3.0.9 or whatever

Yes I'm aware of the new patch and I've played it a little. My thoughts on this are quite simple.

Woot for the 30 minute seals. That's a great new mechanic and without having ever wanted it in the past, I realize now just how much I should have. It helps to clean up my bars, since I can put them into my Healbot, just like buffs. Now I can move stuff around and not have to worry about those darn seals any more.

Boo hiss for the Divine Plea nerf. It doesn't affect me much -- I'm not Holy and I don't normally run with Holy paladins, but any nerf is no fun. I agree with Siha over at Banana Shoulders -- it's too soon and not well thought out.

Cough-Cough, Argh, Ugh

Yeah, I've been sick. My daughter got a bug while over at a friend's house and brought it back to our place.

I have lain in bed for most of the last 3 days. LOTS of sleep. In that vein I have not been WoWing much either. I will have something posted later today or tomorrow and intend to keep up the posts from then on -- unless I'm stricken by some other nasty bug. Tired of being sick.

Quick note though. One of the tankadins that I was neck and neck with as far as gear goes has retired his shield for a while and picked up a 2 hander. He re-rolled Retribution, and while I'm sad to see him switch, it seems like a better move for him. He really wanted to contribute to guild runs without getting onto his rogue.

Downside: Now we only have 2 players specced to tanking and one of them is not def capped and has been leveling their shadow priest. That kinda means I'm the main tank in our guild now, which on one level is great, means I will be in demand, but on another level, means that I will be in demand. I do play almost every day, but I'm just not always available what with the baby and girlfriend aggro and such. Oh well, I'm sure we'll figure it out -- I'm thinking about trying to institute regular 5 man instance runs. Level 71+ only. That way we can get everyone's alts up and hopefully gear everyone to heroic levels. I'm ready to progress in heroics and I think except for a mage and maybe a lock, that's it.

We'll see how things work out.

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.

3.1 New Paladin Stuff

Everyone and their brother, and sister, has already reported on this. Here is the link if you want to check out the original post -- I will have more to say on these changes a bit later.

Have a nice day.

Death Knight-adin

Firstly let me say that I'm an awful blogger. I can't for the life of me remember to take screen shots and screen films. And my posts are regularly wall of text. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that I'm a multimedia producer at my job. I do video and digital photography all the time -- why is it that I can't remember to do that at all while playing? We may never know. On to the post.

Death Knights ARE cool.

I played my DK last night for a while -- he's only level 60, but this is my third DK that I've taken to 60 (I just enjoy the opening quest and the event at the end, I just keep re-rolling). I logged in and really did not want to face the uncertainty of an heroic PUG. Good or bad, I just wasn't in the mood.

So I played my DK -- he's frost spec, but not yet with tanking talents. As I'm going along facemelting, pulling multiple mobs, kicking arse, taking names something begins to occur to me.

Death Knights are the heroic version of Protection and Retribution paladins. Sorta. Having been a paladin for so long I feel I can say this. If you wanted to sit down with paladins of those 2 specs and figure out what they really want out of their class -- you'd get pretty close to the current Death Knights.



One thing that paladins have been wanting for freakin ever has been a ranged spell. Granted that you can spec into Holy Shock, or Avenger's Shield or .... what, Repentance, (does that count?), but there has never been a long range base ability until just a little while ago. Right out of the gate DKs get Death Grip and Icey Touch -- which are pretty awesome and you don't need anything to get them started.

Next up -- a way to deal with freakin' casters. Paladins still cry when they think of trying to tank Scholomance (at level) with all the casters and no way to silence them or get them to shut up or anything. We still have no real way to deal with them -- although we can stun them, we can only do that once a minute and you have to be within melee range -- phht. Along come DKs and they have, again, Death Grip and the juicy Mind Freeze. Casters can now eat my shorts (as a DK).

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there is the runic power and runes mechanic. As long as their health is not too low, a DK can keep fighting, given the right rotation etc, until their player's eyes bleed and their fingers fall off. Paladins, on the other hand can keep going as long as they still have mana -- and mana runs out pretty quickly (unless of course you're dodging and parrying and you've got Blessing of Sanctuary up).

Am I going to stick with my Death Knight and allow my paladin to gather dust? Will this plog be re-named Death Knights Smash! or DKPWNZMOAR?

No. NO. No. I love my paladin and have a hard time leaving him behind to level any of my other toons. Especially because it was soooo hard to level him in the first place. But I must say, DKs are kinda fun, and REALLY don't they have a kind of evil uber paladin feel to them?

Friends are Important

I did something last night that I had told myself I would not do.

I allowed an undergeared dpser to fill a slot in a heroic run.

I had just finished running a guildie through Scholomance (undead ftw) and decided that I wasn't tired enough for bed yet. I realized that the daily heroic was one that I knew very well and was confident in, so I thought that I would put together a group.

There are currently 4 level 80 tanks in my guild, but only 2 have hp over 20k and defense over 530. Me and my friend %*#$)%(. Since about 75 I feel that he and I have had a nice relationship trying to help each other gear up to be the best we can be in tanking situations. Perhaps later on we might become competitive with one another, but that's a ways away.

