One Week from a Release Date Announcement?

"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

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.