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.

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

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

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.