for a beta key.

"Varanis of Silvermoon (NSFW) said in the Wrath forums that he's willing to pony up his beta key to the best WoW pick-up line." And let me tell you, some of them are fantastic.

• Vikhammer of Uther: "Hey baby, shouldn't your body be purple? Because it's totally epic."
• Ohmehgahd of Alexstrasza: "I lost my lips, can I borrow yours?"
• Whoru of Durotan: "Your gear may be epic, but your body is without a doubt Legendary!"
• Foxtehhammer of Kael'thas: "Nice pants, baby. What's the drop rate?"
• Tyranar of Hyjal: "Hey baby, thats my heart you just rolled on, and it's BoP."
• Resarcio of Scilla: "I know theres a bad case of Thunder Clap going around, but don't worry...I spec'd Protection."

Won't my wife be surprised when I ask her what the drop rate of her pants is?

I Wants Me One of Those

Mania has tamed herself a Devilsaur. I want one, too.

I guess of all the features in Wrath, I'm looking forward to the new hunter stuff the most, especially exotic pets. Just call me a huntard.

All Over You Like White on a Polar Bear in a Snow Storm

MMO-Champion has got the latest on the WotLK beta build, and it includes some lovin' druids have been asking for for ages. Unfortunately, these changes come from the new profession Inscription, but short help is better than none, Chewie.

According to the information, druids will be able to add glyphs to alter their forms appearances. So far, the only one that has surfaced in beta is the Glyph of the White Bear. While there is much joy among beta druids over this, there also seems to be some trepidation in that in changing their forms, they may have to give up some other glyph which may be more useful on a gameplay level.

Some of the other information released showed us some new blacksmith loving, the flying mount for death knights, and other various and a sundry updates.

Cruise over to MMO-Champion for the full story.

Oggie Hits a Homerun

I don't know if you've been keeping up with all the beta information for Wrath, but I've been watching the beta forums for new information and what the players think about the changes.

In particular, I've been spying on the Paladin forums, seeing as my latest favorite is a Pally. Oggie (Gorda on beta) has come up with a great post listing the pro's and con's of the new talents relevant to protection specced Paladins. That's 'tankadins' to everyone else.

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.