Haz Mace, Will Raid

What a Long, Strange... Month It's Been

2010-09-28T10:08:00.000-05:00

I feel like I can finally start to breathe again after a long period of underwater spelunking. Yep, you caught me, I totally stretched that metaphor because I wanted to use the word "spelunking."

I said "spelunking," big whoop, wanna fight about it?

For those of you unsure as to where I've been hiding... well, I've been buried in CSS code for quite a while. Ok, fine, I'll come out and say it...

I am now (sorta) self-hosted! Update your links, ladies and gentlemen, to www.hazmacewillraid.com! I'll be tossing a post up there to make sure you land in the right place, and let me know what you think of the change!

Her 'Just Desserts' Were Actually Double Helpings of Death

2010-09-02T14:12:00.003-05:00

Go figure. The one day I actually have work to do in the morning is the day after our big kill. Oops, I kinda spoiled it.

Heroic Sindragosa 25: Dead!

I had to "borrow" this screenshot from Rhi because mine got all crappy on Photobucket. I'll upload a couple of my own when I get home from work, though!

Anyway, the frosty queen of frost is dead, and now I can quit raging about this fight and start raging about heroic Putricide. I can see it now...

"Gorram it, green team, why is your add not dead?! You are all TERRIBLE and I'm going to write many, many blog posts about how people with the green debuff automatically have their RL Intelligence reduced by 75%!"

In all seriousity though, what a gratifying kill. You could tell that our final 'attempt' was a kill just in the way everything flowed together. No air phase deaths, clean switches, healer/tank communication, the lack of panic-y voices over Vent; everything went according to plan.

Well, other than our new shadow priest recruit getting quasi-hacked mid attempt. That wasn't too awesome, but at least he got it back right away.

Psst. That one's mine!

A heroic Conqueror's token dropped, so I threw down every last DKP I could scrounge up... and Rhi outbid me. There is one piece of good news to come out of this, however: after toppling Rhi's DKP surplus, I am now the veritable Conqueror's DKP king. Next time, my precious 277 tier, next time.

We used Rhi's strat. If you have questions, I highly suggest you go here and pepper that page with inquiries. My only regret is that the ever-skeptical individual I singled out in my last post wasn't in attendance for our victory. Phoey.

Icecrown Citadel: Revenge of the Skettis!

Also, in lesser news, unless my math is off (which wouldn't be unprecedented), this marks my 100th blog post, and just over a year since Haz Mace, Will Raid's inception!

Here's to another hundred, or perhaps more!

In Which I Rant About Attitudes

2010-08-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

Oh, Sindragosa, how I loathe thee. You weren't content to just stomp our faces in for one night, or even to possess a cat and distract further attempts at taking your life. Your stubbornness is very annoying. We even walked in there with a new strat (one Rhidach outlined here) and, while things seemed to be going well, the icy queen still lived at the end of the raid.

However, I didn't come here to write about how we fared against this chilly roadblock. What I really want to discuss, believe it or not, is attitude.

Unless your Vent is dead silent during raids, I'm sure all of you have picked up on (or are starting to pick up on, as is my case) the general feel of raid time in your local guild and the main actors and actresses that grace its stage. In many ways, it's your interactions with these individuals that determines how your runs progress and how much fun you take out of it.

I'm sure many of us have been in raids with ragers that are hovering over their Vent bind, just waiting to tear the heart out of some poor sap who isn't stacked perfectly enough, or whatever their rage-spiration may be.

On the other side of the spectrum there are the ~~antithesises~~ ~~antithesi~~ opposites of the ragers, the push-overs. These are the raiders that kindly remind everyone not to kill XT's heart in a short message in raid chat (come on, no one reads raid chat), and when the heart comes down and the shaman hits Bloodlust, you just know the push-over is sitting there, shrugging his shoulders, saying to himself "Aw, shucks. Well, better luck next time!"

Obviously, neither extreme is ideal, nor do I think there is one specific attitude that is right for every situation. Rather than trying to find a happy medium, let's look at how these two extremes apply to raiding.

Case: Heroic Sindragosa 25

Yes, I am using my guild's current progression encounter as an example. Bear with me, and go ahead and take that grain of salt, along with what looks like a fistful of ibuprofen. I can wait.

For those unfamiliar with the heroic encounter, a basic overview is that it's a LOT like the normal version, just much, much less forgiving. I don't intend on making a fight breakdown / strategy for this fight until we down it, but thankfully a full understanding of the heroic mechanics won't be relevant for my discussion. I hope.

We normally run with only two or three druids, and as such, we only have two or three Rebirths. On such an unforgiving encounter, those would ideally be saved for tanks, first and foremost. However, quite often we would have someone not quite LoS a frost bomb and get one-shot as a result, in which case one of our Rebirths is burned.

It is my own humble (/chuckle) opinion that LoSing frost bombs during the air phase is not a difficult thing to do, and therefore, those who fail at doing so need to buckle down and simply "do better." I don't know how else I can say it; such players need to adapt. I'll admit, I've been killed twice by the same mechanic. As a result of those deaths, I felt embarrassment and a little bit of shame for dying to something so simple, and henceforth kicked myself into gear. That was more than two weeks ago, and I have not been hit by a frost bomb since.

As an aside, I, in fact, don't hold myself as a shining example of the 'perfect raider.' I still have room for improvement, and I continually work at it. For example: the greatest thing about having dual monitors is having the ability to multi-task; the worst thing about having dual monitors is having the ability to multi-task.

So what happens when individuals who consistently fail at this are soaking up Rebirths like a desiccated sponge? Is it wrong to expect that raider to be improving their performance?

Short answer: No, it isn't wrong at all.

Long answer: The fact that we're getting so close to downing this fight is an indication of the potential of our players. I've seen some truly impressive things in my short stay here so far. The potential is there; the commitment to fulfillment is what I feel is lacking. We all want this shrill bone-thing dead. We should all be committed to this goal. By accepting that raid invite, you are telling not only your raid leader, but the rest of the raid and guild as a whole, that you are willing to go the distance and do what needs to be done to see these things through, among other clichés.

Macroscopically, in any raid that's struggling on something, the solution may not be a simple strat change or repositioning; it could be the consensual attitude of the raid. So what's the remedy?

It's not yelling and barking at your guildmates, that's for sure. My old guild had a raid leader that shouted out orders like he was commanding a brigade of 9 year olds. Not only does it get grating and irritating, it's insulting to be treated like that. Thankfully, there isn't a soul in ES that has adopted such a style.

On the flip side, the cure we're seeking is also not the shoulder-shrugger attitude either. After a wipe, expressing your "Oh well, maybe next time!" point-of-view won't get you any points, and it definitely won't get you any closer to your kill.

I wanted to write this post without singling anyone out, and (hopefully) without causing too much intra-guild drama. As such, I'm going to try to put this next part as delicately as possible.

There were a few attitudes I observed last night that really bothered me.

First, the individual that Rhidach mentions in his latest post. In case you didn't click that link (I wouldn't blame you; my banner is way cooler than his), there was an individual opening criticizing the decision to try a new strat. I highly, highly encourage proper and intelligent feedback from raiders to their raid leader, but not in such a way that portrays the RL as a villain, which is (again, in my "humble" opinion) exactly what happened.

This is not to say I totally and utterly disagreed with this dissenter. At first, I too questioned the wisdom of switching up strats when we got so close to a kill last week. However, rather than crying in raid chat about it, I kept my opinion to myself. I made a decision of my own; that is, to trust the raid leader and see this through. And by golly, when we made it sub-20% on the first try of the new strat, those reservations I had soon evaporated. Imagine that.

Your raid leader, guild leader, and officer corps are a higher rank than you for a reason. They have all shown an aptitude for leading and decision-making, and, as the case with ES, their experience and guidance has seen us through to one of the hardest encounters in the game thus far. They spend a lot of time working, researching, brainstorming, and collaborating, so that when raid time rolls around, bosses drop left and right, and you, the average raider, leave later that night with full bags and a sense of accomplishment.

In short, trust in your leaders. Trust is the glue that binds your raid together.

The second attitude that really irked me was actually conveyed in the middle of an attempt. We had a healer clearing stacks of Unchained Magic who suddenly got marked for a beacon and, unfortunately, couldn't make it all the way to the designated "ice block area." The tank had to readjust in order to get back in range of the tomb so both tanks could clear stacks quickly.

The placement of this tomb, while poor, was seemingly unavoidable. Sometimes these things happen. Everyone did a fantastic job readjusting, but we eventually ended up wiping anyway. However, right as the tomb went out, the tank let out a cry of frustration over Vent, to which someone responded "Oh well, it's alright."

I have a few problems with this. First, I know that you mean well and you're trying to calm the tank who is probably foaming at the mouth, but it is not alright. The tomb got placed in the wrong area, and as a result, we wiped shortly after. Nothing about that is "alright."

It may not actually be anyone's fault; the healer in question can't just zip to any part of the map at a whim. It was great that no one else managed to get tombed alongside them during this mishap, but we cannot walk into these attempts with the sense that, if you screw up, everything's okay.

Second, not only was that the wrong thing to say, it was also the wrong time to say it. You don't try making idle chit-chat with Jim Furyk when he's in the middle of his backswing. The only people talking should be those contributing to the task at hand, i.e. the murder of this stupid dragon. There is no need to clog up Vent with your "carebear" chatter.

All in all, my advice to anyone reading this that is in a similar situation is to try to be mindful of your raid's attitude. Whenever possible, encourage determined optimism while discouraging apathy and raging outbursts.

Essentially, be more like Vulcans. They know how to get stuff done.

Ha, innuendo. Awesome.

So Much Blue!

2010-08-24T10:15:00.000-05:00

Finally, there are good Blue beta posts on ret paladins. Let's take a gander.

Quote:

On a related subject, Pursuit of Justice is pretty under budget and Eye for an Eye is pretty risky to take, considering it could perhaps break CC on the target.

Eye for an Eye will only reflect direct damage spells, not dots.

Oh good, another reason not to take Eye for an Eye. Next.

Quote:

It is something that really needs work on because at the moment as long as you have a single Holy Power and an open GCD you will TV instead of only wanting to TV at 3 which just seems odd to me.

This would be a pretty big dps loss under most circumstances. A 3 charge Templar's Verdict hits so much stronger than a 1 charge, that it's not worth it using Templar's Verdict to fill holes.

They're trying to move away from the FCFS rotation system, from what I've been told, so the poster's sentiment of "Oh no, I have no more buttons to push, I'm just going to TV!" is misinformed. Wait for the 3 stack, young padawan, then facesmash TV.

Quote:

This has pretty much been my complaint from the start. Our rotation is one part Rogue, one part feral, one part empty space, and one part mashing buttons.

It doesnt feel cohesive, it doesnt feel fluid, it has no rhythm

This specific feedback is a tricky thing to handle because a lot of Ret paladins are used to mashing buttons every GCD, and any time they aren't in that state they are going to feel a lack of "rhythm" (as you put it). Yet if you look at rogues and Feral druids, they can't hit a button every GCD because they don't always have the energy to do so.

We don't want classes / specs to use every GCD. We don't think that's good for the game, as I've mentioned before. (Casters do their waiting while casting rather than in between abilities.) The trick is to fill "enough" holes with something. For some players, especially some Ret players, that "enough" is going to feel weird for them unless it means every single hole. That's not what we're going for though. Wasting every other GCD is too extreme and isn't what we're going for either.

Again, no more FCFS. At least not the "fill the hole with any old spell that's not on cooldown" FCFS we're used to. Since I'm not on the beta, and since I've been lagging behind with my beta research, I can't say for certain, but it seems like it's going to be a FCFS with a HoPo (*shudders*) dump (*giggles*) woven somewhere in there. Yes, it's going to be weird. But at least they're trying to require a little skill for the ret rotation.

Quote:

Yeah just to clarify though, I think most Rets understand that they are a hybrid and like GC said like an arms warrior but with no MS and better healing. However, the majority of complaints are coming from the "defensive dps" model and not necessarily just being defensive. We don't want and don't need to be offhealers or defensive utility providers, that is what we were and that is what GC has said multiple times was NOT effective.

I usually regret getting into the "what is my role supposed to be?" discussions because players then feel like they're supposed to use that as a constitution to interpret whether their class is performing correctly or not. Let us worry about that. If Word of Glory is so weak that you'd never consider using it, then that's good feedback. If it needs to heal for 50K before you'd ever consider using it, then that's good feedback too (because it either means we're barking up the wrong tree, or you personally aren't the correct audience for that talent). The fact that you have talents that affect a heal should be ample evidence that we want you to situationally cast it. The fact that you have only a couple of talents (and one really aimed at Holy sub-speccing) should suggest that we want to keep it situational.

Blizzard needs to understand that as ret paladins, defenders of the Light and all that RP stuff, we have MASSIVE egos. As such, we're going to get every damage-increasing talent within our grasp, only coming back to utility and "situational" things as our remaining talent points afford us to.

Healing has no immediate, noticeable increase in ego-size. No one stops what they're doing and goes "Hey, ret paladin, thanks for healing me!" Hell, I do it a lot now-a-days with my Art of War procs and not one peep from anybody. Well, Ana gives me the occasional confused, "Did you really just use that proc for a Flash of Light? On... someone else?"

But our Hand spells? Freedom-ing a tank on Sindy, Salv-ing an overzealous certain cat-wielding frost DK, Sac-ing our LK tank when the Lich King enrages when someone just utterly fails in the Frostmourne room, Protect-ing a Marked healer or caster on Saurfang when we're sub 30%; all of these things distinguish the good paladins from the apathetic, lazy ones.

And just so we're clear, Blizzard; we don't need mana and cooldown reductions on our utility spells. Unless you make them cost like 50% of our mana. Then maybe we can talk business.

Quote:

GC do you have any planed changes for AoW? what do you think of the suggestion to make it effect hammer of wrath instead? i thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Hammer of Wrath hits too hard to be a rotational ability. We'd have to make the proc really rare or nerf the Hammer of Wrath damage. You might notice we dropped Execute from the Arms warrior rotation for the same reason -- it actually neutered Execute rather than making it a fun ability.

Why does this need to be changed? If they made AoW affect (notice: affect, not effect) Hammer of Wrath, that would essentially eliminate Exorcism from our rotation. Less spells and an Execute spam, or sophistication and an Execute that works as intended? Hmm, toughy.

Quote:

Could you please address any of the many greater concerns outlined in the OP instead of a tertiary flavour talent please?

I address what I want to address. The reason is because players will never agree on what the right thing is for us to address, nor do we want to turn it into a shouting match. You're better off giving us feedback and letting us answer when we think it's appropriate rather than demanding answers for specific issues.

And Ghostcrawler becomes Eric Cartman. Seriously though, WoW players are like a bunch of spoiled brats when it comes to class changes; Mommy Blizzard can't appease all of us all the time. It's called tough love, get used to it.

Talents like Eye for an Eye, Selfless Healer and Acts of Sacrifice are designed to be choices. No half-decent paladin is going to skip over a major talent like Sanctified Wrath. But we are trying to design the trees so not every talent is Sanctified Wrath. If part of what attracted you to the paladin class was being able to occasionally throw out a heal to save your friends in a 5-player dungeon, then Selfless Healer might be attractive. If you like having lots of utility in PvP, then Acts of Sacrifice might be a better choice.

It's okay -- intended even -- that some of you would skip over these talents. It's only a problem if everyone does so. We imagine a cookie cutter Ret build would tell you to absolutely take Sanctified Wrath and Zealotry, but to spend a few points where you want.

Well said.

Quote:

Acts of Sacrifice just seems lackluster in a tree that isn't suppose to worry about mana.

That's not entirely the case. Ret is designed to be able to hit basic abilities with enough mana. You don't have infinite mana. You'll find that casting heals other than WoG will be really difficult and Consecrate is probably not going to happen unless you situationally find yourself with a lot of mana. In that environment, being able to do something other than dps might be attractive. I think it gets way overplayed on the forums, but it's often nice to offer something other than "I bring damage!" to a group, because everyone brings damage.

Thank God, now maybe this "finite mana" sentiment will be heard by everyone else and I won't get asked to heal a dungeon when our healer drops group. Wishful thinking, to be sure.

Quote:

With regards to Seals, I agree with the general sentiment that it really isn't much of a choice between Seal of Truth and any other Seal right now; even in PvP, you lose such a huge amount of damage by using Seal of Justice that it's just not even a choice. Either Seal of Justice needs to be more effective at slowing targets, or Seal of Truth needs to be less powerful so the choice is more reasonable.

We're going to add a little bit of damage to Justice just because there are several talents that improve Seals in the trees and we don't want those to be completely unattractive to a PvP Retribution paladin. I think it's far too early however to be able to place judgement [sic] calls on whether damage or the movement limitation of Justice is the obvious choice. You can't do much damage if you can't get to melee and typically autoattack-based damage isn't nearly as valuable in PvP.

I foresee a return of seal-switching in PvP. Seal of Justice until you can get into melee, Seal of Truth when you do? Although we've held the "kitee" crown for quite a while now, maybe Seal of Justice + Long Arm of the Law will topple that throne.

Quote:

I'm sorry...but acts of sacrifice are probably my favorite situational talents, as they are helpful in heroics to alleviate tank damage with sac, and hof 5 seconds less is too good NOT to take. Reducing mana cost is just icing on cake. It will probably be in my pve and pvp builds, but if WoG doesn't heal for a decent amount, I doubt many will take selfless healer at all.

That's good. Now if we can just get to the point where some (not all) paladins say that they like the hybridy feel of Selfless Healer, then we're all set.

That's all well and good, but the current iteration doesn't do a damn thing to Sac. It does seem odd that it only affects two of our Hand spells, though.

The Birth of an In-Joke

2010-08-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

So, apparently, "next week" to me means "the NEXT next week." With Rhi back at the helm of our 25m, we charged through Icecrown our first night, knocking out 7/12, leaving Plagueworks and Sindy up. Last night, we went in, knocked out Plagueworks within 45 minutes, leaving a little over 2 hours for attempts on the ole Ice Queen herself.

We had a few especially good bits of progression; namely, the air phases. Up until now, we've had trouble coordinating tomb DPS and, in some cases, line-of-sighting the frost bombs (especially that first one, it's a quickie). Last night our raid showed phenomenal improvement in those areas, with only a few exceptions. We had attempts where no one died at all during air phases, whether it be to frost bombs or asphyxiation. The lowest we got the old gal was to 13% I believe, which is a decent improvement from last week's 22%.

Finally, we come to the real inspiration behind this post.

Once upon a time, there lived a death knight named Morvain. Well, since he's a death knight, it's more like "there unlived," but you get the point. He was in the guild Enveloping Shadows, a group of ruffians and pally bloggers bent on killing things and stealing things from their bodies. This band of Scourge fodder strolled into Icecrown Citadel in order to defeat the terrible Lich King and his many sundry minions. Anywho, they finally cleared a swath through the dread citadel until they reach the perch of none other than the Queen of the Frostbrood, Sindragosa! Prime-consort to Malygos in life, she now served Arthas in undeath, and was preventing our heroes from getting phat lewtz, so they decided that her unlife must end.

She threw all of her frost magic at ES, killing them over and over since, apparently, one death was not enough for this crew. Sindy, as her friends tend to call her, grew tired of this charade and decided to have a little fun while they flailed their pathetic magic at her. She reached out with her powers and was able to possess Morvain's cat. While the raiders swung their swords and threw things at her in Icecrown Citadel, Sindy was stalking the halls of Morvain's house, enjoying her newfound freedom. Slowly, quietly, she entered the room where Morvain played. She lurked about, observing the death knight spamming Frost Strike, waiting for the right opportunity. Sindy could sense that the heroes were getting close... too close to ending her, once and for all.

Well, until the next reset, at least.

This is an actual picture of Morvain's cat. I hope he doesn't send it to my house to interrupt my raiding experiences as punishment for posting this picture; my (kinda) epic screenshot got resolution-cleaved by Blogger overnight.

With her health draining, she knew she must act. Through a sheer force of will, Sindy reached out from the cat and touched Morvain's mind, entrancing him, binding him to the cat like when you see something really really disgusting but it's just so captivating you can't look away. As Morvain was busy being enthralled by his cat, he ran into two other people and all three were entombed in ice. Snapping back to reality, Morvain admitted the mistake was caused because he was "looking at his cat," and the following hysterical laughter on Vent got more people frozen, which led to one of the most hilarious wipes I've experienced during my stay in ES thus far.

What's funny is that the aforementioned wipe happened when we switched the difficulty from heroic back to normal, as well as the raid's attitude from "cautious" to "nonchalant." The link leads to Ana's Twitter, where she linked a screenshot of the whole mess.

In parting, here is a quote from Mr. Rogers (of all people, why I chose him is beyond my comprehension) that I believe illustrates the relationship between our poor death knight and his cat:

"There's only one person in the whole world like you, and I like you so much. Meow meow meow so much. Bye bye."

AVR: Re-visiting Blizzard's Own "Kill Command"

2010-08-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

With all of our work on heroic Sindy 25 of late, I've heard a few voices over vent proclaim, "I wish we still had AVR!"; getting extra tombs from improper placement of the beacon targets is never a good thing.

Sometimes, when doing Festergut and Rotface, I long for the near-definitive circle on the ground that made sure I was getting a stack of Inoculated or wasn't going to get hit by an Unstable Ooze Explosion. That certainty was really nice to lean on, to rely on, that when Blizzard took it away, it felt like I was entering these fights for the first time... again.

For those late to the party, AVR, short for Augmented Virtual Reality, was an add-on that projected graphics onto the game world, most often for use on boss encounters with specific ranges of abilities and the like. The aforementioned are perfect examples of the ingenuity of AVR; rather than using something like "/range 10" to determine how far away someone is, you could have a circle with a radius of 10 yards drawn around you in red, clearly delineating what you were and were not going to entomb in deathly ice.

Note I use the past tense, 'AVR was,' because in patch 3.3.5, Blizzard essentially "broke" the add-on, preventing it from working properly, and proclaimed that,

The invasive nature of a mod altering and/or interacting with the game world (virtually or directly) is not intended and not something we will allow. World of Warcraft UI addons are never intended to interact with the game world itself. This is mirrored in our stance and restriction of model and texture alterations.

There was quite the uproar following this announcement and its implementation. Elitists, who never downloaded the mod, were filled with glee at all the 'scrubs' that were crying on the forums. The opportunists, who saw a way to help their raid learn difficult boss mechanics, were befuddled that something so seemingly harmless and extremely helpful was dispatched of by Blizzard, a company that supposedly welcomed UI add-ons and modifications that personalized the individual's playing experience.

Anyway, that's all in the past. The question I wanted to address, whether it is a touch belated or not, is this:

"Did Blizzard have the right to break AVR?"

Dotting the i's and crossing the t's

The following is an excerpt from the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement (EULA), specifically from section 2, Additional License Limitations:

"You agree that you will not, under any circumstances... use cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience..."

At first glance, at least to a non-lawyer like myself, this seems to brand ALL add-ons and mods illegal (for the sake of this discussion, I intend the term 'illegal' to mean 'against the rules,' not against any state or federal laws). However, the operative phrase "any other unauthorized... software" suggests that there exist some mods and add-ons that are authorized for use by Blizzard, and some that are not.

How does Blizzard decide what to authorize and what to forbid? In short, we don't know. They are a business and, as such, don't necessarily have to explain why they do everything that they do; they don't hold the same accountability as a governing body. For example, if Ford wanted to stop painting their cars red, they technically would not be accountable to consumers as to the reason behind this decision. Their stockholders, perhaps, but not their consumers.

However, we can extract a reasonable guideline for these decisions from the World of Warcraft Terms of Use Agreement (ToU), as quoted from section 9, Code of Conduct, sub-section C, Rules Related to Game Play:

"[C]ertain acts go beyond what is "fair" and are considered serious violation of these Terms of Use. Those acts include... [a]nything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game."

While the original context of this clause is in reference to the conduct of players within the game itself, it seems that this philosophy, of forbidding things that are contrary to the "essence" of the World of Warcraft, holds true for many of their policies and decisions.

