Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.