Archive for August, 2008

WotLK Build 8885 Updates; Bad Nerf To Rets

When everybody started talking about Retribution Paladins’ mana is bad in the forums… I know I’m missing something. Then AHA! I saw a new build being released and immediately understood why. Highlight on this new build has to be the nerf to Judgement of the Wise. Initially, Judgement of the Wise is a 3-point talent giving 60% of the damage caused to 3 group or raid members. This was great because it practically converted Retadins’ mana bar into a never-ending rage bar. Think Warriors with 100 rage all the time! That’s how good it was! Then they changed it to regenerate only 0.5% of the maximum mana per second for up to 10 party or raid members.

While I’m sure its raid application will be significant, but unfortunately due to the limited mana pool of Retadins, it isn’t quite returning enough for ourselves. To make it worse, Seal of Wisdom and Light, as well as Judgement of Wisdom and Light have also been changed (undocumented) to restoring only 2% to 4% per proc, also a significant nerf from previously mechanics of being affected by Attack Power. Many have been proposing that Judgement of the Wise should remain the same for personal recharging, ie 60% of damage done should be restored back to the Paladin. Others proposed a change for the now useless Benediction talent to include some kind of recharging utility… which isn’t very popular due to the increased amount of talent points needed to perform something we were able to do.

On the other hand though, Protection Paladins should rejoice with the new changes to Blessing of Sanctuary, which now also restores mana! This is a good step for Blizzard to address Tankadins’ mana concerns. Question now is whether this will be enough hmmm…

WotLK Build 8885 Updates - MMO-Champion (Source)

Retribution

  • Blessing of Might ranks 5+ have all been buffed and now grant more attack power.
  • Judgements of the Wise (Tier 6) changed to: Your Judgement spells have a 33/66/100% chance to grant up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.5% of their maximum mana per second.
  • Improved Blessing of Might (Tier 1) now increases the attack power bonus from Blessing of Might by 5/10/15/20/25%. (Previously 10/20/30/40/50%)

Holy

  • Beacon of Light (Tier 11) changed to: The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed.

Protection

  • Blessing of Sanctuary changed to give all members of the raid or group that share the same class with the target the Greater Blessing of Sanctuary, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 30 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.
  • Shield Specialization (Tier 3) now increases shield block value by 10/20/30%. (Previously just increased damage absorbed)
  • Toughness (Tier 3) now reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50% in addition to its previous effect. (Previously just increased armor by 2/4/6/8/10%)

Related Posts:

Comments (3)

Skinning 450 = 25 Critical Rating

This excellent article has been submitted by Alex Pagle. If you would also like to share your thoughts with our fellow readers, please submit your entry to wowpaladin@wowpaladin.org.

Gathering professions always seemed like the red-headed stepchild of WOW. They were only good for giving you a steady supply of materials to help you level up whatever crafting profession you had chosen. That last sentence was in the past tense for a reason. The word on the street is that Mining, Skinning, and, Herbalism will each provide a unique bonus based on your skill level. While I haven’t seen anything official on the WOW boards, I have come across various articles mentioning this exciting change.

MMO-Champion: Skinning 450 = 25 Crit Rating

This article makes brief mention of the three gathering professions and what the potential reward is for being a gatherer.

Mining - 35 Stamina, at max level
Skinning - 25 Critical, at max level
Herbalism - 2000 hit point heal over time (5 min cooldown), at max level

Not too shabby, IMO. Sure, it’s not the shiney sword you’d get from being a Blacksmith, but, any of those stats are a welcome boost to professions that had really nothing to offer a player once they maxed out. Of course this is still beta and there could be changes on how this will all be
implemented, or, if it will even make it at all. It’s at least a small ray of hope for those of you who spent countless hours picking Felweed on your 58, while trying to avoid getting dive-bombed by some level 70. Or, those of you that lost count of the number of mobs that interrupted your mining
when you were one tick away from getting that last piece of Gold Ore needed to move on to Mithril.

