The Suicidal Zebra

Dungeon And Tier Set Look-Alikes

2011-08-17T19:20:00.003+01:00

So, we now know what the Ethereal Transmogrifier will be up to in (projected) 4.3 - take two items you have and make one look like the other if they're the same base type. For example you'll be able to take your ass-looking BiS Ret Boots and remodel them into a skin that looks much more appealing. So long as neither are Lengendaries that is:

You will not be able to transmogrify using a legendary item as either the source or the recipient of a change.

(Source)

Though given the no-doubt coming s**t-storm over that it's questionable just how long that particular rule will remain in force.

Anyway, almost everyone and their dog is justifiably going on about making their set look like the Tier 2 for their class. Unless you're a Warlock, in which case you can pretty much choose whatever Tier you want because they're all awesome. However at this stage it looks like you'll probably need to source that item, and that's not all together easy in the case of the early Tiers - drop pools on Molten Core and BWL bosses were *huge*, and they've still got a lock-out preventing you from re-running them multiple times per day. Not all is lost however, in Burning Crusade many of the models were recoloured and re-used in matching item sets which dropped from Dungeons, including most of Tier 2. For example, this snazzy blue recolour of Lightforge:

The whole list of these recolours can be found at Wowpedia.org:

http://www.wowpedia.org/Set_look_alikes

And as a bonus, most of them don't have class specific requirements either. Enjoy your new, or should I say 'retro', look. Just don't use it too much or Blizz's art designers may have a sad.

Rebuke Day: 4.0.6 Patch Reaction

2011-02-09T23:36:00.003Z

At first I was like

and then I

But as Ret I was still

Notes On the Latest PTR Changes

2011-01-19T19:56:00.003Z

Just a quickie today. MMO-Champion is reporting that the new Mastery effect (+20% damage as Holy Damage for TC, CS and Auto-Attack, +2.5% per point) has been nerfed a little to +16%/+2.1%. Arghhhhh.... right?

Right?

Well, don't be too alarmed. Previous PTR builds weren't properly increasing the damage of our Mastery with Inquisition (+30% Holy Damage, lest we forget) and from the sounds of things Hand of Light was being balanced around the output seen on the PTR. Lylirra was kind enough to pop onto the PTR forums and clarify if this was intended:

RLimbaugh said:
Is the new Mastery we have suppose to be affected by inquisition or not? Been wondering that since it was announced.

It is. There was a bug that was preventing this from occurring, though, but it should be resolved in the next PTR build. :)

(Source)

Rush is good for something. Who knew?

Another point of concern raised on the PTR testing sites (most recently by Antigen) was that Hammer of Wrath was hitting like a wet noodle (his words). Well, the CM was also nice enough to clarify this too in the same thread:

Samual Said:

Hammer of Wrath damage has been nerfed by 50% on the 4.0.6 PTR. [Is this intended?]

This is actually a bug. A very non-excessive, non-stealthy bug. There was small coding change in the latest PTR build that caused Hammer of Wrath, a ranged ability, to use ranged attack power instead of melee attack power. The change itself was completely unintended and has since been corrected.

That said, we're still watching paladin damage (both sustained and burst), and if we feel that further adjustments need to be made, Hammer of Wrath may actually be a good candidate.
(Source)

Yay for Blues communicating :). I'm not convinced that nerfing Hammer of Wrath is that good a candidate for addressing higher than desired Retribution DPS (It's only up for a relatively short period of time, Tier 12-13 levels of Haste may significantly impact rotation with higher TV damage and better scaling for Exorcism), but a heads-up is always welcome to me.

The upshot is that Mastery Rating should be appreciably better than Crit and Haste, even though the effect of Haste on DPS is rather erratic and hence difficult to assess.

UPDATED: 4.0.6 PTR Paladin Changes

2011-01-06T16:09:00.015Z

UPDATE: Full Patch Notes here. Added Crusader Strike and Repentence notes.

UPDATE 2: Added Rebuke (happy Tankadins) and Sacred Shield (Happy PvP Ret) changes.

MMO-Champion has all the gossip on the class changes in the 4.0.6 PTR Build. As Boub rightly says many of the changes are tooltip changes reflecting the hotfixes of the past few months, but it looks like the promised changes to Retribution's Mastery and Divine Purpose are in.

Paladin Changes

General

Inquisition is now undispellable
Rebuke is now a baseline skill available to all Paladins at level 54. Retribution Paladins gain a new Talent in Rebukes position.
Crusader Strike base damage increased from 115% Weapon Damage to 135%
Seal Of Truth: All single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar's Verdict) can now trigger this seal. Seal of Truth will no longer Proc Seals of Command twice from one attack
Forbearance
The duration has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
Lay on Hands now causes Forbearance on the target. It used to only cause it when cast on the paladin. This was an old design from when Divine Protection caused Forbearance and the paladin didn't want to prevent a tank from using their defensive cooldown.
Lay on Hands cannot be a critical effect and will not be affected by most abilities which modify healing (such as Beacon of Light).
Since only Divine Shield, Lay on Hands and Hand of Protection cause Forbearance, the tooltips have been adjusted to better explain the mechanic.

[It's difficult to understate the impact of Rebuke being moved to baseline for Protection Paladins. Where once it was brushed of as a 'Quality of Life' issue for tanks, not having an interrupt has more an more often been exposed as a genuine weakness for Tanks and DPS. Moving it to baseline makes a lot of sense, and the cheers can already be heard. Crusader Strike being buffed is good for everyone - more threat, more DPS.
Inquisition, Zealotry and Righteous Fury now being undispellable make me suspicious that dispelling mechanics will be returning to PvE Raids in 4.1.]

Holy
Divine Plea now gives you 12% of your total mana over 9 sec, up from 10% of your total mana over 15 sec.
Light of Dawn base healing has been reduced by 40%, from 1008 - 1124 to 605 - 675.
Tower of Radiance no longer affects Holy Light.
[The latter two changes are tooltip clarifications. I wasn't aware of any Hotfix to Divine Plea though, so that's a significant buff to a fairly ropey skill]

Protection
Blessing of Kings now costs 19% of base mana, up from 6% of base mana.
Shield of the Templar (Rank 1) now reduces the cooldown of Guardian of Ancient Kings by 40 sec, down from 45 sec. Other ranks unchanged.

[I'm pretty sure that the SotT(r1) change was hotfixed in a while ago. Blessing Mana Changes are pretty meaningless in the main unless new encounters have a magic buff dispelling effect, implemented to maintain parity with Mark of the Wild apparently.]

Retribution
Blessing of Might now costs 19% of base mana, up from 5% of base mana.
Divine Purpose:- The following attacks now have a 7/15% chance to cause your next Holy Power ability to consume no Holy Power and to cast as if 3 Holy Power were consumed. - Divine Storm, Exorcism, Hammer of Wrath, Holy Wrath, Inquisition, Judgement and Templar's Verdict.
Hand of Light (Mastery) - Your Crusader Strikes, Divine Storm and Templar's Verdicts deal 20% additional Holy Damage. Each point of Mastery increases this value by 2.5%
Censure no longer breaks Repentance
~~Templar's Verdict~~ ~~tooltip now shows 35%/104%/270% weapon damage for 1/2/3 HP.~~-Lack of confirmation for one week, removed note
Rebuke moved to Baseline
New Talent: Sacred Shield - When reduced below 30% health, Paladins gain the Sacred Shield effect. The Sacred Shield absorbs [1+2.8*AP] damage and increases healing received by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. Undispellable.
Zealotry is now undispellable
[see Below]

Glyphs
Glyph of Divine Plea - now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.

Professions
Meta gems with the Chaotic and Relentless prefixes now have a requirement of 3 red gems.
New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.
Synapse Springs now increase Agility, Strength, or Intellect (whichever is highest for the character).
Bracer Enchantments with +50 Agility, +50 Intellect and +50 Strength have been added to the in-game files

The new Retribution Mastery greatly increases the value of Mastery Rating, probably placing it above Crit and Haste Rating in the stat pecking order by some margin. TV, CS and DS deal more damage per cast, though I think that only Templar's Verdict will have changed positions in the rotation (to more important that Hammer of Wrath and Exorcism). All round, it's VASTLY better than Live's Mastery in absolute terms and scaling.

Somewhat disappointingly the change does little to make Divine Storm more attractive over Crusader Strike in AoE situations unless the Hand of Light mechanic has a more subtle interation with CS and DS than we're seeing from the tooltip. ~~Similarly, the Glyph of Crusader Strike (+5% crit rate to CS) will still be the 4th best Prime because it's unlikely to increase the crit rate of the HoL portion of the damage~~.

Finally new Divine Purpose, on the face of it, is slightly better than Live Divine Purpose (15% chance of +3 Holy Power rather than 40% change of 1 HP), though GCD conflicts could have an impact which makes them more similar in their DPS contribution. Interestingly Zealotry should be a better fit with this incarnation of the talent than Live as proc'd Holy Power isn't wasted.

-There's going to be an impact on rotations as and when it goes Live. Three HP Inquisitions will likely be the order of the day until you get 4 Piece Tier 11, but some analysis needs to be done.

All in all, good changes. But remember, this is the PTR and things can change between now and when it's pushed to Live.

ADDED: First impressions of the new Mastery, tested as a level80 premade on the PTR, from Ronark on the Elitist Jerks forums:

Hand of Light is classified as an additional damage source. It cannot be dodged, parried, or miss as long as the initial attack lands. Hand of Light damage is calculated after the initial attack swing, and thus will deal no damage and will not be reflected in the Combat Log against targets that were killed by the initial attack (Example- Killing a Critter will only yield in Crusader Strike damage, and no Hand of Light damage).

The damage done is based off the damage of the initial attack, and remains constant, meaning that damage boosting effects such as Avenging Wrath does not cause Hand of Light to "double dip" and deal 44% extra damage.

Finally, because it is a technically a separate attack, the damage dealt by Hand of Light from using Divine Storm does not contribute to the healing component- The heal is still based on solely the physical damage of Divine Storm.

(Source)

Hence talents, glyphs and abilities which scale TV, CS and DS directly (noteably Glyphs and Raid Buffs) will increase the Hand of Light damage but HoL shouldn't double-dip. This, couple with the buff to CS, may cause Glyph of CS to edge out the Glyph of Exorcism. Interaction with Inquisition hasn't yet been tested.

--

Sacred Shield could be a massive boost to Retribution Paladin survivability in PvP, though to a certain extent it's dependant on the amount absorbed by the Shield. It seems to be utterly passive, which is pretty nice in the same way that old Ardent Defender was pretty nice (see: will get a lot of nerf calls). 2.8*AP doesn't strike me as overpowered, but it is a pretty healthy amount of damage absorbed. I imagine that it'll be present in most 4.0.6 PvP and PvE builds.

That it cannot be dispelled is a nice boon for a class used to being nullified in PvP due to over-reliance on Magical buffs.

--

One last thing to note is that sane Meta Gems requirements will be returning in 4.0.6 and new +Str/3% Crit gems will be added which will have 3 Red requirements. It goes without saying that this will be de-facto Best In Slot.

Using Inquisition Effectively.

2011-01-06T09:47:00.003Z

During 4.0.1 we all got used to a nice and simple rotation using almost every available GCD if Haste-capped. Now that the haste-cap is pretty much unattainable there's plenty of dead space, throwing timings off and leading to more cooldown watching, rather than less. To address this third-party add-ons are configured specifically to reduce the information overload during encounters, CLCInfo (previously CLCRet) being a prime example targeted at Retribution's Rotation, but you shouldn't use them as an excuse to disconnect the brain entirely.

One of the weaknesses of the current Retribution Rotation that can cause players to have a brain fart is Inquisition, more specifically when to recast Inquisition. If Holy Power generation was nice and smooth and regular the answer would be pretty trivial, but throwing in the proc mechanics of Divine Purpose and Hand of Light can sometimes throw you for a loop. Because of this, and the strange interaction 4 pc Tier 11 has with the rotation, it's best not to let an add-on do the thinking for you.

--

The basic rotation/priority system for level 85 Retribution DPS is:

Inquisition > Hammer of Wrath > Exorcism > Templar's Verdict > Crusader Strike > Judgement > Holy Wrath > Consecration

Fairly obviously Inquisition should be up pretty much 100% of the time (expect for periods when you're not DPSing), and it's easier in the basic case to rebuff for a full 30 second duration. Assuming a 3 Holy Power Inquisition is optimal, the longer that buff is up without being re-cast the more resource efficient it is (Both in terms of Holy Power and GCD's used). Unsurprisingly re-casting Inquisition as late as possible requires a certain amount of pre-planning - you don't suddenly have 3 Holy Power to use just because you need it!

Laying out the maths is a little over the top, but it works out that you're okay continuing to spend Holy Power on TV whilst you have more than 6 seconds left on Inquisition. Less than 6 seconds left should mean that you re-cast Inquisition as soon as have 3 Holy Power or a proc of Hand of Light.

The only other important consideration is that first cast of Inquisition upon engaging a boss or if you've allowed the buff to fall off and have zero Holy Power. In these cases it's more important to get the buff up with a solid duration of 20 seconds rather than wait for 3 Holy Power.

The time sensitive nature of Inquisition reinforces the need for an Add-on that tracks the buffs duration and displays it conveniently. I use CLCInfo for the purpose mainly because it was handy at the time I was re-learning 4.0 keybinds and tinkering with my UI, but any number of tools like Power Auras, ForteXorcist, ClassTimers and IceHud for RealUI would do the job just as well. Perhaps better in fact as they're designed for that sort of functionality.

--

Special Case- Sapphirium Battleplate 4 Piece Bonus

Once you've gathered four parts of your Tier 11 your Inquisitions will last for an additional 10 seconds. You might think that this is license to use 3 Holy Power and only cast it once every 40 seconds, but it's not quite that simple.

Inquisition also procs Divine Purpose, with the same frequency no matter the amount of Holy Power used. This means that casting Inquisition using less Holy Power is more efficient from a HP resource perspective -

Without 4-Piece, 40% Chance of Holy Power via Divine Purpose Proc per Cast

10s Duration - 1 HP Cost - 0.06 HP per second
20s Duration - 2 HP Cost - 0.08 HP per second
30s Duration - 3 HP Cost - 0.10 HP per second

With 4-Piece

20s Duration - 1 HP Cost - 0.05 HP per second
30s Duration - 2 HP Cost - 0.067 HP per second
40s Duration - 3 HP Cost - 0.075 HP per second

We tend to cast Inquisition every 25-30 seconds because it has the lowest GCD cost. Casting every 15-20 seconds would start to interfere with the cooldown of other abilities especially when Art of War is factored in, and that flexibility is important. With 4 Piece Tier 11 we can make use of this more optimum usage of GCD's but make it 33% more cost-effective under ideal conditions. Subject to the vagaries of an encounter, refreshing Inquisition with 2 Holy Power for 30 second duration is usually better than 3HP for 40 whilst still adhering to the rule of looking to rebuff when the duration is < 6 seconds. Of additional non-trivial consideration is that 2HP Inquisitions are far easier to cast - it'll take at worst 2 Crusader Strikes to generate the resources you need, rather than 3.

--

Remember than none of the above are hard and fast "Laws of Good DPS" to adhere to come hell or high water, I just want to express how key being aware of your timings can be even with something as simple as keeping a buff up. Encounter mechanics will play havoc with your rotation at the best of times, so having a few simple guidelines to follow should help you to concentrate on the encounter more than rotation.

It's been stated that Divine Purpose is likely to change in the future, probably eliminating the additional Holy Power proc in favour of moving the Hand of Light Mastery effect into the tree in this position. If mechanics are changed in this fashion you'll be using every Hand of Light Proc on Templar's Verdict and alternating Inquisition with TV as you max out your Holy Power bar. We'll see how the changes play out when they're announced in detail.

Haste and Retribution, Level 85 Redux

2010-12-20T18:00:00.001Z

Look back into my blogging past and you'll see a storied history of how Haste has affected the DPS of Retribution Paladins. It used to be awful, then good for Horde Paladins (through Seal of Blood), then good for everyone, then awful again (Blood was killed off /mourn), &c.

There should be winners and losers in the stat meta-game and it makes sense for capped Stats (Hit and Expertise) to be better than un-capped ones; Crit and Haste are at least close enough together in value to make stat selection for differing playstyles potentially viable. Rating Inflation - the increasing amount of rating required for 1% effectiveness - has unfortunately meant that high levels of Crit or Haste, where playstyles could be tangibly different, are difficult to reach without reducing overall DPS. Trading Strength for Haste or Crit is simply never a sensible option because Strength is so much more valuable than any secondary stat.

Further reading, including a first pass at relative stat valuation - The Retribution Concordance: Ret in 4.0.3a At Elitist Jerks.

You'll have to excuse my disappointment in this state of affairs. The Ret tree looks tailor-made to take advantage of Haste to really shake up how the spec worked but generally fails to realise any benefits over that of Crit.

So why is this? Lets take a look at what Haste Rating does:-

1) Via Sanctity of Battle, it decreases the cooldown of Crusader Strike and hence increasing the rate of Holy Power generation. Passive Retribution damage, i.e. damage which is easy to maintain such as auto-attack and DoT damage, is pretty low so maximising your Global Cooldown usage is important. The optimum state to be in is continually on GCD, prioritising your abilities to maximise DPS further.

2) Increases Auto-attack speed and DPS to the effect of
- Faster Ramp-up on applications of Censure (the Seal of Truth DoT)
- Increased Art of War procs per minute by increasing auto-attack speed.
- Increased Hand of Light procs per minute by increasing auto-attack speed.

3) Increases Censure Damage Over Time.

I should note right now that I've never been a fan of SoB. I've always felt that utilising your spare GCD's effectively (wrt utility) was the sign of a better Paladin than one who could merely 'do the job assigned', and SoB makes the DPS trade-off for utility higher than it really should be IMO. Anyway, lets set that aside for now...

Most of (2) and all of (3) can be quantified pretty easily, but Sanctity of Battle's value is difficult to assess. It's fascinating to see just how much of our DPS rotates around abilities directly affected by Haste, and yet the stat seemingly has little impact.

Reducing the cooldown of CS by 10% should optimally see CS being used 10% more often. I can't say strongly enough that this is faulty analysis. In reality you can only reduce the effective cooldown of CS if you have a spare GCD to eat into. Spare GCD blocks only occur when you either having absolutely nothing to cast or when skipping an ability to cast CS sooner would make sense. In reality delaying an ability for an earlier CS is rarely worthwhile, CS simply doesn't hit hard enough and Haste doesn't reach high enough levels.

Hitting the soft-cap for a 3 second CS cooldown is too often seen as the Holy Grail for Ret, but it encounters two problems that make this attitude unrealistic.

a) The Haste Cap. At level 80, and with latency having an effect, the haste soft-cap for a 3 sec CS was a very achieveable ~900 Rating with a spot of Reforging. At 85, with the Latency Fix now in-game, you're now looking at an absurd ~3600 Haste Rating which is unrealistic at Tier 11 gear levels.

b) A lower cooldown on CS doesn't change the priority of each ability. Neither Crusader Strike nor Templar's Verdict are the highest priority in Retribution's rotation at current gear levels as both Art of War Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath do more damage-per-cast than either ability even after you consider the Holy Power generated. Rigidly sticking to a 3-sec CS cooldown can result in a DPS loss if there's no flexibility to take advantage of Procs and Hammer of Wrath.

The strength of 3-sec CS was always predicated on Templar's Verdict and CS being very strong DPS contributions, but nerfs to both abilities late in Beta put pay to it. The even when the soft-cap is reached you'll struggle to see anything like a 1 sec reduction in the effective cooldown of CS or the knock-on 7% more Templar's Verdicts because of Hand of Light and Art of War Procs.

The jury, to some extent, is still out on Haste whilst RAWR is being updated to 4.0 environment. Right now, it's probably best to invest in Crit and Haste roughly equally once Hit and Expertise caps have been reached in case of strong diminishing returns.

At least it's not as bad as Mastery though, right? ;)

Uldum Loremaster - Dirty Birds and Phasing

2010-12-15T13:08:00.006Z

Uldum is one of those rare Zones where the storyline actively encourages the completion of almost every quest, no matter how trivial or minor. Lucky thing too, there are almost exactly as many quests in Uldum (108) as are needed for Unearthing Uldum (the Cataclysm Loremaster achievement for the zone).

Note the qualifier - "almost". There are three quests which could easily be missed as you progress, one of which is very difficult to complete once you've passed a certain milestone in the Harrison Jones story due to phasing. All start when you kill a particular creature for the first time. You will need at least two of these three quests to reach 108 for the zone.

Do the World a Favour - Kill 12 Mangy Hyena's in the area south of Khartut's Tomb in NE Uldum. I don't think this quest has any significant phasing issues, but it's best to do it soon after starting the Harrison Jones quest line when you're ordered to killed Pygmy's in the area.

Just a Fancy Cockroach - Kill 5 of each colour Scarab inside the Obelisk of the Stars. Starts when you kill any colour Scarab but can sometimes bug out, requiring you to kill a particular colour to start it. Complete whilst on the Harrison Jones quest line.

Dirty Birds - Kill 8 Diseased Vultures in the Cradle of the Ancients. I'd advise you complete it when you're in the area for the first few Commander Schnottz quests because later phases in the Harrison Jones quest line remove all Diseased Vultures in the area. All is not lost if you're unlucky enough to be in the wrong phase.

You should note that if you're outside the Cradle looking in you can see the Vultures, which often fly around the edges of the phased area. Classes with 40yrd range attacks should be able to kill them at range and complete the quest relatively easily. Melee-based characters will find things a little more difficult because of the general 20 yard range limitation on their abilities (Paladin Exorcism, Warrior Taunts etc.), but there are a few ledges just outside the Cradle from which you can pull Vultures.

Ledge on NW Side of Cradle of the Ancients from which you can pull Vultures.

It takes a while because you have to wait for re-spawns, but at least the option exists until the phase is fixed.

Hope that helps you out if you're having any issues.

---

ADDED: From Antigen in comments:

Also, after you've done the quests up at the Obelisk of the Moon where you carpet bomb the camps and hurt the dragon that pats around there, Myzerian, you can either skillfully solo or group up and kill the dragon and loot its' head, which starts a quest that counts toward the achievement.

That quest, "Myzerian's Head" rewards three blue-quality gems and healthy amounts of gold and XP, so it's worth doing even at 85, IMO.

Thanks Antigen!

Archaeology - A Primer

2010-12-09T04:45:00.026Z

The following is very much a first pass at the profession. Feel free to notify me of anything that would be useful. Sorry for placeholders for pics, they will be added to soon.

UPDATED - Max number of Fragments per Cache is 3 (slvl 75-525). Dig Sites in Hyjal/Uldum count towards your 4 in Kalimdor, Twilight Highlands Dig Sites are part of your 4 for Eastern Kingdoms.

UPDATE 2 - Dealing with bugged Dig-site (see Troubleshooting)

UPDATED 3 - 14/12/2010 Hotfix: Fragment Caches can contain between 3 and 6 Fragments rather than just 3

UPDATED 4 - Daily quests for buffs in 5-man dungeons have been in the game for some time, requiring a race's Keystone. See this post on the excellent WoW Dig Site resource for more info.

Archaeology is a new secondary Profession (like Cooking and Fishing) implemented in, and requiring, the Cataclysm Expansion. The aim is to compete a series of Research Projects, studies which give you some insight into long ago stories and lore, and in the process perhaps even create a functional artefact unique to the profession. Generally speaking it's fairly slow to level and provides no more day-to-day benefit than Fishing, but the pay-off if you're lucky can be pretty cool. Achievement chasers will be pleased to know that there is a whole new category just for this Profession.

Profession Basics

Learning the Profession

Like all secondary professions Archaeology can be learned at any major city. The best way to find the exact location of a trainer is to ask a guard in a capital city, but here is a full list of trainers with linked maps.

The Archaeology window can be found in via the Professions tab of your Skills window (default hotkey: P). From here you can see the current progress of your Research Projects and access a list of completed projects including lore flavour.

Your primary tool for Archaeology is the Survey action, which guides you to the Fragment Caches within a Dig Site.

Where Do I Dig?

Once you have learnt Archaeology a new feature will appear on your continental maps for Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms - four small trowels per map. These maps are 'Dig Sites', and represent small locations where Fragment Caches are known to exist. Unfortunately, you can't just dig anywhere!

Map of Kalimdor with Dig Sites in Un'Goro Crater, Tanaris,
the Southern Barrens and Aszhara

Clicking on the Zone will zoom you to the Zone Map, which will show you a more detailed representation of where you can Dig in that zone.

Kalimdor - Minimum Skill Level = 1 - Night Elf, Troll, Fossil and (infrequently) Dwarven Dig Sites
Eastern Kingdoms - Minimum Skill Level = 1 - Dwarven, Troll, Fossil and (infrequently) Night Elf Dig Sites
Outland - Minimum Skill Level = 300 - Orcish and Draenei Dig Sites
Northrend - Minimum Skill Level = 375 - Vrykul, Nerubian, Night Elf and Troll Dig Sites
Uldum - Minimum Skill Level = 450 - Tol'vir Dig Sites (Counts towards the 4 total Kalimdor Dig Sites)

How do I Dig?

Once you've reached a Dig Site you're ready to start Surveying. Each dig site contains three Fragment Caches which only you will see and interact with; no-one can steal your Fragments. Firstly, activate the Survey ability.

A theodolite (tripod with an eyeglass on top) will appear with its' eyeglass pointing in a particular direction and a glowing antenna in one of three colours:-

1. Red - Your Fragment Cache is more than 100 Yards away. The error margin for your eyeglass is huge, almost 90 degrees in either direction. Follow the direction of the eyeglass ~150 yards and then re-Survey.

2. Yellow - Your Fragment Cache is between 100 and 40 yards away. Your eyeglass now points in roughly the right direction, and has an error margin of 20 degrees in either direction. Follow and re-Survey ~70 yards

3. Green - Your Fragment Cache is very close (within 40 yards) and the eyeglass points in the almost exactly the right direction. Re-survey at ~20 yards.

Repeat your Surveying until you've found your Fragment Cache. Using Survey when you're within 10 or so yards of your Cache will unearthed it.

The key to narrowing down the location of your cache quickly is dealing with Red results, and with that in mind here are a few rules of thumb:

1. Start in the middle of the dig site - you'll eliminate a large proportion of the site whatever the result.

2. Red results eliminate the area directly behind the theodolite. Multiple Red results chained together should be thought of as gradually cordoning off an area within which the dig site would be. This is especially important for the largest dig sites, in Tanaris, Unbound Thicket etc.

3. In my experience there are areas where Caches usually aren't, most obviously within walls, under water, impassible cliffs and outside the dig site. Use these obstacles to narrow down your search further.

What do I Get?