Therefore, the question becomes thus:

"Is the functionality of AVR contrary to the "essence" of the World of Warcraft?"

Lines in the sand

As I suspected, Blizzard replies to this sentiment in the second part of the response quoted above:

[I]t removes too much player reaction and decision-making while facing dungeon and raid encounters. While some other mods also work to this end, we find that AVR and the act of visualizing strategy within the game world simply goes beyond what we’re willing to allow.

Let's see if we can extract some assumptions from this statement. First, Blizzard has an expectation for the level of player response in terms of dungeon and raid encounters.

For example, if I were to ask you to log in right now and stand twenty yards away from another player by purely eyeballing it, could you do it? I'm guessing a large proportion of you could not, myself included. However, with a simple "/range 20", this task is easily performed. What does this mean in terms of Blizzard's expectations?

It means that they know what is reasonable to expect from the player and what is not.

It is reasonable to expect a player to know that standing on top of another player who is marked for death via Ice Tomb is bad; it is unreasonable to expect a player to know, without previous knowledge, the exact distance in-game that he or she needs to be from the marked target in order to not be entombed as well. In allowing Deadly Boss Mods and its "/range" functionality, Blizzard was admitting that determining precise distances in-game without outside assistance was unreasonable.

Another assumption that can be taken from Blizzard's statement is that there exists a line that Blizzard has drawn that defines what is and is not acceptable in terms of the implementation of an add-on or mod, outside of previously established reasons (the "essence" argument).

This assumption is a bit harder to grasp. For this purpose, let's compare DBM with AVR.

In Deadly Boss Mods (DBM), messages and timers appear on your screen that inform you of impending attacks, abilities, cooldowns, etc. For anyone who has ever used this or a similar add-on (which I'm guessing is a large majority), you know that sometimes DBM can clog and pollute your screen with its incessant warnings. What's important to note is that Blizzard condones this; without even researching a fight, a raider can jump into Icecrown Citadel and have DBM chirp away all of the boss's abilities and reportable mechanics.

In AVR, textures appear around certain objects to visualize some of the abilities and attacks from various encounters to provide the player with a very simplified "don't stand in the red circle" version of raiding. Again important to note; Blizzard does not condone this.

What's the difference? Format. DBM can spam all the messages and timers it wants, but if the player doesn't interpret these messages and timers correctly and act accordingly, bad things will happen. AVR took this interpretation and beat it senseless; arrange the pretty patterns on the ground and you win (sarcasm, but it's not far from the truth).

One fight where AVR shined as brightly as a tire fire was Festergut, specifically for the purpose of determining the range of the spores. Essentially, this mechanic went from this,

where you can see ranged DPS and healers stacking under skull's spore intuitively, to this,

The mechanic no longer emphasized finding the spore target and making sure you're underneath it when it explodes (or whatever the hell happens to give you a stack), and instead it became a matter of "OMG stand in this absurdly large red circle outlined on the ground!" Rather than have one raid member valiantly put themselves in danger by *gasp* running out of melee to share the spore with ranged or, even more dangerously, running in towards the tanks to ensure they get a stack as well, it became a drawing game obsessed with making sure the player knew their shapes and colors.

The end of the road

Let's take AVR to its logical extreme. If the author felt especially ambitious, or if a player had enough programming knowledge to modify the add-on themselves, one could conceive of a boss encounter where the floor was quite literally covered by AVR. Special circles could represent where to tank the boss, other circles could represent where each player was to stand, and so on and so forth.

In essence, boss strategies could potentially be integrated into the add-on, turning the entire concept of fighting an 'internet dragon' into "stand here, don't stand there, hit your buttons, collect loot." (I know a lot of us kid that we may already be at that point, but in actuality, we are not.) By allowing AVR to progress to such a point, Blizzard would be killing off a community of intelligent discussion and interaction that has blossomed and flourished over the years. The spirit of creativity is as close a concept to the "essence" of the game as anything can get, and by providing such a basic and simple workaround to the more complex and difficult aspects of the game, that spirit would be extinguished.

I believe that Blizzard foresaw these developments, knew that the WoW community would want more and more out of AVR, and was determined to stop it. As per their legal agreements, they cited that AVR was not an authorized modification in that it violated the "essence" of the game, and took action to prevent it from functioning correctly, generously providing a more than ample reason for doing so to their player base.

Therefore, and this should come as no surprise, Blizzard was fully within their rights to make changes to the game to prevent any add-on like AVR from ever functioning properly. They laid out the rules, AVR broke them, they broke AVR, end of story.

I'm thinking of a number... but you can't have it!

One last legal issue before closing: the "intellectual property" issue of add-ons and mods. Even though such authors invest their time, and often money, in producing such additions to the World of Warcraft, the cold truth is that, due to the presence of specific clauses within the Ownership section of the WoW EULA, these additions are not the intellectual property of their creators.

If you went to Tom Smith's beachfront in Maui and built a sand castle on his beach, using his sand, but using your shovels, buckets, blood, sweat and tears, the sand castle would still belong to Tom Smith. In the same way, even though you're the one designing add-ons for WoW, using code that Blizzard has provided for developers like you, it's still their sand castle.

If perchance you went and did a CTRL-F for "TL;DR", here you go: Blizzard was right to disable AVR, a mod that significantly cheapened the game we love, because it's their party and they'll break things if they want to, and no amount of tears will ever bring it back.

Many Tombs! Handle It!

2010-08-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

Progress (n), according to Dictionary.com, unabridged: a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage; growth or development; continuous improvement.

If you had asked me on the seventh wipe to 25-man heroic Sindragosa last night if I thought we were progressing, the answer would've been a hesitant "not really." Sure, there were air phases when people wouldn't die to frost bombs (I stupidly ate two frost bombs for reasons too unimportant and whiny to go into), but generally, each air phase was accompanied by held breaths and crossed fingers. We were at the same place we have been on Sindy since I've joined the guild; not a very encouraging showing.

I'm not sure if it was the "last attempt" call, or if eight is a lucky number, or if the planets were at syzygy (real word!), but suddenly everything clicked, we put our progression pants on and triumphantly marched into phase 2, getting the Queen of the Frostbrood down to 22%!

I am filled to the brim with pride that our 25-man group, rather than give up on the last attempt in order to 'get it over with' quicker, gave it our all and showed that we really do belong here.

She's as good as dead next week, I'm calling it right now!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

2010-08-12T10:07:00.000-05:00

Remember when I said "trust me... changes are coming,"?

Well... voilà! My new banner is complete, and as such, I was able to redesign and update the blog to match.

I hope Vidyala puts up a run-through of this entire process, like she did for Rhidach. It really was awesome watching a black-and-white sketch turn into something much greater. Of course, sitting in awe after downloading every e-mail attachment, seeing how our ideas were blending together and turning into something so vivid and tangible; that part never got old.

She even stuck with me when I was nitpicky about the expression on the ret's face! At first he was a bit stoic, merely holding his axe out as if to say, "I am a blood elf paladin. I have seen many battles. Here is my weapon of all-righteous retribution." I was looking for something a little more true-to-digital-self.

The following is actually an excerpt from an e-mail I sent her, addressing this issue:

One thing: would it be possible to maybe tense him up? Flex the arms a bit, clench the teeth, something along those lines? He looks a little relaxed, and when a ret paladin relaxes, the trolls yell "Faceroll!", and we have to see the Therapists of the Holy Light.

Seriously, those guys say they're all about "respect, tenacity, and compassion," but as soon as your hour is up, BAM!, they put you out on your ass. I might just take my 100g/hr somewhere else.

I just wanted to thank Vidyala immensely for this entire project; your cooperation, patience, and remarkable skills will not be forgotten! If anyone reading this would like something similar done, go visit her blog, Pugging Pally, or follow her on Twitter, (@_vidyala), and inquire about a commission for yourself!

Because Even Rets Can Appreciate Beauty

2010-08-07T19:40:00.000-05:00

Leveling weapon skills sucks. Especially when they're 1/400.

I found this guy and decided to see if I could create peace between our peoples...

After an intense 15 minute bout, my Two-Handed Mace skill was at 350, and Mr. Walker here was at half health.

After about twenty minutes, I think he just died of boredom. I got back from my "AFK Sandwich" run to find him keeled over, cleft in twain (ahhh, second time I've been able to use that phrase!).

On a related note, Crystalsong Forest is depressingly unused and forgotten by most players, and even Blizzard themselves it seems. Why are there Sunreavers and Silver Covenant outposts? There's so much potential in this zone; I mean, just look at how awesome this screenshot looks:

The white background of this blog isn't the best backdrop, but trust me, it's GORGEOUS.

Tweet Tweet

2010-08-06T14:34:00.000-05:00

I caved and made a Twitter account for the WoW portion of my life. It's a good thing I'm finally up-to-date with most of my work, because between Twitter, guild forums, Facebook, writing this, and reading other blogs, I have NO idea how I'd stay on top of it all.

Anyway, if you want you can follow me! Just click that Twitter thing I added to the right. I know that entire column is kind of a mess, but trust me... changes are coming.

Big changes.

There's Gold in Them There Talent Builds!

2010-08-05T18:51:00.000-05:00

First and most definitely foremost, a big congrats to Nordicslayer of Enveloping Shadows for completing our guild first Shadowmourne! I am, for the record, super jealous, as I haven't even completed my infusion quests yet. But still, a great thing to see completed!

And one more for posterity...

God, that is so awesome; it should be illegal. Let's make them illegal until I get one. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Anywho, I have put off writing about Cataclysm this and that for a while. I figured that Blizz was going to turn our trees inside out 10,000 times before Cata went live, so any speculation on my part would be a waste of letters. However, hell is slowly freezing over and the most recent builds are looking more concrete, so without further ado...

I've put together what I think is the "cookie cutter" spec for PvE Retribution in Cata: 2/3/32

This spec takes every damage-increasing talent I could get my grubby hands on. I randomly heard one day in Vent that Cata will have more movement fights, so that pretty much reinforced the need for Pursuit of Justice in my mind. I love that talent.

Rather than go over the talents I did take, I'm going to go over the talents that I could take using the 4 extra talent points we have.

Eye for an Eye - Rather than just critical strikes, this talent is now affected by all damaging attacks. Still fairly lackluster in my mind's eye.

Rebuke - Not a bad choice for 1 talent point. We've wanted a reliable interrupt that's not on a 1 minute cooldown for so long. Those poor non-Belf paladins and their one interrupt and lack of style.

Repentence - I still hate this spell. It never works the way I want it to. Just the other night in Ruby Sanctum, a trash mob got loose and was threatening to stomp the healers, so I hit it with an Exorcism and drew it away from the pack, turned and casted Repentence on it... only to have the tiniest edge of Ana's Consecration snap it back to ferocious reality. I get that it has the same mechanic as Sap, but paladins don't have the option of sneaking up on something and putting it out of commission in a neat little corner; give us a CC that works in the heat of battle! It could be something like Radiance a la Eadric the Pure; just give us something better than that oops-I-sneezed-on-your-CC-target-and-it-broke spell.

Selfless Healer and Acts of Sacrifice - PvP talents, through and through. When I'm smashing away at a boss, I am anything but selfless with my Art of War procs, and I don't use my Hand spells on cooldown, so I don't think reduced cooldowns and mana costs will change much.

Protector of the Innocent - I'm pretty wary on a talent that increases the damage done by one of my Auras. Last night, according to the logs, my Ret Aura ticked 47 times, for a total of 18,528 damage over the course of 3.5 hours. Meh.

Judgements of the Pure - This is the talent I wanted to think over. Fully-talented, this results in a 9% haste increase. While haste isn't as much of a BFF to us as Strength or Hit is, its general function is increasing the amount of damage we can do in a set amount of time.

All this being said, and provided we undergo no more major overhauls before launch, I will probably be going with the following spec at 85:

5/3/33

I had one extra talent point from going 3/3 JotP, so I threw it in Rebuke.

Questions? Comments?

Change Can Be a Good Thing

2010-07-29T11:40:00.000-05:00

Seriously, if someone finds a muse with "Belongs to Antigen" written on it in black Sharpie, let me know. My inspiration to write and my creativity while doing so lately is severely lacking.

Anyway, I did it; I made the switch. No, not to GEICO, to Enveloping Shadows!

I had to sneak up on Rhidach and take a screenshot quick before he ran off and into a wall.

It was tough to leave Thunderlord. The people in my 10-man are awesome. I hope they forgive me and take my boomkin in my paladin's stead. He doesn't use Starfall on all the trash, I promise.

I got into Ana's 10-man on Sunday for my first taste of ES raiding. We did a full clear, with a lot of heroic modes and achievements to get both Ana and Slorail their drakes. Congrats again guys, those drakes are awesome!

By the way, yes, I was punching the Lich King while we waited for the plague to stack to 30 for Been Waiting a Long Time for This. Sadly, I did not max out my Unarmed skill.

Apparently, in ES, they pull the second drake before Sindy up the stairs and kill it in order to glitch her out so they can go over stuff with her ready to pull. Or, as in the case of our 25m, Rhi runs around with Sindy and tries to get as many people cleaved as possible in the process of reseting her!

In my first 25m run with Enveloping Shadows, we did all of Lower Spire on heroic, getting a guild first kill on heroic LDW, and finished off the evening with heroic Blood Princes.

The next night we did BQL, Rotface, and Festergut on heroic, Putricide on normal, Sindy for a few attempts on heroic but ultimately put on normal, and Lich King one-shot on normal. I was pretty impressed, to say the least.

The whole time we were raiding, the attitude never wavered from the jovial (well, when we were working on heroic LDW, Frank did pop his head up to say hello, but it wasn't too bad). If most ES raids proceed like they did over the last two nights, I think I might never leave.

A big thanks to Rhidach for the invitation to join his team and to the rest of ES for making me feel at home!

Paladin Twitter Dev Chat: Because They Just Can't Seem to Get Us Right

2010-07-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

I normally don't pay attention to much of this, but these are such huge changes that, if implemented, will alter the playstyle of pretty much every paladin in the World of Warcraft... I can't resist that bandwagon! Let's go!

Q. Any thought to having Retribution paladins use spell power plate to help put Holy paladins on equal footing as other healers?
A. We think Retribution paladins needs to use strength plate. Changing this would require a lot of funky solutions, such as how we handle Crusader Strike damage, and trying to control Retribution from being too powerful a healer. We realize it's odd to itemize spell power plate for one specialization, but we think all of the solutions to this issue are worse than just living with it.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing them redesign all of our abilities to scale off spell power again. It seems ludicrous that spell power plate exists for one spec of one class, but strength plate is used by five specs spread over three classes.

And as for making ret too powerful an off-healer; how about a holy-esque version of Righteous Fury? Perhaps make healing spells cost a LOT of mana, and give holy paladins a talent/aura/spell that decreases healing spell mana cost by 50/75%?

In essence, what Blizzard is saying is that they're too lazy to rework all of that. Whatevs, devs.

Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar's Verdict
Holy Shield's duration is now extended by Holy Power
Divine Storm's damage is now increased by Holy Power
We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

Say we're in Hyjal or something and are grinding mobs absent-mindedly, as I am prone to do from time to time. As a result, we've accumulated a full bar of Holy Power and have just been sitting on it without using it. All of a sudden, a dirty Alliance/Horde flies down to start some shit. "Not in my house!" we yell as we charge across the battlefield. Judgement, Divine Storm, Crusader Strike... oh wait, full Holy Power, TEMPLAR'S VERDICT!!!!! MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS!!11one!

Not only do we get a "massive attack" in Templar's Verdict, but if the Holy Power damage modifier to Divine Storm is passive rather than active (i.e. doesn't use up Holy Power, but instead scales with how much you have at the time), then prepare for a real cataclysm... of tears and anguish and OMG WATCH OUT FOR THAT RET!!

In short, the return of ret burst? I thought we wanted to steer away from that. While I'm all for the OP deliciousness that this appears to be, don't expect it to be a one-shot button... at least not for the whole expansion.

Q: Are Protection paladins still going to refresh Divine Plea on melee hit (via a talent or trained ability)?
A. Yes.

Thank God.

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at one or two of the new Retribution abilities or talents?
A. Templar's Verdict: An instant weapon attack that causes a percentage of weapon damage. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:

1 Holy Power: 55% Weapon Damage
2 Holy Power: 125% Weapon Damage
3 Holy Power: 225% Weapon Damage

Word of Glory: Consumes all Holy Power to heal a friendly target for a specific amount per application of Holy Power (0 mana cost, 0 cooldown, instant cast).

So the max amount of Holy Power applications is 3 stacks (or whatever). And a "free" 225% weapon damage melee attack? Go, number crunchers, go! Math isn't quite my forte.

Q: If Judgement of Wisdom is being removed from the game, are paladins getting a new Judgement so we don't all have to use Judgement of Light?
A. There will only be one Judgement spell. This spell places a single debuff on the target with the effects currently associated with Judgement of Light and Judgement of Justice. The Judgement of Wisdom effect has been retired completely.

Damnit. OOMadin? No, it's not Megan and Jong's love child, it's what I fear could happen to rets if we don't get some other form of passive mana regen. Maybe that's the check on the bursty burst; you'll go OOM if you hit your buttons too hard? Intriguing...

Q: Are the improved aura talents going away? They were still present in beta.
A. If you mean talents like Improved Devotion Aura, then those are gone. We still have talents that, say, increase healing on targets of your auras. Improved Concentration Aura still exists. In general, though, you shouldn't have to worry about having raid buffs of different power competing with each other.

Good riddance. Clearing up clutter FTW.

Refrigerator

2010-07-15T13:57:00.002-05:00

If anyone finds a cat with my tongue, please let me know.

I think he was last seen near a writer's block.

On a stump.

Bleh.

Retribution Leveling: 11-20

2010-07-08T19:52:00.000-05:00

Well, it's ah... been a while, ha ha, since I have made a post...

Sorry, that's a little inside joke I have with some of the people I went to Germany with, none of whom read this blog, so you could say that it's superfluous, but I miss those times, so ha.

I've gotten into the leveling grind, I have. Between Judgements, I watched some old Voyager re-runs, chatted with friends, didn't work for a week and a half, and generally did absolutely nothing with my life. Glorious.

You'll notice that I've added a feed reader for my paladin on Lightninghoof. As a proud member of Enveloping Shadows, I am blazing through the shattered world of Outland on my way to face the Lich King's minions... erm, yeah. It's an RP-PvP server, thought I'd get into... Yeah, I'll stop now.

Before we get into this second tier of levels, I'd like to thank Rhidach, Anafielle, and all of the people in ES for the guild invite and for the lively green-colored chatter I see popping up on my screen all the time. I'm slowly starting to get a feel for the residents of the guild and truly enjoying my stay!

Talents

Here is what I feel is your optimal talent build for Retribution leveling up until level 20.

0/0/11

In short, take Benediction 5/5 (levels 10-14), then Improved Judgements 2/2 (levels 15-16), Heart of the Crusader 3/3 (levels 17-19), and Seal of Command 1/1 (level 20).

I included a major and minor glyph, which both become available at level 15. I went with Glyph of Judgement for the major, because:

You'll be using Judgement a lot. I mean it. A L-O-T. 10% extra damage on your primarily primariest of spells is a good thing.
Mana isn't a terrible issue at these levels, and Seal of Command isn't even available until 20, so Glyph of Seal of Command can be postponed.
... Glyph of Seal of Command was damn expensive on Lightninghoof. So I guess I defaulted to Judgement out of thrift. But still, the point about mana holds, as long as you don't Consecrate every inch of Azeroth on your way to 80.

Use the time between levels 20 and 30 to make some gold so you can purchase that glyph when you get there.

How, you may ask? Simple: DON'T LEVEL FIRST AID. I don't care what 'experts' say, it's a waste of time and gold. You're a paladin: toss a FoL on yourself and call it a day. There may be a select few situations in which bandages might do you some good (especially in Cata, it seems, but hey, that's a few months away at least), but overall, you can heal yourself.

Take that cloth (especially the lower tiers of cloth) and sell it on the AH. I saw stacks of Wool Cloth going for 20g and up. Hawtness.

Back to glyphs, the minor I chose (Glyph of Blessing of Might) was more for convenience than anything. This way, you only have to rebuff both spells once every half hour, which means more time to kill wolves and murlocs.

Level 12

Here you'll see an upgrade to your Might, Judgement of Wisdom (more on this later), and your Resurrection spell quest. Go do it now, especially if you're going to do dungeons and cheat on me as holy.

Level 14

Upgraded Wisdom and Holy Light, as well as Righteous Defense. The namesake of Rhidach's blog is useful... for prot paladins. No way! I wouldn't even put it on your bar at this point in your soloing career. However, grouping may find a use for this button.

Level 16

An upgraded Ret Aura, Righteous Fury (which is another case of "not unless tanking"), and an ability I've grown to love: Hand of Reckoning.

Take a minute to drink it in. A 30 yard taunt that damages the target if it's not targeting you. Even better is that the damage incurred scales with our AP. Are you peeing yourself yet? You should be. Let me give you an example.

I was on my paladin earlier this morning, doing a quest loop in Zangarmarsh in order to hit 64 before I had to leave for work. So I was walking down this path, doo dee doo, and all of the sudden I see a village of weird Umbrafen things. Apparently I needed to kill very specific amounts of them for a quest, so I go up to the first one (which had about 4,000 HP) and hit Hand of Reckoning while I was running into melee range.

BOOM! Hand of Reckoning crits for 1000 damage!

While I was a few levels higher than this mob, Hand of Reckoning is still another damn button to push for us, especially at the aforementioned level 16.

Use it to pull everything, use it to pull mobs away from other mobs, use it to pull my finger.

Don't use it in a dungeon or other tanking situation where you aren't the one taking the beating.

Oh, and another amazing thing about Hand of Reckoning; you can easily pick off runners with it! When a mob "runs away from you in fear," it detargets you and flees. Take advantage of this opportunity and snipe it with a taunt. Most times, the damage will be just enough to kill the fleeing mob.

Level 18

Hand of Freedom. Amazingly useful spell, put it on a keybind (mine is "F").

Level 20

The moment you've been waiting for: free mount! Go to your class trainer and learn Summon Warhorse. You'll automatically get Apprentice Riding and your Warhorse in your Mounts tab.

Oh, and you get a few other cool things too:

And an upgraded Devo Aura.

In general, don't use Consecration unless you're fighting 3+ mobs (maybe even 2+, depending on your ability to burn down the first quickly), don't use Blessing of Kings unless you're fighting things substantially higher in level than you and you feel the extra HP would be of benefit, and don't cast Exorcism unless you're trying to get hold of a caster and your Hand of Reckoning missed.

Retribution Leveling: 1-10

2010-06-25T00:21:00.000-05:00

Out of what can only be described as sheer boredom, of which the only prescription is more cowbell, I've started leveling another ret paladin. While I'm doing so, I thought it'd be a good idea to make some sort of leveling guide as I go, to those of us who are waiting for Cata and have just nothing else to do.

Level 0

Oh yes, even before you're level 1, you're level 0, sitting at the character creation screen and trying to decide on hair colors. I mean, what other decision is there? Oh... those other decisions. Let's go over them then.

HORDE

As a Hordie, you only have one option: Blood Elf. Might I suggest rolling a male Belf, even if you're a female IRL? There's nothing quite like frosted tips. Although I should mention that female Belves aren't that bad. Just get your face/hair/earring situation figured out, and start rolling through Eversong.

ALLIANCE

As a ~~piece of scum~~ weird Alliance player, you have three options: Draenei, Dwarf, or Human. In terms of PvP, Human seems to be the way to go. In PvE, however, it's a toss-up.

Go Human if you want: Mace and Sword Specializations, handy for freeing up some itemization on gear.
Go Dwarf if you want: a slightly better Mace Specialization.
Go Draenei if you want: a 1% Hit-increasing aura, and a -10% self-respect aura (not real, sadly).