*Et cetera*

Some of you may or may not know that I am a fan of low level twinking. I’ll spare you the details of why, and how many twinks I’ve created over the years. I’m just going to give you the meat and potatos of what this new development means for low level twinks. Since the gathering professions do not have a level requirement, like the crafting professions, Twinks could possibly max out their gathering professions to get these bonuses. While the stamina bonus from Mining, and the HoT from Herbalism are self explanitory, 25 crit remains the most interesting boost. Crit rating currently scales better at lower levels. Currently on a level 10 character, 25 crit would net you a 46% critical strike bonus!!! It’s entirely possible to reach 100% critical, effectively doubling any listed dps total you could reach (my current level 10 twink had 46 dps, unbuffed). As you level higher, the returns ar not as good, but, you can still put up some impressive numbers. A word of caution, It’s still unknown if WotLK will change this in anyway. If you choose to try this, you do so at your own risk.

Related Posts:

Comments (2)

Patch 3.0 Is Coming To PTR! But…

But Judgement is still broken in Beta! Hammer of Righteous is also still doing physical damage! I’m pretty sure there is a few other bugs but I’m not in beta and I kindda lost track of the list thus far. Still, my point being… Isn’t it a little too early Blizzard? Why the rush? There was a speculation that right after Activision-Blizzard merger, there was a decision from the top management to fix the release date to November/December. While the developers are still pretty happy in reassuring us that it will be ready when it is ready… Somewhat I have been feeling that it has been a bad rush. Paladins should have been worked on in Alpha and not Beta! And now everything should be fixed first in Beta and not to be released in PTR first!

Your priorities are wrong Blizzard!

And then there is this fellow who agrees with me in a more elaborated way…

Posted by Veldren (Source)

The talk of the beta town lately is the recent announcement that 3.0, and with it the WotLK talents and abilities, will be going Live in a timeframe of weeks.

“The coming weeks” does not suggest a lengthy period of time.

I haven’t been in beta as long as most (only a couple of weeks) but I will tell you right now that WotLK is not ready for release.

There’s still time to implement and test content. With 3.0 does not come Northrend, nor does it come Northrend’s dungeons and raids, nor does it come with Northrend’s battleground or World PvP. What does come with 3.0 are class talents and abilities.

Those aren’t ready either.

A number of classes have received almost no review throughout the entire beta process. Shaman and Rogues come to mind as classes that both have not had any serious class changes throughout the beta and have still-NYI talents that nobody’s even been able to test. Murder Spree, the Combat 51-point, has never worked and nobody has any idea how powerful it will or won’t be. If the talent goes live a week before 3.0 and it turns out it’s horrible and needs a total rework- well, rogues certainly won’t be happy. My finger isn’t exactly on the pulse of the Shaman community but I’m sure they have many unanswered concerns.

Another class I’ve been following is Mages. Mages did have a back-and-forth with the Devs, but it abruptly stopped and the devs went off to other classes. Mages still have a number of issues that were never addressed or arose during the Beta process. For instance, the Arcane tree is almost completely untestable from a PvE DPS standpoint because Arcane Blast’s mana cost is ludicrously high and more than likely bugged (1000 mana or so at 80). Arcane Blast is a spell that needs a lot of feedback that can’t be given due to sweeping changes to its mechanics.

I’m sure that Shaman, Rogues, and Mages aren’t alone in their concerns for their class and still feel that a lot more work could be done. These are simply the classes I follow the most closely.

This isn’t meant to be a complaint or a QQ post. It’s not a criticism of the fine work you’ve done so far on the expansion. I realize this is Beta and there is still work to be done. I am simply concerned.

How much time do classes who have gotten very little developer attention lately have to test their abilities? How long will they have to wait for some of their talents to even be implemented?

Which classes are done, which classes are not, and how many changes can we expect for classes who have received very little attention?

If a blue takes the time to respond to this, thank you very much for addressing my concern. I love the expansion very much so far, and would hate to see it dragged down by a rush to meet a deadline.

Other players, feel free to add your own thoughts on the matter. Bear in mind, this isn’t a doomcrying thread. This isn’t a complaining thread. This is simply an attempt, partially of concern and partially of curiousity, to see where classes are standing at the moment and where we hope to see them go.