From Profession Level 1-75 Fragment Caches contain 2 Fragments and thereafter you gain between 3 and 6 Fragments for the category of Dig Site you're surveying, for example Jaedenar in Felwood will always uncover Night Elf Research Fragments. Dwarven Racial bonus grants you one additional Fragment per Cache. These fragments aren't stored as items in your inventory, but as currency visible in your Research Tab. Fragments are never wasted - if you have too many fragments for a Project they'll be rolled over into your next Project.

Additionally you may also get a Keystone in a Cache like the Highborne Scroll. Hang on to them even if you can't use them right away, they're worth a dozen Fragments in compatible Research Projects. Be careful though, they can be traded and sold to vendors.

Research and Keystones

Nine different research categories are currently available: Troll, Night Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Draenai, Fossil, Vrykul, Nerubian and Tol'vir. (Yes, there's a 10th icon... no, I don't know what it does yet).

When you collect a Fragment it's attributed to the Research Project for a corresponding category. Don't worry, there's no fiddling with backpacks required, they're counted as a currency for storage purposes and it's all done automatically. Once you have collected the required number of fragments for that Project you may choose to 'Solve' it, creating the item associated with the project. These items can be kept, or sold on to generate a small amount of cash.

Some projects can be solved more quickly via the use of Keystones. These projects have a number of hexagonal slots below the progression bar within which you can place a Keystone just before you click to solve. Each Keystone boosts your progression by 12 fragments, more than the value of a whole dig site. If you have the opportunity to use a Keystone to solve a project you should always take full advantage of it, there's no reason not to.

Look closely, this Project has two Keystone slots.
The second is greyed out until you've placed a Keystone in the first slot.

Resulting Artefacts

Most Projects create 'Common' (Grey) items which can be safely vendored. Details of the Artefact including additional flavour text are stored in your 'Completed Projects' tab.

Sometimes these common artefacts are linked in common a narrative, and uncovering all these artefacts will net you an Achievement. One such story is 'The Tragedy in Three Acts', the tale of Pyramond and Theleste.

Rare Project Artefacts

A few Research Projects are 'Rare', and instead of resulting in a Common item have Rare or Epic rewards. Rare projects typically required substantially more Fragments to complete, but also often have multiple Keystone slots to ease the project along.

There's no way to predict when a Rare project will become available, though the rare projects available to you may depend on you Archaeology skill. For reference, I gained the Fossillized Hatchling project at approx. skill level 150 and Queen Aszhara's Dressing Gown project at 250. If you're after a particular Rare item, such as the upgraded Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds, tailor your continent to that Category (in this case, Eastern Kingdoms for Troll Ruins).

Levelling Strategies.

Completing a Survey and looting Fragments can generate skill points in Archaeology up to 100, though 95+ tends to be very infrequent. Solving a Research Project grants 5 skill points. Fragments are never wasted, and so those seeking to maximise the speed of levelling should not solve Projects until they've reached 100.

Rare Projects are generally poor for levelling the skill, though the item you'd gain may be worthwhile. If you're seeking to maximise levelling speed avoid continents heavy in your Rare Projects' Category.

Alternatively, those seeking to level the skill as their character levels should be aware that looting fragments generates a non-trivial amount of XP (modified by the Rested bonus). Level 80 characters seeking to power-level the Profession will gain enough XP to at least level to 83, and normal Alt levelling progression may be significantly affected by the amount of XP you gain. Two gathering professions and Archaeology could easily grant you enough XP to out-level zones you were planning to experience.

You can level all the way up to 525 on one continent if you so desire. Just like Fishing, the location Surveyed or Project completed has no bearing on skill point gain.

Fast Mounts are well worth their gold. Travelling between dig sites and survey points are the most significant uses of time when levelling, and mounts allow you to traverse between dig sites and survey points at speed. At low levels your Archaeology progression will be stymied significantly by a lack of fast mount and flying.

Troubleshooting

You may rarely come across a Survey where your Cache is inaccessible, either through being in the middle of an obstacle or outside the bounds of the dig site. When this happens, move on to another Dig Site and gain your fragments from that location and then return to the bugged Site. Depleting a dig site re-sets the position of Caches in all Sites, so with any luck that bugged Cache will have moved to an accessible location.

New Nitro Boost Includes a Painful Backfire.

2010-11-30T18:30:00.001Z

I love Engineering, you love Engineering. And so it pains me to say that there's been a bout of mass amnesia during the events of the Shattering (probably from too much Mind Amplification) and everyone seems to have forgotten how to make Nitro Boots. Goblins and Gnomes have rushed to bring a quick substitute to the marketplace of innovation, Nitro Boosts, with rather mixed results.

The first thing to note is that Nitro's are no longer a Boot augmentation, they now take up the Belt tinker slot in which you may previously have had the Frag Belt/Spyglass. No, I don't think that a speed boost coming from your belt is at all logical either, but I won't be complaining too much. The upshot is: you can now use regular Enchants such as Greater Assault on your boots (Yay!) but lose the use of Frag Grenades (Boo). At a very reasonable 6 Volatile Triggers and 6 Handfuls of Cobalt Bolts, Nitro Boosts are hardly likely to break the bank and would be a no brainer.

I say 'would be', because there's now a couple of pretty big downsides to this Engineering augment. Backfire rates are up, way up, and can now occur in Raids and Battlegrounds. At level 80 there are some reports that the tinker is backfiring more often than it's actually working, but under normal circumstances the tinker would still be well worth it.

The second pieces to this horrid puzzle is a new additional backfire effect. No longer will Nitro backfires only throw you up in the air and deploy a parachute for a nice and soft landing, you additionally may get the following debuff in BGs and Raids:-

Yes, that's 120% of your Maximum Health over 8 seconds, otherwise known as 'ouch'. The idea was probably to discourage the highest-end raiding guilds from stacking this profession simply for the Boots, but now using the boots is just too damn risky unless the levels of healing flying around is huge. I'm tempted to suggest that Blizzard adjusted the backfire rate for >lvl80 and inadvertently upped the level 80 backfire rate. If you're an Engineer you may want to consider just using the Frag Belt for now.

It's a shame really, Nitro Boots were a massive boon to melee specs in Wrath (especially for 'stay out of the Defile' moments) and a very competitive profession in end-game raiding if you looked beyond the pure numbers. In Cataclysm it's a shadow of its' former self for melee dps, though Casters will gain the very strong +480 Intellect/12 sec Synapse Springs and Tanks an armour cooldown in the form of Quickflip Deflection Plates. As times goes on Engineering remains pretty weak for Retribution, and without at the very least a lvl85 speed boost (with associated low backfire rates that do much less damage) it may well be one to avoid if you're a top-flight Raider.

More Damage Via Tradeskills - Retribution Professions in Cataclysm

2010-11-18T14:22:00.007Z

EDIT: Made a few updates based on corrected information. Doesn't change Profession priority.

EDIT2: Tentatively included the changes in 4.0.6 patch notes which would have an singificant effect on the value of the professions, namely changes to Bracer Enchants and the Synapse Springs Engineering Tinker.

Upon the Shattering you'll have the chance to roll a new character and experience a new adventure in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Some few of you (very few I should think by now) will be levelling a brand new Paladin, and a sub-set of those will be Retribution and levelled to engage in end-game content. In this endeavour, it behoves you to choose your professions wisely and maximise your potential. To that end the following is a brief run-down of the options available to you and their relative value:

1) Leatherworking.

**** UPDATE: In 4.0.6 (build currently on the PTR servers as of 11/01) Bracer Enchants for +50 Intellect/Agility/Strength are being added to the game files. Leatherworking will be once more on a par with Blacksmithing, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, Enchanting and Alchemy. *****

Previously, Leatherworking is been somewhat overlooked by Retribution Paladins in search of more bang for their tradeskill buck. Not any more however as the profession gets four new wrist slot enhancements worth 130 of your Primary stat, with a Strength option for Plate DPS. Tanks have the option of a well-budgeted equivalent - 195 Stamina.

Budget-wise the profession isn't over-valued, it replaces level 85 Wrist Enchantments which are up to +65 in a Secondary stat. Par for other professions (which can utilise wrist enchantments) is +80 in a Primary stat, so you could even argue that it's under-budget. However given that in Ret's case Strength is worth ~100% more than Crit or Haste Rating (the best 65 Rating Enchantments) and 33% more than Hit Rating (50 Stat enchantment) Leatherworking is obviously slightly better. In fact, any class which values a Primary stat >33% more than Crit or Haste Rating will find that Leatherworking is the best profession for them.

2) Tailoring

Tailoring is at least the second best or perhaps even the best Profession to take if you're eager to maximise your DPS, it's all down to the as-yet unknown proc rate of Swordguard Embroidery Rank 2. Like Leatherworking it replaces a +65 Crit enchantment, though casters also have the option of a highly rated +50 Intellect enchantment to their cloak instead.

If this enhancement follows the mechanics of its' WotLK equivalent it will have an 45 second internal cooldown and very high proc rate, generally modelled as a 15 second up-time with 50 second cooldown. This averages to around 300AP, the equivalent of ~135 Strength, more if synchronised with cooldowns such as Avenging Wrath.

3) Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy.

Each of these Professions, in their own way, provide a bonus of exactly 80 Strength (or 80 of your primary stat if you're not Plate DPS). Blacksmithing allows you to add a socket to gloves and wrists for a total bonus of +40 Strength each. Enchanting has a +40 Strength Ring enchant. Inscription trades a +50 Str/+25 Crit shoulder enhancement for a +130 Str/+25 Crit one. Jewelcrafting has +67 Strength Epic gems available (the +67 is rounded up, three net you 200 Strength total). Alchemy's passive benefit of increased effectiveness for flasks grants you the extra 80 Strength when you imbibe a Flask of Titanic Strength.

Ancillary benefits, such as the ability to craft your own gear or generate gold, should therefore factor into your decision. Jewelcrafting and Inscription are without doubt the better gold generators and Inscription is just about the most interesting of the four in terms of 'other things' it can create. Enchanting doesn't really require a gathering profession to support it, making it ideal if you're rerolling fresh on a new realm. Blacksmithing in theory allows you to make what you craft, but raw materials are costly and crafted items can usually be bought from the AH anyway.

4) Engineering

*** Patch 4.0.6 features a change to the Synapse Springs tinker. It will increase your Primary Stat (Strength in Retribution's Case) by 480 for 10 Seconds (1 min cooldown) rather than Intellect, pushing Engineering from one of the worst professions for this spec to one of the best. The Engineering Tinker recipes are randomly discovered as you craft your way to 525 profession skill ***

It's not looking good for our old pal. A Primary stat boost on the order of +80 in the glove tinker slot would place it in the leagues of Leatherworking and Tailoring but only Intellect is represented. Melee DPS are lumbered with a rehash of the rocket-glove, the Tazik Shocker. Used on cooldown (every 2 minutes) it's pretty much a flat 40 DPS increase, modified slightly by Avenging Wrath. This activated ability could be boosted to a 45 second cooldown in the future to match that of the rocket-glove, so if you already have very high level Engineering (400+) it's probably worth holding out for a bit before jumping into a better profession.

There's no Nitro Boost boot tinker for Cataclysm, and using the current one has a high backfire rate outside of Raid zones. On the other hand unlike WotLK Nitro Boosts do stack with boot enchants, though they no longer have an additional 24 Crit Rating bonus.

I should probably also mention the new Engineering Goggles. This time around they're item level 359, the same as Tier 11, and have a stat budget commensurate with that. Retribution has access to the Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades, a set of plate +Strength goggles with a Meta and two Cogwheel sockets. Cogwheels are an engineering-only gem type which feature 208 Rating of a Secondary Stat of your choice, allowing slightly better customisation though obviously reforging won't be an option. Whilst they're unlikely to be better overall than dropped Tier 11 Helms they will allow you to gear up more quickly than you otherwise would be able to if you're willing to shell out the gold on Materials. More casual players with less consistent access to raiding environments should appreciate this.

Currently Engineering is in a pretty bad way, but a Profession parse before the first major patch would hopefully alleviate much of the issue. If you're rolling a new Paladin it may be best to avoid it, especially as many of the most useful utility tinkers are being prohibited in Rated Battlegrounds.

5) Skinning, Herbalism

Maximum proficiency in Skinning grants you Master of Anatomy Rank 7 which increases your Crit Rating by 80. It's definitely not the most optimal of professions, and should probably only be taken if you intend to sate the voracious leather requirements of other characters.

Similarly Herbalism is only really suitable if you're looking to invest in herb-dependant tradeskills on other characters, primarily Alchemy and Inscription. Skilled Herbalists gain Lifeblood Rank 8, a buff granting 480 Haste rating for 20 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown.

6) Mining

Very simple. Toughness Rank 7 grants you 120 additional Stamina and is gained when you max out the Mining skill at 525. This is a profession ideal for tanks, not for DPS or Healers.

--

So there are your options. I certainly wouldn't beat yourself up if you don't have the two absolutely most optimal professions available to you, but if you're still using gathering professions you may want to replace it favour of the better ones.

A point to note: as we up the gear Tiers to a higher value of Gem all the professions will probably be adjusted to compensate, staying the same relative strength. On the other hand if a new range of ultra-power wrist enchants with the a high budget and utilising Primary stats is released the value of the major crafting professions could be turned on their head.

As always, choose the best fit for you, and enjoy!

Paladin Tier 11 - First Impressions

2010-11-15T21:25:00.014Z

Boubouille at MMO-Champion has just posted High Definition pictures of the final armour models for Tier 11, and my goodness are they a hodge-podge of styles. Without doubt Mages got the best of the lot, followed by Druids and probably Death Knights. Those with the short-end of the stick are Warriors (HAH!) and Rogues, though Hunters looking like they've spent a lot of time on their anglerfish trick-or-treat costume.

Paladins are somewhat middle of the pack. Most sets look better in-game than they do in screenshots and Reinforced Sapphirium is no exception, though more discerning Paladins may want to turn off helm graphics. It's certainly no Judgement or Lightbringer even in its' preferable white and gold colour scheme, but neither is it the obscenity that was Crystalforged.

Anyway, lets take a look at the Sets in more detail:

Retribution - Reinforced Sapphirium Battleplate

Strength	1349
Stamina	2296
Hit Rating	337
Expertise Rating	168
Crit Rating	228
Haste Rating	754
Mastery Rating	377

Hit, Mastery and Haste are strongly represented; Expertise and Crit much less so. The weakness of Mastery as a Stat for Ret makes it a prime choice to reforge away, especially in the leg slot which alone features a whopping 228. Remember, you can only Reforge into a secondary stat which isn't already present on the item, so choose carefully.

Set Bonuses.

2 Piece- Increases the damage of your Templar's Verdict ability by 10%
4 Piece- When you cast Inquisition its' duration is calculated as if you had one additional Holy Power.

The 2-Piece bonus is pretty straight-forward - Templar's Verdict represents around 20% of your damage at level 85, so it's worth a straight 1.5-2% of your damage. That's not quite as good as previous set bonuses for the class, but not bad overall.

By contrast the 4 piece bonus is harder to quantify. Inquisition is a better alternative than Templar's Verdict only if you refresh it after 17 seconds on a 3 Holy Power cast. In one aspect the 4-Piece bonus is therefore a quality of life bonus, but on the other hand it frees up one GCD every 2 minutes or allows you to cast TV sooner. The gents over at EJ have calculated that this effect is worth another ~2%, but this will be greatly dependant on gaps in the GCD-Space and hence Haste. The more Haste you have, the more worthwhile it becomes.

Each of the above bonuses are worth more than a typical upgrade to a Heroic version (i.e. 13 ilvls). If you have 4 non-Heroic (ilvl 359) Set pieces it's not worth breaking the Set until you have at least two Heroic (ilvl 372) alternatives to those slots.

Overall, I'd prefer it if the Set bonuses were swapped. I'm aware of the compelling reasons for having the simple bonus from 2 pieces; being able to easily quantify if set items are upgrades makes Badges/Point hoarding in advance of an elusive break-point less likely. However I quite like the idea of changing-up the rotation as early as possible, as Tier 10 used to, which leads to some very interesting gearing options at Tier 12 as and when we get there.

All in all it's not a bad set, even if it does lack the wow-factor of previous Tiers.

--

Protection - Reinforced Sapphirium Battlearmour

Strength	1327
Stamina	2296
Hit Rating	241
Expertise Rating	0
Dadge Rating	682
Parry Rating	505
Mastery Rating	257

The Paladin tanking sets strongly favour Dodge and Parry, as you might expect. Somewhat surprising is the complete lack of Expertise and relatively low levels of Hit. Capping Hit and Expertise will prove fairly challenging, especially if you choose not to take the Glyph of Seal of Truth.

Set Bonuses.

2 Piece - Increases the damage done by your Crusader Strike ability by 10%.
4 Piece - Increases the duration of your Guardian of Ancient Kings ability by 50%.

No doubt Rhidach will have a post up discussing the relative merits of Tier 11 soonish, but till them you'll have to make do with my mumblings.

The 2 Piece bonus is obviously a fairly strong Threat-Per-Second boost to your main threat-generating ability, and at 10% it scales better than the Warrior and Deathknight analogues. However I find it interesting that there isn't a commensurate increase in the AoE threat-generating ability - an attempt to keep AoE threat from getting out of hand perhaps?

The 4-Piece bonus is pretty much the same as that for other classes, and the cooldowns they affect are roughly comparable. Guardian of Ancient Kings has a duration of 12 seconds for Protection, so the bonus increases the duration to 18 seconds. I'm pretty sure that's a good deal, but I'm really not an experienced enough tank to decide if it's worth keeping over a half- or full-Tier upgrade.

Holy - Reinforced Sapphirium Regalia

Intellect	1349
Stamina	2296
Spirit	987
Crit Rating	540
Mastery Rating	337
Haste Rating	0

Setting aside the bonus for a moment, the stats on Holy Tier 11 seem very, very strange. They are absolutely chock full of Critical Strike and Mastery but lacking in Haste, which seems somewhat obtuse. Haste is obviously a raw throughput stat and as such as independently useful in almost all situations, but perhaps diminishing returns were starting to bite when you factor in multiple Haste Talents. Crit however is just not that good even as a mana efficiency stat given the loss of Illumination. It synergises with the Communion talent pretty well, but once you reach a certain level of crit the diminishing returns hit hard. Mastery is a straight through-put talent but like Crit the effect can be wasted through its' short duration and non-rolling nature.

Basically, Crit and Mastery are both situationally good, whereas Haste is just Good full stop. To not have any on our Tier gear is bizarre in the extreme, even though you have significant amounts via Talents and Raid buffs.

Set Bonuses

2 Piece - Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%.
4 Piece - Whenever your Holy Radiance spell is active, you gain 1620 Spirit.

The 2 piece bonus is your standard fare filler for each healing spec. Shaman and Priests have an analogous bonus on their Tier 11, whereas Druids have a crit chance bonus to Lifebloom ticks. In another time I'd have called these 'placeholder' bonuses, but not today when imaginative set bonuses are sacrificed to the alter of class equality. The value is strongly linked to how often you use Holy Light in your rotation (no flies on me, eh ;)), so this may be one Tier bonus you'd be happy to trade in.

The bonus for wearing 4 pieces of gear is roughly the same as all the Tier 11 healing sets. Holy Radiance has a 10 second duration and 30 second cooldown if you invest in the Speed of Light talent, so unlike other classes you're not able to keep a particular buff up 100% of the time but to compensate you gain more Spirit for a shorter period of time. Previously this may have allowed you to take advantage of other cooldowns to boost your regen rates to high levels for a short period of time, but I'm not sure that any 4.0 abilities function that way.

--

So there you have it, a longish introduction to the Tier 11 sets. As always, everything is subject to change

DPS Meta Gem Requirements for Retribution.

2010-11-12T15:07:00.007Z

UPDATE: Blizzard have announced an intention to revert the colour requirements of 3% Crit Damage Meta Gems back to 3.3 specs - 2 Blue one Red for Chaotics and one of each colour for Relentless. The changes should come into effect in an upcoming patch, making the rest of this article moot unless the revert is reversed.

Level 85 Meta Gems have been implemented on the Beta Servers, or perhaps that should be partially implemented. You can find the full list of Meta Gems discovered so far on Wowhead Beta Site here, but lets have a quick look at those useful to Melee Specs. Note that rare gems in the Beta (the highest Tier available so far) have a budget of +40 stats i.e. +40 Strength/Hit Rating/Expertise Rating etc.

PvE Melee/Caster DPS

Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond
+54 Critical Strike Rating and 3% Increased Critical Damage
Requires more Blue gems than Red gems

PvE Tanking

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond
+81 Stamina and 2% Increased Armor Value from Items
Requires at least 2 Yellow gems

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond
+81 Stamina and +5% Shield Block Value
Requires at least 3 Blue gems

PvP Melee/Caster

Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond
+54 Critical Strike Rating and 1% Spell Reflect
Requires at least 2 Red gems

Enigmatic Shadowspirit Diamond
+54 Critical Strike Rating and Reduces Snare/Root Duration by 10%
Requires at least 1 Blue gems
Requires at least 1 Yellow gems

Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond
+54 Mastery Rating and Minor Run Speed Increase
Requires at least 2 Yellow gems

Impassive Shadowspirit Diamond
+54 Critical Strike Rating and Fear Duration Reduced by 10%
Requires at least 1 Blue gems
Requires at least 1 Yellow gems

Powerful Shadowspirit Diamond
+81 Stamina and Stun Duration Reduced by 10%
Requires at least 2 Blue gems

Obviously the majority of these are variations on a theme intended for PvP, no biggie. But look at the change to the Chaotic gem requirements - "More Blue than Red Gems". With the changes in 4.0 melee DPS can finally get some use out of Blue Gems via the Hit Rating, but in the case of Retribution Red +Strength Gems are still point for point on the order of 33% better when below the Hit Cap. We can't even revert back to a level 80 RED, both it and Chaotic Skyflare are being retroactively changed to have the same Blue>Red requirements.

For Retribution, and many other specs if what I'm hearing bears out, whether or not to satisfy Meta Gems requirements is going to be a thorny issue. Tier 11 gearing levels will include 8 sockets at minimum and 12 or more in optimal configurations, so that's between 7 and 11 Purple gems and 1 Blue gem. In Ret's case, when below the Hit Cap you're trading up-to 260 Strength (all-Red) for 260 Hit Rating (Blue>Red), obviously a reduction in overall DPS. To be an attractive proposition this has to be less than the value of +3% Critical Strike Damage.

So, is it better to socket all Red rather than aim for the Meta Requirements? Well, it's a tough call. Current World of Logs parses indicate the +3% Critical Strike damage bonus is a not inconsiderable ~1% of total DPS, but the relative value of 260 Strength over 260 Hit is in that ball-park too. There's not an awful lot in it, but the equation gets much worse for Chaotic Shadowspirit as you gain more sockets, discover gems with higher stat bonuses, reforge Crit into other stats, or surpass the Hit Cap. For what it's worth, quick calculations of my own lead me to believe that running with the Chaotic Meta is fractionally better than not.

If 3% Crit Damage is worth it Gemming and Reforging priorities won't be affected, though the numbers game would become more interesting. Gems choices will tend to be Purple Etched Demonseye (as they are more convenient for item socket bonuses) plus one Rigid Ocean Sapphire or Green Gem with +Hit/+Other Rating when near the Cap.

Reaching the opposite conclusion - that 3% Crit Damage just isn't worth it - will mean you have to reforge much more aggressively to reach all the relevant Caps. The priority of Hit then Expertise will remain in place but you may find yourself reforging away stats that in an ideal world you'd like to keep. It goes without saying that the Meta Gem of choice when gemming straight red would be the Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond.

But that's not all, for that would be too easy, there are still Socket Bonuses to cogitate over. Cataclysm Socket bonuses are much, much more significant than they are in Wrath itemisation, to the extent that it's not uncommon to see +20 and even +30 bonuses in key slots. Any bonuses valued at 10 Strength or greater per off-colour choice will be valuable, and they occur with considerable frequency at Tier 11. Yellow gem slots are ideally filled by Inscribed Ember Topaz until +Strength/+Haste Orange gems are included, but don't forget to balance with an additional blue if you're aiming for the more stringent Meta bonus.

Hey, Did'Ya Feel That? Yeah, You Just Got Hotfixed, In A Good Way.

2010-10-15T08:48:00.004+01:00

Last night Blizzard pushed a number of server-side changes (AKA Hotfixes) to the Live servers to address the DPS imbalances seen at level 80, and Ret was amongst the classes whose DPS was boosted. SIGNIFICANTLY boosted.

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.

2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many Mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.

3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.

4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic. (Source)

In my naivete I was anticipating a simple and straightforward buff to Seal coefficients. Well the very fine folks over at Elitist Jerks have been busy beavers trying to extract the changes and it appears that the Ret changes are much more comprehensive than I'd expected:

Exorcism - Base damage increased
Judgement - damage increased by 50%
Censure (The Seal of Truth Dot analogous to the old Seal of Vengeance Dot) - Damage increased by 33%
Hammer of Wrath - Damage increased by 230% (not a typo)
Holy Wrath - Spell Power coefficient doubled
Templar's Verdict - Damage increased by 30% when you cast it by spending 3 Holy Power

Thanks to Redcape on said forum for these coeffs. If there are any new developments I'll update this list.

You'll note that most of the changes are to the Filler abilities, and as you might expect the Filler priority needs to be adjusted. Furthermore, it now makes sense to separate your Zealotry and Avenging Wrath cooldowns in order to maximise your DPS, whereas previously Zealotry and AW would be activated together. There may also be further implications at level 85 if the coefficients remain the same, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The new Filler priority is:

1st:- Hammer of Wrath
2nd:- Exorcism + Art of War
3rd:- Judgement
4th:- Consecration
5th:- Holy Wrath

These are rough approximations. I believe that Exorcism+AoW and Judgement are pretty close together now in terms of DPS contribution, and Holy Wrath may just squeeze out Consecration due to Divine Purpose potentially proc'ing a point of Holy Power.

Glyphs also change slightly. In terms of Primes, Glyphs of Judgement and Exorcism are both probably better than Glyph of Crusader Strike now, with Templar's Verdict and Seal of Truth still being best in slot (the latter only if you are below the Expertise cap). In order to reduce the strain of casting Hammer of Wrath during Wings burn phases you'll almost certainly want to take it's corresponding Major Glyph to reduce the mana cost by 100%.

That's it from me for the moment, go out and give the changes a try for yourself. If nothing else your DPS level in static fights should be back up to 3.3.5 levels, and Hammer of Wrath crits are bloody hilarious.

A Few More Words on Ret 4.0.1 - Stats and 'Rotations'

2010-10-14T16:25:00.006+01:00

[UPDATED 14/10/10: Filler skill priority list updated to reflect hotfix. Significant changes.]