I'll leave it up to you to make the decision; I will say, though, that the Draenei starting areas are more intuitively designed than the human and dwarf ones, and will probably net you a decently larger amount of xp in a shorter amount of time.

HEIRLOOMS

So you got a main on the server (Horde or Alliance? Doesn't matter anymore!) and you got some Emblems / Shards burning a hole in your pocket? I personally recommend getting the Polished chest and shoulders, as the Stockade shoulders are slightly worse. However, if you feel you need the resilience for whatever reason, both shoulders have the 10% XP bonus, which stacks with the chest, so go for it.

Also, the Dread Pirate Ring is pretty hot, if you've won the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby, that is.

If you really have a lot of extra badges, get a Swift Hand of Justice or two. Again, if you need some PvP-related gear, buy an Inherited Insignia from Wintergrasp.

And last but not least, grab up the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper or Reforged Truesilver Champion for a weapon, and throw Crusader on it. When it procs during the first few levels, you will decimate all in your path! After level 60, you can throw Strength on it, since Crusader's effectiveness will be quite low at that point.

BAGS

For the love of the Light, if you can send some 16, 18, or 20 slotters over from a main, do it! Running out of bagspace sucks.

Levels 1-3

Welcome to the world of melee-swinging. I'm serious, you have no other DPS moves. Sure, you got Devotion Aura and Holy Light, as well as Seal of Righteousness, but once you throw your seal up, you can just go AFK and make a sandwich while patiently waiting for your character to kill the mob.

Levels 4-6

Here's your bread-and-butter spell: Judgement. Right now, you'll get Judgement of Light, which heals you each time you attack the affected target. This is what you'll mainly be using as you level, so get used to it.

Blessing of Might is also introduced here, so throw that up on yourself and keep it up. And let's not forget about our half-bubble, Divine Protection. Use it if you get into a jam, but watch the cooldown on it.

If you plan on any extended amount of PvE adventures when you hit 80, I'd suggest downloading, installing, and getting used to PallyPower as soon as you can. I had mine already loaded when I made my character, which I'd recommend. That way, you can get accustomed to controlling your seals, auras, and blessings through that interface, which is sorta mandatory for most raids.

Another nifty perk: you don't have to waste space on your action bar for seals or blessings if you use PallyPower. Well, unless you want to bless people not in your party... or you want to switch seals in combat... but other than that it's pretty sweet!

Levels 7-10

Here we get Hammer of Justice, a useful stun and interrupt ability on a 1 minute cooldown. Keybind it.

Another really useful ability, Purify, becomes available as well. I have mine keybound to Mouse Scroll Down to make dispelling things easy. You'll eventually replace Purify with Cleanse, but for now this will have to do.

On the cooldown side of things, we also get Hand of Protection, or BoP, and Lay on Hands. Both of these abilities will give the targeted player a debuff called Forbearance, which prevents them being able to use BoPs, LoHs, Divine Protection, or Divine Shield within the next 2 minutes. It also puts restrictions on your wings, but we'll cover that later when we train it.

The next installment will feature levels 11-20 and how to start speccing into Retribution, the paladin tree everyone loves!

Heroic Ruby Sanctum Retribution Gearing: Even Moar ArP!

2010-06-23T11:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we took a look at all the shiny new gear from Ruby Sanctum, which is unfortunately still unavailable until Blizzard says otherwise. I neglected to include any information on the heroic loot from RS, as I didn't find any links to it. Well, it turns out I didn't look hard enough; a friend of mine pointed out that the heroic loot tables are on the front page of MMO Champion. Doh! So then, without further ado, let's get to it.

First, if you keep up with Elitist Jerks' BiS lists, you'll have noticed that they included this subsection at the bottom of the OP:

Ruby Sanctum Patch 3.3.5 All Item BiS

Wrist: [Polar Bear Claw Bracers] => Umbrage Armbands (Heroic)
Ring: [Band of the Bone Colossus] => Signet of Twilight (Heroic)
Trinket: [Death's Choice]=> Sharpened Twilight Scale (Heroic)
Boots: [Frostbitten Fur Boots] => Apocalypse's Advance (Heroic)
Neck: [Sindragosa's Cruel Claw] => Penumbra Pendant (Heroic)
No other changes from the above listed All Items BiS listing.

Notice that these upgrades pertain to the "Heroic All Items Priority List." Therefore, I'm choosing to ignore a few of the upgrades because I refuse to wear agil gear as a ret paladin. Granted, for the moment I suffer a DPS loss for doing so, but I take it in stride (I intend to explain my anti-agility philosophy as best I can in another post).

So what can we add to our "Heroic Plate Items Priority List" over on the EJ forums?

10-MAN

Just as in normal, we get Bracers of the Heir and Zarithrian's Offering, only this time they're heroic.

The ring, or as I like to see it, Might of Blight 1.5, seems to be just that: the exact same ring, only half way between the item budgeting of the normal and heroic versions. Maybe not exactly half way, but you get the idea. Also, with a red socket, and depending on what the socket bonus turns out to be (more than likely +4 Strength), this could compete for a spot on our BiS lists.

As compared to the heroic version of Might of Blight, and given that the Might of Blight is socketed with an Inscribed Ametrine and Zarithrian's Offering with a Bold Cardinal Ruby (with a socket bonus of +4 Strength), you're looking at a trade-off of 14 Crit and 4 ArP for Might of Blight compared to the 4 Strength from Zarithrian's Offering.

Although I'm waiting to compare the theoretical DPS between the two using an updated version of Rawr (which will hopefully come out soon), I'm leaning toward Zarithrian's Offering for a couple reasons:

Strength scales our AP up, and most of our attacks have an AP modifier, meaning the more Strength we get, the harder we hit
Crit Rating increases your chance to crit, not the damage from the crit itself. 14 Crit Rating translates into 0.305% Crit Chance, meaning you're 0.305% more likely to hit critically. This seems kinda marginal, but as I said, I'll have to wait until I see the sim to make a conclusion.
Armor Penetration Rating, as it is, is not one of our most ideal stats. It's not terrible, true, but we have bigger stats to fry. Therefore, a loss of 4 ArP isn't going to be noticeable.

Also, given an excess amount of hit, this ring might be worth using in place of your Ashen Band of Endless Might. Just keep an eye on your stats!

The bracers are somewhat more fickle. Compared to our current BiS heroic bracers, the Bracers of the Heir have -6 Strength and -4 Critical Strike Rating, as well as -60 Hit and +56 Armor Penetration Rating. Again, this comes down to whether 56 ArP > 6 Strength and 4 Crit, and again I'm going to have to hold my tongue until I can see it for myself.

Much of this is dependent on your Hit Rating (remember: 263 = sexy), which the next set of loot is bound to screw with.

25-MAN

Again, for our taking are Apocalypse's Advance, Penumbra Pendant, and Sharpened Twilight Scale, all heroic-quality items. Even according to EJ's All Item list, the boots and necklace are BiS. Therefore, it would stand to reason that they can find a home on the Plate list too. And as we've already seen, Sharpened Twilight Scale (heroic) is one of our BiS trinkets, along with Tiny Abomination in a Jar (heroic).

If you swap out the Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard and Blood-Soaked Saronite Stompers on our current Plate BiS list with Penumbra Pendant and Apocalypse's Advance, you see +34 Str, +21 Hit, +12 Crit, and -9 ArP, not including any gems or socket bonuses. So let's see: +9 ArP, or +34 Str, +21 Hit, and +12 Crit? I think that's a no-brainer.

So if we equip all of the 25-man gear listed above, we find ourselves with 21 extra Hit Rating (presuming you're sitting on the hit cap, of course). This extra garnish isn't quite enough to warrant ditching any piece with hit, as the piece in the current Heroic Plate BiS list with the lowest non-zero Hit Rating has 59, but who knows? Maybe we can reshuffle some gear and squeeze out a few more points of DPS while maintaining our hit cap.

You could do the math yourself... or you could just wait for more motivated people to build the sims for you, like me. So let's get working, people!

Ruby Sanctum Retribution Gearing: Moar ArP!

2010-06-22T16:10:00.004-05:00

Oh, work. I've spent today and Monday in my office playing Zork I and II, which are a couple of text-based adventure games that run in MS-DOS and were made in the early 80's. Truth be told, I was actually looking for a very similar game, except it took place on a spaceship; I remember playing the space one as a kid but couldn't remember for the life of me what the name was. But yes, to answer your inevitable question, I have been pretty bored lately.

Anyway, enough about that; Ruby Sanctum is being "released" today! Huzzah! Finally, Wyrmrest Temple will see more people than those ambitious Sarth-3D puggers.

IMPORTANT NOTE (from official patch notes): "Please note due to the way this patch is being applied in all regions, this dungeon will not immediately be available in North America."

So don't get your panties in a bunch; it'll be out soon!

Until it's ready for us, all we can do is sit and speculate. Therefore, let's go over some details. The following things have been stated before, but I'll state them again in case you missed them (all of this is subject to change, of course, but this is just what we have been told thus far):

Ruby Sanctum will contain four bosses: Halion the Twilight Destroyer and three drakes, Baltharus the Warborn, General Zarithrian, and Saviana Ragefire, in a setup reminiscient of Obsidian Sanctum.
The drakes will each drop one Emblem of Frost, with Halion dropping the only loot to speak of in the instance.
Unlike OS, RS will not feature a "drakes up" scenario for complicating the encounter and getting extra loot or achievements.
While Halion drops higher iLevel loot than each tier's ICC counterpart (251 loot in ICC 10m and 258 loot in RS 10m, 264 in ICC 25m and 271 in RS 25m), it is not intended to be any more difficult than ICC.
Heroic modes are supposed to be available, though it is unclear how they're to be accessed (right off the bat, after killing Halion, or some other means)

Honestly, I haven't watched any PTR encounter videos to see what the fights are like (mah bad), but I do have the ability to skim Halion's loot table! So let's go on an adventure and see what us ret paladins can nom up!

10-MAN

Both Zarithrian's Offering and Bracers of the Heir appeal to my hunger for strength-plate. Although the ArP that was sprinkled delicately over these items gives me gas...

Don't let my intestinal problems dissuade you though; these are pretty damn good. Grab 'em up, provided they're an upgrade.

25-MAN

Oh Mama. There's Apocalypse's Advance, with some hit that frees up some itemization, and Penumbra Pendant, which noms that itemization, when switched with Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard, and gives us some amazing... ArP. Well, it's better than more hit!

These upgrades pale in comparison to the Sharpened Twilight Scale. Well, sorta. I guess the "pales in comparison" part depends on your current gear setup.

See, getting trinkets is a pain in the royal ass. Now a BiS (or close to it) trinket for almost every melee DPS drops in a fairly short 25-man. And yes, you guessed it; it's quite good for us rets as well.

Given our first trinket slot contains Tiny Abomination in a Jar (normal), the DPS order of the second slot goes:

Sharpened Twilight Scale (heroic) > Death's Choice (heroic) > Whispering Fanged Skull (heroic) > Death's Choice (normal) > Sharpened Twilight Scale (normal) > Whispering Fanged Skull (normal) > etc.

This trinket order is fairly general, and if you have it, TAJ (normal) will only be replaced by TAJ (heroic) because the trinket is just so amazing. I mean, at the time I had a DMC: Greatness, which I replaced with TAJ (normal), along with a Whispering Fanged Skull (normal), and just by equipping that trinket my DPS jumped up by over 600 points.

Obviously going from a 200 iLevel to a 264 was going to be a big increase, but not only is the proc really hot, but the passive hit on the trinket itself allows us to switch some gear around, especially useful since the four pieces of tier we use don't have any hit on them. So leggo our Abo's, rogues!

Shared Topic: What Needs to Die in a Fire in Cataclysm?

2010-06-18T12:09:00.000-05:00

I think this is the first time I've participated in a Blog Azeroth Shared Topic. Seeing as I've had a considerable lack of inspiration in posting topics of late, I might start doing these more often, so if you like them, let me know!

Anywho, Spinks over at Spinksville suggested the following topic:

Cataclysm is coming! The old world is going to be destroyed and remade.

Which town, quest, NPC, or zone really needs to be purged with fire, in your opinion? Will you enjoy dancing on the ashes of a particularly hated quest giver? Or is there some zone you avoid like the plague (plaguelands excluded) where being nuked from orbit could only improve the experience? And why do you hate it/them so much?

As someone who has six level 80 characters, I have a pretty good idea of what I want immediately thrown into searing hot magma. Rather than follow his use of the exclusive "or", I'm going to do all three because I'm a badass ret paladin. Yeah, that's the reason. (Ok, it's because I have four hours of downtime at work, sue me.)

TOWN

This is a tough one. I think out of every town in the game, the one I hate most is Thunder Bluff. I had to go there the other day on my boomkin to start the epic flight form quest, so I can farm for Anzu's mount, and I figured "I'll just go to TB, learn artisan riding from the trainer, then hop over to the druid trainer; couldn't be easier!"

WRONG. The riding trainer is in Bloodhoof Village.

Are.
You.
Serious.
???

Granted, if I were on my paladin, I'd line myself up with Bloodhoof from the tallest bluff I could find and use Nitro Boosts/Flexweave Underlay Parachute to float to safety, but I was not.

Also, how the hell did the Tauren get up that high and build an entire city to boot? Cows can't climb, silly Blizzard.

Everything in that abysmal place is awkwardly positioned on three tiers of bluffs, and the only ways up are either to run out to one of the rises and hope the other bridge goes up or down a tier, or to take the spiral staircase inside the way too large totem in the middle. Inside the totem, you get dismounted, and unless they changed it, you also get dismounted running through the lodges to get onto the bridges (I have gone through without dismounting before, but it could have just been lag that never caught up with me, no idea).

Not to mention that the mage portal arrival point is in a dark, scary cave, meaning you can't mount until you get out, unlike Orgrimmar. I know Alliance don't even have such a thing as a mountable portal area, but I like to complain.

HOW IT SHOULD DIAF:

I'm thinking an earthquake could topple the bluffs and bring everything crashing to the ground. They could phase the area, having quests associated with rescuing people from the debris and even to help in building a 'temporary' capital at Bloodhoof. That way it wouldn't be all altitude-y and annoying. I mean, there's plenty of room for expansion in Mulgore, let's utilize some real estate guys.

QUEST

Easy. Mok'thardin's Enchantment. As a young paladin leveling in STV, I received this quest, and after grinding gorillas for at least an hour, I had collected enough spare gorilla parts to raise my own army of Frankenstein-esque undead monsters, except they wouldn't have any tendons because apparently when you're killing a gorilla you MUST FIRST SEVER EVERY TENDON IN THEIR BODY!

Also, to everyone who remembers this quest and got it "in five minutes," you can DIAF too.

HOW IT SHOULD DIAF:

I'm not sure what's happening to STV when the Cataclysm hits, but I hope either a) Mok'thardin gets executed by a group of angry adventurers because, surely, no enchantment could be worth this much pain, or b) the entire Elder Mistvale Gorilla population is decimated. Done and done.

ZONE

Originally I was going to say Desolace, but seeing as they're revitalizing it I think I'll wait and see how that goes. Therefore, I'm going to have to go to plan B and say Felwood. How awkwardly designed is this zone? Not to mention that to do any quests, you have to travel way too far away from the quest givers / flight paths (even with an epic ground mount). Not only that, but the zone is horribly depressing, since EVERYTHING is tainted by fel whatever. I could not wait to leave that place.

Runners up include:

Teldrassil- You'll get your cardio workout here, especially for quests like The Moss-twined Heart and Ursal the Mauler.
Wetlands- Only one flight path / quest giver hub / inn? AND it's at the farthest point west on my map? FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU...
The Blasted Lands- The closest Horde outpost isn't even in this zone? Are you for real real?

HOW IT SHOULD DIAF:

I think this is the only one that I think should ACTUALLY die in a fire. Remember the Wrathgate, where Alexstrasza actually did something for once and used her fire breath to purge the Forsaken's plague? Well maybe she could get off her ass and purge Felwood too! If nothing were left of that zone but ashes and scorched earth, I'd be perfectly happy.

The three runners up I listed can just sink into the planet and cease to exist, since they're mostly Alliance lands anyway.

Seal of Command: Cleave Your Way to Victory!

2010-06-10T10:02:00.001-05:00

I remember when paladins didn't even spec into Seal of Command.

"That's a leveling seal!" they'd say. "It has no endgame viability!"

Blizzard heard these people and proclaimed from a nearby mountaintop, "NAY! Seal of Command in 3.2.2 will be re-tooled, and henceforth be known as Seal of Cleave! Let it be so!"

We all know how awesome this seal is for AoE situations, mainly trash packs and the like. But say you're a dedicated raiding ret paladin with some extra time and gold to spend; should you use your offspec for a Seal of Command-specific AoE build? Does such a thing exist?

How about you and me find out? Yeah? Maybe we can get some ice cream after? Awesome! Yeah, ice cream!

In assessing our core talents, let's see which are "mandatory" and which can be shuffled. Say you have a boomkin in your raid providing Improved Moonkin Form, as they should and as my guild has had in both 25m and our 10m group. This buff does not stack with Swift Retribution, so those talent points can be reallocated. Also, since we're trying to build an AoE trash spec and will be using Seal of Command, 5/5 Seals of the Pure is unnecessary, so those are up for grabs as well.

Here's our spec so far: 0/5/52

We have a whopping 14 points free to place at our discretion. The power... the POWER!!!!!

Let's try and find damage-increasing talents in the other trees and assess their accessibility.

TALENT DISCUSSION

HOLY

Holy Power - In order to get this nifty talent, we'd need to dump 25 points into the Holy tree just to get to it, 30 points to go 5/5. When using Seal of Command, I believe (haven't tested or found a specific source) this would modify Judgement of Command, Consecration, Holy Wrath, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath. Would be nice, but all in all, getting to it would be a bitch.

Holy Shock - I'm upset that I missed the whole "Shockadin" fad. I'm a little excited to be getting this as a base spell for all paladins in Cataclysm, but as for right now, it's in the same boat as Holy Power. Too many talents in Ret would need to be sacrificed to reach this puppy.

Holy Guidance - I know about all the 'rawr no SP anymore rawr' coming from the Ret community as a whole, but most of our attacks (i.e. the attacks I listed as being affected by Holy Power) are still modified by spellpower, making this worth looking into. Given the average ret paladin's unmodified Intellect as roughly 120, this talent could up our spellpower by an incredible 24 points. So... yeah, never mind. Next!

The remaining talents (Judgements of the Pure and Enlightened Judgements) would be hawt for ret, but they're just one tier above Beacon of Light, so there is NO way we can get those.

PROTECTION

Combat Expertise - Like Enlightned Judgements in Holy, this talent could free up some itemization in our gear for more direct DPS-based stats (that is, Strength), while also increasing our crit by 6%. Too bad this requires 38 points in Protection to be fully active.

Touched by the Light - Oh yes, the talent at the center of the Prot/Holy PvP spec of days passed. In the original iteration of this talent, the spellpower increase was based off of Stamina, not Strength, meaning holy pallies could use a protection spec while wearing holy gear to get loads of spellpower and an increase of 10% to their critical heals. In terms of our DPS, increasing spellpower by using our Strength seems like an awesome idea. However, the position of this talent in the Protection tree (requires 43 points to get 3/3) makes it impossible to get.

Summary: Even with 14 free points, we can't reach any DPS-increasing talents in either Prot or Holy trees. Bummer.

So what now? As you might have guessed, it comes down to a battle of cooldowns:

Aura Mastery vs. Divine Sacrifice.

Say you are this hypothetical ret paladin with an unused offspec (not me, by the way). You have your main raiding spec all neatly organized and glyphed and framed on your wall, and your other spec is empty. Your main spec will pick up 5/5 Seals of the Pure, and if you followed my advice in this post, you probably picked up AM, meaning that picking up that cooldown for a second spec is kinda... odd.

I need to clear something up before we get into the pros and cons of these two cooldowns. Previously I was a bit harsh on World of Matticus's own Matticus (and Ophelie's guildie) when I read he was choosing to spec into DivSac over AM, and for that I really do apologize. My Elitist Jerks training kicked in when I saw a spec that wasn't EJ-approved and I didn't even stop to think that there could be situations where DivSac would be better than AM, especially if you already have an AM somewhere.

Anyway, in the comments of that post, Ophelie said the following little gem that I completely glossed over:

There's no significant dps loss in going DS instead of AM so saying he shouldn't go into ICC because he's specced into DS is kind of exaggerating.

She's absolutely correct. First, that I exaggerate a lot, and in doing so look like an idiot. But more relevantly, that taking DivSac carries with it no DPS loss to speak of. True, grabbing Divine Guardian DOES, but only when we're talking about single-target encounters, such as most boss fights, and not AoE-loving trash, or the unique Dreamwalker encounter.

I really will not go into why or why not you should pick up DivSac, as I feel I've already beaten that topic to death (some of it being right, some of it being blatantly ignorant); if you feel your raid could use a 2 minute cooldown that:

Effectively soaks up 50,000 damage (given the caster paladin's health pool is approximately 25,000) that is spread out among the members of your party (and your raid, when combined with Divine Guardian),
Cannot be bubbled a la 3.2 awesomeness, meaning that once you absorb the 50,000 damage the spell breaks,
Makes said ret paladin the center of healing focus for ten seconds,

Then I say go for it. With my raid set up, however, it makes little sense to take, as our holy paladin and two prot paladin MTs (as well as me, in my prot spec) all take DivSac in their builds, in addition to Divine Guardian. I will leave this choice up to you.

However, getting back to the topic at hand, if you did take AM for your main spec and you're deciding which cooldown to take for your trash offspec, may I suggest taking DivSac? It's moderately useful on trash, but I think the real benefits of choosing this route are Guardian's Favor, Divine Guardian, and surprisingly, Toughness.

Guardian's Favor - Brings BoP's cooldown down to 3 minutes and increases Freedom's duration to 8 seconds; increased usefulness to two potentially life-saving utility cooldowns = win, in my book.

Divine Guardian - Remember how I said that grabbing this talent gibs your DPS "only when we're talking about single-target encounters, such as most boss fights, and not AoE-loving trash, or the unique Dreamwalker encounter"? Without needing Seals of the Pure, we can grab this talent, not only giving your raid a 20% DR raid wall, but also making Sacred Shields you toss out more powerful and last longer.

Toughness - I admit, I took this mainly get to Divine Guardian, and figured it was worth more than Improved Righteous Fury, Anticipation, and Divinity combined. More armor? Meh. A 30% reduction in slows? Yes please!

Therefore, after much ado, I present you with your DivSac/AoE trash offspec: 0/19/52

GLYPHS

The glyphs I chose in the link above are fairly straightforward, although the removal of the Glyph of Seal of Vengeance opens a third slot for one of the following:

Glyph of Seal of Command - Hurting for mana for some reason? Use this!

Glyph of Holy Wrath - Are most of the mobs you AoE down Undead or Demons AND your tanks need some help with snap aggro? Use this!

Glyph of Divine Storm - Are your healers not very good with large amounts of AoE raid damage, especially in the melee? Use this!

Glyph of Salvation - Are you an overzealous aggro whore? Use this!

ROTATION/PRIORITY

And finally, we come to FCFS priority. Since EJ doesn't have an AoE-based FCFS priority system, let me introduce you to mine!

Judgement > Divine Storm > Crusader Strike > Consecration > Hammer of Wrath > Exorcism

Randomly toss in some Holy Wraths to help CC (gasp!) Undead and Demon mobs, or to get interrupts on Risen Archmages, but I wouldn't use it as a primary spell (even when glyphed).

Don't worry, I didn't just pull this out of my butt; I used Rawr to devise the highest DPS rotation using my gear (T10 equivalent) with 3 Humanoid targets for 1.0 minutes while using Seal of Command. So if you're worried I put a lot of hard work and effort into it, don't be. If you look really carefully, you'll notice the only difference is prioritizing Consecration over Hammer of Wrath, which makes sense with multiple mobs.

SHOULD YOU USE IT?