Spot on. But Tigole was being rather brief on the reply and never quite addressed why things in such a rush without things first being ready in Beta.

Posted by Tigole (Source)

None of the classes are done. They are still being iterated on. 3.0 will be on the PTR’s soon. There is still a lot of testing before 3.0 would go live to public servers.

If you look back at past patches, we’ve had patches on the PTR for over 2 months before.

Yea still… you don’t need the extra datas Blizzard. Fix the bugs first!

Related Posts:

Comments (12)

Blizzard, You’re Doing It All Wrong!

This is quite a good read. Have a look!

TL;DR: Blizzard had been, and still is very confused with Paladins.

Blizzard: you’re doing it all wrong - Posted by Roosevelt (Source)

this might seem like a bit of qq at the start, but it helps me make my point.

its been so long since this game started taking shape and you still havent decided what you want paladins to do. thats the reason the class has been failing at so many different things.

lets have paladins be a utility melee class.
no, we need a buff bot class, have paladins be bards and a constant buffer.
looks like no one likes to buff bot, lets let paladins go go back to dpsing.
nah, we have too many people dpsing now, lets make paladins healers.
hm, how about we let paladins do damage, but only useful in pvp situations.
wait, people are complaining about not finding tanks, lets make paladins tank.
hmm, seems like with druids tanking we need healers again, lets have paladins heal.
damn, other healers are pissed at paladins, lets not have them heal anymore.
wait, if they cant heal what can they do? lets let them dps again.

i think i’ve made my point, the cycle goes on and on…

now thats only the general view. going into specifics, mainly for pvp, you have complained over and over about paladin burst damage. first of all paladin burst damage has never been that much higher than other people’s burst damage. the difference is that other people have control over their burst and do it when they’re supposed to, so people expect it coming and it never bothers them. there is no control over paladin burst, it happens when it happens, and you end up with a happy paladin and an angry person who unexpectedly got owned. thats the reason people complain. its not because paladins are the only class in the game who can do burst damage, its only because they do it when people dont expect it.

ok, so what do you do about it? again, you cant make up your mind. paladins have the least number of active abilities in the game than any other class, so your only option is to allow those very few abilities to do more damage. but you also dont want that. YOU CANT MAKE UP YOUR MINDS.

look at our pvp glove bonus. its 5% damage to cs… the pvp glvoes were the best dps glove for a long time, why? because its pretty much the only glove bonus that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do pvp, it only adds damage. what does this say? its says that blizzard wants paladin to pvp by have no utility other than damage. but wait, blizzard doesnt want that, do they?

what comes later? numerous nerfs to paladin utlity spells like freedom, bop, and bos, death of our defensive abilities like bubble and cleanse, and a so many buffs to other classes at the same time these nerfs are thrown around that paladins are grounded into a pulp. again, youre showing that you do not want paladins to have any utility at all.

what happens with wotlk? first, judgements go on global cooldown. there you have it, less burst. then what do you do? you give paladins a ridiculous art of war talent. more burst. looks like the cycle is starting again. crap, what am i saying, it never ended, thats what makes it a CYCLE.

hm… whats next? lets make vengeance stack less, because it adds to burst. no, it actually doesnt, but you can think that if you want. and to go with that, lets give paladins a glyph that increases proc chance of soc by 20%. i mean, paladins are balanced around burst damage, so this glyph is right up their alley. oh, wait what? who put that glyph there?

and btw, that art of war has got to go. paladins shouldnt be able to do that much burst. now to address that, lets let them do 20% more damage with their cs on stunned targets. that will surely address the burst issue with paladins. who? what? wait… my brain… it hurts…

im sure there are much brighter people than me working for blizzard who have everything planned out, communiate very well with eachother, and make thoughtful changes; but i’m gonna put out some solutions here just for kicks.

1. vegeance was added to address the horrifically low damage output of paladins. it wasnt added for them to do more burst. take it away, and paladins are crap again (not that they werent crap dps with 3 stacks of vegeance already). solution: vengeance increases damage by 3%, each additional point allows it to stack one more. at five points you have 5 stacks of 3 each, giving you 15. keeps it intact for dps, and makes it less burst for pvp. if you crit someone 5 times in 30 seconds before you do your burst, they probably have no resilience at all and shouldnt be pvping.

