How to Figure Out If You're Ready

There are always questions being thrown around forums and in comments sections of blogs about whether or not you are ready for an instance.

For some things, like tanking heroics and raids there are some hard and fast rules. You MUST have 535 defense in order to be uncrittable for heroics and 540 for raids. MUST. But then there are some not so easy to answer questions like, "Is my stamina high enough to tank heroic Utgarde Pinnacle?" Everyone seems to have a different answer to this, based mostly on how hard they think a given instance is.

If you ask me, I don't have any real true answers for you either -- other than what my GM told me. "Give it a try, if you fail then oh well, it's just a game."

He also mentioned to me that there were sites out there that help to rate your gear and you'll get an idea of where you should be instancing and where you should be getting your gear. Imba is one, but I'm not sure it's the best. So far, my favorite is WoW Heroes.

It's got me rated as yellow for Naxx 10, which I believe means I could tank it, but that it wouldn't be EASY. And that Eye of Eternity 10 I am just not ready for at all. Which I would totally agree with.

Now I would not say that this site -- or any others like it are the end all be all. You have to understand that they are built on certain parameters which you may or may not agree with (most I think do) and the numbers are based on your current Armory set. Which, hopefully you know is itself based on what you were wearing when you logged out of the game (with some updating exceptions).

So go on out there check out Wow Heroes, and read around on forums and such to find out just what's going on.

Comments on Dual Specs

Ok so I am really excited about dual specing. I would really like the ability to tank an instance OR heal it depending on what is needed, and I REALLY hate the idea of paying for respecs as they stand now.

I must say I think that one part of Blizzard's plan regarding dual specs is sorely lacking.
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.
This, to me, is bogus. Come on -- one of the greatest thing about having 2 specs is that you can switch in-between -- you can have a dps spec for leveling and another for instancing. Why oh why is it so hard to find healers? In my opinion it's that they don't want the hassle of trying to down mobs while soloing on a healing spec. This is true at max level, which this rule is fine for, but is incredibly true when it comes to leveling! Especially now that we have 10 newish and still somewhat fresh levels that people are putting mains and alts through, they want to do instance runs and its incredibly hard to find healers because they are all speced into dps roles. I think this rule needs to be changed. No ifs, ands or buts.

Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.
This sounds good at first blush. Alright, I'm willing to pay for this service, it doesn't need to be free for all. But wait a second. How much will I have to shell out? There has already been a troll post on the WoW forums about some crazy 5k gold shell out, to which a Blizzard employee never did say whether or not it was true. If it is indeed something around 5k I am against that. While I know that is not hard to get money of any kind in Wrath, unless it's higher than say 10k gold, I still think that 5k will make it hard for a lot of players to be able to get this going. It took me about 2 weeks of focused saving of gold in order to come up with the 5k I needed to get my epic flying training (just never got around to it in TBC). While that isn't game killing, it does tend to crimp my "fun gaming" time. 1k gold might be alright, but I just don't want to see this being some crazy huge gold sink. No thank you.

Well, really that's all I have to say about this right now. I think all the other details given are pretty neat and cool. Scribes will be happy to have something truly indispensable for customers, and it's something that can be done without a scribe's assistance in a city, so that's cool by me.

All in all, sounds good, I just hope that it's not too expensive to set up and that they make it available to at least level .... 60s or something.

Cheers.

My Thoughts on 3.1 Patch Notes

I dunno. I'm gonna side with BRK on this one. Even though he's mostly talking about his hunter changes -- I think that a good bit of this stuff is going to end up on the cutting room floor. You know, somewhere ON THE GROUND in Ghostcrawler's office. Here we go:

Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

Alright. Finally, yes this is pretty exciting and I really don't think this is going to change. What is up for debate, however, is whether or not that ability will boost stats by 2%, 10% or something in between. Some believe "we'll get the 10% BoK baseline, it's the only way this would even remotely make sense." I'm not so sure. I actually think that we are going to automagically get BoK for 2% and then it can be talented up to 10% -- and those talent points will be in the first tier of protection (although, really they could go easily into any of the trees).

Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Sshah. As if. This will never stand. Even if the intent behind this change lasts there will definitely be some kind if nerf to this. With the Glyph and a little skill (really miniscule amounts of skill) paladins will be unstoppable in PVP. I have zero doubts in my mind that this will change somehow. I DO think it's a great idea though -- another general purpose ranged spell is wonderful. I just don't think it will make it through testing without some nerf bombs.

Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

I think that this silence effect is pretty awesome. I was just saying how paladins would give their mommas away for a chance to deal with casters -- and this does it. This will make it much easier to deal with casters on PVE pulls, but also taking down that annoying warlock who just eats your brains and there's nothing you can do about it. Folding in the extra damage will be nice, but since most of us have it already, it shouldn't change much.

Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

Does this actually mean that they are freeing up more points in the prot tree for some new talents? I truly do not know the answer to this. If you do, let me know. It does not say that the effects are changed, just less ranks. So, I guess I'm all for this one.

Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

This one also seems to be a little lacking in true details. So if I put max points into this talent what procs the refresh? Does just having DP up mean that it's never going to end? It'll just keep on going? I'm not sure I totally understand this one, but if it means more mana regeneration I'm all for that. It will make a huge difference for non-main (offtanks or just someone who is trying to dps a bit) tanks in PVE and it will mean that prot pvpers will feel a bit better about their insanely low MP.

Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

This feels like a mostly PVP talent change. This means we'll have our awesome stun available to us, with talents every 10 seconds. I must say this also feels a little overpowered. With the Exorcism change and now this, ALONG with the Shield of the Templar silencing effect -- we'll be able to stand tall against casters -- they will run in fear from our holy might. I think this will also get herded into the ole nerf pen too. It's just a bit much all told.

Truly I think that these changes are great and I would love to see them get to Live and then stay. I fear this is just not the case though. The Exorcism buff alone will be high on the nerfing target list. If these do manage to make it all the way into the game it will mean a lot more utility for maintankadins, and it will give protection paladins true viability in PVP, something they really never had before -- despite their massive HP.

Important Stats to your Paladin

tSo. What are the most important stats to you as a paladin? Well, of course it depends on what you are doing and how you are doing it.

Quite simply you can break it up into talent specs and say this:

Holy needs Intellect.

Protection needs Stamina.

Retribution needs Strength.

Those ARE the most important stats for those specs. But that's a bit oversimplified -- those stats are the most important for those specs when your toon is AT or NEAR level limit. And of course, there are hardly ever only one stat that you want to pay attention to.

PROTECTION

Protection, the spec that I am most familiar with really does want to stack on the stamina -- both for survivability and also because of the wonderful Touched by the Light talent (which you can get, at the earliest at level 50). This talent takes 10/20/30% of you stamina and turns it into spell power and since most of our talents use spell power that's a great bonus.

After stamina, though, where do you go? Well that depends on what you are going for: uncrittable or just awesome. If you intend to tank anything in heroics and/or raids you need to work towards the uncrittable number which is 535 defense in heroics and 540 in raids. If you are purely a soloer and/or you only do normal instance runs the next stat you want to stack is strength (although if you are tanking ANY instance getting high defense will heighten your survivability greatly).

Strength is great for us as well because it ups our white melee damage on auto swings greatly but when you get Shield of the Righteous the damage it causes works off of block value which is calculated off of strength. The more strength you have, the more Holy damage SotR does.

So, just to clarify: your basic important stats for protection are stamina, defense and strength -- some people will argue that defense is more important, at least initially, than stamina, but really the two come hand in hand and you need certain amounts of both in order to survive your encounters. Additionally, Intellect is always nice, and it's not something you should scoff at, but with our basic talents and skills, even if we don't have ANY +int, we should still be doing pretty well with our mana.


RETRIBUTION

Strength is the first and foremost among the stats to stack for a retadin. No question, no arguments. After strength, there are some differing ideas.

+Hit. In my opinion, this should be your next stat to be looking for. You want to be "hit capped" so that every time you swing that big old 2-hander of yours, it actually hits something. In order to be hit capped you need at least 8% (or 9% depending on who you ask). And the hit rating you need is apparently 262. There is still some debate on the ACTUAL FACTUAL numbers, but you get the idea. Testing is always ongoing at Elitist Jerks.

After +hit, I believe you should be for +crit. That way each time you hit, which should be always, you have a much better chance of doing double damage. My understanding is that you should have a minimum of 20% to crit. Really, just pile on the +crit and some Agility if you can -- +crit is more important as it gives you a higher percentage for less points than agility will.

Finally, as a retadin, you'll want a bunch of stamina in order to survive the occasional hit and also wide range AOE spells. Armor will not mitigate this, so pile on the stamina as well.

HOLY

First off, you are a caster now so you need mana up the wahzoo. Pile on the Intellect first and foremost -- this charges up your mana pool, gives you a higher crit rating with your spells and through the nifty Holy Guidance talent, (at level 45 minimum) raises your spellpower by 4/8/12/16/20% of your intellect. Go INT go.

See this post by Banana Shoulders: I totally agree.

After that there is some discussion about what you might want next. It kinda depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to heal, then you want to use your healing talents to their fullest -- and many of those talents work off of spell criticals. So pile on +crit first.

If you are just questing or doing something else in an odd way as a holy paladin (I'm not judging) you might want to pile on the MP5 as a secondary stat in order to keep your drink time down.

After that -- probably stamina. It's always nice to survive that one shot that gets through your threat management team. (Not that it ever happens.)

There is the matter of +haste for Holy paladins, but from what I've read it really isn't going to do much for you. Pick it up if you'd like, but if you've really got enough +crit and intellect, the haste won't matter that much -- you'll be kickin arse all over the place.

So yeah, there ya go. As always you can check out the official WoW forums, Elitest Jerks, maintankadin or the forums at wowhead for more information or more opinions.

Enjoy.