As I've mentioned, I lack the dust-collecting offspec in order to try this out, as I'm often asked to switch back and forth between prot and ret during both 10's and 25's. However, if you already dumped the gold into getting Dual Spec and really aren't doing anything with it, why not give it a shot?

Rather than just use this for trash, a spec such as this would be ideal for the Dreamwalker encounter under if you have an AM from somewhere else for when the Blazing Skeletons cast Lay Waste (Fire Resist Aura + AM = win). The Divine Guardian-enhanced DivSac would certainly help for this ability, but I think this ability is better saved for crunch time, when adds are overwhelming your tank(s) and your healers are trying to pump out as many heals as possible to end the encounter. Again, it's up to you.

A few more reasons for why this spec would be great for Dreamwalker:

Guardian's Favor would result in more BoPs to hand out for people too slow to run away from exploding Blistering Zombies, and a longer Freedom to give to those who need to run away from something but were just hit by an Archmage's Frostbolt (5/5 Toughness is nice for this ability as well),
Suppressors bunch up nicely at Dreamwalker's feet, making them nice and cleave-able,
While the other adds don't necessary bunch up, most of the adds will die within 15-20 seconds, which is the DPS threshold for Seal of Vengeance, so in this timespan Seal of Command outperforms
Even 1/2 Improved Hammer of Justice means more interrupts available over the course of the fight to stop the Archmages' casting (and on heroic this is vital)

==============================

That's it for now. Any questions? Comments? Concerns?

Screenshots Make For Good Filler

2010-06-08T08:22:00.001-05:00

I've been stowing some screenies away for a rainy day when I get the chance to blog on my home computer, and HARK, THAT DAY COMETH!

Oh, the subtlety of the jokes. Look at how simple my action bar is. Yay for boomkin!

A pug I was in actually reached the end of Underbog, no wai!

I was the ONLY one in the raid who still needed The Orb Whisperer, so I took some drastic measures to make sure to call for a wipe if I needed to. Funny thing is, I was the Keleseth tank, so it more-or-less rested on me to not screw the pooch on the achievement.

Sometimes the scenery is quite beautiful. I believe this is looking out from Dalaran.

Oh Toog... to be fair, we were ALL pretty cocky walking into Algalon. Took us a decent amount of tries to down him though, still a tough fight if you've never seen the mechanics.

Apparently, this decorative floaty thingy doubles as an interstellar signaling device. Shocking. Heh.

A moment when TidyPlates sucks. Hello graphic lag.

During a wipe on an alt ICC 10m run, I decided to hop in a portal to see what all the healers were hiding from me. Really not as cool as I thought it would be.

Last but not least, my Wind Rider Cub from Ferarro's contest finally arrived! Big thanks to her being so accommodating and helpful, and generous of course! Every time I look over he's perpetually in the middle of waving at me, so I wave right back at him. Haven't thought of a name yet, but I just got him yesterday so it's all good.

Until next time!

In Soviet Russia, Boss Raids You!

2010-05-27T15:10:00.000-05:00

I was reading a bit over on Pugging Pally (which is a great site, especially for those of us who are so deep into level 80 stuff that we forget that we ever leveled a paladin and had to gear it up) and I came across the following:

Everyone ready? One, two, three... ROFL.

The website was blocked to protect those that would actually, for some reason, go to it.

The Joys of Coercion

2010-05-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

With the 20% ICC buff now live, my 10-man and I waltzed into ICC with our warlock's old raid ID that had everything clear except Sindragosa and the Lich King and, after a few "Oh my God, how does this fight go again?" wipes, we finally downed heroic 10m Sindragosa! Better yet, we went on to LK to do Been Waiting a Long Time for This and downed it on our second try! Now all we have left are normal-mode achievements and the drakes are ours'! This paragraph needs more exclamation marks!!!

In other news, my druid hit 80 on Monday night! Boomkin DPS is quite fun; my numbers on trash are through the roof and, since trash DPS is what people seem to care about most, I haven't been kicked from any heroics yet for having a 3.2k GearScore.

And one more thing: if you're running heroic Gun'Drak and three of your DPS want to do the optional boss, don't just go on without them. You'll upset the DPS who are all friends, in vent together, and have the majority of the party. Democracy FTW!

(Seriously though, we wanted to do the murloc guy but the healer and tank didn't, so we went and cleared the trash to the optional boss by ourselves while the healer and tank died on trash to the last boss, then kicked the tank, followed by the healer dropping group, followed by one of my friend's going resto while the other pulled out a voidwalker, followed by us three-manning the optional boss. Good news is that by the time we got over to the trash leading to the final boss, a new healer and tank joined and we finished off the instance. Hooray! )

Moral of the story: don't be inconsiderate if 3/5ths of your party wants to do some extra boss or something like that.

Data Mining and Relativity

2010-05-24T16:15:00.001-05:00

My lack of posting this time of year can only mean one thing: finals. And yes, you would be correct if you assumed as much. You would be incorrect, however, if you assumed that this was all that I was busy doing.

I'm graduated! After four years, my undergraduate education is now complete. My commencement ceremony was Saturday and, if you're really good, I might put up some pics. Stay tuned.

My feelings? A mixture of fulfillment, satisfaction, and nostalgia. The thought of never returning to my campus is extremely depressing, so I might have to go pretend to be a student in the fall. You know, just lay out in the quad, play some volleyball or frisbee, walk around the science building whilst talking about chemical reactions with a friend or two; all the stuff that makes incoming freshman feel completely inadequate.

My future plans? TBD. I did not get into graduate school but I think I'm okay with that. I went into the application process unsure of whether I wanted to devote the next 5+ years of my life to something I wasn't sure I wanted to do and now that I'm on the other side without such a commitment, I feel that I can truly take a deep breath and figure out exactly what the hell to do with my life. Suggestions are welcome!

So what does any of this mean in terms of WoW? I'll probably have a bit more time to write, considering I'm working 9-5's all summer. Provided I have some inspiration, of course.

For this post, I have decided to take the flag from Righteous Defense and I am a Paladin... in terms of coverage of Armory Data Mining! See what the theme is? Righteous Defense did protection, I am a Paladin did holy, and now I'm doing retribution! OMG HOW SERENDIPITOUS!

Ahem, moving on.

GEMS

The first four are exactly what I like to see. Inscribed Ametrine, in the proper socket, does theoretically give more DPS than a Bold Cardinal. Way to go, guys.

What I don't like to see is that Chaotic Skyflare is more popular than Relentless Earthsiege. Perhaps this is a PvP thing (a theory that I'll be leaning on for this entire post), but any self-respecting PvE retribution paladin shouldn't be taking the kick in the pants to fulfill the meta requirements for the Chaotic. A sad reality, since by itself the Chaotic outshines the Relentless, but when coupled with the fact that it needs two blue gems... frowny face.

Also, the other gem in this list that just makes me cringe is the Bright Scarlet Ruby. Oh, ye misinformed paladins...

GLYPHS

Glyph of Judgement? Good.

Glyph of Exorcism? Are you really passively expertise-capped? Really? Let me see your gear... Yeah I don't believe you. It's either a PvP thing or you're wrong.

Otherwise, the top three (if you take out Exo) look good. The others I'm going to chock up to not re-glyphing when you switch specs and (as for the case of SoComm and DS glyphs) PvP.

TALENTS

This is really the most disappointing part of the data-mining process. I stubbornly refuse to accept the 5/11/55 spec, especially this iteration which is predominant in the 5/11/55 category. Rather than figure it's a PvP thing, I am certain this is the most popular PvE retribution bulid, which is evidenced in the 0/2 Divine Purpose, among other things (Guardian's Favor, Stoicism). This just goes to show,

"What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right." -Albert Einstein

Avenger's Shield: Heroic Lower Spire

2010-05-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again: the snow is all melted, the sun is shining, and underclassmen venture out of their dorms into the upper quad to play some Frisbee or, as is the case with underclasswomen, sunbathe (making my walks through there quite enjoyable, nudge nudge), whereas us upperclassmen are bogged down with projects, papers, and presentations. The joy of finals.

Rest assured, I haven't quit altogether. Somehow, I've managed to continue raiding and, as a guild, we've managed to get some progression under our belts. Now that my 10-man team is working on the last of our heroic bosses (Sindragosa, not Lich King) before we go back and do normal-mode achievements for our drakes, I'd say it's past due for some more tanking guides. This installment will be the meat and potatoes concerning the achievement Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10 player); the Lower Spire!

Note: While some of these strats can be duplicated to great effect in 25-mans, some cannot, and as such I feel compelled to warn the reader that these strats are concerning heroic 10-man ICC only. I will loot heroic 10-man and heroic 25-man loot so you can salivate at how sexy some 277 gear is.

LORD MARROWGAR

This big ol' pile of bones only has a few new mechanics in the heroic version. His Coldflame ability will now remain on the ground for 8 seconds, rather than the original 3. Hopefully you don't have any hunters so everyone can stand in melee range, and only the tanks have to worry about Coldflame. If you have one, well, they can just move on their own; as long as they're quick, they shouldn't have to worry. What my main tank and I do is set up a sequence for laying down patches of flame and moving on. Let me show you:

As usual, face Marrowgar away from the raid, so his back is to the entrance of the antechamber. Patches of flame will radiate outward towards you and the other tank. Start in the B position. Both you and the other tank should be stacked smack in the middle of the B position, so when Marrowgar lays down a Coldflame, you both can move to C. Once in C, Marrowgar will lay down some fire in C, so move to A. Rinse and repeat. You'll have to run over a little bit of flame, but it shouldn't be too bad. Even if you start in A, you'd have to go to B, then C, then back to A, so where you start is rather irrelevant; I simply chose B as its the most convenient with regards to normal tanking. If, after a Bone Storm, Marrowgar is in an awkward position, then just readjust your ABC sequence to where he's facing and have your DPS/healers readjust their positioning.

The other, more wipe-causing, change is that Marrowgar will toss out Bone Spikes during Bone Storm. It is imperative that you get these people out quickly, because if Marrowgar decides to brostorm near (or heaven forbid, on top of) someone who has been spiked, it's game over for them, not to mention that the increased duration of Coldflame will mean that the blue fire will accumulate quickly during this phase, so it's very possible that someone will be spiked on top of some flame. Moar heals, quick DPS is all I can say about that.

Other than the greater damage output and higher health pool, this HM isn't too bad. Pay attention to these two changes and you'll see that cookie crumble.

Loot:

H10m: Bonebreaker Scepter, Marrowgar's Scratching Choker
H25m: Bracers of Dark Reckoning, Legguards of Lost Hope

LADY DEATHWHISPER

If you've done the 25m encounter of Deathwhisper, you shouldn't be too surprised at the occasional Mind Control here and there, just CC them and continue on. Other than the scaling (more health/mana, harder-hitting adds, etc.), there's a VERY important tank mechanic for phase 2: she is immune to taunt.

Let me restate that: you'll be feverishly slamming your 969, trying to outthreat your DPS, who are currently hitting 15% harder than normal. I have to tell you, it's a bit stressful. Keep on top of handing out Salvs, TotT's, and other aggro-dropping or threat-reducing mechanics you have at your disposal. Also make sure to switch seals to Vengeance if you were using Command to wrangle in some adds.

An additional add will spawn from the rear of the room during phase 2, so have your DPS switch to it and blow it up. The current tank can try to pick it up, but the other tank (who should have quite a few stacks of Touch of Insignificance; I'm not sure how many stacks we go up to, but it is almost definitely not the full 5) won't be able to do much.

Still watch out for ghosts and MC's, kite away from Death and Decay's, and manage your threat properly, and you'll have a kill in no time.

Loot:

H10m: Ghoul Commander's Cuirass
H25m: Broken Ram Skull Helm, Juggernaut Band

LOOTSHIP... err, GUNSHIP BATTLE

Hehe, censorship. Good one, Google Image Search.

Honestly, there's almost no difference in tanking this encounter. I'm sure Muradin (or Saurfang) hits harder, but I wouldn't know because my main tank NEVER LETS ME JUMP OVER! Anywho, missle strikes (indicated by the flashing graphic on the ship's deck) cause a knockback of a few yards... at least, I'm pretty sure it was a few. I saw our DK get hit by it and he only went back maybe 5,10 yards.

Edit: According to WoWWiki, the rockets have a 7 yard knockback. I was close!

Loot:

H10m: Abomination's Bloody Ring, Neverending Winter
H25m: Boneguard Commander's Pauldrons, Corpse Tongue Coin

DEATHBRINGER SAURFANG

This encounter on heroic is more healing-intensive than anything, as Saurfang gets Blood Power much more readily. Blood Beasts hit harder, and by harder, I mean that when they gain the Scent of Blood, they'll one-shot anything that isn't a tank. They also move a lot faster than on normal, which, when coupled with the previous change, means that an unslowed, unstunned beast is a cruise missile with a vengeance. Make use of a healthy amount of stuns and slows to prevent anyone from getting nom'ed.

As always, switches are very important, especially considering you'll have little margin for error with Saurfang's increased health and your healers' limited mana pools. Enough sloppy switches could mean lengthening the encounter (since Saurfang heals when he's attacking a target with Rune of Blood), more than likely resulting in a wipe, so keep your finger poised over your taunt and pounce on that mofo as soon as your other tank gets the debuff.

The most important aspect of this fight, in my opinion, is keeping your Marked targets alive. If a single Marked target dies, Saurfang heals for 20%, again more than likely resulting in a wipe.

So, to recap: keep Marks up, stun, slow, and kill beasts, tank swap on Rune of Blood, burn him. I put those in the order of importance for giggles.

Loot:

H10m: Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification (or another Mark of Sanc, if you're not a paladin and you're cheating on your other blogs), Deathforged Legplates, Gargoyle Spit Bracers
H25m: Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification (heroic), Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification (yes, apparently H25m end-wing bosses drop one heroic mark and two non-heroic marks)

That about wraps up the Lower Spire. Good luck in there!

The Death of the 25-Man?

2010-04-26T12:53:00.001-05:00

A new blue post confirms Blizz's direction for raiding in Cataclysm, and boy is it going to change a few things:

We're continuing to refine the raid progression paths in Cataclysm, and we'd like to share some of those changes with you today. Please enjoy!

The first of the refinements being made is that we're combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn't apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.

So they're going to make us choose between 10 and 25? Well, that should be easy; 25m's give better loot... right?

We're designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we'll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They'll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today.

Oh... so, if both versions drop the same items, then why the hell would anyone put up with the headache of trying to herd 24 other cats through fights, let alone roll against them for the exact same gear as you could get in 10m's without as much competition or frustration?

We of course recognize the logistical realities of organizing larger groups of people, so while the loot quality will not change, 25-player versions will drop a higher quantity of loot per player (items, but also badges, and even gold), making it a more efficient route if you're able to gather the people. The raid designers are designing encounters with these changes in mind, and the class designers are making class changes to help make 10-person groups easier to build. Running 25-player raids will be a bit more lucrative, as should be expected, but if for a week or two you need to do 10s because half the guild is away on vacation, you can do that and not suffer a dramatic loss to your ability to get the items you want.

Even having the bosses drop more loot doesn't change the fact that, per individual, you're better off in 10m's. I highly doubt they'd have a boss drop two or more of the same item, nor have loot tables so large that you're not likely to see that item within the next week or two.

Also, if you have a solid 25-man raiding core, that means you have, what, 5-7 healers, 3-4 tanks, and loads of DPS... between offspecs and back-ups, I don't think anyone would be hard-pressed to turn a 25-man raiding core into 3 solid 10-man groups, reducing hassle and loot drama, and maximizing both progression and gearing.

I'll admit, I've liked 10m's more than 25m's for quite a while, and this announcement has only strengthened by convictions. I guess we'll have to wait and see the specifics before we jump to any bold conclusions, but I think they're going down the wrong path here.

Dual Kingslayers

2010-04-20T19:50:00.003-05:00

We finally did it. After 2 weeks of attempts, the bigger, badder, non-heroic 25m (Lich) King is dead!

We 24 and 23-manned several attempts, and let me tell you, DPS was not a problem. The 10% buff gives you so much leeway that I can't even imagine the final iteration of the buff (30%?). If there was one thing that kept tripping us up, it was:

DEFILES!

Their proper placement and size control was a constant struggle. The tanks used the directions of "left" and "right," which got confusing when we changed positions on the platform:

Raider: "Is 'left' to the left of the Throne or to the left of where we're facing?"
Raid Leader: "..."

I told them to use polar coordinates, but noooo...

And if it wasn't defiles, it was:

RAGING SPIRITS!

It took a while for our tanks to get used to the instant spawns and seemingly-random aggro pulling of these stupid mobs. One spawned from a death knight near me and, without a consecrate down or nothin', it turned, hit me, and I died.

So, if you're having trouble, I'm guessing that cracking down on these two points will help you immensely.

Generic Cataclysm Paladin Changes Post #476

2010-04-14T16:31:00.001-05:00

I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere lately; many sleepless nights and prognostications about an uncertain future... let's just say crunch time sucks.

Anyway, our class preview is finally out! Yippee! Sorry holy paladins, but I'm only going to be covering Protection and Retribution relevant changes.

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.

Hmm, an AoE silence/CC? Does this hint at a return of skillful CC in dungeons and raids? Intriguing...

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).

This seems to be the big doozy. The Prot version gives tanks another defensive cooldown, while the Ret version is another thing to pop during BL. While I like the idea of keeping my spellbook as abbreviated as possible, I'm saddened that I wouldn't be able to pop the Ret version when I'm tanking for some extra threat. But hey, paladins can't be choosers.

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.

I completely agree with this change. The short cooldown on CS will ensure that you'll have enough buttons to push to prevent rapid aging and premature death.

"[N]ew talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely," = CS healing debuff? Hrmmm...

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.

Blizzard Entertainment: stupid-proofing your gaming experience since '91.

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.

I'm confused by this statement. Ret's amazing defensive capabilities are... holding it back? I don't Arena much anymore, but I don't think it's our defensive cooldowns that are hindering our ratings, but lack of snares, interrupts, and healing debuffs. But hey, I could be wrong.

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.

You know how I said Blizz is stupid-proofing things? I take it back, slightly. In other words: this, this, a THOUSAND TIMES THIS!!! While Ret's FCFS rotation isn't the easiest, it isn't incredibly difficult. Requiring more skill to truly excel at Retribution is a challenge to all Ret paladins, one that I'm more than willing to accept.

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.

Meh, I sort of agree with this assessment. Blowing a Consecration on one mob, as part of our 969 rotation, is a ridiculous mana drain. Again, more complicated = more skill. I loves me a challenge.

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.

Good, no more premature drop on masses of trash mobs or a quickly-striking boss.

Well, that's it from me. All said, I'm looking forward to the next 5 levels, as well as how this all works out in the endgame.

OMG! Watch out for the Shock Vortex, Empowered Flame, Shadow Prison, Twilight Fans...

2010-04-07T02:00:00.000-05:00

I sincerely hate Blood Council on H-10m.

You may ask me, "Hey Lysogen/Antigen/whatever the hell you wanna call yourself, how can you hate something that exists as a bunch of 1's and 0's?" Well, kind sir or madam, it's quite simple. It kills your character over... and over.. and over... for a total of 4 hours spread over two nights.

It was funny, I went for a walk to the gas station after we called the raid, and on the way back I was thinking, "you know, that fight is actually kinda cool," but then I got back here and sat down and thought, "I HATE SHOCK VORTEX!!"

You know what made the last attempt of the night not so butt-hurting?

Pygmy raid.

By the way, Rhidach inspired me to change up my UI (my old UI was kinda... meh), so take a gander. I did the same Recount/Omen stacking that he did, and just made some long-awaited changes. Let me know what you think!

In Which Priests are not Paladins

2010-04-06T02:47:00.002-05:00

I'm glad that April Fool's Day is over. Sure, a few pranks are fine (especially when you can watch them on YouTube), but I really think WoW Insider took it overboard and drowned with it. And since I spend my days at work reading blog posts (with about 80% of posts daily from my feed being from WoW.com), I was quite upset.

Well, it was the day after and, scrolling through their posts I found an article on Retribution talents, gearing, rotation, etc. So, being the inquisitive and self-improving ret that I am, I took a gander.

To be fair, their normal paladin columnist was unavailable, so they had a priest columnist fill in.

But to be unfair, the columnist should never pick up a mace if he's going to actually walk into Icecrown with it and hit things. On the topic of talent builds, he said,

If you want access to Divine Sacrifice then you'd go 5/11/55 with those six points all in protection... I opted to go for the Divine Sacrifice build. It just seems to be something that I'll make a habit of using fairly often in raids. I'm extremely jumpy about defensive cooldowns.

What?!

Let's think about this: let's say a raiding retribution paladin has 25,000 health (some have more, some have less, this is just a nice round number to work with). With that build, the paladin can absorb as much as 50,000 damage (40% of the paladin's health multiplied by the number of party members = 10,000 x 5).

Note: Divine Shield no longer negates the incoming damage from Divine Sacrifice according to Elitist Jerks. Also, as the only foreseeable way to make this talent viable (Divine Guardian) is inaccessible to us, this analysis is assuming not taking Divine Guardian.

Did nobody tell Jimmy that bubble doesn't work anymore? Now he can't use wings for 30 seconds...

Ok, that's a decent chunk of change, but let's examine this realistically: say you're the ret paladin with the DivSac build in a 10m raid. You walk into a boss fight and DPS your little heart out until the raid leader says "DivSac, paladin!"

In order to be used as a tank cooldown, you must be in the group with the tanks. Duh, right? Ok, but in a 10m setting, there are two tanks and two other people in that group. Splash and AoE damage is all-too-common nowadays, so odds are you'll be soaking up some of your groupmates' AoE damage as well as tank damage. Since you have a set amount of damage you can absorb, the AoE damage your groupmates are receiving will take up a decent amount of that preset 50k damage and the effectiveness of that cooldown on the tank is basically naught.

Not only that, but in order to be COMPLETELY effective (i.e. soaking up the entirety of that 50k damage as tank damage), with no AoE damage whatsoever, the tank would have to take a hit of 166,666.66 (repeating) damage, which would be reduced by your Divine Sacrifice to 116,666.66.

To put this damage in perspective, let's compare that with our parse from our 10m Lich King kill. I'm using this because it's readily available and LK hits like a mofo. For instance, his melee swings hit me for an average of 12,726 damage each. However, I must take this number and factor in my armor's damage reduction:

Since my armor is sitting at 30,796, I have a total of 66.91% damage reduction, meaning that 12k hit I took was merely 33.09% of the original hit, which calculates to be 38,459 damage (rounding up from here on out).

(I can ignore dodge, parry, and block for this analysis since I'm looking at numbers from hits that I actually took.)

Let's do the same thing with that previous number. Say I was tanking the boss fight and a ret paladin popped DivSac in that "idealest of ideal" of situations. For me to take 166,667 damage pre-DivSac, the boss would have to had hit me for 503,678 damage. I'm not sure this is even possible for melee hits. Perhaps this could be spread out in a few hits over a period of time, but can't be longer than 10 seconds.

(Assuming perfect timing and a boss swing timer of 1 second, the 116,667 damage after DivSac would translate into 11,667 damage per second. Wow.)

Well, let's imagine we had a ret paladin popping DivSac during one of the Lich King's melee hits (not that it's a good idea ever, but just for the sake of argument). I took a 12k hit, so that means the paladin would absorb roughly 3.6k in damage. With tank health pools exceeding 60,000, and healers' spell power only going up, 3.6k is quite sad in terms of mitigation (ex: our resto druid's Rejuvenation was healing for an average of 3,246 per tick, according to the aforementioned parse).

In short: in order for DivSac to have any sort of usefulness as a tank cooldown (at least when untalented, as is the case in the linked build), the tank would have to take ridiculous amounts of damage with no AoE or other damage occurring to other members of the ret paladin's party.

"Ok," you may say, "that's kinda ridiculous. DivSac's true purpose is in mitigating AoE damage."

