The State..... two weeks later

Two weeks have passed since the 4.0.1 patch hit us. Changes are made to most classes, and paladins are not an exception.
So... are we at a better state now than two weeks ago? Well, some of my initial concerns have been addressed atleast.


Retribution:

The rotation is still very random, and it seems like Blizzard intends to keep it this way.
Ret damage was low, so they buffed several of our abilities. But numbers never really concern me, since they are easy to change.

Retribution is in the same place as two weeks ago.


Holy:

I was concerned about mana regen for holy paladins (at 85, at 80 nobody seems to have any mana issues). Blizzard added even more mana regen to Seal of Insight, in the form of 15% of the paladins base mana being regained when unleashing its judgement.

I complained about Holy Radiance only having a 10 yard range. It was buffed to 20 yards (which in turns seem to make it slightly TOO good). Edit: And yes, it has been nerfed.

Light of Dawn is still a situational heal, which requires the raid to group up. Most raiders are used to spreading out as much as possible during fights, so the need to group up to get healed will take some getting used to.

Word of Glory was buffed for Holy paladins, since it was too weak. Actually, ALL holy paladin healing spells were buffed. Again, numbers tweaking is easy to do.

Holy is in a better place than two weeks ago.


Protection:

The buff to Crusader Strike made it better for single target than our AoE move Hammer of the Righteous. For a while, tankadins used more or less the same rotation on single target as they did on multiple target. The buff changed that at least.

I was concerned about our ramp-up time. We need to build up three Holy Power before being able to hit the monsters hard enough for them to notice. Blizzard will address this by making Divine Plea generate three Holy Power when used. This means that tankadins can start a fight with three Holy Power every two minutes. This is a good change.

The prot rotation is still "939". It's not harder than the old "969", which, even though it was "easy", was an elegant and smooth rotation. "939" leaves a little bit of wiggle-room, since not 100% of our global cooldowns are used (but pretty darn close).

I was concerned about Grand Crusader. Our Avenger's Shield ends up low on our priority list, which means that we mostly ignore this proc, and just use our frisbee when it fits into our rotation. In AoE fights, the proc is more useful, since (unglyphed) the frisbee hits three targets in the face. Blizzard has stated that they will in some way buff the proc, since it is their intention to make it our signature proc.

Word of Glory is still a concern. I read about tankadins getting huge heals off when they have massive Vengeance stacks. This is broken, and will be fixed. Word of Glory is not supposed to scale with the attack power provided by Vengeance.
Blizzard is buffing Word of Glory for Holy, but keeping it as a modest heal for ret and prot.

I see the use of Word of Glory, but I still find it underwhelming. Compared to the self-healing on my death knight (Death Strike, Rune Tap, Bloodworms, etc), Word of Glory is really lackluster. And it still requires me to build up three Holy Power before it is strong enough to be noticed.

Of course, there wouldn't be patches and hotfixes without paladin nerfs!

Our blocking will be nerfed. As soon as I had installed the patch, I went to reforge my tanking gear. With very little effort, Arnax was block-capped (102.4% combined miss-avoidance-block). I know that ratings will suffer when we get to 85, but that was just ridiculous. Raid buffed, it turned out I had TOO much Mastery. When the block cap is reached, Mastery turns into complete crap for protection paladins (is there any other class that has a problem like this?).
Blizzard's solution to this was to nerf both Holy Shield (from 15% to 10%) and Mastery (from 3% per point to 2.25% per point).
Edit: I read the Holy Shield change wrong. Holy Shield no longer increases block chance, but increases the amount of damage blocked. So tankadins lost 15% block chance, but gained 10% block "value."

Blizzard also nerfed our Shield of the Righeous. It now scales a lot less with attack power (from 120% to 60%, ouch), but gets a bigger base damage. The issue they are solving is the massive damage that can be reached with full stacks of Vengeance up. I know some tanks got a hard-on when seeing 100k+ crits on Festergut, but that was obviously broken.

Our main damage reduction cooldown Guardian of Ancient Kings will also get nerfed (from 60% damage reduction to 50%). With a nerf both to our block mechanic and our main damage reduction cooldown, tankadin survivability just took a hit.