So, how was your Patch Day? Fraught with bugs and a learning curve which would put the average mountain stage of the Tour De France to shame? Good, I'd expect nothing less. If you've had the chance to play around with the new model yet, and perhaps even Raid, you'll probably think that things have gone backwards since 3.3.5. In some ways they have - Ret is broadly balanced around lvl85 and the two new DPS abilities we get from 81-85. You may even have lost DPS, a cursory glance at the WoL reports of a number of high-level guilds indicate a significant drop in DPS measured in double-digit percentage points. Level 80 is going to be an uphill battle in a way that the transition from Burning Crusade to Wrath wasn't.

On the other hand, Ghostcrawler has recently acknowledged that Ret and a number of specs are underperforming, whilst casters (esp. Mages) are over the top. In fairness to Mages, their mechanics are so Crit-dependant I'd expect them to be more reasonable at lvl85. A few hotfixes may well be incoming, probably to Seal and Judgement damage rather than fundamental underlying mechanics, so keep your eyes peeled. Caster PvE DPS will probably wipe the floor with yours for the next couple of months even when you get the hand the new mechanics, and as for PvP.... ahahahah NO!

This makes optimising your Ret Paladin experience all the more important now, and with any luck you'll be ready for the post-Cataclysm future when it arrives whilst still pulling your weight in Icecrown.

Stats - Strength, Haste, all that Jazz.

Normally I'd discuss the rotation first but one stat in particular is pretty critical to how it's constructed.

Strength - By far the most important stat in terms of what increases your DPS, even more so than Hit and Expertise. It's now your primary stat for Gemming.
Hit - Should be capped, preferably through base stats on gear and reforging. Every DPS-increasing ability you have scales with Hit, in addition to Divine Purpose and Mastery procs.
Expertise - Not quite as important as Hit (Exorcism, Holy Wrath and Judgement don't scale with this stat) it's still very useful for the same reasons as Hit. Cap via base gear, reforging and Glyph of Seal of Truth.
Haste - See Below
Crit - No longer as important as in 3.X, no proc'ing abilities are directly dependant on it. This is the best stat to trade for Hit, Expertise and Haste via reforging.
Mastery - At present, Mastery increases the proc chance of Hand of Light by 1% per 32 rating. It's only available via reforging and isn't quite good enough to warrant investing into over Haste or Crit.

Haste

This is very much a first pass at the Haste issue and represents my thoughts and ideas on the subject. If you have anything to add, don't hesitate to do so.

Haste is a strange stat in 4.0. As before it increases the speed of your auto-attacks, reduces the cast time of your spells and shaves off a few milliseconds from your spell GCD. However it will now also reduce the cooldown of your Crusader Strike, presupposing you took Sanctity of Battle - you did take it didn't you? If you invest in the Judgements of the Pure talent you get 9% pretty much baseline, and the Wrath of Air Totem will grant you 5% more (Sanctity of Battle is both Melee and Spell Haste). Your effective cooldown will be:

CS_Cooldown_Effective=CS_Cooldown_RaidBase/(1+%Haste/100)

where

CS_Cooldown_Raidbase = cooldown modified by JotP and Wrath of Air = 4.5/1.09/1.05 = 3.93184

Your target for CS_Cooldown_Effective should be around 3 seconds plus the average latency you experience when activating two instance-cast abilities. I.e.

2*GCD+2*latency = CS_Cooldown_Raidbase/(1+%Haste/100)

Assuming perfect (0ms) latency you want ~31% haste from gear alone, and substantially less as your latency increased. At the level 80 ratings of 32.79 per 1% Haste this equates to approx 1017 Rating.

Latency	Optimum Haste Rating @lvl80
50	880
100	749.9073
150	627.8192
200	512.9127529
300	302.2509333
400	113.7640421

Obviously, Latency has a drastic impact on required haste rating and DPS. This optimum represents a soft-cap on haste. More will still strictly increase your DPS, but probably not by quite as much as Crit.

Rotations

With that out the way, it's time to talk about rotations. In 3.X the rotation was basically a very sedate First-Come-First-Serve priority system, with the odd change-up from Art of War or the Tier-10 2 piece set bonus. Spare GCD's left wriggle-room for utility, such as Hands, and self-healing via Sacred Shield. 4.0 isn't quite the polar opposite, but pretty darn close.

The way I view it, there are three parts to the 4.0 Paladin DPS model.

1. Finisher

Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm (and Inquisition in 4.0.3) are your Finishers, analogous to Rogue Finishers. As a rule of thumb you should only cast them when you have 3 Holy Power or a Proc of Hand of the Light. However if either of those conditions are true, TV and DS are the only spells you should be casting.

2. Fulcrum

This your primary Holy Power generating ability, Crusader Strike, which is pivotal to your DPS. If you have reached the Optimum Haste Rating you will cast it on cooldown, 3 seconds + 2*Latency. At haste values substantially lower than the optimum the math starts to get messy - you need to judge whether delaying the casting of CS in favour of a 2nd filler is higher DPS than doing nothing. Some quick calculations indicate that it should be worth waiting until CS is off cooldown. Essentially, you'll hit CS whenever it is off cooldown AND you have neither 3HP nor a Mastery proc active.

3. Fillers

Fillers are DPS abilities which are cast between every CS that doesn't result in reaching 3 HP. Each is prioritised against the other on a damage-per-cast basis, which results in the following priority order:

1st. Hammer of Wrath
2nd. Exorcism, presupposing Art of War Proc
3rd. Judgement
4th. Consecration
5th. Holy Wrath
6th. Exorcism (No Art of War)

This Rotation has been uipdated to reflect the changes brought in the Hotfix on the 14th October.

Using the above the basic Rotation is CS->Filler->CS->Filler->CS->TV/DS->CS. Divine Purpose procs for extra Holy Power allow you to hit TV earlier, and a Proc of Hand of Light allows you to hit TV immediately, followed by CS or TV depending on the subsequent amount of Holy Power.

There are certain situations where this priority may change slightly, the most obvious situation being when you're at >15yards range as a Judgement would allow you to close with the target more quickly, or when mana consumption is unsustainable. Note that Major Glyphs shave off some mana issues you may have.

Avenging Wrath and Zealotry should not be active at the same time so you can gain full benefit from the Sanctified Wrath talent, which allows Hammer of Wrath to be cast regardless of target health whilst under the effects of Wings. During Zealotry phases CS and TV should be cast back-to-back, but take care to ensure that you have plenty of mana before Zealotry comes off cooldown.

What does this all mean?

Well, for one say goodbye to those free GCDs, you should now be spending every GCD you have on a DPS ability. Proc-watching will also be a major part of your gameplay as you react to Divine Purpose granting you the 3 HP you need, or Hand of Light, or Art of War. In fact, the Cataclysm-equivalent of Wrath's CLCRet add-on will most likely be mandatory if you want to do effective levels of raid DPS without consuming a lethal dose Caffeine.

The problem with a full-GCD rotation is that latency has a huge impact on DPS, and that's being worked on by Blizzard. In the current Beta build a queueing system for abilities is being implemented, which should eliminate the latency experienced by chaining abilities which aren't on a spell-specific cooldown together. Until it's pushed to Live, mashing those keys is the best you can do.

One of the points I haven't mentioned is being aware of encounter phase transition timings so you can dump your remaining Holy Power ~~before it decays (it decays at a rate of 1 HP per 10 sec IIRC),~~* but it's a fairly obvious point to observe.

*As corrected by Antigen in comments, Holy Power only decays whilst out of combat.

Retribution Patch 4.0.1 Talent Primer.

2010-10-12T13:40:00.012+01:00

I just want to take a little time to do a quick run-down of Talents specs and Glyphs. Holy Power is something you'll really need to experience for yourself to get the hang of before serious raiding starts up, no amount of talking can suddenly make you accustomed to this new mechanic. It's worth noting that a recent change to the mechanic allows Divine Purpose's Proc'd HP points to stack to 4 (invisibly), which reducing the amount of wasted HP due to bad luck but still takes some getting used to.

TLDR:

Suggested 4.0.1 Talent Build for Level 80:
Final 4.0.1 PvE Build:- 3/2/[28+X]. Note that Points spent here in Guardian's Favour and Repentance can be spent elsewhere in Retribution according to your own taste.
Glyphs: Templar's Verdict (P) Exorcism (P) Crusader Strike (P) Aesthetic Crusader (Ma) Hammer of Wrath (Ma) Consecration (Ma) Lay on Hands (Mi)

--

Every Retribution build at level 80 has to take at least 31pts in the tree, and once those 31pts are spent you can diversify into Holy or Protection. You will want to do this! Ther are only 28 places to invest you talent points that increase your DPS in the Ret Tree, the 5 'spare' points will almost certainly be distributed between Holy or Prot Tier 1.

Masteries

Masteries are passive abilities and active skills you gain from choosing a specialisation. The Masteries you gain from being awesome enough to choose Retribution are:

Templar's Verdict - Strike that scales with Holy Power
Sheathe of Light - Increases Spell Power by 30% of Attack Power [N.B. Many spells which scaled from AP and SP now only scale from AP or SP, whichever is greater]
Two-Handed Weapon Specialisation - 20% Increased Damage with 2-handed Weapons
Judgements of the Bold - Gain 25% of your base mana over 10 seconds whenever you cast Judgement
Hand of Light - 8% chance on Auto-attack for your next Holy Power ability to cost no Holy Power and cast as if it used 3 Holy Power. Chance increases by 1% for every point of Mastery (~32 Mastery Rating @lvl80)

Talent Run-down

Ret Tier 1:

Eye for an Eye (2 Pts):- We're still in the dark over whether this talent can proc from Boss attacks, but the answer is probably not. Perhaps worth experimenting with it using spare Ret points.

Crusade (3 Pts):- A flat 15% boost to Templar's Verdict and Crusader Strike, your staple DPS abilities. Take it.

Improved Judgement (2 Pts):- Better than you might think, this new talent increases the range of Judgement by 20yards. Ideal for high-movement encounters and opening up at range. Take it. Prerequisite for Long Arm of the Law.

Tier 2:

Guardian's Favour (2 Pts):- Still a strong PvP utility talent, it's of less use in PvE when your raid is switched on. Candidate for spare points.

Rule of Law (3 Pts):- Increases the critical effect chance of your Crusader Strike by 15%. Not as great as it would be if Crit played a greater role in your DPS than it currently does, it's still a DPS-increase. Take it.

Pursuit of Justice (2 Pts):- 100% chance of gaining HP when struck by Stuns, Fears and Immobilises AND 15% increased run speed. Probably the best 2 pts you can spend in Ret for PvP or PvE, take it!

Tier 3:

Communion (1 Pt):- Players affected by your Aura's do 3% more damage, you do 2% more damage and gain Replenishment when you cast Judgement. Take It.

The Art of War (3 Pts):- In a slightly different take to 3.x's AoW, your autoattacks have a 20% chance to cause your next Exorcism to be instant cast, cost no mana and deal 100% additional damage. Awesome talent in terms of 'fun', you'll want to be investing in this.

Long Arm of the Law (2 Pts):- Judgements increase your run speed by 45% for 4 seconds when cast on targets >15yards from you. Whilst not being as good as you might think it's still not bad, and perhaps one that will be tweaked later on. Take it in both your PvP and PvE builds though, you've got nothing better to spend the points on.

Divine Storm (1 Pt):- If we had more than 31 DPS-increasing points to spend debate over whether or not to take this skill would rage long into the night. As it stands, though much diminished it's still our best AoE ability. Take It. [NB As with Whirlwind, Divine Storm no longer has a target limit]

Tier 4:

Rebuke (1pt):- The long awaited Retribution interrupt, it's essentially Kick for Paladins. There aren't any PvE encounters which make this talent mendatory so you may want to give this a miss for now. PvP is another matter.

Sanctity of Battle (1pt):- Haste reduces the cooldown of Crusader Strike. In 4.0 @lvl80 this is going to be significant due to the high haste rating on gear. 50% haste from gear and effects result in the optimal 3sec CS cooldown, which probably won't be achievable at level 85. Take this ability and go nuts whilst it lasts.

Seals of Command (1pt):- Your damaging Seal Procs now do an additional 7% weapon damage, and your Seal of Righteousness will now cleave to 2 nearby targets. No brainer, take it.

Sanctified Wrath (3pts):- Largely unchanged in 4.0, it has had the former Glyph of Avenging Wrath effect rolled into it which allows you to cast Hammer of Wrath regardless of target health whenever you pop Wings. Due to a recent buff to Hammer of Wrath Damage, Wings and Zealotry shouldn't be activated at the same time.

Tier 5:

Selfless Healer (2 Pts):- 50% stronger Words of Glory and 4% more damage caused per Holy Power used. This is not a damage increasing talent, use Holy Power on anything other than a Templar's Verdict or Inquisition (lvl81) and it'll be a DPS loss. It does however mitigate the DPS loss somewhat. May be interesting in PvP but not too useful in PvE because you shouldn't be wasting HP on heals except in specific circumstances (e.g. phase changes).

Repentance (1 Pt):- Still the same effect, still out only effective CC. You'll definitely want to take this in Cataclysm Heroics, but for now you can avoid it at your discretion in PvE. I'll be taking it, it's been a life-saver in the past.

Divine Purpose (2Pts):- Pretty much every non-CS special attack you will do will have a 40% chance to grant you 1 Holy Power. Take It, Obviously. [N.B. If this procs when you're already at 3 Holy Power you will gain a 4th application, though you won't see it in the UI].

Tier 6:

Inquiry of Faith (3Pts):- Increases the periodic damage of your Seal of Truth (your main single-target Seal) by 30%. Take it. [N.B. Also increases Inquisitions duration by 150%, but that is meaningless until lvl81+ is unlocked].

Acts Of Sacrifice (2pts):- This is a strange one. 20% Cooldown reduction of Hands of Freedom, Salvation and Sacrifice is great for PvP, and would be pretty good for PvE if the old Glyph of Salvation (20% damage reduction) still existed as a Major. It doesn't, and so in theory this talent should be avoided in PvE. The great unknown is just what sort of state Threat will be in come 4.0. If any classes are threat capped this talent will be a DPS-increase for the Raid, otherwise it's of only marginal value.

Tier 7:

Zealotry (1 Pt):- Our Superb, Ultimate Talent - except it kinda isn't. Zealotry costs 3 Holy Power, but causes Crusader Strike to generate 3 Holy Power per hit. For 15 seconds our rotation becomes hectic, spammy and not at all elegant, and Divine Purpose procs are wasted. You'd want to synergise it with Avenging Wrath but this inevitably steps on the toes of Sanctified Wrath's tertiary effect of allowing Hammer of Wrath to be cast regardless of target Health. Instead, keep Zealotry and Wings phases independent of one another. Take it, but use the opportunity to practice with it.

You should continue to synchronise AW with Bloodlust/Timewarp, Zealotry phases gain little from the Bloodlust cooldown.

Off-Spec Trees:

At level 80 you only have a total of 36 Talent points, leaving 5 spare once you've invested the bare minimum into Retribution. The result is that Tier 2 Holy and Prot is beyond your reach. Thankfully, there are a total of 7 places you can invest your remaining talent points which increase your DPS.

Protection Tier 1.

Divinity (3 Pts):- A relic of 3.X, this increases the healing you take and do by 6%. Avoid at level 80, but consider at level 85 if Tier 2 Prot has something really juicy you want to take.

Seals of the Pure (2 Pts):- Increases the damage done by your Seal of Truth/Righteousness/Justice by 12%. It should also affect Seal of Truth's DoT and Seals of Command. Probabably a toss-up between it and Arbiter of the Light, this should be the better PvE talent presupposing it scales the abilities correctly.

Eternal Glory (2 Pts):- 30% chance for your Word of Glory to consume no Holy Power. Avoid when Ret.

Holy Tier 1.

Arbiter of the Light (2 Pts):- Increases the critical effect chance of Judgement and Templar's Verdict by 15%. Pretty tasty in PvP, it's slightly weaker in PvE than SotP and JotP. Probably.

Protector of the Innocent (3 Pts):- I can't envision a situation where Retribution or Protection would take this talent (save it being extremely buggy and proccing on Judgement Heal of Replenishment ticks). Avoid unless Holy.

Judgements of the Pure (3 Pts):- Increases casting and melee Haste by 9% for 1 minute following a Judgement. That's 9% passive haste, which affects Exorcism (yawn), Holy Wrath (yawn), Crusader Strike (Yay), Auto Attacks (Yay) and Ret Mastery. The math needs to be crunched on it, but it's worth at least one point and probably all three.

Final 4.0.1 PvE Build:- 3/2/[28+X]. Note that Points spent here in Guardian's Favour and Repentance can be spent according to your own taste.

Glyphs

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to discuss glyphs, but Antigen at Haz Mace Will Raid has a great run-down of Glyphs here. Here are my thoughts

Prime (AKA the only ones that Really matter):

1st: Glyph of Templar's Verdict - 15% More TV damage. Obvious choice.
2nd Glyph of Exorcism - 20% increased damage for Exorcism.*
3rd: Glyph of Crusader Strike - 5% more Crit for CS.*
4th: Glyph of Judgement - 10% more damage for Judgement.

*after WoL analysis, Glyph of Exorcism appears to contribute significantly more DPS than Glyph of Crusader Strike and Glyph of Judgement. Priority adjusted accordingly

Also consider: Glyph of Seal of Truth - Still at least better than Glyph of Crusader Strike below the Expertise Cap. Probably better to take this than reforging your gear to reach the cap.

Major:

Why oh why isn't Glyph of Seal of Truth a Major? Anyway, most of the Majors are mana cost reductions, which aren't that useful to Ret. On the other hand, Major's should be the slot with most situational utility and so are prime candidates for tailoring to specific encounters. Here are the more situational Glyphs.

Glyph of Divine Protection: no physical damage reduction, but in trade you gain 40% magical damage reduction. On a 1 minute cooldown. No longer causing Forbearance. Awesome IMO.
Glyph of Salvation: Could have potential on burn phases for threat capped players, we don't really know enough about how it works just yet.
Glyph of the Aesthetic Crusader: Flat mana cost reduction on our spammiest spell. Probably will turn out to be a staple of Ret over time.
Glyph of Turn Evil: Much less of a trade-off to take it in 4.0 than 3.X, it's still situational in PvE. Great in PvP.
Glyph of Holy Wrath: Extends Holy Wrath's stun to Dragonkin and Elementals. V. useful in lvl85 content, you shouldn't be using it much anywhere other than Ruby Sanctum till then.
Glyph of Consecration: Would be a no-brainer in 3.X, but the changes to the spell in 4.0 (10 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown, 55% base mana cost, less damage per tick) make the spell extremely situational. However it is the only Major glyph that represents an actual DPS increase. Further analysis of WoL data indicates that Consecration is higher up in damage-per-cast than I was expecting, boosting the value of this Glyph.

Minor:

Glyph of Lay on Hands and any others you fancy. None are particularly valuable for Retribution, though Glyph of Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Truth will make Seal Switching less of a mana-related headache.

Press Release: December 7th Cataclysm Release - Official!

2010-10-04T14:37:00.006+01:00

Update: Official Press Release.

EDIT: Kotako are also quoting the same press release here.

If this is the case then Cataclysm is 2 months away, with 4.0.1 (the pre-Cataclysm preparatory build inclusing event) landing on live servers either tomorrow or next week in all likelihood.

--

No independent confirmation for this source as yet, multiple websites are quoting the same group: BusinessWire

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/world-of-warcraftr-cataclysmtm-in-stores-starting-december-7-2010-10-04?reflink=MW_news_stmp

IRVINE, Calif., Oct 04, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM), the highly anticipated third expansion for the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game*, will be released starting on December 7, 2010. The expansion will be available on DVD-ROM for Windows(R) XP/Windows Vista(R)/Windows(R) 7 and Macintosh(R) at a suggested retail price of $39.99 and will also be offered as a digital download from the Blizzard Store. A special Collector's Edition packed with bonus items will be available exclusively in retail stores for a suggested retail price of $79.99.

"Cataclysm includes the best content we've ever created for World of Warcraft. It's not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "With the help of our beta testers, we're putting on the final polish, and we look forward to welcoming gamers around the world to enjoy it in just a couple of months."

The first two World of Warcraft expansions, The Burning Crusade(R) and Wrath of the Lich King(R), each shattered PC game sales records upon their release.* In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races -- worgen and goblins -- will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they'll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world.

The beta test for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is currently underway. Visit the official Battle.net(R) website at http://www.battle.net to set up a Battle.net account and sign up for a chance to participate. To learn more about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, visit http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm.

*Based on internal company records, public data, and reports from key distribution partners.

SOURCE: Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

One Week from a Release Date Announcement?

2010-09-08T18:20:00.003+01:00

"Gosh, this sounds familiar" was a feature of the talk on WoW-Twitter when the Alpha was first announced. It appeared that the start of the Catacysm F&F Alpha closely coincided with the Wrath of the Lich King Alpha leak 2 years earlier - make that 2 years to the week earlier. Speculation then run rampant - "How long will the Alpha Last?", "When will we get the Beta?", "What does this mean for the release date?" etc. but no-one really had much of a clue.

If Cataclysm was following Wrath's development timetable then the Alpha turned into the Beta somewhat earlier than ones expectation. This has been explained away as a rush due to poor Alpha feedback and widespread information leaks, far more widespread than Wrath, which I suppose is a reasonable rationalisation. Beta start dates are small beans to our prospective Nostradamus's though as the real date of contention is the release date, and for those who want to believe that Cataclysm is mirroring Wrath's development schedule the next week or so is a key milestone. The release date of Wrath of the Lich King was announced on the 15th of September (for true obsessives this was the 3rd Monday in September), 2 months prior to the 13th November launch. If the smart money of a mid-November release is correct then a announcement may be imminent.

If Cataclysm is to be mid-November then we may or may not see 4.0 go live about one month before that date. When 3.0 was launched the devs. still had a full month to add to and polish Northrend before anyone would step foot there, whereas the whole of Azeroth is being redeveloped in this latest expansion. Putting unfinished zones which aren't absolutely new (such as Winterspring) off-limits will be much more difficult to justify to the subscriber base, and so its' live date will be much more fluid. Furthermore, holding off on launching 4.0 till new 80+ content is released makes a lot of sense; class balance could well be shot to hell, making top-tier Wrath raiding content nigh-on impossible.

Hey, it could happen :P

And with that rampant speculation out the way, go and enjoy the Battle for Gnomeregan/Fall of Zalazane.

Quick Note on LAotL's Effectiveness: Not Quite Zeno's Paradox, But Close

2010-08-16T13:03:00.008+01:00

Long Arm of the Law, Retributions new Talented Gap-Closer, was revealed on Friday and has already excited a lot of comment. Whilst many have hailed the chance at finally dealing with kiters, those with a more critical eye have analysed the talent and found it somewhat wanting.

UPDATE: Since posting this thread GC has responded to a query by Hofflerand on this topic:

We generally don't stack movement speed increases and PoJ explicitly says that it doesn't stack, but the 30% is a very conservative number so we left ourselves room to bring that up. It's 45% in our current builds.

Even if they don't stack, I think PoJ will be useful in a variety of situations and won't feel like a wasted talent.

Is this a meaningful Gap Closer?

Calling something a Gap Closer is somewhat overblown if the gap it closes is insignificant. Thankfully it's fairly easy to assess the numerical effectiveness of the talent for PvP and PvE:

Default Run speed is 7 yards per second (Source)
Most Players in PvP will utilise a minor run speed enchant for 8% increased run speed
Most Retribution Paladins will take the Pursuit of Justice talent for 15% increased run speed.
Long Arm of the Law increases run speed by 30% for 4 seconds

This implies:

In the duration of the LAotL buff (4 seconds) a PvP equipped enemy will run 30.24 yards.
A Paladin with PoJ will run 32.2 yards.
A Paladin with the Buff will run 36.4 yards.

The gross gap closed by a Paladin in an average PvP situation is 6.16 yards in this 4 second duration, which means that the net gap closed purely by the Long Arm buff is 4.2 yards. Note that at best this buff has a 10 second cooldown.

The minimum range at which Long Arm can be used is 15 yards. Presupposing optimal conditions, at the end of the buff duration the Paladin will still be 8.84 yards away (~4 yards out of melee range) and it would take another 6 seconds to get into melee range. Most accomplished players of classes that can kite should easily be able to land another snare on the Paladin within that time frame. On the other hand it will reduces the time of getting an enemy into the range of a Hammer of Justice, which would be helpful when coupled with a cooldown reduction on this latter ability.

In this regard therefore, Long Arm of the Law is most effective when dealing with escaping classes that have no Sprint/Ranged Snare/Inst. CC of their own, i.e. Warriors, the class which Retribution is already best equipped to deal. Against classes with easily apply-able snares (Hunter, Mage, DK) Long Arm has limited use, especially when Hand of Freedom is on cooldown. In essence, Long Arm doesn't make the class any less kiteable in of itself.

Is Long Arm of the Law Reliable?

A major change for all Paladins in Cataclysm is the removal of buff protections such as Stoicism (30% reduced chance that your magical buffs and debuffs will be dispelled), leaving crucial abilities like Hand of Freedom and Justice significantly more vulnerable to dispel effects. The crucial question was whether or not Long Arm would be a magical effect, and thus dispellable. Unfortunately it is dispellable, and to have crucial PvP abilities neutered by simple class abilities with no cooldown or effective cost bar a GCD feels like bad design. As a consequence of minimum range Ret Paladins will also have to utilise a range finder add-on to guard against using a Judgement in the dead-zone.

Should you take the talent?

In PvE the talent should be a fairly significant buff as outlined in the previous post. Even without the talent a 30 yard range Judgement has pretty significant implications when it comes to encounters with lots of mobility and target switching.

The jury is still out in PvP. Whilst any movement speed boost is nice it has to be weighed against the additional DPS or utility talents you would otherwise spend the talent points on. On the other hand, more proficient Paladins will utilise Judgement focus or mouseover macros against tertiary targets to close the gap on their main target. The game will definitely be harder in Arena and Battlegrounds for Ret because of the changes already on the cards, and LAotL does little to really address underlying weaknesses in the class against the most basic mechanics.

It feels a little churlish to complain about a movement speed buff but in my opinion it still needs work before it's really ready for primetime. Until then, it should be no surprise to anyone that Engineering will remain the de facto PvP profession.

Long Arm of the Law - Ret's New Gap-Closer. [12759]

2010-08-14T12:02:00.004+01:00

New Beta builds inevitably mean new Paladin changes, and yesterdays' is no different. The talent calculators haven't been updated quite yet but Curse Networks twitter feed released a few very interesting changes. I know a number of Retribution Paladins will be very interested in them:

Improved Judgement - Now increases Judgement range by 10/20 yards.

Okay, so a longer range Judgement for Ret (and other specs willing to throw two talents in Tier 1 Ret). Longer range always represents a DPS increase in encounters with target switching so that's a flat buff to the talent, even though the cooldown reduction is no a factor. PvP considerations would be more significant if the Judgement debuff still limited run-speed to 100% (as Judgement of Justice does now), but this effect has been rolled into Seal of Justice's debuff (as opposed to a minor stun). The trade-off therefore is one of damage for utility when choosing your PvP Seal, and it should be interesting to see if Judgement will be able to proc SoJ's speed limiting effect.