Let's look at that too, although this time I don't have specific examples (too lazy to dredge through our old parses and look for some good AoE numbers). Say that you, the ret paladin, are placed in a party with clothies and leather-wearers who have next to no means to mitigate AoE damage. Truly, this is the ideal situation for DivSac to "shine," right? Well, you're gleefully chipping away at Sindragosa when suddenly you're pulled in and she starts casting Blistering Cold. You all have your heads up your respective asses and don't run out. You pop DivSac and see what happens.

Every single party member gets hit for 30k. Your Divine Sacrifice can only absorb 50k, so ideally, it mitigates 10k per person. However, each person would still get hit with 20k damage. For most clothies and leather-wearers, this many people getting hit for a massive amount of their total health is unhealable.

(Please, please, please inform me if I am incorrect in assuming you get hit for the full 30,000 damage barring any Frost resistance and/or the tiny amount of armor clothies and leather-wearers have.)

All of this is assuming your healers are on top of their game and spam healing you so you don't trigger the 20% lower boundary. The millisecond you dip below 20% health, DivSac will cancel.

==============================

So let's see: with a 5/11/55 build (you could go 5/5 in Divinity if your tank sucks and you get hit a lot), you get a halfway-effective AoE damage-mitigation CD for your party only, whereas with a 11/5/55 build you get a 6 second period of double resistance to a certain school of magic for the entire raid (the most ideal use of AM), making it amazing for fights like Sindragosa and Blood Council (think when it jumps to Taladram and he casts a fireball). Just not worth it at all, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Edit: I've realized that I put most of the work (read: math) in this post to the part that doesn't really matter (using DivSac as a tank cooldown). This is the "damnit, I'm thinking about it wrong" aspect I mentioned in a previous post.

Why Second Guessing Yourself is Almost Always a Bad Thing

2010-04-05T22:04:00.001-05:00

I wrote this huge post on Friday on why a Divine Sacrifice build as a raiding Retribution paladin is nonviable as all hell, including logic and reasoning and maths...

Then I second-guessed my reasoning, went through everything a billion times... and 5:00 came and I left work. As such, it's still sitting in my post list (along with a "Using that Mace" for Rotface and Festergut and an "Avenger's Shield" for heroic Storming the Citadel).

So, if it's worth anything after I go over it again, I'll stick it up here for your reading enjoyment. I just want to make sure that the crap I'm spewing is accurate.

Har Har, Blizzard

2010-04-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ori at I Like Bubbles for the heads-up on this. Not only will your character appear as a walrus today, but your achievements will be mocked and belittled by Blizzard (look at the arrows)! I don't 'cheese' encounters, nor do I ninja PvP bracers, THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE WHO WANTED THEM, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME BLIZZARD!!!

Why My Spec is Better Than Your's

2010-03-31T11:18:00.000-05:00

Just kidding. In fact, a need to revise my spec has led me to write this post.

Our basic PvE talent build these days is 5/5/55, with 5 points in Seals of the Pure for the obvious buff to SoV damage. However, this build still leaves 6 points to toss around. Where should I put them, you may ask? Let's look at your options, sorted by tree.

Heisenberg doesn't know where to put your talent points, but I do. Lysogen 1, quantum mechanics 0.

HOLY

Spiritual Focus - Garbage. Other than the occasional spot-FoL from an AoW proc, you shouldn't be healing. This should be obvious.

Healing Light - Equally garbage. Again, not healing.

Unyielding Faith - Interesting. Could be situationally useful. Let's keep this one in mind.

Divine Intellect - Not terrible, but we aren't exactly shooting for a big mana pool here. This talent's main value is in allowing us to reach a bit farther in the Holy tree.

Illumination - No.

Improved Lay on Hands - Again, no.

Aura Mastery - This spell would be the point of dumping points into the Holy tree. For us Rets used to having raid utility (RIP RaidSac), AM provides something to do. For heavy magical damage fights, you could activate a resist aura and double its effectiveness for 6 seconds. For heavy physical damage fights, you could activate Devotion Aura and give your tanks double armor for a small crunch period. The actual usage of this spell is somewhat limited, but it's something.

PROTECTION

Do you got your Divine Strength 5/5? Ok, good. Now get out of this tree. Seriously. Since grabbing Seals of the Pure has become mandatory, you no longer have enough free points to grab Divine Sacrifice AND the talent that makes it not suck, Divine Guardian.

Besides, no other talent in the Protection tree within reach will increase your DPS or raid utility. Divinity used to be ok before they normalized JoL healing, but alas, no longer.

RETRIBUTION

You've spent 55 points in this tree and you want to spend MORE in it? Well... ok then.

Deflection - Wow. The fact that you'd even think about putting points into this is making me tear up a little. And angry. Right-click those points back and let's pretend this never happened.

Vindication - I would consider this the main reason to dump your points into the Retribution tree. If you don't have a prot paladin / warrior / feral druid / warlock in your raid, this talent can be very useful in lowering damage taken by your tanks. Communicate with your raid team and see what buffs/debuffs are available.

Eye for an Eye - Barely useful. Shouldn't see this proc too much (probably only on trash pulls) if you have decent tanks / you can manage your threat. For now, I'm going to advise against taking this.

Divine Purpose - Situationally useful. Reduced chance to get hit by spells and ranged attacks is nice (i.e. Lady Deathwhisper's Frostbolts), and the ability to get out of certain stuns (unfortunately, not Tear Gas) could be useful as well.

==============================

So, which build suits you? Here's a hard-and-fast rule:

Do you have an AP debuff in your raid (via feral druid, warrior, warlock, or prot paladin)?

Yes: 11/5/55

No: 7/5/59

The theory behind the second talent spec is that since you shouldn't be getting hit by much of anything, it makes Eye for an Eye useless, freeing up two points that can be put into Unyielding Faith. Less time in fears/disorient effects, the more time DPSing the boss.

Avenger's Shield: The Lich King

2010-03-30T17:40:00.001-05:00

If you've been following my guide posts, you're probably looking at the title of this one and scratching your head.

You: "I thought his ret series was titled 'Using that Mace'? And how did we go from Saurfang to the Lich King? Did we step on some funky time-machine teleporter that draws upon the powers of the Nether, draenei tails, and tax dollars?"

Me: No, silly. I just wanted to pen down my guild's strat for this fight before it escapes the butterfingers of my short-term memory. And since I tanked this fight, and will tank heroic 10-man Icecrown Citadel, I figured the main focus of a new series would be (duh) tanking.

Therefore, I present Avenger's Shield!

... Yes, like the spell. Ok look, Rhidach already took Righteous Defense, Galo got Ardent Defender, this was the best I could think of.

I'm sorry I ended that sentence with a preposition, damn vernacular.

There are so many things wrong (and right... giggidy) with this picture, but it's relevant, so it stays.

In explaining this encounter I'll be using some visual aids, a first for me (I think), so bare with the crude symbols and obviously-assembled-in-Word quality.

THE LICH KING

Well, you've made it. You've bested his minions, now you're facing the big bad of Icecrown Citadel, the Lich King. Sitting at a whopping 17.4 million health, this is a fight you're going to want to be comfortable for. (Damn prepositions, they're everywhere!)

Let's go over your pre-fight checklist:

Beverage?
Comfortable headset?
Seat cushion?
Hot wings, Cheetos, or some other sloppy snack that will get its residue all over your keyboard and mouse?
Gentleman's bladder or adult diaper?

Just kidding about that last one... I hope.

The fight starts out with some RP, go figure. The Lich King will get pissed at Tirion and freeze him, making him completely useless. Honestly, it would have been nice if he would've given us a hand, but no...

For the first part of the fight (i.e. from 100% to 70%), one tank should pick up LK and the other get in position to pick up the Shambling Horrors that he summons every minute or so. The ghouls he summons, as long as they're not on ranged or healers, can mostly be ignored. Below is my diagram of positioning for phase 1 (note: I'm assuming a raid comp of 3 ranged DPS, 2 melee DPS, and 3 healers).

The Horror tank will... tank the Horrors. Also, if the Horror tank is a paladin, he or she can help dispel the Necrotic Plague from your raid members so it can jump around the adds and burn them down. The Horrors and the Lich King should be tanked at least 10 yards apart, to prevent melee from getting the plague. Otherwise, rinse and repeat until about 71%, at which time you should be ready to run.

At 70%, LK will start casting Remorseless Winter, which HURTS. Also, ice blocks rise around the outside of the platform. Every single member of your raid needs to get on these. During this intermediate "transition" phase, LK will summon two types of adds.

The first are Ice Spheres. These should be taken down by ranged. While they have low health, if they reach the raid they will throw you off the platform and kill you. Just have ranged burn these quick and then they can turn their attention to the next type of add, which will require some fancy footwork on your part.

The second type of adds during this phase are Raging Spirits. Similar to the mechanic for the Val'kyr Herald trash mobs, a Spirit will knock a player down and spawn immediately beside it. Before 3.3.3, there was a slight delay in the spawning of the add and attaining aggro, making it easy for tanks to pick them up. With the new patch, however, these start demolishing your raid as soon as they spawn, so be quick. Tank them together to achieve maximum cleave-y potential.

There will be three (3) total Raging Spirit spawns, whether you're ready for them or not, in this transition phase, which lasts a minute. After this time, the ice you're standing on will crumble and fall, so you need to get back to the middle quickly. Prepare to enter phase 2.

When you enter phase 2, you'll inevitably have at least one Raging Spirit still up from before, so just tank that off to the side, facing away from the raid (as they'll silence anyone in front of them). This entire phase centers around two abilities: Defile and Summon Val'kyr. I've assembled two diagrams for phase 2; one of what your raid should look like a few seconds before a Defile, and one for a few seconds before Summon Val'kyr. Let's discuss the pre-Defile diagram.

Your raid will want to be as spread out as possible right before Defile is cast. For this spell, the Lich King will target someone, then start a two-second cast for Defile. Once the cast is finished, a void zone-esque effect will spawn at that person's feet. That person will want to flee as far as they can to the edge of the platform, drop off the void, and get back into the middle without running into it (if any raid member sits in it, it'll get bigger and bigger, causing a wipe).

It should be noted that the rest of this encounter will involve a conscious effort of avoiding the Defile voids, so be aware of where they are and what you need to do to avoid them at all times.

Now let's look at the Summon Val'kyr diagram. This one is pretty simple. When the Lich King summons a Val'kyr, the add will fly down, pick up a raid member, and try to throw them off the platform. In order to give your DPS the maximum amount of time to burst down the valk, position your entire raid as close to the middle as you can afford (voids notwithstanding).

As you can imagine, phase 2 is very headache-inducing, as it has you spreading as far out as you can and then packing in really close. There is one more ability to add to your migraine, however; Soul Reaper.

As a paladin tank, we have a few ways out of the insta-gibbing greatness that is Soul Reaper. First, we can pop Divine Protection. Our own little Shield Wall does a good job of mitigating LK's ridiculous damage during this ability. Otherwise, receiving Hand of Sacrifice from another paladin tank OR holy or ret paladin can work as well, although less damage will be mitigated using this method. The third, and seemingly most last-resortish, is Ardent Defender. I wouldn't recommend planning on Ardent Defender, primarily because you have at least one other option for staying alive during Soul Reaper, not counting healer cooldowns.

Phase 2 will last until the Lich King reaches 40% health, at which point another transitional phase occurs. This phase is almost exactly like phase 1.5, except four (4) Raging Spirits spawn rather than 3. Again, this phase lasts 60 seconds, so have your DPS burn the Spirits down as quickly as they can. At the end of the transitional phase, the Lich King will cast Quake again and drop the edges off the platform, so hurry up and make your way back to the middle.

When you get back to the center, phase 3 begins. Although he'll still cast Defile and Soul Reaper, the Lich King will no longer summon valks. Instead, he'll cast Vile Spirits, summoning a number of... Vile Spirits. These spawn directly above LK and float their way down to you. If they reach you, or 30 seconds elapses, they'll explode, which hurts quite a bit, especially if there are several spirits stacked together. In order to give your ranged time to DPS them down, drag LK as far away from the spirits' spawn point as you can. The fewer number of spirits that hit you, the better.

Essentially, phase 3 breaks down to dealing with Defile and its voids, killing Spirits, and managing tank/healer cooldowns for Soul Reaper. Just burn that mother to 10% and, before you know it, it's game over.

LK will instantly kill you (I knew he had it in him, 'atta boy), then some more RP stuff will happen. You'll be resurrected by Terenas, at which point you'll have to burn the Lich King down from 10% to 0. Pop wings, throw your shield, toss a hammer, go nuts.

How about some loot?

On 10m,

Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King

On 25m,

Mithrios, Bronzebeard's Legacy

Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification

(As there is no set BiS list for tanking gear, I'll leave it up to you to decide if these are upgrades or not.)

Grats! Hopefully this (sarcasm) short (/sarcasm) explanation has been helpful. Until next time!

Using that Mace: Deathbringer Saurfang

2010-03-28T19:30:00.003-05:00

Finally, I'm gifted with the free time to finish up my Lower Spire ICC guides! Just finished with my quantum chem midterm and am a mere one day away from spring break! Unfortunately, I'll be stuck at work for the entire week I have off, but I'm a broke college student, so more money is always welcome.

Today, for your listening pleasure, I present you with some reading music. Enjoy!

So you've just blown up the other faction's gunship, now what? All hands, brace for... docking!

Ah, the entrance to the Upper Spire, there it is... why is the door closed? What could POSSIBLY stand in our way now?

Oh... the Lich King resurrected Saurfang the Younger and turned him into an evil Death Knight-ish minion. Great, just great.

DEATHBRINGER SAURFANG

Your raid should be set up in two basic groups, melee and ranged. Don't even ask me what group you should be in; bad ret, BAD.

There are two strats, that I've heard of, to deal with adds. I'll cover the whole fight assuming one strat, then go back and say what would be different for the other.

The fight starts off simple enough. You'll be hittin' Saurfang for a little bit, life is pretty simple. You don't really have to worry about the debuffs he tosses out (except for Mark of the Fallen Champion, which you'll have to be healed through or die, nothing you can really do about it so don't worry), so just keep swinging. But then, Saurfang casts a little spell called Call Blood Beast, and EXCREMENT HITS THE ROTOR!

Yes, a fan spins, grats. The Blood Beasts, when they strike players, add a stacking buff to Saurfang that increases his size and damage output, so these things should be taken down quickly.

The first strat I have encountered has melee dealing minimal AoE damage, for a number of different reasons.

First, in this scenario, the ranged will aggro and slow them, chipping away at their health slowly while making sure they don't hit anyone, thus preventing Saurfang from gaining stacks of Blood Power and easing the jobs for healers/tanks.

If you pop down a Consecration while the ranged are trying to get aggro, you'll get aggro instead, the beasts will start hitting you, and Saurfang will start stacking his buff, basically eliminating the point of the strat.

Second, the beasts have a buff called Resistant Skin, which pretty much makes AoE worthless.

Therefore, I'd recommend taking Consecration off your bar / out of your rotation for this fight, and use Divine Storm sparingly and conscientiously.

He's lookin' a little pale...

For the other strategy, which is the strategy my current guild uses, have melee take down the beasts quickly, single-targetting them and applying stuns judiciously. This should be used when you fairly outgear the encounter, basically when your DPS can take Saurfang down quickly enough before his damage becomes unhealable.

At 30% Saurfang will mini-enrage by popping Frenzy, basically decreasing the amount of time your heals can keep your tanks alive. Provided you have the DPS, you should down Saurfang soon and rejoice that you've just finished the first section of ICC!!!

Loot time? Yes, loot time!

On 10m, you're looking at:

Ramaladni's Blade of Culling This axe is decent, except for the ArP and blue sockets (why they would EVER put blue sockets on a two-hander... oh wait, DK tanks...). All in all, use your best judgment, but if it's an upgrade, go for it.

Blade-Scored Carapace Great chestpiece (minus the gem sockets, AGAIN), just watch out for set bonuses!

Saurfang's Cold-Forged Band Only if no one else needs it / it's better than a ring you're currently wearing.

On 25m, here's what you're rolling on:

Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification This is it. Literally. I know you're eyeing that Deathbringer's Will, and I don't blame you. Turning into a buffalo would be frickin' sweet, but it's just not that good. In fact, it's terrible for us. Resist the urge.

Next up (when I get some more time on my hands), the Plagueworks!

Lysogen the Kingslayer?

2010-03-24T01:45:00.001-05:00

FUCK QUEENS, I SLAY KINGS MOTHAFUCKA!!!!
FUCK LOOT, I WANT TITLES MOTHAFUCKA!!!!

And I actually got a good SS too! ... Might have something to do with having time to find my button while I was dead (it was a PART of the mechanic, not my fault!)

Sorry about the NSFW beginning to this post, I wrote it like 2 minutes after we got the kill and I was just filled to the brim with ecstatic rage.

What a fight though, oh betsy... I wish I had time tonight to go over our strat and our vacillation between stupid wipes and DEAR GOD 6% LEFT, MY COOLDOWN'S COOLDOWNS ARE DOWN AND THE OTHER TANK IS DEAD! So, another day, perhaps...

Oh, and after we downed L.K. (I don't know why I insist on properly abbreviating his name), we decided to pop into ToGC 10 and see what we could do...

All in all, a great night to be a raiding ret paladin with a viable prot offspec. More updates to come!

Attn: Lich King

2010-03-22T01:28:00.001-05:00

STOP SQUIRMING!!! I swear, if you forgot to take your benzos again, I am going to F-L-I-P...

Oh, and you're officially on notice. Come Tuesday, it's me, you, the main tank, the three healers, and the five DPS.

And Tirion's there, I guess.

You know, you'd think the "Frozen Throne" would be cold, but snuggling with big daddy L.K. and Ava... man was it getting toasty.

(Yes, I did offtank the Lich King encounter, as well as Sindragosa prior to that, which we one-shotted... but L.K., not so much. Another, longer post to follow!)

Using that Mace: Gunship Battle

2010-03-19T14:49:00.003-05:00

Oh snap, and here we are at boss encounter numero tres: Gunship Battle. Let's do a quick recap:

You've boned Marrowgar,

You've silently told (ah, whisper, get it?) the Lady that she's dead,

And now you're on the elevator.

When you reach the top, you should be facing a group of Alliance NPCs battling some Horde NPCs. Why can't we all just get along??? Come on, guys, group hug.

Yeah, I know, fat chance. Well, target the healers first, but still just cleave, cleave, cleave. There's a lot of cleave contained within Icecrown Citadel; you just have to juice that melon until you're left with dried out rind. You know what that rind is? The pile of dead bosses left in your juicy wake. Yup.

Ok, so I suck at photo editing. Let's continue.

If you take a right at the T intersection (which you should), then you'll only encounter two packs of these faction-specific trash mobs and a frost wyrm before you reach the gangway to the Gunship.

GUNSHIP BATTLE

This is one of the more unique boss encounters I have experienced this expansion. One part vehicular combat, one part tank n' spank with a twist of lime is how I'd describe this encounter.

The first thing (VERY first thing) you want to do when you get aboard your faction's gunship (either Orgrim's Hammer or the Skybreaker) is to grab a rocket pack from Zafod Boombox, equip it, and bind it to a hotkey. I don't care if your raid leader says you're going to stay on the ship the whole time or whatever, grab one. It's epic.

What will essentially happen is that your ship takes off to travel to the Upper Spire of Icecrown Citadel and the other faction's ship meets your's and you guys duke it out for a bit. Again, WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?!

Anyway, the entire encounter can be distilled down to two phases. The first phase involves the vehicular combat and the second, the tanking and spanking. Your raid leader will assign 2 (on 10m) or 4 (on 25m) gunners, whose job will be to jump in the turret and fire on the enemy ship. If you're assigned to do this, jump in before the encounter starts and familiarize yourself with the controls.

Warning: I have never been a gunner, so I'm using second-hand info here. Please correct me if any of it is wrong or if I omitted something.Thanks to WoWWiki and Wowhead, I found the abilities for the turret.

PHASE ONE

In the turret, you pretty much have two moves at your disposal (gotta love vehicles). The first is Cannon Blast, which you'll start out firing. With each shot, heat will build up in the turret, which is where your next ability comes in, Incinerating Blast. When you reach 90 heat, or as close to 90 as you're comfortable with, use that second ability. It will consume all of the heat "charges" and fire a fiery shot at the enemy ship, inflicting quite a bit of siege damage.

Just continue pumpin' iron out of your cannon until a Skybreaker Sorcerer / Kor'kron Battle-Mage comes out and casts Below Zero on your turrets, freezing them and making them non-functional.

If you are not in the turret (and as I said earlier, I never have been), just try to avoid rocket strikes that are shown with a fancy-shmancy circle on the deck (like in the Mimiron encounter) and help out with adds spawning from a portal on your own ship.

PHASE TWO

With the turrets frozen, the priority becomes killing the caster that's channeling Below Zero on your turrets so you can get back to damaging the opposing faction's ship. If you're on the "jump team," as we call it, you will use your rocket pack to jump to the other ship. This is done by simply pressing your rocket pack hotkey, targeting a spot on the enemy ship, and clicking. Once you're over there, DPS the caster down while your tank makes sure the enemy general (either Muradin Bronzebeard or High Overlord Saurfang) doesn't cleave the cleave right out of you. When the caster is dead, just jump back over to your ship.

That's pretty much the entire encounter. Just alternate between these phases and within a few switches you'll cripple the other ship and, out of appreciation, your general will offer you some loot from the ship's armory. Good job!

Now let's see what you want to get your grubby little hands on:

On 10m,

Saronite Gargoyle Cloak The socket bonus is nice, considering you'd probably stick a Bold Cardinal Ruby in there anyway (if you weren't going to... do it, don't question why).

Bone Drake's Enameled Boots Some fairly nice boots, the Expertise is welcome, but the ArP can stay home and watch Tool Academy as far as I'm concerned.

On 25m,

Polar Bear Claw Bracers BiS bracers pre-heroic ICC. GET THEM NAO!

Skeleton Lord's Circle BiS (one of them, at least) ring pre-heroic ICC. Again, GET IT NAO!

Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak If you're really desperate for a cloak, and for some reason, no one in your entire 25m raid wants this thing, go for it. Otherwise, hold off, there's a better cloak heading your way in the Plagueworks.

That's it for the Gunship Battle. Don't touch that dial, Deathbringer Saurfang is up next!

Reason Number 46 of Why I Shouldn't Have Children

2010-03-17T13:58:00.002-05:00

Many of you may notice that I'm terrible at taking screenshots of action. Other bloggers are much much better at it but for some reason, when I get an achievement or something SS-worthy, my brain is just like "ohh, shiny" and I totally zone out.

Of course, I'm referring to my ICC posts lately; I'd try to put in some legit screenshots, but I've been having tryouts for this guild I'm apping to for 2 weeks now and every time I raid with them I'm trying to outshine this other ret paladin, who is actually pretty good. Even though I really want the spot, I tip my hat to you, Locien, and wish you the best of luck!

What I really wanted to talk about (briefly, as I'm still working on my ICC posts) is what I consider one of the most ideal boss fights for ret paladins seen so far this patch, and it is in none other than the Vault of Archavon.

TORAVON THE ICE WATCHER

We all should know this fight by now. In case you don't, all you need to do is:
a) Kill the boss, and
b) Stay alive.

Pretty simple. Stay alive by not sitting in a Frozen Orb. Kill the boss by hitting it a lot.

But this is what I love: the usual "OMG I'm out-DPSing you" ranged peoples are (or should be) too busy killing Frozen Orbs to attack the boss much, making this fight melee-favored.

For example, I was in a 25m VoA last night and, for Toravon, I was first in DPS and overall damage at roughly 7900, with another ret paladin in second at 7400. Word.

How did I do that, you ask? Well, young apprentice, when something is melee-favored, I slam my keys twice as hard to get some bigger numbers. Or I use a baby, because babies are excellent facerollers.

It works, trust me.

Using that Mace: Lady Deathwhisper

2010-03-16T23:04:00.019-05:00

As promised, here's installment number 2 of my "Using that Mace" series for Icecrown Citadel: the Lady Deathwhisper encounter.