Protection is still on a rollercoaster ride, but is probably at about the same state as two weeks ago.


TL;DR Blizzard is still tuning paladins, and the tuning won't stop until we hit 85 and they see real numbers from a larger population than on beta. Holy paladins got buffed. Retribution paladins got slightly buffed. Protection paladins got mostly nerfed.

I'm still here.... honest!

More than a month has past since my last post. That is, of course, unfortunate, but I have had loads to do at work lately, and since that is what pays the bills, blogging has been down-prioritized to a level where it competes with mowing the lawn and cleaning out the garage.

My lawn looks like a jungle, and there is hardly room for my car in the garage. So I'll just give a short update on what's going on in the game for me.

We have 8 out of 12 heroic encounters down in ICC25. Lady Deathwhisper, Putricide, Sindragosa, and Lich King are still up. Lady was our goal this week, but it didn't work out.

One of the guild's 10-man groups are working on heroic Arthas. The group I run with has had some problems with signups, but we are at 9/12 hardmodes (Putricide, Sindragosa, and LK left).

My casual ICC10 is working on normal mode Lich King.

There has been some minor leaks from the Cataclysm Alpha, but nothing to be especially excited about.

And we all know that the only thing that really matters is: What will female worgen look like?

Paladin Class Preview

The paladin preview is upon us!

Short version: "Holy paladins get a new big heal and Beacon of Light will be nerfed. Retribution and Protection will get more complicated rotations since they obviously are faceroll specs. Any exact details are not available at this moment. Please hold."

Paladins don't seem to be getting that interrupt or gap closer we've been asking for, and that sucks.
Holy paladins will get a half-assed AoE healing spell, but seem to be stuck in the single-target nuke heal niche.


New Paladin Spells

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

For protection, this is our version of the warrior's Shockwave. This is a good thing, since tankadins currently lack snap AoE aggro. It also gives Holy an AoE damage spell. I wonder what kind of cooldown this spell has, since I assume it won't be spammable. Also, how long will the targets be blinded, and will damage break the blind?

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

It doesn't say anything about spec restrictions, so I assume all three specs will be able to use this spell. I also assume it only scales with spell power, so it will be ridicilously weak for non-holy paladins. I'm sure it will have a VERY short range, so it will only be healing the people standing on top of you. So this is Blizzard's AoE heal gift to paladins?

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Retribution gets their own Gargoyle. Holy gets a smart heal. Protection gets another damage reduction cooldown. I'm pretty sure the damage reduction won't last a full 30 seconds. For a tanking cooldown, 3 minutes is a bit long. Maybe a glyph will shorten the cooldown?


Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

Holy paladins get another damage ability. Protection paladins get another single-target damage ability. Retribution paladins hopefully get something sexier than the current lame strike.

• Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

The dispel changes affect all classes that can dispel. It's more or less a nerf to all non-healers, which means that retribution and protection paladins will get a weaker Cleanse.

• Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

I like the intention Blizzard has here, but I'm not sure it's enough. Paladin buffing is annoying (not as annoying as it used to be but still annoying). Merging Might and Wisdom is a good choice, since buffing druids, shammies, and paladins sometimes could give you grey hairs.
But what happens to Blessing of Sanctuary, since it is not mentioned here?

• Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

In the first post, it seemed that Holy Shock would only keep the healing part across specs. But later comments from Ghostcrawler indicate that it will still do damage as well. This would give retribution and protection paladins a new instant ranged damage spell. Didn't Blizzard nerf instant Exorcism because it was considered OP in PvP? And now they give us an instant ranged damage spell back?
Actually, Holy Shock might just replace Exorcism altogether. If it is an instant heal/damage spell, it would be identical to an Art of War proc for a ret paladin (either an instant Flash of Light or an instant Exorcism). I don't see ret paladins having BOTH Holy Shock and Art of War FoL/Exorcism.
For tankadins, it means another single target damage spell, and also another ranged spell to pickup runaway adds with. Plus an instant heal if needed.