2. make useful set bonuses. make cs interrupt, not do more damage. interrupt on a set bonus too op? hm, i wonder if any other class gets such a bonus… wait, someone does. who? rogues, who have 20 different interrupts already, so why not just go ahead and give them a ranged interrupt too? no one will know how the rogue interrupted them, so they wont care…

3. dont add stupid glyphs. right now with bubble up, youre still not at 100% soc proc with a 3.8 weapon. with that dumb glyph, you will be at 100% proc with a 3.6 weapon. what does this mean? you hit bubble and avenging wrath and you are GURANTEED a soc proc. hit your wrath/trinket macro, hoj, blow someone away so hard that they go crying to the forums.

4. yes, we still have no snares and no closers. you know what would be a good glyph instead of the 20% more cs damage one? hm.. let me think, what do paladins have been crying for… how about 20% slow while under joj?

i can go on and on, and this is only retribution. i’m not even touching on the mistakes that you’ve make over and over with the other specs and gone in circles trying to fix them.

i really dont want to do one of those posts that takes up the first 10 spots and uses max characters in each, so i’m just gonna stop.

fare well in your journies.
FOR SIGMAR!
er, i mean FOR AUIR!
uh, wrong game… FOR UTHER!

Related Posts:

Comments (2)

Blue Posts Wednesday

I’m currently moving house so please bear with me for the slow updates for the moment… I will try to get organized as soon as possible as well as getting an internet connection so I can start posting right away.

As for today’s update…

Previously, like what I said… Blizzard isn’t working on Paladins at the moment due to the lack of updates. However, through patches we kept seeing a little nerf here and there and it sure isn’t fun that way. Ghostcrawler confirmed that it’s just experimental and it’s not official.

Quoted from Ghostcrawler (Source)

We didn’t work on paladins a lot for this patch. Any changes you’re seeing are likely because a designer was monkeying around with mechanics and numbers a little bit trying to come up with something he or she liked. Whenever you see just a few subtle changes, particularly if they are undocumented, it is more likely experimentation than anything else.

When we start to discuss next steps for the paladins, I promise to drop by and lay a few on you. But if I don’t post anything, it’s because I don’t know anything new.

If you are a beta tester, you would have noticed that Judgement is not working at the moment. It’s doing zero damage, and being the core component of Paladin class mechanism, it spoils a lot of the testing. But fear not! Ghostcrawler has listened.

Quoted from Ghostcrawler (Source)

A lot of spells seem to be broken for several different classes.

I know it sucks (and honestly it sucks for us too, because we won’t get the quality of feedback we’re looking for), but these things happen. We can’t rigorously test a beta build for weeks and weeks like we would a retail patch or the data will be hopelessly out of date. At this stage in development, a lot of stuff is going into the game every day, and sometimes bugs crop up.

We’ll see if it’s possible to get any of this hotfixed.

Then, he provided a very important reassurance…

Quoted from Ghostcrawler (Source)

No, no, no, paladins aren’t done. Look at the recent (mostly happy) reactions to the hunter and warrior changes. That is what we hope to accomplish for every single class.

When asked about the current Vengeance state, Ghostcrawler replied…

Quoted from Ghostcrawler (Source)

I can’t give you an answer you will like on Vengeance yet. It is a problematic talent because it represents a huge potential (but not a gaurantee) for dps.

Many (though not all) talents are balanced around a 1% to maybe 1.5% dps increase per talent point. With a 3 stack of Vengeance, that’s a 15% dps increase when it’s up for 5 talent points. And it’s up a lot, but not all the time, and to make matters worse, it tends to be up more as gear gets better and better. That’s a really hard thing to balance around. The death knight has the same problem, by the way, though the paladin is doing Holy damage which is very hard to resist. There are plenty of talents, many of them new, for different classes that provide way too much at the moment for their cost, but we will get them all into shape.