[Edit: I've been made aware of the fact that my commenting isn't working for some reason. So, to those of you that have just been dying to leave me a fart joke or something, I apologize and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.]

I would've been able to say that I was writing this while plowed my way through a 10m ICC PuG and written the encounter 'as it happened,' per se, but no, I got saved to a 10m ICC PuG earlier in the day that was already on the second boss when I entered the instance and promptly got disconnected. Yay!

Anyway, so you've just downed Marrowgar, maybe got some loot, and are trodding up the stairs behind him. Eventually you'll reach the top of the stairs and be looking out over the room containing the Lady herself and her few packs of adds.

The trash itself is pretty simple; your tanks will pull one pack at a time, while everyone else should be around one of the corners, LoS-ing the mobs until they reach the top of the stairs. Then just cleave, cleave, cleave away.

After these two packs are done, the only trash left before the boss are the two large guys on either side. Fairly simple tank n' spank, however, if you get a debuff on you (blanking on the name) run away from everyone else.

LADY DEATHWHISPER

There are two phases to the Lady Deathwhisper encounter. The first phase is primarily add management, while the second phase is your standard 'kill the boss' phase.

On 10m, your raid should split into at least two groups: a tank and some DPS for the adds and some ranged on the boss. And some healers. Ok, maybe that's three.

On 25m, you should split up similarly, only now each side of the room spawns adds every time, so each side should have its own dedicated add-killing team of tank and DPS. Also, your third tank should be positioned in the back of the room to pick up the errant add that spawns back there as well. Oh, and some more healers.

I should perhaps explain why there are a few ranged DPS on the boss. Deathwhisper has a Mana Barrier, similar to a mage's Mana Shield, that protects her from harm by deducting damage taken from her mana instead of her health.

(Technically, damage she takes is first deducted from her health and then replenished from her mana, like a continual healing effect, but what ever.)

It is only when this barrier is down can you actually kill her. So your ranged DPS that are assigned to the boss will be slowly chipping away at that barrier. Anywho, let's get on to the first phase.

PHASE ONE

When you "pull" Lady Deathwhisper, she will throw up her barrier and start summoning waves of adds on a timed basis (your DBM should inform you when the next wave of adds are gonna spawn, just an FYI). Deathwhisper spawns two types of adds: Cult Adherents and Cult Fanatics. Adherents are the ones that you want to take down first, as they toss up Shroud of the Occult, preventing ranged from really doing anything to them. Plus they're fragile little clothies, and we ALL know how fun it is to tear a poor clothy apart.

After those are down, you should grind down the Fanatics, and if you're on 25m, assist in taking down the add at the back of the room.

Periodically, an add will cast Dark Martyrdom, which will kill it and allow it to be resurrected as a skeleton. These need to be burned quickly. If it's a Reanimated Adherent, go to town. If it's a Reanimated Fanatic, let your ranged deal with it. However, if you're DPS is high enough, you could completely avoid this.

Anyway, this will continue for a while until your ranged can bring down Deathwhisper's barrier. It's best to time this between add spawns, for obvious reasons.

PHASE TWO

Phase two begins as soon as her barrier drops, allowing you to actually do damage to her. This is mostly the burn phase, except that you need to watch out for the following:

No, they're not going to help you with ghosts, stop calling them.

Ghosts. They're spawn periodically and chase people. Right before they die all a'splody-like, they cast Vengeful Blast, which... hurts. Just try to get away from them.
Death and Decay. Deathwhisper will spawn one of these every once in a while, which appears as a bright green circle on the floor. MOVE. That's it.
Frostbolt. These should be interrupted because... well, simply because they can be interrupted. Realistically, we are not the go-to class for interrupts, but if you can toss an extra interrupt in there every once in a while, especially if someone says they can't get the next interrupt, go ahead.
Dominate Mind. The Lady only uses this in 25m, so don't fret about it in 10m. Works just like any other Mind Control mechanic, just CC the affected individual for 12 seconds and you should be good.

Just rinse and repeat, and you should come out of the wash with a dead Lady Deathwhisper. Congrats! Loot time!

On 10m, some loot you might want:

Whispering Fanged Skull Just an amazing trinket, apparently has a 35% proc rate and a 45 second internal cooldown, meaning that it will be up often.

Deathspeaker Zealot's Helm Pretty darn good helm, just remember not to break your 2pT9 until you get 4pT10!!

On 25m, some loot you might want:

Blood-Soaked Saronite Stompers BiS boots before heroic ICC. GET IT NOW!

Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard Also BiS neck before heroic ICC. ROLL ROLL ROLL!

Stay tuned for the Gunship encounter!

Using that Mace: Lord Marrowgar

2010-03-12T17:35:00.023-06:00

It's been really foggy around these parts lately. It makes me feel very mystical and lost in time... until I get into my car and drive through it! Can't stop me, fog!

Anywho, Icecrown Citadel has been out for... quite a while now (three months-ish). The King has been slain. Hell, the heroic King has been slain as well! It's only a matter of time (and ICC raid buffs) until everyone catches up with the top guilds. So, for some reason beyond my understanding, I have decided to write a ret's guide to the Lower Spire!

[Edit: writing out a guide for Marrowgar and his associated trash took up many more words than I thought, so I'll be splitting up my Lower Spire guide, and most likely subsequent ICC guides, into the individual boss encounters.]

When you enter the instance, you're greeted with Tirion and his band of merry Argent men. Luckily, Tirion brought some smiths with him, so you can come back here and repair whenever you need, using those oh-so-seldomly-placed teleport pads. Also, the ring vendor is on the left, so when you get Friendly/Honored/Revered/Exalted, remember to come back here and get a new ring.

The trash leading up to Marrowgar is what makes all the ladies swoon over us; Seal of Command + Holy Wrath + Consecrate = ....

Sick eh?

Just go with the flow for these pulls. Your tanks should mark some kill targets (which are typically the Servant of the Throne guys, as their Glacial Blast hurts but can be interrupted), but just cleave to your heart's content. Your rogues might not disable some of the traps (or you might not have a rogue to do so), which just means that some big mean skeleton guys will come alive and try to kill you. Typical "don't stand in front, let tank get aggro" business here. There's just a couple rooms of trash and you'll get to the first big bad.

LORD MARROWGAR

So... we've got a bone to pick with this guy. Just don't work your fingers to the bone on this fight, the cold is not good for the circulation. I mean, if you're not wearing your official Remember Jong! ret paladin sweater, then you're going to get chilled to the bone in here.

Har. Ok, so we got a big, floaty, winged, four-headed bone monster. God, Arthas has some imagination, doesn't he?

For us DPS, there's a few important points to this encounter. First, the tanks will pick it up and do the whole facing-away-from-the-raid thing. You do NOT want to attack from the front on this boss, not just because you'll do less damage due to the elevated expertise cap, but because anyone too close to the tanks will get hit with Saber Lash, which will one-shot you if you are closer than the second tank to the first tank that is getting hit.

Kinda confusing, but trust me, don't go up there.

Another ability that will be cast rather frequently is Bone Spike Graveyard, which will impale randomly selected raid members on... bone spikes. No wai, amirite? These spikes are targetable and killable, so kill 'em and save your buds. Depending on which strategy you use, you can just leave them and let cleave/splash damage from your raid DPS attacking the boss kill the spikes, as long as everyone stacks in one area. Just listen to your raid leader for the strat you're using and adjust accordingly.

The last ability you need to look out for is called Bone Storm. During this phase, the boss will spin around the room and cleave anything that gets in his way. It doesn't hurt that much, but it's not recommended to chase him like how you chased that ice-cream truck last week. That was shameful, YOU'RE 28 YEARS OLD, TOM, BUY YOUR OWN ICE CREAM!!!

Aggro mechanics are ignored during this portion of the fight, but as of March 4th, 2010, he no longer drops threat at the end of his storm, so go ahead and hit him a few times to keep your SoV stacks up.

Finally, at any point in the encounter he'll drop patches of Coldflame around random players, which extend outwards in a cross. It's blue fire. ... It's fire. It is bad to stand in fire.

The encounter just alternates between these abilities. To recap:

Attack Marrowgar from behind (never by the tanks)
Stay out of the blue fire
Get people down from bone spikes
Stay away from the whirlwind of bony death

Mix those ingredients in a shaker and boom, loot time!

On 10m, loot that you might want from Marrowgar:

Citadel Enforcer's Claymore (pretty nice, and the assloads of Hit on this piece allow you to jostle some gear around if you're equipping a Mark of Supremacy, for example.

Shawl of Nerubian Silk (I'd only pick this up if no one else needs it (for either MS or OS) AND you're wearing something akin to Might of the Nerub)

On 25m, loot that you might want from Marrowgar:

Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter (/want)

Gendarme's Cuirass (If you're still rockin' 2pT9 chest/something else, don't give that up until you can get 4pT10, not even for this baby! Trust me, that set bonus is gooooooood)

Band of the Bone Colossus (Again, only if no one else needs it (for either MS or OS) AND you're wearing something akin to Ring of the Violent Temperament)

Until next time... honor and vengeance, paladin!

Oh Excuses, Excuses

2010-03-10T15:14:00.004-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been really swamped with coursework so far this semester, especially my quantum mechanics class that they're trying to pass for a chemistry class. I'm on to you, chemistry department.

Also, and this is perhaps more important than the lack of time to write posts, as previously mentioned, I haven't had any motivation or inspiration of what to write about. I like writing for the sake of writing, sure. But I've wanted to make something useful lately instead of my normal ramblings and when I get stuck on something, I don't like to just drop it.

I'm going to write something useful, damnit. I know I'm gonna.

Oh, AND I've been holding my breath lately for Ferarro's latest contest for the Wind Rider Cub plushie...

Hey, don't judge me. Or consecrate me.

Because Blogger's Default Templates Suck

2010-03-07T19:26:00.000-06:00

I'm changing up my layout yet again. I realized that commenting was damn near-impossible, among other things, so I'm mixin' it up.

Not many WoW updates otherwise. My guild merged with another one due to attendance issues, leaving me more than likely without a raid spot, so I'm in the process of looking for a new home.

Oh, and Polar Bear Claw Bracers? Yup. BiS pre-hard modes. Gotta love legit PuGs.

Retribution in Cataclysm - Now With More Hit!

2010-03-03T15:34:00.011-06:00

What sucks about blogging at work is that I can't access the official WoW forums because they block it, so I have to get my patch notes and whatnot from WoW.com. Don't get me wrong, I rather enjoy reading their articles, but just an FYI, I pulled these Cataclysm changes from their blue postings.

I was going to say that if you see anything wrong in these blue posts, blame the editors over there but they'd probably blame Ghostcrawler anyway, which is only natural, so meh.

Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.

I agree wholeheartedly with this change. I'm sure rogues/feral druids/hunters and whoever else used Agility AND Attack Power gear are getting sick of doing the Agil -> AP calculation, and then adding the straight AP from the gear itself. I dunno, it seems like it'd get annoying.

What does it mean for us? Simpler gear choices. It comes down to "which piece has more Strength on it?", which is welcome in this paladin's eyes. What I find interesting is that last bit about Agil providing less Crit, which could help combat the non-plate BiS gear for retribution.

[For reference, EJ currently has 7-9 pieces (depending on which bracers you choose and if you get Shadowmourne or the polearm from H LK) with Agil in place of Str in our BiS list for heroic modes, which I find just silly. I mean sure, I bet they let you do more DPS, I don't doubt that, but paladins wearing leather and using a hunter polearm? Silly ret, agility's for kids.]

Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

This is intriguing; I guess we'll have to do a lot of gear management and the like to stay at that cap. The kicker is yet to come, though.

Wait for it, wait for it...

Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don't want more Hit Rating on your gear or you'd rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you'll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won't be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Boom! We'll be able to change our gear at our whim. Well, more like the whim of your local blacksmith for us ret paladins (at least I think so; plate armor = blacksmith seems pretty logical). So we can turn primary stats (Stam, Str, etc.) into secondary stats (Crit, Haste, Hit) and vice versa, depending on our needs. This should make BiS lists pretty interesting, and blacksmiths should find themselves with a LOT of new customers.

Personally, I like how this adds a layer of depth to the end-game. There's going to be a lot of tweaking and number-crunching going on, and that just makes me giddy. I love data.

No, not Mr. Data, although he is pretty sweet. Data as in spreadsheets, parses, optimization modules, in-game data collecting via target dummies or well-known raid bosses. Whenever someone's like, "This rotation is better than the one you're using lol", I say "Show me the data!" all Jerry Maguire-like. Yes, I scream it too.

Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.

I'm loathing this one, to be honest. I'm so used to despising the haste on my gear as if it were a giant pickle in the middle of an ice-cream sandwich. What will this do for us, regenerate our mana faster? Seems kinda useless, as we don't really run out of mana in most circumstances thanks to Judgement of Wisdom (which should be your default Judgement, unless you got other paladins judging it). For those rare instances in which we do get low on mana, there's always Divine Plea to make up the difference.

Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We'll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

This is the new ish with Cataclysm, or at least one of the new ishes; in other words, there are several new ishes, and this is one of them. I got the following screenshot from MMO-Champion.com, which I trimmed down to show our proposed masteries:

Hmm. Nice, to be sure, but I can't say that I am really excited about it. These seem kinda bland, but maybe that's the point; they're good enough to make you want to "specialize" in one talent tree, but they're not amazing enough to be imbalanced. We'll have to see how this goes.

3.3.3 Patch Note Musings

2010-02-26T23:20:00.001-06:00

As Ferarro of Paladin Schmaladin has extensively covered the Paladin changes in 3.3.3 here (oh, sarcasm), I thought I'd take some random parcels of change-y goodness and see what I could do with it:

Players who use the Vote Kick option will now be prompted to provide a reason for kicking a party member. This reason will be presented to everyone in the party except for the person voted to be kicked.

Hilarious. Let's all PRAY that it's a fill-in-the-blank form, the contents of which appear to all voters and to the kickee after they are kicked.

On a more serious note, that's a terrible idea I had there. Funny for the first five minutes? Yes. Funny after every "undergeared" individual gets continually kicked from groups? No. What it most likely will amount to is a few options to choose from, such as "Bad connection", "AFK", or "Blindingly drunk". Maybe.

Many quests which require vehicles have had their vehicle mechanics updated and improved in the interest of fun.

If by combining the terms 'updated vehicle mechanics' and 'fun', Blizzard means 'removing all vehicle encounters from the game,' then I would agree with this update. I don't think vehicles can be fixed; taking a player, with dozens of spells and (presumably) a deep understanding of those spells, and placing them into a vehicle with 3 or 4 buttons is ludicrous. If people want to play a ret paladin, let them level one, don't force them.

Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.

I don't really see this as necessary. Fireball hits harder; why would a leveling frost mage want to throw out a free Frostfire Bolt? Endgame, on the other hand... Who raids as frost? I mean, sure, those free FFBs would be affected by all of the damage-increasing talents that frost mages get, but arcane is sooooooo much sweeter.

2 minute Evocation?
Highest single-target DPS?
Rotation so simple, a blindfolded pelican could play it?

Squack on, young pelican, squack on.

Real Paladins Wear Dresses

2010-02-24T17:10:00.001-06:00

Just because, a long while ago, I promised a certain Bossy Pally that I'd make this post...

BAM! Sexy dress time!

I know a few paladins do not care for our leg pieces to appear as dresses. I, however, feel that it conveys a certain pomp and circumstance, an elegance in between bloody, skull-crushing swings of your weapon of choice.

What I need from you readers is your opinion: what tabard should I represent that would look the best? Our guild tabard is white and doesn't go well at all. So leave some comments with your thoughts!

Oh, and if you check out my Armory, I picked up a mace in ICC 10. That'll stave off the blog-renaming crew for now. Huzzah!

Heroics - A Lesson in Etiquette

2010-02-21T17:42:00.002-06:00

I wanted to touch on a topic near and dear to my heart. I've been trying to gear up my resto shaman, and finish off my prot set on my paladin, so I've been hitting heroics pretty hard. As such, I've experienced both the tanking and healing sides of random heroic groups. There are a number of things that are understood in groups, and a number of things that should be understood, but unfortunately aren't. So let's just dive in here and open this can of worms.

Tanking
Let me just start off by saying that I'm not a pro tank. I'm no Rhidach or Wrathy. I tank heroics and maybe off-tank 10 mans. I don't have any tanking specific mods and only one tanking specific macro.

However, there are a few basic tenets of heroic dungeon etiquette that I feel tanks never receive.

First, and primarily, the issue of aggro control is a measure used by "skilled" DPS to gauge a tank's worth. However, when you attack a mob before the tank can get aggro, and/or then continually out-threat the tank, that's not the tank's fault, its your's. Get Omen, stop being an idiot, and don't pull threat. It's pretty simple.

Here's a neat trick to see if your tank has what it takes: after the tank pulls, count to 5 out loud, and then start attacking. If you pull aggro without using a taunt, then he probably needs to work on something. That, or you are just disgustingly epic.

Secondly, some DPS (and healers, surprisingly) like to speed the runs up by pulling and then hoping the tank will take aggro off them. Do NOT do this. It pisses tanks off. Often times I let them die, then pick it up. If I play their game, they are never going to learn their lesson. Let the tank determine the pace of the run, because if your tank dies, your group will probably be following close behind.

Healing
Healing on my resto shaman isn't that hard. Granted, my gear isn't that good, so I can't spit out LHW's like dolla dolla bills out of MC Hammer's bank account, but it's still not terrible. For the healing side of things, I only really have one piece of advice:

Don't ignore fight mechanics and expect me to heal you through damage! That just smacks of laziness and should get you booted from the party. In fact, I remember in doing BC heroics when doing stupid things like that did get you kicked, because BC heroics were hard.

Nowadays, if there is a void zone, your game will tell you not to stand in it because when you stand in it you die. When you get mirrored on the last boss of Forge of Souls, you better hope your group-mates stop DPS because not every healer can heal through that damage. If you don't know the fights, ask someone (politely) to explain it or *gasp* look it up on Wowhead.

That's it for now. Go forth and remember, when grinding heroics, DPS responsibly.

Something's Different...

2010-02-17T01:41:00.003-06:00

I'm going to be futzing with my layout for a little while, so please bear with it. What I have up now is a work-in-progress, but only a few things have to changed around.

Please let me know what you think and if you have any thoughts/comments/suggestions! Thanks!

My Last Fortnight... In Picture Form!

2010-02-15T21:15:00.000-06:00

No more mace :( But that sword is sexy!

Just goofin' off before an ICC raid.

Oh, Princes. Here's to you three and your epic powers of getting raiders to pull their heads out of their asses.

Yeah, 10m Putricide. OT didn't know how to work the Abomb thing, hence the puddles.

Trying the door strat on 25 ToGC Twin Val'kyrs. Couldn't quite get it, but I found it hilarious packing everyone in that little doorway.

Fresh 80 with my only epic being Merlin's Robe and I pulled almost 3k DPS on the last boss of H-Gun'Drak as FFB. Sup?

Who You Gonna Call?

2010-02-14T14:31:00.002-06:00

Just a quickie post before I throw up a bunch of screenshots that I've been too lazy to deal with.

I tanked an in-guild 10m ICC last night. We only got up to Saurfang (and kept wiping because we had a mage that didn't know what Ice Block was), but I was pleasantly surprised at how little I messed up. I was pretty much the offtank, because I had like 42k health and our DK tank had 47k. /jealous

Anyway, it was a blast. I really enjoyed seeing raiding from a different perspective like that. Having to work together with the other tank on fights like Marrowgar and Saurfang add a new dimension to raiding. As DPS, you just have to avoid dying and MAYBE do a few special things (kiting the adds on Saurfang without getting owned by them), but tanking is really an exercise in teamwork.

I enjoyed it so much that I think I'm going to do it again next week!

Like I said, next post will be a bunch of random screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Chasing a Ghost Through Icecrown Citadel

2010-02-10T16:44:00.003-06:00

I'm toying with the idea of starting up a 10-man ICC group in my guild because all of the current 10-mans are full. The raid leaders of those 10-mans might be a bit pissed at me if I do, because a couple of my RL friends would drop their 10-mans (maybe) and join mine so we could all raid and chill together.

Shocked? I am. I almost NEVER step up and try to lead. Why? Because leading is a pain in the ass. There are so many things to manage and know, from fight mechanics and ideal raid comps, to delegation of roles and handling internal disputes.

I like people, but I hate people. I like the person, but I hate people in general; that's probably a better way of putting it. "Why?", you may ask, "People are all nice and kind and bunches of fun!"

Let me enlighten you.

==============================

My first job was working at McDonald's. However, I tend not to tell people that because:

a) I only worked there for a month, and
b) It was terribly embarrassing to work at McDonald's. Oh hey, girl x from my English class, how's... oh, you want a double cheeseburger meal, eh?

I wasn't actually a cashier there, that would've been glorious. I worked the grill and, on days I considered "blessed," the dress table / toppings line. But none of that is important.

My second job was working for one of our local grocery stores, on maintenance. Pushing carts, moping floors, cleaning bathrooms... I did it all for $6.50 an hour. If I had a paycheck over $120 for the week, I was happy. Although it wasn't the most distinguished job, I stuck with it; I mean, it was NO McDonald's, and for that I was happy. There was a fair amount of freedom bestowed upon me; as long as my duties for the hour were completed, I was free to go and do as I wished; my manager had nothing approaching the hawk-like watching powers of the managers at Mickey D's.

About six months after I started, I was promoted to cashiering. Nice pay raise from my meager wage on maintenance, but it had its difficulties too.

Quick summary of cashiering for you bastards that have never cashiered:

1) Loooooooong hours,
2) Extremely low task variability (as a result, I almost never left my register; my poor legs),
3) Seldom, if ever, have positive interactions with customers.

As a cashier, I was in the tight grip of the head cashier, who we called the customer service manager (CSM). I had to bargain with the CSM to even use the restroom, which mocked me from a mere 20 feet away. My breaks were assigned to me. My movement was restricted. My efficiency and courtesy was nearly never rewarded. The oppression of the CSM seemed never-ending; cashiering, a dead-end oasis of simultaneous solitude and congestion.

After three arduous months, I was moved to the frozen/dairy department (technically not a promotion, but I considered it a benediction). Suddenly, the cold corner of the store became my domain. Except in the mornings, I worked alone. I decided what to do, when to do it, when to go on break, when to go to the bathroom... Everything! Oh man, I was free!

But time passed and the novelty soon wore off as I realized that, even discounting the store managers, I was not truly free, for it is the customers that rule the aisles. When someone asked me to get something for them, it was not so much a request as a demand. When the customer complained, something needed to be done immediately to remedy the situation.

Don't get me wrong, I know how business works (sorta) and I know that, in order to stay in business, you can't treat your customers like crap. That aside, taking charge of the entire frozen/dairy department in the afternoon hours of Thanksgiving / Christmas Eve / Independence Day, all alone, taught me some valuable lessons.

First, the individual customer is less of a monster than a Baby Blizzard Bear. People, on the other hand, an amorphous collection of individuals, are more akin to the Scourge.

GOOD

NOT VERY GOOD AT ALL

Second, leadership isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, you may enjoy it for brief periods, but those zombies will get you eventually. Then it's going to be a brain buffet, if you have any left that is.

But hey, I could be wrong.

All I Really Need is a Shiny Weapon

2010-02-06T20:31:00.000-06:00

After all that bitching about not getting that mace in ICC 25, I PuGed a ICC 10 in my guild (yes, we had to form a group randomly because the pre-established groups are full) and lo and behold:

Citadel Enforcer's Claymore

and

Whispering Fanged Skull

BOOM! A new weapon... finally! And a new trinket? Ok!

Problem though: do I rename my blog? I no longer have a mace, but I will raid...

What do you guys think? Should I rename the blog to something more general and universally applicable, or keep it the way it is?

Go Team! Becoming an Effective and Reliable Raider

2010-02-02T23:31:00.000-06:00

To follow up the previous post's negativity, I thought I'd touch on some cheery, sentimental stuff. Let's see, I'm just gonna dig through the trash bin of my post ideas.... Ah, here it is!