We then come to the gap-closer:

Long Arm of the Law (tier 3): 50/100% chance; 30% move speed buff for 4 sec when using Judgement on targets >= 15 yds away.

As gap closer's go, it's an interesting mechanic. The principle is that if your target is a long distance away you've got some ability to close the gap, but staying on a close (<15 yard) target requires some utility cooldowns if that target has snares/sprints of their own. In PvE it's a straight buff for target-switching encounters such as Professor Putricide where time-on-target is paramount.

On the flip-side, this talent is a sprint, not a snare. As such, snares against you will still be very effective and mean that closing the gap to competent Hunters and Mages will remain a difficult proposition. Equally, staying in melee range will be harder due to the lack of Judgement of Justice, possibly necessitating the use of SoJ in place of a Seal which deals significant damage. I'm also not sure if Pursuit of Justice is still a part of the Cataclysm talent trees. Another point worth investigating is just how close to someone you can get in 4 seconds at 30% speed from 15-30 yards away.

And yeah, I'd call it the 'Swift Hand of Justice' if there weren't already a trinket by that name.

Other interesting changes revealed were:

Sanctity of Battle: Causes haste to reduce the cooldown of Crusader Strike.

Divine Storm buffed to 150% weapon damage (from 90%) with 3 Holy Power.

Hammer of the Righteous - Hits target for 39% weapon dmg, all other targets in range for x to y holy dmg. 4.5 sec cooldown.

Divine Favor - Increases spell casting haste/crit by 20% for 20 sec. 3 min cooldown.

As well as the new graphic for Holy Power charges.

I'm highly unconvinced by Haste reducing the cooldown of Crusader Strike unless CS's base cooldown has increased significantly (beyond the current 4.5s). The 1.5sec Global Cooldown on most Ret abilities result in this only effective when haste brings CS's cooldown close to whole multiple of 1.5s (give or take latency), and tbh I'm really struggling to see the point. Hopefully there'll be more information on how this works soon.

Finally, Eskostar in the Elitist Jerks Cataclysm Change for Ret thread mentions an explicit change to Divine Purpose: 40% chance to generate holy power on Judgement, Exorcism, Templar's Verdict, Divine Storm, Inquisition and Holy Wrath. This greatly increases the Holy Power generation rate, though whether you'd spend this HP on anything other than Templar's Verdict/Divine Storm is another question.

First Hints of the Powers of the Ancient Kings

2010-07-30T15:30:00.007+01:00

Beta Build 12664 hit last night, and there's not a whole lot that needs to be said about it. As always MMO-Champion has the full listings for all classes, aswell as a few very cool screenshots, so check it out. There's not a whole lot to say about the build, like the last couple they've tinkered around the edges but not changed the fundamentals much. Here are my highlights for Paladins:

Vindication talent now causes Holy Wrath to have a chance ('chance' has to be one of the worst words in Talents, it's so woolly) for an AoE 10% Physical Damage debuff (i.e. Demo Shout). Overall a good change, but as always you have to question exactly what is meant by 'a chance'.

Avenging Shield is cemented as part of the Protection Paladins' rotation as the cooldown is reduced to 20 secs via talents and it has have a chance to be reset on successful Crusader Strikes.

Holy Shield's duration is increased from 15 to 20 seconds. Looks like they were listening to what I said last week about the problematic way that HS interacts with CS, but even at 20sec the problem remains. Crusader Strike remains an unreliable means of generating Holy Power for Protection, especially at lower tiers of content, and so virtually all HP would remain spent on HS. Prot could do with a higher rate of HP generation or more reliable means of generation less susceptible to the whims of RNG. However even that sticks in the craw somewhat when Warriors get 10% additional block passively (scaled by Mastery) and critical blocking effects.

Art of War is no longer as likely to be 'always up' with a nerf to 15% chance to proc, but the tighter rotation makes this feel less of an issue and just allows other spells to get a look-in.

Imp. Crusader Strike is back and reduces the cooldown of CS from 4 to 3 seconds (with two points invested). Spam, spam, spammy spam spam. Not a great fan of this, but it does tend to close down the available GCD-space, hence making decisions of other spells to use more meaningful.

Seal of Justice see's a change in the tooltip - no longer stuns the target, instead limits its' maximum run speed. So far this isn't reflected in the MMO-Champ or WoWHead Cataclysm spell databases so we really don't know what it means. It may be that the 100% run speed limitation is being removed from the Judgement and instead is a Seal proc debuff (bleh change IMO), or it may be that it's a more meaningful Snare. This is one that needs to be tested (and me with a broken Beta account, Oy!)

There's not really an awful lot to talk about then - they're tinkering around the edges but not changing too much from previous builds. I still think Protection doesn't have a really distinct flavour in Cataclysm so far, though chucking out Avengers Shield regularly may help. To a certain extent leveraging in Holy Power more should tend to help, but I'm of the opinion that more reactive defensive abilities would be a boon to making the spec more fun. We shall see what the future hols in this regard.

Anyway, that's boring stuff. So in an effort to be less boring, lets have a look at Guardian of Ancient Kings.

The Guardian is our level 85 spell and as you can see has different effects depending on the specialisation you have chosen. Note that duration of the Guardian's manifestation is as yet unknown, but we can at least make the educated guess that for Protection it'll last approx. 12 seconds to match up with Shield Wall.

Protection: Summons the Ancient Protector, reducing the damage you take by 60%. However it's possible that during this time the Guardian is killable, making the duration potentially quite short. Currently, the duration is unknown.

Holy: Summons the Ancient Healer, who can cast Light of the Ancient Kings:

This heal should scale with your Spell Power, and it'd be pretty cool if it also scaled with your haste at the same time.

Retribution: Summons the Ancient Crusader, who fights by your side and strengthens your attacks.

So, something akin to the Shadowmourne weapon proc. It's unknown if the 20 Str buff starts to stack as it attacks, or starts at a full stack which reduces as it attacks. In addition, the damage done by the Ancient Crusader itself is as yet unknown.

Something of a mixed bag really. The Guardians may turn out to look awesome and be very powerful, but they probably won't change playstyle very much. Protection Paladins especially may feel short-changed as the Guardian is merely a slightly more powerful version of a spell they already got at baseline (Divine Protection). All three are very much 'fire and forget', though only in the case of one spec does it synergise with other cooldowns.

If the offensive potential of the Guardian + Avenging Wrath + Zealotry is deemed to be overly strong expect them to become mutually exclusive later on in the Beta (as with Divine Sheild, Divine Protection, Lay on Hands and AW currently).

with thanks to Lebeau on the MMO-Champion forums for drawing the threads together.

Holy Power - The Story So Far.

2010-07-23T18:15:00.015+01:00

This article is an effort to consolidate information for the new Holy Power resource for quick access. This information is current of Cataclysm Beta Build 12759, 15.08.10. Edited 16.08.10 to correct a few things

Background and UI Element

In patch 12759 a new UI 'meter' element for Holy Power was added, which in time will replace the stacking buff seen on earlier screenshots.

Click here for the non-animated version

Holy Power is a brand new auxiliary resource for all three Paladin specs designed to add complexity and versatility to the class. Some think of it as an analogue to Runic Power or Combo Points as it shares features of both these more established mechanics.

As the Class is split between ranged caster and melee combatant models generating Holy Power differs a little between the specs. At baseline a successful Crusader Strike allows you to generate 1 Holy Power, up to a maximum of three. Once you reach level 10 the Class starts to diverge in functionality, and more options for generating Holy Power become available.

Holy

Holy Shock is Holy's specialisation bonus spell. It has a 6 sec cooldown which obviously is a guaranteed hit when used as a Heal, but will generate 1 Holy Power so long as its successfully cast. Unlike the sources of Holy Power for other specs this is probably the most fail-safe method, befitting of a healing spec.

Tower of Radiance is a Tier 6 Holy Talent, hence it is available much later in the game. It gives you a chance, dependant on the number of points you allocate to the talent and up to 100% for 3 points, to generate Holy Power when you directly heal your Beacon of Light target.

Crusader Strike is also still available, but isn't usually effective as a healer due to melee range. As there are no talents to improve it, it retains its' 4.5 sec cooldown.

Blessed Life has been changed as of build 12759. It will now cause attacks against you to generate 1 Holy Power (occurs once every 2 seconds). Feels mainly like a PvP talent unless it can also proc from encounter AoE.

Protection

In a change from the Wrath of the Lich King Paladin, Crusader Strike is available when tanking too. It tends to have a 4.5 sec effective cooldown due to a busy rotation.

Hammer of the Righteous has been retooled to generate Holy Power on successful cast as of build 12759, but not on a per-target basis. It shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike, but should be a guaranteed HP rather than based on the vagaries of Hit and Expertise.

Retribution

Retribution probably has it easiest in terms of generating Holy Power in the current build. Crusader Strike is the specs bread-and-butter strike, generally used on an effective 4.5secs due to once again a busy rotation or 3 second cooldown with sufficient Haste, and still generates 1 Holy Power. Sanctity of Battle will cause Haste to reduce the cooldown of Crusader Strike (though GCD's remain a limiting factor to this effect), 3 seconds will likely be the lowest effective cooldown you can reach, though YMMV with latency).

In addition, Retribution gains the passive talent Divine Purpose in Tier 4. This allows successful casts of Judgement, Exorcism, Templar's Verdict, Divine Storm, Inquisition, Holy Wrath a 40% chance to generate 1 Holy Power, leading to a higher Holy Power generation rate than tends to be the case with Protection and Holy.

Zealotry is Retribution's Tier 7 talent. When activated, successful Crusader Strikes hits generate a full 3 applications of Holy Power. In the current build this buff lasts for 15 seconds, allowing up to 4 of these augmented Strikes, and has a 2 min cooldown.

Finally there is Hand of Light, Retributions lvl80 Mastery Effect. It imbues your Auto-attacks with an 8% chance to cause your next cast skill that consumes Holy Power be as effective as if you spent 3 Holy Power on it. If that weren't enough, said spell would also cost no Holy Power. Mastery Rating, present on gear above level 80, increases the chance of your Auto-Attacks triggering this effect.

Generating Holy Power would matter not at all unless there was something to spend it on. Thankfully, there are right now a few means of spending Holy Power, but it should be noted that every spell that uses Holy Power consumes all applications of it.

All specialisations can take advantage of a brand new spell for Cataclysm, Word of Glory. This is an instant cast direct heal which scales with Spell Power and the amount of Holy Power consumed.

If damage or threat is your thing, Inquisition if for you. This self-buff consumes Holy Power to grant you 30% increased Holy Damage, but also costs 20% base mana as well as your Holy Power. The buff lasts for 4 seconds per application of Holy Power used, 10 seconds with Retribution's Inquiry of Faith talent. Depending on gear levels, Inquisition may prove to be a sub-par use of Holy Power compared to Shield of the Righteous due to its' 12sec max duration.

Holy

None Specific to Holy, yet. Unsurprisingly however Word of Glory should be a much more effective spell for this spec.

Protection

Shield of the Righteous replaces Holy Shield as your active threat gen talent which scales according to Holy Power. Instant Cast, no cooldown, 6% base mana cost.

1 Holy Power: 20% Attack Power
2 Holy Power: 60% Attack Power
3 Holy Power: 120% Attack Power

If you take the talent Holy Shield (now a passive talent) you gain 5% block per Holy Power consumed when Shield of the Righteous or Inquisition is cast. You therefore have the option of a quick burst of threat via SotR, or the more gradual threat boost of Inquisition. Holy Shield lasts 20 seconds, regardless of the spell you choose. Reliability is once again the watch-word though, so Hit and Expertise Capping to ensure predictable Holy Power generation is a big deal.

Retribution.

This is where we see the rough stuff. First, there's Templar's Verdict, a new heavy hitting melee strike. The spell is currently a specialisation bonus for Retribution, and so should become available at level 10. Divine Storm by contrast is still an AoE attack scaling from weapon damage, and makes an appearance at Tier 3. It too consumes Holy Power, but isn't as effective in single-target encounters and so should only be used when there are three or more targets in range.

The damage breakdown per application of Holy Power consumed is as follows:
Holy Power Consumed Divine Storm Templar's Verdict
1 22% 55%
2 74% 125%
3 150% 225%

TV and DS are effectively mutually exclusive - use of either ability is determined by the number of enemies in range of DS.

Last but not least, there's Zealotry. Somewhat frustratingly it requires 3 applications of Holy Power to Cast, making correct timing to get the most out of this skill critical. Beta build 13189 changed Zealotry so that those 3 Holy Power aren't consumed by Zealotry itself, but this change hasn't been pushed to Live servers.

Impact on Playstyle

Holy will naturally tend to have more flexibility and mobility thanks mainly to the new talents and spells, but the Holy Power requirement requires more active resource management than is required by current design. Holy Power has also nicely added compensation in for healing the usually sub-optimal Beacon of Light target. The concept of a healing rotation starts to develop in conjunction with talents, raising the specs skill cap.

Protection gets the short end of the stick relatively speaking. Capping Hit and Expertise (i.e. eliminating dodge) is imperative to ensure constant Holy Shield up-time. It's not hard to see how this could tie a Paladin's tanking rotation into knots. Holy Power generation in single-target situations simply isn't reliable enough to warrant spending it on anything other than Holy Shield unless the amount healed by Word of Glory is significantly more than we're expecting in Tier 11 content.

It's tempting to say that Holy Power has probably had the most impact on Retribution, and I think it's quite true. However management of cooldowns remains the back-bone of the spec, and mana concerns may once again rear their head with the removal of Judgement of Wisdom. Good Ret Paladins will probably be those who can effectively weave together Crusader Strike and Templar's Verdict to maximise the damage caused when TV is cast, however the best Paladins will manage TV independent of CS and solely based on Holy Power meter. Eternal Glory (20/40% that WoG doesn't consume Holy Power) may tempt more players into using Word of Glory, but that's still an average cost of two thirds of a Templar's Verdict. The amount healed by WoG is probably critical when assessing the value of that talent, but one 'free' WoG per minute may be a better talent.

Summary

Thus far, Holy Power adds a lot of potential to the class which isn't fully exploited as yet. Zealotry also needs a review as Ret may find itself unable to use a large proportion of the extra Holy Power generated because Hand of Light and Divine Purpose procs. Another Wings-style damage cooldown seems like a shame compared to a more interesting 31pt talent.

So, a good start. Hopefully more to come as the Beta progresses.

Paladin Changes for Beta Build [12539]

2010-07-21T10:08:00.006+01:00

Changes, so delicious. Mmmmmmm

..

Yes, well. A new build is up, and the Paladin Changes are listed. And my, they are tasty. Holy Power has been implemented, Templar's Verdict is in, Holy gets a Sprint and Ret gets cake. No, not cake, what's it called.

Ah yes....

AN INTERRUPT.

I'm not going to outline all the changes, you can easily look at MMO-Champ for those. World of Raids also has a comprehensive listing here which differs slightly from MMO-Champions mined data. However I do want to pick out a few very specific changes in each spec and note a few changes still to come.

General

Holy Power has been implemented. One point of Holy Power is generated for every successfully landed Holy Shock and Crusader Strike. Talents improve the rate at which you generate Holy Power.

The passive mana regen effect of Judgements of the Wise is being rolled into both Prot and Ret Judgements passively as 40% base mana regenerated over 10 seconds. Replenishment will still be Ret-only secondary effect on Judgement. Spiritual Attunement and Guarded by the Light are being canned as mana regen abilities.

Divine Storm - This skill may or may not be baseline, we just don't know yet. It's now the early Holy Power dump, doing AoE damage based on the number of HP charges consumed, and has no cooldown. I could bear to see the mana cost reduced by 50%, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this skill as long as it continues to proc Seals.

Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom have been rolled into one Seal - Seal of the Pure. This will also have an impact of Glyphing, obviously, but having these two Seals always was a little clunky.

Holy Changes

Word of Glory is a brand new spell which consumes all Holy Power to instantly heal a target. Presumably the amount healed is proportional to your current Holy Power. MMO-Champ isn't logging this under Paladin spells but it is in the Database as Word of Glory. Instant heals are always nice, but needing to chain 3 successful Holy Shocks before being able to cast it adds a little spice.

Speed of Light - Casting Holy Shock grants 5/10/30% spell haste for your next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light, and casting Healing Hands grants you 10/20/60% movement speed for 10 sec. Also lowers the cooldown on Healing Hands by 10/20/30 sec at all times. Speaking of more mobility, here's a situational sprint. The talent seems very powerful right now and may well be nerfed as instant heals and 30sec cooldown sprints are a little OTT.

Beacon of Light - Your Beacon is once again healed by all direct healing spells cast, but with only 50% effectiveness. To me, this seems like a sensible compromise, though we may even see this decrease a little as the Beta progresses simply because of Holy’s larger toolbox.

Pillar of Light - Healing your Beacon also has a chance to generate Holy Power. It's important from a raiding perspective to make sure that healing your Beaconed target isn't too inefficient a use of your time, i.e. that if you absolutely have to heal the Beaconed player you don’t feel penalised for doing so, and this talent seems to fit the mould.

Light of Dawn - Send a wave of healing energy before you, healing all friendly targets up to 30 yards away for X. Think of this as 'Cone of Healing', and it’s probably going to turn out to be a raid-only spell. Expect some smart-healing mechanic and upper boundary on total amount healed.

Three new Healing spells and much more mobility mean that this is a very interesting update for Paladins. On the other hand, there's very little interaction thus far with Holy Power, especially at low levels (still don't know what level Paladins gain Word of Glory).

Holy offense has been augmented with a baseline CS (potentially baseline DS, wew shall see), baseline 'hit all targets' Holy Wrath, Judgements and talented instant-cast Exorcism Proc.

Protection

Holy Shield will now increase your Block Rate by 30% for 10 seconds plus a further 10 seconds for every Holy Power consumed, and deals damage to the attacker. 1 minute cooldown. This implies an increased block rate 2/3rd of the time. Expect a Glyph to drop the cooldown by ~25secs.

Raidwall returns in the form of Divine Guardian, a straight-up raid-wide 20% damage reduction. Awesome.

Talents which grant additional Stamina are gone, replaced by a passive +% Stamina bonus for choosing Protection. Much of the rest of the tree is made up of proc-based +damage (i.e. +Threat) talents rather than mitigation, which feels pretty wonky for a Tanking tree. In trying to make the talent leaner they seem to have run out of ideas, leading to a fixation on threat and making interesting threat rotations. Whilst holding threat is rightly important, it feels disappointing that you can’t change-up your rotation in order to reduce damage at the cost of threat.

Retribution

Templar's Verdict it in, and it's awesome. However even though it has no cooldown it costs 20% base mana and requires Holy Power, making it a very expensive spell to utilise. It’s also mutually exclusive with Divine Storm because they both share Holy Power, a resource that is generated at a fixed rate when specced Ret. Without a more variable way to generate HP this spell may as well simply have a fixed cooldown shared with Divine Storm.

Zealotry is a tough talent to assess. On one hand it allows for huge damage on cooldown through generation of Holy Power and dumping that into Templar's Verdict, but on the other hand your mana pool would swiftly get eaten. Divine Storm has the same problem, it's still a very expensive spell mana-wise. Word of Glory has no mana cost as yet, but it a healing spell. This ones going to be a tough one to balance, and may not survive the Beta. Also, the 30minute cooldown should just be a placeholder, it’s more likely that it’ll be 10 minute so it may be used on a ‘once per encounter’ basis but not in Arenas.

Inquisition is just a rotation filler, similar to Rogue's Slice and Dice. You can't use it without Holy Power, but with a full 3/3 application it will last for 30 seconds. Mana cost seems utterly redundant as effective cost is one Templar's Verdict per 30 seconds (i.e. One of your 2 potential Templar's Verdicts).

Rebuke* is a melee-range interrupt with no effective cost on a 10sec cooldown. Pretty much a kick, though it costs much less relative to our rotation (Kick costs 20 energy IIRC, no trifling amount). It's probably too cheap, so may well have a cost added to it at some point. Should still be off the GCD though, otherwise it would be effectively useless. Why isn't this available to Protection too? And will the animation be a Slap in the Face?

Finally, Art of War no longer allows instant-cast heals. Word of Glory, an HP powered spell, is the effective replacement.

There’ll be more tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to analyse things more deeply, but I think there’s still a few things missing before we can stick a fork in these Talents and call them done.

UPDATE - World of Raids is reporting that melee attacks generating Holy Power is a specialisation bonus for Retribution. This makes the HP mechanic much more appealing.

*Side note - Rebuke was one of the names suggested by the community for Hand of Reckoning.

Holy Power: A New Paladin Complimentary Resource? (Via #BlizzChat)

2010-07-17T02:17:00.012+01:00

[Update]: Okay, this appears to be how it will work:

Certain skills with very common usage in a spec, such as Crusader Strike for Ret and Holy Shock for Holy, will have a secondary effect. This effect will buff you with one application of Holy Power, up to a maximum of 3.

The Holy Power buff will probably then give you a spec-specific boost, for example it might increase your Holy Damage by 1/2/3%. This in itself isn't too fun, it would just be providing a Vengeance for all three specs, but that's not the entirety of the mechanic.

Holy Power stacks can be consumed (entirely) in order to cast specific new abilities, or boost existing spells. The effectiveness of these abilities would be proportional to how big the stack was, making sensible timing imperative.

Significantly, in the same way that Seal of Vengeance has a ramp-up time for PvP balancing purposes so would all the Holy Power spells. This adds scope for new abilities and talents with dynamic durations that would require you to engage first, for example adding an interrupt talent to Ret that needs Holy Power, making fine tuning balance a far easier proposition.

Done well, this new mechanic would add another layer of complexity to a class notorious for its' faceroll approach. No bad thing.

---

Just outlined on the Blizz developer chat:

Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

* An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
* A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
* A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict [Templar's Verdict? Ace name!]
* Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
* Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power

We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

(Source)

This sounds suspiciously like 'our' Runic Power, essentially an auxiliary resource for additional effects. Potentially it would be a huge shake-up to the class, but it may well be a bit more than can be balanced during a Beta phase. Remember though that this is Beta. Early Beta. Everything is subject to change.

Oh, and they need to call it something else. I'm tempted to say "Awesome", but whatever the name I'll henceforth refer to it as just "the Jong Meter".

--

More on Templar's Verdict and Word of Glory:

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at one or two of the new Retribution abilities or talents?
A. Templar’s Verdict: An instant weapon attack that causes a percentage of weapon damage. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:

1 Holy Power: 55% Weapon Damage
2 Holy Power: 125% Weapon Damage
3 Holy Power: 225% Weapon Damage

Word of Glory: Consumes all Holy Power to heal a friendly target for a specific amount per application of Holy Power (0 mana cost, 0 cooldown, instant cast).

So the resource won't be a continuous 1-100 'meter', rather a self-buff in the style of Vengeance which will be consumed when a particular spell is used. Call it a cross between Runic Power and Soulshards I suppose.

The final word on Judgements is Wisdom is dead, Light and Justice are being baked into the same spell:

Q: If Judgement of Wisdom is being removed from the game, are paladins getting a new Judgement so we don't all have to use Judgement of Light?
A. There will only be one Judgement spell. This spell places a single debuff on the target with the effects currently associated with Judgement of Light and Judgement of Justice. The Judgement of Wisdom effect has been retired completely.

These Aren't the Beta Talent Trees You're Looking For.

2010-07-15T10:32:00.003+01:00

By now, you should have been able to have a look at the new talent trees on WOWTal.com or similar. If you haven't, look now.

Here is a look at the current Paladin talent trees.

You might have expected a long and detailed analysis of Holy, Prot and Ret from me about now, or at least a brief snark over how awful they are. Well, panic not. From the mouth of Ghostcrawler:

"These are old talents. This is not the paladin revamp that we said was coming. Sorry, you'll just have to wait a little bit longer."(Source)

"Reactive Judgements [are] dead.

[..]

I'm going to regret saying this, but the paladin trees are the most changed in the game. There are only a few of the current beta talents that survived the, um, cleansing."(Source)

Sound familiar? Well, with that in mind it seems totally pointless to jump off the deep end, tempted though we may be. In fact this is almost a shame. For all their faults there were a few gems in this build, such as a Sanctified Wrath which allowed Hammer of Wrath to be used whenever you're under the effects of Avenging Wrath, or a PvE-effective Eye for an Eye. Also the loss of Divine Purpose will hurt a lot if it goes ahead (no, the Mastery isn't a Stun break, it's passive mana regen). But oh well.

If we do one thing for class design in Cataclysm, it will be changing the paladin (all 3 specs) rotation up a bit!

In the Ret case, we started with a basic question: what is it they should be managing? There are a lot of things they *could* be managing. Today it's cooldowns. It could be mana or procs or a lot of things. There was one Ret talent in particular we really liked, and we started building a rotation around it. Then we decided the mechanic was good enough to flesh out for Holy and Prot too.

We're not ready to share the design just yet, and like all changes of this sort, it will be controversial. Some players crave a more interactive rotation. Some like their paladins the way they are. Some are only attracted to the class because it can be overpowered and they like to feel like a superhero.(Source)

Reflections on overpowered-ness aside, we should all be pretty happy with this mission statement. Shaking up rotations to differentiate the great Paladins from the merely 'good' is something that all specs should allow so long as it doesn't feel clunky or out of place with the class. It should be quite interesting to see just which talent or rotation they plan to implement, the only frequently used spell each spec has in common is Judgement so... okay, I got nothing, but it should be entertaining.

There's one final thing worth mentioning, and that's the change to Holy Shield design.

We are going to turn both Holy Shield and Shield Block into short cooldowns. A short cooldown is an ability that you don't save for an absolute emergency (like Shield Wall) but we also don't want it to be on such a short cooldown that it feels maintenance-y. It's a tricky number to get right, but something in the 30 sec to 1 min zone feels about right. Then you might use Holy Shield one GCD instead of SoR or you can choose to save it until the next big boss attack.

(Source)

This somewhat files in the face of previous announcements. Supposedly Tankadins were being designed to effectively block more often than Warriors, but for less mitigation per block. The effective removal of block value probably necessitated a convergence of Paladin and Warrior blocking mechanics, but this could potentially homogenise the classes too much. Should be interesting to see how it shakes out.

RealID Gone, for Now: Wherein I Show My Cynical Nature

2010-07-09T18:15:00.004+01:00

So, the battle is won. Posting with your RealID is gone.

For now.

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

In my first post on the subject I warned about a bait and switch by Activision-Blizzard over RealID, that they'd cancel it but institute something else in it's place slightly less abhorrent. Then significant numbers would come out and say 'hey, at least it's not RealID' and we'd all go along with it.

This would not be acceptable.