We tried a 2 stack to decrease the burst potential a little, but I don’t think it ended up being very fun. Building up a stack is supposed to be a stack, and 2 is just a puny stack. Maybe we’ll try a 3 stack of 3% each — we don’t know for sure yet. Maybe we’ll decide it’s okay at 3 stacks and just live with retadins being bursty sometimes.

However, I do promise that if Vengeance contributes less to your total dps, we’ll make up for it in other ways. We haven’t done that yet because our goal was to see how Venegeance felt at fewer stacks, not to balance ret dps. You’re absolutely right that we decreased your dps across the board without compensating you. That’s going to happen in a beta unfortunately. Was you dps too high and needed to come down or are you now non-viable as a class with this change? Nobody at Blizzard could really answer that with confidence because we haven’t done a numbers pass yet.

I hope that answers some of your questions. From a selfish perspective though, this thread is more helpful to us when you provide feedback than if it’s a blue QA forum. I read all the threads, but any time I take to respond is less time I’m working on the game. :)

And he tried to elaborate a little further…

Quoted from Ghostcrawler (Source)

I meant that we can’t assume Vengeance is up 100% of the time so we can’t assume paladins will always have that 15% boost. Yet if we balance them without that 15% (or we try and estimate it at something like 5 or 10%), we’ll start to run into trouble when paladins with lots of +crit do manage to keep it up all the time. And if it really is up all the time, is that interesting an ability anyway?

As to the death knight, we only gave them that talent to mirror the paladin one and catch a hint of the “anti-paladin” vibe. Whatever treatment Vengeance ends up, Bloody Vengeance will almost certainly get as well.

I agree there are several things driving Retribution to be bursty. To some degree, bursts can be fun. We all like seeing a crit with a big number flying up. But we’d probably all agree that there comes a point where you feel like you’re just rolling a dice — maybe I’ll do crazy dps on my next few hits and maybe I won’t. I think we can stabilize Retribution a little bit while still letting you see some big numbers sometime and have very competitive dps.

I am going to be away from a keyboard for a bit, but I still plan on reading the thread. Don’t feel unloved. :(

So in conclusion, Blizzard is not quite done yet with Paladins. They are still experimenting with various talent changes. It’s very important to make it known that you do not like any changes so that they don’t actually make it official! Finally, post a constructive feedback on the beta forum and they might just adopt your suggestions!

Related Posts:

Comments (1)

Lake Wintergrasp Loots

Lake Wintergrasp is a very interesting pvp zone added in WotLK that most players will be spending a lot of time in. It’s the first non-instance world pvp zone that players and come in and out as they wish, to assist in either attacking or defending a keep on a rotation basis. I have always been reminiscing the good old South Shore / Tarren Mill battles pre-tbc, and Blizzard has finally answered the call with Lake Wintergrasp. I just wish that they could somewhat revert Alterac Valley back too for the fun factor *ahem*.

Anyway, since the PVP vendors were added to the zone, as usual MMO-Champion reported back with the latest loots information. Apparently every time a faction captures the keep, all players of the faction get 7500 honor and 150 arena points. This would be interesting as players get to keep the points and spend them somewhere else instead of on the loots listed below shall they desire to do so.

The costs of the PVP items are…

Weapons
Off-hand items - 3600 Honor
Main-Hand (Healer Mace) - 10000 Honor
Main-Hand (Melee) - 8400 Honor
Two Hands - 12000 Honor
Ranged Weapon (Hunters) - 12000 Honor
Throwing Weapons / Wands - 3200 Honor
Shields - 6000 Honor
Relics - 3200 Honor

Epic Armors
Epic Belt/Boots - 24800 Honor
Epic Bracers - 15800 Honor
Epic Necklace - 19000 Honor
Epic Cloak - 19000 Honor
Epic Trinket - 24800 Honor
Epic Rings - 19000 Honor

Rare Armor Sets
Rare Chest - 6000 Honor
Rare Helm - 6000 Honor
Rare Shoulders - 4800 Honor
Rare Gloves - 3600 Honor
Rare Pants - 6000 Honor

And then, of course the details of the items…

Gallery

Finally, if you want to read up more on what Lake Wintergrasp is about, I made your life easier by including the following piece of information. ;P

Quoted from Wotlkwiki.info (Source)

Lake Wintergrasp is a large lake located in between Sholazar Basin, the Borean Tundra, The Dragonblight, and Icecrown Glacier. It is the largest body of water, albeit frozen, on the continent of Northrend.