That's right, baby, teamwork.

I'm sure many of you have heard all about teamwork, from your raid leaders, guild leaders, whiny battleground leaders (I laugh at your randomly-bestowed position of power), coaches, teachers, parents... phew. Each of these individuals recognize the power of a properly constructed and maintained group.

Fortunately, I'm not going to preach about how awesome groups are. I'd probably get sick of myself real quick. What I am going to go over, however, is a raider's responsibilities in a raid group.

And by raider, of course, I mean ret paladin.

When enjoying new content, raid responsibly.

First and foremost, COME PREPARED!!! That means the following:

Read up / watch videos on boss strats
Bring enough flasks to cover the entire raid period, plus one or two extra
Bring your own buff food (yes, it is possible that your raid can run out of Fish Feasts) i.e. Dragonfin Filet
Have your gear repaired before entering the instance
Have enough reagents to cast Wisdom on the dumb shaman that doesn't remember that Mana Spring Totem overrides your Wisdom (there are still people that don't realize this... *irked*)

Got all that? Good. Now, here's a big one: show up on time! Wait, no; show up at least 5 minutes early. Sitting on your ass for 5 minutes isn't going to kill you, and it's going to show your raid leader / guild leader that you're on top of your game and that you care about raiding.

When you got your spot in the raid and you're nice and cozy, you're getting close to being a team player. I have two remaining suggestions. The first?

Don't be this guy. Although that's a good idea...

Pay attention! By this, I do not mean focus on DPSing the boss, staring at your rotation and hitting attacks the moment they come off cooldown. I mean be aware of the fight. In other words, you need to develop a sense of situational awareness. Rhidach has a good post on the topic from a while back that's definitely worth a look. Your DPS isn't gonna do any good when you die from standing in a void zone / fire / other generic idiot trap. Watch what's happening around you; don't fall for the idiot traps.

The second: communication and listening comprehension. Ok, that's kind of two things, but they're fairly related. If there's a mob loose, speak up! Don't be afraid to talk in Vent; if it saves a wipe and ensures a kill, it's worth it. Do not, however, blabber over Vent during attempts, or even during raid time. The raid leader and his or her assistants are trying to coordinate a group of 25 people to do one, solitary task. Don't be an asshat.

As for listening comprehension, LISTEN! Yeah, it's that simple. Turn your Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez down (don't worry, you can have it playing softly in the background, which is actually how I like to listen to my Mil.... ahem, moving on). Being able to hear everyone in Vent is crucial. Well, almost everyone; at the very least, your tanks, healers, and raid leader.

In fact, fellow ret paladins and melee DPS classes are fairly important too if they have something to say... Ok, I'm changing my answer back to everyone. It's my blog, I do what I want.

Not only do you need to be cognizant of what people are saying, you need to instantly process this information and act on it. If your raid leader or other authority figure tells you to switch targets, you switch targets. Switch your seal if you have to, just be on top of it. If you are told NOT to bubble, DON'T bubble. I know, I know, bubbling is fun and exciting, but save that cooldown when necessary. Unfortunately we don't spec into Divine Sacrifice anymore since the nerf; RaidSac provided a great example of both listening comprehension and situational awareness in providing your entire raid a mini-Shield Wall.

We can still reminisce on such glorious former responsibilities though.

In essence, just use common sense, pay attention, and be willing to follow some orders to get stuff done. I mean, come on, the Lich King ain't gonna kill himself, right?

Justifiying the QQ

2010-01-28T13:13:00.000-06:00

Normally, I don't like to complain. I've heard a lot of QQing in my day and it bugs the shit out of me. However, I'm afraid I must give into the temptation for now. Let me explain what happened.

It was a raid night like any other. 6:45 came, invites went out, and we rolled in there like we had something to prove. We had previously downed Rotface and Festergut, so we went to Blood Princes to get those out of the way before we put in a few attempts at Putricide (he is a mean bastard, that Professor).

After a couple wipes, everyone (myself included, as I hadn't had the time to research the fight) finally got a hang of it and, before we knew it, the Princes laid slain at our feet. Before I can even check AtlasLoot to see what drops off them, I see it linked in raid:

Cryptmaker

Holy. Sexy. Shit. Since loot is distributed by loot council, I immediately link my Furious Gladiator's Bonegrinder in raid, as is the custom, almost as a plea to the officers to give me a much-needed upgrade. A few others link their weapons too; there were a few Shadow's Edge, a Bryntoll, the Bone Arbiter, and a Dual-blade Butcher.

The owner of the Butcher whispers me and says something like, "Since it's probably down to me and you, good luck man!", to which I reply "Yeah, you too!"

Let's be honest; I did not actually want him to get that mace over me. But he doesn't know that. MUHAHAHA.

Anyway, time creeps by as the officers and GM discuss their votes in officer chat. They tell the rest of the raid to move on and clear trash while they distribute loot, so off we go. Before the first pack of trash leading to Putricide is down, I get a wall of pink text like the following:

Ok, I actually retyped that to myself and screenshoted it, but it was VERY similar to that... don't judge me.

I was a bit put off as I saw the weapon get looted to someone else, but I, not paying much attention, figured it was going to the guy that whispered me. Out of a moment of curiosity, I noticed that the name that whispered me wasn't the guy who got it, so I looked to see what weapon he could possibly have had that was worse than that new mace.

The individual in question, a Blood DK, linked his current weapon as Bryntoll, the Bone Arbiter, socketed with two Fractured Cardinal Ruby.

What?!?!

I sat there in a moment of blunt confusion for about a minute, then proceeded to get really pissed. How the HELL is that mace a significant upgrade for him, if it's an upgrade at all? I mean, I've heard that ArP is good for Blood DKs, but seriously?

So I decided to do some research with Rawr v2.3.8. I plugged in both characters with their appropriate upgrades, and this is what I got:

According to Rawr, I would stand to gain 507 DPS from equipping the weapon.

According to Rawr, he would stand to lose 120 DPS.

Granted, Rawr isn't a perfect tool, so I decided to dig further. The following was taken directly from the "Blood Simple - A Blood DK DPS Guide - Updated for 3.3!" thread over at EJ:

The two most important stats for Blood DKs are Strength and Armor Penetration. The general rule of thumb while gearing up is ALWAYS gem for STR, except to meet Meta gem requirements.

The following are stat weights as of 3.3 which I currently use, and feel are fairly representative.

Stat	APE
Attack Power	1
Weapon DPS	9.89
Strength	2.89
Armor Penetration	2.75
Hit Rating (to cap)	2.51
Expertise Rating	2.47
Crit Rating	1.56
Haste Rating	1.5
Agility	1.37
Hit Rating (to spell hit cap)	.52
Armor	.03

I went and Armoried the Blood DK in question and he is completely gemmed for ArP.

Can anyone clarify this for me? And am I justified to be a little pissed off? Really pissed off?

Lagged IRL

2010-01-25T10:46:00.000-06:00

Oh man, jetlag really sucks. I flew back from Germany yesterday and boy, were my arms tired....

Har har har.

Anyway, I hope you all had a good last few weeks, I know that I loved my time in Germany. It was pretty scary being without a car/cell phone/Internet for three weeks, but I made it through. I'm currently uploading a small selection of the pictures I took (small means 93, in this case) so I can share them with y'allz. Let's see if this works:

If that works like intended, it should just be a slideshow. Let me know if it doesn't, or if you have any questions on any of the pictures!

So while I was trying to stay up last night late enough to get back on the right sleep schedule, I logged in and I put in a few attempts at Professor Putricide with my guild. I felt terrible because I hadn't looked up any strats or videos, AND since I've been gone for three weeks, everyone pretty much outgeared the hell out of me. The switching targets thing didn't help my DPS either.

But yes, we put in attempts, i.e. didn't kill him. But hey, if at first you don't succeed...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to catching up on everyone's January activities and trying to get caught up in this crazy World of ours!

To Deutschland!

2009-12-31T15:50:00.000-06:00

Don't worry, it's not going to be a long, long time until I return from Germany; just a few weeks. I'm taking a course over our J-term at my college and decided to take it abroad. I won't have internet while I'm over there, with the exception of the occasional internet cafe. Therefore, I bid you all farewell for now, have a great New Year's, and I'll see you towards the end of January!

Auf wiedersehen readers!

Awww Yeah, New Banner, What Up Son?

2009-12-26T15:26:00.000-06:00

Thanks to my friend's guildmate, I have a new banner! Check it out... my paladin isn't female anymore, but hey, it's a custom banner. I'll take what I can get.

Thanks again, anonymous person!

I Want to Get My PhD in Memetics

2009-12-23T09:56:00.000-06:00

Of course, I would be one of the last people to participate in this meme. It could be a mix between the sporadicity (somehow, this is a word, I Googled it, and Google don't lie) of my posts and my terrible, terrible short-term memory, but I'm just getting around to this now. The only "tag" I saw was in Rhidach's post, and I figured that was enough. Meh.

1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Ok, when I said I have terrible, terrible short-term memory, I guess that also applies to my long-term memory. Let's see here, what the hell was 2009 all about...

Oh! I started raiding somewhat seriously. I joined a progression of raiding guilds (Google It, iRaid, Cynosure, and now Eradication) on my paladin, although I started out on my shaman.

I also started this blog, and I've never really written anything for others to read on a semi-regular basis, so I'm proud of myself for still pluggin' away. (Big thanks to everyone who stops by and boosts my self-esteem with comments and view numbers!)

2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Ulduar hands down. I still remember the first time I ran that place, it was fuckin' magical.

3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

The free time to raid throughout the year. Seriously, that sucked. Also, I'd like to have my frost mage leveled to 80 and transferred sometime soon.

4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

In terms of WoW achievements, probably downing Yogg after what seemed like the longest wait in the world to get into a group that could do it.

Outside of WoW, applying to grad schools and being one semester closer to graduation is nice. I'd like 25 achievement points for that, Blizzard, let's get to work.

5. What was your biggest failure?

Transferring to Aerie Peak to raid, then having to quit, then coming back when I thought I finally had the time and discovering that the entire guild transferred off. I wasn't all that mad when it happened, but now that I recap it... WOW.

6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Getting my mace. I remember doing 2s with my priest friend and I would be on a roller coaster of emotion with each win and loss, because my eyes were on the prize the whole time. Admittedly, I ALMOST got the sword, but I got talked into the mace. Glad I made that choice.

7. What do you wish you’d done less of?

I wish I had done less leveling-my-worthless-warrior. Seriously, it's 80 now and is still dual-wielding a Titansteel and that axe from Halls of Lightning. That's back when fury was good for the masses, not just ridiculously geared raiding warriors.

8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

Too many. I won't pick a favorite either, because that'd be picking favorites. Instead, I can provide you with a list of my top five:

The rant-filled I Like Bubbles,
The delightfully number crunchy and prot-ish Avenging Wrathy and Righteous Defense,
The one part Bertrand Russell, two parts Jeff Goldblum Critical QQ,
And the Pinky and the Brain over at Forbearance (no comment on who's who).

9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

Out of everything that has happened this year, I'd say the most valuable thing I've learned is that you can't, I repeat, CANNOT tank as a snowman.

The Real "Cold Snap"

2009-12-21T11:01:00.000-06:00

You know, I was going to include a small excerpt of last night's Daily Show, where Jon Stewart talks about Gretchen Carlson and how she dumbs herself down for no good reason at all, but all of the clips I found on YouTube were some more-than-likely NSFW videos about her... physical attractiveness. I use that word carefully, simply because any woman who thinks an ignoramus (by definition in the English language) is an ignorant lawyer has had her physical beauty negated by her intellectual vacuum.

Actually, I'm sure she saw something about the 17th century play Ignoramus when looking up this definition, in which the main character was an ignorant lawyer. Shocking, I know. Dictionaries are hard to use.

==============================

Few experiences in my life quite parallel the feeling I get every time I go snowboarding. I confront the bitter cold and harsh wind with optimism, embracing it as a sign that today is not a day for labwork or deadlines. The anticipation of riding the lift to the top of the hill is rivaled only when I'm sitting on the cusp of the run in front of me, where taking one jump forward would send me full throttle into a white world, zigzagging through the snow-dusted trees and ski chalets. Once I throw myself over the edge and into this almost surreal realm, I am committed; the mountain will throw at me what it will, and reacting is as much a thrill as it is a necessity.

A truly amazing WoW experience successfully captures these emotions and distills them into an intellectual beverage for your enjoyment. So many fight mechanics are tank and spank, hit the boss enough until he dies or gives up, that when we encounter the rare "gimmick" encounter, we are more annoyed than refreshed. We have become accustomed to so much; it's easy to forget the feelings of awe and wonderment we experienced the first time we witnessed the Sapphiron encounter, as the dragon constructed itself out of the scattered bones on the floor, or the sense of serendipity and relief when crowd control, Mass Dispelling, kiting, interrupts, heals, and all-out burst worked out just right on the Faction Champions encounter.

Remember and cherish these moments, and recognize that your progress into ICC will undoubtedly produce similar memories and ecstatic moments.

Safe and happy holidays, readers!

What's in a Name? Letters, Mostly

2009-12-18T05:38:00.000-06:00

Another sleepless night for the sake of finals. Third this week. Screw college.

Life lesson: don't major in science. Two good things come out of this recommendation:

Firstly, future generations won't have to go through all the crap I've had to go through, sparing themselves a rather large portion of their sanity and, thusly, life in general.

Secondly, there won't be any new scientists to replace me, so I can end up making lots of money.

If you're an economics person and are thinking "I don't think you thought that one through, buddy," then you're right. I took an econ course once... Never again.

Onto more IMPORTANT things;

I did indeed transfer my pally back, but I did not name him AuntieJenn, Anteeegen, or AuntieJong. Sorry fellas, I just thought Auntie anything would be extremely odd to see on a male belf, oh excuse me, "male" belf. And you can't have 3 e's in a row in character names, so that takes care of the second.

No no, I let my inner and outer nerd take over when I named my character. If you can't take the suspense and really want to know what it is, go ahead and click my Armory link to the left. However, I'm not going to be updating my Blogger name (not even sure it's possible). Why? Because changing my name on here would only serve to confuse people. It's the same reason I didn't rename my blog when I stopped raiding (although I do hope to every god possible that I can raid next semester without much trouble).

So I went to run the daily random heroic after I transferred and I was matched to a group for H Pit of Saron. I, of course, was specced prot, because getting groups as ret sucks hard. There were bracers that dropped from one boss that I needed for my ret spec. However, I did not inform the group I would be rolling on them; I had been in groups previously with tanks or healers rolling on DPS gear without telling anyone, so I figured it was fine.

Of course it wasn't fine. Why would I tell this story if it was fine? God you guys are gullible.

Anyway, they drop, and I roll need. The group FREAKS OUT. I politely and succinctly inform them that ret is my main spec, and I only spec prot to get groups faster. They insist that, since I was currently prot, I should only roll on prot gear. I found that idea ignorant, and chose to laugh at it, as it's a heroic and can be run daily for the drop, a point I also calmly conveyed to them. Apparently one of them had a character on my server and said he was going to go on TL and say that I was a ninja. Oh noes, heroic ninja for my actual main spec, I'm scurred.

This is the point that I found quite hilarious:

He said he was going to report me for "disobeying the loot rules," and that not only would I get the bracers taken away from me, I'd get banned for this offense.

Curious to see if this was possible, I did some research and, as it turns out, no you can't. That's straight from Blizz. Cash money.

Furthermore, I'm disputing the fact that I even WAS being a ninja-

Ret is my main spec; hell, it's even my first spec of my dual specs which, when looked at on the Armory, appears to be my main spec.
My ret gear is better, overall, than my prot gear (although my prot set is catching up quickly, sadly).
I know ret inside and out (i.e. much better than I know prot), including writing a blog with at least a few informative posts on ret gearing, talenting, etc.

But just because I was SPECCED prot and tanked the heroic, they say I can't roll on an item I need? Bull.

But what do you guys think? I mean, sure, I could have informed them that I'd be rolling on ret-type gear, but I run so many random heroics that to do so becomes tedious, and in literally every other heroic, no one cares.

< /rant >

Back in Belf

2009-12-15T15:23:00.000-06:00

Long story short, I had to quit for a while because of school. I'm on an indefinite leave from raiding for the same reason, but I came back to play here and there because I love this game and I can find other ways to enjoy it than just raiding. Anyway, when I came back after a couple months MIA, my entire raiding guild had transferred and faction-changed. Talk about impulsive...

I'm not really bitter about it though. If you really want to do something, do it, and I'm pretty live and let live. I hope they're doing well, storming ICC and causing a ruckus in the Lich King's pantries and broom closets.

So I decided to transfer back to TL. I miss playing with friends, and I miss Orgrimmar. Ironforge was cool, but Org just has a familiarity to it.

I also missed the belfocity of being a belf. I went "male" in memory of Jong's belf pally. Each frosted tip is a testament to your belf-legacy, sir.

So I propose to you readers: what shall I name my pally now? Macht is taken (the name I had on AP) and Antigen was flagged for a rename for some stupid reason. Throw any ideas in the comments section below, don't be shy!

Man, My Mace is Getting Rusty

2009-12-14T09:28:00.000-06:00

Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. Sure, you get tired, but the lack of sleep eventually messes with your mind. All of a sudden, light bulbs seem funny, your mouse pad is mocking you, and bottled water is the best thing in the entire world.

Chain-tanking random heroics for hours on end, rather than work on my 30+ page biology portfolio, became my sole ambition. You know it's getting bad when you look at Recount, see that you are destroying all of the DPS, and keep going. I mean, I'm an easygoing guy... to a point. There is just no excuse to be doing that terribly.

(Hunters with your taunt on, I'm staring intently into your soul here.)

Sure, you don't have to be in T10 right out of the gate, but don't show up to heroic Halls of Reflection with BoA gear and quest greens. That's a slap in the face to everyone else, ESPECIALLY the healer.

And when you upset the healer, you upset me, because, as a tank, if there is one person that I WILL taunt off of, it's the heals. So go ahead, piss off the guy healing your wounds, see what happens.

... What's going to happen, you ask? You'll get an angry tankadin runnin' your ass down like Dugan trampling that ref during the Vikings/Steelers game:

Healer friends, I'll be the Dugan to your Harvin, this I promise you.

3.3 and Me, Oh Em Gee, Pee Vee Eee

2009-12-13T03:20:00.000-06:00

I'd have to say the thing I was MOST excited about when I logged in on patch day was that my Silver Covenant Hippogryph can walk! Thank you, Blizzard, for restoring my poor bird-lion's legs. Although I think they might have destroyed it's ability to run without looking like it's trying to swim through air.

With the new cross-server LFG system, I figured (so naively) that finding a heroic as an OMGSICK ret pally was gonna be super easy. Yeah, that didn't quite work out well. See, DPS quality is not a factor in the decisions for ANYTHING, as I'm sure many of you have figured out by now (poor, poor Darraxus). So I specced prot... and stayed prot.

I even changed my offspec to holy to try to start healing. But we'll see about that one, I'm still not sure I can bear THAT much responsibility. If only someone would've told my friend before he wanted me to look after his cat...

I think this could be made into a movie, but I'm kinda torn on who would portray my paladin. Would it be an actress, because I always play female characters (easier on the eyes, here's looking at you Draenei male), or an actor, because I'm actually a guy? I could go for an androgenous actor... Nah.

"A ret paladin, clinging to the edge of society as a DPS, is forced to roll prot and tank face in some PuGs. Saddened as his roles in life have completely changed, he still somehow outDPSs 75% of PuGs he joins. Even more saddened, he sets his paladin on auto-attack while he gets up to make a sandwich. After he returns with a delicious peanut butter and honey sandwich and a tall glass of milk, the fact that he still has aggro throws him onto the verge of depression, down the twisting spiral of despair over the state of cluelessness and ineptitude among his brethren. Just then, a radical transformation occurs..."

I am paladin, hear me rawr.

Rawr.

I Have a Confession to Make

2009-12-04T16:33:00.000-06:00

I'm cheating on WoW with Dragon Age. There, I said it, do what you will.

It's a great game so far. I'm still in Lothering, doing simple quests like killing bears and bandits and such, but I like the combat scheme it has going for it. They've even introduced a mechanic that taunts enemies and makes them focus one party member.

Where have we seen this before? Sounds tank-y.

There's also a spell that I haven't picked up at all called Heal. I wonder what that's for.

Sadly enough, however, I have not run into a priest or something like that yet. I do have a hot witch girl voiced by Claudia Black, which I picked up on almost immediately and became very excited (Stargate SG-1, seasons 8-10 anyone?). And some ex-nun who is now a rogue... for some reason. I don't understand her back story, nor do I particularly care to look into it; she is quite extraneous.

I only have a couple complaints about the game so far. First of all, when you fight people, blood goes everywhere and you get blood specks on your armor and face. While this in and of itself isn't bad, it's that every time a cut-scene happens right after a fight, you see those blood specs and it looks RIDICULOUS. Then again, I didn't grow up during the Middle Ages, and wouldn't know about the patterns of blood spatter when an arm is cleaved off with a two-handed sword. I could give them the benefit of the doubt with this one.

However, the second complaint is actually about the gameplay itself: you seem to die WAY too easily. I picked a warrior (naturally, it was the closest thing I could get to a ret) and because of their "the character with the heaviest armor gets focused" game mechanic, my main character goes through health potions faster than Tiger Woods through a fire hydrant (too soon? I don't think so) Or for those of you attuned to the elemental nature of football, faster than Adrian Peterson through a speed trap.

They've always said that guy was fast...

Anyway, maybe it's just the beginning of the game and my nub ass hasn't gotten any gear worth anything, so getting hit hard is a natural consequence. Still, it's annoying as hell.

Stop being so fleshy and vulnerable, Aiden. Stop it.

Oh, What Tangled Interwebs We Weave...

2009-11-28T16:43:00.000-06:00

So apparently, there's some guy in Japan who was so lonely that he married a video game character.

Yes, let that sink in... He married a character from the Nintendo DS game, Love Plus. Like, married in real-life, by a religious official, in front of a crowd of witnesses.

This game is intended to be a dating simulator, and has players developing relationships with one of three different virtual girlfriends. Below is an excerpt from Kotaku, a video game blog, from their coverage of Love Plus:

"Players can set how they want their girlfriend to address them, and over time, she modifies to match the players' likes and dislikes. The way she speaks will even change slowly over the course of the game."

Apparently, when they're not being overrun by giant lizards, the tech-savvy denizens of Japan are busy at work trying to make the WEIRDEST shit ever.

==============================

Seriously, if you could develop relationships in WoW with the NPCs, I know a TON of people that would immediately head to Theramore to court Jaina. I mean, you can't go wrong with Jaina, perfect matching of brains and beauty, but she's shown that her "duties" come first, whatever those may be. Plus she is totally seeing Thrall on the side. Once you go green...

But while everyone is porting back to Azeroth to lay at the bottom of Jaina's tower, crying themselves to sleep at night, I'll be sneaking into the Argent Tournament Grounds for some one-on-one time with Argent Confessor Paletress:

I mean, come on! She's not even wearing legitimate pants! This should be a no-brainer, guys.

The Battle

2009-11-20T01:02:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been leveling a mage, since leveling is something that I can do on my own time and whatnot, and I've always wanted to play something that's almost the exact opposite of a paladin (I'm sure warlocks would make a better antithesis but they always struck me as wanna-be mages anyway).

I use leveling guides to get through old world content because, honestly, it's so confusing where to go and when. I was on the part of the guide where it told me to go kill some creatures in the southern Badlands, so I jump on my armored elephant (I wish I was exalted with a different city, I hate riding those things) and stroll down to the area. I start decimating all in my path, wave after wave of bad guys falling beneath my tender, cloth-covered feet, and I see it.

Anathemus, a behemoth of stone and what looks like grass, sporting a whopping 8.3k HP, looking down on me as if I were some bug in a dress.