In the original RealID forum announcement it was stated that pre-upgrade posts simply can't be retroactively updated to show RealID, i.e. that the data wasn't captured. This will not be the case in the new forums, it's just that your RealID won't be shown.

Remember the new T&C's? They still stipulate that you accept that your Real Name can be noted alongside your post. With the new forums they can flip a switch and start doing that at any time.

Worse still, the creeping brief of Facebook integration and RealID is still open policy, nothing has changed in this regard except that opposition was perhaps more outspoken than they had anticipated.

The more pompous amongst us may say that the price of privacy is eternal vigilance. The general point to make is still that you should be responsible for your own privacy on the internet, and every corporation that deals with your data has a responsibility to either keep everything locked up tight or allow you fine control over what you make public. The plan for the forums didn't allow that, it was their way or the highway, and that's the major reason why it was terrible.

So, good work people! But don't make the mistake of thinking that this is the end of the matter.

In Other News: WoW Goes Back to 31pt Talent Trees.

2010-07-07T17:28:00.008+01:00

Update:

Looks like they had a change of heart about Divine Storm being the lvl10 'core' skill for Ret:

After further reflection, we don't think Divine Storm makes a good level 10 Ret ability. It really wants to be an AE attack, and it's just hard to make an AE attack a signature ability usable in as many situations as a signature attack deserves to be.

Divine Storm will probably go back into the talent tree. It won't be the 31-point though. Both the 31-point and the 10 ability need to have more single-target use. That means something like 3 new abilities for Retribution and several new or modified talents on top of that. Crazy.

As you can see, we're still iterating a lot on paladins. Our lack of communication is because things are changing quickly, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to share it all until things feel a little more stable.

(Source)

It'll be interesting to see what they do with Repentance. If CC is to be a major part of Cataclysm, as it was in TBC, Ret may well need it to be useful in more challenging 5-mans. I'm not sure that we'll see 3 new abilities, DS and Repentance still make sense in there. For levelling purposes at least it seems reasonable to place SoCommand or SoVengeance accessible at a lowish level (<30 preferably) which could mean SoC as the level 10 Ret Ability, leading to only one new skill being required for during development.

We play in interesting times, that's for sure.

--

When Cataclysm was initially announced to include no new Tier of Talents, elimination of more generic passive talents, yet 5 more Talent Points I was sceptical that they could pull it off. So, apparently, were Blizzard. Now the talent trees are being compressed back down to 31pts (7 Tiers).

Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

When we first announced our design goals for class talent trees back at BlizzCon 2009, one of our major stated focuses was to remove some of the boring and "mandatory" passive talents. We mentioned that we wanted talent choices to feel more flavorful and fun, yet more meaningful at the same time. Recently, we had our fansites release information on work-in-progress talent tree previews for druids, priests, shaman, and rogues. From those previews and via alpha test feedback, a primary response we heard was that these trees didn’t incorporate the original design goals discussed at BlizzCon. This response echoes something we have been feeling internally for some time, namely that the talent tree system has not aged well since we first increased the level cap beyond level 60. In an upcoming beta build, we will unveil bold overhauls of all 30 talent trees.

[..]

The Rise of Specialization

We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later. When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees. These abilities and bonuses are only available by specializing in a specific tree. Each tree awards its own unique active ability and passives when chosen. The passive bonuses range from flat percentage increases, like a 20% increase to Fire damage for Fire mages or spell range increases for casters, to more interesting passives such as the passive rage regeneration of the former Anger Management talent for Arms warriors, Dual-Wield Specialization for Fury warriors and Combat rogues, or the ability to dual-wield itself for Enhancement shaman.

The initial talent tree selection unlocks active abilities that are core to the chosen role. Our goal is to choose abilities that let the specializations come into their own much earlier than was possible when a specialization-defining talent had to be buried deep enough that other talent trees couldn’t access them. For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.

[...]

In Summary

When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one. Then they spend their talent point. The other trees darken and are unavailable until 31 points are spent in the chosen tree. The character is awarded an active ability, and one or more passive bonuses unique to the tree they've chosen. As they gain levels, they'll alternate between receiving a talent point and gaining new skills. They'll have a 31-point tree to work down, with each talent being more integral and exciting than they have been in the past. Once they spend their 31'st point in the final talent (at level 70), the other trees open up and become available to allocate points into from then on. As characters move into the level 78+ areas in Cataclysm, they'll begin seeing items with a new stat, Mastery. Once they learn the Mastery skill from their class trainer they'll receive bonuses from the stat based on the tree they've specialized in.

We understand that these are significant changes and we still have details to solidify. We feel, however, that these changes better fulfill our original class design goals for Cataclysm, and we're confident that they will make for a better gameplay experience. Your constructive feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

(Source)

Simply by removing talents which provide generic bonuses to hit, crit and the like Blizzard left a lot of empty space in a lot of talent trees which would have to be filled. It appears that in most cases this space could never be filled in time, hence the tree compression.

This explains why the new Holy Tree, listed last week, felt so sparse and lacking in genuine interest: it's the Vanilla tree, with all the tedium associated with it. No interesting proc mechanics, no reactionary abilities, just 7 tiers of abilities you're expected to throw most of your weight into. The worry must now be that in culling talents for Cataclysm they'll cull the most interesting (by hardest to balance) talents in favour of the boring 5% Crit to X+Y Spells passive talents.

They've thrown in the towel when it comes to hybridisation of specs for hybrid classes (31/10 being the most you can reach from the looks of things) so off-the-wall builds will be impossible.

Classes which rely on major talents for more interesting leveling experience may feel hard done by, even if they get core talents (Mortal Strike, Dual Wield etc.) at level 10 when they choose their specialisation. For me Vengeance really keeps the momentum up when questing simply because you want to keep that buff up. With Crusader Strike being a lvl1 talent I struggle to see which ability will be classed as Core for any Paladin Spec; Holy Shield, Holy Shock (yuck) and Seal of Command perhaps. Eliminating ranks make the process of gaining Experience much less interesting, yet we know that Questing itself will be more fun.

It may all work out fine and dandy. It may be horrific and be a genuine dumbing-down of classes. I wait on the changes with baited breath. I hope to god we don't see a redux of the Vanilla Paladin talents.

ADDED:

In fact, when we invest our 31st point (at lvl70) we're then given 10 and only 10 more points to place where we like. So no 11pt talents from other trees, and only Tier 1 needs to broadly appeal to any spec (Tier just should but doesn't need to)

Divine Storm will be the Ret lvl10 Skill, and there will be a new bottom-of-the-tree ability at 31pts. (Source)

My Take on RealID [Updated]

2010-07-07T09:54:00.007+01:00

Update 3: The current rumour making the rounds is that Blizzard Staff will no longer be required to post with their real name following the harassment of Battle.net CM Bashiok.

Bashiok, in an unwise attempt to alleviate the worries of posters, posted his real name on the forum thread. Within hours personal details were dug up, including Facebook profile, home address, telephone and more. Apparently other harassing activities also then took place. He then took his name down, but the damage had been done.

I hope Blizzard takes note of this.

[This has since been denied by EU CM Wryxian here]

Update 2: Serious Mode On.

Here is the archive for the EU feedback thread for this RealID Debacle:

MMO-Champion Blue Tracker: Battle.net Update: Upcoming Forum Changes

It's worth a read because damage control is running wild, but they're still firmly toeing the current company line. However here is some of the most glaring oblivios responses you will ever read from a CM:

During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction.

..

There's a lot of scare-mongering going on about the change, but there seems a need to make something very clear. The forums have always been an optional extra -- something you can choose to participate in if you wish to. With our Real ID changes for the forums, this is still the case. The only difference will be, if you do choose to participate in the forums, then you will do so by using your real name. But only after you've been warned and accepted this in advance.

There's a couple of things wrong with this stance. The first and probably most abhorrent aspect is the subtle accusation that those stating they'll quit the forums are all the negative elements in the forums. In fact they're anything but: MVPs, long-time members and those doing upkeep on class stickies are amongst those who will not continue to post come July 27th (when the change is implemented). Other long-time bloggers are quitting WoW altogether in protest and perhaps out of worry over the next step in RealID. It's a flagrant attempt to marginalise dissent, all the more galling in that it's coming from Community Managers, not the forum trolls they are supposedly attempting to eliminate.

The second point is one of forums being 'optional'. Theoretically this may be true, but in actuality it's not the case. From a bug-fixing POV you actively want to encourage users with tech-support woes to post. Just take a quick look at the moderators of the Tech Support forums who routinely ask for the crash dump and dxdiag reports, it's only by analysing these in batches that getting a handle on the root-cause of a bug is possible. RealID represents a genuine disincentivisation of posting and for obvious reasons phone support is not a practical replacement. Those who have been hacked, where authenticators have been applied to their account because of the totally inadequate security of Battle.net since day one, routinely have to post on the official forums to get these removed because of the abysmal phone support.

There are so many things wrong with RealID that the work of all the other bloggers out there has made me putting them down on (virtual) paper entirely rundant. However there's one final thing I'd mention to address the core rationale behind RealID on forums - to reduce trolling and increase quality posting.

People don't troll because of anonymity, they troll because they are wankers. All this new policy does is drive away quality posters (rightly) concerned about their privacy, reducing the quality of forums as a result.

I now eagerly await the bait-and-switch, where this 'feature' is dropped but another slightly less offensive one is put in its place.

--

A deep thinker I am not. But wouldn't it be cool to see 30,000 of these at BlizzCon?

ADDED:

Oh and this. 100% this. Does anyone not trolling for page hits actually agree with this dumb RealID idea?

Early Talent Commentary: With More Talent Points Comes Fewer Choices?

2010-07-05T15:45:00.000+01:00

Hopefully by now you've had a chance to glance at the changes to the Holy Talent Trees in the latest Beta Build. If you haven't, the kind folks over at MMO-Champion have put them into an easily manipulated form for your perusal on WoWTal.com:

Click for the latests Talent Build.

Right now there's not a huge amount of point in analysing the Trees to death. This is very, very early Beta (some might even say that the build standard is late Alpha rather than early Beta) and the changes perhaps reflect that. However, as with the Wrath Beta all those many moons ago we can perhaps glean something of the Dev's thinking from the changes presented.

1. This isn't the Utility You're Looking For

The most glaring and obvious change is that Aura Mastery and Imp. Concentration Aura are deep, deep into Holy. Tier 7 and 10 deep. There's really only one reason for this sort of a change: they feel that the Utility represented by these talents is simply too good to allow a Retribution or Protection Paladin to have it. Full stop, end of story.

Obviously that's going to set a whole raft of players off into the realms of crazy talk: "Blizzard Hates Paladins", "Blizzard Hates Ret", etc etc, but at this stage we simply have no real way of telling how strong these talents will turn out to be in the Cataclysm era and they want to pre-emptively prevent the temptation of class-stacking right now. This is a good thing, if you hadn't guessed.

The down-side is that spec'ing into Holy for utility won't be nearly so desirable. Prot and Ret will always be tempted by Seals of the Pure, however traversing down the tree is much less interesting, and it's not exactly riveting currently. Ret can target the new Sanctified Light for Holy Shock and Judgement Crits, picking up Divine Favour along the way (mana back from HS, as it is EXPENSIVE), but most talents are of only marginal DPS or utility value for Ret and Prot. Personally, I eagerly await a new 11pt talent for Holy, though I hope were not waiting as long as we have done in the past.

2. More Basic Spells as Talented Abilities

Divine Favour is GONE! But what's this in it's place?

(Okay, more interesting name for the talent would be nice.
Don't worry about the 'healed for' value yet.)

You may recall that all classes will be 'given' (in some fashion) a quick (1.5s), medium (2s) and slow heal (3s). Okay, this perhaps is a little bit redundant in the current game; we'll run with it though.

In our case, we're actually getting two 3-second cast heals: Holy Light (baseline) and Divine Light (talented, Tier 5), and Holy Light talented will have a 2 second cast time. This may seem a little redundant, hell it's a lot redundant, but stay with me here. It means that Holy Light will scale as if it were a 3 second cast spell whilst remaining 2 second cast. Combine it with the new Beacon of Light, which only interacts with Holy Light and Holy Shock, and HL remains our go-to healing spell. And a pretty powerful one at that.

A cynic might say that this talent arrangement is a pretty cheap way of designing a 5 pt talent, and I'd agree on the face of it, but it still has potential. Even if Divine Light is a boring-ass Tier 5 talent.

3. Things To Do... So Many Things to Do

This is only a first pass at the tree, never mind the whole class, and there's still a lot to do. There's also going to be a very long Beta process if we really are going to see 4.0 in October. Thank goodness for those, because there's still a lot to look out for:

So many dross talents. Sacred Cleansing and Pure of Heart - they're pretty bad unless you expect the class to be Cleansing 24/7*. Purifying Power just doesn't seem at all useful for Holy, the whole 'Healing Classes need to Level Too' argument notwithstanding.

Pure of Heart can be too detrimental. Plenty of diseases and curses will trigger something nasty on completion (e.g. Cuse of Doom) which make taking this talent highly unwise. Needs to eb fixed

Supposedly Magic Cleansing was to be removed from the baseline spell and rolled into a Holy Talent. Expect to see that soon, though as 11pt talent would somewhat make removing it from baseline redundant.

Early Holy. Please make Tier 2 and 3 interesting and valuable to Ret and Prot. I know that you may be keen on the whole off-healing angle but it's just not possible for those specs (self-healing has some potential) but even so these talents need work. Hopefully Fears and Disorientates will be part of 5-man and raid encounters in Cataclysm, making this talent interesting for all Specs.

The Ret and Prot Changes ;).

With any luck we'll see a new build tomorrow, or Friday if there are a lot of nerfs. Till then, keep the faith.

--

*Please don't design encounters where we're cleansing 24/7, the removal of Cleansing Totem makes me scared.

Cataclysm - First Impressions [Gentle Spoilers].

2010-07-01T16:43:00.015+01:00

So, as with a few (okay, not a few, actually a lot) of others in the WoW Blog/Twittersphere I was lucky enough to dip my toe into the Cataclysm Alpha these past few fortnights. Seeing all these changes first-hand was a blast, and it was hard not to spell out how much fun it was when everyone was ragging on Blizzard last month. That's not to say it's perfect, it was after all the Alpha and Alpha's are there to be tested, fixed and feedback given. Even so I'm really enthused by the thought that has gone into improving a number of aspects of play and the obvious intended direction.

Questing

When I say that questing has been streamlined it's probably hard to grasp what I mean. Cast your mind back to the original levelling process from 1-60, when every quest seemingly had you running out to all parts, then back again, then back out to the very same place. Levelling became an art of knowing which point in multiple quests chains minimised travel time and allowed efficient questing. Certain key zones were crucial to quicker levelling, such as the Mirage Raceway and Jintha'Alor, whereas others were to be avoided unless you liked the walk.

Well, to a certain extent this has been changed in Cataclysm. Most zones still run with questing hubs (e.g. Goldshire) but quest chains have be significantly adjusted so that in many cases returning back to the quest hub is unnecessary. Instead you can hand in the completed quest and start the next one in the chain remotely, allowing you to have to rarely break the flow of questing. The mechanic makes levelling a much more immersive process.

You should be able to quest fully to 60 in one of the two Continents, so pushing two alts to 60 and not burning out on repeating content shouldn't be any sort of problem. The only point to consider is that questing is pretty linear thus far meaning that side-quests are relatively few and far between (one imagines due to the constraints of Phasing), however this is early Beta and can always be added later.

Post-80 there's plenty of content to get stuck into, including some quests which are effectively homages to games past. There's a continued evolution in quest design started in Wrath, just don't expect it to be challenging from the get-go. It's designed for new lvl78-80's, not your epic-laden backside.

Geography and Travel

Blizzard weren't kidding when they said that Azeroth was in for a lot of upheaval. Previously bland terrain such as that seen in the Barrens suddenly seems so much more lively, and that makes questing feel so much more fun. But the world hasn't been shrunk - it's still just as big as it was before and takes just as long to travel from north-east to south-west as the crow flies. However you can take advantage of many more flight paths added in all areas, especially low-level zones before you get your mounts, meaning that time you spend playing is time well spent. For example Elwynn Forest has a FP in Goldshire and Eastvale Logging Camp, as well as there being a FP in northern Westfall and Lakeshire. Returning to base for new Skills or Professions is significantly less time consuming than currently.

Adrenaline junkies may be disappointed to know that in the process of re-ordering the monster levels in Zones some of the danger in reaching new zones has been eliminated. Running to Booty Bay from Goldshire isn't quite as dangerous as it was, and Southshore is easy to get to at lvl25. Not that you'd want to go to Southshore.

Not a nice place any more.

Graphically, we see that the improvements added to Wrath are followed through. Forsaken zones have been adapted to Forsaken architecture and all the Orcish structures have a much more imposing feel to them. However this again isn't a huge departure from what has gone before, you're still playing fundamentally the same game you may have picked up in late 2004. The new water detail is nice, but it's unobtrusive and doesn't kill your FPS as much as it could. Players with meatier machines will see the benefit but those still playing on machine bought a few years ago should still be able to cope. More graphical tweaks, including self-reflection in water, are due to come at some point.

For a compiled list of Cataclysm Flight Paths check out this forum thread by Callystah.

Lore

Quest NPCs and Zones themselves feel much more fleshed out. More often they are given a back story or have a backstory in the Pre-Cataclysm world. A good example of this is Private Keeshan, a minor Vanilla NPC who makes a strong return in Cataclysm.

The Cataclysm world works even if you haven't been through what Vanilla has to offer, but if you do have a firm grasp of the Pre-Cataclysm world and it's lore you're rewarded with a very coherent quested storyline for each zone with its' foundations in the player's Pre-Cataclysm actions. Of the content seen so far Westfall is a tour-de-force in this regard.

Slightly on the down-side some of the new post-80 Mt Hyjal quests are confusing unless you know the plot to Stormrage. This to me is disappointing, just as I was disappointed with Varian's introduction in Wrath of the Lich King ("Hey, the Kings Back!"), hopefully we'll see a little more in-game explanation this time around.

Finishing Up - Overall Impressions

Okay, how to bring it all together. For one I'd say that at lesat the 1-30, probably the 1-60 levelling experience is new enough that playing through an alt really doesn't feel like the same old grind. It feels fresh and new just like an expansion should. If you're still interesting in the game beyond Raiding and PvP Cataclysm looks set to slake your thirst for content, for a while at least.

As for me, I'm hoping some current issues with my Cata account are ironed out and I get to see a whole lot more in the Beta. We've yet to see most of the Class and Profession changes and I find eeking out the new skill and talent mechanics quite an enjoyable part of the process, and I hope to be able to report back some of the things I've discovered.

Though perhaps not too much ;)

Compiled List of Paladin Cataclysm Changes Thus Far. [Build 12319]

2010-07-01T01:09:00.011+01:00

Paladin Beta Talent/Skill Changelog

Remember that all talents are in a huge state of flux and are subject to massive change. Updated: Build 12319, 01.07.2010

Talents:

Holy

Divine Intellect (Talent T2) Increases your total Intellect and Spirit by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%
Sanctified Light (Talent T4) Increases the critical effect chance of your Judgements and Holy Shock by 5%/10%/15%
Improved Holy Light (Talent T4) Decreases the cast time of your Holy Light by 0.2s/0.4s/0.6s/0.8s/1.0s
Divine Light (Talent T5) Heals a friendly target for X [- This is the announced 3 sec big heal.]
Aura Mastery (Talent T7) Moved from Tier 3 Causes your Concentration Aura to make all affected targets immune to Silence and Interrupt effects and improve the effect of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 6 sec.
Improved Holy Shock (Talent T7) Reduces the mana cost of your Holy Shock Spell by 35%/70%
Beacon of Light (Talent T11) The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all members of your party or raid within a 60 yard radius. Each Holy Light or Holy Shock you cast on party or raid members will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at one time. Lasts 1 minute.

Protection

Sanctuary (Talent T5) Reduces damage taken from all sources by 3% and when you block, parry, or dodge a melee attack you will gain 2% of maximum mana.
Holy Shield (Talent T7) Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%, increases chance to block by 5%, and deals 294 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active.

Retribution

None So Far

--

As stated previously, there haven't been many Paladin changes thus far in the Cataclysm testing process. However here is a brief run-down of the changes which have come to light so far (compiled by Alpha Tester Valoriel)

The Paladin talent trees have not yet been updated (not counting today's patch, hopefully this is it!)

-Blessing of King and Mark of the wild are now the same, granting 5% to all stats except spirit and some magical resistance.
The 3 resistance Aura have been merged into a single aura
Flash of Light heal significantly more but also cost significantly more
Beacon of Light no longer affect any spell other than Holy Light.
A new heal is available: Divine Light. It heal for a large amount of hitpoint and has a casting time of 3.5s. Think of it as a paladin greater heal. The spell isnt trainable yet.
Blessing of Wisdom has been folded into Blessing of Might.
Blessing of Sanctuary has been replaced by a placeholder talend named Sanctuary, granting the effects of the now defunct Blessing of Sanctuary to the paladin as a passive permanent effect.
Crusader Strike is now available at level 1 and it really make a world of difference.
Crusader Strike is currently replaced by Improved Crusader Strike (Increase the damage done by Crusader Strike by 10%) in the Retribution tree but it is a PLACEHOLDER.
Shield of the Righteous now scale of attack power as block value has been removed.
Protection paladin now get more chance to block through their mastery stat instead of the announced Block Value.
Consecration now deal significantly less damage per tick but last 15 seconds. The cooldown is still of 8 seconds but please note that you can only have one consecration effect up at any time.
I will post a description of Healing Hands when i can log back in. The spell exist but we cannot reach the proper level yet. From memory it is an instant spell, has a 10s cooldown and heal everything in a 10 yard radius around the paladin (but i may remember it wrong).
Blinding shield is not yet available.

(Source)

A new patch is download as I write this, which will hopefully see more Paladin changes. I'll formalise this list of changes as and when we see something new.

NDA-Busting (Hah!) Cataclysm Closed Beta Post

2010-07-01T00:24:00.007+01:00

Hunter Weapon

Yeah, seriously. I would post something about Paladins, but there were no Paladin updates of significant note to test in the Alpha to date. In the latest test build the talent updates and new skills hadn't been implemented yet, nonetheless I'll set up a Build Changelog in anticipation of new content later on.

Closed

2010-02-21T06:08:00.003Z

This blog will no longer be updated. A big thank you to all my readers and commenter's over the past 20 months.

All the best.

~Tim - The Suicidal Zebra.

Note on Heroic Halls of Reflection.

2009-12-16T13:45:00.003Z

/decloak

Paladins of all stripes. Please note that the baddies in the Halls of Reflection Gauntlet event are Undead. This means that you too can finally CC*. Set up a focus macro for Turn Evil and make that blighter run around rather than wail on your tank or healer (esp the Riflemen).

This goes doubly for Ret Paladins.

And triply for Ret Paladins who still haven't used Repentence in PvE content.

*CC. You remember, Crowd Control. Using some method to prevent an NPC from performing actions.

Yeah, like Mages in Burning Crusade heroics. Well remembered.

Right, had to get that off my chest. Back to your regularly scheduled silence.

Extended Outage.

2009-11-25T04:02:00.003Z

As you may have noted blogging round here has dried up over the past month or so, and that won't be changing any time soon. Rather than put up filler posts (which I've never been a great fan of) The Suicidal Zebra won't be updated for at least 6 weeks, during which time I will hopefully once again be bitten by the Blogging Bug. Or have something interesting to say.

See you in the new year.

~ Tim

New to 3.3: More Sensible Nerfs, Slightly Better Mechanics.

2009-11-09T22:38:00.006Z

Updated 17.11.09:

MMO-Champ are reporting that Divine Intervention has changed in the latest build. It may have, but in a logical (non-nerf) manner:

Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect ends. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

(Source: Official PTR Notes 17.11.09)

MMO-Champ datamines tooltips but has no way to extract spell functionality directly. The tooltip has probably just been cleaned up to reflect this tweaked version, which is understandable, when you think about it.

--

The official patch notes have just changed again to reflect a few additions to the patch including a new iteration of LoH+Forbearance. Here are the latest:

Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion and Sated from the target. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

Retribution:

* Repentance: This crowd control effect will no longer break early from the damage done by Righteous Vengeance. (Source)

The LoH change is by far the most sensible iteration thus far, though Protection Paladins won't be able to use it as a tanking cooldown. It's a compromise, though whether it's 'fair' or not depends on which side of the class line you stand ;). This is probably as close as were going to get to a fair non-trivial BG-PvP nerf without redesigning the ability from the ground up, but it's a shame that PvE-ing Paladins are affected. For the record I still hate Forbearance, and if there was one thing I'd like to remove in Cataclysm this would be it.

As an aside, it would be interesting to see LoH and AW continue to be usable back-to-back rather than including the 30-sec lock-out currently in operation for all other Forbearance-causing abilities.

The change to Divine Intervention (the Paladin Wipe Recovery, a.k.a save me a repair bill, tool) is really a quality of life change. As noted by Morrigan in her latest post Divine Intervention not removing the Bloodlust/Sated debuff can cause issues for the attempt after which you have recovered. You almost wonder if someone at Blizzard was reading her blog. Good change, if a little long in coming, and still doesn't really address the underling weakness of the ability

Finally, we come to Repentance. The change was originally floated back in the great nerf of 3.0.3, though at that time the value of Righteous Vengeance was far lower than it currently is. The reason why this is important is that RV is a passive ability over which a Ret Paladin has very little control (excepting the obvious), and this can leave Repentance as slightly redundant in PvP. Again, it simply makes Ret PvP mechanics a little less silly, and I doubt that it'll have wide-ranging impications for the next Arena Season. However, don't quote me on that if Modders start writing macro's to 'count up' the remaining RV damage and then using Repentance, allowing RV to tick unto the opponents death.

So, we've finally got to a stage where the Patch as advertised isn't totally bonkers from this Paladin's perspective. Surely it's can't be long before it's deployed to the live servers, perhaps even before the end of November?

Good News Everyone... The Real Paladin Tier 10

2009-11-05T19:45:00.006Z

Bah.

The page was ninja-updated. The set below is in fact Season 8 PvP, and MMO-Champs version was Tier-10. Damn. Oh well, at least the Season 8 Set looks good.

*goes off to cry*

--

The Official Tier-10 Sneak Peak has been updated to include previews of the Paladin and Priest Tier-10, and I'm pleased to say that the former differs significantly from that datamined by MMO-Champion. Here's the image,

I'm tempted to say that it looks a hell of a lot like the next Paladin PvP tier rather than Tier-10, but we'll get no better advance warning on the looks of the official tier than the horses mouth. Personally, I like the look a whole lot more than the datamined graphics and it feels a heck of a lot more 'Paladiny', if that's a word I'm allowed to invent.

I'm not sure what the datamined version actually is, perhaps an NPC model or Shaman T-10. Or it may be that Blizzard have got their wires crossed somewhere. We shall see.