New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

Everytime paladins QQ about how bad their performance is in Arena, or how OP other classes are at the moment, the immediate answer is: "So what? U haf ur bubblez, nab!11!!1!!"
Blizzard haven't wanted to touch the bubble, since they believe it's a signature spell in the paladin arsenal.
Now they are playing with the idea of reducing the duration of the bubble by a couple of seconds, so that a paladin won't be able to heal back to full health before it fades.
The only time I use my bubble as a tank is when I clear stacks of nasty debuffs, and I do it with a cancelaura macro. I only need a half-a-second long bubble :)
But I understand that this is purely a PvP balancing act.

• We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.

Blizzard thinks retribution is a faceroll spec and wants to make it more complicated.

• We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

A 30 minute Sacred Shield sounds just like a new Blessing to me (with the caveat that it can only be used on one target). I'm not sure how this change would make a holy paladin a better group healer though...

• We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.

Like paladins NEED a bigger heal, right? Seems they will tone down Holy Light to a "normal" heal and add a new big heal.
But the big thing here is the part with Beacon of Light. Will it really only work with Flash of Light, the spell Blizzard states will be more expensive and rather weak?
Later clarifications on this indicate that Blizzard still haven't decided what to do with Beacon of Light yet. All they know is that it needs to be changed (i.e. nerfed).

• Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

We already knew that.

• Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we're looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

"Paladin tanks need more complicated rotations because they are a faceroll spec." So we will get a bunch of new abilities that we need to use? And two new cooldowns we need to choose between when tanking?
I seriously will not have room for all of this on my action bar. I already use at least five abilities in my normal tank rotation, not counting taunts and defensive cooldowns. Now they will add more, and different rotations for single target and AoE?
From this preview, we've seen Blinding Shield being added for AoE (but most likely with a long cooldown), and Holy Shock and Crusader Strike being added for single target. We will abviously see more stuff added.

• Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Only time the charges wear off is when AoE tanking loads of trash, so this is just a convenience change.



Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Holy

• Healing
• Meditation
• Critical Healing Effect

Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

Wow! A critting heal will HEAL FOR MORE. Imba Mastery!
Boring mastery which just keeps holy paladins in the NUKE HEAL niche. I thought the intention was to get them out of there?

Protection

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Block Amount

Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

No surprises here.

Retribution

• Melee Damage
• Melee Critical Damage
• Holy Damage

Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.

Yawn! Boring.


With all the previews now up, I vote for the Shaman preview to be the sexiest. The Shaman preview really made me look forward to healing on my shammy. The death knight preview was just "meh", and the paladin preview just raised a lot of questions.

Class Previews Day 3

On the third day of previews, Blizzard gave to us: Hunters, Druids, and Mages.

I don't play either of these classes, and couldn't care less....

The short version is: Hunters won't use mana or ammo anymore. Resto druids won't be running around as giant broccolis anymore. Mages get heroism.

I know atleast one mage who creamed his pants when he realized he was getting heroism.

Changed your underwear yet, Fj?

Class Previews Day 2

Tomorrow is the big day: we will get the Paladin preview. Fingers crossed for some goodies.

This blue post worries me a little bit:

The fact is we're just not as far along on paladins as we are the other classes.

We haven't torn up the paladin talent trees in earnest yet, so the preview will likely be heavy on design intent and light on details.

The reason this worries me is that Blizzard should know better. They should know from experience that paladins are the hardest class to balance right, since most paladin abilities are shared between the specs, and there is no real punishment for using abilities from another role while playing (we don't have forms, or presences, or stances).

Saving the paladin to last seems to be a bad idea when you know it will be the hardest to design. That quote above states that they have barely started....

Anyway... the second preview day showed us the warriors, death knights, and rogues. Since I play a death knight, and since we got to see some tanking masteries, these were interesting previews.

Warriors
Warriors get Heroic Leap, an ability that paladins have been asking for for a long time. I'm not going to QQ just yet, because I don't know what paladins will get. But paladins really really need a closer, an ability to quickly cover the distance between here and there. Paladins are still extremely easy to kite in PvP, and we are the only tank that cannot get to a mob "instantly" (death knights have Death Grip, but that cannot be used on bosses, so they also suffer from this).

Shouting becomes "free", Whirlwind becomes a "true" AoE, fury will be able to dual-wield one-handers again.

Then we get to the tanking masteries:

Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.