My friend also has a level 80 rogue alt. He and I often play at the same time, but not often together because who really needs 2 tanks on 5 man content. So when we can and he's not busy tanking something else I invite his dps to whatever I'm doing.

I had decided to run heroic Utgarde Keep and wanted to bring my friend. Without asking about his dps or experience in heroics I sent him an invite which he accepted.

He did immediately tell me that if his dps was not up to par that I could kick him with no hard feelings. I told him in a whisper that I didn't want to do that, but if it became necessary, I would. He didn't know his dps off the top of his head, but I knew him as a good player and someone who tried really hard, and to me that makes a huge difference.

As we got the run together I realized that the other 2 dpsers totally outgeared the instance so was even less worried about my friends output. Though what I did not realize was that the healer was less geared than I was lead to believe -- we were not CCing based on their belief that they could handle me getting hit (I knew I could handle it, but without heals it's another story).

We ended up wiping twice, both times I believe it was the healer just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time (being pushed back by the dragons into a nearby group and dying).

As soon as the first boss died it became clear to me that my friend had never been in this instance on heroic setting, and, in fact, had never been in ANY heroic when he got the Badge of Heroism achievement. At that moment I closed my eyes and hoped that I wouldn't be getting whispers from the other members who had noticed that as well and wanted me to boot him. It didn't happen, I sighed in relief and we moved on.



Throughout the rest of the run I could tell that the others had been there and didn't need explanations for the bosses, so I just whispered my friend instructions. I knew that he had been to Utgarde Keep before and knew the bosses, just not on heroic difficulty. So when I told him about the encounters I made sure to focus on what was different in the fights.

Most of the run was pretty easy, and we finally got to the last boss -- the heroic daily quest target. I told my friend rogue to watch out for the bosses cast bar and to get out of the way whenever he cast anything. Now, perhaps that's not totally needed, maybe it's a bit of an oversimplification, but as he was the only melee class and his dps was hovering near 980 I figured it wouldn't gimp our encounter too badly.

He said he would do his best and I aggroed the boss. Within 30 seconds my friend had hit the floor. In a whisper to me he laughed and apologized, but I told him it was no big deal. He got a battle rez from our druid and we continued into the undead phase with no problems. He promptly got out of Dodge when he needed to and we took our guy down.

In all honesty our healer and one other died during that last part -- but as I saw it happening I Layed on Hands and Avenging Wrathed and with our remaining members we got it done.

No true rogue gear dropped but the epic crossbow did, and because he's a good guy he did not need it, even though I knew that no one else wanted it. He did win the greed roll and I was ecstatic for him. It was a massive upgrade even though it wasn't a main weapon or armor.

As we were leaving some members were discussing running straight over to heroic Utgarde Pinnacle without missing a beat. I was surprised and happy to see that no one really felt my rogue friend was a liability -- and truly I never thought it myself. I decided that I was too tired and that I believed I was not geared for it yet and so we all parted ways.

This whole wall of text is to say that bringing my friend, while not adding a significant boost to dps, made him and I happy and didn't ruin anything for anyone. "Bring the player, not the class (or spec)" is something that we hear a lot lately from Blizzard. I say, "bring who you want, and hope for the best."

Change

A wise man once said, "The only thing that does not change is change itself."

Well, it's true. My last post I was pissed off by lame pug members, but today I must say, that has changed.

I ran heroic Utgarde Keep (no, my sword did not drop) and there were no wipes and no deaths. There whole thing ran rather smoothly. Well, not totally smoothly.

The person who put the group together was a rogue who really wanted a purple crossbow drop. When he invited me to tank he even asked me if I was going to roll for it if it dropped ........... (sigh).
"I'm a paladin." I said. It took that a moment to process but he finally got it.

Then, because he wanted this drop so badly, he turned on master looter and kept it on the whole time. He would not pass leader to me, he would not mark. But, as it turns out, we were somewhat overpowered -- DPS burned all the bosses down in what felt like record time, and I never ever worried about my health bar. Gotta love those awesome big-love heals.

In the end, because the rogue had master looter on and set to Epic level, when the last boss died and a Frozen Orb dropped, the first person to loot got it. We all cried foul and they, graciously, gave it up for a /roll.

The rogue kept talking like it was no big deal, and that he had it under control. The healer and I both agreed that it would have been nice to have let him die at some point -- too bad he never had that much aggro. It wasn't until he said he was going to disenchant what none of us wanted that things went really insane. He looted the pieces, of which there were maybe 2 -- DE'd one of them, and only then found out that he could not DE the other. (sigh).



That's when I put him on /ignore. The instance was over, we didn't have anything else to do, but I seriously just couldn't listen to that j*ck*ss wail and whine anymore.

I added the healer and one of the dpsers to my friends list with their permission. (For whatever reason, I know I don't have to, I always ask people if it's ok for me to add them to my friends list. I think I just want to know that maybe they'll respond if I whisper them later.)

And that was that. It really wasn't all that bad. We got through it in, what seemed like, record time, and nobody had to be rezzed.

I guess the real lesson here is, somewhat similar to weather and baby's attitudes, if you don't like what's happening in your PUG, just wait for the next one, and hopefully you'll like it better.

=)