The link to the page of all set previews is always on the right of this blog.

Sacred Shield Changes Partially Reverted, more Forbearance

2009-11-03T23:40:00.012Z

The 3.3 Patch Notes have just been updated in preparation for another build this evening. The big news is undoubtedly that Sacred Shield has been un-nerfed a little - the Flash of Light HoT now only exists as a part of the Infusion of Light Talent but the Shield proc will have a 6 second cooldown once again. Did anyone care about this HoT anyway given how it didn't roll and was overwritten by any new FoL? Probably not.

Well, they may care now as the text of the patch note implies that the HoT isn't tied to Sacred Shield. This is unlikely to go live, but is well worth testing and would represent a big buff for Holy Paladins from 3.2.2 state.

On the other hand, Lay On Hands has been tied to Forbearance. It's hard not to face-palm at this change given that it's still not usable in the Arena and has a base cooldown of 20 mins. Frankly, it's a nerf targeted at Battlegrounds and open-world PvP which has the side-effect of making the Skill significantly less useful for Protection PvE. Yet again Forbearance is being used as a catch-all rather than a genuine solution and yet again we're wondering at the lack of imagination in design; perhaps if all you have is a club everything looks like a knee-cap. Still, it's better than the alternative floated last week, but are these changes just 'solutions' in search of a problem?

Oh, Holy Paladin's casting LoH on your Paladin Tank? Congratulations, your Paladin Raid tank can no longer cast Divine Protection for 2 mins. Great Work.

I sense a few more iterations are necessary.

Otherwise, there's not much to see in these changes. We'll be able to avoid repair bills twice as often with a new 10min cooldown on Divine Intervention (hilariously, it still cannot be used in Arena's), and the Aura Mastery change from 10 to 6 seconds has been officially included.

From a more general perspective lifting the level restriction on Meeting Stones is a GOOD CHANGE, though having it included for Hallow's End would have been nice. On the PvP side of things 25 Arena Points for completing the Battleground Daily is interesting for those on low ratings seeking to push on for better gear. You're still talking a maximum of 175 more Arena Points a week to make a dent in the points required for decent gear and it doesn't change rating, but some will complain anyway. I couldn't care less how gear is dished out so long as players in competitive areas of gameplay can compete on a level playing field.

The full text of the patch note changes can be found here. Full PTR Patch Notes here.

EDIT - Got the wrong end of Battleground change. Corrected.

EDIT2 - In hilarious coincidence, exactly one year ago today I posted this:

A Lack of Patience With Forbearance

Prot-Ret, the New Prot-Holy?

2009-11-03T17:21:00.005Z

Prot-Holy was nerfed significantly with the justification that Paladins healing in PvP should be taking Holy talents, not Prot talents. This has been reinforced with the recent change to Sacred Shields' baseline effect and placement of 'Imp. SS' deep in Holy, though it strikes me as being ass-backwards as far as development decisions go. The knock-on effects are inevitable and have been brushed off by Ghostcrawler under the excuse that Ret is 'too tanky'.

*cue laughter*

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone, even in 3.0, say that Ret was too durable. Too bursty, definitely, but never too durable. The last time I can remember anyone bring out that old chestnut was in Vanilla, levelled against the whole class even as it underperformed in PvP and players needed an atlas to find their interrupt (as well as their asses). Indeed, the 'Three Lives' comment has yet again returned at a time when Bubble-breakers have never been more prevelent, and by GC no less. You might be under the misapprehension that a class which needs three lives to down an equally geared adversary has greater issues than these cooldown, I know I am. But I digress.

With Ret's durability being nerfed and burst no longer being the be-all and end-all in Arena PvP Prot+Ret has started making an appearance. The idea seems to be that burst damage is still 'okay' but control is generally better, to the extent that it's more competitive in group PvP. Also, the spec is obviously a hell of a lot more durable than Ret in 3.2 and even more so in 3.3 as SS and hence its' synergy with AoW+FoL is being nerfed.

Mana could be something of an issue even with talented Divine Plea, but look at what you could get.

Avengers Shield - A Ranged Snare or Silence on a 30sec cooldown that deals plenty of damage.
Ardent Defender - loads of damage reduction, passive self-rez and expertise
30 Second Hammer of Justice to make up for a lack of Repentence.
Damage Reduction up the wazooli, including magical damage reduction and party damage reduction/redirection
A significantly larger Hit Point pool.

In 3v3 Arena team Ret's light is declining, as evidenced by the latest SK-100 leaderboard which has Zero (0) Rets. If you still want to play your Paladin in an even slightly offensive role Prot-Ret could be a strong alternative to Ret. Heck, if you want to give it a try all you need is 50g for a respec and a good Sword+Board, though eventually Block Value gear is going to start ot look tempting.

Tentative 53/18 Build, Inc. Glyphs.

---

N.B. I'm not to blame if Prot is nerfed following this post. Really.

Sacred Shield, Now 80% Less Effective. - Updated

2009-10-27T23:52:00.013Z

Update

A couple of other changes have been datamined from the latest PTR build by MMO-Champ :-

1) Lay of Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
2) Aura Mastery now lasts 6 seconds, down from 10.

Additionally, the Sacred Shield change is in the tooltip for this build. AM is a PvP nerf, LoH is no longer a Paladin Tank cooldown. But really, why was this necessary, LoH has been like that since Vanilla.

Oh wait, I know why, it's the 7800 mana it grants in PvE combined with the Glyph of Divinity. Why not just change the Glyph to 'has no effect when LoH is cast on yourself'?

/headdesk

Here's another possibility: is this a nerf targeted specifically out our performance in Battlegrounds? After all, rated BG's are coming soon and there may be a fear that Paladins will dominate this new 'PvP bracket'.

--

Patch 3.3's latest build includes the following change:

Baseline
Sacred Shield: The damage absorption effect from this ability now triggers only once every 30 seconds. [As opposed to once every 6 seconds]

Holy
Infusion of Light: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 seconds.
(Source)

Sacred Shield's baseline effect just got hit to be 20% of it's current effectiveness, which represents a huge nerf to the value of the skill for any Paladin not deep in Holy. To put it into context, a baseline Sacred Shield in 3.2 will proc up to five damage shields over 30 seconds with one cast, a Patch 3.3 SS will proc one.

Why? What's the motivation? Well, the bugbear of many a Paladin over the last few years has struck again: skill nerfs because of PvP. Prot-Holy build is still very popular as a spec and deep-Holy often gets a lot of criticism for being non-interesting for a PvPing Paladin compared to the control and offensive potential of Prot-Holy. Prot's big issue was one of mobility without Holy Shock, and so a strong Sacred Shield remains powerful against teams without an offensive dispel. By making Infusion of Light required for a PvP-viable Sacred Shield any skills deeper than 24pts in Prot - including Ardent Defender, Avenger's Shield, Touched by the Light and Judgments of the Just - are immediately taken off the table. I'm not qualified enough to judge if a crippled Sacred Shield will in fact cripple Prot-Holy but if I had to guess I'd say it's not good for that gameplay niche, to put it mildly.

As a side-effect Ret will obviously take a huge durability and utility hit in PvP as even without Divine Guardian the ability absorbed a non-trivial amount of incoming damage, the Shield will absorb less damage than an instant FoL will heal. Finally, Sacred Shield becomes a very weak ability for Prot damage mitigation in any Raid with no Holy Pally.

Is Sacred Shield now a worthy lvl80 baseline ability for all specs? For any specs? God no.

Ghostcrawler on Divine Sacrifice.

2009-10-26T21:04:00.003Z

The crabby one has poked his head above the parapet to describe how the new incarnations of Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian will work. In the post we learn that:

3.1's incarnation is too powerful and has begun to be a major balancing factor for encounters,
The D-Guard effect may last for the full duration of D-Sac rather than ending if D-Sac breaks early,
And this may not be the final interation of D-Sac and D-Guard development as the PTR is ongoing

There's nothing surprising in there, the talent is intended to work as you would expect except for the break conditions of Divine Guardian. Of most importance from a testing POV however is that we finally have a firm idea of how the talent is supposed to work.

I'll try to explain this all.

The old (3.2) model of "raid wall" where you get to essentially Shield Wall your entire raid by bubbling to avoid the excessive damage was overpowered and we were increasingly starting to balance around it.

The new (PTR) model is that Diving Sacrifice applies to the party, not raid. It can absorb 40% of your health x your party size. If you are in a party of 5, it will redirect damage to you that is taken by the party up to a max of 200% of your health. If you are in a party of 2, it will redirect damage to you that is taken by the party up to a max of 80% of your health. If you take enough damage to drop you below 20% of your health, the spell is cancelled.

Divine Guardian reduces damage taken by the raid by 20% for up to 15 sec when you cast Divine Sacrifice. The damage reduction isn't directly related to the redirected damage any longer, except that it stops when Divine Sacrifice stops because you have absorbed too much damage or dropped your own health too low. (I understand the current PTR may not have DG stopping when DS stops.) The talent still affects Sacred Shield as a secondary effect.

Whether you bubble or not will not change the amount absorbed. If you do not bubble, then both DS and DG will cancel as soon as it drops you below 20%. We added this cap because we thought the self-gib feature of using DS / DG without bubbling was weird. However, the spell can still kill you if the damage is quick and massive enough. If you have DS up when a party member gets hit by a Mimiron rocket, you'll die before the 20% cancellation kicks in.

Example: Kallee the paladin has 50,000 health. She has the DG talent. When she uses DS in a full raid, she can absorb 20% of incoming damage to the raid until one of three things happen: 1) 15 sec expire, 2) she absorbs 100,000 damage total (from damage to her party only), 3) she drops below 10,000 health.

Yes, this means that in some situations you could get the full 15 sec duration if some part of the raid is taking damage but the paladin's party is not. The more typical case is a situation in which the whole raid is taking damage.

A related significant change is that all sources of damage should now count towards Divine Sacrifice. Before there were some situations, Twin Val'kyr for instance, where the paladin wouldn't take damage or wouldn't take enough damage from the redirection.

P. S. We have been trying to move more abilities from the party to the raid, but some just don't scale nicely and are either overpowered in a 5-player group or underpowered in a 25-player group. We may implement some kind of scaling mechanism for Cataclysm or just accept that a few abilities need to remain party only.

P. P. S. This has changed a couple of times on the PTR already and it's possible this is not the final implementation, so confusion is totally understandable.

(Source)

So, the discussion moves on from 'How should this work?' to 'Should this be used as a Raid-wide Damage Reduction cooldown or as Damage Reduction for the Raid's Tank?'. Essentially, 20% Raid-wide DR or ~50% DR for the tank. Personally, the only further change I'd like to see is to move Divine Guardian up a tier alongside Divine Sacrifice, to make it viable as Ret raid utility.

And that's my last post on Divine Sacrifice for a while. Promise.

Divine Sacrifice - Revenge of the Extended Tooltip

2009-10-25T23:40:00.001Z

Latest Divine Sacrifice change, ostensibly to prevent gibbing yourself with the skill:

Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.

I was trying to think of a way to make fun of this, but having to buy a Kindle to read a tooltip is beyond parody.

One Final Change Before the Cataclysm?

2009-10-23T16:34:00.002+01:00

How about in the 4.0 Patch, where gear is fairly irrelevant and a lot of the raiding content has been cleared leading to piles and piles of Emblems being stocked up with nothing to spend them on, the Emblems themselves become Bind to Account? By the end of 3.3 many mains are going to have 100's of EoT's stockpiled from running heroics and raids in 3.3, but unfortunately will have nothing to invest in those EoT's in. Transferring them to be spent on an alt, either for raiding or gaining DPS items to level with, renders these items useful beyond their usual expiration date and has the potential to bridge the gap between lvl80 hierlooms and 81-85 levelling content.

What do you think?

Seal And Libram Switching Macro.

2009-10-23T15:23:00.005+01:00

UPDATED 21/12/09 (Patch 3.3)

Patch 3.3 has broken the 'Safe' Libram swap macro at the bottom of this page, I believe as a sideffect of the breaking of Rogue poison-weapon swapping macro's. The less complicated one (listed first) still works, with the added benefit of having the character space to fit in calls to the Clcret rotation helper addon. Still, make sure you don't hit it accidentally.

---

If you are a Ret Paladin and have been involved in any sort of raiding content recently you should now be getting used to Seal Switching depending on the encounter or phase in a particular fight. You should also be using the Libram of Valiance, the super-sexy Relic deisnged for Seal of Vengeance. However I know that some of you aren't swapping their Relic along with their Seal, even though Valiance doesn't help SoCommand at all. Tut Tut...

Aren't you glad I'm here to help ;).

Libram swapping can be performed at any time, even during a GCD, but invokes a 1.5 second GCD. Hence if you Libram-swap as soon as you cast an instant you will only incur a total 1.5sec GCD, along with the usual reset of the weapon swing timer. The total procedure can be placed in a macro, seen below:

#showtooltip Seal of Command
/cast Seal of Command
/equip Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude

However, the Libram will still be swapped even if Seal of Command isn't cast. Correcting for this failure mode is a little tricky, but the following /run command should work out:

/cast Seal of Command
/run local f=RbA or CreateFrame("Frame","RbA") f:SetScript("OnEvent",function(s,e,u,p) if u=="player" and p=="Seal of Command" then EquipItemByName(42852) end end) f:RegisterEvent("UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEEDED")

The script basically attempts to cast Seal of Command, and then if successful runs the EquipItemByName function with the arguement (42852). This number is actually the item number of the Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude, but you can input the item ID of any suitable Libram. In theory EquipItemByName can take the item name aswell as the number as an arguement, but in this case that option would take the macro over the character limit.

Check out Wowhead for ItemID's, the same number used in their item weblinks.

thanks to Glutton on the EJ Forums for this info

Paladin Tier 10 Graphics... Meh.

2009-10-21T15:47:00.005+01:00

By now you've all seen pics of Paladin Tier 10 and it looks like opinion is split: some quite like it, others think that Blizzards designers should die in a fire. The general colour scheme doesn't help, pinks purples and browns have never really felt like Paladin colours, and skulls and/or fire make you think more readily of Deathknights or Shaman than Paladins. Note that the 'pink' jaw piece looks like a rendering error.

There is a blue recolour of Tier 10 in the game files which looks better but still doesn't feel much like Paladin gear to me.

This isn't the first time the Paladin community hasn't been particularly impressed with the look of their Tier gear, we've got something of a love-hate relationship with Blizzards art designers. The love can be traced back to Judgement and Lightbringer which both rock, the hate is a product of Lightforge (Tier-0, though great recolours exist), Lawbringer (Banana-shouldered Tier 1) and Crystalforge (ugh, Tier 5). Of course, the problem isn't so much with the artistic ability of the art team which has generally been of a high quality, but perhaps their underlying inspiration needs some work.

Tier 8 and Tier 10 are designed to be evocative of Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. Rather than genuinely make you think 'that's Paladin gear', they're styled as if you've picked up and decided to throw on what has just been dropped from a boss. In this they've been successful, the plate Tier 10 gear would suite any of the classes equally with only a minor recolour, but that's not to say that they suit any of them particularly well. This philosophy seems unnecessary when the token system implies taking a template item dropped and then heavily adapting it to the class Tier.

Does this mean we're past the days of Judgement and Lightbringer which were undoubtably Paladin styles? I hope not, but it will be if this expansion is anything to go by.

Blue Tier 10 Recolour found here, posted by Vashdakari

Things I Hate, Onyxia Edition.

2009-10-16T11:37:00.003+01:00

I hate:

1) Disconnecting Off-tanks. If your internet isn't stable you probably shouldn't be doing an important job.

2) Disconnecting Healers. As (1), but I'm willing to forgive you if no other healers are online.

In fact, just about anyone Disconnecting. Except for the other Ret Pally, he can disconnect all he wants so long as he doesn't roll on gear.

3) Having to be a whelp tank to replace (1) as the only reasonably geared tank off-spec in the raid.

4) DPS in front of the Big Add, or anywhere near the Add's tank. Cleave = 5-yard chaining death.

5) Healers in front of the Big Add. See above.

6) Tanks not turning the big add away from (4) and (5).

7) Melee DPS without Enemy Cast Bars turned on, and hence standing in Blast Nova when it's a 5 fecking second cast. Seriously. Just. Argh!!!

8) Shoddy Phase 3 Transitions. Sometimes understandable, but Onyxia shouldn't be coming down in a nasty position if ranged DPS is told to stop at 41% until RL tells them to bring her down.

9) DPS Standing anywhere near the Whelp Pits during (8). If your whelp tank is pulling away from them now is not the time to rush towards them, if necessary stay in SW/SE until Onyxia is in the right place.

And the prime, number one thing I hate:

10) Wiping for 2 hours on a boss we really should one-shot by now.

Auxiliary thing I hate, not limited to Onyxia

Someone pointing out mid-raid where a specific member of the raid went wrong (in painstaking detail), going on about it for quarter of an hour without making any actually useful observations. A word to the wise everyone, you can only go on and on and on for so long until other raid members start to think you're just in love with your own voice.

This post was inspired by Wednesday's Onyxia raid.

Tier 10 Librams: First Glance.

2009-10-15T17:50:00.001+01:00

MMO-Champion, doing their usual sterling work, have datamined the current bonuses for the Tier-10 Relics. They all follow a similar theme: stackable bonuses useful to the spec triggered by a skill in their general rotation. They don't, in the main, represent as much of an upgrade over Tier-9 as T9 did over T8/PvP, but they are still reasonably well budgeted.

Paladin T10 Holy Relic (Holy Shock) - Your Holy Shock spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

The T-10 Holy Libram proc is triggered by Holy Shock, rather than Holy Light as in the case of Libram of Veracity (T9). The maximum possible benefit is 255 Spell Power vs Veracity's 234, but it stacks over a period of 10 seconds (minimum) rather than being active after the first Holy Light cast. As usual, pre-buffing before the encounter begins may be a way to overcome this drawback.

Not being a Healer it's tough for me to gauge the value of the Libram, but my gut instinct is that it's not that much of an upgrade and will be fairly low down in the Emblems of Frost spending priority list. In the grand scheme of things 22 Spellpower really isn't all that much and the upgrade of any single set piece to the next Tier of ilvl's should provide a better return.

--

Paladin T10 Protection Relic (Shield of Righteousness) - Your Shield of Righteousness ability grants 73 dodge rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

Next we come to the Protection Libram. Again, it's a stackable buff, this time providing Dodge Rating in chunks of 75 on strikes from your Shield of Righteousness. It's little better than the Libram of Defiance, the Tier 9 equivalent, but the 20 more dodge rating will be eaten up by diminishing returns in Tier 9/10 gear. The stacking nature of this buff and the fact that it requires a minimum of 12 seconds to stack makes it only slightly better than Defiance and almost certainly not worth investing in until all other tanking upgrades have been purchased.

And your off-spec gear.

And your gems.

And Hierloom items.

Okay, perhaps not Hierlooms, but you get my drift.

Incidentally, check out this thread on Maintankadin to learn more about avoidance diminishing returns.

--

Paladin T10 Retribution Relic (Crusader Strike) - Your Crusader Strike ability grants 44 Strength for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Now, on to the Ret Libram. It is the upgrade for the Libram of Valiance, and at the peak it provides 220 Strength (44*5) vs Valiance's 200. It also has an up-time of 100%, compared with the ~96% of Valiance (due the small chance Valiance has of expiring before the buff is renewed). However, other comparisons aren't necessarily that favourable.

The ramp-up requirement for all the DPS librams have probably been designed to make the Librams less useful in PvP, where an always-up +200 Str could make a heck of a difference. The same was true with Valiance, where it was tied to a Seal less than viable for PvP. It's frustrating, and speaks to bad itemisation for those actual PvP Librams, but there's not much that can be done about it.

Back to PvE and T-10 takes at least 16 seconds to ramp up to its' full potential, rather than the 1-2 secs of Valiance, and 20 seconds is probably a more reasonable estimate. Over a minute of continuous time on-target is needed for T10 to equal Valance's DPS contribution, though admittedly SoV/Cor's own ramp-up will nibble away at that figure. Obviously for full effectiveness you'll also want to cap Expertise and Hit, though you'll probably be doing that anyway.

On the flip side T-10 isn't tied to any one Seal, making it ideal for situations where using SoVeng/Cor would be sub-optimal. Trash packs and encounters with multiple adds are prime opportunities to let loose with this Libram and Seal of Command. Even so, if these sorts of conditions occur a with some frequency the Tier 10 Set 2-item bonus (40% chance of refreshing the cooldown of Divine Storm) would be the first port of call.

---

So to sum up:

Relic Upgrades:
Holy T10 - Small upgrade
Protection T10 - Minor Upgrade
Retribution T10 - Small to medium upgrade (depending on encounter)

A major part of why these items are lacklustre is the stacking nature of the buff and that they are linked to skills with an effective cooldown. Presupposing a Tier-10 Set purchasing scheme similar to Tier 9's you'll almost certainly want to be buying your Class Set first. But lets not get at all down-hearted, on their own these Librams are great and yet again show just how much of an improvement Tier 9's Relics are.

As with all Patch 3.3 info this is subject to change using the PTR process

*note* Post needs more images

Patch 3.3: Tier 10 Set Bonuses - Ret Updated.

2009-10-09T01:10:00.004+01:00

Loathe as I was to post about the Tier 10 Set Bonuses, here they are. Note that the Ret Paladin Set bonuses have been swapped and clarified by Blizzard over the current MMO-Champion listing, so I'm pretty pleased I chose to wait:

Retribution:

2 piece bonus - Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to reset the cooldown on your Divine Storm ability.
4 piece bonus - Your Seals and Judgements deal 10% additional damage.

(Source)

Protection:

2 piece bonus - Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
4 piece bonus - When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.

(Source)

Holy:

2 piece bonus - While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your healing spells are increased by 35%.
4 piece bonus - Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.

(Source)

Bonuses are in the testing stage and will remain subject to change for some time.

For my money, the Ret bonus looks pretty good and should change up the rotation slightly, though they may well start to limit what can actually proc the cooldown reset. The one concern with DS will probably remain mana cost, 18% is a big chunk of your mana bar.

It's quite late here so I'll leave it at that.

Patch 3.3: Cementing The Raid-Wall, Fixing Divine Sacrifice.

2009-10-08T01:00:00.006+01:00

The Patch notes have just been updated and finally we have some detail for Paladin changes in 3.3. It looks like the idea of a raid-wide Shield Wall is going to be formalised and tested following a rejigging of Divine Sacrifice and Guardian.

Paladin
Protection

Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.

Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.

Okay, this is going to take a little unpacking to explain.

Currently:

Divine Sacrifice redirects 30% (40 with Divine Guardian) from each raid member to the Paladin. This should continue until 150% of the Paladin's Max HP have been transferred. Sometimes however, most notably when Divine Shield is active, the Paladin takes no damage and the Divine Sacrifice buff appears to persist for much longer than expected (usually the full duration of Divine Shield). This effectively shields the Raid for 30% (40% when talented) of all incoming damage (hence 'Raid-Wall'), immensely useful for certain hard-modes. It's pretty much always been recognised as a bug, and a powerful one at that, but silence from Blizzard made assessing the intended functionality impossible.

Note that you only need to invest 11pts in Protection to gain this Raid-Wall.

In 3.3:

Divine Sacrifice only applies to 'Party' members (not raid-wide). It transfers 30% of damage taken by Party members. The damage redirection is limited to 40% x # of Party members, i.e 200% of the Paladin's maximum health when in a full party. As the Paladin will only take 50% of the damage redirected, and damage is only redirected Party-wide, the chances of insta-gib are significantly reduced.

Generally, 3.3's DSac will be similar to 3.2's except that it's Party-wide and correctly limited by the Paladin's health.

Divine Guardian will be a true 20% Raid-Wall, but should function in a much more predictable manner. Extending the duration of Divine Sacrifice by minimising the damage your Party-members are taking will be key to the proper use of this ability - for a 28k HP raid-buffed Paladin to retain a 10sec duration his party members would have to be taking only 4.6k DPS (after modifiers) on average. Not very much, but the raid-wide 20% damage reduction will help.

The Paladin using Divine Sacrifice+Guardian should not be in the same party as the Main Tank.

No clue if this ability will stack when multiple Paladins use it at the same time (probably not), nor any idea if you will have full DSac duration if all your party members are immune to all damage (gogo 5-Paladin parties).

---

A broken wall is still a wall. Ish.

I'm loath to call what has to be a bug-fix a nerf, but it is. To get a Raid-Wall (i.e. Divine Guardian) you need to invest 17pts in Protection which necessitates the omission of potent DPS increasing or healing talents. Except in very specific fights taking Divine Guardian will probably be a Ret Paladin no-go. For Tanks, the use of DSac in concert with Divine Shield shouldn't be required any longer, so no dropped aggro, but it still greatly increases incoming damage. It's probably not something that a tanking Protection Paladin would be able to use because of the substantial increase in damage taken in any situation where you actually want to use it.

I like the redesign in general, and had it been a part of 3.1 I'd have bitten Blizzard's hand off. However 17 pts is probably too deep for a DPS or Healing spec, and instead putting both DSac and DG in Tier 3 (requiring a total investment of 13pts) would be a better idea IMO.

What are your thoughts?

Image taken from Flickr Creative Commons group

Patch 3.3: Imp Shopping But Not Much Else... Yet

2009-10-02T15:44:00.003+01:00

Warlock rerollers are in for a treat in 3.3. Imps are available at level 1 and with now prerequisite quest. No longer will you have to waste any time discovering the (often comedic) name of your trusty (though rarely trusted) companion. If you don't like the name simply delete the character and try again.

You may get lucky, but probably not this lucky:

---

I would be posting conjecture on 3.3 but there really isn't much to go on. There are no Paladin changes except for SoCorruption's tooltip correction (to bring it in line with SoV's), nerfs to Pet Avoidance which should make dealing with Treants and Armies of the Dead slightly easier, and various buffs to low level characters such that reaching level 15 is more painless than ever.

Oh, and Vanish is getting fixed, using a suggestion at least 4 years old (Stealth/Vanish buff cannot break on damage for 1sec after cast). Finally, good sense has prevailed.

Speculation goes that the PTR has been released to compete with SW:TOR Beta signups and this is a very preliminary build. On the other hand you'd imagine that so deep into Wrath of the Lich King few class balance changes are actually required. We'll have to wait and see.

More Token Time!

2009-09-30T23:42:00.002+01:00

Hot off the presses is an extension for Brewfest (in the US at least, should also be in the UK).

Brewfest is a time of year where the focus is placed squarely on the celebration of fun and food. In order to give everyone enough time to truly experience this event (and after some fine tuning on the part of the event organizers), we will be extending the event two additional days. The festivities will end on October 5th at 11:59PM, so don’t miss it!

(Source)

Two extra days won't seem like a lot, but the extension allowing you to net 80 more tokens is a pretty conservative estimate. If you got to 200 and thought you didn't have the time to complete the achievement you should still be able to get it done.