Paladins will most likely get a mastery like this as well (hopefully with some individual flavor). It sounds reasonable and will make block useful again.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

This one I'm not so sure about. Tanks deal more damage when they get hit? And the buff scales with the damage done to the tank?

Doesn't this mean that more avoidance and more mitigation lead to slower stacks of the buff being applied? So the better gear the tank has, the slower his AP buff will stack up? Why?

And how does it work for offtanks, who won't get hit as much as the main tank? What do they do to keep threat up? How do an offtank stay "second on aggro" if he doesn't get this buff?

Well, guess we have to wait and see.


Death Knights
After being all psyched out over all the goodies that my shammy was going to get, the death knight changes seemed a bit lacking.

Outbreak will be a nice opener, making it possible for the DK to apply both diseases with just one GCD. But it will have a long cooldown (1 minute), so it will take some practise to learn how to use it best.

Necrotic Strike is the DK version of Mortal Strike.

Dark Simulacrum is the DK version of Spell Reflect.

None of these excites me much. Mortal Strike and Spell Reflect are PvP abilities, and I don't PvP with my DK anyways.

Blizzard is changing the way runes will charge, so that Dks can spend them more efficiently. This will probably take some time to get used to, but is probably a good change.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Blood will become the dedicated tanking tree. Instead of a block mastery, DKs will get

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

So the more a DK heals himself, the more mitigation he gets.

The DK dps masteries are quite boring.


Rogues
I haven't raided with my rogue since early Trial of the Crusader, but there were a couple of good changes I noticed in the preview.

The rogue can transfer combo points from one target to another. Passive abilities, such as Slice and Dice, no longer have target requirements to be activated (which means you can use the points from a recently killed target). Combat Readiness makes the rogue less squishy. Weapon specializations will be removed (no more respeccing everytime you get a weapon upgrade).

And Smoke Bomb sounds like a lot of fun.

Class Previews Day 1

I know, I know. We paladins have to wait another week before we get to see what Blizzard has in store for us. But there are other classes to take a look at before then.

Since I play quite a bit with my shaman and death knight as well, I'm eager to see what kind of changes those classes will get.

Ghostcrawler dropped a DK bomb already the other day by declaring that Blood will be the designated tanking tree for death knights. This was a change that I've been expecting for some time. Blizzard probably realized that designing meaningful Masteries for all three DK trees, when having all three being able to both dps and tank, would have been a game design nightmare.

So they took the easy way out, and we will now see Blood as a tanking tree, Frost as a Dual-Wield dps tree, and Unholy as a Two-hander dps tree.

Anyway, we will see more of the DK changes tomorrow. Today the classes previewed were Shaman, Warlock, and Priest.

I don't play a warlock nor a priest, so I don't really understand the impact of the changes presented. I guess locks are happy to finally get rid of those shards.

This, however, is really cool:

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

The shammy changes presented made me happy. I rarely play as enhancement, and I kind of feel like enhance shammies got the least exciting changes of the three specs. The other two specs got the following candy:

Elemental:

• Elemental shammies get a more useful AoE damage spell in Earthquake, which sounds fun.
• Spirit on gear turns into hit for elemental shammies, which means restos and "ellies" will finally be able to share gear.
• Totem of Wrath will no longer be a static buff, but a 4-10% (depending on spec) spell power buff.
  
• Spiritwalker's Grace (see below) will make it possible to dps while moving.
• Elemental Overload Mastery seems cool. Moar pew-pew!
  

Good stuff! A useful AoE, "hit for free", scaling spell power buff, and no more "lightning bolt turrets".

Restoration:
Before I start, check these two new talents out:

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

OMGawesumsweetnessyummy!

Healing Rain sounds so sexy I want it right this instant! Imagine a healing spell I will cast outside of my little Grid world! I will actually have to move my eyes from Grid and target something in the actual game to heal. People can run in and take a healing shower and move out when topped off.

Spiritwalker's Grace is like getting pie after eating some cake with a plate of cookies as the side dish. The hardest fights to heal as a shammy is the fights will lots of movement. I mean, you only get so far with Riptide, and Nature's Swiftness do have a two-minute cooldown. This new talent will make it possible to heal on the move when it matters the most.