The beast threatened to stomp my face in if not dealt with, so I proposed to the local Council of Magi that he had WMDs on his back and, after some intense discussion over whether to show my helm or not, I was given permission to go in and "take care of business." Declaring it a suicide mission, the council refused to give me back up. I told them to "talk to the hoof" and teleported away.

I return to the beast, just out of Frostbolt range, and prepare for an epic battle.

Evocation up? Check.

Potions? Check.

Mana Gem conjured? Check.

Cold Snap and Icy Veins off cooldown? Check.

I was ready to rock and roll.

Spells as cold as Northrend itself shot from my hands as quickly as I could summon them. The beast, slowed by the chill of my onslaught, lumbered towards me. I let forth a blast of glacial energy, freezing the beast in his place, then teleported away a safe distance and continued my volley.

Soon, the beast was on the threshold of death, but still on a vengeful march forward. I unleashed a blast of flame with my mind, killing him, bringing his earthen body to the ground with a large crash. Nearly out of mana and out of breath, I stood triumphant over his body and flexed:

After getting a mediocre reward from killing something that had nearly 8 times as much health as I did, I went to Wowhead to check his loot table. That's when I saw this comment left by Clashen, and my victory seemed for naught:

"Not immune to Frostbolt, Frostnova or Cone of Cold, very easy for a mage to take down."

Whatever, Clashen, just whatever.

A Mace Named After Me? Eat That, Fordring

2009-11-15T03:04:00.000-06:00

So Wow.com had this thing on more community members seeing their names on in-game items and I became instantly jealous/intrigued. They say that they've found these items in the patch files, so I downloaded the PTR and did a little digging myself.

This is what I found, and let me tell you... I like it.

Wrath of the Farm King

2009-11-08T00:09:00.000-06:00

I have recently fallen into the trap that is FarmVille on Facebook. I mean, come on, you got your own little plot of digital land to plant crops and decorate with buildings and hay bales and animals. Sounds like the American dream, right?

Right.

Then I got a brilliant idea. I mean, more brilliant than Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the ~~evil bastards~~ proponents behind the demotion of Pluto from planet status.

I mean, come on, now it's "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine...?" Certainly isn't Pizzas. Thanks Neil.

Anyway, I figured that WoW needs to jump on this farming bandwagon before FarmVille dominates the corner of the market, so I came up with a prototype for Blizzard:

Looks like my pumpkins are about done. I don't know how I'm going to harvest them with a giant mace, but I can sure as hell try.

I Cracked Like That Stupid Egg That Never Gives Me A Proto

2009-11-05T13:15:00.000-06:00

Yup, I played. Correction: I am playing. Well, not at this moment. But I think I'm going to play a little here and there. Level an alt, probably. Why? It's the easiest thing to manage time with. Unfortunately I can't really return to a full raid schedule, but at least I can still play.

I know what you're thinking: oh my GOD this guy is ridiculous, he's leaving, then he's playing again, then he's playing a little, then he's raiding, then he's leaving again; ok, maybe you're not thinking that EXACTLY, but I'm sure it's on the same wavelength. The truth is, I love this game. Just giving it up cold turkey, while not that difficult, definitely took it's toll on my sanity.

That, and I was getting WAY too good at Halo 3 (Killing Frenzy on Team Snipers? Ridiculous.).

Learning to Learn

2009-10-25T17:57:00.000-05:00

After reading Megan's post on Forbearance about how great players strive to learn and master new specs or classes rather than be content and lazy with their characters, I wanted to write a lengthy response involving WoW psychology and the benefits of consistent neurological stimulation, but I quickly realized that even I would probably stop reading if someone's comment was that long. TL;DR to the max.

As a college student, I have learned a fair amount in my academic career: from figuring out how to tie my shoes in kindergarten (bunny ears FTW, I still don't know how to loop, swoop, and pull) to ascertaining the molecular basis of cystic fibrosis (a genetic mutation leading to a malfunctioning/non-functioning chloride ion channel, what son?!).

No matter the subject material, the process of learning never changes: converting an external stimulus into coherent information that can be processed and stored into the long-term memory, theoretically through the biological mechanism of long-term potentiation. What we experience consciously, however, is that the more we perform a task or are asked to produce an answer to a question, our performance in these areas improves.

For example, think about any part-time, food industry job you've ever had (if you've never had one, you're a bastard); not only is it crucial to know where the burgers are in the freezer, but also how many can fit on the grill at one time, how many to cook to meet any present or future need (without letting them sit under the heat lamp too long), how long they take to cook, where to put them when they're done, etc. Eventually, when cooking burgers has been burned into your brain (no pun intended), you can manage the deep fryer and all of its aspects, and then the dressing table, fry cooker, ice cream machine, coffee maker, drive thru, and register.

How long this mastery takes varies on an individual basis, but I'm willing to bet you have all experienced the mastery of a task and the utter boredom, disinterest and apathy it creates.

"Whoops, I dropped a tomato in the deep fryer... Cool, look at it sizzle."

Let's tie this back into WoW:

Leveling a Ret Paladin is easy (arguably the easiest spec to level as a paladin). Gearing up by running heroics and farming mats, still relatively easy. Of course, playing a Ret can be a blast. Hell, this blog wouldn't exist if I didn't think Rets were fun to play. But what happens when Rets become the "flavor of the month" because people learn about some bug that may or may not make you an invincible and vengeful god, and everyone and their brother reroll? Well, simply put, you're no longer that special, tiger. Now you have 44573443565 other Rets (not to mention DKs) to jockey with for a spot in that heroic daily group. Why would someone pick you over those other guys? At this point, it simply becomes a 'First come, first served' or, worse yet, 'Who's name is cooler?'

Speaking of names, I swear, my old raid leader never pronounced my paladin's name right.... it's not an-TEE-jen, it's AN-teh-jen. Whatever, hatchet buried, bridge built over the water, blah blah blah.

You could market yourself, making an absurdly-long macro that automatically posted your 'DPS LFG Heroics' with a personal touch like 'will trade sexual favors for guaranteed spot' (someone on my old server, jokingly, had something along these lines in his enchanting macro... it worked, he got tons of business). But seriously, how many times do you see a wall of text in trade chat and just completely ignore it because you half expect it to be some 'jOiN mY gUiLd, We HaVe A tAbArD!!' bullcrap? Too many times, my friends.

You could take Megan's suggestion and diversify your playstyle. For paladins, this can be difficult, but the end result is the ability to fill any roll whenever you need to. Healer just drop group? Respec holy and have fun playing whack-a-DPS. Tank d/c? Respec prot and 969 your way to victory. Versatility is the name of the game here, folks.

Of course, I'm not saying that being good at all these specs will make you a better person. We all know rolling a paladin does that automatically, so no need to fret. But the willingness to change and not be afraid of failure, to be a noob again and learn how to do something completely different, that... that is invaluable.

Because Goodbyes are so Cliché

2009-09-14T20:00:00.001-05:00

It has been over a month since I've posted, and for those of you that religiously followed my blog over the summer (lookin' at you, Jong), I'm sorry. I kind of left things at a cliffhanger, with the prospect of transferring servers/factions looming on the horizon.

Anyone interested in story time? I am, let's go!

In the end, I decided to app to an Alliance guild on Aerie Peak. They were a raiding guild that was halfway through Ulduar hard modes and working on Heroic Trial, both of which were in 10man (25mans are a little harder to get off the ground, which I determined from how frustrated my new GM sounded as he pushed our 25man through normal Trial).

So I left my guild and my friends on Thunderlord for a jaunt on Aerie Peak, and I actually enjoyed it. My first couple of days in the guild, the GM threw me in the 10man hard mode group and we downed Firefighter. That same night, our tank finished her Algalon key, so we got to go see what was up his ass until he turned around and stomped us. Fun times all around.

The following week, I started classes. This semester I'm taking two upper-level biology courses and two do-nothing courses just for credits to graduate on time. After only a week, I was able to determine that I could not keep up any sort of raiding schedule and do well in my biology classes, which were the ones that mattered. Therefore, I wrote a succinct (Blizzard didn't give me much choice, stupid character limit on in-game mail) letter to my GM and recruitment officer of the guild I JUST transferred to and regretfully resigned from WoW until such time I had the free time to pick up my mace again.

So here we are. I'll try to stop by every now and then, check up on Rhidach, Ixobelle, Daraxxus, Ambrosyne, Jong, and all the other crazy but lovable bloggers I have gotten to know through their insightful and inspiring posts.

It's been quite the ride.

Party on, Garth.

WTB Free Time, PST

2009-09-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

Busy busy busy...

Let me recap the past week or two for you guys:

- Guild downed Anub'arak in both my 10-man and our 25-man
- Participated in a Yogg kill for the first time as a sub in a different 10-man (same guild though)
- Packing up, then moving into my apartment on campus
- Being sick for a couple days and have it be worse than it should've been due to alcohol and simple exhaustion

So those are my excuses for leaving this blog a barren wasteland; take them or leave them.

In WoW news, I might be transferring servers/faction for a new guild. My current guild is alright, don't get me wrong, it's just that they don't really give a shit about hard modes, or even Ulduar anymore. The Yogg kill I got was with the more serious 10-man in our guild that is already full.

Sad face.

But yeah, that's $55, which is a decent amount of coin. And there's the 'I'd feel guilty for leaving my current guild' stuff, because they've been really great, but they're not heading in a direction that I agree with, and the game is only a game if you enjoy it...

Nerd Rage Accumulating, Must... Prevent... Overload...

2009-09-03T23:46:00.000-05:00

I just lost a roll on the Dual-Blade Butcher. I'm upset, so I'm writin' a quick post that's completely unrelated to WoW.

The dip-chip dilemma is a confounding one. Tortilla chips are delicious, don't get me wrong, but they don't taste right if you don't have salsa.

So I go to the fridge and whip out the chunky salsa I prefer (stays on the chip better, IMO) and stare at the empty salsa dish in front of me. How much do I fill? How hungry am I? Or, more often than not...

How much salsa = how many chips? Can you estimate your salsa intake by handfuls of chips?

Gah, way too much math involved in this answer. Wow I'm lazy. But come on, 1.5 mL of salsa per square inch of chip sounds ridiculous. I realize that if you grab too much salsa, you either dump it or eat more chips to try to use it all.

Wait, either throw it away or eat it... that sounds strangely... American.

Player's Bill of Rights?

2009-09-02T09:51:00.000-05:00

I didn't even bother trying to log on yesterday morning before work because I knew the servers would be down for maintenance, so I went to work, did my thing, went to the gym, and came home around 6:00 pm. To my disgust, the servers were still down. They remained down for another 2 hours before Blizzard decided to let us play on them again.

9:45 rolled around and, with 9 other guildies, into the Trial of the Crusader we went.

Beasts? Down.

Demon? Down.

Champions? Wipe, wipe, then down.

Twins? Down.

Bug? Uhh...

You said that last week, you asshole! I guess we'll try again later in the week.

By the way, look at that Recount for our Twins encounter:

6k? I be runnin' in ur coliseum, stealin' ur orbs.

Here's a fun trick: when you have to switch essences to go take down the other's shield, you can grab the orbs of the color you just switched to and it will stack on the ones that you collected from the previous color. I think I had the Empowered buff like three times. Pure win.

==============================

All of these problems, from not getting our server up until an hour before raid time, to not being able to fight Anub'arak, to the instance error shit still poppin' up, caused a lot of ruckus in trade chat. Lots of QQing, a topic Euripedes likes to discuss. This all raises a good question, though:

Do we have the right to bitch at Blizzard when we can't play our favorite game for a couple hours?

Forget the EULA/ToA or whatever the legal jargon that Blizzard spews out their mouths. I'm simply asking whether we, as consumers, are entitled to complaints about "maintenance Tuesdays."

We pay roughly $70 ($30 for Vanilla and BC a la Battle Chest, $40 for Wrath) to just install the game and play it the way it was meant to be played. We then pay $15 a month to continue playing, with the promise of new content through patches. The scale on which Blizzard patches WoW dwarfs other games.

Heh, dwarf.

Personally, I feel that the monthly fee is negligible when compared to other gaming venues. Sure, similar MMOs like Warhammer and EVE Online go for $15 a month also, but look at XBox Live.

I used to be pretty big into Halo 3, being a bored college student and all, and just having the ability to play online cost me 7$ a month. New map packs for Halo cost between 600 and 800 Microsoft Points, or $8 - $10 for new content. These packs didn't come out very often, and the limits of Halo 3 were some form of armed PvP combat, with standard elements of deathmatches, capture the flag, etc. WoW has much more to offer than Halo, and I certainly feel that the extra content justifies an additional $8 a month.

So when servers go down for maintenance, is this stealing money out of our pockets? In the past, Blizzard has credited players with a free day of playtime due to excessive problems with maintenance causing the servers to be down for much longer than expected. This shows that Blizzard sometimes acknowledges our loss of playtime and, by extension, money.

Should we expect this every time the realms are down for longer than promised? This becomes a slippery slope. How long do the servers need to be down for Blizzard to issue free playtime? A couple hours past their estimate? An hour? A half-hour? One minute past?

Euripedes' post (the one I linked earlier in this rambling) addresses Blizzard's perfectionism. If they're not satisfied with the way something turned out, i.e. Starcraft: Ghost, they're not going to let other people play it. They could just release a metric shit ton of sub-par Warcraft and Starcraft-themed games and make millions, if only because people that are familiar with both of the series would gobble them up. If they do that, however, down goes their product quality, and down goes their customer loyalty.

It's like Alien vs. Predator; from what I've heard, as I sadly haven't seen either movie, Alien and Predator were great, but along comes some edgy studio that wants to put them both in the same production and viola, you have a steaming pile of film crap. The remade Miami Vice also falls into this same category; I walked out of this movie not even an hour into it.

Therefore, Blizzard maintains their servers constantly, and they won't let their subscriber base even think about playing until they're satisfied that most of the problems have been ironed out. Mini-refunds are Blizzard's way of saying 'thank you for your patience,' and are in no way obligatory. What about the instance problems, and the Anub'arak glitches, you may ask? Suck it up, it's a big game and Blizzard only has so many employees to handle the problems. They're aware of the situation and will get to it when everyone stops flooding their offices with tears.

Just be grateful that Blizzard is in such caring hands.

The Things I Do For Shinies

2009-09-01T13:44:00.000-05:00

The only heroic I'll do on my paladin is the daily, and only for those necessary Emblems of Triumph. I was tanking a Heroic Gun'drak, which was the daily, a couple days ago with a group composition of druid healer, hunter, warlock, and arms warrior. By the second boss (the Colossus guy), it was pretty evident how the rest of the instance was going to go; I was first in damage and DPS. While I can see that my DPS is naturally high because Shield of Righteousness 'has a Hemi in it,' I was still saddened to see that the warlock was doing 2k MAX on trash and bosses, the hunter was barely keeping up with 1.8k, and the warrior was dead last with 1.2k. The warrior admitted that he has just hit 80 the day before, but come on guys, let's get our act together here. On the bright side, at least I didn't have threat issues...

In raiding news, our raid leader had to stop playing because of RL conflicts, so one of our 10-man raid leaders stepped up and delivered. And deliver he did, as we got guild-first downs of Thorim, Mimiron, and Vezax. Go team! Extendable lockouts FTW on those. We'll be attempting Yogg next Sunday, I believe, as 25 Trial should take a little while this week, with the final encounter opening up.

The majority of my WoW time has been devoted to gearing out my DK. Let me tell you, finding a group when you have BoA shoulders on isn't so easy. People just automatically label you as a scrub and lawl you out of the group. I ran a Heroic Trial of the Champion yesterday with a couple friends and a PuG Blood DK. He laughed at my DW Frost spec, and my sub-par gear, but by the end of the instance, he had 4k dps and I had 3.1k, not nearly as low as he thought. However, when I confronted him about it, he just said I'd 'never beat him in DPS lol.' Congrats, Blood DK, you're officially an idiot who doesn't realize that his gear allows for much higher potential DPS than mine, which has a plethora of blues left (yes, I consider 4 blues a plethora). Also, at the time, I had a Titansteel MH and a Naxx 10 OH, so that didn't help the situation either.

I don't know why I did a Google search for 'ice cream,' but I'm sure glad I did. This guy kinda looks like Red Foreman from That 70's Show.

Wow, I want some of that ice cream now. Hopefully its made from frozen human.

If I Could Rearrange the Alphabet, I'd Put U and I Closer Together

2009-08-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

So far, I have covered gearing up (both pre 3.2 and post), enchanting that ish, and distributing your talent points. Now, I'm gonna go over my user interface, or UI, to give newbie rets an idea of what's necessary (and what's not, but looks fuckin' awesome).

For all of the following pictures, if you click them they should enlarge, just like... never mind.

Here is a screenshot of me in a 10 man Trial run with my guild. All I want you to focus on here is the clusterfuck of addons that I have. But trust me, apprentice, clusterfucks are good. I'll go over all the addons you can see on my screen and why I think they're important.

GRID

Grid is an addon that takes your party and raid frames and condenses them into little boxes, as seen here. The little boxes are colored by class (pink for paladins, thanks Blizzard). When someone loses health, the box becomes emptier (look at the orange box and you can see that our druid has lost some health). People out of range will be grayed out, and dead people will have a gray box with DEAD in place of their name. Of course, this mod is highly customizable; you can change the shape, spacing, coloring, and shading of the boxes, among other things. I like it because it saves some of my screen real estate. Yeah, that's pretty much the only reason.

PALLY POWER

Next up is Pally Power. As a paladin, this could be the single most useful mod for paladins in a raid environment. What it does is condense your blessings, seals, and auras into a little strip. What's unique about this mod is that it allows an individual, with either lead or assist, to assign who gives what blessing to whom. The assignments will show up in the main window, such as above, and all you need do is click each class to give them their buff. Or, if you're REALLY lazy, you can click the little Badge of Justice-esque icon below your seals many times and it'll automatically apply the buffs in a sequential order. Neat, huh?

CHATTER

All Chatter does is retool your chat interface, colors names by class, includes their level, timestamps, and other stuff. One cool feature is that you can click a button and open a chatlog that'll allow you to copy stuff from your chat. Not entirely necessary, but nice.

DEADLY BOSS MODS

Deadly Boss Mods is a must-have for raiding. Wrathy, from Avenging Wrathy, has pointed out an alternative to DBM that is called BigWigs; I've never used it, but if you don't like DBM for some insane reason, try that out. What these addons do is alert you to special moves that bosses have, when they're happening, how long they have on cooldown, even what raid members are affected by what debuff. Excellent for those with situational awareness issues (i.e. myself), as it plays noises and flashes your screen when shit goes down.

PITBULL

Pitbull just redresses your raid frames from the standard pilgrim smock of Blizzard's UI to a sexy, slimmed down string bikini. Highly customizable, highly confusing (the two kind of go hand in hand). Don't let that detract you, though; I much prefer these frames to XPerl. I have my focus, self, target, and target of target frames in the middle of my screen because those tend to be the most important.

POWER AURAS CLASSIC

Oh, how I could sing a lovely song on the wonders of Power Auras. This mod is so customizable, it puts Build-a-Bear to shame. Simply put, this mod makes visual and/or audio signals that are triggered when an event that you specify occurs. Huh? For example, when my Art of War procs, I have it show up as a yellow, glowing circle, as seen in the picture above. I also have a timer that indicates how much time I have left on the proc. For Prot, I use Power Auras to signal when my Divine Plea drops and my Holy Shield needs to be refreshed. The uses for this mod are endless. Not a necessity, but it'll make your virtual life much much better.

DOMINOS

Dominos replaces the action bars from the Blizzard UI with highly moveable and customizable bars. You can move them any which way, on whatever scale you desire. Personally, I don't like clicking my moves, so my bars are really small to discourage me from clicking.

MSBT

Mik's Scrolling Battle Text (or MSBT) replaces the default floating combat text in the Blizzard UI. With MSBT, you can control the size of the text, the positioning, all that fun stuff. Useful for clearing the center of your screen of Blizzard's floating numbers so you can see that boss's cute ass better.

QUARTZ

So I failed and didn't get a screenshot of the ACTUAL use of this mod in action, but use your imagination. Quartz replaces your cast bars with better looking ones (they're smooth and shiny), but more importantly, you can move and scale them. Also, as seen in the picture, the buffs and debuffs that YOU applied to the target will be shown above the target's cast bar.

OMEN

Your tanks will thank you for installing this addon. It shows your current threat on your target, as well as how much threat you need to produce in order to pull off the tank. Gives you a good goal to shoot for. Seriously though, get this.

SEXYMAP

Completely and totally unnecessary, just makes your map look sweeter. There are different styles to choose from, and you can customize which icons you see on your minimap and which you don't.

RECOUNT

I saved the best for last. You aren't a TRUE ret paladin; nay, a true DPS, if you don't have this mod running. It keeps track of other things (who tops dispels on IC? this guy!), but they're not as important. The two graphs I have below my Recount window keep track of overall raid DPS and my latency (ping).

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So there you go, take from my UI what you like and leave what you don't. Pally Power is a requirement in my guild, as well as most raiding guilds you'll join. When your UI turns you on, then you know you've done a good job.

Just a Quickie

2009-08-27T16:47:00.000-05:00

This is a shout-out to all my peeps on Thunderlord-H: I need this drake. No, I don't "want" this thing, I require it for my continued survival. If you are interested in doing some moar chieves to get it, hit me up in game or in an e-mail or comment.

Also, I'm lookin' for a new banner. If anyone can make one, or have ideas of what it should look like, lemme know.

The Birthing of a Relic

2009-08-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

What ho! Ye Belt of the Titans!
The girdle of my destiny,
The band of my dreams.

Thine crafting was a thing of legend:
Assembled from saronite, most durable,
Titansteel, the ingot of the Gods,
Engraved orbs of olde magicks, and
The essence of the shadow itself.

T'was nigh a fortnight of patience required,
But I held steadfast and ever diligent.
The smith, with a sweaty brow and determined eyes,
Smoothed and shaped the metal to his will
Until it revealed its fated form.

Blood-red jewels of empowering strength,
Glistening with the blessing of those most high,
Were united with the smith's work,
Begetting a masterpiece of combat
Worthy of bearing the Titans' moniker.

With great pride and alleviated mind
I adorn the fruit of my own toil.
I bellow an invigorated roar,
Thanking the stars and
Warning those full of bane.

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TL;DR version: I finally made my Belt of the Titans; it's fuckin' sweet.

On Val'kyrs' Wings

2009-08-26T11:32:00.000-05:00

I got invited to a 10-man Trial and Ulduar group last night (in my own guild, no less), the first 10-man group in our guild to face the new Trial boss, the Val'kyr Twins, or Twin Val'kyrs, whatever. After one-shotting the new boss, I have one question for Blizzard:

Are you serious?

I suppose if you don't have DBM, the fight might be a little challenging. Raid damage was almost non-existant, and it seemed like the damage the tanks were taking was pretty pathetic as well. If you could gather up enough balls to stack their buff to 100, you got a Bloodlust-y effect that let you rip more evil angel face.

The fight seems to be one that weeds out the chimps from the chumps, i.e. a chimp could figure out that opposite colors probably are bad for you and for the boss, so as long as you stay away from floating orbs of black when you're white and you're hitting the black boss, easy mode. Maybe that's giving chimps a lot of credit, but they have the strength of 8 men, so OF COURSE I'm going to stroke their egos.

Like any good ret paladin would do, I was browsing the loot table for the Twins while we were going over strats or something that seemed important and I noticed this: Edge of Agony. I started salivating over the thought of a new weapon without Resilience on it when I realized it had WAY too much Agility on it, and no Strength, and ArP, of all stats. I then started to sob gently into my QQ pillow, wondering why Blizzard had teased me with a hunter weapon that was so tantalizing.

When all was said and done, I had enough badges to get my 2-piece T9: Liadrin's Gauntlets of Conquest. I would've waited for a Trophy so I could get 9.25, but apparently they're being distributed evenly, so people who have already received a Trophy (i.e. me) can't get one until all 24 other raiders do. Where's that pillow...