Remember though, don't buy anything until you have 350 Tokens. Then buy the Brewfest Garb needed for Disturbing The Peace, do a little dance, and sell the garb back to any vendor for a 350 Token refund. Finally, go and buy the Brew of the Month Club Membership Form for 200 Tokens, and perhaps even the adorable Pink Elekk pet for 100.

Mount hounds will also be pleased to hear that this gives you 2 additional days' worth of attempts at the dastardly Coren Direbrew, he of bloody-low-drop-rate-and-hexed-rolls-mount fame.

Fans of the Brewfest Seasonal Garb can also use this additional time to raise the tokens and buy each item outright.

Happy Ram Racing!

All Powerful She May Be, But Her Spelling Sucks

2009-09-25T11:52:00.002+01:00

"Remeber, Remeber how to spell 'Remember'"

I'll let her off with her spelling of Reveler, she may be British ;).

3.2.2 Seal of Command Notes.

2009-09-23T21:47:00.004+01:00

Just a few things to mention:

Seal of Command should now be used in favour of Seal of Righteousness in virtually every (PvE) circumstance. You should only be using SoR in AoE situations anyway, but in these circumstances SoC should now be able to pull out a meaningful DPS lead,
Seal of Command's cleave effect range seems to be roughly melee range, i.e. ~5 yards,
One target cannot be hit with multiple SoC cleave effects from the same source,
As indicated, Seal of Command's cleave won't work with Divine Storm or Hammer of the Righteous, but the basic SoC proc continues to work with these skills
Seal of Commands' Cleave will break Crowd Control,
The Cleave effect counts as an AoE attack, and AoE-damage reducing effects will affect this proc (e.g Factions Champions in TotC),
Seal of Command should henceforth be known as "Seal of Cleave"

ADDED:

SoC Cleave procs will chain to nearby attackable neutral NPC's, so be cautious

Taking the talent is a tough call, the trade-off largely depends on your raid make-up. If present in Moonkin heavy raids should drop points from Swift Retribution, Warrior/druid heavy ones will look to Vindication, Paladin heavy ones probably won't be picking up Imp Blessing of Wisdom. SoC's probably worth it, but will stimulate many a lively discussion.

Have fun with it :).

ADDED: It strikes me that I haven't really distinguished between PvP abnd PvE. Personally, I think that the relatively weak Judgement damage of SoC continues to push SoR as the superior skill. Breaking CC certainly doesn't help either.

BRB, Vomiting IRL.

2009-09-23T12:27:00.004+01:00

I hate Brewfest. Really, seriously hate it.

It's not the endless grind for Brewfest Tokens which makes me think that trying to get the Violet Protodrake is a futile exercise.

It's not missing out on a Brewfest Mount or Direbrew Remote in every single roll, no matter how many times I run that git Coren.

It's not even listening to those Goblins sing every time I step just outside Orgrimmar. Actually, that's kinda catchy.

No, it's that god damn fucking awful in game drunk effect. What were those bastards thinki-

..

thinking? "Oh, you want to do the 'fight off the Dark Iron' daily? Sure, but first we need to stick a blur effect filter over the whole of the screen so you can't see a damn thing, and then put a pulsing pincushion distortion effect over the whole damn scene. And if that wasn't bad enough, you won't be able to walk in a straight line, adding to the wonderful sense of up-chuck inducing nausea."

Oh, but I'm cunning. I'll turn off the blur filter so all I have to deal with is that damn pulsing. But that just lulls you into a false sense of sec-

..

security, whilst I can see clearly the screen continues to pulse in my periphery and walking still isn't straight. Cue 'I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fi- PASS THE FUCKING BUCKET!!'.

And then, you can't get rid of the effect quickly once you finish the daily. It's beyond them to put something clever in like making coffee dispel the effect. So I have to wait for ten bleeding minutes for the smashed/drunk/tipsy effect to wear off before I can do anything else, preferably >50ft away from the PC monitor.

This achievement grind can't end soon enough. Halloween is up next, which can't be that ba-

No Pink Elekk Quest in EU Realms.

2009-09-22T09:59:00.005+01:00

Ah, that explains things. A sharp-eyed player on the EU forums was wondering why the Pink Elekks on Parade and Wolpertinger quests, specifically stated by Kisirani to be back in this year, weren't available. One member stated that they were specifically bugged in the EU, and Wyxian replied:

This is unfortunately not correct. The Pink Elekk and Wolpertinger quests are deliberately not available in Europe. Though we would like to have them available here too, this isn't possible I'm afraid.

(Source)

No doubt due to the objections of a particular state within the EU. So, quite apart from anything else EU players are down 40 Tokens (the usual reward for the Pink Elekks quest). I'm guessing that PEoP isn't a daily otherwise it equate to 40 tokens per day.

So, that should explain the disparities on US and EU Token totals.

Grind Every Day for the Brewfest Achievement?

2009-09-20T18:23:00.002+01:00

You need 550 Brewfest Tokens to complete the achievement, i.e. 200 for entry into the Brew of the Month and 350 for the three pieces of dress.

Day One, you can comfortably gain 85 Tokens.

Every day thereafter you can gain 25 tokens from the two dailies around the Brewfest camp.

At odd intervals (but at least once every day) you can do the Brewfest Keg Delivery for 2 tokens every turn-in. 7-8 Turn-ins are comfortably attainable, 11-12 is probably the Horde maximum (Alliance may be able to squeeze out a couple more due to a shorter path). Assume an additional 15 tokens per day on average.

Brewfest is 14 days long.

Approx. number of days required after the first = (550-85)/40 = 12 Days.

So, miss 3 days and you'll have great difficulty completing the achievement. Am I missing something?

(This is presupposing that the Costume Purchase refund is fixed, otherwise you only need 350 tokens.)

About that Pandaren Monk Mini-pet.

2009-09-15T01:15:00.003+01:00

Updated 04/11/09

Looks like I was wrong. ;)

--

You must have seen the Pandaren Brewmaster Mini-pet by now. The model has been datamined in 3.2.2 and looks awesome. Don't take my word for it though:

So, where will you see this? Well, it won't be for the 5th Anniversary, we're getting the super-cute Onyxia Whelpling to commemorate that date. It's unlikely to be for the Brewfest either, the holiday is awash with pets, mounts and a title already. Plus the first load of Violet Protodrakes are due. But still, a Coren Direbrew uber-rare drop (al la the Scorchling) is not beyond the realms of possibility. However, I think there's a better bet.

The World of Warcraft Magazine.

Blizzard are very good at incentivising real world purchases with in-game rewards. Just look at the TCG, you can be sure that if the Brewmaster was a TCG reward Upper Deck would be proclaiming it from the tallest tower. The only upcoming event as yet not accounted for is the release of the first issue of WoW-The Magazine, also due some time around WoW's 5th anniversary, and the enthusiasm for it has been muted to say the least. This would be one way to get the manic collectors salivating.

So, a cool mini-pet for the $39.95 1 year subscription. Tempted?

Want a DPS Relic? Don't Have the Tokens to Spare? Use Honour!

2009-09-12T17:00:00.012+01:00

Obviously, the best raiding Ret Libram is the sexy, wonderful and fantastic Libram of Valiance. Everyone loves an effective 200 passive Strength from the Relic slot but it comes at a price: 25 Emblems of Triumph.

For those not yet well advanced in TotC-10/25 and regularly smacking up Koralon EoT's are hard to come by and worth their weight in gold. If you're not DPS as your main spec you should rightly baulk at the price, at least until there is no more main-spec gear for you to buy. So, what Libram should you go for?

Not This One.

Well, the best choice was previously the Libram of Radiance, but 25 EoV's = 25 EoC's and so it comes at a very high cost. Don't rely on getting lucky with this as a drop, the drop rate is atrocious. And anyway, there is a better option.

Season 7 just started, and there's been a new development: PvP Relics's are now available for Honour! I've mentioned before that the PvP Libram's are great for PvE but previously they've required an Arena Rating and Arena Points to gain. In a PvP Season transition the old second highest tier (now 3rd highest) is usually made available with Honour, but that hasn't included Weapons (much to my chagrin) or Relics. The same is true this year, with one exception: Deadly Relics can now be bought with Honour Points and no Rating requirement!

WoWHead is still (wrongly) listing these items as requiring an Arena Rating of 700 and some Arena Points. However, all Deadly Relics can be bought from Zom Bocom, the Apprentice Arena Vendor in the Dalaran Underbelly, for the low-low price of 15300 Honour Points. Okay, it's still something of a grind, but well worth it for Relic using DPS Off-specs and maybe a few Healer specs too (the DG Holy Libram for example gives 334 additional Spellpower to your FoL for example).

The Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude is worth 120 Passive AP. It's not a patch on the Libram of Valiance, but definitely the next best for players with no access to the Arena.

Thanks go to new WoW-Blogger Ayrlyn and her blog 'The Light, and How The Swing It'.

Yay, 3.2.2 Bug Fixes!

2009-09-11T11:31:00.006+01:00

The Test Realm Patch notes have been updated to include a couple of crucial bug fixes for Paladins.

Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Seal of Vengeance is currently quite a bit buggy. Individual debuff stacks are accumulated for each SoV user, but size of the damaging proc isn't determined properly. When there is only 1 stack on the target the damage of the weapon proc is scaled by the size of this stack, which can cause some rather interesting effects with Divine Storm when you have a Prot and Ret Paladin in the same raid. Great huh?

Well, not so great. You see, the flip side to this bug is that when there are two or more debuff stacks on a particular mob the size of the proc is determined by the smallest stack size. This isn't so bad for the Ret Paladin as long as he is the only Ret Paladin in the raid as he's always the slowest at accumulating stacks anyway, but it can serve to throttle the threat generation of any Tankadins in the raid.

So, rejoice! A useful bug fix. But wait, there's more!

Paladin Tier-9 DPS 2-Piece Set Bonus: Now grants the correct chance for Righteous Vengeance ticks to be critical strikes.

Not many people have two pieces of Tier 9 as yet, but those cool dudes at Elitist Jerks discovered that the 2-Piece Tier 9 wasn't working properly. Here's that bonus:

2: Your Righteous Vengeance talent now has a chance for its' damage to be critical strikes.

After a number of exhaustive tests on target dummies and raids it was determined that the current chance for your RV dot to crit is 3-4% with this bonus. Clearly, this is blinking low, and makes 4* Tier 8.5 a little better than 2*ilvl 232 Tier 9. It's presumed that the 'correct' crit rate is your melee crit rate, which should be upwards of 40% raid-buffed. Even if, for some idiotic reason, spell crit rate was used the crit rate for the DoT would only be ~5% less. With a crit rate in this ballpark Tier 9 2-piece is a must have.

This may also impact on the optimum FCFS rotation. Currently Crusader Strike takes priority over Judgement, especially if you have the Tier 8 four-piece bonus. The two abilities have always been nip and tuck though especially in the age of Tier 7, and as gear level increases so Judgement has closed the gap. Because Tier 9's set bonii tends to benefit Judgement more than CS, prioritising the former over the latter may result in a higher DPS. This is especially the case in encounters which involve a lot of target switching.

Eeek, I may have to update that chart soon.

Two Piece Tier 9 also increases the relative value of Crit Rating. You won't be stacking it in favour of Str, Hit or Expertise, but you may want to consider a +10 Str/+10 Crit orange gem if it grants you a socket bonus of more than +4 Strength.

--

There is one slight disappointment, but it still counts as a bug-fix (or exploit fix) I guess.

Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

No more hot-swapping Librams for damage or mitigation any more, not that it was ever a huge issue on the damage front because it also reset your swing timer and activated a GCD.

---

No-one knows when 3.2.2 is due. The more cynical amongst us may be of the opinion that they're using it to bridge the gap to Icecrown Citadel (otherwise known as 3.3), and a delay in the Dev cycle for 3.3 will tempt Blizz into releasing 3.2.2 later. On the other hand, this is the first major patch since 3.2 and so warrants sorting out all the bugs and exploits that patch created as well as the additional content. Whatever the reason may be we shouldn't expect 3.2.2 next week, and it may well be October before it hits live.

The Insidious Nature of Dual-Specs.

2009-09-10T14:30:00.001+01:00

Am I the only one spending more time on my secondary, rather than primary spec?

Jana was, is and continues to be my main. I've gathered gear in the stated desire to Raid as Ret, but I haven't been able to Raid as often as I'd like and probably not stamped my identity as a DPSer on the Guild. But of course I still want to Raid, and acquire gear which will improve my raid performance (even though we're nothing like a front-line hardcore guild). How do you get gear outside of Raids? You guess it, Heroic and their associated Emblems. But DPS are a dime a dozen in our guild like many others, so what do I do?

Yep, I volunteer to tank.

"What could it hurt?", I rather naively said to myself. "I'm still Ret, and this Secondary PvP spec isn't exactly seeing much use." I had bought the Dual Talent ability with a spare 1k gold I had lying around but hadn't gained a huge amount of use from it. Also like many others I abstained from PvP until Druids were banned for being unkillable. Healing was out of the question, not only because I hate healing on my Paladin but also because I ritually destroy all healing gear I come across.

(by 'ritually destroy' I of course mean 'sell to the nearest Goblin'. Sure, I hate the very idea of Paladin healing, but I have to fund my desire for whelplings somehow!)

It started innocently enough - a quick Violet Hold run. No drama, no deaths, all good. Utgarde Keep was next, and predictably it was a walk-over. Heroic after Heroic followed, and pretty soon I was tanking more than I was DPSing. I even volunteered to off-tank an alt and emblem run in Naxx-10. Suggestions from well-meaning guildmates to make tanking my main spec didn't help my state of mind and annoyance. The one saving grace, and the reason why I'm not tanking in Raids that I do attend, is that tank gear requirements are relatively high and that you don't need to take 5 tanks to a 25-man.

Other Paladin guildies who run as Primary - Prot, Secondary - Holy are being pushed into the Healing role because of a relative lack of Healers on at odd times. They're treating it with good-natured joviality but I feel guilty every time I ask one of these guys to heal as I tank a Heroic.

Dual Talent Specs are a frustrating feature for hybrids. On the one hand, it gives the purchaser a huge amount of added flexibility and convenience, but on the other you can very easily be pressured into a role not to your preference. So it is with me. Be very careful when buying the ability and make sure that the secondary spec is one that you can live with, you may be using it more often than you'd like.

Holy Wrath Blah Blah Hotfix, Blah Anub'arak Blah.

2009-09-09T13:52:00.002+01:00

Yep, we have a new Hotfix. Via Daelo, Blizzard Dev:

We just deployed a hotfix to modify Holy Wrath so this spell has the same diminishing return mechanics that other player stun spells and abilities currently have. This will prevent Undead creatures that we wish to be susceptible to stun from being permanently stunned if you include enough Paladins in your raid who then rotate their Holy Wrath casts.

This will affect the difficulty of Anub'arak, but we didn't want the "right way" to defeat this fight to involve bringing five Paladins who glyphed their Holy Wrath spell.

(Source)

I'm not exactly sure how Holy Wrath's stun diminishing returns were overlooked for this particular fight, the new Glyph and nature of this encounter seemed tailor made for each other. Using Holy Wrath rotations to deal with otherwise near untankable adds is innovative and a different role from those Paladins are used to (especially Holy Paladins). The method also changes up rotations significantly, no bad thing for bored Rets. But hey, if it trivialises content or makes stacking a particular class necessary I guess a hotfix was required.

Anyway, the upshot of the hotfix is that the Glyph of Holy Wrath is no longer useful due to these diminishing returns, the DPS increase of choosing it specifically over another Glyph option probably isn't that high given GCD conflicts. In fact, other AoE stuns such as Shockwave and Shadowfury should now see greater use in this particular encounter, making Holy Wrath of limited use yet again except for the damage.

Was Paragon's four Paladin World First really trivialising it?

No small number of guilds are going to have to re-think their Anub'arak strategy, and it puts something of a pall over the two 'World Firsts' if they 'abused' Holy Wrath in this way, this screenshot indicates that Paragon used Holy Wrath extensively. Perhaps the real rush to the final World First in Heroic Mode can now start.

As an aside, the number and frequency of Paladin hotfix nerfs really serve to justify the opinion that some of the encounter Devs don't have much of a clue of Paladin abilities. That doesn't exactly fill me with optimism given the current development of a new expansion.

About That Armour Pen Nerf...

2009-09-05T13:41:00.005+01:00

Direct from the mouth of Ghostcrawler:

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We're letting you know now so that this doesn't feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won't come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

Great. Cool. Fantastic. This sort of stat stacking was always a risk given that the more you stacked APen the better the return was, coupled with some classes/specs still inflicting the majority of their damage as Physical. However, Armour Pen, previously tied for last place in Ret Melee stat priority at Tier8 gear levels (approaching the value of Crit Rating when you have oodles of it) is now back to being dead last. That makes thing very simple for us: generally avoid Armour Pen items unless they are an upgrade to the next gear Tier.

Just one thing though...

For Pete's Sake can you please stop putting it on all sorts of essential upgrades in Tier 8 and 9, upgrades that Blood/Unholy/Frost DK's, Warriors and Ret Paladins use. Stick it on Warrior and DK Tier sets, Blacksmithing crafted items, all that stuff. But stop using it on those shared items when for some (Warrior, Blood DK) it's a quality stat and others' it's dross.

This goes double for Weapons.

And triple for Ret Tier 9. Seriously, what idiot chose to stick Armour Penetration on our Tier 9 chest? Yes, it's still Best In Slot, but only Spellpower would make the use of item budget on this item more nonsensical for the spec.

And don't get any ideas from that for Tier 10.

Thank god this stupid stat is gone from items in Cataclysm.

/rant

Koralon The Loot Piñata

2009-09-02T17:08:00.005+01:00

So, Season 7 has just started on Live Realms and with that we get obligatory New PvE Content in the form of the third Vault of Archavon boss, Koralon the Flame Watcher.

Now, I hope I won't be insulting anyone when I say... my word this guy's easy to kill. I mean, seriously easy. Order of Sarth 1D easy.

The encounter is essentially a gear check. There is some of the usual 'Don't Stand in the Fire' environmental effects and tank positioning is pretty key so melee can spot the fire, but apart from that it's a DPS race. Koralon has a stacking buff which increases his damage by 5% that he casts every 20 secs or there abouts, and obviously he'll eventually one-shot the tanks. The better geared your two tanks are the more time your DPS will have to take him down, but you definitely want decent DPS. No-one with the De-Raged Waraxe need apply.

Healers will have to be on their toes, and you may want err on the side of bringing along one too many rather than one too few. Three healers will probably be the norm in the 10-man version, 2-healer setups will be tough to pull off because of all the raid damage flying around. Obviously, Fire Resist Aura or Totem will greatly improve your chances as it mitigates a big hefty wodge of that fire damage.

As usual, Bloodlust is a premium ability, especially in the 10-man version.

Koralon will drop Tier 9 in 10-man versions and 9.5 in 25-man versions. I suppose that Relentless Gladiator gear will only drop in the latter and Furious (thanks for the correction chronic) will drop from the former.

Mad props to those guilds able to achieve Earth, Wind and Fire. Killing all three within one minute is awesome, probably another one of those 'impossible' achievements that we all hear so much about.

Time to Retire Tirion Fordring?

2009-08-27T19:20:00.003+01:00

Let's be honest here, there are few more prominant mortal characters in Warcraft right now than Tirion Fordring. He's gone from a retired former Paladin who lost his family and watched as his son was corrupted and killed to the dude who's risen above the strife between the races and is taking the fight to Arthas. He's honourable, impartial and even-handed to a fault. Over the course of the Expansion he's brought diverse races and classes into the ranks of the Argent Crusade and succeeded in quelling much of the antagonism between the major factions. It's likely were it not for Garrosh Hellscream, Fordring would be able to forge a cease-fire between Thrall and Varian Wrynn. He also currently wields the Ashbringer, a more badass weapon you're not likely to see, and urged the acceptance of Deathknights into the fold of the Alliance and Horde.

Fordring has become a rallying standard when the Horde and Alliance have a common enemy, and as such will continue to be an obstacle when the game seeks to foster conflict between the races as seen in Cataclysm. He would also be the first target for any enemy seeking greater dominance over Azeroth. The character is starting to play a more central role in end-game lore than any of the major faction leaders. In short, this guy has to go.

One Last Hurrah for Arthas?

With all that's happened over the past few (in-game) months the power and evil of the Lich King is getting lost in the shuffle. We know that he destroy our souls with one spell but even now he's too timid in reacting to our encroachments into Icecrown. He should be planning something special to negate the advantages Tirion brings to the Crusade. And the figure of the Lich King is powerful enough to warrant taking out some big names as we bring him down. Fordring, as a neutral, well-loved and big name character, is a prime candidate.

There are of course more than a few ways in which Arthas may blunt the effectiveness of Fordring. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head.

Poison his steed, Mirador.
Defile the tomb of Uther Lightbringer.
Systematically turn a large number of his Crusade. He may be able to take them being killed, but corruption from within would tear the Crusade apart. Bartholemew, Tyrosus and the Crusaders at the Tourney are contenders.
Reveal his estranged wife Karandra as a member of the Cult of the Damned.
Raise his son Taelen as an Ghoul or even a Deathknight to lead the Undead vangard against the Argent Crusade.

Without a doubt, Arthas will be dispatched in 3.3 either through elimination or redemption. It also appears that he has put plans in motion to counter the Alliance and Horde specifically by the enforced turning of two of their champions. Surely, after going to so much trouble to draw out Fordring for battle he will target the main man again.

Presupposing an encounter between Arthas and Tirion the Ashbringer and Frostmourne saga's should be concluded. In so doing the backstory detailing the origin of both Runeblades should finally be fully revealed, explaining if the Ashbringer was indeed forged from the spark of a Naaru and who crafted Frostmourne. Perhaps the confrontation between these two opposing elements would cause them both to be destroyed. It might even have been a plan of the Naaru; we know that they are adept at seeing the bigger picture and planning ahead.

The Aftermath - Disbanding the Argent Crusade, Inspiring New Paladins

With the death of Fordring and the supposed end of the Lich King's Undead threat the disparate groups which make up the Argent Crusade should slowly drift apart. Recall that the Crusade was conceived as a union of the Argent Dawn and the Order of the Silver Hand, the latter of which is an Alliance group that has set aside the issues around working with the Horde to combat a common foe. The Argent Dawn may well continue as a neutral faction in the future, but greatly diminished in power and influence.

The memory of Fordring would serve as an inspiration for new Paladins that transcended boundaries of race, especially if supported by the major moderate figures of the Horde such as Thrall and Saurfang. If handled correctly this could inspire the Tauren to feel comfortable embracing the Light, just as they embrace nature now.

Blood Knights and the Order of the Silver Hand could feature as two new major PvP factions in the Cataclysm world, both seeking to discover the origins of Light in the Titan Parthenon. Alternatively, the Order could be a neutral class faction similar to the Ebon Blade or Cenarion Circle, but I think divorcing it that far from the Alliance would be a mistake.

Other Lore Potential: Garrosh, Daval Prestor and the Old Gods (Spoilers!)

How has Garrosh changed from a whiny crybaby to the Warchief-in-Waiting? We could perhaps justify it in a retcon (otherwise known as OMG Comic!), but perhaps simply using the available tools would get the job done. Recall that what may appear to be a series of unconnected threats is essentially the fight for dominance of two overarching forces: the Titan Pantheon and Old Gods.

As seen at Blizzcon, Horde fortifications are being reinforced with a curious black iron which should seem familiar: it's Saronite. There's only one source of the dangerous ore in the world and the mining of it leads to inevitable madness with prolonged exposure because of the whisperings of the Old Gods. Surely only a fool would expose themselves and others to their influence, and not even Garrosh would support such an action? However, perhaps Garrosh came into contact with Saronite very early and the Old Gods, sensing a weak and malleable mind, chose to corrupt him. This would certainly account for his fast change of outlook, aggression, and erratic temperament.

The Dragon Aspect Deathwing will return in Cataclysm, and may reappear as Lord Daval Prestor. It was never made clear if his cover had been blown or if only Rhonin and Krasus know his true identity, but he was once an ally of the leader of Gilneas, Genn Greymane. Prestor may once again wield power and influence amongst the Alliance, continuing the plans of the Old Gods on Azeroth by sowing the seeds of conflict between the Alliance and Horde. The unmasking of Lord Prestor could in fact be a major event in WoW before the Deathwing raid instances are released, recapturing the epic feel of a similar quest now removed.

With 3.3 likely due some time before the new year a protracted release date for Cataclysm seems unlikely. As Dylan once said, 'Time's, they are a'changing', and 4.0 will see the biggest upheaval in the games' history. I just hope that the lore surrounding the events is as compelling as it needs to be, and isn't all farmed out to the Comic Series.

Failures In Phasing.

2009-08-25T10:55:00.007+01:00

'Phasing Tech' was introduced in Wrath of the Lich King and allows players to observe changes in the world around them as they complete quest objectives. The system has increased the sense of immersion, letting everyone feel that their efforts in Azeroth are having a lasting impact on the game world. Currently only doodads, npc's and players are capable of 'phasing', but one of the features discussed in the Cataclysm preview panel was the concept of terrain phasing.

Early attempts at phasing weren't as successful as had been hoped.

Perhaps the best current example of the use of the use of phasing is the Deathknight starter area, where it is used extensively to show the taking of the area around Acheus from the Scarlet Crusade as a series of quests. Presumably terrain phasing would be used to show the environmental and geographic impact of the re-emergence of Deathwing into the physical plane.

The 1-60 levelling experience and zones is set to be re-vamped, and phasing will no doublt be a big feature of the redesign given its' success in Wrath. Unfortunately this brings with it a couple of headaches: questing as a group and completing the most challenging quests where players are in different states of phase.

Phased Group Questing

If you've tried to do the 'Riders of Blood/Frost/Holy' phased quest chain in Icecrown you'll know that finding someone at the your place in the quest chain can be exceedingly difficult. If they're not at the correct phase not only can they not see the quest objectives, they also cannot even see other party members. In an ideal world you'd boost them to the correct point in the quest chain but because of phasing you can't help them out with the pre-reqs to hasten the process or overcome a difficult objective. By the same token players who have fully completed the quest chain cannot help you at any stage in the process. There's also an impact on levelling groups, due to the risk of being locked out of group activities if you did a bit of solo-questing when they were busy.

Phasing large portions of the new Azerothian terrain implies that even larger areas of the world map will have multiple phases within which the interaction of players would be difficult. In theory releasing new lvl1-60 content should make the old world seem bustling and busy, but in reality heavy phasing could make it seem like a ghost world and prevent effective grouping.