Other:

• A new go-to heal in New Healing Wave.
• Bye-bye Cleansing Totem (/cry).
• Spirit Link is back. Well, maybe.
• A very nice Mastery: Deep Healing.

Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

• And a shammy version of the paladin judgement: Unleash Weapon.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

I look forward to healing on my shammy in Cataclysm!

Now, bring on the death knight changes! Then we will have a full week to recover before the paladin preview is upon us!

Thank God it's Friday

I'm writing this sitting at an airport waiting for my flight home. Work keeps sending me out-of-town, which was all good when I was young and single, but is becoming dull now when I'm married and have a kid. But I gotta pay that mortgage, right?

(Oh noes, I have exposed the fact that I'm married! Now all the hordes of female blog-fans chasing after me will move on to the next sexy blogger hunk. What will I do without all those virtual panties that have been thrown at me allt his time?)

I just only had time to install the 3.3.3 patch before leaving home the other day. I didn't see any paladin changes, which is a very rare thing. No Pvp nerfs. No redesigned talents. No AoE threat nerf. It must have been a mistake, which I'm sure Blizzard will correct with an unannounced stealth hot fix. Or maybe the paladin team is so exhausted from all the previous changes that they needed a vacation this time around.

When I'm checking my earlier posts I realize that I stopped writing ICC guides when I got to Professor Putricide. Well, I guess that's proof enough that I hate him. When I start explaining tactics on Putricide in our casual 10-man, I throw up a little in my mouth, and quickly make a raid vote to go to Blood or Frost wing instead.

I'll try to pick up the guide writing, even though it feels a bit late to write them at this point. I might just go for heroic guides instead, but I'm just starting doing the heroic fights now, so it'll take some time for me to digest them.

In unrelated news, Arnax finally got a brand new hat. He's now wearing his first piece of T10 (iLvl264). The competition for Conqueror marks is fierce in our raids, since we run with six (!) paladins, threeish warlocks and fourish priests. It doesn't help that for some reason, the Conqueror marks drop less than the other two...

Boarding time. Time to squeeze into a metal tube with a hundred others traveling home.

Thank God it's Friday!

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Yesterday, I left the guild I have been in for three years. It was a hard decision to make, but I didn't really see any other options.

The guild introduced me to raiding back when Karazhan was new. I had played the game since its release, but never really gotten into the raiding scene until TBC.

The raiding days in TBC were a lot of fun. The guild was far from cutting edge, but we had fun while raiding, and slowly made progress. I know it's easy to forget the hard times, but I have a lot of fond memories from those days.

The main reason for leaving was that 25-man raiding had become a lot less fun. The raiding atmosphere was bad, raid morale was low, and I didn't agree with the leadership style of the raid leader. The state of raiding was so bad that we barely got enough signups to go raiding at all.

All guilds have their ups and downs, and during the three years I was a member in this guild, I stayed and helped the guild through bad times before. This time, however, I don't see any change for the better anytime soon, and I no longer have strong enough emotional ties to the guild to be prepared for a long haul.

Many of my in-game friends have left the guild, and other people I respect and enjoy playing with have either stopped raiding or play alot less than they used to.

It came to a point where I realized that logging on my paladin wasn't as much fun as it used to be. So I decided to leave and start afresh someplace else.

Will the grass be greener on the other side? I hope so. Only time will tell.

To my former guild mates I'd like to say: "So long and thanks for all the fish feasts!"

Hot-fixed Paladin Stamina Nerf

Several paladins noted the other night that their health suddenly dropped. I must admit I didn't notice it myself, but I can imagine the confusion it must have caused.

Blizzard did an unannounced hotfix where they, in short, nerfed paladin stamina with 4%, while buffing death knight stamina with 2%.

The official announcement came out later:

Paladin

• Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.

Death Knight

• Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
• Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.

It's a nice buff to death knight tanks, who have been a bit of an underdog for a while now.

For paladins it's of course never nice to get nerfed (especially not unannounced), but the comments from blue posters seem to indicate that the nerf to stamina makes it less likely that they will nerf Ardent Defender, the source of endless QQ from other tanks.

Since I prefer a fully functioning AD to 4% stamina, I'm all good.