Lake Wintergrasp will appear as a zone fully dedicated to World PvP, even on PvE servers. It will focus on siege weapon warfare.

  • Lake Wintergrasp is WoW’s first non-battleground zone solely devoted to PvP action.
  • According to a fixed, rolling schedule, one faction will defend the keep/mine, and the other faction will assault it. Both sides will fight over towers and siege workshops scattered around the zone.
  • If the attacking force succeeds in capturing the keep/mine, that faction will defend it during the next rotation. If that attacking force fails to capture the final objective before the next rotation, that faction will be given more resources (unknown to what those might be for now)” to balance out the fight, and give every faction a chance to hold Lake Wintergrasp.
  • Lake Wintergrasp will feature a variety of new daily quests. These quests include (but are not limited to): quests where you have to ride a mount with an NPC, holding attackers at bay; flying aircraft quests; flying mount quests where you have to lower ropes to evacuate NPCs; in these quests, mounts can hold multiple players!

Related Posts:

Comments (4)

Sponsor A Contest!

After more than 2 years of establishment, wowPaladin.org would like to organize some contests to reward our loyal readers for their consistent support. As such, we are looking for sponsors who would love to play a major role in making these contests a huge success by contributing either monetarily or products that will appeal to our readers. Your contribution is greatly appreciated and will not go anonymous to our 30,000 monthly visitors.

We are fairly flexible with the terms and conditions and are more than happy to accommodate special needs that would benefit you in return for a win-win situation. If you are interested, please email wowpaladin@wowpaladin.org. :)

Related Posts:

Comments off

WotLK Build 8820 Updates

In the recent builds, seems like Blizzard has stopped working on Paladins for a bit, as reflected by the lack of changes in the new builds. Instead, Hunters, Warriors and Death Knights have been enjoying quite a fair bit of attention lately as Blizzard turns to address their issues one at a time. Warriors in particularly has received quite a few new talents in this latest patch.

For Paladins however, 8820 seems to be a but of a nerf. Vengeance now stacks only 2 times instead of 3. As a result, it will only grant 10% damage bonus at a maximum, as opposed to the original 15% bonus. There is also changes to Concentration Aura too,. However, this is a game mechanics change, and not just a Paladins only effect. Blizzard most probably wants to wipe out any immunity effect there is in the game so that they have a lot more variation to play with. I’ll not be surprised if following these changes, we will start seeing items that reduces your cast time interruptions being introduced to the game.

Finally, I see this spell called Holy Vengeance being mentioned in the notes. MMO-Champion claims that it’s a seal that “fills the Paladin with holy power, granting each melee attack a chance to cause Holy damage over 18 sec. This effect can stack up to 5 times. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 2 min. Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing Holy damage per application of Holy Vengeance. 100 yd range, Instant”. 100 yards?! That’s insane!! I tried to double check with Wotlkwiki, and hey I can’t find the spell. I’m not sure if this spell really exist, if MMO-Champion made a mistake, or if Wotlkwiki being too out of date. But 100 yards?! That seems too good to be true to me. And why is it 18-second or changed to 15-second are beyond me too. I thought all seals are 20-second at the moment? Why the special cases previously and right now?

One thing we need to pay attention to is that, these are apparently undocumented changes. It may not be official or even intentional.

Undocumented Class Changes - Quoted from MMO-Champion (Source)

Holy

  • Concentration Aura changed = All party or raid members within 30 yards lose 35% less casting or channeling time when damaged.

Retribution

  • Seal of Corruption, Holy Vengeance, Judgement of Vengeance, and Seal of vengeance all changed from 18 sec to 15 sec.
  • Vengeance (Tier 6) stacks up to 2 times now. (Previously 3)

Related Posts:

Comments (1)