The End of the Sprawling Quest Chain

Veteran players will perhaps recall how levelling in the Barrens or Darkshore zones tended to feature more travelling time than actual time completing the quest objectives. Lower Exp/Level and mounts at level 20 have served to ameliorate the problem but levelling in these two areas remain an annoyance compared to Wrath zones. Well, all is not lost, Blizzard stated that the lvl1-60 levelling experience won't feature nearly as much travelling time. This may or may not have an altruistic motive, but it is a direct consequence of terrain phasing.

If you want to have quests a long way from your central hub you need to make allowances not only for the objectives' phase state, but also the phase state of the NPC's around the area and now the terrain as well, which is much harder to compensate for. For example, we know that in Cataclysm a shoreline (presumed to be in Darkshore) will be eroded over the course of a phased quest chain, and this prevents any objectives from being present in the eroded coastline unless intimately linked with the chain that phases the terrain. Currently the occurances of this sort of conflict are rare, I can only think of The Hunter and the Prince when Battle Before the Citadel is in your quest log, but the conflict is set to become commonplace.

Inherently, phasing makes multi-zone quest chains harder to design, which is great for levelling but not so much for epic end-game quest chains sprawling across the game world.

The Solutions

There are a few ways to approach the dealing witht he problem. The easiest by far is the status quo: a great deal of the quest chains are solo content with the harder objectives consigned to instances (which can then be grouped as usual) or not not be phased at all. This means that although out-of-instance groups can be difficult to form the completion of tougher objectives can be done with the aid of an instance group, but it should probably be veered away from if you want to encourage the levelling of alts. Sons of Hodir and the pre-'Rider' Shadow Vault quest lines are a good example of this.

The second, and perhaps more difficult to implement, would be a 'Join Phase' option in a party. In principle a player could be allowed to aid members of a group in a different phase of a quest chain, and the only way to do this would be to temporarily duplicate their phase information. Once the selected player has 'caught up' to a party member that member would then to continue to progress along the quest chain as normal. Obviously this is not a trivial change, but is quite handy because not only is it useful for completing those tough elite world quests, it also makes grouping up socially for a zone to work through some quests collaboratively a cinch. Small levelling groups wouldn't have to worry too much about a member having completed the odd quest or zone on their own and being locked out of participation in the group for long periods of time.

There is the 'Starship Pegasus' risk upon changing terrain phase states, but this could be avoided by the use of safe locations for phase changes (non-phasing towns or any zone terrain which stays unchanged).

Summary - Cool has it's Consequences

I really like the phase style of quests seen in Wrath. It's a great addition to the game and finally makes it feel like your having an impact in the game world without that world having to be instanced. The risk of a world that appears dead even with hundreds of players in the zone will always be the danger of phasing, perhaps leading to the realisation that the tech should be used sparingly and more intelligently than it currently is. However the quests are designed, the ability for party members to link their phase state info should be included if you want to encourage 1-60 levelling.

My Life Is Now Complete

2009-08-22T04:24:00.006+01:00

Just watching the Blizzcon dance contest. Saw a fat dude Riverdance. Awesome, even better than the guy doing MC Hammer in a shell suit.

Jay Mohr, who's been hitting the pies, is on fire...

Sinister.

2009-08-21T16:45:00.001+01:00

I feed this Venomhide Raptor Hatchling every morning, and supposedly she's trying to decide if i'm her mother. I just know that if she decides the wrong way she'll bite my face off whilst I sleep.

And why won't Mor'vek answer my damn questions about matricide in Venomhide society? That bastard Troll just grins whenever I ask. And where did he get that Tauren horn from?

Light! She's staring at me again!

Task for the Weekend Yr 2: Find Blizzcon Information.

2009-08-18T19:20:00.003+01:00

Well, the year's come around again and Blizzcon is about to start. Last year I was wondering where I was going to get the tasty, tasty information as and when it occurred, and to a certain extent struck gold with Chrom's suggestion of Warcraft Radio for streaming and catch-up. Hopefully they'll be operating a similar service again.

This year my brother and his GF have invested in the live stream (dey love dem murlocs) so I'll be popping 'round theirs' for an evening of food, films and announcements as they happen. However much of the meatiest stuff will be going on in the wee hours UK time, so yet again I'm looking for links to chats, live-blogging and twitter feeds of the event. No web address is to long, nor bandwidth requirement too wide. My purse can definitely be too small though... I'm a cheap git who needs his money ;).

I'll throw any and all suggestions up in this post, so if you want to publicize what you're doing for Blizzcon that's fine too.

If I can get my head round Twitter I may throw up a few 'tweets', live as it were. Don't get your hopes up though, it's still the work of the devil.

Milking Lore.

2009-08-15T15:45:00.006+01:00

Holy Cow, Lighthoof, DivineSteak... I think you guys can make up your own puns ;).

Original Screenshot from Firelight's Ret Paladin Blog (mate, where have you gone?)

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Do Want! It'd be hilarious if legions of fans turned up to Blizzcon with these shirts.

More Tauren Paladin images on google. I particularly like the Lawbringer-clad Tauren who looks set to burst into a rendition of 'Peanut Butter Jelly Time'.

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Moar Puns!

Bovinity
Dairy Storm
Cowstrader Strike
Meatediction
Horseradish of the Righteous
Sirloin of Command

3.2.2 SoC Mechanic Clarification: No Proc From DS

2009-08-15T00:48:00.006+01:00

GC has just weighed in on the new functionality of SoC. As a reminder, this is the current wording of the SoC change in the PTR Patch Notes:

Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

Just now GC posted the following clarification:

The idea was always that Seals were a choice. We have just iterated on them so much this patch that one of them kept coming up as the only real Seal. Hopefully this latest design will work out.

If an attack procs a seal of command then that seal of command can chain onto up to two different targets.

That is correct, with one clarification. It must be a single-target attack. If the attack is already multi-target like Divine Storm, then only the damage procs, not the cleave.

Now that's a real downer. Okay, perhaps 12 Cleaving procs of SoC would have been too much, but now we'll never know. It's still your go-to trash/AoE Seal, but it still won't have the punch of DS's synergy with SoB. Ditto Hammer of the Righteous.

As for "he idea was always that Seals were a choice", pull the other one GC, it's got bells on. Seals haven't been structured as a genuine choice for DPS since 1.0, and the 3.0 changes made any on the fly decisions regarding Seals near impossible due to the high mana cost. Place some more Dev time in all three of the DPS Seals, give them more flavour and differentiate them, if you want us to swallow that line.

And how about a minor glyph to reduce the mana cost of swapping? Eh?

P.S. Tauren Paladins Bitches!

PTR Patch 3.2.2 Paladin Notes; Poor, Poor Rogues.

2009-08-14T10:42:00.008+01:00

Well, that was quick. Nary a week into 3.2 and we have the first signs of the next mini-patch, 3.2.2. This of course is the Onyxia revamp and Prot/Holy PvP nerf patch patch, but there are quite a few things of interest. As usual MMO-Champ has the details, but here are the Paladin changes:

Paladin
Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.

Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

The devil will be in the detail of course, but my gut instinct is that this is a fairly significant reduction in PvE Tanking threat which I'm not sure was wholly necessary. That said, this should only rear it's ugly head in the highest end PvE raids or more accurately when DPS is way above the curve. An increase in cooldown of HoJ by 10 seconds seems pretty harsh as it once again reaffirms the Prot Paladin as last in the ability to deal with caster raid bosses, and no matter how useful it was in PvP this seems like a heavy price to pay.

Will this kill the ProtHoly build choice for PvP healing? I'm not convinced to be perfectly honest but it certainly seems a lot less viable because it will no longer have any 'free' spellpower to compensate for Divine Plea's self-MS. However even with Touched by the Light taking a huge hit the myriad CC options and durability available to deep Prot may continue to make it a strong contender to those who can extract the most from their build. In any case, this is unlikely to make deep Holy that much more attractive to those PvP Healers who have shunned it in the past. The 34/0/37 build popular in Season 5 may well make another appearance in some form if the lack of Dispell protection can be worked around.

Healing with Prot/Ret gear should still be a no-go. It's unlikely that a shallow 7k mana pool will have the mana resources necessary to keep up even with permanent Divine Plea, and it goes without saying that the use of Divine Plea would have to be more considered.

The Seal of Command (now Seal of Cleave ;)) change is interesting. Very interesting. I'm not sure that the value in PvP is anything to shout about as any opposition team that chooses to clump together will probably be a walk-over anyway, but it definitely has very strong PvE applications in dealing with trash and add waves. ~~One Divine Storm has the potential to deal up to 12 SoC hits in one cast, allowing Paladins to more than regain ground lost in 3.2 with the removal of Seal of Blood.~~ SoC will not proc from multi-target melee attacks like DS and Hammer of the Righteous (see latest). Seal switching would still be required to make use of this though, and there is no indication that this has become a less expensive proposition (gogo SoC/SoV cost reduction minor glyph). SoC hasn't found its' niche quite yet and is still of limited value in PvP but it's good to see it get a little love.

In other news, Rogues got smacked hard. Very hard. No more interrupting Fan of Knives, lower damage FoK and an internal cooldown on Honour Among Thieves. Would not like to be an official board CM in the morning.

Orphan Adoption: Wolvar or Gorloc?

2009-08-05T20:48:00.004+01:00

Children's Week Part Two is currently up on the servers, and features Matron Aria of Dalaran requests for help in keeping the orphan's under her care amused. This time you have a choice of companion, the Wolvar pup Kekek or Oracle hatchling Roo.

I brought Kekek along for the ride, and he seemed suitably impressed with the majesty of the Dragon Queen and power of that notorious killer Hemit Nesingwary. I was also privileged to gain an insight into the future of the Wolvar and Kekek himself.

Who will you adopt, even for a few hours? If you want to lend a helping hand don't forget, the Matron won't be around forever.

European Battle.net Accounts Unable to Log On to WoW Servers.

2009-08-05T16:13:00.004+01:00

Update: Things seem to be working fine now :).

Loads of reports kicking around that European WoW game accounts which have been converted to Battle.net game accounts cannot log in to the game since the servers were updated to Patch 3.2.

So if you have a Battle.net account and were worried that it was just you... don't worry, it's not. The forums are currently down so Blizzard can't relay info on whether they are aware of the problem and provide an ETA on the fix unfortunately. Battle.net accounts can however log in to account management on the main WoW-Europe website if you want to check out your account status.

Accounts which haven't been converted to Battle.net accounts appear to be unaffected by this specific issue and can log in normally. As to the stability and playability on those realms... YMMV.

I'll see if I can update this as and when more info is gleaned.

Last Minute SoV Shin-kick.

2009-08-04T20:52:00.005+01:00

Wooohooo, don't you love changes going forward in the Live version that were never tested and largely unannounced. After a month of it working in the opposite manner, JoV will no longer proc Seal of Vengeance.

From the official patch notes:

Paladins.

..

Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned. Only auto-attacks and Shield of the Righteous can place the debuff on the paladin’s current target(s). However, while the seal is active, each melee swing or ability (excluding judgements) that lands on the target will deal a percentage of weapon damage as Holy damage to the target. This damage maxes out at 33% weapon damage with 5 applications of the debuff and scales upward evenly based on how many applications of the debuff are active. This Holy damage deals double-damage critical strikes. In addition, the damage-over-time debuff is now considered a melee attack for the purposes of determining its chance to hit, miss, be dodged or parried.

I've got no confirmation that this has yet made it into the Live build as yet (sorry guys, Europe gets the patch tonight and servers will be up sometime in September) but to be honest it's not an absolutely huge nerf (though I'd hardly call it insignificant). It can really be summed up in one phrase: 'JoV already hits like a truck and we really, really don't want you using it in PvP'.

ADDED: Rasputin on EJ has just confirmed that SoV does not proc from JoV. Goodie.

Embracing Your Inner Gnomish Army Knife: Ret Utility Talents in 3.2.

2009-08-04T13:30:00.005+01:00

Imagine the scenario: 3.2 has dropped... doesn't take much imagination, does it? Your talents have reset, and you just don't know what you should be speccing into. Well, I hope to take you through a few of the available options for a 3.2 PvE talent spec.

The Retribution Base Spec.

Retribution has always been both blessed and cursed with a really, really simple base build. Dump all your points in the DPS increasing talents and you've got 14 talent points to play with. Well, in 3.2 you'll be down to 9:

3.2 PTR Ret Base Spec

All that's changed is taking 5/5 in Seals of the Pure, which increases the DoT, Proc and Judgement damage of your Seal of Vengeance/Corruption. When SoV is firing on all cylinders the talent really is a quite considerable DPS increase, and also has the happy coincidence of also improving SoR to a generally better level than SoC. Until you hear differently, always take this talent in your PvE build.

So, there are 9 Points to spend and two major routes to go down: Holy or Prot... putting all of your 9 spare in Ret isn't really necessary. So, what should you go for?

Variant One: Lay On Hands and Aura Mastery (13/5/52 + 1)

Buried away there in the patch notes is the change to Improved Lay on Hands. Rather than increase Armour by 25/50% for 15secs the talent now reduces physical damage taken by 20%. This is an improvement from 3.2 for all classes with less than 16700 (~Shaman + Shield) or greater than 36600 Armour. 3.2's Imp LoH is a maximum of 1.7% effective damage reduction worse than the 3.1 incarnation (at 33k unbuffed armour). The value of this talent is therefore lower than you would like as LoH is typically for tanks, but has some breathing room for Mail and lesser wearers in PvE vs adds.

Aura Mastery hasn't had much impact in the PvE landscape, but the resistance to spell pushback and uninterruptability has been a lifesaver in many an Ulduar hard-mode. The temp boost to Resistance Auras isn't nearly as useful as I'd hoped it would be, but overall it's well worth grabbing if you traverse down the tree that far.

This build would leave 1 spare point to place into any talent of your choice which strikes me as a very expensive investment, mainly because the 5 of the 8 points are pretty much worthless. The build is somewhat less than ideal considering that most of the remaining utility talents in range are 2pt talents.

Variant Two: Divine Sacrifice (5/11/52 + 3)

In the past I've been grossly unfair to this skill. My initial criticism still stands: an AoE damage redirection skill is too dangerous with the amount of damage thrown out in many encounters, and in other encounters the damage redirected would be too trivial to matter. However, I've moderated my opinion slightly in one particular set of circumstances: when the talent is used in conjunction with Divine Shield.

One of the quirks of damage redirection such as DiSac and HoSac is that they do not bypass the immunity provided by Divine Shield. Hence, if you DiSac just after DS damage is still redirected but not inflicted; there is no risk of insta-gibbing.

In 3.1, Divine Sacrifice whilst under the effects of Divine Shield was pretty much uncapped, leading to the term 'Raid-wall' being coined to describe DS's 30% raid-wide damage reduction for 10 seconds at the cost of 2 GCD's and a 5 min cooldown. Theorycrafters don't have a solid understanding of why this happens; it has been by turns ascribed to server timing issues, bizarre interaction with immunities or the buff continuing to redirect damage from all raid members until one has redirected an amount totaling 150% of the Paladins health, at which time the effect fades from all raid members. That it's buggy is the only firm conclusions which can be made

Unfortunately, this talent continues to be buggy and opportunities to test it have been few and far between. The best intelligence so far is that it's even more buggy, and may last the full 10 seconds or may break early. If the skill hasn't been changed then it is far and away the best raid-wide mitigation talent in the game, but if the damage redirected is properly capped even under the effects of DS its' value is significantly diminished. I'll repost on Divine Sacrifice as/when I know more, but given how good it's been in 3.1 it seems churlish not to give it a go in 3.2.

Update: Barrelroll in comments states that it is fully capped at 150% of the Paladin's Health, meaning that its been nerfed hard and probably isn't raid viable. Better to use DS and HoSanc as a single-target shield wall when absolutely necessary and spend the points elsewhere.

Taking DSac leaves 3 talent points spare, 4 if you only take 1pt in Pursuit of Justice (not recommended!).

Variant 3: Other Utility

Divine Guardian, a great talent investment and mainstay of 3.1, is no longer reachable in PvE builds. The improvement to Flash of Light and higher Ret GCD use makes this a double-blow. On the other hand Vindication is now a viable PvE talent, so at least there's still something to invest in.

Depending on the build you choose somewhere between nine and one talent points are left over, and your options are a little sparse between.

Improved Blessing of Might - +62.5AP per point, max 2 points.
Vindication - -287AP per point, max 2 points. Now works on Boss Mobs.
Divinity - Increase healing done to you by 5% and healing you do by 5%.
Guardian's Favor - Reduces HoF and HoP cooldowns by 8 and 120 seconds respectively.
Divine Purpose - HoF generates a stun break.

Vindication should probably be your first investment choice for your remaining talent points. It doesn't stack with Demoralizing Roar/Shout, but its' effect is as strong as the fully improved version of these two abilities. As it procs from Divine Storm the -AP proc can be distributed amongst multiple enemies in situations where more than one target is in melee range. It also doesn't require a GCD to refresh, and that's quite important for Ret's GCD-heavy rotation. Protections Paladins will probably take this ability, so consider it if you are rolling with Druid, Warrior or Deathknight tanks.

Imp. BoM is Imp. BoM, the spell hasn't changed and still rocks your raid. Holy Paladins seeking the improved mana efficiencies of a Ret build will probably pick it up though, and even a Tankadin may well have at least 1 point in it. This should be second place in priority after Vindication.

Divinity isn't as strong in 3.2 with the nerf to JoLight's healing power. It makes reasonably useful filler for getting down to Divine Sacrifice or for left-over points, but otherwise it's not really powerful enough to warrant the points.

Divine Purpose and Guardian's Favour are both exceptionally dependent on the encounter mechanic. At times they may be extremely useful, in other circumstances the abilities that they affect may not even be hotkeyed. Shouldn't normally be a part of your PvE build.

Paladins interested purely in doing DPS ~~should have rolled a rogue~~ and happy to pass up raid mitigation talents in Prot and Holy could choose the following build (or some variant): I'm a Fighter, Not a Lover build.

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So, there are your options.

On The Shopping List Of Most Ret Paladin's This Summer...

2009-08-03T21:41:00.007+01:00

I don't mean the Argent Changer (for 100 Champion Seals).

Nor Tier 9, that set of dubious fashion.

It's the Libram of Valiance:

This effect has a proc chance of close to 100% and an internal cooldown of roughly 45 seconds, leading to an average up-time of 33%. So long as this remains the case the Proc is worth around 169 AP /w Kings, which compares favorably with the Furious Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude (144 AP with 100% uptime). Predicting the 200Str proc and chaining cooldowns in order to gain the most benefit from this buff will tend to stretch its' lead over last Seasons' PvP Libram.

PvPers will still want the Furious Gladiator's Libram due to SoV's lack of PvP viability, and can look forward to an upgrade in Season 7. Incidentally, the Season 7 Libram is worth slightly more than Valiance at 172 AP. However it is budgeted at 6 ilvl's higher, so this disparity seems very reasonable.

The Libram of Valiance can be bought for 25 Emblems of Triumph from your friendly Triumph Emblem vendor. Emblems of Triumph are dropped in the 10-man and 25-man Crusaders Coliseum raid instances (both normal and heroic), or may be obtained as a reward for the Heroic Daily Quest. Unless you are already rocking the Furious Gladiator's Libram this probably represents the canniest investment you can make with your first Triumph Emblems, especially as it doesn't drop from any boss.

UPDATE:

In the current live build (as of 13th August) the Libram of Valiance has an uptime of 95%, equating to a passive 190 Strength. Frankly this is all sorts of overbudget in a single item slot and should be toned down pretty soon, probably via hotfix. Until then though, go mad.

New Blog Design, First Draft.

2009-08-02T17:55:00.006+01:00

Okay, I've had a thrash about in Blogger and finished a rough draft of a new blog template for this site. I've popped it on a test blog rather than risk screwing up this one, for obvious reasons, which can be found here:

My Testbed Blog

Screenshot of the layout:

Obviously it's a work in progress, a few of my own conclusions so far are:

1) The banner is at least too tall, probably too big all around.
2) The predominantly grey-scale colour scheme is a little flat, I could do with adding some more colour just to liven things up.
3) Widgets, widgets, widgets. I not sure there's anything I need to add, but there may be a few things I want to. Maybe couple of mini armory links or the like.
4) The Linkbar really isn't working well with this design. Perhaps drop it?

So, what do you think at this stage. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome :).

Seal Switching To AoE In 3.2; Seal of Command's Limited Range.

2009-07-31T23:16:00.004+01:00

A lot of the debate in the past week or so has centered around Seal of Vengeance's single-target damage, and rightly so. Because of the controversy another component of damage in a raid context has gone largely overlooked: AoE damage. Seal of Vengeance is obviously unsuited to applying AoE damage, and with that in mind this post looks at the other options available.

The Old - Seal of Blood.

The staple Ret Seal of 3.1, SoB's proc of 48% weapon damage on all weapon swings leads to very significant front-loaded damage in multi-target situations. Divine Storm itself is effectively a Whirlwind which proc's SoB, and Consecration is usually ticking even in single-target encounters. Aggro could sometimes be an issue, but when the risks involved in stealing aggro from the tank are minimal SoB allowed considerable burst AoE without necessarily interrupting a DPS cycle on the main target.

3.1 will probably be looked back upon as the golden age of Ret DPS... farewell Seal of Blood, you will be missed.

The New...ish - Seal of Vengeance

Seal of Vengeance largely replaces SoB in 3.2, but is only suited to single-target DPS situations due to the difficulty of stacking Holy Vengeance on secondary targets. Tab-targetting may allow you to spread the Holy Vengeance debuff around a little, perhaps to as many as 3 targets reliably under optimum conditions and with no avoided swings. Unfortunately, an encounter with up to 3 targets all in melee range that last long enough to make it worthwhile is an exceedingly rare beast. Spreading the debuff to 2 targets will be the likely limit of SoV functionality, and enough of a juggling exercise for most players.

The Alternative - Switching Your Seal

Rather than go through the rigmarole of tab-targetting there is another option: switching your Seal. Both SoCommand and SoRighteousness allow a damage proc from Divine Storm, but as a consequence lower damage will be inflicted upon the main target. Using Command or Righteousness is not something you want to be doing all the time, but when you absolutely positively have to do as much AoE damage as possible they are valid options.

SoR has a much smoother distribution of damage as proc damage doesn't vary and cannot crit. This can be of great benefit in situations where drawing aggro is a worry. On the other hand the size of the damage proc is almost always inferior to that of Command, especially when considering that Command procs may crit. If aggro isn't a problem, either because you're comfortable with the damage 4 adds beating on you may cause or very happy with your tank's ability to hold threat (yay Pally and DK Tanks!), SoC represents significantly higher multi-target DPS.

But, there's a catch with Seal of Command: You need to be in melee range, i.e. within 5 yards, for the attack hitting the target to proc it.

Seal of Righteousness -
Proc at Range
Seal of Command -
No Proc at Range

You may be thinking that this isn't a problem, but Judgment and Divine Storm have a range of 10 and 8 yards respectively and you may miss a surprising number of procing opportunities. Seal of Righteousness and Vengeance proc's don't suffer from this problem thankfully.

The maximum range of Commands proc issue may well rear its' ugly head again in any PvP discussions given the otherwise weak nature of Judgment damage.

The Cost

Mana. - Casting a Seal spell still costs 14% of base mana, and if you want to adapt to encounter phases you'll be doing it multiple times in a battle. Even the most frugal Ret Paladin will soon see this eat into their mana pool, especially in 10-man raids where mana buffs are thin on the ground. Throw a little Holy Wrath into the mix and you'll be reaching for the mana potion injector more often than House pops a Vicodin. And with less panache.

Somewhat mitigating this is the new Glyph of Seal of Command, which restores 8% of base mana on Judgement. The opportunity cost of this Glyph is high as it replaces one of your three Major's, probably GoJudgment.

Incidentally, '75% Mana Cost Reduction For All Damaging Seals' would make a great idea for a Minor Glyph.

Talent Points. - By choosing to take SoC you by necessity spend a talent point that could be spent on utility such as Vindication, which incidentally works great in AoE situations as it procs from Divine Storm. If you have taken neither Divine Sacrifice nor Imp. LoH the trade-off is trivial, but with either of these powerful cooldowns some hard decisions need to be made.

Main Target Damage - Taking either option will greatly reduce DPS on your main target, if one exists. If DPS on a single, static target is essential then Seal swapping is unnecessay - rely on your raid members with greater AoE capability to do the job and stay in the role that you do best: single target AoE.

Conclusion

Seal Switching will only be an option in a few boss fights, but could have a significant impact if certain variables are in place. Your default position on any given encounter should always be one of running Seal of Vengeance but stay mindful of these tools in your arsenal. Given that Seal of Command requires a talent point invested and has limited range Righteousness is the Seal that I would favour. Your mileage may vary.

If you're fighting trash, go crazy ;).

As a more general point, the idea of Seal switching presents a good opportunity for Blizzard to tailor Seals to different encounter types and introduce another test of skill to differentiate relatively good Ret Paladins from bad ones. That said, it requires quite a lot of development time invested into finding and balancing a niche for each of the damaging Seals. At the very least, Command and Righteousness need to be more distinct than they are.

EDITING NOTE: Seal of Corruption is the Horde version of Seal of Vengeance, and it procs the Blood Corruption debuff. In all ways the two Seals are functionally identical.

PTR SoV Update.

2009-07-30T23:40:00.008+01:00

Nomenclature

Seal of Vengeance (SoV): The Seal in question.
Holy Vengeance (HV): The debuff left by Auto-attack hits/crits whilst SoV is active. This debuff causes periodic damage to the target.
SoV Proc: The direct damage proc from Seal of Vengeance. The damage of this proc depends on the number of copies of HV on the target, up-to 33% of weapon damage for 5 copies of the debuff.

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A new build on the PTR has slightly improved the damage output of SoV during the ramping-up stage. In previous builds, the SoV Proc only occurred when 5 copies of Holy Vengeance were up on the target. Now, Seal Proc damage scales with the number of copies of the debuff on the target:

Holy Vengeance Stack Size SoV Proc Damage (% Weapon Damage)
0 No Proc
1 6.7
2 13.3
3 20
4 26.7
5 33

The Holy Vengeance debuff is still only applied via auto-attacks and HotR.

CS, DS and Judgement, aswell as Auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous, can all trigger the SoV Proc.

For the record, I still think it's a bloody stupid system, but it's now marginally less stupid. At the very least, Seal switching when DPSing a single target is totally unnecessary if the target lasts >6 seconds.

/HeadDesk

2009-07-30T00:26:00.007+01:00

Oh, here's an interesting thread on the official forums discussing the SoV debuff change. I hope the discussion is detailed and productive.

..

Nice, Ghostcrawlers responded.

Oh dear...

..

oh dear...

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oh deary, deary me...

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Holy Power Consumed	Divine Storm	Templar's Verdict
1	22%	55%
2	74%	125%
3	150%	225%

Holy Vengeance Stack Size	SoV Proc Damage (% Weapon Damage)
0	No Proc
1	6.7
2	13.3
3	20
4	26.7
5	33