Now we all have to wait and see about that AoE threat nerf that seems to be incoming...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!
I hope you all enjoy the Holidays.

Patch 3.3: First Impressions

I was prepared for the worst after hearing stories about crashing servers and immense latencies, but my patch day experience was only spoiled by one disconnect, and I wasn't lagging at all.

The first thing I did was to respec. I moved my three "filler points" in the prot tree from Reckoning and put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. Otherwise my spec stays the same as before.

I managed to do my cooking daily before someone in the guild needed a tank for the new heroics. I hadn't read much about the instances, and didn't know much more than that they were three and that we were supposed to run behind Jaina's skinny behind most of the time. Even though we had a full group, we used the Dungeon Finder feature to be teleported to the instance.

Even though I love the efficiency of being teleported straight to any instance, it kind of takes away the feeling of being part of a "big" world. When you had to fly to every instance, it gave you a feeling that you actually had to travel a distance from your safe haven to get to the place where the vile monsters rip brave adventurers to small pieces. Now you can spend all your time in Dalaran, just waiting for a teleport to the other side of the world (literally), and when you are done, you will be safe back at the inn, with a barmaid willing to please just within arm's reach.

Why would I want a fancy flying mount if I won't be travelling anywhere?

Anyhow, we got the the first instance, went inside, and started pulling. After a couple of groups, I realized that the healer had been AFK since we zoned in, so I took a break and drank some mana tea. Beware of the OOM monster when you tank these instances!

As soon as the healer came back, I pulled a new group, and we wiped. It was a bit surprising to be honest, but shit does happen. After that, we burned through all three instances up to the Lich King himself.

Spoiler alert: The Lich King fight consists of the entire group running away like little girls.

On the last ice wall, I managed to lose our healer to a stray mob, and after that, the Lich King caught up with me and killed me. The rest of the group ran away to safety, and got their heroic achievements, while me and the healer got nada. So I guess I have to run the last instance again just for the achievement...

Even though I didn't lag or disconnect much, there was a VERY annoying thing that screwed up my tanking: All mobs wanted to run through me and fight me from behind. It didn't matter how I pulled, the same thing happened all the time. So I had to constantly move around while tanking, which my rogue and ret pally companions didn't enjoy much. I really hope this is a bug, because it made tanking alot harder and very annoying. I can't even imagine how nasty tanking Anub'arak's adds on heroic will be if they keep running through you and attack you from behind...

After the heroics, I went to the new 25-man raid. I'll get back to that one in a later post.

So far, I'm impressed with the patch. The new dungeons are cool (at least the first time you run them), the Dungeon Finder tool seems nice, and the new raid instance is sexy. My first impression of the patch is that it's much better than the disappointing 3.2 patch. But it's only been one day, so I'll probably soon find something to complain about...

Chilly Winds and Pilgrim's Flu

I've been a bit demoralized lately, for several reasons.

Five of the members of our "Saturday Evening Heroic ToC 10 Fun Raid" left the guild last week. Not only were they five of the guild's best players, but also five of my best friends in the game. I won't discuss their reasons for leaving in this blog, but both I and my wife, who enjoyed our 10-man raids immensely, were not surprised to see them leave.

The guild's 25-man raids are stagnant. The guild management and the raid leader decided to stop doing heroic Coliseum several weeks ago, and instead pursue hard modes in Ulduar. This decision has resulted in lots of QQ on our forums, fewer signups, and people leaving the guild. The morale of the remaining raiders are low.

The combination of no longer enjoying our 25-man raids, losing our fun 10-man raid group, and spending a week sick with the flu has made me spend my game time on things I might not have done otherwise.

I've been running Outland heroics with my wife to grind reputation with factions nobody really cares about anymore. I've been fishing. I've been doing cooking and fishing dailies I never bothered with before. I even bought Haris Pilton's fashionable bag for many gold coins (shopping is supposed to make you happy, right?).

So when a new in-game holiday shows up, I'm first in line to get those shiny achievements done. I have nothing better to do anyway, right?

But, to be honest, Pilgrim's Bounty is a pretty stupid holiday.

• The quests that kept sending you back and forth between Stormwind, Ironforge, and Darnassus wanted me to reroll a mage just to get the portals...
• Getting people to understand how to pass food around the tables is like teaching dogs to read and write.
• Killing 40 turkeys in a row in competition with 40 others? Everytime you reach over 30 turkeys you know there will be a gnome mage popping up, stealing your next turkey with an Ice Lance, and you will weep when you see your timer run out.
• Finding a rogue of each race to shoot with your Turkey Shooter? Good luck with that one...
• And how many times will you get ganked in Horde cities when you just want to sit down and enjoy their food and hospitality?

Well, at least it's Christmas soon...

Giants Dancing on my Brain

I missed our Ulduar hard mode raid yesterday due to migraine, which sucked. It's not really possible to raid when it feels like you have two enraged giants tap dancing on your brain, while a ravenous shark is gnawing away at the back of your head.

So I missed out on the Iron Council and Hodir hard modes. Since we did the Flame Leviathan and XT-002 hard modes on Wednesday, at least I got those checked off on my list.

Our little ten-man group got heroic Anub down to 17% a couple of times on Saturday. 17% is still miles away from a kill of course, but we feel that we've got the kill in sight. My gear for the fight is shaping up, but I'm still short 8% from being passive unhittable. The gear set is still making a difference, since the amount of damage made to me is significantly lower than it used to be in my EH gear.

Before the giants started their dancing lessons on my cerebrum and the shark still hadn't reached my medulla oblongata, I attented a 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid with my shammy as dps. I have now completed Trial of the Crusader as all possible roles: Tank (paladin and death knight), healer (shaman), melee dps (rogue and warrior), and ranged dps (shaman).

As in almost every other raid, ranged dps is the easiest role. You tab between targets, keep up your rotation, and make sure not to stand in fire. That's it. Kudos to people who don't fall asleep while doing this every raid ;P

I'll try to make my next post a little bit more useful. Like discussing patch 3.3 and the pleasure of tanking in a dress again, or something.

P.S. If you were wondering: The giants were of course singing as well:

We're dancing on his brain
Just dancing on his brain
What a glorious feelin'
We're enraged again

True story.

Back at the Keyboard

I'm back after spending a week in the deep dark forests of Finland, where I attended a training course for Software Architects.

In my absence, my guild has accomplished the following:

• Forged the guild's first legendary mace (congratulations, Diabbix!)
• Downed Onyxia in an official guild run
• Cleared Trial of the Crusader with TWO guild runs

It's great that our guild can manage to run with two groups in Trial of the Crusader, since it means more of us can get to experience the fights, and get the nice loot.

It's too bad that I couldn't be there when Diabbix got his mace, but that's life. Getting the legendary mace is a nice guild achievement, and we have a couple of priests with fragments in their bags, waiting for their turn. But signups for Ulduar has waned significantly lately, so it might be hard to accomplish.

Well, time to log on. I have to catch up on some of the dailies....

The Wondrous World of PUGs

Since the changes that made every boss drop Conquest emblems, and the daily heroic quest rewarding Triumph emblems, I have been running heroics with PUGs every day. Running with PUGs these days are not as bad as it used to be, mostly because the majority of people outgear the content, and not because people are in any way better players than before.

I respecced my shaman to restoration a couple of weeks back, which means I'm pugging as tank (paladin and death knight), dps (rogue), and healer (shaman). You can say that I get to see pugging from every perspective.

The smoothest runs are almost always when I run as tank. It's very obvious that the skill and gear of the tank is the biggest factor of success in a pug. It doesn't really matter if the healer or the dps are any good as long as I'm tanking with any of my over-geared tanks. As a tank, you set the pace and decide the risks. After the first couple of pulls, you know what to expect from the rest of the group, and adjust accordingly for the rest of the instance. I've only wiped once when running as tank, and that was when a dps pulled all nine adds on Palentress in Trial of the Champion.

When running as dps, you pretty much are in the hands of the tank and the healer. Sure, you can help out as much as you can by protecting the healer and only hitting the tank's target, but if they both suck, you are in for an unecessary repair bill.

As a healer you can make a difference, but only up to a certain point. If the tank can't hold aggro or does stupid pulls, or if the dps is trigger-happy to the extreme and ignore Omen, you will have deaths no matter how well you heal. I have to admit that the only times I have ever left a group is when I'm healing and it's obvious that the tank has no clue of what he's doing.

It really makes me sad to see that so many tanks are so terrible, even after Blizzard has made tanking so much easier than before. Tanks that fail at heroics at level 80 wouldn't have made it through the gates to the heroics in TBC.

But of course you get pleasant surprises as well when you find yourself in an amazing group, burning through the instance, making jokes, or maybe doing huge pulls just to test your limits.

PUGs can turn out either way. It can be a fun ride or a real pain. You never know, and I guess that is the beauty of it these days.

My WoW History

Since we are coming up to the five year anniversary of WoW, I decided to recap my own history in the game.

I entered the World of Warcraft about a month after its release. My first character was a dwarf paladin named Thorwald. I was attracted to the idea of a holy warrior that was wearing heavy armor, a two-handed weapon, and used a combination of magic and brute force to kill monsters. Thorwald was deleted when he reached mid-30s, since I got bored with the combat system (buff yourself, autoattack, and watch mobs die at random speed). I then tried out an undead rogue for 35ish levels, and then a human mage. That mage eventually became my second character to reach 70, and is now, at level 71, working as my bank character / enchanter.

I have played every class in the game to at least level 55. The only classes that never made it to 70 were warrior, druid, and priest.

I didn't start raiding until I was 70. My first raid instance ever was Karazhan, and my first raiding character was a holy paladin named Isolde. Isolde had been around for a long time by then. After deleting my dwarf paladin, I realized that I still wanted one of those holy warriors, so I created a human paladin and levelled her as a holy/ret hybrid. She was my first character to reach both 60 and 70. These days she is stuck at 71, still dressed in her BT/MH epics, sitting at the inn in Valiance Keep.

I raided SSC, TK, MH, and BT on my holy paladin until I got bored with the paladin healing style. I then switched my main raiding character to my elemental shaman and spent some time spamming lightning bolts at stuff in raids.

At this time, I felt the guild needed another tank, and thus Arnax was born. I levelled him as protection from day 1. I still remember the mid-30s when I finally got Reckoning, which made AoE grinding alot faster. "Need to kill X boars? Sure, just round them up and hack away!". Switching between Seal of light and Seal of wisdom to keep them bars topped off while being attacked by a plethora of mobs was fun.

I tanked my way through all the TBC raids up until Council in BT when The Patch was released, which made it easier for everyone to finish off those pesky final bosses. Thus I never tanked Illidan before 3.0, and I always brought my shaman to Archimonde for an extra tremor totem until 3.0 hit us.

Arnax is now my main, and is the character I bring to progression raids. I have a rogue alt who I bring to our second raid group (Ulduar and Coliseum) and a death knight alt who I help out in Naxx with. My shaman has raided Naxx and Ulduar, but is now in the ice box.

I have deleted all my other alts, mostly to remove the temptation to level them as well. But I have found that the experience of having played almost all of the classes up to 70 has served me well. I know what to expect from other classes, and I know their strengths and weaknesses. Actually, the only specs I have absolutely no clue about are balance druids and shadow priests.

The only class that I have stuck by with through all these years is the paladin. My current main paladin was not my first, but my third paladin created. It just took some time for me to figure out which spec I enjoyed the most (I play a horde retribution paladin as well).

It's been a fun five years. The last three years my wife has played the game as well, which has made it even more fun. The time I have spent with the guild Guardians of Destiny has been great, and I thank them for letting me raid with them, and letting me switch roles from healer to dps to tank in our progression raids.

With Icecrown Citadel at the horizon, and Cataclysm later on, the future of WoW looks promising. I hope to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

Summer time

It's summer time and everything slows down a bit. Raid sign-ups in our guild is low and several raids are cancelled. We don't have enough core sign-ups to continue on Yogg-Saron.

I'm mostly playing my rogue alt at the moment, except when I collect useless achievements (like the Flame Warden title achievement) on Arnax.

There are some big changes to paladins coming in patch 3.2. I'll get back to those in a post later. At the moment, I am on vacation and will not post much at all.

I hope you all enjoy your summer :)